Economic Development Book

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

2009-12-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

The Origins of the Second World War

Author: R J Overy

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

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

In this third edition:

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

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

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

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

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

Multinational Enterprise and the Globalization of Networks of Knowledge

Author: Peter J Buckley

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

Biosecurity in the Global Age or Becoming Asian American

2009-12-04T03:32:00.000-08:00

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

Author: David P Fidler

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

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

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

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

Book about: Amazing Peace or Skippyjon Jones

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

Author: Nazli Kibria

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

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

Reed Ueda

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

John Lie

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

What People Are Saying

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

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

	Preface and Acknowledgments
Ch. 1	Asian Americans and the Puzzle of New Immigrant Integration	1
Ch. 2	Growing up Chinese and American, Korean and American	27
Ch. 3	The Everyday Consequences of Being Asian: Ethnic Options and Ethnic Binds	67
Ch. 4	College and Asian American Identity	102
Ch. 5	The Model Minority at Work	131
Ch. 6	Ethnic Futures: Children and Intermarriage	159
Ch. 7	Becoming Asian American	197
	References	207
	Index	215

Dirty War Clean Hands or Hunting Nazis in Munich

2009-12-02T22:20:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Paddy Woodworth

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

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

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

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

	List of Illustrations
	Acknowledgements
	Map of GAL Attacks in Basque Country
	Map of GAL Attacks in Bayonne
	Prologue	1
Pt. I	An Ancient People, A Modern Conflict
1	'Only 5,000 Years Ago'	17
2	Boys Become Giant-Killers	33
3	The First Dirty War	44
Pt. II	A Dirty War Run By Democrats
4	Clean Hands in Government	63
5	Fear Crosses the Border	71
6	Under Siege in the Sanctuary	87
7	ETA Between Two Fires	101
8	Bombing Biarritz	116
9	A Revolutionary Doctor	124
10	A Black Lady Stalks the Bars	139
11	Massacre at the Monbar	156
12	Shooting Women and Children Too	161
13	The GAL's War is Over	170
Pt. III	Placing Blame: Investigating the Investigators
14	Grounds for Suspicion	177
15	Protecting Senor X	200
16	State Terrorism in the Dock	230
17	Recollections in Tranquillity	245
18	A Cascade of Confessions	259
19	Old Bones Tell Their Story	281
20	Who's Cheating Who?	295
21	The Paper Chase	313
22	A Divided Democracy	335
23	A Minister in the Dock	356
24	Judgement and Response	379
Pt. IV	Conclusions: Cleaning Up After A Dirty War
25	Waking from the Nightmare	407
	Epilogue	420
	Chronology of GAL Attacks	433
	Chronology of GAL Investigations	437
	Some Notes on the Spanish Constitution, Judiciary and Legal System	444
	Glossary	449
	Bibliography	458
	Index	462

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

Author: Joachim von Halasz

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

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

The Faith of Barack Obama or Masters of Paradise

2009-12-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

The Faith of Barack Obama

Author: Stephen Mansfield

DISCOVER the NEW FACE of RELIGION in AMERICAN POLITICS

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

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

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

Publishers Weekly

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

New interesting book: Complete Interview Procedures for Hiring School Personnel or Sexual Harassment and the Law

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

Author: Alan Block

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

Disciplinary Revolution or The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation

2009-11-30T11:45:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Philip S Gorski

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

	Preface and Acknowledgments
	Introduction
1	Body and Soul: Calvinism, Discipline, and State Power in Early Modern Europe	1
2	Disciplinary Revolution from Below in the Low Countries	39
3	Disciplinary Revolution from Above in Brandenburg-Prussia	79
4	Social Disciplining in Comparative Perspective	114
	Conclusion	157
	Notes	173
	Bibliography	209
	Index	237

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

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

Author: Timothy B Smith

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

The Age of Diminished Expectations 3rd Edition or Beslan

2009-11-29T06:32:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Paul Krugman

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

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

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

Library Journal

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

Booknews

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

	Foreword
	Preface
	Introduction	1
I	The Roots of Economic Welfare	9
1	Productivity Growth	13
2	Income Distribution	23
3	Employment and Unemployment	31
II	Chronic Aches and Pains	39
4	The Trade Deficit	43
5	Inflation	59
III	Policy Problems	69
6	Health Care	73
7	The Budget Deficit	85
8	The Embattled Fed	101
9	The Dollar	111
10	Free Trade and Protectionism	123
11	Japan	137
IV	Financial Follies	155
12	The Savings and Loan Scandal	159
13	Corporate Finance	169
14	Global Finance	185
V	American Prospects	203
15	Happy Ending	207
16	Hard Landing	213
17	Drift	225
	Index	233

Beslan: The Tragedy of School No. 1

Author: Timothy Phillips

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

Scotsman

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

Prescription for Survival or American Gunfight

2009-11-28T01:20:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Bernard Lown

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

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

Author: Stephen Hunter

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Washington Post - Ted Widmer

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

Publishers Weekly

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

Library Journal

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

Kirkus Reviews

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

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

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity or A House Built on Sand

2009-11-26T20:09:00.000-08:00

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity

Author: Gregory Cran

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

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
1	Sherman at Melos: Realpolitik Ancient and Modern	21
2	Truest Causes and Thucydidean Realisms	36
3	Representations of Power before and after Thucydides	72
4	Power, Prestige, and the Corcyraean Affair	93
5	Archaeology I: The Analytical Program of the History	125
6	Archaeology II: From Wealth to Capital: The Changing Politics of Accumulation	148
7	The Rule of the Strong and the Limits of Friendship	172
8	Archidamos and Sthenelaidas: The Dilemma of Spartan Authority	196
9	The Melian Dialogue: From Herodotus's Freedom Fighters to Thucydides' Imperialists	237
10	Athenian Theses: Realism as the Modern Simplicity	258
11	Conclusion: Thucydidean Realism and the Price of Objectivity	294
	Bibliography	327
	Index	343

New interesting textbook: Real World Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers or ASPNET in a Nutshell

A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science

Author: Noretta Koertg

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

Library Journal

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

Cannibal Island or Inclusion

2009-11-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag

Author: Nicolas Werth

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

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

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

Foreign Affairs

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

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

Interesting textbook: Escopetas Descargadas or Language of Baklava

Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research

Author: Steven Epstein

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

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

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

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

Contentious Politics or Growing Apart

2009-02-21T23:21:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-20T18:10:00.000-08:00

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.

Books about: O Manual de Excelência de Facilitador

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.)

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

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

2009-02-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

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.

Books about: Systèmes informatiques de Bibliothèque :de l'Automation de Bibliothèque aux Solutions d'Accès D'information Distribuées

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

2009-02-18T04:19:00.000-08:00

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

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

New interesting book: iMovie 08 iDVD 08 for Mac OS X Visual QuickStart Guide or Sams Teach Yourself Programming with Java in 24 Hours

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

2009-02-16T23:07:00.000-08:00

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.

Books about: Digital Sensations or Business Intelligence

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.

	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

2009-02-15T17:55:00.000-08:00

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.]

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

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

2009-02-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-13T07:28:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-12T02:16:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

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)

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

2009-02-09T15:51:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

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.

. . . 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)

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

2009-02-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

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.

	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

First Person or Last Samurai

2009-02-06T00:14:00.000-08:00

First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President

Author: Vladimir Putin

The astonishingly frank and revealing self-portrait of the most powerful man in Russia, President Valdimir Putin.

Who is this Vladimir Putin? Who is this man who suddenly--overnight and without warning--was handed the reigns of power to one of the most complex, formidable, and volatile countries in the world? How can we trust him if we don't know him?

First Person is an intimate, candid portrait of the man who holds the future of Russia in his grip. An extraordinary compilation of over 24 hours of in-depth interviews and remarkable photographs, it delves deep into Putin's KGB past and explores his meteoric rise to power. No Russian leader has ever subjected himself to this kind of public examination of his life and views. Both as a spy and as a virtual political unknown until selected by Boris Yeltsin to be Prime Minister, Putin has been regarded as man of mystery. Now, the curtain lifts to reaveal a remarkable life of struggles and successes. Putin's life story is of major importance to the world.

Publishers Weekly

Prior to his sudden rise to the Russian presidency, Putin was virtually a mystery; this transcript of recent interviews goes a long way toward filling the blanks in his past. In eight chapters of q&a, punctuated with anecdotes from friends and family members, Putin recounts his boyhood in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), the three years he spent as a KGB intelligence officer in Dresden, his return to the collapsed USSR and decision to enter politics and, finally, the day Boris Yeltsin asked him to take up the Kremlin reins. In Russia, this slim volume surfaced quickly during the brief interim between Yeltsin's resignation and the March elections. But rather than focusing on his political views and ideology, the interviewers devote the bulk of the text to Putin's biography--an indication of just how unknown the new Russian president is to his constituency. And the book succeeds in humanizing the uncharismatic politician. Through his childhood memories, readers learn that the gaunt, stoic man in the newsreels was once a spunky teen cruising the streets of Leningrad in search of girls and judo matches and dreaming of being a Soviet secret agent. Putin, it would seem, was just the socialist boy-next-door, or, in his own unironic words: "a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education." The question he leaves unanswered is: how does such an ordinary and unassuming guy find himself the president of Russia in an era of unabashed political intrigue? (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

This book, which transcribes 24 hours of interviews that three Russian journalists conducted with the Russian president, seeks to answer the pressing question: Who is Vladimir Putin? We read of his grim childhood, adolescence, education, early professional life, interests (judo, intelligence work), and marriage. Nothing particularly remarkable here. Then came the collapse of communism, and Putin's dazzling ascent began, but just why is still not altogether clear. What comes through of the man? An intense patriot, a religious believer, and a family man, Putin is characterized by stern rectitude, even priggishness, and lacks a sense of humor. He insists on Russia's European nature and says that he is committed to democracy. The questioners are polite but not toadying, pressing him on the Chechen War and high-level cronyism and corruption in the Kremlin. An interesting start to what is sure to become a growth industry of books on Russia's new president; for all public libraries.--Robert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Three people, presumably journalists, interviewed the Russian president six times for about four hours each, and arranged the questions and answers into a chronological account of his life and career. The translator is Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Times Literary Supplement - Amy Knight

What they want is an end to the unpredictabilityand chaos that characterized the Yeltsin era. Judging from this book, Vladimir Putin is the ideal man for the job.

New interesting textbook: Outdoor Photographers Landscape and Nature Photography with Photoshop CS2 or Conquest in Cyberspace

Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori

Author: Mark Ravina

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

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

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

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

Library Journal

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

	Note to the Reader	ix
	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Introduction	1
1	"Powerfully Sentimental": Saigo's Early Years in Satsuma	13
2	"A Man of Exceptional Fidelity": Saigo and National Politics	43
3	"Bones in the Earth": Exile and Ignominy	77
4	"To Shoulder the Burdens of the Realm": The Destruction of the Shogunate	107
5	"To Tear Asunder the Clouds": Saigo and the Meiji State	151
6	"The Burden of Death is Light": Saigo and the War of the Southwest	191
	Notes	215
	Bibliography	240
	Sources	255
	Index	257

My Life as a Spy or Sex Science and Stem Cells

2009-02-04T19:00:00.000-08:00

My Life as a Spy

Author: John A Walker

John A. Walker Jr. was a Chief Warrant Officer and communications specialist for the US Navy. In 1985, he was arrested for selling classified secrets to the Soviet Union. Upon his arrest it was revealed that he had been acting as a spy from 1968 to 1985 and that his son, brother, ex-wife, and an acquaintance had also participated in the espionage ring. Altogether, their actions constituted one of the most serious security breaches in US history. In 1990, the New York Times stated, "Mr. Walker provided enough code-data information to alter significantly the balance of power between Russia and the United States."
What motivated a career naval officer to become a spy during the height of the Cold War? Over the years, statements by Walker have been reported in various books, newspapers, and other media outlets, but Walker has never told his own story-till now. Walker has decided to make public a private document that he originally wrote for his children to explain his actions. Among the reasons he gives for publishing this work is the following statement:

"As I grew older, I came to understand that the wars that had taken place during my entire life were just a symptom of a larger national policy. I watched my uncles and aunt go off to World War II, my brother to Korea, and myself to Vietnam, all of which were waged on foundations of lies. Voltaire said that history is a lie agreed upon by historians. How true.
"I cannot classify myself as a visionary or idealist, but just a simple citizen who became angry by the government lies. I did conclude that the US system of government was broken, so I felt justified in breaking some rules in order to help save it.... Why did Ifeel responsible or qualified to end the pattern of perpetual war? I cannot answer my own questions. But then, my insane stunt seemed to have worked. By the admission of both the US and the USSR, I provided the most extensive intelligence ever to the Soviets. With my material in hand, the Soviet government eventually realized the US planned no attack upon them, so my actions have contributed greatly to the Soviet Union's decision to end the Cold War."

Library Journal

Walker was a communications specialist in the U.S. Navy, and from 1968 to 1985 he passed cryptographic secrets to the KGB so the Soviets could track U.S. fleet movements. Here, he justifies his treason through criticism of Cold War American society and includes fascinating details of his actions. He claims that the information he provided allowed the Kremlin to see that the Reagan administration was not preparing for a nuclear war and helped lead to the fall of the USSR. Walker explains his motivation: he was upset at the dangerous and expensive falsehoods of the Cold War, he thought that the assassination of President Kennedy was an organized coup by corporate/government leaders, and he wanted the money. It is ironic that this traitor is outraged that his spying partner and longtime friend Jerry Whitworth betrayed him to the FBI; Walker also blames his ex-wife and Whitworth's wife. His book is suitable for the espionage collections of all libraries to complement Pete Earley's Family of Spies , Howard Blum's I Pledge Allegiance , and Robert W. Hunter and Lynn Dean Hunter's Spy Hunter .-Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL

Kirkus Reviews

Straight from the federal pen, an unrepentant traitor's mea culpa. Busted for spying for the Soviet Union 23 years ago, Walker claims that, because his "children deserved an explanation of my activities," he wrote a memoir that swelled to nearly 600 pages. When his attorney lost it, he says, he started over; thus this book, which is plainly more than a decade old, since he writes of "recent" trips by Bill Clinton on various diplomatic missions. If there is news here, it is largely of a kind we have heard before, thanks to such vehicles as The Falcon and the Snowman: Minor player sells out his country for modestly ideological reasons, in this case putatively having to do with disgust over the waste of resources and effort over a cooked-up Cold War; gets used to the cash and other payoffs of treason; recruits a dim bulb or two in the moral equivalent of a Ponzi scheme; and finally gets caught. Walker protests that the technological secrets he delivered to the Soviets proved that the Cold War was a sham, allowing Gorbachev to put an end to it. To gauge by this ineptly written book, though, Walker is no rocket scientist, which makes one wonder why the Soviets bothered with him. The Soviets seem to have wondered the same thing, having slated Walker for special handling following one too many foul-ups on the part of his psychotic ex-wife and other members of his loose circle. One matter of true interest comes when Walker describes old classified documents that he handled detailing orders for the American D-Day landings of World War II, which Bill Clinton ordered declassified and then rescinded that directive. Was it, as Walker says, because the documents showed "a serious blunder of notfollowing the invasion plan, perhaps landing our troops in the wrong place due to sheer incompetence"?For Cold War completists only. One hopes that Walker will not profit from this defiant scribble.

Foreword 7 Chapter 1 The Crime 11 Chapter 2 The True Believer 23 Chapter 3 The Lies 35 Chapter 4 Playing the Game 41 Chapter 5 The CIA Gets a War 51 Chapter 6 The Cold War Myth 55 Chapter 7 A Couple of Good Years 59 Chapter 8 Heading Downhill 69 Chapter 9 The Nadir 89 Chapter 10 The Spy 99 Chapter 11 Would the World Change? 119 Chapter 12 The Weak Link 131 Chapter 13 A CIA Mole 143 Chapter 14 Seeing the Light 153 Chapter 15 The Bomb 165 Chapter 16 Back to Sea 169 Chapter 17 The Nam 175 Chapter 18 The 25,000-Mile Dead Drop 185 Chapter 19 Looking for a New Enemy 193 Chapter 20 The Turbulent Seventies 195 Chapter 21 Vietnam and a Secret Mission 207 Chapter 22 New Thoughts on War 213 Chapter 23 Forge a Clearance, Recruit a Spy 215 Chapter 24 My Last Tour of Duty 229 Chapter 25 Overdue Divorce 239 Chapter 26 A New Life, a New Cold War 251 Chapter 27 Around the World 263 Chapter 28 Drug Smugglers 271 Chapter 29 Rescuing Cynthia 277 Chapter 30 Annus Horribilis 289 Chapter 31 Family Problems 293 Chapter 32 RYAN and Reagan 299 Chapter 33 Michael 311 Chapter 34 The End Draws Near 325 Epilogue 345

Book review: Dr Perricones 7 Secrets to Beauty Health and Longevity or What Every Woman Should Know About Fertility and Her Biological Clock

Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right-Wing Assault on Reason

Author: Diana DeGett

Sex, Science, and Stem Cells

INSIDE THE RIGHT WING ASSAULT ON REASON

Congresswoman Diana DeGette

A top congresswoman’s stinging rebuke of those who politicize science and sex.

“Over time, I realized that the politicization of science by the Republicans and the religious right was at its most insidious over any issue relating to human reproduction. This brought me to the inevitable conclusion that too many of our elected officials are simply incapable of thinking rationally about sex. I could think of no other explanation. The disconnect was so transparent that some of our older male politicians couldn’t even talk about any aspect of human sexuality without biting their lips to avoid snickering like schoolboys.”
— From the Introduction

Publishers Weekly

U.S. Congresswoman DeGette, of Colorado, doesn't mince words regarding religious conservatives in congress who have been pushing, since Reagan, for abstinence-only sex education, a ban on stem cell research, and other ways of "undermining scientific progress in the name of God." Calling this "political malpractice" of a "malignant, self-serving, and unconscionable" sort, DeGette's riveting insider's account reveals how conservatives have controlled the agenda on woman's issues, especially after the 2000 election. Though her opponents are largely Republicans, DeGette works with moderates and conservatives across the aisle while facing opposition from anti-choice Democrats, as in a crucial vote to prevent a ban on stem cell research. DeGette also writes movingly about her daughter's diabetes, which made stem cell research a personal cause; sadly but predictably, her triumphant legislation, crafted across party lines and with the support of Nancy Reagan, is dashed by a Bush veto. DeGette's report from the D.C. front lines is often infuriating, but her exposure and takedown of conservatives' more outrageous arguments (against, for instance, insurance coverage of government workers' birth control) provide reason to hope for a backlash.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The David Suzuki Reader or American Business Values

2009-02-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

The David Suzuki Reader

Author: David Suzuki

In these provocative essays - some reprinted, others previously unpublished - leading environmentalist David Suzuki explores the limits of knowledge and the connectedness of all things; looks unflinchingly at the destructive forces of globalization, political shortsightedness, and greed; cautions against blind faith in science, technology, politics, and economics; and provides inspiring examples of how and where to make those changes that will matter to all of us and to future generations. He also offers a vision of hope based on our love of children and nature.

In this time of global unrest and uncertainty, Suzuki provides an important reminder of common bonds and of what really matters. Written with clarity and passion, this book is essential reading for anyone who admires David Suzuki, who wants to understand what science can and can't do, or who wants to make a difference.

American Business Values: A Global Perspective

Author: Gerald Cavanagh

This book challenges readers to examine problems and to be aware of biases. It provides the tools to make informed ethical judgments, and tells readers what is required to form good moral habits and character. The primary focus of this book is on American business values, but it also examines how those values are influencing people throughout the world, and how American values are, in turn, being influenced by other peoples. For business advisors and consultants, as well as corporate managers.

From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans or The Much Too Promised Land

2009-02-02T08:34:00.000-08:00

From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans: Florida and Its Politics since 1940

Author: David R Colburn

Likely to raise hackles among Democrats and Republicans alike, this dynamic history of modern Florida argues that the Sunshine State has become the political and demographic future of the nation. David Colburn reveals how Florida gradually abandoned the traditions of race and personality that linked it to the Democratic Party. The book focuses particularly on the population growth and chaotic gubernatorial politics that altered the state from 1940, when it was a sleepy impoverished southern outpost, to the present and the emergence of a dominant Republican Party.

In the twenty-first century, Colburn says, Florida is a dynamic, highly partisan, largely conservative state at the cultural, social, and economic intersection of the Western Hemisphere. But the transition hasn't been entirely felicitous. Allegations abound that the state is a "banana republic" favoring the wealthy, a piece of paradise that embraces "immigrants, natives, seniors, rednecks, evangelicals, and yes, flim-flam artists and mobile home salesmen. All of whom came to the state looking for ways to improve their lot in life."

Colburn depicts the state's colorful governors at the center of every postwar development from Cracker to Sun Belt politics, from segregation to integration, from boosterism and modernization to economic and environmental crises. As the story of one of the most influential states in the nation, the book redefines Florida politics.

Books about: Robot Builders Cookbook or End to End QoS Network Design

The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace

Author: Aaron David Miller

For nearly twenty years, Aaron David Miller has played a central role in U.S. efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace as an advisor to presidents, secretaries of state, and national security advisors. Without partisanship or finger-pointing, Miller records what went right, what went wrong, and how we got where we are today. Here is a look at the peace process from a place at the negotiation table, filled with behind-the-scenes strategy, colorful anecdotes and equally colorful characters, and new interviews with presidents, secretaries of state, and key Arab and Israeli leaders.

Honest, critical, and often controversial, Miller’s insider’s account offers a brilliant new analysis of the problem of Arab-Israeli peace and how it still might be solved.

The New York Times - Ethan Bronner

…[a] revealing and well-written…Apart from such self-criticism, what is unusual about this memoir when compared with other, similar ones is how lively, even irreverent, it is. Mr. Miller is a fine raconteur who fills his pages with real characters and sly observations.

The Washington Post - Glenn Kessler

If Miller had been secretary of state or national security adviser, he might have used his memoir to maintain or restore his reputation. But he does not have to worry much about history's judgment on him personally. And so he has the freedom to recount the many mistakes he and other American diplomats made…the value of the book is its rich and colorful history of past negotiations, and Miller's sharp-edged analysis of what went wrong and right. Memo to the secretary of state: The next time you head off to Jerusalem, throw out some of those briefing papers to make room for this book in your briefcase.

Publishers Weekly

In this extraordinary account of 20 years on the front lines of Arab-Israeli peacemaking, career diplomat Miller provides an impressively candid appraisal of Middle East peace efforts. Drawing from his extensive experience and 160 interviews with presidents, advisers and negotiators, he apportions censure and praise with an even hand, sparing not even his failures or those of his colleagues. Miller evinces genuine compassion for both sides in the conflict (stressing that Americans cannot fully understand the life-and-death stakes in the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians), while maintaining a detachment that allows him to draw hard conclusions. Miller says that though the two sides hold ultimate responsibility for their shared fate, American involvement is imperative and calls for the tough-love approach of Kissinger and Carter, arguing compellingly that such engagement is "now more vital to our national interests, and to our security, than at any time since the late 1940s." Although occasionally paternalistic, Miller's writing is both approachable and deeply smart; this and his absolute failure to take sides mean that this work will doubtlessly influence and enrage-and certainly inspire. (Apr.)

Kirkus Reviews

A word to the next president regarding peace talks in the Middle East: "If you're not prepared to reassure the locals while cracking heads as needed (and both will be needed), don't bother."So ventures negotiator and Middle East specialist Miller, a veteran of many incidents requiring tough talk and tough action and a survivor of Yitzhak Rabin's legendary wrath. (Rabin called Miller's Clinton-era Declaration of Principles "the worst American text since Camp David.") This book combines memoir with what might be called a primer on diplomacy, ending with some carefully reasoned suggestions for the next president to heed. He is a diplomat through and through, but it doesn't take much between-the-lines reading to discern that he finds the present administration wanting in that regard. Its vaunted road map, he writes, had little chance "to get the car out of the parking lot, let alone onto the highway." Yet, just as clearly, Miller takes seriously the need to fight a long war on terror and the fact that Israel is a chief battlefield in that war. He warns that the Middle East is a "bad, bad neighborhood," fraught with perils of many kinds. He also opines that the golden age of Arab-Israeli diplomacy is past, with no current leaders of the likes of Rabin, Hussein, Begin and Sadat to take up the difficult job of peacemaking in an atmosphere where many of their compatriots do not seem to want it. Yet, Miller urges, majorities on both sides do want peace, and if they are to have it Washington must take the lead, even if "the primary responsibility for peacemaking rests with the Arabs and Israelis, not with the Americans."Despite a few bad baseball metaphors and some misplaced breeziness, Miller'saccount is well considered. Recommended reading for the next administration, if not this one. Agent: Deborah Grosvenor/Grosvenor Literary Agency

U S vs Them or Open Society and Its Enemies Volume 1

2009-02-01T03:21:00.000-08:00

U. S. vs. Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security

Author: J Peter Scoblic

How American foreign policy has been formed by conservative ideals that pose a catastrophic threat to our future

In U.S. Versus Them, J. Peter Scoblic argues that the Bush administration's belief in "moral clarity"—its insistence that our foreign policy be based on a fight to the death between America and the forces of evil—has put us at grave risk. Although this worldview may have appealed to many voters in the 2004 election, it has in fact exacerbated the greatest threat to our country: nuclear terrorism. U.S. Versus Them reveals that the seeds of current foreign policy were planted fifty years ago, at the beginning of the Cold War, when conservatism was just beginning to take root, defining itself in opposition to Soviet communism. Scoblic shows how conservative ideology itself—from its development by William F. Buckley, Jr., through its implementation by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to its culmination in the current administration—has endangered Americans and will continue to do so long after this president has left the Oval Office.

As James Mann does in Rise of the Vulcans, Scoblic does more than simply describe or deride Bush's foreign policy; he explains it, showing how and why the president has failed the greatest challenges to American security in the post-9/11 world—indeed, why he was destined to make those mistakes from the moment he took office. U.S. Versus Them is an intellectual history that also answers the question: How can we defend ourselves while restoring America's place in the world?

Robert Wright

J. Peter Scoblic is one of the freshest voices on U.S. foreign policy, and he's addressing a subject of existential importance. His distinctive take on the origins of George Bush's arms control policies—and why they've produced catastrophic results—belongs on the reading list of anyone trying to understand why a zero-sum approach to the world won't work in the twenty-first century. (Robert Wright, author of Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny)

James Mann

In U.S. Vs. Them, Peter Scoblic challenges the assumptions and policies of the Bush administration on nuclear strategy. The book describes the contrasting views of conservatives and liberals on arms control as they have evolved over the past several decades. To understand today's news stories about North Korea and Iran, one must understand the policy battles and the history that Scoblic lays out in this book. (James Mann, author of Rise of the Vulcans: A History of Bush's War Cabinet and The China Fantasy)

Sean Wilentz

J. Peter Scoblic's new book superbly dispels nostalgia in favor of history. Since 1989, pernicious myths have abounded about how cranky, right-wing ideas on foreign policy and nuclear supremacy won the Cold War. In fact, those ideas came all too close to destroying the world—which makes their comeback in recent years extremely alarming. Scoblic's unpolemical, deeply informed account offers urgent warnings about the present as well as a reasoned and persuasive rendering of the past. (Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln)

Kai Bird

J. Peter Scoblic's rollicking indictment of how conservatives have undermined America's security since the dawn of the nuclear era is intellectual history at its best. Scoblic shows us that a ship of fools is afloat, still navigating us all toward catastrophe. It is a shocking and even sordid tale told with calm logic and clear prose. Every informed citizen should pick up this book—but the next president should not occupy the Oval Office without first reading U.S. Vs. Them. (Kai Bird, coauthor with Martin J. Sherwin of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer )

Richard Rhodes

In this highly original study, part history, part current analysis, J. Peter Scoblic reveals the deep fear disguised as uncompromising idealism that has propelled the American conservative movement to promote its disastrous foreign policies. Us Vs. Them is a clear, succinct guidebook to the troubled first decade of the twenty-first century. (Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and author of Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Atomic Arms Race)

Strobe Talbott

A penetrating and provocative critique of a worldview that has brought the United States a world of trouble. (Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state, and author of The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation)

The Washington Post - Fred Kaplan

The shelves are already bulging with books about George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy—where it went wrong, how to steer things right. Yet space should be made for J. Peter Scoblic's U.S. vs. Them, if only because it points out that there's nothing "neo" about the neoconservatives.

The New York Times - Nicholas Confessore

In U.S. vs. Them, Scoblic, the executive editor of The New Republic, argues persuasively that neoconservatism isn't the problem—plain old conservatism is. For Scoblic, the Bush administration's habits of foreign affairs—its distrust of international institutions, its conviction that "good" and "evil" nations cannot coexist in the world—are part of an inglorious tradition of bad ideas that dates to the years of the cold war, when Barry Goldwater lobbied against building a Moscow-Washington hot line.

Publishers Weekly

This cogent first book from the executive editor of the New Republic forcefully argues that 50 years of American conservatism have undermined U.S. security and pushed the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. Scoblic charts the course of American conservatism, from its development by William F. Buckley Jr. through the disastrous Cold War to Bush's failure to safeguard the United States after 9/11: in stark, often frightening detail, Scoblic examines how Bush embraced "regime change" as a means of fighting "evil" and neglected to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, failed to prevent North Korea from reprocessing plutonium, rebuffed requests for negotiations from an Iranian regime that was, in 2003, willing to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency, repeatedly ignored U.S. intelligence and pursued the war in Iraq. Scoblic illustrates how and why conservatism shaped the current administration and explains how it guided Bush's "good vs. evil" morality. This is an important book, well researched and well reasoned in its assessment of conservatism and mandatory reading for anyone concerned with America's security and future. (May)

Kirkus Reviews

A learned and lively political harangue insists that America's recent foreign-policy failures are the result of conservative principles. New Republic executive editor Scoblic begins in the 1940s when conservatism seemed a spent force, devastated by the Depression, isolationism and FDR's charisma. In the book's most stimulating pages, the author describes the ideology's rebirth in the '50s, sparked by a few academics and one brilliant journalist: William F. Buckley Jr. In the National Review, Buckley laid out the modern conservative creed: Free enterprise is good, government is bad, communists are evil. Morality, not politics, must guide our leaders, Buckley averred. One does not negotiate with evil; treaties and even cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union were shameful. This philosophy thrived, but not at the highest levels. Republican presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford were not modern conservatives; they believed preventing nuclear war was more important than overthrowing the Soviet Union. (Buckley and colleagues disagreed.) President Reagan seemed ideal, vilifying communism and beefing up U.S. forces. However, halfway through his term he reversed his policy and launched negotiations that dramatically improved U.S.-Soviet relations. Scoblic reminds readers that Reagan left office under a torrent of conservative denunciation. In the second half, the author characterizes President George W. Bush as the apotheosis of modern conservatism to whom 9/11 appeared as a godsend, providing an evil enemy to replace the defunct Soviet Union. But the Bush administration has been distracted from fighting terrorism, the author argues, by its eagerness to smite rogue states like Iraq as ademonstration of American righteousness. Since modern conservatives have no objection to using nuclear weapons to fight evil, the current administration has dropped efforts to prevent their spread (except to evil nations), thereby making the world more dangerous than at any time during the Cold War. Readers must plow through a torrent of government position papers, speeches, editorials and intelligence reports, but many will find Scoblic's acerbic analysis worth the slog. A well-delineated albeit depressing portrait of America's present guiding political philosophy.

Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 1: The Spell of Plato

Author: Karl Raimund Popper

Popper was born in 1902 to a Viennese family of Jewish origin. He taught in Austria until 1937, when he emigrated to New Zealand in anticipation of the Nazi annexation of Austria the following year, and he settled in England in 1949. Before the annexation, Popper had written mainly about the philosophy of science, but from 1938 until the end of the Second World War he focused his energies on political philosophy, seeking to diagnose the intellectual origins of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies was the result.

In the book, Popper condemned Plato, Marx, and Hegel as "holists" and "historicists"--a holist, according to Popper, believes that individuals are formed entirely by their social groups; historicists believe that social groups evolve according to internal principles that it is the intellectual's task to uncover. Popper, by contrast, held that social affairs are unpredictable, and argued vehemently against social engineering. He also sought to shift the focus of political philosophy away from questions about who ought to rule toward questions about how to minimize the damage done by the powerful. The book was an immediate sensation, and--though it has long been criticized for its portrayals of Plato, Marx, and Hegel--it has remained a landmark on the left and right alike for its defense of freedom and the spirit of critical inquiry.

Socrates Meets Machiavelli or Essentials of Accounting for Governmental and Not for Profit Organizations

2009-01-30T22:08:00.000-08:00

Socrates Meets Machiavelli: The Father of Philosophy Cross-Examines the Author of The Prince

Author: Peter Kreeft

There is no better way to understand our present world than by exploring the Great Books written by the great minds that have made it.

There is no better way to study the beginning of modern political philosophy than by studying its foundations in Machiavelli's The Prince.

There is no better way to study the Great Books than with the aid of Socrates, the philosopher par excellence.

What if we could overhear a conversation in the afterlife between Socrates and Machiavelli, in which Machiavelli has to submit to an Oxford tutorial style examination of his book conducted by Socrates using his famous "Socratic method" of cross-examination? How might the conversation go?

This imaginative thought-experiment makes for both drama and a good lesson in logic, in moral and political philosophy, in "how to read a book", and in the history of early modern thought.

Thus this book is for readers looking for a thought-stretching "good read" and for use in college classes in logic, philosophy, ethics, political science, literature, communication, rhetoric, anthropology, and history.

Essentials of Accounting for Governmental and Not-for-Profit Organizations

Author: Paul A Copley

Copley’s Essentials of Accounting for Governmental and Not-for-Profit Organizations, 9e is best suited for those professors whose objective is to provide more concise coverage than what is available in larger texts. There is more comprehensive coverage of accounting for governmental and not-for-profit organizations than what is available in an advanced text but concise enough to be used effectively in a semester, quarter, or even a half term course focusing on just these areas. The main focus of this text is on the preparation of external financial statements which is a challenge among governmental reporting. This edition incorporates all of the FASB, GASB, GAO and AICPA pronouncements passed since the last edition.

The Encyclopedia of Survival Techniques or The Travels of a T Shirt in the Global Economy

2009-01-29T16:56:00.000-08:00

The Encyclopedia of Survival Techniques

Author: Alexander Stilwell

A comprehensive guidebook to outdoor survival, in any terrain, in any climate, in any part of the world, included here is everything you need to know about staying alive in the wild. Organized by climate and terrain (desert, sea, arctic, mountain, and jungle), The Encyclopedia of Survival Techniques is packed with over two hundred line drawings that provide step-by-step guidance to mastering survival situations, from making tools and preserving food in the wild to finding your way back to civilization. Key topics include constructing shelters; building traps, tools, and rafts; wilderness first aid (from mending broken bones to emergency surgery); rope craft and knots; and how to survive natural disasters. You'll also learn which plants are safe to eat and which are deadly poisonous, as well as which animals are dangerous in survival situations.Whether building a fire on a frozen mountainside or seeking drinking water in a barren desert, The Encyclopedia of Survival Techniques will help you survive all of nature's obstacles. (7 1/2 X 9 1/4, 192 pages, maps, illustrations, diagrams, charts)

Library Journal

For someone planning an adventure in a remote area away from the conveniences and comforts to which one is accustomed, this could prove to be a mighty handy volume. Stilwell, who has written several books on the outdoors and gained his training in the British Army, covers subjects from preparation and equipment to information particular to foreign countries (shots required, local conditions, etc.). Chapters address such material as "Survival in the Desert" and "Rafts and River Crossings," concluding with "Ropes and Knots." The book includes many statistical tables as well as illustrations of everything from life rafts to eating utensils. It is written clearly and understandably. Recommended for public and school libraries, especially those with readers involved in outdoor adventuring.--Robert E Greenfield, formerly with Baltimore Cty. P.L. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This book provides practical, serious advice. Stilwell begins with an initial chapter on preparation and equipment for any "survival" situation. The next section describes survival in differing physical terrains: desert, sea, tropics, polar regions, and mountains. Each chapter describes how to make a shelter, find food and water, start a fire, and identify and cope with dangerous indigenous animals. Clear line drawings and maps accompany many items. The information is clear and concise. The next section is devoted to surviving natural disasters from earthquakes and hurricanes to volcanoes, floods, and fires. Here, guidance is provided on how to prepare for a disaster, and actions to take indoors and out. The rest of the book contains more detailed information on first aid, finding food, making a fire, navigating, signaling, and tying knots. Again, each chapter is subdivided into succinct sections accompanied by clear charts and diagrams. Campers, scouts, hikers, or anyone interested in outdoor-survival techniques will find easy to use information here.-Jane S. Drabkin, Chinn Park Regional Library, Prince William, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

	Introduction	6
1	Preparation and Equipment	8
2	Survival in the Desert	16
3	Survival at Sea	30
4	Survival in the Tropics	46
5	Survival in Polar Regions	62
6	Survival in Mountains	78
7	Surviving Natural Disasters	94
8	First Aid	110
9	Firemaking, Tools and Weapons	128
10	Trapping, Fishing and Plant Food	136
11	Navigation and Signalling	154
12	Rafts and River Crossings	168
13	Ropes and Knots	172
14 Appendix	Foreign Travel	182
	Index	190

Books about: The Wines of New Mexico or Great British Food

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade

Author: Pietra Rivoli

Praise for THE TRAVELS OF A T-SHIRT IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

"Engrossing . . . (Rivoli) goes wherever the T-shirt goes, and there are surprises around every corner . . . full of memorable characters and vivid scenes."
—Time

"An engaging and illuminating saga. . . . Rivoli follows her T-shirt along its route, but that is like saying that Melville follows his whale. . . . Her nuanced and fair-minded approach is all the more powerful for eschewing the pretense of ideological absolutism, and her telescopic look through a single industry has all the makings of an economics classic."
—The New York Times

"Rarely is a business book so well written that one would gladly stay up all night to finish it. Pietra Rivoli's The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is just such a page-turner."
—CIO magazine

"Succeeds admirably . . . T-shirts may not have changed the world, but their story is a useful account of how free trade and protectionism certainly have."
—Financial Times

"[A] fascinating exploration of the history, economics, and politics of world trade . . . The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is a thought-provoking yarn that exhibits the ugly, the bad, and the good of globalization, and points to the unintended positive consequences of the clash between proponents and opponents of free trade."
—Star-Telegram (Fort Worth)

"Part travelogue, part history, and part economics, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is ALL storytelling, and in the grand style. A must-read."
—PeterJ. Dougherty, Senior Economics Editor, Princeton University Press author of Who's Afraid of Adam Smith?

"A readable and evenhanded treatment of the complexities of free trade . . . As Rivoli repeatedly makes clear, there is absolutely nothing free about free trade except the slogan."
—San Francisco Chronicle

Foreign Affairs

The protagonist of this highly informative and entertaining book is a $6 T-shirt purchased in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Georgetown economist Rivoli uses her T-shirt as a vehicle for telling an analytic story about its life — from the cotton fields of Texas to either its proud purchase by a Tanzanian villager or its sale as mattress filler, depending on its condition when discarded by its American owner. Along the way, she explores the history of cotton production and the cotton textile industry and evaluates the misguided and often absurd U.S. textile policy over the past half century, up to the end of 2004, when the multilateral Multifiber Arrangement (which inadvertently created many more jobs in not-quite-competitive developing countries than it preserved in the United States) expired. Rivoli draws heavily on her own interviews and on anthropological as well as economic literature, which gives her tale a human touch. She shows how despite the awful working conditions in apparel factories, in both historical America and contemporary poor countries the jobs they offered were often liberating to young women, who preferred the sweatshops to the stifling life they otherwise would have had to endure on the farm.

Emergency Response Planning for Corporate and Municipal Managers or Losing Ground

2009-01-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

Emergency Response Planning for Corporate and Municipal Managers

Author: Paul A Erickson

The book is broken out into three sections. Section 1 outlines the overall scope of comprehensive emergency planning and discusses in detail the major elements that must be addressed in an Emergency Response Plan. Section 2 examines the types of hazards and risks faced by emergency response personnel, as well as the public, in typical emergencies, and provides specific recommendations regarding the immediate and long-term health and safety of emergency response personnel. Section 3 discusses a range of issues that must be given special attention in the development and implementation of any emergency response plan including: hazard and risk reduction, decontamination, data and information management, monitoring strategies and devices, terrorism, and the training of emergency response personnel.

New interesting textbook: Complete Guide to Convenience Food Counts or 5K and 10K Training

Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980

Author: Charles Murray

This classic book serves as a starting point for any serious discussion of welfare reform. Losing Ground argues that the ambitious social programs of the1960s and 1970s actually made matters worse for its supposed beneficiaries, the poor and minorities. Charles Murray startled readers by recommending that we abolish welfare reform, but his position launched a debate culminating in President Clinton’s proposal “to end welfare as we know it.”

Publishers Weekly

Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve, argued that the social programs of the '60s and the '70s worsened the plight of the poor and minorities. This 10th anniversary issue includes a new introduction by the author. (Jan.)

John C. Marshall

Mr. Murray suffers from the besetting problem of the right - an inability to define any meaning for equality beyond equal opportunity. He does not reckon with the insistence of most Americans that social policy define some kind of community in which everyone has a place, regardless of his or her fortunes in the marketplace. Books of the Century, New York Times review March, 1986

What People Are Saying

Ken Auletta
"Charles Murray will infuriate people. But if they read carefully, he will also make them think."

James S. Coleman
"A remarkable book. Future discussions of social policy cannot proceed without taking the arguments and evidence of this book into account."

Richard Vigilante
"A great book."

Daniel B. Moskowitz
"Without bile and without rhetoric it lays out a stark truth that must be faced: Two decades of well-meaning programs to erase racism and poverty in the U.S. have left those at the very bottom of the ladder worse off than ever."

Berlin Diary or Royal Babylon

2009-01-27T06:28:00.000-08:00

Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941

Author: William L Shirer

The Journal of a Foreign correspondent 1934-1941. When it first appeared in 1941, Berlin Diary made history as 'the most complete news report yet to come out of wartime Germany' (Time). William L. Shirer's journal, filled 'with increasing horror and fascination, ' bears witness to Europe's 'plunge down the road to Armageddon' with unparalleled immediacy.

Books about: Administration de Personnel Publique :Problèmes et Perspectives

Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty

Author: Karl Shaw

An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy.

Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside?

Royally dishing on hundreds of years of dubious behavior, Royal Babylon chronicles the manifold appalling antics of Europe's famous families, behavior that rivals the characters in an Aaron Spelling television series. Here, then, are the insane kings of Spain, one of whom liked to wear sixteen pairs of gloves at one time; the psychopathic Prussian soverigns who included Frederick William and his 102-inch waist; sex-fixated French rulers such as Philip Duke D'Oreleans cavorting with more than a hundred mistresses; and, of course, the delightfully drunken and debauched Russian czars - Czar Paul, for example, who to make his soldiers goose-step without bending their legs had steel plates strapped to their knees. But whether Romanov or Windsor, Habsburg or Hanover, these extravagant lifestyles, financed as they were by the royals' badgered subjects, bred the most wonderfully offbeat and disturbingly unbelievable tales - and Karl Shaw has collected them all in this hysterically funny and compulsively readable book.

Royal Babylon is history, but not as they teach it in school, and it underlines in side-splitting fashion Queen Victoria's famous warning that it is unwise to look too deeply into the royal houses ofEurope.

Publishers Weekly

Anyone who loves scandal, particularly the juicy dish on royalty, will inhale this gossipy account by British writer Shaw (The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists). In a style reminiscent of low-end tabloids, the author presents a litany of negative and sometimes disgusting details about the personal lives of the men and women who ruled Britain, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Austria. Leaving the late 20th century mostly behind (his only mention of Charles and Diana is in the introduction), the author concentrates instead on royal misbehavior back to the 1700s. Entertaining overall, many entries are indisputably not for the faint of heart, such as the truly gross story of Russia's Peter the Great ("`Great' was generally a recognition of power or brute strength, no matter how they lived, how many people they had killed or how repulsive they were"), described by Shaw as a "paranoid sadist." This tsar was an alcoholic who tortured people for fun and once forced an attendant to bite into the flesh of a corpse. This chronicle is replete with royal sexual activities, including those of the Bourbons of France, whom Shaw credits with possessing "extraordinary appetites." Irony is Shaw's strong suit, which lends a great deal of humor to often humorless anecdotes. For example, he notes that Spain's King Philip IV fathered 30 illegitimate children "but being a good Catholic always felt bad about it" and forced his wife to have sexual relations three times daily. Like Michael Farquhar's A Treasury of Royal Scandals (see review below), this irreverent and amusing expos of royal indiscretions will appeal especially to those who like their history "lite." Illus. not seen by PW. (May 29) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

	Introduction	1
1	Lie Back and Think of Belgium: The Perils of Royal Marriage	11
2	Rex Noster Insanit: Our King Is Insane	34
3	A Breed Apart: A Lesson in Royal Inbreeding	66
4	The Sport of Kings: The Secret of Royal Adultery	88
5	God's Bailiffs: Absolute Power in Hohenzollern Germany and Romanov Russia	125
6	Hanover Family Values	189
7	First, Catch Your King: The Tragic History of the Fairy-tale Monarchy	227
8	The Stud Farm of Europe: The Rise of the House of Saxe-Coburg	255
9	Duty, Dignity, Decency: The Windsors	273
	Epilogue	321
	Bibliography	323
	Index of Family Trees
	The Spread of Hemophilia in the Royal Houses of Europe	71
	The Royal House of Hohenzollern	126
	The Royal House of Romanov	151
	The Royal House of Hanover	190
	The Royal House of Wittelsbach	228
	The Saxe-Coburgs on the Thrones of Europe	256
	The Royal Houses of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha and Windsor	274

Working with Difficult People or A Turn to Empire

2009-01-26T01:08:00.000-08:00

Working with Difficult People

Author: William Lundin

Working with difficult people can reduce your morale, threaten your productivity, deplete your energy, and waste your time. But you don't have to be helpless in the face of other people's craziness! Knowing how to handle coworkers' disruptive behavior is one of the most important career skills you can have, allowing you to become a more valuable employee and a more self-reliant person.

Working with Difficult People defines nine fundamental types of difficult people and gives you a complete system for opening lines of communication, resolving differences, and avoiding office headaches. This audiobook teaches you how to:

•understand your own reactions to different kinds of difficult people
•explore the interrelationship between yourself and the problematic employee — whether it's a boss, fellow coworker, or someone you manage
•practice healthier responses to those who make your life miserable

You'll find out how to proactively manage your relationships with those who are mean and angry, suspicious, pessimistic, shy, narcissistic, overly competitive, controlling, and more. This audio edition includes an action plan for preparing for encounters and confrontations as well as all-new verbal self-defense tips, guidance on how to master power dynamics, and ways to differentiate between situational issues and psychological ones.

	Introduction	1
Ch. 1	Mean and Angry: The Case of Margaret and the Snarling Supervisor	5
Ch. 2	Suspicious: The Case of George and the Mistrusting Manager	16
Ch. 3	Pessimists: The Case of Ron and the Gloomy Group Leaders	25
Ch. 4	Cynics: The Case of Red and the Doubting Manager	34
Ch. 5	Shy and Quiet: The Case of Fred and the Silent Supervisor	42
Ch. 6	How Do I Love Me? The Case of Grace and the Office Princess	49
Ch. 7	Extreme Competitiveness: The Case of Cindy and the Fearsome Foe	57
Ch. 8	Overcontrolling: The Case of Tracey and Wilma Witch	66
Ch. 9	It Takes Two to Make a Toady: The Case of Joe, the Man in the Empty Suit	76
Ch. 10	Lessons: Handling All Kinds of Difficult People	85

New interesting book: Höherer Kundenwert in der Neuen Wirtschaft: Konzepte und Fälle, Vol. 0

A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France

Author: Jennifier Pitts

A dramatic shift in British and French ideas about empire unfolded in the sixty years straddling the turn of the nineteenth century. As Jennifer Pitts shows in A Turn to Empire, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham were among many at the start of this period to criticize European empires as unjust as well as politically and economically disastrous for the conquering nations. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the most prominent British and French liberal thinkers, including John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, vigorously supported the conquest of non-European peoples. Pitts explains that this reflected a rise in civilizational self-confidence, as theories of human progress became more triumphalist, less nuanced, and less tolerant of cultural difference. At the same time, imperial expansion abroad came to be seen as a political project that might assist the emergence of stable liberal democracies within Europe.

Pitts shows that liberal thinkers usually celebrated for respecting not only human equality and liberty but also pluralism supported an inegalitarian and decidedly nonhumanitarian international politics. Yet such moments represent not a necessary feature of liberal thought but a striking departure from views shared by precisely those late-eighteenth-century thinkers whom Mill and Tocqueville saw as their forebears.

Fluently written, A Turn to Empire offers a novel assessment of modern political thought and international justice, and an illuminating perspective on continuing debates over empire, intervention, and liberal political commitments.

Civilization and its Enemies or Partners in Command

2009-01-24T19:56:00.000-08:00

Civilization and its Enemies

Author: Lee Harris

Civilization and Its Enemies is a tour de force by America's "reigning philosopher of 9/11," Lee Harris. What Francis Fukuyama did for the end of the Cold War, Lee Harris has now done for the next great conflict: the war between the civilized world and the international terrorists who wish to destroy it. Each major turning point in our history has produced one great thinker who has been able to step back from petty disagreements and see the bigger picture - and Lee Harris has emerged as that man for our time. He is the one who has helped make sense of the terrorists' fantasies and who forces us most strongly to confront the fact that our enemy-for the first time in centuries-refuses to play by any of our rules, or to think in any of our categories.

About the Author:
Lee Harris entered Emory University at age fourteen and graduated summa cum laude. After years spent pursuing diverse interests, including a stint at divinity school, several years writing mystery novels, and a career as a glazier, he began writing philosophical articles that captured the imagination of readers all over the world. The author of three of the most controversial and widely shared pieces in the history of Policy Review, Harris has emerged as one of the most talked-about writers of recent times. He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

InstaPundit.com

. . . Harris explains why people are trying to kill us -- and why . . . many in the West are reluctant to face reality.

Publishers Weekly

Harris seems to have burst on the scene with a series of articles in the Hoover Institution's Policy Review. These articles, according to the publisher, created a tremendous buzz, and they form the basis of this book, arguing that in the aftermath of September 11, America must regard itself as the legitimate defender of world civilization. Because Americans are so highly civilized, Harris maintains, they "forget" the realpolitik truths of enmity and barbarianism, and he has come to sound the alarm. Western "liberal left" intellectuals mislead, Harris says, by mistakenly dignifying al-Qaeda as political activists instead of dismissing them as a gang of ruthless "fantasists" who don't share any of our assumptions about how the world should work. Generally ignoring the lessons of other countries' experiences of terrorism, Harris dwells instead on the failures of WWI-era liberal internationalism and on the fantasist ideologies of Hitler and Mussolini. Seeking throughout to boost the notion of American cultural superiority, he turgidly presents Greek and Roman models of social stability that he claims inform the civilizing "team player" patriotism of Americans, as opposed to the weaker structures of tribal loyalty of the "old world." Stale assertions apart, Harris is suspiciously defensive when deriding a nebulously drawn figure of the contemporary Western intellectual, whom he sees as sustained by dreamy cosmopolitan utopianism. Choosing not to engage much with such thinkers, Harris instead tries to hoist them by their own postmodern petard. His reasonable-sounding dismissal of the [pst-Enlightenment reign of reason and his assumption that his reader, an American, can be rallied through a potted education in civilization prevent this deeply rhetorical extended essay from accomplishing much true intellectual work. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Harris must be very popular with those in the Bush administration. From the publication of his first political essay in Policy Review, "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," through this new book-length polemic, he makes a stark and simple argument: we have a ruthless enemy and we need to annihilate him, so get used to it. Although drawing upon the lessons of history and the writings of philosophers, Harris maintains his focus on the dangerous post-9/11 world. In his view, 9/11 marked the beginning of an "ideological epidemic" that has fundamentally changed how we now must approach the world. He expounds upon the nature of the "enemy," the need for ruthlessness in world affairs, and patriotism. He is highly critical of liberal apologists for internationalism and cosmopolitanism, both of which he regards as na ve and ineffectual in the battle to preserve civilization. This provocative and controversial view will appeal primarily to political conservatives. Although Harris is being compared with Francis Fukuyama, his book may not achieve the fame of The End of History and the Last Man. Nevertheless, it deserves a place on library shelves.-Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A Civics 101 treatise on why we're good and terrorists and their pals are bad. Once upon a time, human societies-oh, say, Sparta-found it necessary to declare certain humans enemies, chase them down, and kill them, maybe enslaving their women and keeping their toys in the bargain. But then, over time, certain soft, pampered, and overindulgent societies came to discover that they had forgotten that, in Woody Allen's resonant phrase, even paranoiacs have enemies. "They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy," intones independent pundit Harris, whose recent articles in Policy Review prefigure this extended essay. "That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary." Well, perhaps, except that recent presidents up to and including the much-despised Bill Clinton identified plenty of enemies for us to worry about, not least of them the Soviet Union. The notion that anyone really imagined that the world was a safe and flower-paved place is arguable enough, but Harris nonetheless likens us dumb, hapless latter-day Americans to the ancient Aztecs, who had no way of explaining what happened to them when old Cortez came along; just so, the awful sight of civilian airliners flying into tall buildings confronted us with a baffling enigma that put our language and thinking all out of whack. It makes your head hurt, after all, to imagine fighting a just war against people who don't play by the rules. Harris offers, by way of a remedy for our confusion, a tour through the pages of Plato and the "gang ethos" of ancient Greece, a crash course in Roman ideas of patriotismand Hegelian logic, a discourse on al-Qaeda symbology and the virtues of the free market and, to boot, a few asides on the Imperial training in Frank Herbert's Dune-all apparently meant to reassure readers that we are civilized and they are not, and that the US represents the last best hope of all who would be civilized in the future, "a practical design for the next stage of human history: a utopia that works." If Bushite cheerleading mixed with sort-of-learned allusion is your bag, then this is for you.

What People Are Saying

Daniel Pipes
. . . Harris dissects the West's strong and weak points, then . . . draws conclusions about the deep-seated changes that need be made . . .

Arnold Beichman
A learned, imaginative study of the new world of the twenty-first century and the opening gun, 9/11, of WWIII . . .
—(Arnold Beichman, author of Nine Lies About America)

	Preface
1	The Riddle of the Enemy	1
2	Our World-Historical Gamble	21
3	Defining the Enemy	37
4	The Grand Illusion	49
5	Ruthlessness and the Origin of Civilization	69
6	The Birth of Patriotism and the Historic Role of the United States	85
7	Two Types of Cosmopolitanism: Liberal Versus Team	115
8	How Reason Goes Wrong	135
9	Tolerance: A Case Study	143
10	The Origin of the Enemy	157
11	The Rare Virtues of the West	181
12	Conclusion: The Next Stage of History	201
	Acknowledgments	219
	Index	221

Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace

Author: Mark Perry

The depth and significance of the relationship between George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower has eluded historians for years. In Partners in Command, acclaimed historian and journalist Mark Perry gets to the heart of arguably the most fateful partnership in American military history, a union of two very different men bound by an epic common purpose. He follows Marshall and Eisenhower's collaboration from the major battles in North Africa and Italy to the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion, the crisis of the Battle of the Bulge, and the postwar implementation of the Marshall Plan, and the establishment of Eisenhower's leadership of NATO. erry shows that Marshall and Eisenhower were remarkably close colleagues who brilliantly combined strengths and offset each other's weaknesses in their strategic planning, on the battlefields, and in their mutual struggle to overcome the bungling, political sniping, and careerism of both British and American commanders that infected nearly every battle and campaign. Finally, Marshall and Eisenhower collaborated in crafting the foreign policy and military infrastructure that became the foundation for winning the Cold War.

From their first meeting after Pearl Harbor in 1941, Marshall and Eisenhower recognized in each other an invaluable military partner-by February 1942, Marshall, who was Army chief of staff, had promoted Eisenhower to head the War Plans Division, where his first job was to write the initial plan to win the war against Japan. Within a few months, Marshall selected Eisenhower as commander of all U.S. forces in the European theater. By early 1944, however, a subtle but major shift had occurred: Marshall the teacherhad become Eisenhower's student, Eisenhower having developed the superior grasp of command challenges.

Partners in Command is an extraordinary portrait of an often ignored alliance between two iconic military figures and the ways in which their unusual collaboration would ultimately shape fifty years of successful American foreign policy.

Library Journal

What People Are Saying

Kai Bird
Mark Perry's gracefully written dual biography informs us that as young army officers George C. Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower were wisely taught 'never fight unless you have to, never fight alone, and never fight for long.' Perry casts the Marshall-Eisenhower partnership in a new, personal light, vividly recreating the stark choices facing two of America's most brilliant World War II strategists. Partners in Command is both a formidable achievement in biography and an engrossing account of the dark imponderables of total warfare.(Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer)

Tough Towns or The American Presidency

2009-01-23T14:43:00.000-08:00

Tough Towns: True Tales from the Gritty Streets of the Old West

Author: Robert Barr Smith

The only people tougher than the bank and train robbers of the Old West were the citizens who banded together to create law and order on the streets of their towns. Shoemakers and storekeepers, bank men and local lawmen, barbers and liverymen—they all fought to defend their homes and to defend their lives against the outlaws who threatened them.
Tough towns faced down famous gangs like the Daltons and the James-Youngers, drove off Mexican bandits, killed Pretty Boy Floyd’s chief lieutenant, and helped put an end to the nineteenth-century rash of bank robbing in the West. Ordinary-people-turned-heroes joined their neighbors and fought—and sometimes died—because they wouldn't run away or turn a blind eye to crime. Their stories, told by historian and writer Robert Barr Smith, are a fascinating part of the legend of the Old West.

KLIATT

There is no doubt that the level of violence in the towns and nascent cities of the Old Southwest was high, although certainly not as high as in today's cities. Most folks were law-abiding, then as now, and whenever a colorful crime did take place, the story became enshrined in the town's history for decades to come. The difference is that the criminals tended to come from outside the community, and locals seldom feared to help bring them to justice. Exactly how tough were some of these towns? Well, mobs breaking into the local jail to expedite the execution of miscreants were common enough, and jailkeeps seldom put up much of a fight to protect them. Many ordinary citizens enthusiastically joined an ad hoc posse, quickly abandoning store counter or anvil to help run down the wrongdoers. Multiple posses were frequent in these towns: following a hot trail in successive waves, or fanning out in groups to block likely escape routes. Captive robbers were not always returned safely to the sheriff, instead meeting their final justice under a convenient tree. This was especially likely if someone popular had been killed in the gunplay, but the haste with which two killers were hanged simultaneously from the same short length of rope was later judged to be a little extreme. Afterwards, volunteers often indulged in gristly souvenir taking. Even the task of propping up the deceased for his final camera pose drew many volunteers, one of them going so far as to lend his hat to a well-worn corpus. Smith's examples make for lively reading, but offer thoughtful insights as well. One is struck by how many criminals were brought to justice (of one kind or another) because someone knew them, orrecognized them from a simple written description. Western communities were small, and posted notices probably brought in more miscreants than all of the posses that ever pounded down a trail.

Interesting book: Real 13th Step or Dietary Supplements and Functional Foods

The American Presidency

Author: Alan Brinkley

The most up-to-date, incisive, and accessible reference on the American
presidency, with essays by the nation's leading historians.

An indispensable resource for the curious reader and the serious
historian alike, The American Presidency showcases some of the most provocative interpretive history being written today. This rich narrative history
sheds light on the hubris, struggles, and brilliance of our nation's leaders.
Coupling vivid writing with unparalleled scholarship, these insightful
essays from well-known historians cover every presidency from the first
through the forty-third.

Mary T. Gerrity - KLIATT

Through a series of essays, historians from around the US present an overview of the American presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush. The editors state in the introduction that the essays are not a collection of presidential biographies but rather the focus is on how the presidents "perceived and used the office and how the office has changed as a result." As a reference source, the essays provide a panoramic view of American political history from the beginnings of the US Constitution with its brief description of the duties of the executive branch to the present day's growth and development of power as well as constraints and layers of federal bureaucracy. The changing and expanding economic, social, and political culture of the US over the years also has affected the ability of those who have held the office. These aspects play an important role in the development of each essay as the 43 presidents have dealt with the myriad of forces that impinge on the presidential office. The essays are fascinating reading, providing an appreciation of the trials and triumphs of executives, popular and unpopular, noted or obscure, as well as icons who lived in the White House. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2004, Houghton Mifflin, 572p. illus. bibliog. index., Ages 15 to adult.

	Contributors	vii
	Introduction	ix
	George Washington	1
	John Adams	20
	Thomas Jefferson	33
	James Madison	48
	James Monroe	59
	John Quincy Adams	73
	Andrew Jackson	82
	Martin Van Buren	103
	William Henry Harrison	115
	John Tyler	121
	James K. Polk	129
	Zachary Taylor	139
	Millard Fillmore	145
	Franklin Pierce	152
	James Buchanan	163
	Abraham Lincoln	173
	Andrew Johnson	189
	Ulysses S. Grant	200
	Rutherford B. Hayes	215
	James A. Garfield	224
	Chester Arthur	233
	Grover Cleveland	240
	Benjamin Harrison	250
	William McKinley	257
	Theodore Roosevelt	268
	William Howard Taft	285
	Woodrow Wilson	297
	Warren G. Harding	314
	Calvin Coolidge	323
	Herbert Hoover	332
	Franklin D. Roosevelt	344
	Harry S. Truman	365
	Dwight D. Eisenhower	381
	John F. Kennedy	397
	Lyndon B. Johnson	409
	Richard Nixon	425
	Gerald Ford	443
	Jimmy Carter	455
	Ronald Reagan	467
	George H. W. Bush	487
	Bill Clinton	499
	George W. Bush	530
	Acknowledgments	545
	For Further Reading	547
	Illustration Credits	554
	Index	555

At Wars End or The Declaration of Independence

2009-01-22T09:31:00.000-08:00

At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict

Author: Roland Paris

Exploring the challenge of rehabilitating countries after civil wars, this study finds that attempting to transform war-shattered states into liberal democracies with market economies can backfire badly. Roland Paris contends that the rapid introduction of democracy and capitalism in the absence of effective institutions can increase rather than decrease the danger of renewed fighting. A more effective approach to post-conflict peacebuilding would be to introduce political and economic reform in a gradual and controlled manner.

	List of figures
	Preface
	Introduction	1
Pt. I	Foundations
1	The origins of peacebuilding	13
2	The liberal peace thesis	40
Pt. II	The peacebuilding record
3	Introduction to the case studies	55
4	Angola and Rwanda : the perils of political liberalization	63
5	Cambodia and Liberia : democracy diverted	79
6	Bosnia and Croatia : reinforcing ethnic divisions	97
7	Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala : reproducing the sources of conflict	112
8	Namibia and Mozambique : success stories in southern Africa?	135
Pt. III	Problems and solutions
9	The limits of Wilsonianism : understanding the dangers	151
10	Toward more effective peacebuilding : institutionalization before liberalization	179
11	Lessons learned and not learned : Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and beyond	212
	Conclusion	235
	Bibliography	237
	Index	281

Interesting book: Armageddon Oil and Terror or Working toward Whiteness

The Declaration of Independence: The Story Behind America's Founding Document and the Men Who Created It

Author: Rod Gragg

The fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, the foundation of America's freedom, created a nation and launched a freedom movement the world had never seen. Today it seems inevitable that the thirteen colonies would declare their independence from Britain. And yet in 1776 it was not so. Here is the extraordinary story of drama and daring, sacrifice and selflessness, danger and potential death. The signers concluded their work with a plea for Providential protection and a selfless vow to sacrifice "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Many of them did just that to create a country in which "all men are created equal, . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Award-winning historian Rod Gragg brings to life the drama of 1776 like no other book. The removable artifacts, including a full-size (24-1/4" x 29-1/2") replica of the Declaration of Independence, bring to life the events of 1776 like no other presentation.

The Revenge of Gaia or Blue Dixie

2009-01-21T04:18:00.000-08:00

The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity

Author: James Lovelock

In The Revenge of Gaia, bestselling author James Lovelock- father of climate studies and originator of the influential Gaia theory which views the entire earth as a living meta-organism-provides a definitive look at our imminent global crisis. In this disturbing new book, Lovelock guides us toward a hard reality: soon, we may not be able to alter the oncoming climate crisis. Lovelock’s influential Gaia theory, one of the building blocks of modern climate science, conceives of the Earth, including the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and upper layers of rock, as a single living super-organism, regulating its internal environment much as an animal regulates its body temperature and chemical balance. But now, says Lovelock, that organism is sick. It is running a fever born of the combination of a sun whose intensity is slowly growing over millions of years, and an atmosphere whose greenhouse gases have recently spiked due to human activity. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but on time scales measured in the hundreds of millennia. It is already too late, Lovelock says, to prevent the global climate from “flipping” into an entirely new equilibrium state that will leave the tropics uninhabitable, and force migration to the poles. The Revenge of Gaia explains the stress the planetary system is under and how humans are contributing to it, what the consequences will be, and what humanity must do to rescue itself.

The Washington Post - Tim Flannery

Minor technical blemishes fail to tarnish this luminous, challenging and timely work. Because it is so full of vital and interesting facts, The Revenge of Gaia is essential reading for anyone interested in climate change. And whatever your politics, it's sure to offend.

Publishers Weekly

The end is all but nigh for Mother Earth's inhabitants unless drastic measures are soon taken: that's the rueful prognostication delivered by Lovelock (Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth), intuitive originator of the theory that the world is a self-regulating system that, over the eons, has been able to sustain an equilibrium between hot and cold so as to support life. Now, propelled by global warming, Lovelock says, a tipping point has almost been reached beyond which the Earth will not recover sufficiently to sustain human life comfortably. Lovelock dismisses biomass fuels, wind farms, solar energy and fuel cell innovations as technologies unlikely to mitigate greenhouse gases in time to save the planet. Instead he sees nuclear energy as the only energy source that can meet our needs in time to prevent catastrophe. Chernobyl was a calamity, he notes, but nuclear power's danger is "insignificant compared with the real threat of intolerable and lethal heatwaves" and rising sea levels that could "threaten every coastal city of the world." Lovelock's pro-nuke enthusiasm, unexpected from one of the mid-20th century's most ardent environmental thinkers, is the well-reasoned core of this urgent call for braking at the brink of global catastrophe. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

Lovelock proposes a theory of the Earth as one giant living organism (Gaia) that has a limited lifespan and that is reaching the end of the heat cycle. Add to the natural cycle the enormous amount of damage humans have done to the Earth, especially in the last 200 years, including deforestation, farming too large a percentage of the land, ejecting huge amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere, and using up fossil fuels. Lovelock compares the Earth to an old lady living in an old house besieged by a number of unruly and disruptive teenagers. That analogy is typical of Lovelock, who alternates solid science with images that bring the message home. As a geophysicist, he knows and understands the science and uses charts and photos to prove his point. He believes that nuclear energy is the only way to extend Gaia's hospitality to humans and dismisses the most commonly promoted solutions such as wind power or solar power as too little, too late. The book concludes with a final image of the last survivors living in hot deserts at either pole of the Earth. This book will certainly stir up interesting discussions in the classroom. Age Range: Ages 15 to adult. REVIEWER: Nola Theiss (Vol. 42, No. 1)

Interesting book: Advancing Womens Careers or Restaurant Management

Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority

Author: Bob Moser

A powerful case for a new Southern strategy for the Democrats, from an award-winning reporter and native Southerner

In 2000 and 2004, the Democratic Party decided not to challenge George W. Bush in the South, a disastrous strategy that effectively handed Bush more than half of the electoral votes he needed to win the White House. As the 2008 election draws near, the Democrats have a historic opportunity to build a new progressive majority, but they cannot do so without the South.

In Blue Dixie, Bob Moser argues that the Democratic Party has been blinded by outmoded prejudices about the region. Moser, the chief political reporter for The Nation, shows that a volatile mix of unprecedented economic prosperity and abject poverty are reshaping the Southern vote. With evangelical churches preaching a more expansive social gospel and a massive left-leaning demographic shift to African Americans, Latinos, and the young, the South is poised for a Democratic revival. By returning to a bold, unflinching message of economic fairness, the Democrats can win in the nation’s largest, most diverse region and redeem themselves as a true party of the people.

Keenly observed and deeply grounded in contemporary Southern politics, Blue Dixie reveals the changing face of American politics to the South itself and to the rest of the nation.

The New York Times - Chris Suellentrop

Bob Moser falls squarely in the camp that thinks the South is just waiting for the Democrats to remind her of all the good times they used to have together before she shacked up with the Other Party. The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt needs to stand on the Mason-Dixon line, hoist a portable stereo over its head and blast the song that brought the two of them together in the first place—that old-time New Deal religion—into the South's bedroom window, Moser suggests. In Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority, he doesn't succeed in making a persuasive case that this plan would work, but he does achieve a secondary goal: convincing Democrats that the South is a lot more complicated and interesting than they have made it out to be. It just might be a worthy object of their affection.

Publishers Weekly

This arresting analysis from Moser, political correspondent for the Nation, debunks the belief in an "enduring Republican South," which he terms "the single most destructive myth of contemporary politics." The author wades into the "swirl of stereotypes" to challenge the conventional wisdom of many Democratic strategists, that the South is a Republican stronghold. Moser examines polls and voting trends that belie the idea of a conservative, fundamentalist, inherently racist voting bloc, looking instead at the history of the South as a breeding ground for progressivism and populist economic policies before proposing that the Democrats should stop trying to be "the party of 'Republicans Lite' " in order to win over Dixie. Moser details Jim Webb's and Barack Obama's successes in the South, praises Howard Dean's "fifty-state strategy" for re-energizing the Democratic Party in the region and gives insightful suggestions for how the party can continue the trend. Well-written, well-researched and perfectly timed with this year's election cycle, this fascinating read is highly recommended to anyone interested in unraveling political fact from fiction and detecting the myriad complicated relationships that knit a nation together. (Aug.)

Warlord or The Genius of America

2009-01-20T01:26:00.000-08:00

Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

Author: Ilario Pantano

This is the powerful true story of the Marine lieutenant who, having fought for his country in the first Gulf War, went on to professional success in finance, only to be compelled to reenlist in the wake of 9/11. Leaving behind an ex-model wife and two children, he served once again in Iraq -- and was charged by the U.S. military with murder.

Ilario Pantano has always been a warrior at heart -- it's the force that drives him, that defines his core being and his life. But on April 15, 2004, just a few moments during the most violent and chaotic month in the Iraq War would change his life forever. On a raid in the Sunni hotbed of the Al Anbar province, Lieutenant Pantano shot and killed two Iraqi insurgents. Months later, while successfully leading Marines during the explosive surge in terrorist activity, including the battles for Fallujah, one of his own men disputed Pantano's self-defense claim in the Al Anbar shootings. Pantano was relieved of his command and charged with premeditated murder, a crime punishable by death.

Now for the first time, in his own words, Pantano recounts his gripping and controversial story in Warlord, the memoir of a patriot who prepared to reenlist as the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, ten years after his service as an elite Marine sniper and veteran of Desert Storm. Warlord is the story of an unconventional fighter who combined his professional and military experiences to protect the lives of his men and win both on battlefields and in the courtroom. In the face of a widely publicized military hearing, Pantano's family "attacked into the ambush," launching a Defend-the-Defenders campaign that was met with overwhelming supportnationwide. Pantano was cleared of all charges. But most surprising of all, the heart of the patriot has not been embittered as he calls on his fellow Americans to stand strong in the face of our enemies.

A harrowing, redemptive, and singular contribution to the literature of war, Ilario Pantano's inspiring story brings an unrivaled human dimension to the conflict in Iraq, to the unyielding idealism that drives its American fighting men and women, and to the unexpected consequences and uncompromised faith that can emerge from the brutal, chaotic, and irreversible nature of combat.

New interesting book: Will Mix for Sex or Spice Route

The Genius of America: How the Constitution Saved Our Country and Why It Can Again

Author: Eric Lan

An inspiring and revelatory look at the document that has made our country the longest surviving democracy in the history of civilization: The Constitution of the United States.

The history of democracy is a history of failure. The United States holds the record at 230 years, yet the document at the nation’s center is one that we take for granted. Due to a combination of heightened frustration, moves to skirt the constitutional process, and a widespread disconnect between the people and their constitutional “conscience,” Lane and Oreskes warn us our system is at risk.

The Genius of America looks at the Constitution’s history relative to this current crisis. Starting with the eleven years between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution’s adoption, they show how our near failure to create a loosely knit nation led the framers to devise a system that takes human nature into account. Next they provide examples of how we have weathered crises in the past, from early attempts at political tyranny to the Civil War. Finally they turn to two periods, one of great consensus (from Roosevelt’s New Deal through Johnson’s Great Society) and another of division (from Reagan through George W. Bush), both of which demonstrate the Constitution’s effectiveness.

In the final assessment, Lane and Oreskes challenge us to let this great document work as it was designed—in times of change and stasis. They hold our leaders accountable, calling on them to stop fanning the flames of division. And while evenhanded in its presentation, The Genius of America reminds us the Constitutionis our national glue.

The New York Times - Robert A. Dahl

Mr. Lane and Mr. Oreskes…have provided us with an excellent discussion of how the Constitution, frequently revised by amendment, has managed to survive through numerous challenges and crises.

Introduction: An Extraordinary Accomplishment     1
The Invention
The More Fatal Problem Lies Among the People Themselves     21
Approaching So Near to Perfection as It Does     48
That Poor Little Thing-the Expression We the People     80
Thank God, It Worked
To Meet Extraordinary Needs     103
The Right to Alter the Established Constitution     123
The Challenge
A Mandate for Vigorous Action     147
Government Is Not the Solution, Government Is the Problem     174
Conclusion: We     199
The Constitution of the United States of America     223
Acknowledgments     253
Abbreviations and Bibliography     257
Notes     269
Index     283

Rachel and Her Children or How Would Jesus Vote

2009-01-19T14:14:00.000-08:00

Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America

Author: Jonathan Kozol

The story that jolted the conscience of the nation when it first appeared in The New Yorker

Jonathan Kozol is one of America’s most forceful and eloquent observers of the intersection of race, poverty, and education. His books, from the National Book Award–winning Death at an Early Age to his most recent, the critically acclaimed Shame of the Nation, are touchstones of the national conscience. First published in 1988 and based on the months the author spent among America’s homeless, Rachel and Her Children is an unforgettable record of the desperate voices of men, women, and especially children caught up in a nightmarish situation that tears at the hearts of readers. With record numbers of homeless children and adults flooding the nation’s shelters, Rachel and Her Children offers a look at homelessness that resonates even louder today.

Anna Quindlen

This book is passionate and often unbearably moving. It is also sometimes dull, incomplete and rhetorical. It is painfully uneven. . . . Mr. Kozol has his whole heart in it. I wish it was enough. Assembled just right, the factual underpinnings interspersed in judicious and selective amounts with the stories, the people more in evidence, the author less so, this could have been a book which not only preached to the converted, but converted the hard of heart. It probably will not do that, and that is a shame. -- New York Times

Publishers Weekly

To write this ``jolting firsthand report,'' Kozol spent months among the homeless, whose depressing stories, interwoven with his commentaries, tell of infant deaths, malnutrition, hunger, loss of dignity and desperation. ``This powerful volume,'' PW maintained, `` forces one to ask: `What are our national priorities?' '' Author tour. (Feb.)

Library Journal

Here are the less visible homelesswomen and children living in shelters and hotels under degrading conditions. Kozol, known for his books on education, introduces us to some of those at the bottom of America's underclass, the residents of a hotel for the homeless in New York, which can only be described as a house of horrors. Kozol faults everyone involved: governments, social agencies, landlords, the courts, and indifferent Americans in general for permitting the perpetuation of the shocking conditions endured by homeless families. This book could be the incentive needed to spark humane solutions. Highly recommended. BOMC selection. Anne Twitchell, EPA Headquarters Lib., Washington, D.C.

School Library Journal

YA A horrifying, staggering book about the homeless in this country as specifically exemplified by those who are housed in the Martinique Hotel in New York. Through direct, simply stat ed interviews with several families in the Martinique over a period of time, Kozol systematically strips away the stereotypic litany of what is wrong with welfare recipients (too lazy to work, etc.). He shows repeated case histories of people held captive by a welfare sys tem that would rather pay the private sector $1,900 a month to house them in squalor than give them perhaps a third of that amount for apartment rent and a chance to gain back their self-respect. There is much about this book that is not only infuriating but also uncomfort able; many of these people have previ ously been educated, productive citi zens who have endured several life crises and lost everything. The true heart of this book, however, rests on two pointsthe lack of affordable housing for the poor and, most tragical ly, the children who will become adults with little education, poor health, no marketable skills, and mental and emo tional scars from spending a childhood under these conditions. Kozol's writing is clear and reads easily due to his stark, unembellished style. It is always the people who shine through; they are a testament to the human spirit. It is impossible to read this book and remain untouched. Barbara Weathers, Du chesne Academy, Houston

New interesting textbook: Retaking Rationality or Cicero

How Would Jesus Vote?: A Christian Perspective on the Issues

Author: D James Kennedy

The 2008 election is shaping up to be one of the most important political contests in American history. In fact, Dr. D. James Kennedy believes it will be a watershed moment that could impact our very survival as a nation under God.

Values voters–people whose political views and votes are based on their faith in God–are being targeted as never before. As we move forward in the campaign season, the significant players will debate terrorism, radical Islam, nuclear threats, global warming, social issues, gay marriage, immigration, education, health care, and many other essential issues that can create sharp ideological divisions.

Into this overwhelmingly complex political situation, Dr. Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe bring a clear, compelling, and nonpartisan exploration of what God’s Word has to say on these critical matters. How Would Jesus Vote? isn’t intended to tell you which candidates to support; rather it offers you a Christ-centered understanding of the world to help you draw your own political conclusions.

This election, don’t cast an uninformed vote that fails to reflect your values. Instead, learn how to apply your faith and obedience to God to your ballot. This timely, helpful, and hopeful book will enable you to do just that.

Publishers Weekly

In his final book, Kennedy, who died in September of this year, joins his Coral Ridge Ministries colleague Newcombe in proffering this biblical justification of their socially conservative position on issues important to their followers, including abortion, the death penalty, war, education and freedom of religion. Kennedy and Newcombe make provocative claims throughout. Regarding abortion, they cite a study that found that 99% of women who have had abortions now wish abortions were illegal. About allocation of government funds, they argue that money currently spent on school lunch programs would be better spent on national defense against "jihadists." When discussing health care, they accuse England and the Netherlands, both countries with national health services, of killing babies and the elderly. Such remarks are paired with what Kennedy and Newcombe characterize as a humble search of the Scriptures, and each chapter ends with a summary of how the authors feel Jesus would have American Christians vote. While most of this book is standard conservative Christian fare, Kennedy and Newcombe give it a distinctive Calvinist flavor, focusing particularly on Calvin's belief that "God has distributed this world's goods as he has seen fit," and that not all poor people are deserving of Christian charity. (Jan. 15)

Foreword     vii
Acknowledgments     xi
Jesus and Politics
Do Jesus and Politics Mix?     3
Render unto Caesar     23
Salt and Light     37
The Issues
Matters of Life and Death: Abortion, Stem Cells, Suicide, and Euthanasia     47
Crime and Punishment: Judging the Death Penalty     59
War: Is It Ever Justified?     69
Education and Our Schools     85
Economic Concerns     99
Health-Care Issues     119
The Environment and Climate Change     131
Immigration and Racial Prejudice     145
Marriage: Society's Smallest Unit     161
Judicial Activism and the Courts     173
Final Thoughts
The Problem of Political Compromise     183
Put Not Your Trust in Princes     193
Epilogue: Something More Basic Than Politics     209
Defending Religious Liberty     213
Notes     233
Index     255

Terrorism or A Vast Conspiracy

2009-01-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

Terrorism

Author: Charles Townshend

This book charts a path through the outpouring of efforts to understand and explain modern terrorism, by asking what makes terrorism different from other forms of political, military action; what makes it effective; and what can be done about it. It unravels complex central questions such as whether terrorists are criminals, whether terrorism is a kind of war, what kind of threat terrorism represents, how far media publicity sustains terrorism, and whether democracy is especially vulnerable to terrorist attack. It examines the historical ideological and local roots of terrorist violence, and the success of specific terrorist and anti-terrorist campaigns in the more distant as well as the recent past.

A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President

Author: Jeffrey Toobin

In A Vast Conspiracy, the best-selling author of The Run of His Life casts an insightful, unbiased eye over the most extraordinary public saga of our time -- the Clinton sex scandals. A superlative journalist known for the skillfulness of his investigating and the power of his writing, Jeffrey Toobin tells the unlikely story of the events that began over doughnuts in a Little Rock hotel and ended on the floor of the United States Senate, with only the second vote on Presidential removal in American history. This is an entirely fresh look at the scandal that very nearly brought down a president.

Packed with news-making disclosures and secret documents published here for the first time, Toobin unravels the three strands of a national scandal - those leading from Paula Jones, Kenneth Starr, and Monica Lewinsky - that created a legal, personal, and political disaster for Bill Clinton. A Vast Conspiracy is written with the narrative drive of a sensational (if improbable) legal thriller, and Toobin brilliantly explores the high principle and low comedy that were the hallmarks of the story. From Tripp to Goldberg, Isikoff to Hyde, the complex and tangled motivations behind the scandal are laid bare.

While misguided, outlandish behavior was played out at the very highest level, Toobin analyzes the facts and the key figures with a level of dignity and insight that this story has not yet received. The Clinton scandals will shape forever how we think about the signature issues of our day -- sex and sexual harassment, privacy and perjury, civil rights, and, yes, cigars. Toobin's book will shape forever how we think about the Clinton scandals.

Time - Adam Cohen

In A Vast Conspiracy, New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin retells the whole tale with gusto.

Entertainment Weekly

A real page-turner...blunt, sardonic, often morbidly funny.

USA Today

A well-written, profoundly rational analysis...Toobin's book possesses fresh insights.

New York Daily News

An irresistibly readable new overview of the whole ugly case.

Detroit Free Press

Toobin's book is literate, well-researched, penetrating and evenhanded, laying blame where it belongs, offering a reasonable perspective on this shabby case.

Boston Globe

A gripping and colorful account of the crime and trial that captured the world's attention.

New York Times Book Review

His prose is fluent, direct and supple, his assessments pithy and succinct....He uses his legal expertise to assess defense and prosecution strategies, highlight crucial developments and sketch in the background of principle players in such a way that the stories create a mosaic of life.

San Francisco Chronicle

What makes the book both important and entertaining is the way [Toobin] fills in the gaps left by more partisan authors.

The New York Times Book Review - Powers

[An] admirably clear, vigorously written, plain-spoken and common-sensical book...Toobin's strength lies in his ability to chart a clear narrative line through tangled cases . . . The main and considerable pleasure of his book comes from watching the astonishing story unfold so it makes sense.

The New York Observer - Floyd Abrams

Where were you when President Clinton was impeached? Or when he was acquitted? Can you believe that you've not only forgotten, but that the whole ugly thing ended just a year ago?Jeffrey Toobin recalls it all, and inA Vast Conspiracy, a superlatively researched and written book, lays it out. There is only one hero in this book–Judge Susan Webber Wright, the jurist who dismissed the Paula Jones case and later held Mr. Clinton in contempt, stands alone as "an isolated beacon of sanity in the darkness." The remainder of the dramatis personae in the impeachment saga are deliciously skewered by Mr. Toobin... Mr. Toobin's portrayal of the President is far more nuanced than what most commentators have offered.

The Economist

Mr. Toobin's book is a brave one...Clear sightedness is this book's main virtue...Mr. Toobin tells the tale with such pace and clarity that his book is a good read despite itself.

Its the Crude Dude or Hemingses of Monticello

2009-01-18T14:48:00.000-08:00

It's the Crude, Dude: Greed, Gas, War, and the American Way

Author: Linda McQuaig

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

Books about: Contratos

Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Author: Annette Gordon Reed

Historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family, and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.

The Washington Post - Fergus M. Bordewich

…monumental and original…Liberating the woman known to Jefferson's smirking enemies as "dusky Sally" from the lumber room of scandal and legend, Gordon-Reed leads her into the daylight of a country where slaves and masters met on intimate terms. In so doing, Gordon-Reed also shines an uncompromisingly fresh but not unsympathetic light on the most elusive of the Founding Fathers…In this magisterial book, she has succeeded not only in recovering the lives of an entire enslaved family, but also in showing them as creative agents intelligently maneuvering to achieve maximum advantage for themselves within the orbit of institutionalized slavery.

Publishers Weekly

This is a scholar's book: serious, thick, complex. It's also fascinating, wise and of the utmost importance. Gordon-Reed, a professor of both history and law who in her previous book helped solve some of the mysteries of the intimate relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, now brings to life the entire Hemings family and its tangled blood links with slave-holding Virginia whites over an entire century. Gordon-Reed never slips into cynicism about the author of the Declaration of Independence. Instead, she shows how his life was deeply affected by his slave kinspeople: his lover (who was the half-sister of his deceased wife) and their children. Everyone comes vividly to life, as do the places, like Paris and Philadelphia, in which Jefferson, his daughters and some of his black family lived. So, too, do the complexities and varieties of slaves' lives and the nature of the choices they had to make-when they had the luxury of making a choice. Gordon-Reed's genius for reading nearly silent records makes this an extraordinary work. 37 illus. (Sept.)

Thomas J. Davis - Library Journal

This multigenerational saga traces mixed-race bloodlines that American history has long refused fully to acknowledge. Blending biography, genealogy, and history, Gordon-Reed (history, Rutgers Univ.; law, New York Law Sch.; Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy) brings to life the family from which Sally Hemings (1773-1835) came and the family that she and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) created. Sally bore five surviving children for the man who penned the Declaration of Independence and later became the new nation's third president. In a three-part, 30-chapter tour de force through voluminous primary and secondary sources, including Jefferson family correspondence, Gordon-Reed reconstructs not simply the private life and estate of an American demigod but reveals much of the characteristic structure and style of early Virginia society and the slavery that made possible much of the Old Dominion's position and pleasure. Moreover, she ushers forth slaves from the usual shadows of historical obscurity to show them as individuals and families with multifaceted lives. This is a masterpiece brimming with decades of dedicated research and dexterous writing. It is essential for any collection on U.S. history, Colonial America, Virginia, slavery, or miscegenation. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

The unusual history of an enslaved family whose destiny was shaped over the course of four decades by Thomas Jefferson. Gordon-Reed (Law/New York Law School, History/Rutgers Univ.; Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, 1997, etc.) grudgingly comes to a sympathetic view of Jefferson, who inherited the mixed-race Hemings family when he married Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772. By 1784, he was a widower living in Paris as head of the American commission, accompanied by manservant James Hemings, whom Jefferson took along so he could receive training as a French chef. In 1787, James's 14-year-old sister Sally came to Paris with Jefferson's daughter Polly; sometime during the French sojourn, she became her master's mistress. Back in Virginia, Jefferson installed Sally in a fairly pampered life at Monticello; he sired her numerous children and emancipated them upon his death in 1826. The author painstakingly sifts through the evidence about their relationship and examines the convoluted attitudes that influenced Jefferson's behavior. Sally's white father was also Martha Jefferson's father; Jefferson's wife and his slave mistress were half-sisters who owed their radically different destinies to the Anglo-Virginian system of bondage. The colonists had adopted the Roman rule partus sequitur ventrem (you were what your mother was) rather than the English rule (you were what your father was). By the perverse logic of this system, any drop of white blood ameliorated the work slaves were assigned and their chances of being freed. Jefferson encouraged James Hemings and his brother Robert to learn skills and to move freely in the world. There is no clue in the life of this intertwined family that Gordon-Reeddoes not minutely examine for its most subtle significance. She concludes that Jefferson was above all a most private man, who espoused abhorrent racial theories in public but behaved relatively well (by the standards of the era) toward his own slaves. Ponderous but sagacious and ultimately rewarding.

Propaganda or Fidel Castro

2009-01-18T03:35:00.000-08:00

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Author: Jacques Ellul

'The theme of Propaganda is quite simply. . . that when our new technology encompasses any culture or society, the result is propaganda. . . . Ellul has made many splendid contributions in this book.' -Robert R. Kirsch, The Los Angeles Times

Book review: Artwise Rome Museum Map Laminated Museum Map of Rome Italy Streetwise Maps or God and Gold

Fidel Castro: My Life: a Spoken Autobiography

Author: Ignacio Ramonet

Fidel Castro is perhaps the most charismatic and controversial head of state in modern times. A dictatorial pariah to some, he has become a hero and inspiration for many of the world's poor, defiantly charting an independent and revolutionary path for Cuba over nearly half a century.

Numerous attempts have been made to get Castro to tell his own story. But only now, in the twilight of his years, has he been prepared to set out the details of his remarkable biography for the world to read. This book is nothing less than his living testament. As he told reporters, his desire to finish checking its text was the one thing that kept him going through his recent illness. He presented a copy of the book in its Spanish edition to his compadre President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

In these pages, Castro narrates a compelling chronicle that spans the harshness of his elementary school teachers; the early failures of the revolution; his intense comradeship with Che Guevara and their astonishing, against-all-odds victory over the dictator Batista; the Cuban perspective on the Bay of Pigs and the ensuing missile crisis; the active role of Cuba in African independence movements (especially its large military involvement in fighting apartheid South Africa in Angola); his relations with prominent public figures such as Boris Yeltsin, Pope John Paul II, and Saddam Hussein; and his dealings with no less than ten successive American presidents, from Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

Castro talks proudly of increasing life expectancy in Cuba (now longer than in the United States); of the half million students in Cuban universities; and of the training of seventy thousand Cuban doctors nearly halfof whom work abroad, assisting the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He is confronted with a number of thorny issues, including democracy and human rights, discrimination toward homosexuals, and the continuing presence of the death penalty on Cuban statute books. Along the way he shares intimacies about more personal matters: the benevolent strictness of his father, his successful attempt to give up cigars, his love of Ernest Hemingway's novels, and his calculation that by not shaving he saves up to ten working days each year.

Drawing on more than one hundred hours of interviews with Ignacio Ramonet, a knowledgeable and trusted interlocutor, this spoken autobiography will stand as the definitive record of an extraordinary life lived in turbulent times.

Architects of Peace or Rethinking the Color Line

2009-01-17T15:23:00.000-08:00

Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images

Author: Michael Collopy

Seventy-five of the world's peacemakers - spiritual leaders, activists, scientists, writers - appear in this tribute to the power of nonviolence. Photographer Michael Collopy combines his original tritone portraits of these luminaries, from Nelson Mandela to the Dalai Lama, with moving statements on peace in their own words - most written especially for this book. Including 16 Nobel Peace Prize laureates as well as less known heroes such as Bosnian diarist Nadja Halilbegovich, Architects of Peace offers a message of hope for humanity.

Booknews

Reprint of a 2000 work about which Book News wrote: Presents b&w photos by Collopy, of 75 people, some prominent, some less so, some living, some deceased; these people were selected because they have held to their convictions and contributed in some way to world peace. With each portrait is a statement by the person, ranging in length from a few hundred words (Elie Wiesel) to a couple thousand (Reverend Jesse Jackson). The whole is attractively presented in an oversize format (11.5x11.5<">). The intent is to showcase altruistic achievements and to inspire emulation. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Internet Book Watch

Photographer Callopy sets out to bring over seventy of the world's peacemakers in one book: Architects of Peace pairs his photos with their words and opinions, examining cultural and social differences, changes, and achievements of the past century. Much more than an art title, this embraces modern peacemakers and their work.

Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity

Author: Charles A Gallagher

Rethinking the Color Line is an anthology of current research and writings that examine contemporary issues and explore new approaches to the study of race and ethnicity.

Booknews

A collection for an undergraduate course, providing a theoretical framework and analytical tools and discussing the meaning of race and ethnicity as a social construction. The readings are designed to require students to negotiate between individual agency and the constraints of social structure, and to think of race and ethnicity in fluid rather than static terms. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

* Indicates New ReadingIntroduction: Rethinking the Color Line: Understanding How Boundaries Shift Part I: Sorting By Color: Why We Attach Meaning To Race RACE AND ETHNICITY AS SOCIOHISTORIC CONSTRUCTIONS How Our Skins Got Their Color by Marvin Harris Racial Formations by Michael Omi and Howard Winant Theoretical Perspectives in Race and Ethnic Relations by Joe R. Feagin and Clairece Booher Feagin *An Overview of Trends in Social and Economic Well-Being, by Race by Rebecca M. Blank from America Becoming Racial Trends and Their Consequences (National Research Council 2001) *The Possessive Investment in Whiteness by George Lipsitz from American Quarterly, Volume 47, September 1995 *Color Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in Post Race America by Charles Gallagher RACE AS CHAMELEON: HOW THE IDEA OF RACE CHANGES OVER TIME Drawing the Color Line by Howard Zinn Placing Race in Context by Clara E. Rodriguez and Hector Cordero-Guzman (and more...)

Alexander Hamilton American or Out of Poverty

2009-01-17T05:10:00.000-08:00

Alexander Hamilton, American

Author: Richard Brookhiser

Alexander Hamilton is one of the least understood, most important, and most impassioned and inspiring of the founding fathers. At last Hamilton has found a modern biographer who can bring him to full-blooded life; Richard Brookhiser. In these pages, Alexander Hamilton sheds his skewed image as the "bastard brat of a Scotch peddler," sex scandal survivor, and notoriously doomed dueling partner of Aaron Burr. Examined up close, throughout his meteoric and ever-fascinating (if tragically brief) life, Hamilton can at last be seen as one of the most crucial of the founders. Here, thanks to Brookhiser's accustomed wit and grace, this quintessential American lives again.

The New York Times Book Review - Michael R. Beschloss

A dramatic, compact biography that fairly gallops through Hamilton's picaresque life. Alexander Hamilton, American brilliantly succeeds in arguing that Hamilton deserves greater credit than he usually gets for his brain power, idealism, and vision.

National Review - Orlando Patterson

Richard Brookhiser's splendid biography…succeeds in doing what no other work has quite done before: provide a portrait of Hamilton that brings out the true genius of the man in a volume that is both elegantly written and accessible to a mass audience.

The Wall Street Journal - James Grant

[A] wonderful portrait….Mr. Brookhiser has put his own intelligent stamp on the life of a great man.

USA Today - Gary Rawlins

A pithy and entertaining biography….In this bold reinterpretative study that throws down the gauntlet to Jefferson's disciples, Brookhiser ably pleads Hamilton's case before the bar of history….The author's achievement is to capture the full nature of a great but flawed man.

Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail

Author: Paul Polak

Based on his 25 years of experience, Polak explodes what he calls the "Three Great Poverty Eradication Myths": that we can donate people out of poverty, that national economic growth will end poverty, and that Big Business, operating as it does now, will end poverty. Polak shows that programs based on these ideas have utterly failed‹in fact, in sub-Saharan Africa poverty rates have actually gone up.

These failed top-down efforts contrast sharply with the grassroots approach Polak and IDE have championed: helping the dollar-a-day poor earn more money through their own efforts. Amazingly enough, unexploited market opportunities do exist for the desperately poor. Polak describes how he and others have identified these opportunities and have developed innovative, low-cost tools that have helped in lifting 17 million people out of poverty.

What People Are Saying

Suresh Kumar
"Paul Polak's life of global engagement testifies to his dedication to helping the rural poor develop concrete ways to fight poverty. His book is the pragmatic idealist's view of how things can be done."--(Suresh Kumar, Special Advisor, The Clinton Foundation)

Sandra Postel
"Paul Polak offers a personal, radical, and profoundly sensible prescription for alleviating global poverty. His engaging style of storytelling is not only persuasive, but entertaining. Read Out of Poverty‹it will change the way you look at the world."--(Sandra Postel, Director of the Global Water Policy Project and author of Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?)

Majora Carter
"Paul Polak's approach is beautifully revolutionary because it recognizes that the poor must be part of the solution to end poverty and are not the causes of it."--(Majora Carter, CEO, Sustainable South Bronx)

Steve Wozniak
"Out of Poverty is very exciting. It matches a lot of my own thoughts about solving things. When you alleviate something but don't fix the cause, it comes back. Paul Polak's approach confronts the root causes."--(Steve Wozniak, Inventor of the Apple computer and Cofounder. Apple Computer)

John Maeda
"Paul's approach to solving our world's greatest ailment is one of simplicity in design and humanity in spirit. His powerful recipe for change is clear, precise, and do-able. And we need to desperately do it right now."--(John Maeda, Associate Director of Research, MIT Media Lab and author of The Laws of Simplicity)

Politics the Wellstone Way or World Poverty and Human Rights

2009-01-16T15:57:00.000-08:00

Politics the Wellstone Way: How to Elect Progressive Candidates and Win on Issues

Author: Wellstone Action

During the past four years, political activism has grown to a level that has not been seen in the United States since the Vietnam War. Tensions over the war in Iraq and the presidential election motivated hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the political fence to take to the streets. Politics the Wellstone Way offers a comprehensive set of strategies to help progressives channel that energy into winning issue-based and electoral campaigns.

Wellstone Action is a nonprofit organization dedicated to continuing Paul and Sheila Wellstone’s fight for progressive change and economic justice by teaching effective political action skills to people across the country. Politics the Wellstone Way is a workshop in book form, providing the detailed framework needed to jump-start a new generation of activists plus plenty of helpful tools for old pros, including articulating a strong message, base building, field organizing, budgeting, fundraising, scheduling, getting out the vote, and grassroots advocacy and lobbying, illustrated by practical and inspirational examples.

From the school board all the way to the White House, Politics the Wellstone Way instructs people on becoming better organizers, candidates, campaign workers, and citizen activists, empowering them to make their voices heard.

Wellstone Action was established by the Wellstones’ two surviving sons, David and Mark. The main vehicle for this ongoing work is Camp Wellstone, a weekend training program that Wellstone Action leads regularly in locations across the country. Jeff Blodgett, Paul Wellstone’s longtime campaign manager, is the executive director ofWellstone Action. For more information visit www.wellstoneaction.org.

What People Are Saying

Al Franken
"This book is the next best thing to going to a Camp Wellstone if, like me, you are too lazy, or too important."

Tom Harkin
"This is a great book for progressives who want to win without compromising their principles. My friend Paul Wellstone was an expert campaigner and organizer, and it is fitting that Wellstone Action is carrying on his work by training progressives in the tools of effective political action. The pages of this book are filled with smart advice and useful tools from Wellstone's most trusted advisers. Highly recommended for those who are progressive and want to win!"
—Senator

Jim Hightower
"Agitation is essential for progressive reform. But agitation without organization equals frustration. In this book, Wellstone Action shows you how to combine the two for success."

Walter Mondale
"Paul Wellstone had a great ability to win by connecting his politics to people in a profound way. Paul can't be replaced, but his formula for success can be passed on to others, and this book does just that. Written by the people who guided his successful campaigns, it is a blueprint for those who are committed to making a difference, taking a stand, and winning."

Howard Dean
"Paul Wellstone was a great American because he was honest and led with his heart. But he was a successful leader because he knew how to organize, and he showed ordinary citizens that they had the power within themselves to change our country."
—chair of the Democratic National Committee and former presidential candidate

Russ Feingold
"The passion that Senator Wellstone brought to public service is an inspiration to all of us who carry on the cause of progressive politics. Working together, we can bring real change to our country when we reach out to the grassroots by standing up and standing tall for the progressive values we share."
—Senator

World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms

Author: Thomas W Pogg

Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One-third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five.

However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong.

Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyzed how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter on Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.

About the Author:
Thomas Pogge is Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University, Research Director in the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, and Adjunct Professor in the Centrefor Professional Ethics at the University of Central Lancashire

General Introduction     1
Some cautions about our moral judgments     2
Four easy reasons to ignore world poverty     7
Sophisticated defenses of our acquiescence in world poverty     13
Does our new global economic order really not harm the poor?     18
Responsibilities and reforms     26
Human Flourishing and Universal Justice     33
Introduction     33
Social justice     37
Paternalism     40
Justice in first approximation     43
Essential refinements     45
Human rights     50
Specification of human rights and responsibilities for their realization     54
Conclusion     56
How Should Human Rights be Conceived?     58
Introduction     58
From natural law to rights     60
From natural rights to human rights     62
Official disrespect     65
The libertarian critique of social and economic rights     70
The critique of social and economic rights as "manifesto rights"     73
Disputes about kinds of human rights     75
Loopholes in Moralities     77
Introduction     77
Types of incentives     79
Loopholes     81
Social arrangements     82
Case 1: the converted apartment building     83
Case 2: the homelands policy of white South Africa     86
An objection     88
Strengthening     89
Fictional histories     91
Puzzles of equivalence     93
Conclusion     95
Moral Universalism and Global Economic Justice     97
Introduction     97
Moral universalism     98
Our moral assessments of national and global economic orders     100
Some factual background about the global economic order     102
Conceptions of national and global economic justice contrasted     106
Moral universalism and David Miller's contextualism     108
Contextualist moral universalism and John Rawls's moral conception     110
Rationalizing divergent moral assessments through a double standard     114
Rationalizing divergent moral assessments without a double standard     116
The causal role of global institutions in the persistence of severe poverty     118
Conclusion     122
The Bounds of Nationalism     124
Introduction     124
Common nationalism: priority for the interests of compatriots     126
Lofty nationalism: the justice-for-compatriots priority     135
Explanatory nationalism: the deep significance of national borders     145
Conclusion     150
Achieving Democracy     152
Introduction     152
The structure of the problem faced by fledgling democracies     154
Reducing the expected rewards of coups d'etat     158
Undermining the borrowing privilege of authoritarian predators     159
Undermining the resource privilege of authoritarian predators     168
Conclusion     173
Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty     174
Introduction     174
Institutional cosmopolitanism based on human rights     175
The idea of state sovereignty     183
Some main reasons for a vertical dispersal of sovereignty     187
The shaping and reshaping of political units     196
Conclusion     201
Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a Global Resources Dividend     202
Introduction     202
Radical inequality and our responsibility     203
Three grounds of injustice     205
A moderate proposal     210
The moral argument for the proposed reform     214
Is the reform proposal realistic?     216
Conclusion     220
Pharmaceutical Innovation: Must We Exclude the Poor?     222
Introduction     222
The TRIPS Agreement and its aftermath     224
The argument from beneficial consequences     230
Toward a better way of stimulating research and development of essential medicines     236
Differential pricing     238
The public-good strategy for extending access to essential medicines     240
A full-pull plan for the provision of pharmaceuticals     244
Specifying and implementing the basic full-pull idea     253
Justifying the plan to affluent citizens and their representatives     256
Last Words     262
Notes     265
Bibliography     314
Index     328

Many Headed Hydra or All the Laws but One

2009-01-16T05:45:00.000-08:00

Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

Author: Peter Linebaugh

"For most readers the tale told here will be completely new. For those already well acquainted with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the image of that age which they have been so carefully taught and cultivated will be profoundly challenged."—David Montgomery, author of Citizen Worker
Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.

When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization in the early seventeenth century launched the first global economy, a vast, diverse, and landless workforce was born. These workers crossed national, ethnic, and racial boundaries, as they circulated around the Atlantic world on trade ships and slave ships, from England to Virginia, from Africa to Barbados, and from the Americas back to Europe.

Marshaling an impressive range of original research from archives in the Americas and Europe, the authors show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a "hydra" and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us about our common humanity.

"A landmark in the development of an Atlantic perspective on early American history. Ranging from Europe to Africa to the Caribbean and North America, itmakes us think in new ways about the role of working people in the making of the modern world."—Eric Foner, author of The Story of American Freedom

"What would the world look like had the levelers, the diggers, the ranters, the slaves, the castaways, the Maroons, the Gypsies, the Indians, the Amazons, the Anabaptists, the pirates . . . won? Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker show us what could have been by exhuming the revolutionary dreams and rebellious actions of the first modern proletariat, whose stories~until now~were lost at sea. They have recovered a sunken treasure chest of history and historical possibility and spun these lost gems into a swashbuckling narrative full of labor, love, imagination, and startling beauty."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!

"The Many-Headed Hydra is about connections others have denied, ignored, or underemployed. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europe, Africa, and the Americas came together to create a new economy and a new class of working people. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker tell their story with deep sympathy and profound insight. . . . A work of restoration and celebration of a world too long hidden from view."—Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

"More than just a vivid illustration of the gains involved in thinking beyond the boundaries between nation-states. Here, in incendiary form, are essential elements for a people's history of our dynamic, transcultural present."—Paul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic

"This is a marvelous book. Linebaugh and Rediker have done an extraordinary job of research into buried episodes and forgotten writings to recapture, with eloquence and literary flair, the lost history of resistance to capitalist conquest on both sides of the Atlantic."—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

Publishers Weekly

Deriding the "historic invisibility" of their subjects--"the multiethnic class that was essential to the rise of capitalism and the modern, global economy"--Linebaugh (The London Hanged), professor of history at the University of Toledo, and Rediker (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea), associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, reveal that throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, mobile workers of all sorts--maids, slaves, felons, pirates and indentured farm hands--formulated ideas about freedom and justice that would eventually find expression in the American Revolution. The moneymen thought of themselves as noble heirs to Hercules, "symbol of power and order," and referred to the people they mobilized across continents as "hydra," after Hercules's many-headed foe. During these early days of intercontinental commerce, there were many small rebellions, and Linebaugh and Rediker's book is especially valuable for its rich descriptions of the lesser-known revolts, including one by slaves in New Jersey who "conspired to kill their masters," burn their property and make off with their horses in 1734, and another by Native American whalers who tried to torch Nantucket in 1738. The authors also describe the March 1736 "Red String Conspiracy": 40 to 50 Irish felons, who planned to burn Savannah, kill all the white men and escape with a band of Indians (the conspirators wore red string around the right wrist to identify themselves). Their plot was foiled but caused great unrest in Savannah. This book provides a unique window onto early modern capitalist history. The authors are to be commended not only for recovering the voices of obscure folk, but also for connecting them to the overarching themes of the age of revolution. 50 b&w illus. not seen by PW. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Kirkus Reviews

A revealing work of leftist revisionist history whose cast includes sailors, seamstresses, farmers, and a Founding Father or two. Linebaugh (History/Univ. of Toledo) and Rediker's (History/Univ. of Pittsburgh) sweeping account of the stateless poor of the 16th- and 17th-century Atlantic opens with a telling anecdote. In 1609, an English vessel was shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda, where the survivors found not a hellish land of cannibals and devils (as the charts had promised) but an"Edenic land of perpetual spring and abundant food"—and where, for the first time ever, these children of post-Restoration England could be free. When, some months later, rescuers arrived, they had to chase these new noble savages out of the woods and haul them off to the Virginia colony by force. Such, the authors suggest, was often the case in the New World: the earliest crossings of the Atlantic Ocean were undertaken by men and women who had nothing to lose, the multiethnic dispossessed who struggled to make new lives at a remove from the emerging capitalist order of Europe (whose spokesmen in turn portrayed the resistant mob as a"hydra-headed monster" against which only a crowned Hercules could prevail). Linebaugh and Rediker document a series of little-known rebellions large and small—most fomented by sailors, who were accustomed to struggling with masters for food, pay, and work and who"brought to the ports a militant attitude toward arbitrary and excessive authority." Though sometimes fashionably dense in the postmodern manner, Linebaugh and Rediker's"hidden history" is in the main both accessible and persuasive, and not without itsshareof surprises—including a startling new view of the African-American revolutionary martyr Crispus Attucks, whose biography extends well beyond mere victim of the Boston Massacre. An intriguing and welcome addition to the historical literature of the period.

Introduction	1
1. The Wreck of the Sea-Venture	8
2. Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water	36
3. "A Blackymore Maide Named Francis"	71
4. The Divarication of the Putney Debates	104
5. Hydrarchy: Sailors, Pirates, and the Maritime State	143
6. "The Outcasts of the Nations of the Earth"	174
7. A Motley Crew in the American Revolution	211
8. The Conspiracy of Edward and Catherine Despard	248
9. Robert Wedderburn and Atlantic Jubilee	287
Conclusion: Tyger! Tyger!	327
A Map of the Atlantic 1699	354
Notes	355
Acknowledgments	413
Index	417

Interesting textbook: Empreendimentos de Tecnologia:de Idéia para Empresa

All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime

Author: William H Rehnquist

In All the Laws but One, William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, provides an insightful and fascinating account of the history of civil liberties during wartime and illuminates the cases where presidents have suspended the law in the name of national security.

Abraham Lincoln, champion of freedom and the rights of man, suspended the writ of habeas corpus early in the Civil War—later in the war he also imposed limits upon freedom of speech and the press and demanded that political criminals be tried in military courts. During World War II, the government forced 100,000 U.S. residents of Japanese descent, including many citizens, into detainment camps. Through these and other incidents Chief Justice Rehnquist brilliantly probes the issues at stake in the balance between the national interest and personal freedoms. With All the Laws but One he significantly enlarges our understanding of how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution during past periods of national crisis—and draws guidelines for how it should do so in the future.

House of War or Ethical Realism

2009-01-14T08:29:00.000-08:00

House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power

Author: James Carroll

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

Books about: Entrepreneurial Marketing or Commercial Transactions

Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World

Author: Anatol Lieven

America today faces a world more complicated than ever before, but both political parties have failed to envision a foreign policy that addresses our greatest threats. As a result, the United States risks lurching from crisis to crisis. In Ethical Realism, Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman, two distinguished policy experts from different political camps, have joined forces to write an impassioned manifesto that illuminates a new way forward.

Rather than blindly asserting a mixture of American power and the transformative effects of democracy, Lieven and Hulsman call for a foreign policy that recognizes America’s real strengths and weaknesses, and those of other nations. They explain how the United States can successfully combine genuine morality with tough and practical common sense.

To achieve these goals, Lieven and Hulsman emphasize the core principles of the American tradition of ethical realism, as set out by Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, and George Kennan: prudence, patriotism, responsibility, humility, and a deep understanding of other nations. They show how this spirit informed the strategies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower in the early years of the Cold War and how these presidents were able to contain Soviet expansionism while rejecting the pressure for disastrous preventive wars a threat that has returned since 9/11.

Drawing on this philosophy and these historical lessons, Lieven and Hulsman provide a set of concrete proposals for tackling the problems we face today, including the terrorist threat, Iran, Russia, the Middle East, and China. Their arguments are intended to establish American global power on a more limited but muchfirmer basis, with greater international support. Both morally stirring and deeply practical, this book shows us how to strengthen our national security, pursue our national interests, and restore American leadership in the world.

The New York Times - James Traub

Ethical Realism is passionately argued and bristlingly accusatory (more Lieven than Hulsman, one suspects). It reminds us that we once knew how to confront an adversary without sacrificing something essential of ourselves. More than that, it reminds us how very different was the moral atmosphere of the cold war from that of our own time, as this telling aside from the notes of President Eisenhower (cited by Lieven and Hulsman) suggests: "Global war as a defense of freedom: Almost contradiction in terms."

Report from Ground Zero or The Third Reich in Power

2009-01-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center

Author: Dennis Smith

What would make someone rush into a towering inferno and dash up stairs toward danger against a flow of human beings running in the opposite direction? Only someone who's been there can tell us.

In this first book-length account of the rescue efforts at the World Trade Center, retired New York City firefighter Dennis Smith gives a remarkable eyewitness account of perhaps the most heroic and desperate collaborative disaster effort in recent history. Smith arrived on the scene shortly after the attacks on September 11 and stayed for weeks. He stretched hoses, picked up bodies, and talked with police, firefighters, and emergency workers who had rushed downtown to confront a spectacle no rescue worker had ever faced before.

In Report from Ground Zero, Smith gives us the stories of some of the 343 firefighters who were reported missing or dead, including; Captain Pat Brown from Ladder Company 3, who was a personal friend; a father and son; the department's beloved chaplain; commanders; rookies; and entire companies that were lost. Smith pays tribute to the dozens of police and emergency workers who dies, as well as those who undertook an urgent search and rescue mission and, finally, the grim and daunting task of massive clean up.

Smith's rare blend of superb writing skills and up-close firefighting experience drop us into the psyche of a firefighter, which sheds light on what would make someone rush into a flaming building: it's called heroism.

Entertainment Weekly

No matter how well told, insightful, or compelling the stories are—and almost to a one, they fit that description—the book demands breaks.

New York Times

Smith has captured the horror and chaos of those first terrifying hours, and the ensuing anger and grief and determination.

Library Journal

In words as devastatingly heartbreaking as the photo on the book's cover, Smith uses his skill as a writer to capture the horrors of September 11, 2001. Smith is a retired New York City fireman and author of the bestselling Report from Engine Co. 82, so he is able to convey the mind-set of this "brotherhood." The firefighters, rescue workers, and police personnel who responded to the World Trade Center attack all went into this cataclysm to do their job-to rescue as many people as they possibly could. The author captures the raw emotion of the event as seen through the eyes of people who survived and also as a participant during the search and rescue mission. A cast of actors present the testimonies of survivors, making this work even more gripping. Excellently performed, Report from Ground Zero is highly recommended for all libraries.-Theresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., Russellville Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

New Yorker

The first-person narratives in this account of the rescue efforts at the World Trade Center constitute a tremendously powerful chronicle of September 11th. The language of the firefighters and police officers is blunt and vivid, the details are sharply etched, and the fractured stories -- particularly of those who were inside the towers but somehow escaped -- offer a Cubist vision of the day's chaos. The book's description of the disaster's aftermath is less successful: Smith conveys the ritualistic and sacramental nature of the search for the victims' remains, but he lapses too frequently into sentimentality and abstract meditations on patriotism and courage. The author, who also wrote the gripping "Report from Engine Co. 82," does best when he lets the images speak for themselves: the airplane luggage scattered across the plaza; the waves of firemen disappearing into the stairwells; the indelible sound -- "like an M-80 firecracker," one man says -- of bodies hitting the ground; and the moment when suddenly there was "nothing but dust."

Go to: Fondue or Girls Guide to Wine

The Third Reich in Power

Author: Richard J Evans

The definitive account of Germany's malign transformation under Hitler's total rule and the implacable march to war

This magnificent second volume of Richard J. Evans's three-volume history of Nazi Germany was hailed by Benjamin Schwartz of the Atlantic Monthly as "the definitive English-language account... gripping and precise." It chronicles the incredible story of Germany's radical reshaping under Nazi rule. As those who were deemed unworthy to be counted among the German people were dealt with in increasingly brutal terms, Hitler's drive to prepare Germany for the war that he saw as its destiny reached its fateful hour in September 1939. The Third Reich in Power is the fullest and most authoritative account yet written of how, in six years, Germany was brought to the edge of that terrible abyss.

Chinas Great Train or Free Culture

2009-01-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

China's Great Train: Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet

Author: Abrahm Lustgarten

A vivid account of China’s unstoppable quest to build a railway into Tibet, and its obsession to transform its land and its people

In the summer of 2006, the Chinese government fulfilled a fifty-year plan to build a railway into Tibet. Since Mao Zedong first envisioned it, the line had grown into an imperative, a critical component of China’s breakneck expansion and the final maneuver in strengthening China’s grip over this remote and often mystical frontier, which promised rich resources and geographic supremacy over South Asia.

Through the lives of the Chinese and Tibetans swept up in the project, Fortune magazine writer Abrahm Lustgarten explores the “Wild West” atmosphere of the Chinese economy today. He follows innovative Chinese engineer Zhang Luxin as he makes the train’s route over the treacherous mountains and permafrost possible (for now), and the tenacious Tibetan shopkeeper Rinzen, who struggles to hold on to his business in a boomtown that increasingly favors the Han Chinese. As the railway—the highest and steepest in the world—extends to Lhasa, and China’s “Go West” campaign delivers waves of rural poor eager to make their fortunes, their lives and communities fundamentally change, sometimes for good, sometimes not.

Lustgarten’s book is a timely, provocative, and absorbing first-hand account of the Chinese boom and the promise and costs of rapid development on the country’s people.

The Washington Post - John Pomfret

Abrahm Lustgarten's fine book China's Great Train is one of the few works to bring the Western reader inside the heads of China's builders. Following the lives of two engineers and a doctor, Lustgarten chronicles an incredible feat of modern engineering: the construction of a railway connecting Tibet to the rest of China. …for Lustgarten, a contributing writer for Fortune magazine, the building of the railway is not just a great yarn. It's also a microcosm of how the Communist Party has refashioned China in the last 30 years…Lustgarten translates the palpable excitement of being a builder in a nation where builders rule. He also accomplishes something more valuable: He provides insight into the seat-of-the-pants nature of many of China's massive schemes. Reading China's Great Train, we recognize China's engineers, and by extension its leadership, for what they are: some of the world's biggest risk-takers. Geeks with guts.

Kirkus Reviews

A careful account of the Chinese expansion into the Tibetan Plateau, accelerated by the completion of the world's highest railroad. Fortune contributing writer Lustgarten notes that China has been working to incorporate Tibet wholly into its sphere since the invasion of 1959, when the Dalai Lama was forced into exile. To the chagrin of Communist technocrats, however, China could never quite figure out how to fund highways and other corridors of transport into the high country until recently, with the result that "Tibet's infrastructure in the decades since [1959] had remained more tied to India and Nepal than to Beijing-something Chinese nationalists found excruciatingly untenable." Thanks to President Jiang Zemin's "Go West" development initiative, though, Chinese settlers have pushed ever westward, resettling millions of ethnic Chinese into the remote interior. An important vehicle was the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, begun in 2001, which picked up on a failed effort begun and abandoned in 1979. The mountainous region, "shockingly inhospitable to the lowlander Chinese," has since been sprouting factories, shopping centers, housing developments-and prisons, of course, for China has been striving to break the back of the Tibetan freedom movement. This train would, its builders hoped, "finally provide a permanent, intractable link between Tibet and China," if only by introducing enough ethnic Chinese into the region to outnumber the Tibetan population, and thus converting a backward place full of supposedly docile people into another industrial powerhouse. Reporters remarking on such developments, such as the Swiss journalist Jean-Marie Jolidon, have been summarily expelled from China.Lustgarten had better luck, but it is clear that he asked hard questions along the way, including ones to establish how expensive the whole railway project has turned out to be: about $4.5 billion, perhaps much more. Lustgarten's account, both journalistic and historical, is a welcome addition to the literature of Tibetan enslavement. Agent: PJ Mark/McCormick & Williams

Look this: End of the American Century or Worst Person In the World

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity

Author: Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, "the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era" (The New Yorker), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can't do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.

The New York Times

The shrinking of the public domain, and the devastation it threatens to the culture, are the subject of a powerfully argued and important analysis by Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School and a leading member of a group of theorists and grass-roots activists, sometimes called the ''copyleft,'' who have been crusading against the increasing expansion of copyright protections. Lessig was the chief lawyer in a noble, but ultimately unsuccessful, Supreme Court challenge to the copyright extension act. Free Culture is partly a final appeal to the court of public opinion and partly a call to arms. — Adam Cohen

The Washington Post

As the rest of Free Culture makes clear, the arcane ins and outs of today's copyright battles now mask a much deeper cultural struggle in which the stakes have grown unthinkably high. — Chris Lehmann

Publishers Weekly

From Stanford law professor Lessig (Code; The Future of Ideas) comes this expertly argued, alarming and surprisingly entertaining look at the current copyright wars. Copyright law in the digital age has become a hot topic, thanks to millions of music downloaders and the controversial, high-profile legal efforts of the music industry to stop them. Here Lessig argues that copyright as designed by the Framers has become dangerously unbalanced, favoring the interests of corporate giants over the interests of citizens and would-be innovators. In clear, well-paced prose, Lessig illustrates how corporations attempt to stifle innovations, from FM radio and the instant camera to peer-to-peer technology. He debunks the myth that draconian new copyright enforcement is needed to combat the entertainment industry's expanded definition of piracy, and chillingly assesses the direct and collateral damage of the copyright war. Information technology student Jesse Jordan, for example, was forced to hand over his life savings to settle a lawsuit brought by the music industry-for merely fixing a glitch in an Internet search engine. Lessig also offers a very personal look into his failed Supreme Court bid to overturn the Copyright Term Extension Act, a law that added 20 years to copyright protections largely to protect Mickey Mouse from the public domain. In addition to offering a brilliant argument, Lessig also suggests a few solutions, including the Creative Commons licensing venture (an online licensing venture that streamlines the rights process for creators), as well as legislative solutions. This is an important book. "Free Cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon," he writes. "Ours was a free culture. It is becoming less so." (Mar. 29) Forecast: This book will have a wider appeal than Lessig's previous works, and author appearances in New York and San Francisco could attract buyers. With peer-to-peer file sharing constantly making headlines, the book has added relevance. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

"A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property," writes a copyright expert. But, he adds, extremism in asserting rights in that property can kill a culture. Consider Disney Corp., which regularly clamps down on artists who use the likeness of, say, Mickey Mouse for their own purposes. Now, Mickey has been around since 1928, born, Lessig (Law/Stanford Univ.; The Future of Ideas, 2001, etc.) argues, to the great magpie Walt Disney, who "ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn." Fair enough, and it's inarguable that many of Disney's early creations were parodies of or commentaries on other films of his time. Try that today, though, and you'll invite a lawsuit, for the big media have taken pains to secure legislation that extends copyright terms, and always in their favor; you wanna use Mickey, you gotta pay on Disney's terms. "No society," writes Lessig, "free or controlled, has ever demanded that every use be paid for or that permission for Walt Disney's creation must always be sought. Instead, every society has left a certain bit of its culture free for the taking." Until now, that is. The result: rampant piracy, ever-tighter commercial control over intellectual rights, and a derivative, commercialized, impoverished culture. Though no stranger to rhetorical excess ("every generation welcomes the pirates from the last"), Lessig quite sensibly suggests that copyright become harder to hold onto for long stretches, and that the emphasis of the law shift to a "some rights reserved stance," particularly where the work in question is no longeractively sold on the market-an out-of-print book, say, or CD. Provocative, and sure to inspire argument among the myriad lawyers who, Lessig hints, are the only ones who benefit from the current mess. Amanda Urban/ICM

	Preface
	Introduction	1
	"Piracy"	15
Ch. 1	Creators	21
Ch. 2	"Mere Copyists"	31
Ch. 3	Catalogs	48
Ch. 4	"Pirates"	53
Ch. 5	"Piracy"	62
	"Property"	81
Ch. 6	Founders	85
Ch. 7	Recorders	95
Ch. 8	Transformers	100
Ch. 9	Collectors	108
Ch. 10	"Property"	116
	Puzzles	175
Ch. 11	Chimera	177
Ch. 12	Harms	183
	Balances	209
Ch. 13	Eldred	213
Ch. 14	Eldred II	248
	Conclusion	257
	Afterword	273
	Notes	307
	Acknowledgments	331
	Index	333

Barbara Jordan or The Global Cold War

2009-01-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

Barbara Jordan: Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder

Author: Barbara Jordan

Revered by Americans across the political spectrum, Barbara Jordan was "the most outspoken moral voice of the American political system," in the words of former President Bill Clinton, who awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. Throughout her career as a Texas senator, U.S. congresswoman, and distinguished professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, Barbara Jordan lived by a simple creed: "Ethical behavior means being honest, telling the truth, and doing what you said you were going to do." Her strong stand for ethics in government, civil liberties, and democratic values still provides a standard around which the nation can unite in the twenty-first century.

This volume brings together several major political speeches that articulate Barbara Jordan's most deeply held values. They include:

"Erosion of Civil Liberties," a commencement address delivered at Howard University on May 12, 1974, in which Jordan warned that "tyranny in America is possible"
"The Constitutional Basis for Impeachment," Jordan's ringing defense of the U.S. Constitution before the House Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate break-in
Keynote addresses to the Democratic National Conventions of 1976 and 1992, in which Jordan set forth her vision of the Democratic Party as an advocate for the common good and a catalyst of change
Testimony in the U.S. Congress on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and on immigration reform
Meditations on faith and politics from two National Prayer Breakfasts
Acceptance speech for the 1995 Sylvanus Thayer Award presented by the Association ofGraduates of the United States Military Academy, in which Jordan challenged the military to uphold the values of "duty, honor, country"

Accompanying the speeches, some of which readers can also watch on an enclosed DVD, are context-setting introductions by volume editor Max Sherman. The book concludes with the eloquent eulogy that Bill Moyers delivered at Barbara Jordan's memorial service in 1996, in which he summed up Jordan's remarkable life and career by saying, "Just when we despaired of finding a hero, she showed up, to give the sign of democracy.... This is no small thing. This, my friends, this is grace. And for it we are thankful."

Preface
Acknowledgments
Biography of Barbara Jordan, with Student Comments
My Personal Introduction of Barbara Jordan
Erosion of Civil Liberties: Commencement Speech, Howard University, May 11, 1974
The National Political Stage
- Rising to the Occasion: The Constitutional Basis for Impeachment, U.S. House Judiciary Committee Impeachment Hearings, July 25, 1974
- Center Stage: Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, July 12, 1976
- The Spotlight after Congress: Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, July 13, 1992
Barbara Jordan's Take on Three Twenty-First-Century Political Issues
- Confirmation of Supreme Court Justices: Testimony in Opposition to the Nomination of Robert Bork, September 17, 1987
- Immigration Reform: Congressional Testimony as Chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, March 29, 1995
- Religious Faith and Politics: Prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast, February 2, 1978; Address at the National Prayer Breakfast, February 2, 1984
The Sylvanus Thayer Award
- Unswerving Dedication to Principle: 1995 Sylvanus Thayer Award Citation, West Point, October 5; Barbara Jordan's Thayer Award Acceptance
Epilogue: Remarks of Bill Moyers at the Memorial Service for Barbara Jordan, University of Texas at Austin, January 28, 1996
Notes

Interesting textbook: C Templates or Beginning OpenGL Game Programming

The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times

Author: Odd Arne Westad

The Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States indelibly shaped the world we live in today--especially international politics, economics, and military affairs. This volume shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the 20th century created the foundations for most of today's key international conflicts, including the "war on terror." Odd Arne Westad examines the origins and course of Third World revolutions and the ideologies that drove the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. towards interventionism. He focuses on how these interventions gave rise to resentments and resistance that, in the end, helped to topple one and to seriously challenge the other superpower. In addition, he demonstrates how these worldwide interventions determined the international and domestic framework within which political, social and cultural changes took place in such countries as China, Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua. According to Westad, these changes, plus the ideologies, movements and states that interventionism stirred up, constitute the real legacy of the Cold War. Odd Arne Westad is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2004 he was named head of department and co-director of the new LSE Cold War Studies Centre. Professor Westad is the author, or editor, of ten books on contemporary international history including Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950 (2003) and, with Jussi Hanhimaki, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2003). In addition, he is a founding editor of the journal Cold War History.

Foreign Affairs

Starting with the inquiry headed by Owen Roberts into why the United States was caught by surprise at Pearl Harbor and concluding with the 9/11 Commission, this neat and readable little book describes and evaluates the use of blue-ribbon panels to defuse crises of confidence in the government's handling of national security. The other cases were prompted by revelations about the CIA's forays into domestic spying in 1975, the problems of finding a basing mode for the MX missile, and the Iran-contra scandal. The emphasis, as the subtitle indicates, is on the utility of these panels for political damage control at home, which turns out to be quite significant, and the importance of the selection of the panel members and their relationship to the White House. If the book deserves criticism, it is that although it discusses national security issues, it fails to provide international context or consider how these various scandals changed the terms of U.S. foreign policy.

The Political Brain or George W Bush

2009-01-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation

Author: Drew Westen

The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest.
In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven't decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates' policy positions.
Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head, suggesting that the question for Democratic politicsisn't so much about moving to the right or the left but about moving the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen's discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of forty years—such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can't change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here's how…

Guardian

(o)ne of the most insightful books on politics and the art of persuasion in recent years.

The Washington Post - Chris Lehmann

The Political Brain is not…a dispassionate foray into neuropsychology, but rather another in the long and ongoing series of treatises on what's wrong with Democrats and how to fix them. Westen trots out the same basic advice to address a host of issues from abortion and gay marriage to gun control and the War on Terror. Democrats, he preaches, need more genuine emotion to enliven their campaign rhetoric and extend their brand appeal to the hotly coveted voters at "the middle of the political spectrum."

The Baltimore Sun

A savvy, scary, partisan, provocative, take-no-prisoners-political primer, with cautionary tales drawn from the emotionally-challenged Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry campaigns, each of which snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. His analysis of how and why political rhetoric stimulates voters' networks of association, bundles of thoughts, feelings, images, and ideas will be instructive, if also infuriating, to political junkies, no matter what their partisan affiliation.

Washington Post Book World

In the thick of another overheated election cycle, it would seem the time is ripe for an exploration of how political enthusiasms play out on the neural paths of the brain. Drew Westen, the psychologist and author of The Political Brain, supplied an important study.

Huffington Post

A brilliant new book . . . Let's make sure that all Capitol Hill cavemen read [it], and take it to heart.

What People Are Saying

Howard Dean
"Drew Westen is a must read. We will win the Presidency if our candidate reads and acts on this book"-- (Howard Dean)

Book review: Vegetarian Cooking for Healthy Living or Napa Valley Wine Country California

George W Bush: An Unauthorized Oral History

Author: Tom Ruprecht

Emmy-nominated humorist and political writer Tom Ruprecht offers up the first faux oral history of the United States' 43rd president. George W. Bush's life is presented in chronological order-from infancy to the beer-soaked floor of a Yale fraternity house, and from blowing off his questionable tenure with the National Guard to blowing off his presidential duties. Inspired quotes from the president's inner circle reveal long-simmering tensions between George H. W. and Barbara Bush; Condoleezza's unrequited love; Cheney's descent into madness; and much, much more.

Sociology Matters or Chester Alan Arthur

2009-01-11T17:23:00.000-08:00

Sociology Matters

Author: Richard T Schaefer

This is a low-cost, paperback, condensed version of Sociology: A Brief Introduction, Sixth Edition. The conciseness, readability, and highly focused coverage of Sociology Matters are designed to appeal to instructors who rely on several texts rather than on a single comprehensive textbook. Its design and pedagogy are both straightforward and streamlined. Sociology Matters features newly written chapter introductions and a unifying theme--answering the question "How does sociology matter?"

"After more than 30 years of teaching sociology to students in colleges, adult education programs, nursing programs, an overseas program based in London, and even a maximum-security prison, I am firmly convinced that the discipline can play a valuable role in teaching critical thinking skills. Sociology can help students to better understand the workings of their own lives as well as of their society and other cultures." –-Richard T. Schaefer

BRIEF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: The Sociological View

Chapter 2: Culture and Socialization

Chapter 3: Social Structure, Groups, and Organizations

Chapter 4: Deviance and Social Control

Chapter 5: Stratification in the United States and Worldwide

Chapter 6: Inequality by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

Chapter 7: Inequality of Gender

Chapter 8: Family and Religion

Chapter 9: Education, Government, and the Economy

Chapter 10: Population, Community, Health, and the Environment

Chapter 11: Social Movements, Social Change, and Technology

DETAILED CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1: The Sociological View

What Is Sociology?; The Sociological Imagination; Sociology and the Social Sciences; Sociology and Common Sense

What Is Sociological Theory?

The Development of Sociology; Early Thinkers; Émile Durkheim; Max Weber; Karl Marx; Modern Developments:Charles Horton Cooley /Jane Addams / Robert Merton

Major Theoretical Perspectives; Functionalist Perspective: Manifest and Latent Functions; Conflict Perspective: The Marxist View / A Different Voice: W. E. B Du Bois; Interactionist Perspective; Feminist Perspective

What is the Scientific Method?; Defining the Problem; Reviewing the Literature; Formulating the Hypothesis; Collecting and Analyzing Data; Selecting the Sample: Ensuring Validity and Reliability; Developing the Conclusion: Supporting Hypotheses /Controlling the Other Factors /In Summary: The Scientific Method

Major Research Designs; Surveys; Observation; Experiments; Use of Existing Sources

Ethics of Research

Applied andClinical Sociology

Summary

Chapter 2: Culture and Socialization

Culture and Society

Development of Culture Around the World; Cultural Universals; Innovation; Globalization, Diffusion, and Technology

Elements of Culture; Language; Norms: Types of Norms / Acceptance of Norms; Sanctions; Values

Culture and the Dominant Ideology

Cultural Variation; Subcultures; Countercultures; Culture Shock; Ethnocentrism; Cultural Relativism

The Role of Socialization; Environment: The Impact of Isolation: A Girl Called Isabelle / Heredity: the Impact of Biology

The Self and Socialization; Cooley: Looking-Glass Self; Mead: Stages of the Self; Mead: Theory of the Self; Goffman: Presentation of the Self

Socialization and the Life Course; The Life Course; Anticipatory Socialization and Resocialization

Agents of Socialization; Family; School; Peer Group; Mass Media and Technology; Workplace; The State

Summary

Chapter 3: Social Structure, Groups, and Organizations

Defining and Reconstructing Reality

Elements of Social Structure; Statuses: Ascribed and Achieved Status / Master Status; Social Roles: What Are Social Roles? / Role Conflict/ Role Strain; Groups: Primary and Secondary Groups / In-Groups and Out-Groups / Reference Groups

Social Networks and Technology; Social Institutions

Social Structure in Global Perspective; Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft; Lenski’s Sociocultural Evolution Approach: Preindustrial Societies / Industrial Societies /Postindustrial and Postmodern Societies

Understanding Organizations; Formal Organizations and Bureaucracies; Characteristics of a Bureaucracy; Bureaucracy and Organizational Culture; Voluntary Associations

Technology Impact on the Workplace

Summary

Chapter 4: Deviance and Social Control

Social Control; Conformity and Obedience; Informal and Formal Social Control; Law and Society

Deviance; What is Deviance? / Deviance and Social Stigma; Explaining Deviance: Functionalist Perspective /Interactionist Perspective / Labeling Theory /Conflict Theory / Feminist Perspective

Crime; Types of Crime: Professional Crime / Organized CrimeWhite-Collar and Technology-Based Crime / Victimless Crime; Crime Statistics:Understanding Crime Statistics /International Crime Rates

Summary

Chapter 5: Stratification in the United States and Worldwide

Understanding Stratification ; Systems of Stratification: Slavery / Castes / Social Classes; Perspectives on Stratification: Karl Marx’s View of Class Differentiation / Max Weber’s View of Stratification; Is Stratification Universal? Functionalist ViewConflict View / Lenski’s Viewpoint

Stratification by Social Class; Measuring Social Class: Objective Method / Multiple Measures; Wealth and Income; Poverty: Studying Poverty / Who Are the Poor? /Explaining Poverty; Life Chances

Social Mobility; Open versus Closed Stratification Systems; Types of Social Mobility; Social Mobility in the United States: Occupational Mobility / The Impact of Education / The Impact of Race /The Impact of Gender

Stratification in the World System; Legacy of Colonialism ; Globalization ; Multinational Corporations: Functionalist View / Conflict View; Modernization

Summary

Chapter 6: Inequality by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

The Privileges of the Dominant

Race, Ethnicity, and Minority Groups; Minority Groups; Race; Ethnicity

Immigration and New Ethnic Groups

Explaining Inequality by Race and Ethnicity; The Functionalist View; The Conflict Response; The Interactionist Approach

Prejudice and Discrimination; Discriminatory Behavior; Institutional Discrimination; Measuring Discrimination

Summary

Chapter 7: Inequality of Gender

The Social Construction of Gender; Gender-Role Socialization; Women's and Men's Gender Roles; A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Explaining Inequality by Gender; The Functionalist View; The Conflict Response; The Feminist Perpsective; The Interactionist Approach

Women: The Oppressed Majority; Sexism and Sex Discrimination; Sexual Harrassment; The Status of Women Worldwide; Women in the Workforce of the United States; The Social Consequences of Women's Employment

The Double Jeopardy of Minority Women

Summary

Chapter 8: The Family and Religion

Studying Social Institutions; Functionalist View; Conflict View; Interactionist View

The Family: A Global View; Composition: What is the Family?; Kinship Patterns: To Whom Are We Related?; Authority Patterns: Who Rules?

Religion as a Social Institution; The Integrative Function of Religion; Religion and Social Support; Religion and Social Change; Religion and Social Control: A Conflict View

Chapter 9: Education, Government, and the Economy

Education: Schools as Formal Organizations; Bureaucratization of Schools; Teachers: Employees and Instructors; Student Subcultures

Power and Authority; Types of Authority: Traditional Authority /Legal-Rational Authority / Charismatic Authority

Who Rules in the United States?; Power Elite Models: Mill’s Model / Domhoff’s ModelPluralist Model

The Economy: Today and Tomorrow; Economic Systems: Capitalism / Socialism; Economic Change: The Face of the Workforce /Deindustrialization / E-Commerce /The Contingency Workforce

Summary

Chapter 10: Population, Community, Health, and the Environment

Demography: The Study of Population; Malthus’s Thesis and Marx’s Response; Studying Population Today; Elements of Demography

How Did Communities Originate?; Early Communities; Preindustrial Cities; Industrial and Postindustrial Cities

Urbanization and Its Consequences; Functionalist View: Urban Ecology; Conflict View: New Urban Sociology

Health and Illness: Sociological Perspectives; Functionalist Approach; Conflict Approach

The Medicalization of Society ; Inequities in Health Care; Interactionist Approach; Labeling Approach

Social Epidemiology; Social Class; Race and Ethnicity; Gender; Age

The Environment and Our Place in It; Environmental Problems: An Overview: Air Pollution /Water Pollution / Contamination of Land; Human Ecology; A Conflict View of Environmental Issues

Environmental Justice

Summary

Chapter 11: Social Movements, Social Change, and Technology

Social Movements; Relative Deprivation; Resource Mobilization; Gender and Social Movements; New Social Movements

Theories of Social Change; Evolutionary Theory; Functionalist Theory; Conflict Theory; Global Social Change

Resistance to Social Change; Economic and Cultural Factors; Resistance to Technology

Technology and the Future; Computer Technology: Telecommuting / The Internet; Biotechnology: Sex Selection / Genetic Engineering /Bioterrorism; Technological Accidents

Technology and Society; Culture and Social Interaction; Social Control; Stratification and Inequality

Summary

Glossary

References

Credits

Index
Read also The House on Beartown Road or Advanced First Aid Afloat

Chester Alan Arthur (The American Presidents Series)

Author: Zachary Karabell

The Gilded Age bon vivant who became America's unlikeliest chief executive-and who presided over a sweeping reform of the system that nurtured him
Chester Alan Arthur never dreamed that one day he would be president of the United States. A successful lawyer, Arthur had been forced out as the head of the Custom House of the Port of New York in 1877 in a power struggle between the two wings of the Republican Party. He became such a celebrity that he was nominated for vice president in 1880-despite his never having run for office before.
Elected alongside James A. Garfield, Arthur found his life transformed just four months into his term, when an assassin shot and killed Garfield, catapulting Arthur into the presidency. The assassin was a deranged man who thought he deserved a federal job through the increasingly corrupt "spoils system." To the surprise of many, Arthur, a longtime beneficiary of that system, saw that the time had come for reform. His opportunity came in the winter of 1882-83, when he pushed through the Pendleton Act, which created a professional civil service and set America on a course toward greater reforms in the decades to come.
Chester Arthur may be largely forgotten today, but Zachary Karabell eloquently shows how this unexpected president-of whom so little was expected-rose to the occasion when fate placed him in the White House.

Kirkus Reviews

An unmemorable president earns a fitting biography. Freelance historian Karabell (Parting the Desert, 2003, etc.) has the unenviable task, in this latest in Arthur Schlesinger's American presidents series, of chronicling the life and times of Chester Arthur (1829-86), who "belongs to two select, and not altogether proud, clubs: presidents who came to office because of the sudden death of their predecessor, and presidents whose historical reputation is neither great, nor terrible, nor remarkable." Arthur was indeed a strong supporter of his predecessor, James Garfield, felled by the bullet of a disgruntled jobseeker; although by no means charismatic or even interesting, he was useful to Garfield as an entree to and liaison with the powerful Republican leadership of New York. Arthur seems to have sought elected public office only reluctantly, and for good reason: as an appointed customs official in New York City, he earned more than $50,000 annually in the 1870s, an astonishing sum of money that owed to an astonishing level of official corruption, though Arthur himself seems to have been honest enough. Though popular precisely because he represented a moderate balance between two competing wings within the GOP, Arthur ran afoul of powerful rivals, including Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. Grant, and James Blaine, the last of whom essentially forced Arthur out of the White House after he served out Garfield's term. Arthur's tenure was not without its accomplishments, Karabell dutifully writes, including a thoroughgoing reform of the civil-service system to professionalize the government and reduce favoritism. On the negative side, Arthur oversaw an immigration exclusion act aimed against theChinese, which he vetoed at first but then surrendered to; on this and other issues he stepped away from his base of support within his party, and, as Karabell notes, alienating his allies after having "earned the near-permanent distrust of competing factions and of the opposing Democrats."A dry life of a dry man, with a few intriguing glimpses into the Gilded Age.

Dancing Under the Red Star or Thomson Advantage Books

2009-01-11T07:11:00.000-08:00

Dancing Under the Red Star: The Extraordinary Story of the Only American Woman to Survive Stalin's Gulag

Author: Karl Tobien

The shocking and inspirational saga of Margaret Werner and her miraculous survival in the Siberian death camps of Stalinist Russia.

In 1932, Henry Ford sent 450 of his Detroit employees and their families to live in Gorky, Russia, to operate a new manufacturing facility. This is the true story of one of those families-Carl and Elisabeth Werner and their young daughter Margaret-and their terrifying life in Russia under brutal dictator Joseph Stalin.

Margaret was seventeen when her father was arrested on trumped-up charges of treason. Heartbroken and afraid, she and her mother were left to withstand the hardships of life under the oppressive Soviet state, an existence marked by poverty, starvation, and fear. Refusing to comply with the Socialist agenda, Margaret was ultimately sentenced to ten years of hard labor in Stalin's Gulag.

Filth, malnutrition, and despair accompanied merciless physical labor. Yet in the midst of inhumane conditions came glimpses of hope and love as Margaret came to realize her dependence upon "the grace, favor, and protection of an unseen God."

In all, it would be thirty long years before Margaret returned to kiss the ground of home. Of all the Americans who made this virtually unknown journey-ultimately spending years in Siberian death camps-Margaret Werner was the only woman who lived to tell about it.

Written by her son, Karl Tobien, Dancing Under the Red Star is Margaret's unforgettable true story: an inspiring chronicle of faith, defiance, and personal triumph.

Books about: The Antonio Gramsci Reader or Rights of Law Enforcement Officers

Thomson Advantage Books: American Government and Politics Today, Brief Edition, 2008-2009

Author: Steffen W Schmidt

With new engaging features and as part of the Wadsworth Advantage Series, AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS TODAY: BRIEF EDITION, 2008-2009 highlights today's controversial issues and shows how you can become involved in American government and make a difference as an active, informed citizen. Praised for its balanced and up-to-the-minute coverage, this book focuses on the fundamentals—the constitutional, governmental, political, social, and economic structures and processes that are the core of American government. The text also includes coverage of policy and analysis issues.

1. The Foundations of American Government. 2. Forging a New Government: The Constitution. 3. Federalism. 4. Civil Liberties. 5. Civil Rights. 6. Public Opinion, Political Socialization, and the Media. 7. Interest Groups and Political Parties. 8. Campaigns, Elections, and Voting Behavior. 9. The Congress. 10. The Presidency. 11. The Bureaucracy. 12. The Judiciary. 13. Domestic and Economic Policy. 14. Foreign Policy. Appendix A: Declaration of Independence. Appendix B: The Constitution of the United States of America. Appendix C: The Federalist Papers, No. 10 and No. 51. Glossary.

	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

	List of illustrations
1	The trouble with terrorism	1
2	Crusaders and conspirators	20
3	The reign of terror	36
4	Revolutionary terrorism	53
5	Nationalism and terror	74
6	Religious terror	96
7	Counterterrorism and democracy	114
	References	141
	Further reading	146
	Index	151

Economic Development Book

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

The Origins of the Second World War

Table of Contents:

Multinational Enterprise and the Globalization of Networks of Knowledge

Biosecurity in the Global Age or Becoming Asian American

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

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

Reed Ueda

John Lie

What People Are Saying

Table of Contents:

Dirty War Clean Hands or Hunting Nazis in Munich

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

Table of Contents:

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

The Faith of Barack Obama or Masters of Paradise

The Faith of Barack Obama

Publishers Weekly

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

Disciplinary Revolution or The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation

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

Table of Contents:

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

The Age of Diminished Expectations 3rd Edition or Beslan

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

Library Journal

Booknews

Table of Contents:

Beslan: The Tragedy of School No. 1

Scotsman

Prescription for Survival or American Gunfight

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

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

The Washington Post - Ted Widmer

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity or A House Built on Sand

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity

Table of Contents:

A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science

Library Journal

Cannibal Island or Inclusion

Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag

Foreign Affairs

Table of Contents:

Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research

Contentious Politics or Growing Apart

Contentious Politics

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

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

The Condition of the Working Class in England

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

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

UFOs and the National Security State or Conquests and Cultures

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

Conquests and Cultures: An International History

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Booknews

Kirkus Reviews

Politics in Plural Societies or The Martyrs of Karbala

Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability

Table of Contents:

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

Right from the Beginning or Law as Politics

Right from the Beginning

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Law As Politics: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism

Table of Contents:

Netroots Rising or The Man from Clear Lake

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

Donna L. Davey, Margaret Heilbrun - Library Journal

Table of Contents:

The Man from Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Gaylord Nelson