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 Chapter	3
Ch. I	Exterior form of North America	14
Ch. II	Origin of the Anglo-Americans, and its importance in relation to their future condition	20
Ch. III	Social condition of the Anglo-Americans	35
Ch. IV	The principle of the sovereignty of the people in America	41
Ch. V	Necessity of examining the condition of the States before that of the Union at Large	44
Ch. VI	Judicial power in the United States, and its influence on political society	73
Ch. VII	Political jurisdiction in the United States	79
Ch. VIII	The Federal Constitution	84
Ch. IX	Why the people may strictly be said to govern in the United States	133
Ch. X	Parties in the United States	134
Ch. XI	Liberty of the Press in the United States	140
Ch. XII	Political associations in the United States	147
Ch. XIII	Government of the Democracy in America	154
Ch. XIV	What the real advantages are which American Society derives from the Government of the Democracy	186
Ch. XV	Unlimited power of the majority in the United States, and its consequences	201
Ch. XVI	Causes which mitigate the tyranny of the majority in the United States	215
Ch. XVII	Principal causes which tend to maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States	228
Ch. XVIII	The present and probable future condition of the three Races which inhabit the territory of the United States	264
	Opinions of the Present Work	344
	Endnotes	347
	Appendix	640
	Index	691