Sunday, February 22, 2009

Cold New World or American Pharaoh

Cold New World: Growing up in a Harder Country

Author: William Finnegan

New Yorker writer William Finnegan spent time with families in four communities across America and became an intimate observer of the lives he reveals in these beautifully rendered portraits: a fifteen-year-old drug dealer in blighted New Haven, Connecticut; a sleepy Texas town transformed by crack; Mexican American teenagers in Washington State, unable to relate to their immigrant parents and trying to find an identity in gangs; jobless young white supremacists in a downwardly mobile L.A. suburb. Important, powerful, and compassionate, Cold New World gives us an unforgettable look into a present that presages our future.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction of 1998 selection
One of the Voice Literary Supplement's Twenty-five Favorite Books of 1998

What People Are Saying

Nicholas Lemann
Cold New World is a book about an important, grievously underreported (until now) social phenomenon, the shutting out of a whole generation of young Americans from opportunity.




New interesting book: Al Dente or Little Cafe Cakes

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation

Author: Adam Cohen

"This is Chicago, this is America." With those words, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley famously defended his brutal crackdown on protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention. Profoundly divided racially, economically and socially, Chicago was indeed a microcosm of America, and for more than two decades Daley ruled it with an iron fist. The last of the big city bosses, Daley ran an unbeatable political machine that controlled over one million votes. From 1955 until his death in 1976, every decision of any importance -- from distributing patronage jobs to picking Congressional candidates -- went through his office. He was a major player in national politics as well: Kennedy and Johnson owed their presidencies to his control of the Illinois vote, and he made sure they never forgot it. In a city legendary for its corruption and backroom politics, Daley's power was unrivaled.

Daley transformed Chicago -- then a dying city -- into a modern metropolis of skyscrapers, freeways and a thriving downtown. But he also made Chicago America's most segregated city. A man of profound prejudices and a deep authoritarian streak , he constructed the nation's largest and worst ghettoes, sidestepped national civil rights laws, and successfully thwarted Martin Luther King's campaign to desegregate Northern cities.

A quarter-century after his death, Daley's outsize presence continues to influence American urban life, and a reassessment of his career is long overdue. Now, veteran journalists Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor present the definitive biography of Richard J. Daley, drawn from newly uncovered material and dozens of interviews with his contemporaries. In today's era of poll-tested, polished politicians, Daley's rough-and-tumble story is remarkable. From the working-class Irish neighborhood of his childhood, to his steady rise through Chicago's corrupt political hierarchy, to his role as national powerbroker, American Pharaoh is a riveting account of the life and times of one of the most important figures in twentieth-century domestic politics. In the tradition of Robert Caro's classic The Power Broker, this is a compelling life story of a towering individual whose complex legacy is still with us today.

Scott Turow

American Pharaoh is a unique gem. It is an enthralling narrative, a true page-turner, and also a needed work of history. It is the first serious biography of Richard J. Daley, the enormously complicated man who ruled Chicago for decades, and who, no matter how viewed, indelibly shaped not only one city, but the American political scene and national urban life." (—Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent)

Douglas Brinkley

I have read a lot of biographies, but none more compelling than Cohen and Taylor's brilliant portrait of Mayor Richard J. Daley. American Pharaoh is a tour de force." (—William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor)

Washington Monthly

...fast-paced, comprehensive, and written well enough to evoke the sights and sounds of a great city in turbulent times.

Publishers Weekly

Like all good biographies, this first full account of the life of Richard Daley does more than tell the story of an individual. In the course of telling Daley's tale--from his birth (in 1902) to his death (in 1976)--journalists Cohen and Taylor also chronicle the history of 20th-century Chicago. They capture the grittiness of Daley's boyhood--the day-to-day of life near the stockyards, the importance of ethnicity in local neighborhoods and the city's seemingly paradoxical combination of parochialism and diversity, dynamic growth and resistance to change. Initiated into machine politics as a young man, Daley quickly embraced the machine's values of order, allegiance, authority and, above all, the pursuit of power. Later, he ran the city in accordance with these values; the authors explain that he always assessed his options in terms of what would both enhance his power and encourage Chicagoans to stay in their proper place. Cohen (a senior writer at Time) and Taylor (literary editor and Sunday magazine editor of the Chicago Tribune) use the most famous crisis during his tenure, the 1968 Democratic convention, to illustrate how the mayor's rigid values dictated his actions--but more importantly, they say, his myopic passion for order worked together with his deep racism to shape modern Chicago. And, they argue, his legacy is a cultural legacy--through him, early 20th-century ethnic narrow-mindedness shaped everything from the character of Chicago politics to its landscape. (Constructed during his tenure, Chicago's freeways and housing projects keep everyone, especially blacks, in their places.) Penetrating, nonsensationalistic and exhaustive, this is an impressive and important biography. 16 pages b&w illus. not seen by PW. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

The Washington Monthly - Nolan

Cohen and Taylor are fastidiously fair to the famous mayor and do not take sides...Like their subject, they take Chicago very seriously.

The New York Times Book Review - Alan Ehrenhalt

A splendid, serious treatment of Daley's life, the first full-length biography of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters of modern American political history . . .

The New York Observer - Ward Just

This marvelous book—it is one of the very best narratives of American politics that I have read—is a meticulous account of the rise and long twilight of the most powerful city boss of recent history...

Business Week - Robert Royalty

...the definitive biography...Cogen and Taylor don't just look under the hood of America's last great political machine, they take the engine apart and examine every corroded nut and bolt...a compelling narrative.

Kirkus Reviews

A monumental biography of Chicago's six-term mayor that elevates the coarse and cunning political boss to the status of an American icon. It's hard to argue with the assertion of journalists Cohen (Time) and Taylor (Chicago Tribune) that Daley was the biggest political boss of the last century. The only child of a working-class, Irish-Catholic family, Daley started out as a laborer in the city's infamous stockyards and, despite the fancy suits and limousines he later indulged as prerogatives of power, always claimed to be just another hard-working man who took care of the people who voted for him. In the city's working-class Bridgeport neighborhood, the young Daley did the boring detail work that local Democratic precinct captains didn't like, got out the vote, kicked back to those who favored him, and never forgot a face. More a plodder than a charismatic leader, Daley worked his way through law school, remained faithful to his wife, refrained from smoking or drinking, and never stole from the public trough—though he had no problems lying to the press and collecting two salaries (beginning in 1955) as both mayor and Democratic Party chairman. A stickler for clean streets, he surrounded himself with glad-handers, thugs, bureaucratic hacks, and ward heelers who doled out patronage jobs, exploited racist fears, and salted election returns. The darling of the national Democratic Party after Illinois provided the crucial votes that put Kennedy in the White House in 1960, Daley let the city's business elite launch urban-renewal schemes that improved the skyline while reinforcing racial and economical segregation. He became a national embarrassment when journalistswerebeaten by police during the 1968 Democratic convention, but (despite numerous scandals) he remained in control of the city up to the moment he died in 1976. A breathlessly engrossing history of a classic urban political machine and the powerbroker who ran it his way. (16 pages b&w illustrations, not seen)

What People Are Saying

Scott Turow
American Pharaoh is a unique gem. It is an enthralling narrative, a true page—turner, and also a needed work of history. It is the first serious biography of Richard J. Daley, the enormously complicated man who ruled Chicago for decades, and who, no matter how viewed, indelibly shaped not only one city, but the American political scene and national urban life.
—(Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent)


Douglas Brinkley
American Pharaoh is a grand, sweeping profile of Chicago's Richard J. Daley, perhaps the most powerful and irascible mayor in American history. This is political biography at its absolute finest: sprightly prose, dramatic flair, definitive insights, careful research, colorful anecdotes, and a balanced interpretation. Daley leaps off these pages as if he were still alive.
—(Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Eisenhower Center and Professor of History, University of New Orleans)


Studs Terkel
This is a myth—shattering portrait of Mayor Daley the elder. In its revelatory detail, it offers us a canny politician, not especially original or colorful, whose staying power enabled him to outlast all competition. It is an eye opening work that enthralls the reader from page one.
—(Studs Terkel, author of Working and My American Century)


Alex Kotlowitz
American Pharaoh is biography at its absolute best. In the spirit of Robert Caro's The Power Broker, this is a story of more than just a man. It is a tale of a tumultuous time, of the corrupt authority of power, and of the strength and frailties of our democracy. Best of all, Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, who have done an extraordinary job of reporting, know how to spin a good yarn. I read this book on airplanes. I read it late at night. I read it when I should have been working. In short, it held me spellbound.
—(Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River)




Friday, February 20, 2009

Kaiser Wilhelm II or Humanitarian Imperialism

Kaiser Wilhelm II: Profiles in Power Series

Author: Christopher Clark

Kaiser Wilhelm II is one of the key figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe: King of Prussia and German Emperor from 1888 to the collapse of Germany in 1918 and a crucial player in the events that led to the outbreak of World War I. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including unpublished archival material, this study focuses on:

* the character and extent of his power
* his political goals
* his success in achieving them
* the mechanisms by which he projected authority and exercised influence.
* his role in the formation of foreign policy and his impact on the events of July 1914

Following Kaiser Wilhelm's political career from his youth at the Hohenzollern court through the turbulent peacetime decades of the Wilhelmine era into global war and exile, the book presents a new interpretation of this controversial monarch and assesses the impact on Germany of his forty-year reign.

Christopher Clark is a Lecturer in Modern European History at St Catharine's College, Cambridge University.



Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Ch. 1Childhood and youth1
Ch. 2Taking power27
Ch. 3Going it alone55
Ch. 4Domestic politics from Bulow to Bethmann92
Ch. 5Wilhelm II and foreign policy, 1888-1911123
Ch. 6Power and publicity160
Ch. 7From crisis to war: 1909-1914186
Ch. 8War, exile, death: 1914-1941225
Ch. 9Conclusion257
Further reading in English262
Index266

New interesting book: Comptabilité Directoriale :une Introduction aux Concepts, les Méthodes et les Utilisations

Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War

Author: Jean Bricmont

Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world's leading economic and military powers—above all, the United States—in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks. The criteria for such intervention have become more arbitrary and self-serving, and their form more destructive, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Iraq. Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the large parts of the left was often complicit in this ideology of intervention—discovering new "Hitlers" as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.

Jean Bricmont's Humanitarian Imperialism is both a historical account of this development and a powerful political and moral critique. It seeks to restore the critique of imperialism to its rightful place in the defense of human rights. It describes the leading role of the United States in initiating military and other interventions, but also on the obvious support given to it by European powers and NATO. It outlines an alternative approach to the question of human rights, based on the genuine recognition of the equal rights of people in poor and wealthy countries.

Timely, topical, and rigorously argued, Jean Bricmont's book establishes a firm basis for resistance to global war with no end in sight.




Thursday, February 19, 2009

Private Oral Exam Guide or Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal

Private Oral Exam Guide: The Comprehensive Guide to Prepare You for the FAA Oral Exam

Author: Michael D Hayes

Updated to reflect vital FAA regulatory, procedural, and training changes, this indispensable tool prepares private pilots for their one-on-one "checkride" with an FAA examiner. It answers the most commonly asked questions, clarifies the requirements of the written and oral portions, and presents study material for the exam. Topics covered include certification and documents, weather, airplane systems, and cross-country flight planning. This newly revised edition also includes a section on aeronautical decision-making and crew resource management.



Book review: Direzione della Fuori-de--Scatola

Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Author: J Patrick OConnor

Sentenced to death in 1982 for allegedly killing a police officer named Daniel Faulkner, Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most famous death row inmate in the United States, if not the world. This book is the first to convincingly show how the Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney’s Office efficiently and methodically framed him. It takes you step-by-step through what actually transpired on the night Faulkner was shot, including positioning each of the witnesses at the scene and revealing the identity of the killer. It also details the entire trial and fully covers the tortuous appeals process. The author, a seasoned crime reporter, writes in the language of hard facts, without hyperbole or exaggeration, unfounded accusation or finger-pointing, to reveal the truth about one of the most hotly debated cases of the twentieth century.

Publishers Weekly

In this account of the trial of controversial death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, O'Connor, editor and publisher of crimemagazine.com, clearly lays out his case that Abu-Jamal should receive at least a new trial, if not complete exoneration. O'Connor asserts that Abu-Jamal was framed for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner because of a vendetta by Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo and the police due to Abu-Jamal's defense, as a journalist, of the cultish countercultural group MOVE. Relying heavily on court transcripts and prior books on the case, O'Connor shows what he sees as the judge's bias, troubled relations between Abu-Jamal and his defense lawyer and dubious statements by various witnesses. Abu-Jamal was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death; later overturned, the sentence could still be reinstated pending a decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. In the wake of Faulkner's widow's recent book alleging Abu-Jamal's guilt, it's difficult to be swayed entirely by O'Connor's arguments, but he makes a strong case that the investigation into Faulkner's murder deserves another look. (May)

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

Booklist

A complex and compelling read that rivals established TV hits while tackling real life injustice.

Kirkus Reviews

The title says it all: Longtime investigative reporter and Crime Magazine editor and publisher O'Connor argues that the best-known death-row inmate of our time was set up. An advocacy journalist well regarded in Philadelphia and beyond for his interviewing skills, perhaps destined for fame as a news anchor or writer, Mumia Abu-Jamal "had never been known for violence." Indeed, writes O'Connor, he had been a peace activist while a student at ultraliberal Goddard College and was seemingly on the path to becoming a Rastafarian ascetic when he was charged with the December 9, 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal admittedly carried a gun; a part-time cab driver since being fired from a public radio station for his unscripted political commentary, Mumia had twice been robbed and was concerned for his safety. Connected by several threads to the "back-to-nature group MOVE," which had drawn the ire and bullets of Philadelphia police during the Frank Rizzo years, Abu-Jamal was framed, perhaps to keep him from looking too deeply into police counterintelligence operations. The police investigation was incomplete, confused and much-revised, and the forensics were improbable: Detained, Abu-Jamal was supposed to have been on the ground below Faulkner, but the first bullet to strike hit the officer in the back. Moreover, writes O'Connor, "It would not come out until trial that the police had not bothered to run any tests of Abu-Jamal's hands or clothing to determine if he had fired a gun or even if [his] .38 had been fired." Such tests being commonplace at shooting scenes, O'Connor advances the view that the results did not fit the setup and were discarded. Compounding all this,O'Connor then enumerates, was flawed physical evidence, a biased judge, perjured testimony and a district attorney known as the " 'Queen of Death' because of her zeal for seeking the death penalty," particularly for black capital offenders. O'Connor sets forth a careful, well-constructed argument. Whether it changes minds one way or the other remains to be seen, but, he urges, it is time for a new trial.

What People Are Saying

Edward Asner
O'Connor's . . .efforts and results are most impressive.




Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Preface     xi
Introduction: A Cause Celebre     1
December 9, 1981     7
The Arrest     15
The Original Police Version of the Shooting     21
Frank Rizzo     25
MOVE     29
The Arrest and Trial of John Africa     47
Mumia     49
Pretrial Hearings     57
The Witnesses     61
The Players     65
Jury Selection     73
The Trial Opens     77
Testimony of Robert Chobert     81
Cynthia White's First Day of Testimony     87
White's Testimony, Part II     95
The Alleged Confession     101
Testimony of Michael Scanlan     113
Testimony of Albert Magilton     117
How Faulkner Died     121
Judge Sabo: "I Don't Care About Mr. Jamal"     131
The Defense     141
Witnesses for the Defense     147
"The Negro Male Made No Comments"     157
Jackson's Closing Statement     165
McGill's Summation     171
Guilty!     179
The Sentencing Hearing     181
The FreeMumia Movement     191
The Post-Conviction Relief Act Hearings     201
Arnold Beverly     223
Mumia's Own Account     227
Was Faulkner an FBI Informant?     235
Justice Delayed     239
Oral Arguments     245
Justice at Last     253
Index     261

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Women and the National Experience or Social Welfare

Women and the National Experience: Primary Sources in American History

Author: Ellen Skinner

This brief, accessible primary source collection contains over one hundred different sources that illuminate the history of women in the United States. This book combines classic and unusual sources to explore both the private voices and the public lives of women throughout U.S. history. For anyone interested in the history of women in the United States.



Table of Contents:
* indicates new readings.

Preface.

1. Gender Patterns in the Colonial Era. Anne Hutchinson, Trial (1638).
Anne Bradstreet, Before the Birth of One of Her Children (c. 1650).
Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World: The Trial of Susanna Martin (1692).
Femme Sole Trader Act (1718).
Benjamin Wadsworth, A Well-Ordered Family (1712).
Chrestien Le Clercq, The Customs and Religion of the Indians (c. 1700).
Mary Jemison, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1724).
Elizabeth Sprigs, Letter from an Indentured Servant (1756).
* Eliza Pinckney, Birthday Resoultions (1750s).
Judith Cocks, Letter to James Hillhouse (1795).

2. From Revolution to Republic: Moral Motherhood and Civic Mission. * Ann Hulton, Letter of a Loyalist Lady (1774).
Esther DeBerdt Reed, Sentiments of an American Woman (1780).
Molly Wallace, The Young Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia (1790).
Abigail Adams, Letters to John Adams and His Reply (1776).
* Judith Sargent Murray, On the Equality of the Sexes (1790).
Ladies Society of New York, Constitution (1800).
Colored Female Religious and Moral Society of Salem, Massachusetts, Constitution (1818).
Emma Willard, Plan for Female Education (1819).
John S.C. Abbott, The Mother at Home (1833).

3. Emerging Industrialization: Opportunity and Protest. Harriet Hanson Robinson, Lowell Textile Workers (1898).
Letters to the Voice of Industry (1846).
Ellen Monroe, Letter to the Boston Bee (1846).
Female Labor Reform Association, Testimony Before the Massachusetts Legislature (1845).
* Betsy Cowles, Report on Labor, Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio (1851).
Caroline Dall, Women's Right to Labor (1860).

4. Moral Activism, Abolitionism, and the Contest over Woman's “Place.” * Advocate of Moral Reform, Important Lectures to Females (1841).
Friend of Virtue, Died in Jaffrrey, Aged 27 (1841).
Dorothea Dix, On Behalf of the Insane (1843).
Catherine Beecher, The Evils Suffered by American Women and American Children (1846).
A Temperance Activist (1853).
Elizabeth Emery and Mary P. Abbott, Letter to the Liberator (1836).
Pastoral Letter to New England Churches (1837).
Sarah Grimke, Reply to Pastoral Letter (1837).
Proceedings of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, Philadelphia (1838).
Angelina Grimke, An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States (1838).
Benjamin Drew, Narrative of Escaped Slaves (1855).
Harriet Tubman, Excerpts from a Biography by Her Contemporaries (c. 1880).
Elizabeth Dixon Smith Geer, Journal (1847-1850).

5. Woman's Rights: Pioneer Feminists Champion Gender Equality. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments (1848).
Women of Philadelphia (1848).
Caroline Gilman, Recollections of a Southern Matron (1838).
Lucretia Mott, Discourse on Women (1849).
Emily Collins, Reminiscences of the Suffrage Trail (c. 1881).
The Unwelcome Child (1845).
Sojourner Truth, Ain't I a Woman? (1851).
Ernestine Rose, This Is the Law but Where Is the Justice of It? (1852).
Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, Marriage Contract (1855).
H.M. Weber, Defends Dressing Like a Man, Letter to the Woman's Rights Convention, Worcester, Mass, (1850).

6. The Civil War, Reconstruction and Gender Politics. Mary Boykin Chesnut, A Confederate Lady's Diary (1861).
Clara Barton, Nursing on the Firing Line (c. 1870).
Phoebe Yates Pember, Excerpts from A Southern Woman's Story (1879).
Charlotte Forten, Letter to William Lloyd Garrison (1862).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, On Marriage and Divorce (c. 1850).
* Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Why Women Should Not Seek the Vote (1896).
* Victoria Claflin Woodhull, And the Truth Shall Make You Free (1871).
Susan B. Anthony, Proceedings of the Trial (1872).
Bradwell v. Illinois (1869).
Amelia Barr, Discontented Women (1896).

7. Building Sisterhood: The Limits of Inclusion. Edward H. Clarke, Sex in Education (1874).
M. Carey Thomas, Present Tendencies in Women's Education (1908).
Anna Manning Comfort, Only Heroic Women Were Doctors Then (1916).
Martha E.D. White, Work of the Woman's Club (1904).
Grover Cleveland, Woman's Mission and Woman's Clubs (1905).
National Association of Colored Women, Club Activities (1906).
Frances Willard, On Behalf of Home Protection (1884).
Zitkala-Sa, The School Days of an Indian Girl (1900).
* Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Bible and Church Degrade Woman (1895).
Ida Wells Barnett, A Red Record (1895).
* Selena Butler, The Chain Gang System (1897).

8. Industrial Expansion and the Woman Worker: Gender, Race, and the Workplace. Mary Church Terrell, What It Means to Be Colored in the Capital of the United States (1906).
Susan B. Anthony, Bread Not Ballots (c. 1866).
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, The Working Girls of Boston (1884).
Leonora Barry, Investigator for the Knights of Labor (1888).
* Clara Lanza, Women as Clerks in New York (1891).
Mother Jones, The March of the Mill Children (1903).
Rose Schneiderman, A Cap Maker's Story (1905).
Rose Schneiderman, The Triangle Fire (1911).
New York Times, Miss Morgan Aids Girl Waist Strikers (1909).

9. Progressive Era: Maternal Politics, Protective Legislation, and Suffrage Victory. Ann Garlin Spencer, Women Citizens (1898).
Jane Addams, The Clubs of Hull House (1905).
Florence Kelley, The Child, the State, and the Nation (1905).
Muller v. Oregon (1908).
National Women's Trade Union League, Legislative Goals (1911).
Anna Howard Shaw, NAWSA Convention Speech (1913).
Mollie Schepps, Senators v. Working Women (1912).
NAWSA, A Letter to Clergymen (1912).
Carrie Chapman Catt, Mrs. Catt Assails Pickets (1917).
Alice Paul, Why the Suffrage Struggle Must Continue (1917).
Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch, Resolutions Adopted at the Hague Conference (1915).

10. Post-Suffrage Trends and the Uneven Rate of Gender Change. U.S. Government, Survey of Employment Conditions: The Weaker Sex (1917).
* Mary G. Kilbreth, The New Anti-Feminist Campaign (1921).
Women Streetcar Conductors Fight Layoffs (1921).
Ann Martin, We Couldn't Afford a Doctor (1920).
The Farmer's Wife, The Labor Savers I Use (1923).
National Woman's Party, Declaration of Principles (1922).
*Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Speech Given at the Women's Interracial Conference.
Elisabeth Christman, What Do Working Women Say? (c. 1912).
* Eleanor Woodbridge, Petting and the Campus (1925).
Letter to Margaret Sanger (1928).

11. The Impact of the Depression and the New Deal. Meridel Le Sueur, Women on the Breadlines (1932).
Ruth Shallcross, Shall Married Women Work? (1936).
* Pinkie Pilcher writes to President Roosevelt (1936).
Ann Marie Low, Dust Bowl Diary (1934).
Louise Mitchell, Slave Markets in New York City (1940).
Mary McLeod Bethune, A Century of Progress of Negro Women (1933).
* Jessie Daniel Ames, Southern Women and Lynching (1936).
Eleanor Roosevelt, Letter to Walter White (1936).

12. World War II and Postwar Trends: Disruption, Domestic Restoration, and Civil Rights Protest. Richard Jefferson, African-American Women Factory Workers (1941).
Postwar Plans of Women Workers (1946).
* Marynia Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg, Modern Women; The Lost Sex (1947).
* Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston from Farewell to Manzanar (1973).
* Loretta Collier, Interview: A Lesbian Remembers Her Korean War Military Service (1990).
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955).
Anne Moody, The Movement (1963).
Betty Friedan, The Problem That Has No Name (1963).

13. Feminist Revival and Women's Liberation. National Organization for Women, Statement of Purpose (1966).
Redstockings Manifesto (1969).
Gloria Steinem, Statement to Congress (1970).
* Joyce Maynard, An Eighteeen-Year-Old Looks Back at Life (1972).
Rape, an Act of Terror (1971).
Chicana Demands (1972).
National Black Feminist Organization, Manifesto (1974).
Lesbian Feminist Organization, Constitution (1973).
National Organization for Women, General Resolutions on Lesbians and Gay Rights (1973).
* Kathy Campell et al, Women's Night at the Free Clinic (1972).

14. Contested Terrain: Change and Resistance. Roe v. Wade (1973).
Phyllis Schlafly, The Positive Woman (1977).
Letter from a Battered Wife (1983).
Gerda Lerner, A New Angle of Vision (1986).
Anita Hill, Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee (1991).
Susan Faludi, Backlash (1992).

15. Entering the Twenty-First Century: Elusive Equality and Gender Gap Issues. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (1991).
Paula Kamen, Acquaintance Rape: Revolution and Reaction (1996).
Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (2000).
bell hooks, Feminist Theory, 2nd Edition (2000).
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future (2000).
Concerned Women for America, Final Beijing +5 Battle Centers Around Abortion (2000).
Leila Ahmed, A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman's Journey (2000).
Kathleen Slayton, Gender Equity Gap in High Tech (2001).
Petra Mata, Interview: from Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, Sweatshop Warriors (2001).

Read also Federalism or Arrogant Capital

Social Welfare: Politics and Public Policy (Research Navigator Edition)

Author: Diana M DiNitto

 

Social Welfare: Politics and Public Policy, (Research Navigator Edition)

Sixth Edition

By:Diana M. DiNitto (University of Texas at Austin)

With Linda K. Cummins (Barry University)

 

Overview:

 

Social Welfare: Politics and Public Policy is a comprehensive and easy-to-understand introduction to the social welfare system and social welfare policy.

 

Now in a Research Navigator Edition, the text includes:

·        64 pages of additional material in the front matter, featuring a chapter-by-chapter update on various policy issues and legislation since November 2004

·        New exercises and activities for each chapter, asking students to think critically about some of the issues, or to do further research on them

·        An access code for Research Navigator on the inside front cover

 

Research Navigator™ is the easiest way for students to start a research assignment or research paper. Complete with extensive help on the research process and four exclusive databases of credible and reliable source material including the EBSCO Academic Journal and Abstract Database, New York Times Search by Subject Archive, “Best of the Web” Link Library, and Financial Times Article Archive and Company Financials, Research Navigator helps students quickly and efficiently make the most of their research time.

 

What Reviewers Are Saying:

 

“One of the positive strengths of this text is an emphasis on appropriate research and current trends in the area being discussed. In particular, the material on child support enforcement is some of the best that can be found. Given the reputation of the author as a top-notch researcher, this carries over and is evidenced in the text.”

--Stephen C. Anderson, Ph.D., The University of Oklahoma

 

“It is an excellent overview and introduction to this broad topic Social Welfare policy and programs, and provides essential basic information, as well as brief histories of the types of debates and controversies that have occurred in each of the various topic areas covered.”

--Carole Upshur, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts - Boston

 

 

 

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Monday, February 16, 2009

Smallholders Householders or Governance and Politics of China

Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture

Author: Robert McC Netting

“A magnificent work of scholarly synthesis. His book will long remain essential reading for all who claim an interest in debates about agrarian change.”—The Geographical Journal



Table of Contents:
Tables and Figures
Prologue: An Ethnological Essay in Practical Reason1
1The Technology and Knowledge of Intensive Farm Practices28
2The Farm-Family Household58
3Labor-Time Allocation102
4Energy Inputs, Outputs, and Sustainable Systems123
5Farm Size and Productivity146
6Smallholder Property and Tenure157
7Inequality, Stratification, and Polarization189
8Chinese Smallholders232
9Intensive Agriculture, Population Density, Markets, and the Smallholder Adaptation261
10Peasant Farming and the Chayanov Model295
Epilogue: Does the Smallholder Have a Future?320
References Cited337
Index379

Interesting textbook: The Four Yogas or The Baby Boomer Body Book

Governance and Politics of China

Author: Anthony Saich

Over the past 20 years change in China has been breathtaking. Reform has affected every facet of life and has left no policy and institution untouched. Now available in a substantially revised second edition covering the changes of the Sixteenth Party Congress and Tenth National People's Congress and other recent developments this major text by a leading academic authority, who has also lived and worked in China, provides a thorough introduction to all aspects of politics and governance in post-Mao China.



Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Age of Reagan or In Her Own Right

The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

Author: Sean Wilentz

One of the nation's leading historians offers a groundbreaking and provocative chronicle of America's political history since the fall of Nixon.

The past thirty-five years have marked an era of conservatism. Although briefly interrupted in the late 1970s and temporarily reversed in the 1990s, a powerful surge from the right has dominated American politics and government. In The Age of Reagan, Sean Wilentz accounts for how a conservative movement once deemed marginal managed to seize power and hold it, and the momentous consequences that followed.

Ronald Reagan has been the single most important political figure of this age. Without Reagan, the conservative movement would have never been as successful as it was. In his political persona as well as his policies, Reagan embodied a new fusion of deeply right-leaning politics with some of the rhetoric and even a bit of the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and John F. Kennedy's New Frontier. In American political history there have been a few leading figures who, for better or worse, have placed their political stamp indelibly on their times. They include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt—and Ronald Reagan. A conservative hero in a conservative age, Reagan has been so admired by a minority of historians and so disliked by the others that it has been difficult to evaluate his administration with detachment. Drawing on numerous primary documents that have been neglected or only recently released to the public, as well as on emerging historical work, Wilentz offers invaluable revelations about conservatism'sascendancy and the era in which Reagan was the preeminent political figure.

Vivid, authoritative, and illuminating from start to finish, The Age of Reagan raises profound questions and opens passionate debate about our nation's recent past.

The Washington Post - Kevin Phillips

Wilentz deserves kudos for biting off a challenge that few historians would have dared to undertake. All too many U.S. political chronicles have been written by specialists who present events in four- or eight-year segments minimally encumbered by a larger economic, political or historical context. By contrast, Wilentz goes for sweep, and in a number of ways achieves it.

The New York Times - Douglas Brinkley

in The Age of Reagan—a smart and accessible overview of the long shadow cast by our 40th president—Wilentz largely abandons partisanship in favor of professionalism. Thus, the supposedly inflexible Reagan emerges here as the pragmatic statesman who greatly reduced the world's nuclear stockpiles…Undoubtedly, Reaganholics will carp that Wilentz has a selective memory (giving more ink to Iran-contra than Reagan's diplomacy with Margaret Thatcher), and progressives will denounce him for drinking Gipper-flavored Kool-Aid (equating Reagan with Franklin D. Roosevelt). But, in truth, the main thrust of Wilentz's thesis is fair-minded, with a slight center-left tilt.

Publishers Weekly

Distinguished Princeton historian Wilentz-winner of a Bancroft Prize for The Rise of American Democracy-makes an eloquent and compelling case for America's Right as the defining factor shaping the country's political history over the past 35 years.

Wilentz argues that the unproductive liberalism of the Carter years was a momentary pause in a general tidal surge toward a new politics of conservatism defined largely by the philosophy and style of Ronald Reagan. Even Bill Clinton, he shows, tacitly admitted the ascendance of many Reaganesque core values in the American mind by styling himself as a centrist "New Democrat" and moving himself and his party to the right.

Wilentz postulates Reagan as the perfect man at the ideal moment, not just ruling his eight years in the White House, but also casting a long shadow on all that followed (a shadow, one might add, still being felt in the Republican presidential campaign today). While examining in detail the low points of Reagan's presidency, from Iran-Contra to his initial belligerence toward the Soviet Union, Wilentz concludes in his superb account that Reagan must be considered one of the great presidents: he reshaped the geopolitical map of the world as well as the American judiciary and bureaucracy, and uplifted an American public disheartened by Vietnam and the grim Carter years. While much has been written by Reagan admirers, Wilentz says, "his achievement looks much more substantial than anything the Reagan mythmakers have said in his honor." 16 pages of b&w photos. (May)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Michael O. Eshleman Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal

Why don't books have accurate titles? You'd think this one would be about the evident influence of the 43rd president, acknowledged by members of both parties as having wrought major change. Instead, Bancroft Prize winner Wilentz (history, Princeton Univ.; The Rise of American Democracy) presents an extended survey of the past 30 years of Washington politics, writing from left of center as a liberal Democrat. Thus, in his treatment of the 1980s, Reagan gets a lot of blame and none of the credit. Wilentz judges the scandals and accusations of Reagan's administration harshly but is dismissive of those of the Clinton administration. By his own admission, he conducted no interviews for this book on recent history, and he offers no new insights. Worse, he makes these decades boring, notwithstanding their being filled with the kinds of events and personalities that should make history appealing. The results are more like a textbook that dutifully covers all the bases. Only the extended critical bibliographic essay, surveying the vast literature of the period, makes it worth consideration by larger libraries. Richard Reeves's President Reagan: The Triumph of Imaginationis a first-rate, albeit more narrowly focused, alternative. [See Prepub Alert, LJ1/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

A distinguished center-left historian surveys U.S. politics over the past 35 years and pronounces Ronald Reagan, like it or not, the era's dominant figure. In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, the McGovernite Congress elected in 1974 appeared to restore liberalism to its accustomed place as the dominant force in American politics. In fact, the victory disguised years of Democratic Party confusion and intellectual decay. This, plus a growing network of conservative think tanks, institutes and media voices, and the feckless Ford and Carter presidencies, prepared the ground for conservatives to take over the Republican Party and then the country. The movement to shrink government, reduce taxes, reverse the country's moral decline, keep the military strong and fight communism found its perfect champion in the smiling personage of Reagan, who so transformed the terms of political debate that no successor has been able to conduct business without accounting for him. Wilentz (History/Princeton Univ.; Andrew Jackson, 2006, etc.) correctly calls for Reagan to be treated seriously by professional historians. He's wrong, though, to think his own political proclivities have not colored the analysis here. The author pays only grudging respect to Reaganism, tellingly defining it as a "distinctive blend of dogma, pragmatism, and, above all, mythology." He attributes Reagan's signal achievement-ending the Cold War without bloodshed-as much to Gorbachev. He treats the rest of the Reagan legacy-gutted regulatory agencies, regressive tax policies, politicized judiciary, polarized citizenry-as a set of indisputable, unfortunate facts that the Clinton interregnum barely disrupted. Wilentz declines to predictwhether Bush II will revise and extend conservatism's reach or spark a liberal resurgence. Still, the very fact that a historian of Wilentz's credentials and liberal disposition willingly deals seriously and at such length with Reagan means, in a Nixon-to-China sense, attention must be paid. An insightful analysis of the rise and reign of Reagan; a somewhat less successful explication of the meaning of Reaganism and its implications.



Books about: Essentiel de Direction

In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Author: Elisabeth Griffith

The first comprehensive, fully documented biography of the most important woman suffragist and feminist reformer in nineteenth-century America, In Her Own Right restores Elizabeth Cady Stanton to her true place in history. Griffith emphasizes the significance of role models and female friendships in Stanton's progress toward personal and political independence. In Her Own Right is, in the author's words, an "unabashedly 'great woman' biography."

Charles McGrath

....[W]armth and cantankerous humor come out strongly in this biography. -- The New York Times Books of the Century



Saturday, February 14, 2009

Harvard Business Review on Corporate Ethics or Tragic Mountains

Harvard Business Review on Corporate Ethics

Author: Joseph L Badaracco

Harvard Business Review on Corporate Ethics

Resolving today's most pressing questions about business behavior has become a priority in today's corporate environment. In deciding how to act, managers reveal their inner values, test their commitment to those values, and ultimately shape their characters. Readers of this collection of articles will learn to identify the theoretical and practical issues of recognizing and responding to ethical dilemmas and will find the link between good ethics and good business.

The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series

The series is designed to bring today's managers and professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, here are the leading minds and landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required reading for ambitious businesspeople in organizations around the globe.



Table of Contents:
We Don't Need Another Hero1
Ethics Without the Sermon19
Why 'Good' Managers Make Bad Ethical Choices49
Ethics in Practice67
Managing for Organizational Integrity85
Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home113
The Discipline of Building Character139
The Parable of the Sadhu165
About the Contributors183
Index185

Book review: Birding Babylon or Selling Olga

Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992

Author: Jane Hamilton Merritt

Tragic Mountains tells the story of the Hmong's struggle for freedom and survival in Laos from 1942 through 1992. During those years, most Hmong sided with the French against the Japanese and Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh, and then with the Americans against the North Viemamese.

This is a story of courage, tenacity, brutality, secrecy, incredible heroism by Hmong and Americans alike, international cynicism, betrayal, genocide, and resilience. The staunchest of allies, the Hmong were America's foot soldiers in the brutal secret Lao theater of the Vietnam War, risking all to defend their homelands and to rescue downed U.S. crews. Abandoned by the United States when it withdrew in 1975, the Hmong have been subjected to a campaign of genocide by communist Laos and Vietnam.

BookList

This is a comprehensive history of American relations with the Hmong tribe of Laos, a relationship that began when the Hmong were contacted by the OSS in 1942 for anti-Japanese resistance activities, continued through the various wars in Southeast Asia in which the Hmong were staunchly anti-Communist, and persists during the post-Vietnam War period in which the Hmong have faced the alternatives of exile or genocide. This story is complex and requires some background in the general history of the Vietnam War. But it is also well told, with few villains, many ignorant, and hardly any heroes except the Hmong themselves. Recommended for large Vietnam collections.



Friday, February 13, 2009

Know Your Power or Man of the People

Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters

Author: Nancy Pelosi

“Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights. But women weren't just waiting; women were working. Never losing faith, we worked to redeem the promise of America, that all men and women are created equal. For our daughters and our granddaughters today we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and our granddaughters now the sky is the limit.” —Nancy Pelosi, after being sworn in as Speaker of the House

When Nancy Pelosi became the first woman Speaker of the House, she made history. She gavelled the House to order that day on behalf of all of America’s children and said, “We have made history, now let us make progress.” Now she continues to inspire women everywhere in this thought-provoking collection of wise words—her own and those of the important people who played pivotal roles in her journey.

In these pages, she encourages mothers and grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters to never lose faith, to speak out and make their voices heard, to focus on what matters most and follow their dreams wherever they may lead. Perhaps the Speaker says it best herself in the Preface: “I find it humbling and deeply moving when women and girls approach me, looking for insight and advice. If women can learn from me, in the same way I learned from the women who came before me, it will make the honor of being Speaker of the House even more meaningful.”

This is a truly special book to share with all the women you know. It is a keepsake to turn to again and again, whenever you need to be reminded that anything is possible when you know your power.

Publishers Weekly

Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, offers her words of wisdom mixed with those from women who helped make her journey possible. Geared toward women both young and old, Pelosi's message is one of possibility and promise and her encouraging advice comes across clearly in her own inspired reading. With plenty of experience in public speaking, Pelosi displays a slightly different side of her personality and performance ability here, offering an extremely personal and relatable reading that draws listeners in with its honesty and earnestness. The final result is sure to inspire scores of young listeners, and reaffirm what many older listeners have known for a very long time: possibility is not limited to members of a particular sex, age or social class. A Doubleday hardcover (Reviews, June 2).(Aug.)

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



Table of Contents:

Pt. 1 Roots and Wings

1 Never Lose Faith 5

2 Declarations of Independence 9

3 An Open House 21

4 Love Happens 31

5 Be Open to the New 45

Pt. 2 Kitchen to Congress

6 Recognize Opportunity 61

7 Organize, Don't Agonize 69

8 A Voice That Will Be Heard 87

9 "Age Quod Agis": Do What You Are Doing 99

10 Think Outside the Beltway 109

Pt. 3 Know Your Power

11 A Seat at the Table 123

12 There Is No Secret Sauce 131

13 Remember When You Used to Cook? 141

14 The Qualities You Need 147

15 The Speaker and the President 155

16 What Matters Most 165

Index 175

New interesting textbook: El Laberinto de la Soledad y Otras Obras or The Age of Napoleon

Man of the People: The Maverick Life and Career of John McCain (Revised and Updated for the 2008 Presidential Election)

Author: Paul Alexander

Praise for Man of the People


"Among the many legends who have made America great stands John McCain.?Man of the People, Revised and Updated lyrically tells his quintessentially American story: a seemingly ordinary man doing extraordinarily heroic and selfless things—out of a pure devotion to his country.? This dynamic biography shows why it's easy to imagine him among the ranks of Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan, who led America with such daring and wisdom.?McCain's life is so organically American, so true to the legacies of the leaders who preceded him, that the greatest chapter of his story is still to be written."

—Monica Crowley, panelist, The McLaughlin Group; host, The Monica Crowley Show

"John McCain is a real man. By that I mean he has faults and weaknesses like anybody else. But he has supplemented those with a ferocious courage and intensity. Paul Alexander brings McCain's life to life in a way the reader will never forget."

—Bill O'Reilly, anchor, The O'Reilly Factor

"Man of the People, Revised and Updated is nothing short of the definitive text on what makes John McCain tick. The complexity of this man is not well understood—unless you read this book. Alexander's must-read chapter on the infamous 2000 South Carolina primary—'The Dirtiest Race I've Ever Seen'—is the most comprehensive telling to date of that sad moment in our politics."

—Craig Crawford, Washington journalist, cqpolitics.com

"If I were looking for a politician to clean the corporate pigsty, it would be John McCain. In Man of the People, Paul Alexander artfully captures the drive, the integrity, andthe tenacity that make John McCain such a one-of-a-kind politician."

—Arianna Huffington, cofounder and Editor in Chief, The Huffington Post



Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Hidden Hand Presidency or Chinas Political System

The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader

Author: Fred I Greenstein

Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, Fred Greenstein reveals that there was great political activity beneath the placid surface of the Eisenhower White House. In a new foreword to this edition, he discusses developments in the study of the Eisenhower presidency in the dozen years since publication of the first edition and examines the continuing significance of Eisenhower's legacy for the larger understanding of presidential leadership in modern America.

Booknews

**** Reprint of the respected Basic Books edition of 1982 (cited in BCL3), with a new preface. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)



Table of Contents:
Preface: A 1994 Perspective
Prologue and Acknowledgments
1An Exemplary President?3
2What Manner of Man?15
3Political Strategies57
4The Two Faces of Organization100
5Strengths and Weaknesses of the Style: The Joe McCarthy Case155
6Lessons for Other Presidents228
Key to Primary Sources and Abbreviations249
Notes251
Index273

Book review: El Ajo or Whole Food Facts

China's Political System

Author: JuneTeufel Dreyer

China’s Political System examines how the government of China is affected by ongoing efforts to harmonize its unique culture with external influences and ideas. Highly respected area specialist June Teufel Dreyer offers expert analysis of historical context and current trends to show how this transition is challenging China’s economic, legal, military, social, and cultural institutions. Throughout the text, Dreyer challenges students to think about the broader problem of governance in China by comprehensively showing how past and present impact leaders, citizens, ethnic minorities, and policies and by incisively considering the different futures for China’s political system.



Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Excitable Speech or A Promised Land a Perilous Journey

Excitable Speech: Contemporary Scenes of Politics

Author: Judith P Butler

With the same intellectual courage with which she addressed issues of gender, Judith Butler turns her attention to speech and conduct in contemporary political life, looking at several efforts to target speech as conduct that has become subject to political debate and

regulation. Reviewing hate speech regulations, anti-pornography arguments, and recent controversies about gay self-declaration in the military, Judith Butler asks whether and how language acts in each of these cultural sites.

contexts of verbal conduct, this book, too, is sure to have an effect (Lambda Book Report)

frameworks

(Lambda Book Report)



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction: On Linguistic Vulnerability1
1Burning Acts, Injurious Speech43
2Sovereign Performatives71
3Contagious Word: Paranoia and "Homosexuality" in the Military103
4Implicit Censorship and Discursive Agency127
Notes165
Index183

Read also One That Got Away or Down with Big Brother

A Promised Land, a Perilous Journey: Theological Perspectives on Migration

Author: Daniel G Groody

The nineteen authors in this collection recognize that one characteristic of globalization is the movement not only of goods and ideas but also of people. The crossing of geographical borders confronts Christians, as well as all citizens, with choices: between national security and human insecurity, between sovereign national rights and human rights, between citizenship and discipleship. Bearing these global dimensions in mind, the essays in this book focus on the particular problems of immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. The contributors to this volume include scholars as well as pastors and lay people involved in immigration aid work.



Monday, February 9, 2009

Spirituality for Our Global Community or Race Against Time

Spirituality for Our Global Community: Beyond Traditional Religion to a World at Peace

Author: Daniel Helminiak

In this ground breaking book, Daniel Helminiak provides a crucial spiritual option for the many who feel the need to go beyond the secular materialism of modern society and the beliefs of traditional religious faith. Helminiak gives us a compelling vision of a global spirituality that downplays beliefs and emphasizes the essential spiritual dynamics of the common human quest for wholeness, goodness, freedom and community.



Table of Contents:

Preface     ix
Introduction     xiii
The Current Cultural Crisis     1
The Relevance and Irrelevance of Religion     19
The Spirit of Humanity     41
The Structure of the Human Spirit     55
The Problem of God     75
Otherworldly Beliefs and Spiritual Community     97
The Psychological Housing of the Human Spirit     121
Our Global Community     139
Index     169
About the Author     185

Read also The Forging of the Modern State or Economics

Race Against Time: Searching for Hope in AIDS Ravaged Africa (CBC Massey Lectures Series)

Author: Stephen Lewis

In 2000, the United Nations laid out a series of eight goals meant to guide humankind in the new century. Called the Millennium Development Goals, these targets are to be met by 2015 and are to lay the foundation for a prosperous future. In Race Against Time, Stephen Lewis advances real solutions to help societies across the globe achieve the Millennium Goals. Through lucid, pragmatic explanations, he shows how dreams such as universal primary education, a successful war against the AIDS pandemic, and environmental sustainability, are within the grasp of humanity. For anyone interested in forging a better world in the third millennium, Race Against Time is powerful testimony.



Sunday, February 8, 2009

Motor Vehicle Collision Injuries or W E B DuBois

Motor Vehicle Collision Injuries: Biomechanics, Diagnosis, and Management

Author: Lawrence Nordhoff

This book presents the most current concepts of chiropractic diagnostic workup, injury mechanisms, patient management, and prognosis of cervical and soft tissue injuries caused by automobiles.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer: Dana J Lawrence, DC (Palmer College of Chiropractic)
Description: This is a second edition of a book that covers a number of topics related to whiplash injuries, with a growing emphasis upon the biomechanics of different kinds of injuries and collisions. It also spends time discussing both diagnostic issues pertaining to motor vehicle accidents as well as management considerations and legal aspects of caring for injured patients.
Purpose: The purpose is to discuss the factors involved in managing the patient who has suffered a motor vehicle accident and to understand the biomechanics of injury as well as the legal ramifications of care. It also updates the first edition by adding five new chapters and over 1,600 new references. Given that there is a large and growing amount of literature on this topic, it is time that the book be revised and updated. The authors have done an admirable job of adding new material to an already useful book and so indeed, this book has met its objective.
Audience: The audience for this book is fairly broad. Though it is written mainly by a chiropractor, it will be useful well beyond the chiropractic audience, to virtually all who care for the patient injured in an automobile accident. This includes chiropractors, osteopaths, physical therapists, orthopedists, and even emergency room physicians. For practitioners, this will be a great reference, for it provides detailed information about the biomechanics of injury, meaning that as patients seek care, this information comes immediately into care. It will also be useful as a teaching text for students involved in the clinical care aspect of their training, for all disciplines noted above. Dr. Nordhoff is known in the chiropractic profession for the first version of the book, so is seen as an expert in this field.
Features: There are several aspects to the book. It presents an informational overview about collisions and then moves to discussing how to take a history after a patient seeks care for a collision injury. There are a number of chapters addressing diagnostic strategies and procedures, such as when and how to use radiography and when to have a patient undergo neurological testing. There are several chapters devoted to management-related topics and several more devoted to understanding the biomechanics of injury processes, such as what happens in rear-end, front-end, and side collisions. Finally, the book has information pertaining to legal matters involved in caring for patients involved in car accidents. These chapters in particular should be singled out for notice and are exceedingly well done. There are two appendixes, one providing a glossary of terms and one providing conversion charts detailing how energy is converted into injury during a crash.
Assessment: This second edition adds a great deal of information to the first, and the result is a more useful book, which does not mean that the first edition was not. This is a major revision, adding new chapters, discussing biomechanics of injury in great detail, and offering significant pointers for both managing and handling the legal aspects of care for the person injured in a motor vehicle accident. While there are some books that address the cervical spine in detail within the chiropractic profession, none are directed specifically at motor vehicle injury; thus, this book stands on its own, and does a good job of it.

Rating

4 Stars! from Doody




New interesting book: Einrichtungen, Institutionsänderung, und Wirtschaftsleistung

W. E. B. DuBois: A Biography

Author: David Levering Lewis

The two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of W. E. B. Du Bois from renowned scholar David Levering Lewis, now in one condensed and updated volume

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America—was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator. Now, David Levering Lewis has carved one volume out of his superlative two-volume biography of this monumental figure that set the standard for historical scholarship on this era. In his magisterial prose, Lewis chronicles Du Bois’s long and storied career, detailing the momentous contributions to our national character that echo still today.

“A remarkable study . . . Mr. Lewis so vividly evokes the environments that shaped Du Bois that one almost participates in the life.”—The New York Times Book Review



Saturday, February 7, 2009

Vulnerable Populations in the United States or Public Personnel Management

Vulnerable Populations in the United States

Author: Gregory D Stevens

" . . . an excellent primer for undergraduates and graduate students interested in vulnerable populations and health disparities." -- New England Journal of Medicine, July 7, 2005

"I have reviewed a number of books looking for meaningful content to help my students understand and work with vulnerable populations. This is the most comprehensive, yet understandable book on the topic." -- Doody's Reviews, 2005

". . .combines thoughtful, coherent theory with a large amount of information available in a single source. It will prove to be a valuable resource for policymakers, researchers, teachers, and students alike for years to come." -- Journal of the American Medical Association, April 20, 2005

Vulnerable Populations in the United States offers in-depth data on access to care, quality of care, and health status and updates and summarizes what is currently known regarding the pathways and mechanisms linking vulnerability with poor health and health care outcomes. Written by Leiyu Shi and Gregory D. Stevens, this book provides a coherent, well-integrated, general framework for the scientific study of vulnerable populations—a framework that is compatible with the focus of public health policy and the Healthy People initiative. The comprehensive volume Vulnerable Populations in the United States



• Discusses the determinants of vulnerability using a broad framework that includes both social and individual determinants.

• Portrays the mechanisms whereby vulnerability influences access, quality, and health status.

• Summarizes the literature and provides empiricalevidence of disparities in health care access, quality, and outcome for vulnerable populations.

• Focuses on influences of individual risk factors and multiple risk factors .

• Reviews programs currently in place for vulnerable populations.

• Instructors material available.


Doody Review Services

Reviewer: Mariann C. Lovell, PhD, RN (University of Cincinnati School of Nursing)
Description: This book thoroughly examines the issue of vulnerability, from concept to empirical evidence of the determinants of vulnerability to the evaluation of programs that address vulnerable populations in the United States. It is logically organized and provides current data using easy-to-understand charts, graphs and tables.
Purpose: The purpose is to call attention to the inequitable health and healthcare experiences of vulnerable populations in the United States. It proposes a framework to study the vulnerable populations and evaluates programs aimed at reducing health disparities.
Audience: According to the authors, the book is written for academics (students and researchers alike) as well as for practitioners. In my opinion, the book is very useful for healthcare workers, including nurses and physicians, program planners, such as health department administrators, and for policy makers.
Features: This is the only book that I know of that so thoroughly covers vulnerability:from presenting a well researched framework to analyzing the determinants of vulnerability to a proposal to resolve health disparities in vulnerable populations. Community determinants and the mechanisms of vulnerability are particularly well covered. The book's organization makes it easy to follow. The extensive glossary allows understanding by even the novice inquirer into vulnerable populations
Assessment: I have reviewed a number of books looking for meaningful content to help my students understand and work with vulnerable populations. This is the most comprehensive, yet understandable book on the topic.

Rating

4 Stars! from Doody




Table of Contents:
1A general framework to study vulnerable populations1
2The community determinants and mechanisms of vulnerability32
3Disparities in health care access, quality, and health status : the influence of individual risk factors85
4Disparities in health care access, quality, and health status : the influence of multiple risk factors131
5Current strategies to serve vulnerable populations171
6Resolving disparities in the United States203

Book about: An Almost Kosher Cookbook or Our Family Recipes or Home Cooking V Lauren Groveman

Public Personnel Management: Contexts and Strategies

Author: Donald E Klingner

Reflecting contemporary political and managerial realities, this book provides a comprehensive exploration of the values, conflicts, political processes, and management techniques which provide the context for personnel administration in the public sector. A five-part organization covers an introduction to the world of public personnel management, planning, acquisition, development, and sanctions. For human resources personnel—especially managers.

Booknews

Explores the world of personnel management in civil service. Fourteen chapters cover an introduction to the topic; budgeting, planning, and productivity; analysis, classification, and evaluations; pay and benefits; equal employment opportunity and affirmative action law; recruitment and promotion; leadership; staff development; performance appraisal; health and safety issues; organizational justice; collective bargaining; and human resource development. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.



Friday, February 6, 2009

From Freedom to Slavery or SWAT Battle Tactics

From Freedom to Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America

Author: Gerry Spenc

Never afraid to take on tough cases or tackle difficult issues, here in From Freedom to Slavery Gerry Spence comes at us uncensored, with his passions on fire. In this underground bestseller, which has come to define Spence's political philosophy, he speaks out against the destructive forces in America today-forces of government and corporate tyranny that are robbing us of our freedom-and he warns us that time is running out.

In a dramatic new chapter, presented for the first time in a trade paperback edition, Spence recounts in astonishing detail the government shoot-out at Ruby Ridge and the resulting trial of separatist Randy Weaver, revealing the important lessons we must learn from this tragic case.

Finally, Spence makes the eloquent case that we, as Americans, have delivered our freedoms to new masters: corporate and governmental conglomerates, our biased court system, and the censored media. From Freedom to Slavery is an urgent work that urges us to resist this tyranny, a book that must be read and discussed by all concerned citizens of our troubled land.



Table of Contents:
About the Trial of Randy Weaver
To Begin With
1The Eye of the Wolf: The Tyranny of Justice1
2The Trial of Randy Weaver: The Tyranny of Government13
3Easy in the Harness: The Tyranny of Freedom51
4The Invisible Trap: The Tyranny of Fear65
5Mountain Climbers: The Tyranny of Work77
6The New King: The Tyranny of the Corporate Core83
7The New Indians: The Tyranny of Poverty127
8Tree Hugger: The Tyranny of Viewpoint145
9Eve's Return to the Garden: The Tyranny of Maleness159
10Redesigning the Human Mind: The Tyranny of the Media177
11Kingdom of the Self: The Tyranny of Time195
Acknowledgments207
Notes by Chapter209
About the Author211

Books about: What to Do when the Power Fails or Stress and Coping in Autism

SWAT Battle Tactics: How To Organize, Train, And Equip A SWAT Team For Law Enforcement Or Self-Defense

Author: Pat Cascio

This book teaches police departments, paramilitary units or security companies how to organize a SWAT team that can react decisively to any crisis. Learn how to recruit, train and equip for urban or rural warfare; master hand-to-hand combat; adapt infantry tactics to civilian tasks; and much more.



Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Marx for Beginners or Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

Marx for Beginners

Author: Rius

A cartoon book about Marx? Are you sure it's Karl, not Groucho? How can you summarize the work of Karl Marx in cartoons? It took Rius to do it. He's put it all in: the origins of Marxist philosophy, history, economics; of capital, labor, the class struggle, socialism. And there's a biography of "Charlie" Marx besides.

Like the companion volumes in the series, Marx for Beginners is accurate, understandable, and very, very funny.



Interesting book: I principi fondamentali di FMEA

Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

Author: Marcus Garvey

A controversial figure in the history of race relations around the world, Marcus Garvey amazed his enemies as much as he dazzled his admirers. This anthology contains some of the African-American rights advocate's most noted writings and speeches, including "Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World" and "Africa for the Africans."



Tuesday, February 3, 2009

After Victory or Migration Theory

After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars

Author: G John Ikenberry

The end of the Cold War was a "big bang" reminiscent of earlier moments after major wars, such as the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the end of the World Wars in 1919 and 1945. Here John Ikenberry asks the question, what do states that win wars do with their newfound power and how do they use it to build order? In examining the postwar settlements in modern history, he argues that powerful countries do seek to build stable and cooperative relations, but the type of order that emerges hinges on their ability to make commitments and restrain power.

The author explains that only with the spread of democracy in the twentieth century and the innovative use of international institutions--both linked to the emergence of the United States as a world power--has order been created that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit "constitutional" characteristics. The open character of the American polity and a web of multilateral institutions allow the United States to exercise strategic restraint and establish stable relations among the industrial democracies despite rapid shifts and extreme disparities in power.

Blending comparative politics with international relations, and history with theory, After Victory will be of interest to anyone concerned with the organization of world order, the role of institutions in world politics, and the lessons of past postwar settlements for today. It also speaks to today's debate over the ability of the United States to lead in an era of unipolar power.

What People Are Saying

Robert Gilpin
For the third time in this troubled century and following the end of the Cold War and the tragic events in the former Yugoslavia,the world is challenged to create a stable and enduring world order. In this pathbreaking book,Ikenberry draws upon novel theoretical insights and historical experience to determine what policies and strategies work best as the United States attempts to lead in the struggles to create a new world order. . A major contribution to IR theory and to thinking about international order.


David A. Lake
"After Victory is an extremely important inquiry into the origins of postwar order in international relations--the key analytic and policy issue of our time. Ikenberry's book is unique in its theoretical and empirical sweep. In contrast to realists, for whom international orders are epiphenomenal and transient, and constructivists, who see order emerging from shared worldviews and norms, Ikenberry adopts a historical sociological framework. He argues that states self-consciously create institutions to bind themselves and others in international orders that reduce the 'returns to power'."


Peter Katzenstein
After Victory argues that political primacy is achieved best through a strategy of limiting the unilateral exercise of power. This book engages contemporary political debates,and it illuminates these debates with an informative set of historical case studies. All serious students of international relations and all practitioners of foreign policy will want to come to terms with John Ikenberry's elegant and learned analysis.


Joseph Grieco
Through careful,thorough,and subtle analysis of the diplomacy of the post-war settlements of 1815,1919,1945,and 1989--91,John Ikenberry addresses in After Victory three major questions for the study of world politics: how do major-state victors seek to translate their military success into a sustainable political order; why do secondary-state partners accept the order so constructed by the major victors; and why have post-war settlements become progressively based on institutional principles and practices? In its theoretical boldness,historical sweep,policy relevance,and sheer elegance of analysis and presentation,few books published in the past quarter-century in the field of international relations are the equal of After Victory.


David A. Lake
After Victory is an extremely important inquiry into the origins of postwar order in international relations--the key analytic and policy issue of our time. Ikenberry's book is unique in its theoretical and empirical sweep. In contrast to realists,for whom international orders are epiphenomenal and transient,and constructivists,who see order emerging from shared worldviews and norms,Ikenberry adopts a historical sociological framework. He argues that states self-consciously create institutions to bind themselves and others in international orders that reduce the 'returns to power'.




Interesting textbook: Introduction to Hospitality or Strategics

Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, Vol. 2

Author: Caroline B Brettell

During the last decade the issue of migration has increased in global prominence and has caused controversy among the host countries around the world. Continuing their interdisciplinary approach, editors Catherine Brettell and James Hollifield have included revised essays from the first edition in such fields as anthropology, political science, and history. This edition also features new essays by a demographer, geopgrapher, and sociologist.

 



Monday, February 2, 2009

The Serenity Prayer or State Directed Development

The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War

Author: Elisabeth Sifton

In 1943, the renowned theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a prayer for a church service in a New England village. Its appeal for grace, courage, and wisdom soon became famous the world over. Here, Elisabeth Sifton, Niebuhr's daughter, reclaims the true history of the Serenity Prayer and, in a poignant narrative, tells of efforts made by the brave men and women who, like Niebuhr, devoted their lives to the causes of social justice, racial equality, and religious freedom in a world spiraling into and out of economic depression and war. Recalling her father's efforts to warn the clergy of the dangers of fascism, and of America's own social and spiritual crises, Sifton reminds us of what is possible when liberal, open-minded leaders—not zealous fundamentalists or hawkish plutocrats—shape the conscience of the nation. The Serenity Prayer is itself a meditation on the power of prayer in morally compromised, unstable times. A New York Times Notable Book. 12 illustrations.

Author Biography: Elisabeth Sifton, senior vice president of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, lives in New York City and in Princeton, New Jersey.

The New Yorker

The Christian writer and activist Reinhold Niebuhr has influenced millions with his Serenity Prayer, which was composed in the depths of the Second World War, circulated to the troops, and, in edited form, adopted as the mantra for Alcoholics Anonymous. Sifton, Niebuhr’s daughter, sets out to correct misreadings of “Pa’s” prayer and to bring to life the extraordinary intellectual community of friends (such as Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Felix Frankfurter) who surrounded Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary and at his summer home in Massachusetts. Sifton’s account is not free of a certain Episcopalian hauteur (she itemizes the shortcomings of more uncouth Protestant denominations), but she gives her portrait of the time a resonance appropriate to our own. After Eisenhower’s election in 1952, Niebuhr warns his daughter, “You’ve never lived under a Republican administration. You don’t know how terrible this is going to be.”

Publishers Weekly

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's famous prayer ("God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other") has, Sifton notes, the distinction of being the world's most misattributed text. In a sometimes frustrating, sometimes illuminating and sometimes tedious memoir, Niebuhr's daughter-an eminent book editor and currently senior vice-president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux- sets the prayer in the context of her father's life and work. She traces the prayer's birth to its origins during summer services in a New England village church in 1943. The prayer clearly reveals Niebuhr's Christian realism, which asserts that every human effort is tainted with sin or the inevitable human failure to be perfect. Drawing on her memories of her father and her readings of his books, letters, sermons and prayers, Sifton chronicles her father's development as a theologian who courageously challenged the facile liberalism of American churches, the complicity of German churches with the Nazis and the simplistic solutions of Marxism and socialism. Sifton reminisces about many of the major political, theological, and intellectual figures who were a part of her upbringing (Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, W.H. Auden, Felix Frankfurter, R.H. Tawney, Isaiah Berlin) and with whom her father moved shoulder to shoulder in the world. Despite some unfocused writing as she moves from personal recollection to theological reflection, Sifton offers an intimate portrait of growing up with one of America's most important theologians and demonstrates the timelessness of Niebuhr's struggle for justice and mercy in the world. Photos. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The senior vice president of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux here offers a loving memoir of her father, Reinhold Niebuhr, the Union Theological Seminary professor and social philosopher who, in 1943, composed the popular "Serenity Prayer" as a response to Nazism and other 20th-century horrors. The prayer, now the motto of Alcoholics Anonymous, can be found on T-shirts and coffee mugs around the world. Niebuhr explained that he had never copyrighted his creation because "prayers weren't something to make claims on." Set in rural Massachusetts and New York City in the 1930s and 1940s (the golden days of mainline churches), Sifton's nostalgic reminiscences depict the Niebuhr home as the Algonquin Round Table of liberal intellectuals. The book is full of anecdotes of childhood encounters with W.H. Auden, Felix Frankfurter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Alan Paton, and other luminaries. At the same time, Sifton dismisses Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham as fundamentalist zealots. A tender, often humorous, and occasionally slow-moving account of the dusk of Protestant hegemony in North America in the last third of the 20th century, this is not leisurely reading but will be useful in academic and seminary libraries. A good, basic biography of Niebuhr is Charles C. Brown's Niebuhr and His Age. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/03.]-Joyce Smothers, Divinity Program, Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Harold Bloom
"Reinhold Niebuhr's spiritual greatness is demonstrated memorably in Elisabeth Sifton's remarkable book. Not only is the sermon itself a of permanent intellectual value, but it could not be more appropriate for the United States at this very bad time in our national political and religious life."




See also: Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande or Adams Navel

State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery

Author: Atul Kohli

Why have some developing countries industrialized and become more prosperous rapidly while others have not? Focusing on South Korea, Brazil, India, and Nigeria, this study compares the characteristics of fairly functioning states and explains why states in some parts of the developing world are more effective. It emphasizes the role of colonialism in leaving behind more or less effective states, and the relationship of these states with business and labor in helping explain comparative success in promoting economic progress.



Table of Contents:
Introduction : states and industrialization in the global periphery1
1The colonial origins of a modern political economy : the Japanese lineage of Korea's cohesive-capitalist state27
2The rhee interregnum : saving South Korea for cohesive capitalism62
3A cohesive-capitalist state reimposed : Park Chung Hee and rapid industrialization84
4Invited dependency : fragmented state and foreign resources in Brazil's early industrialization127
5Grow now, pay later : state and indebted industrialization in modern Brazil169
6Origins of a fragmented-multiclass state and a sluggish economy : colonial India221
7India's fragmented-multiclass state and protected industrialization257
8Colonial Nigeria : origins of a neopatrimonial state and a commodity-exporting economy291
9Sovereign Nigeria : neopatrimonialism and failure of industrialization329
Conclusion : understanding states and state intervention in the global periphery367