World Politics Book: February 2009

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Shopping for Bombs or John Brown Abolitionist

Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of AQ Khan's Nuclear Network

Author: Gordon Corera

A.Q. Khan was the world's leading black market dealer in nuclear technology, described by a former CIA Director as "at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden." A hero in Pakistan and revered as the Father of the Bomb, Khan built a global clandestine network that sold the most closely guarded nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
Here for the first time is the riveting inside story of the rise and fall of A.Q. Khan and his role in the devastating spread of nuclear technology over the last thirty years. Drawing on exclusive interviews with key players in Islamabad, London, and Washington, as well as with members of Khan's own network, BBC journalist Gordon Corera paints a truly unsettling picture of the ultimate arms bazaar. Corera reveals how Khan operated within a world of shadowy deals among rogue states and how his privileged position in Pakistan provided him with the protection to build his unique and deadly business empire. It explains why and how he was able to operate so freely for so many years. Brimming with revelations, the book provides new insight into Iran's nuclear ambitions and how close Tehran may be to the bomb.
In addition, the book contains startling new information on how the CIA and MI6 penetrated Khan's network, how the U.S. and UK ultimately broke Khan's ring, and how they persuaded Pakistan's President Musharraf to arrest a national hero. The book also provides the first detailed account of the high-wire dealings with Muammar Gadaffi, which led to Libya's renunciation of nuclear weapons and which played a key role in Khan's downfall.
The spread of nuclear weapons technology around the globe presents the greatest securitychallenge of our time. Shopping for Bombs presents a unique window into the challenges of stopping a new nuclear arms race, a race that A.Q. Khan himself did more than any other individual to promote.

The Washington Post - George Perkovich

Shopping for Bombs is more than the fast-paced story of an alarming proliferation network and the conditions that let it flourish. Corera also offers a fascinating, detailed account of how Libya surprised the world with its undetected nuclear acquisitions and how the United States and Britain secretly persuaded Moammar Gaddafi to verifiably give them up.

Publishers Weekly

Corera, a security correspondent for the BBC, offers a measured account of how a young Pakistani metallurgist named A.Q. Khan became the world's leading dealer in nuclear technology. The story starts as Khan watched Pakistan lose the 1971 war with India and vowed to help prevent it from happening again. Three years later, as India tested its first nuclear device, he offered Prime Minister Bhutto his help in creating the Muslim world's first nuclear bomb. In 1975, when his Dutch employer discovered Khan had stolen centrifuge designs, he fled to Pakistan. Though he was tried in absentia in 1983, it wasn't until January 2004, under pressure from the U.S. and Britain, that he was arrested for 30 years of selling nuclear materials and designs to Libya, North Korea and Iran. By the mid-1980s, Corera points out, the U.S. was aware that Pakistan had produced weapons-grade uranium. Drawing on CIA and diplomatic accounts of the spread of technology, Corera also examines why the Americans initially looked the other way as Pakistan joined forces in arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan before becoming an ally in the hunt for bin Laden. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

New interesting book: Prehistoric Cooking or Middle Eastern

John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

Author: David S Reynolds

Few historical figures are as intriguing as John Brown, the controversial Abolitionist who used terrorist tactics against slavery and single-handedly changed the course of American history. This brilliant biography of Brown (1800-1859) by the prize-winning critic and cultural biographer David S. Reynolds brings to life the Puritan warrior who gripped slavery by the throat and triggered the Civil War.

When does principled resistance become anarchic brutality? How can a murderer be viewed as a heroic freedom fighter? The case of John Brown opens windows on these timely issues. Was Brown an insane criminal or a Christ-like martyr? A forerunner of Osama bin Laden or of Martin Luther King, Jr.? David Reynolds sorts through the tangled evidence and makes some surprising findings.

Reynolds demonstrates that Brown's most violent acts- his slaughter of unarmed citizens in Kansas, his liberation of slaves in Missouri, and his dramatic raid, in October 1859, on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia- were inspired by the slave revolts, guerilla warfare, and revolutionary Christianity of the day. He shows us how Brown seized the nation's attention, creating sudden unity in the North, where the Transcendentalists led the way in sanctifying Brown, and infuriating the South, where proslavery fire-eaters exploited the Harpers Ferry raid to whip up a secessionist frenzy. In fascinating detail, Reynolds recounts how Brown permeated politics and popular culture during the Civil War and beyond. He reveals the true depth of Brown's achievement: not only did Brown spark the war that ended slavery, but he planted the seeds of the civil rights movement by making a pioneering demand forcomplete social and political equality for America's ethnic minorities.

A deeply researched and vividly written cultural biography- a revelation of John Brown and his meaning for America.

From the Hardcover edition.

The New York Times - Barbara Ehrenreich

How do we judge a man of such different times -- and temperament -- from our own? If the rule is that there must be some proportion between a violent act and its provocation, surely there could be no more monstrous provocation than slavery. In our own time, some may discern equivalent evils in continuing racial oppression, economic exploitation, environmental predation or widespread torture. To them, John Brown, Abolitionist, for all its wealth of detail and scrupulous attempts at balance, has a shockingly simple message: Far better to have future generations complain about your methods than condemn you for doing nothing.

The Washington Post - David W. Blight

John Brown, Abolitionist captures with arresting prose Brown's early life of poverty, his huge, tragic, rolling-stone family of 20 children with two wives, the business failures and bankruptcies in several states, the lasting influence of his staunchly Calvinist father and his genuine devotion to the human rights of African Americans. He also takes us deeper than any previous historian into Brown's exploits in the 1856-58 guerrilla war known as "Bleeding Kansas." In the murderous frontier struggle between pro-slavery and free-state advocates, Brown led a personal band of abolitionist warriors who fought pitched battles and executed some settlers. Moreover, the narratives of Brown's fascinating fund-raising tours of Eastern reform communities, the Harpers Ferry raid itself, his epic letter-writing from a jail cell while awaiting execution, and the hanging (with the whole world watching) are all beautifully executed.

Publishers Weekly

In the very first paragraphs of this biography, Bancroft Prize-winner Reynolds (Walt Whitman's America) steps back a bit from the grandiose claims of his subtitle. Nevertheless, his book as a whole paints a positive portrait of the Calvinist terrorist Brown (1800-1859)-contrary to virtually all recent scholarship (by Stephen B. Oates and Robert Boyer, among others), which tends to depict Brown as a bloodthirsty zealot and madman who briefly stepped into history but did little to influence it. Reynolds's approach harks back to the hero-worship apparent in earlier books by W.E.B. Du Bois and Brown's surviving associates. John Brown waged a campaign so bloody during the Kansas Civil War-in 1856 he chased men and elder sons from their beds in cabins along the Pottawatomie Creek, and then lopped off their heads with broadswords as sobbing wives and younger children looked on-that fellow Kansas antislavery settlers rebuked him. Even the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison condemned Brown and his methods. After taking the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry in October 1859, Brown intended (had he not been swatted like a fly within hours) to raise and arm a large force of blacks capable of wreaking a terrible vengeance across Virginia. Yet Reynolds insists that "it is misleading to identify Brown with modern terrorists." Really? 25 b&w illus. (Apr. 21) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

John Brown, with his bristling beard, fierce expression, and unyielding opposition to slavery, has always been the perfect icon of the nation's headlong rush into the abyss of the Civil War. After his gallant and completely foolhardy raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, virtually every person in the US lined up solidly on one side or another of the Great Question. By the time he was finally hanged, by the hand of Robert E. Lee, no less, there was no going back. Dealing with the man and his reputation, however, has always been something of a problem. Southerners at the time, horrified at the prospect of a massive slave uprising, immediately branded him as a terrorist, if not the Devil incarnate. The Transcendentalists and other anti-slavery groups in the North, in response, soon came to see him as a martyr for peace, nearly on the level of Jesus himself. As the Civil War finally receded into the past, most scholars eventually came to see Brown simply as some sort of crackpot, well-meaning perhaps, but always an unstable and colorful character who, much like his namesake John the Baptist, was a harbinger of colossal events to come. Now, with this book, author David Reynolds has portrayed what has come to be the modern view, seeing John Brown in the larger context of black emancipation and aligning him squarely alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and the modern civil rights era: all of which might (or might not) have astounded the bearded firebrand. Brown was both intelligent and complex, as Professor Reynolds skillfully brings out, and had one of history's more original personalities. Most YAs will find the entire book a large dose to swallow, but will find individual chaptersand episodes to be fascinating. The highly detailed text opens a fascinating window on the social turmoil of American society on the eve of the Civil War. Even if that war wasn't fought specifically to free the slaves, it was nevertheless all about slavery, and old Brown certainly played his part.

Kirkus Reviews

Cradle-to-moldering-grave biography of America's homegrown abolitionist terrorist. Was it John Brown's audacity that put the spark to the tinderbox of slavery in mid-19th-century America? The prize-winning Reynolds (Walt Whitman, 2004, etc.; English and American Studies/CUNY) makes the case that the Civil War and emancipation might well have been slower in coming had Brown (1800-59) not inflamed paranoia in the South by his murderous raids in Pottawatomie, Kan., and his seizure of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. The author argues that Brown was more of a Puritan pioneer than crazed fanatic, a patriarchal figure who "won the battle not with bullets but with words." Although the violence of Brown's anti-slavery raids was at first roundly denounced in the North, his calm and rational behavior after his capture, Reynolds emphasizes, eventually won admiration for his crusade, much thanks to Emerson, Thoreau and other transcendentalists who took up his banner. Though unabashedly hagiographic-the chapter on his execution is titled "The Passion"-the biography justifies its portrayal of Brown as an agent outside and above the norms of society. The author demonstrates that his nonracist behavior, for example, was startlingly original to Southerners and Northerners alike, albeit not anomalous vis-a-vis contemporary European attitudes. Reynolds takes great pains to cast a fair light on an exceptionally controversial figure who used brutally violent tactics to bring about the end of slavery and the beginning of racial equality. He states unequivocally that Brown's tactics were terrorist (and an inspiration to John Wilkes Booth), but in President Lincoln's own words, the Civil War itself was"a John Brown raid on a gigantic scale." Reynolds's conclusions are bold yet justified, and his analysis reflects a thorough understanding of the cultural environment of the time. Engrossing and timely, offering astute, thorough coverage of America's premier iconoclast and the cultural stage upon which he played his role.

Preface
1. The Party
2. The Puritan
3. The Pioneer
4. The Patriarch
5. The Pauper
6. The Plan
7. Pottawatomie
8. Pariah and Legend
9. The Promoter
10. Plotting Multiculturally
11. Practice
12. Preparation
13. Problems
14. Pilloried, Prosecuted, and Praised
15. The Passion
16. Positions and Politics
17. The Prophet
18. Posterity
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Friday, February 20, 2009

Prisoners of Hope or The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr

Prisoners of Hope: The Story of Our Captivity and Freedom in Afghanistan

Author: Dayna Curry

The gripping and inspiring story of two extraordinary women—from their imprisonment by the Taliban to their rescue by U.S. Special Forces.

When Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer arrived in Afghanistan, they had come to help bring a better life and a little hope to some of the poorest and most oppressed people in the world. Within a few months, their lives were thrown into chaos as they became pawns in historic international events. They were arrested by the ruling Taliban government for teaching about Christianity to the people with whom they worked. In the middle of their trial, the events of September 11, 2001, led to the international war on terrorism, with the Taliban a primary target. While many feared Curry and Mercer could not survive in the midst of war, Americans nonetheless prayed for their safe return, and in November their prayers were answered.

In Prisoners of Hope, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer tell the story of their work in Afghanistan, their love for the people they served, their arrest, trial, and imprisonment by the Taliban, and their rescue by U.S. Special Forces. The heart of the book will discuss how two middle-class American women decided to leave the comforts of home in exchange for the opportunity to serve the disadvantaged, and how their faith motivated them and sustained them through the events that followed. Their story is a magnificent narrative of ordinary women caught in extraordinary circumstances as a result of their commitment to serve the poorest and most oppressed women and children in the world. This book will be inspiring to those who seek a purpose greater than themselves.

Publishers Weekly

This is the eagerly anticipated story of the two Christian aid workers from Waco, Tex., who were imprisoned by the Taliban in Afghanistan shortly before the September 11 attacks on America. Because so many Americans followed their plight in the press, the behind-the-scenes details of their 105-day ordeal will inevitably be riveting. Unfortunately, the narrative is told in a weaving fashion that shuttles back and forth between Curry's voice, Mercer's voice and their joint perspective. Moreover, much of their story of monotonous prison life does not lend itself well to straightforward chronological narrative. Instead, the book is organized loosely by themes, places and people, and often leaps ahead of itself in confusing ways. Despite these frustrations and a surprisingly weak fade-to-black ending that barely mentions God or the faith that has sustained the missionaries throughout, the book is compelling. Readers will learn of the individual paths that led Curry and Mercer first to Christ and then to Kabul. Especially heartbreaking are the stories of all the Afghan families who were relying on the women for life-saving support and who were abruptly cut off at the time of their arrest. Perhaps most powerful is the honesty with which Mercer discusses her spiritual difficulties in captivity. This is not the story of larger-than-life heroines whose faith never wavers in the face of persecution; readers are allowed glimpses into Mercer's very real despair and the rift it caused in the group of prisoners. This gritty sense of the real life of ordinary, believing Americans keeps the pages turning. (June) Forecast: Curry and Mercer have become media-appointed American paladins, so this should garner some strong attention in both the Christian and secular markets. It is a main selection of the Crossings Book Club and a featured selection of the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Clubs. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Book review: Mercadotecnia de Servicios:la Gente, Tecnología, Estrategia

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957-December 1958, Vol. 4

Author: Martin Luther King Jr

Acclaimed by Ebony magazine as "one of those rare publishing events that generate as much excitement in the cloistered confines of the academy as they do in the general public," The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. chronicles one of the twentieth century's most dynamic personalities and one of the nation's greatest social struggles. King's call for racial justice and his faith in the power of nonviolence to engender a major transformation of American society is movingly conveyed in this authoritative multivolume series.
In Volume IV, with the Montgomery bus boycott at an end, King confronts the sudden demands of celebrity while trying to identify the next steps in the burgeoning struggle for equality. Anxious to duplicate the success of the boycott, he spends much of 1957 and 1958 establishing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But advancing the movement in the face of dogged resistance, he finds that it is easier to inspire supporters with his potent oratory than to organize a mass movement for social change. Yet King remains committed: "The vast possibilities of a nonviolent, non-cooperative approach to the solution of the race problem are still challenging indeed. I would like to remain a part of the unfolding development of this approach for a few more years."
King's budding international prestige is affirmed in March 1957, when he attends the independence ceremonies in Ghana, West Africa. Two months later his first national address, at the "Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom," is widely praised, and in June 1958, King's increasing prominence is recognized with a long-overdue White House meeting. During this period King also cultivates alliances with the laborand pacifist movements, and international anticolonial organizations. As Volume IV closes, King is enjoying the acclaim that has greeted his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, only to suffer a near-fatal stabbing in New York City.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

2010 Meltdown or The Call of Service

2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs Crisis

Author: Edward E Gordon

Ed Gordon marshals a vast amount of data to illustrate how various trends are converging to create a labor vacuum--with potentially disastrous consequences for economic competitiveness and individual opportunity. He sounds a wake-up call to business leaders, policymakers, educators, and concerned citizens, employees, and parents--anyone with a stake in our economic future. Moreover, he highlights innovative initiatives in training, education, and community development in the United States and around the world that can serve as models for positive action. Ultimately, The 2010 Meltdown is an optimistic book about social change, setting an agenda for reforms in education, policy, and business investment that will promote economic freedom, renewal, and prosperity.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: People, Jobs, and Culture
America's Meltdown
The 2010 Crossroad
The Rise of the Techno-Peasants
Feeding the Sharks
Where Has the Schoolhouse Gone?
Help Wanted in America and the World
Structuring Renewal
Signposts at the Workforce Crossroad
The "Sixth Discipline"
Beyond the 2010 Crossroad
End Notes
Index

See also: Condi vs Hillary or Chernobyl

The Call of Service

Author: Robert Coles

In this book, Coles explores the concept of idealism and why it necessary to the individual and society.

Publishers Weekly

In a searching, inspirational probe, eminent Harvard psychiatrist Coles ( The Moral Life of Children ) examines the idealistic motives of people who engage in volunteer work, community service or civil rights activism. Mixing autobiographical reminiscence, analysis and oral testimony, he interviews Peace Corps members as well as volunteers in hospitals, schools, prisons and nursing homes. Coles finds that volunteer work can have a transformative influence on those who heed the ``call of service,'' even though they frequently experience doubts, misgivings, depression and even a sense of futility and despair. Rich in empathy and insight, his informed study interweaves his own experiences as a child psychiatrist helping Southern children caught up in the school desegregation struggle, an account of his current work as a volunteer inner-city elementary school teacher near Boston, recollections of his 1950s service in a Manhattan soup kitchen with Catholic Worker activist Dorothy Day and portraits of his mentors Anna Freud and poet/physician William Carlos Williams, who set him on his altruistic path. Author tour. (Sept.)

Library Journal

Coles is the prolific and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such works as The Spiritual Life of Children ( LJ 11/1/90). Here he examines idealism, the drive that leads people to be of service to others. This service takes a variety of forms, from the formal (e.g., the Peace Corps) to simple volunteer work in hospitals, schools, and the like. Coles makes the subject interesting by letting the people who serve talk about their work. These doers, including Coles himself, tell of the satisfactions and the hazards of service. Let it be known that idealism or service is not a one-way street, Coles maintains. Those who give are as much receivers and learners. This engaging and inspiring book is highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.-- John Moryl, Yeshiva Univ. Lib., New York

Kirkus Reviews

An exceptional blend of observation and reflection, literary report and personal revelation, that once again finds Coles (Psychiatry and Medical Humanities/Harvard; Anna Freud, 1992; etc.) exploring important social concepts—community service and the sources of altruism—with the tenacious moral energy that has characterized his writings for 30 years. From the first, Coles clearly cherished his encounters with people whose conduct claimed his imagination: In book after book, he presented them with dignity and respect. Here, he recalls the six-year-old integrating a southern school who sees ahead not trouble but opportunity; admires the white teacher who introduces Tillie Olsen's short story "O Yes" to a class of black middle- schoolers; learns from the Bowery bum who values not only the daily meal at his shelter but also the staff's acceptance of his angry moods; and understands the older tax lawyer who maintains that "there's still a little of 1964 in me." Coles contends that—while motives vary and overlap and stresses frequently wear people down—the satisfactions of service are plentiful and sustaining, conferring importance on small interactions and providing affirmation to those involved (often in place of, say, apparent social change). In his usual meandering way, he examines not only what those who serve mean to us and what their actions mean to them—most of his subjects emphatically resist the "idealist" designation—but also his own part in the equation (as volunteer and witness) and his enduring sources of inspiration: the examples of his own parents; of novelists whose ideas he finds edifying; and of mentors familiar from earlier works.Early on in his career, Coles abandoned the jargon of psychoanalysis and staked out his own territory—and a grateful audience. This work, a wellspring for those touched by "national service" headlines, echoes the spiritual tones of previous books and secures the author's place as a peerless interpreter of individual initiative and moral direction.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The Week the World Stood Still or Fighting for Faith and Nation

The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis

Author: Sheldon M Stern

“ . . . The Week The World Stood Still is an impressive work of scholarship that is also highly recommended for non-specialist general readers with an interest in the history of the Cold War era.”—The Midwest Book Review

Foreign Affairs

The discovery that President John F. Kennedy had installed a system for taping conversations in the Oval Office transformed the historiography of the Cuban missile crisis, and Stern was at the heart of the effort to transcribe them at the John F. Kennedy Library. An earlier and much longer version of this book (published in 2003 as Averting the Final Failure) expressed his disappointment with the inadequacy of the best-selling version of these transcripts, edited by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow. He believes strongly that at issue is intonation as well as language, evidence of the emotions at play, and the substance of the debate — so that emphasis can turn bland comment into heavy sarcasm. Only careful listening brings home, for example, how irritated Kennedy got with McGeorge Bundy during the critical discussions on October 27, 1962. This shortened version centers on a blow-by-blow account of the crisis as revealed in the tapes, getting across the ebb and flow of the discussions, the changes in mood, and the groping for a solution to an apparently desperate situation. As such it is a useful addition to the vast literature on the missile crisis and on Kennedy as a crisis manager.

1	The JFK Cuban Missile Crisis tapes	1
2	The making of the Cuban Missile Crisis	11
	The Cold War : JFK's crucible	11
	The Cold War and Cuba	14
	Nuclear confrontation in Cuba	18
	The Kennedy paradox	23
	Key members of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council	29
3	The secret meetings of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council	37
	Epilogue : the November post-crisis	205

Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants

Author: Cynthia Keppley Mahmood

The ethnic and religious violence that characterizes the late twentieth century calls for new ways of thinking and writing about politics. Listening to the voices of people who experience political violence - either as victims or as perpetrators - gives new insights into both the sources of violent conflict and the potential for its resolution. Going beyond such easy labels as "fundamentalism" and "terrorism," Mahmood shows how complex and multifaceted the human experience of political violence actually is. Drawing on her extensive interviews and conversations with Sikh militants, she presents their accounts of the human rights abuses they suffer in India as well as their explanations of the philosophical tradition of martyrdom and meaningful death in the Sikh faith. While demonstrating how divergent the worldviews of participants in a conflict can be, Fighting for Faith and Nation gives reason to hope that our essential common humanity may provide grounds for a pragmatic resolution of conflicts like the one in Punjab, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the past fifteen years.

Library Journal

Mahmood (Frisian and Free: Study of an Ethnic Minority of the Netherlands, Waveland, 1989) undertook this investigation as a study of the anthropology of violence and based her interviews solely on Sikhs living in North America, including some in prison. The narratives relate primarily to the relationship of the individual to Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, or the invasion of the holiest Sikh temple by the Indian government in 1984. The last portion of the book raises questions about membership in communities and violent attempts to force conformity. Mahmood discusses Edward Said, Salmon Rushdie, and Harjot Oberoi (a Sikh whose academic writings have stirred much controversy). She is careful to state that the militants within the Sikh community are a minority and raises ethical issues for an anthropologist undertaking such research. Highly recommended.-Donald Clay Johnson, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Coercion Capital and European States or The Words of Martin Luther King Jr

Coercion, Capital and European States: Ad 990 - 1992

Author: Charles Tilly

In this pathbreaking work, now available in paperback, Charles Tilly challenges all previous formulations of state development in Europe. Specifically, Tilly charges that most available explanations fail because they do not account for the great variety of kinds of states which were viable at different stages of European history, and because they assume a unilinear path of state development resolving in today's national state.

The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Author: Coretta Scott King

Created as a "living memorial" to the philosophies and ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this essential volume includes more than 120 quotations from the greatest civil rights leader's speeches, sermons and writings.

Malcolm Boyd

This volume of quotations is thoughtful, intelligently provocative... —Los Angeles Times

New York Times

A valuable book.

Ebony Man

This book celebrates King's wisdom and is relevant today as it was during his lifetime.

Children's Literature

"When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind." These words and others from King's sermons, speeches and published works typify his conviction to address social wrongs by peaceful means. An introduction by his wife, Coretta, brings King's history briefly to life through her eyes—from their first meeting as students in 1952 to his death by a sniper's bullet in 1968. The quotations eloquently advocate love, peace, strength and courage, and are divided into sections representing Racism, The Community of Man, Nonviolence, Faith and Religion and more. Also included is President Reagan's speech proclaiming Martin Luther King Day as a public holiday. This short book could easily be read straight through but would benefit readers even more when absorbed in small, thoughtful doses. Though sources for the selections are listed, individual selections are rarely identified, making the text more useful for inspiration and awareness than as a research resource. An extensive chronology incorporates Dr. King's personal history with relevant events of the Civil Rights movement. Generous amounts of white space dramatically offset both the words and the black-and-white photographs that personify this vital leader and his cause. Part of "The Newmarket Words Of" series. 1996 (orig. 1983), Newmarket, $11.95. Ages 9 up. Reviewer: Betty Hicks AGES: 9 10 11 12 13 14

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction or The Fate of Their Country

The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction

Author: F Michael Connelly

The Sage Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction emerges from a concept of curriculum and instruction as a diverse landscape defined and bounded by schools, school boards and their communities, policy, teacher education, and academic research. Each contributing author was asked to comprehensively review the research literature in their assigned topic. These topics, however, are defined by practical places on the landscape e.g. schools and governmental policies for schools.

Key Features:

Presents a different vision or reconceptualization of the field
Provides a comprehensive and inclusive set of authors, ideas, and topics
Takes a global rather than North American parochial approach
Recognizes that curriculum and instruction is broader in scope than is suggested by university research and theory
Reflects post-1992 changes in curriculum policy, practice and scholarship
Represents a rethinking of how school subject matter areas are treated

The contents of the Handbook are recognizable by high level practitioners with curriculum making jobs to do. Teacher education is included in the Handbook with the intent of addressing the role and place of teacher education in bridging state and national curriculum policies and curriculum as enacted in classrooms.

Meet the authors! phillion@purdue.edu

Acknowledgments     viii
Introduction: Planning The Handbook: Practice, Context, and Theory   F. Michael Connelly   Ming Fang He   JoAnn Phillion   Candace Schlein     ix
Curriculum in Practice     1
Introductory Essay   Ian Westbury     1
Making Curriculum
Curriculum Policy and the Politics of What Should Be Learned in Schools   Ben Levin$dConsulting Authors: Geraldine Anne-Marie Connelly and Ulf P. Lundgren     7
Curriculum Planning: Content, Form, and the Politics of Accountability   Michael W. Apple$dConsulting Authors: Carlos Alberto Torres and Geoff Whitty     25
Making Curricula: Why Do States Make Curricula, and How?   Ian Westbury$dConsulting Authors: Stefan T. Hopmann and Leonard J. Waks     45
Subject Matter: Defining and Theorizing School Subjects   Zongyi Deng   Allan Luke$dConsulting Authors: John Chi-kin Lee and Margaret Placier     66
Managing Curriculum
Structuring Curriculum: Technical, Normative, and Political Considerations   Kevin G. Welner   Jeannie Oakes$dConsulting Authors: Michelle Fine and Kenneth R. Howe     91
Curriculum Implementation and Sustainability   Michael Fullan$dConsulting Authors: David Hopkins and James Spillane     113
Technology's Role in Curriculum and Instruction   Barbara Means$dConsulting Authors: Larry Cuban and Stephen T. Kerr     123
Curriculum in Context     145
Introductory Essay   Allan Luke     145
Diversifying Curriculum
Curriculum and Cultural Diversity   Gloria Ladson-Billings   Keffrelyn Brown$dConsulting Authors: Kathryn H. Au and Geneva Gay     153
Identity, Community, and Diversity: Retheorizing Multicultural Curriculum for the Postmodern Era   Sonia Nieto   Patty Bode   Eugenie Kang   John Raible$dConsulting Authors: Cherry A. McGee Banks and Sofia Villenas     176
Students' Experience of School Curriculum: The Everyday Circumstances of Granting and Withholding Assent to Learn   Frederick Erickson   Rishi Bagrodia   Alison Cook-Sather   Manuel Espinoza   Susan Jurow   Jeffrey J. Shultz   Joi Spencer$dConsulting Authors: Robert Boostrom and Pedro Noguera     198
Immigrant Students' Experience of Curriculum   Ming Fang He   JoAnn Phillion   Elaine Chan   Shijing Xu$dConsulting Authors: Jim Cummins and Stacey J. Lee     219
Teaching for Diversity: The Next Big Challenge   Mel Ainscow$dConsulting Authors: Chris Forlin and Roger Slee     240
Teaching Curriculum
Teacher Education as a Bridge? Unpacking Curriculum Controversies   Marilyn Cochran-Smith   Kelly E. Demers$dConsulting Authors: Ann Lieberman and Ana Maria Villegas     261
Cultivating the Image of Teachers as Curriculum Makers   Cheryl J. Craig   Vicki Ross$dConsulting Authors: Carola Conle and Virginia Richardson     282
Teachers' Experience of Curriculum: Policy, Pedagogy, and Situation   William Ayers   Therese Quinn   David O. Stovall   Libby Scheiern$dConsulting Authors: Freema Elbaz-Luwisch and Janet L. Miller     306
Internationalizing Curriculum
Indigenous Resistance and Renewal: From Colonizing Practices to Self-Determination   Donna Deyhle   Karen Swisher   Tracy Stevens   Ruth Trinidad Galvan$dConsulting Authors: Teresa L. McCarty and Linda Tuhiwai Smith     329
Globalization and Curriculum   Kathryn M. Anderson-Levitt$dConsulting Authors: Lynne Paine and Fazel Rizvi     349
Community Education in Developing Countries: The Quiet Revolution in Schooling   Joseph P. Farrell$dConsulting Authors: Ash Hartwell and John N. Hawkins     369
Curriculum in Theory     391
Introductory Essay   William H. Schubert     391
Inquiring Into Curriculum
Curriculum Inquiry   William H. Schubert$dConsulting Authors: Craig Kridel and Edmund C. Short     399
Curriculum Policy Research   Edmund C. Short$dConsulting Author: Nina Basica     420
Hidden Research in Curriculum   Robin J. Enns$dConsulting Author: Margaret Haughey     431
Reenvisioning the Progressive Tradition in Curriculum   David T. Hansen   Rodino Anderson   Jeffrey Frank   Kiera Nieuwejaar$dConsulting Authors: Gert J. J. Biesta and Jim Garrison     440
What the Schools Teach: A Social History of the American Curriculum Since 1950   Barry M. Franklin   Carla C. Johnson$dConsulting Authors: Gary McCulloch and William J. Reese     460
Curriculum Development in Historical Perspective   J. Wesley Null$dConsulting Authors: Geoffrey Milburn and Wiel Veugelers     478
Curriculum Theory Since 1950: Crisis, Reconceptualization, Internationalization   William F. Pinar$dConsulting Authors: Donald Blumenfeld-Jones and Patrick Slattery     491
The Landscape of Curriculum and Instruction: Diversity and Continuity   F. Michael Connelly   Shijing Xu$dConsulting Authors: Elliot W. Eisner and Philip W. Jackson     514
Author Index     534
Subject Index     558
About the Editors     586
About the Part Editors     588
About the Consulting Authors     589
About the Contributing Authors     597

New interesting book: Consumers Guide to Cell Phones and Wireless Service Plans or Statistical Analysis of Medical Data Using SAS

The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War

Author: Michael F Holt

How partisan politics lead to the Civil War

What brought about the Civil War? Leading historian Michael F. Holt convincingly offers a disturbingly contemporary answer: partisan politics. In this brilliant and succinct book, Holt distills a lifetime of scholarship to demonstrate that secession and war did not arise from two irreconcilable economies any more than from moral objections to slavery. Short-sighted politicians were to blame. Rarely looking beyond the next election, the two dominant political parties used the emotionally charged and largely chimerical issue of slavery's extension westward to pursue reelection and settle political scores, all the while inexorably dragging the nation towards disunion.

Despite the majority opinion (held in both the North and South) that slavery could never flourish in the areas that sparked the most contention from 1845 to 1861-the Mexican Cession, Oregon, and Kansas-politicians in Washington, especially members of Congress, realized the partisan value of the issue and acted on short-term political calculations with minimal regard for sectional comity. War was the result.

Including select speeches by Lincoln and others, The Fate of Their Country openly challenges us to rethink a seminal moment in America's history.

Publishers Weekly

University of Virginia historian Holt (The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party) provides an elegant, brief analysis of the partisan political forces that, via the great debate over the extension of slavery into the American West, eventually plunged the United States into civil war. Holt discounts the view that the war arose inevitably from two irreconcilable economies as well as the more na ve interpretation that it derived from righteous Northern outrage over slavery. Instead he argues that shortsighted and self-absorbed politicians from both the South and the North (their agendas focused, for the most part, on simple re-election) needlessly exploited the slavery-extension debate and escalated the associated rhetoric to a crescendo that finally made disunion inevitable. Holt provides brilliant thumbnail portraits of such key players as Abraham Lincoln, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, James K. Polk, Daniel Webster and Stephen A. Douglas. He also offers vitally lucid analyses of such key legislative issues as the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Stating his case in a nutshell, Holt writes, "At few other times in American history did policy makers' decisions have such a profound-and calamitous-effect on the nation as they did in the 1840s and 1850s." 8 pages of b&w illus. not seen by PW; map. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

While modern historians often focus on the activities of marginalized groups that lacked true political power, the well-respected Holt (history, Univ. of Virginia; The Political Crisis of the 1850s) reaffirms the importance of politics and politicians as he re-examines the often studied coming of the Civil War. This short volume reiterates a thesis Holt offered earlier in The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, which declares that the war resulted from a series of political decisions and actions relating to the extension of slavery rather than moral or social differences over slavery. The earlier volume was applauded by scholars, but its length (1000+ pages) and detail were daunting to more casual readers. This concise book, with four chapters focusing on significant political events of the prewar period and a useful appendix of primary sources, makes Holt's theories available to a wider audience. Reference to the current conflict in Iraq demonstrates the continuing importance of Holt's approach. Likely to be used for years to come, this work is highly recommended for academic and public libraries of all sizes.-Theresa McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

It wasn't slavery per se but the debates about the extension of slavery into new territories and states that sent the nation careening into civil war, argues Holt (History/Univ. of Virginia) in a work that aims at a broader audience than did his The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (1999). As in that comprehensive, scholarly history, the author returns to the era of presidents whose visages will never adorn Mt. Rushmore (Polk, Taylor, Pierce, Buchanan) and politicians whose personal interests trumped the interests of the nation. (Stephen A. Douglas worked hard for the transcontinental railroad, in part to make sure it would pass through some of his land holdings.) With the confidence born of intimate knowledge, Holt guides us through some extraordinary complexities: the Missouri Compromise, the Mexican War, the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He explores the reasoning and motivations of some of the most well-known names in American history, including Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. He does not, however, see much honor among the political thieves of the era. "Politicians made decisions," he writes, "from short-term calculations of partisan, factional, or personal advantage rather than from any long-term concern for the health, indeed, the very preservation of the Union." Holt implies that times have not changed much, and perhaps it was the contemporary parallels that led him, as he states in the text, to attempt both to sharpen the focus of his study of American Whigs and to attract a more general readership. He has certainly accomplished the former: few passages deal with anything other than politics, with glimpses of HarrietBeecher Stowe and John Brown providing occasional relief. But attracting a general readership is a more dubious proposition. Holt's prose is heavy, leaden, and veers at times into the inelegant. Important but occasionally tedious analysis of a most critical period in our history. (map; 8 pp. b&w illustrations, not seen)

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Aldo Leopold or Supreme Court Opinions of Clarence Thomas 1991 2006

Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire: An Illustrated Biography

Author: Marybeth Lorbiecki

Written in a clear, accessible style, this biography reveals the background, early inspiration, and triumphs of Aldo Leopold and traces the foremost environmentalist's development as a leader in the conservationist movement. 160 linecuts.

Library Journal

While not the first biography written about environmentalist Aldo Leopold (see Curt Meine's Aldo Leopold: His Life & Work, Univ. of Wisconsin, 1988), this one is definitely a worthwhile addition to the literature. Sufficient facts and context are provided to leave the reader informed yet not overburdened with detail. Environmental writer Lorbiecki does not offer much interpretation of events but rather allows us to see Leopold's development through description of his life and his own philosophical evolution. We see his emergence as a leader in wilderness preservation, and game and then wildlife management. We also see his development as a husband, father, and mentor. The presentation of Leopold's public and private lives is well balanced. He is portrayed here not as a saint but as a thinking man, willing to learn and change. Those unfamiliar with Leopold will relish this book; those who already know him will enjoy the retelling. This highly readable, lavishly illustrated biography is recommended for all environmental collections, public and academic.-Nancy J. Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs, Oxford, Ohio

Booknews

This brief biography traces Leopold's development as a leader in the conservationist movement; explores his environmental writings, achievements, and philosophy; and examines his life as a husband and father. Leopold's daughter contributes her own personal reflections and many family photos. Lorbiecki has written numerous books and articles about environmental issues. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Look this: L'Économie de Changement climatique :la Révision Sévère

Supreme Court Opinions of Clarence Thomas, 1991-2006: A Conservative's Perspective

Author: Henry Mark Mark Holzer

In his fifteen years as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has written nearly 350 opinions. Thousands of Thomas's eloquent and thoughtful words are thus available for Americans to examine. Yet much of the public still bases its opinion of Thomas on the words of the American media, going as far back as the bruising confirmation battle of 1991. Widespread, uncritical acceptance of glib assumptions has greatly distorted the record and even the character of this formidable justice.

This book offers readers the opportunity to consider the real Clarence Thomas-the formidable intellectual and defender of the Constitution, amply represented by his writings. It analyzes his most important majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions from 1991 through 2006. The author argues that Thomas's opinions reveal a consistent adherence to the principles of federalism, separation of powers, limited judicial review, and regard for individual rights as contemplated by the framers of the Constitution. An appendix contains a list of every opinion Thomas has written and notes whether it was a majority, concurring, or dissenting opinion.

Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction     1
"We the People": The Constitution of the United States     9
"Further declaratory and restrictive clauses": The Bill of Rights     17
"Shall be vested in": Separation of Powers     23
"The powers not delegated": Federalism     36
Tenth Amendment     36
Commerce Clause     40
Necessary and Proper Clause     43
"One supreme Court": Judicial Review     51
Judicial Restraint     51
Statutory Interpretation     60
Stare Decisis     64
Thomas and Scalia     67
"Congress shall make no law": First Amendment     69
Establishment of Religion     69
Free Exercise of Religion     75
Freedom of Speech     76
Right of Association     93
"Other enumerated rights": Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments     96
Fourth Amendment     97
Fifth Amendment     100
Sixth Amendment     107
Eighth Amendment     111
"No State shall": Fourteenth Amendment     122
Privileges or Immunities     122
Due Process of Law     125
Equal Protection of the Law     140
Conclusion     151
Chapter Notes     159
Opinions of Justice Thomas     193
Statutory Interpretation Opinions of Justice Thomas     209
Index     219

Friday, February 13, 2009

The End of Iraq or Turkmeniscam

The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End

Author: Peter W Galbraith

The End of Iraq -- definitive, tough-minded, clear-eyed, describes America's failed strategy toward that country.

Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship

Author: Ken Silverstein

“As I have often said, I would represent the devil himself for the right price–it’s not personal, just business.”
–a Washington, D.C., lobbyist

For nearly as long as there have been politicians in the United States, there have been lobbyists haunting the halls of Congress–shaking hands, bearing gifts, and brandishing agendas. Everyone knows how the back-scratching game of money, power, and PR is played. For a good enough offer, there are those who will gladly dive into the dirtiest political waters. The real question is: Just how low will they sink? Veteran investigative journalist Ken Silverstein made it his mission to find out–and “Turkmeniscam” was born.

On assignment for Harper’s magazine, and armed with a fistful of fake business cards, Silverstein went deep undercover as a corporate henchman with money to burn and a problem to solve: transforming the former Soviet-bloc nation Turkmenistan–branded “one of the worst totalitarian systems in the world”–into a Capitol Hill-friendly commodity. Even in the notoriously ethics-challenged world of Washington’s professional lobbying industry, could “Kenneth Case” (Silverstein’s fat-cat alter ego) find a team of D.C. spin doctors willing to whitewash the regime of a megalomaniac dictator with an unpronounceable name and an unspeakable reputation? Would the Beltway’s best and brightest image-mongers shill for a country condemned for its mind-boggling history of corruption, brutality, and civil rights abuse?

Who would dare tread in the ignoble footsteps of Ivy Lee, the pioneering PR guruwho sought to make the Nazis look nice? And who would stoop to unprecedented new lows to conquer Congress and compromise the red, white, and blue for the sake of the almighty green? As Ken Silverstein discovers in this mordantly funny, disturbingly enlightening, jaw-dropping exploration of the dark side, the real question is: Who wouldn’t?

Praise for The Radioactive Boy Scout

“Alarming . . . The story fascinates from start to finish.”
–Outside

“An astounding story . . . [Silverstein] has a novelist’s eye for meaningful detail and a historian’s touch for context.”
–The San Diego Union-Tribune

“[Silverstein] does a fabulous job of letting David [Hahn’s] surrealistic story tell itself. . . . But what’s truly amazing is how far Hahn actually got in the construction of his crude nuclear reactor.”
–The Columbus Dispatch

“Enthralling . . . [The Radioactive Boy Scout] has the quirky pleasures of a Don DeLillo novel or an Errol Morris documentary. . . . An engaging portrait of a person whose life on America’s fringe also says something about mainstream America.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Amazing . . . unsettling . . . should come with a warning: Don’t buy [this book] for any obsessive kids in the family. It might give them ideas.”
–Rocky Mountain News

Kirkus Reviews

Harper's Washington editor Silverstein (The Radioactive Boy Scout, 2004, etc.) takes an informative, smart-alecky look at the lengths to which lobbying firms will go to get clients. The book is based on his undercover reporting for the magazine. Silverstein invented a company interested in promoting Turkmenistan's image in the United States so that it could attract investors to energy projects in the former Soviet Union. In edgy prose he describes the people he met and the places he visited, also providing plenty of biographical and campaign-finance factoids. His report will confirm many people's worst fears about the influence business, whose members display considerable willingness to work for repressive regimes (as long as they or their allies can write checks) and a tendency to shade the truth when dealing with the media. While this material worked well as a magazine article, it's a bit skimpy for a full-length book, so the author augments the narrative of his investigation with a lengthy history of lobbying. This synthesis of existing material doesn't always cohere. Silverstein's undercover effort was controversial when the article first came out, among some journalists as well as most of the lobbying community. He defends his approach as the only way to get the true story and also takes issue with those who put balance above all other values when judging reporting. " 'Balanced' is not fair, it's just an easy way of avoiding real reporting (as well as charges of bias) and shirking our responsibility to inform readers," he contends. Nobody will accuse Silverstein of evenhandedness, since he never gives the lobbyists a chance to defend their tactics. Readable and well-reported, thoughopenly partisan. Agent: Melanie Jackson/Melanie Jackson Agency

Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Jewish Political Tradition or Advanced Tactical Marksman

The Jewish Political Tradition: Authority, Vol. 1

Author: Michael Walzer

The first volume in a new series that will define an entirely new field within Jewish Studies by identifying a Jewish political tradition. Michael Walzer is the very prominent editor of the series, providing introductions to the volume and project as well as to each chapter. It is based on documents covering a time span over 2000 years.

Library Journal

In this first book of a four-volume series originating from a conference on Jewish philosophy, religion, and politics sponsored by the Shalom Harman Institute of Jerusalem, the political arguments of two millennia are made accessible to a new generation of general readers. The struggle between secular and religious authority and the interaction of the individual in society are central themes. The editors, all scholars affiliated with the Shalom Hartman Institute, arrange this anthology of texts with commentaries in chronological order under 30 chapters headings, centering upon key historical events from ancient times unto the modern State of Israel. Primary sources (the Talmud, Mishnah, Midrash, Gemara, etc.) are supplemented by legal responsa, extracanonical, and contemporary sources, including essays, articles, and pamphlets by eminent scholars and professionals working in different fields of Jewish studies. Many of the medieval and modern texts are translated into English for the first time. Biographical data on various authors are included. This highly comprehensive and scholarly work is recommended for academic libraries.--Michael W. Ellis, Ellenville P.L., NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Noah J. Efron

Remarkable for both what it does and how it does it. It is a > splendid achievement.—Boston Book Review

The New Republic - David Novak

The Jewish Political Tradition is one of the most ambitious Jewish intellectual efforts of recent years.

What People Are Saying

Macy
This work is the most comprehensive attempt that has ever been undertaken to present a thematic compilation of the important texts of the Jewish political tradition. It is a monumental project.

Book review: Decision Support and Business Intelligence Systems or Programming Microsoft ASPNet 20 Core Reference

Advanced Tactical Marksman: More High-Performance Techniques for Police, Military, and Practical Shooters

Author: Dave M Lauck

When Lauck wrote *The Tactical Marksman* in 1996, it quickly became a sought-after training manual for police, military and civilian marksmen alike. Now one of the most respected names in high-performance shooting and gunsmithing refines and updates that information. Dispensing with overcomplicated mil-dot formulas and minute-of-angle calculations, Lauck shows you how to achieve superior accuracy and figure out angle shots, streamline the zero process, hit targets at 2,000 yards, deal with dawn and dusk shoots, train for real-world scenarios, choose optics and accessories, create a mobile shooting platform and much more.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Unaccountable or Modernization Cultural Change and Democracy

Unaccountable: How the Accounting Profession Forfeited a Public Trust

Author: Mike Brewster

For thousands of years, those who controlled and monitored society’s finances–accountants–were often the most powerful, respected, and influential members of the community. From the collectors at communal granaries in the ancient Middle East to the scribes who monitored Queen Victoria’s Exchequer, the accountant’s role has been to preserve the integrity of financial systems.

In the United States, twentieth-century accountants played a vital role in shaping the transparency of U.S. capital markets, counseling the Allies on financial matters in both world wars, advising Congress on the creation of the federal income tax, and inventing the concept of the gross national product.

Yet by 2003, the reputation of the public accountant was in tatters. How did the accounting profession in America squander its legacy of public service? What happened to the accountants that presidents, senators, and captains of industry turned to for advice? Why did auditors stop looking for fraud? How did this once revered profession find itself in this unlikely and humiliating state?

New interesting book: Decolonizing Methodologies or Leaving America

Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence

Author: Ronald Inglehart

This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behavior. These changes are roughly predictable because they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernization theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85% of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernization is a process of human development, in which economic development triggers cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely.

	Foreword
1	A revised theory of modernization	15
2	Value change and the persistence of cultural traditions	48
3	Exploring the unknown : predicting mass responses	77
4	Intergenerational value change	94
5	Value changes over time	115
6	Individualism, self-expression values, and civic virtues	135
7	The causal link between democratic values and democratic institutions : theoretical discussion	149
8	The causal link between democratic values and democratic institutions : empirical analyses	173
9	Social forces, collective action, and international events	210
10	Individual-level values and system-level democracy : the problem of cross-level analysis	231
11	Components of a prodemocratic civic culture	245
12	Gender equality, emancipative values, and democracy	272
13	The implications of human development	285
	Conclusion : an emancipative theory of democracy	299

Monday, February 9, 2009

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or Voices of Freedom

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated

Author: Gore Vidal

The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now) Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of "evil-doers?" "Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age." — Washington Post "Our greatest living man of letters."—Boston Globe "Vidal's imagination of American politics is so powerful as to compel awe."—Harold Bloom, The New York Review of Books

Publishers Weekly

In this collection of essays, noted novelist and critic Vidal turns his acerbic wit on the United States. Never shy about expressing his opinion, Vidal questions U.S. assumptions regarding the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings: "That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with." His critique of the coverage of September 11 is slim, mostly centering on already reported truisms about why many in the Muslim world sympathize in some way with Osama bin Laden. Some readers, however, will share his unease with the willingness on the part of the American government and the American people to put concerns for civil liberties on the back burner during the war on terrorism. Vidal's criticisms of McVeigh, with whom he struck up a correspondence and a relationship, is more detailed. In Vidal's view, it is unlikely that McVeigh was solely responsible for Oklahoma City, and he saw himself as a martyr for a libertarian cause that would rescue America. But in this book, the tone is as important as the text. Vidal gleefully skewers American capitalism and the role of the religious right in American politics at every opportunity. Critics of American policy and American life, as well as those prone to conspiracy theories, are likely to find a lot of fodder. Many will not be surprised that Vidal's views have not received a wider hearing a piece on McVeigh was rejected by Vanity Fair, another by the Nation but even at his most contrarian, Vidal's writing is powerful and graceful. (May) Forecast: Vidal's piece on September 11 appeared in a book that became a bestseller in Italy. Will it do the same here? Not likely, but the success of Noam Chomsky's 9-11 makes it clear that at least some readers are ready for an alternate view. They may also welcome A Just Response (reviewed on p. 69), a collection from the Nation. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In a piquant collection (originally published in Italy), Vidal (The Last Empire, 2001, etc.) asks readers to consider the forces that motivated Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden-and perhaps it wouldn't hurt to heed the beating the Bill of Rights has been taking recently. When President Bush ("a powerless Mikado ruled by a shogun vice president and his Pentagon warrior counselors") tells his public that the nation is embarking on a "very long war," a "secret war" against operators like bin Laden, who has been reduced to a Shakespearean motiveless malignity, warning bells should be heard. Citizens ought to wonder, Vidal suggests, how we got in such a fix. Have our actions in the Middle East been not only self-serving, but open to misinterpretation as well? Plain hypocritical? Should we give with one hand, take away with the other: support Saddam Hussein or bin Laden one day, vilify him the next? When "Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return" (Auden), is self-righteousness an option? As for McVeigh, does he bear witness to rage in the heartland? Is there a reason for the surge of militias? Has the destruction of the family farm anything to do with it? Have the trouncing of the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, the carte blanche given to the ATF/FBI/DEA/IRS to step on those rights, the abominations of Waco and Ruby Ridge, followed by the government's smug refusal to accept any culpability, at the very least boomeranged on their proclaimed intent? Deserves some thought by anyone with a shred of skepticism, thinks Vidal. He provides plenty of examples to sustain his shimmering abhorrence for current American politics (e.g., his contention that FBI Director Freeh was "placed" inhis job by Opus Dei). Challenging as ever, Vidal quotes Justice Brandeis: "If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for laws; it invites every man to become a law unto himself."

Voices of Freedom: English and Civics

Author: Bill Bliss

This content-based English and Civics text introduces basic government and history topics through a carefully controlled sequence of lessons that simultaneously teach beginning-level vocabulary and grammar.

New civic participation activities, projects, and issue discussions meet English/Civics program goals.
Expanded chapter tests develop test-taking skills and increase confidence levels.
Interview dialogues allow students to practice the functional interview skills crucial to a successful INS interview.
Internet activities range from simple web browsing to virtual field trips to important historical sites.

New civic enrichment activities in each chapter, including visits to local government offices, community tasks, and debates encourage students to become active participants in the classroom and in the community.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Lead Time or The Hemingses of Monticello

Lead Time: A Journalist's Education

Author: Garry Wills

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

	Introduction : after the fact
1	War protest : commune	3
2	War protest : jail	11
3	Dr. King on the case	29
4	"McCarthyism"	53
5	Alger Hiss	56
6	Hiss and Nixon	62
7	Summer of '74	79
8	Sideshows	96
9	Dunces	108
10	The Senate	117
11	The House	124
12	Bobby Baker	128
13	Daniel Patrick Moynihan	132
14	George Wallace	140
15	Burt Lance	156
16	Jerry Brown	166
17	The best reporter	181
18	Miniconvention, '74	186
19	Democrats, '76	195
20	Republicans, '76	203
21	Miniconvention, '78	209
22	Truman	221
23	Eisenhower	233
24	Johnson	236
25	Ford	241
26	Carter	250
27	Reagan	257
28	Born-again Watergater	275
29	Stained-glass Watergate	285
30	Pope John Paul II	293
31	Dorothy Day	300
32	The Pope in America	304
33	The devil	320
34	Why?	327
35	Muhammad Ali	331
36	Shirley Verrett	339
37	Raymond Berry	346
38	Beverly sills	362
App	Boxing : a palinode	381

Book about: Sistemi d'informazione di impresa: Un metodo Modello-Basato

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Author: Annette Gordon Reed

Historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family, and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.

The Washington Post - Fergus M. Bordewich

…monumental and original…Liberating the woman known to Jefferson's smirking enemies as "dusky Sally" from the lumber room of scandal and legend, Gordon-Reed leads her into the daylight of a country where slaves and masters met on intimate terms. In so doing, Gordon-Reed also shines an uncompromisingly fresh but not unsympathetic light on the most elusive of the Founding Fathers…In this magisterial book, she has succeeded not only in recovering the lives of an entire enslaved family, but also in showing them as creative agents intelligently maneuvering to achieve maximum advantage for themselves within the orbit of institutionalized slavery.

Publishers Weekly

This is a scholar's book: serious, thick, complex. It's also fascinating, wise and of the utmost importance. Gordon-Reed, a professor of both history and law who in her previous book helped solve some of the mysteries of the intimate relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, now brings to life the entire Hemings family and its tangled blood links with slave-holding Virginia whites over an entire century. Gordon-Reed never slips into cynicism about the author of the Declaration of Independence. Instead, she shows how his life was deeply affected by his slave kinspeople: his lover (who was the half-sister of his deceased wife) and their children. Everyone comes vividly to life, as do the places, like Paris and Philadelphia, in which Jefferson, his daughters and some of his black family lived. So, too, do the complexities and varieties of slaves' lives and the nature of the choices they had to make-when they had the luxury of making a choice. Gordon-Reed's genius for reading nearly silent records makes this an extraordinary work. 37 illus. (Sept.)

Thomas J. Davis - Library Journal

This multigenerational saga traces mixed-race bloodlines that American history has long refused fully to acknowledge. Blending biography, genealogy, and history, Gordon-Reed (history, Rutgers Univ.; law, New York Law Sch.; Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy) brings to life the family from which Sally Hemings (1773-1835) came and the family that she and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) created. Sally bore five surviving children for the man who penned the Declaration of Independence and later became the new nation's third president. In a three-part, 30-chapter tour de force through voluminous primary and secondary sources, including Jefferson family correspondence, Gordon-Reed reconstructs not simply the private life and estate of an American demigod but reveals much of the characteristic structure and style of early Virginia society and the slavery that made possible much of the Old Dominion's position and pleasure. Moreover, she ushers forth slaves from the usual shadows of historical obscurity to show them as individuals and families with multifaceted lives. This is a masterpiece brimming with decades of dedicated research and dexterous writing. It is essential for any collection on U.S. history, Colonial America, Virginia, slavery, or miscegenation. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

The unusual history of an enslaved family whose destiny was shaped over the course of four decades by Thomas Jefferson. Gordon-Reed (Law/New York Law School, History/Rutgers Univ.; Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, 1997, etc.) grudgingly comes to a sympathetic view of Jefferson, who inherited the mixed-race Hemings family when he married Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772. By 1784, he was a widower living in Paris as head of the American commission, accompanied by manservant James Hemings, whom Jefferson took along so he could receive training as a French chef. In 1787, James's 14-year-old sister Sally came to Paris with Jefferson's daughter Polly; sometime during the French sojourn, she became her master's mistress. Back in Virginia, Jefferson installed Sally in a fairly pampered life at Monticello; he sired her numerous children and emancipated them upon his death in 1826. The author painstakingly sifts through the evidence about their relationship and examines the convoluted attitudes that influenced Jefferson's behavior. Sally's white father was also Martha Jefferson's father; Jefferson's wife and his slave mistress were half-sisters who owed their radically different destinies to the Anglo-Virginian system of bondage. The colonists had adopted the Roman rule partus sequitur ventrem (you were what your mother was) rather than the English rule (you were what your father was). By the perverse logic of this system, any drop of white blood ameliorated the work slaves were assigned and their chances of being freed. Jefferson encouraged James Hemings and his brother Robert to learn skills and to move freely in the world. There is no clue in the life of this intertwined family that Gordon-Reeddoes not minutely examine for its most subtle significance. She concludes that Jefferson was above all a most private man, who espoused abhorrent racial theories in public but behaved relatively well (by the standards of the era) toward his own slaves. Ponderous but sagacious and ultimately rewarding.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Era of Good Feelings or Durable Inequality

Era of Good Feelings

Author: George Dangerfield

Winner of the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes, this is the standard history of the years between Jefferson and Jackson.

Interesting book: Leadership Clairs

Durable Inequality

Author: Charles Tilly

Charles Tilly, in this eloquent manifesto, presents a powerful new approach to the study of persistent social inequality. How, he asks, do long-lasting, systematic inequalities in life chances arise, and how do they come to distinguish members of different socially defined categories of persons? Exploring representative paired and unequal categories, such as male/female, black/white, and citizen/noncitizen, Tilly argues that the basic causes of these and similar inequalities greatly resemble one another. In contrast to contemporary analyses that explain inequality case by case, this account is one of process. Categorical distinctions arise, Tilly says, because they offer a solution to pressing organizational problems. Whatever the "organization" is--as small as a household or as large as a government--the resulting relationship of inequality persists because parties on both sides of the categorical divide come to depend on that solution, despite its drawbacks. Tilly illustrates the social mechanisms that create and maintain paired and unequal categories with a rich variety of cases, mapping out fertile territories for future relational study of durable inequality.

William Julius Wilson

Solidifies Charles Tilly's reputation as one of the world's most creative social scientists....Tilly's original framework clearly reveals and thoroughly explains the similar social processes that create different forms of social inequality. -- William Julius Wilson

Bruce G. Carruthers

Clearly the work of a master...provides a new and rigorous understanding of one of the key facts of social life. -- Bruce G. Carruthers

Friday, February 6, 2009

New Imperialism or On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness

New Imperialism

Author: David Harvey

People around the world are confused and concerned. Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else was involved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics? These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. In this closely argued and clearly written book, David Harvey, one of the leading social theorists of his generation, builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a "new imperialism" are here, for the first time, laid bare for all to see.

On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness

Author: Jacques Derrida

One of the world's most famous philosophers, Jacques Derrida, explores difficult questions in this important and engaging book. Is it still possible to uphold international hospitality and justice in the face of increasing nationalism and civil strife in so many countries? Drawing on examples of treatment of minority groups in Europe, he skillfully and accessibly probes the thinking that underlies much of the practice, and rhetoric, that informs cosmopolitanism. What have duties and rights to do with hospitality? Should hospitality be grounded in a private or public ethic, or even a religious one? This fascinating book will be illuminating reading for all.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Born to the Mob or Mr Lincoln Goes to War

Born to the Mob: The True-Life Story of the Only Man to Work for All Five of New York's Mafia Families

Author: Frankie Saggio

Frankie Saggio reminisces about the era of true wise guys like his Uncle Philly -a contemporary of Al Capone. After all, it was Frankie's uncle who "taught him the value of a dollar and how to steal it from someone else." Uncle Philly was from a day when being in a mafia family meant being bound by blood and honor, not like modern day families whose only concern is money. For Frankie, the only way to avoid the modern mob treachery is to avoid getting involved with any single mob family, working "freelance" for all five. Frankie can do this because he is one of the biggest earners in the business, pulling down millions and kicking a share upstairs to the bosses. Though he fights the decision, Frankie is tied by blood to the Bonanno family, Uncle Philly's family, and current home to Philly's murderer. Soon after joining the Bonannos, Frankie narrowly escapes an assassination attempt and is busted for a major scam. With little choice, and even less loyalty to the Bonannos, Frankie turns himself over to the Feds on the one condition that he will tell the feds everything, but will not squeal on his own relatives.

Publishers Weekly

The apparently insatiable public appetite for insider stories from the world of organized crime gives Saggio's dramatized third-person narrative, co-written with true-crime veteran Rosen (Lobster Boy), a built-in audience, but don't expect another Wiseguy or Donnie Brasco. Saggio, a federally protected witness following his cooperation against his former partners in crime, relates a familiar, clich d tale without offering much new. While his schemes involved mail fraud scams and stock manipulation rather than violence, more detailed and better-written accounts of mob infiltration of Wall Street have appeared recently (e.g., Gary Weiss's Born to Steal and Salvatore Lauria's The Scorpion and the Frog). Purple prose ("With a crackle of gears, the bus descended to hell") mingled with blatant errors (the underboss, not the capo, is "one rung below boss"; Rudy Giuliani never prosecuted John Gotti) and "revelations" that are not news (Carmine Galante's assassins have been publicly named before) add up to a disappointing by-the-numbers story. The few touches of humor-Saggio refers to the mob's ruling body, the Commission, as the "Justice League" and compares his life to that of Harry Potter-don't make Saggio, who comes off here as greedy and conscienceless, any more endearing. Readers with a background in law enforcement will dispute Saggio's accusation that FBI undercover agent Joe Pistone was complicit in three murders and that the FBI let those hits go forward. (Mar. 11) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Saggio, now residing in an unknown location under the federal government's Witness Security Program, tells all in this interesting but unevenly written memoir of the Wiseguy life. Growing up under the wing of his uncle, "Philly Lucky" Giaccone (a member of the Bonanno crime family), Saggio was initiated early into the ways of the Mafia. When he was 17, Uncle Philly was killed, and Saggio became a "freelance" mobster, going on to work for all five of New York's crime families. Ultimately busted for his operation of a phony pay-phone scam, Saggio made a deal with the federal government to inform on the Mafia in which he had traveled so widely. The story is told in the third person, but large parts are made up of direct quotes from Saggio, often breaking the flow of the book and making it slightly disjointed. Not for the faint of heart, given the superfluous use of strong language, this is an optional purchase for the true-crime collections of large public libraries or wherever Mob tell-alls are popular.-Sarah Jent, Univ. of Louisville, KY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An organized-crime figure specializes in financial shenanigans as intricate as any imaginable. No goomba-come-lately, Saggio was a fourth-generation member of an extended Mafia family. Here, with his first-person account buttressed by crime journalist Rosen's narrative, Saggio explains why he chose to operate independently: "I didn't want anyone bustin' my balls. . . . If I wasn't with any crew, I could move around and not answer to anyone." He made money and paid the vig to whoever controlled the turf-and what a turf it was, from drugs to cigarettes to car thefts, but most fascinatingly on Wall Street, where Saggio figured out how to "get a hook into a firm, bring the wiseguys in, and the exploit the situation." This involved IPO scams like dumping stocks after an early purchase. "I had a vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank and a vice president at European American Bank who would handle my accounts and transactions personally," the mobster boasts; Paine Webber and Shearson Lehman also figured in the equation. But Saggio's independence required an exquisite appreciation of balance and a knowledge of who was who within the five New York crime families. ("Patty and his brother Joey were with Roy DeMeo, who ran a crew for Nino Gaggi, a skipper with the Gambinos.") His connections were always in flux-now with the Columbos, now with the Luccheses, the Genoveses, the Bonannos, the Gambinos-and when Saggio eventually ran afoul of the truly nasty Tommy D., he turned to the witness protection program, which comes across as a deeply amateurish operation. The everyday lawlessness and violence here is omnipresent; there's no running, no hiding, no avenue of escape from Mob influence, andlaw-abiding readers may feel as though a rasp is being drawn across their foreheads. If what Saggio says is true, and there's little reason to believe it's not, readers are advised to think twice before their next flutter on an IPO.

Go to: The Dependent Personality or Miracle Touch

Mr. Lincoln Goes to War

Author: William Marvel

This exciting work of groundbreaking history investigates the mystery of how the Civil War began, reconsidering the big question: Was it inevitable? Marvel vividly depicts President Lincoln's first year in office, from his inauguration through the rising crisis of secession and the first several months of the war. Drawing on original sources and examining previously overlooked factors, Marvel leads the reader inexorably to the conclusion that Lincoln not only missed opportunities to avoid war but actually fanned the flames - and often acted unconstitutionally in prosecuting the war once it had begun. The story unfolds with Marvel's keen eye for the telling detail, on the battlefield as well as in the White House. This is revisionist history at its best and necessary reading for Civil War and Lincoln devotees alike.

Publishers Weekly

Establishing slavery as the Civil War's central issue has fostered an acceptance of the conflict's inevitability among academic and popular historians alike. Marvel, author of several prize-winning books on the Civil War (Lee's Last Retreat, etc.), combines an iconoclastic approach with extensive research to challenge this conventional wisdom. Focusing on the North's road to war in 1861, he argues that Abraham Lincoln made armed force a first choice, rather than a last resort, in addressing the Union's breakup. While conceding the complex problems Lincoln faced, and the corresponding limitations on his options, Marvel describes the president's course of action as "destructive and unimaginative." The confrontation at Fort Sumter ended any chance of avoiding conflict, he writes, and the North's amateurish conduct of initial military operations, culminating in the defeats at Bull Run, Wilson's Creek and Ball's Bluff, encouraged an emerging Confederacy's belief that war was its best option. More generally, Lincoln's early and comprehensive infringement of such constitutional rights as habeas corpus set dangerous precedents for future autocratic executives. Marvel's characterization of Lincoln as a victim of tunnel vision, who launched a war without considering how devastating it might become, incorporates a certain present-mindedness. His willingness to consider the positive prospects of accepting secession is informed by a barely concealed subtext: the existence of the United States as we know it has not been an unmixed blessing. This well-constructed, comprehensively documented revisionist exercise merits consideration and reflection. Drawings, maps, halftones. (May 10) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Historian Marvel (Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox) insists that the positive outcome of the Civil War and the deification of Lincoln as a great war leader have obscured many of the actual facts. He offers an alternate historical view, arguing that Lincoln misread the political situation during the secession winter preceding the attack on Fort Sumter, mishandled the crisis at the fort, abused the power of his office, trampled on civil liberties and democratic processes to keep Maryland and Missouri in the Union, and stumbled through cabinet decisions about how to prosecute the war. In grim and vivid detail, he recounts the military blundering that made the war more terrible than it might have been were another man in Lincoln's position. Marvel writes with authority and vigor in relating military actions but relies on conjecture in supposing political alignments and peaceful resolutions had Lincoln not been so aggressive and unyielding in insisting the Union not disassemble. Nonetheless, this provocative book will fuel the current raging debates on presidential powers, leadership, the causes and conduct of the Civil War, and the possibilities of peace. Highly recommended.-Randall M. Miller, Saint Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The Railsplitter as tyrant, warmonger and Machiavellian strategist. Did Lincoln cause the Civil War? Historian Marvel (The Monitor Chronicles, 2000, etc.) says yes, but then adds a qualification or two. Certainly, he writes, Lincoln could have taken the advice of Cabinet members, newspaper editors and plenty of Northern voters by allowing the South to secede, in which case, Marvel ventures, slavery would have at least been a localized problem, likely to disappear in time. Lincoln, however, "eschewed diplomacy" and replied to the capture of Fort Sumter-which, Lincoln's secret agents had already told him, was inevitably to fall to the South-by raising an army and threatening invasion. He had already hinted at such intentions in his inaugural speech, knowing that trouble was on the way; indeed, as Marvel writes, Sumter, which supposedly touched off the war, was but the latest of many federal installations that the secessionists had taken, to which then-President James Buchanan had responded by not doing anything. Any attempt to enforce federal law in the South, Lincoln's advisors told him, "would precipitate war." By Marvel's account, Lincoln welcomed the prospect, for the Union needed a renewed forging of bonds and federal authority needed to be extended over states' rights-an argument still played out in the Capitol today. In any event, Marvel argues, Lincoln willingly violated the Constitution to preserve the Union by, for one thing, suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and he came very close to establishing a dictatorship (of the Roman, not Nazi, variety). "Lincoln gradually arrogated so much authority to his office that his own dominant party dared not pass that power on to a member ofthe opposition," Marvel notes, so that Republicans raced to strip away presidential powers when Democrat Andrew Johnson took office after Lincoln's assassination. Sure to touch off discussion, if not controversy, in professional circles; readers with a penchant for iconoclasm will want to have a look, too.

Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps ix
Preface xiii

Part I WE CANNOT SEPARATE
1. Songs for a Prelude 3
2. Flags in Mottoed Pageantry 36
3. The Banner at Daybreak 63

Part II AND NOW THE STORM-BLAST CAME
4. Behold the Silvery River 93
5. Where Ignorant Armies Clash 120
6. The Crimson Corse of Lyon 155

Part III THE ERA OF SUSPICION
7. The Despot's Heel 185
8. By Cliffs Potomac Cleft 216
9. Shovel Them Under and Let Me Work 247

Epilogue 281
Appendix 1: Orders of Battle 289
Appendix 2: Biographical Sketches 292
Notes 304
Bibliography 340
Acknowledgments 363
Index 368

	Introduction	1
1	Firearms Safety	3
2	The Modern Tactical Marksman	17
3	Rifle Selection	25
4	Advanced Optics and Accessories	57
5	Ammunition and Ballistic Considerations	99
6	Zeroing	123
7	Marksmanship	137
8	Immediate Action Rifle	141
9	Advanced-Precision Rifle Training	147
10	Equipment Maintenance	183
	Appendix A	189
	Glossary	197

	Introduction
	September 11, 2001 (A Tuesday)	1
	How I Became Interested in Timothy McVeigh and Vice Versa	43
	Shredding the Bill of Rights	49
	The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh	83
	Fallout	123
	The New Theocrats	137
	A Letter to Be Delivered	147

	Preface
1	All About Oil	1
2	How America's Power Grew	26
3	Capital Bondage	87
4	Accumulation by Disposession	137
5	Consent to Coercion	183
	Further Reading	213
	Bibliography	217
	Notes	225
	Index	237

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Blog Archive

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of AQ Khan's Nuclear Network

The Washington Post - George Perkovich

Publishers Weekly

John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

The New York Times - Barbara Ehrenreich

The Washington Post - David W. Blight

Publishers Weekly

KLIATT

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

Friday, February 20, 2009

Prisoners of Hope: The Story of Our Captivity and Freedom in Afghanistan

Publishers Weekly

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957-December 1958, Vol. 4

Thursday, February 19, 2009

2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs Crisis

Table of Contents:

The Call of Service

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis

Foreign Affairs

Table of Contents:

Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants

Library Journal

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Coercion, Capital and European States: Ad 990 - 1992

Table of Contents:

The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Malcolm Boyd

New York Times

Ebony Man

Children's Literature

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction

Table of Contents:

The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire: An Illustrated Biography

Library Journal

Booknews

Supreme Court Opinions of Clarence Thomas, 1991-2006: A Conservative's Perspective

Table of Contents:

Friday, February 13, 2009

The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End

Table of Contents:

Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship

Kirkus Reviews

Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Jewish Political Tradition: Authority, Vol. 1

Library Journal

Noah J. Efron

The New Republic - David Novak

What People Are Saying

Advanced Tactical Marksman: More High-Performance Techniques for Police, Military, and Practical Shooters

Table of Contents:

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Unaccountable: How the Accounting Profession Forfeited a Public Trust

Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence

Table of Contents:

Monday, February 9, 2009

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

Voices of Freedom: English and Civics

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Lead Time: A Journalist's Education

Table of Contents:

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

The Washington Post - Fergus M. Bordewich

Publishers Weekly