Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Crossed Swords or The Lincoln Douglas Debates

Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within

Author: Shuja Nawaz

Based on 30 years of research and analysis, this definitive book is a profound, multi-layered, and historical analysis of the nature and role of the Pakistan army in the country's polity as well as its turbulent relationship with the United States. Shuja Nawaz examines the army and Pakistan in both peace and war. Using many hitherto unpublished materials from the archives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army, as well as interviews with key military and political figures in Pakistan and the United States, he sheds light not only on the Pakistan Army and its US connections but also on Pakistan as a key Muslim country in one of the world's toughest neighborhoods. In doing so, he lays bare key facts about Pakistan's numerous wars with India and its many rounds of political musical chairs, as well as the Kargil conflict of 1999. He then draws lessons from this history that may help Pakistan end its wars within and create a stabler political entity.



Table of Contents:
List of Photographs     ix
List of Acronyms     x
Preface and Acknowledgements     xv
Dramatis Personae     xxi
Introduction: From 786 to the Age of Terror     xxvii
In History Bound     1
A Difficult Birth     27
The First Kashmir War     42
The Legacy of Conflict: Chaos and Ambitions     76
Courting Uncle Sam     92
Things Fall Apart     122
The First Coup     139
Martial Law and the Search for Legitimacy     170
Wars and Consequences     192
September 1965 and Ayub's Fall     219
Untied Pakistan: How to Break Up a Country     249
Wars and Consequences Redux     282
Bhutto Rules     320
Guardians of the Faith     359
The Troika's Musical Chairs     411
Systemic Failures: The Wars Within     465
The Liberal Autocrat     506
Today and Tomorrow     567
Appendices
Timeline: Key Events-Pakistan and Its Army     587
Primary Sources     595
Investigation into the Death of General Asif Nawaz     599
Select Bibliography     608
Index     620

Book about: Macs For Dummies or How to Cheat in Flash CS3

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Author: Abraham Lincoln

While the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas are undoubtedly the most celebrated in American history, they may also be the most consequential as well. For the issues so fiercely debated in 1858 were about various interrelated aspects of one momentous, nation-threatening issue: slavery. The contest between Lincoln and Douglas became a testing ground for the viability of conflicting ideals in a nation deeply divided. One of the most colorful and engaging episodes in American history, this series of debates is of enduring interest as an illuminating instance of the ever-recurring dilemma of self-government: what happens when the guiding principle of democracy, "popular sovereignty," confronts a principled stand against a "moral, social, and political evil"? The tragic answer in this case came three years later: civil war.

Important as they are, the Lincoln-Douglas debates have long since ceased to be self-explanatory. This edition is the first to provide a text founded on all known records, rather than following one or another of the partisan and sometimes widely-varying newspaper accounts. Meticulously edited and annotated, it provides numerous aids to help the modern reader understand the debates, including extensive introductory material, commentary, and a glossary. The fullest and most dependable edition of the Lincoln-Douglas debates ever prepared, this edition brings readers as close as possible to the original words of these two remarkable men.



The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Witness to Roswell

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Author: Malcolm X

If there was any one man who articulated the anger, the struggle, and the beliefs of African Americans in the 1960s, that man was Malxolm X. His AUTOBIOGRAPHY is now an established classic of modern America, a book that expresses like none other the crucial truth about our times.
"Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book."
TEH NEW YORKTIMES

Sacred Fire

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the story of one of the remarkable lives of the twentieth century. Malcolm X, as presented in this as-told-to autobiography, is a figure of almost mythic proportions; a man who sunk to the greatest depths of depravity and rose to become a man whose life's mission was to lead his people to freedom and strength. It provides a searing depiction of the deeply rooted issues of race and class in America and remains relevant and inspiring today. Malcolm X's story would inspire Alex Haley to write Roots, a novel that would, in turn, define the saga of a people.

Malcolm Little was born in Nebraska in 1925, the seventh child of Reverend Earl Little, a Baptist minister, and Louise Little, a mulatto born in Grenada to a black mother and a white father. Malcolm X quickly grew to hate the society he'd grown up in. After his father was killed, his mother was unfairly denied insurance coverage and his family fell apart. Young Malcolm went from a foster home to a reformatory, to shining shoes in the speakeasies and dance halls of Boston. After getting work as a Pullman porter, he went to New York and fell in love with Harlem. His stint as a drug dealer and petty crook landed him in jail, where he became a devout student of the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad. That was when he figured out that "he could beat the white man better with his mind than he ever could with a club." Malcolm X's subsequent quest for knowledge and equality for blacks led to his unreserved commitment to the liberation of blacks in American society.

What makes this book extraordinary is the honesty with which Malcolm presents his life: Even as he regrets the mistakes he made as a young man, he brings his zoot-suited, swing-dancing, conk- haired Harlem youth to vivid life; even though he later turns away from the Nation of Islam, the strong faith he at one time in that sect's beliefs, a faith that redeemed him from prison and a life of crime, comes through. What made the man so extraordinary was his courageous insistence on finding the true path to his personal salvation and to the salvation of the people he loved, even when to stay on that path meant danger, alienation, and death.

Robert Bone

A movement might emerge shorn of racism, seperatism, and blind hate which yet preserved the explosive force and liberating energy of the Muslim myth. This is the direction in which Malcolm X was moving for a year or more before his death. The essense of the this shift was psychological. It had nothing to do with black supremacy, but much to do with manhood and self-reliance. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, September 1966

What People Are Saying

Spike Lee
The most important book I'll ever read. It changed the way I felt; it changed the way I acted. It has given me courage that I didn't know I had inside me. I'm one of hundreds of thousands whose life has changed for the better.


I.F. Stone
This book will have a permanent place in the literature of the Afro-American struggle.




Book about: Digestive Wellness or Milk Free Kitchen

Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60-Year Cover-Up

Author: Thomas J Carey

Witness to Roswell will hold you spellbound as you read the actual eyewitness testimony to an amazing event: the recovery of a UFO in 1947 just outside of Roswell, New Mexico. Witnesses will not only reveal that the alien crew were placed in body bags and packed in dry ice, but, most astonishing of all, that one of the crew survived the crash.



Table of Contents:
Foreword   Paul Davids     13
Preface     19
Introduction     23
The Ultimate Cold Case File     27
Myth or Reality: The Undeniable Truths     37
The Corona Debris Field: Much Ado About Something     43
They're Not Human!     55
Afraid They Would Shoot at Us     63
Harassed Rancher Sorry He Told: The Aftermath of a Balloon Recovery: The True Story     67
Nothing Made on This Earth     77
The Senator and the Aliens: "Get Me the Hell Out of Here!"     83
The Making of a Cover-Up     93
"Some Things Shouldn't Be Discussed, Sergeant!"     97
Loaned by Major Marcel to Higher Headquarters: From Complicity to Cover-Up     111
The Secretary and the Spacemen     119
"Get These [Bodies] Over to the Base Hospital!"     125
Who's Flying, Anyway?     141
Who Goes There?     145
Boys, We Just Made History!     157
If You Say Anything, You Will Be Killed     167
It Looks Like Something Landed Here!     175
You and I Never Saw This     181
It Wasn't Ours!     187
The Pieces Were From Space     193
Deathbed Confessions: "Ohh...theCreatures!"     197
A Voice From the Grave: The Sealed Statement of First Lieutenant Walter G. Haut     209
Afterword     219
Schematic Map of New Mexico     221
Crash Site Stone Marker     223
The Confession of Major Patrick Saunders     225
Notes     227
Bibliography     241
Index     245
About the Authors     255

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

My Life or The Essential Chomsky

My Life

Author: Bill Clinton

President Bill Clinton's My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to serving the public.

It shows us the progress of a remarkable American, who, through his own enormous energies and efforts, made the unlikely journey from Hope, Arkansas, to the White House—a journey fueled by an impassioned interest in the political process which manifested itself at every stage of his life: in college, working as an intern for Senator William Fulbright; at Oxford, becoming part of the Vietnam War protest movement; at Yale Law School, campaigning on the grassroots level for Democratic candidates; back in Arkansas, running for Congress, attorney general, and governor.

We see his career shaped by his resolute determination to improve the life of his fellow citizens, an unfaltering commitment to civil rights, and an exceptional understanding of the practicalities of political life.

We come to understand the emotional pressures of his youth—born after his father's death; caught in the dysfunctional relationship between his feisty, nurturing mother and his abusive stepfather, whom he never ceased to love and whose name he took; drawn to the brilliant, compelling Hillary Rodham, whom he was determined to marry; passionately devoted, from her infancy, to their daughter, Chelsea, and to the entire experience of fatherhood; slowly and painfully beginning to comprehend how his early denial of pain led him at times into damaging patterns of behavior.

President Clinton's book is also the fullest, most concretely detailed, most nuanced account of a presidency ever written-encompassing not only the high points and crises but the way the presidency actually works: the day-to-day bombardment of problems, personalities, conflicts, setbacks, achievements.

It is a testament to the positive impact on America and on the world of his work and his ideals.

It is the gripping account of a president under concerted and unrelenting assault orchestrated by his enemies on the Far Right, and how he survived and prevailed.

It is a treasury of moments caught alive, among them:

  • The ten-year-old boy watching the national political conventions on his family's new (and first) television set.
  • The young candidate looking for votes in the Arkansas hills and the local seer who tells him, "Anybody who would campaign at a beer joint in Joiner at midnight on Saturday night deserves to carry one box. . . . You'll win here. But it'll be the only damn place you win in this county." (He was right on both counts.)
  • The roller-coaster ride of the 1992 campaign.
  • The extraordinarily frank exchanges with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole.
  • The delicate manipulation needed to convince Rabin and Arafat to shake hands for the camera while keeping Arafat from kissing Rabin.
  • The cost, both public and private, of the scandal that threatened the presidency.
Here is the life of a great national and international figure, revealed with all his talents and contradictions, told openly, directly, in his own completely recognizable voice. A unique book by a unique American.


Also available from Random House Audio and in a Random House Large Print Edition.
clintonpresidentialcenter.org
with 32 pages of photographs
Jacket photographs courtesy of the Clinton Presidential Materials Project Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson.

The New York Times - Larry McMurtry

William Jefferson Clinton's My Life is, by a generous measure, the richest American presidential autobiography - no other book tells us as vividly or fully what it is like to be president of the United States for eight years. Clinton had the good sense to couple great smarts with a solid education; he arrived in Washington in 1964 and has been the nation's - or perhaps the world's - No. 1 politics junkie ever since. And he can write - as Reagan, Ford, Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson, to go no farther back, could not.

The Washington Post - Walter Isaacson

[Clinton's] life is too fascinating, his mind too brilliant, his desire to charm too strong to permit him to produce a boring book. The combination of analytic and emotional intelligence that made him a great politician now makes him a compelling raconteur.



Interesting book: The Art of Judgment or Introduction to International Macroeconomics

The Essential Chomsky

Author: Noam Chomsky

In a single volume, the seminal writings of the world's leading philosopher, linguist, and critic, published to coincide with his eightieth birthday.

For the past forty years Noam Chomsky's writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.

Chomsky's many bestselling works—including Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, Understanding Power, and Failed States—have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. In particular, Chomsky's scathing critiques of the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have furnished a widely accepted intellectual inspiration for antiwar movements over nearly four decades.

The Essential Chomsky assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky's thought.



Cure or Saddams Secrets

Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care

Author: David Gratzer

The American health care system is in crisis. Skyrocketing costs and increasing bureaucracy have traumatized consumers and doctors alike. In The Cure, Dr. David Gratzer brings a dose of common sense to this over-regulated area of the American economy.



Table of Contents:

Foreword Milton Friedman Friedman, Milton

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Introduction 1

1 Dick Cheney's Heart 11

2 Two Days That Changed Health Care 25

3 Nixon's Revenge 45

4 The Third Way 59

5 Insuring America 81

6 Mills' Revenge: Medicaid 101

7 Mills' Revenge II: Medicare 121

8 Our Drug Problem 141

9 The Hip That Changed History 161

10 The Three Keys 183

Acknowledgments 199

Notes 201

Index 223

Read also Bridal Shower Games or Busy Peoples Low Fat Cookbook

Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein

Author: Georges Sada

General Sada paints a picture of Hussein, his regime-and his country-that is at once personal and truthful, compelling and sobering.



Monday, December 29, 2008

Reagan or Leviathan

Reagan: The Hollywood Years

Author: Marc Eliot

The bestselling author of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart offers a new look at Ronald Reagan's neglected and misunderstood career in Hollywood, shining a spotlight on how it took him from leading man to world leader.

Publishers Weekly

For 30 years, Ronald Reagan was dedicated to a film and television career. Yet Eliot (who has written bios of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, among others) claims previous studies of the former president gloss over this influential era. "To be able to fully comprehend Reagan the man, one must also understand Reagan the actor." With that charge, Eliot chronicles Reagan's film career, from his numerous "B" pictures, such as Girls on Probation, to the image-enhancing Knute Rockne All American, which contained Reagan's future political rallying cry: "Win one for the Gipper." Interspersed with tales of Hollywood casting maneuvers, Eliot takes a no-holds-barred approach to Reagan's personal life, whether his numerous affairs, his rocky marriage to Jane Wyman or Nancy Davis's single-minded determination to marry him. Eliot also examines his time heading SAG, the actors' union, which proved prescient. By 1962, Reagan was out of work, reduced to giving his "Price of Freedom" speech to interested groups. His delivery at a Goldwater fund-raiser was so inspiring that it jump-started his second career, clearing the way for the "Central Casting version of what an American president should look like." Extensively researched, this biography is an accessible and eye-opening read. (Oct.)

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

Ben Malczewski - Library Journal

Nearly 20 years after Ronald Reagan's presidency, his name means different things to different people. To some, it's the Berlin Wall, Reaganomics, or the Cold War; to those who knew his entertainment career, it's derisory reminiscences about Bedtime for Bonzo, the Gipper in Knute Rockne All American, or comedian Rich Little's mocking, rosy-cheeked, and head-shaking "Well...." Seeking to tie the entertainment and political sides of Reagan together and paint a more holistic portrait of the man, best-selling author Eliot (Cary Grant: A Biography; Down 42nd Street) succeeds in adding a little soul to a Hollywood career that has been undervalued if not entirely dismissed while setting the stage for what was yet to come. Although the book feels as though it is written too much in hindsight-Eliot's tendency to foreshadow and add melodramatic weight to occurrences occasionally gets the best of him-this is a valuable supplement to other biographies that focus more on Reagan's presidential years and is an important addition to large public and academic biographical and entertainment collections.

Kirkus Reviews

Eliot (Song of Brooklyn: An Oral History of America's Favorite Borough, 2008, etc.) charts the less-than-stellar career of Ronald Reagan, the actor. The late president was once a perennial second banana of middling looks and talent who dependably and forgettably assayed roles as the hero's best friend in dozens of B movies during Hollywood's Golden Age. This was, of course, before finding his true metier as a public speaker and political force in the tumultuous early days of Hollywood unions, most notably the Screen Actors Guild. Eliot paints the young Reagan as a Midwestern model of Rockwellian rectitude, a genial cipher with an unquestioning devotion to family, heartland values and a knack for self-promotion. Local celebrity as an athlete and radio sports announcer led to an undistinguished career in motion pictures, with the exceptions of his roles in Knute Rockne, All American and King's Row, both of which interestingly found him declaiming classic dialogue from the sickbed. Eliot delves deeply into the precariousness of Reagan's finances and ego during this period, as film after film failed to establish him as an A-list star and his marriage to the mercurial actress Jane Wyman ended in humiliating divorce. The image of Reagan pontificating about current events, filling the house with pipe smoke while Wyman writhed in crushing boredom, is a particularly poignant one. Much of the narrative focuses on Reagan's self-actualization as a political animal through his deep involvement with SAG and its role in the blacklist and various other scandals, such as its underhanded dealing with Lew Wasserman's MCA in negotiating residuals for its members. This occasionally dry material illustratesReagan's fuzzy drift from liberal Democrat to conservative Republican, as well as an apparently innate ability to cover his tracks with his aw-shucks charm and selective memory. The book ends with a determined Nancy Davis, herself a failed actress, steering her new beau toward a more socially desirable set of friends-well-connected, well-heeled conservatives-looking for a new pony to back after the flameouts of Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater. An enlightening, richly detailed and suggestively disturbing look at the American Dream and one of its truest dreamers.



Books about: The Wise Men or Republic Jowett translation

Leviathan (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading Series)

Author: Thomas Hobbes

After the publication of his masterpiece of political theory, Leviathan, Or the Matter, and Power of Commonwealth Ecclesiastic and Civil, in 1651, opponents charged Thomas Hobbes with atheism and banned and burned his books. The English Parliament, in a search for scapegoats, even claimed that the theories found in Leviathan were a likely cause of the Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666.

For the modern reader, though, Hobbes is more recognized for his popular belief that humanity's natural condition is a state of perpetual war, with life being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Despite frequent challenges by other philosophers, Leviathan's secular theory of absolutism no longer stands out as particularly objectionable. In the description of the organization of states, moreover, we see Hobbes as strikingly current in his use of concepts that we still employ today, including the ideas of natural law, natural rights, and the social contract. Based on this work, one could even argue that Hobbes created English-language philosophy, insofar as Leviathan was the first great philosophical work written in English and one whose impact continues to the present day.


About the Author:
Thomas Hobbes was born on Good Friday in 1588. Despite growing up in an impoverished clerical family, he was precociously intelligent and completed a classical education at Oxford. He decided not to follow in his father's footsteps, though, and instead became a tutor within an aristocratic family. When these royalist political connections and a number of personal writings in support of monarchical authority got Hobbes centrally involved in the turmoil of the English Civil War, he feared for his safety and fled to France in 1640. It was while in exile in France that he wrote Leviathan, the work that cemented Hobbes' philosophical reputation as the pre-eminent modern theorist of secular absolutism.



Table of Contents:
Part 1Of Man
1Of Sense3
2Of Imagination4
3Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations8
4Of Speech12
5Of Reason and Science18
6Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions Commonly Called the Passions; and the Speeches by which They Are Expressed23
7Of the Ends or Resolutions of Discourse30
8Of the Vertues, Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects32
9Of the Severall Subjects of Knowledge41
10Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour, and Worthinesse43
11Of the Difference of Manners49
12Of Religion54
13Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery63
14Of the First and Second Naturall Lawes and of Contract66
15Of Other Laws of Nature74
16Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated83
Part 2Of Common-Wealth
17Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Common-wealth87
18Of the Rights of Soveraignes by Institution90
19Of Severall Kinds of Common-wealth by Institution; and of Succession to the Soveraign Power96
20Of Dominion Parternall and Despoticall104
21Of the Liberty of Subjects110
22Of Systems Subject, Politicall, and Private117
23Of the Publique Ministers of Soveraign Power126
24Of the Nutrition, and Procreation of a Common-wealth130
25Of Counsell134
26Of Civill Lawes140
27Of Crimes, Excuses, and Extenuations154
28Of Punishments, and Rewards164
29Of Those Things that Weaken, or Tend to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth170
30Of the Office of the Soveraign Representative178
31Of the Kingdome of God by Nature189

James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights or The Republic

James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights

Author: Richard Labunski

Today we hold the Constitution in such high regard that we can hardly imagine how hotly contested was its adoption. Now Richard Labunski offers a dramatic account of a time when the entire American experiment hung in the balance, only to be saved by the most unlikely of heroes--the diminutive and exceedingly shy James Madison.
Here is a vividly written account of not one but several major political struggles which changed the course of American history. Labunski takes us inside the sweltering converted theater in Richmond, where for three grueling weeks, the soft-spoken Madison and the charismatic Patrick Henry fought over whether Virginia should ratify the Constitution. Madison won the day by a handful of votes, mollifying Anti-Federalist fears by promising to add a bill of rights to the Constitution. To do this, Madison would have to win a seat in the First Congress, which he did by a tiny margin, allowing him to attend the First Congress and sponsor the Bill of Rights.
Packed with colorful details about life in early America, this compelling and important narrative is the first serious book about Madison written in many years. It will return this under-appreciated patriot to his rightful place among the Founding Fathers and shed new light on a key turning point in our nation's history.

The New York Times - Gary Rosen

A virtue of Labunski's account is the generous attention he gives to Anti-Federalist luminaries like Henry, George Mason and Richard Henry Lee - figures too often overlooked in our reverential regard for the founding. For those used to thinking of the Bill of Rights as carved in stone, it is also instructive to see just how large a role accident played in its creation. The 10 amendments familiar to us started off as 17 in the House and were reduced to 12 by the Senate. The first two of these - on the size of the House and Congressional pay - didn't pass muster in the states, and so the third recommended amendment became, as if by fate, our famous First.

Publishers Weekly

It will come as little surprise to learn that Poe is a veteran Broadway performer: in reading Labunski's chronicle of James Madison's efforts to ratify the Constitution and pass the Bill of Rights, his voice echoes with effortless assurance, carrying into the virtual back row of any room. Thankfully, Poe mostly avoids the vocal equivalent of theatrical preening and posing. His reading is careful, unassuming and avoids wholly unnecessary showboating. Labunski's narrative revolves around Madison's struggle with fellow Virginian Patrick Henry over ratification, and Poe does a fine job of conveying the steadily ratcheting tension of their battle. Poe colors Labunski's tale with an appropriate array of significant pauses, emphases and hushed mock-whispers, bringing his book to life without resorting to overworked theatrical tricks. He may be a stage veteran, but Poe's reading is anything but stagy. Simultaneous release with the Oxford hardcover (Reviews, May 8). (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

James Madison played an important role in both the development of the U.S. Constitution and the creation of its first ten amendments, i.e., the Bill of Rights. Relying on primary sources, Labunski (Sch. of Journalism & Telecommunications, Univ. of Kentucky: The Second Constitutional Convention: How the American People Can Take Back Their Government) carefully and lucidly examines how Madison and his political supporters and opponents (mostly Anti-Federalists) shaped the initial parameters of the Constitution and then further expressed their constitutional philosophies in the amendments that followed. Seven of the ten chapters focus on activities prior to the introduction of the Bill of Rights. In his thorough coverage of the activities of the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Labunski offers intriguing discussions of constitutional debates and provides an understanding of the political and social context of the early constitutional polity. He finds that Madison and other Federalists used strategies that would ensure adoption of constitutional ideas in both Virginia and other parts of the nation. He then goes on to examine Madison's transformation from opponent of amendments to the Constitution to a central advocate in the U.S. House of Representatives for passage of what would become the Bill of Rights. A highly recommended analysis that will be useful for public and academic libraries. Steven Puro, St. Louis Univ. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.



Table of Contents:
1The Philadelphia Convention3
2The reluctant candidate24
3The road to Richmond48
4The Virginia ratifying convention67
5The ratification vote96
6The anti-federalists fight back120
7The election147
8Madison introduces the Bill of Rights178
9Congress proposes the Bill of Rights213
10Ratification of the Bill of Rights242
11Epilogue256

Read also Globality or If Democrats Had Any Brains Theyd Be Republicans

The Republic (Bloom Translation)

Author: Plato

Long regarded as the most accurate rendering of Plato’s Republic that has yet been published, this widely acclaimed work is the first strictly literal translation of a timeless classic. This second edition includes a new introduction by Professor Bloom, whose careful translation and interpretation of The Republic was first published in 1968. In addition to the corrected text itself there is also a rich and valuable essay—as well as indexes—which will better enable the reader to approach the heart of Plato’s intention.



Sunday, December 28, 2008

To the Bitter End or Kick Ass

To the Bitter End: An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler, 1933-1944

Author: Hans Bernd Gisevius

When on July 20, 1944, a bomb—boldly placed inside the Wolf's Lair (Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia) by the German Anti-Nazi Resistance—exploded without killing the Führer, the subsequent coup d'état against the Third Reich collapsed. Most of the conspirators were summarily shot or condemned in show trials and sadistically hanged. The conspiracy involved a wide circle of former politicians, diplomats, and government officials as well as senior military men. The Resistance had started as early as 1933 and involved several planned putsches and assassination attempts. Hans B. Gisevius knew or met the major figures—including Beck, Canaris, Oster, Goerdeler, and von Stauffenberg—and barely escaped after the coup's failure. One of the few survivors of the German Anti-Nazi Resistance, Gisevius traces its history, from the 1933 Reichstag fire to Germany's defeat in 1945, in a book as riveting as it is exceptional.

New Yorker

The most exhaustive and authentic-sounding account of the conspiracy to kill Hitler.



Read also United States Government Civics or Police Officer Exam

Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Author: Carl Hiaasen

Readers who eagerly anticipate each new Carl Hiaasen novel will relish this selection of his Miami Herald columns, written with the same dark humor and satirical edge as Tourist Season, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, and the rest of Hiaasen's brilliant and nationally acclaimed fiction. Known for evoking the disastrously flawed paradise of modern South Florida, Hiaasen proves in these columns that facts can indeed be stranger than the fiction they inspire.

In addition to South Florida color and world-class journalism, readers of Kick Ass will find one of Florida's staunchest defenders in action, and they'll take great pleasure in watching him work.

Booknews

A collection of columns from the by the extremely popular mystery writer. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kirkus Reviews

A public service to his many fans, this compendium of Miami Herald columns by best-selling novelist Carl Hiaasen (Lucky You, 1997, etc.) reveals an angry, alert civic muckraker in the pugilistic vein of Mencken or Royko. Though best known for his ribald crime fiction, with its meticulous universe of South Florida idiocy and venal conspiracy, Hiaasen cut his teeth as an investigative reporter, and this spirit is strong in both his chosen subjects and his wry attention to unforgiving evidentiary detail. As editor Stevenson notes, the collection's thrust, which she constructed by sifting through Hiaasen's 1300-plus columns, was to present his advocacy of "realistic growth and decent government in Florida." Along the way Hiaasen stops to gut innumerable big fish—crooked politicians, rogue cops, insensate tourists, swollen developers—within a rough chronology reaching back to the cocaine-crazed Reagan '80s. Although Hiaasen is a truly funny writer, a stern moral compass lies beneath his slapstick. His quixotic outrage regarding the despoliation of his home state (cf. the columnist/terrorist of his Tourist Season, 1986) is as unforgiving as an Uzi, as authentic as a Waffle House breakfast. Hiaasen's zestful attacks on Miami's many embarrassing or indicted leaders end up addressing the threats posed, for instance, by the crash overpopulation of Florida, epitomized by the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Andrew upon shoddy developments, a dire issue that pro-business boosters (e.g., The Mouse) labor to minimize. But even the loopier pieces (tame dachshund-eating alligators, Geraldo Rivera's faked drug raids) are informed by Hiaasen's unforgiving focus upon the social rot beneath the zanyfacade. Such columns, like his fiction, reveal Hiaasen as a crystalline, pitiless seer of human weakness in much the same vein as his Floridian forbears, Charles Willeford and Harry Crews. Deeply satisfying, both for what it reveals of the serious priorities of a supposedly light novelist and for the outrageous epic of Florida profiteering and entropy within.



A Thousand Hills or Civil Service Exams

A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It

Author: Stephen Kinzer

The bestselling author of All the Shah's Men profiles one of the most successful revolutionaries of the modern era, telling the dramatic story of how he seized power in Rwanda and led this shattered country's astonishing recovery.

Publishers Weekly

Kinzer (All the Shah's Men) has penned a hagiographic account of Rwandan president Paul Kagame, the Tutsi refugee who organized the Rwandan Military Front in 1994 and helped halt the genocide in Rwanda. Instead of settling scores, Kagame embarked on a program of reconciliation and reconstruction; Kinzer eloquently describes a physical and psychological recovery unmatched in Africa: a Rwanda whose people are "bubbling with a sense of unlimited possibility." Kagame's goal, modeled on the successes of "Asian tigers" like Singapore, aims to transform Rwanda into the continent's first middle-income country in a single generation, eschewing foreign aid in favor of reliance on business-driven development. Kinzer does not conceal the bloody realities behind Kagame's acquisition of power nor does he deny Kagame's "rigorous, absolutist approach to governing." Nevertheless, he is transparently trusting in Kagame's capabilities and intentions, and while his eloquent prose invites optimism, a half-century of experience urges caution. (June)

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

Marcia L. Sprules - Library Journal

Readers will remember Rwanda for its horrific genocide in 1994; they may be less aware of the country's recovery over the past 14 years. Paul Kagame, long a powerful figure and now Rwanda's president, has been instrumental in that recovery process, claims Kinzer (All the Shah's Men), a wide-ranging bureau chief for the New York Times. Kagame grew up in a refugee camp in Uganda, served as an intelligence officer in its army, and founded the Rwanda Patriotic Front, which supports the right of refugees to return to Rwanda. After assuming political office, Kagame first directed a reconciliation process for all citizens and, since 2000, has emphasized economic development. His authoritarian style draws sharp criticism from human rights organizations, and Western economic development experts question his programs. Kinzer presents him in the most favorable light possible while not overlooking troubling actions, such as his sending troops into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to support rebels there. Based on interviews with Kagame, ordinary citizens, and many others who have worked with Kagame at some time, the book is a nuanced portrait of a complex figure in morally ambiguous times. Recommended for all collections supporting an interest in Africa.



Read also Bordeaux or Good Things for Easy Entertaining

Civil Service Exams: The Complete Preparation Guide

Author: Learning Express LLC

From researchers to mechanics, librarians to lumberjacks, the government employs nearly every kind of professional imaginable. Whether trying for employment at the federal, state, or local level, Civil Service Exam provides the critical strategies needed to find the right career and the crucial skill practice required to pass the civil service exam. This book contains three, complete practice exams, covering all the commonly tested skill areas: mathematics, written communications, and civil service-specific skill sets such as memory, customer service, and coding, as well as free access to online practice tests with instant scoring and individualized feedback - it's like having the test in advance!



Saturday, December 27, 2008

Second Treatise on Civil Government or Strategic Planning for Public and NonProfit Organizations

Second Treatise on Civil Government

Author: John Lock

The central principles of what today is broadly known as political liberalism were made current in large part by Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1690). The principles of individual liberty, the rule of law, government by consent of the people, and the right to private property are taken for granted as fundamental to the human condition now. Most liberal theorists writing today look back to Locke as the source of their ideas. Some maintain that religious fundamentalism, "post-modernism," and socialism are today the only remaining ideological threats to liberalism. To the extent that this is true, these ideologies are ultimately attacks on the ideas that Locke, arguably more than any other, helped to make the universal vocabulary of political discourse.

About the Author:

Born in 1632 in Somerset, England, Locke was the son of an attorney in a middle-class family. In 1652 he went to Oxford and studied medicine. The first earl of Shaftesbury introduced Locke to the world of politics, and early in their association, Locke served as secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations and secretary to the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas. In 1696, Locke was made Commissioner of Trade, a position he held for several years before his death in 1704.<%END%>



Interesting book: Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics or Applying Economics to the Environment

Strategic Planning for Public and NonProfit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement

Author: John M Bryson

When it was first published more than sixteen years ago, John Bryson's Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations introduced a new and thoughtful strategic planning model. Since then it has become the standard reference in the field. In this completely revised third edition, Bryson updates his perennial bestseller to help today’s leaders enhance organizational effectiveness. This new edition:



• Features the Strategy Change Cycle—a proven planning process used by a large number of organizations

• Offers detailed guidance on implementing the planning process and includes specific tools and techniques to make the process work in any organization

• Introduces new material on creating public value, stakeholder analysis, strategy mapping, balanced scorecards, collaboration, and more

• Includes information about the organizational designs that will encourage strategic thought and action throughout the entire organization

• Contains a wealth of updated examples and cases




Brothers in Arms or Stalin

Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder

Author: Gus Russo

A groundbreaking new reporting of the historical drama linking the Kennedys and the Castros that sheds new light on the JFK assassination.

Using breakthrough reporting and interviews with long-silent sources, Russo and coauthor Stephen Molton have crafted a dramatic retelling of the time before, during, and after the Kennedy killing. The book centers on the two opposed sets of brothers—the Kennedys and the Castros—who collectively authored one of modern history’s most dangerous, and tragically ironic, chapters. Bobby Kennedy pushed for the murder of Fidel Castro and instead got the death of his beloved brother, a psychic blow from which he himself never recovered. Lee Harvey Oswald killed an admired president and traumatized a nation, but in so doing may have prevented a third world war.

Built on thirty years of intense research—including discoveries so significant that they have rekindled CIA and State Department interest in the Kennedy assassination—Brothers in Arms is a vivid, character-driven, almost cinematic narration of a singularly fascinating time. For neophytes, it is the most accessible and informed single volume on the assassination. For the many readers fascinated by this story, it provides extraordinary new facts that will force a reconsideration of how and why the Kennedy murder came to pass.

Kirkus Reviews

Two investigative journalists recount the dangerous political duel between the brothers Kennedy and Castro. "I've killed my own brother!" With this anguished cry, say former Frontline reporter Russo (Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers, 2006, etc.) and screenwriter Molton (Brave Talk, 1987), Robert Kennedy, who for years headed the administration's counterinsurgency effort against Fidel Castro, acknowledged his complicity in JFK's assassination. When the name "Oswald" showed up in a dossier indicating that the unstable ex-Marine was considered for recruitment by anti-Castro forces, RFK understood that the deadly game of spy-counterspy had come full circle. As with his counterpart, Raul Castro (Fidel's younger brother), who was in charge of Cuba's intelligence service, RFK's selfless devotion knew no bounds. Both viewed the contest between their countries in highly personal terms: "what offended the dignity of the brother offended the dignity of his entire nation." Relying on past histories and innumerable interviews, the authors vividly reconstruct the Cold War atmosphere of the '60s. Acknowledging Oswald as the sole triggerman, they convincingly conclude that he was a Cuban asset who acted under his own agency, but was also a patsy for larger clandestine elements. Their tracing of Oswald's creepy progress to Dallas's Dealey Plaza, their detailed portrait of the shadowy Rolando Cubela Secades (was he a double agent?) and their intimate knowledge of the shadowy intelligence world all contribute to a deeper understanding of the sometimes purposeful, sometimes random forces at work. Russo and Molton attribute the coverup ofOswald's Cuban connection to the Warren Commission's ignorance about the extent of the Kennedy brothers' plots to kill Castro, to RFK's interest in protecting the family legacy and to Lyndon Johnson's desire to keep an enraged America from retaliating and possibly triggering World War III. A serious, intriguing look at the blood feud whose horrible consequences continue to reverberate. Author events in Washington, D.C. Agent: Deborah Grosvenor/Grosvenor Literary Agency



Interesting book: Color Me Confident or Eating for Acid Reflux

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

Author: Simon Sebag Montefior

This widely acclaimed biography provides a vivid and riveting account of Stalin and his courtiers—killers, fanatics, women, and children—during the terrifying decades of his supreme power. In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research and narrative ?lan, Simon Sebag Montefiore gives us the everyday details of a monstrous life.

We see Stalin playing his deadly game of power and paranoia at debauched dinners at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We witness first-hand how the dictator and his magnates carried out the Great Terror and the war against the Nazis, and how their families lived in this secret world of fear, betrayal, murder, and sexual degeneracy. Montefiore gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin’s dictatorship, and a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal.

The New York Times

In Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Mr. Montefiore draws upon new archival material, unpublished memoirs and interviews with survivors of that era (including many children of Stalin's associates and underlings) to create a harrowing portrait of life in the dictator's inner circle. In doing so, he gives us an intimate look at Stalin himself and the culture of sadism, ruthlessness and dread that flourished around him, fueling a murderous regime that would leave tens of millions of people dead. — Michiko Kakutani

The Washington Post

The result is a portrait of Stalin and the members of his court that is unprecedented in its intimacy and horrifying in its implications, not merely because it shows that the engineers of one of history's greatest holocausts were depraved -- there has always been ample evidence of that -- but also because they emerge in these pages as surprisingly normal. This raises the possibility that, under the influence of the appropriate ideas and with the right career incentives, crimes like those of the Stalinist regime could be committed by people like ourselves. — David Satte

The New Yorker

Any biography of a tyrant runs the risk of humanizing its subject to the point of appearing to mitigate his crimes. But Montefiore’s intimate portrait actually throws the coldhearted murderousness with which Stalin pursued and defended power into sharper relief. The book—much of it based on fresh archival material—moves smoothly between detailed sketches of everyday life at the Kremlin and accounts of the paranoid and sanguinary scheming that determined Soviet politics. This juxtaposition captures the vertiginous quality of life in Stalin’s court, where no allegiance was permanent. Just as strikingly, Montefiore shows how Stalin, a “master of friendships,” used charm to win the support of members of the Party’s inner circle (many of whom ended up regretting it). This haunting book gets us as close as we are likely to come to the man who believed that “the solution to every human problem was death.”

Publishers Weekly

Montefiore (The Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin) is more interested in life at the top than at the bottom, so he includes hundreds of pages on Stalin's purges of top Communists, while devoting much less space to the forced collectivization of Soviet peasants that led to millions of deaths. In lively prose, he intersperses his mammoth account of Stalin's often-deadly political decisions with the personal lives of the Soviet dictator and those around him. As a result, the reader learns about sexual peccadilloes of the top Communists: Stalin's secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, for one, "craved athletic women, haunting the locker rooms of Soviet swimmers and basketball players." Stalin's own escapades after the death of his wife are also noted. There's also much detail about the food at parties and other meetings of Stalin's henchmen. The effect is paradoxical: Stalin and his cronies are humanized at the same time as their cruel misdeeds are recounted. Montefiore offers little help in answering some of the unsettled questions surrounding Stalin: how involved was he in the 1934 murder of rising official Sergei Kirov, for example. He also seems to leave open the question of Stalin's paranoia: he argues that the Georgian-born ruler was a charming man who used his people skills to get whatever he wanted. Montefiore mainly skirts the paranoia issue, noting that only after WWII, when Stalin launched his anti-Semitic campaigns, did he "become a vicious and obsessional anti-Semite." There are many Stalin biographies out there, but this fascinating work distinguishes itself by its extensive use of fresh archival material and its focus on Stalin's ever-changing coterie. Maps and 24 pages of photos not seen by PW. Agent, Georgina Capel. (Apr.) Forecast: With a 75,000 first printing, this is likely to draw in Slavophiles and history buffs. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The mission of this large work by Montefiore (Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin) is to "go beyond the traditional explanations of Stalin as `enigma,' `madman,' or `Satanic genius' and that of his comrades as `men without biographies,' dreary moustachioed sycophants in black-and-white photographs." In other words, he seeks to reorient our historical perspective by giving us a more intimate account of these men. To do so, he places Stalin and his "oligarchs" in idiosyncratic Bolshevik context as members of a military-religious "order of sword-bearers," getting up close and personal as he describes relationships among the most notable of Stalin's courtiers, including Molotov, Beria, Yezhov, Zhadanov, Kaganovich, and Khrushchev. Montefiore echoes such contemporary works as Roy Medvedev's The Unknown Stalin: His Life, Death, and Legacy and Jonathan Brent's Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953, but he also goes beyond them. For instance, he describes the last days of Stalin in greater detail than have other authors. While Montefiore does not humanize his subjects, he does make them more understandable, if no less repellant. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with a strong Soviet/Russian collection. Harry Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. Syst., Iola Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A fascinating, superbly written study of the Red Emperor Josef Stalin, "an energetic and vainglorious melodramatist who was exceptional in every way."Stalin, the one-time seminarian from Georgia, was at once a ruthlessly efficient administrator and a born outlaw (during the Civil War he funded his guerrilla activities by robbing banks), capable of commanding both fear and respect, though always preferring the former. He was careful throughout his long rule to surround himself with equally capable if easily intimidated lieutenants, whom the young British historian/novelist Montefiore (Enigma, 2001, etc.) characterizes wonderfully: Stalin's favorite secret policeman, Genrikh Yagoda, "a ferret-faced Jewish jeweler's son from Nizhny Novgorod with a 'Hitlerish moustache' and a taste for orchids, German pornography, and literary friendships"; Vyacheslav Molotov, the Marxist true believer, "small, stocky, with a bulging forehead, chilling hazel eyes blinking behind round spectacles, and a stammer when angry (or talking to Stalin)." They created an extraordinary terror state indeed, so terrible that Stalin's iron-hard Bolshevik wife committed suicide after it became clear that he had thoroughly betrayed the revolution (and behaved monstrously toward her to boot). Yet there were some curious blind spots in Stalin's total state, as well as in his understanding of the world: for all the evidence to the contrary, for instance, he could not believe that Hitler was planning an invasion of the Soviet Union, growling, "Germany will never fight Russia on her own" (and Germany didn't: Hitler brought allies to the fight) and insisting that the German attacks of June 1941 were the work of renegade generals,not of Hitler himself. "The duel between those two brutal and reckless egomaniacs," as Montefiore puts it, bled Russia dry and nearly brought Stalin's government down; but the terror state would fall only with Stalin's death in 1953, whereupon his surviving aides, "relieved to be alive," were dumped into the ashbin of history. There is much news here (including the fate of Hitler's bones), and much to ponder. Altogether extraordinary, and required reading for anyone interested in world affairs. First printing of 75,000



Friday, December 26, 2008

The Great Unraveling or Danger Close

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century

Author: Paul Krugman

In this long-awaited work, award-winning economist and columnist Paul Krugman challenges us to take on George Bush and the radical right. Drawing from his New York Times columns, he chronicles how the boom economy unraveled: how exuberance gave way to pessimism, how the age of corporate heroes gave way to corporate scandals, and how fiscal responsibility collapsed. Krugman asks how it was possible for a country with so much going for it to head downhill so fast and finds the answer in the agenda of the Bush Administration.

Krugman began writing his New York Times column in 2000, demonstrating that he is one of the most well-informed and trenchant commentators in America. From his account of the secret history of the California energy crisis to his devastating dissections of the Bush Administration's dishonesty on everything from tax cuts to the war on terrorism, Krugman tells the uncomfortable truth about how the United States lost its way amid economic disappointment, bad leadership, and deceit. This unprecedented work of social and political history sets the first years of the Twenty-first Century in a stark, new light.

New York Review of Books

....It seems slightly scandalous that Krugman has persisted in noting that the present administration has been moving the lion's share of the money to an array of corporate interests distinguished by the greed of their CEOs, an indifference toward their workers, and boardroom conviction that it is the welfare state that is ruining the country. Krugman has been strident. He has been shrill. He has lowered the dignity of the commentariat. How refreshing.
Russell Baker

The New York Times

Krugman's best columns showcase his fluency in economics, analytical power and willingness to go out on a limb.—Peter Beinart

Publishers Weekly

"This is not, I'm sorry to say, a happy book," says Krugman in the introduction to this collection of essays culled from his twice-weekly New York Times op-ed column, and indeed, the majority of these short pieces range from moderately bleak political punditry to full-on "the sky is falling" doom and gloom. A respected economist, Krugman dissects political and social events of the past decade by watching the dollars, and his ideas are emphatic if not always well argued. He has a somewhat boyish voice and a pleasingly enthusiastic tone, although his enthusiasm sometimes leads him to take liberties with punctuation. The essays are grouped thematically instead of chronologically, which gives this audio adaptation a scattershot feel. Since these pieces were written over a long stretch of time, certain key ideas recur quite often-political reporters don't pay enough attention to the real news, the Bush administration is dishonest, big corporations are inherently untrustworthy-and can become tedious. To his credit, Krugman is not entirely partisan-he reveals himself to be a free-market apologist-and even listeners who disagree with most of the things he says will likely be taken in by his warm and energetic delivery. Simultaneous release with the Norton hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 18). (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

A Princeton economist turned New York Times columnist, Krugman combines colorful writing with astute economic analysis. This book is a collection of his columns from 2000 to 2003 (plus some earlier articles written for non-economists) with new introductory commentary. Krugman is a self-conscious outsider, an iconoclast who offers trenchant commentary on bad policy and bad business behavior, and much of the material here concerns what he considers the Bush administration's systematic deception of the public. In the introduction, he posits the existence of a revolutionary right-wing conspiracy — a term he does not use lightly. His commentary ranges from developments in Japan and Europe to financial crises and foreign trade policy, areas in which Krugman has made important contributions as an economist. He emerges as a strong, insightful critic of an unqualified "market-knows-best" world view.

Library Journal

Krugman, twice-weekly op-ed columnist for the New York Times and a Princeton economics teacher, shares his take on President Bush and the radical right and how the United States has "lost its way amid economic disappointment, bad leadership, and deceit." The book contains more than 100 of the author's Times columns published between January 2000 and January 2003 and a few extras published in Fortune magazine and at Slate.com, plus his added commentary that freshens the material. The articles cover the gamut of national economic and political issues that dominated the period, including the California energy crisis, the Bush administration's tax cuts, and the war on terrorism. Krugman, who is adamantly anti-right-wing, draws on his solid economics training and experience in these credible pieces, which transcend the rant that sadly fills today's political commentaries. Highly recommended for university and larger public libraries.-Dale Farris, Groves, TX Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Paul A. Samuelson
The new Krugman book documents why this top-drawer academic economist deserves at least one Pulitzer Prize for his accurate Times op-ed columns that are a lone voice, telling things as they are and debunking Washington policies that are neither compassionate nor conservative. Plutocratic democracy is in the saddle. Rx. Krugman twice a week and in this coherent sum-up on relevant 2003-2010 economics. Buy. Read. Ponder. Benefit.


Molly Ivins
You need to read this book, and when you do, you'll have only one response: it's time to get mad, for most of the media are in denial about how far the takeover of this country by the radical right has already progressed.


Anthony Lewis
Paul Krugman is the indispensable American columnist, a voice of truth in a political world of lies and calculated injustice. This book is even better. It makes the case, unrestrained by deference, that a revolutionary right-wing movement is out to transform the United States-and is succeeding, rolling over a supine press and political opposition.


James Carville
If I had a tenth of Paul Krugman's brain and a twentieth his courage, I'd be the happiest person on the face of the Earth!


Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Paul Krugman is the great discovery of recent American journalism. Lively, lucid, witty, superbly informed, his commentary on the state of the union is required reading for anyone concerned about the American future.


David Levering Lewis
The title of Paul Krugman's The Great Unraveling might well have been The Great Usurpation. In a republic hijacked by the radical right whose leaders reject the legitimacy of our current political system, Paul Krugman's coruscant book calls for a "great revulsion" across the land before it is too late.




Table of Contents:
Introduction : a revolutionary power3
IBubble trouble21
1Irrational exuberance27
2Portents abroad53
3Greenspanomics67
4Crony capitalism, U.S.A.101
IIFuzzy math131
5The bait ...137
6... And the switch165
72 - 1 = 4189
IIIVictors and spoils213
8Things pull apart219
9The private interest229
10Exploiting September 11245
11A vast conspiracy?269
IVWhen markets go bad293
12California screaming299
13Smog and mirrors327
14Foreign disasters349
VThe wider view363
15Global schmobal367
16Economics and economists391
VIOne year later409
17War and terror413
18Dollars and cents443
19Abuses of power469

New interesting textbook: Accounting or Microeconomics

Danger Close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq

Author: Steve Call

"America had a secret weapon," writes Steve Call of the period immediately following September 11, 2001, as planners contemplated the invasion of Afghanistan. This weapon consisted of small teams of Special Forces operatives trained in close air support (CAS) who, in cooperation with the loose federation of Afghan rebels opposed to the Taliban regime, soon began achieving impressive—and unexpected—military victories over Taliban forces and the al-Qaeda terrorists they had sponsored. The astounding success of CAS tactics coupled with ground operations in Afghanistan soon drew the attention of military decision makers and would eventually factor into the planning for another campaign: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But who, exactly, are these air power experts and what is the function of the TACPs (Tactical Air Control Parties) in which they operate? Danger Close provides a fascinating look at a dedicated, courageous, innovative, and often misunderstood and misused group of military professionals.

Drawing on the gripping first-hand accounts of their battlefield experiences, Steve Call allows the TACPs to speak for themselves. He accompanies their narratives with informed analysis of the development of CAS strategy, including potentially controversial aspects of the interservice rivalries between the air force and the army which have at times complicated and even obstructed the optimal employment of TACP assets. Danger Close makes clear, however, that the systematic coordination of air power and ground forces played an invaluable supporting role in the initial military victories in both Afghanistan and Iraq. This first-ever examination of the intense,life-and-death world of the close air support specialist will introduce readers to a crucial but little-known aspect of contemporary warfare and add a needed chapter in American military history studies.

What People Are Saying

Dennis E. Showalter
. . . explains one of the most important and least understood keys to success in conventional military operations—that is, actions against an organized enemy . . . Call catches the cadences and the mentality of today's professional soldiers . . . seeks to tell a straight story, presenting shortcomings and errors as well as positives. (Dennis E. Showalter, Colorado College)


Mark Buckman
Many of us watched the war on TV—or thought we did. This book brings forth previously untold and important accounts of airpower used to decimate Taliban and Iraqi forces, ahead of U.S. ground-force advances into enemy held terrain. . . . (Col. Mark Buckman, USAF, Council on Foreign Relations)




Gertrude Bell or The Strong Man

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations

Author: Georgina Howell

A marvelous tale of an adventurous life of great historical import

She has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia, which, while not inaccurate, fails to give Gertrude Bell her due. She was at one time the most powerful woman in the British Empire: a nation builder, the driving force behind the creation of modern-day Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society, choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author (of Persian Pictures, The Desert and the Sown, and many other collections), poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer (she took off her skirt and climbed the Alps in her underclothes).

She traveled the globe several times, but her passion was the desert, where she traveled with only her guns and her servants. Her vast knowledge of the region made her indispensable to the Cairo Intelligence Office of the British government during World War I. She advised the Viceroy of India; then, as an army major, she traveled to the front lines in Mesopotamia. There, she supported the creation of an autonomous Arab nation for Iraq, promoting and manipulating the election of King Faisal to the throne and helping to draw the borders of the fledgling state. Gertrude Bell, vividly told and impeccably researched by Georgina Howell, is a richly compelling portrait of a woman who transcended the restrictions of her class and times, and in so doing, created a remarkable and enduring legacy.

The Washington Post - Jason Goodwin

Georgina Howell recounts these stories with a wide-eyed admiration that is, for the most part, infectious, and her long book is a gripping read. Often pursuing themes in Bell's life, rather than bald chronology, she introduces her readers to the atmosphere of Oxford colleges, to the perils and excitements of the Alps, and to the dangers and decorum of desert life.

Publishers Weekly

In this hefty, thoroughly enjoyable biography of Gertrude Bell (1868-1926), English journalist Howell describes her subject as not only "the most famous British traveler of her day, male or female" but as a "poet, scholar, historian, mountaineer, photographer, archaeologist, gardener, cartographer, linguist and distinguished servant of the state." As Howell observes, "Gertrude always had to have a project," and she manages to bring those multitudinous projects, studies and adventures to life on the page. "I decided," Howell writes, "to use many more of her own words than would appear in a conventional biography": a felicitous decision when the subject's letters, diaries and publications are as seamlessly incorporated in Howell's engaging text as they are. Bell's role in the creation of Iraq and the placement of Faisal upon the throne, is fully detailed, both to honor her power and to haunt us today. But the strength and delight of Howell's superb biography is in the fullness with which Bell's character is drawn. Having clearly fallen in love with her subject (though not blind to her warts), Howell leaves no stone unturned-family history, school days, Bell's clothes, sometimes her meals, her friendships, her servants, her thousands of miles traveled, her fluency in languages (Persian, Turkish, Arabic) and, yes, her romances. 16 pages of b&w illus. (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.



Table of Contents:
Maps     xi
Preface     xv
Gertrude and Florence     3
Education     28
The Civilized Woman     42
Becoming a Person     60
Mountaineering     74
Desert Travel     94
Dick Doughty-Wylie     127
Limit of Endurance     162
Escape     194
War Work     217
Cairo, Delhi, Basra     238
Government Through Gertrude     274
Anger     302
Faisal     335
Coronation     365
Staying and Leaving     383
Chronology     421
Note on Money Values     433
Notes     435
Bibliography     453
Acknowledgements     461
Index     465

Look this:

The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

Author: James Rosen

The Strong Man is the first full-scale biography of John N. Mitchell, the central figure in the rise and ruin of Richard Nixon and the highest-ranking American official ever convicted on criminal charges.

As U.S. attorney general from 1969 to 1972, John Mitchell stood at the center of the upheavals of the late sixties. The most powerful man in the Nixon cabinet, a confident troubleshooter, Mitchell championed law and order against the bomb-throwers of the antiwar movement, desegregated the South’s public schools, restored calm after the killings at Kent State, and steered the commander-in-chief through the Pentagon Papers and Joint Chiefs spying crises. After leaving office, Mitchell survived the ITT and Vesco scandals—but was ultimately destroyed by Watergate.

With a novelist’s skill, James Rosen traces Mitchell’s early life and career from his Long Island boyhood to his mastery of Wall Street, where Mitchell's innovations in municipal finance made him a power broker to the Rockefellers and mayors and governors in all fifty states. After merging law firms with Richard Nixon, Mitchell brilliantly managed Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign and, at his urging, reluctantly agreed to serve as attorney general. With his steely demeanor and trademark pipe, Mitchell commanded awe throughout the government as Nixon’s most trusted adviser, the only man in Washington who could say no to the president.

Chronicling the collapse of the Nixon presidency, The Strong Man follows America’s former top cop on his singular odyssey through the criminal justice system—a tortuous maze of camera crews,congressional hearings, special prosecutors, and federal trials. The path led, ultimately, to a prison cell in Montgomery, Alabama, where Mitchell was welcomed into federal custody by the same men he had appointed to office. Rosen also reveals the dark truth about Mitchell’s marriage to the flamboyant and volatile Martha Mitchell: her slide into alcoholism and madness, their bitter divorce, and the toll it all took on their daughter, Marty.

Based on 250 original interviews and hundreds of thousands of previously unpublished documents and tapes, The Strong Man resolves definitively the central mysteries of the Nixon era: the true purpose of the Watergate break-in, who ordered it, the hidden role played by the Central Intelligence Agency, and those behind the cover-up.

A landmark of history and biography, The Strong Man is that rarest of books: both a model of scholarly research and savvy analysis and a masterful literary achievement.

The Washington Post - Lincoln Caplan

The Strong Man, by James Rosen, a Fox News Washington correspondent and a contributing editor to Playboy, displays wide-ranging and obsessive reporting, especially about the Watergate story. The book seeks to accomplish what a Mitchell memoir could not. It may seem strange to say that Rosen aims to vindicate the lawman-turned-convict, since the author affirms Mitchell's guilt and even details crimes "he got away with," but Rosen's purpose is wholesale revision: He presses the thesis that Mitchell should be recognized as a distinguished, if tragic, American figure.

Publishers Weekly

Casting the 66th attorney general and Watergate felon as the most upright man in the Nixon administration is faint praise indeed, to judge by this biography. Fox News correspondent Rosen applauds Mitchell for his tough law-and-order policies, school-desegregation efforts and hard line against leftist radicals, and for enduring wife Martha's alcoholic breakdowns and raving late-night phone calls to reporters. The book's heart is Rosen's meticulous, exhaustively researched study of Mitchell's Watergate role, absolving him of ordering the break-in and most other charges leveled against him. Instead, Mitchell is painted as a force for propriety who was framed by others-especially White House counsel John Dean, who comes off as Watergate's evil genius. (Rosen also claims Watergate burglar James McCord was secretly working for the CIA and deliberately sabotaged the break-in.) Unfortunately, Rosen's salutes to Mitchell's integrity and reverence for the law clash with his accounts of the man's misdeeds: undermining the Paris peace talks, suborning and committing perjury, tolerating the criminal scheming in Nixon's White House and re-election campaign. Mitchell may have blanched at the Nixon administration's sleazy intrigues, as Rosen insists, but he seems not to have risen above them. (Feb. 19)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Karl Helicher - Library Journal

In 1977, John N. Mitchell, Nixon's former attorney general (1969-72) and then manager of his 1972 reelection campaign, became the highest-ranking American official to serve time in prison: 19 months for perjury and obstruction of justice. Rosen (Washington correspondent, Fox News) presents a sympathetic account of Mitchell, who "never dished the dirt on Richard Nixon," although the President tried to make his former law partner the Watergate fall guy. Compounding Mitchell's woes were John Dean, White House counsel, who Rosen claims ordered the Watergate break-in; John Ehrlichman, Nixon's chief domestic policy adviser; Jeb Magruder of the Committee to Reelect the President-all of whom scapegoated Mitchell in their desperate attempts to save themselves from jail-and Martha Mitchell, his unbalanced, alcoholic wife whose public antics made the couple a national embarrassment. Rosen reveals a fascinating but well-buried chapter of Watergate, the Moorer-Radford scandal, in which the Joint Chiefs of Staff spied on Nixon because they thought he was too weak a leader to withstand the Soviets. In this incident and others, Mitchell persuaded Nixon not to retaliate. However, Rosen acknowledges that Mitchell was not without his flaws and indeed did obstruct justice. This fine political biography, casting Mitchell in a controversially positive light, is a good choice for larger public libraries.



Thursday, December 25, 2008

unSpun or Democracy in America

unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation

Author: Brooks Jackson

Americans are bombarded daily with mixed messages, half-truths, misleading statements, and out-and-out fabrications masquerading as facts. The news media--once the vaunted watchdogs of our republic--are often too timid or distracted to identify these deceptions.

unSpun is the secret decoder ring for the twenty-first-century world of disinformation. Written by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the founders of the acclaimed website FactCheck.org, unSpun reveals the secrets of separating facts from disinformation, such as:

• the warning signs of spin, hype, and bogus news
• common tricks used to deceive us
• how to find trustworthy and objective sources of information

Telling fact from fiction shouldn't be a difficult task. With this book and a healthy dose of skepticism, anyone can cut through the haze of biased media reportage to be a savvier consumer and a better-informed citizen.

What People Are Saying


"Read this book and you will not go unarmed into the political wars ahead of us. Jackson and Jamieson equip us to be our own truth squad, and that just might be the salvation of democracy."
----Bill Moyers

"THE DEFINITIVE B.S. DETECTOR---AN ABSOLUTELY INVALUABLE GUIDEBOOK."
---Mark Shields, syndicated columnist and political analyst, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

"unSpun is an essential guide to cutting through the political fog. Just in time for the 2008 campaign, Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson have written a citizen's guide to avoiding the malarkey of partisan politics."
---Mara Liasson, NPR national political correspondent

"The Internet may be a wildly effective means of communication and an invaluable source of knowledge, but it has also become a new virtual haven for scammers---financial, political, even personal. Better than anything written before, unSpun shows us how to recognize these scams and protect ourselves from them."
---Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative, Craigslist.org




Interesting book:

Democracy in America

Author: Alexis de Tocquevill

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, made a nine-month journey throughout America. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the life and institutions of the evolving nation. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing democratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing that the egalitarian ideals it enshrined reflected the spirit of the age and even divine will. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America and an indispensable authority on democracy.

This new edition is the only one that contains all Tocqueville's writings on America, including the rarely-translated Two Weeks in the Wilderness, an account of Tocqueville's travels in Michigan among the Iroquois, and Excursion to Lake Oneida.

Booknews

<:st> Political philosophers Mansfield (government, Harvard U.) and Winthrop (constitutional government, Harvard U.) present a new translation<-->only the third since the original two-volume work was published in 1835 and 1840<-->aiming to restore the nuances of Tocqueville's language. Tocqueville himself was not satisfied with the 19th-century translation; the other, prepared in the late 1960s (Harper & Row), is cited in This translation is based on a recent critical French edition (Editions Gallimard, 1992). Mansfield and Winthrop provide a substantial introduction placing the work and its author in historical and philosophical context, as well as annotations elucidating references that are no longer familiar to readers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

New York Times Book Review - Caleb Crain

Thanks to [Tocqueville's] prescience, a new edition of ''Democracy in America'' is always timely.



Table of Contents:
Note on this Reeve Edition
Preface to this Edition
Introductory Notice
Introductory Chapter3
Ch. IExterior form of North America14
Ch. IIOrigin of the Anglo-Americans, and its importance in relation to their future condition20
Ch. IIISocial condition of the Anglo-Americans35
Ch. IVThe principle of the sovereignty of the people in America41
Ch. VNecessity of examining the condition of the States before that of the Union at Large44
Ch. VIJudicial power in the United States, and its influence on political society73
Ch. VIIPolitical jurisdiction in the United States79
Ch. VIIIThe Federal Constitution84
Ch. IXWhy the people may strictly be said to govern in the United States133
Ch. XParties in the United States134
Ch. XILiberty of the Press in the United States140
Ch. XIIPolitical associations in the United States147
Ch. XIIIGovernment of the Democracy in America154
Ch. XIVWhat the real advantages are which American Society derives from the Government of the Democracy186
Ch. XVUnlimited power of the majority in the United States, and its consequences201
Ch. XVICauses which mitigate the tyranny of the majority in the United States215
Ch. XVIIPrincipal causes which tend to maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States228
Ch. XVIIIThe present and probable future condition of the three Races which inhabit the territory of the United States264
Opinions of the Present Work344
Endnotes347
Appendix640
Index691

Constitutional Law or The Way Well Be

Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies

Author: Erwin Chemerinsky

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: Principles and Policies continues to serve as an incomparably clear introduction to both doctrine and policy in its Third Edition.

This highly successful student treatise offers distinct advantages:

  • thorough treatment of all areas of constitutional law covered in both beginning and advanced courses
  • direct, unambiguous identification of the issues
  • takes a neutral approach that examines all sides of constitutional law debates
  • presents both the doctrines and the underlying policy issues of the law, unlike many other texts which emphasize one or the other
  • flexible organization allows the chapters to be used in any order

    For the Third Edition, the author:

  • updates the entire text, with new material introduced throughout
  • pays special attention to developments between editions, particularly in regard to presidential power in the war on terrorism, the many decisions concerning state sovereign immunity, the controversial rulings concerning the takings clause, the important decisions concerning affirmative action by colleges and universities, and significant developments concerning the Establishment Clause (such as the approval of vouchers and the Ten Commandments decisions)
  • covers the most recent and significant cases, among them Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (executive power to detain enemy combatants), Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs and Tennessee v. Lane (sovereign immunity), Gonzales v. Raich (Congress's ability to prohibit possession and cultivation of marijuana for medicinal purposes), City of New London, Connecticut v. Kelo (takings clause), Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger (equal protection),Lawrence v. Texas (sexual privacy), and Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (vouchers)



    Book about:

    The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream

    Author: John Zogby

    In the tradition of Why We Buy, preeminent pollster John Zogby identifies key trends in American culture and suggests how companies from the Fortune 500 to the neighborhood deli can use this information to improve their business.

    The Washington Post - Steve Weinberg

    Dismissing a crystal-ball book by a professional pollster would be easy. After all, generalizing about a diverse nation of 300 million people based on samples of just a few hundred seems ludicrous. But pollster John Zogby's voice in The Way We'll Be is disarming. He anticipates skepticism and answers potential arguments with a combination of intelligent rebuttal, winning modesty and full disclosure about the limits of his methodology. What he describes seems a plausible (though not guaranteed) scenario for the future of the United States, its politics, culture and economics. Even if Zogby's conclusions prove to be mistaken, the data he has collected offer plenty of fodder for discussion.

    Publishers Weekly

    Renowned political pollster Zogby distills a lifetime of surveying public opinion into a provocative-and heartening-portrait of American attitudes toward a host of topical issues that will shock cynics who regularly pronounce on the nation's divisions, apathy and appetite for excess. "The bullshit era is over and done," Zogby notes; his surveys reveal a public craving for truth rather than hype, valuing thrift over luxury and ready to accept limits on consumption. A "New American Consensus" is emerging, according to the author; shared economic hardships are uniting people commonly perceived to be at odds, and self-defined identities such as "investor" are becoming more reliable predictors of worldviews than race or gender. The author reserves particular enthusiasm for the younger generation, whose responses reveal an unprecedented embrace of diversity, sensitivity to global human rights and a willingness to grapple with complex issues-such as abortion-free from orthodoxy and with a desire to find middle ground. "The American Century is over," Zogby declares, "and the Whole Earth Century has begun"; his intriguing claims will likely stimulate hope and continued debate. (Aug.)

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

    Elizabeth L. Winter - Library Journal

    Pollster Zogby (CEO, Zogby Int'l.) synthesizes several years' worth of polling data across a wide variety of topics to paint a picture of today's American culture. In other words, he's not just discussing political polling here. After explaining the art and science behind polling, he goes on to argue for a new American consensus, one that he believes is emerging. He identifies and discusses four "meta-movements" that he thinks represent new definitions of the American dream, much different from the material prosperity that defined the good life for previous generations. He then details these meta-movements-living with limits, embracing diversity, looking inward, and demanding authenticity, discussing poll results on everything from how long Americans expect to live to whether or not scientists should bring back extinct dinosaurs. While Zogby's conclusions seem neither unfounded nor unreasonable, it is difficult to see how he can legitimately tease so much why out of polling numbers that simply demonstrate what. The poll data in the book will likely be of general interest, and his text boxes of summarized marketing tips following each chapter will be useful for those seeking to find new ways of reaching the kinds of American consumers Zogby has described. Recommended for business collections and corporate libraries.



    Table of Contents:

    1 The Art, Science, and Power of the Poll 3

    2 The New American Consensus: Moving Beyond the Values Divide 27

    3 Dematerializing the Paradigm: Leaner, Smaller, More Personal, and Personalized 56

    4 Global, Networked, and Inclusive: A Youth Movement That Is Reshaping All of Society 91

    5 The New American Dream: Who I Am, Not What I Own 120

    6 One True Thing: Searching for Authenticity in a Make-Believe World 148

    7 The Way We'll Be 184

    Acknowledgments 217

    Index 221

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