Political Biography Books

The Reconstruction Presidents or Nationalism

2009-12-02T23:00:00.000-08:00

The Reconstruction Presidents

Author: Brooks D Simpson

During and after the Civil War, four presidents faced the challenge of reuniting the nation and of providing justice for black Americans - and of achieving a balance between those goals. This first book to collectively examine the Reconstruction policies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes reveals how they confronted and responded to the complex issues presented during that contested era in American politics. Brooks Simpson examines the policies of each administration in depth and evaluates them in terms of their political, social, and institutional contexts. Simpson explains what was politically possible at a time when federal authority and presidential power were more limited than they are now. He compares these four leaders' handling of similar challenges - such as the retention of political support and the need to build a southern base for their policies - in different ways and under different circumstances, and he discusses both their use of executive power and the impact of their personal beliefs on their actions.

Library Journal

Comparative studies of presidents inevitably introduce "the rating game." In this case, the Reconstruction presidential quartet is evaluated by the prolific historian and young author of Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction (LJ 10/15/91) and found to be dissonant. Lincoln epitomizes the ultimate democratic political leader--flexible as he struggled to preserve the last best hope of humankind while working toward a racial justice and active when necessary. His successor, however, proved to be the most dangerous kind of politician in a republic: an active, inflexible one. Although Johnson moved far beyond his past, unlike his predecessor he couldn't overcome it--especially his racism and hatred. The author allows for the best historical context to justify Grant and Hayes, well-intentioned passives whose excessive dependence on others spawned an environment that ultimately ruined reputations. A fine comparative study; recommended for all presidential collections.--William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport

Booknews

In a first-time collective assessment of the Reconstruction polices of Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and Hayes, Simpson (history, humanities; Arizona State U.) presents the challenges they faced in maintaining political support while seeking to provide justice for black Americans and reunite the country after the Civil War. The author contends that constraints on Federal action determined policies more than personal views on race. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Kirkus Reviews

The historian Eric Foner has presented the Reconstruction as a failed opportunity to achieve emancipation and equality for black Americans. Here, Simpson (History/Arizona State Univ., Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, not reviewed) persuasively argues that, given their circumstances, the four Reconstruction presidents generally did as well as they could. The Reconstruction has always been controversial. For decades, scholars believed that the postwar policies of the Republicans were unduly vindictive and punitive. Yet some in recent years have charged that Congress was pusillanimous, half-hearted, and ineffectual in ensuring the equality of the South's ex-slaves. Such judgments, Simpson observes, fallaciously attribute the perspectives of the present to the past, "as if critics are seeking some sort of validation for their own views on race." He shows that, despite attitudes afloat that would be considered racist today, the Reconstruction presidents (with the exception of Johnson) were generally sincere in assisting African-Americans in overcoming the legacy of slavery, but were constrained by the 19th-century understanding of the presidency as an office of limited powers. Lincoln's priorities were winning the Civil War and preserving the Union; though he truly hated slavery, his emancipation policy was intended as a means to another end. Johnson, who shared white Southern antagonism toward African-Americans, sought a return to Jacksonian democracy of the past, but became bogged down in internecine disputes with Congress. Ulysses Grant, the author contends, was a pragmatist who balanced competing goals of restoring harmony to the formerConfederate states and realizing black citizenship, yet was driven by circumstances beyond his control. Though sharing the goals of Reconstruction, Rutherford Hayes, in a final bow to political necessity, withdrew federal troops from the South, unwittingly ensuring decades of second-class citizenship for African-Americans. A powerful analysis of a darkly formative period in American history. (History Book Club selection)

	Preface
	Introduction	1
Pt. 1	Abraham Lincoln
1	"Broken Eggs Cannot Be Mended"	9
2	"Much Good Work Is Already Done"	36
Pt. 2	Andrew Johnson
3	"There Is No Such Thing As Reconstruction"	67
4	"Damn Them!"	100
Pt. 3	Ulysses S. Grant
5	"Let Us Have Peace"	133
6	"Unwhipped of Justice"	163
Pt. 4	Rutherford B. Hayes
7	"The Great Pacificator"	199
	Conclusion	229
	Notes	237
	Bibliographical Essay	261
	Index	271

Look this: Organizational Behavior or Starting an Online Business All in One Desk Reference For Dummies

Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity

Author: Liah Greenfeld

Nationalism is a movement and a state of mind that brings together national identity, consciousness, and collectivities. It accomplished the great transformation from the old order to modernity; it placed imagination above production, distribution, and exchange; and it altered the nature of power over people and territories that shapes and directs the social and political world. A five-country study that spans five hundred years, this historically oriented work in sociology bids well to replace all previous works on the subject. The theme, simple yet complex, suggests that England was the front-runner, with its earliest sense of self-conscious nationalism and its pragmatic ways; it utilized existing institutions while transforming itself. The Americans followed, with no formed institutions to impede them. France, Germany, and Russia took the same, now marked, path, modifying nationalism in the process.

Nationalism is based on empirical data in four languages—legal documents; period dictionaries; memoirs; correspondence; literary works; theological, political, and philosophical writings; biographies; statistics; and histories. Nowhere else is the complex interaction of structural, cultural, and psychological factors so thoroughly explained. Nowhere else are concepts like identity, anomie, and elites brought so refreshingly to life.

Booknews

Premised on the belief that nationalism lies at the basis of the modern world, Greenfeld's (social sciences, Harvard U.) study addresses the specific questions of why and how nationalism emerged, why and how it was transformed in the process of transfer from one society to another, and why and how different forms of national identity and consciousness became translated into institutional practices and patterns of culture, molding the social and political structures of societies which defined themselves as nations. To answer these questions, Greenfeld focuses on five major societies: England, France, Russia, Germany, and the US. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Hitler and the Final Solution or Kremlin Rising

2009-12-01T17:37:00.000-08:00

Hitler and the Final Solution

Author: Gerald Fleming

Fleming is the only scholar given access to the interrogations of the German civilian crematoria engineers lying inaccessible, until a few months ago, in Moscow. This historically important information finally places the last stone in the mosaic of Auschwitz-Berkenau.

Go to: Aromatherapy or Beasts of the Earth

Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution

Author: Peter Baker

In the tradition of Hedrick Smith's The Russians, Robert G. Kaiser's Russia: The People and the Power, and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb comes an eloquent and eye-opening chronicle of Vladimir Putin's Russia, from this generation's leading Moscow correspondents.

With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia launched itself on a fitful transition to Western-style democracy. But a decade later, Boris Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, a childhood hooligan turned KGB officer who rose from nowhere determined to restore the order of the Soviet past, resolved to bring an end to the revolution. Kremlin Rising goes behind the scenes of contemporary Russia to reveal the culmination of Project Putin, the secret plot to reconsolidate power in the Kremlin.

During their four years as Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser witnessed firsthand the methodical campaign to reverse the post-Soviet revolution and transform Russia back into an authoritarian state. Their gripping narrative moves from the unlikely rise of Putin through the key moments of his tenure that re-centralized power into his hands, from his decision to take over Russia's only independent television network to the Moscow theater siege of 2002 to the "managed democracy" elections of 2003 and 2004 to the horrific slaughter of Beslan's schoolchildren in 2004, recounting a four-year period that has changed the direction of modern Russia.

But the authors also go beyond the politics to draw a moving and vivid portrait of the Russian people they encountered -- both those who have prospered and those barely surviving -- and show howthe political flux has shaped individual lives. Opening a window to a country on the brink, where behind the gleaming new shopping malls all things Soviet are chic again and even high school students wonder if Lenin was right after all, Kremlin Rising features the personal stories of Russians at all levels of society, including frightened army deserters, an imprisoned oil billionaire, Chechen villagers, a trendy Moscow restaurant king, a reluctant underwear salesman, and anguished AIDS patients in Siberia.

With shrewd reporting and unprecedented access to Putin's insiders, Kremlin Rising offers both unsettling new revelations about Russia's leader and a compelling inside look at life in the land that he is building. As the first major book on Russia in years, it is an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the country and promises to shape the debate about Russia, its uncertain future, and its relationship with the United States.

The New York Times - William Grimes

Well written, well reported and well organized, the book consists of free-standing chapters that touch on the most important events and trends in contemporary Russia, from the war in Chechnya to the spread of AIDS and the dire state of the Russian judicial system. Connecting these disparate themes is the fishy-eyed, single-minded man at the top, a thoroughgoing mediocrity, as depicted by the authors, with a vision for Russia that happens to match the moment.

The Washington Post - James M. Goldgeiger

Methodical in its approach, as riveting as a novel in its depiction of modern Russian life, Kremlin Rising is a powerful indictment of Putin's years as president. In his obsessive quest for control and a stronger Russian state, Putin is undermining Russia's long-term future just as Soviet leaders did in their own repressive days. Given how often President Bush has spoken of Putin's commitment to democracy, one can only hope that this book is on the must-read list for those vacationing in Crawford, Tex., this summer.

Foreign Affairs

Baker and Glasser, The Washington Post's husband-and-wife team in Moscow from 2001 to 2004, are sharp-eyed and knowing. Having seen, felt, and tasted Putin's Russia, they paint with clear but somber strokes. Moscow is aglitter with the playthings of the rich and the indulgences of a swelling middle class, but elsewhere teachers face a new generation of students uncritical of Stalin and proud of Soviet power, military reformers fall to military leaders still fighting World War II, and advocates of modern jury-trial justice cannot make it past layers of prejudice and corruption. Amid all this, Putin comes off as captive to his KGB past, calculating and harsh in dealing with opposition, and readier to trifle with than to build democracy. Baker and Glasser have dug deeply and interviewed well and widely, offering on all the headline issues — from the 2002 Moscow theater seizure and the 2004 Beslan school massacre to the Khodorkovsky case and the 2004 presidential election — details available nowhere else.

First Amendment Law in a Nutshell or Up from Slavery

2009-11-30T12:25:00.000-08:00

First Amendment Law in a Nutshell

Author: Jerome A Barron

Expert authors summarize the principles set forth in case law and explore the philosophical foundations of First Amendment law. Current theories are examined to explain the rationale behind constitutional protection for free expression and freedom of religion. The debate between separationists and religious accommodationists in establishment clause jurisprudence is featured in this text as well.

Booknews

A nice little textbook on freedom of religion and speech. We are put off by the 13 pages of West Publishing Co. books advertised ahead of the title page. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

PrefaceTable of Cases Part One. Background and Methodology Chapter Text, History and Theory The Marketplace of Ideas Model The Self–Government Model—Civic Republicanism and Civic Virtue Revived The Liberty Model—Self–Fulfillment and Autonomy Additional Theories of Free Expression Critics of Special Protection for Free Expression First Amendment Methodology Categorization and Balancing Content–Based v. Content–Neutral Regulations Overbreadth and Vagueness Prior Restraint Part Two. Content-Based Regulation and Low-Value Speech Advocacy of Illegal Conduct Dangerous and Offensive Speech Fighting Words Hostile Audiences Offensive Speech True Threats Obscenity and Indecency Obscenity Child Pornography Indecent Speech First Amendment "Due Process" Defamation, Privacy and Mental Distress Constitutionalizing Libel Law Public Figures and Public Issues Public Figures and Private Figures Public Speech and Private Speech Privacy Intentional Infliction of Mental Distress Commercial Speech Commercial Speech in the Chrestensen ERA: A Categorical Approach The Problem of Defining Commercial Speech Virginia Pharmacy and New Protection for Commercial Speech Commercial Speech Differentiated From Other Forms of Protected Speech The Central Hudson Test: Special or Diminished Protection for Commercial Speech? The Fox and the Central Hudson Test Revised Lawyer Advertising Routine Services In–Person Solicitation Solicitation Through Print Advertising and Targeted Mailings Statements of Certification and Specialization Truthful Advertising About Lawful but Harmful Activity New Categories? Racist Speech Pornography and Feminism Part Three. General Approaches The Public Forum Regulating the Public Forum The Nonpublic Forum Private Property Expressive Conduct Standards for Expressive Conduct The Definitional Problem The O'Brien Test Flag Burning Nude Dancing Freedom of Association and Belief Regulation of Group Membership Government Employment and Benefits Registration and Disclosure Compelled Association The Electoral Process Political Speech During the Campaign Electoral Spending Buckley v. Valeo Corporate Spending Access to the Ballot Regulating Political Parties Government Sponsored Environments Student Speech Government Employment Criticizing the Government Political Activity Political Patronage Subsidized Speech: Sponsorship or Censorship? Summary Freedom of the Press The Press Clause—"Or of the Press" Journalist's Privilege Protecting Confidentiality Burning the Sourc Gagging the Press Introduction The Nebraska Press Case Silencing the Bar and Other Trial Participants Access to the Courtroom Trial Proceedings Pretrial Proceedings Summary Access to the Media Access to the Electronic Media Part Four. Freedom of Religion Text, History and Theory of the Religion Clauses The Antiestablishment Clause Government Financial Aid to Religious Institutions Religion in the Schools Released Time and Equal Access Religious Exercise in the Schools Religion and Curriculum Control Government Acknowledgement of Religion Related Establishment Clause Problems Taxation and Tax Exemptions Sabbath Day Observance Laws Establishment Clause Miscellany The Establishment Clause Today The Free Exercise Clause Belief/Opinion or Conduct Direct or Indirect Burdens The Reign of Compelling Interest Analysis The Repudiation of Judicial Exemptions Religion in Government–Sponsored Environments The Burdens That Count Formal Neutrality Triumphant Index

Look this: The Science of Sherlock Holmes or Id Rather Teach Peace

Up from Slavery

Author: Booker T Washington

Booker T. Washington, the most recognized national leader, orator and educator, emerged from slavery in the deep south, to work for the betterment of African Americans in the post Reconstruction period.

"Up From Slavery" is an autobiography of Booker T. Washington's life and work, which has been the source of inspiration for all Americans. Washington reveals his inner most thoughts as he transitions from ex-slave to teacher and founder of one of the most important schools for African Americans in the south, The Tuskegee Industrial Institute.

Booker T. Washington's words are profound. Washington includes the address he gave at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895, which made him a national figure. He imparts 'gems of wisdom' throughout the book, which are relevant to Americans who aspire to achieve great attainments in life.

Listeners will appreciate the impassioned delivery of the reader, Andrew L. Barnes. Legacy Audio is proud to present this audio book production of "Up From Slavery" by Booker T. Washington.

Langston Hughes

Washington's story of himself, as half-seen by himself, is one America's most revealing books.

Sacred Fire

The history of the African in America has often been personalized or embodied within one individual, one spokes-person who represented the sentiments of the moment. In the South of the 1890s, Booker T. Washington stood as the often controversial personification of the aspirations of the black masses. The Civil War had ended, casting an uneducated black mass adrift or, equally tenuous, creating a class of sharecroppers still dependent on the whims of their former owners. Black Reconstruction, for all its outward trimming, had failed to deliver its promised economic and political empowerment. While an embittered and despairing black population sought solace and redemption, a white citizenry systematically institutionalized racism.

From this Armageddon rose this Moses, Booker Taliaferro Washington, who was born in 1856 in Virginia, of a slave mother and a white father he never knew. But he gave no indication in his autobiography of the pain this almost certainly caused him: "I do not even know his name. I have heard reports to the effect that he was a white man who lived on one of the nearby plantations. But I do not find especial fault with him. He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time." After Emancipation, Washington began to dream of getting an education and resolved to go to the Hampton Normal Agricultural Institute in Virginia. When he arrived, he was allowed to work as the school's janitor in return for his board and part of his tuition. After graduating from Hampton, Washington was selected to head a new school for blacks at Tuskegee, Alabama, where he taught the virtues of "patience, thrift, good manners and high morals" as the keys to empowerment.

An unabashed self-promoter (Tuskegee was dependent upon the largesse of its white benefactors) and advocate of accommodation, Washington's "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" and "be patient and prove yourself first" philosophy was simultaneously acclaimed by the masses, who prescribed to self-reliance, and condemned by the black intelligentsia, who demanded a greater and immediate inclusion in the social, political, and economic fabric of this emerging nation. Washington's philosophy struck a chord that played like a symphony within the racial politics of the times. It gave a glimmer of hope to the black masses; it created for whites a much-needed locus for their veneer of social concern—funds flooded into Tuskegee Institute; and finally, the initiatives of the black intelligentsia, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, were, for the moment, neutralized.

Washington "believed that the story of his life was a typical American success story," and he redefined "success" to make it so: "I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in his life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." His powerfully simple philosophy that self-help is the key to overcoming obstacles of racism and poverty has resonated among African Americans of all political stripes, from Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan.

Library Journal

Washington's memoir begins with his life as a slave on a plantation in western Virginia. Once he's freed, he looks for ways to gain knowledge, while also working in a coal mine and eventually as a house boy for a noted member of the white community. Later, he attends Hampton Institute where for the first time he is exposed to higher education and begins to develop his philosophy. The author then goes to Tuskegee Institute where he is first a teacher and later its president. Up from Slavery includes much of Washington's thinking on economic empowerment and the importance of education. Also included here is an 1895 speech he made at the International Exposition in Atlanta that turned him into a national figure and a role model. Washington's words continue to inspire many but also ruffle the feathers of those who follow the work of scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, who had a different view regarding the role of African Americans in society. Andrew L. Barnes offers a fine reading of this important work. For all libraries.-Danna Bell-Russel, Library of Congress Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

John Hope Franklin
The ascendancy of [Booker T. Washington] is one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of American education and of race relations.

The Secret Destiny of America or Looking for History

2009-11-29T07:13:00.000-08:00

The Secret Destiny of America

Author: Manly Palmer Hall

Manly P. Hall's two classic works on the hidden history and occult mission of America—The Secret Destiny of America and America's Assignment with Destiny— each redesigned and reset in this special two-in-one volume.

Drawing upon often neglected fragments of history, The Secret Destiny of America presents evidence for a mysterious Great Plan at the core of the nation's founding. Preeminent occult scholar Manly P. Hall argues that humanistic, esoteric, and mystical orders collaborated in setting aside the American continent for a world-shaking experiment in enlightened self-government and religious liberty.

The author locates the seeds for this plan one thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era, exploring figures such as the Pharaoh Akhnaton, Plato, and Plotinus. Once hatched in the colonial age, the great experiment involved: · Christopher Columbus, who may have been an agent of esoteric order connected with Lorenzo de' Medici and Leonardo da Vinci;

• English intellectuals Bacon and Raleigh, who played unique roles in the court intrigue surrounding the settlement of the continent;

• founders Washington and Franklin, who had esoteric associations;

• and a network of Rosicrucians, mystics, and Freemasons whose ideals of religious freedom traveled to American soil.

Whether discussing the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States, the prophecy at George Washington's birth, or the role of a mysterious stranger who swayed the signers of the Declaration of Independence, The Secret Destiny of America is the sole volume to link together the fascinating strandsof esoteric history that lie at America's heart.

Books about: Qigong Fever or Immortality

Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America

Author: Alma Guillermoprieto

From the esteemed New Yorker correspondent comes an incisive volume of essays and reportage that vividly illuminates Latin America’s recent history. Only Alma Guillermoprieto, the most highly regarded writer on the region, could unravel the complex threads of Colombia’s cocaine wars or assess the combination of despotism, charm, and political jiu-jitsu that has kept Fidel Castro in power for more than 40 years. And no one else can write with such acumen and sympathy about statesmen and campesinos, leftist revolutionaries and right-wing militias, and political figures from Evita Peron to Mexico’s irrepressible president, Vicente Fox.

Whether she is following the historic papal visit to Havana or staying awake for a pre-dawn interview with an insomniac Subcomandante Marcos, Guillermoprieto displays both the passion and knowledge of an insider and the perspective of a seasoned analyst. Looking for History is journalism in the finest traditions of Joan Didion, V. S. Naipaul, and Ryszard Kapucinski: observant, empathetic, and beautifully written.

Publishers Weekly

Guillermoprieto (The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now), Latin America correspondent for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, presents a collection of essays focusing on Colombia, Cuba and Mexico in the 1990s, accompanied by wonderfully elegant sketches of Eva Per"n of Argentina and Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru. There is some repetition, but this flaw does not seriously detract from her message that although Latin American political culture in the latter half of the 20th century is largely shrouded in myth, particularly because of its potent relationship with the U.S., it does indeed have "its own independent life." Apparent throughout is the author's ability to capture a historical moment and place it in context: for example, her observations of the pope's visit in January 1998 to a Cuba led by Fidel Castro dressed in a dark suit, and not his usual army fatigues, who made many political concessions for the privilege of paying homage to the pope. The chapter on John Paul II is flanked by portraits of Che Guevara and of Castro, the former steeped in romantic fanaticism, the latter seen as clinging to power long after his revolution has been bypassed by history. Guillermoprieto's writing seems unaffected by any obvious political bias; she excoriates the violence of the left (the murderous guerrilla brigades of Colombia) and of the right (the murderous Colombian paramilitary forces). Above all, the author displays an insightful grasp of the absurdities and chaos (one of the root causes of which is the U.S.'s inexhaustible appetite for drugs) that, in her view, permeate Latin American politics. (Apr. 18) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Guillermoprieto, a staff editor at The New Yorker, is a well-known and astute observer of Latin America. This collection of 17 of her essays, all adapted from pieces published in The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, focuses on recent political events in the region. The essays are primarily about three countries: Cuba, where revolutionary idealism had to face reality; Colombia, where revolutions have always failed; and Mexico, a land of political fantasy. Among the stories, book reviews, and descriptions are perceptive and insightful observations of Latin American politics and society that help illuminate this important part of the world. This volume will be of interest to Latin American collections as well as current affairs libraries. Mark L. Grover, Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Clear-eyed essays focusing chiefly on political events of the past decade in Colombia, Mexico, and Cuba. New Yorker writer Guillermoprieto (The Heart That Bleeds, 1994) is the very model of the intrepid reporter. With astounding energy, she braves the snarls of politics and the perils of mountains and jungle to hack her way to the heart of the matter and lay out the facts for her reader. Whether she is making her way through the nearly impenetrable wilds of Colombia to meet with leaders of that nation's oldest guerilla group (the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, alias FARC) or being awakened in the middle of the night to talk with Subcomandante Marcos, military leader of the Zapatistas, her commitment to the story is unshakeable. She stays alert through six hours of a Castro press conference, and awakens at 5 a.m. to witness the Pope's historic outdoor mass in Havana. For all of this physical action, however, it is her fluency with the political territory that is truly remarkable. Tracing the histories of political parties and alliances, Guillermoprieto provides insight into movements that usually seem absolutely opaque. The nebulous War on Drugs in Colombia is laid out piece by piece, with the guerillas and government actors labeled and interviewed. The Zapatistas are made human and comprehensible. Cuba's citizenry is seen up close and personal. Looking at massive movements and political machinery, Guillermoprieto insists on understanding the very human motivations behind them and their impact on millions of regular people who contribute to them and must live with their effects. She's equally impressive analyzing Eva Perón or Mario Vargas Llosa. Atrulyinstructive work.

Chomsky For Beginners or Chi Na Fa

2009-11-28T02:01:00.000-08:00

Chomsky For Beginners

Author: David Cogswell

Noam Chomsky has written over 30 books, he is the most-quoted author on earth, the New York Times calls him “arguably the most important intellectual alive” — yet most people have no idea who he is or what he’s about.

Chomsky For Beginners tells you what he’s about: Chomsky is known for his work in two distinct areas — Linguistics and… “gadflying.” (“Gadfly,” the word applied to Socrates. comes closest to the constant social irritant that Chomsky has become.) It is Chomsky’s work as Political Gadfly and Media Critic that has given passion and hope to the general public — and alienated the Major Media — which, of course, is why you don’t know more about him.

Chomsky’s message is very simple: Huge corporations run our country, the world, both political parties, and Major Media. (You suspected it; Chomsky proves it.) If enough people open their minds to what he has to say, the whole gingerbread fantasy we’ve been fed about America might vanish like the Emperor’s clothes…and America might turn into a real Democracy.

What’s so special about Chomsky For Beginners? The few existing intros to Chomsky cover either Chomsky-the-Linguist of Chomsky-the-Political-Gadfly. Chomsky For Beginners covers both — plus an exclusive interview with the maverick genius. The clarity of David Cogswell’s text and the wit of Paul Gordon’s illustrations make Chomsky as easy to understand as the genius next door. Words and art combine to clarify (but not oversimplify) the work and to “humorize” the man whomay very well be what one savvy interviewer called him — “the smartest man on earth.”

Chi Na Fa: Traditional Chinese Submission Grappling Techniques

Author: Liu Jinsheng

First published in 1936, this work represents primary source material of ancient combat techniques designed in a time of occupation and war, when the threat of lethal hand-to-hand combat was an ever-present reality for soldiers, those involved in law enforcement, and very often for the ordinary citizen. This is the seminal work in the field, written by the form’s founders, Liu Jinsheng and Zhao Jiang, as a training manual for the Police Academy of Zheijiang province. The intent of this translation is to provide authentic historical documentation for martial arts techniques that have been modified for use today in both competition and self-defense. Submission grappling is a technique in which fighters use locks, chokes, and breaking techniques to defeat their challengers in no-holds-barred matches. Chi Na Fa remains the most comprehensive explanation available of these Chinese grappling techniques, from which derive many current techniques. Renowned author and Brazillian jiu jitsu champion Tim Cartmell presents the book in a clear, compelling new translation.

Do the Hard Things First or Beyond the Wire

2009-11-26T20:49:00.000-08:00

Do the Hard Things First: (And Other Bloomberg Rules for Business and Politics)

Author: Michael R Bloomberg

In Do The Hard Things First, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg shares the management strategies and life lessons that have helped him build a multi-billion dollar global business and run a $60 billion city government, serving the needs of demanding business clients and diverse constituencies alike. In the words of Michael Bloomberg himself, “Over the course of both my private and public sector careers, I’ve learned a set of rules that I believe offer guidance that people of all professions will find useful. In this book, I've summed up these rules and my experience in how to follow them: from how to build a first-rate team, to create the conditions for innovation, and to know when to say ‘yes’ to your customers and when to say ‘no’.”

New interesting textbook: Uninsured in America or Great Feet for Life

Beyond the Wire: Former Prisoners and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland

Author: Peter Shirlow

This book provides the first detailed examination of the role played by former loyalist and republican prisoners in grass roots conflict transformation work in the Northern Ireland peace process. It challenges the assumed passivity of former prisoners and ex-combatants. Instead, it suggests that such individuals and the groups that they formed have been key agents of conflict transformation. In analyzing this, the authors challenge the sterile demonization of former prisoners and the processes that maintain their exclusion from normal civic and social life.

The book is a constructive reminder of the need for full participation of both former combatants and victims in post-conflict transformation. It also lays out a new agenda for reconciliation that suggests that conflict transformation can and should begin "from the extremes".

The book will be of interest to students of criminology, peace and conflict studies, law and politics, geography and sociology as well as those with a particular interest in the Northern Ireland conflict.

List of Tables     vi
Preface     vii
Introduction     1
Understanding Political Imprisonment: Northern Ireland and the International Context     21
Prisoner Release and Reintegration in the Northern Ireland Context     42
The History and Evolution of Former Prisoner Groups     56
Imprisonment and the Post-Imprisonment Experience     76
Residual Criminalisation and its Effects     94
Community and Conflict     107
Former Prisoners and the Practicalities of Conflict Transformation     123
Conclusion: Conflict Transformation and Reintegration Reconsidered?     143
Notes     154
Bibliography     163
Index     180

Firewall or Defending the Homeland

2009-11-25T15:37:00.000-08:00

Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up

Author: Lawrence E Walsh

In this historic, first-person account, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation exposes the extraordinary duplicity of the highest officials of Ronald Reagan's administration and the paralyzing effects of the cover-up that Judge Lawrence Walsh and his associates unraveled. Iran-Contra was far more than a rogue operation conceived and executed by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North with the backing of National Security Advisor John Poindexter, as the Reagan administration claimed. It was instead a conspiracy that drew in the chief actors of that administration: President Reagan, Vice President George Bush, Director of Central Intelligence William Casey, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and Attorney General Edwin Meese, among others. With the president's support, the United States attempted to trade arms for hostages held by Iranian terrorists, then retained part of the proceeds from these undercover sales in Swiss bank accounts, where the secret money funded the guerrilla activities of the Nicaraguan Contras, a counter-revolutionary group that Congress had specifically forbidden the administration to support. An experienced and steely prosecutor, Judge Walsh built a powerful team of young lawyers to pursue the truth of the Iran-Contra affair through painstaking interrogations and reviews of hundreds of thousands of documents. His team confronted daunting barriers: some of the key players were given grants of immunity by Congress's own (and sometimes hindering) investigation, government agencies twisted claims of national security in order to hide the true nature of their activities, administration officials told outright lies in sworn testimony, and Republican leaders attempted to drown the investigation in a massive flow of often irrelevant material.

Publishers Weekly

Iran-contra independent counsel Walsh chronicles here his efforts to call to account senior Reagan administration officials for their deceptions and the arms-for-hostages fiasco, alleging that "no one... told the full truth." Having failed to put anyone in prison, he marshals considerable evidence of malfeasance to convict Oliver North, John Poindexter and Caspar Weinberger. Neither Beltway insiders nor the public at large, however, are likely to read this work for its insights into Iran-contra or the political culture of the Reagan era. Instead, Walsh's book will probably be cited in a growing debate about whether the expenditure of millions on independent investigations has made our government more honest. Foes of the independent counsel system will find a lot of material here with which to buttress their arguments. Despite years of effort from some of the most astute prosecutors in the country, the only high-level official left with a criminal record from Walsh's investigation was national security adviser Robert McFarlanea reluctant participant in the Iran-contra cover-up who pleaded guilty to deceiving Congress. Walsh attributes his meager results to systematic efforts by two administrations to frustrate his efforts and an executive bureaucracy mired in a culture of concealment.

Library Journal

Walsh was the independent counsel for the Iran-Contra investigation from 1986 to 1993. Though he writes earnestly and with the highest integrity, his recounting of the events surrounding Iran-Contra is as confusing as the hearings themselves and is overburdened by excessive detail. Walsh alleges that Presidents Reagan and Bush could have been indicted for obstruction of justice and misuse of the presidential pardon, respectively. However, Reagan is not Nixon, and Iran-Contra never fascinated and repelled the public like Watergate. The long ordeal ended with few perpetrators being convicted, while members of Reagan's cabinet built an impenetrable firewall around the president. -- Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

Library Journal

John B. Judis

Walsh's book is a useful record of the scandal and its aftermath. -- The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Walsh, the former independent counsel for Iran/Contra matters, submits an injudicious, self-serving brief in aid of reversing the probable verdict of history that his extended and contentious investigation of malfeasance at the highest levels of US government produced appreciably more heat than light. Drawing on the record he compiled in the course of a six-year investigation, the author delivers a largely chronological narrative built around a rehash of serious charges that were never proved in court. At issue was the question of whether Ronald Reagan exceeded his presidential authority in sanctioning a hushed-up arms-for-hostages deal with Iran, which also yielded cash used to equip the Contra forces in Nicaragua. These clandestine operations came to light in the mid-1980s, and Walsh was called in to unravel the tangled web at the start of 1987. By the author's account, he had no axes to grind at the outset of his inquiry. Perhaps not, but his office became vaultingly ambitious in its selection of targets after failing to put the usual CIA, National Security Council, or White House suspects, let alone Oliver North and John Poindexter, behind bars. At various times, Walsh recounts, he and his aides went after George Bush, Edwin Meese, Donald Regan, George Shultz, and Caspar Weinberger. The fact that he got nary a one of these men in the dock does not stop the author from repeating in detail allegations of supposed misdeeds that resulted in but a single indictment. Attentive readers will learn that feckless subordinates, ill-informed judges, and national-security hurdles, not Walsh, are to blame for the paucity of scalps.

A spirited if one-sided effort by Walsh to have the last word on the Iran/Contra affair and to justify his largely unavailing stewardship of the independent counsel's office.

List of Illustrations

Preface
Part I. Rogue Conspiracy: The Congress againstthe Courts
1. From Stonewall to Firewall
2. The Private War
3. Call to Counsel
4. Opening View
5. The Bramble Bush
6. First Convictions
7. Close Pursuit
8. Crossroads
9. The Basic Indictment

Part II. Litigation: The Courts against the Congress
10. Half a League Onward
11. The Trial of Oliver North
12. Deniability Triumphant
13. The Trial of John Poindexter
14. Reversal and Revival
15. The CIA Cracks
16. Roller Coaster

Part III. Behind the Firewall
17. What the Secretary of State Knew
18. The Note-Taker
19. The Chief of Staff
20. The President's Protector
21. Like Brushing His Teeth

Part IV. Political Counterattack
22. Nuclear War
23. An Unusual Proposal
24. Boomerang: The Character Issue
25. Bob Dole, Pardon Advocate
26. The Last Card in the Cover-up
Reflections
Index

New interesting textbook: Encyclopedia of Food and Color Additives or Move over Martha

Defending the Homeland: Domestic Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Securit

Author: Jonathan R Whit

The United States government is reorganizing to increase domestic security. How will these changes impact the American criminal justice system? DEFENDING THE HOMELAND: DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE, LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND SECURITY is the only book that illustrates up-to-the minute information on how our criminal justice system has changed since 9/11. Written by an expert on academic leave to provide training for the Department of Defense, White provides an insider's look at issues related to restructuring of federal law enforcement and recent policy challenges. The book discusses the problem of bureaucracy, interaction between the law enforcement and intelligence communities, civil liberties, and theories of war and police work. From a practical perspective, the book examines offensive and defensive strategies. The book gives an introduction to violent international religious terrorism and an overview of domestic terrorist problems still facing law enforcement.

Cold New World or American Pharaoh

2009-02-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

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)

Kaiser Wilhelm II or Humanitarian Imperialism

2009-02-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

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.

	Preface
	Acknowledgements
	Chronology
Ch. 1	Childhood and youth	1
Ch. 2	Taking power	27
Ch. 3	Going it alone	55
Ch. 4	Domestic politics from Bulow to Bethmann	92
Ch. 5	Wilhelm II and foreign policy, 1888-1911	123
Ch. 6	Power and publicity	160
Ch. 7	From crisis to war: 1909-1914	186
Ch. 8	War, exile, death: 1914-1941	225
Ch. 9	Conclusion	257
	Further reading in English	262
	Index	266

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.

Private Oral Exam Guide or Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal

2009-02-19T13:37:00.000-08:00

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)

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.

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

Women and the National Experience or Social Welfare

2009-02-18T04:59:00.000-08:00

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.

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

[ ]

Smallholders Householders or Governance and Politics of China

2009-02-16T23:47:00.000-08:00

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

	Tables and Figures
	Prologue: An Ethnological Essay in Practical Reason	1
1	The Technology and Knowledge of Intensive Farm Practices	28
2	The Farm-Family Household	58
3	Labor-Time Allocation	102
4	Energy Inputs, Outputs, and Sustainable Systems	123
5	Farm Size and Productivity	146
6	Smallholder Property and Tenure	157
7	Inequality, Stratification, and Polarization	189
8	Chinese Smallholders	232
9	Intensive Agriculture, Population Density, Markets, and the Smallholder Adaptation	261
10	Peasant Farming and the Chayanov Model	295
	Epilogue: Does the Smallholder Have a Future?	320
	References Cited	337
	Index	379

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.

The Age of Reagan or In Her Own Right

2009-02-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

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)

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

Harvard Business Review on Corporate Ethics or Tragic Mountains

2009-02-14T13:22:00.000-08:00

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.

	We Don't Need Another Hero	1
	Ethics Without the Sermon	19
	Why 'Good' Managers Make Bad Ethical Choices	49
	Ethics in Practice	67
	Managing for Organizational Integrity	85
	Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home	113
	The Discipline of Building Character	139
	The Parable of the Sadhu	165
	About the Contributors	183
	Index	185

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.

Know Your Power or Man of the People

2009-02-13T08:08:00.000-08:00

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.)

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

The Hidden Hand Presidency or Chinas Political System

2009-02-12T02:56:00.000-08:00

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)

	Preface: A 1994 Perspective
	Prologue and Acknowledgments
1	An Exemplary President?	3
2	What Manner of Man?	15
3	Political Strategies	57
4	The Two Faces of Organization	100
5	Strengths and Weaknesses of the Style: The Joe McCarthy Case	155
6	Lessons for Other Presidents	228
	Key to Primary Sources and Abbreviations	249
	Notes	251
	Index	273

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.

Excitable Speech or A Promised Land a Perilous Journey

2009-02-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

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)

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.

Spirituality for Our Global Community or Race Against Time

2009-02-09T16:31:00.000-08:00

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.

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

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.

Motor Vehicle Collision Injuries or W E B DuBois

2009-02-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

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

Vulnerable Populations in the United States or Public Personnel Management

2009-02-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

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

1	A general framework to study vulnerable populations	1
2	The community determinants and mechanisms of vulnerability	32
3	Disparities in health care access, quality, and health status : the influence of individual risk factors	85
4	Disparities in health care access, quality, and health status : the influence of multiple risk factors	131
5	Current strategies to serve vulnerable populations	171
6	Resolving disparities in the United States	203

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.

From Freedom to Slavery or SWAT Battle Tactics

2009-02-06T00:54:00.000-08:00

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.

	About the Trial of Randy Weaver
	To Begin With
1	The Eye of the Wolf: The Tyranny of Justice	1
2	The Trial of Randy Weaver: The Tyranny of Government	13
3	Easy in the Harness: The Tyranny of Freedom	51
4	The Invisible Trap: The Tyranny of Fear	65
5	Mountain Climbers: The Tyranny of Work	77
6	The New King: The Tyranny of the Corporate Core	83
7	The New Indians: The Tyranny of Poverty	127
8	Tree Hugger: The Tyranny of Viewpoint	145
9	Eve's Return to the Garden: The Tyranny of Maleness	159
10	Redesigning the Human Mind: The Tyranny of the Media	177
11	Kingdom of the Self: The Tyranny of Time	195
	Acknowledgments	207
	Notes by Chapter	209
	About the Author	211

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.

Marx for Beginners or Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

2009-02-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

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."

After Victory or Migration Theory

2009-02-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

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.

The Serenity Prayer or State Directed Development

2009-02-02T09:14:00.000-08:00

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."

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.

	Introduction : states and industrialization in the global periphery	1
1	The colonial origins of a modern political economy : the Japanese lineage of Korea's cohesive-capitalist state	27
2	The rhee interregnum : saving South Korea for cohesive capitalism	62
3	A cohesive-capitalist state reimposed : Park Chung Hee and rapid industrialization	84
4	Invited dependency : fragmented state and foreign resources in Brazil's early industrialization	127
5	Grow now, pay later : state and indebted industrialization in modern Brazil	169
6	Origins of a fragmented-multiclass state and a sluggish economy : colonial India	221
7	India's fragmented-multiclass state and protected industrialization	257
8	Colonial Nigeria : origins of a neopatrimonial state and a commodity-exporting economy	291
9	Sovereign Nigeria : neopatrimonialism and failure of industrialization	329
	Conclusion : understanding states and state intervention in the global periphery	367

The Clean Tech Revolution or Good Neighbors Bad Times

2009-02-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity

Author: Ron Pernick

When industry giants such as GE, Toyota, and Sharp and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are making multibillion-dollar investments in clean technology, the message is clear. Developing clean technologies is no longer a social issue championed by environmentalists; it's a moneymaking enterprise moving solidly into the business mainstream. In fact, as the economy faces unprecedented challenges from high energy prices, resource shortages, and global environmental and security threats, clean tech—technologies designed to provide superior performance at a lower cost while creating significantly less waste than conventional offerings—promises to be the next engine of economic growth.

In The Clean Tech Revolution, authors Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder identify the major forces that have pushed clean tech from back-to-the-earth utopian dream to its current revolution among the inner circles of corporate boardrooms, on Wall Street trading floors, and in government offices around the globe. By highlighting eight major clean-tech sectors—solar energy, wind power, biofuels and biomaterials, green buildings, personal transportation, the smart grid, mobile applications, and water filtration—they uncover how investors, entrepreneurs, and individuals can profit from this next wave of technological innovation. Pernick and Wilder shine the spotlight on the winners among technologies, companies, and regions that are likely to reap the greatest benefits from clean tech—and they show you why the time to act is now.

Groundbreaking and authoritative, The Clean Tech Revolution is the must-read book to understand and profit from the cleantechnologies that are reshaping our fast-changing world.

The Motley Fool

For individual investors interested in profiting from this opportunity, The Clean Tech Revolution offers an excellent overview.

Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village

Author: Mimi Schwartz

Mimi Schwartz grew up on milkshakes and hamburgers—and her father’s boyhood stories. She rarely took the stories seriously. What was a modern American teenager supposed to make of these accounts of a village in Germany where, according to her father, “before Hitler, everyone got along”? It was only many years later, when she heard a remarkable story of the Torah from that very village being rescued by Christians on Kristallnacht, that Schwartz began to sense how much these stories might mean. Thus began a twelve-year quest that covered three continents as Schwartz sought answers in the historical records and among those who remembered that time. Welcomed into the homes of both the Jews who had fled the village fifty years earlier and the Christians who had remained, Schwartz peered into family albums, ate home-baked linzertorte (almost everyone served it!), and heard countless stories about life in one small village before, during, and after Nazi times. Sometimes stories overlapped, sometimes one memory challenged another, but always they seemed to muddy the waters of easy judgment. Small stories of decency are often overlooked in the wake of a larger historic narrative. Yet we need these stories to provide a moral compass, especially in times of political extremism, when fear and hatred strain the bonds of loyalty and neighborly compassion. How, this book asks, do neighbors maintain a modicum of decency in such times? How do we negotiate evil and remain humane when, as in the Nazi years, hate rules?

The Washington Times

A fascinating picture, atypical of so much written on the subject. Blessed with good antennae and a skeptical mind, Ms. Schwartz is not an innocent abroad. Never gullible or credulous, but open to the evidence of her own eyes and ears, she is an ideal guide to her father's lost world, which for so long she resisted. . . . It is a measure of her nuanced approach and refusal to settle for pat, simplistic answers that her book finds and genuinely values a rare point of light in that darkest of times without ever exaggerating its overall significance.

an Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Shofar

Mimi Schwartz . . . has written a brilliant book that is 'not a Holocaust book,' not a book about the annihilation of European Jewry. And yet, if a Holocaust book should transmit how dear and how fragile every human life is-if it should transmit our infinite responsibility to one another in the light of the Nazi assault on the Infinite One-it is a Holocaust book, a Jewish book, a most human book. In any case, it is a book that should be read by all.

-Michael Berenbaum - Jewish Journal of Los Angeles

Schwartz . . . writes beautifully; her words flow, characters are portrayed seemingly effortlessly and she makes vivid the tensions between the German generations and between those Germans who insist on remembering what others would equally insistently forget. The result is most satisfying, the tale of a woman in search of her roots who finds what she is looking for-and so much more; but the story is much larger than that. It is a vivid portrayal of good neighbors who experienced the worst of times that tested themselves and each other and that scattered fragments of the truth of that time to the four corners of the earth, seemingly waiting for one fine writer to unite them.

Kirkus Reviews

The American-born daughter of a German Jew tells the story of her father's tiny village, where charity mostly trumped hate during Hitler's reign. Schwartz (Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed, 2002, etc.) compiles material from personal interviews, local archives and Holocaust literature into an eloquent and affectionate account of Benheim (a fictional name). Jews and Catholics had lived as friends in this small southwestern farming community for centuries, until Nazis from a nearby town shattered the interracial and interreligious peace by destroying the local synagogue on Kristallnacht in 1938. A number of the town's Jews had left the year before; some established a refugee community in Israel, others emigrated to America, as Schwartz's father did. Many chose to stay and were aided by their Christian neighbors; nonetheless, almost a third of Benheim's Jewish population eventually died in concentration camps. Schwartz's main concern is to distinguish between historical truth and inherited nostalgia, to find out whether Benheim really was a uniquely peaceful hamlet of loyal neighbors who rejected the Nazis's systematized stereotyping and brutality. Her final tally reveals a town in which personal decency was frequently upheld. The village's most cherished story (recounted in several versions) is of a policeman who hid the synagogue's Torah during Kristallnacht, then gave it to his Jewish neighbors to take to Israel. Wisely conceding that village life during the Holocaust wasn't always so generous, Schwartz also includes stories of Christians turning their heads so as not to see the deportations and of the Nazi-appointed mayor erecting a swastika over the village. The town contained"contradictions that refuse a neat labeling," the author acknowledges, to the chagrin of Holocaust scholars who favor more official records. As she got to know the surviving villagers, she writes, "their stories [made] my need for judgment recede." Schwartz's tone is gentle, her prose brilliantly clear and her insights keen, if not entirely new. A ruminative exploration of the murkiness of collective memory.

List of Illustrations     xiii
Author's Note     xv
Close to Home
Treadmill to the Past     3
Anonymous Translation     8
At the Nachmittag     17
Kaffeeklatsch     24
Joie de Vivre     35
Four Stories of the Torah     48
The Revolving Room     59
An Ocean Away
Off the Record     75
A Little Respect, Please     95
The Good Raincoat     102
Hedwig, Fritz, and "Schtumpela"     113
The Second Generation     122
Back and Forth
Willy from Baltimore     139
Five Kilometers Away     151
Katherine of Dorn     164
Truth Transposed     175
What Willy's Neighbor Says...     177
The Red Album     180
Where Legend Ends     193
At My Father's Grave     203
End Points
The Other Miriam     213
Three Little Girls     221
Yes or No?     234
The Celebration     243
Acknowledgments     259

The Keys to the White House or Good Intentions Bad Outcomes

2009-01-30T22:48:00.000-08:00

The Keys to the White House: A Surefire Guide to Predicting the Next President

Author: Allan J Lichtman

About the Author:
Allan J. Lichtman is professor of American history at American University, a veteran political commentator, and author of the forthcoming White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (2008)

Jack Germond - Baltimore Sun

This is a must book for political junkies who want to answer one important question about any campaign: Who's going to win?

Toronto Sun

If you're into American presidential politics, "The Keys to the White House" is a must, and fun, read.

Roll Call

Of the hundreds of books written about presidential elections, one of the best is Allan J. Lichtman's "The Keys to the White House".

What People Are Saying

William Schneider
Do me a favor. Don't read this book. Because if you do, it could put all of us pundits and political consultants out of business. Allan Lichtman has some nerve, revealing our trade secrets to the great unwashed public. Including the biggest secret of all, which is that the presidential vote is simple, rational, and highly predictable.

David Broder
For generations, politicians, pundits, and poll-takers have been seeking their version of the Holy Grail--a surefire, guaranteed way to predict presidential elections well ahead of time. It may have been found in this book.

	Foreword
	Introduction
1	Logic of the Keys: How Presidential Elections Really Work	1
2	Turning the Keys to the Presidency	19
3	Civil War and Reconstruction	49
4	The Gilded Age	65
5	Rise and Fall of Progressivism	81
6	Depression, War, and Cold War	99
7	New Directions, War, and Scandal	123
8	Reagan and Beyond	143
9	Lessons of the Keys	159
10	Toward a New Presidential Politics	171
11	How to Bet in '96	177
	Notes	183
	Index	189
	About the Author	197

Interesting book: Heal Your Heart or Generation Extra Large

Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: Social Policy, Informality, and Economic Growth in Mexico

Author: Santiago Levy

Despite various reform efforts, Mexico has experienced economic stability but little growth. Today more than half of all Mexican workers are employed informally, and one out of every four is poor. Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes argues that incoherent social programs significantly contribute to this state of affairs and it suggests reforms to improve the situation.

Over the past decade, Mexico has channeled an increasing number of resources into subsidizing the creation of low-productivity, informal jobs. These social programs have hampered growth, fostered illegality, and provided erratic protection to workers, trapping many in poverty. Informality has boxed Mexico into a dilemma: provide benefits to informal workers at the expense of lower growth and reduced productivity or leave millions of workers without benefits. Former finance official Santiago Levy proposes how to convert the existing system of social security for formal workers into universal social entitlements. He advocates eliminating wage-based social security contributions and raising consumption taxes on higher-income households to simultaneously increase the rate of growth of GDP, reduce inequality, and improve benefits for workers.

Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes considers whether Mexico can build on the success of Progresa-Oportunidades, a targeted poverty alleviation program that originated in Mexico and has been replicated in over 25 countries as well as in New York City. It sets forth a plan to reform social and economic policy, an essential element of a more equitable and sustainable development strategy for Mexico.

What People Are Saying

Nancy Birdsall
"This is a rare study linking misguided social programs to low productivity and wages and disappointing growth in Mexico. Clear, compelling, and worrying, justifying a bold policy prescription, from an author who knows his economics, his politics, and his Mexico."--(Nancy Birdsall, President, Center for Global Development, and former Executive Vice President of the Inter-American Development Bank)

Ravi Kanbur
"The central thesis of this monograph is that the way Mexico's social programs are structured vis-à-vis the labor market is inequitable and inefficient. This excellent book argues that such programs, which the author strongly supports, should be delivered in a manner that does not discriminate between different types of employment arrangements. Benefits should be financed with general taxes, not employment-specific contributions by firms and workers. It will become a standard reference in the development literature because although the focus of the study is Mexico, the issues considered are faced by most developing countries, in Latin America and beyond."--(Ravi Kanbur, T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs and Professor of Economics, Cornell University, and former Chief Economist for Africa at the World Bank)

Franзois Bourguignon
"Santiago Levy demonstrates how important it is that we consider the systemic implications of individual actions when designing economic and social policies. His comprehensive analytical framework, his thorough interpretation of an unusual data set, and his acute sense of how real people behave combine to make for a fascinating and constructive critique of Mexico's social protection system that would also apply to several other emerging economies."--(François Bourguignon, Director, Paris School of Economics, and former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank)

James D. Wolfensohn
"Santiago Levy makes a compelling case for the reform of the Mexican social protection system. He provides a brilliant in-depth analysis of the shortcomings of the current approach that fails to achieve the basic goal of protecting those in need and also seriously harms Mexico's growth prospects."--(James D. Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank)

Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant or Novus Ordo Seclorum

2009-01-29T17:36:00.000-08:00

Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography

Author: Renee Winegarten

When they first met in 1794, shortly after the Reign of Terror, Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant were both in their twenties, both married, and both outsiders. She was already celebrated and a published writer, whereas he, though ambitious, was unknown. This compelling dual biography tells the extraordinary story of their union and disunion, set against a European background of momentous events and dramatic social and cultural change. Renee Winegarten offers new perspectives on each of the protagonists, revealing their rare qualities and their all-too-human failings as well as the complex nature of their debt to one another.

Their passionate and productive relationship endured on and off for seventeen years. Winegarten traces their story largely through their own words—letters and autobiographical writings—and illuminates the deep intellectual and visceral bond they shared despite disparate personalities and gifts. Exploring their relationships with Napoleon and the Bourbons, their different responses to the momentous upheavals of postrevolutionary France, their support of individual liberty with order, and more, the book concludes with an appreciation of de Staël’s and Constant’s singular contributions to a new literature and to the history of liberty.

The Washington Post - Michael Dirda

Winegarten tells the story of de Stael and Constant's "marriage of true minds" with absorbing detail…For many readers, I suspect that the names Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant are, in effect, just names. If that's the case, take heart: Renee Winegarten's fine dual biography will bring them to blazing life.

Marie Marmo Mullaney - Library Journal

This "dual biography" is the first full-length exploration of the tempestuous 17-year partnership between Madame de Stael, the most celebrated woman writer of the Napoleonic period, and up-and-coming liberal politician, journalist, and theorist Benjamin Constant. Literary critic Winegarten (Accursed Politics) uses letters, diaries, and published accounts to reveal the pair's innermost thoughts and feelings on love, marriage, and politics, skillfully interweaving the story of their parallel lives against the backdrop of the social and political maneuverings of post-revolutionary France. While the two were never a married couple, they consulted, advised, inspired, and used each other, and each responded in distinct ways to the new Napoleonic order. At times, the complexities of French politics in this period may make the book difficult to follow for all but the most engaged and informed readers, yet Winegarten's recounting of the nature of this partnership and clear examination of the pair's political ideas, writings, and emotions make her book an important contribution to the field. The author concludes that despite their private shortcomings, these two should be remembered and admired for their key contributions to Western liberalism in its formative phase. Students of French literary and cultural history will best appreciate this highly readable, if occasionally complex, narrative. Recommended for academic collections and large public libraries.

Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origin of the Constitution

Author: Forrest McDonald

This is the first major interpretation of the framing of the Constitution to appear in more than two decades. Forrest McDonald, widely considered one of the foremost historians of the Constitution and of the early national period, reconstructs the intellectual world of the Founding Fathers--including their understanding of law, history political philosophy, and political economy, and their firsthand experience in public affairs--and then analyzes their behavior in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in light of that world. No one has attempted to do so on such a scale before. McDonald's principal conclusion is that, though the Framers brought a variety of ideological and philosophical positions to bear upon their task of building a "new order of the ages," they were guided primarily by theiy own experience, their wisdom, and their common sense.

William and Mary Quarterly

Thoroughly impressive. A book that is consistently enlightening and one that, more than any of McDonald's previous works, stands as a monument to his remarkable talents.

Georgia Historical Quarterly

As provocative as it is difficult to put down.

The New York Times Book Review

A witty and energetic study of the ideas and passions of the Framers.

The Kingdom of God Is Within You or Babylon by Bus

2009-01-28T12:23:00.000-08:00

The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Author: Leo Tolstoy

The soul-searching book that inspired Gandhi to embrace the concept of passive resistance, Tolstoy's 1894 polemic outlines a radical, well-reasoned revision of traditional Christian thinking. The revered novelist and political thinker denounces violent revolution, calling upon readers to rely upon their inner divinity for the strength to effect social change.

Babylon by Bus: Or, the True Story of Two Friends Who Gave Up Their Valuable Franchise Selling "Yankees Suck" T-shirts at Fenway to Find Meaning and Adventure in Iraq

Author: Ray Lemoin

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

Ghosts of the Fireground or Federalist Papers

2009-01-27T07:11:00.000-08:00

Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Calling of a Wildland Firefighter

Author: Peter M Leschak

A firefighter's remarkable first–hand account of the lessons of tragedy, courage and faith in the epic struggle between man and fire.

In April of 2000, on the brink of one of the most ferocious fire seasons ever recorded, Peter Leschak discovers the diary of Father Pernin, one of the few survivors of a wildfire that hit Peshtigo, Wisconsin, in 1871. Throughout this harrowing summer, Leschak takes us through Pernin's dangerous clash with the Great Peshtigo Fire while reflecting on his own journey from the ministry to fireground leader. In so doing, Leschak captures the sacred and mysterious pull of the fireground and breathes life into one of the most astounding and little–known disasters to ever hit this country.

Ghosts of the Fireground weaves seamlessly between Father Pernin's struggle with an inferno so hot that not even the Peshtigo River guaranteed safety to Peter Leschak's breathtaking frontline battles 130 years later, offering a compelling look at the courageous and noble pursuit that is wildland firefighting.

The New Yorker

If almost no one has heard of the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871, which consumed an entire Wisconsin town and killed twelve hundred people, that's because it occurred at the same time as the Great Chicago Fire. But Peshtigo was a far more potent example of just how devastating and uncontrollable fire can be, which is why it fascinates the author. In this curious blend of history and autobiography, Leschak, himself a wildland firefighter, intersperses an account of the Peshtigo disaster with stories of his own experience on the fireground. The result is often formally awkward, but the material is gripping, and Leschak does an excellent job of evoking both the terror and the majesty of a raging fire. In clean, understated prose, he describes the world of the firefighter, in which endless days of waiting give way to hours of intensity and exaltation. Firefighters, Leschak suggests, may not like fires, but they're never happier than when they're in the middle of one.

Publishers Weekly

What is it about their work that makes firefighters so devoted addicted, even to the calling? Leschak (Trial by Wildfire), a 20-year veteran wildfire fighter, attempts to answer this question in his contemplative memoir. He focuses primarily on the spring of 2000, when he led a helitack crew (a rapid-response helicopter unit) battling especially fierce and persistent wildfires in western Montana. That was also when Leschak discovered the diaries of Father Peter Pernin, a survivor of the 1871 fire that leveled Peshtigo, Wis. He threads the story of the Peshtigo fire throughout the book, along with other historical facts about American forest fires and the formation of a wildfire subculture. As he describes the dangers faced by his own team, the plainspoken, articulate Leschak explores the psychology and spirituality of fire fighting particularly the exhilaration of life-threatening situations citing sources as diverse as Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James and Walker Percy. Leschak had trained to become an evangelical minister in East Texas, and he recalls his conversion to evangelism at age 18, after listening to a radio preacher; his growing disillusionment with the narrow-mindedness of his Bible college; and his revelatory discovery of his true life' s work. In spite of its prominence in the subtitle, the story of the Peshtigo fire is woven casually and sporadically into the book; those looking for a sustained history should turn to another book on the Peshtigo fire being publishing the same month (Firestorm at Peshtigo, Forecasts, June 24). Nonetheless, Leschak' s action scenes crackle with energy, and his down-to-earth account of his spiritual quest should strike a chord with many. (Aug.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

From Leschak (Letters from Side Lake, not reviewed, etc.), a good look into the mind of one wildland firefighter, his motivations and methods of operation. Though there are episodes throughout about fighting "magnificent, dangerous fires in remote and rugged terrain," what Leschak focuses on here are the questions of why he chose such a supremely high-risk job and whether he measures up to the quick-thinking, life-saving acts of Reverend Peter Pernin during the hellfire that struck Peshtigo, Wisconsin, in 1871, killing an estimated 1,200 people and burning 1,800 square miles. Leschak, too, had trained for the ministry, but he bridled at the authoritarianism and yearned for more direct personal responsibility in his life. There's plenty of zeal-touched imagery here, from "the romantic attraction of hardship and hazard amid a corpulent society obsessed with mammon" through phrases like "grasp the hot iron," referring to a trial by fire believed by Saxons to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. It might be a stretch to say that the plain-speaking Leschak has a death wish ("I sure wouldn't want to miss it. Miss what? Let's slice to the core: miss the chance to die"), though on the daring meter he rates very high. "Action," he says, "is the crux of sentient life," and the crazy-sublime world of wildfires is just the place to find it, though he admits that "anyone who does it for the money is either desperately derelict or requires remedial arithmetic." Like Pernin, who led dozens to safety during the Peshtigo conflagration, Leschak "accepted the duty of decision" by becoming a crew chief. The urgency and drama that infuse his story never feel overstated but aptly fit the circumstances.History, danger, and courage, intriguingly rendered.

New interesting book: Rosso de novelo Realização de Excelência em Levantamento de Fundo

Federalist Papers

Author: Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist Papers--85 essays published in the winter of 1787-8 in the New York press--are some of the most crucial and defining documents in American political history, laying out the principles that still guide our democracy today. The three authors--Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay--were respectively the first Secretary of the Treasury, the fourth President, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in American history. Each had played a crucial role in the events of the American Revolution, and their essays make a compelling case for a new and united nation, governed under a written Constitution that endures to this day. The Federalist Papers are an indispensable guide to the intentions of the founding fathers and a canonical text in the development of western political thought. This is the first edition to explain the many classical, mythological, and historical references in the text, and to pay full attention to the erudition of the three authors, which enabled them to place the infant American republic in a long tradition of self-governing states.

The Welfare State Reader or Managerial Epidemiology for Health Care Organizations

2009-01-26T01:56:00.000-08:00

The Welfare State Reader

Author: Christopher Pierson

'The Welfare State Reader’ has rapidly established itself as vital source of outstanding original research. In the second edition of this highly respected reader, Pierson and Castles have comprehensively overhauled the content, bringing it wholly up-to-date with contemporary discussions about this most crucial area of social and political life. The book includes almost twenty new carefully-edited selections, all reflecting the very latest thinking and research in welfare state studies. These readings are organised around a series of current debates – on welfare regimes, on globalization, on Europeanization, on demographic change and the political challenges of the new century. There are also two substantial sections devoted to the future of welfare – assessing the new risks and new opportunities that confront policy-makers in an increasingly complex political environment. Each section, as well as the volume overall, is set in context by an editorial introduction.

As well as bringing together classic debates, The Welfare State Reader constitutes an invaluable guide to what is happening at the cutting-edge of welfare research. Read either independently or alongside he third edition of Pierson’s ‘Beyond the Welfare State?', it will give the reader an unrivalled overview of debates surrounding the welfare state.
"

	Acknowledgements
	Editors' Note
	Editors' Introduction	1
I	Approaches to Welfare
	The First Welfare State?	11
	The Welfare State in Historical Perspective	18
	Citizenship and Social Class	32
	Universalism versus Selection	42
	What is Social Justice?	51
	The Fiscal Crisis of the State	63
	Some Contradictions of the Modern Welfare State	67
	The Power Resources Model	77
	The Meaning of the Welfare State	90
	The Two Wars against Poverty	96
	The New Politics of the New Poverty	107
	Feminism and Social Policy	119
	The Patriarchal Welfare State	133
II	Debates and Issues
	Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism	154
	The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism	170
	Towards a European Welfare State?	190
	Is the European Social Model Fragmenting?	207
	Social Welfare and Competitiveness	234
	Negative Integration: States and the Loss of Boundary Control	254
	Challenges to Welfare: External Constraints	257
	National Economic Governance	263
	Social Security around the World	271
	On Averting the Old Age Crisis	281
	Intergenerational Conflict and the Welfare State: American and British Perspectives	293
	The New Politics of the Welfare State	309
	Welfare State Retrenchment Revisited	320
III	The Futures of Welfare
	High-Risk Strategy	337
	The Implications of Ecological Thought for Social Welfare	343
	Basic Income and the Two Dilemmas of the Welfare State	355
	The Welfare State and Postmodernity	360
	Positive Welfare	369
	Subject Index	380
	Name Index	400

Look this: Le Lecteur de Transformations Global :une Introduction à la Discussion de Globalisation

Managerial Epidemiology for Health Care Organizations

Author: Brian W Amy

Managerial Epidemiology for Health Care Organizations provides readers with a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the application of epidemiological principles to the delivery of health care services and management of health care organizations. As health administration becomes evidence- and population-based, it becomes critical to understand the impact of disease on populations of people in a service area. This book also addresses the need of health organizations’ to demonstrate emergency preparedness and respond to bioterrorism threats. A follow-up to the standard text in the field, this book introduces core epidemiology principles and clearly illustrates their essential applications in planning, evaluating, and managing health care for populations. This book demonstrates how health care executives can incorporate the practice of epidemiology into their various management functions and is rich with current examples, concepts, and case studies that reinforce the essential theories, methods, and applications of managerial epidemiology.

Allen Brinker

This text contains equal parts basic epidemiology and an overview of descriptive statistics for healthcare utilization. As stated, the intention is to introduce the student or healthcare administrator/manager to the notion of healthcare for populations. Healthcare administrators and students are the intended audience. The first section includes a complete primer on epidemiology, with chapters on the current nomenclature and science of health assessment and health economics. The authors should be complimented on the ease at which mathematical statistics are described and outlined using real life examples. All new students of epidemiology can benefit from this section of the text. The second section includes chapters on the assessment of healthcare utilization based on setting of care (ER, hospital-adult, hospital-pediatric, worksite) and the specific needs of the aged. It is, however, a shortcoming that the authors do not explain in substantial detail the pervasive impact poverty and ethnicity maintained in the assessment of health and healthcare utilization and the limitations of observational information in general. The successful implementation of information from controlled studies (evidence-based medicine) into clinical practice remains the challenge for a system whose public perception is that of managed cost and not managed care. The first section is an enjoyable and readable primer on epidemiology. The second section, with chapters on utilization of healthcare, is informative and provides the groundwork for anyone inclined to begin study of healthcare utilization by objective means. The book does not, however, lend itself to the design or redesign of any healthcaresystem. The authors, both of whom have outstanding credentials and experience in this area, should be credited with an excellent, basic textbook, but perhaps an over-reaching title.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer: Allen Brinker, MD, MS (Private Practice)
Description: This text contains equal parts basic epidemiology and an overview of descriptive statistics for healthcare utilization.
Purpose: As stated, the intention is to introduce the student or healthcare administrator/manager to the notion of healthcare for populations.
Audience: Healthcare administrators and students are the intended audience.
Features: The first section includes a complete primer on epidemiology, with chapters on the current nomenclature and science of health assessment and health economics. The authors should be complimented on the ease at which mathematical statistics are described and outlined using real life examples. All new students of epidemiology can benefit from this section of the text. The second section includes chapters on the assessment of healthcare utilization based on setting of care (ER, hospital-adult, hospital-pediatric, worksite) and the specific needs of the aged. It is, however, a shortcoming that the authors do not explain in substantial detail the pervasive impact poverty and ethnicity maintained in the assessment of health and healthcare utilization and the limitations of observational information in general. The successful implementation of information from controlled studies (evidence-based medicine) into clinical practice remains the challenge for a system whose public perception is that of managed cost and not managed care.
Assessment: The first section is an enjoyable and readable primer on epidemiology. The second section, with chapters on utilization of healthcare, is informative and provides the groundwork for anyone inclined to begin study of healthcare utilization by objective means. The book does not, however, lend itself to the design or redesign of any healthcare system. The authors, both of whom have outstanding credentials and experience in this area, should be credited with an excellent, basic textbook, but perhaps an over-reaching title.

Rating

4 Stars! from Doody

What the Anti Federalists Were For or The Early American Republic 1789 1829

2009-01-24T20:37:00.000-08:00

What the Anti-Federalists Were For

Author: Herbert J Storing

The Anti-Federalists, in Herbert J. Storing's view, are somewhat paradoxically entitled to be counted among the Founding Fathers and to share in the honor and study devoted to the founding. "If the foundations of the American polity was laid by the Federalists," he writes, "the Anti-Federalist reservations echo through American history; and it is in the dialogue, not merely in the Federalist victory, that the country's principles are to be discovered." It was largely through their efforts, he reminds us, that the Constitution was so quickly amended to include a bill of rights.

Storing here offers a brilliant introduction to the thought and principles of the Anti-Federalists as they were understood by themselves and by other men and women of their time. His comprehensive exposition restores to our understanding the Anti-Federalist share in the founding its effect on some of the enduring themes and tensions of American political life. The concern with big government and infringement of personal liberty one finds in the writings of these neglected Founders strikes a remarkably timely note.

Preface by Murray Dry
1. Introduction
2. Conservatives
3. The Small Republic
4. Union
5. The Federalist Reply
6. The Aristocratic Tendency of the Constitution
7. Complex Government
8. Bill of Rights
9. Conclusion
Works Frequently Cited
Notes
Appendix: Contents of The Complete Anti-Federalist
Index

New interesting book: Guide To Operating Systems Enhanced Edition or Workflow Management

The Early American Republic, 1789-1829

Author: Paul E Johnson

Synthesizing political, social, and cultural aspects of early U.S. history, The Early American Republic, 1789-1829 provides a unique and integrated overview of the era. Focusing on the politics and process of nation-making and the birth of American market society, the book addresses two main subjects. First, it recounts the history of national politics from the presidency of George Washington through the inauguration of Andrew Jackson. During that period, the Founders struggled to make a national republic, then watched as their United States became bigger, more democratic, and more divided than anything they had envisioned. Second, the book describes the beginnings of American market society, demonstrating how many Americans began to organize their lives around earning, buying, and selling. The Early American Republic, 1789-1829 illustrates the formative years of American nationhood, democracy, and free-market capitalism. While most people consider these to be inevitably American, the book demonstrates that none were natural, inevitable, or undisputed in 1789.
Examining all aspects of the Early Republic, the book explores such topics as family life, religion, the construction and reconstruction of gender systems, the rise of popular print and other forms of communication, and evolving attitudes toward slavery and race. It also covers the social history of market society, territorial expansion, and the growth of slavery, offering detailed region-, race-, and class-specific considerations of family life and religion. Providing a brief, comprehensive, and clearly written synthesis of American political, economic, social, and cultural development, The Early American Republic,1789-1829 is ideal for courses in the early national period.

Rogue Economics or Holy Roller

2009-01-23T15:24:00.000-08:00

Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality

Author: Loretta Napoleoni

Economist and syndicated journalist Loretta Napoleoni argues that the world is undergoing rapid and unexpected great transformations fueled by what she calls rogue economics. Eagerly awaited around the world (translation rights have already been sold throughout Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia), Napoleoni's account is based on top-to-bottom primary-source interviews from banking executives in New York to Russian prostitutes to London morgue workers, and grounded in the author's personal experience in international finance. From Eastern Europe's booming sex trade industry to China's "online sweatshops," from al-Qaeda's underwriters to America's subprime mortgage lending scandal, Rogue Economics exposes the paradoxical economic connections of the new global marketplace.

Loretta Napoleoni is the author of the best-selling book Terror Inc.: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism, which has been translated into twelve languages. One of the world's leading experts on money laundering and terror financing, she has worked as London correspondent and columnist for Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, El Pais, and Le Monde. A former Fulbright scholar, she holds a PhD in economics, an MA in international relations and economics from Johns Hopkins University, and an MPhil in terrorism from the London School of Economics. For her work as a consultant for the commodities markets, she traveled regularly to Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries, where she has met top financial and political leaders. She lives in London.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. After looking into how terrorism gets paid for (Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism), Napoleoni tackles the whole of capitalism's dark side: the economics of illegal, criminal and terrorist activities worldwide. There's no shortage of material, including the sex trade of Eastern Europe, internet fraud, piracy (both nautical and intellectual), human slavery, drugs and even the subprime mortgage lending scandal. Unsettling, eye-opening statistics abound-one third of all fish eaten in the UK is illegally poached; today, 27 million slaves worldwide generate annual profits of $31 billion; up until 9/11, 80 percent of the $1.5 trillion underworld economy was laundered through the US (the Patriot Act moved much of this business to Europe)-and Napoleoni's bold analysis begs controversy. From page one, she ties the illegal business boom directly to the spread of democracy, pointing to the fall of the Berlin Wall as the moment when "rogue economics" were unleashed in their current, globe-enveloping iteration. Timely and fascinating, Napoleoni's top-notch reporting, in which her attention turns from Viagra to blood diamonds to the banana price wars in a few pages, works in the vein of Freakonomics and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, but much grimmer. Like those, this volume doesn't provide many answers, but the questions it raises are profound.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book review: Diagnosis for Organizational Change or Mandarins of the Future

Holy Roller: Growing up in the Church of Knock down, Drag Out: or, How I Quit Loving a Blue-Eyed Jesus

Author: Diane Wilson

In this rollicking memoir, Diane Wilson-a Texas Gulf Coast shrimper and the author of the highly acclaimed An Unreasonable Woman-takes readers back to her childhood in rural Texas and into her family of Holy Rollers. By night at tent revivals, Wilson gets religion from Brother Dynamite, an ex-con who finds Jesus in a baloney sandwich and handles masses of squirming poisonous snakes under the protection of the Holy Ghost. By day, Wilson scratches secret messages to Jesus into the paint on her windowsill and lies down in the middle of the road to see how long she can sleep in between passing trucks.
Holy Roller is a fast-paced, hilarious, sometimes shocking experience readers won't soon forget. It is the prequel to Wilson's first book, telling the story of the Texas childhood of a fierce little girl who will grow up to become An Unreasonable Woman, take on Big Industry, and win. One of the best Southern writers of her generation, Wilson's voice twangs with a style and accent all its own, as true and individual as her boundless originality and wild youth.

Publishers Weekly

In her latest, shrimper and memoirist Wilson (An Unreasonable Woman) unspools the tale of her 1950s small-town upbringing along the Gulf Coast of Texas, the daughter of third-generation shrimpers. As in her first book, Wilson writes with a stylized cadence, sans extraneous punctuation, that readers will either take to or not: "Grandma ate Fritos in a glass of buttermilk for dinner and supper and that plus giving the radio evangelist all her shrimp-heading money was driving two of her daughters batty and two not so much." Her father, "a man's man who didn't talk unnecessarily to women," and is always off shrimping, leaves her to be raised by her eccentric mother and grandmother ("the original Waste Not Want Not-er... nothing was so low that it didn't get cooked into something else"), who nevertheless imbue her with strong, transcendent values. Meanwhile, a cast of characters that includes her Pentecostal Aunt Silver ("Pentecostals had faith and faith was the absence of planning") and a snake-handling Brother Dynamite lead her through a clash between the Church of Jesus Loves You and an upstart backwoods congregation. Wilson's distinctive voice makes for some whip-smart passages, and her southern Gothic world, a colorful and unpredictable place, is fully identifiable in its commitment to vice-tight family love and responsibility to some higher power.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Janet Ingraham Dwyer - Library Journal

These two vivid memoirs, in very distinct voices, recollect childhood in the context-well, in the clutches-of all-encompassing religion. Wilson's fierce determination and passion characterized her first memoir, An Unreasonable Woman, about her David vs. Goliath fight against a polluting Texas chemical company. Now she delves into her childhood in a hardscrabble Pentecostal shrimping family, surrounded by fire-and-brimstone preachers, radio evangelists, tongue-speakers, snake-handlers, and her own relatives-believing women and fallen-away men. Wilson's prose is breathtaking in its dexterity and blunt poetry, as when she recounts being conscripted as a scout to accompany her grandfather and Aunt Patty, under cover of night, to break into a game warden's riverside shack in pursuit of an incriminating gun. Wilson evokes in her rural Gulf Coast setting an exotic place at the intersection of transcendence and squalor, coated in oyster dust and the conviction that God saves (the Pentecostal believers, and no one else).

In contrast to Wilson's intensity, Turner offers a gentle, amused-and slightly bemused-recollection of his own Christian fundamentalist upbringing. His story begins on the day his four-year-old, formerly Methodist self gets affixed with a clip-on necktie and whooshed off to a new, independent Baptist church and ends, more or less, the day he receives an award at his high school graduation for being "Most Christ-like" (out of a class of four). In between, the author reflects on his pastor's overly loud sermons, his own struggle with the sin of dilly-dallying, and the foibles of growing up in a family that would, for instance, celebrate Christmas by throwing apoorly-thought-through birthday party for Jesus, featuring a cake with 33 lit candles. As reflected in his subtitle, Turner, who has written several books on Christian life, came through the experience with faith intact. Churched would have benefited from more exploration of how and why, but it is a solid, poignant, and funny memoir nonetheless. Both books are recommended for public libraries, and Wilson's is essential.

Harvard Business Review on Compensation or Nat Turners Slave Rebellion

2009-01-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

Harvard Business Review on Compensation

Author: Alfred Rappaport

The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series is designed to bring today'smanagers 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.

This collection will help managers and human resource professionals weigh the pros and cons of different compensation plans and provide a framework for thinking about this important aspect of the war for talent. The articles discuss a variety of compensation-related issues such as: making salaries public, stock options, executive compensation, and incentive plans.

Booknews

Reprints eight articles published in the that explore issues related to employee compensation, such as making salaries public, stock options, and incentive plans. Topics include the salary system at Egon Zehnder recruiting, how to link executive pay with performance, and six dangerous myths about pay. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion: Including the 1831 Confessions

Author: Herbert Aptheker

The first full-length study of the bloodiest slave uprising in U.S. history, this meticulously researched document explores the nature of Southern society in the early 19th century and the conditions that led to the rebellion. Aptheker's book includes Turner's "Confessions," recorded before his execution in 1831.

John Glenn or Twenty Five Lessons in Citizenship

2009-01-21T04:58:00.000-08:00

John Glenn: Young Astronaut

Author: Michael Burgan

Dear Reader:

The Childhood of Famous Americans series, sixty-five years old in 1997, chronicles the early years of famous American men and women in an accessible manner. Each book is faithful in spirit to the values and experiences that influenced the person's development. History is fleshed out with fictionalized details, and conversations have been added to make the stories come alive to today's reader, but every reasonable effort has been made to make the stories consistent with the events, ethics, and character of their subjects.

These books reaffirm the importance of our American heritage. We hope you learn to love the heroes and heroines who helped shape this great country. And by doing so, we hope you also develop a lasting love for the nation that gave them the opportunity to make their dreams come true. It will do the same for you.

Happy Reading!

The Editors

Books about: 300 Best Chocolate Recipes or Thai Cooking

Twenty-Five Lessons in Citizenship

Author: DL Hennessey

This book has helped countless immigrants gain citizenship since its first publication in 1925

Twenty-Five Lessons in Citizenship offers clear, concise, and accurate information about U.S. history and the make-up of national, county, and city governments for people who are studying to become citizens of the United States. In addition to the lessons, this guide gives the complete text of the U.S. Constitution.

The Seventies or Selected Political Speeches

2009-01-20T02:07:00.000-08:00

The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics

Author: Bruce J Schulman

Sweeping away misconceptions about the "Me Decade," Bruce Schulman offers a fast-paced, wide-ranging, and brilliant examination of the political, cultural, social, and religious upheavals of the 1970s. Arguing that it was one of the most important of the postwar twentieth-century decades, despite its reputation as an eminently forgettable period, Schulman reconstructs public events and private lives, high culture and low, analyzing not only presidential politics and national policy but also the broader social and cultural experiences that transformed American life. Here are the names, faces, and movements that gave birth to the world we now live in-from Nixon and Carter to The Godfather and the Ramones; from Billie Jean King and Phyllis Schlafly to NOW and the ERA; from the Energy Crisis to Roe v. Wade. The Seventies is an astutely provocative reexamination of a misunderstood era.

Book review: MCITP Self Paced Training Kit or Word 2002 for Dummies

Selected Political Speeches

Author: Marcus Tullius Cicero

As the Roman Republic lurched to its close, amid corruption, ruthless power struggles and gross inequality, Cicero produced some of the most stirring and eloquent speeches ever written. Whether he is quashing the Cataline conspiracy, defending the poet Archias or railing against Mark Antony in the Philippics - the magnificent speeches in defence of liberty that cost him his life - Cicero vividly evokes for us the cut and thrust of the Roman Assembly, Senate and court rooms. This excellent modern translation also enables readers to understand why Cicero was for centuries a major influence on prose writers and political thinkers of every kind.

How Congress Works or The Revolt of the Cockroach People

2009-01-19T14:54:00.000-08:00

How Congress Works: And Why You Should Care

Author: Lee H Hamilton

An inside look at the way Congress works and how it impacts the lives of all Americans, by an eminent former Congressman.

Publishers Weekly

Remember that "how a bill becomes law" charts in your high school civics class? It doesn't begin to describe the "messy" process that really operates in Congress, according to Hamilton, a former congressman from Indiana who was respected on both sides of the aisle. He offers a strong defense of the institution he served from 1965 to 1999. This basic primer details the history of Congress, its importance and some of the critical actions it has taken-from the Tariff Act of 1790, which established duties on imported goods, to landmark laws of the 1960s, such as the Voting Rights Act and the bills that established Medicare and Medicaid. Hamilton also describes the "complicated and untidy" process by which Congress really works and why we "need more people who know how to practice the art of politics." Congress, he argues, acts "as the people's voice against unchecked power[;] it is the guarantor of liberty." The author is not uncritical of Congress, offering several suggestions as to how that body could improve itself. But here and elsewhere in the book, his suggestions and arguments fail to scratch much below the surface. It's hard to disagree with the statements that congressional discourse should be more civil and that citizens should be more active in politics, but Hamilton fails to address the causes of these and other problems. Still, in a cynical age, and a time of increasing presidential authority, it's encouraging to see a true, reasonable believer call for recognizing Congress as a necessary pillar of American democracy. Parents should send this primer off with their kids to college. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Polling data since the 1950s demonstrates that, of all branches of the national government, Congress consistently ranks as the least popular or trusted. Recent studies have found that such poor opinion is a function of the public's ignorance of what Congress does and how it does it. In an effort to correct the public's perceptions about Congress, former Congressman Lee Hamilton has published a collection of his essays drawn from newspaper columns that both inform and empower the reader. In lively, accessible language, Hamilton presents the institutional Congress-its rules and procedures-while simultaneously exposing the human face of the legislature: the people who occupy the seats in the House and the Senate. His many examples drawn from personal experience are perfectly chosen to illustrate his points. Most important, Hamilton challenges the reader to become more involved in the political process and suggests simple methods for the average person to do so. Recommended for all public libraries.-Thomas J. Baldino, Wilkes Univ., Wilkes-Barre, PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

New interesting textbook: Best of the Best from Utah or Touring Texas Wineries

The Revolt of the Cockroach People

Author: Oscar Zeta Acosta

The further adventures of "Dr. Gonzo" as he defends the "cucarachas" — the Chicanos of East Los Angeles.

Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo" a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

In this exhilarating sequel to The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Acosta takes us behind the front lines of the militant Chicano movement of the late sixties and early seventies, a movement he served both in the courtroom and on the barricades. Here are the brazen games of "chicken" Acosta played against the Anglo legal establishment; battles fought with bombs as well as writs; and a reluctant hero who faces danger not only from the police but from the vatos locos he champions. What emerges is at once an important political document of a genuine popular uprising and a revealing, hilarious, and moving personal saga.

Feingold or Reflected Glory

2009-01-19T04:41:00.000-08:00

Feingold: A New Democratic Party

Author: Sanford D Horwitt

Russ Feingold is a rarity in American politics. A staunch civil libertarian, he was the only member of the U.S. Senate who voted against the ill-conceived USA Patriot Act that was rushed through Congress in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. In 2002, while the Bush administration's fabrications and scare tactics persuaded an overwhelming majority of the Senate to vote for the Iraq war resolution, Feingold opposed it. Washington insiders thought such controversial votes could doom Feingold's 2004 reelection. But he won by a near landslide, far outdistancing his party's presidential candidate, John Kerry.

Sanford D. Horwitt writes in this timely, compelling independent biography that Russ Feingold "represents the progressive side of the Democratic divide more clearly and authentically than any successful politician on the national stage." The third-term senator's willingness to take bold stands -- he was the first in the Senate to call for a timetable for redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq -- has inspired a growing number of rank-and-file Democrats across the country.

Drawing on scores of interviews and historical documents, Horwitt shows that Feingold's authenticity is deeply rooted in the old progressive tradition personified by one of his heroes, Robert M. La Follette, the legendary Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator. "Fighting Bob" and the other great reformers of the Progressive Era placed a high value on honest, efficient government, investment in public education, health and infrastructure, and curbs on corporate power and other wealthy interests in the political process.

Feingold became known to a national audience when he teamed up with Republican JohnMcCain on campaign finance reform legislation. After a seven-year battle, the McCain-Feingold bill became the first major reform of the campaign laws since the Watergate era.

Feingold, who grew up in a small southeastern Wisconsin town, is a man of modest means and the grandson of Jewish immigrants. In this lively portrait, Horwitt evokes mid-century Janesville, a Republican stronghold on the banks of the Rock River, where a precocious Rusty Feingold absorbed lifelong lessons about the importance of community and personal integrity.

Beginning with his first election to public office, he has defied conventional political wisdom and long odds, Horwitt tells us, a pattern that has been repeated throughout his career. Feingold has shown how a new, reinvigorated Democratic Party can stand for progressive ideals, resist the corrupting influence of special interests and win elections.

Kirkus Reviews

Admiring portrait of the maverick liberal who was the only U.S. Senator to oppose the Patriot Act and the first to call for a timetable for American troop withdrawal from Iraq. Horwitt, the biographer of activist Saul Alinsky (Let Them Call Me Rebel, 1989), draws extensively on interviews with friends, family and colleagues of the 54-year-old, twice-divorced Wisconsin Democrat. Russ Feingold grew up in one of the few Jewish families in Janesville, a small farming community. His Yiddish-speaking Russian grandfather Max owned a grocery store; his father was a progressive lawyer. One of five children, Feingold early showed himself to be bright, hardworking and a self-described "renegade by nature," waging campaigns at his high school for a more relaxed dress code and other reforms. He first tasted politics at the University of Wisconsin, where he campaigned for John Lindsay in the 1972 Presidential primary. After college and a stint as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he attended Harvard Law, practiced briefly and won election to the Wisconsin state senate in 1982. Ten years later, at 39, he became the youngest member of the U.S. Senate. He co-sponsored the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, passed in 2002, led efforts to censure George Bush over NSA wiretapping of international phone calls and remains a steadfast opponent of the Iraq war. Written with the senator's cooperation, the book describes an unfailingly courageous politician who champions reform in the progressive tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and Wisconsin Governor Robert M. La Follette, often to the consternation of colleagues. "You're not living in the real world," Hillary Clinton told him when he objected to the DemocraticParty's efforts to gut McCain-Feingold. Noting that the Wisconsin senator has been discussed as a possible presidential contender, the author suggests that Feingold offers "a serious, authentic alternative" to Washington's Democratic establishment. Not an official biography, but it might as well be. Agent: Mary Evans/Mary Evans Inc.

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Reflected Glory: The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman

Author: Sally Bedell Smith

English debutante Pamela Digby first came into the public eye when she married Churchill's dissolute son Randolph. While he was overseas in World War II, she had an affair with Averell Harriman, the first in a line of wealthy and prominent men - including Jock Whitney, Prince Aly Khan, Gianni Agnelli, Elie de Rothschild, and Stavros Niarchos - who supported her over the next two decades. She found legitimacy as the wife of Broadway producer Leland Hayward and became wealthy when she married Harriman on the eve of his eightieth birthday. At age sixty she reinvented herself as a kingmaker in the Democratic Party, and more than a decade later was rewarded with an appointment as U.S. Ambassador to France. Smith details how Pamela Harriman, even after she had become independent and respectable to a degree that would have been unimaginable in her party-girl years, burned through the Harriman fortune, prompting her late husband's disgruntled heirs to file a series of lawsuits accusing her of being a "faithless fiduciary." Always a brass-knuckle fighter, she made headlines with a barrage of ironic countersuits - against the family whose name elevated her to Democratic doyenne, the Wall Street brokerage that provided her wealth, and the advisers who had guided her every move. At each stage of Pamela's life, newspapers and magazines recounted her public exploits and amplified her legend. The private moments were equally indelible: playing bezique late at night with Winston Churchill, enlisting Dwight Eisenhower to help in the kitchen at her officers' club during World War II, presiding over lavish dinners at the Riviera estate of Gianni Agnelli, fixing chicken hash at midnight for Leland Hayward and his Broadway stars, talking one-on-one with Bill Clinton in the Oval Office.

Kurt Jensen

Biographers are often knocked for devoting too much attention to pop psychologizing and not enough to "the work" - the accomplishments that justify a book-length treatment of any life. In her tart new unauthorized biography of Pamela Churchill Harriman, biographer Sally Bedell Smith is refreshingly uninterested in exploring the inner child of the current U.S. Ambassador to France. The book has been cleansed of the Freudian spoor that clings to the cracks and footnotes of most current biographies.

This leaves Smith free to poke around in Harriman's thin shelf of "accomplishments" - most notably her ability to make cozy with rich and influential people, primarily men. An early marriage to Winston Churchill's unimpressive son Randolph was followed by marriages to Broadway producer Leland Hayward and, later, the elderly diplomat and Wall Street heir Averell Harriman. Harriman married well, and she dated well: The men in her life also included CBS founder William Paley and Edward R. Murrow. Her marriage to Averell Harriman gave her the Democratic party connections (and the cash) to become a major Washington social figure and fund-raiser, cultivating Bill Clinton among many others as her friends.

Bedell makes it clear that Harriman's abilities as a gadfly outstrip any others she might possess. Reflected Glory is vicious in its small details as well as in its large ones. Did Harriman perhaps possess some unseen talent as a writer? "Her personal correspondence showed scant literary merit," Bedell writes, and as a journalist "her commitment to the craft was thin." In conversation, "she was remembered neither for the originality nor the felicity of her contributions." Was she, then, a woman of bold principle, a political provocateur, on the model of her contemporary Margaret Thatcher? "Her political beliefs shifted along with the men in her life." Then she must have had style? Harriman is variously described as "dumpy" and "a banal milkmaid, a little plump, certainly not beautiful."

It was precisely because she lacked conventionally redeeming traits, that Harriman, Bedell implies, was naturally drawn to politics. Reflected Glory is compulsively readable as Bedell details the rake and shovel of Harriman's busy PAC, and the final painful spectacle of her gropings toward respectability - an ambition which culminated in her appointment as an ambassador in 1993. "A lot of French," remarks a source, "were puzzled."

Solidly researched, smoothly written and full of tangy revelations, Reflected Glory is a fascinating study of the triumph of mediocrity - and mediocrity's particular affinity to late 20th-century American democracy. -- Salon

Publishers Weekly

In 1994, Christopher Ogden, employed by Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman to ghost her autobiography, published Life of the Party. When she balked at exposing the spicier side of her career, he went ahead on his own, using her taped interviews, but legally he could quote nothing. Smith, another unauthorized biographer, quotes little from Harriman, written or vocal, for similar reasons, but 400 of her acquaintances cooperated, resulting in a deeply informed and revelatory study. Smith (All His Glory: The Life of William S. Paley) has done further homework in financial and court papers and in the diaries, letters and memoirs of contemporaries. Had it not been for Ogden's preemptive strike, Smith's intensely detailed biography of the least sedate of American ambassadors--British-born Pamela Harriman, now 76, represents the U.S. in Paris--would be even more explosive. Perhaps only in France, where premiers and presidents often have publicly acknowledged mistresses, would she be acceptable, even admired, as an envoy. Bedding her way to wealth and power, the resourceful red-haired beauty wed Randolph Churchill, Leland Hayward and Averell Harriman, filling in the interstices between marriages with Edward R. Murrow (her only unmoneyed lover), Gianni Agnelli, Aly Khan, Elie de Rothschild and other deep-pocketed admirers. Said one observer: "She could make a man, not just in bed. She stretched a man's horizons." Austerity was never her cup of tea, nor was familial loyalty to the children and grandchildren inherited from two American husbands. Her lifestyle, Smith contends, was always based on self-aggrandizement. As a former Hayward wife remarked, "Pam Churchill thought she would marry [Fiat heir] Agnelli, so she became a Catholic on spec." Brushing aside her reputation as grande cocotte, a French friend scoffed, "Everyone has a past. It is who she is today that counts." Photos not seen by PW. First serial to Vanity Fair. (Nov.)

Library Journal

In this fully documented biography of a modern-day courtesan, Smith (In All His Glory: The Life of William S. Paley, S. & S., 1990) reveals details and anecdotes extracted from 800 interviews (using 400 named sources) to animate the extraordinary Harriman and her relationships, whether personal, public, or political. The English debutante, born in 1920 and until very recently claiming France as her latest conquest as U.S. ambassador there, has led many lives. Her reputations as "wartime hostess, international femme fatale, show business wife, diplomat's consort..., and American ambassador" evolved with her marriages to three famous men: Randolph Churchill, Leland Hayward, and Averell Harriman. Smith recounts all aspects of this female whirlwind with a straightforward reporting style yet impels us to follow Harriman's continuing saga. Although an interview with Harriman would have lent more credence to her work, Smith paints a portrait with less bias than Christopher Ogden's unauthorized Life of the Party (Little, Brown, 1994). This work lends itself well to a public library's biography section. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/96.]Kay Meredith Dusheck, Univ of Iowa, Iowa City

1215 or Until Death Do Us Part

2009-01-18T15:28:00.000-08:00

1215: The Year of Magna Carta

Author: Danny Danziger

Surveying a broad landscape through a narrow lens, 1215 sweeps readers back eight centuries in an absorbing portrait of life during a time of global upheaval, the ripples of which can still be felt today. At the center of this fascinating period is the document that has become the root of modern freedom: the Magna Carta. It was a time of political revolution and domestic change that saw the Crusades, Richard the Lionheart, King John, and—in legend—Robin Hood all make their marks on history.

The events leading up to King John's setting his seal to the famous document at Runnymede in June 1215 form this rich and riveting narrative that vividly describes everyday life from castle to countryside, from school to church, and from hunting in the forest to trial by ordeal. For instance, women wore no underwear (though men did), the average temperatures were actually higher than they are now, and the austere kitchen at Westminster Abbey allowed each monk two pounds of meat and a gallon of ale per day. Broad in scope and rich in detail, 1215 ingeniously illuminates what may have been the most important year of our history.

Publishers Weekly

Magna Carta is considered a foundation of modern freedoms, yet it is deeply rooted in the unique facts and political situation of 13th-century England. This excellent study is not only about the document itself but also about the context in which it can be fully understood. Danziger (The Year 1000) and Gillingham, professor emeritus of history at the London School of Economics, head each chapter with a passage from the Great Charter and elucidate the daily experience and issues that underlie it. While the first chapters elaborate on how both average folk and elites lived, worked, hunted, married, studied, played and went to church, later chapters get deeper into the meaning of the document itself. Marvelous details about daily life abound, while myths and misperceptions are firmly swept away. The infamous King John, who signed the Great Charter, moves slowly to center stage against the background stories of his parents, the legendary Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine; his brother Richard Lionheart; and other great figures of the day, both historical and mythical, including Robin Hood and Thomas Becket. When the reader reaches the climactic chapter, in which the barons force the Charter on John, the document has jumped off the pedestal on which tradition has placed it and become a living thing. The event itself and the details of the document show how age-old practices and last-minute concessions shaped the text (which is included in its entirety). Danziger and Gillingham make it clear that the Magna Carta was not an abstract thesis, but a brilliant response to a particular time and circumstance. Map. (June 15) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

"No vill or man shall be forced to build bridges at river banks, except those who ought to do so by custom and law."The years preceding 1215 in England were bad ones, apparently, for the folks who didn't wish to be press-ganged into building bridges; they weren't much better for those who liked a little variety in their diet, for in those days "the poor virtually fasted every day," even if their simple repasts spared them from the tooth decay that the rich, with their artificial sweeteners, suffered. British historian/writers Danziger (co-author, The Year 1000, 1999, etc.) and Gillingham (History/London School of Economics) take readers on an informal, sometimes even breezy tour of the times, explaining oddments and customs: Chairs being rare, for instance, visitors to a house were usually seated on daybeds; only an important guest was given the seat of honor, whence the modern term "chairman" or "chair." Danziger and Gillingham linger appreciatively on some of the better aspects of the day, when cathedrals and seats of learning were established and England's holdings were beginning to expand across the waters to France and Ireland. But they don't shy from the less idyllic features of life in Merrie Olde, when slavery may have been abolished but serfdom endured ("Economic and social circumstance inevitably meant that some people were less free than others"). Their narrative, which moves along nicely, closes with the rebellion of the English knights against King John, who, most commentators agree, needed to be rebelled against; the result was the Magna Carta, a translation of the complete text of which closes this study (and makes it of extra use for readers seeking good value for theirshilling). Danziger and Gillingham suggest that the most important clauses of the Magna Carta concern the requirements for fair trials and judgment by peers-but protection against having to build bridges unwillingly must have been nice, too. A reader-friendly glance at a turning point in history.

	Introduction	ix
	Map of Britain and France	xxii
1	The Englishman's Castle	1
2	The Countryside	19
3	Town	37
4	School	57
5	Family Strife	77
6	Tournaments and Battles	95
7	Hunting in the Forest	111
8	The Church	125
9	King John	141
10	The King's Men	159
11	Trial by Ordeal	175
12	A Christian Country	191
13	The English and the Celts	207
14	The Wider World	223
15	The Great Charter	245
16	The Myth	267
	The Text of Magna Carta	275
	Bibliography	291
	Acknowledgments	297
	Index	299

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Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia

Author: Ingrid Betancourt

This memoir reads like a fast-paced political thriller. Until Death Do Us Part recounts Ingrid Betancourt's early years in Paris, where she grew up among diplomats, literati, and artists, including Gabriel García Máraquez. From this charmed life, Ingrid returned to the embattled political scene of her native Colombia, where as a senator and a national heroine, she confronted—and became the target of—the establishment and the drug cartels behind it.

This is also a deeply personal story of a woman whose love for her country gave her the courage to stand up to a power that has defeated or seduced all others who opposed it. Until Death Do Us Part gives a chilling account of the dangerous, byzantine machine that runs Colombia, and tells a riveting, inspiring story of privilege, sacrifice, and true patriotism.

James Sullivan <BR> <BR> - Book Magazine

Colombian presidential candidate Betancourt promises to rid her native country of its rampant drug-funded corruption. In Colombia, one of the most dangerous political environments in the world, such a pledge can get you killed. But Betancourt has been living with that horrible threat for some time now. A pampered young woman who spent years in Paris with her diplomat parents, she has devoted her adulthood—and sacrificed a safe, stable life with her two children—to face down Colombia's deeply ingrained criminal culture. She first ran for legislative office in Bogotáas an unknown but won the seat with an ingenious campaign gimmick—she handed out condoms to symbolize her battle against the "disease" of corruption. In office, she undertook a highly publicized hunger strike to protest the illicit connections of the recent president, Ernesto Samper. Betancourt's memoir could make for a crackling novel of political intrigue. "My relationship with death is like that of a tightrope walker," she concludes. "We're both doing something dangerous, and we've calculated the risks, but our love of perfection invariably overcomes our fear."

Publishers Weekly

In a memoir that sometimes conveys the excitement of a Clancy thriller, Betancourt recounts her remarkable life, from the Paris of her childhood (her father was Colombia's minister of education and ambassador to UNESCO) to present-day Colombia, where she has served as a senator in Bogot and where she plans to launch her 2002 presidential campaign. That is, if she isn't assassinated first. Betancourt announces early on that she is no ordinary politician and that her reminiscences will comprise no ordinary political memoir. But what constitutes exceptional in Colombia, a country awash in political corruption and controlled by a government that is under the thumb of organized crime and vulnerable to the financial lure of illegal drug trafficking? Well, for starters, Betancourt spent her first campaign, for a seat in the House of Representatives, standing along the city's busiest streets, handing out condoms ("[O]ur poster: my photo alongside a picture of a condom, with this slogan: `The best to protect us against corruption.' " She scandalized her parents, her friends, her country, but won her seat in the House. So began Betancourt's campaign against electoral fraud and narcopoliticians, which, despite the death threats and the pressure exerted on her family, continues to this day and which won't end, as her title implies, until she wins or is killed for her efforts. Betancourt's memoir is intelligently written, if occasionally sentimental, and she passionately and clearly describes the consequences of corruption and the dangers of combating it. (Jan.) Forecast: This was a bestseller in France and Colombia. It may not reach that status here, but Betancourt's attractive face on the cover will lead people to pick it up, and her fast-paced story will keep them reading. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

A courageous Colombian senator, member of a politically active family, charts her course through the dangerous political waters of her troubled country.

Ethics or The Force of Reason

2009-01-18T04:16:00.000-08:00

Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory

Author: Lawrence M Hinman

ETHICS: A PLURALISTIC APPROACH TO MORAL THEORY provides a comprehensive yet clear introduction to the main traditions in ethical thought, including virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology. Additionally, the book presents a conceptual framework of ethical pluralism to help students understand the relationship among various theories. Hinman, one of the most respected and accomplished professionals in ethics and philosophy education today, presents a text that gives students plentiful opportunities to explore ethical theory and their own responses to them, using fascinating features such as the "Ethical Inventory" sections that appear at the beginning and the end of the text. End-of-chapter discussion questions, interviews with contemporary advocates of major ethical theories, and the use of current issues and movies help students retain what they've learn and truly comprehend the subject matter.

1. The Moral Point of View
2.Understanding the Diversity of Moral Beliefs: Relativism, Absolutism, and Pluralism
3.The Ethics of Divine Commands: Religious Moralities
4.The Ethics of Selfishness: Egoism
5.The Ethics of Consequences: Utilitarianism
6.The Ethics of Duty and Respect: Immanuel Kant
7.The Ethics of Rights: Contemporary Theories
8.The Ethics of Justice: From Plato to Rawls
9.The Ethics of Character: Aristotle and Our Contemporaries
10.The Ethics of Diversity: Gender
11.The Ethics of Diversity: Race, Ethnicity, and Multiculturalism
12.Conclusion: Toward a Global Ethics of Peace.
Glossary.
Index.

Interesting textbook: Magnet Therapy or Healing Joint Pain Naturally

The Force of Reason

Author: Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci is back with her much-anticipated follow up to The Rage and the Pride, her powerful post-September 11 manifesto. The genesis for The Force of Reason was a postscript entitled Due Anni Dopo (Two Years Later), which was intended as a brief appendix to the thirtieth edition of The Rage and the Pride (2002). Once Ms. Fallaci completed the postscript, she chose to expand it into a book, a continuation of her ideas set in motion in The Rage and the Pride.In The Force of Reason Fallaci takes aim at the many attacks and death threats she received after the publication of The Rage and the Pride. Ms. Fallaci begins by identifying herself with one Master Cecco, the author of a heretical book who was burnt at the stake during the Inquisition seven centuries ago on account of his beliefs, and proceeds with a rigorous analysis of the burning of Troy and the creation of a Europe that, to her judgment, is no longer her familiar homeland but rather a place best called Eurabia, a soon-to-be colony of Islam (with Italy as its stronghold). Ms. Fallaci explores her ideas in historical, philosophical, moral, and political terms, courageously addressing taboo topics with sharp logic.

Kants Cosmopolitan Theory of Law and Peace or Closed Chambers

2009-01-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

Kant's Cosmopolitan Theory of Law and Peace

Author: Otfried Hoff

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

1	Kant's challenge and relevance today	1
2	Aristotle instead of Kant?	21
3	Universalistic ethics and the faculty of judgment	45
4	On evil	68
5	Kant's more nuanced approach	81
6	The moral concept of right and law	94
7	Categorical imperatives of right according to Ulpian	119
8	The neglected ideal	135
9	The "idea" : legal progress	159
10	Peace I : are republics peaceable?	177
11	Peace II : federation of peoples or world republic?	189
12	The critique of pure reason : a cosmo-political reading	204

Books about: Herbs in the Garden or Quick Mix Biscuits and Slices

Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court

Author: Edward Lazarus

When Closed Chambers was first published, it was met with a firestorm of controversy-as well as a shower of praise-for being the first book to break the code of silence about the inner workings of this country's most powerful court. In this eloquent, trailblazing account, with a new chapter covering Bush v. Gore, Guantanamo, and other recent controversial court decisions, Edward Lazarus, who served as a clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun, presents a searing indictment of a court at war with itself and often in neglect of its constitutional duties. Combining memoir, history, and legal analysis, Lazarus reveals in astonishing detail the realities of what takes place behind the closed doors of the U.S. Supreme Court-an institution that through its rulings holds the power to affect the life of every American.

The Toledo War or John Brown Abolitionist

2009-01-17T05:51:00.000-08:00

The Toledo War: The First Michigan-Ohio Rivalry

Author: Don Faber

The Michigan-Ohio football rivalry is well known and stretches back many years. But far fewer may be aware that Michigan and Ohio were engaged in a different kind of battle more than a century earlier---one that began before Michigan became a state.

It was a fight over a narrow wedge of land called the Toledo Strip. Disagreement over ownership of the Strip dated to the early nineteenth century. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which created the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, described an east-west boundary line between the northern and southern states in the Northwest Territory. That line began at the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan and ran eastward to where it intersected Lake Erie, thus placing the mouth of the Maumee River in the Territory of Michigan.

But maps in those days weren't precise, and there was considerable doubt as to the exact location of Lake Michigan's southernmost point. Adding to the uncertainty was the absence of a good survey. When Ohio became a state in 1803, the importance of a harbor on Lake Erie became evident. To provide for this need, the state's constitution included a provision that claimed the mouth of the Maumee River for Ohio, disregarding the boundary line placed by the Northwest Ordinance.

Today the fight over Toledo in 1835 puts a grin on most people's faces---on Ohioans because they won, and on Michiganians because Ohio won Toledo while Michigan ended up with the Upper Peninsula. But passions about rightful ownership ran high, and it would be many years---and involve a colorful cast of characters all the way up to presidents---before the dispute was settled. The Toledo War: The FirstMichigan-Ohio Rivalry gives a well-researched and fascinating account of the famous war.

Don Faber is best known as the former editor of the Ann Arbor News. He has also served on the staff of the Michigan Constitutional Convention, won a Ford Foundation Fellowship to the Michigan State Senate, and was a speechwriter for Michigan Governor George Romney. Now retired, Faber lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, Jeannette, and indulges in his love of Michigan history.

John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

Author: David S Reynolds

Few historical figures are as intriguing as John Brown, the controversial Abolitionist who used terrorist tactics against slavery and single-handedly changed the course of American history. This brilliant biography of Brown (1800-1859) by the prize-winning critic and cultural biographer David S. Reynolds brings to life the Puritan warrior who gripped slavery by the throat and triggered the Civil War.

When does principled resistance become anarchic brutality? How can a murderer be viewed as a heroic freedom fighter? The case of John Brown opens windows on these timely issues. Was Brown an insane criminal or a Christ-like martyr? A forerunner of Osama bin Laden or of Martin Luther King, Jr.? David Reynolds sorts through the tangled evidence and makes some surprising findings.

Reynolds demonstrates that Brown's most violent acts- his slaughter of unarmed citizens in Kansas, his liberation of slaves in Missouri, and his dramatic raid, in October 1859, on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia- were inspired by the slave revolts, guerilla warfare, and revolutionary Christianity of the day. He shows us how Brown seized the nation's attention, creating sudden unity in the North, where the Transcendentalists led the way in sanctifying Brown, and infuriating the South, where proslavery fire-eaters exploited the Harpers Ferry raid to whip up a secessionist frenzy. In fascinating detail, Reynolds recounts how Brown permeated politics and popular culture during the Civil War and beyond. He reveals the true depth of Brown's achievement: not only did Brown spark the war that ended slavery, but he planted the seeds of the civil rights movement by making a pioneering demand forcomplete social and political equality for America's ethnic minorities.

A deeply researched and vividly written cultural biography- a revelation of John Brown and his meaning for America.

From the Hardcover edition.

The New York Times - Barbara Ehrenreich

How do we judge a man of such different times -- and temperament -- from our own? If the rule is that there must be some proportion between a violent act and its provocation, surely there could be no more monstrous provocation than slavery. In our own time, some may discern equivalent evils in continuing racial oppression, economic exploitation, environmental predation or widespread torture. To them, John Brown, Abolitionist, for all its wealth of detail and scrupulous attempts at balance, has a shockingly simple message: Far better to have future generations complain about your methods than condemn you for doing nothing.

The Washington Post - David W. Blight

John Brown, Abolitionist captures with arresting prose Brown's early life of poverty, his huge, tragic, rolling-stone family of 20 children with two wives, the business failures and bankruptcies in several states, the lasting influence of his staunchly Calvinist father and his genuine devotion to the human rights of African Americans. He also takes us deeper than any previous historian into Brown's exploits in the 1856-58 guerrilla war known as "Bleeding Kansas." In the murderous frontier struggle between pro-slavery and free-state advocates, Brown led a personal band of abolitionist warriors who fought pitched battles and executed some settlers. Moreover, the narratives of Brown's fascinating fund-raising tours of Eastern reform communities, the Harpers Ferry raid itself, his epic letter-writing from a jail cell while awaiting execution, and the hanging (with the whole world watching) are all beautifully executed.

Publishers Weekly

In the very first paragraphs of this biography, Bancroft Prize-winner Reynolds (Walt Whitman's America) steps back a bit from the grandiose claims of his subtitle. Nevertheless, his book as a whole paints a positive portrait of the Calvinist terrorist Brown (1800-1859)-contrary to virtually all recent scholarship (by Stephen B. Oates and Robert Boyer, among others), which tends to depict Brown as a bloodthirsty zealot and madman who briefly stepped into history but did little to influence it. Reynolds's approach harks back to the hero-worship apparent in earlier books by W.E.B. Du Bois and Brown's surviving associates. John Brown waged a campaign so bloody during the Kansas Civil War-in 1856 he chased men and elder sons from their beds in cabins along the Pottawatomie Creek, and then lopped off their heads with broadswords as sobbing wives and younger children looked on-that fellow Kansas antislavery settlers rebuked him. Even the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison condemned Brown and his methods. After taking the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry in October 1859, Brown intended (had he not been swatted like a fly within hours) to raise and arm a large force of blacks capable of wreaking a terrible vengeance across Virginia. Yet Reynolds insists that "it is misleading to identify Brown with modern terrorists." Really? 25 b&w illus. (Apr. 21) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

John Brown, with his bristling beard, fierce expression, and unyielding opposition to slavery, has always been the perfect icon of the nation's headlong rush into the abyss of the Civil War. After his gallant and completely foolhardy raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, virtually every person in the US lined up solidly on one side or another of the Great Question. By the time he was finally hanged, by the hand of Robert E. Lee, no less, there was no going back. Dealing with the man and his reputation, however, has always been something of a problem. Southerners at the time, horrified at the prospect of a massive slave uprising, immediately branded him as a terrorist, if not the Devil incarnate. The Transcendentalists and other anti-slavery groups in the North, in response, soon came to see him as a martyr for peace, nearly on the level of Jesus himself. As the Civil War finally receded into the past, most scholars eventually came to see Brown simply as some sort of crackpot, well-meaning perhaps, but always an unstable and colorful character who, much like his namesake John the Baptist, was a harbinger of colossal events to come. Now, with this book, author David Reynolds has portrayed what has come to be the modern view, seeing John Brown in the larger context of black emancipation and aligning him squarely alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and the modern civil rights era: all of which might (or might not) have astounded the bearded firebrand. Brown was both intelligent and complex, as Professor Reynolds skillfully brings out, and had one of history's more original personalities. Most YAs will find the entire book a large dose to swallow, but will find individual chaptersand episodes to be fascinating. The highly detailed text opens a fascinating window on the social turmoil of American society on the eve of the Civil War. Even if that war wasn't fought specifically to free the slaves, it was nevertheless all about slavery, and old Brown certainly played his part.

Kirkus Reviews

Cradle-to-moldering-grave biography of America's homegrown abolitionist terrorist. Was it John Brown's audacity that put the spark to the tinderbox of slavery in mid-19th-century America? The prize-winning Reynolds (Walt Whitman, 2004, etc.; English and American Studies/CUNY) makes the case that the Civil War and emancipation might well have been slower in coming had Brown (1800-59) not inflamed paranoia in the South by his murderous raids in Pottawatomie, Kan., and his seizure of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. The author argues that Brown was more of a Puritan pioneer than crazed fanatic, a patriarchal figure who "won the battle not with bullets but with words." Although the violence of Brown's anti-slavery raids was at first roundly denounced in the North, his calm and rational behavior after his capture, Reynolds emphasizes, eventually won admiration for his crusade, much thanks to Emerson, Thoreau and other transcendentalists who took up his banner. Though unabashedly hagiographic-the chapter on his execution is titled "The Passion"-the biography justifies its portrayal of Brown as an agent outside and above the norms of society. The author demonstrates that his nonracist behavior, for example, was startlingly original to Southerners and Northerners alike, albeit not anomalous vis-a-vis contemporary European attitudes. Reynolds takes great pains to cast a fair light on an exceptionally controversial figure who used brutally violent tactics to bring about the end of slavery and the beginning of racial equality. He states unequivocally that Brown's tactics were terrorist (and an inspiration to John Wilkes Booth), but in President Lincoln's own words, the Civil War itself was"a John Brown raid on a gigantic scale." Reynolds's conclusions are bold yet justified, and his analysis reflects a thorough understanding of the cultural environment of the time. Engrossing and timely, offering astute, thorough coverage of America's premier iconoclast and the cultural stage upon which he played his role.

The Democratization of American Christianity or Reflections on the Revolution in France

2009-01-16T16:38:00.000-08:00

The Democratization of American Christianity

Author: Nathan O Hatch

The half century following the American Revolution witnessed the transformation of American Christianity. In this book Nathan O. Hatch offers a provocative reassessment of religion and culture in the young republic, arguing that during this period American Christianity was democratized and common people became powerful accors on the religious scene. The passion for equality, says Hatch, brought about a crisis or religious authority in popular culture, introduced new and popular forms of theology, witnessed the rise of minority religious movements, reshaped preaching, singing, and publishing, and became a scriptural foundation for nineteenth-century American individualism.

Hatch examines five distinct traditions or mass movements that emerged early in the nineteenth century: the Christian movement, the Methodists, the Baptists, the black churches, and the Mormons. Each was led by young men of relentless energy who went about movement building as self-conscious outsiders, However diverse their theologies and church organizations. Hatch points out, they all offered the unschooled and unsophisticated compelling visions of individual potential and collective aspiration. More effectively than religious movements in other modern industrial societies, these denominations embraced people without regard to social standing and challenged them to think, interpret Scripture, and organize the church for themselves. The religious populism that resulted remains among the oldest and deepest impulse in American life.

Books about: High Energy Cookbook or The First Year Multiple Sclerosis

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Author: Edmund Burk

This new and up-to-date edition of a book that has been central to political philosophy, history, and revolutionary thought for two hundred years offers readers a dire warning of the consequences that follow the mismanagement of change. Written for a generation presented with challenges of terrible proportions--the Industrial, American, and French Revolutions, to name the most obvious--Burke's Reflections of the Revolution in France displays an acute awareness of how high political stakes can be, as well as a keen ability to set contemporary problems within a wider context of political theory.

The Times Literary Supplement

This edition of Burke's classic text aims to locate Burke once again in his contemporary political and intellectual setting. It reprints the text of the first edition of the Reflections, and provides extensive notes and a comprehensive introduction.

Booknews

Edmund Burke's classic text, which he appended over the years, was originally written in 1790 in the form of a letter to Richard Price. J.C.D. Clark provides us with a lengthy introduction and annotation to the original, unappended text which follows, in order to situate Burke and his canonical work within its original political and intellectual setting. Price's reply, and Burke's subsequent additions are included in appendices. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

	Editor's Preface
	Introduction: Edmund Burke: The Political Actor Thinking
	Reflections on the Revolution in France	3
	Rethinking Reflections on the Revolution in France	211
	Edmund Burke: Prophet Against the Tyranny of the Politics of Theory	213
	Edmund Burke and the Literary Cabal: A Tale of Two Enlightenments	233
	Why American Constitutionalism Worked	248
	Democracy, Social Science, and Rationality, Reflections on Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France	268
	Suggested Readings	291
	Glossary-Index	293

Ahrens Fox Fire Apparatus Photo Archive or Quotations of Theodore Roosevelt

2009-01-16T06:25:00.000-08:00

Ahrens-Fox Fire Apparatus Photo Archive

Author: Walter M P McCall

Of all the companies that built motor fire apparatus in America in the 20th century, none has acquired the cult-like devotion accorded the unique products of the Ahrens-Fox Fire Engine Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. With its front-mounted piston pump surmounted by a gleaming spherical air chamber, the Ahrens-Fox piston pumper projects irresistible aesthetic and mechanical appeal. Fire apparatus aficionados and collectors have all but elevated the truly distinctive Ahrens-Fox piston pumper to a firefighting deity. Noted fire apparatus historian and author Walt McCall has selected the best of the best for this photographic tribute to a legendary nameplate—including the milestone Continental, mighty six-piston Models PS, BT and what is arguably the most beautiful fire engine ever made in America, the classic, semi-streamlined Model HT. A supplemental gallery of 30 color photos showcases some of the finest surviving Ahrens-Foxes.

Book about: Betty Crockers Best of Baking or Beer

Quotations of Theodore Roosevelt

Author: Theodore Roosevelt

President, environmentalist, big game hunter, war hero, trust buster, father of the modern American navy, builder of the Panama Canal, Nobel Peace Prize winner-Teddy Roosevelt remains a commanding and intriguing figure of American history. This handsome book includes approximately 100 of the most memorable quotes of this prolific writer and orator.

Social Work Research and Evaluation or The Complete Idiots Guide to the US Constitution

2009-01-14T09:10:00.000-08:00

Social Work Research and Evaluation: Foundations of Evidence-Based Practice

Author: Richard M Grinnell

This book is the longest standing and most widely adopted text in the field of social work research and evaluation. As stated in the book's preface, it is intended for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate social work students in a one-semester research methods course. Since the first edition in 1981, this edition is designed to provide social work students with the basic methodological foundation they need in order to successfully complete more advanced research courses that focus on single-system designs or program evaluations. With its customarily straightforward user-friendly writing style by renowned educators, this edition will continue to maintain its notoriety as the premier social work research methods text.
Thoroughly revised and updated, the chapters offer a wealth of new research examples and references, accessible diagrams of essential concepts and processes, and extended coverage of core social work research methods and recent developments. For example, with the inclusion of four new chapters on the evidence-based approach to social work practice, the book emphasizes how important this approach has become, and provides a rock-solid foundation for understanding how to evaluate and interpret research findings that have been derived from research studies-the minimal skills needed for evidence-based social work practitioners.

PART I THE CONTEXTS OF RESEARCH.

1. Introduction

2. The Ethical Conduct of Research

3. The Quantitative Research Approach

4. The Qualitative Research Approach

PART II DESIGNING RESEARCH STUDIES.

5. Conceptualization and Measurement

6. Sampling

7. Case-Level Designs

8. Group-Level Designs

PART III COLLECTING DATA.

9. Structured Observation

10. Participant Observation

11. Qualitative Interviewing

12. Survey Research

13. Secondary Analysis

14. Content Analysis

15. Selecting a Data Collection Method and Data Source

PART IV BECOMING A CULTURALLY-SENSITIVE RESEARCHER.

16. Research with Minority and Disadvantaged Groups

PART V DATA ANALYSIS.

17. Quantitative Data Analysis

18. Qualitative Data Analysis

PART VI WRITING AND EVALUATING RESEARCH REPORTS.

19. Writing Reports from Research Studies

20. Evaluating Quantitative Research Studies

21. Evaluating Qualitative Research Studies

PART VII BECOMING AN EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTITIONER.

22. Finding Existing Knowledge

23. Evaluating Evidence

24. Meta-Analysis

25. Evidence-Based Practice

PART VIII FROM RESEARCH TO EVALUATION.

26. Program Evaluation

Glossary.

Look this: Sam Houston or The Handbook of Municipal Bonds

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the US Constitution

Author: Tim Harper

The "living" document that changed the world.

One of the most revered, imitated, and controversial government documents in the world, the U.S. Constitution serves as the foundation for the American government and shapes the lives of Americans every day. But how many know its history and the impact it's had on American laws and practices throughout history? This guide serves as the most current and accessible handbook to this all-important document.

-Covers the document itself, as well as controversial interpretations and decisions

A Taste of Power or My Grandfathers Son

2009-01-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story

Author: Elaine Brown

Brown's account of her life at the highest levels of the Black Panther party's hierarchy. More than a journey through a turbulent time in American history, this is the story of a black woman's battle to define herself.

Publishers Weekly

Brown here relates the dramatic story of her youth, her political awakening and her role in the Black Panther Party when she succeeded her lover Huey Newton to become the group's first female leader. Though smoothly written, the book contains much reconstructed dialogue that may daunt readers. Brown's memoir takes her from a Philadelphia ghetto to California, from college to cocktail waitressing, from wanting to be white to joining the black power movement. She meets Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson and Bobby Seale, goes to jail, visits North Korea and North Vietnam, debates Marxism and gets involved in Oakland, Calif., politics. When other Black Panthers seemed to lose sight of the revolution and seek power for its own sake, Brown, with a growing feminist consciousness, left the group. She now lives in France and expresses ambivalent feelings about the party she once loved. Having made her acquaintance, the reader wonders about her present life. (Jan.)

Library Journal

Brown, who became involved in and eventually led the Black Panther party until 1977, here offers her autobiography. She traces both the growth and evolving philosophies of the party and her own attempts to help black women. She also describes the drug and domestic abuse within the party, as well as vividly depicting the violence committed against society at large. While Brown includes an objective and lengthy description of Panther founder Huey Newton, who brilliantly rallied black people in America, she also depicts a man whose drug and alcohol dependencies hindered the growth of the party. Brown's autobiography ends inconclusively: she does not seem to have grasped how her past actions presently affect her life. Does she experience feelings of guilt or regret? We don't find out, but her story is still interesting. A Taste of Power is recommended for large public and academic libraries and those with women's studies collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/11/92, and ``Malcom X: By Any Book Necessary,'' LJ 10/15/92 . -- Jeanine McAdam, Mt. Sinai Medical Ctr. Lib., New York

Kirkus Reviews

Engrossing, jolting, behind-the-scenes memoir by the woman who led the Black Panther Party to mainstream power-brokering without giving up the guns, and who ended up fleeing its violence: a stunning picture of a black woman's coming of age in America. Brown writes well and insightfully of her complex family background and Philadelphia ghetto childhood, and of her life in a paramilitary organization whose members live under the constant threat of violence from society, police, and each other. In L.A., a wealthy white lover introduces her to Communism; a black activist casually straps bandoleers of shotgun shells around her before a rally; "warriors" expect sexual favors from revolutionary women; close friends die at the hands of a rival black organization and police. Briefly infatuated with Eldridge Cleaver (later a foe), Brown falls in love with brilliant, self-educated, troubled Huey Newton—a man seemingly trapped by the Party he created, and subject to fear-and-cocaine-induced rages; he anoints her Party leader before jumping bail for exile in Cuba (1974). Brown wins the grudging loyalty of the Party's angry men, as well as mainstream respect (for school and social programs in Oakland—largely funded through illegal means) and influence in California politics. She takes pleasure in violent intimidation: "For a black woman in America to know that power is to experience being raised from the dead." Soon after Newton's return in 1977, a terrified Brown leaves the Party. Rhetoric and ideology are presented readably here: Brown identifies her most radical conclusions as opinion. For less political readers, the inherent drama plus anecdotes about revolutionary andshow-biz celebs (including a bit of kiss-and- tell) keep the pages turning. Brown (now in France) doesn't mention her post-Party life or Newton's death in 1989. Timely, front-row view of a turbulent era. Put it on the shelf beside The Autobiography of Malcolm X. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)

My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir

Author: Clarence Thomas

Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.

Thomas was born in rural Georgia on June 23, 1948, into a life marked by poverty and hunger. His parents divorced when Thomas was still a baby, and his father moved north to Philadelphia, leaving his young mother to raise him and his brother and sister on the ten dollars a week she earned as a maid. At age seven, Thomas and his six-year-old brother were sent to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, and her stepmother in their Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.

His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a black man with a strict work ethic, trying to raise a family in the years of Jim Crow. Thomas witnessed his grandparents' steadfastness despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. His own quiet ambition would propel him to Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually "despite a bitter, highly contested public confirmation" to the highest court in the land. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible.

Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. My Grandfather's Son is the story of a determined man whose faith, courage, and perseverance inspired him to rise up against all odds and achieve his dreams.

The New York Times - William Grimes

His critics might not be moved by his political arguments, but his memoir gives them a man, not a caricature, to attack…Justice Thomas describes his intellectual journey, and his struggle to keep body and soul together on meager government pay, in some of the book's most absorbing and self-critical chapters.

The Washington Post - Jabari Asim

My Grandfather's Son ends triumphantly as Thomas prepares for his first conference as a member of the Supreme Court. This memoir will not sway those who oppose his fierce, unapologetic conservatism, but it does provide a fascinating glimpse into a tortured, complex and often perplexing personality. Near the end of the book he discusses a desire to allow his life "to be seen as the story of an ordinary person who, like most people, had worked out his problems step by unsure step." In that he has succeeded.

Criminal Investigation or Where Have All the Soldiers Gone

2009-01-13T11:24:00.000-08:00

Criminal Investigation

Author: Charles R Swanson

Criminal Investigation is recognized as being one of the most comprehesnive books available in the market. It is widely used in undergraduate courses in Criminal Investigation,and also by Police Departments who purchase it for their offices to study when preparing for promotional examinations.

New interesting textbook: How to Wow with Photoshop Elements 5 or MCTS Self Paced Training Kit

Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern Europe

Author: James J Sheehan

An eminent historian offers a sweeping look at Europe's tumultuous twentieth century, showing how the rejection of violence after World War II transformed a continent

In the last decade we've seen an ever-widening rift between the United States and Europe, most visibly over Iraq. But as James J. Sheehan reminds us in his timely book, it wasn't always thus. How did America and Europe come to take such different paths?

In Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? Stanford historian Sheehan charts what is perhaps the most radical shift in Europe's history. For centuries, nations defined themselves by their willingness and ability to wage war. But after World War II, Europe began to redefine statehood, rejecting ballooning defense budgets in favor of material well-being, social stability, and economic growth. Sheehan reveals how and why this happened, and what it means for America as well as the rest of the world.

Succinct yet broad in scope, Sheehan's authoritative history provides much-needed context for understanding the fractured era in which we live.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

It's easy for us to turn up our noses at Europe's not infrequent outbursts of self-righteousness, especially from the intellectual left, but we do well to remind ourselves that Europe speaks from experience that we have not undergone and can only pray we never do. I am no pacifist, but it seems to me that Europe as Sheehan portrays it in this timely, first-rate book is headed on a sound, mature course. Europeans tend to see terrorism "as a persistent challenge to domestic order rather than an immediate international threat" and to attack it with "more effective policing, stricter laws, better surveillance" rather than with a "war." Maybe, just maybe, they know more than we do.

The New York Times - Geoffrey Wheatcroft

…[a] scintillating tour d'horizon—and de force…

Publishers Weekly

After two cataclysmic wars, argues Stanford historian Sheehan, Europe has been transformed from a place where the state was defined by its capacity to make war into a group of "civilian states" that have "lost all interest" in making war. Rather, they are marked by a focus on economic growth, prosperity and personal security. To explore this transformation, Sheehan examines the changes in modern warfare and in its infrastructure and the mobilization of national economies for war. Sheehan looks at the impact in the early 20th century of universal conscription, including its social consequences (such as bringing together different social classes), and its eventual decline; the peace movements marked by the 1899 and 1907 Hague conferences; the effects of the Cold War; the growth of the European Union; and the Euro-American split over the Iraq war. Sheehan's style is clear and fluid, and his work is just the right length. Perhaps his only failing is to scant Europe's "fitful and ineffective" interventions in the Balkans and more distant strife-torn countries, but this pales besides the information offered by this fine contribution to European studies. (Nov.)

Kirkus Reviews

Europeans and Americans inhabit different planets-certainly, Sheehan (History/Stanford Univ.) writes, when it comes to attitudes toward war. Sheehan's solid book addresses an interesting phenomenon: How is it that Europe, breeding ground for catastrophic wars, has adopted the view that the military is a largely unnecessary evil? One factor, the author suggests, is the changing view of the nation-state. Whereas wars created and reinforced nations, and universal military service was once seen as a means for inculcating the ideals of the state, ever since 1945 supranational organizations, such as the UN and World Court, have assumed some of the state's old duties. Britain had already proved that it was possible to be an only modestly militaristic state and yet control a vast empire. Now, with the postwar loss of empires around the world, Europe's nations no longer needed great armies. (Besides-though Sheehan does not address it at any length-much of the postwar defense tab was being paid by the United States, eager to contain the Soviet Union via NATO, whose mission, a British diplomat remarked, was to "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.") However Europe arrived at its new view of force, wars fought on the continent have been remarkably well-contained. As Sheehan observes, a war in the Balkans would once have touched off a conflagration across the continent, but the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were local and, once NATO got involved, easily suppressed. Any increase in militarism seems unlikely, given the widespread renunciation of America's invasion of Iraq, though the balance may be thrown off once militarized Turkey joins the European Union. Sheehan warns that itwill "not be an easy matter to absorb this kind of state into Europe's resolutely civilian politics and culture."Is Europe ripe for the plucking? Perhaps. Sheehan offers a worthy contribution to geopolitics.

Prologue: War and Peace in the Twentieth Century xiii

Part I : Living in Peace, Preparing for War, 1900–1914
1. "Without War, There Would Be No State" 3
2. Pacifism and Militarism 22
3. Europeans in a Violent World 42

Part II: A World Made by War, 1914–1945
4. War and Revolution 69
5. The Twenty-Year Truce 92
6. The Last European War 119

Part III : States Without War
7. The Foundations of the Postwar World 147
8. The Rise of the Civilian State 172
9. Why Europe Will Not Become a Superpower 198

Epilogue: The Future of the Civilian State 222 Notes 231 Bibliography 245 Index 261

Mr Adams Last Crusade or Spanking the Donkey

2009-01-12T22:11:00.000-08:00

Mr. Adam's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress

Author: Joseph Wheelan

Following his single term as President of the United States (1825–1829), John Quincy Adams, embittered by his loss to Andrew Jackson, boycotted his successor's inauguration, just as his father John Adams had done (the only two presidents ever to do so). Rather than retire, the sixty-two-year-old former president, U.S. senator, secretary of state, and Harvard professor was elected by his Massachusetts friends and neighbors to the House of Representatives to throw off the "incubus of Jacksonianism." It was the opening chapter in what was arguably the most remarkable post-presidency in American history.

In this engaging biography, historian Joseph Wheelan describes Adams's battles against the House Gag Rule that banished abolition petitions; the removal of Eastern Indian tribes; and the annexation of slave-holding Texas, while recounting his efforts to establish the Smithsonian Institution. As a "man of the whole country," Adams was not bound by political party, yet was reelected to the House eight times before collapsing at his "post of duty" on February 21, 1848, and then dying in the House Speaker's office. His funeral evoked the greatest public outpouring since Benjamin Franklin's death.

Mr. Adams's Last Crusade will enlighten and delight anyone interested in American history.

Boston Globe

Wheelan has written a solid and entertaining account of Adams's 17-year congressional career

Frederick J. Augustyn Jr. - Library Journal

Former AP reporter Wheelan (Jefferson's War) renders a valuable service by reminding readers that a constructive post-presidential career is not a new phenomenon. While Robert V. Remini's John Quincy Adamscovered the sixth president's entire career, Wheelan's contribution focuses on the illustrious 17-year period in Adams's life when, as a congressman for eastern Massachusetts, after his one White House term ended, he functioned as a "man of the whole country." Within the constraints of his time, this highly intelligent but prickly man eventually fought more forcefully for abolition and civil rights, for women's political participation, and against Indian removal than perhaps anyone else then in the U.S. government. Readers who remember the film portrayal of John Quincy Adams working to free the passengers of the slave ship Amistadin the film of that name will benefit from the fuller treatment on "Old Man Eloquent" here. They will learn of his role in the governmental support of scientific research through the judicious use of James Smithson's bequest, for example. Although Wheelan seems to have used few new sources as addenda to Adams's diligently kept 68-year-long diary and his family's papers, he artfully interprets the life of this conscience-bound President as one ironically to be fulfilled by his congressional career. That Adams entered Congress at age 64, beset by depression and physical ailments, and succeeded, should encourage other service-minded seniors. Recommended for public libraries and for all U.S. history collections.

Author's Note     vii
Prologue     xi
Favored Son of the Revolution     1
The Road to the Presidency     27
An "Agony of Mind"     37
The Freshman Congressman     67
A Worthy Cause     91
Adams, Science, and the Smithsonian Institution     111
Lightning Rod of Congress     129
"True and Honest Hearts Love You"     145
The Amistad     163
"Old Nestor"     187
Triumph     205
A New War and Decline     225
Epilogue     253
Bibliography     261
Notes     269
Index     293
Acknowledgments     307
About the Author     309

Look this: Dignity and Daily Bread or Study Guide for Use with Financial Accounting

Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the Dumb Season

Author: Matt Taibbi

The 2004 Election Was a Circus, and Matt Taibbi enjoyed a Front-Row Seat.

As a correspondent for the New York Press, The Nation, and Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi scoured the political landscape for hard-hitting news stories. But the closer he got to the politicians, the more pompous and vapid they appeared. How could he write anything meaningful about these puffed-up martinets, much less vote for them? Nevertheless, Taibbi forged on and continued his responsibilities as a serious campaign reporter—though not without frequent bouts of blind panic, drug use, and donning a gorilla suit.

Spanking the Donkey indicts the surreal irrelevance of today’s mainstream politics with barbed wit and caustic intelligence. Follow Taibbi as he covers the primary for the 2004 presidential election, joining him for a spot on John Kerry’s campaign plane, face-to-face encounters with John Edwards’s pancake makeup, enough Howard Dean press conferences to memorize the good doctor's stump speech by heart, and—just to spice things up—a two-month stint working undercover in a Republican campaign office in Orlando, Florida. Brimming with uncensored opinions and total truth, Taibbi captures the real American political mind; as a patron at Flo’s Bar in Manchester, New Hampshire, eloquently puts it: “They all suck . . . who’s running?”

“Gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi will do anything . . . to bring political reporting back to life. Spanking the Donkey is all the more necessary in the aftermath of an election that harnessed enough liberal outrage to light the Vegas strip, cost more than a billiondollars, absorbed hundreds of hours we will never get back, and achieved absolutely nothing.” —Salon

Bagpipe Brothers or Philosophy in a Time of Terror

2009-01-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

Bagpipe Brothers: The FDNY Band's True Story of Tragedy, Mourning, and Recovery

Author: Kerry Sheridan

"I applaud Kerry Sheridan for a huge effort to bring the story of the pipers and drummers of the FDNY to national notice. These men made a decision on 9/11 when they lost one of their own to dedicate their lives to bringing honor and glory and memory to the most fateful time in Fire Department history. The world should know this story, for the band has left a legacy of love that can never be surpassed."-Dennis Smith, author, "Report from Ground Zero."

"This is a story of unfathomable heroism and Sheridan deftly delivers it with both a journalist's hand and a great deal of heart. Read Bagpipe Brothers and see if you can keep yourself from crying the next time you hear the pipes calling."-Brian V. McDonald, author of My Father's Gun. One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD.

"You don't have to be Irish to have your heart tugged by the wail of the bagpipes. After reading Kerry Sheridan's wonderfully reported and beautifully written book, I will never hear that sweet and sad sound quite the same again.-Ari L. Goldman, author The Search for God at Harvard and Living a Year of Kaddish

After the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks, an Irish American tradition of funeral bagpiping came to symbolize the sounds of mourning for an entire nation. Among the dead were 343 firefighters--some of their bodies were found and some were not. In the months following the attacks, New York City's Emerald Society Bagpipe Band of firefighter-musicians took out their instruments and prepared to bury their dead--brothers in duty and in blood. Many firefighters alternated between playing their instruments at funerals and digging for the missing in the rubble of Ground Zero.

BagpipeBrothers tells the story of four unforgettable firefighters in the band, all of whom represent the larger stories of mourning and recovery that the nation experienced in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. In addition to the losses throughout the Fire Department, the bagpipe band lost one of its own, a beloved drummer, and also lost the respected brother of a member. The firefighters' stories include searching for the dead, struggling to bring peace to their families and themselves, coping with the endless round of funerals, and rethinking the meaning of faith. It is a moving experience to see this group of very strong men deal with unimaginable grief.

Kerry Sheridan has written the first book to cover the ordeal of the massive number of funerals, the importance of recovering bodies in Irish American culture, and the bagpiping ritual, both traditional and modern.

Kerry Sheridan was born and raised in an Irish American family in upstate New York. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Irish American newspapers in New York and California. She has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Library Journal

Journalist Sheridan recounts with startling immediacy the events following the 9/11 terrorist attacks as they affected the Fire Department of New York's pipe and drum band. After setting the stage with the development of the Irish American bands since the early 1960s, providing some insight into firehouse culture and discussing several other fires, she weaves together the stories of disparate families and friends as they coped with the devastation of the 343 firefighters lost at the World Trade Center. The firefighters in the band were overextended as they played for as many as 19 memorial services in one day, all the while working at the recovery site and serving as surrogate parents to their fallen comrades' children or comforters to the widows. Sheridan's terse phrasing reflects her profession, and her own Irish background betrays a deep affection for the plight of those she is privileged to interview. The raw emotions and suspense fully involve the reader in this harrowing tale. Recommended for all libraries to sit alongside Dennis Smith's Report from Ground Zero and David Halberstam's Firehouse as a testament to the resilience and humanity of these brave souls. It will especially interest libraries in the New York area or collections on firefighting or bagpipe bands.-Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

	Acknowledgments	IX
	Prologue	1
	Introduction: A Brief History of Bagpiping and the Irish Traditions of the New York City Fire Department	3
1	Irish Fair	20
2	The Brunton Brothers	41
3	September 11	50
4	Dawning of the Day	75
5	The Funerals	88
6	Discovery	121
7	Laying to Rest	138
8	Thanksgiving	152
9	End of the Line	162
10	Holiday	181
11	Home Turf	196
12	Lost Celebrations	201
13	Closing Ground Zero	218
	Epilogue	241
	Notes	245

New interesting book: Diagnostiquer l'Instrument de Culture D'organisation

Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida

Author: Giovanna Borradori

The idea for Philosophy in a Time of Terror was born hours after the attacks on 9/11 and was realized just weeks later when Giovanna Borradori sat down with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in New York City, in separate interviews, to evaluate the significance of the most destructive terrorist act ever perpetrated. This book marks an unprecedented encounter between two of the most influential thinkers of our age as here, for the first time, Habermas and Derrida overcome their mutual antagonism and agree to appear side by side. As the two philosophers disassemble and reassemble what we think we know about terrorism, they break from the familiar social and political rhetoric increasingly polarized between good and evil. In this process, we watch two of the greatest intellects of the century at work.

Library Journal

Many assumptions about politics were destroyed along with the World Trade Center, and Borradori (philosophy, Vassar) seized the opportunity to ask Habermas and Derrida how their theories fared. These men represent two central strands of European philosophy-the one building on Enlightenment notions of universal rationality, the other suspicious of the commitments often hidden in its language. Borradori thinks their past writings show that both philosophers regard freedom as dependent on a caring society that provides the necessary conditions for action and oppose the tradition that sees freedom as dependent only on philosophical clarity and the absence of restraint. In these interviews, Habermas and Derrida do mention the underlying economic issues-globalization and the search for mastery over the world's oil supplies. But Habermas sees the outbreak of terror mainly as a failure of communications, and Derrida sees it above all as a failure to develop a concept of world hospitality to replace what he thinks is the outmoded Christian notion of a toleration that is really only charity. Despite their theoretical convictions, they seem here to see the problems more as philosophical than as a failure to integrate economics and the social sciences or develop a strategy against misery and poverty. This is a book without jargon or technicalities that should have a place in all large collections.-Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Hitlers Second Book or Social Welfare

2009-01-11T18:03:00.000-08:00

Hitler's Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf

Author: Adolph Hitler

The first complete and annotated edition of the book that Adolf Hitler dictated just before his rise to power but never wanted to publish. Contains startling and revealing ideas that drove him once in power but that he didn't want made known.

Dr. Gerhard L. Weinberg was working in the repository of captured German records in Alexandria, Virginia, when in 1958 he found a manuscript that had been dictated, by Adolf Hitler. Since publishing Mein Kampf in 1925 and 1926, Hitler had not dealt with foreign policy issues to any extent. In 1928 he decided to write a new book to address a number of questions tied to events that were taking place at the time especially the elections to the Reichstag where the Nazi party had a mere 12 seats out of 410. However the main idea behind the new book was to provide answers to a number of foreign policy issues. It is here that the idea of an alliance between Germany and Italy is clearly enunciated and Mussolini is praised. Of course, the entire text is riddled with the familiar racial language that was Hitler's particular trademark, as well as his form of extreme Social Darwinism and insistence of the need for "living space" and the need to "Germanize" the new space in the East, which meant in any case annihilating the Jews and others located there.

The new contribution offered here was the much broader, "open" vision Hitler gave of his foreign policy views and the fact that all of them were oriented toward war and aggression. He only conceived foreign policy and relations with other countries in those terms and stated for example that his goal was not to revise the Treat of Versailles at all since he wanted to acquire much more space for Germany than the borders of 1914!

Finally the most startling vision is the terrifying future Hitler offered, one of continuous warfare, with new wars being carried out in a kind of chain-reaction until the final inevitable clash with the United States. These statements, wrapped in the typical rhetoric and with many references to people and events that belong to those times, and masterfully explained by Dr. Weinberg's annotations, makes this one of the essential documents, unavailable until now, for a deeper understanding of the Nazi period and his long list of horrors.

The New Republic - Omer Bartov

Must we read another ranting book by Hitler? This book is certainly as close to the heart of darkness as a book can be. But it should have been read in its time, and it should be read now.... This is a book that should be read... by contemporary journalists, political observers, and all concerned people who have the stomach to recognize evil when they confront it.

Publishers Weekly

In 1958, while directing the microfilming and organization of a trove of archives that the U.S. forces had taken from the Nazis at the end of WWII, historian Weinberg (A World at Arms) discovered the manuscript of a second book that Hitler had written but never published. The manuscript was published in German in 1961, accompanied by Weinberg's annotations, but this is the first authoritative English version (a pirated and poor translation appeared in the 1960s). The text bears all of Hitler's hallmarks: rambling thoughts, half-baked ideas, pedantic writing-along with a terrifying, sustained belief in war and violence as the means to ensure that Germans would flourish. Compared to Mein Kampf, there are fewer pages devoted to Jews. Nonetheless, what comes across most strongly is Hitler's abiding commitment to the principle of race and his identification of Jews as the enemy that threatened to undo all that Germans had created. Hitler dwells at length on foreign policy, and outlines a strategy of alliance with Fascist Italy and Great Britain. (He actually believed that Britain would accept a German-dominated European continent so long as Germany did not challenge the overseas British empire.) He also foresees an inevitable clash with the United States. This provides solid historical background on Hitler's thinking in the late 1920s, when his party was nothing more than a tiny, radical sect. Weinberg provides helpful notes and a very informative introduction. 20,000 first printing. BOMC, History and Military Book Clubs main selection. (Oct. 10) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Weinberg (A World at Arms) is a respected historian of the Nazi period who discovered the original text of this book, dictated in 1928 but never published, in the captured German archives now housed at Alexandria, VA. In 1961 it was published both in German and in an unauthorized and now out-of-print English translation as Hitler's Secret Book. This new edition provides a smooth translation, a thoughtful preface, and extensive, useful scholarly annotations and notes. This scholarly care does not blunt Hitler's verbose and meandering style or the vileness of the thoughts presented here in all their stultifying ugliness. For the general reader who has already encountered Hitler's ideas in Mein Kampf, most of the contents of this book will be chillingly familiar. For the scholar or student, there is some additional information touching on Hitler's opportunistic approach to the nationality question in the case of Italy and the South Tyrol, as well as acknowledgment of the importance of dealing with the United States. But, except for the notes and scholarly apparatus, Hitler's Second Book extends the ideas of Mein Kampf in only a limited fashion. This book has been picked up by the Military and History Book clubs; so demand may lead to purchase. Suitable for academic libraries and for public libraries striving for completeness.-Barbara Walden, Univ. of Wisconsin Lib., Madison Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

	Foreword
	Introduction
	Preface	3
I	War and Peace in the Struggle for Survival	7
II	Fighting, Not Industry, Secures Life	16
III	Race, Conflict, and Power	29
IV	Foreign Policy Critique and Proposals	38
V	The Policies of the NSDAP	48
VI	From the Unification of the Reich to a Policy of Space	51
VII	The Misguided Economic and Alliance Policies of the Second Reich	58
VIII	Necessity of Military Power - The Borders of 1914 Not the Goal	83
IX	Neither Border Policies Nor Economic Policies Nor Pan-Europe	99
X	No Neutrality	119
XI	Germany's Political Situation: No Alliance with Russia	134
XII	Basic Principles of German Foreign Policy	153
XIII	The Possible Goals	155
XIV	Germany and England	160
XV	Germany and Italy	175
XVI	Conclusion	224
	App. I	235
	App. II	236
	Notes	241
	Index	289

New interesting book: Art and Craft of Entertaining or Simply Thai

Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need

Author: June Axinn

Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need
Seventh Edition

June Axinn
Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania
Mark J. Stern
University of Pennsylvania

Basic Approach:

Social Welfare, Seventh Edition, describes and analyzes the ideas that have shaped the history of social welfare–from the Colonial Period to the present day. It offers a comprehensive examination of the history of social welfare that explores the ideas and the economic and political forces that have shaped policy development, providing students with a foundation for understanding current policies.

Features:

New! The period from 1992—2006 (Chapter 9) looks at the main thrusts of social welfare policy emphasized by the Republican majority in Congress and examines their impact on the poor and the oppressed in the United States.
Chapter 9 includes updated material on Medicare prescription drug legislation, welfare reform, Hurricane Katrina, and social security privatization.
Expanded sections cover the historical development of institutions and the de-institutionalization movement.
Revised discussion of the War on Poverty takes recent scholarship into consideration.
Expanded discussions of trends in the justice system address the immigration debate and the issue of homosexuality and the law.
New Discussion Questions for each chapter help engage students in the role of history in contemporary policy debates.

What the reviewers are saying…

“I really enjoy Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need and find that each time I read it in order to prepare for class, I pick up a few new interesting facts.”
Michael Wolf-Branigin, George Mason University

“I think [Social Welfare] is still the best overall text for BSW or MSW students in courses that emphasize the history of social welfare. It is well-organized, researched and written. It has a clear theme that is maintained throughout the book. It reflects the disciplinary strengths of the authors (economics and history) and it uses primary source documents effectively.” Michael Reisch, University of Michigan

________________________________________________________________________
** MyHelpingLab ad here **

Booknews

Axinn and Stern (social work, U. of Pennsylvania) present a historical narrative of social welfare issues in the US, accompanied by relevant historical documents. Organized around historical time periods from the mid-18th century to 1999, the volume places social welfare policy into economic, demographic, and political contexts. Revisions include new sections on the treatment and status of Native Americans, immigration policy, family roles, and attitudes towards the aging. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Community Nutrition in Action or Mapping the Social Landscape

2009-01-11T07:51:00.000-08:00

Community Nutrition in Action: An Entrepreneurial Approach (with InfoTrac?)

Author: Marie A Boyl

COMMUNITY NUTRITION IN ACTION, FOURTH EDITION is the perfect text to introduce students to the program planning, policies, resources, and nutrition issues specific to community nutrition, providing an understanding of creating and implementing nutrition programs from various constituencies (elderly populations, children, impoverished populations, college students, etc. ). Successful practitioners in community nutrition have proven to have a mind and skill set that opens them up to new ideas and ventures. Incorporating an entrepreneurial approach, this text encourages students to learn how to take risks, try new technologies, and use fresh approaches to improving the public's nutrition and health status. The text also delivers the core material important to those who will be active in solving community nutritional and health problems, including program delivery, nutrition education, nutrition assessment, and planning nutrition interventions. From the "Case Studies" to the "Community Learning Activities," students are provided with both practical advice and applications to support active learning.

Book about: Best Party Book or Slow Cooker Magic

Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology

Author: Susan J Ferguson

Drawing from a wide selection of classic and contemporary works, the 60 selections in this best-selling reader represent a plurality of voices and views within sociology. In addition to classic works by authors such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, C. Wright Mills, David Rosenhan, Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, this anthology presents a wide range of contemporary scholarship, some of which provides new treatments of traditional concepts. By integrating issues of diversity throughout the book, Ferguson helps students see the inter-relationships of race, social class, and gender, and the ways in which they have shaped the experiences of all people in society.

* = New to this edition

Preface

I. THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

1. C. Wright Mills, The Promise--classic piece on the sociological imagination

*2. Kathyrn Edin and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage—applying the sociological imagination to single motherhood

3. Mary Romero, An Intersection of Biography and History: My Intellectual Journey--applying the sociological imagination to domestic service

Social Research

4. Michael Schwalbe, Finding Out How the Social World Works--a summary of what it means to be sociologically mindful

5. Craig Haney, W. Curtis Banks, and Philip G. Zimbardo, Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison--classic piece on the research design of Zimbardo's famous experiment

*6. Mitchell Duneier, Sidewalk--an ethnographic study of street vendors in New York City

II. CULTURE

*7. Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Fear the Wrong Things--one perspective of American culture

8. Anne M. Velliquette and Jeff B. Murray, The New Tattoo Subculture --the tattoo subculture and meanings of body adornment

9. Yen Le Espiritu, The Racial Construction of Asian American Women and Men--an examination of racist and sexist stereotypes in U.S. culture

10. Haunani-Kay Trask, Lovely Hula Hands: Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture--an examination of cultural commodification and exploitation

III. SOCIALIZATION

11. Judith Lorber, "Night to His Day": The Social Construction of Gender--thesocialization of gender identity

12. Robert Granfield, Making It By Faking It: Working-Class Students in an Elite Academic Environment--working class identity and law school socialization

*13. Jacqueline Lewis, Learning to Strip: The Socialization Experiences of Exotic Dancers--how exotic dancers are socialized to their work

14. Gwynne Dyer, Anybody's Son Will Do--resocialization into the total institution of the military

IV. GROUPS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

15. Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler, Peer Power: Clique Dynamics among School Children--a study of the structure and interactional dynamics among groups of school children

16. Martin Sanchez Jankowski, Gang Business--a functional analysis of a primary group

*17. Christine L. Williams, Shopping as Symbolic Interaction: Race, Class, and Gender in the Toy Store--a study of secondary group relationships and social interaction

18. Mark Colvin, Descent Into Madness: The New Mexico State Prison Riot--an example of social structure breaking down

V. DEVIANCE, CRIME, AND SOCIAL CONTROL

19. David L. Rosenhan, On Being Sane in Insane Places--classic piece on labeling and social deviance

20. Penelope E. McLorg and Diane E. Taub, Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia: The Development of Deviant Identities--the social construction of deviant identities

21. Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio--an ethnographic study of drug dealing in the inner-city

22. A. Ayres Boswell and Joan Z. Spade, Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?--the social organization of crime

VI. SOCIAL INEQUALITY

Social Class

23. Kingsley Davis, Wilbert E. Moore, and Melvin Tumin, Some Principles of Stratification --classic piece on the functions of social stratification

24. G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?: The Corporate Community and the Upper Class--the lifestyles and social institutions of the upper class

*25. Thomas M. Shapiro, The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality--an examination of social class and racial differences in wealth

26. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel-and-Dimed on (Not) Getting by in America--an exploration of the lives of the working poor

Gender

27. Barbara Risman, Gender as Structure--a review of four theories that explain sex and gender

*28. Betsy Lucal, What It Means to Be Gendered Me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichotomous Gender System--one woman's experiences with gender identity and interaction

*29. Nancy Lesko, Our Guys/Good Guys: Playing with High School Privilege and Power--an examination of male-dominated athletics and school culture

*30. Meika Loe, Working at Bazooms: The Intersection of Power, Gender, and Sexuality--an investigation of gender and sexuality in the workplace

Race and Ethnicity

*31. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “New Racism,” Color-Blind Racism, and the Future of Whiteness in America
--the persistence of whiteness and racial inequality in America

32. Jennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean, Beyond Black and White: Remaking Race in America--how race is measured by the U.S. government

33. Charlie LeDuff, At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die--an examination of the racial dynamics at one workplace site

*34. Katherin M. Flower Kim, Out of Sorts: Adoption and (Un)Desirable Children--how race and racism influence adoption decisions

VII. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Power and Politics

35. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite--classic piece on the power elite

36. Dan Clawson, Alan Neustadtl,and Mark Weller, Dollars and Votes: How Business Campaign Contributions Subvert Democracy--an application of Mills' power elite

*37. Charles Derber, One World Under Business--the financial dynamics and politics of globalization

Mass Media

38. Todd Gitlin, Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives--the globalization of American media

39. Gregory Mantsios, Media Magic: Making Class Invisible--how the mass media distorts social class

*40. Karen Sternheimer, It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children--an examination of media violence and its effects on children

The Economy and Work

41. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Manifesto of the Communist Party--classic piece on the relationship between the capitalists and the workers

42. Robin Leidner, Over the Counter: McDonald's--an ethnographic study of the routinization of work

43. Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work--how individuals combine their work and home lives

Religion

44. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism--classic piece on the influence of religion on the economy

45. Mark Chaves, Abiding Faith--the current status of religion among Americans

*46. Russell Shorto, Faith at Work--how some Christians are bringing faith into the workplace

Health and Medicine

*47. Jonathan Oberlander, The U.S. Health Care System: On a Road to Nowhere?--a critical review of the U.S. institution of medicine

*48. Eric Klinenberg, Dying Alone: The Social Production of Urban Isolation--the health consequences of the 1995 Chicago heat wave

49. David A. Karp, Illness and Identity--an interview study of people with depression

Education

50. Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes, Civilize Them With A Stick--education as an institution of social control

*51. Jonathan Kozol, Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid--racial segregation in American schools

52. Ann Arnett Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity--racial and gender stereotyping in American schools

The Family

*53. Andrew J. Cherlin, The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage--an examination of the weakening of social norms in the institution of marriage

54. Ann Crittendon, The Mommy Tax--the income discrimination faced by working mothers

*55. Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life--a study of social class differences in parenting and child rearing in African American and white families

VIII. SOCIAL CHANGE

*56. Joel Best, Social Progress and Social Problems: Toward A Sociology of Gloom--the paradoxical relationship between social progress and social problems

*57. George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society--a contemporary theory of social change

*58. D. Stanley Eitzen, The Atrophy of Social Life--how social isolation is affecting society

*59. Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith, Globalization and Social Movements --an overview of social movements and globalization

60. Allan G. Johnson, What Can We Do? Becoming a Part of the Solution--social change strategies to deal with privilege and oppression

Curveball or Rebuilding Native Nations

2009-01-10T12:17:00.000-08:00

Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Man Behind Them: How America Went to War in Iraq

Author: Bob Drogin

Curveball answers the crucial question of the Iraq war: How and why was America’s intelligence so catastrophically wrong? In this dramatic and explosive book, award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin delivers a narrative that takes us to Europe, the Middle East, and deep inside the CIA to find the truth–the truth about the lies and self-deception that led us into a military and political nightmare.

In 1999, a mysterious Iraqi applies for political asylum in Munich. The young chemical engineer offers compelling testimony of Saddam Hussein’s secret program to build weapons of mass destruction. He claims that the dictator has constructed germ factories on trucks, creating a deadly hell on wheels. His grateful German hosts pass his account to their CIA counterparts but deny the Americans access to their superstar informant. The Americans nevertheless give the defector his unforgettable code name: Curveball.
The case lies dormant until after 9/11, when the Bush administration turns its attention to Iraq. Determined to invade, Bush’s people seize on Curveball’s story about mobile germ labs–even though it has begun to unravel. Ignoring a flood of warnings about the informant’s credibility, the CIA allows President Bush to cite Curveball’s unconfirmed claims in a State of the Union speech. Finally, Secretary of State Colin Powell highlights the Iraqi’s “eyewitness” account during his historic address to the U.N. Security Council. Yet the entire case is based on a fraud. America’s vast intelligence apparatus conjured up demons that did not exist. And the proof was clear before thewar.

Most of the events and conversations presented here have not been reported before. The portrayals–from an obdurate president to a bamboozled secretary of state to a bungling CIA director to case handlers conned by their snitch–are vivid and exciting. Curveball reads like an investigative spy thriller. Fast-paced and engrossing, it is an inside story of intrigue and incompetence at the highest levels of government. At a time when Americans demand answers, this authoritative book provides them with clarity and conviction.

Just when you thought the WMD debacle couldn’t get worse, here comes veteran Los Angeles Times national-security correspondent Drogin’s look at just who got the stories going in the first place…Simultaneously sobering and infuriating–essential reading for those who follow the headlines.
—Kirkus Reviews

In this engrossing account, Los Angeles Times correspondent Drogin paints an intimate and revealing portrait of the workings and dysfunctions of the intelligence community.
—Publishers Weekly

Enter Bob Drogin's new book… an insightful and compelling account of one crucial component of the war's origins… Had Drogin merely pieced together Curveball's story, it alone would have made for a thrilling book. But he provides something more: a frightening glimpse at how easily we could make the same mistakes again…The real value of Drogin's book is its meticulous demonstration that bureaucratic imperative often leads to self-delusion.
—Washington Monthly

Drogin delivers a startling account of this fateful intelligence snafu.
—Booklist

But, again, the intelligence community was disappointing the Bush administration… Los Angeles Times correspondent Bob Drogin lays out the whole sorry tale in his forthcoming book, "Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War." —Newsweek

By the time you finish this book you will be shaking your head with wonder, or perhaps you will be shaking with anger, about the misadventures that preceded the misadventures in Iraq. This book is so powerful, it almost refutes its subtitle: The man called Curveball did not cause a war; he became a pretext — one among many.
— George F. Will
There used to be an old rule that *real* journalists lived by: 'All governments are run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed.' We've come a long way from those days, to a media that has been cowed into submission and accepting the 'official story.' Thank God for Bob Drogin and his refusal to believe. It's journalists like him and books like CURVEBALL that give many of us a sliver of hope that we can turn things around. —Michael Moore, Director of "Fahrenheit 9/11," and "Sicko"
Curveball is the factual equivalent of Catch 22. It is impossible to read this book and then look at our world leaders without thinking, "F*ck. Oh f*ck. Oh my God, oh f*ck."
—Mark Thomas, comedian and political activist

…the biggest fiasco in the history of secret intelligence over 500 years.
—Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day Of The Jackal, The Odessa File and The Afghan

Bob Drogin struck journalistic gold in this story of a conman who told his intelligence handlers exactly what they wanted to hear. If this twisted tale could be read simply as a thrilling farce it would be pure delight — but much more importantly, it is a history of our time.
—Philip Gourevitch

Bob Drogin is a brilliant reporter. In Curveball, he has produced a riveting and important investigation, full of startling and carefully documented detail, laying bare the anatomy of an intelligence failure and its contribution to a catastrophic war.
—Steve Coll, author of GHOST WARS: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Bob Drogin accomplishes what only the best reporters can; he forces you to wonder how he could possibly know that! If you want to know how the CIA could have possibly been so wrong about Iraq, here is a big part of the answer.
—Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down

A crucial study in the political manipulation of intelligence, understanding how Curveball got us into Iraq will arm us for the next round of lies coming out of Washington.
—Robert Baer, author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism

Here we go again: the self-deception, the corruption of intelligence, and the abuse of authority, amid a full cast of the usual suspects in the White House and the Pentagon. It's a crucially important story, and it comes wonderfully alive in Curveball. It would be almost fun to read if the message wasn't so important–and so devastating to the integrity of the American processes.
—Seymour M. Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib

Curveball is a true story, marvelously reported, about a descent into the netherworld of deceit and duplicity, where the lies of a single man in an interrogation cell in Germany grew like a malign spore in the dark. When it emerged, on the lips of the President and the Secretary of State, it infected the course of world events.
—Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action and The Lost Painting.

The New York Times - Christopher Dickey

This is a story of willful blindness masquerading as secret intelligence that is worthy of Somerset Maugham or Graham Greene, and Drogin rises to the occasion.

Publishers Weekly

In 1999, an Iraqi refugee, soon code-named Curveball, told German intelligence agents of his work on an ongoing Iraqi program that produced biological weapons in mobile laboratories. His claims electrified the CIA, which had little good intelligence about Saddam Hussein's regime and was fixated on the threat of Iraqi WMDs, which later became a centerpiece in the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq. It was only after American occupation forces failed to find any mobile germ-warfare labs-or other WMDs-that prewar warnings about Curveball's heavy drinking and mental instability, and the nagging gaps and contradictions in his story, were taken seriously. In this engrossing account, Los Angeles Timescorrespondent Drogin paints an intimate and revealing portrait of the workings and dysfunctions of the intelligence community. Hobbled by internal and external turf battles and hypnotized by pet theories, the CIA-including director George Tenet, whose reputation suffers another black eye here-ignored skeptics, the author contends, and fell in love with a dubious source who told the agency and the White House what they wanted to hear. Instead of connecting the dots, Drogin argues, "the CIA and its allies made up the dots." (Oct. 16)

Kirkus Reviews

Just when you thought the WMD debacle couldn't get worse, here comes veteran Los Angeles Times national-security correspondent Drogin's look at just who got the stories going in the first place. "Clandestine operatives are trained to spread falsehoods as part of their tradecraft," Drogin admits at the outset. The falsehoods that came from an asylum seeker in Germany may have been deliberate, schooled and carefully scripted. More likely they were the inventions of an alcoholic desperate to be believed long enough not to be deported to a land still run by Saddam Hussein. "Curveball" was recruited out of Baghdad University in 1994 to keep tabs on Hussein's chemical-weapons program; by 1996, the CIA's files were full of notes averring that he was developing mobile germ-weaponry labs and other biochemical nasties. Curveball fled Iraq for Germany in 1999, seeking asylum. He apparently passed the tough scrutiny of the German spies, though British intelligence warned that he was untrustworthy. Meanwhile, other informers on the weapons program were feeding back information that had come from American intelligence, eager to supply what they imagined their American handlers wanted. Said weapons inspector Scott Ritter, "most of it just regurgitated what we'd given them. It was crap. Total crap." So it was, as Drogin demonstrates. Even though some within American intelligence eventually came to doubt Curveball, the higher-ups had too much invested in him-"the CIA analysts seemed so cocksure about the Iraqi, a defector they had never met, that the president was citing him." The president also used Curveball's reports to take the country to war, depending on a single source that had never been vetted orsubstantiated. Curveball, Drogin suggests, may in the end be blameless; he told pleasing stories that comforted the president, while George Tenet and his CIA colleagues "held on to the lies" long after they were shown to be worthless. Simultaneously sobering and infuriating-essential reading for those who follow the headlines. Agent: Sterling Lord/Sterling Lord Literistic Inc.

Look this: Putting Trust in the U S Budget or The Education Gospel

Rebuilding Native Nations: Strategies for Governance and Development

Author: Miriam Jorgensen

A revolution is underway among the Indigenous nations of North America. It is a quiet revolution, largely unnoticed in society at large. But it is profoundly important. From High Plains states and Prairie Provinces to southwestern deserts, from Mississippi and Oklahoma to the northwest coast of the continent, Native peoples are reclaiming their right to govern themselves and to shape their future in their own ways. Challenging more than a century of colonial controls, they are addressing severe social problems, building sustainable economies, and reinvigorating Indigenous cultures. In effect, they are rebuilding their nations according to their own diverse and often innovative designs.

Produced by the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy at the University of Arizona and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, this book traces the contours of that revolution as Native nations turn the dream of self-determination into a practical reality. Part report, part analysis, part how-to manual for Native leaders, it discusses strategies for governance and community and economic development being employed by American Indian nations and First Nations in Canada as they move to assert greater control over their own affairs. Rebuilding Native Nations provides guidelines for creating new governance structures, rewriting constitutions, building justice systems, launching nation-owned enterprises, encouraging citizen entrepreneurs, developing new relationships with non-Native governments, and confronting the crippling legacies of colonialism. For nations that wish to join that revolution or for those who simply want to understand the transformation nowunderway across Indigenous North America, this book is a critical resource.

The Freedom Agenda or The General and Mrs Washington

2009-01-10T02:05:00.000-08:00

The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy [Just Not the Way George Bush Did]

Author: James Traub

Americans have been trying to shape democracy around the world for more than a century. It is the American mission, our distinctive form of evangelism. But when President Bush declared, in his second inaugural address, that “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands,” he elevated this cause—the “Freedom Agenda,” as he called it—to the central theme of American foreign policy. Yet the war in Iraq has proven the folly of seeking to impose American democracy by force. As we leave the Bush era behind, the question arises: What part of our efforts to spread democracy can we rescue from this failure?

The Freedom Agenda traces the history of America’s democratic evangelizing. James Traub, a journalist for The New York Times Magazine, describes the rise and fall of the Freedom Agenda during the Bush years, in part through interviews with key administration officials. He offers a richly detailed portrait of the administration’s largely failed efforts to bolster democratic forces abroad. In the end, Traub argues that democracy matters—for human rights, for reconciliation among ethnic and religious groups, for political stability and equitable development—but the United States must exercise caution in its efforts to spread it, matching its deeds to its words, both abroad and at home.

The New York Times - Gary J. Bass

[Traub] very much wants to promote democracy, and his book is a penitent but determined exercise in salvaging that idea from Bush's "Wilsonianism of the right." The trick is to do this without sounding like a Menshevik explaining how the Soviets never really tried socialism properly, but Traub, who is relentlessly fair-minded, carries it off…Appalled by Bush's hubris, Traub still sees the need to protect individual rights by building liberal democracy, but in a "more honest, more modest, more generous" way. Many new democracies have stalled in their liberalization, hampered by corruption, public disenchantment, ill-functioning states or foolish social and economic policies. Traub understands that democracy should mean more than just elections; it should also mean the rule of law, individual freedoms, checks and balances, accountability and civilian control of the security forces. This book is a nuanced guide for reaching a complicated, differentiated world. After Bush's certitudes, this is oddly thrilling.

Publishers Weekly

Traub (The Best Intentions) tries to rescue the policy of democracy-promotion from the ashes of the Iraq War in this book that is both a critique of contemporary politics and a nimble history of the continuities in American foreign policy. According to the author, the "Freedom Agenda"-George W. Bush's declaration that American liberty is dependent on "liberty in other lands" is-for all its contemporary bungling-a "venerable American axiom." The ambition to export democracy has been "our missionary impulse," an impulse the book traces from McKinley's 1898 invasion of the Philippines. Securing democracy at home and abroad is essential, argues Traub; "our own security depends on the progress of liberty"-just not with the "heavy-handed and often bellicose" approach of the Bush administration. Although he gives short shrift to historical democracy-promotion successes in Germany, Japan and South Korea, the author's cogent assessment of the current necessity and challenges of recent efforts by presidents Carter to George W. Bush makes for a useful primer on American intervention in a changing world. (Sept.)

Kirkus Reviews

New York Times Magazine contributor Traub (The Best Intentions, 2006, etc.) analyzes the history and future of America's role in spreading democracy abroad. The author takes his title from the phrase generally used to describe the policy articulated in President Bush's second inaugural address: "the survival of liberty in our lands increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." Traub traces the history of this messianic idea back to the turn of the 20th century, when American forces swept into the Philippines and fumblingly attempted to convert the island nation into a modern democracy. He touches upon similar efforts made by presidents Wilson and Truman but spends most of his time on America's response, both at home and abroad, to the communist and later Islamist threat. The subtitle reveals Traub's slant, but his criticisms of the Bush administration are couched in a dispassionate, journalistic tone, eschewing righteous denunciations to focus on questions of efficacy. Oddly, the author doesn't spend much time explaining "why America must spread democracy." Instead, he operates as a scientist, cracking open the notion of democracy to see what it consists of, examining why it works in some places but not in others. Like all good reporters, Traub distrusts simple solutions, looking instead at the complex, competing evaluations of democracy's importance in world affairs. He has no sympathy for those who find some people "unready" for a government chosen at the ballot box, nor for those who think democracy is simply a matter of ballot boxes and ignore the impact of history, economics and institutions. He clearly fears a future America, chastened by the Bushadministration's failures abroad, unwilling to respond to the calls of people around the world who yearn for a stake in their governments. Not much new here, but detailed, intelligent analysis makes this an excellent primer on a perpetually thorny issue.

Go to: Complete Book of Diabetic Cooking or Best Low Carb Cookbook

The General and Mrs. Washington: The Untold Story of a Marriage and a Revolution

Author: Bruce Chadwick

Until now the story of the American Revolution has been incomplete. Many have told the stories of blood and battle, of heroes and traitors, but no one has told the tale of the union that helped form the Union.

The history of America’s First Family is inexorably tied to the workings of the revolution. Martha’s son Jackie (she had four children and George had none) was 28 when he died at Yorktown. George’s own life would have been lost on multiple occasions if not for Martha. Only she could bring comfort and grace to the winter camps and it was in this manner that the revolutionaries came to see Martha not only as a kindred spirit, but as a beloved heroine.

Here is the story of the fateful marriage of the richest woman in Virginia and the man who could have been king. In telling their story, Chadwick explains not only their remarkable devotion to each other, but also why the wealthiest couple in Virginia became revolutionaries who risked the loss of not only their vast estates, but also their very lives.

Publishers Weekly

When Martha Custis married George Washington in 1759, according to Chadwick, she was a fat and amiable widow seeking a loving companion, a father for her children and a manager for her sizable plantations. Their union also met the needs of the dashing, social-climbing and rotten-toothed military hero: he became one of the wealthiest men in Virginia, inherited a ready-made family and quashed a fruitless infatuation with his best friend's wife. As Chadwick (George Washington's War) explains in this lackluster dual biography, Martha was a traditional, dutiful wife whose life in a patriarchal society revolved around her husband and children as she supervised a staff of slaves who prepared meals, tended gardens and produced clothing. As the Revolution approached, Martha saw her role as supportive wife of a political figure. She joined George at Valley Forge during the cruel winter of 1777-1778, and her simple helpfulness, such as organizing sewing circles to clothe soldiers, made her a beloved role model. As the president's wife, Martha befriended all and sundry and had Washington's ear. Although competently researched, Chadwick's latest effort is amateurishly written and lacking in provocative insights. Readers will do better with Patricia Brady's splendid recent bio of the first First Lady. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Former journalist Chadwick, the author of other books on Washington and the Revolutionary period (e.g., George Washington's War), here turns his attention to the domestic life of the first couple of the new United States. Drawing extensively on letters and journals from contemporaries, the author offers a picture of the Washingtons at home at Mount Vernon, in winter camp with the army during the Revolutionary War, and in their rented residences during Washington's presidency. Although less has been written on Washington as husband and householder than as general and statesman, Washington scholars will find little new here; this is a popular treatment for general readers. George and Martha are revealed to be surprisingly typical of their class and era. They cope with the everyday business of married life; George was a devoted father to Martha's children from her first marriage, and the book charts their grief over the loss of a daughter and a son. With their behavior as the first first couple-George's reserve, Martha's open-heartedness, their shared generosity-they set precedents for a new American way of life. Recommended for public libraries, but Patricia Brady's Martha Washington: An American Life is an excellent choice for informed readers and undergraduates.-Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

At home with George and Martha, America's first First Family. Shortly before her death, Martha Washington (1731-1802) extinguished any hope of a definitive assessment of her marriage and family life by burning the decades-long correspondence between her and her husband. This historians' tragedy forces Chadwick (The First American Army, 2005, etc.) to draw mainly from the observations of contemporaries to examine the dynamic between a husband and wife who together dominated the 18th-century American stage. Having already achieved a small measure of military fame, the land-poor Colonel Washington (1732-99) married the wealthy widow Martha Custis in 1759, taking custody of her two surviving children, Patsy and Jack, and eventually her grandchildren, Nelly and Wash. While it briefly charts the troubled lives of the Custis offspring, the story focuses on the principals. George was tall and muscular; Martha was short and plump. He was ferociously ambitious; she was content to be the wife of a Virginia planter. He was a clothes horse; she favored the plain and simple. He was famously aloof; she was delightfully gregarious. He was strict with the kids; she was hopelessly indulgent. Both had a deep appreciation and admiration for the other, an abiding sense of duty and a keen understanding of their official roles, carefully attending to the details of their domestic and public lives. Intended for the general reader, Chadwick's brisk narrative comes as close as we are likely to get to an understanding of the Washington union, but the book works best when assessing the impressive impact of the First Couple on an ever-widening audience. Washington used the word "family" variously to includehis slaves at Mt. Vernon, his staff in the army, his presidential cabinet and, eventually, all his fellow citizens. No special need to recount the legacy of the father of our country, but Martha, too, played an important, underappreciated role in ministering to these extended families, a contribution well recognized here. A deft portrait of the Washington team, building a life together and, eventually, a new nation.

Too Close to Call or Napoleon Bonaparte

2009-01-09T13:52:00.000-08:00

Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election

Author: Jeffrey Toobin

From the best-selling author of A Vast Conspiracy and The Run of His Life comes Too Close to Call—the definitive story of the Bush-Gore presidential recount. A political and legal analyst of unparalleled journalistic skill, Jeffrey Toobin is the ideal writer to distill the events of the thirty-six anxiety-filled days that culminated in one of the most stunning Supreme Court decisions in history.

Packed with news-making disclosures and written with the drive of a legal thriller, Too Close to Call takes us inside James Baker's private jet, through the locked gates to Al Gore's mansion, behind the covered-up windows of Katherine Harris's office, and even into the secret conference room of the United States Supreme Court. As the scene shifts from Washington to Austin and into the remote corners of the enduringly strange Sunshine State, Toobin's book will transform what you thought you knew about the most extraordinary political drama in American history.

The Florida recount unfolded in a kaleidoscopic maze of bizarre concepts (chads, pregnant and otherwise), unfamiliar people in critically important positions (the Florida Supreme Court), and familiar people in surprising new places (the Miami relatives of Eliбn Gonzбlez, in a previously undisclosed role in this melodrama). With the rich characterization that is his trademark, Toobin portrays the prominent strategists who masterminded the campaigns—the Daleys and the Roves—and also the lesser-known but influential players who pulled the strings, as well as the judges and justices whose decisions determined the final outcome. Toobin gives both camps a treatment they have not yet received—remarkably evenhanded, nonpartisan, and entirely new.

The post-election period posed a challenge to even the most zealous news junkie: how to keep up with what was happening and sort out the important from the trivial. Jeffrey Toobin has now done this—and then some. With clarity, insight, humor, and a deep understanding of the law, he deconstructs the events, the players, and the often Byzantine intricacies of our judicial system. A remarkable account of one of the most significant periods in our country's history, Too Close to Call is endlessly surprising, frequently poignant, and wholly addictive.
About the Author:
Jeffrey Toobin is a staff writer at The New Yorker, the legal analyst at ABC News, and the author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President and The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson. He served as an assistant United States attorney in Brooklyn and as an associate counsel in the office of independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh—which provided the basis for his book Opening Arguments: A Young Lawyer's First Case—United States Supreme Court v. Oliver North. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. Toobin lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

Economist

A good read . . . a brave book.

Chicago Sun-Times

A rich and readable reprise . . . by the New Yorker writer who shows brilliantly how the American legal system spun out of control.

People

A story as taut and surprising as any thriller. . . . Unimpeachable page-turner.

New York Daily News

Compulsively readable. . . . A Vast Conspiracy delivers new information, provides arresting perspective and is a helluva read for all that.

Boston Globe

An irresistibly readable new overview of the whole ugly case.

New York Times Book Review

An admirably clear, vigorously written, plain-spoken and common-sensical book.

New York Observer

A superlatively researched and written book.

New York Review of Books

A superb work of factual and legal analysis. . . . Few novels are as gripping.

Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life

Author: Alan Schom

A definitive biography of Bonaparte from his birth in Corsica to his death in exile on St Helena, this book examines all aspects of Bonaparte's spectacular rise to power and his dizzying fall. It offers close examination of battlefield victories, personal torments, military genius, Bonaparte's titanic ego and his relationships with the French government, Talleyrand, Wellington and Josephine. A consummate biography of a complex man.

The New York Times Book Review - Robert Gildea

A rip-roaring yarn...a vast dramatis personae of emperors and princesses, marshals and bishops, mistresses and murderers....Napoleon does, as it claims, present the whole Napoleon, the public and the private face....Schom has a lively style, and a neat turn of phrase, and his book reads well.

Robert Gildea

The New Yorker - Adam Gopnik

Polished, scholarly, and successful.

Washington Post Book World - Dan Wick

Meticulously researched... Schom presents a rounded portrait not only of Napoleon but also of the principal figures in his extraordinary life... and brilliantly presents Napoleon's life while appropriately deflating his legend.

Kirkus Reviews

A biography so negative, it even casts doubt on Napoleon's military genius. Historian Schom breaks no new ground in portraying the man who rose from the impoverished Corsican aristocracy to become emperor of France as a brutal, selfish manipulator who dreamed only of glory and cared little for other people. But even previous biographers who didn't think much of Bonaparte as a human being or a ruler usually conceded that he had no equal on the battlefield. Schom is at pains to refute this notion, beginning with a blistering account of the Egyptian campaign of 1798-99, during which the French army was decimated due to its general's failure to inform himself about the land he was invading or to properly plan for provisioning his troops, flaws that would have even more tragic consequences in Russia in 1812. The evaluation is so hostile, it's a little hard to understand how Egypt made Napoleon popular enough to sweep into power in November 1799—let alone how he managed to lead the French army triumphantly across most of Europe over the next 13 years. Despite his assertion that he covers 'every aspect of [Napoleon's] life and character,' Schom severely scants the monarch's sweeping political and social initiatives within France; not even the enduring Napoleonic Code gets much attention. This is old-fashioned narrative history, primarily concerned with personal intrigue among the elite and detailed accounts of battles, and lacking consideration of their broader context. On that limited basis, it's entertaining: vivaciously and rather sloppily written, effectively if not definitively researched (notes refer mostly to published sources rather than archives), with vivid charactersketches of all the Bonapartes, the agreeable and promiscuous Josephine, cynical foreign minister Talleyrand, and other key figures. More suitable for those looking for the proverbial 'good read' than anyone seeking deeper insights into a crucial transitional moment—and man—in French history.

What People Are Saying

Len Deighton
"Superb. Mr. Schom has achieved every historian's dream; using exemplary scholarship to write a page-turning best seller."

Gregor Dallas
"Schom has a lively style.....His technique....is very effective....[NAPOLEON] is a timely book."

John Maxwell Hamilton
"A badly needed comprehensive, one-volume life .[NAPOLEON] does a magnificent job of covering the full sweep of Napoleon's career."

Robert Gildea
"A rip-roaring yarn...a vast dramatis personae of emperors and princesses, marshals and bishops, mistresses and murderers....NAPOLEON does, as it claims, present the whole Napoleon, the public and the private face....Schom has a lively style, and a neat turn of phrase, and his book reads well."

Adam Gopnik
"Polished, scholarly, and successful."

Dan Wick
"Meticulously researched...Schom presents a rounded portrait not only of Napoleon but also of the principal figures in his extraordinary life...and brilliantly presents Napoleon's life while appropriately deflating his legend."

Ed Voves
"A darkly nuanced biography.....In many ways, Schom's strengths as a historian match those of his protagonist....Schom reveals a tactical mastery of the events of Napoleon's life, calling to mind the emperor's grasp of terrain. His book is bold in scope, and ...his salvos are devastating."

Carolyn Nizzi Warmbold
"Vigorously researched and often brilliantly written.[an] ultimately balanced, no-nonsense portrait that has the benefit of 20th-century science."

Bob Trimble
"Napoleon has fascinated mankind for two centuries, and Mr. Schom's book is just as fascinating."

The Terrorist Watch or Selected Writings

2009-01-09T02:40:00.000-08:00

The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack

Author: Ronald Kessler

“You make a mistake, there are dead people.”
—FBI Special Agent Art Cummings, head of international counterterrorism operations

Drawing on unprecedented access to FBI and CIA counterterrorism operatives, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler presents the chilling story of terrorists’ relentless efforts to mount another devastating attack on the United States and of the heroic efforts being made to stop those plots.

Kessler takes you inside the war rooms of this battle—from the newly created National Counterterrorism Center to FBI headquarters, from the CIA to the National Security Agency, from the Pentagon to the Oval Ofﬁce—to explain why we have gone so long since 9/11 without a successful attack and to reveal the many close calls we never hear about. The race to stop the terrorists, Kessler shows, is more desperate than ever.

Based on exclusive interviews with FBI Director Robert Mueller, CIA Director Michael Hayden, White House Counterterrorism Chief Fran Townsend, and dozens of key intelligence operatives at all levels, The Terrorist Watch:

• tells the previously unreported story of how the United States helped thwart the 2006 London terrorist plot, broke up terrorist cells in Canada, and prevented numerous other attacks
• reveals how the CIA and FBI have rolled up more than 5,000 terrorists worldwide since 9/11
• provides a stunning insider’s account from the FBI agent
who spent eight months debriefing Saddam Hussein after his capture
• pinpoints press leaks that have resulted in CIA agents’ deaths, caused foreign countries to stopcooperating on key investigations, and even tipped off Osama bin Laden to U.S. surveillance
• destroys numerous media myths, such as the canard that the FBI and CIA still don’t cooperate on investigations
• discloses the truth about the number of U.S. mosques where imans preach jihad
• shows how the intelligence community has radically changed its mission—and how the media have misled the public about those changes

Never before has a journalist gained such access to the FBI, the CIA, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the other agencies that are doing the unheralded work of ﬁnding and capturing terrorists.

Ronald Kessler’s you-are-there narrative tells the real story of the war on terror and will transform the way you view the greatest problem of our age.

Prologue     1
"We're at War"     7
Double Whammy     11
"The Wall"     19
Cross-Examining Agents     24
Risk Aversion     29
Pocket Litter     35
Second Wave     42
KSM     51
Stirring Up Librarians     61
"Spying on Americans"     72
Eavesdropping on Bin Laden     82
The Terrorist Mind-Set     93
An American MI5     100
Dumb Cops     107
"You Okay, Dad?"     115
Leaks     127
An Assassination Attempt     140
Saddam's Friend     144
Threat Matrix     160
Neutralizing Bin Laden     172
Preempt, Disrupt, Defeat     181
Dr. Strangelove     190
On the Hunt     196
Countering Spin     206
10,000 Threats     215
Pulling Off A Nuclear Attack     221
The CEO of the War on Terror     227
Acknowledgments     247
Index     249

Selected Writings

Author: Karl Marx

"This new edition of David McLellan's selection from Karl Marx's writings includes carefully selected extracts from the whole range of Marx's political, philosophical, and economic thought. Each section of the book deals with a different period of Marx's life, allowing the reader to trace the development of Marx's thought, from his early years as a student and political journalist in Germany through to his final letters of the early 1880s. Also included in the new edition are a fully updated bibliography and new editorial introductions to each section of the book, providing a clear guide to the background and context of Marx's work."--BOOK JACKET.

Herndons Informants or Brotherhood of Warriors

2009-01-08T16:28:00.000-08:00

Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews and Statements about Abraham Lincoln

Author: Douglas L Wilson

Publication of this long-awaited volume makes available for the first time in complete and accessible form the most important source of information on Lincoln's early life. For twenty-five years after the president's death William Herndon, his law partner, conducted interviews with and solicited letters from dozens of persons who knew Lincoln personally. Up to now, the valuable information he collected has been available only in a microfilm edition in the Library of Congress, of such poor quality that it has been rarely used, particularly since there was no table of contents or adequate index, and in collections at the Huntington Library and the Illinois State Historical Library. The only previous publication of Herndon's materials, more than a half century ago, contains less than 10 percent of the collection and is so unreliable that scholars have hesitated to use it. Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis have earned the gratitude and admiration of scholars by taking on the daunting task of collating the collections in the three libraries, painstakingly deciphering the all but illegible handwriting of Herndon and some of his informants, and carefully documenting the entire work.

James M. McPherson

Many authors have written trilogies, but Douglas L. Wilson may be the first to publish all three volumes within a few months of each other. Although there is some overlap, they fit together like the tiles of a mosaic to provide a fuller portrait than previously existed of Abraham Lincoln during his formative years in New Salem and Springfield....One can scarcely imagine the countless hours of eye-straining, nerve-agitating, mind-challenging labor necessary to produce this book. It is a monumental achievement of scholarship. -- James M.McPherson, The New York Review of Books

	Preface
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction
	Editorial Note
	Short Citations and Abbreviations
1	Letters, Interviews, and Statements Collected by William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, 1865-92	3
2	Informant Testimony Reported in Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (1889)	707
3	Informant Testimony Reported in William H. Herndon's Letters to Jesse W. Weik	713
4	Informant Testimony Reported in Jesse W. Weik's The Real Lincoln (1922)	725
	Register of Informants	737
Appendix	Brief Outline of the Joseph Hanks Family	779
	Index	785

Books about: Wild Sweets or We Called It Macaroni

Brotherhood of Warriors

Author: Aaron Cohen

At the age of eighteen, Aaron Cohen left Beverly Hills to prove himself in the crucible of the armed forces. He was determined to be a part of Israel's most elite security cadre, akin to the American Green Berets and Navy SEALs. After fifteen months of grueling training designed to break down each individual man and to rebuild him as a warrior, Cohen was offered the only post a non-Israeli can hold in the special forces. In 1996 he joined a top-secret, highly controversial unit that dispatches operatives disguised as Arabs into the Palestinian-controlled West Bank to abduct terrorist leaders and bring them to Israel for interrogation and trial.

Between 1996 and 1998, Aaron Cohen would learn Hebrew and Arabic; become an expert in urban counterterror warfare, the martial art of Krav Maga, and undercover operations; and participate in dozens of life-or-death missions. He would infiltrate a Hamas wedding to seize a wanted terrorist and pose as an American journalist to set a trap for one of the financiers behind the Dizengoff Massacre, taking him down in a brutal, hand-to-hand struggle. A propulsive, gripping read, Cohen's story is a rare, fly-on-the-wall view into the shadowy world of "black ops" that redefines invincible strength, true danger, and inviolable security.

The Iron Cage or Infrastructure

2009-01-08T03:15:00.000-08:00

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

Author: Rashid Khalidi

In Resurrecting Empire, Rashid Khalidi dissected the failures of colonial policy over the entire span of the modern history of the Middle East, predicted the meltdown in Iraq that we are now witnessing with increasing horror, and offered viable alternatives for achieving peace in the region. His newest book, The Iron Cage, hones in on Palestinian politics and history. Once again Khalidi draws on a wealth of experience and scholarship to elucidate the current conflict, using history to provide a clear-eyed view of the situation today.

The story of the Palestinian search to establish a state begins in the era of British control over Palestine and stretches between the two world wars, when colonial control of the region became increasingly unpopular and power began to shift toward the United States. In this crucial period, and in the years immediately following World War II, Palestinian leaders were unable to achieve the long-cherished goal of establishing an independent state-a critical failure that throws a bright light on the efforts of the Palestinians to create a state in the many decades since 1948. By frankly discussing the reasons behind this failure, Khalidi offers a much-needed perspective for anyone concerned about peace in the Middle East.

The New York Times - Steven Erlanger

While his book is more of an analysis than an exercise in original research, Mr. Khalidi provides another service for Western readers. He gives a relatively dispassionate description of Palestine in the periods of Ottoman and British rule, and of the nature of Arab society before the combination of Zionism and Nazism led an increasing flow of European-born Jews to settle in the Holy Land…This is not to say that Mr. Khalidi…is without passion. His book is bound to stir angry responses from those who think that any Palestinian effort to fight the soldiers of the Israeli occupation represents terrorism, or from those, Muslim or Jew, who think that their divinity gave all of Palestine exclusively to them.

Publishers Weekly

Historian Khalidi (Resurrecting Empire), a leading expert on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, brings vital perspective to Palestinian attempts to achieve independence and statehood. Admirably synthesizing the latest scholarship and concentrating on the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) established by the League of Nations after WWI, Khalidi describes the process by which a newly arrived European Jewish minority overcame, with help from its imperial ally, the claims and rights of the native Arab majority in what became Israel and the occupied territories. Khalidi shows Palestinians under the mandate facing comparatively severe systemic, institutional and constitutional obstacles to the development of any para-state structure contrary to British promises of Arab independence and Article 4 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Meanwhile, the Jewish minority could count on a system biased in its favor to develop the structures that became those of the Israeli government in 1948 amid violent expulsion of over half the indigenous population. In bringing this narrative up to the present, Khalidi rigorously details the missteps of the Palestinians and their leadership. Khalidi curiously refrains from drawing any detailed proposal of his own to resolve the ongoing conflict, but his first-rate and up-to-date historical and political analysis of the Palestinian predicament remains illuminating. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

The larger conceptual framework into which The Iron Cage mustbe fitted is a history of two contending nationalisms that have not yet reached an acceptable accommodation. Zionism resulted in Israel, but the Palestinian struggle for statehood got off to a shakier start and remains unfinished. These two unequal contenders, moreover, have always been caught up in regional and international politics. Khalidi concentrates on the Palestinian side of this complex sui generis case. His image of the "iron cage" is meant to demonstrate how the Palestinians faced and still face unusually imposing obstacles — an argument that can hardly be denied. Yet Khalidi's book is no exercise in victimology. He is tough on the British, the Israelis, and the Americans, but he is scarcely less hard-hitting in appraising the Palestinians, including such leaders as Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, and Yasir Arafat. The final chapter provides an excellent critique of the Palestine Liberation Organization's labored moves toward the recognition of Israel and of the idea, increasingly bruited, that a two-state solution is no longer feasible.

Preface to the Paperback Edition     ix
Introduction: Writing Middle Eastern History in a Time of Historical Amnesia     xv
Arab Society in Mandatory Palestine     1
The Palestinians and the British Mandate     31
A Failure of Leadership     65
The Revolt, 1948, and Afterward     105
Fateh, the PLO, and the PA: The Palestinian Para-State     140
Stateless in Palestine     182
Notes     219
Acknowledgments     264
Index     267
The Palestine Mandate, July 24, 1922     282

New interesting textbook: Justin Wilson Number Two Cookbook or The Food Intolerance Bible

Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape

Author: Brian Hayes

"Original, highly readable….An extraordinary book."—Anne Eisenberg, Scientific American

A companion to the man-made landscape that reveals how our industrial environment can be as dazzling as the natural world. Replete with the author's striking photographs, Infrastructure is a unique and spectacular guide, exploring all the major "ecosystems" of our modern industrial world, revealing what the structures are and why they're there, and uncovering beauty in unexpected places—awakening and fulfilling a curiosity you didn't know you had. Covering agriculture, resources, energy, communication, transportation, manufacturing, and waste, this is the "Book of Everything" for the industrial landscape.

The objects that fill our everyday environment are streetlights, railroad tracks, antenna towers, highway overpasses, power lines, satellite dishes, and thousands of other manufactured items, many of them so familiar we hardly notice them. Larger and more exotic facilities have transformed vast tracts of the landscape: coal mines, nuclear power plants, grain elevators, oil refineries, and steel mills, to name a few. Infrastructure is a compelling and clear guide for those who want to explore and understand this mysterious world we've made for ourselves. A Science magazine Best Science Book of the Year. 500 color illustrations.

In the Presence of My Enemies or Mongrels Bastards Orphans and Vagabonds

2009-01-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

In the Presence of My Enemies

Author: Gracia Burnham

Can faith, hope, and love survive a year of terror?

For American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham, what started out as a relaxing, once-in-a-lifetime anniversary getaway at an exotic island resort turned into one of the most horrific nightmares imaginable.

Kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group with ties to Osama bin Laden, the Burnhams were snatched away from friends and family and thrust into a life on the run in the Philippine jungle. During a perilous year in captivity, they faced near starvation, constant exhaustion, frequent gun battles, coldhearted murder—and intense soul-searching about a God who sometimes seemed to have forgotten them.

In this gripping firsthand account of faith, love, and struggle in the face of unnervingly casual brutality, you'll go behind the scenes of a real-life drama, told in gritty detail by the least likely survivor. You'll learn about the methods and motives of a radical terrorist group whose members are determined to meet their objectives, no matter what the cost. You'll be inspired by the ultimately triumphant faith and enduring love of an ordinary couple thrown into extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

Whatever the struggles of your life, you'll find encouragement and hope in this refreshingly honest story of a yearlong struggle with the darkness that inhabits the human heart.

Publishers Weekly

In this remarkably honest and unaffected memoir, Burnham tells the story of her captivity at the hands of Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist group in the Philippines. For just over a year, she and her husband Martin, a missionary pilot, lived with their captors and a variety of other hostages in the Philippine jungle. In a botched rescue attempt, the Philippine army shot and killed Martin Burnham and Ediborah Yap, a nurse who was the other remaining hostage. Gracia Burnham was also shot, but rescued and treated for a leg wound. Burnham hauntingly depicts the alchemical reaction of deep Christian faith, Stockholm Syndrome and the unremitting terror of hostage life. The odd intimacy among the hostages and captors comes across in surprisingly frank conversations. At one point, Martin boldly refers to all the bad things the captors have done to the hostages, only to have one of them look at him quizzically and claim he has never done any harm to the hostages. The captors, in fact, do unspeakable things, such as beheading hostages or taking them as unwilling "wives." Impressively, Burnham makes no attempt to dramatize these events for shock value, nor does she use this book as an occasion for Christian triumphalism. Instead, she chronicles both her high and low moments as a Christian during that year, and shows tremendous respect and love for members of other faiths with whom she lived. While some of the book is written for a Christian audience, a much wider audience will appreciate Burnham's brave, artless account of these horrific events. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America

Author: Gregory Rodriguez

Wide-ranging and provocative, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds offers an unprecedented account of the long-term cultural and political influences that Mexican Americans will have on the collective character of our nation.

In considering the largest immigrant group in American history, Gregory Rodriguez examines the complexities of its heritage and of the racial and cultural synthesis--mestizaje--that has defined the Mexican people since the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. Rodriguez deftly delineates the effects of mestizaje throughout the centuries, traces the northern movement of this "mongrelization," explores the emergence of a new Mexican American identity in the 1930s, and analyzes the birth and death of the Chicano movement. Vis-a-vis the present era of Mexican American confidence, he persuasively argues that the rapidly expanding Mexican American integration in to the mainstream is changing not only how Americans think about race but how we envision our nation.

Deeply informative--as historically sound as it is anecdotally rich, brilliantly reasoned, and highly though provoking--Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds is a major contribution to the discussion of the cultural and political future of the United States.

The Washington Post - Pamela Constable

Despite its unappealing title, Gregory Rodriguez's Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds provides a fascinating excursion through the history of Mexican immigrants in the United States. Full of instructive revelations and forgotten facts, the book shows how the treatment and status of immigrants have always been hostage to the vicissitudes of history—from the Gold Rush to the invasion of Iraq. The best sections of this book by a Mexican American columnist for the Los Angeles Times cover events that occurred long ago. But by putting the current tensions in a solid historical context, Rodriguez offers hope that they too will eventually subside and be followed by a cooler spell in which a lasting, more rational solution can prevail over the politics of fear and bigotry.

Publishers Weekly

Despite its title, this volume from L.A. Timescolumnist Rodriguez is a thorough and accessible history of Mexico that emphasizes the legacy of mestizaje, mixed races, among Mexico's inhabitants. Beginning with Cortes's arrival in 1519, an elaborate system of racial classification was put into place to keep separate Spanish and native peoples. The failure of this system, Rodriguez argues, allowed for a more progressive and open-minded approach to race in Mexico compared with, for example, the U.S.: "In colonial New Mexico, mestizajewas the rule rather than the exception." Black/white racial lines were nonexistent, as African natives merged effortlessly into Mexican society (which abolished slavery nearly 40 years before the States). Other developments include the Mexican American War and subsequent insurgencies in the huge swath of Mexican land ceded to the U.S.; the Mexican Revolution and the immigration wave it inspired; the backlash against Mexican-Americans during the depression years; and the Chicano movement of the 1960s and '70s. There's more at stake in Rodriguez's text than the latest immigration hullabaloo (he doesn't get around to addressing the past 30 years until the last chapter); aside from illuminating a complicated history and deeply contextualizing the present debate, the author takes on the concept of racial classification itself, calling for a change in attitude that more closely reflects the Mexican unifying idea of mestizaje, that we are all, to some extent, racially mixed "mongrels." (Oct.)

Kirkus Reviews

Montezuma's revenge is not what you think. Instead, suggests essayist-journalist Rodriguez, the emperor's true revenge may be in the dismantling of the idea of racial differences among white, brown and every other hue. "After the conquest of Mexico," writes the author, "some conquistadors married Indian princesses and daughters of chiefs." So they did, and the Spaniards who came after that first generation of conquistadors married other Indian women, while some Indian men married white women. The result was the mestizo, the Mexican: the race that melded all other races, with "a great variety of phenotypic traits." The upper crust kept itself as white as possible and used skin color as a measure of race and social position. This way of reckoning among whites, creoles, mestizos, indios and other phenotypic types was carried over to the frontier. Once gringo census takers arrived, Californios gave themselves promotions so that, as Rodriguez quotes a historian as remarking, "everyone acquired some fictitious Caucasian ancestry and shed Negro backgrounds-becoming, in effect, lighter as they moved up the social scale." Today, Mexican Americans-who, as Rodriguez points out, constitute two-thirds of the Latino population in the United States-self-identify on the census differently depending on their perceived social status. The upper class considers itself white, but the vast majority of Mexican Americans check "other race," even as most identify ethnically as Hispanic or Latino. As Rodriguez's lucid book demonstrates, now that whites are no longer the majority in California, there is not much talk there of majorities or minorities, even as census officials worry that this confounding of race andethnicity will "undermine the validity of all the other racial categories." In other words, given the growth of the Latino population and high rate of intermarriage, the "other" will do what its forerunner did, namely subvert and redefine the notion of a melting-pot nation. Of great interest to the demographically inclined, and those who wonder what America will look like at the tricentennial.

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction: On Linguistic Vulnerability	1
1	Burning Acts, Injurious Speech	43
2	Sovereign Performatives	71
3	Contagious Word: Paranoia and "Homosexuality" in the Military	103
4	Implicit Censorship and Discursive Agency	127
	Notes	165
	Index	183

	New Thinking on How to Link Executive Pay with Performance	1
	Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work	29
	Rethinking Rewards	51
	A Simpler Way to Pay	77
	What You Need to Know About Stock Options	93
	When Salaries Aren't Secret	119
	Six Dangerous Myths About Pay	141
	Growing Pains	167
	About the Contributors	197
	Index	201

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