Iraqi Politics Books

Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics or Memory of a Large Christmas

2009-12-06T14:26:00.000-08:00

Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Author: H Richard Adams

Primarily intended for veterinary medical students, Veterinary Pharmacology & Therapeutics 8th edition provides a comprehensive resource for students learning basic and applied principles of veterinary pharmacology and therapeutics.
Including expanded coverage of pharmacology and considerable revision of existing materials, the eighth edition is THE DESKTOP REFERENCE for veterinary practitioners to review details about drugs, drug mechanisms, and their clinical applications. Because of the ever-growing breadth and complexity of drug usage in animals, this text has considerable new information on basic pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, as well as their clinical applications.

Ted Whittem

This new edition conforms to a traditional layout by organ systems. The contents encompass a thorough overview of the discipline of veterinary pharmacology. This seventh edition is a needed replacement for the aging 1988 sixth edition. The authors have attempted to provide a substantially new text and reference suitable for professional veterinary students, residents, graduate students, and practitioners. It has proven difficult to satisfy ideally the disparate requirements of these worthy aims. The editor's intention to provide a desk top reference has been achieved with excellence; the book is an excellent resource for graduate student and resident training and for review and revision by students and practitioners. Professional veterinary students may be overwhelmed by the quantity of material presented in each chapter. As a textbook, therefore, this tome will be most useful with the support and detailed direction of skilled teachers. The detail presented in this work is primarily a reflection of the interest, exemplary qualifications, and enthusiasm for the discipline of the authors, all of whom are respected in their areas of expertise. The text content is generally well edited, allowing readability to vary little between authors and thereby ensuring continuity of style throughout. In contrast, there is no uniformity between figures and illustrations, these apparently being the individual author's unedited originals. These illustrations are less than ideal in number and quality for a student textbook, detracting from the teaching usefulness of an otherwise excellent book. This seventh edition returns this title to the pinnacle of veterinary pharmacology reference books. Itought to be a standard reference for all library shelves; it ought to be seriously considered as a necessary purchase by all graduate students in veterinary medicine and related fields.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer: Kent Davis, DVM, B.S. (University of Illinois Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital)
Description: This is the 8th edition of a pharmacology and therapeutics book that has been a gold standard in veterinary medicine for many years. The previous edition was published in 1995.
Purpose: The purpose is to provide a comprehensive resource for students to learn basic and applied principles of veterinary pharmacology and therapeutics. These are very worthy objectives, which the authors have met once again. This text has been updated since 1954 and has stood the test of time.
Audience: This book is written for professional veterinary students, but it is also useful for graduate students and graduate veterinarians. The authors are credible and authoritative in their fields.
Features: Principles, drugs, and nutritional pharmacology are thoroughly covered. Specialty areas of pharmacology are especially useful. The oncology section is up to date and understandable.
Assessment: With this edition, the editor has ensured the book will continue to keep its status as the gold standard. This is a must for any student or graduate veterinarian's library.

Booknews

This is the new edition of a textbook for veterinary students that aims to be a comprehensive resource for basic and applied principles of pharmacology. Fifty-eight chapters are organized into sections discussing principles of pharmacology, drugs acting on the autonomic and somatic nervous systems, drugs acting on the central nervous system, autacoids and anti-inflammatory drugs, drugs acting on the cardiovascular system, drugs affecting renal function and fluid- electrolyte balance, drugs acting on blood and blood elements, endocrine pharmacology, nutritional pharmacology, chemotherapy of microbial diseases, chemotherapy of parasitic diseases, specialty areas of pharmacology, and regulatory considerations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Rating

4 Stars! from Doody

Interesting textbook: The Complete Guide to Writing Web Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale or Pro Novell Open Enterprise Server

Memory of a Large Christmas

Author: Lillian Eugenia Smith

As a young child in the early 1900s, writer and civil rights crusader Lillian Smith lived an idyllic, small-town life. Of the many customs by which her and her eight brothers' and sisters's days were ordered, none are so fondly remembered by Smith as those of the Christmas season. With a lighthearted touch, she recalls such times as when the family hosted forty-eight chain-gang convicts, along with their guards, to a holiday feast and the time her older brothers almost bought an elegant coffin for their parents's gift. Of far greater meaning to Smith, however, are the remembered rituals, the year-after-year sights, sounds, smells, and tastes: first the hog killings and the shaking of the pecan trees just around the time Big Granny, Little Granny, and a cousin or two began to arrive; then making gifts and hanging stockings; and finally the big day, filled with presents, shooting firecrackers, and too much homemade candy, six-layered coconut cake, and "sweet potato pone, fancied up."

Publishers Weekly

In Memory of a Large Christmas, writer and civil rights crusader Lillian Smith (1897-1966) remembered fondly the Christmases of her youth. They were certainly big: lots of people ate lots of food in a house with lots of room. It's all recalled here, from the preface of Thanksgiving through the hog-killing, gift-buying, theatricals-staging, stocking-hanging and finally, the main event. It's packaged in a small volume with illustrations and even a few recipes.

Contemporary U S Tax Policy or True Stories

2009-12-05T09:14:00.000-08:00

Contemporary U. S. Tax Policy

Author: C Eugene Steuerl

C. Eugene Steuerle, one of the country's most influential economists, offers an insider's look at tax policy based on a quarter century of working with officials of all political stripes. Steuerle outlines the principles of taxation and the early postwar period before proceeding to the tax policy battles that began with the Reagan revolution and continue today. Those expecting a simple story of triumph and defeat may be surprised. Rather than moving toward consensus and progress, tax policy history has been messy, repetitive, and often rancorous. Yet evolution-and even revolution-do occur. The second edition has been updated with a look at tax policy during the George W. Bush presidency.

Look this: Moldea tu cuerpo or Everything Dieting Book

True Stories

Author: Lev Emmanuilovich Razgon

Lev Razgon became famous overnight when his memoirs first appeared in Russia in 1988. They were a sensation both due to his angle of vision - Razgon was living among the Party elites as the Stalinist terror of 1937 began - as well as to his sophisticated understanding of both his country and his century. His remarkably long life took him from the shtetl and a family which had been unlucky with the authorities for many generations, to Moscow where he was a Communist journalist and writer, to 17 years in labor camps (a fate shared by both his wives). When he finally returned to Moscow for good, he went back to writing books for young adults and worked in secret on these memoirs. The last man alive to have actually attended and survived the Communist Party Congress of 1934 - most of those attending were dead within three years - Razgon brilliantly conveys the everyday atmosphere of a Soviet world of privilege about to be destroyed. Stalin had given secret orders that the families and friends of the powerful be decimated as a lesson in terror, a preemptive strike against any thoughts of a coup. In this book the personalities and stories which shaped Razgon's existence before and after his seventeen years in the camps are emphasized. Razgon's journalistic curiosity and interest in history as well as individuals led him in unusual directions. Much here is new: the characters and fates of the jailers; the camp lives of the wives of the Soviet elite, imprisoned as hostages to control their powerful husbands; and the frustration of formerly high-ranking military men, forgotten prisoners of the gulag as they see that World War II is approaching.

Publishers Weekly

This remarkable book is a testament to the epochal transformation of the former Soviet Union and the obligation to remember its Stalinist past. Razgon (b. 1908), a journalist married to the daughter of a high-ranking Soviet official, was arrested during the Stalinist terror in 1938 and lived in labor camps or internal exile until 1956, when he was rehabilitated. With the onset of perestroika, he began to publish the memoirs he had been secretly writing for two decades. If Razgon's work lacks the sweep of Solzhenitsyn's gulag accounts, it is full of wisdom and vivid character sketches of victims and perpetrators alike, such as camp boss Tarasyuk, who "resembled in some ways the slaveowners of classical times." In relating these episodes, Razgon reminds us of the insanity of Stalinist legality, which imprisoned the wives of top officials such as President Kalinin and Foreign Minister Molotov while their husbands kept their posts. A one-time Communist Party member, Razgon ultimately resigned and became a founder of Memorial, a group that reexamines the country's history. A wrenching epilogue describes his encounter with his own recently opened KGB file. Crowfoot's translation makes this substantial set of stories accessible. Photos not seen by PW. (June)

Kirkus Reviews

An unforgettable memoir of a journalist who survived two incarcerations in the Gulag, filled with his memories of the victims, the executioners, and those who connived with Stalin's genocidal plans.

Razgon, born in 1908, a writer and editor connected by marriage to top Stalinist officials, was a Communist who was caught up in the purges of the late 1930s and was finally released only after the Khrushchev reforms of the 1950s. He records the life of the elite both before the purges—he is the last person alive to have attended the Congress of the Communist Party in 1934—and what happened to them afterwards. Most memorable are his vivid portraits of those with whom he came into contact: Roshchakovsky, an aristocratic émigré who had returned to serve the Soviet navy and "would eat the prison soup with the wooden spoons so beautifully that it was impossible to tear your eyes away"; Boris and Gleb, ages 16 and 18 respectively, who returned from Czechoslovakia to help the Soviet Union, only to find themselves transported to the Gulag; Zaliva, a bluff and honest camp commandant who killed 1,500 people in the course of a single winter by insisting on following his instructions to the letter; and Colonel Tarasyuk, with the profile of a Roman senator, who calmly gave instructions on one occasion that ensured that everyone in his hospital would be dead within a month. Razgon notes that, according to a Ministry of State Security report in 1956, between 1935 and 1941 alone seven million people were shot—a million a year. During Alexander II's reign, by contrast, just over 60 political prisoners were hanged in Russia. But the author's thoughts ultimately turn not just to the victims or their families, but to the tens of thousands who participated in the process of execution and are now living quiet lives somewhere in Russia.

A brilliant memoir, by turns harrowing, inspiring, sardonic, and devastating.

Community Resources or Reforming Medicare

2009-12-04T04:02:00.000-08:00

Community Resources: A Guide for Human Service Workers

Author: William Crimando

Counselors often refer their clients to particular human-services agencies to deal with specific problems outside their organization's area of expertise. How do they find out which outside agencies can help their clients? What limitations exist? What new helping organizations have been developed and programmed, and what existing programs have been enhanced? What has new legislation funded? This comprehensive and authoritative volume provides the answers human-service professionals need to assist and guide their clients. Written by credentialed practitioners, the book provides detailed explanations and descriptions of the most prominent and beneficial human-service agencies. Also included is information on agency personnel, as well as specific organizational certifications, licensing, and accreditation. This indispensable guide is suitable for use in courses covering the types of human services that exist in every community, and as a follow-up or adjunct to case management courses. It is also an invaluable aid to professional counselors for investigating agencies and/or service(s) for client referral.

Interesting book: Feng Shui la Armonia de la Vida or Life Paints Its Own Span

Reforming Medicare

Author: Henry J Aaron

"Medicare, though important, accounts for less than a quarter of personal health care spending. Systemic reforms in the U.S. health care system would do far more to control Medicare spending than any reform in the program alone. Policies such as promulgating an evidence-based benefit design, steering patients toward high-value services, and reorienting payment policy toward the prevention of acute and chronic diseases have the potential to curtail spending across the population, not just among the elderly. Systemwide health reform is the best way to make Medicare economically sustainable and enable it to provide beneficiaries with high-quality and affordable health care."

"A debate on how to restructure Medicare and close the gap between projected spending and revenues is long overdue. It will undoubtedly revolve around two key issues. First, projected increases in health care spending will put enormous pressure on the federal budget. Second, Medicare is not currently structured to provide the best-health-care-for-the-buck to its beneficiaries."

"Under the social insurance concept, Medicare would return to one menu of covered benefits, deductibles, and cost sharing for all beneficiaries. The rationale for a single set of defined benefits is that the gains-low administrative costs and leverage on providers to hold down fees-would outweigh the costs of not gratifying differences in insurance tastes."

"All versions of premium support rest on the assumption that private plans can organize and pay for health care for Medicare beneficiaries better than the government or individuals can. It would blend regulation designed to ensure access with competition designed to lower costs andraise quality. It also has the appeal of a public-private partnership-a hybrid of public funding and rules, on the one hand, and private delivery and innovation, on the other."

"Ultimately, the prospects for consumer-directed Medicare rise or fall on the acceptability of its premise-that health care is much like other consumer goods, in the sense that it is best allocated according to the demands of individuals operating in relatively unregulated markets."

Kings of Peace Pawns of War or Footwear Impression Evidence Detection Recovery and Examination Second Edition

2009-12-02T22:50:00.000-08:00

Kings of Peace, Pawns of War: The Untold Story of Peace-Making

Author: Harriet Martin

"In the complex process of turning war into peace, international conflict mediators play an increasingly pivotal role. Yet almost nothing is known about these influential individuals. In Kings of Peace, Pawns of War, six of the world's leading mediators talk in detail for the first time about their efforts to secure peace in Iraq, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Iraq and Aceh." Former war correspondent Harriet Martin draws on unparalleled access to top-level mediators at work on the international scene today. Thus she is able to provide for the first time important insights into a profession rarely subjected to public scrutiny. She investigates the tactics they use to keep the two sides talking, and their drive to complete what is often a thankless task. She exposes how the warring parties, and also the international backers of a mediation, will manipulate a peace effort - and the mediator himself - in order to retain the upper hand.

Books about: The Necessary Revolution or How to Work a Room

Footwear Impression Evidence Detection, Recovery and Examination, Second Edition

Author: William J Bodziak

Reviewed and recognized as the most authoritative source in the field, this book describes the methods used worldwide to recover and identify footwear impressions from the scene of a crime.

In this new edition, everything, including the original twelve chapters, bibliography, appendix, etc., has been clarified, updated and expanded. This edition includes updated and new information on recovery procedures and materials such as lifting, photography and casting; chemical enhancement; updated information about footwear manufacturing; footwear sizing; and known impression techniques and materials. WHAT'S NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION: Besides updating and expanding the twelve original chapters, Footwear Impression Evidence: Detection, Recovery and Examination, Second Edition adds three new chapters: one chapter on barefoot evidence, which concerns impressions made by the naked or sock-clad foot or those which remain in abandoned or discarded footwear; another new chapter on several cases in which the footwear impression evidence was of primary importance in bringing about a conviction or confession; and finally, a new chapter on the footwear impression evidence in the O.J. Simpson criminal and civil cases.

Booknews

Sherlock Holmes makes it sound easy, but retired US Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Bodziak says that until a few years ago, footprints were rarely used and then usually poorly. He describes the methods used worldwide to detect and retrieve footwear impressions at the crime scene, to photograph and enhance the impressions, and to evaluate the evidence being examined. He also explains pertinent elements of footwear manufacture. He draws from seminars and classes at the FBI Academy and those hosted by other forensic laboratories. To the first edition (no date noted) the second adds three chapters on barefoot evidence, some actual case applications, and efforts and conclusions from the O. J. Simpson criminal and civil cases. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

American Exodus or Toward the Livable City

2009-12-01T17:27:00.000-08:00

American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California

Author: James N Gregory

Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck's now classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, captured the epic story of an Oklahoma farm family driven west to California by dust storms, drought, and economic hardship. It was a story that generations of Americans have also come to know through Dorothea Lange's unforgettable photos of migrant families struggling to make a living in Depression-torn California. Now in James N. Gregory's pathbreaking American Exodus, there is at last an historical study that moves beyond the fiction and the photographs to uncover the full meaning of these events.
American Exodus takes us back to the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and the war boom influx of the 1940s to explore the experiences of the more than one million Oklahomans, Arkansans, Texans, and Missourians who sought opportunities in California. Gregory reaches into the migrants' lives to reveal not only their economic trials but also their impact on California's culture and society. He traces the development of an "Okie subculture" that over the years has grown into an essential element in California's cultural landscape.
The consequences, however, reach far beyond California. The Dust Bowl migration was part of a larger heartland diaspora that has sent millions of Southerners and rural Midwesterners to the nation's northern and western industrial perimeter. American Exodus is the first book to examine the cultural implications of that massive 20th-century population shift. In this rich account of the experiences and impact of these migrant heartlanders, Gregory fills an important gap in recent American social history.

Library Journal

A thorough study of the migration of Oklahomans, Arkansans, Texans, and Missourians to California in the years of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Gregory dispels the popular Okie image built from The Grapes of Wrath , placing this unique exodus in economic perspective. He is particularly successful in tracing Okie impact on the San Joaquin Valley, where the Okie twang and culture have taken root to become the Californian. Gregory's prose is conversational, although his narrative lacks the compelling anecdotes that enrich history for the lay reader. This is, nevertheless, an important and necessary work on this period. Recommended.-- Timothy L. Zindel, Hastings Coll. of the Law, San Francisco

Interesting book: Condemned or Office 2003 Bible

Toward the Livable City

Author: Emilie Buchwald

Inspiring and accessible, Toward the Livable City combines firsthand accounts of the attractions –– and distractions –– of urban life to show how to create successful cities. For city dwellers and commuters, urban planners and architects, neighborhood groups and activists, this book outlines specific strategies for change. Fifteen leading thinkers including James Howard Kunstler, Jane Holtz Kay, Tony Hiss, Bill McKibben, and Jay Walljasper explore smart growth, riverfront redevelopment, urban farming, pedestrian rights, traffic, opportunity-based housing, and suburban vs. city living. They tell how the mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, built dedicated busways and closed downtown streets to cars; how urban agriculture in vacant lots and backyards in Boston produces 10,000 pounds of vegetables each season; and how Minneapolis successfully redeveloped its riverfront, among other shining examples. Photographs are featured.

	Finding Common Ground, an Introduction
	The Lived-In City: A Place in Time	5
	Divorcing the City	21
	Selections from Roadkill Bill	41
	Cambridge Walking	55
	City Places, Sacred Spaces	64
	Food for the City, from the City	79
	Mixed Use in the City	89
	The Empty Harbor and the Dilemma of Waterfront Development	97
	Reinventing a Vibrant Riverfront	119
	The Backside of Civility	143
	If You Build It, Will They Change?	161
	The Region: The True City	169
	Opportunity-Based Housing	181
	A Burden, a Blessing	212
	How to Fall in Love with Your Hometown	231
	Cities of the Future in the Long Emergency	265
	Charter of the New Urbanism	277
	Additional Reading	283
	Public Interest Organizations	287
	Subject Index	291

Titos Partisans 1941 45 or The Other Campaign

2009-11-30T12:15:00.000-08:00

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.

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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.

Thoughts on Machiavelli or Black Sailor White Navy

2009-11-29T07:03:00.000-08:00

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.

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

The Heart That Bleeds or Molly Brown

2009-11-28T01:51:00.000-08:00

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)

Nightingales Song or Dancing in the Street

2009-11-26T20:39:00.000-08:00

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.)

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.

	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 Freedom	21
2	"Money (That's What I Want)": Black Capitalism and Black Freedom in Detroit	54
3	"Come See about Me": Black Cultural Production in Detroit	94
4	"Afro-American Music, without Apology": The Motown Sound and the Politics of Black Culture	139
5	"The Happening": Detroit, 1967	181
6	"What's Going On?" Motown and New Detroit	209
	Conclusion: "Come Get These Memories"	247
	Notes	263
	Acknowledgments	307
	Index	313

Cover Up or The Origins of Empire

2009-11-25T15:27:00.000-08:00

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.

	Introduction	1
Part I
1	The FBI's Killing Machine	13
2	The Mozart of Terror	23
3	The Suicide-Hijack Plot	35
4	"Plan to Blow Up a Plane"	49
5	TWA 800: Bojinka Fulfilled	61
6	Shattering the K-9 Theory	73
7	"The Ultimate Perversion"	83
8	The Forty-Year Reward	97
9	An NYPD Cop Takes the Fall	107
10	The Death of Nicky Black	119
Part II
11	The White House Stonewall	133
12	The Chicken Coop and the Fox	143
13	Year One Dogs and Ponies	151
14	Warning: Planes as Weapons	159
15	"Alarming Threats" Pouring In	171
16	Checking the Bureau Spin	183
17	"Not a Single Piece of Paper"	193
18	The "Loose Network" Behind 9/11	207
19	Eighteen Minutes to Call NORAD	225
20	"America's under Attack"	243
	Afterword	257
	Cast of Characters and Major Events	263
Appendix I	Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States: Testimony of Peter Lance, March 15, 2004	273
Appendix II	Documents Relating to the Relationship Between Ramzi Yousef and Gregory Scarpa Jr.	299
Appendix III	Documents Relating to the FBI's Knowledge of al Qaeda Prior to 9/11	305
Appendix IV	Documents Relating to the Crash of TWA 800	312
Appendix V	Documents Relating to the DeVecchio OPR	314
Appendix VI	Membership of the 9/11 Commission Family Steering Committee	316
	Notes	317
	Acknowledgments	345
	Index	349

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

The Business of Lobbying in China or Rogues

2009-02-21T23:52:00.000-08:00

The Business of Lobbying in China

Author: Scott Kennedy

In this timely work, Scott Kennedy documents the rising influence of business, both Chinese and foreign, on national public policy in China.

China's shift to a market economy has made businesses more sensitive to their bottom line and has seen the passage of thousands of laws and regulations that directly affect firms' success. Companies have become involved in a tug of war with the government and with each other to gain national policy advantages, often setting the agenda, providing alternative options, and pressing for a favored outcome.

Kennedy's comparison of lobbying in the steel, consumer electronics, and software industries shows that although companies operate in a common political system, economic circumstances shape the nature and outcome of lobbying. Factors such as private or state ownership, size, industry concentration, and technological sophistication all affect industry activism.

Based on over 300 in-depth interviews with company executives, business association representatives, and government officials, this study identifies a wide range of national economic policies influenced by lobbying, including taxes, technical standards, and intellectual property rights. These findings have significant implications for how we think about Chinese politics and economics, as well as government-business relations in general.

What People Are Saying

Harry Harding
Can Chinese firms promote their interests within what remains an authoritarian political system? Scott Kennedy argues that they can, in some cases through business associations. Based on extensive field research, this is one of the first books to examine the ways in which non-state actors in China pursue their interests through lobbying. It is an invaluable addition to the literature on state-society relations in contemporary China. --(Harry Harding, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University)

Ian Johnson
Scott Kennedy has dissected a complex subject in a lucid work with broad implications. His research, well-illustrated with fascinating examples of behind-the-scenes business lobbying, shows that the old corporatist model for explaining business-government relations is increasingly inadequate as interest groups and organizations compete for the government's ear. He shows us a richly complex country with increasing demands percolating up from below--a country that no longer fits the authoritarian model of popular imagination. Strongly recommended for anyone doing business in China or
interested in questions of civil society and, ultimately, political reform. --(Ian Johnson, author of Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in China)

Margaret M. Pearson
Scott Kennedy, one of today's best young scholars of China's political economy, has written a fascinating book that changes the way we see the world of Chinese business. Contrary to the image of Chinese firms as unable or unwilling to influence policy at the national level, business lobbying of government is alive and well. Clearly written and full of vivid data on multiple industries and issues, this book is a must for anyone interested in business-government relations in China. --(Margaret M. Pearson, author of China's New Business Elite)

Jerome A. Cohen
Business-related lobbying, both domestic and foreign, is an important part of the political, legislative, and administrative process in China, and Scott Kennedy's fresh analysis is the best guide I have seen on the subject. --(Jerome A. Cohen, New York University School of Law)

1	Introduction : the puzzle of lobbying in China	1
2	Organizing business in China	25
3	The steel industry : walking on one leg	57
4	The consumer electronics industry : sending mixed signals	96
5	The software industry : approaching pluralism	128
6	Conclusion : China's political economies	160
App	Case selection and interviews	189

Interesting textbook: Economia finanziaria

Rogues: Two Essays on Reason

Author: Jacques Derrida

Rogues, published in France under the title Voyous, comprises two major lectures that Derrida delivered in 2002 investigating the foundations of the sovereignty of the nation-state. The term “État voyou” is the French equivalent of “rogue state,” and it is this outlaw designation of certain countries by the leading global powers that Derrida rigorously and exhaustively examines.

Derrida examines the history of the concept of sovereignty, engaging with the work of Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, Schmitt, and others. Against this background, he delineates his understanding of “democracy to come,” which he distinguishes clearly from any kind of regulating ideal or teleological horizon. The idea that democracy will always remain in the future is not a temporal notion. Rather, the phrase would name the coming of the unforeseeable other, the structure of an event beyond calculation and program. Derrida thus aligns this understanding of democracy with the logic he has worked out elsewhere. But it is not just political philosophy that is brought under deconstructive scrutiny here: Derrida provides unflinching and hard-hitting assessments of current political realities, and these essays are highly engaged with events of the post-9/11 world.

Library Journal

Although some critics contended that Derrida (1930-2004) turned more to the political later in his life, his last book demonstrates that his deconstruction always contained the kernels of political discourse. That politics occupied a central place in Derrida's mind and work should have always been clear from his early essays on Rousseau, Hegel, and Plato in Writing and Difference and Dissemination. Here, he deconstructs the notions of sovereignty, democracy, reason, terrorism, and rogue states. In his typically rigorous fashion, Derrida examines in detail the ways that language constructs and deconstructs our political ideas. Thus, "Pure sovereignty does not exist; it is always in the process of positing itself by refuting itself of betraying itself by betraying the democracy that nonetheless can never do without it." While democratic sovereign states, those capable of ruling within the bounds of international laws, ostensibly act with reason and justice, they often act outside of those boundaries, thus becoming rogue states. He points to the United States's flouting of the UN Security Council's lack of support for a war in Iraq as a perfect example of a sovereign turning into a rogue. With his deft prose, amazing philosophical erudition, and exacting method, he deconstructs the phrase "rogue state" (Etat voyou) while tracing the legacy of sovereignty from Bacon and Hobbes to the oft-neglected 20th-century political philosopher Carl Schmitt. Recommended especially for large libraries that serve college or university communities, academic libraries, and libraries wanting a complete collection of Derrida's works.-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

The Question of Palestine or On Tyranny

2009-02-20T18:40:00.000-08:00

The Question of Palestine

Author: Edward W Said

Still a basic and indespensible account of the Palestinian question, updated to include the most recent developments in the Middle East- from the intifada to the Gulf war to the historic peace conference in Madrid.

Publishers Weekly

Said's controversial but instructive Palestinian interpretation of the Mideast conflict now includes a new introduction and epilogue commenting on the intifada , Gulf war and Madrid peace talks. (Apr.)

Go to: Personal Fitness or Comfort of Home Parkinson Disease

On Tyranny

Author: Leo Strauss

On Tyranny is Leo Strauss's classic reading of Xenophon's dialogue, Hiero or Tyrannicus, in which the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising tyranny. This edition includes a translation of the dialogue, a critique of the commentary by the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, Strauss's restatement of his position in light of Kojève's comments, and finally, the complete Strauss-Kojève correspondence.

"Through [Strauss's] interpretation Xenophon appears to us as no longer the somewhat dull and flat author we know, but as a brilliant and subtle writer, an original and profound thinker. What is more, in interpreting this forgotten dialogue, Strauss lays bare great moral and political problems that are still ours." —Alexandre Kojève, Critique

"On Tyranny is a complex and stimulating book with its 'parallel dialogue' made all the more striking since both participants take such unusual, highly provocative positions, and so force readers to face substantial problems in what are often wholly unfamiliar, even shocking ways." —Robert Pippin, History and Theory

"Every political scientist who tries to disentangle himself from the contemporary confusion over the problems of tyranny will be much indebted to this study and inevitably use it as a starting point."—Eric Voegelin, The Review of Politics

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

The Review of Politics - Eric Voegelin

Every political scientish who tries to disentangle himself from the contemporary confusion over the problems of tyranny will be much indebted to this study and inevitably use it as a starting point.

Salvador or Twenty Years at Hull House

2009-02-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

Salvador

Author: Joan Didion

"Terror is the given of the place." The place is El Salvador in 1982, at the ghastly height of its civil war. The writer is Joan Didion, who delivers an anatomy of that country's particular brand of terror–its mechanisms, rationales, and intimate relation to United States foreign policy.

As ash travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, and considers the distinctly Salvadoran grammar of the verb "to disappear," Didion gives us a book that is germane to any country in which bloodshed has become a standard tool of politics.

Library Journal

Didion's 1983 volume captured "the terror and unpredictability permeating the El Salvadorean scene," said LJ's reviewer (LJ 3/1/83). Though political events in El Salvador are no longer in the public eye, this serves as a chronicle of a dark chapter in that country's tumultuous history.

Interesting book: Virginia in the Vanguard or Imperial Life in the Emerald City

Twenty Years at Hull-House

Author: Jane Addams

Jane Addams's narrative of life in an immigrant urban neighborhood provides students with an introduction to the issues of the Progressive era and the tenets of social activism. This new teaching edition reduces Addams's original text by about 35 percent, trimming illustrative detail to focus on the ideological underpinnings of the original work. The author sketches a brief biographical portrait of Addams, outlines the decisions and convictions that led her to found Hull-House, and includes a vivid picture of turn-of-the-century Chicago. Related documents include a description of life at Hull-House from the perspective of an immigrant who frequented it, an early review of Hull-House, and perspectives from other reformers.

Library Journal

The Turgenev standby gets a facelift for the 1990s, thanks to translator Katz, professor of Russian and director of the Center for Post-Soviet and East European Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The growing popularity of new translations of Russian classics, such as the recent Notes from Underground (Classic Returns, LJ 7/93), should induce interest in Turgenev's work. For public and academic libraries.

Booknews

Jane Addams' narrative of life in an immigrant urban neighborhood provides students with an introduction to issues of the Progressive era and the tenets of social activism. This teaching edition reduces Addams' text by about 35 percent, to focus on ideological underpinnings of the original work. Includes a brief biographical portrait of Addams, and outlines her convictions that led her to found Hull House. Includes related documents, with discussion questions, plus a chronology and b&w photos. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

What People Are Saying

Frances Perkins
"Should be framed and revealed as the beauty of the cultural life and spiritual value of the immigrant at the time when nothing would so despised and unconsidered an American life as the foreigner."

Marian Parks
"For the helpless, young and old, for the poor, the unlearned, the strangers, the despised, we have urged understanding and injustice."

The Changing American Mind or What Happened

2009-02-18T04:49:00.000-08:00

The Changing American Mind: How and Why American Public Opinion Changed Between 1960 and 1988

Author: William G Mayer

This book is important reading for all who are interested in American politics and public opinion. It appendixes, which include the results of more than 250 survey questions that have been asked regularly of national samples over the last three decades, make it an indispensable reference source for everyone who studies or participates in American politics.

Publishers Weekly

Suggesting that pundits often misinterpret evidence about public opinion, Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University, offers a thorough academic dissection of changes in several components of public opinion and reasons for such changes. He suggests that in nearly 30 years public opinion has shifted radically in some areas--moving to the left regarding race, women's roles, sexual mores and nuclear power, while moving to the right on crime and punishment. On other issues, such as religious belief and the causes of poverty, collective opinion has remained more or less constant. Social and demographic changes such as the growth of the Sun Belt, he argues, have had little effect on public opinion, though external events like the Tet Offensive have changed many minds. While intergenerational change leads to new attitudes on social and cultural issues such as race relations, it has had little effect on opinions about foreign policy and the economy. Mayer concludes that liberalism has lost touch with its populist roots, but his own evidence regarding generational change provides a caveat to his conclusion that to win, Democratic presidential candidates must moderate their views on social issues. (Dec.)

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception

Author: Scott McClellan

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

The Sociology of Health Illness and Health Care or Georgias and Timaeus

2009-02-16T23:37:00.000-08:00

The Sociology of Health, Illness, and Health Care: A Critical Approach

Author: Rose Weitz

Why do people get ill, and how should we care for them? These are some of the questions driving THE SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH, ILLNESS, AND HEALTH CARE: A CRITICAL APPROACH. Inside, you'll learn about the nature of illness and how the health care industry works. Easy to understand and packed with study tools, this sociology textbook will not only get you ready to navigate the health care system, it will help you out in class as well.

Georgias and Timaeus

Author: Plato

Two major works by one of history's best known and most widely read and studied philosophers. Gorgias addresses the temptations of success and the rewards of a moral life; Timaeus is an explanation of the world in terms not only of physical laws but also of metaphysical and religious principles. B. Jowett translation.

Putins Russia or States and Markets

2009-02-15T18:25:00.000-08:00

Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy

Author: Anna Politkovskaya

A searing portrait of a country in disarray and of the man at its helm, from “the bravest of Russian journalists” (The New York Times)

Hailed as “a lone voice crying out in a moral wilderness” (New Statesman), Anna Politkovskaya made her name with her fearless reporting on the war in Chechnya. Now she turns her steely gaze on the multiple threats to Russian stability, among them Vladimir Putin himself.

Rich with characters and poignant accounts, Putin’s Russia depicts a far-reaching state of decay. Politkovskaya describes an army in which soldiers die from malnutrition, parents must pay bribes to recover their dead sons’ bodies, and conscripts are even hired out as slaves. She exposes rampant corruption in business, government, and the judiciary, where everything from store permits to bus routes to court appointments is for sale. And she offers a scathing condemnation of the ongoing war in Chechnya, where kidnappings, extra-judicial killings, rape, and torture are begetting terrorism rather than fighting it. Finally, Politkovskaya denounces both Putin, for stifling civil liberties as he pushes the country back to a Soviet-style dictatorship, and the West, for its unqualified embrace of the Russian leader.

Sounding an urgent alarm, Putin’s Russia is a gripping portrayal of a country in crisis and the testament of a great and intrepid reporter.

Publishers Weekly

At a time when many Westerners are ambivalent about Russian President Vladimir Putin, famed war correspondent Politkovskaya (A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya) argues that there is little to admire about the man or the country he has remade in his image. By recounting stories of the winners and losers in today's Russia, Politkovskaya portrays the country as a place where decency is punished, corruption rules and murder is simply a means of getting to and staying at the top. "Putin may be God and Czar in Chechnya, punishing and pardoning, but he is afraid of touching... Mafiosi," Politkovskaya writes. She's an attentive and compassionate storyteller, and the stories she tells are worth reading. The same cannot be said of her simplistic analysis. Politkovskaya's claims that Russia is more corrupt than ever before and that it's reverting to Stalinism, for example, may strike readers as provocative exaggerations. As someone frustrated with the Putin regime and furious about the war in Chechnya, which she argues is an omen of the state's future inhumane treatment of all its citizens, Politkovskaya is passionate and sometimes convincing. But she never adequately explains why, if life under Putin is so awful, 70% of Russian voters chose him for their president in 2004. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

The savagery of Russia's actions in Chechnya is not news, nor is the highhandedness of its intelligence services, nor the cynical way Russian politicians and businesspeople mix money and politics. But Politkovskaya, one of Russia's most stridently indignant journalistic voices, has a way of driving the point home with passion drawn from concrete, personal stories. She takes the reader from a distant observation point into the barracks or the courtroom or the street where the deed goes down and then through the tortuous labyrinth where it is consummated, blessed, or concealed. Most of the book is about, as she says, life in Putin's Russia, not Putin's role. Still, she asks, "Why do I so dislike Putin?" and answers, because of his Chekist mentality, his "matter-of-factness worse than a felony, his cynicism," his small-minded pursuit of power — and, most of all, because, by guile or indifference, he presides over a Russia slinking back toward its Soviet past.

Library Journal

Up front Politkovskaya (special correspondent, Novaya Gazeta) confesses to having limited qualifications to write this book (she is not a political analyst), but she explains she has written it because she's damned fed up with Putin's regime. "We cannot just sit back and watch a political winter close in on Russia for several more decades," she proclaims. "We want to go on living in freedom." In a series of personal and heart-wrenching stories, she uses her experiences (she has been honored by Amnesty International and the Index on Censorship and is the winner of the Golden Pen Award for her coverage of the war in Chechnya) to highlight examples of treacherous treatment under Putin's command. His government, she maintains, has made a mockery of the courts. Judges and prosecutors are subject to "telephone justice," i.e., a telephone call from a government official dictates the outcome of most trials. She asserts that the military is a tool of the government and that the massacres at the Moscow theater hostage crisis and at Beslan were Putin's tactics to show that Russia's Chechen debacle is in fact a war on international terror. Her main point, ultimately, is that in Russia, all outrages stem from Putin's retreat from democracy. Because of the rather limited scope and lack of corroborative sourcing, this is a good purchase for public libraries only. [The book has not been published in Russia.-Ed.]-Harry Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. Syst., Iola Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A resounding indictment of the Russian leader into whose soul George Bush recently peered and pronounced himself satisfied. That was the wrong conclusion to draw, to trust Novaya gazeta correspondent Politkovskaya's furious attack on the person and government of Vladimir Putin. The leaders of the West, she writes, have found it useful to pretend that Putin merits their respect, and with their crowning him an equal "Putin's reign reached its high point, and almost nobody noticed." The former KGB general made it clear that enemies of his regime needed to take notice, however; by Politkovskaya's account, his years of rule have been marked by a return of Stalinist measures ranging from the imprisonment of political enemies in psychiatric hospitals to the show-trial persecution of men and women above suspicion-all very familiar to older Russians who grew up under Sovietism. "Nobody has any hard facts," she writes, "but everybody is frightened, just as people used to be." But there's a big difference: whereas the pride of the USSR was its military, today's Russian armed forces are staffed by brutal officers who rob their subordinates and sometimes kill them for pleasure, or, at the opposite extreme, by dedicated, brilliant officers who go unpaid and near-starving, maintaining their men and equipment through the charity of their neighbors. Who profits by undermining Russia's security? The same mafiosi and oligarchs and developers to whom Putin has handed over control of the economy, Politkovskaya thunders, thereby satisfying one of the three preconditions for getting ahead in today's Russia: "First, you have to initially get a slice of the state pie-that is, a state asset as your privateproperty."Looting the public coffers? Influence-peddling? Corruption? Putin's government sounds positively Western, though the author suggests that it's the same old oriental despotism-and urges that her readers, Russian and otherwise, not allow "political winter" to descend again.

Foreword     ix
Author's Note     xiii
My Country's Army and lts Mothers     1
Our New Middle Ages, or War Criminals of All the Russias     25
Tanya, Misha, Lena, and Rinat: Where Are They Now?     81
How to Misappropriate Property with the Connivance of the Government     114
More Stories from the Provinces     159
Nord-Ost: The Latest Tale of Destruction     186
Akaky Akakievich Putin II     230
Postscript     245
Notes     257
Index     261

States and Markets: A Primer in Political Economy

Author: Adam Przeworski

The purpose of this text is to introduce concepts for studying relationships between states and markets. The economy and the state are thus analyzed as networks of relationships between principals and agents, each occupying a particular position in the institutional structure. The book then analyzes systematically the effect of the organization of the state on the functioning of the economy. It isolates the conditions that trigger government's positive or negative responses to the economy.

Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder or Rousseau

2009-02-14T13:12:00.000-08:00

Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions

Author: Michael Savag

Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder-

Michael Savage has the cure.

With grit, guts, and gusto, talk radio sensation Michael Savage leaves no political turn unstoned as he savages today's most rabid liberalism. In this paperback edition of his third New York Times bestseller, Savage strikes at the root of today's most pressing issues, including:

Homeland security: "We need more Patton and less patent leather . . . Real homeland security begins when we arrest, interrogate, jail, or deport known operatives within our own borders . . . One dirty bomb can ruin your whole day."

Illegal immigration: "I envision an Oil for Illegals program . . . The president should demand one barrel of oil from Mexico for every illegal that sneaks into our country."

Lawsuit abuse: "Lawyers are like red wine. Everything in moderation. Today we have far too many lawyers, and we're suffering from cirrhosis of the economy."

"Pure Savage. Very effective, very timely, very hot."

-American Compass Book Club

Rousseau: 'The Discourses' and Other Early Political Writings

Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau

The work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is presented in two volumes, which together form the most comprehensive anthology of Rousseau's political writings in English. Volume I contains the earlier writings such as the First and Second Discourses. The American and French Revolutions were profoundly affected by Rousseau's writing, thus illustrating the scope of his influence. Volume II contains the later writings such as the Social Contract. The Social Contract was publicly condemned on publication causing Rousseau to flee. In exile he wrote both autobiographical and political works. These volumes contain comprehensive introductions, chronologies, and guides to further reading, and will enable students to fully understand the writings of one of the world's greatest thinkers.

	Preface
	Introduction
	Chronology of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
	A brief guide to further reading
	A note on the texts
	A note on the translations
	A note on the editorial notes and index
	Discourse on the Sciences and Arts or First Discourse	1
	Replies to Critics
	Letter to M. l'Abbe Raynal	29
	Observations [to Stanislas, King of Poland]	32
	Letter to Grimm	52
	Last Reply	63
	Letter about a New Refutation	86
	Preface to Narcissus	92
	Preface of a Second Letter to Bordes	107
	Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men or Second Discourse	111
	Replies to Critics
	Letter to Philopolis	223
	Reply to Charles-Georges Le Roy	229
	Letter to Voltaire	232
	Essay on the Origin of Languages	247
	Idea of the Method in the Composition of a Book	300
	Discourse on the Virtue a Hero Most Needs or On Heroic Virtue	305
	List of abbreviations and textual conventions	317
	Editorial notes	320
	Index of editors, translators, and annotators	417
	General index	419

Career Opportunities in Forensic Science or The Bin Ladens

2009-02-13T07:58:00.000-08:00

Career Opportunities in Forensic Science

Author: Susan Echaore McDavid

Forensic science is the application of scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge to legal issues. Hence, the field of forensic science is remarkably broad in scope, encompassing everything from art and engineering to medicine and law. Career Opportunities in Forensic Science offers a comprehensive view of careers in the field, with complete information for the 21st century on more than 80 jobs, including Accident Reconstruction Specialist, Computer Forensics Specialist, Crime Scene Investigator, Criminologist, DNA Analyst, Fire Investigator, Forensic Engineer, Forensic Pathologist, Forensic Science Researcher, Forensic Sculptor, Medical Examiner, Prosecuting Attorney.

Throughout the book, the reader will find a quick-reference Career Profile for each job summarizing its notable features, a Career Ladder illustrating frequent routes to and from the position described, and a comprehensive text pointing out special skills, education, training, and various associations relevant to each post. Appendixes list education and training resources, certification programs, professional unions and associations, and Web resources.

Industry Outlook     ix
Acknowledgments     xv
How to Use This Book     xvii
Crime Scene and Criminal Investigation Personnel
Crime Scene Investigator (CSI)     2
Crime Scene Supervisor     5
Patrol Officer     8
Criminal Investigator     11
Fire Investigator     14
Fingerprint Technician     17
Evidence Custodian     20
Polygraph Examiner     23
Crime Lab Personnel
Criminalist     28
Crime Lab Technician     32
Crime Lab Supervisor     35
Quality Manager     38
Crime Lab Director     41
Criminalists
Bloodstain Pattern Analyst     46
DNA Analyst     49
Firearms Examiner     52
Forensic Biologist     55
Forensic Chemist     58
Forensic Drug Chemist     61
Forensic Serologist     64
Latent Print Examiner     67
Questioned Document Examiner     70
Trace Evidence Examiner     73
Medicolegal Death Investigation Personnel
Coroner     78
Medical Examiner     81
Medicolegal Death Investigator     84
Forensic Pathologist     87
Forensic Toxicologist     90
Forensic Anthropologist     93
Forensic Pathology Technician     96
Histologist     99
Morgue Assistant     102
Forensic Experts in Art and Multimedia
Forensic Photographer     106
Forensic Video Analyst     110
Forensic Audio Examiner     113
Forensic Artist     116
Forensic Sculptor     119
Forensic Graphics Specialist     122
Forensic Musicologist     125
Forensic Experts in Health and Medicine
Forensic Medical Consultant     130
Child Abuse Pediatrician     133
Forensic Chiropractic Examiner     136
Forensic Epidemiologist     139
Forensic Nurse     142
Forensic Odontologist     145
Forensic Pharmacist     148
Forensic Radiologist     151
Forensic Experts in the Natural Sciences
Environmental Forensics Expert     156
Forensic Archaeologist     159
Forensic Botanist     162
Forensic Entomologist     165
Forensic Geologist     168
Forensic Meteorologist     171
Forensic Microbiologist     174
Forensic Palynologist     177
Wildlife Forensic Scientist     180
Forensic Experts in Mathematics and Computer Science
Forensic Statistician     184
Computer Forensics Specialist     187
Forensic Experts in Engineering and Construction
Forensic Engineer     192
Accident Reconstruction Specialist     195
Construction Forensics Expert     198
Forensic Architect     201
Forensic Surveyor     204
Forensic Experts in the Behavioral Sciences
Criminologist     208
Forensic Hypnotist     211
Forensic Psychiatrist     214
Forensic Psychologist     217
Forensic Rehabilitation Consultant     220
Forensic Social Worker     223
Forensic Experts in Business
Forensic Accountant     228
Forensic Economist     231
Fraud Examiner     234
Forensic Experts in Language and Speech
Forensic Linguist     238
Forensic Phonetician     241
Jurisprudence Experts
Trial Lawyer     246
Prosecuting Attorney     250
Forensic Consultant     254
Judge     257
Forensic Science Educators, Researchers, and Reporters
Forensic Training Specialist     262
Forensic Science Instructor     265
Forensic Science Researcher     268
Crime Reporter     271
Appendixes
Education and Training Resources on the Internet     276
Professional Certification Programs     279
Professional Unions and Associations     284
Resources on the World Wide Web     294
Glossary     302
Bibliography     306
Index     311

New interesting textbook: Business the Amazoncom Way or First Course in Database Systems

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Author: Steve Coll

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national bestseller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show how American influences changed the family and how one member's rebellion changed America

The Bin Ladens rose from poverty to privilege; they loyally served the Saudi royal family for generations-and then one of their number changed history on September 11, 2001. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll tells the epic story of the rise of the Bin Laden family and of the wildly diverse lifestyles of the generation to which Osama bin Laden belongs, and against whom he rebelled. Starting with the family's escape from famine at the beginning of the twentieth century through its jet-set era in America after the 1970s oil boom, and finally to the family's attempts to recover from September 11, The Bin Ladens unearths extensive new material about the family and its relationship with the United States, and provides a richly revealing and emblematic narrative of our globally interconnected times.

To a much greater extent than has been previously understood, the Bin Laden family owned an impressive share of the America upon which Osama ultimately declared war-shopping centers, apartment complexes, luxury estates, privatized prisons in Massachusetts, corporate stocks, an airport, and much more. They financed Hollywood movies and negotiated over real estate with Donald Trump. They came to regard George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Prince Charles as friends of their family. And yet, as was true of the larger relationship between the Saudi and American governments, when tested by Osama's violence, the family's involvement in the United States proved to be narrow and brittle.

Among the many memorable figures that cross these pages is Osama's older brother, Salem-a free-living, chainsmoking, guitar-strumming pilot, adventurer, and businessman who cavorted across America and Europe and once proposed marriage to four American and European girlfriends simultaneously, attempting to win a bet with the king of Saudi Arabia. Osama and Salem's father, Mohamed bin Laden, is another force in the narrative-an illiterate bricklayer who created the family fortune through perspicacity and wit, until his sudden death in an airplane crash in 1967, an accident caused by an error by his American pilot.

At the story's heart lies an immigrant family's attempt to adapt simultaneously to Saudi Arabia's puritanism and America's myriad temptations. The family generation to which Osama belonged-twenty-five brothers and twenty-nine sisters-had to cope with intense change. Most of them were born into a poor society where religion dominated public life. Yet by the time they became young adults, these Bin Ladens found themselves bombarded by Western-influenced ideas about individual choice, by gleaming new shopping malls and international fashion brands, by Hollywood movies and changing sexual mores-a dizzying world that was theirs for the taking, because they each received annual dividends that started in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. How they navigated these demands is an authentic, humanizing story of Saudi Arabia, America, and the sources of attraction and repulsion still present in the countries' awkward embrace.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Steve Coll's riveting new book not only gives us the most psychologically detailed portrait of the brutal 9/11 mastermind yet, but in telling the epic story of Osama bin Laden's extended family, it also reveals the crucial role that his relatives and their relationship with the royal house of Saud played in shaping his thinking, his ambitions, his technological expertise and his tactics…It is a book that possesses the novelistic energy of a rags-to-riches family epic, following its sprawling cast of characters as they travel from Mecca and Medina to Las Vegas and Disney World, and yet, at the same time, it is a book that, in tracing the connections between the public and the private, the political and the personal, stands as a substantive bookend to Mr. Coll's Pulitzer-Prize-winning 2004 book, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the C.I.A., Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to Sept. 10, 2001.

Publishers Weekly

The bin Ladens are famous for spawning the world's foremost terrorist and building one of the Middle East's foremost corporate dynasties. Pulitzer Prize-winner Coll (Ghost Wars) delivers a sprawling history of the multifaceted clan, paying special attention to its two most emblematic members. Patriarch Mohamed's eldest son, Salem, was a caricature of the self-indulgent plutocrat: a flamboyant jet-setter dependent on the Saudi monarchy, obsessed with all things motorized (he died crashing his plane after a day's joy-riding atop motorcycle and dune-buggy) and forever tormenting his entourage with off-key karaoke. Coll presents quite a contrast with an unusually nuanced profile of Salem's half-brother Osama, a shy, austere, devout man who nonetheless shares Salem's egomania. Other bin Ladens crowd Coll's narrative with the eye-glazing details of their murky business deals, messy divorces and ill-advised perfume lines and pop CDs. Beneath the clutter one discerns an engrossing portrait of a family torn between tradition and modernity, conformism and self-actualization, and desperately in search of its soul. (April 1)

Nader Entessar - Library Journal

This is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date books in English to tell the rags-to-riches story of the Arabian Peninsula's house of Bin Laden. In a fascinating read, Coll (former managing editor, the Washington Post), who won the Pulitzer Prize for Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, provides a detailed account of the Bin Ladens and their myriad business enterprises. Coll traces the history of Mohammed Bin Laden, a young illiterate Yemeni bricklayer who went to the newly established country of Saudi Arabia and became a key figure in building the country's infrastructural projects, including roads and mosques. In the process, the scion of the Bin Laden family became a multimillionaire and transformed his entrepreneurial skills into establishing numerous business ventures that tied him to the world's rich and famous. The Bin Laden family's symbiotic relationship with the Saudi royal family served as a critical factor in bolstering the Bin Laden fortunes and shielding the family from its adversaries. The author's portrayal of the Bin Ladens is greatly readable while also sophisticated in its complexities. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ1/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

A sprawling, fascinating account of America's declared No. 1 enemy, his far-flung family and the astonishing number of influential Americans who live within that family's orbit. Salem Bin Laden loved American pop music and films. For many years he kept a kind of "rolling intercontinental party" that would be interrupted only when he called up one of his fleet of jets and ran off to do business, whether meeting with Brooke Shields in Hollywood or the king of Saudi Arabia at home or in some foreign venue. So writes New Yorker staff writer and two-time Pulitzer winner Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, 2004, etc.), who finds Salem involved in countless other ventures around the world, from telecommunications to construction to arms-dealing (at least enough of the last to get tangled up in the Iran-Contra Affair). In addition, Salem's siblings owned real estate across America, from apartment complexes to an airport; funded presidential races, favoring the GOP; and enjoyed friendships with British royalty and the American elite. "In both a literal and a cultural sense," Coll observes, "the Bin Laden family owned an impressive share of the America upon which Osama declared war." Even so, the relationship was shaded and complex. The uber-patriarch of the family was a Yemeni who worked doggedly to build a fortune in Saudi Arabia. He then branched into Palestine, only to be displaced by the victorious Israeli government at the time of the 1967 war, which surely contributed to then-ten-year-old Osama's later views. Mohamed Bin Laden returned from East Jerusalem to find himself in a strained relationship withthe Saudi royal family, perhaps because he was glacially slow to deliver on huge public-works contracts. This, too, may have led to his offspring's views, and it cannot have helped that Salem died in a plane crash in America, just as Mohamed died in a plane crash caused by an American pilot. "Bush's ill-considered use of the word 'Crusade' to describe America's response to September 11" couldn't have helped either. The makings of a villain, shaped in many ways by the culture he came to revile. Urgent and important reading. Agent: Melanie Jackson/Melanie Jackson Agency

Encyclopedia of Underwater Investigations or First World Dreams

2009-02-12T02:46:00.000-08:00

Encyclopedia of Underwater Investigations

Author: Robert Gordon Teather

This functional manual takes the mystique from underwater investigative procedures through the use of clear, descriptive, step-by-step procedures and forms. Valuable information for police, public safety dive teams, attorneys, fire departments, and coroner's office personnel. Data was compiled from more than 500 underwater recovery investigations. Using the detailed instructions, techniques and principles will ensure an accurate investigation and report.

Book about: Handbook of Community Practice or Prague in Black

First World Dreams: Mexico Since 1989

Author: Alexander Dawson

This accessible book looks at the last twenty years of Mexico's history. Under globalization, Mexico has opened its borders, reformed its political system, and transformed its economy. But Mexico's increasingly vibrant civil society is marred by Human Rights abuses and violent rebellion. 'First World Dreams' shows how market reforms have produced a stable economy, regular economic growth, and some vast fortunes, but have devastated much of the country-side and crippled domestic producers. Today Mexico remains a nation in a perpetual state of becoming; becoming a democracy, becoming a nation that respects human rights, becoming a modern industrial power, and yet also becoming more violent, more fragmented, and becoming a place where the chasms between wealth and poverty grow ever larger.

Strategic Presidency or The American Disease

2009-02-10T21:34:00.000-08:00

Strategic Presidency: Hitting the Ground Running

Author: James P Pfiffner

"The best book on the importance of presidential transitions to the long-term successes of administrations. Contemporary scholars and practitioners will be especially interested in Pfiffner's timely treatment of the problems that surrounded the Clinton administration's troubled start."—Mark J. Rozell, author of The Press and the Carter Presidency and Executive Privilege

"Should be required reading for Presidential candidates, their staffs, and anyone who hopes to understand how it works inside the White House. It's a guide to how to do it and how not to do it."—John Ehrlichman

"A modest classic in the literature on the presidency that is both scholarly and practical-a unique combination."—Joseph A. Pika, author of The Presidential Contest and The Politics of the Presidency

Author Biography: James P. Pfiffner, professor of government and public policy at George Mason University, is the author of The Modern Presidency and The President, the Budget, and Congress and the editor of The Managerial Presidency

Presidential Studies Quarterly

A masterful handbook on the nature of presidential transitions and among the most important publications on the presidency.

	Preface to the Second Edition
	Preface to the First Edition
	Introduction: Taking over the Government	1
1	Organizing the White House	17
2	The Holy Grail of "True" Cabinet Government	34
3	Personnel Control: Staffing the Administration	56
4	Presidential Control of the Bureaucracy	73
5	Taking over the Budget	94
6	Moving the President's Legislative Agenda	111
7	The Bush Transition: A Friendly Takeover	128
8	The Clinton Transition: Hitting the Ground Walking	148
	Notes	209
	About the Author	243
	Index	245

Interesting book: Photoshop Elements 2 for Dummies or Wi Fi Toys

The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control

Author: David F Musto

The American Disease is a classic study of the development of drug laws in the United States. Supporting the theory that Americans' attitudes toward drugs have followed a cyclic pattern of tolerance and restraint, author David F. Musto examines the relationz between public outcry and the creation of prohibitive drug laws from the end of the Civil War up to the present.
Originally published in 1973, and then in an expanded edition in 1987, this third edition contains a new chapter and preface that both address the renewed debate on policy and drug legislation from the end of the Reagan administration to the current Clinton administration. Here, Musto thoroughly investigates how our nation has dealt with such issues as the controversies over prevention programs and mandatory minimum sentencing, the catastrophe of the crack epidemic, the fear of a heroin revival, and the continued debate over the legalization of marijuana.

Firefighting in Washington DC or On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State

2009-02-09T16:21:00.000-08:00

Firefighting in Washington, D.C (Images of America Series)

Author: Staff of The Capitol Fire Museum

From the burning of Washington by the British in 1814 to the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon, firefighters in Washington, D.C., have always known they are the defenders of one of the most important cities in the world. Explore the complex, heroic, and sometimes tragic history of firefighting in Washington, D.C., as written by a worthy group of authors from The Capitol Fire Museum of Washington. Using images and oral histories gathered over the past century, this book covers the creation of the paid fire department during the Civil War, construction of new firehouses for the fledgling city in varying international designs, the heyday of firefighting before World War II, the turbulent times of the 1960s, and the modern department today.

New interesting book: L'impresa resiliente: Superamento della vulnerabilit� per vantaggio competitivo

On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State

Author: Joseph R Strayer

The modern state, however we conceive of it today, is based on a pattern that emerged in Europe in the period from 1100 to 1600. Written from the experience of a lifetime of teaching and research in the field, this short, clear book is the classic work on what is known about the early history of the European state. Charles Tilly's foreword shows how Strayer's book set the agenda for a whole generation of historical analysts, not just in medieval history but also in the comparative study of state formation. William Chester Jordan's foreword addresses the scholarly and pedagogical setting within which Strayer produced his book, and how this both enhanced its accessibility and informed its focus on peculiarly English and French accomplishments in early state-building.

Blair Unbound or Clad in Iron

2009-02-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

Blair Unbound

Author: Anthony Seldon

In June 2007, with his approval rating at an all-time low, Tony Blair stood down as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after more than a decade in office. In this riveting account, Anthony Seldon—a recognized expert of British politics—follows the career of Tony Blair starting from its pinnacle at September 11 right up to his handing of the reins over to his arch rival, Gordon Brown. The politics of the post-9/11 Blair government, its policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, its domestic actions, and the true nature of Blair-Brown power struggle are all addressed. Based on hundreds of interviews with key government insiders and individuals close to the Blair camp—many of whom have previously kept their views private—this is the most complete, authoritative, and compelling account yet of the Blair premiership. Blair Unbound serves both as a fascinating “volume two” of this master class in political biography and as a highly revealing and compelling book in its own right.

Publishers Weekly

From its harrowing account of the events of September 11, 2001, to its elegant rendering of Tony Blair's final day at 10 Downing Street, this vibrant, richly detailed look at Blair's second and third terms as British prime minister makes for a riveting, if lengthy, read. Seldon has done a staggering amount of research in reconstructing Blair's tumultuous final years in office and surveying the significant domestic and foreign issues that dominated Blair's later years in office: the Iraq War, the London terrorist attacks, education reform, the Northern Ireland peace process and Blair's effort to push for the adoption of the euro, an issue about which he felt so strongly he may have been willing to sacrifice his political future to achieve his desired ends. The intricate, expansive text returns frequently to the increasingly fraught relationship between Blair and his successor, Gordon Brown, which was loaded with growing political and personal animosity. Aside from Brown, however, personal relationships and scandals play a secondary role in this page-turning political biography, an essential text for anyone interested in contemporary British politics. (June)

Booklist

An outstanding work that strives successfully to explain the man and his administration.

The Wall Street Journal

A vivid portrait.

Introduction     ix
9/11     1
Finding His Theme     19
Riding Two Horses     47
The Road to Baghdad     80
'Make or Break' at Home     107
Confronting Saddam     135
Iraq: From Agonising to Vindication     172
Losing My Agenda     201
The Descent     232
The Recovery     263
Back in Charge     278
Crafting a Bold Future     302
General Election, 2005     331
Second Honeymoon     351
Promise Fades     382
Losing His Authority     415
Stirrings of Dissent     444
The September Coup     479
On a Knife Edge     500
To the Wire     529
Conclusion: The Long Farewell     554
Acknowledgements     585
Dramatis Personae     589
Note on Sources and Methodology     600
Notes     602
Bibliography     639
Index     644

Book review: The Art and Science of CSS or Building the Perfect PC

Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power

Author: Howard J Fuller

This work addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the monitors were for, and why they failed in other roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War (such as the repulse at Charleston, April 7, 1863). Monitors were 'ironclads'- not fort-killers. Their ultimate success is to be measured not in terms of spearheading attacks on fortified Southern ports but in the quieter, much more profound, strategic deterrence of Lord Palmerston's ministry in London, and the British Royal Navy's potential intervention.

The relatively unknown 'Cold War' of the American Civil War was a nevertheless crucial aspect of the survival, or not, of the United States in the mid 19th-century. Foreign intervention--explicitly in the form of British naval power--represented a far more serious threat to the success of the Union blockade, the safety of Yankee merchant shipping worldwide, and Union combined operations against the South than the Confederate States Navy. Whether or not the North or South would be 'clad in iron' thus depended on the ability of superior Union ironclads to deter the majority of mid-Victorian British leaders, otherwise tempted by their desire to see the American 'experiment' in democratic class-structures and popular government finally fail. Discussions of open European involvement in the Civil War were pointless as long as the coastline of the United States was virtually impregnable. Combining extensive archival research on both sides of the Atlantic, this work offers an in-depth look at how the Union Navy achieved its greatest grand-strategic victory in the American Civil War. Through a combination of high-tech 'machines' armed with 'monster' guns, intensive coastal fortifications and a new fleet of high-speed Union commerce raiders, the North was able to turn the humiliation of the Trent Affair of late 1861 into a sobering challenge to British naval power and imperial defense worldwide.

Executive Secrets or Laboring to Learn

2009-02-07T05:56:00.000-08:00

Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency

Author: William J Daugherty

Since its inception in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency has been vital to maintaining national security. Yet the covert action programs managed by the intelligence agency at the behest of American presidents have often been misunderstood and the agency itself deemed suspect in its operations and priorities. In Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency, William J. Daugherty, a seventeen-year veteran operations officer with the C.I.A., explains the nature of the intelligence discipline of covert action and presidential decision making processes since World War II. By examining the agency's history in this way, he establishes and clarifies the role of covert action as a necessary tool of presidential statecraft. Daugherty refutes the widespread notion that the C.I.A. often behaves, in the words of the late Idaho senator Frank Church, like a "rogue elephant" rampaging out of control, initiating risky covert action programs without the knowledge, much less the sanction, of either Congress or the White House. Daugherty illustrates how these and other misperceptions about covert action have seeped into the public consciousness. He argues that covert action is a legitimate foreign policy option and examines the congressional and legal oversight of these actions.

Citing congressional investigations, recently declassified documents, and his own experiences in covert action policy and oversight, Daugherty demonstrates that the C.I.A.'s covert programs were initiated by the president. In addition to explaining how covert programs transform presidential foreign policy into reality, he details how each president conducted the approval, oversight, and review processes for covert action and examines specific instances in which U.S. presidents have expressly directed C.I.A. covert action programs to suit their broader policy objectives. A former Marine Corps aviator with a combat tour in Vietnam, Daugherty's first tour with the C.I.A. was in Iran, where he was one of fifty-two Americans held hostage for 444 days during the Carter administration. Combining unique inside perspectives with sober objectivity in judging the true nature and scope of C.I.A. covert actions during the last half century, Daugherty reveals an agency whose essential functions are necessary in a complex and often dangerous modern world.

	Foreword
1	The role of covert action in intelligence and foreign policy	9
2	The "romances" of covert action	23
3	Covert action policy and pitfalls	47
4	The military and peacetime covert action	59
5	The discipline of covert action	71
6	Approval and review of covert action programs in the modern era	91
7	Harry S. Truman	113
8	Dwight D. Eisenhower	131
9	John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson	151
10	Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford	167
11	Jimmy Carter	183
12	Ronald W. Reagan	193
13	George H. W. Bush and William J. Clinton	213

Look this: The Move to Community Policing or The Business Case for Enterprise Class Wireless LANs

Laboring to Learn: Women's Literacy and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era

Author: Lorna Rivera

The American adult education system has become an alternative for school dropouts, with some state welfare policies requiring teen mothers and women without high school diplomas to participate in adult education programs to receive aid. Very little has been published about women’s experiences in these mandatory programs and whether the programs reproduce the conditions that forced women to drop out in the first place. Lorna Rivera bridges the gap with this important study, the product of ten years’ active ethnographic research with formerly homeless women who participated in adult literacy education classes before and after welfare reform. Analyzing the web of ideological contradictions regarding “work first” welfare reform policies, Rivera argues that poverty is produced and reproduced when women with low literacy skills are pushed into welfare-to-work programs and denied education.

One Hour Activist or Come to Think of It

2009-02-06T00:44:00.000-08:00

One-Hour Activist: The 15 Most Powerful Actions You Can Take to Fight for the Issues and Candidates You Care About

Author: Christopher Kush

No matter what your political persuasion, The One-Hour Activist is your guide to influencing lawmakers, candidates, and reporters. The One-Hour Activist reveals fifteen powerful, proven grassroots actions that persuade lawmakers and candidates to see things your way. Each action is designed to grab the attention of your representatives and build relationships that serve your issues over the long run. And each action takes less than an hour to complete, so you can make a difference without giving up your life! The One-Hour Activist is packed with insider advice from elected officials, professional organizers, lobbyists, and journalists who share state-of-the-art tips for getting your message across. Real-life examples of effective letters, e-mail, phone calls, public testimony, and news story pitches from concerned citizens just like you illustrate the actions.

	Preface	ix
	Acknowledgments	xv
	The Author	xvii
	Introduction: Democracy in Action	xix
Part 1	Gather Information and Strategize	1
Action 1	Learn How Grassroots Advocacy Works	3
Action 2	Pick Your Issues and Your Angle	17
Action 3	Identify Your Representatives	31
Action 4	Join an Interest Group	45
Action 5	Create a Legislative Agenda	53
Action 6	Analyze a Bill	61
Action 7	Conduct Opposition Research	73
Part 2	Contact Your Elected Officials	83
Action 8	Write an Effective Letter	85
Action 9	Send a Powerful E-Mail	97
Action 10	Make a Compelling Phone Call	105
Action 11	Persuade Others to Act	113
Part 3	Get Involved with Elections	119
Action 12	Get Out the Vote	121
Action 13	Contribute Money to Candidates Who Support Your Cause	131
Part 4	Work the News Media	143
Action 14	Start a Press Clippings File	145
Action 15	Write a Letter to the Editor	151
Part 5	Super-Powerful Actions That Take a Little More Time	159
Action 16	Have a Face-to-Face Meeting with Your Representative	161
Action 17	Testify at a Public Hearing	175
Action 18	Participate in a Protest	185
Action 19	Volunteer for a Political Campaign	193
Action 20	Pitch a News Story or Interview	199
	It's Time for Action!	211

New interesting book: Théorie Éthique et Affaires

Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium

Author: Daniel Schorr

A journey through twenty years of politics with one of the most revered news analysts of our time

Daniel Schorr, an institution at CBS for decades and a twenty-year mainstay of NPR, is a legend in journalism. Come to Think of It is the first selection of Schorr's observations on politics and American life from the years 1990 to the present—a peerless commentary on the history of our time. Schorr's essays reveal him as a master of pithy, get-to-the-point analysis, whether he is calling the Supreme Court's 2000 decision to seat George W. Bush as president a "junta" by a "Gang of Five" or eviscerating a conservative counterpart for belittling F.D.R.'s legacy. Schorr's experience—he has covered the administrations of twelve presidents—gives him an authority and range that permeate every page of Come to Think of It.

Schorr's analyses include insight on:
• The Iraq war in current and historical perspective
• The first Gulf War, Bosnia, North Korea, and Iran
• Executive privilege and misdeeds throughout history
• Healthcare, welfare, and the state of the social contract
• The proliferation of nuclear weapons
• The U.N. report on climate change

As a record of our perilous times and as a cogent primer on the politics of the last two decades, Come to Think of It is an unparalleled record of political analysis. This will be a must-read for the legions of devoted NPR listeners who tune in to hear Daniel Schorr every week and for anyone who wants insight and a historical perspective on the 2008 election.

Winning or Chasing Ghosts

2009-02-04T19:30:00.000-08:00

Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the Toughest Questions in Business Today

Author: Jack Welch

In Winning, their 2005 international bestseller, Jack and Suzy Welch created a rare document, both a philosophical treatise on fundamental business practices and a gritty how-to manual, all of it delivered with Jack's trademark candor and can-do optimism. It seemed as if "no other management book," in the words of legendary investor Warren E. Buffett, would "ever be needed."

Instead, Winning uncovered an insatiable thirst to talk about work. Since the book's publication, the Welches have received literally thousands of questions from college students and seasoned professionals alike, on subjects ranging from leadership and global competition to tough bosses and building teamwork. Indeed, questions about virtually every business and career challenge have poured in—some familiar, others surprising, many urgent and probing, and all of them powerfully real.

Winning: The Answers takes on the most relevant of these questions, and in doing so, its candid, hard-hitting responses expand and extend the conversation Jack and Suzy Welch began with Winning. It is a dialogue that is sure to be both compelling and immensely useful to anyone and everyone engaged in the vital work of helping an organization grow and thrive.

New interesting textbook: Topics in Microeconomics or Managing Smart 325 High Performance Tips Every Manager Must Know

Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldier's Perspective

Author: Paul Rieckhoff

The riveting, action-packed true story of the first soldier to challenge the war in Iraq.

As a 1st Lieutenant and Infantry Platoon Leader for the U.S. Army, charged with leading 38 young men in Iraq, Paul Rieckhoff was proud to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who served during Vietnam and WWII respectively. He and his soldiers spent almost a year in one of the most dangerous and volatile areas of Baghdad. And what they encountered there was chaos: not nearly enough troops, no humanitarian aid, no body armor, no radios, and no real plan for what to do after Baghdad fell.

Rieckhoff was shocked to see that sometimes the greatest challenges his platoon faced did not come from enemy combatants. He saw firsthand the disastrous results of disbanding the Iraqi army, sending thousands of armed, angry, and unemployed men out into the streets. And he saw what happened when we tried to conduct a war on the cheap, by bestowing government contracts to the lowest bidder and sending our military into battle inadequately protected and armed. What followed, over the next ten months, set him on a course that would forever change his life.

When he finally came home from his tour of duty, Rieckhoff vowed to tell Americans the truth about what was going on in Iraq. He demanded accountability from elected officials and was the first Iraq veteran to do so publicly. He created Operation Truth, which grew into IAVA, the first and largest veterans' group specifically for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through this organization, he has become a leading spokesman for troops, veterans, and their families, and a critical voice in the ongoing debate surrounding this conflict.

What is really happening in Iraq? Should we be there? Should we stay? Rieckhoff is in a unique position to answer these crucial questions. Not only was he on the ground in the heat of battle but he is also on the front lines politically at home. He provides a grunt's-eye view of the harrowing, bloody battles on the streets of Baghdad and a patriot's vision of where America has gone wrong and how it can reset its path.

Washington Post

...his straightforward style comes across as honest and underscores the earnestness of his attempt to wrest back from the Bush administration his cherished conception of America.

Publishers Weekly

An Operation Iraqi Freedom vet and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Rieckhoff recounts his journey from National Guard lieutenant to disillusioned patriot in this disappointing combat memoir-cum-polemic. Rieckhoff admits that he thought the reasons for invading Iraq were "bullshit," but volunteered to go anyway. His experiences in Iraq-patrolling the chaotic streets of Baghdad in the months after its occupation-only confirmed his initial judgment that the invasion "was one of the greatest foreign policy mistakes in our nation's history." Rieckhoff is anything but humble. An Amherst grad (as he often interjects), he finds his recruiter repellant-a "slick, fat... Sergeant [who] smelled like a dirty ashtray"- but enlists anyway. President Bush is "arrogant" and "a bully," and Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer is "ignorant and out-of-touch." Rieckhoff is bipartisan in his contempt: when the Kerry campaign ignores his advice, he dismisses the Democratic presidential candidate as "a calculating and coached politician." Finally, he and a "small band of pissed-off visionaries" founded their own organization, Operation Truth, to get out the word. In the end, Rieckhoff has a story to tell, but he undermines his credibility with his arrogance and petty offside remarks. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Rieckhoff, a lieutenant and infantry platoon leader for the National Guard, starts his chronicle on a civilian 747 bound for Iraq two weeks after the U.S. invasion. He writes his somewhat angry but undeniably proud narrative with the intent to show us the circumstances in Iraq from a soldier's perspective. We see Rieckhoff leading his squad through its complex duties and how he worried about the tide of good will turning on his men. Outdated equipment, a lack of supplies, and little advance training in urban combat or Arab customs cause frustration. Wanting to make changes once he was home, Rieckhoff tried to reach out to both political parties. Although he issued the Democratic response to one of President Bush's radio addresses a year ago, he remains politically independent. He was also instrumental in forming a grassroots organization, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, to support and speak for his fellow veterans. His book is recommended for all public libraries.-Nancy Larrabee, Greenburgh P.L., Elmsford, NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Richard Clark
Rieckhoff's rage is the anger of a patriot.

Max Cleland
This book hit me in the gut.... It is full of courage, GI talk, humor and pure patriotism.

Arianna Huffington
A book that all Americans who care about their country should read.

Chuck D
Paul Rieckhoff is a human being of true substance and character.

Gideon Yago
An honest, electric memoir.

Hammer and Hoe or The Federal Budget

2009-02-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

Author: Robin DG Kelley

Hammer and Hoe documents the efforts of the Alabama Communist Party and its allies to secure racial, economic, and political reforms. Sensitive to the complexities of gender, race, culture, and class without compromising the political narrative, Robin Kelley here illuminates one of the most unique and lest understood radical movements in American History.

Interesting textbook: Managed Care Success or Business in Mexico

The Federal Budget: Politics, Policy, Process

Author: Allen Schick

The federal budget impacts American policies both at home and abroad, and recent concern over the exploding budgetary deficit has experts calling our nation's policies "unsustainable" and "system-dooming." As the deficit continues to grow, will America be fully able to fund its priorities, such as an effective military and looking after its aging population?

In this third edition of his classic book The Federal Budget, Allen Schick examines how surpluses projected during the final years of the Clinton presidency turned into oversized deficits under George W. Bush. In his detailed analysis of the politics and practices surrounding the federal budget, Schick addresses issues such as the collapse of the congressional budgetary process and the threat posed by the termination of discretionary spending caps. This edition updates and expands his assessment of the long-term budgetary outlook, and it concludes with a look at how the nation's deficit will affect America now and in the future.

Booknews

Explains how budgeting works at each stage of executive and legislative action, and assesses the effects of the procedures on budget politics and policies. Analyzes the early years of Clinton's presidency, discusses budgetary actions affecting social issues, and covers revenue legislation, managing federal expenditures, and the appropriations process. Includes a glossary and numerous tables. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Certain Victory or JK Lassers Your Winning Retirement Plan

2009-02-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

Certain Victory: The U. S. Army in the Gulf War

Author: Robert Scales

Written in a colorful, readable style, Certain Victory chronicles the Army's remarkable regeneration in the two decades after Vietnam-the foundation of the Desert Storm victory. Each chapter starts with a compelling personal combat story that puts the conflict into human perspective. A "quick read" without military jargon, Certain Victory brings the civilian reader into battle alongside individual soldiers. With a foreword by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan.

Booknews

The official US Army account of Army performance in the Gulf War, originally published by the Office of the Chief of Staff, US Army, 1993. A highly readable and abundantly illustrated chronicle by Brig. Gen. Scales, who headed the Army's Desert Storm Study Project. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Book review: Perl for System Administration or Microsoft SQL Server 2005

J.K. Lasser's Your Winning Retirement Plan

Author: Henry K Hebeler

AT LAST, SOUND, INFORMED, REALISTIC ANSWERS FOR RETIREMENT FINANCE

Use the simple, step-by-step guidance in J.K. Lasser’s Your Winning Retirement Plan to double your money for your golden years. Whether you’re forecasting how much you need to be saving for retirement or are deciding how much you should be spending once you’re there, acclaimed planning expert Henry K. Hebeler can get you the results you need. You’ll analyze your investments and start getting the highest possible returns––with the least amount of risk; take a real-world look at your total financial picture, without inappropriate planning assumptions; and make use of a new concept called the Retirement Autopilot, which can help you budget more wisely today and ensure that your investments will last a lifetime.

Key coverage will help you:

Beat reverse dollar-cost averaging so your money will continue to grow
Make use of modern feedback theory to secure your finances today––as well as tomorrow
Find solutions to different retirement scenarios, including early retirement and when only one spouse is retired

Booknews

Retirement consultant Hebeler presents a do-it-yourself guide on planning for retirement. Concepts discussed include financial planning, life expectancy, inflation, types of investments, return on investments, preretirement planning, early retirement, estate planning, and spending in retirement. The text is accompanied by forms and worksheets. The volume does not include bibliographical references. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Introduction
The Realities of Financial Planning
Some Fundamental Planning Facts
Investments
Return on Investments
Preretirement Planning
Spending in Retirement
Postscript
Appendix A: Hard-to-Value Investments
Appendix B: Technical Notes
Appendix C: Forms for Your Own Calculations
Appendix D: Glossary
Index.

Critical Condition or La traves a de Enrique

2009-02-01T03:51:00.000-08:00

Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business--and Bad Medicine

Author: Donald L Barlett

Exposing the most controversial, little-known practices of America’s most flawed system, Time magazine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team pulls back the curtain on the health care industry to explain exactly how things grew so out of control.

Dirty examination and operating rooms in doctor’s offices and hospitals . . . Health care executives pulling in millions in bonuses for denying treatment to the sick . . . More than 100 million people with inadequate or no medical coverage . . . This may sound like the predicament of a third-world nation, but this is America’s health care reality today. The U.S. spends more on health care than any other nation, yet our benefits are shrinking and life expectancy is shorter here than in countries that spend significantly less per capita. Meanwhile, HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, and hospital chains reap tremendous profits, while politicians—beholden to insurers and drug companies—enact legislation for the benefit of the few rather than the many, while the entire system is on the verge of collapse.

In Critical Condition, award-winning investigative journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele expose the horror of what health care in America has become. They profile patients and doctors trapped by the system and offer startling personal stories that illuminate what’s gone wrong. Doctors tell of being second-guessed and undermined by health care insurers; nurses recount chilling tales of hospital meltdowns; patients explain how they’ve been victimized by a system that is meant to care for them. Drug companies profit by selling pills in the same mannerthat Madison Avenue sells soap, while Wall Street rakes in billions by building up and then tearing down health care businesses. And politicians pass legislation perpetuating the injustices and out-right fraud the system encourages.

By analyzing the industry and offering an insightful prescription for getting it back on the right track, Critical Condition is an enormously compelling investigative work that addresses the concerns of every American.

The Washington Post - Jerome P. Kassirer

Barlett and Steele diagnose the quality of American health care as second-rate "bad medicine." True, America's life expectancy trails that of many other countries, and on the World Health Organization's "healthy living" scale, the world's wealthiest country ranks 29th (behind Croatia!). But many of the examples in Critical Condition are sensational, high-profile cases of gross errors in small for-profit hospitals. Many doctors who work in academic medical centers would argue that their patients get quite good day-to-day care.

Publishers Weekly

Bestselling investigative journalists Barlett and Steele (America: What Went Wrong?) deliver a devastating indictment, supported by excellent research, of a health-care system that they say is failing to provide first-rate services to its citizens, 44 million of whom are without insurance. According to these Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, now with Time magazine, the U.S. compares poorly with other Westernized nations in delivering quality care and a healthy life expectancy, and preventing infant mortality. Per capita health-care spending continues to exceed the amount spent by many other countries, the authors say, because one out of every three U.S. dollars pays for administrative costs. The authors also present case histories of patients, some with life-threatening conditions, who were ignored by bureaucratic HMOs that put profit first. Barlett and Steele describe how health care first became driven by profits on Wall Street during the Reagan administration. Competing insurance plans, they say, led not to better choices for consumers, but to physicians who are prevented by insurers from prescribing needed treatments; a severe shortage of nurses; and unsafe hospitals where staff shortages and unsanitary conditions result from cost-cutting. The authors, who strongly advocate a single payer plan, successfully depict a health-care system in crisis. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (On sale Oct. 5) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

La travesнa de Enrique

Author: Sonia Nazario

En esta asombrosa historia real, la galardonada periodista Sonia Nazario relata la inolvidable odisea de un nino hondureno que enfrenta penurias y peligros para reunirse con su madre en los Estados Unidos.

Cuando Enrique tiene cinco anos, su madre, Lourdes, se marcha de Honduras para trabajar en los Estados Unidos. Esto le permite enviarle dinero a Enrique para que pueda comer mejor y asistir a la escuela mas alla del tercer grado.
Lourdes le promete a su hijo que regresara pronto, pero en los Estados Unidos las cosas no son faciles. Transcurren once anos. A Enrique lo desespera pensar que no volvera a ver a su madre, y se lanza solo en su busca desde Tegucigalpa con poco mas que un pedazo de papel donde ha escrito el numero telefonico de su madre en Carolina del Norte. Sin dinero, hara una travesia peligrosa e ilegal a lo largo de Mexico de la unica forma que puede: encaramado en los costados y en los techos de los trenes de carga.
Con recia determinacion y profundo anhelo, Enrique atraviesa mundos hostiles y desconocidos eludiendo pandilleros que controlan los techos de los trenes, bandidos despiadados y policias corruptos que solo quieren robarle lo que tiene y deportarlo. Enrique avanza a fuerza de ingenio, coraje, y esperanza-y tambien gracias a la bondad de los desconocidos. Es una travesia epica que hacen miles de ninos inmigrantes todos los anos para encontrarse con sus madres en los Estados Unidos.
Basado en la serie publicada por el periodico Los Angeles Times que gano dos premios Pulitzer-uno por el reportaje, el otro por la fotografia-La Travesia de Enrique es una historia para todos los tiempos sobre familias desgarradas por la separacion, sobre el anhelode volver a estar juntos y sobre un nino que arriesgara su vida para reencontrarse con la madre que ama.

	Mapa: La Travesia De Enrique: De Tegucigalpa A Nuevo Laredo	iv
	Prologo	vii
1	El Nino Que Quedo Atras	3
2	En Busca De Piedad	49
3	Ante La Bestia	67
4	Dadivas Y Fe	111
5	En La Frontera	151
6	Un Rio Oscuro, Quiza Una Nueva Vida	199
7	La Nina Que Quedo Atras	219
	Epilogo: Mujeres, Ninos Y El Debate Sobre La Inmigracion	267
	Notas	291
	Agradecimientos	321

Revolution for the Hell of It or Party Politics in America

2009-01-30T22:38:00.000-08:00

Revolution for the Hell of It: The Book That Earned Abbie Hoffman a Five-Year Prison Term at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial

Author: Abbie Hoffman

While the supremely popular Steal This Book is a guide to living outside the establishment, Revolution for the Hell of It is a chronicle of Abbie Hoffman's radical escapades that doubles as a guidebook for today's social and political activist. Hoffman pioneered the use of humor, theater, and shock value to drive home his points, and in Revolution for the Hell of It he gives firsthand accounts of his legendary adventures, from the activism that led to the founding of the Youth International Party—or "Yippies!—to the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests ("a Perfect Mess") that resulted in his conviction as part of the Chicago Seven. Also chronicled are the mass demonstrations he led in which over fifty thousand people attempted to levitate the Pentagon using psychic energy, and the time he threw fistfuls of dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and watched the traders scramble. With antiwar sentiment once again in a furor and an incendiary political climate not seen since the book's original printing, Abbie Hoffman's voice is more essential than ever.

	Foreword
	Introduction
1	Revolution for the hell of it	7
2	The rising of the Pentagon	21
3	The new niggers	51
4	Yippie! - the media myth	77
5	On to Chicago	99
6	Free is the revolution	145
7	Free advice to the brothers	151
8	Some props used	159
9	Extra quotes, bits & pieces	173
10	Ego tripping	195
11	Epilogue : life among the dinosaurs	207
12	This part is absolutely free	215

New interesting textbook: Very Special Agents or Child of War Woman of Peace

Party Politics in America

Author: Marjorie R Hershey

Part of the “Longman Classics in Political Science” series and the gold standard of political parties texts, this new edition includes in-depth analysis of the 2006 campaigns and election and previews what lies ahead for the parties in the 2008 and 2010 Presidential and Congressional Elections.

Party Politics in America analyzes the interaction of the three primary components of parties–party organization, party in the electorate, and party in government. Originally written by Frank Sorauf and now authored by Marjorie Hershey, the book integrates research with contemporary and historical examples to bring the fascinating story of how parties have helped to shape our political system to life.

When Corporations Rule the World or Where to Retire

2009-01-29T17:26:00.000-08:00

When Corporations Rule the World: SECOND EDITION

Author: David C Korten

* An international best-seller
* Endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab

This second edition updates the reader on the deepening human crisis of the global economy. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow, and people continue to exploit the planet. Korten writes of the new global citizens' movement of activism in response to corporate globalization, and of civil society groups' efforts to restructure global economic governance. He transitions from a critical analysis of the new world order to an optimistic focus on the role of spirit and culture in a "civil-ized" society.

ForeWord Magazine - Cindy Patuszynski

Vivid imagery and original ideas make The Post-Corporate World an interesting and thought-provoking perspective of Korten's view of global society.

Andrea Martin

...[W[ith thrilling clarity, discusses practical ways to create a just, sustainable and compassionate society. —Utne Reader

Publishers Weekly

This well-documented, apocalyptic tome describes the global spread of corporate power as a malignant cancer exercising a market tyranny that is gradually destroying lives, democratic institutions and the ecosystem for the benefit of greedy companies and investors. Korten (Getting to the 21st Century) points out his conservative roots and business credentials-and then proceeds to finger such classic conspiracy-theory scapegoats as the Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations as the planning agents of the new world economic order he decries. Korten, founder of the People-Centered Development Forum, prescribes a reordering of developmental priorities to restore local control and benefits. Suggested reforms include shifting tax policies to punish greed and reward social responsibility, placing a 100% reserve requirement on demand deposits at banks and closing the World Bank, which he claims encourages indebtedness in nations that can't afford it. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy." So begins The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, the latest salvo from David C. Korten (When Corporations Rule the World). In four sections of three or four chapters each, Korten lays out how it happened and what we can do about it, using model communities that have already begun to "treat money as a facilitator, not the purpose, of our economic lives."

Library Journal

For 30 years, Korten toiled as a development worker seeking to end the poverty of the world's underdeveloped nations. In that time, he noted a stark difference between capitalism's democratic myth and the reality of social, economic, and environmental deterioration that accompanied such efforts. In this intriguing sequel to When Corporations Rule the World (Berrett-Koehler, 1995), Korten identifies the root causes of these failures as consumerism, market deregulation, free trade, privatization, global consolidation of corporate power, a focus on money as purpose for economic life, and corruption of our democratic institutions. His solutions prescribe excluding corporations from political participation, implementing serious political campaign reform, eliminating corporate welfare, regulating international corporations and finance, making financial speculation unprofitable, reestablishing locally owned and managed economies that rely predominantly on local resources, and focusing on service to life, not money, as the purpose of our economic existence. Korten makes a good case, but his solutions won't necessarily fly in the face of reality. Still, his book should find a receptive audience in both academic and public libraries.--Norman B. Hutcherson, Kern Cty. Lib., Bakersfield, CA

Library Journal

Korten (Getting to the Twenty-First Century, Kumarian Pr., 1990) brings impressive credentials to the task of blaming large international corporations for many of the social and environmental problems confronting people all over the world. Using numerous well-researched examples, Korten argues that not only do today's corporations exploit labor and the environment, but governments (particularly the U.S. government), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, aid and abet this exploitation through policies that favor capitalists over workers and small business. Although Korten speaks from an obviously liberal position, in an era when conservative political voices declare an unswerving faith in the benefits of unfettered free markets, a voice from the opposition offers a welcome balance. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Andrea C. Dragon, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station, N.J.

Booknews

While protestors at the WTO meetings in Seattle and at similar meetings of the global financial institutions have been derided as ill-informed troublemakers by the majority of the press, Korten (former advisor to the Ford Foundation and U.S. Agency for International Development) argues that their concerns about increasingly centralized corporate power are essentially right. He outlines the evolution of corporate power over the economy and governance worldwide, while acknowledging the severe depredations it causes to millions around the world. After looking at many facets of the problem in financial systems, flawed economic analyses, declining democratic institutions, and other aspects of growing corporate power, he offers some solutions. He grounds his alternative in a theory he calls the "Ecological Revolution" that would attempt to localize economies, while globalizing cooperation among communities. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Andrea Martin

...[W[ith thrilling clarity, discusses practical ways to create a just, sustainable and compassionate society. -- Utne Reader

Kirkus Reviews

In the '80s, capitalism defeated communism. Now it has defeated democracy, we are informed by Korten (When Corporations Rule the World). Capitalism is inimical to life, he declares, and he thinks, naturally enough, that life is better. The author, a former Harvard Business School teacher, depicts the doleful condition on our sad little planet. He objects to the wayward thinking of proponents of what he calls a "dead universe" governed by inhumanly impersonal corporations. Midas was wrong. Life and money do not mix. Humanity, as a functioning organism, can make a better choice. It can reject the power of international business, bent on amassing hegemony and cash at any cost. Corporations, to put it baldly, are soul destroying and inherently evil. They are merging and metastasizing worldwide. The unfortunate current primacy of cash returns to shareholders bodes ill. Corporations destroy natural assets and human institutions and exploit workers—this is the author's angry preachment. (The reader must conclude that the term "corporation" is simple synecdoche, standing in for Mammon as Capitalist). Korten is preaching a kind of Zen: We must learn the lessons of life's ancient wisdom and stop the foolishness now. Without a shift to ethical and mindful markets and the local rooting of capital, we are doomed, saith Korten. Reject NAFTA, the WTO, and the IMF as ultimately destructive forces. Corporations should not, as is presently the case, be accorded the status of personhood or be recipients of governmental largess. Economic democracy must be advanced, but can the change happen? The author thinks so, pointing to signs of postmodern populism and grassroots humanitarianism. Staytuned. Less a full-scale program for action than a life-affirming pep talk. An amalgam of physics, biology, and politics, with a dollop of philosophy, this manifesto is as troublesome as any zealot's call for morality.

What People Are Saying

Ralph Nader
Building on the electrifying, best-selling first edition of When Corporations Rule the World, this new edition expands and updates Korten's laser-like analysis of how global corporations dominate people and their governments, and the miserable conditions that result when the few rule the many. Korten then shows practical pathways to a realizable future of more just, prosperous, and sustainable societies. This book will agitate your mind, elevate your soul, and engage your civic spirit.

Desmond Tutu
This is a 'must read' book -- a searing indictment of an unjust international economic order, not by a wild-eyed idealistic left-winger, but by a sober scion of the establishment with impeccable credentials. It left me devastated but also very hopeful. Something can be done to create a more just economic order.

Danny Glover
Like many of the people who in November 1999 attended the WTO Teach-ins in Seattle, I was motivated to be there because of David Korten's work. When Corporations Rule the World continues to be at the very center of this expanding global dialogue and invites us all to become participants in what I believe to be a sacred trust to create a world that works for all.

	Acknowledgments
	Prologue: A Personal Journey	1
1	From Hope to Crisis	17
2	End of the Open Frontier	25
3	The Growth Illusion	37
4	Rise of Corporate Power in America	53
5	Assault of the Corporate Libertarians	69
6	Decline of Democratic Pluralism	87
7	Illusions of the Cloud Minders	103
8	Dreaming of Global Empires	121
9	Building Elite Consensus	133
10	Buying Out Democracy	141
11	Marketing the World	149
12	Adjusting the Poor	159
13	Guaranteeing Corporate Rights	173
14	The Money Game	185
15	Predatory Finance	195
16	Corporate Cannibalism	207
17	Managed Competition	215
18	Race to the Bottom	229
19	The End of Inefficiency	239
20	People with No Place	249
21	The Ecological Revolution	261
22	Good Living	277
23	An Awakened Civil Society	293
24	Agenda for Change	307
	Epilogue: A Choice for Life	325
	Appendix: The People's Earth Declaration: A Proactive Agenda for the Future	329
	Notes	335
	Index	361
	About the Author	375

Where to Retire: America's Best and Most Affordable Places

Author: John Howells

Finding the ideal home base for your retirement years is a crucial decision. It is also a decision that can be confusing if you aren't sure where to look or what to look for.
In this well-researched and completely revised and updated guide, retirement guru John Howells gives the best advice not only on where to relocate for your retirement, but why you should pick up and move just as life is settling down. Where to Retire provides guidance in the form of clear snapshots of life in hundreds of the most affordable, comfortable, and stimulating places to retire in the United States.
Inside you will find carefully researched, up-to-the-minute information on: where you can live graciously, yet affordably; the ideal climate for your health and preference; recreation opportunities; social environments that suit your lifestyle; where to find the best health care.

Internet Book Watch

Any considering moving to a better area for retirement years should consult this guide first: it provides a set of assessments for popular retirement communities which include tips on how to assess for lifestyle, and appears in its 4th updated edition to provide the latest on changing communities. Chapters are especially strong in detailing affordability factors, climates and health care for selected areas.

Senate Procedure and Practice or The Enemies List

2009-01-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

Senate Procedure and Practice

Author: Martin Gold

The U.S. Senate is often referred to as the world's greatest deliberative body. And that is for good reason. The Senate Chamber-from its inception to its Golden Age to the present day-has been the setting for some of the most moving, decisive, and consequential debates in American history. But how does the Senate work? Senate Procedure and Practice not only answers this question, but also explains and illustrates why the Senate has worked so well for more than two hundred years.

This practical, real-world explanation focuses on the three pillars of legislative procedure: the Senate rules, the parliamentary interpretations of the Senate rules, and the statutes that impose procedural rules. This book is filled with fascinating stories and insights that highlight why a given rule is in place and how it is practiced. Now in its second edition, this book has been updated to discuss the impact the Democratic takeover has had on basic Senate procedures and practices, including the much-discussed Rule XXVIII.

About the Author:
Martin B. Gold is a partner in Covington & Burling's Washington office and is cochair of the firm's Legislative Practice Group

The Enemies List: Flushing Out Liberals in the Age of Clinton

Author: P J ORourk

Written with the same acerbic wit and infectious humor that have made P. J. O'Rourke one of the most popular political satirists of all time, The Enemies List will keep you howling and his enemies scowling. From Noam Chomsky to Yoko Ono, from Peter, Paul, and Mary (yes, they're still alive) to all the people who think quartz crystals cure herpes, from Ralph Nader to the entire country of Sweden, P. J. O'Rourke has created a roster of the most useless, politically disgraceful, and downright foolish people around. Although a ratings system of S=Silly, VS=Very Silly, SML=Shirley MacLaine was ultimately cast aside, the distinguishing feature of the cluster of dunces presented here is silliness, not political subversion. The Enemies List began as an article in the American Spectator and, as readers contributed their own suggestions, quickly grew into a hilarious and slashing commentary on politician and celebrities alike.

Library Journal

The ghosts of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon live on through political humorist O'Rourke's compilation of his New Enemies list. Debuting in 1989 in the conservative monthly American Spectator, it has since appeared annually. Readers of the magazine responded to the list by gleefully sending in their own nominees of individuals and organizations deemed too "politically correct." Thus, feminists, liberals, any elected Democrat at any level, various organizations (including the American Library Association), celebrities, TV talking heads, and the like are skewered here. Funny as the columns and reader comments are (even to liberals), in book form it's a one-joke, redundant whine. If your library doesn't have anything by O'Rourke and doesn't carry American Spectator, buy this; otherwise, save the money and interlibrary loan the magazine. Better yet, buy some of O'Rourke's previous books.-Pamela R. Daubenspeck, Warren-Trumbull Cty. P.L., Ohio

Passion and Principle or Eyes off the Prize

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

Passion and Principle: John and Jessie Fremont, the Couple Whose Power, Politics, and Love Shaped Nineteenth-Century America

Author: Sally Denton

She was the daughter of powerful Missouri politician Thomas Hart Benton and was a savvy political operator who played confidante and advisor to the inner circle of the highest political powers in the country. He was a key figure in western exploration and California’s first senator, and became the first presidential candidate for the Republican Party—and the first candidate to challenge slavery. Both shaped their times and were far ahead of it, but most extraordinarily their story has never fully been told. Thanks in part to a deep-seated family quarrel between Jessie’s father and the couple, John and Jessie were eclipsed and opposed by some of the most mythic characters of their era, not least Abraham Lincoln. Award-winning historian Sally Denton restores the reputations of John and Jessie and places them where they belong—at the center of our country’s history.

The New York Times - Mimi Swartz

Passion and Principle really belongs to Jessie — she was the better writer and had profoundly superior social skills — and Denton handily makes the case for elevating the couple's stature in the history books. But the Frйmonts' self-righteousness, if played down by the author, serves as a cautionary and often humorous subtext. Like so many progressives, the Frйmonts were mostly right, but couldn't help reminding everyone else of that fact, and, ultimately, it did them in. Even back then, nobody liked an "I told you so."

Publishers Weekly

Denton (American Massacre) produces an intriguing take on the life and times of John C. Fremont (1813-1890), explorer of the West, traveling partner of Kit Carson, California senator, unyielding abolitionist and the Republican Party's first presidential candidate (he lost the 1856 election to James Buchanan). This is not a conventional political biography but a portrait of the five-decade-long marriage between Fremont and Jessie, a daughter of Missouri Democratic senator Thomas Hart Benton, set against the tumultuous background of 19th-century America. It is certainly the first narrative in which Jessie Fremont is accorded equal weight, and is by far the most sympathetic-not just to her, but also to him. John, all too often depicted as a semicompetent and fraudulent megalomaniac, emerges as an immensely talented explorer, overtrusting soul and introverted scientist. Jessie's historical caricature as a hysterical shrew and control freak is sensitively tempered by Denton into a complex amalgam of indomitability and idealism constrained by her times into playing second fiddle. Jessie's accomplishments, writes Denton, "were attained not through John as her surrogate, but with John as her partner." As Denton shows, Bill and Hillary are not the first American power couple. 16 pages of b&w illus. (May) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Douglas King - Library Journal

Denton (Faith and Betrayal: A Pioneer Woman's Passage in the American West) tackles the story of 19th-century explorer, Civil War Union general, and (in 1856) inaugural Republican presidential nominee John Frémont and his politically influential wife, Jessie Benton Frémont. She relies heavily on primary sources such as letters, diary entries, and official government documents to untangle the convoluted and widely misperceived political careers and personal lives of her subjects. Denton's research strives to explain Jessie's role in her husband's controversial attempts to abolish slavery, and she convincingly refutes popular historiography's perception of John as fortuitously marrying into a politically powerful family and coasting on his wife's talent. The Frémonts' story stretches from the advent of Manifest Destiny through the Civil War, and Denton tells the tale well, in dense but always readable detail. This original and engaging work is sure to be a boon to historians studying Old West exploration or political entanglements and military actions leading up to the Civil War. Highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Western historian Denton (Faith and Betrayal, 2005, etc.) offers a revisionist treatment of the fearless Pathfinder and his talented, ambitious wife. History has unfairly maligned John and Jessie Fremont, the author argues. Both were attractive, charismatic figures: bright, highly educated and articulate. The "passion" of the title alludes to the Fremonts' very affectionate 50-year marriage and to their commitment to various social and political causes, including abolition. The "principle" lies in their refusal to compromise those core convictions, even when wealth and political power hung in the balance. Denton begins with their initial meeting, described in swooning phrases that would make an apt additional verse to "Some Enchanted Evening." Indeed, as she retreats in time to summarize her principals' pre-swoon biographies, the author's florid prose seems overly colored by the 19th-century sources she consulted (from which she might profitably have ascertained the correct usage of words like "fulsome" and "sojourn"). Denton also repeatedly and unnecessarily quotes from other biographers and historians, sometimes on simple matters of fact. The facts themselves are intriguing. John, the offspring of a dashing French refugee and a Virginia woman who may not have been divorced from her first husband, was 11 years older than Jessie when their son was born in 1813. Jessie was the daughter of aristocratic Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who disapproved so strongly of her suitor that they wed secretly. Together or apart-they were separated for long periods-the Fremonts made a formidable team. They were ambitious, cultivating relationships with some of the most celebrated political and culturalfigures of the century. (They once summered with Longfellow and the Whittiers.) He trusted her implicitly and sent her on missions of enormous significance. They made and lost fortunes in gold-mining and railroad speculation-and very nearly won the White House in 1856, when John was the newly formed Republican Party's first presidential candidate. The Fremonts' story remains compelling, even when manhandled by a maladroit biographer.

New interesting textbook: Dining by Design or Entertaining for Wimps

Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955

Author: Carol Anderson

As World War II drew to a close and the world awakened to the horrors wrought by white supremacists in Nazi Germany, the NAACP and African-American leaders sensed an opportunity to launch an offensive against the conditions of segregation and inequality in the United States. The "prize" they sought was not civil rights, but human rights. Only the human rights lexicon, shaped by the Holocaust and articulated by the United Nations, contained the language and the moral power to address not only the political and legal inequality but also the education, health care, housing, and employment needs that haunted the black community. The NAACP understood this and wielded its influence and resources to take its human rights agenda before the United Nations. But the onset of the Cold War and rising anti-communism allowed powerful southerners to cast those rights as Soviet-inspired and a threat to the American "ways of life." Enemies and friends excoriated the movement, and the NAACP retreated to a narrow civil rights agenda that was easier to maintain politically. Thus the Civil Rights Movement was launched with neither the language nor the mission it needed to truly achieve black equality. Carol Anderson is the recipient of major grants from the Ford Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and numerous awards for excellence in teaching. Her scholarly interests are 20th century American, African-American, and diplomatic history, and the impact of the Cold War and U.S. foreign policy on the struggle for black equality in particular.Her publications include "From Hope to Disillusion published in Diplomatic History and reprinted in The African-American Voice in U.S.Foreign Policy.

1968 in Europe or Bakunin

2009-01-26T01:46:00.000-08:00

1968 in Europe: A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-77

Author: Martin Klimk

A concise reference for researchers on the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this book covers the history of the various national protest movements, the transnational aspects of these movements, and the common narratives and cultures of memory surrounding them. www.1968ineurope.com

Foreword     vii
1968 in Europe: An Introduction   Martin Klimke   Joachim Scharloth     1
Transnational Roots of the 1968 Protest Movements
Subcultural Movements: The Provos   Niek Pas     13
Situationism   Thomas Hecken   Agata Grzenia     23
The International Peace Movement   Michael Frey     33
The Origins of the British New Left   Madeleine Davis     45
Music and Protest in 1960s Europe   Detlef Siegfried     57
Motions and Emotions   Jakob Tanner     71
Protest Histories in Different European Countries
Italy   Jan Kurz   Marica Tolomelli     83
West Germany   Martin Klimke     97
France   Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey     111
Great Britain   Holger Nehring     125
Northern Ireland   Niall o Dochartaigh     137
Belgium   Louis Vos     153
Czechoslovakia   Jan Pauer     163
Poland   Stefan Garsztecki     179
East Germany   Timothy S. Brown     189
Romania   Corina Petrescu   Serban Pavelescu     199
Hungary   Mate Szabo     209
Yugoslavia   Boris Kanzleiter     219
Switzerland   Nicole Peter     229
Scandinavia   Thomas Ekman Jorgensen     239
Spain and Greece   Kostis Kornetis     253
Transnational Networks and Narratives after 1968
Terrorism   Dorothea Hauser     269
The Women's Movement   Kristina Schulz     281
The Environmental Movement   Christopher Rootes     295
Narratives of Democratization: 1968 in Postwar Europe   Philipp Gassert     307
Afterword: The Future of 1968's "Restless Youth"   Tom Hayden     325
About the Authors     333
Index     339

Book review: Magic Spices or Mushroom Cookbook

Bakunin: The Creative Passion

Author: Mark Leier

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

Bagpipe Brothers or Free Trade Under Fire

2009-01-24T20:26:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Kerry Sheridan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Library Journal

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

Books about: Tourisme :les Affaires de Voyage

Free Trade Under Fire

Author: Douglas A Irwin

Growing world trade has helped lift living standards around the world, and yet free trade is always under attack by opponents. Critics complain that trade forces painful economic adjustments, such as plant closings and layoffs of workers, and charge that the World Trade Organization serves the interests of corporations, undercuts domestic environmental regulations, and erodes America's sovereignty. Why has global trade become so controversial? Does free trade deserve its bad reputation? In Free Trade under Fire, Douglas Irwin sweeps aside the misconceptions that litter the debate over trade and gives the reader a clear understanding of the issues involved. This second edition includes a new chapter on trade and developing countries and updates the entire text to deal with new issues such as outsourcing and steel tariffs.

Foreign Affairs - Richard N. Cooper

Here he provides an entree to recent empirical literature, which largely demonstrates that most of the charges against free trade do not stand up under serious empirical scrutiny. He offers an especially informative chapter on antidumping duties, which have historically been supported in the name of ensuring "fair trade."

1	The United States in a new global economy?	7
2	The case for free trade : old theories, new evidence	25
3	Protectionism : economic costs, political benefits?	61
4	Trade, jobs, and displaced workers	94
5	Relief from foreign competition : antidumping and the escape clause	131
6	Developing countries and open markets	160
7	The world trading system : the WTO and new battlegrounds	203

Handy Supreme Court Answer Book or Becoming Justice Blackmun

2009-01-23T15:14:00.000-08:00

Handy Supreme Court Answer Book

Author: David C Hudson

From the origins of the court to modern practical matters—including the federal judiciary system, the Supreme Court’s session schedule, and the argument, decision, and appeal process—this resource provides detailed answers on all aspects of the Supreme Court. Exploring the social, cultural, and political atmosphere in which judges are nominated and serve, this guide book answers questions such as When did the tradition of nine justices on the bench begin? When did the practice of hiring law clerks to assist with legal research and writing begin? and How do cases reach the Supreme Court? Details on historic decisions—including Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona, and Bush v. Gore—accompany a thorough history of all 17 Supreme Court Chief Justices.

Introduction     xi
Acknowledgments     xiii
Origins of the Federal Court System     1
Supreme Court Rules, Practices, and Traditions     21
Supreme Court Trivia     41
The Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth Courts (1789-1800)     61
The Marshall Court (1801-35)     77
The Taney Court (1836-64)     99
The Chase Court (1864-73)     117
The Waite Court (1874-88)     127
The Fuller Court (1888-1910)     147
The White Court (1910-21)     177
The Taft Court (1921-30)     197
The Hughes Court (1930-41)     219
The Stone Court (1941-46)     247
The Vinson Court (1946-53)     265
The Warren Court (1953-69)     279
The Burger Court (1969-86)     321
The Rehnquist Court (1986-2005)     367
The Roberts Court (2005-Present)     409
Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court     429
The Constitution of the United States     435
Resources     453
Index     457

Interesting book: Affair to Remember or Pasta

Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey

Author: Linda Greenhous

“A fascinating book. In clear and forceful prose, Becoming Justice Blackmun tells a judicial Horatio Alger story and a tale of a remarkable transformation . . . A page-turner.”—The New York Times Book Review

In this acclaimed biography, Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times draws back the curtain on America's most private branch of government, the Supreme Court. Greenhouse was the first print reporter to have access to the extensive archives of Justice Harry A. Blackmun (1908–99), the man behind numerous landmark Supreme Court decisions, including Roe v. Wade.

Through the lens of Blackmun's private and public papers, Greenhouse crafts a compelling portrait of a man who, from 1970 to 1994, ruled on such controversial issues as abortion, the death penalty, and sex discrimination yet never lost sight of the human beings behind the legal cases. Greenhouse also paints the arc of Blackmun's lifelong friendship with Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, revealing how political differences became personal, even for two of the country's most respected jurists.

From America's preeminent Supreme Court reporter, this is a must-read for everyone who cares about the Court and its impact on our lives.

The New York Times - Jeffrey Rosen

Linda Greenhouse, the Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, is widely respected not only for her scrupulous translations of complicated opinions and traditions but also for her care in avoiding gossip and preserving the justices' privacy. In her first book, Becoming Justice Blackmun, she has produced something unexpected: one of the most intimate and revealing portraits of the relationship between two justices ever achieved … Ms. Greenhouse's achievement in her meticulous narrative history is to provide new ammunition for Justice Blackmun's critics as well as his admirers. And readers who are unfamiliar with the inner workings of the court could not hope for a more engrossing introduction.

Publishers Weekly

Supreme Court justice Harry Blackmun's lifelong connection with Chief Justice Warren Burger-beginning in kindergarten in St. Paul, Minn., and culminating in 16 years together on the Supreme Court-supplies Greenhouse with one of her main organizing themes in this illuminating study of Blackmun's life and intellectual history. Once the closest of friends, Blackmun (1908-1999) and Burger diverged personally and ideologically, beginning in 1973, when Burger assigned Blackmun to write the Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade. Greenhouse, the New York Times's veteran Supreme Court watcher, draws primarily on Blackmun's massive personal archive to show how his authorship of the majority opinion in Roe (7-2) propelled him down several unexpected paths. Blackmun embraced equal protection for women and came to reject capital punishment. A Nixon appointee, Blackmun became the Supreme Court's most liberal justice after the retirement of William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. The personality that emerges in Greenhouse's portrayal is that of a self-effacing and scholarly judge, devoid of partisanship, willing to follow his ideas wherever they led him. Making no pretense at being definitive or comprehensive, Greenhouse sets a high standard in offering an intimate look both at the man and at the development of his judicial thought. B&w photos. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A Pulitzer Prize-winning Supreme Court journalist and commentator for the New York Times, Greenhouse offers an exceptionally readable biography of Justice Harry Blackmun, from his childhood to his service on the Supreme Court. Drawing upon primary-source materials in the Harry A. Blackmun Collection at the Library of Congress, Greenhouse portrays the evolution of Blackmun's judicial philosophy. In using Blackmun's files, correspondence, and papers, the author creates a revealing portrait of both the man himself and the inner workings of the Supreme Court, including his fractious relationship with Chief Justice Warren Burger. Central to the narrative is Blackmun's involvement in Roe v. Wade, subsequent abortion litigation, and capital punishment litigation. This small book is a valuable addition to the existing body of judicial biographies. Highly recommended.-Theodore Pollack, New York Cty. Public Access Law Lib., New York Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The life and times of a Supreme Court justice who resisted easy categorization, then and now. On his death in 1999, writes New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Greenhouse, Harry Blackmun gave the Library of Congress his papers, "contained in 1,585 boxes that take up more than six hundred feet." Drawing on this wealth of primary information, Greenhouse turns in a nuanced study of Blackmun as legal thinker and judge. Along the way, she offers revealing notes on Warren Burger, whose own papers are sealed until 2026; Burger, Blackmun's childhood friend and fellow Minnesotan, helped see Blackmun onto the bench. Other Minnesotans were guarded in their support: Walter Mondale dismissed him as a conservative, and Hubert Humphrey was not enthusiastic. Blackmun gave liberal critics reason for concern, as when he dissented from the opinion allowing the New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers, remarking, "The First Amendment, after all, is only one part of an entire Constitution." (A citizen from New Jersey wrote in to say, "I thought you were a 'strict constructionist'. . . . More a strict Nixonist.") Yet Blackmun also took it on himself to write the Court's opinion on Roe v. Wade, interpreting it not simply from the woman's-choice stance but also as "primarily, a medical decision." Blackmun had to defend Roe v. Wade for the rest of his career, as a target of those who wished to outlaw abortion entirely; he was relieved when in 1992 five justices declared that "the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed." Greenhouse observes that their time spent together on the bench did ill for Blackmun's friendship with Burger, whom he came to regard as a pooradministrator and shallow thinker; the animosity grew in the matter of United States v. Nixon, which bitterly divided the Court. So, too, would other issues-among them, toward the end of his career, the death penalty-and by Greenhouse's account Blackmun conducted himself well throughout them. Detailed and well considered: a welcome study of Blackmun's contributions to the law. Author tour

What People Are Saying

Garrison Keillor
Harry Blackmun was the model public servant: hard-working, self-effacing, scrupulously honest, of a humorous bent, persnickety about language, ever re-examining his own thinking and dispositions, a patriot of process. Linda Greenhouse's elegant biography, a look at the professional life of the Justice in the blue Volkswagen, opens a window on the Court and on the antique notion of public service.

Jeffrey Toobin
I raced through Linda Greenhouse's book as soon as I got my hands on it. Becoming Justice Blackmun is both gripping constitutional history and rich personal drama. The nation's finest Supreme Court reporter has produced a vivid and fascinating portrait of a complex man.

Anthony Lewis
This is a wonderful, a thrilling book. Linda Greenhouse has given us both the touching story of a man's transformation and a rare insight into the way the Supreme Court works. It is born a classic.

Laurence Tribe
Anyone who wants to understand the inner workings of the U.S. Supreme Court and anyone who hopes to grasp the subtle ways that personal philosophy and psychology combine with the sometimes impersonal logic of the law to shape the outcomes of great legal battles, would do well to read Linda Greenhouse's unpretentious but powerful story of Harry Blackmun. Greenhouse, in a jewel fully worthy of her reputation as the best journalist ever to have covered the work of the Supreme Court, proves to be as able a biographer as she is a reporter. Becoming Justice Blackmun is a brilliant and penetrating study of how unsought challenge and controversy can, in the most modest of men, bring out a measure of true greatness.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
At last, the mystery unveiled! The Supreme Court traditionally guards its privacy to the death, but Harry Blackmun, a supremely humane justice, left papers describing what the Court actually does behind the scenes, and Linda Greenhouse has used the Blackmun papers to write a fascinating book. Especially gripping is the intense human drama of the breakup of a lifelong friendship between Justice Blackmun and Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Eugene V Debs or How Russia Really Works

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

Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist

Author: Nick Salvator

In this classic book, Nick Salvatore offers a major reevaluation of Eugene V. Debs, the movements he launched, and his belief in American Socialism as an extension of the nation's democratic traditions.

Eric Foner, History Book Club Review - Eric Foner

This is biography at its best.

Irving Howe, New York Review of Books - Irving Howe

Salvatore really knows the inner world of Debsian socialism, and he is shrewd in relating Debs' public presence to his personal life…The Debs who emerges is a flawed human being—very flawed—yet an extraordinary person…a vibrant and touching figure.

Melvyn Dubofsky, American Historical Review - Melvyn Dubofsky

In this stunning book, Salvatore sets Debs firmly within the central traditions of United States political and social history and depicts, as never before, the triumph and tragedy that characterized the socialist leaders personal and public life…Salvatore writes with warmth, grace, power, and feeling, and moves the reader…this book deserves to be read and treasured as the finest life of a modern American radical now in print.

New interesting book: 500 5 Ingredient Desserts or Taste of Ohio History Second Edition

How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business

Author: Alena V Ledeneva

During the Soviet era, blat-the use of personal networks for obtaining goods and services in short supply and for circumventing formal procedures-was necessary to compensate for the inefficiencies of socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a new generation of informal practices. In How Russia Really Works, Alena V. Ledeneva explores practices in politics, business, media, and the legal sphere in Russia in the 1990s-from the hiring of firms to create negative publicity about one's competitors, to inventing novel schemes of tax evasion and engaging in "alternative" techniques of contract and law enforcement. She discovers ingenuity, wit, and vigor in these activities and argues that they simultaneously support and subvert formal institutions. They enable corporations, the media, politicians, and businessmen to operate in the post-Soviet labyrinth of legal and practical constraints but consistently undermine the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. The "know-how" Ledeneva describes in this book continues to operate today and is crucial to understanding contemporary Russia.

Foreign Affairs

Any society applies grease, some of it less than pure, to make its institutional gears mesh efficiently. But when the gears do not match up -- when institutions, including laws, are discrepant, dysfunctional, or fragile, and superabundant grease serves to compensate -- efficiency comes at a cost. "Informal practices" are the grease that interests Ledeneva, and in Russia they are the material that fills the gap between formal legal institutions and informal extralegal norms. They operate in politics (through illicit electoral manipulation), where business and politics meet (in insider mutual-protection societies), and in the economy at large (through barter, double bookkeeping, and "privatized" government agencies and services). Each has roots in Russian and Soviet history but with the important difference, as Ledeneva notes in her thoughtful exploration of both their nature and their effect, that informal practices in today's Russia are of, by, and for the few, not something accessible to the uninitiated.

The Israel Arab Reader or Micromotives and Macrobehavior

2009-01-21T04:48:00.000-08:00

The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict

Author: Walter Laqueur

An essential resource-completely revised and updated for the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Israel

In print for forty years , The Israel-Arab Reader is a thorough and up-to-date guide to the continuing crisis in the Middle East. It covers the full spectrum of the Israel-Arab conflict-including a new chapter recounting the Gaza withdrawal, the Hamas election victory, and the Lebanon-Israel War. Featuring a new introduction that provides an overview of the past 115 years of conflict, and arranged chronologically and without bias, this comprehensive reference includes speeches, letters, articles, timelines, and reports dealing with all the major interests in the area.

Look this: Developing Expertise in Critical Care Nursing or Compensation

Micromotives and Macrobehavior

Author: Thomas C Schelling

Before Freakonomics and The Tipping Point there was this classic by the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics.

"Schelling here offers an early analysis of 'tipping' in social situations involving a large number of individuals."—official citation for the 2005 Nobel Prize

Micromotives and Macrobehavior was originally published over twenty-five years ago, yet the stories it tells feel just as fresh today. And the subject of these stories—how small and seemingly meaningless decisions and actions by individuals often lead to significant unintended consequences for a large group—is more important than ever. In one famous example, Thomas C. Schelling shows that a slight-but-not-malicious preference to have neighbors of the same race eventually leads to completely segregated populations.

The updated edition of this landmark book contains a new preface and the author's Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

American Government 2008 or The Working Poor

2009-01-20T01:57:00.000-08:00

American Government 2008: Continuity and Change

Author: Karen OConnor

American Government
Continuity and Change
2006 Edition • Election Update
Karen O’Connor • Larry J. Sabato

Written with the belief that students must first understand how American government has evolved to fully understand our nation and the issues facing it today, the 2006 Election Update of American Government: Continuity and Change continues to offer students a rich historical perspective complemented by complete coverage of the 2006 midterm elections and the most up-to-date scholarship available in any text for the American government course.

NEW TO THIS EDITION

In-depth and updated coverage throughout of the 2006 midterm campaigns and elections, the war in Iraq, the latest Supreme Court decisions, an analysis of “Red and Blue” America, the changing role of the media, and topics that have been subject to ongoing, impassioned debates, such as the assault weapons ban, gay rights, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, and affirmative action.
New The Living Constitution boxes appear in every chapter. These boxes excerpt and explain a portion of the Constitution relevant to that chapter’s topic and examine why that article, section, or amendment was important to the Framers and continues to be important today.
An Annotated Constitution of the United States appears between Chapters 2 and 3. The Constitution is integrated with a detailed primer that examines the meaning and context of its most significant language. This feature helps give students a deep understanding of what the Constitution says, why it includes the text it does, andwhat role this seminal document plays in our lives today.
On Campus boxes now appear in most chapters and continue to focus on the political issues of greatest interest to college students.

MyPoliSciLab

Welcome to MyPoliSciLab, where participation leads to action!

MyPoliSciLab is a state-of-the-art, interactive and instructive online solution for the introduction to American government course. Designed to be used as a supplement to a traditional lecture course, or completely administer an online course, MyPoliSciLab combines multimedia, tutorials, simulations, tests, and quizzes to make teaching and learning fun!

What Students Are Saying About Online Exams and Quizzes:

“I love it. I keep trying until I get a perfect grade and after a couple of times you know the content like the back of your hand!”

“I liked being able to view the results of the quizzes immediately instead of having to wait for them to be graded by the instructor.”

What Students Are Saying About Online Activities:

“The activities were my favorite part of the course. They took a different approach to an interesting subject and made it more applicable to real-life situations. This made the subject seem even more real than before.”

“I think they are a great tool to get students to interact with the material in a way you couldn’t really do in class.”

Visit us at ablongman.com/polisci

Booknews

This updated edition includes the results of the 2000 presidential and Congressional elections, as well as information on the primaries and general campaign. O'Connor (government, American U.) and Sabato (government and foreign affairs, U. of Virginia) present 19 chapters that discuss the foundations and institutions of government, political behavior, and public policy. In each chapter, boxed information compares and contrasts some aspect of American politics to that of other industrial democracies. Includes many color and b&w illustrations. The included CD-ROM contains the full text of the book as well as audio, video, web links, practice tests, and more. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

1	The Political Landscape	2
2	The Constitution	30
3	Federalism	58
4	Civil Liberties	86
5	Civil Rights	116
6	Congress	146
7	The Presidency	180
8	The Bureaucracy	212
9	The Judiciary	236
10	Public Opinion and the News Media	270
11	Political Parties and Interest Groups	306
12	Campaigns, Voting, and Elections	340
	Policy Portfolio	381
I	The Declaration of Independence	391
II	The Constitution of the United States of America	394
III	The Federalist No. 10	407
IV	The Federalist No. 51	413
V	Presidents, Congresses, and Chief Justices: 1789-1997	417
	Glossary	423
	Notes	429
	Index	436

Book review: Negócio Internacional:Estratégia, Gestão, e as Novas Realidades

The Working Poor: Invisible in America

Author: David K Shipler

“Nobody who works hard should be poor in America,” writes Pulitzer Prize winner David Shipler. Clear-headed, rigorous, and compassionate, he journeys deeply into the lives of individual store clerks and factory workers, farm laborers and sweat-shop seamstresses, illegal immigrants in menial jobs and Americans saddled with immense student loans and paltry wages. They are known as the working poor.

They perform labor essential to America’s comfort. They are white and black, Latino and Asian--men and women in small towns and city slums trapped near the poverty line, where the margins are so tight that even minor setbacks can cause devastating chain reactions. Shipler shows how liberals and conservatives are both partly right–that practically every life story contains failure by both the society and the individual. Braced by hard fact and personal testimony, he unravels the forces that confine people in the quagmire of low wages. And unlike most works on poverty, this book also offers compelling portraits of employers struggling against razor-thin profits and competition from abroad. With pointed recommendations for change that challenge Republicans and Democrats alike, The Working Poor stands to make a difference.

The New York Times

As a witness Mr. Shipler is indefatigable. Interviewing cashiers and seamstresses, burger flippers and migrant workers a dozen or more times, he has gotten them to open up and share the grim realities of their lives … by exposing the wretched condition of these invisible Americans, he has performed a noble and badly needed service. — Michael Massing

The Washington Post

The Working Poor and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, a book that eloquently covers some of the same ground, should be required reading not just for every member of Congress, but for every eligible voter. Now that this invisible world has been so powerfully brought to light, its consequences can no longer be ignored or denied. — Eric Schlosser

Publishers Weekly

This guided and very personal tour through the lives of the working poor shatters the myth that America is a country in which prosperity and security are the inevitable rewards of gainful employment. Armed with an encyclopedic collection of artfully deployed statistics and individual stories, Shipler, former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer winner for Arab and Jew, identifies and describes the interconnecting obstacles that keep poor workers and those trying to enter the work force after a lifetime on welfare from achieving economic stability. This America is populated by people of all races and ethnicities, whose lives, Shipler effectively shows, are Sisyphean, and that includes the teachers and other professionals who deal with the realities facing the working poor. Dr. Barry Zuckerman, a Boston pediatrician, discovers that landlords do nothing when he calls to tell them that unsafe housing is a factor in his young patients' illnesses; he adds lawyers to his staff, and they get a better response. In seeking out those who employ subsistence wage earners, such as garment-industry shop owners and farmers, Shipler identifies the holes in the social safety net. "The system needs to be straightened out," says one worker who, in 1999, was making $6.80 an hour-80 cents more than when she started factory work in 1970. "They need more resources to be able to help these people who are trying to help themselves." Attention needs to be paid, because Shipler's subjects are too busy working for substandard wages to call attention to themselves. They do not, he writes, "have the luxury of rage." 40,000 first printing. (Feb. 6) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Edna Boardman - KLIATT

When customers are served by associates in a store or restaurant, enter a freshly cleaned hotel room, or choose freshly picked foods at the grocery store, they benefit from the labor of the working poor. Shipler has interviewed persons of many colors and ethnicities to put together a picture of what their lives are like. He notes the effect on their lives of kinship groups, corporations, social attitudes, emergencies, job training programs, family dysfunction, foreign competition, and other impacts. He is chary of theories and ideologies that would put them in neat categories and of judgments that assign blame for their poverty. He looks at the decisions individuals have made (or not made), and the policies and blocks, public and private, that bar access to better living standards. The book is well written, the anecdotes revealing; Shipler does better than most at putting a human face on the statistics that list those who live on the lowest wages in the US. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2004, Random House, Vintage, 329p. notes. index., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

A book by a Pulitzer Prize winner (Arab and Jew), with an announced first printing of 40,000 copies by a prestigious trade publisher and prepub kudos by Bill Bradley and Robert Reich, is sure to capture a certain amount of media attention. If this happens, it will be well deserved. Shipler is informed and impassioned about the plight of the surprisingly diverse and numerous Americans who work but still walk the official poverty line. This conundrum is complex and rife with interlocking problems, including dead-end jobs that offer little or no healthcare benefits and depressing home and workplace environments. Not the least of these burdens is the widely held belief that poverty is related to indolence. Shipler takes a many-faceted view of this Sisyphean bind, and in his final chapter, "Skill and Will," he offers some thoughts on solutions. His writing style is highly effective and often moving, such as when he notes that our forgotten wage earners engage in "a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff." Recommended for all collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/03.]-Ellen D. Gilbert, Princeton, NJ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A damning report on poverty in America. In The Mystery of Capital (2000), economist Hernando de Soto wondered why the Third World's poor lack the fungible assets that their American counterparts hold-assets that keep them from being, well, so poor. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Shipler (A Country of Strangers, 1997) reveals that this may be illusory: for many of the men and women he portrays here, any property of worth has been mortgaged and remortgaged, and when it is sold, often in a hurry and for less than it's worth, any proceeds go to paying down the mountains of debt that the poor accumulate. These American poor-natives and immigrants alike-"suffer in good times and bad," writes Shipler. They are sometimes the victims of addiction, ignorance, and bad choices; in most instances, however, the working poor are single mothers and single wage-earners with several children and few options. The larger culture misunderstands the causes of poverty, Shipler argues, "and is therefore uncertain about the solutions," though the solutions are there: in a surprising moment, a Wal-Mart manager in rural New England reveals that the store could easily afford to pay its employees two dollars an hour more. (One of his interview subjects made $6 an hour in a Vermont factory in the mid-1970s; 25 years later, now a Wal-Mart clerk, she was up to $6.80.) Traveling from big box stores to Los Angeles sweatshops to farms to public-housing projects, Shipler offers memorable portraits of the women and men who figure as afterthoughts in just about every politician's vision of the American future-even though, Shipler notes, had the poor voted, Al Gore would have been swept into office in 2000: "an upsurge inlow-income numbers would have overcome even Florida's biased registration and balloting system." A sobering work of investigation, as incisive-and necessary-as kindred reports by Michael Harrington, Jacob Riis, and Barbara Ehrenreich. First printing of 40,000. Agency: ICM

La era de las turbulencias or Warrior Queens

2009-01-19T14:44:00.000-08:00

La era de las turbulencias: Aventuras en un nuevo mundo

Author: Alan Greenspan

En La era de las turbulencias, Alan Greenspan hace recuento de su vida y sus experiencias laborales, reconoce que la guerra de Irak tiene que ver con el petrуleo y alude a temas candentes de la economнa contemporбnea, como la burbuja inmobiliaria. Es muy esclarecedor el poder leer las memorias de Greenspan en esta coyuntura de turbulencias.

Alan Greenspan (Nueva York, 1926) fue presidente de la Reserva Federal de EE.UU. entre 1987 y 2006. Obtuvo el bachillerato en economнa en 1948, la maestrнa en economнa en 1950 y su doctorado en economнa en 1977, todos por la Universidad de Nueva York. En 1968 Greenspan se convirtiу en asesor en economнa del entonces candidato Richard Nixon, pero Greenspan no confiaba en Nixon, y se distancio aun mas de el cuando Nixon inicio su polнtica de control de precios y salarios, que horrorizo a Greenspan. Fue presidente de la Reserva Federal desde el 11 de agosto de 1987 hasta el 1 de febrero de 2006.

Fue nominado al puesto por los presidentes Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton y George W. Bush. Solo William McChesney Martin Jr. ha sido el presidente de la Reserva Federal durante mбs tiempo que Greenspan, permaneciendo en el cargo casi 18 aсos y diez meses entre 1951 y 1970.

Look this: Changement Global :la Cartographie des Contours Changeants de l'Économie Mondiale

Warrior Queens

Author: Antonia Fraser

In this panoramic work of history, Lady Antonia Fraser looks at women who led armies and empires: Cleopatra, Isabella of Spain, Jinga Mbandi, Margaret Thatcher, and Indira Gandhi, among others.

Publishers Weekly

In a series of cleverly linked biographies, Fraser here tells the stories of a long line of history's ``warrior queens,'' at the same time exploring and illuminating the myths, paradoxes and ambiguities that attend their status as aggressive female leaders, and the ``mingled awe, horror, and ecstasy'' that they inspire. She begins with the British queen Boadicea, who in A.D. 60 led a massive but doomed rebellion against the Roman occupation (and whose spirit haunts the entire book), and ends with the modern trio: Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher. In between come the likes of Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great and the beautiful Rani of Jhansi, who, wronged by the British, earned herself a permanent place in Indian legend by the heroic role she played against them in the so-called Mutiny of 1857. Fraser ( Mary Queen of Scots ; Cromwell ) buttresses her book with sound scholarship, while her insights and enthusiasm make it beguiling. Illustrated. 60,000 first printing; BOMC and QPBC alternates. (Mar.)

Library Journal

In her justly acclaimed biographies of Oliver Cromwell and Mary, Queen of Scots, Fraser established her rare ability to breathe exciting life into historical figures. In this work she covers 17 women, from Queen Boadicea to Margaret Thatcher, who have ruled, specifically in time of war. Her character vignettes are sharp and incisive, and along the way she offers some intriguing thoughts on how societies through time have reacted to females cast in a role of military leadership. The final chapter, which is an overview of what might be termed the psychology of ``warrior queens,'' ought to be required reading for every student of history. Highly recommended. BOMC and Quality Paperback Book Club alternates.-- James A. Casada, Winthrop Coll., Rock Hill, S.C.

School Library Journal

YA-- Using Britain's Queen Boadicea as a focus, Fraser presents a provocative study of exceptional women leaders whose patriotic and military actions are resounding proof that women have made their mark many times over in fields usually dominated by men. Leadership roles of Warrior Queens Boadicea, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher--and many others--are examined in the context of the paradoxes and politics of their times. This book brings to life historical fact from a feminist viewpoint. A worthwhile addition to the history shelves.-- Jenni Elliott, Episcopal High School, Bellaire, TX

Great Jobs for Criminal Justice Majors or Economic Development

2009-01-19T04:31:00.000-08:00

Great Jobs for Criminal Justice Majors

Author: Stephen E Lambert

Great Jobs for Criminal Justice Majors helps students explore career options within their field of study. Every aspect of the job-search process is covered, including assessing talents and skills, exploring options, making a smooth transition from college to career, conducting an effective job search, and landing the job. The book is filled with a variety of career choices.

Acknowledgments     v
Introduction: Investigate the Opportunities     vii
The Job Search
The Self-Assessment     3
The Resume and Cover Letter     19
Researching Careers and Networking     37
Interviewing and Job Offer Considerations     53
The Career Paths
Criminal Justice: A Degree in Demand     69
Path 1: Law Enforcement: Patrol Your Possibilities     73
Path 2: The Courts: The Case for Great Careers     107
Path 3: Corrections: Lock Up Your Future     147
Path 4: Juvenile Justice: Your Future Is Their Future     171
Path 5: Allied Business: Careers for the Criminal Justice Entrepreneur     195
Index     221

Economic Development

Author: Michael P Todaro

Economic Development , 10/e is the leading textbook in this field, providing a complete and balanced introduction to the requisite theory, the driving policy issues, and the latest research.

Principles and Concepts: Economics, Institutions, and Development: A Global Perspective; Comparative Economic Development; Classic Theories of Economic Growth and Development; Contemporary Models of Development and Underdevelopment. Problems and Policies: Domestic: Poverty, Inequality, and Development; Population Growth and Economic Development: Causes, Consequences, Controversies; Urbanization and Rural-Urban Migration: Theory and Policy; Human Capital: Education and Health in Economic Development; Agricultural Transformation and Rural Development; The Environment and Development; Development Policymaking and the Roles of Market, State, and Civil Society. Problems and Policies: International and Macro: International Trade Theory and Development Strategy; Balance of Payments, Developing-Country Debt, and Issues in Macroeconomic Stabilization; Foreign Finance, Investment, and Aid: Controversies and Opportunities; Finance and Fiscal Policy for Development; Some Critical Issues for the Twenty-First Century.

For all readers interested in economic development.

Real McCain or Broken Government

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

Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't

Author: Cliff Schecter

Thinking about voting for McCain? Read this book. Cliff Schecter's hard-hitting profile explores the gap between the public record of Senator John McCain and his media image. Drawing on a range of sources and adding his unique perspective and humor, Schecter guides the reader though McCain's long history of expedient flip-flops, especially on his signature issues of national security and campaign finance reform. Far from a straight-talking maverick, McCain emerges as a temperamental political chameleon who will do or say virtually anything to become president of the United States. On issue after issue - including the invasion and occupation of Iraq, torture, abortion, and gay rights - The Real McCain reveals a politician who started as a Goldwater Republican, experienced a brief period after sanity after his loss to George W. Bush in 2000, and began pandering to the very groups he challenged after deciding to run again in 2008.

Go to: Some Like It Hot or Alabamas Historic Restaurants and Their Recipes

Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches

Author: John W Dean

The concluding volume of The New York Times bestselling trilogy

One of today's most outspoken and respected political commentators asks: How can our democracy function when the key institutions of government no longer operate as intended by the Constitution? Stepping back to assess three decades of nearly continuous Republican rule, John W. Dean surveys the damage done to the three branches of government and traces their decline through the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I , and Bush II. Speaking to what the average moderate citizen can do to combat extremism, authoritarianism, incompetence, and the Republicans' deliberate focus on polarizing social issues, Broken Government is a must-have book for voters this election year.

Publishers Weekly

Dean delivers the presumably final book in his "impromptu trilogy" on the dread direction Republicans have taken both their party and the government in the past 40 years. His scathing premise that the government is on the brink of destruction due to the active choices of Republicans and the ineptitude of Democrats rings true as he meticulously identifies the failings and tenuous limbs upon which the three branches of government now exist. Dean also keenly identifies how the media has failed to address issues of how government processes its powers. Dean's prose provides clear and concise explanations and a rhythm that Michael easily integrates into his cadence. While sounding uncannily similar to narrator Scott Brick, Michael's voice has a slightly sterner tone, which further emphasizes Dean's disgusted stance. Footnotes are placed conveniently at the end of sentences in a surprisingly unobtrusive manner. While the performance does contain the occasionally badly edited voice shift, it still ends up an impressive and eye-opening deconstruction of politics today. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Reviews, July 30). (Aug.)

The Boston Globe

Broken Government examines, with great precision and even greater urgency . . . 'how Republican rule destroyed the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.'

Preface xi Introduction: Process Matters 1 Chapter 1 First Branch: Broken but Under Repair 25 Chapter 2 Second Branch: Broken and in Need of Repair 71 Chapter 3 Third Branch: Toward the Breaking Point 119 Chapter 4 Repairing Government: Restoring the Proper Processes 175 Acknowledgments 203 Appendices 205 Notes 253 Index 317

Hand of God or Moyers on America

2009-01-18T04:06:00.000-08:00

Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind

Author: Bernard N Nathanson

Dr. Nathanson's deeply personal memoir of what led a lifelong atheist and abortion crusader first to the pro-life cause, and finally to Christianity.

Publishers Weekly

During a period of roughly 20 years, Nathanson performed over 75,000 abortions. Since 1975, however, he has been among the leaders of the pro-life movement in the United States. Here, in a book that is part spiritual autobiography, part political campaign and part history of abortion, Nathanson explores the factors that led him into and eventually out of the abortion business. Nathanson recounts the moral hollowness and a paternalistic treatment of women and their bodies during his early years in medicine that allowed him to abort even his own child in a cold and antiseptic matter. However, the advent of ultrasound, and its images of the fetus as a developing life, along with a progressive conversion to Roman Catholicism, convinced Nathanson of the immorality of abortion and led him into a new phase of his life as a doctor. As revealing as this story is Nathanson's condescending tone and sententious sentences (e.g., "I will spare you the ineluctable Tolstoian observation, but I implore you to consider the psychological abyss that yawned beneath me") elicit very little sympathy either for Nathanson's plight or for the pro-life position. (May)

Kirkus Reviews

Autobiography combines with a battery of argument and data in this passionate account of the author's transition from pioneer of abortion rights to champion of the pro-life cause.

Ob/gyn Nathanson (New York Medical College; Aborting America, 1979) was co-founder in 1969 of the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws (now known as the National Abortion Rights Action League) and the director of the first and largest abortion clinic in the US. He describes how he grew up in a "hate-filled household" in which his brilliant but autocratic father taught him to despise his mother and ridiculed the family's Jewish observances. Nathanson senior thwarted his son's desire to fight in WW II and in 1945 arranged his transition from Cornell to McGill Medical School, where our author was deeply impressed by Karl Stern. During his residency at New York's famous Woman's Hospital, Nathanson was horrified at the consequences of botched illegal abortions, and his efforts to change the laws took off in 1967. He describes the decriminalization campaign and how in 1971 he became director of the Women's Services Clinic, where over 120 abortions were being performed daily. Nathanson's doubts began when Ultrasound revealed the intimate life and development of the fetus for the first time. In 1985 he helped make the controversial film The Silent Scream, which shows a fetus being sucked out and dismembered during an actual abortion. He argues that, whether or not it feels pain or is deemed viable, the fetus is a distinct and developing human life. Nathanson excoriates violence against abortion clinics but warns that current legislation is cutting off legitimate dissent. He is clearly not at peace with his past, and he states that he is presently seeking admission to the Catholic Church.

This concrete and powerful contribution will be required reading for all involved in the abortion debate.

Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times

Author: Bill Moyers

During the fifty years he has been variously a reporter, a political spokesperson, and a broadcaster, Bill Moyers has demonstrated a deep commitment to understanding the workings of our government and the role of the individual in society. His essays and commentaries, such as the recent “Shivers Down the Spine,” “A Time for Anger,” and “Journalism Under Fire,” are argued over and passed along as soon as they appear in print or on the Internet. Identifying what he sees as a political system increasingly at the mercy of a corporate ruling class, he urges a reengagement with the spirit of community that makes the work of democracy possible. Not only a trenchant critique of what is wrong, Moyers on America is also a call to arms for the progressive promise of the people of America, in whom his faith is strong.

Publishers Weekly

"I am a journalist but I am also a pilgrim," Moyers declares in this eloquent selection of his speeches and commentaries. Although these 20 pieces have been edited to resemble essays, their origin lends them a rousing urgency, as Moyers relates stories and insights in his personal journey from small-town Texas boyhood to eminent broadcast journalist. Whether he's extolling the virtues of participatory democracy based on the early 20th-century Progressive movement or lamenting recent evidence that democracy is on the auction block with politicians bought by special interests, Moyers's ability to communicate history, philosophy and personal experience simultaneously is impressive. His instinct for enlisting stories to get his message across appears throughout this collection, including tales from the years he worked for Lyndon Johnson (before and after Johnson became President). In a portrait of Johnson's political strengths and personal weaknesses, a less canny storyteller might leave out the telling anecdote about LBJ's integrating the Faculty Club of the University of Texas in 1964, but not Moyers. The same combination of candor, vividness and forthrightness animating his Johnson portrait is what gives such authority to Moyers's arguments that responsible journalism of unquestioned integrity is essential to our democratic process and that domination of news media by conglomerates, along with trends in celebrity-obsessed journalism, is undermining the freedom of the press. Moyers's wisdom, common sense and deeply felt principles should inspire and energize many readers in the very best way. (May 10) Forecast: A major media and advertising campaign should alert Moyers's huge audience to the unique appeal of this provocative yet always genial collection. New Press plans a 100,000-copy first printing, and publication coincides with Moyers's 70th birthday. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Patricia Moore - KLIATT

With three new chapters in the paperback edition, this collection of essays captures the passion of Bill Moyers as he looks at his country over the past 20 years. Moyers finds much to object to in the political trends in an America that seems to him to be increasingly dominated by corporate monies rather than by an active, informed electorate. Most of us are fairly familiar with the gentle, measured tones of Moyers' television style. Reading Moyers is a different experience. The reader may be startled by the aggressive, if not violent, force of his words, but will not put the book down without being challenged to be a more active American. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2004, Random House, Anchor, 233p., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

Moyers began his career in Texas writing for his hometown newspaper and then broadcasting for KTBC radio, a station owned by Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. After a significant interlude in politics helping organize the Peace Corps and serving as an assistant to President Johnson, he returned to broadcast journalism. This collection of speeches and commentaries highlights Moyers's love of America and hopes for democracy. Many of the essays are personal, such as the earliest piece from 1974, which recounts a weeklong road trip with his father on his 70th birthday (Moyers himself turned 70 this past June). The essay is no glorification of the good old days but a remembrance of the hardships of his father's life that ends with a positive note about the future. Moyers does not idealize America, either, but continues to exhort citizens to strive for a more perfect union. Public libraries and academic libraries with journalism programs should purchase this well-written collection. Judy Solberg, George Washington Univ. Libs., Washington, DC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

	Foreword
	Editor's note
Pt. 1	America now	1
	This is your story : pass it on	3
	Which America will we be now?	23
	One year later	26
	War is war	29
	Crossing the Euphrates	35
Pt. 2	The soul of democracy	37
	The declaration in our times	39
	Many faiths, one nation	47
	The soul of democracy	61
	Democracy in peril	68
	Wearing the flag	81
Pt. 3	The media	83
	The making of a journalist	85
	Journalism and democracy	99
	Countering the bastard muses	107
	The fight of our lives	123
	Public access in peril	127
Pt. 4	Looking back	151
	Where the jackrabbits were	153
	Empty nest	157
	Second thoughts	159
	Good friend	181
	Aging	191

Rule of Experts or Hitler

2009-01-17T15:53:00.000-08:00

Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity

Author: Timothy Mitchell

Can one explain the power of global capitalism without attributing to capital a logic and coherence it does not have? Can one account for the powers of techno-science in terms that do not merely reproduce its own understanding of the world?
Rule of Experts examines these questions through a series of interrelated essays focused on Egypt in the twentieth century. These explore the way malaria, sugar cane, war, and nationalism interacted to produce the techno-politics of the modern Egyptian state; the forms of debt, discipline, and violence that founded the institution of private property; the methods of measurement, circulation, and exchange that produced the novel idea of a national "economy," yet made its accurate representation impossible; the stereotypes and plagiarisms that created the scholarly image of the Egyptian peasant; and the interaction of social logics, horticultural imperatives, powers of desire, and political forces that turned programs of economic reform in unanticipated directions.
Mitchell is a widely known political theorist and one of the most innovative writers on the Middle East. He provides a rich examination of the forms of reason, power, and expertise that characterize contemporary politics. Together, these intellectually provocative essays will challenge a broad spectrum of readers to think harder, more critically, and more politically about history, power, and theory.

Hitler

Author: Joachim C Fest

A bestseller in its original German edition and subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages, this book has become a classic portrait of a man, a nation, and an era. Index. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Booknews

**** Reprint of the HBJ edition originally published in English in 1973 and endorsed by BCL3. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Lost Children of Wilder or Robert Moses and the Modern City

2009-01-17T05:40:00.000-08:00

The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care

Author: Nina Bernstein

In 1973 Marcia Lowry, a young civil liberties attorney, filed a controversial class-action suit that would come to be known as Wilder, which challenged New York City's operation of its foster-care system. Lowry's contention was that the system failed the children it was meant to help because it placed them according to creed and convenience, not according to need. The plaintiff was thirteen-year-old Shirley Wilder, an abused runaway whose childhood had been shaped by the system's inequities. Within a year Shirley would give birth to a son and relinquish him to the same failing system.

Seventeen years later, with Wilder still controversial and still in court, Nina Bernstein tried to find out what had happened to Shirley and her baby. She was told by child-welfare officials that Shirley had disappeared and that her son was one of thousands of anonymous children whose circumstances are concealed by the veil of confidentiality that hides foster care from public scrutiny. But Bernstein persevered.

The Lost Children of Wilder gives us, in galvanizing and compulsively readable detail, the full history of a case that reveals the racial, religious, and political fault lines in our child-welfare system, and lays bare the fundamental contradiction at the heart of our well-intended efforts to sever the destiny of needy children from the fate of their parents. Bernstein takes us behind the scenes of far-reaching legal and legislative battles, at the same time as she traces, in heartbreaking counterpoint, the consequences as they are played out in the life of Shirley's son, Lamont. His terrifying journey through the system has produced a man with deep emotional wounds, a stifled yearning for family, and a son growing up in the system's shadow.

In recounting the failure of the promise of benevolence, The Lost Children of Wilder makes clear how welfare reform can also damage its intended beneficiaries. A landmark achievement of investigative reporting and a tour de force of social observation, this book will haunt every reader who cares about the needs of children.

New York Times Book Review - Tanya Luhrmann

. . . a brilliantly researched account of an attempt to make the New York City foster care system fair for all its children. . . . Its legal analysis is rich, but . . . the drama is human.

Ellen Goodman

Nina Bernstein's fine reporting is more like archaeology. She searched down through layer after layer to show how the foster care system failed children, one generation after the next. ``The Lost Children of Wilder'' is a brilliant reconstruction of all the problems illuminated by a long-running lawsuit that makes Dickens' Jarndyce v. Jarndyce look swift and just.

David Rothman

This book joins a powerful analysis of law as an engine of social change with the fascinating story of the lives of a mother and son caught in the web of foster care and child-welfare agencies. Bernstein captures all the import and meaning of a legal case that split the philanthropic and civil liberties communities like no other. The Lost Children of Wilder is insightful and riveting, illuminating both the political and the personal.

Alex Kotlowitz

Nina Bernstein has pulled off a remarkable feat of reporting and storytelling that pushes us to reconsider how we handle children who are without home or family. A disturbing and riveting narrative that should be required reading for anyone who professes concern for children.

Publishers Weekly

In this first-rate investigation, New York Times reporter Bernstein explores the genesis and aftermath of the landmark 1973 legal case filed by young ACLU attorney Marcia Lowry against the New York State foster-care system. Known as Wilder for its 14-year-old African-American plaintiff, Shirley "Pinky" Wilder, the suit claimed Jewish and Catholic child welfare services had a lock on foster care funding and placements. Like Susan Sheehan in Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair, Bernstein illuminates broader social issues through the story of Shirley; Lamont, the son she bore at 14; and Lamont's young son--all graduates of New York's hellish child welfare system. The tale is gut-wrenchingly Dickensian--all the more so because, as Bernstein shows, the well-meaning 19th-century Jewish and Catholic philanthropists, clerics and parents who founded and expanded the child welfare system in New York ultimately deprived huge numbers of children of their legal and human rights as the demographics of New York changed. It took 25 years and many more lawsuits before the reforms mandated by Wilder began to be realized. In the interim, Lamont endured the same excruciating experiences his mother had suffered, including physical and sexual abuse, homelessness, witnessing the deaths of other children in foster care and losing his own child to the foster care system. A crack addict, Shirley died of AIDS at 40. Despite these horrors, the book ends with the hopeful postscript that Lamont's son currently lives with his mother, Kisha, and visits his now self-supporting father on weekends. Ten years in the making, this viscerally powerful history of institutionalized child abuse and the criminalization of poverty, of civil rights and social change, is compelling and essential reading. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (Feb. 28) Forecast: Like Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities, this book has the potential to jumpstart a national conversation about the failings of our social safety net for impoverished children. If it garners the review attention it deserves, it will find a solid audience among readers of Kozol's and Sheehan's books. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This book is a fascinating history of 28 years of change in the child foster care system in New York City, where sectarian interests controlled the placement of homeless, neglected, abused, and emotionally disturbed children and adolescents. The book follows the lives of lead plaintiff Shirley Wilder and her son as Shirley goes from homeless preteen to teenage mother at 14 and is shifted from home to foster home to group home to institution. Her son grows up in foster care and institutions. The book simultaneously follows a 1986 federal lawsuit, which became known as Wilder, brought on behalf of foster care children in New York City by the ACLU Children's Rights Project. New York Times reporter Bernstein conducted extensive interviews of many of the participants for this book, which is compelling both for its elucidation of child welfare practices and for its demonstration of how litigation can affect social policy. A necessary purchase for New York State academic and larger public libraries and a very useful one for social welfare and policy collections nationwide.--Mary Jane Brustman, Univ. at Albany Libs., NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

What People Are Saying

David Rothman
This book joins a powerful analysis of law as an engine of social change with the fascinating story of the lives of a mother and son caught in the web of foster care and child-welfare agencies. Bernstein captures all the import and meaning of a legal case that split the philanthropic and civil liberties communities like no other. The Lost Children of Wilder is insightful and riveting, illuminating both the political and the personal.
— (David Rothman, author of The Discovery of the Asylum)

Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York

Author: Hilary Ballon

A fresh look at the greatest builder in the history of New York City and one of its most controversial figures.

Above Hallowed Ground or Work Hard Studyand Keep Out of Politics

2009-01-16T16:28:00.000-08:00

Above Hallowed Ground: A Photographic Record of September 11, 2001

Author: Christopher Sweet

"On the morning of September 11th, a new kind of horror shook the world. Terrorists crashed two passenger airliners into the World Trade Center in the worst attack on U.S. soil in the nation's history. But at the same time a new generation of heroes rose up to fight it. This book chronicles not only the devastation of that day, but also the valor and heroism of those who saved thousands of lives." Not one of these photographs has been published before. On top of that, these images offer a vantage point no ordinary photographers could obtain: They were taken by members of the New York City Police Department, uniformed and civilian, who were on the scene moments after the first plane hit and who were behind the scenes during the entire rescue and recovery effort.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-One of the better photographic remembrances of the World Trade Center disaster. None of these color photos have heretofore been published and many depict scenes or were taken from positions that were off-limits to commercial or amateur photographers. Particularly breathtaking are those taken by Dave Fitzpatrick, an off-duty detective who rushed to board a police helicopter that morning and spent the remainder of the day taking thousands of photographs "that became the only aerial views of the devastation and early rescue efforts." The photos are chronologically arranged, beginning minutes after the first plane hit the North Tower, continuing through the succeeding days of search-and-rescue operations, and culminating with the cleanup. Many are full page and there are at least a dozen spreads. As a "photographic record," this coffee-table-sized book documents a historic event, confirming, for example, why no rooftop rescues were possible and the extent of the damage to the entire area now known as Ground Zero. It also stands as a tribute to the public-safety employees, construction workers, and volunteers who worked side by side throughout a horrific ordeal. The book is dedicated to the 23 members of the NYPD who were lost that day and to their families.-Dori DeSpain, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Book review: Der Neue Industriestaat

'Work Hard, Study...and Keep Out of Politics!': Adventures and Lessons from an Unexpected Public Life

Author: III James Baker

A revelatory memoir from one of the great political minds of our time.

The real inside story of why Gerald Ford did not ask Ronald Reagan to be his running mate in 1976-and why Reagan did not pick Ford in 1980; the battle over Florida 2000; the aborted White House job switch that inadvertently opened the door to the Iran-Contra scandal; the Bush campaign's wish that Dan Quayle would offer to resign from the ticket in 1992; the White House turmoil in the dark days following the Reagan assassination attempt; and a great deal more . . .

White House Chief of Staff (twice), Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and campaign chairman for three different candidates in five successive presidential campaigns-few people have lived and breathed politics as deeply as James Baker. Now, with candor and Texas-style storytelling, and not a few surprises, he takes us into his thirty-five years behind the scenes.

None of it was planned. His grandfather, the "Captain," drilled this advice into him: "Work hard, study . . . and keep out of politics!" Then a personal tragedy changed the life of a forty-year-old Texas Democratic lawyer and he never looked back. From campaign horsetrading, which sometimes got rough ("Politics ain't beanbag," says Baker), to the inner councils of the Reagan and Bush administrations to the controversies of today, Baker offers frank talk and spellbinding narratives, along with personal appraisals of six presidents and a constellation of others. It was a long, unexpected journey from Houston, Texas, to Washington, D.C.-and you'll want to travel it with him.

The New York Times - Jacob Heilbrunn

Anyone looking for yet another Republican apostate to denounce Bush should look elsewhere. But there's no need to worry: the stiletto once wielded so deftly by Baker in Washington has not gone dull. Baker, who has already discussed the end of the cold war in an earlier book called The Politics of Diplomacy, here offers a more personal account that implicitly contrasts the past with the present, and is the more telling for its restraint. He focuses on his years as a political operative and official in the Ford, Reagan and Bush 1 administrations to draw lessons about the importance of planning ahead in running political campaigns and governments. Though his memoir may at some points envelop the Reagan years in a nostalgic haze, it provides an extraordinarily illuminating account of the decades-old Republican feud between old-money power brokers and true believers. Ultimately, it shows how he successfully kept the right in check—and what happens when someone doesn't.

Publishers Weekly

Baker's grandfather, a prominent Houston lawyer, told his grandson to avoid becoming a politician hence the title of this memoir. Baker intended to follow that advice, but, at age 40, he switched course after his wife died of cancer, leaving behind four sons. George Herbert Walker Bush persuaded the widower to change parties and work on Bush's Republican Party senatorial campaign to take his mind off his grief. Eventually, Baker played political and policymaking roles in the presidential administrations of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, with nearly four years as Bush's secretary of state, including during the first Gulf war. More sweeping and less formal than Baker's 1995 memoir of his international adventures, The Politics of Diplomacy, this is also haphazardly organized despite its chronological approach. Baker seems to idolize all three presidents he served directly, though he alludes to character flaws and questionable decisions. His defense of the status quo is likely to please loyal Republicans, annoy loyal Democrats and make independents wonder. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Baker, an alumnus of three Republican presidential administrations (Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush) and advisor to five consecutive presidential campaigns, has written a readable personal and political memoir. While he offers insights into his childhood, his early life as a lawyer, and the death of his first wife from cancer in 1970, the heart of his book, titled after advice from his grandfather, is made up of insider observations gleaned from the many political figures with whom he worked. Delving into such events as the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981 and presidential campaigns and debates, Baker almost seems to be from a bygone era: political foes could still be friends outside of politics. While disagreeing with Jimmy Carter, who defeated Ford in the 1976 presidential election, Baker later cochaired the Commission on Federal Election Reform with him in 2005. Baker touches on his post-White House work, including helping George W. Bush with the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida. While definitely written from a Republican loyalist point of view and with more than a few comments about God and faith, Baker's book will interest political junkies on both sides of the aisle and remind them that party politics do not require disrespect between opponents. Suitable for public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/06.] Leigh Mihlrad, Albert Einstein Coll. of Medicine of Yeshiva Univ., Bronx, NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Howl On Trial or The Constitution and 9 11

2009-01-16T06:15:00.000-08:00

Howl On Trial: The Battle for Free Expression

Author: Bill Morgan

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Howl and Other Poems, with nearly one million copies in print, City Lights presents the story of editing, publishing, and defending Allen Ginsberg's landmark poem within a broader context of obscenity issues and censorship of literary works.

This collection begins with an introduction by publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who shares his memories of hearing "Howl" first read at the 6 Gallery, of his arrest, and the subsequent legal defense of Howl's publication. Never-beforepublished correspondence of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Gregory Corso, John Hollander, Richard Eberhart, and others provides an in-depth commentary on the poem's ethi-cal intent and its social significance to the author and his contemporaries. A section on the public reaction to the trial includes newspaper reportage, op-ed pieces by Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, and letters to the editor from the public, which provide fascinating background material on the cultural climate of the mid-1950s. A timeline of literary censorship in the United States places this battle for free expression in a historical context.

Also included are photographs, transcripts of relevant trial testimony, Judge Clayton Horn's decision and its ramifications, and a long essay by Albert Bendich, the ACLU attorney who defended Howl on constitutional grounds. Editor Bill Morgan discusses more recent challenges to Howl in the late 1980s and how the fight against censorship continues today in new guises.

Publishers Weekly

For the 50th anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, the poet's archivist and biographer Morgan and City Lights publisher Peters, and City Lights was Howl's original publisher) have assembled this intermittently fascinating collection of documents, mostly related to the book's obscenity trial in San Francisco in 1957. These documents provides a coherent narrative of the composition of the poem, as well as the prosecution of publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti and one of his City Lights employees and their eventual exoneration. The poet's letters discussing the publication of his book are often illuminating, particularly the massive letter to John Hollander that dissects every element of Howl, but not all the correspondence is equally interesting. Similarly, the lengthy trial transcript is entertaining at times, but would have benefited from being rendered into prose and excerpted appropriately. The book is certainly useful as a reference tool for those researching Ginsberg or obscenity law, and will interest Ginsberg completists, but this isn't a smooth read for a general audience. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

William Gargan - Library Journal

A fitting tribute to Howlon its 50th anniversary, this casebook reprints Allen Ginsberg's (1926–97) landmark poem and collects important sources related to the obscenity trial that followed the 1957 sale of Howl & Other Poemsat Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. Biographer Morgan (I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg) and City Lights Books publisher Peters include newspaper articles on the case; never-before-published correspondence from Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and others; significant excerpts from the trial transcript; and Judge Clayton M. Horn's decision exonerating the book. David Perlman's "How Captain Hanrahan Made Howla Best-Seller" and ACLU lawyer Albert M. Bendich's "Fifty Years of City Lights" are among the essays featured. Morgan's concluding piece, "The Censorship Battle Continues," criticizes current Federal Communications Commission regulations that keep Howlfrom being read on the air and emphasizes the need for continued vigilance to protect free speech. With chronologies for Howland "Milestones of Literary Censorship"; highly recommended.

Robert SaundersonCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information. - School Library Journal

Adult/High School
This compilation of essays, correspondence, court transcripts, memoirs, newspaper accounts, and photographs concerning the 1956 publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems adds up to a fascinating account of one of the most significant cases of censorship in U.S. history. The editors do a superb job of setting the stage leading to the court case and of providing thoughtful testimony to its lasting importance. Among the many helpful features: a chronology of Howl the book and Howl the case; another of censorship in general; reproductions of several San Francisco Chronicle articles, editorials, and letters to the editor; and the complete text of the poem. By far, though, the most compelling parts of the book are the "Howl Letters" and large sections of the official transcript from the 1957 trial. Most of the correspondence is between Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but there are letters to and/or from Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, John Hollander, Richard Eberhart, Louis Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady. These letters provide a window into the meaning and significance of Ginsberg's great poem. Besides Ginsberg and the chief defense lawyer, J. W. Ehrlich, the other person who shines brightly in these pages is Ferlinghetti, a longtime champion of free expression. This book is a gold mine for reports on censorship, especially those in need of primary-source material.

Kirkus Reviews

A fascinating assortment of material-newspaper articles, transcripts, photographs, letters from the principals, commentary-on the 1957 obscenity trial in San Francisco that pitted the "people" against City Lights, the bookshop that published and sold Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems. The poem that occasioned it all (and Ginsberg's related work, "Footnote to Howl") appears early in this engaging and at times astonishing volume. And it's not hard to see why some procrustean mid-'50s folk found the poems offensive: Naughty words and allusions to sexual intimacies and street life abound. As the editors explain, Howl was first grabbed by vigilant Customs officers (it was printed abroad), then by San Francisco cops who, disguised as patrons, bought a copy at City Lights. Some will be surprised to learn that Ginsberg was never arrested or charged; only City Lights owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his unfortunate clerk were booked and fingerprinted. After a brief trial (no jury) that included expert testimony from literary luminaries Mark Schorer, Walter Van Tilburg Clark and Kenneth Rexroth (all for the defense), Judge Clayton W. Horn declared, "I do not believe that Howl is without redeeming social importance." Highlights of the trial transcript (sadly, only excerpted here) include testy exchanges and struggles to explain how Howl differs from the Book of Job. Among the most intriguing pieces are reprints from the San Francisco Chronicle, which immediately recognized the free-speech, free-press issues at stake. Morgan (Ginsberg's longtime archivist and author of an upcoming biography of the writer) and Peters (publisher of City Lights) have provided some useful chronologies and someprobably superfluous warnings about today's family-values crusaders. Ferlinghetti himself, now in his mid-80s, offers a feisty, if hyperbolic, Introduction. The anti-climactic material that follows the judge's opinion might have found a happier home in an appendix. A volume that will appeal to all who cherish their right to read uncensored the outpourings of the human heart.

Look this: Mondo Cocktail or Salmon House on the Hill Cookbook

The Constitution and 9/11: Recurring Threats to Americaa

Author: Louis Fisher

The announced purpose of U.S. antiterrorist policies after 9/11 was to bring democracy and the rule of law to the Middle East. At home, those values were regularly threatened by illegal, unconstitutional, secret, and unaccountable programs. The Bush administration claimed that terrorists hate America for its freedoms, yet its actions jeopardized those freedoms and brought the reputation of the United States lower in the eyes of the world.

Government surveillance. Suspension of habeas corpus. Secret tribunals. Most Americans would recognize these controversial topics from today's headlines. Unfortunately, as Louis Fisher reminds us, such violations of freedom have been with us throughout our history—and continue to threaten the Constitution and the rights that it protects.

Distilling more than two centuries of history into a panoramic and compelling narrative, Fisher chronicles the longstanding tension between protecting our constitutional rights and safeguarding national security, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the McCarthy hearings to George W. Bush's "War on Terror." Along the way, he raises crucial questions regarding our democracy's ongoing tug-of-war between secrecy and transparency, between expediency and morality, and between legal double-talk and the true rule of law.

Fisher focuses especially on how the Bush administration's responses to 9/11 have damaged our constitutional culture and values, threatened individual liberties, and challenged the essential nature of our government's system of checks and balances. His close analysis of five topics—the resurrection of military tribunals, the Guantбnamo detainees, the state secrets privilege, NSA surveillance,and extraordinary rendition—places into sharp relief the gradual but relentless erosion of fundamental rights along with an enormous expansion and concentration of presidential power in the post-9/11 era.

For Fisher, the Constitution's strength as a guarantor of freedom and rights is only as sound and reliable as our own commitment to the values it describes. Each generation of Americans is asked in essence: do you want a republic or a monarchy? Benjamin Franklin, of course, famously responded: "A republic, if you can keep it." Fisher's book reminds us of the political principles we need to rediscover to keep our nation free.

Steven Puro - Library Journal

Fisher (Constitutional Conflicts Between Congress and the President) analyzes the crisis in U.S. civil liberties created by presidential decisions since 9/11 and connects them to a broad legal and historical analysis of presidential authority going back to the Whiskey Rebellion and the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1790s. His concern: internal damage to U.S. constitutional values and to our system of checks and balances in times of crisis or perceived crisis. Fisher gives special attention to governmental limitations placed on the civil liberties of the vulnerable, that is, "undesirable," groups, e.g., the Japanese during World War II. He makes his goal clear: "By reviewing the periods where America falls short of its...standards, my hope is to rededicate the commitment to values that enrich us and benefit the world community." Fisher finds that Presidents, especially the current President and the executive domestic limitations his administration has imposed, have historically created a greater threat to U.S. citizens' civil liberties than have perceived potential external threats. To maintain democratic values, Fisher believes that individuals and public officials must critically question executive actions. A well-supported history and analysis, especially for public libraries, this wide-ranging and informative book is highly recommended.

Misunderestimated or In Churchills Shadow

2009-01-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry, and the Bush Haters

Author: Bill Sammon

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

1	Rise of the Bush Haters	1
2	"Something of a Churchill Scholar"	25
3	A Milestone and a Mission	55
4	Midterm Meltdown	71
5	The No-Gloat Zone	97
6	"Whining Pool"	115
7	"Hosed by the State of the Union!"	137
8	The "Get"	149
9	"Let's Go"	173
10	"Misinforming the World"	189
11	The Rah-Rahs vs. the Wiseasses	223
12	Fly Boy	255
13	"A Long, Hard Slog"	271
14	Bonefishing in Belize	291
15	"We Got Him"	317
16	Vietnam Election	327
	Acknowledgments	353

In Churchill's Shadow: Confronting the Past in Modern Britain

Author: David Cannadin

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

Terry or Black Belt Patriotism

2009-01-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

Terry: My Daughter's Life and Death Struggle with Alcoholism

Author: George S McGovern

It was just before Christmas 1994 that Senator George McGovern received the terrible news that his forty-five-year-old daughter, Terry, had been found dead in a parking lot near her Madison, Wisconsin, home. In an alcoholic stupor, Terry had stumbled out of a bar and into a snowbank, where she fell asleep and froze to death. In this extraordinary remembrance, Senator McGovern attempts to come to grips with the circumstances of his child's demise as well as her troubled life. Alcohol and depression were always twin curses for Terry. Though she maintained a facade of well-being, especially while working on her famous father's political campaigns, she was desperately trying to conquer her addictions. For long stretches of her adult life, despite her efforts to stay sober, she was shuttled in and out of detox centers and institutions. Throughout McGovern's remarkable career in Washington and after his retirement from the Senate, Terry's illness shadowed her parents' every activity. Could they save her without destroying themselves? Were McGovern's political ambitions a factor in Terry's despair? Could Terry's two young daughters - the Senator's grandchildren - remain with their mother? Terry's struggle, and the McGovern family's efforts to save her and learn from her illness, are the heartbreaking themes of this painful and unforgettable book. With courage and compassion, George McGovern addresses a private tragedy with an intimacy and honesty rarely achieved by a public figure. Terry is a book that has forever changed McGovern's life and will undoubtedly alter America's view of alcoholism.

New interesting book: The Silent Majority or The Anti Federalist

Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America

Author: Chuck Norris

Black Belt Patriotism offers a unique perspective on the steps we must take to kick the problems plaguing America, straight from a true American icon.

The Ethics of Identity or Homegrown Democrat

2009-01-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

The Ethics of Identity

Author: Kwame Anthony Appiah

Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality: in the past couple of decades, a great deal of attention has been paid to such collective identities. They clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. But to what extent do "identities" constrain our freedom, our ability to make an individual life, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? In this beautifully written work, renowned philosopher and African Studies scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions.

The Ethics of Identity takes seriously both the claims of individuality—the task of making a life—and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves.

What sort of life one should lead is a subject that has preoccupied moral and political thinkers from Aristotle to Mill. Here, Appiah develops an account of ethics, in just this venerable sense—but an account that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances, our individuality with our identities. As he observes, the question who we are has always been linked to the question what we are.

Adopting a broadly interdisciplinary perspective, Appiah takes aim at the cliches and received ideas amid which talk of identity so often founders. Is "culture" a good? For that matter, does the concept of culture really explain anything? Is diversity of value in itself? Are moral obligations the only kind there are? Has the rhetoric of "human rights" been overstretched? In the end, Appiah's arguments make it harder to think of the world as divided between the West and the Rest; between locals and cosmopolitans; between Us and Them. The result is a new vision of liberal humanism—one that can accommodate the vagaries and variety that make us human.

Interesting book: InSPAration A Teens Guide to Healthy Living Inspired by Todays Top Spas or The Smart Students Guide to Healthy Living

Homegrown Democrat

Author: Garrison Keillor

Both deeply personal and intellectually savvy, Homegrown Democrat is a celebration of liberalism as the "politics of kindness." In his inimitable style, Keillor draws on a lifetime of experience amongst the hardworking, God-fearing people of the Midwest and pays homage to the common code of civic necessities that arose from the left: Protect the social compact. Defend the powerless. Maintain government as a necessary force for good. As Keillor tells it, these are articles of faith that are being attacked by hard-ass Republican tax cutters who believe that human misery is a Dickensian fiction. In a blend of nostalgic reminiscence, humorous meditation, and articulate ire, Keillor asserts the value of his boyhood—the values of Lake Wobegon—that do not square with the ugly narcissistic agenda at work in the country today.

The Washington Post - Ted Van Dyk

Garrison Keillor's Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America is a graceful, loving celebration of the old-time Minnesota liberalism of the heart that is so sorely missed in today's politics. His book is dedicated, appropriately, "to all of the good Democratic-Farmer Laborites of Minnesota."

Homegrown Democrat reads like a personal letter from an incorrigibly idealistic old friend. It is filled with personal stories, observations on people and events and unquenchable hopefulness.

Publishers Weekly

Characteristically soothing and lyrical, Keillor's voice takes on an almost preachy tone in this polemic against the "hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills" that he feels populate the Republican party. Though Democrats will laud the points he scores against the Bush administration and Republicans in general, Keillor's presentation suffers from too much emotion, coupled with a more rigid adherence to the script than he usually observes in his Lake Wobegon stories (A Prairie Home Companion, etc.). One of the audiobook's joys comes when Keillor uses multi-syllabic, pleasingly perverse language la Charles Dickens to convey the deeds of Republicans, whom he views as slimy, odious characters working to fashion a world where people live in fear, only venturing out of their homes in giant cars to gather supplies in the nearest mall. Keillor's trademark dreaminess resurfaces, however, when he returns to familiar ground and offers up his Minnesota boyhood as a case study of the benefits of voting for the Democratic ticket. Kind but strict parents and a decent public education all served Keillor well, and he sees these things as a cure-all for society's ills. Though this one-size-fits-all answer won't sit well with some listeners, Keillor's likeminded fans will enjoy hearing his passionate take on politics. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Forecasts, June 21). (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

While Keillor might wish he were known first as a writer his fiction appeared in The New Yorker long before Prairie Home Companion became a public radio fixture the truth is that his readership comes precultivated from the horde of Lake Wobegone obsessives to whom his voice is soothingly familiar. That audience is probably going to vote Democratic this November, and Keillor's partisan hope is that his offering will help get some of them actually to work for the party's presidential nominee. The Keillor encountered here is at times openly surly. But Keillor most effectively connects with others when he is happy, and so his positive consciousness streams in which he invokes the Scandinavian-derived, northern Midwestern progressive, Socialist Democrat tradition are far more memorable than his snarling, anti-Republican rants. Some urbanites will read Keillor's paeans to wise municipal Democratic stewardship with amusement, but all will appreciate Keillor's candor in distancing core Rooseveltian values from certain tendencies of political correctness and Yuppie hubris. Recommended for public libraries where political (and Lake Wobegone) books circulate well. Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Reaching Past the Wire or Narrative of Sojourner Truth

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

Reaching Past the Wire: A Nurse at Abu Ghraib

Author: Deanna Germain

On a frigid afternoon in February 2003, Deanna Germain, a nurse practitioner and new grandmother living in Blaine, Minnesota, received the registered letter she had hoped would never arrive. In six days she was to report for active duty as war loomed in Iraq. The purpose of mobilization: “For Enduring Freedom.” With startling detail, Lt. Col. Germain offers a clear-eyed account of life as a nursing supervisor behind the fortified gates of Abu Ghraib. Her duty: To treat Iraqi prisoners, U.S. soldiers, and Marines in need of medical attention. Shortly after she arrived, the notorious prison made headlines around the world for abuses that had stopped months before. Despite unbearable heat, frequent mortar attacks, medical supply shortages, substandard facilities, the relentless stench of war, and sleepless nights quartered in a tiny prison cell, Germain served the medical needs of each of her patients with remarkable humanity. In this crucible of wartime stress, workplace turmoil, and cultural uncertainty, Germain found herself forging powerful connections with colleagues and translators. She learned from translators about normal Iraqi families struggling to survive impossible conditions. And after vowing to avoid personal relationships with prisoners, she became a comfort to many. Duty and compassion, camaraderie and hope all helped to pull her through. Lt. Col. Deanna Germain, USAR (Ret.), is a nurse practitioner at a pain clinic near Minneapolis. Connie Lounsbury is a freelance writer who also teaches writing classes.

Publishers Weekly

I realized that the military can make a good soldier out of a mother," writes this Minnesota grandmother and lieutenant colonel in the army reserves, "but it can't take the good mother out of the soldier." In this hardship-weary but generally positive account of her 18 months of service as nurse and soldier at Abu Ghraib, the notorious site of prisoner abuse by American military personnel, Germain seeks to redress the stigma of that enormous scandal. Detailing the daily challenges, sacrifices and service of those at Abu Ghraib, she tells of her contact with Iraqi citizens, detainee patients and foreign workers. Arriving after-the-fact and to another part of the compound, her account contains no insights into the abuse scandal itself (indeed, her take on the misdeeds of a "few" echoes the official "bad-apple" line of military and government spokespersons). The nebulous hierarchy of command at Abu Ghraib, the ambivalence of hospital staff toward wounded prisoners and first-hand glimpses of the exploitative subcontracting of Third World labor by American corporations like KBR do not shake Germain's faith in the rightness of her mission or turn her prosaic narrative-interspersed with texts of e-mails home and journal entries-from the unexamined constant of "duty to country." (Sept. 1)

Narrative of Sojourner Truth

Author: Olive Gilbert

This inspiring memoir, first published in 1850, recounts the struggles of a distinguished African-American abolitionist and champion of women's rights. Sojourner Truth tells of her life in slavery, her self-liberation, and her travels across America in pursuit of racial and sexual equality. Essential reading for students of American history.

The Rage and the Pride or Arnold Schwarzenegger

2009-01-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

The Rage and the Pride

Author: Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci faces the themes unchained by the Islamic terrorism: the contrast and, in her opinion, incompatibility between the Islamic world and the Western world; the global reality of the Jihad and the lack of response, the lenience of the West. With her brutal sincerity she hurls pitiless accusations, vehement invectives, and denounces the uncomfortable truths that all of us know but never dare to express. With her rigorous logic, lucidity of mind, she defends our culture and blames what she calls our blindness, our deafness, our masochism, the conformism and the arrogance of the Politically Correct. With the poetry of a prophet like a modern Cassandra she says it in the form of a letter addressed to all of us.

Publishers Weekly

Noted Italian journalist Fallaci (Interview with History; etc.) is capable of hard-hitting, trenchant social criticism, but she fails to accomplish that in this impassioned but sloppy post-September 11 critique, which has been a bestseller in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Fallaci only aggravates her lack of rigorous thinking by translating the work herself, resulting in a clumsy text that appears not to have been edited or proofread by a fluent English speaker. (Whatever resonance "cicada"-her choice term for the "so-called intellectuals" whom she addresses-has in Italian fails to translate into English.) After a melodramatic preface in which Fallaci congratulates herself on her courage in speaking the truth (and in her defense, apparently there have been efforts to ban the book in France), she lights into the European, and especially Italian, "cicadas" who felt that, on September 11, 2001, America got what she had coming to her and who, in the name of political correctness, fail to condemn the "Reverse Crusade" being waged by Islamic zealots like Osama bin Laden. But Fallaci's love for America, her adopted home, and her critique of European intellectuals' perverse contempt for it, is laced with a bile that may lead readers to suspect her of anti-Arab bias-a possibility she is all to aware of, repeatedly defending herself against the charge of racism. Fallaci's "Italy for Italians" diatribe, her ugly portrait of Muslim immigrants as invading and violating her native Florence ("Terrorists, thieves, rapists. Ex-convicts, prostitutes, beggars. Drug-dealers, contagiously ill"), her denial that there is a moderate Islam, will not sit well with American readers, who may wonder why this small book has, in the publisher's words, "caused a turmoil never registered in decades" in Italy, France and Spain. (Nov.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Look this: Galletas Cookies or Indiana Cooks

Arnold Schwarzenegger: A Biography

Author: Louise Krasniewicz

From his role in The Terminator to his more recent work as "Governator" of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has played a major role in American popular culture. This accessible and entertaining biography traces the trajectory of Arnold's career-sports figure turned movie star turned entrepreneur turned politician. Elected as governor of California in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger now dramatically and vividly represents the determination and, to a great extent, the relentlessness necessary for achieving great fame, political power, and iconic status. While many readers will have read about his benchmark achievements, this biography will reveal the surprising complexities behind the public scenes and put them into a larger cultural context. Photos and a timeline of significant events round out this insightful biography.

Rutherford B Hayes or Twice as Good

2009-01-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

Rutherford B. Hayes

Author: Hans L Trefouss

The disputed election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, in which Congress set up a special electoral commission, handing the disputed electoral votes to Hayes, brings recent events to sharp focus.Historian Hans L. Trefousse explores Haye's new relevance and reconsiders what many have seen as the pitfalls of his presidency. A great intellectual and one of our best-educated presidents, Hayes did much in the way of healing the nation and elevating the presidency.

Interesting book: An Herbalists Guide to Growing and Using Echinacea or Nutrition for Sport and Exercise

Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power

Author: Marcus Mabry

Perhaps no American leader is better known and less understood than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Beyond the dramatic story of the past--her ascent from segregated Alabama to the halls of power--and the controversy of her present, little is known about her as a woman, and while she has broken barriers and achieved extraordinary success, she is also one of the most polarizing figures of our time. Rice embodies xontradiction. As an African American girl growing up in the South when the civil rights movement was at its most tumultuous and inspiring, her own views on race are complex. While she has benefited from advances in civil rights legislation and evolving acceptance of blacks, hers has been a singularly individualistic rise, the product of her parents; determination to make her "special."

Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power is the first biography of Rice to reveal the private woman behind the public image. Bringing his superlative skills as a journalist to bear on this most intriguing of subjects, Newsweek chief of correspondents Marcus Mabry chronicles the fascinating story of Rice's life so far: from her childhood in Alabama and Colorado--where she loved ice skating and playing the piano--to her discovery of international affairs at the knee of Madeleine Albright's father, Josef Korbel, to her role in taking America to war in Iraq. What drove her to the fateful decisions that the United States and the world are now living with? How will history judge her and what awaits her after her service to George W. Bush? Mabry answers these questions om a deeply nuanced portrait of a driven woman of many contradictions whose power is vast--and still growing.

The Washington Post - Amy Alexander

In Twice as Good, we encounter the secretary of state in a straightforward biography that is at once utterly predictable and moderately surprising. By the end of this exceptionally well-researched book, whatever opinion you take away probably will stem more from your own expectations than from the Condoleezza Rice portrayed in these pages.

The New York Times - Jonathan Freedland

Twice as Good, by Marcus Mabry, the chief of correspondents for Newsweek, works hard to solve the Rice puzzle. It digs deep into the story of her family, including her slave ancestors, and the hugely influential figure of her father, the Rev. John Rice. We follow the family's journey from segregation in Alabama to educational opportunity in Colorado and finally to California. We learn much — with a detail uncommon in a political biography — of her almost frighteningly intense childhood.

Preface     xxiv
Introduction: Essence     xxix
Alabama Steel
Debut     3
Perfect     14
Resistance     39
Higher Learning
Fall     63
Rebirth     78
Star     102
Prelude     131
Transition     150
Path to Power
Transformation     169
Schooled     193
Power     241
Storms     268
History     297
Notes     309
Bibliography     341
Acknowledgments     348
Credits     351
Index     353

Criminal Interrogation and Confessions or Reckless Mind

2009-01-11T07:41:00.000-08:00

Criminal Interrogation and Confessions

Author: Fred Edward Inbau

Teach your students the fundamentals of criminal interrogation and confessions with this classic text. This comprehensive text includes extensive material on the verbal and nonverbal behavior symptoms useful in distinguishing between truthful and untruthful subjects; methods for conducting non—accusatory interviews; a systematic interrogation procedure for obtaining admissions from the untruthful; an examination of the law governing interrogations and the admissibility of confessions; and an insightful discussion of problems associated with the Miranda decision.

Look this: Complementary and Alternative Medicine Supplement use in People with Diabetes or Mind Body Fitness

Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics

Author: Mark Lilla

European history of the past century is full of examples of philosophers, writers, and jurists who, whether they lived in democratic, communist, or fascist societies, supported and defended totalitarian principles and horrific regimes. But how can intellectuals, who should be alert to the evils of tyranny, betray the ideals of freedom and independent inquiry? How can they take positions that, implicitly or not, endorse oppression and human suffering on a vast scale?

In profiles of Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Alexandre Kojeve, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, Mark Lilla demonstrates how these thinkers were so deluded by the ideologies and convulsions of their times that they closed their eyes to authoritarianism, brutality, and state terror. He shows how intellectuals who fail to master their passions can be driven into a political sphere they scarcely understand, with momentous results for our intellectual and political lives.

Booknews

In a series of six essays, Lilla (social thought, U. of Chicago) looks at six European philosophers and political theorists and examines how their thought affected their political affiliations and actions, as well as how the politics of the time affected their intellectual endeavors. Discussing the politics of Michel Foucalt, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, and Alexandre Koj<`e>ve, he argues that all of these thinkers were terribly irresponsible in allowing and even advocating for their work to be used in the goals of authoritarian communism of fascism. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Liberty and Power or In the Jaws of the Dragon

2009-01-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America

Author: Harry L Watson

As an engaging and persuasive survey of American public life from 1816 to 1848, Harry L. Watson's Liberty and Power remains a landmark achievement. Now updated to address twenty-five years of new scholarship, the book brilliantly interprets the exciting political landscape that was the age of Jackson-a time that saw the rise of strong political parties and an increased popular involvement in national politics. In this enduring and impressive work, Watson examines the tension between liberty and power that both characterized the period and formed part of its historical legacy.

Library Journal

Despite its subtitle, this is much more than just another study of Jacksonian-era politics. Instead, Watson has integrated recent literature and traditional themes to produce a persuasive and well-written survey of public life from 1816 to 1848. He shows how social, cultural, and economic factors interacted with politics, and stresses as a major theme the tension between liberty and power that both characterized the period and forms part of its historical legacy. His explanations of republican theory and the fight over the Bank of the United States are particularly clear, and there are also good sections on slavery, the Indians, and the changing role of women. Recent scholarship has dated well-known previous surveys of Jacksonian America. For now, this should be the volume of choice. For most libraries.-- Jonathan D. Sarna, Hebrew Union Coll.-Jewish Inst. of Religion, Cincinnati

Look this: Comunicação de Negócios Hoje

In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony

Author: Eamonn Fingleton

In recent years, popular wisdom has held that opening American markets to Chinese goods was the best way to promote democracy in Beijing---that the Communist Party’s grip would quickly weaken as increasingly affluent Chinese citizens embraced American values.

That popular wisdom was wrong. As Eamonn Fingleton shows in this devastating book, instead of America changing China, China is changing America. Although this process of reverse convergence has been swept largely under the carpet by knee-jerk globalists in the American press, Americans will soon be hearing much more about it. Nowhere is the pattern more obvious than in business. Many top American corporations---Boeing, AT&T, the Detroit automobile companies, among them—openly collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party. In a stunning rejection of Western values, Yahoo! even provided the Chinese secret police with vital evidence that resulted in a ten-year jail sentence for one of its Chinese subscribers, a brave young dissident, under draconian censorship laws. Selling the American national interest short, countless other corporations abjectly do Beijing’s lobbying in Congress.

This book---the culmination of twenty years of study---also breaks new ground by revealing the secret behind China’s phenomenal savings rate. Top leaders literally force the Chinese people to save through a highly counterintuitive---and, to ordinary citizens, virtually invisible---policy called suppressed consumption. This practice, which is to economics roughly what steroids are to sport, is fundamentally incompatible with Westernideas of fair global competition. It is reinforced by an Orwellian system of political control that, as Fingleton reveals, utilizes an ancient bureaucratic tool called selective enforcement---a form of blackmail that instills a silent reign of terror throughout Chinese society. Most worryingly, selective enforcement can readily be unleashed on any American corporation with interests in China---which is to say just about every member of the Fortune 500.

While the Chinese people’s rising affluence is, of course, an occasion for wholehearted rejoicing, Uncle Sam should give the Chinese power system a wide berth---lest he catch his coattails in the jaws of a dragon.

Do as I Say or Inventing Human Rights

2009-01-10T01:55:00.000-08:00

Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy

Author: Peter Schweizer

Prominent liberals support a whole litany of policies and principles: progressive taxes, affirmative action, greater regulation of corporations, raising the inheritance tax, strict environmental regulations, children's rights, consumer rights, and more. But do they actually live by these beliefs? Peter Schweizer decided to investigate the private lives of politicians like the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, the Kennedys, and Ralph Nader; commentators Michael Moore, Al Franken, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West; entertainers or philanthropists Barbra Streisand and George Soros. Using publicly-available real estate records, IRS returns, court depositions, and their own published statements, he sought to examine whether they lived by the principles they so forcefully advocate.

What he found was a long list of contradictions. Many of these proponents of organized labor had developed various methods to sidestep paying union wages or avoid employing unions altogether. They were also adept at avoiding taxes; invested heavily in corporations they had denounced; took advantage of foreign tax credits to use non-American labor overseas; espoused environmental causes while opposing those that might affect their own property rights; hid their investments in trusts to avoid paying estate tax; denounced oil companies but quietly owned them.

Schweizer's conclusion is simple: liberalism in the end forces its adherents to become hypocrites. They adopt one pose in public, but when it comes to what matters most in their own lives their property, their privacy, and their children--they jettison their liberal principles and adopt conservative ones. If these ideas don't work for the very individuals who promote them, Schweizer asks, how can they work for the country?

Publishers Weekly

Working with a broadly inclusive pantheon of "the Left" that places Ralph Nader and Barbra Streisand on equal footing with Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, Schweizer (The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty) suggests that liberalism's heroes conduct their lives in ways that prove their philosophy to be "ultimately self-defeating, self-destructive, and unworkable." While acknowledging that conservatives can be high-profile hypocrites as well, Schweizer employs a double standard, arguing that "when conservatives betray their publicly stated principles, they harm only themselves and their families," but when liberals misbehave, they harm their principles first and foremost. Sometimes his research uncovers significant contradictions, as when Schweizer points out that Noam Chomsky, who tends to demonize the military establishment, wrote his first book, Syntactic Structures, with grants from the U.S. Army, the Air Force and the Office of Naval Research. But many of his charges are egregiously hyperbolic, as when he suggests that Cornel West is a "segregationist" because he bought a home in a largely Caucasian suburb. Schweizer clearly knows the limitations of his argument, since he backpedals from many of his most damning statements in his closing remarks. For all its revelations, in the end, this volume reads less like a critique of liberal philosophy than a catalogue of ammunition for ad hominem bloggers. (Oct. 25) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Steve Forbes - Forbes Magazine

Here's a book that'll make your eyes pop. The mainstream media love it when notable conservatives get caught not practicing what they preach concerning personal behavior. Prominent liberals often pride themselves on being morally superior to conservatives. Liberals don't admonish others to lead virtuous personal lives, but they constantly excoriate corporations and businesspeople for being greedy, racist and/or heartless, soullessly putting profits before people, fouling our environment and shamelessly exploiting one and all. Liberals are adamant about imposing policies such as affirmative action; they declaim the virtues of labor unions and the need for ever-stricter environmental regulations. As this book engagingly documents, however, these lefties are in many respects even bigger hypocrites than are fallen conservatives. (30 Jan 2006)

Book about: Victorian Times and Pleasures or Sensacionales sopas

Inventing Human Rights: A History

Author: Lynn Hunt

"A tour de force."—Gordon S. Wood, New York Times Book Review

How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals far and wide. Hunt also shows the continued relevance of human rights in today's world.

The New York Times - Gordon S. Wood

According to many people in the West today, human rights trump all other claims and values, including those of custom, community and culture; everyone in the world, including every individual in strange faraway places like Darfur, has certain inalienable rights simply because he or she is a human being. As conventional as this claim has become for us, in the entire sweep of history it is quite extraordinary and of fairly recent origin. How did it come about and what has been its history? These are the questions Lynn Hunt has sought to answer in this remarkable little book. Indeed, because she covers so much ground in so few pages and with such clarity, Inventing Human Rights is a tour de force of compression.

The Washington Post - Maya Jasanoff

Already by 1776 it had seemed "self-evident," at least to the slave-owning Thomas Jefferson, that "all men were created equal." Of course, like all brilliant rhetoric, his claim was both startlingly and deceptively simple: It masked what may have been the most revolutionary (and in practice, controversial) aspect of American independence. For why and when did we ever start to think that human beings were universally equal, let alone obviously so? Lynn Hunt's elegant Inventing Human Rights offers lucid and original answers…Revolutionaries often see themselves as beginning the world anew, but neither the Americans nor the French conjured up their visions of equality and liberty in a void. Hunt skillfully situates their discourse of rights within a series of broader cultural changes that transformed how (Western) human beings related to one another. It is no accident, she argues, that ideas about common humanity emerged at the same time that people began to take an interest in portraiture, to listen to music in contemplative silence and, above all, to read novels. Indeed, Hunt's mastery of the 18th-century European landscape allows the book to double as a fresh interpretation of Enlightenment culture.

Considering contemporary reading habits and conducting a close analysis of contemporary texts, Hunt (history, UCLA; Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution) argues that between the 1740s and 1780s Western attitudes changed dramatically: there emerged newfound feeling for others and an appreciation of others as self-directed entities. The reading public developed this sensibility largely as a consequence of the new epistolary novels of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Richardson, and others. Concurrently, there was a growing abhorrence of torture or public punishment. Thus was laid the foundation for a language stressing the possession of rights by all men, a concept incorporated in America's Declaration of Independence (1776) and France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). Though women were still excluded from political (but not civil) rights, the door was at last open to religious minorities, the Jews, and free blacks. Talk of rights waned with Napoleon; other political languages engaged Europe for the next century and a half. Rights surfaced again in 1948 with passage of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Cultural history of a high order; recommended for academic and large public collections.

Acknowledgments     11
Introduction: "We hold these truths to be self-evident"     15
"Torrents of Emotion": Reading Novels and Imagining Equality     35
"Bone of Their Bone": Abolishing Torture     70
"They Have Set a Great Example": Declaring Rights     113
"There Will be no End of It": The Consequences of Declaring     146
"The Soft Power of Humanity": Why Human Rights Failed, Only to Succeed in the Long Run     176
Three Declarations: 1776, 1789, 1948     215
Notes     230
Permissions     261
Index     263

Have You Found Her or His Panic

2009-01-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

Have You Found Her: A Memoir

Author: Janice Erlbaum

And every week, there was the unspoken question, the one I didn’t know enough to ask myself : Have you found her yet? The one who reminds you of you?

Twenty years after she lived at a homeless shelter for teens, Janice Erlbaum went back to volunteer. Now thirty-four years old and a successful writer, she’d changed her life for the better; now she wanted to help someone else–someone like the girl she’d once been.

Then she met Sam. A brilliant nineteen-year-old junkie savant, the product of a horrifically abusive home, Sam had been surviving alone on the streets since she was twelve and was now struggling for sobriety against the adverse health effects of long-term drug abuse.

Soon Janice found herself caring deeply for Sam, following her through detoxes and psych wards, halfway houses and hospitals, becoming ever more manically driven to save her from the sickness and sadness leftover from Sam’s terrible past. But just as Janice was on the verge of becoming the girl’s legal guardian, she made a shocking discovery: Sam was sicker than anyone knew, in ways nobody could have imagined.

Written with startling candor and immediacy, Have You Found Her is the story of one woman’s quest to save a girl’s life–and the hard truths she learns about herself along the way.

“A rich and compelling account . . . Ultimately this is a book about the narrator’s journey and the dangers that attend the urge within us all to believe we can save another soul. A terrific read.”
–Cammie McGovern, author of Eye Contact

Publishers Weekly

In winter 2004, 34-year-old Erlbaum (Girlbomb) volunteered at the shelter where she herself had lived as a teenager. Dubbed "The Bead Lady" by the residents, she hefted a large, rattling bag of beadworking supplies to the cafeteria once a week, hoping to reach out to a younger version of herself over jewelry-making sessions-to "believe in them and listen to them," as her volunteer-orientation videotape had instructed. When she met Samantha, a charismatic 19-year-old addict with an unyielding resilience in spite of a horrific childhood, Erlbaum knew she'd found a favorite. Though Sam had been on the streets since age 12, she was well read and quite gifted as a writer-a prodigy, it seemed. The two quickly developed a friendship, which deepened over the next several months as Erlbaum comforted Sam through health problems, abuse flashbacks and rehab, promising her a trip to Disney World if she stayed sober. Erlbaum was determined to save Sam and even offered to become her legal guardian. Erlbaum realized that, at times, details in Sam's backstory didn't add up (she was a skilled classical pianist), but these incongruities raised only the occasional, short-lived suspicion. Finally, Erlbaum realized Sam had been lying to her all along (she actually came from a sold middle-class suburb and hadn't had the childhood she described), snookering her out of her time, attention and affection for a year. Erlbaum's narrative begins promisingly, her savior fantasies and insecurities rendered with honesty and self-effacing good humor. However, her conclusions fall flat, missing opportunities to ponder larger issues at work in the story and opting instead for a mere cautionary tale.(Mar.)

Alison M. Lewis - Library Journal

In her highly acclaimed Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, Erlbaum detailed her experiences as a troubled adolescent who had spent more than a year in New York City's shelter system in the 1980s. In this follow-up memoir, she is now a confident and successful 34-year-old writer who's gotten her act together, complete with a committed romantic relationship. Wanting to give something back, she decides to volunteer at the same homeless shelter at which she herself had stayed 20 years earlier. There, she meets "Sam," a brilliant but troubled 19-year-old who reminds her of her earlier self. Despite admonitions from the professionals running the shelter, Erlbaum becomes more and more deeply involved in Sam's life. Just as she is about to become Sam's legal guardian, the story takes a sharp turn for the worse, revealing new and deeper problems of which no one had been aware. This compelling and fast-paced memoir reads like a novel while providing an inside look at American social problems. Recommended for public libraries and a possible purchase for academic libraries. [Visit the author online at girlbomb.com.-Ed.]

School Library Journal

Adult/High School -Twenty years after spending time in a New York City shelter, Erlbaum returned as a volunteer, bearing beads for crafts therapy and a desire to make a difference. Breaking the rule against playing favorites among residents, she found a kindred spirit in tragic, brilliant Sam. Erlbaum giddily forged a connection with the teen, discussing books and philosophy; feeling outrage at her tales of parental abuse, drugs, and life on the streets; and acting as an advocate to get Sam the help she needed. During Sam's multiple stays in the hospital for increasingly serious infections, Erlbaum encouraged her to focus on getting well and into rehab, spending hours next to hospital beds and on the phone, taking time away from work and her partner. An AIDS diagnosis intensified the strong feelings Erlbaum was developing for Sam and set the ball of discovery rolling as she realized that the girl, who had almost become an adopted daughter, was not what she seemed. Throughout, Erlbaum is honest about her own motives; she mocks her own selfish drive to be important. The chatty narrative, heartrending and funny, is full of dialogue reconstructed from journals; the writing is unobtrusively good and compulsively readable. Teens who enjoy gritty reality like James Frey's A Million Little Pieces (Doubleday, 2003) or the twisted humor of Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors (St. Martins, 2002) will race through this one and come back for Erlbaum's chronicle of her own unstable past, Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir (Villard, 2006).-Jenny Gasset, Orange County Public Library, CA

Kirkus Reviews

Riveting true story of a runaway and the devastating lies she tells. In her mid-30s, Erlbaum (Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, 2006) was on the brink of happiness. Her boyfriend had just moved in, and her career as a writer was burgeoning. But she had never entirely dealt with the trauma of her past. To properly exorcise her childhood demons, she started volunteering at the New York City shelter that helped save her life when she was a teenage runaway. There she met 19-year-old Samantha Dunleavy, "a tall, rangy white girl with a shaggy mop of brown hair" who told stories about traveling the country with her meth-cooking father and junkie mother, who forced her daughter to hustle when money was tight. Sam had amazing talents: She wrote metered poetry, made casual references to astrophysics and could hold intelligent conversations about books and philosophers. Erlbaum fell in love with this "junkie savant." Despite all the rules-"No favorites. And no buying them stuff," the counselors warned-she served as Sam's coolheaded mentor, steady through desperate phone calls and late-night pleas. Erlbaum was there by Sam's side when the accident-prone girl wound up in the hospital: a broken wrist, then sepsis, then the psych ward, rehab, pneumonia, meningitis and a slew of subsequent medical problems. Soon, the force of Sam's neediness began to overwhelm Erlbaum's life; even her wedding plans were shadowed by the specter of her young friend's life-threatening ailments. Desperate to find Sam appropriate medical help, the author uncovered a jaw-dropping secret that turned everything preceding its discovery into one giant question mark. What started out as a memoir becomes a disturbing, fascinatingdetective story. Erlbaum treats her troubled subject with humanity, sensitivity and care, making this an intensely rich reading experience. Agent: Alice Martell/Martell Agency

Interesting book: Reflexology or Therapeutic Touch

His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S.

Author: Geraldo Rivera

A rare, unflinching look at one of today's most important issues--from one of today's most well-known journalists.

In this insightful, well-researched book, Peabody and Emmy® Award-winning journalist Geraldo Rivera examines the growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S., fueled partly by what may be the single most divisive issue in America today: illegal immigration. With objective clarity and personal conviction, Rivera sheds light on an issue that is muddled with confusion and prejudice--and too often blamed for everything from terrorism to welfare.

Examining the past--his own parents' struggle to be "real" Americans, as well as the plight of other ethnic groups in their quest for that dream--Rivera places the issue of illegal immigration in a historic context, dispelling the myth that we are facing an unprecedented crisis.

A vital contribution to the ongoing debate about immigration, His Panic is destined to reshape the way Americans view the future of our country.

The Heart of a Soldier or Righteous Warrior

2009-01-09T02:30:00.000-08:00

The Heart of a Soldier: A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11th

Author: James B Stewart

Sometimes from the ashes of tragedy comes an extraordinary, even magical story that inspires, offers hope, and helps heal even the deepest wounds. Heart of a Soldier is such a story, one of love and friendship, danger and courage, redemption and heroism, thrillingly told by one of America's finest writers. Susan Greer, middle-aged and divorced, had just about given up on love and romance when she met a stranger who, oddly, was jogging in his bare feet. Born in Britain on the eve of World War II, Rick Rescorla became an American citizen and a much-decorated soldier. His extraordinary life is woven into the military conflicts of his time, from the battlefields of colonial Africa, where he and his best friend, U.S. Army officer Dan Hill, led lives of adventure worthy of Kipling and Conrad, to some of the deadliest battles of Vietnam to the epicenter of modern-day terrorism. Surviving them all with great courage and style, Rescorla seemed invincible.

Rescorla tried to put combat and death behind him, and for a time it seemed as though he had succeeded. With Susan, he found the peace and domesticity he craved. But it turned out that everything in his remarkable life was preparing him for one last act of selflessness that would transcend all that had come before. Then, on September 11, 2001, he faced the ultimate test.

Heart of a Soldier shows us bravery under fire, loyalty to one's comrades, and the miracle of finding happiness late in life. In charge of security for Morgan Stanley, Rick Rescorla successfully got 2,700 of its employees out of the World Trade Center's South Tower on September 11. Then, thinking perhaps of the soldiers who had died in his arms and of Susan, the woman who had "made his life," he went back and began climbing the tower stairs, looking for stragglers. Heart of a Soldier is an inspiring and unforget-table story from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Den of Thieve and Blind Eye.

Publishers Weekly

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Stewart (Den of Thieves) aims to capture the enormity of the World Trade Center attack by retracing one of the lives lost in the disaster: that of Rick Rescorla, head of security for Morgan Stanley. From the late 1980s on, Rescorla tried to warn Port Authority officials that the World Trade Center was an easy target for terrorists. On September 11, after safely evacuating the Morgan Stanley offices in the south tower (he kept people calm by singing into his megaphone), Rescorla went back into the building minutes before it collapsed to search for stragglers. This wasn't his first selfless act of bravery: a Vietnam veteran, Rescorla won a Silver Star and other medals for his role in the Ia Drang valley an important American victory, but one whose devastating losses turned Rescorla against the war. Piecing together the recollections of, among others, Rescorla's widow, Susan, his best friend and fellow soldier, Daniel Hill, to narrate Rescorla's life story, Stewart also weaves in Susan's, and describes the Rescorlas' blissful mid-life relationship, a second marriage for both. Stewart's narrative is fast-paced, fluid and impressively detailed, though not without clich s. It's an absorbing and at times inspiring profile in courage, yet the book has the feel of an extended magazine piece. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Skilled storyteller Stewart and precise reader George DiCenzo bring life to this tale of two soldiers, American Dan Hill and British-born Nick Rescorla, whose lives display great courage, intelligence, and loyalty. They met in Africa and fought in the Vietnam War. Although brief, carnage in the latter section is not for the squeamish. The program goes on to recount their marriages, children, divorces, careers, and new romance for Rescorla. Hill converts to Islam and goes under Communist fire in Afghanistan, a suspenseful episode, but his subsequent offer to go after Osama bin Laden is ignored, as was his prediction of suicide planes and New York City terror attacks. Rescorla, about 62, was in charge of security for Morgan Stanley, and his heroism in saving many lives at the World Trade tower on September 11, 2001 is told well, hour by horrifying hour. For action-adventure fans.-Gordon Blackwell, Eastchester, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

	Prologue	1
1	Peachey and Dravot	5
2	Winds of War	24
3	Heart of a lion	47
4	American Dream	54
5	Hard Corps	69
6	In the Valley of Death	79
7	Charge of the Light Brigade	112
8	Home Front	134
9	Not to Reason Why	141
10	Towers in the Sky	171
11	The Target	183
12	Soul Mates	205
13	We were Soldiers	228
14	A Day to be Proud	249
15	The Courage to Heal	265
	Epilogue: You'll Remember Me	287
	Notes and Sources	293
	Acknowledgments	305
	Index	309

Go to: Power to the People or United Nations

Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism

Author: William A Link

In Righteous Warrior, William A. Link provides a magisterial portrait of Senator Jesse Helms, one of the most commanding American politicians of the late twentieth century, and of the conservative movement he forged. Born in Monroe, North Carolina, in his early years Helms worked as a newspaperman, a radio commentator and a magazine editor. Early on, he realized the power of television, and, on tiny black and white screens across North Carolina in the 1960s, he battled the civil rights movement, campus radicalism, and the sexual revolution. Race was a central issue for Helms, and he used it at every turn to solidify his base and, in some cases, to mobilize political support. But also important was sexuality, and his discomfort with what he believed was a rising tide of immorality. In 1973, he was elected to the Senate, where he remained until 2003. As Senator, Helms became a national conservative leader and spokesman for the revitalized American Right, playing a prominent role in the Reagan Revolution of the 1970s and 1980s and the rising tide of Republicanism of the 1990s. His political organization, the Congressional Club, became remarkably successful at raising millions of dollars and in operating a highly sophisticated, media-driven political machine. The Congressional Club also provided a source of national standing and power for Helms. In working so relentlessly for his cause, Helms literally became a nexus of the burgeoning movement, pushing conservative causes, linking conservative politicians up with wealthy donors and amassing more power than many Senators within memory. In Righteous Warrior, William Link tells the story of oneof the most powerful Americans of the twentieth century and the conservative mark he left on the American political landscape.

The New York Times - David Greenberg

Righteous Warrior should stand as the go-to biography of Helms for some time. Not only will Link's thorough research and dutiful reconstruction of Helms's career deter successors, but his core analysis is hard to dispute. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine," Helms himself once growled, while ranting against a Clinton administration appointee for being "a damn lesbian." Link is too dispassionate and fair-minded a historian to make this book a monochromatic portrait in bigotry. Yet his account leaves little doubt, ultimately, about what made Helms such a figure of vilification throughout his long career—and what simultaneously allowed such a vilified figure to enjoy so much sustained success.

The Washington Post - Michael Skube

William A. Link's Righteous Warrior is a scrupulously fair biography of a man who gave himself entirely to protecting a way of life he saw as endangered. To Helms, that meant conservatism more than it meant one political party or another…Link, a professor of history at the University of Florida, attempts to explain Helms's importance without engaging in either veneration or caricature. In his view, Helms was an architect of the conservative reshaping of politics in the 1970s and '80s, a conduit of regional support for Ronald Reagan and a source of organizational know-how for conservatism nationally. "The rise of the new American right," Link argues, "cannot be properly understood without coming to terms with Helms's role."

Chief of Station Congo or Out of the Shadow

2009-01-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone

Author: Larry Devlin

Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country had declared its independence, the army had mutinied, and governmental authority had collapsed. As he crossed the Congo River in an almost empty ferry boat, all he could see were lines of people trying to travel the other way—out of the Congo. Within his first two weeks he found himself on the wrong end of a revolver as militiamen played Russian-roulette, Congo style, with him.

During his first year, the charismatic and reckless political leader, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered and Devlin was widely thought to have been entrusted with (he was) and to have carried out (he didn't) the assassination. Then he saved the life of Joseph Desire Mobutu, who carried out the military coup that presaged his own rise to political power. Devlin found himself at the heart of Africa, fighting for the future of perhaps the most strategically influential country on the continent, its borders shared with eight other nations. He met every significant political figure, from presidents to mercenaries, as he took the Cold War to one of the world's hottest zones. This is a classic political memoir from a master spy who lived in wildly dramatic times.

Reuters

Chief of Station, Congo, [Devlin's] account of his stint in Kinshasa, then called Leopoldville, is an effort to finally set the record straight following years of rumors.

Financial Times

Must-read for those interested in the shaping of independent Africa . . . . this book is of pressing and immediate relevance.

ControlledGreed.com

[I]t's a rollicking great read . . . a memoir full of adventure . . .

Publishers Weekly

In this vivid, authoritative account of being CIA station chief in Congo during the height of the Cold War, Devlin brings to life a harrowing tale of postcolonial political intrigue, covert violence and the day-to-day reality of being a key player in a global chess match between superpowers. Posted to Congo in 1960, Devlin quickly found himself at the swirling center of conflictвЂ" the Belgian colonial rulers had pulled out, the local strongmen had begun what would be a decades-long struggle for power and the Soviet Union was sending agents to influence events. Arriving on the scene with his wife and young daughter in tow, Devlin finds "central authority had broken down; there was no one in control who could prevent random acts of barbarity." As the country begins to fall apart and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba starts flirting with the Soviets, orders come from Washington for "his removal." Within weeks Lumumba is not only out of power but dead. While the rest of the book is full of exciting cloak-and-dagger derring-do and scrapes with death, it is this incident that haunts Devlin. He devotes the last chapter of the book to a point-by-point refutation of his or the agency's involvement in Lumumba's death. That alleged assassination is often used to illustrate the hypocrisy in U.S. foreign policy. Devlin's straightforward, plainly written approach to the task lends credence to his assertion of innocence. (Mar.)

Foreign Affairs

One of the more notorious CIA agents of the Cold War, Devlinhas written a matter-of-fact account of his role in the Congo's tumultuous early postindependence years. Although he readily admits that the Eisenhower administration ordered him to plan for the elimination of Patrice Lumumba, the country's first elected prime minister, whom Washington viewed as too pro-Soviet, Devlin claims not to have played any role in the actual assassination, which was apparently undertaken by rival politicians with assistance from Belgian security personnel. Devlin's tale is often entertaining, with lots of cloak-and-dagger drama in a chaotic and largely lawless capital city, Lйopoldville. On the other hand, his account of the complicated politics of the era is pedestrian and much too focused on a handful of individuals close to the U.S. embassy. As CIA chief of station, Devlin aggressively promoted politicians he viewed as favorable to U.S. interests; he remains unapologetic about having helped advance Joseph Mobutu, a young, second-tier politician at independence who emerged as the country's undisputed strongman within five years. Devlin seems still quite confident that the alternative to Mobutu's utterly disastrous 30-year rule would have been much worse: Soviet control of central Africa, or, as he calls it, "NATO's southern flank."

Kirkus Reviews

A spy comes in from the dripping heat. Devlin, long retired from The Company, recounts a busy career fending off Soviet ambitions in Africa as a CIA agent and then station chief, a spook's version of ambassador. In most parts of the world, he writes, that rivalry was an aptly named cold war, whereas in Congo, where he was stationed, it was decidedly a hot one. Newly independent from a once-rapacious Belgium, for whose colonial administrators Devlin has little use, Congo faced its first major crisis when the new leader, Patrice Lumumba, "promised all government employees a pay raise, all, that is, except the army." In a country where the army has all the guns, that is always a dicey proposition, and Lumumba found himself facing civil war, urged along by the American government, which wanted to see him gone; one memo of Aug. 26, 1960, puts its baldly: "if Lumumba continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will at best be chaos and at worst pave the way to a Communist takeover of the Congo. . . . Consequently, we concluded that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action." By his account conscience-stricken, Devlin resisted doing the wet work. By other accounts, which Devlin cites, he was roundly implicated in the eventual ouster and assassination of Lumumba. Given what seems to be an air of late-in-life candor, it seems reasonable to trust the author, but you can't ever know for sure. In whatever case, Lumumba's absence opened the door to long-reigning dictator Mobutu, whom Devlin considers a pretty good guy overall; America's interests were thus well served, thanks as much to Sovietineptitude as to anything the CIA did. An unusually open look at CIA operations in the Eisenhower-Kennedy era, adding an interesting, perhaps controversial, footnote to the still-much-debated death of Lumumba.

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Out of the Shadow: George H.W. Bush and the End of the Cold War

Author: Christopher Maynard

As America watched the fall of the Berlin Wall with great enthusiasm, President George H. W. Bush called the incident simply "a good development." He knew that the Cold War was far from over and that bringing it to an end would require not only symbolic gestures but also practical diplomacy.

During Bush's presidency (1989-93), the Berlin Wall fell, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, Germany was reunified, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Yet, many people believe the Cold War ended under Reagan and that Bush's foreign policy achievements were merely an extension of Reagan's policies.

In this in-depth look at the Bush administration's handling of the end of the Cold War, author Christopher Maynard argues that Bush actually made a fundamental shift in foreign policy regarding the Soviet Union. In part, he believes, historians have downplayed Bush's contribution because they have focused on the strong ideological rhetoric of Reagan and Gorbachev without looking at the day-to-day process of policymaking during the Cold War.

Out of the Shadow incorporates a variety of important, previously unused sources. Its focused treatment of the topic will appeal to scholars interested in both the first Bush presidency and the Cold War.

What People Are Saying

H.W. Brands
"An insightful and thought-provoking account of a crucial yet underappreciated chapter in recent world history. Winding down the Cold War looked simple, but appearances deceived. Christopher Maynard pulls back the veil to show how it happened."--(H.W. Brands, Dickson Allen Anderson Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin)

John Robert Greene

. . . a superb chronicle of an underappreciated moment in American diplomatic history—that moment when the first President Bush successfully managed the end of the Cold War. . . . a moment that Maynard narrates with grace and precision. An outstanding book. (John Robert Greene, Cazenovia College)

Ryan Barilleaux

Out of the Shadow is an important addition to the scholarship on the presidency of George H. W. Bush. Most of the work that has been done on the end of the Cold War tends to focus on Ronald Reagan or on other events. Additionally, most of the research on the first Bush presidency tends to be general assessments or studies of the Persian Gulf War. This is the only book-length study of the forty-first president's role in the end of the Cold War. (Ryan Barilleaux, professor and chair, Department of Political Science, Miami University of Ohio)

Desert Flower or A Short History of Reconstruction

2009-01-08T03:05:00.000-08:00

Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad

Author: Waris Diri

Waris Dirie leads a double life-by day, she is an international supermodel and human rights ambassador for the United Nations; by night, she dreams of the simplicity of life in her native Somalia and the family she was forced to leave behind. Desert Flower, her intimate and inspiring memoir, is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about the beauty of African life, the chaotic existence of a supermodel, or the joys of new motherhood. Waris was born into a traditional Somali family, desert nomads who engaged in such ancient and antiquated customs as genital mutilation and arranged marriage. At twelve, she fled an arranged marriage to an old man and traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu -- the first leg of an emotional journey that would take her to London as a house servant, around the world as a fashion model, and eventually to America, where she would find peace in motherhood and humanitarian work for the U.N. Today, as Special Ambassador for the U.N., she travels the world speaking out against the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, promoting women's reproductive rights, and educating people about the Africa she fled -- but still deeply loves. Desert Flower will be published simultaneously in eleven languages throughout the world and is currently being produced as a feature film by Rocket Pictures UK.

Daphne Uviller

Straightforward, gruesome and insightful, Dirie's Desert Flower is remarkable. -- Time Out New York

Elton John

"Waris's story is one of remarkable courage. From the deserts of Somalia to the world of high fashion, she battles against oppression and emerges a real champion. She is the most beautiful inspiration to anyone."

Nafis Sadik

"Waris Dirie is a remarkable and courageous person. Her story is an inspiration. Not only did Waris overcome obstacles that would defeat most people, but as UNFPA Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation, she will serve as a leader in the struggle to end all forms of discrimination against women."

Village Voice

"Succeeds not just as a polemic against [female genital mutilation] and its attendant horrors, but as a classic chronicle of immigrant hardship and triumph."

Publishers Weekly

Joining the current rage for model memoirs...is Dirie, a native of Somalia, who has for more than a decade stalked the world's catwalks and appeared in numerous glossy magazines. This, however, is no fluff-job dictated into a tape recorder on transatlantic flights, then recomposed by a hired gun back in New York. Rather, it is a striking account of a personal odyssey that began in the Somali desert, where Dirie grew up without shoes, living amid nomadic tribes and tyrannized by patriarchal strictures. As a pubescent girl, Dirie was circumcised--a procedure described here in chilling detail--before escaping an arranged marriage to stay with an aunt in Mogadishu. Landing a job as a house servant in London, Dirie struggled to launch a modeling career while dodging British immigration authorities and the dreadful results of marriages of convenience. At the end of this affecting and at times very entertaining book, Dirie's metamorphosis from desert nomad into jetsetting nomad culminates in a post as a human rights ambassador to the UN, where, these days, Dirie campaigns for the eradication of female circumcision and women's rights around the globe. It's easy to forget that Dirie's memoir is a book about someone whose success has come from posing for the camera. Indeed, it is Dirie's remarkable lack of narcissism or entitlement that makes her so captivating a raconteur.

Library Journal

As a special ambassador to the United Nations, Somalian supermodel Dirie speaks out against the custom of genital mutilation, a "barbaric rite" that she underwent at age five. In this memoir, she "provides a fascinating glimpse of her separate lives--camel herder, supermodel, human rights activist--and manages to weave threads of drama, humor, and courage into each." (LJ 11/1/98)

Raye Snover

....[G]ives a powerful inside view into the hardships of the nomadic Somali culture, where life is centered around the daily search for food and water, and young girls undergo genital cutting for arranged marriages. -- The New York Times Book Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

The tale of a courageous woman's struggles to come to terms with her Somali childhood, including her experience of female genital mutilation (FGM). Dirie ran away from home at age 13 to escape from an arranged marriage to a 60-year-old man. By age five, however, she had been introduced to FGM, the practice that would ensure her marriageability (and thus her marketability) in Somali culture. While Dirie's beloved mother held her down, a local "gypsy woman" used a dirty razor blade to scrape away at Dirie's external sexual organs and then sewed her up again, leaving only tiny holes to allow for urination and menstruation to occur in a compromised fashion. After fleeing her family, Dirie worked as a housemaid for a well-placed uncle in London, where she was "discovered" as a model and embarked on a successful career in fashion. She then underwent surgery to unstitch her vagina (in an unforgettable detail, she explains how amazing it felt to urinate in less than ten minutes and menstruate in less than ten days). More recently she's become an international UN ambassador on the issue of FGM after sharing her personal story with the magazine Marie Claire and on '20/20'. And indeed, the issue could hardly have won a better spokeswoman. Her book offers extraordinary firsthand insight into FGM, thought to be performed now on more than two million girls a year. It is also a well-told and truly engaging autobiography with an old-fashioned, Algeresque appeal: obscure African camel-tender becomes internationally admired (and vindicated) high-life heroine. On all counts, an outstandingly dramatic and moving tale.

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A Short History of Reconstruction: 1863-1877

Author: Eric Foner

An abridged version of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, the definitive study of the aftermath of the Civil War, winner of the Bancroft Prize, Avery O. Craven Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Award, Francis Parkman Prize, and Lionel Trilling Prize.

Booknews

An abridged version of the multiple award-winning Reconstruction: America's unfinished revolution (1988). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mexifornia or Adventures from the Technology Underground

2009-01-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

Mexifornia: A State of Becoming

Author: Victor David Hanson

This book is part history, part political analysis and part memoir. It is an intensely personal book about what has changed in California over the last quarter century.

The Los Angeles Times

Hanson's primary worry is steadily rising illegal immigration into a welfare state with expanding entitlements and waning commitment to the history and virtues of Western civilization, an admittedly imperfect, coercive consensus that nonetheless held together a uniquely successful, multiethnic nation. The emerging Mexifornia is becoming "not quite Mexico and not quite America either." — Frederick R. Lynch

Adventures from the Technology Underground: Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them

Author: William Gurstell

The technology underground is a thriving, humming, and often literally scintillating subculture of amateur inventors and scientific envelope-pushers who dream up, design, and build machines that whoosh, rumble, fly—and occasionally hurl pumpkins across enormous distances. In the process they astonish us with what is possible when human imagination and ingenuity meet nature’s forces and materials. William Gurstelle spent two years exploring the most fascinating outposts of this world of wonders: meeting and talking to the men and women who care far more for the laws of physics than they do for mundane matters like government regulations and their own personal safety.

Adventures from the Technology Underground is Gurstelle’s lively and weirdly compelling report of his travels. In these pages we meet Frank Kosdon and others who draw the scrutiny of the FAA, ATF, and other federal agencies in their pursuit of high-power amateur rocketry, which they demonstrate to impressive—and sometimes explosive—effect at the annual LDRS gathering held in various remote and unpopulated areas (a necessary consideration since that acronym stands for Large Dangerous Rocket Ships). Here also are the underground technologists who turn up at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada high desert, including Lucy Hosking, “the engineer from Hell” and the creator of Satan’s Calliope, aka the World’s Loudest Thing, a pipe organ made from jet engines. Also at Burning Man is Austin “Dr. MegaVolt” Richard, who braves the arcing, sputtering, six-digit voltages of a giant Tesla coil in his protective metal suit. Add in a trip to see medieval-stylecatapults, air cannons, and supersized slingshots in action at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin competition in Sussex County, Delaware, and forays to the postapocalyptic enclaves of the flamethrower builders and the future-noir pits of the fighting robots, and you have proof positive that the age of invention is still going strong.

In the world of science and engineering, despite its buttoned-down image, there’s plenty of fun, humor, and sheer wonder to be found at the fringes. Adventures from the Technology Underground takes you there.

• Launch homemade high-power rockets.

• Catapult pumpkins the better part of a mile.

• Watch robot gladiators saw, flip, and pound one another into high-tech junk heaps.

• Dazzle the eye with electrical discharges measured in the hundreds of thousands of volts.

• Play with flamethrowers, potato guns, and other decidedly unsafe toys . . .

If this is your idea of fun, you’ll have a major good time on this wild ride through today’s Technology Underground.

From the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s high desert to the latest gathering of Large Dangerous Rocket Ship builders to Delaware’s annual Punkin Chunkin competition (a celebration of “science, radical self-expression, and beer”), you’ll meet the inspired, government-unregulated, and corporately unfettered men and women who operate at the furthest fringes of science, engineering, and wild-eyed arc welding, building the catapults, ultra-high-voltage electrical devices, incendiary artworks, fighting robots, and other machines that demonstrate what’s possible when physics meets human ingenuity.

Library Journal

Like most underground cultures today, amateur engineering has hit the mainstream through television shows, such as the technology-tinkering Junkyard Wars, BattleBots, and Monster Garage. Engineer and technology consultant Gurstelle (Backyard Ballistics) continues the trend by taking readers into the hidden communities of people involved in developing hurling machines (catapults and trebuchets), pulse jet engines, flamethrowers, tesla coil-powered electric current theater, air cannons, robots, high-powered rockets, and magnetic linear accelerator guns. Drawing on two years of experience mingling with people in these communities, Gurstelle balances scientific explanations of the technologies with profiles of the people who built them and descriptions of the events at which they were showcased. Given the amateur nature of developers' projects, examples of things that routinely go wrong are omnipresent throughout the text. Though very far from a how-to guide, this contains enough inspiration to get readers searching the Internet for detailed building specifications and then easily into trouble. Strongly recommended for adult public library collections.-James A. Buczynski, Seneca Coll. of Applied Arts & Tech., Toronto Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

No Tech Hacking or Shadow Factory

2009-01-07T03:39:00.000-08:00

No Tech Hacking: A Guide to Social Engineering, Dumpster Diving, and Shoulder Surfing

Author: Johnny Long

As the clichÃ© reminds us, information is power. In this age of computer systems and technology, an increasing majority of the world's information is stored electronically. It makes sense then that as an industry we rely on high-tech electronic protection systems to guard that information. As a professional hacker, I get paid to uncover weaknesses in those systems and exploit them. Whether breaking into buildings or slipping past industrial-grade firewalls, my goal has always been the same: extract the informational secrets using any means necessary. After hundreds of jobs, I discovered the secret to bypassing every conceivable high-tech security system. This book reveals those secrets, and as the title suggests, it has nothing to do with high technology. As it turns out, the secret isn't much of a secret at all. Hackers have known about these techniques for years. Presented in a light, accessible style, you'll get to ride shotgun with the authors on successful real-world break-ins as they share photos, videos and stories that prove how vulnerable the high-tech world is to no-tech attacks.

As you browse this book, you'll hear old familiar terms like "dumpster diving", "social engineering", and "shoulder surfing". Some of these terms have drifted into obscurity to the point of becoming industry folklore; the tactics of the pre-dawn information age. But make no mistake; these and other old-school tactics work with amazing effectiveness today. In fact, there's a very good chance that someone in your organization will fall victim to one or more of these attacks this year. Will they be ready?

•Dumpster Diving Be a good sport and don't read the two "D" wordswritten in big bold letters above, and act surprised when I tell you hackers can accomplish this without relying on a single bit of technology (punny).
•Tailgating Hackers and ninja both like wearing black, and they do share the ability to slip inside a building and blend with the shadows.
•Shoulder Surfing If you like having a screen on your laptop so you can see what you're working on, don't read this chapter.
•Physical Security Locks are serious business and lock technicians are true engineers, most backed with years of hands-on experience. But what happens when you take the age-old respected profession of the locksmith and sprinkle it with hacker ingenuity?
•Social Engineering with Jack Wiles Jack has trained hundreds of federal agents, corporate attorneys, CEOs and internal auditors on computer crime and security-related topics. His unforgettable presentations are filled with three decades of personal "war stories" from the trenches of Information Security and Physical Security.
•Google Hacking A hacker doesn't even need his own computer to do the necessary research. If he can make it to a public library, Kinko's or Internet cafe, he can use Google to process all that data into something useful.
•P2P Hacking Let's assume a guy has no budget, no commercial hacking software, no support from organized crime and no fancy gear. With all those restrictions, is this guy still a threat to you? Have a look at this chapter and judge for yourself.
•People Watching Skilled people watchers can learn a whole lot in just a few quick glances. In this chapter we'll take a look at a few examples of the types of things that draws a no-tech hacker's eye.
•Kiosks What happens when a kiosk is more than a kiosk? What happens when the kiosk holds airline passenger information? What if the kiosk holds confidential patient information? What if the kiosk holds cash?
•Vehicle Surveillance Most people don't realize that some of the most thrilling vehicular espionage happens when the cars aren't moving at all!

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Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

Author: James Bamford

“There have been glimpses inside the NSA before, but until now no one has published a comprehensive and detailed report on the agency . . . Mr. Bamford has emerged with everything except the combination to the director’s safe.” –New York Times Book Review

Today’s National Security Agency is the largest, most costly, and most technologically advanced spy organization the world has ever known. It is also the most intrusive, secretly filtering millions of phone calls and e-mails an hour in the United States and around the world. Half a million people live on its watch list, and the number grows by the thousands every month. Has America become a surveillance state?

In The Shadow Factory, James Bamford, the foremost expert on the National Security Agency, charts its transformation since 9/11, as the legendary code breakers turned their ears away from outside enemies, such as the Soviet Union, and inward to enemies whose communications increasingly crisscross America.

Fast-paced and riveting, The Shadow Factory is about a world unseen by Americans without the highest security clearances. But it is a world in which even their most intimate whispers may no longer be private.

The Washington Post - Bob Kerrey

…important and disturbing …By detailing the failures of the NSA and CIA, Bamford goes where the 9/11 Commission did not fully go. He convincingly makes the case that our intelligence problems had little to do with the limitations imposed on the NSA or other agencies…this revealing and provocative book is necessary reading, perhaps especially for members of Congress who annually reauthorize the work of the NSA. They should look again at the 9/11 Commission's recommendations to reform the congressional committees that watch over the executive branch agencies responsible for protecting us. Unless that oversight is strengthened, the fears expressed in The Shadow Factory will only grow.

Alexander Hamilton or Power to the People

2009-01-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

Alexander Hamilton

Author: Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow, the renowned author of Titan whom the New York Times has called "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades," vividly re-creates the whole sweep of Alexander Hamilton's turbulent life-his exotic, brutal upbringing; his titanic feuds with celebrated rivals; his pivotal role in defining the shape of the federal government and the American economy; his shocking illicit romances; his enlightened abolitionism; and his famous death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July 1804. Drawing upon extensive, unparalleled research- including nearly fifty previously undiscovered essays highlighting Hamilton's fiery journalism as well as his revealing missives to colleagues and friends-this biography of the extraordinarily gifted founding father who galvanized, inspired, and scandalized the newborn nation is the work by which all others will be measured.

The Washington Post - Michael Lind

In Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow, the author of The House of Morgan, The Warburgs and Titan, a biography of John D. Rockefeller, has brought to life the Founding Father who did more than any other to create the modern United States … In this magisterial biography, Chernow tells the story not only of Hamilton but also of his wife, Eliza, a remarkable woman who died at the age of 97 in 1854.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

… Mr. Chernow sets himself a compelling task: to add a third dimension to conventional views of Hamilton while reaching beyond the limits of a personal portrait. If Alexander Hamilton reflects its subject's far from charismatic nature, it also provides a serious, far-reaching measure of his place in history. And Mr. Chernow has done a splendid job of capturing the backbiting political climate of Hamilton's times, to the point that no cow is sacred here. The "golden age of literary assassination in American politics," featuring Thomas Jefferson as a particularly self-serving schemer, sounds astonishingly familiar today.

Caspar Weinberger - Forbes

This has been an especially good reading summer for devotees of American Colonial and Revolutionary his-tory. First and, in my opinion, the best of the many new books covering this period is Washington's Crossing--by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press, $35). Professor Fischer is a noted historian, whose Albion's Seed, published in 1989, tells the story of those descendants of the British who settled here and helped create the United States. His Paul Revere's Ride has also been widely and justly praised.

Washington's Crossing tells the complete story of General George Washington's most daring, risky and successful venture early in the war. Following a succession of victories by the British and their mercenary forces, which had resultedin the loss of New York for the Americans, the British were within sight of Philadelphia, where the new American Congress was sitting.

Washington's army had been all but destroyed, and the British were surging across New Jersey. Washington's decision to cross the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776, when it was considered virtually impossible, was a move both bold and foolhardy. A flotilla of small boats crammed with soldiers, guns and horses somehow rowed across the river through one of the East's worst winter snow and ice storms. (The crossing as painted by Emanuel Leutze in 1851 captured this event spiritually and has become a great icon of the Revolution.) By crossing the Delaware, Washington placed the remnants of his army in a position to trap the British behind Trenton and, a few days later, to give that army and the cause for which it fought its first real victory. In many ways the shots fired atTrenton were the shots "heard round the world."

Professor Fischer conveys in a remarkably realistic way what combat and the fog of war are actually like. But, more important, he tells the story of what it was like for Washington to lead a discouraged, underequipped army that was constantly being micromanaged by a divided Congress that couldn't--at least at the beginning--decide whether it wanted independence or, simply, to get the Stamp Act repealed.

For those who still wonder how the Revolutionaries ever defeated the huge British forces arrayed against them, both on land and at sea, this book makes clear that it was the military genius and leadership of George Washing-ton that turned almost certain defeat into victory. Washington's Crossing is an essential and exciting key to a more complete understanding and appreciation of what our ancestors did to win the Revolution.

A new biography, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (Penguin Press, $35), is another superb book I read this summer. Hamilton served as principal aide to General Washington from the early days of the Revolu-tion. This gave him a ringside seat at the formation of the United States and its implausible victory over the British, who had deployed one of the world's finest military machines but lost to a ragtag army of upstarts.

Chernow's splendid, thorough and brilliantly written biography gives us a new understanding of Hamilton's vi-tal role during the war and immediately after as Secretary of the Treasury of this new entity on the world's stage. I doubt that many people realize how much of our country's financial structure we owe to Alexander Hamilton. This book goes beyond the standard fare offered in most American history classes. Hamilton's towering intellect, as well as his many faults, and his long, fierce disagreements with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and many of the other Founding Fathers are presented here with almost shocking candor.

There have been other biographies of Hamilton, but Chernow's is far and away the most comprehensive and compelling of any I have read. It is a fitting tribute to the man who set the U.S. on the path that has made our nation the economic leader of the world.

Another treat for Revolutionary history enthusiasts is The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon S. Wood (Penguin Press, $25.95). This delightful new study focuses on the actual aristocratic and elitist views and opinions of this so-called populist leader, who was one of our best-loved, most influential and renowned spokesmen to the world.

Moving away from Revolutionary times, I next read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography byWilliam F. Buckley Jr. (Regnery Publishing, $29.95). Buckley, a major founder of today's sen-sible conservatism, has led an extraordinary life, which fully matches his extraordinary talents. His subtitle is apt, as the book contains essays on sailing, skiing, music, old friends and colleagues and all manner of other diverse subjects, which are united in that they have all been of interest to one of the best minds and writers in America today.

Publishers Weekly

After hulking works on J.P. Morgan, the Warburgs and John D. Rockefeller, what other grandee of American finance was left for Chernow's overflowing pen than the one who puts the others in the shade? Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) created public finance in the United States. In fact, it's arguable that without Hamilton's political and financial strategic brilliance, the United States might not have survived beyond its early years. Chernow's achievement is to give us a biography commensurate with Hamilton's character, as well as the full, complex context of his unflaggingly active life. Possessing the most powerful (though not the most profound) intelligence of his gifted contemporaries, Hamilton rose from Caribbean bastardy through military service in Washington's circle to historic importance at an early age and then, in a new era of partisan politics, gradually lost his political bearings. Chernow makes fresh contributions to Hamiltoniana: no one has discovered so much about Hamilton's illegitimate origins and harrowed youth; few have been so taken by Hamilton's long-suffering, loving wife, Eliza. Yet it's hard not to cringe at some of Hamilton's hotheaded words and behavior, especially sacrificing the well-being of his family on the altar of misplaced honor. This is a fine work that captures Hamilton's life with judiciousness and verve. Illus. Agent, Melanie Jackson. (Apr 26) Forecast: National Book Award winner Chernow's reputation and track record with a previous bestseller could make Alexander Hamilton as popular with readers as Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. With a 300,000 first printing, Penguin is banking on it. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Readers' interest in American history tends to oscillate between two periods: the Civil War and the Revolution. We are currently well into a Revolutionary period. A slew of best-selling historical works has been published in recent years on the American Founders — including studies of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. Now, Ron Chernow has produced an original, illuminating, and highly readable study of Alexander Hamilton that admirably introduces readers to Hamilton's personality and accomplishments.

Chernow penetrates more deeply into the mysteries of Hamilton's origins and family life than any previous biographer. And what a family it was. Hamilton, the only immigrant in the first ranks of the Founders, was the illegitimate son of a downwardly mobile Scottish father and a free-living and free-thinking woman of the West Indies. These difficult origins marked Hamilton for life as he struggled to integrate himself into the highest circles of American public life.

Library Journal

In this favorable, hefty biography of Alexander Hamilton, Chernow (The Warburgs; The House of Morgan) makes the case for him as one of the most important Founding Fathers, arguing that America is heir to the Hamiltonian vision of the modern economic state. His sweeping narrative chronicles the complicated and often contradictory life of Hamilton, from his obscure birth on Nevis Island to his meteoric rise as confidant to Washington, coauthor of The Federalist Papers, and America's first Treasury secretary, to his bizarre death at the hands of Aaron Burr. A running theme is the contradictions exhibited during his life: a member of the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton nevertheless felt that the Constitution was seriously flawed and was fearful of rule by the people. A devoted father and husband, he had two known affairs. Lastly, he was philosophically and morally opposed to dueling, and yet that's how he met his end. Although quite sympathetic to Hamilton, Chernow attempts to present both sides of his many controversies, including Hamilton's momentous philosophical battles with Jefferson. Chernow relies heavily on primary sources and previously unused volumes of Hamilton's writings. A first-rate life and excellent addition to the ongoing debate about Hamilton's importance in the shaping of America. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries. [BOMC and History Book Club main selections.]-Robert Flatley, Kutztown Univ. Lib., PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A splendid life of an enlightened reactionary and forgotten Founding Father. "In all probability," writes financial historian/biographer Chernow (Titan, 1998, etc.), "Alexander Hamilton is the foremost political figure in American history who never attained the presidency, yet he probably had a much deeper and lasting impact than many who did." Indeed, we live in a Hamiltonian republic through and through, and not a Jeffersonian democracy. Many of the financial and tax systems that Hamilton proposed and put in place as the nation's first treasury secretary are with us today, if in evolved form, as Chernow shows; and though Hamilton was derided in his time as being pro-British and even a secret monarchist, Chernow writes, he was second only to George Washington in political prominence, at least on the practical, day-to-day front. The author wisely acknowledges but does not dwell unduly on Washington's quasi-paternal role in Hamilton's life and fortunes; unlike many biographies that consider Hamilton only in Washington's shadow, this one grants him a life of his own-and a stirring one at that, for Hamilton was both intensely cerebral and a man of action. He was, Chernow writes, a brilliant ancestor of the abolitionist cause; a native of the slave island of Nevis, he came to hate "the tyranny embodied by the planters and their authoritarian rule, while also fearing the potential uprisings of the disaffected slaves"-a dichotomy that influenced his views of ordinary politics. He was also constantly in opposition to things as they were, particularly where those things were Jeffersonian; as Chernow shows, Hamilton had early on been "an unusually tolerant man with enlightened views on slavery,Native Americans, and Jews," but became a crusty conservative near the end of his brief life (1755-1804), perhaps as a result of one too many personal setbacks at the hands of the Jeffersonians. Literate and full of engaging historical asides. By far the best of the many lives of Hamilton now in print, and a model of the biographer's art. Agent: Melanie Jackson

Interesting textbook: The Needs of the Dying or In Vitro Fertilization

Power to the People

Author: Laura Ingraham

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

	Introduction	xi
Part 1	1972-1974	1
Part 2	1974-1981	103
Part 3	1981-1983	243
Part 4	1984-1989	313
Part 5	1990-2000	369
	Postscript	443
	Notes on Reporting and Sources	445
	Case References	459
	Acknowledgments	461
	Index	463

Preface	ix
Chapter I MARTIN HEIDEGGER HANNAH ARENDT KARL JASPERS	1
Chapter II CARL SCHMITT	47
Chapter III WALTER BENJAMIN	77
Chapter IV ALEXANDRE KOJÉVE	113
Chapter V MICHEL FOUCAULT	137
Chapter VI JACQUES DERRIDA	159
Afterword THE LURE OF SYRACUSE	191
Acknowledgments	217

	Preface
	Introduction	1
1	What Is So Different about Mexican Immigration?	19
2	The Universe of the Illegal Alien	35
3	The Mind of the Host	60
4	The Old Simplicity That Worked	75
5	The New Gods That Failed	103
6	The Remedy of Popular Culture?	126
	Epilogue: Forks in the Road	142

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