Monday, November 30, 2009

Titos Partisans 1941 45 or The Other Campaign

Tito's Partisans, 1941-45

Author: Velimir Vuksic

The civil war that raged in Yugoslavia following the German invasion in 1941 was brutal, uncompromising and complex, pitting royalists, fascists communists, ethnic groups, and the Axis powers against one another in a shifting and bloody theatre of war. The Partisan forces under the command of Josip Broz Tito were a constant thorn in the side of the Wehrmacht divisions in the Balkans, prompting numerous anti-partisan operations. Using primary source material, stunning contemporary images and personal accounts, this book explores a well-known but little published subject for the first time, bringing to light the development, training, weaponry, tactics and combat experiences of Tito's formidable guerrilla force, and the events of this bloody theatre of World War II.



Look this: Good to Great or Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms

The Other Campaign: The Zapatista Call for Change from Below

Author: Subcomandante Marcos

The Other Campaign is a collection of texts by Subcomandante Marcos and his Zapatista companeros that articulate a vision for "change from below," a call to create social change beyond the limits of electoral politics. As Mexico approaches the presidential elections, Marcos and supporters are touring the country in an effort to build a broad-based movement. The book includes a recent interview with Marcos and speeches made by Zapatista comandantes, as well as the Zapatistas' "Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle," which places the indigenous struggle for democracy in its historical context and articulates an evolving vision for democracy, dignity, and justice.

Subcomandante Marcos is a spokesperson and strategist for the Zapatistas.



Sunday, November 29, 2009

Thoughts on Machiavelli or Black Sailor White Navy

Thoughts on Machiavelli

Author: Leo Strauss

Leo Strauss argued that the most visible fact about Machiavelli's doctrine is also the most useful one: Machiavelli seems to be a teacher of wickedness. Strauss sought to incorporate this idea in his interpretation without permitting it to overwhelm or exhaust his exegesis of The Prince and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy. "We are in sympathy," he writes, "with the simple opinion about Machiavelli [namely, the wickedness of his teaching], not only because it is wholesome, but above all because a failure to take that opinion seriously prevents one from doing justice to what is truly admirable in Machiavelli: the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech." This critique of the founder of modern political philosophy by this prominent twentieth-century scholar is an essential text for students of both authors.



Look this: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team or A Sense of Urgency

Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet during the Vietnam War Era

Author: John Sherwood

View the Prologue

"This riveting account of racial turmoil in the U.S. Navy will be of immense interest to any student of the Navy, the Vietnam War, the All-Volunteer Force, or race relations in the United States."
—Eugenia C. Kiesling, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY

It is hard to determine what dominated more newspaper headlines in America during the 1960s and early 70s: the Vietnam War or America's turbulent racial climate. Oddly, however, these two pivotal moments are rarely examined in tandem.

John Darrell Sherwood has mined the archives of the U.S. Navy and conducted scores of interviews with Vietnam veterans — both black and white — and other military personnel to reveal the full extent of racial unrest in the Navy during the Vietnam War era, as well as the Navy's attempts to control it. During the second half of the Vietnam War, the Navy witnessed some of the worst incidents of racial strife ever experienced by the American military. Sherwood introduces us to fierce encounters on American warships and bases, ranging from sit-down strikes to major race riots.

The Navy's journey from a state of racial polarization to one of relative harmony was not an easy one, and Black Sailor, White Navy focuses on the most turbulent point in this road: the Vietnam War era.




Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments     vii
Prologue: Storm Warning     xi
Glossary     xxi
The Black Sailor: Chambermaid to the Braid and Nothing More     1
Racial Unrest Strikes the Army and Marines     16
The Zumwalt Revolution     30
Kitty Hawk: The Pot Begins to Boil     55
Blow Off: The Kitty Hawk Riot     83
More Unrest: The Hassayampa Riot     103
The Sit-down Strike on the Constellation     130
Negotiations with the Protesters: A Comedy of Errors     150
The Hicks Subcommittee Hearings: Questions and Motives     167
Violence on Nearly Every Ship: Race Riots after Constellation     193
The Struggle to Eliminate Bias in the Fleet     227
From Awareness to Affirmation     243
Epilogue     262
Appendix Navy Ranks and Ratings, 1973     271
Notes     275
Bibliography     315
Index     331
About the Author     344

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Heart That Bleeds or Molly Brown

The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now

Author: Alma Guillermoprieto

An extraordinarily vivid, unflinching series of portraits of South America today, written from the inside out, by the award-winning New Yorker journalist and widely admired author of Samba.

Publishers Weekly

First published in the New Yorker, Guillermoprieto's 13 essays reveal the fragile political life and culture in Latin America. (Apr.)



Interesting textbook: Todays Public Relations or Experiencing Human Resource Management

Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth

Author: Kristen Iversen

When Margaret Tobin Brown arrived in New York City shortly after her perilous night in Titanic's Lifeboat Six, a legend was born. Through magazines, books, a Broadway musical, and a Hollywood movie, she became "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," but in the process her life story was distorted beyond recognition. Even her name was changed--she was never known as Molly during her lifetime. Kristen Iversen's Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth is the first full-length biography of this American icon, and the story it tells is of a passionate and outspoken crusader for the rights of women, children, mine workers, and others struggling for their voice in the early twentieth century. In the end, the real "Molly" Brown was far more fascinating than her myth, and Kristen Iversen has captured her in all her brilliance.

Publishers Weekly

Molly Brown--the gun toting, vulgar saloon-girl-made-good--has become a staple of American myth through the Broadway and Hollywood musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown and the hit film Titanic. In this extensively researched biography--the first serious work on Brown--Iversen, an editor at Westcliffe Publishers and an independent scholar, reveals that Brown was a far more fascinating and important figure than her stage or screen portrayals suggest. True to her legend, Margaret Tobin Brown was born in 1867 to poor Irish immigrants in Hannibal, Mo., became the grande dame of Denver society after her husband hit pay dirt in his silver mine and survived the sinking of the Titanic. She was also, however, a prominent philanthropist and social reformer focusing on the rights of children; an ardent suffragist who contemplated several runs for Congress; a frequent liberal spokesperson for women's, labor and race issues; and, late in life, an actress of some note. A devout Catholic, Brown publicly challenged her church's stand on women's suffrage; invited Jewish women to work on her high-society fund-raising events; and, although she was a mine owner, defended the unionization of miners. Iversen is particularly adept at placing Brown in the context of her times, making the most of this opportunity to reexamine the Gilded Age and early 20th century through the lens of feminism and economic and social change. (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The real Margaret (she was never called Molly) Brown revealed in a biography long on both dramatic reconstructions of the Titanic disaster and mundane family scrapbooks As Iversen, an editor at Westcliffe Publishers, has it, Margaret (she was sometimes called Maggie) Brown was never the high-kicking vulgarian with a heart of gold portrayed by Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown or even the flamboyant dowager queen of the West (with a heart of gold) portrayed by Kathy Bates in the film Titanic. She was educated, culturally aware, multilingual, and comfortable in Paris, Newport, New York, Denver, and Leadville, Colo., society. She did have a heart of gold, and it was often dedicated to such sophisticated activities as organizing successful fund-raising events for building Denver's Roman Catholic cathedral, adding a wing to a Denver hospital, aiding families of miners left destitute by disaster, and, with her friend "Kids Judge" Benjamin Lindsey, organizing and subsidizing programs for indigent children. Her courage and organizational abilities were evident in the Titanic disaster, when she not only helped row Lifeboat #6 to safety but also went on to raise money and social support for the surviving immigrants, who had lost everything when the ship went down. Margaret was also a feminist, putting herself forth as a candidate for Congress. Her marriage to miner J.J. Brown had collapsed by then, due probably to both his womanizing and her activism. Margaret and her two children vied in court over J.J.'s will but eventually reconciled. Before she died in 1932 at age 65, Margaret was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her work in France during WWI. A pastiche of reminiscencesand newspaper clippings that tries to set the record straight and certainly suggests that, as important as the myth of the golden-hearted Western girl may be, the real Margaret was far more interesting than the cinematic versions. (b&w photos, not seen)



Thursday, November 26, 2009

Nightingales Song or Dancing in the Street

Nightingale's Song

Author: Robert Timberg

Robert Timberg weaves together the lives of Annapolis graduates John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter to reveal how the Vietnam War continues to haunt America. Casting all five men as metaphors for a legion of well-meaning if ill-starred warriors, Timberg probes the fault line between those who fought the war and those who used money, wit, and connections to avoid battle. A riveting tale that illuminates the flip side of the fabled Vietnam generation—those who went.

Publishers Weekly

Looking at the lives and careers of five Naval Academy graduatesamong them John Poindexter and Oliver Northfellow alumnus Timberg probes the connections between the legacy of the Vietnam war and the Iran-Contra scandal. (Oct.)



See also: Fundamentals of Meal Management or Just Me Cookin in Germany

Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit

Author: Suzanne E Smith

Detroit in the 1960s was a city with a pulse: people were marching in step with Martin Luther King, Jr., dancing in the street with Martha and the Vandellas, and facing off with city police. Through it all, Motown provided the beat. This book tells the story of Motown—as both musical style and entrepreneurial phenomenon—and of its intrinsic relationship to the politics and culture of Motor Town, USA.

As Suzanne Smith traces the evolution of Motown from a small record company firmly rooted in Detroit's black community to an international music industry giant, she gives us a clear look at cultural politics at the grassroots level. Here we see Motown's music not as the mere soundtrack for its historical moment but as an active agent in the politics of the time. In this story, Motown Records had a distinct role to play in the city's black community as that community articulated and promoted its own social, cultural, and political agendas. Smith shows how these local agendas, which reflected the unique concerns of African Americans living in the urban North, both responded to and reconfigured the national civil rights campaign.

Against a background of events on the national scene—featuring Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes, Nat King Cole, and Malcolm X—Dancing in the Street presents a vivid picture of the civil rights movement in Detroit, with Motown at its heart. This is a lively and vital history. It's peopled with a host of major and minor figures in black politics, culture, and the arts, and full of the passions of a momentous era. It offers a critical new perspective on the role of popular culture in the process of politicalchange.

Library Journal

Smith (history, George Mason Univ.) uses Motown to examine the shift in African American protest ideologies from integration to separatism. Motown, she argues, sprang from the strong tradition of black cultural and economic self-determination that was at the foundation of Detroit's most important black institutions, such as poet Margaret Danner's Boone House and WCHB, the first African American-owned radio station. Smith chastises Motown for its hesitating to change with the times, as Detroit-based Black Muslims became more vocal in their demand for African American rights and the 1967 riot broke out. She also suggests that the label's relocation from Detroit to Los Angeles in 1972 is final evidence of the bankruptcy of its version of African American capitalism. Writing in a somewhat choppy style and using mostly secondary sources, Smith successfully contextualizes Motown within Detroit culture, but she na vely condemns the logical consequences of the entrepreneurial spirit that drove its founder, Berry Gordy Jr., from his Detroit home to an international audience. Recommended for libraries serving social historians.--David P. Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Foreword - Edward Morris

Motown Records is an American success story and an African American triumph. To Smith, however, the fabled enterprise symbolizes a great deal more. The assistant professor of history at George Mason University argues that Motown not only took its name and talent roster from Detroit, but that it was shaped as well by the city's general reputation for racial tolerance and a labor-intensive auto industry that gave rise to a black middle-class. The drama inherent in Smith's account is that Motown was born and came of age just as the Civil Rights movement was gaining strength and momentum. That being the case, Berry Gordy, the company's founder and guiding presence until it was sold, faced more than the usual uphill battle all small businesses confront. He also had to walk the gossamer line between grooming his artists to appeal to a white audience with buying power and demonstrating his solidarity with the struggles of his own people.
Although she relies primarily on secondary sources, Smith performs a valuable service in showing that Gordy, rather than being the rugged individualist often depicted, was the product of a hard-working and supportive family, one that had displayed a relentless self-help ethic for generations. She does not spare Gordy when discussing the way he treated his artists and songwriters, providing them a "family" atmosphere on the one hand while taking financial advantage of them on the other. Even as he made timid forays into politics by issuing occasional albums with civil rights themes, Gordy discouraged his artists from taking political stands in their music. Gordy faced his own political and ethical dilemmas against the background of a Detroit that was rapidly changing. It manifested its own forms of racism with community-destroying "urban renewal" programs and police brutality that led to widespread riots. Its auto industry moved to the suburbs and displaced workers (mostly African Americans) with automation. As Motown grew, Smith says, it gradually lost the local character that incubated and first energized it.
To be sure, Smith is mainly concerned with the larger issues, but she does a good job of giving behind-the-scenes glimpses of the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and other Motown myths. While capitalism worked very well for Motown and its principals, Smith concludes, it was a far less effective system in exposing and eradicating the roots of racism.



Table of Contents:
Introduction: "Can't Forget the Motor City"1
1"In Whose Heart There Is No Song, To Him the Miles Are Many and Long": Motown and Detroit's Great March to Freedom21
2"Money (That's What I Want)": Black Capitalism and Black Freedom in Detroit54
3"Come See about Me": Black Cultural Production in Detroit94
4"Afro-American Music, without Apology": The Motown Sound and the Politics of Black Culture139
5"The Happening": Detroit, 1967181
6"What's Going On?" Motown and New Detroit209
Conclusion: "Come Get These Memories"247
Notes263
Acknowledgments307
Index313

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Cover Up or The Origins of Empire

Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding About the War on Terror

Author: Peter Lanc

Ever since 9/11, investigative reporter Peter Lance has been leading the fight to expose the intelligence gaps that led to 9/11. Now, in the follow-up to his bestselling 1000 Years for Revenge, he returns with devastating new evidence that the government has been covering up its own counterterror failures since the mid-1990s -- and continues today.

In Cover Up, Lance shows how the government chose again and again to sacrifice America's national security for personal motives and political convenience. In its first half, he unveils shattering new evidence that terror mastermind Ramzi Yousef ordered the bombing of TWA 800 from his prison cell in order to effect a mistrial in his own terror bombing case. Astonishingly, the FBI was alerted to Yousef's plans in advance by a prison informant who even passed along his detailed sketch of a bomb-trigger device -- a document seen here for the first time. And Lance reveals the shocking reason the Justice Department suddenly ruled the crash an accident despite overwhelming evidence of the bombing -- throwing away its best chance to penetrate the cell that was already planning 9/11.

And the outrage doesn't stop there. In Part II, Lance offers an unofficial "minority report" on the 9/11 Commission, critiquing it as the incomplete, highly politicized "Warren Commission of our time." He explores potential conflicts of interest among its members, from the staff director who wrote a book with Condoleezza Rice, to the former Clinton deputy attorney general who participated in a critical meeting that upended the TWA probe. He exposes the report's false contention that the 9/11 plan was conceived in 1996, when the FBI hadknowledge that the plot was in motion as early as 1994. And, in a heart-stopping, minute-by-minute chronicle of the attacks, he asks dozens of unanswered questions about the defense failures of that day -- from why fighter jets weren't scrambled for almost an hour after the hijackings, to why the president and several of his top military advisers remained virtually incommunicado for more than half an hour after it was clear that America was under attack.

At a time when America feels no safer than ever, Cover Up will lend new eyes to readers who want the full story behind the 9/11 attacks -- and inspire us all to keep demanding the truth.



Table of Contents:
Introduction1
Part I
1The FBI's Killing Machine13
2The Mozart of Terror23
3The Suicide-Hijack Plot35
4"Plan to Blow Up a Plane"49
5TWA 800: Bojinka Fulfilled61
6Shattering the K-9 Theory73
7"The Ultimate Perversion"83
8The Forty-Year Reward97
9An NYPD Cop Takes the Fall107
10The Death of Nicky Black119
Part II
11The White House Stonewall133
12The Chicken Coop and the Fox143
13Year One Dogs and Ponies151
14Warning: Planes as Weapons159
15"Alarming Threats" Pouring In171
16Checking the Bureau Spin183
17"Not a Single Piece of Paper"193
18The "Loose Network" Behind 9/11207
19Eighteen Minutes to Call NORAD225
20"America's under Attack"243
Afterword257
Cast of Characters and Major Events263
Appendix ICommission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States: Testimony of Peter Lance, March 15, 2004273
Appendix IIDocuments Relating to the Relationship Between Ramzi Yousef and Gregory Scarpa Jr.299
Appendix IIIDocuments Relating to the FBI's Knowledge of al Qaeda Prior to 9/11305
Appendix IVDocuments Relating to the Crash of TWA 800312
Appendix VDocuments Relating to the DeVecchio OPR314
Appendix VIMembership of the 9/11 Commission Family Steering Committee316
Notes317
Acknowledgments345
Index349

New interesting textbook: Out of the Shadows or Feng Shui Principles for Building and Remodeling

The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1

Author: Nicholas Ed Canny

Volume I of the Oxford History of the British Empire explores the origins of empire. It shows how and why England, and later Britain, became involved with transoceanic navigation, trade, and settlement during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The chapters, by leading historians, both illustrate the interconnections between developments in Europe and overseas and offer specialist studies on every part of the world that was substantially affected by British colonial activity. As late as 1630, involvement with regions beyond the traditional confines of Europe was still tentative; by 1690 it had

Library Journal

The first two volumes of this five-volume history of the British Empire establish a very high standard of scholarship. Over three dozen scholars examine both major and minor aspects of the modern imperial experience. The chronological focus develops from the 16th century, when Ireland was the starting point of the empire, to the end of the 18th, when the 13 American Colonies were lost. The essays form an interlocking analysis of the origins of empire from an intellectual, military, economic, and technological perspective. There is some overlap; for example, several essays discuss the role of naval power, but each author approaches the topic with a different focus, such as technology in N.A.M. Rogers's essay and politics in John Appleby's. The various chapters, therefore, reinforce the overall picture instead of being redundant. Separate chapters in the first volume analyze the origins and implementation of the British imperial expansion, or contraction, in each region and then continue in the second volume, as do discussions of new subjects, such as the colonization of Australia. The interrelationship between the mother country and the Colonies also receives continued emphasis. Jonathan Israel's chapter, in Volume 1, on the continental perspective of British empire building helps place events in an even broader context. There is a short bibliography after each chapter. Three following volumes will see the empire through to its 20th-century decline. Recommended for all libraries.--Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati