The House or Wilsons Ghost

The House: The History of the House of Representatives

Author: Robert V Remini

Throughout America's history, the House has played a central role in shaping the nation's destiny. In this incomparable single-volume history, distinguished historian Robert V. Remini traces the institution from a struggling, nascent body to the venerable powerhouse it has become since America's rise on the world stage. The essential drama of democracy—the struggle between principle and pragmatism—is showcased throughout the book, and through it the history of America's successful experiment with democracy unfurls.

Publishers Weekly

National Book Award winner Remini (Andrew Jackson) offers the definitive history of "the People's House." Envisioned as the more democratic half of America's bicameral legislature, the House first convened on April 1, 1789. As Remini shows, in the early decades, Henry Clay's leadership was crucial-his willingness to go head-to-head with the Monroe administration helped establish the House's power and autonomy. During the Civil War, the House provided crucial support for the Union by passing legislation to print greenbacks and create a military draft. Remini treats the 16 black congressmen who served during Reconstruction in t a few, general paragraphs; this particular era in the institution's history deserves more attention. Turning to the 20th century, Remini examines the House's response to the Great Depression, the Cold War, civil rights, Vietnam and Watergate. His concluding chapter addresses the "Conservative Revolution" of the 1980s and `90s. Here Newt Gingrich gets the spotlight: he was determined to give the House a more prominent position in the legislative process, but also helped usher in "an era of incivility and personal attack and partisanship" that, says Remini, continues today. Written at the instruction of Congress,, this tome is highly readable though encyclopedic. B&w photos. (May 1) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The U.S. House of Representatives, with two centuries of history and 11,750 cumulative members, conceivably could be chronicled in one volume, but this official history-the straitjacket of one volume and one author was imposed-does not do the job. Remini, a distinguished historian of antebellum America, with more than ten books on Andrew Jackson to his name, is not an obvious choice for the project. Often he can only push the narrative along by reciting election returns and sprinkling irrelevancies such as information on flappers into the text as if he forgot his intended subject. It is a book a mile wide and an inch deep presenting little the well-read student of American history won't already know. Remini wanted to appeal to scholars, but the lack of a bibliography or suggestions for further inquiry is notable, while his footnotes never give citations to the many laws and court cases described. In spite of these flaws, the book does fill a need and is an optional purchase for public libraries.-Michael O. Eshleman, Kings Mills, OH Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

New interesting book: Supplement Shopper or Natural Medications for Psychiatric Disorders

Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century

Author: Robert S McNamara

With Wilson's Ghost, Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight deliver an impassioned plea and a decisive and multi-faceted program for making the 21st century a more peaceful century than the last. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the war that has followed, have made their argument even more imperative. In a provocative synthesis of the pragmatic, historical, and philosophical arguments for avoiding war and achieving a sustainable peace, McNamara and Blight put forth a plan for realizing Woodrow Wilson's dream. The plan begins with a moral imperative that establishes the reduction of human carnage as a major goal of foreign policy across the globe, and details the necessity of adopting new policies to support that goal.

McNamara and Blight argue that now is the time for a radical approach to reducing the risk of human carnage, and they demonstrate why we cannot afford to fail in this effort.

Library Journal

Former Secretary of Defense McNamara is 85 and still atoning for his role in the Vietnam conflict (see In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, LJ 4/15/95). His new book, written with international relations expert Blight, takes the ideas and idealism of Woodrow Wilson and sets forth a moral and multilateral formula for achieving peace in the world. The authors advocate the importance of "democratic decision-making" in U.S. foreign policy and increased empathy toward Russia and China. They also warn that the plague of communal violence within nations poses a dilemma for the United States and international organizations, as intervention might not lead to a satisfactory solution of the conflict. McNamara and Blight are especially eloquent in their pleas to end the threat of nuclear catastrophe, and McNamara inserts his personal reflections on the Cuban missile crisis (as well as on the lost opportunities for an early resolution in Vietnam). The authors critique major foreign policy theories and develop a convincing "Wilsonian" framework for U.S. policy. This stimulating and challenging work will do much to redeem McNamara's legacy; recommended for academic and large public libraries. Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

President Kennedy's former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and coauthor Blight (international studies, Brown U.) offer suggestions as to how the United States could and should change its foreign policy and defense policy to incorporate the core objectives of post-WWI Wilsonian ideals. They suggest that the United States make the end of war a major goal of foreign policy and argue that while the U.S. will have to provide leadership, it must not apply its economic, political, or military policy unilaterally. In order to successfully maintain a peaceful world, they believe that a complete rapprochement with China and Russia is necessary in order to prevent the real dangers of Great Power conflict. In addition they offer suggestions towards strengthening the U.N. in a move towards true multilateralism in the reduction of communal violence and the threat from nuclear weapons. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

	Preface to the Paperback Edition
	A Note from Robert McNamara
	A 21st-Century Manifesto: Choose Life over Death
	Prologue: Wilson's Tragedy, and Ours	3
1	A Radical Agenda: The U.S. Role in Global Security in the 21st Century	17
2	Preventing Great Power Conflict: Bringing Russia and China in from the Cold	59
3	Reducing Communal Killing: Intervention in "Dangerous, Troubled, Failed, Murderous States"	113
4	Avoiding Nuclear Catastrophe: Moving Steadily and Safely to a Nuclear-Weapons-Free World	169
5	Reducing Human Carnage: An Agenda for the 21st Century	217
	Epilogue: Listening to Wilson's Ghost	227
	Afterword to the Paperback Edition: Wilson's Ghost in the Post-9/11 World	231
	Notes	277
	Acknowledgments	303
	About the Authors	307
	Index	309

The Speculation Economy or Walter White

The Speculation Economy: How Finance Triumphed over Industry

Author: Lawrence E Mitchell

American businesses today are obsessed with the price of their stock, and no wonder. The consequences of even a modest decrease can be so dire that some executives would rather damage their corporation's long-term health than allow quarterly returns to fall below projections. But how did this situation come about? When did the stock market become the driver of the American economy? Lawrence E. Mitchell identifies the moment in American history when finance triumphed over industry. He shows how the birth of the giant modern corporation spurred the rise of the stock market and how, by the dawn of the 1920s, the stock market left behind its business origins to become the very reason for the creation of business itself.

What People Are Saying

Joel Seligman
"Mitchell highlights two of the most pivotal events in our history of modern finance: the rise of Wall Street and investment banking as a key factor in American capitalism and the federal government's response to the ever more complex role of finance capitalism. Mitchell's writing is graceful, comprehensive, and persuasive that as significant as the story of trusts and the trustbusters has been, the rise of finance capitalism and ultimately its federal coordination through such agencies as the Federal Reserve System and the Securities and Exchange Commission may be even more important."--(Joel Seligman, President, University of Rochester and author, the Transformation of Wall Street)

Harvey J. Goldschmid
"Lawrence Mitchell's new work is full of fresh insight about the rise of what he calls 'American corporate capitalism.' Anyone interested in the development of our modern financial markets will be richly rewarded by a careful reading."--(Harvey J. Goldschmid, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia University, former Member, United States Securities and Exchange Commission)

Stephen M. Bainbridge
"Professor Mitchell's provocative thesis is that the development of the modern American public corporation was not an organic process but rather occurred almost overnight at an identifiable point in time and as a result of identifiable political and economic forces. This important new work helps us understand the forces that continue to shape the dominant form of economic actor of our time."--(Stephen M. Bainbridge, William D. Warren Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law)

Charlie Cray
"An impressive work of legal, economic and historical scholarship that will enrich today's debate over corporate accountability and regulatory policy."--(Charlie Cray, director of the Center for Corporate Policy and co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy)

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WALTER WHITE: THE DILEMMA OF BLACK IDENTITY IN AME

Author: Thomas Dyja

"Thomas Dyja's fascinating and compelling biography of Walter White takes us into the personal and political world of this fair-skinned, blond and blue-eyed, brash and impulsive, stylish and complex man. His story is about one of the few individuals in American history who devoted himself completely to the concept of a color-blind nation, yet lost the delicate balance between ambition and advocacy that had been his trademark." In restoring Walter White to his place in the story of the African-American struggle, Thomas Dyja fills the void between Booker T. Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also confronts some of the thorniest issues between blacks and whites in America.

Publishers Weekly

Once known as "Mr. NAACP," Walter White and his contributions to African-American history have been lost in the margins of memory. Dyja (The Moon in Our Hands) offers a straightforward biography of the light-skinned, blue-eyed, blond-haired black man who served as executive secretary of the NAACP for the "complex and pivotal decades" from 1931 to 1955. White's daring made him an unparalleled investigator into the horrendous violence and systematic peonage that characterized the decades before WWII. His accomplishments were history making: desegregation of the armed forces owes a debt to his investigations into the treatment of black soldiers in Europe and the Pacific; the Legal Defense Fund owes much to White's focus on litigation. Usefully but often controversially, this "man of few theories and many tactics, remained squarely, sanely and consistently down the middle for almost four decades" and kept the NAACP along that same path. As in White's life, the NAACP holds the center, but Dyja attends to White's place as a writer of the Harlem Renaissance and to his more intimate life, including his "last act"-White's marriage to a white woman that, according to the author, "cost him his place in history." (Nov.)

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

Kirkus Reviews

Compact, insightful biography seeks to restore the historical importance of the energetic, light-skinned NAACP secretary whose leadership laid the groundwork for the civil-rights movement. As a result of forced sexual relations on both sides of his family, Walter White (1893-1955) was only 5/32nds black. Some historians have seen the blue-eyed, blond-haired activist as "a freak of nature who somehow used his fair skin to deceive both white and black America," writes Dyja (The Moon in Our Hands, 2005, etc.). The author portrays White as a witty, ambitious man who had the courage and passion to challenge Jim Crow segregationist laws. Raised black but able to pass for white, he used this as a tool when he joined the NAACP in 1918 to investigate the growing number of lynchings in the South. Risking his own life numerous times, he lured lynchers into proudly confessing murder and torture to a man they thought was white. He wrote articles and gave incendiary talks to highlight his findings, using the mass media to gradually turn Americans against lynching. In New York, White was an early member of the Harlem Renaissance, though his literary success was limited; he wrote an anti-lynching novel (Fire in the Flint, 1924) and encouraged other writers to portray African-American life in all its complexity. He became secretary of the NAACP in 1931 and incessantly championed civil rights, making the cover of Time in 1938. He effectively blocked the Supreme Court nomination of John Parker, who supported black disenfranchisement; his relentless pressure resulted in Truman's landmark 1948 executive orders ending discrimination in federal employment and requiring equal opportunity in the armed forces. Hiscrowning legacy was the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schooling. White's 1949 marriage to a white woman gave ammunition to critics who diminished his role in African-American history by saying he never believed he was black, but Dyja successfully shows that he transcended narrow definitions of race and worked for humanity. Able tribute to a boundary-smashing activist.

What People Are Saying

Manfred Berg
"Walter White, the longtime executive secretary of the NAACP, is one of the most complex and yet fascinating characters of the black freedom struggle. While many historians have dismissed White as an opportunistic self-promoter, Thomas Dyja's elegantly written biography provides the reader with an empathetic and judicious portrait of a man who was passionately devoted to the cause of racial advancement but as an individual aspired to move beyond the limitations of race."--(Manfred Berg, author of The Ticket to Freedom)

Ted Widmer
"Thomas Dyja's gripping biography of Walter White has restored an essential American life. With impeccable research, acute sensitivity and literary grace, Dyja has restored one of the most important links in the long chain of events and causes that brought Americans, at long last, into the the bright sunshine of civil and human rights."--(Ted Widmer, author of Ark of the Liberties)

Kenneth Robert Janken
"In prose that moves effortlessly across the page, Thomas Dyja captures the energy and accomplishments of Walter White, one of the most important and effective African American leaders of the last century."--(Kenneth Robert Janken, author of Walter White: Mr. NAACP)

Devin Fergus
"Dyjas's crisply-written biography is a fascinating, concise history of arguably the most effective civil rights leader of his time. Dyjas's timely and nimble effort identifies the gap between one person's proximity to power and a community's failure to ever actualize it--a dilemma that continues to plague civil rights leaders and by extension black America today. As the inaugural text for this new series, Walter White is an auspicious beginning for The Library of African American Biography, which will crucially introduce and familiarize future generations of readers to the most important people of the African American experience."--(Devin Fergus, author of Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980)

Structural Approach to Direct Practice in Social Work or Enduring Debate

Structural Approach to Direct Practice in Social Work: A Social Constructionist Perspective

Author: Gale Goldberg Wood

This classic text introduces students to the structural approach of social work practice, which assumes that many clients' problems arise from harmful social forces. By focusing on the construction of such realities as poverty, racism, and domestic violence, the structural approach counters the focus on individual change that is so common in our age of managed care and corporatization.

For this edition Gale Goldberg Wood and Carol T. Tully have recast the text from the perspective of contemporary social constructionism without altering its main message and organization. They have added six new chapters, covering ethics, the role of the social worker as therapist and community organizer, learning and working within the organization, and the paradigm dilemma. In addition, case studies now include greater detail about the client's social context.

Though much has changed since the first edition of this book was published, the need for well-trained, compassionate social workers remains. The Structural Approach to Direct Practice in Social Work continues to be an essential resource for practitioners who wish to help their clients confront oppressive social realities and affect system change through political action.

Book about: Naomis Guide to Aging Gratefully or Daily Word for Healing

Enduring Debate: Classic and Contemporary Readings in American Politics

Author: David T Canon

The most comprehensive reader available for courses in American government, The Enduring Debate, Fourth Edition, balances classic and contemporary selections from a variety of scholarly and popular sources. In addition, each chapter presents at least two readings in debate-style format, encouraging students to read critically and to explore the different sides of an issue.

University of California, Irvine - Mark P. Petracca

The best selection yet of readings necessary for an introduction to American politics and highly appropriate for undergraduates.

Bloomsburg University - Gloria T. Cohen-Dion

This is an excellent book; presenting the issues before the "debate" from several different perspectives is a fine idea.

Making Sense of the Molly Maguires or Shame of the Cities

Making Sense of the Molly Maguires

Author: Kevin Kenney

Twenty Irish immigrants, suspected of belonging to a secret terrorist organization called the Molly Maguires, were executed in Pennsylvania in the 1870s for the murder of sixteen men. Ever since, there has been enormous disagreement over who the Molly Maguires were, what they did, and why they did it, as virtually everything we now know about the Molly Maguires is based on the hostile descriptions of their contemporaries.
Arguing that such sources are inadequate to serve as the basis for a factual narrative, author Kevin Kenny examines the ideology behind contemporary evidence to explain how and why a particular meaning came to be associated with the Molly Maguires in Ireland and Pennsylvania. At the same time, this work examines new archival evidence from Ireland that establishes that the American Molly Maguires were a rare transatlantic strand of the violent protest endemic in the Irish countryside.
Combining social and cultural history, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires offers a new explanation of who the Molly Maguires were, as well as why people wrote and believed such curious things about them. In the process, it vividly retells one of the classic stories of American labor and immigration.

See also: Silence on the Wire or Starting a Yahoo Business for Dummies

Shame of the Cities

Author: Lincoln Steffens

First printed more than a century ago, this muckraking classic attacked corrupt election practices and shady dealings in businesses and city governments across the nation. Taking a hard look at the unprincipled lives of political bosses, police corruption, graft payments, and other notorious political abuses of the time, the book set the style for future investigative reporting. Invaluable to students and teachers of early twentieth-century American history, the volume remains an inspiration for all reform-minded journalists.

Rome Wasnt Burnt in a Day or The Price of Fire

Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day: The Real Deal on How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting America

Author: Joe Scarborough

With big-spending Democrats at their side, President George Bush and his "conservative" Republican Congress have controlled the government's checkbook while the national debt has skyrocketed past seven trillion dollars. That's right, $7,000,000,000,000. How has the party of Reagan become the party of big-government spending? Now former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough delivers a scathing indictment of Republicans and Democrats alike in the same informed, hard-hitting, and entertaining style fans of Scarborough Country have come to admire. Having had a ringside seat during his four terms in the House of Representatives, Scarborough gives the inside scoop on how Washington really works and on the spending orgy the Republicans have fueled the last ten years.

The story begins with Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and the Republicans promising to balance the budget and reform Washington. It culminates with a Republican president continually rubber-stamping pork-filled appropriations bills that squander taxpayer dollars. That is, unless you think it's necessary to spend millions of dollars on research into "alternative salmon products" in Alaska, or the study of crickets in Utah, or of sea turtles in Hawaii. Sadly, these instances merely hint at the gross spending by Congress.

From confrontations with the Fat White Pink Boys (political operatives who put the sick in sycophant) to flights on Air Force One and a tell-tale discussion with President Bush about how to balance the budget, Joe Scarborough has seen all that he can take and now calls on his fellow Republicans to stop turning their backs on the ideals Ronald Reagan fostered that were once the backbone of this proud party. Important, timely, and a call to arms, Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day shows just how imperative it is that Washington politicians of all stripes stop mortgaging the country's economic future for their own ill-gotten gains.

Publishers Weekly

Elected to Congress in 1994 as a Contract with America revolutionary, Scarborough spent six years representing the Florida panhandle, and currently hosts the MSNBC political talk show Scarborough Country. His book is part memoir, part political treatise that purports to explain how various "Washington barbarians" are bankrupting America. Full of partisan and reformer zeal, the freshman class of 1994 set out on its crusade to reform Congress and reduce government spending. However, the crusaders met their Saladin in President Clinton and his skillful use of the veto pen. The House freshmen were further disillusioned when their leadership opted for compromise rather than continued confrontation following the government shutdown in 1995. Scarborough bitterly compares the Republican leadership to the pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm-indistinguishable from the corrupt Democratic bosses they had ousted. His account of the Republican Congress is well told from the perspective of the House freshmen, but Scarborough never asks the hard questions about why the Gingrich Republicans became so unpopular with voters. Similarly, the book's promise to reveal the "real deal" about why government spending continues to rise, is nothing more than the revelation that interest groups, lobbyists and politicians collude on government spending because it is in their mutual self-interest. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Republicans and Democrats are both burning our tax dollars, argues this former Republican Congressman, now host of MSNBC's Scarborough Country. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction	1
Chapter 1	The Real Deal	13
Chapter 2	Barbarians at the Gate	33
Chapter 3	Battling the Imperial Congress	51
Chapter 4	Capitol Offense	77
Chapter 5	Not a Dime's Worth of Difference	91
Chapter 6	Becoming the Imperial Congress	105
Chapter 7	The Easter Rising	121
Chapter 8	Fat White Pink Boys	137
Chapter 9	Why Washington Always Wins	149
Chapter 10	How to Fix It	171
	Epilogue	183

Interesting book: Dirección Estratégica:Texto y Casos

The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia

Author: Benjamin Dangl

New social movements have emerged in Bolivia over the "price of fire"-access to basic elements of survival like water, gas, land, coca, employment, and other resources. Though these movements helped pave the way to the presidency for indigenous coca-grower Evo Morales in 2005, they have made it clear that their fight for self-determination doesn't end at the ballot box. From the first moments of Spanish colonization to today's headlines, The Price of Fire offers a gripping account of clashes in Bolivia between corporate and people's power, contextualizing them regionally, culturally, and historically.

Benjamin Dangl has worked as an independent journalist throughout Latin America, writing for publications such as Z Magazine, The Nation, and The Progressive. He is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events, and UpsideDownWorld.org, an online magazine covering activism and politics in Latin America. Benjamin won a 2007 Project Censored Award for his coverage of US military operations in Paraguay.

"Price of Fire is not yet another bleak 'tell-all' account of globalization, its pages are filled with stories of resistance, struggle and, above all, hope."-Teo Ballve, editor of the NACLA Report on the Americas and co-editor of Dispatches from Latin America

"Ben Dangl takes the reader on an unforgettable and inspiring journey through Bolivia and neighboring countries, providing a window on the revolutionary struggles of the poor and dispossessed, and particularly on the resurgence of indigenous resistance and leadership."-Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Blood on theBorder: A Memoir of the Contra War

"Most Americans know nothing of Bolivia, an ignorance that only plays into the hands of empire. Ben Dangl's book is both informative and inspiring, a cure for the apathy that grows from that ignorance. A must-read for those already interested in solidarity with Latin America and indigenous people."-Tom Hayden, author of The Zapatista Reader and Street Wars

"Ben Dangl has found himself under the skin of the Bolivian freedom struggle: he accurately represents its constraints, its opportunities, and its hopes."-Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World

"With great empathy and lucid prose, Dangl captures the exemplary courage that has put Latin America in the vanguard of the new internationalism and has made it one of the few bright spots on an otherwise dismal global landscape."-Greg Grandin, author of Empire's Workshop

"Price of Fire by Ben Dangl informs, outrages, and builds hope. People's movements for societal betterment in South America are an inspiration for human rights activists worldwide and Dangl gives us a full serving of encouragement and hope. He documents how historical imperialism, dominated my US corporate/government capital interests, is being successfully challenged by indigenous activists. Price of Fire is the story of cultural resistance from the street to international geo-political alliances. I highly recommend this book for working people, students, and radical democrats to hear the voices of South American people and their chronicle of grassroots democratic empowerment."-Peter Phillips, Professor Sociology, Sonoma State University, Director Project Censored, and co-editor with Dennis Loo of Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney

The Lost Executioner or Top Secret Tourism

The Lost Executioner: A Journey to the Heart of the Killing Fields

Author: Nic Dunlop

"In Cambodia, between 1975 and 1979, some two million people died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Twenty years later, not one member had been held accountable for the genocide. Haunted by the image of one of them, Comrade Duch, photographer Nic Dunlop set out to bring him to life, and thereby to account. "I needed to understand how a seemingly ordinary man from one of the poorer parts of Cambodia could turn into one of the worst mass murderers of the twentieth century." The result, The Lost Executioner, is an unforgettable, illuminating document that, by bearing witness, captivates us all with its revelation." Weaving seamlessly between past and present, Dunlop unfolds the history of Cambodia as a filter for understanding its tragic last forty years. He makes clear how much responsibility the United States must share, through failed political alliances and the illegal bombing of Cambodia, for the bloodshed that followed. Guided by witnesses Dunlop teases out the details of Duch's transformation from sensitive schoolchild and dedicated teacher to the revolutionary killer who later slipped quietly back into village life. From the temples of Angkor to the prisons of Pol Pot's regime, to his unexpected meeting with Duch himself, Dunlop's special vision as a photographer enlarges our own. The Lost Executioner is a blend of history and testimony - and a vivid reminder that, whether in the killing fields of Cambodia or the deserts of Darfur, if we turn our backs on genocide, we must bear a collective guilt.

Publishers Weekly

Long preoccupied by the Cambodian genocide in the late 1970s at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Irish-born and Thailand-based photojournalist Dunlop homed in on Comrade Duch, head of the Khmer Rouge secret police and Pol Pot's chief executioner, who had vanished. How had a well-educated schoolteacher (born Kaing Guek Eav) become commandant of a torture center and complicit in the deaths of an estimated 20,000 political prisoners? asks Dunlop in this measured but horrifying book, a chronicle of his dogged efforts to understand the carnage and bring about justice. With Duch at the book's core, the author (who worked in Cambodia throughout the '90s) weaves a contemporary account of a war-ravaged nation into the history of its ancient past and rumination on terror in the name of ideology. Dunlop also deepens his story with thoughtful-and very personal-commentary on photography and violence. In 1999, Dunlop found and confronted Duch, who voluntarily confessed to his role in the Khmer Rouge. Though Duch was then charged and imprisoned, he has not yet been brought to trial. Cambodia's labyrinthine politics can occasionally be difficult to digest, but Dunlop's personal quest for international justice holds the narrative together. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Haunted by photographs of prisoners at the Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia, where in the late 1970s many thousands were tortured and all but seven perished, Irish-born photojournalist Dunlop searched for its commandant, the zealous Cambodian executioner who was called Comrade Duch. In this historical account of his quest and the Khmer Rouge's genocidal reign in Cambodia and its aftermath, Dunlop interweaves stories of both the victims and the perpetrators, the indifference and the ignorance of the West, as well as his own personal journey to understand how and why the horrific happened and why the world seemingly turned a blind eye. Dunlop's search leads him, in 1999, to one Hang Pin, a born-again Christian relief worker and schoolteacher whom he soon realizes is Comrade Duch. When confronted by Dunlop, Duch admits his guilt: "My unique fault is that I didn't serve God, I served men, I served communism." Comrade Duch is still in prison awaiting trial. His photo and confession to the authorities were published, but Dunlop wonders if that did more to stifle the truth than bring about justice. Well written, harrowing, and blunt, this book is recommended for public and academic libraries.-Patti C. McCall, Albany Molecular Research Inc., NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A photographer/journalist charts the brutal, sanguinary history of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and chases down one of its most savage officials, who now sits in prison awaiting trial. The kindless commandant of S-21, the most unforgiving of Khmer Rouge prisons, was a man of several names-Kaing Geuk Eav, his birth name; Comrade Duch, his Khmer Rouge name; Hang Pin, his name during his years in hiding, when he taught math and English in remote villages, declared himself saved by Jesus and worked for a relief agency. During his years as commandant, only a handful of prisoners survived. It's miraculous that any did. The methods of torture-60 lashes for urinating or defecating without permission, among them-bespeak both the vast dimensions of the terror and the unlimited abilities of people to imagine ways to torment one another. One of the most disturbing moments in Dunlop's narrative is an interview with a former prison guard whose lack of affect is both stunning and frightening. Many thousands died while in the care of Duch in ways horrible to imagine. Dunlop features interviews with victims and victimizers, including Duch himself, whom the author helped apprehend. Dunlop tells, as well, the sad recent history of Cambodia; at times, he is unable to restrain his disgust. He notes, for example, that the United Nations forces and bureaucrats, in the country in the early 1990s to supervise a cease-fire and monitor elections, spent $92 million on air-conditioned Land Cruisers for themselves but only $20 million on road and bridge repairs. Biography, memoir and history of unspeakable darkness.

Interesting book: Defying Dixie or Unexpected George Washington

Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You're Not Supposed to Know About

Author: Harry Helms

Here is the unseen America of government facilities and installations protected by a wall of secrecy, deception, and misinformation. It includes huge, isolated areas (some larger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island), along with innocuous office buildings located in the middle of major cities. This "other America" has an enormous impact on your life, but you probably have little idea of its extent, scope, and power.

This book invites you to visit this top-secret America. Listings are by state, and each facility/site entry gives its history, discusses the activities carried on there, explores various rumors, and provides maps and directions to every location.

Author Harry Helms visited and photographed a number of sites in this book. None of the intelligence here was taken from classified sources; everything was on the public record and obtained by patient digging. Since the 9/11 attacks, much of this information was removed from public dissemination. To those who think a book like this discloses vital government secrets, Helms says: "Get real. If I can find this stuff out, the Russians, Chinese, and various terrorist groups also found it out a long time before I did."

Adventurous travelers and truth-seekers will want to know how to navigate within top-secret America.

When Grownups Play at War or The Communist Manifesto

When Grownups Play at War: A Child's Memoir

Author: Ilona Flutsztejn Gruda

It was the last summer before the war- the war that was to change millions of lives. I was nine years old, and while the grownups talked of the tragedy to come, we children played as we always had, not realizing it would never be the same again. From a splendid blue September sky, the German planes began to drop their bombs on Poland…

Books about: Bomb Scare or Pacifism as Pathology

The Communist Manifesto

Author: Karl Marx

Critically and textually up-to-date, this new edition of the classic translation (Samuel Moore, 1888) features an introduction and notes by the eminent Marx scholar David McLellan, prefaces written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels subsequent to the original 1848 publication, and corrections of errors made in earlier versions. Regarded as one of the most influential political tracts ever written, The Communist Manifesto serves as the foundation document of the Marxist movement. This summary of the Marxist vision is an incisive account of the world-view Marx and Engels had evolved during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration of the previous few years.

Multiculturalism or To End A War

Multiculturalism

Author: Charles Taylor

A new edition of the highly acclaimed book Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition," this paperback brings together an even wider range of leading philosophers and social scientists to probe the political controversy surrounding multiculturalism. Charles Taylor's initial inquiry, which considers whether the institutions of liberal democratic government make room--or should make room--for recognizing the worth of distinctive cultural traditions, remains the centerpiece of this discussion. It is now joined by Jürgen Habermas's extensive essay on the issues of recognition and the democratic constitutional state and by K. Anthony Appiah's commentary on the tensions between personal and collective identities, such as those shaped by religion, gender, ethnicity, race, and sexuality, and on the dangerous tendency of multicultural politics to gloss over such tensions. These contributions are joined by those of other well-known thinkers, who further relate the demand for recognition to issues of multicultural education, feminism, and cultural separatism.

Praise for the previous edition:

Table of Contents:

Preface (1994) ix
Preface and Acknowledgments xiii
PART ONE 1 Introduction Amy Gutmann 3
The Politics of Recognition Charles Taylor 25
Comment Susan Wolf 75
Comment Steven C. Rockefeller 87
Comment Michael Walzer 99
PART TWO 105
Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State Jurgen Habermas Translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen 107
Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social Reproduction K. Anthony Appiah 149
Contributors 165
Index 169

Books about: San Luis Obispo County Wineries or Meat Club Cookbook

To End A War

Author: Richard Holbrook

When President Clinton sent Richard Holbrooke to Bosnia as America's chief negotiator in late 1995, he took a gamble that would eventually redefine his presidency. But there was no saying then, at the height of the war, that Holbrooke's mission would succeed. The odds were strongly against it. This book is Holbrooke's gripping inside account of his mission, of the decisive months when, belatedly and reluctantly but ultimately decisively, the United States reasserted its moral authority and leadership and ended Europe's worst war in over half a century. To End a War reveals many important new details of how America made this historic decision.

Chris Hedges

Holbrooke's To End a War is an engaging, witty and dramatic account....More than that, it is an impassioned plea for Washington to use the military might at its disposal to intervene when societies break down, to take a leadership role in the world and to reject the notion that putting an end to gross human rights abuses is a goal that must inevitably differ from pragmatic, self-interested foreign policy....The strength of the book is its wealth of anecdotes and detail, which instill life into the characters who wander on and off the stage.-- New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review - Chris Hedges

The strength of the book is its wealth of anecdotes and detail, which instill life into the characters who wander on and off the stage.

Thomas E. Ricks

...[S]hould be read by anyone who still believes that the relationship between the U.S. military and its political overseers is healthy.... —The Washington Monthly

Publishers Weekly

American negotiator Holbrooke offers a fast-paced, first-person account of the American-led diplomatic initiative that ended the bloodshed of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia in 1995. A veteran of the Vietnam peace talks, one-time ambassador to Germany and assistant secretary of state, Holbrooke guides readers through "fourteen weeks... filled with conflict, confusion, and tragedy before... success." This is a penetrating portrait of modern diplomacywhat the author describes as "something like a combination of chess and mountain climbing." Spurred on by the deaths of three colleagues on his negotiating team (their armored personnel carrier toppled over a cliff on a treacherous approach to Sarajevo), Holbrooke hammers out a cease-fire in an intensive shuttle among the three Balkan presidents, and then presides over the three-week cloistered peace conference in Dayton, Ohio. He covers the elements of crafting effective foreign policy: coordination among various agencies and personalities in Washington; dealing with European allies; ensuring that military and diplomatic efforts work in concert; negotiating with ethnic nationalist leaders; "spinning" the press; and selling the peace plan to a skeptical Congress and public. While he provides scant background into the historical roots of the Balkan conflict, Holbrooke details the various stages of the negotiating process and vividly describes the Balkan leaders: the arrogant Tudjman, the sly Milosevic and the bickering and disorganized Bosnian Muslims. Although often self-justifying, Holbrooke acknowledges several errors, such as allowing the Bosnian Serb entity to retain the "blood-soaked name" of Republika Srpska. Still, his achievement in forging peace in Bosnia is beyond question, and his account of that process is essential for understanding how American power can be brought to bear on the course of history. (June)

Library Journal

The chief U.S. negotiator of the Dayton accords gives the inside story.

Tom Gjelten

Unavoidably, his behind-the-scenes story of the negotiations is a self-promoting account. To End a War is also one of the most important and readable diplomatic memoirs of recent times. Holbrooke writes vividly of his dramatic encounters with the Balkan leaders. -- The Washington Post Book World

Richard Bernstein

To End a War is, in sum, an important book containing many lessons about the possibilities and limitations of diplomacy.... He has written a straightforward account of a historic achievement that was largely his own, telling frankly and precisely and with a minimum of throat-clearing exactly how that achievement came about. -- The New York Times

Thomas E. Ricks

...[S]hould be read by anyone who still believes that the relationship between the U.S. military and its political overseers is healthy.... -- The Washington Monthly

Chris Hedges

The strength of the book is its wealth of anecdotes and detail, which instill life into the characters who wander on and off the stage. -- The New York Times Book Review

Time

A compelling accountof life-and-death negotiation—the personal dynamics, the theatrical gestures, the unexpected snags, the leaks...A classic exercise in lock-up, great power diplomacy...A riveting book.

The Economist

Richard Holbrooke is the Quentin Tarrantino of diplomacy...peppered with amusing anecdotes and shrewd insights.

Kirkus Reviews

A riveting and forthright insider account of the Dayton accords and their aftermath, by their primary architect. For Holbrooke, a proponent of the use of force to end the Bosnian crisis, the assignment as assistant secretary of state during Clintonþs first administration (1994þ96) offered an opportunity to implement changes he had long advocated. The core of Holbrooke's report, and by far the most vibrant and disarming, is his candid account of the Dayton accords that ended the war. "The negotiations," he writes, "were simultaneously cerebral and physical, abstract and personal something like a combination of chess and mountain climbing." To End a War captures this mood precisely; Holbrooke offers gripping tales of marathon 24-hour sessions, scenes of the Balkan leaders screaming at one another and at the Americans, and offers unforgettable portraits of Milosevic, Izetbegovic, and Tudjman. The place seethes with frustration. When Anthony Lake comments that this is "the craziest zoo I've ever seen," Holbrooke feels satisfied that he has "understood the special weirdness of Dayton." The consummate diplomat and team member, Holbrooke tells not only of his own fiercely dedicated work but graciously praises and documents the efforts of negotiators, diplomats, politicians, and humanitarian workers who continue to take part in making and implementing policy. While not exactly literary, Holbrooke's memoir is both highly literate and informed, as well as notably readable. Quotations appear from W.H. Auden, Kierkegaard, and Melville, among others. Itþs also steeped in the tradition of diplomatic memoirs by eminent diplomat/authors such as Henry Kissinger and Harold Nicolson.While limiting his discussion to the Balkans and the Dayton accords, Holbrooke always has an eye to the broader picture, drawing frequent historical comparisons. A diplomatic memoir of uncommon honesty and insight and a sobering tale for those who dismiss the Dayton accords as an unjust peace. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)

What People Are Saying

Arthur Schlesinger
"This brilliant and remarkable book is both an absorbing firsthand narrative of the Balkan Conflict and an invaluable contribution to the history of our time."

Fritz Stern
"Written with sagacity and wisdom, To End a War tellsus about politics in the Balkans and in Washington, about our European allies, and about the intricacies of diplomatic negotiations."

Henry Kissinger
"Whether one agrees with him or not on Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke's book is must reading."

George F. Kennan
"What Richard Holbrook has given us in this impressive diplomatic memoir is a vivid and well-written account of the heroic efforts put forward by the author himself and the small team he headed to spare the troubled Balkan region further bloodshed and horror, and to bring the endanged peoples of Bosnia hope, security, and normalcy of life."

Leslie Gelb
"A real-life diplomatic thriller: the inside story of how peace came to Bosnia. An indispensable guide for future peacemakers."

Leslie Stahl
"A riveting, unpudownable account of how Holbrooke and his team cajoled the leaders of the various factions in Bosnia into signing a peace accord. This is not a book about dry policy prescriptions or march-along history. It is an adventure involving physical danger, moral quandaries, psychological gamesmanship, and high drama. Richard Holbrooke is a spirited, generous writer and a master storyteller."

US Citizenship Test or Practical Ethics

U.S. Citizenship Test

Author: Gladys Alesi

This manual has been updated to include explanations of recently instituted government procedures and regulations that pertain to application for United States citizenship. Progressive exercises, in addition to providing a review of information needed for the test, build practice in using spoken and written English. Topics include reviews of U.S. history, geography, and government, explanation of application procedures, advice on filling out citizenship application forms, and up-to-date information on eligibility for naturalization.

New interesting textbook: Tecnología Conducida Comercial

Practical Ethics

Author: Peter Singer

Peter Singer's remarkably clear and comprehensive Practical Ethics has become a classic introduction to applied ethics since its publication in 1979 and has been translated into many languages. For this second edition the author has revised all the existing chapters, added two new ones, and updated the bibliography. He has also added an appendix describing some of the deep misunderstanding of and consequent violent reaction to the book in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland where the book has tested the limits of freedom of speech. The focus of the book is the application of ethics to difficult and controversial social questions.

Minority Populations and Health or Beyond the Fields

Minority Populations and Health: An Introduction to Health Disparities in the United States

Author: Thomas A LaVeist

"The text is state-of-the-art in its analysis of health disparities from both domestic and international perspectives. Minority Populations and Health: An Introduction to Health Disparities in the United States is a welcome addition to the field because it widens access to the complex issues underlying the health disparities problem. "-- Preventing Chronic Disease/CDC, October 2005

"This is a very comprehensive, evidence-based book dealing with the health disparities that plague the United States. This is a welcome and valuable addition to the field of health care for minority groups in the United States."-- Doody's Publishers Bulletin, August 2005

"Health isn’t color-blind. Racial minorities disproportionately suffer from some diseases, but experts say race alone doesn’t completely account for the disparities. Newsweek's Jennifer Barrett Ozols spoke with Thomas LaVeist, director of the Center for Health Disparities Solutions at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and author of the upcoming book, "Minority Populations and Health: An Introduction to Health Disparities in the U.S." (Jossey-Bass) about race and medicine. "-- MSNBC/Newsweek interview with author Thomas L. LaVeist, February 2005

"The book is readable and organized to be quickly read with specifics readily retrievable. It is comprehensive and visual."-- Journal of the American Medical Association, September 2005

Minority Populations and Health is a textbook that offers a complete foundation in the core issues and theoretical frameworks for the development of policy and interventions to address race disparities in health-related outcomes. This bookcovers U.S. health and social policy, the role of race and ethnicity in health research, social factors contributing to mortality, longevity and life expectancy, quantitative and demographic analysis and access, and utilization of health services. Instructors material available at

Doody Review Services

Reviewer: Penny Wolfe Moore, RNC, PhD (Southwestern Adventist University)
Description: This book focuses on the health disparities of minority populations in the United States, using many tables and charts (no color) that illustrate main points very well.
Purpose: The author had taught courses on health inequality for several years but could not find a comprehensive book, so he wrote this especially to meet that classroom need. He meets his objective, and the book is also useful for community health planners and educators.
Audience: It was written with undergraduate and graduate students in mind but a wider audience exists. Community health educators and community developers will find this book very useful. Anyone working on the Healthy People 2010 objectives will need this as a reference.
Features: This book offers a comprehensive discussion of the many factors leading to health disparities related to racial/ethnic issues. The healthcare needs of minority groups are explored with many strategies presented. Theory is linked to research and implications for action are included. Many charts and tables are included that summarize material and give more meaning to research findings.
Assessment: This is a very comprehensive, evidence-based book dealing with the health disparities that plague the United States. The problems are identified and then followed by strategies for action. This is a welcome and valuable addition to the field of healthcare for minority groups in the United States.

Rating

4 Stars! from Doody

Table of Contents:

1	Historical aspects of race/ethnicity and health	1
2	Conceptual issues in race/ethnicity and health	15
3	The demography of American racial/ethnic minorities	30
4	The epidemiological profile of racial/ethnic minorities	53
5	Mental health	83
6	Health care services among racial/ethnic groups	108
7	Theories of racial/ethnic differences in health	133
8	Socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic differences in health	157
9	Behavior and health	180
10	African American health issues	205
11	American Indian and Alaska Native health issues	223
12	Asian and Pacific Islander health issues	242
13	Hispanic/Latino health issues	260
14	Addressing disparities in health and health care	283

Book about: Story of Wine or The Get With The Program Guide to Fast Food and Family Restaurants

Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century

Author: Randy Shaw

Cesar Chavez is the most prominent Latino in United States history books, and much has been written about Chavez and the United Farm Worker's heyday in the 1960s and '70s. But left untold has been their ongoing impact on 21st century social justice movements. Beyond the Fields unearths this legacy, and describes how Chavez and the UFW's imprint can be found in the modern reshaping of the American labor movement, the building of Latino political power, the transformation of Los Angeles and California politics, the fight for environmental justice, and the burgeoning national movement for immigrant rights. Many of the ideas, tactics, and strategies that Chavez and the UFW initiated or revived--including the boycott, the fast, clergy-labor partnerships and door-to-door voter outreach--are now so commonplace that their roots in the farmworkers' movement is forgotten.

This powerful book also describes how the UFW became the era's leading incubator of young activist talent, creating a generation of skilled alumni who went on to play critical roles in progressive campaigns. UFW volunteers and staff were dedicated to furthering economic justice, and many devoted their post-UFW lives working for social change. When Barack Obama adopted "Yes We Can" as his 2008 campaign theme, he confirmed that the spirit of "Si Se Puede" has never been stronger, and that it still provides the clearest roadmap for achieving greater social and economic justice in the United States.

Publishers Weekly

Bay Area community organizer Shaw (Reclaiming America) examines the enduring influence of the United Farm Workers' model of grassroots organization, which he pointedly credits with the majority of labor's successes since the 1960s and a wellspring of 21st-century movements for democratic rights. He retells the story of Cesar Chavez and the UFW's unprecedented success in mobilizing a broad coalition as well as winning political clout and material gains for workers through such tactics as boycotts, appeals to spiritual values, fasting and community-centered organizing. Shaw describes a generation of young activists passing through the UFW's crucible of idealism, sacrifice and individual initiative, and into a lifetime of service to social justice causes; indeed, it was the very success of the UFW's campaigns that contributed, ironically, to a gradual power drain on the union in the 1980s. Leading organizers and political strategists like Susan Sachen and Marshall Ganz went on to work for other unions like SEIU or were hired away by mainstream electoral campaigns. Finally, Shaw evaluates the capacities of today's labor movement to build on the UFW's legacy of self-directed, on-the-ground training, political solidarity and far-reaching social idealism. (Jan.)

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

Ikes Spies or In Pursuit of Reason

Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment

Author: Douglas Brinkley

About the Author:
Ambrose, Stephen E. is Director Emeritus of the Eisenhower Center, retired Boyd Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, and president of the National D-Day Museum. He is the author of many books, including Americans at War, Citizen Soldier, and Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West.

See also: Classic Conran or Backyard Bartender

In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson

Author: Noble E Cunningham Jr

"A major contribution." Washington Post
The authoritative single-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most significant figure in American history. He was a complex and compelling man: a fervent advocate of democracy who enjoyed the life of a southern aristocrat and owned slaves, a revolutionary who became president, a believer in states' rights who did much to further the power of the federal government. Drawing on the recent explosion of Jeffersonian scholarship and fresh readings of original sources, IN PURSUIT OF REASON is a monument to Jefferson that will endure for generations.

Publishers Weekly

Cunningham succeeds admirably in his biography of Jefferson, intended for both scholars and general readers. The University of Missouri historian conveys not only the details of Jefferson's career as a politician and polymath, but the evolution of his thinking as expressed in Notes on the State of Virginia and other writings. He shows that Jefferson's belief in ``the sufficiency of reason for the care of human affairs'' sustained his political principles and his faith in progress and education. Cunningham, author of earlier books on the man and his era (The Image of Thomas Jefferson in the Public Eye, etc.), writes well and with evident authority in this rich work. Photos not seen by PW. History Book Club main selection. (May 29)

Library Journal

Finally we have a sensible one-volume biography of America's most multifaceted Founding Father. Cunningham, an expert on Jefferson's politics and presidency, has admirably condensed the variegated life and tumultuous times into a manageable and readable book. Cunningham's Jefferson is a man occasionally given to emotional turmoilas on the death of his wife and his flirtation with Maria Coswaybut mainly he is a personification of the Enlightenment's faith in human reason, progress, and education. It is a traditional interpretation, even conservativeJefferson's faults and mistakes are downplayed or excusedbut consistent with the weight of academic evidence. This is now the beginning biography for students and scholars alike. History Book Club main selection. Harry W. Fritz, History Dept., Univ. of Montana, Missoula

The Hinge of Fate or Exposing the Real Che Guevara

The Hinge of Fate, Vol. 4

Author: Winston S Churchill

From uninterrupted defeat to almost unbroken success: a year when Rommel is gradually thrown back in North Africa, and in the Pacific the tide turns.

Read also Effortless Style or 101 Tips for Improving Your Blood Sugar

Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him

Author: Humberto Fontova

A critical biography of the iconic communist revolutionary, and an expose of the liberals who lionize him.

Nearly four decades after his death, it's impossible to avoid the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara everywhere from T-shirts to cartoons. Liberals consider Che a revolutionary martyr who gave his life to help the poor of Latin America. Time named him one of the one hundred most influential people of the last century. And a major Hollywood movie is about to lionize him to a new generation.

The reality, as we learn from Cuban exile Humberto Fontova, is that Che wasn't really a gentle soul and a selfless hero. He was a violent Communist who thought nothing of firing a gun into the stomach of a woman six months pregnant whose only crime was that her family opposed him. And he was a hypocrite who lusted after material luxuries while cultivating his image as a man of the people.

Fontova reveals that Che openly talked about his desire to use nuclear weapons against New York City. Such was Che's bloodthirsty hatred that Fontova considers him the godfather of modern terrorism.

Exposing the Real Che Guevara is based on scores of interviews with survivors of Che's atrocities as well as the American CIA agent who interrogated Che just hours before the Bolivian government executed him.

The Challenge of Democracy or The Future of Freedom

The Challenge of Democracy: Government in America

Author: Kenneth Janda

This complete introduction to American government offers a comprehensive program that integrates the core text with supporting materials to benefit both students and instructors. The Eighth Edition maintains the highly acclaimed, non-ideological framework, exploring three themes: freedom, order, and equality as political values; the majoritarianism v. pluralism debate; and the effect of globalization on U.S. politics.

• Brief callouts in the text inform students of Talking Politics audio clips on the accompanying web site and the instructor and student CDs. Follow-up questions encourage students to think about what they hear and can be answered online and submitted to instructors via email.
• The Looking to the Future feature invites students to consider trends in American government and then consider the implications of their answers.
• Politics in a Changing World focuses on the effect of globalization on American government.
• Can You Explain Why? features ask students to use critical-thinking skills to try and explain a political paradox, such as why Americans engage in more forms of political participation than people of other nationalities, yet don't vote as much.
• Compared with What? boxes in every chapter ask students to evaluate facets of the U.S. political system as compared to those of other countries.

Table of Contents:

Contents

Note: Each chapter concludes with a Summary.

• I. Dilemmas of Democracy
• 1. Freedom, Order, or Equality?
  The Globalization of American Government
  The Purposes of Government
  A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Government
  The Concepts of Freedom, Order, and Equality
  Two Dilemmas of Government
  Ideology and the Scope of Government
  American Political Ideologies and the Purpose of Government

  2. Majoritarian or Pluralist Democracy?

  The Theory of Democratic Government

  Institutional Models of Democracy

  Democracy and Globalization

  II. Foundations of American Government

  3. The Constitution

  The Revolutionary Roots of the Constitution

  From Revolution to Confederation

  From Confederation to Constitution

  The Final Product

  Selling the Constitution

  Constitutional Change

  An Evaluation of the Constitution

  4. Federalism

  Theories and Metaphors

  Federalism's Dynamics

  Ideology, Policymaking, and American Federalism

  Federalism and Electoral Politics

  Federalism and the American Intergovernmental System

  Federalism and the International System

  Federalism and Pluralism

  III. Linking People with Government

  5. Public Opinion and Political Socialization

  Public Opinion and the Models of Democracy

  The Distribution of Public Opinion

  Political Socialization

  Social Groups and Political Values

  From Values to Ideology

  The Process of Forming Political Opinions

  6. The Media

  People, Government, and Communications

  The Development of the Mass Media in the United States

  Private Ownership of the Media

  Government Regulation of the Media

  Functions of the MassMedia for the Political System

  Evaluating the Media in Government

  7. Participation and Voting

  Democracy and Political Participation

  Unconventional Participation

  Conventional Participation

  Participating Through Voting

  Explaining Political Participation

  Participation and Freedom, Equality, and Order

  Participation and the Models of Democracy

  8. Political Parties

  Political Parties and Their Functions

  A History of U.S. Party Politics

  The American Two-Party System

  Party Ideology and Organization

  The Model of Responsible Party Government

  9. Nominations, Elections, and Campaigns

  The Evolution of Campaigning

  Nominations

  Elections

  Campaigns

  Explaining Voting Choice

  Campaigns, Elections, and Parties

  10. Interest Groups

  Interest Groups and the American Political Tradition

  How Interest Groups Form

  Interest Group Resources

  Lobbying Tactics

  Is the System Biased?

  IV. Institutions of Government

  11. Congress

  The Origin and Powers of Congress

  Electing Congress

  How Issues Get on the Congressional Agenda

  The Dance of Legislation: An Overview

  Committees: The Workhorses of Congress

  Leaders and Followers in Congress

  The Legislative Environment

  The Dilemma of Representation

  Pluralism, Majoritarianism, and Democracy

  12. The Presidency

  The Constitutional Basis of Presidential Power

  The Expansion of Presidential Power

  The Executive Branch Establishment

  Presidential Leadership

  The President as National Leader

  The President as World Leader

  13. The Bureaucracy

  Organization Matters

  The Development of the Bureaucratic State

  Bureaus and Bureaucrats

  Administrative Policymaking: The Formal Processes

  Administrative Policymaking: Informal Politics

  Problems in Implementing Policy

  Reforming the Bureaucracy: More Control or Less?

  14. The Courts

  National Judicial Supremacy

  The Organization of Courts

  The Supreme Court

  Judicial Recruitment

  The Consequences of Judicial Decisions

  The Courts and Models of Democracy

  V. Civil Liberties and Civil Rights

  15. Order and Civil Liberties

  The Bill of Rights

  Freedom of Religion

  Freedom of Expression

  The Right to Bear Arms

  Applying the Bill of Rights to the States

  The Ninth Amendment and Personal Autonomy

  16. Equality and Civil Rights

  Two Conceptions of Equality

  The Civil War Amendments

  The Dismantling of School Segregation

  The Civil Rights Movement

  Civil Rights for Other Minorities

  Gender and Equal Rights: The Women's Movement

  Affirmative Action: Equal Opportunity or Equal Outcome?

  VI. Making Public Policy

  17. Policymaking

  Government Purposes and Public Policies

  The Policymaking Process

  Fragmentation and Coordination

  The Nonprofit Sector

  18. Economic Policy

  Theories of Economic Policy

  Public Policy and the Budget

  Tax Policies

  Spending Policies

  Taxing, Spending, and Economic Equality

  19. Domestic Policy

  The Development of the American Welfare State

  Social Security

  Public Assistance

  Health Care

  Elementary and Secondary Education

  Benefits and Fairness

  20. Global Policy

  Making Foreign Policy: The Constitutional Context

  Making Foreign Policy: Organization and Cast

  A Review of U.S. Foreign Policy

  Global Policy Issue Areas

  The Public and Global Policy

  Appendix

  The Declaration of Independence

  Articles of Confederation

  The Constitution of the United States of America

  Federalist No. 10 (1787)

  Federalist No. 51 (1788)

  Presidents of the United States

  Justices of the Supreme Court Since 1900

  Party Control of the Presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives 1901–2005

Read also Hacerse un Profesor (con MyLabSchool)

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

Author: Fareed Zakaria

Liberty and Democracy. The two go hand in hand in popular thinking, fused by more than two hundred years of U.S. history. More democracy means more freedom. Or does it? At a time when democracy is transcendent, the one political system whose legitimacy is unquestioned, this deeply important book points out the tensions between democracy and freedom. It ranges widely through the past and present to remind us that we can have too much of a good thing. Take American democracy, in many peoples' minds the model for the rest of the world. Fareed Zakaria points out that the American form of democracy is one of the least democratic in use today. Members of the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve -- institutions that fundamentally shape our lives -- are appointed, not elected. The Bill of Rights enumerates a set of privileges to which citizens are entitled no matter what the majority says. By restricting our democracy, we enhance our freedom. Nonetheless, we fall into the mistake of thinking, both at home and abroad, that the answer to our problems is always more democracy. But look at the post-Watergate reforms, which opened up politics. They brought into the halls of Congress not the voice of the people but the cries of special interests, well-organized minorities, and money. American government today is more democratic than ever before -- and also more dysfunctional. Abroad, the problem is that the spread of democracy has not produced a corresponding growth of liberty. We are seeing in many parts of the world, from Russia to Venezuela to the Palestinian Authority, a strange creature -- the elected autocrat. In the Arab world in particular we see societies trapped between repressive dictatorships and fanatical masses. Is there a way out? There is. Zakaria calls for a restoration of the balance between liberty and democracy and shows how liberal democracy has to be made effective and relevant for our times. Woodrow Wilson said the challenge of the twentieth century w

The New York Times

The Future of Freedom, however, is no polemic against elections. Rather, it is a calm antidote to the fervency of those who want to force elections down the throat of every society, no matter what its particular circumstances and historical experience. As any foreign correspondent knows, there are all kinds and gradations of dictators. Saddam Hussein cannot be compared to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, whose coup in Pakistan in 1999 led to an attempt at "radical political, social, educational and economic reform" that no elected politician would have dared. Nor can Lee Kuan Yew, who wrought an economic miracle in Singapore, be compared to another dictator, Robert Mugabe, whose thuggery and incompetency have brought Zimbabwe to the brink of famine and bankruptcy. Mr. Zakaria, far from extolling dictatorship, usefully reminds us of a complicated world that cannot be depicted as a Manichean divide between democratic and authoritarian. — Robert D. Kaplan

The Washington Post

The Future of Freedom s a work of tremendous originality and insight. — Timothy Noah

The New York Times Sunday Book Review

In his brave and ambitious book, Fareed Zakaria has updated Tocqueville. The Future of Freedom is brave because its central conclusion — that liberty is threatened by an excess of democracy — is deeply unfashionable and easily misrepresented. — Niall Ferguson

Publishers Weekly

Democracy is not inherently good, Zakaria (From Wealth to Power) tells us in his thought-provoking and timely second book. It works in some situations and not others, and needs strong limits to function properly. The editor of Newsweek International and former managing editor of Foreign Affairs takes us on a tour of democracy's deficiencies, beginning with the reminder that in 1933 Germans elected the Nazis. While most Western governments are both democratic and liberal-i.e., characterized by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic rights-the two don't necessarily go hand in hand. Zakaria praises countries like Singapore, Chile and Mexico for liberalizing their economies first and then their political systems, and compares them to other Third World countries "that proclaimed themselves democracies immediately after their independence, while they were poor and unstable, [but] became dictatorships within a decade." But Zakaria contends that something has also gone wrong with democracy in America, which has descended into "a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness." The solution, Zakaria says, is more appointed bodies, like the World Trade Organization and the U.S. Supreme Court, which are effective precisely because they are insulated from political pressures. Zakaria provides a much-needed intellectual framework for many current foreign policy dilemmas, arguing that the United States should support a liberalizing dictator like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, be wary of an elected "thug" like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and take care to remake Afghanistan and Iraq into societies that are not merely democratic but free. (Apr.) Forecast: Zakaria has a weekly platform as a Newsweek columnist and high visibility as an analyst for ABC News. Reviews are guaranteed, and the controversial nature of Zakaria's thesis should encourage debate in the media. Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

The U.S. State Department has a Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor whose purpose is to "promote democracy as a means to achieve security, stability, and prosperity for the entire world" and "identify and denounce regimes that deny their citizens the right to choose their leaders in elections that are free, fair, and transparent." The Bush administration has already promised to bring democracy to Iraq after Saddam Hussein is ousted. And Americans regularly condemn China for being undemocratic and praise Russia for its democratic advances. Democracy is the way Americans distinguish the good guys from the bad, those regimes worth supporting from those not, and it is the first remedy prescribed for any country whose practices are disliked. But Fareed Zakaria, editor and columnist at Newsweek International, argues in The Future of Freedom that many developing societies initially fare best under what he calls "liberal authoritarian regimes," and that "what we need in [American] politics today is not more democracy but less."

Zakaria's provocative and wide-ranging book is eminently worth reading. If not entirely persuasive when dealing with contemporary American politics, he is correct that Americans' obsession with electoral democracy has clouded their understanding of countries such as Russia, China, and South Korea and led at times to disastrous policy choices. This case has been made before, but never as simply and clearly. His book displays a kind of argumentation, grounded in history and political philosophy, of which there is precious little these days, particularly among opinion columnists.

Library Journal

Newsweek International's editor exposes the down side of democracy, i.e., the assumption that what's popular is right. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The problem with democracy is that it lets just about everyone have a say. Or so would go an inelegant rendition of Newsweek International editor Zakaria's more sophisticated argument, which is akin to those of, say, Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama in the Big Idea school of political criticism. Briefly, Zakaria holds that some of the features we take for granted in democracy, such as universal adult suffrage, are recent innovations that overlie, and now threaten to obscure, far more important aspects of "constitutional liberalism--the rule of law, private property rights, and . . . separated powers and free speech and assembly." These ideals, "best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge," are the true hallmarks of democracy, but they are not the ones that Americans, at least, think of when that golden term is uttered, and not the ones that are called to mind when the talk turns to spreading one-man, one-vote democracy around the world, which is a peculiarly American project. ("Think of it this way," Zakaria intones, "if France had been the world's leading power for the last century, would 18-year-olds wearing jeans in restaurants come up to you and say, 'Hi, I'm John and I'll be your waiter today'?") The rest of the world, and particularly the Arab and Asian quarters, is not much interested in this power-sharing ideal--which in any event, by Zakaria's account, so often tends to lead to the tyranny of the majority and "the erosion of liberty, the manipulation of freedom, and the decay of a common life." Zakaria's arguments are, of course, arguable, but they are interesting and provocative at the same time. His passing notes are more intriguing, culled fromstatistical tables and academic journal articles, on the material and political conditions required if a democracy of any kind is to endure: per-capita income and GDP above $6,000, an independent judiciary, an incorrupt central bank. A fruitful argument against the politics of "simple-minded populism," eminently worthy of consideration and debate.

The Voice of Hope or Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World 1400 1800

The Voice of Hope

Author: Aung San Suu Kyi

"The dialogues [in The Voice of Hope] express Aung San Suu Kyi's humor, erudition, wisdom and accessibility, and demonstrate why she has become a world spiritual leader."-The New York Times Book Review

"Reading this book, one can well understand why [Aung San Suu Kyi] has been compared to such heroes of freedom as Nelson Mandela and Vclav Havel."-San Francisco Chronicle

Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize Laureate, mother of two, and devout Buddhist, is one of the most inspiring examples of spiritually infused politics and fearless leadership that the world has ever seen. Daughter of the martyred Burmese national hero who negotiated Burma's independence from Britain in the 1940s, Aung San Suu Kyi was called upon to lead the pro-democracy movement in Burma in 1988. The movement was quickly and brutally crushed by the military junta, and Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest.

The Voice of Hope is a rare and intimate journey to the heart of her struggle. Over a period of nine months, Alan Clements, the first American ordained as a Buddhist monk in Burma, met with Aung San Suu Kyi shortly after her release from her first house arrest in July 1995. With her trademark ability to speak directly and compellingly, she presents here her vision of engaged compassion and describes how she has managed to sustain her hope and optimism.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the leader of the National League for Democracy, which achieved a decisive victory in the last Burmese national election, held in 1990. The junta has refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of that vote. She has lived under house arrest for twelve of thelast eighteen years.

Alan Clements is the author of Burma: The Next Killing Fields? and Burma's Revolution of the Spirit. Since completion of The Voice of Hope, he has been permanently blacklisted in Burma.

New interesting book: Workbook Std Trng F Estheticians or Backache

Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800

Author: John Thornton

This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. Prior to 1680, Africa's economic and military strength enabled African elites to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics that made slaves so necessary to European colonizers. He explains why African slaves were placed in significant roles. Estate structure and demography affected the capacity of slaves to form a self-sustaining society and behave as cultural actors. This second edition contains a new chapter on eighteenth century developments.

Table of Contents:

	Preface to the second edition
	Abbreviations
	Maps
	Source notes for Maps 1-3
	Introduction	1
1	The birth of an Atlantic world	13
2	The development of commerce between Europeans and Africans	43
3	Slavery and African social structure	72
4	The process of enslavement and the slave trade	98
5	Africans in colonial Atlantic societies	129
6	Africans and Afro-Americans in the Atlantic world: life and labor	152
7	African cultural groups in the Atlantic world	183
8	Transformations of African culture in the Atlantic world	206
9	African religions and Christianity in the Atlantic world	235
10	Resistance, runaways, and rebels	272
11	Africans in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world	304
	Index	335

The Populist Vision or Global Shift

The Populist Vision

Author: Charles Postel

In the late nineteenth century, monumental technological innovations like the telegraph and steam power made America and the world a much smaller place. New technologies also made possible large-scale organization and centralization. Corporations grew exponentially and the rich amassed great fortunes. Those on the short end of these wrenching changes responded in the Populist revolt, one of the most effective challenges to corporate power in American history.
But what did Populism represent? Half a century ago, scholars such as Richard Hofstadter portrayed the Populist movement as an irrational response of backward-looking farmers to the challenges of modernity. Since then, the romantic notion of Populism as the resistance movement of tradition-based and pre-modern communities to a modern and commercial society has prevailed. In a broad, innovative reassessment, based on a deep reading of archival sources, The Populist Vision argues that the Populists understood themselves as--and were in fact--modern people, who pursued an alternate vision for modern America.
Taking into account both the leaders and the led, The Populist Vision uses a wide lens, focusing on the farmers, both black and white, men and women, while also looking at wager workers and bohemian urbanites. From Texas to the Dakotas, from Georgia to California, farmer Populists strove to use the new innovations for their own ends. They sought scientific and technical knowledge, formed highly centralized organizations, launched large-scale cooperative businesses, and pressed for reforms on the model of the nation's most elaborate bureaucracy - the Postal Service. Hundreds of thousands of Populist farm women soughteducation, employment in schools and offices, and a more modern life. Miners, railroad workers, and other labor Populists joined with farmers to give impetus to the regulatory state. Activists from Chicago, San Francisco, and other new cities provided Populism with a dynamic urban dimension
This major reassessment of the Populist experience is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics, society, and culture of modern America.

Interesting textbook: Berufsemissionen in der mit der Rede sprachigen Pathologie und Audiology

Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy

Author: Peter Dicken

Now in a substantially revised and updated fifth edition, this bestselling work is the definitive text on globalization. Peter Dicken provides a comprehensive, balanced yet critical account of globalization processes and their sweeping, highly uneven effects on people's lives. Each timely chapter has been extensively rewritten to reflect current globalization and antiglobalization debates, the latest empirical developments, and new ideas about the shaping and reshaping of production, distribution, and consumption in the world economy.

New in the Fifth Edition
*An entirely new case study on the agro-foods industries
*A substantially expanded discussion of problems of global governance (involving such institutions as the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF) and the increasing role of global civil society organizations
*All statistical materials have been updated and are presented in nearly 250 specially designed figures and tables

Table of Contents:

List of Abbreviations     xvii
Preface to the Fifth Edition     xix
The Shifting Contours of the Global Economy     1
Questioning 'Globalization'     3
What in the world is going on?     3
Conflicting perspectives on 'globalization'     5
Unravelling the complexity of the new geo-economy: economies as networks     8
Production circuits; production networks     13
Even in a globalizing world, economic activities are geographically localized     21
Networks of networks     23
The geo-economy and the environment     25
Conclusion     29
Notes     30
Global Shift: The Changing Global Economic Map     32
What's new?: The imprint of past geographies     32
Roller-coasters and interconnections     35
The changing contours of the global economic map: global shifts in production, trade and direct investment     38
Conclusion     67
Notes     68
Processes of Global Shift     71
Technological Change: 'Gales of Creative Destruction'     73
Technology and economic transformation     73
Processes of technological change: an evolutionary perspective     74
The time-spaceshrinking technologies     78
Technological changes in products and processes     93
Geographies of innovation     98
Conclusion     103
Notes     104
Transnational Corporations: The Primary 'Movers and Shapers' of the Global Economy     106
The significance of the transnational corporation     106
Why firms transnationalize     107
How firms transnationalize     114
'Placing' firms: the myth of the 'global' corporation     124
Conclusion     135
Notes     135
'Webs of Enterprise': The Geography of Transnational Production Networks     137
The 'global-local' question: an oversimplified view of the TNC's dilemma     137
Configuring the firm's production network: the complex internal geographies of the TNC     140
TNCs within networks of externalized relationships     153
Regionalizing transnational production networks     168
Conclusion     171
Notes     171
'The State Is Dead...Long Live the State'     173
'Contested territory': the state in a globalizing economy     173
States as containers of distinctive cultures, practices and institutions     175
States as regulators of trade, foreign investment and industry     179
States as competitors     184
States as collaborators: the proliferation of regional integration agreements     187
Conclusion     204
Notes     205
'Doing It Their Way': Variations in State Economic Policies     207
From the general to the specific     207
A degree of convergence     207
The older industrialized economies: the United States and Europe     210
Japan     214
Newly industrializing economies     216
Conclusion     230
Notes     230
Dynamics of Conflict and Collaboration: The Uneasy Relationship between TNCs and States     232
The ties that bind     232
Bargaining processes between TNCs and states     236
Conclusion     245
Notes     246
The Picture in Different Sectors     247
'Fabric-ating Fashion': The Clothing Industries     249
The clothing production circuit     249
Global shifts in the clothing industries     250
Changing patterns of consumption     254
Production costs and technology     255
The role of the state and the Multi-Fibre Arrangement      260
Corporate strategies in the clothing industries     262
Regionalizing production networks in the clothing industries     267
Conclusion     276
Notes     276
'Wheels of Change': The Automobile Industry     278
The automobile production circuit     278
Global shifts in the automobile industry     280
Changing patterns of consumption     283
From mass production to lean production: technological change in the automobile industry     284
The role of the state     286
Corporate strategies in the automobile industry     289
Regionalizing production networks in the automobile industry     304
Conclusion     315
Notes     315
'Chips with Everything': The Semiconductor Industry     317
The semiconductor production circuit     317
Global shifts in the semiconductor industry     319
Changing patterns of consumption     321
Production costs and technology     323
The role of the state     326
Corporate strategies in the semiconductor industry     333
Regionalizing production networks in the semiconductor industry: the case of East Asia     343
Conclusion      345
Notes     345
'We Are What We Eat': The Agro-Food Industries     347
Transformation of the food economy: the 'local' becomes 'global'     347
Agro-food production circuits     349
Global shifts in the agro-food industries     352
Consumer choices - and consumer resistances     358
Transforming technologies in agro-food production     360
The role of the state     363
Corporate strategies in the agro-food industries     367
Conclusion     376
Notes     376
'Making the World Go Round': Financial Services     379
Money counts     379
The structure of the financial services industries     381
The dynamics of the market for financial services     383
Technological innovation and the financial services industries     384
The role of the state: regulation and deregulation in financial services     387
Corporate strategies in financial services     390
Geographical structures of financial services activities     397
Conclusion     407
Notes     408
'Making the Connections, Moving the Goods': The Logistics and Distribution Industries     410
'Whatever happened to distribution in the globalization debate?'     410
The structure of the logistics and distribution industries     411
The dynamics of the market     414
Technological innovation and the logistics and distribution industries     414
The role of the state: regulation and deregulation in the logistics and distribution industries     420
Corporate strategies in the logistics and distribution industries     423
Logistics 'places': key geographical nodes on the global logistics map     430
Conclusion     432
Notes     432
Winning and Losing in the Global Economy     435
Winning and Losing: An Introduction     437
From processes to impacts     437
The contours of economic development     440
Making a living in the global economy     449
The 'double exposure' problem     450
Conclusion     452
Notes     452
Good or Bad?: Evaluating the Impact of TNCs on Home and Host Economies     454
A counterfactual dilemma     454
TNCs and 'home' economies: potential impacts of outward investment     456
TNCs and 'host' economies: potential impacts of inward investment     459
Conclusion     473
Notes     474
Making a Living in Developed Countries: Where Will the Jobs Come From?     475
Increasing affluence - but not everybody is a winner     475
What is happening to jobs and to incomes?     476
Why is it happening?     486
What is being done?     492
Conclusion     499
Notes     499
Making a Living in Developing Countries: Sustaining Growth, Enhancing Equity, Ensuring Survival     501
Some winners - but mostly losers     501
Heterogeneity of the developing world     502
Sustaining growth and ensuring equity in newly industrializing economies     511
Ensuring survival and reducing poverty in the least developed countries     518
Conclusion     522
Notes     522
Making the World a Better Place     524
'The best of all possible worlds'?     524
Globalization and its 'discontents': emergence of a global civil society?     525
Global governance structures     528
Two key concerns: labour standards and environmental regulation     540
To be 'globalized' or not to be 'globalized': that is the question     545
What might the future be? What should the future be?     546
Notes     553
Bibliography      555
Index     585
About the Author     600