Education Policies Books: 2008

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Pirate Coast or Becoming Justice Blackmun

The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805

Author: Richard Zacks

A real-life thriller from acclaimed historian and author of The Pirate Hunter, Richard Zacks -- the true story of the unheralded American who brought the Barbary Pirates to their knees.

In an attempt to stop the legendary Barbary Pirates of North Africa from hijacking American ships, William Eaton set out in 1805 on a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. The operation was sanctioned by President Thomas Jefferson, but at the last moment he grew wary of "intermeddling" in a foreign government, and Eaton set off without proper national support.

Short on supplies, given very little money and only a few men, Eaton and his mission seemed doomed from the start. But against all odds, he improbably triumphed, recruiting a band of European mercenaries in Alexandria, along with some Arab cavalry and Bedouin fighters, and leading them on a march across the Libyan Desert. Once in Tripoli, the ragtag army defeated the local troops and successfully captured Derne, laying the groundwork for the demise of the Barbary Pirates. The success of the event is immortalized in the Marines' Hymn, but Jefferson never allowed Eaton the fame he craved. Now, Richard Zacks brings this important story from our nation's history to life.

Richard Zacks, author of the heralded The Pirate Hunter, is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and a freelance journalist for Atlantic Monthly, Life, Time, and numerous other publications. He lives in New York City.

The New York Times - William Grimes

… Mr. Zacks relies heavily on a wealth of first-person accounts that, time and again, resuscitate the narrative. He also, quite wisely, makes plenty of room on the stage for the charismatic Eaton, a compelling figure who fully deserves the hero's treatment that Mr. Zack accords him.

The Washington Post - Sudip Bose

Jefferson's navy in those days consisted of fewer than 10 ships, but he sent the USS Philadelphia to blockade Tripoli harbor in the hope of making peace. The maneuver failed. The mighty Philadelphia and its crew of 307 were captured, and Karamanli set ransom at an astonishing $1,690,000. The failure was, as Richard Zacks puts it in The Pirate Coast, "a national disaster for the young United States." How those captives were eventually rescued is the subject of Zacks's lively popular history.

Publishers Weekly

The author of The Pirate Hunter, which made Captain Kidd come to life, focuses here more broadly on a piracy hot spot. Resolved to stop the enslavement of American merchant sailors by North African nations, Jefferson deployed most of the infant U.S. Navy to the Mediterranean and sent a column of troops overland from Egypt to place the pasha of Tripoli's brother Hamet on the throne in 1801. The leader of that motley array of mercenaries, Muslim tribesmen, Hamet's retainers and a handful of U.S. Marines was the colorful and combative William Eaton, who led them more than 500 miles across the desert to "the shores of Tripoli." By the time he arrived, peace negotiations were underway, in the hands of one Tobias Deane, who was neither honest nor competent. Eaton had to abandon Hamet and was in turn virtually abandoned by the Jefferson administration, leaving him with a mountain of debt and a drinking problem that eventually killed him at 47. There has been a dearth of good material on the Barbary War and particularly on Eaton's trek; Zacks has researched thoroughly, writes entertainingly and shows a knack for sea stories and characterization. This is the book that Captain Eaton has long deserved. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Freelance writer Zacks (The Pirate Hunter) has written an exceptional book about pirates, covert missions, and governmental denial, all during the initial U.S. involvement with North Africa's Muslim city-states. The focus is on the long-forgotten William Eaton, dispatched by Jefferson to lead a column of troops, including eight U.S. marines, overland from Egypt to Tripoli to overthrow the Bashaw, or Pasha. Eaton didn't quite make it to "the shores of Tripoli," which have since been immortalized by the Marine hymn, because Jefferson had also certified diplomatic peace negotiations that trumped the invasion. An exciting, informative book. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

William Eaton, brash and defiant diplomat, is dispatched to Tripoli in 1805 by Thomas Jefferson to free 300 American hostages in what became the first U.S. covert mission to overthrow a foreign nation. The animalistic Barbary pirates, far from the swashbuckling Errol Flynn variety, provide ample villainy for Zacks's (The Pirate Hunter, 2002, etc.) recap of an obscure historical event. Bashaw Yussef is the ruler of Tripoli, controls the high seas and demands tributes from nations desiring safe passage for their vessels. America, young and desperate to defy tyranny, refuses the Bashaw's extortion and ends up in an overseas hostage situation at a time when its fledgling navy boasts six ships in total. While enforcing a blockade, the Philadelphia runs aground off Tripoli's coast, and the entire crew of 300 is enslaved. The set-up to this true underdog narrative barrels forward like a cinematic tidal wave and continues when a flawed savior is called upon, the disgraced and ill-prepared Eaton being sent to place the Bashaw's exiled brother on the throne and rescue the hostages without paying tribute. The engaging "first act" is one hook after another, but as Eaton's mission falters, so does the forward motion of the story. Infantry headcounts and pages of diplomatic correspondence take center stage in lieu of shipwrecks and betrayal among men both captive and free. Zacks does an expert job of explaining the diplomacy and machinations of the U.S. government even when those fail to rise to the dramatic urgency of the story's central event. He also fills these gaps in the action with many exquisitely researched, character-enhancing tangential anecdotes, including a riveting account of theperpetration of deceit against George Washington by a lesser-known diplomat named Lear. Where Zacks excels is in his research, quipping asides and loving grasp of the subject; where he slides are in the places he can't alter. When this sometimes slow story picks up steam, the pages sail by.

Interesting book: Breuss Cancer Cure or The Harvard Medical School Guide to Lowering Your Cholesterol

Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey

Author: Linda Greenhous

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Who Was Eleanor Roosevelt or The President the Pope and the Prime Minister

Who Was Eleanor Roosevelt?

Author: Gare Thompson

For a long time, the main role of First Ladies was to act as hostesses of the White House...until Eleanor Roosevelt. Born in 1884, Eleanor was not satisfied to just be a glorified hostess for her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Eleanor had a voice, and she used it to speak up against poverty and racism. She had experience and knowledge of many issues, and fought for laws to help the less fortunate. She had passion, energy, and a way of speaking that made people listen, and she used these gifts to campaign for her husband and get him elected president-four times! A fascinating historical figure in her own right, Eleanor Roosevelt changed the role of First Lady forever.

The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World

Author: John OSullivan

They Changed the Course of History

They were three "middle managers" no one imagined could reach the top.

Ronald Reagan was too old to be president and too conservative anyway. Margaret Thatcher was not only too conservative she was a woman, and not on anyone's short list to lead Britain's Conservative Party. And the idea of a Polish pope that was truly absurd, especially when the cardinal in question was a strong anti-Communist and defender of orthodoxy when many in the Church and throughout the world believed the future belonged to détente with the Soviets and social liberalism in the West.

Not only did Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Karol Wojtyla (the future John Paul II) rise to the top, but all three of them also survived assassination attempts, collaborated in the miraculous peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet Communism, and reinvigorated their respective countries and the West. They were beacons of optimism cutting through the malaise and despair that afflicted 1970s America, strike-ridden and economically moribund post-imperial Britain, and a Catholic Church rocked by social and sexual revolutions.

In The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister, veteran journalist and former Thatcher speechwriter John O'Sullivan reveals:

* How Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul developed as strong and individual leaders, perfectly suited to take power when liberalism failed How John Paul's papal visit to Poland in June 1979 led to the birth of the Solidarity labor union
* How the pope's moral undermining of Communism worried the Soviet Politburo more than any military threat
* Why Thatcher's handling of the Falklands crisis was a turningpoint in the Cold War
* How Reagan arranged for the pope to receive U.S. intelligence on developments in the Soviet bloc
* Reagan's reluctant support for the nuclear "balance of terror" and how he gratefully adopted the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as an effective alternative
* The Soviets' attempts to lure the pope into an anti-SDI campaign and his refusal
* How Reagan's refusal to compromise with Gorbachev in Reykjavik precipitated the unraveling of Soviet power
* How Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II restored optimism and hope to their people

Today, as we face a new and perhaps even deadlier enemy than Soviet Communism, we need to revisit the powerful lessons taught by these three great leaders who revived the faith, prosperity, and freedom of the West.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

More Perfect Constitution or The New Case Against Immigration

More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country

Author: Larry J Sabato

The political book of the year, from the acclaimed founder and director of the Center for politics at the University of Virginia.

A More Perfect Constitution presents creative and dynamic proposals from one of the most visionary and fertile political minds of our time to reinvigorate our Constitution and American governance at a time when such change is urgently needed, given the growing dysfunction and unfairness of our political system . Combining idealism and pragmatism, and with full respect for the original document, Larry Sabato’s thought-provoking ideas range from the length of the president’s term in office and the number and terms of Supreme Court justices to the vagaries of the antiquated Electoral College, and a compelling call for universal national service—all laced through with the history behind each proposal and the potential impact on the lives of ordinary people. Aware that such changes won’t happen easily, but that the original Framers fully expected the Constitution to be regularly revised, Sabato urges us to engage in the debate and discussion his ideas will surely engender. During a presidential election year, no book is more relevant or significant than this.

The New York Times - Robert A. Dahl

A reluctance to engage in public discussions that might challenge the prevailing view of the Constitution as a sacred document will doubtless inhibit debate on Mr. Sabato's proposals. This is not to say that they should all be adopted. But without a public discussion of proposals like this, too many American citizens will be unable to understand the virtues and problems of our Constitution and how it might be improved.

Publishers Weekly

Sabato, founder of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, ventures bravely into the controversial waters of constitutional reform. Sabato argues that the founders never intended the Constitution to be timeless, but rather understood that "government structures, ossified by constitutional neglect [can] become fundamentally unfair and tilted to those already in power." Sabato's reforms are consistent with the values he believes underpin the Constitution-fairness, idealism, pragmatism and focus on the needs of the present and the future-while attempting to mitigate social inequities. His lucid if unorthodox suggestions include a single six-year presidential term that could be extended another two years by referendum; limiting federal and Supreme Court justices to a 15-year term; a larger House of Representatives that would, among other benefits, allow for greater diversity in Congress. His reforms encompass the entire citizenry, who would be required to perform two years of national civilian or military service in what he calls a "Bill of Responsibilities." While there's room for skepticism and unintended consequences in some of his suggestions, Sabato makes strong, cogent arguments. (Oct.)

Michael O. Eshleman - Library Journal

A familiar talking head on TV, Sabato (founder, Ctr. for Politics, Univ. of Virginia; The Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall of George W. Bush's Presidency) doesn't actually propose anything that hasn't already been suggested to improve the Constitution: ex-presidents should get senate seats for life, judges should not have terms for life, mandatory national service should be revived, etc. Of course, the chances of any of these ever being voted on by Congress, let alone ratified by the states, is nil, yet they are all interesting and well conveyed here. This is food for thought deserving a place in public libraries.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-The author has considerable respect for the Founding Fathers and makes level-headed, convincing arguments that they fully expected the Constitution to undergo revisions periodically. He leaves the Bill of Rights untouched in his proposals for change and focuses on the structure of government: Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. The Senate, for example, would be more representative by granting the 10 most populous states two more senators, and the next 15 one additional senator each. Sabato also proposes that the Constitution should have a "Bill of Responsibilities"-a national service requirement (think Peace Corps, VISTA, AmeriCorps). Back matter includes the full text of the document. Extensive chapter notes are awkward to follow due to the use of sometimes lengthy Roman numerals. The issues presented here will make for exciting discussions and debates in social studies classes.-Paula Dacker, Charter Oak High School, CA

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The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal

Author: Mark Krikorian

New research reveals why America can no longer afford mass immigration

Mark Krikorian has studied the trends and concluded that America must permanently reduce immigration- both legal and illegal-or face enormous problems in the near future.

His argument is based on facts, not fear. Wherever they come from, today's immigrants are actually very similar to those who arrived a century ago. But they are coming to a very different America-one where changes in the economy, society, and government create different incentives for newcomers.

Before the upheavals of the 1960s, the U.S. expected its immigrants-from Italy to India-to earn a living, learn English, and become patriotic Americans. But the rise of identity politics, political correctness, and Great Society programs means we no longer make these demands. In short, the problem isn't them, it's us. Even positive developments such as technological progress hinder the assimilation of immigrants. It's easy now for newcomers to live "transnational" lives.

Immigration will be in the headlines through Election Day and beyond, and this controversial book will help drive the debate.

Kirkus Reviews

Interesting take on the immigration debate posits that America can no longer absorb any newcomers. Executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and longtime National Review contributor Krikorian takes a sober tone in his first book. Instead of blaming new immigrants and their failure to assimilate as quickly as most right-wingers would prefer, he argues that America has reached maturity as a nation and thus simply has no need for immigration, legal or otherwise. Back when the country was being settled, or when its economy was just ramping up, or even when it was expanding out into the suburbs, he argues, America required both the manpower and brain power of recent arrivals. Now that the roads and schools are overcrowded and porous borders threaten national security, it's time to lock down the gates to all but the most select few. This is an intriguing argument, and Krikorian does some meticulous economic and sociological number-crunching without ever quite making the sale. Most economists would refute his conclusion that immigrants are a net drain on the GDP, and most sociologists would disagree that they are assimilating at a slower rate than their predecessors. The author has an annoying tendency of taking out-of-context quotes from marginal political radicals and asserting that they speak truths for millions of people. He also harps on a shadowy band of conspirators he calls "elites," consisting of Democrats and Republicans who somehow scheme to keep the existing flawed immigration system intact against the will of the people. A flawed argument that seems passable only due to the paucity of serious discussion on the subject.

Introduction     1
Assimilation: The Cracked Melting Pot     10
Mass Immigration Versus American Sovereignty     46
National Security: Safety in Lower Numbers     92
Economy: Cheap Labor Versus Modern America     133
Government Spending     167
Population     188
What Is to Be Done?     212
Acknowledgments     237
Notes     239
Index     287

John Adams or All the Presidents Men

John Adams: The American Presidents Series

Author: John Patrick Diggins

A revealing look at the true beginning of American politicsUntil recently rescued by David McCullough, John Adams has always been overshadowed by Washington and Jefferson. Volatile, impulsive, irritable, and self-pitying, Adams seemed temperamentally unsuited for the presidency. Yet in many ways he was the perfect successor to Washington in terms of ability, experience, and popularity. Possessed of a far-ranging intelligence, Adams took office amid the birth of the government and multiple crises. Besides maintaining neutrality and regaining peace, his administration created the Department of the Navy, put the army on a surer footing, and left a solvent treasury. One of his shrewdest acts was surely the appointment of moderate Federalist John Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.Though he was a Federalist, he sought to work outside the still-forming party system. In the end, this would be Adams’s greatest failing and most useful lesson to later leaders.

The Los Angeles Times

John Patrick Diggins, a professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, has produced a little work that is more contemporary polemic than considered meditation upon the complexities of his subject, one of the most interesting, admirable and maddeningly difficult men in American history. — Anthony Day

Publishers Weekly

Diggins pays tribute to David McCullough's reestablishment of John Adams's reputation, but he has his own take in this entry in the American Presidents series, edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. He seeks to rebut the conventional wisdom that the country's second president was a "loser," a view based on the fact after losing the election of 1800, Adams's party, the Federalists, disappeared from the scene. The 1800 election was, in fact, a triumph for Adams and the ideas the Federalists espoused, says CUNY historian Diggins (On Hallowed Ground), as an opposition party came to power "without America shedding a single drop of blood." Furthermore, Diggins asserts, "American political history begins with the rift between Adams and Jefferson," and though Adams has been disparaged by historians, he played a central role in the development of American democracy. More than just a miniature of our second president, Diggins's slim volume offers a reconsideration of Adams, a thoughtful study of American politics of the period and Adams's legacy for today. (June 11) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A brief life of the post-revolutionary president who liked nothing better than to be left alone. And isolation, comments Diggins (History/CUNY), "while healthy for poetry or philosophy, is fatal in the sphere of politics." Laboring in the daunting shadow of David McCullough's massive, literate biography (John Adams, 2001), Diggins (On Hallowed Ground, 2000, etc.) acquits himself well in the shorter format of the American President series. Like McCullough, he spends time considering Adams in the light of political alter ego Thomas Jefferson, who lived as an aristocrat while speaking as a radical yet unfairly accused his sober-minded, eminently democratic opponent of being a Caesar in the making. Indeed, writes Diggins, when he defeated Adams in the 1800 presidential race, Jefferson even claimed that "he saved America from aristocracy and monarchy"--little realizing, the author adds, "that his utter dependence on party politics represented a defeat of his own ideals." Not that Adams's own ideals were left intact in the hubbub of sectarian fighting and character assassination that marked the earliest days of the republic. As Diggins notes, Adams's questionable record in office helps us "understand American history for what it really is: a study . . . of emerging interest-driven, factional blocs struggling for dominance within a political culture of consensus." In this struggle, the author claims Adams as the prototypical American liberal, whose championing of a strong executive branch, judiciary, and federal military force allowed the central state to take root and grow. Without that state, Diggins argues, no progressive cause since could have been realized. "Ironically," he observes on,"the egalitarian ideals Jefferson espoused would be realized in the very institutions he opposed." Readers of McCullough will find little new factual information here, but the solid interpretation of events will interest students of the presidency and the early republic.

Go to: Diet for Dancers or Best Gluten Free Family Cookbook

All the President's Men

Author: Carl Bernstein

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Monday, December 29, 2008

The Holy Grail of Macro Economics or Introduction to Emergency Management

The Holy Grail of Macro Economics: Lessons from Japan's Great Recession

Author: Richard C Koo

Japan's "Great Recession" lasted from approximately 1992—2007 and finally provided the economics profession with the necessary background to understand what actually happened during the US recession of the 1930s. The discoveries made, however, are so far-reaching that a large portion of economics literature will have to be modified to accommodate another half to the macro economic spectrum of possibilities that conventional theorists have overlooked.

In particular, Japan's Great Recession showed that when faced with a massive fall in asset prices, companies typically jettison the conventional goal of profit maximization and move to minimize debt in order to restore their credit ratings. This shift in corporate priority, however, has huge theoretical as well as practical implications and opens up a whole new field of study. For example, the new insight can explain fully the precise mechanism of prolonged depression and liquidity trap which conventional economics—based on corporate profit maximization—has so far failed to offer as a convincing explanation.

The author developed the idea of yin and yang business cycles where the conventional world of profit maximization is the yang and the world of balance sheet recession, where companies are minimizing debt, is the yin. Once so divided, many varied theories developed in macro economics since the 1930s can be nicely categorized into a single comprehensive theory, i.e., the Holy Grail of macro economics

The policy implication of this new discovery is immense in that the conventional aversion to fiscal policy in favor of monetary policy will have to be completely reversed when the economy isin the yin phase.

The theoretical implications are also immense in the sense that the economics profession will no longer have to rely so much on various rigidities to explain recessions that have become the standard practice within the so-called New Keynesian economics of the last twenty years.

Book review: Chinese Cuisine Made Simple or Good Housekeeping 100 Best One Dish Meals

Introduction to Emergency Management

Author: George Haddow

Introduction to Emergency Management, Third Edition provides a comprehensive update of this foundational text on the background components and systems involved in the management of disasters and other emergencies. The book details current practices, strategies, and the key players involved in emergency management, especially in the U.S. but also around the world. Expanded coverage of local and state issues, particularly as they need to interact and work with FEMA and other federal agencies, adds value to public administrators locally tasked with protecting their community. The Third Edition is fully updated to cover FEMA's continually changing role within the Department of Homeland Security and the impact and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Lessons including proper planning, mitigation, in-crisis decisions, evacuation, and recovery shed light on how managers can avoid devastating breakdowns in communication and leadership during an event. Not only terrorist events but many such natural disasters require similar preparedess planning. Emergency planning is vital to the security of entire communities and thus an essential focus for research, planning and training. This new edition continues in its tradition of serving as an essential resource for students and young professionals in the discipline of Emergency Management.

* Case examples provide current specific examples of disasters and how they were managed
* Extensive focus on Katrina includes full coverage of events leading up to the crisis, response and recovery issues, lessons learned, and an event timeline
* Written by 2 former FEMA senior officials who draw on first-hand experience in day-to-day emergencymanagement operations

1. The Historical Context of Emergency Management
2. Natural and Technological Hazards and Risk Assessment
3. The Disciplines of Emergency Management: Mitigation
4. The Disciplines of Emergency Management: Response
5. The Disciplines of Emergency Management: Recovery
6. The Disciplines of Emergency Management: Preparedness
7. The Disciplines of Emergency Management: Communications
8. International Disaster Management
9. Emergency Management and the New Terrorist Threat
10. The Future of Emergency Management Katrina: A Case Study Appendix: Acronyms

Power to the People or Whats the Matter with Kansas

Power to the People

Author: Laura Ingraham

Top-rated radio personality Laura Ingraham is fed up with the rule of the elites, and
Power to the People issues a call to arms- a plea to reinvigorate our birthright of liberty, to reconnect to our American heritage, to revive our commitment to traditional, conservative principles, and to grow as people by summoning our moral resolve and living our faith.

Ingraham exposes the threats we face from an emboldened cultural Left, global dogmatists, science worshippers, and politicians who spend more time on their hair than on constituency outreach. She also offers real-world solutions for how we can demand more from our leaders and ourselves. Power to the People will not just rile up Ingraham's millions of fans, it will also incite readers to do their part to protect the country that we love. "It is ours to lose," she writes, "and there are many at home and abroad who are more than willing to take it from us. Let's get to work. If each of us does our part, we can't lose."

And amidst these rallying cries and clarion calls to America, Ingraham reveals with heart wrenching honesty and in poignant detail her battle with cancer and the surprising gifts the insidious illness bestowed upon her - incredible strength through weakness, the meaning of sacrificial concern for others, and most importantly, a new-found and deeper faith.

In true Laura Ingraham spitfire style, Power to the People rallies Americans to grab their pitchforks and storm the castles of the old media, over-reaching judges, openborders politicians, radical academics, and unelected bureaucrats. She challenges people to not only take back the power, but to also give of themselvesto recapture America's spirit and greatness.

Book review: The Food Allergy Cure or How to Live 365 Days a Year

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

Author: Thomas Frank

With a New Afterword by the AuthorThe New York Times bestseller, praised as "hilariously funny . . . the only way to understand why so many Americans have decided to vote against their own economic and political interests"
(Molly Ivins)Hailed as "dazzlingly insightful and wonderfully sardonic" (Chicago Tribune), "very funny and very painful" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "in a different league from most political books" (The New York Observer), What's the Matter with Kansas? unravels the great political mystery of our day: Why do so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests? With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank answers the riddle by examining his home state, Kansas-a place once famous for its radicalism that now ranks among the nation's most eager participants in the culture wars. Charting what he calls the "thirty-year backlash"-the popular revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment-Frank reveals how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans.A brilliant analysis-and funny to boot-What's the Matter with Kansas? is a vivid portrait of an upside-down world where blue-collar patriots recite the Pledge while they strangle their life chances; where small farmers cast their votes for a Wall Street order that will eventually push them off their land; and where a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs has managed to convince the country that it speaks on behalf of the People.

The Washington Post - Corey Robin

Frank is witty and shrewd, a genial, informative political tour guide of the sort we desperately need today.

The New Yorker

Kansas, once home to farmers who marched against “money power,” is now solidly Republican. In Frank’s scathing and high-spirited polemic, this fact is not just “the mystery of Kansas” but “the mystery of America.” Dismissing much of the received punditry about the red-blue divide, Frank argues that the problem is the “systematic erasure of the economic” from discussions of class and its replacement with a notion of “authenticity,” whereby “there is no bad economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a beer.” The leaders of this backlash, by focussing on cultural issues in which victory is probably impossible (abortion, “filth” on TV), feed their base’s sense of grievance, abetted, Frank believes, by a “criminally stupid” Democratic strategy of triangulation. Liberals do not need to know more about nascar; they need to talk more about money and class.

Foreign Affairs

This fresh and engaging book stands out in the torrent of political screeds now pouring off the presses. Written by a man of the left, What's the Matter with Kansas? examines the rise of ultraconservative politics in the state that was once known for agrarian populism. The new activists, Frank says, are lower-middle-and working-class people-in past decades, the backbone of social democratic politics in Kansas. Why, Frank asks, do working-class Kansans labor to support a right-wing agenda that will strip them of social benefits, lower their wages, and provide enormous tax windfalls to the rich? Frank's eye is keen, and his pen is nimble; his answers are sadly conventional. He sees the contemporary Democratic Party as an odious mix of economic conservatism (the Democratic Leadership Council) and decadent social liberalism (Hollywood), and with the two parties united on antiworker economics, Kansas voters act rationally when they choose the party that at least pretends to respect their social values. A sharp turn to the economic left, Frank believes, will ultimately revive Democratic fortunes and stop the New Right in its tracks. Many thoughtful and spirited people have reached this conclusion in the past; none ever managed to build the powerful socialist party of their dreams. Perhaps Frank will succeed where others have failed.

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

A fire-and-brimstone essay on false consciousness on the Great Plains. "The poorest county in America . . . is on the Great Plains, a region of struggling ranchers and dying farm towns," writes native Kansan and Baffler founding editor Frank (ed., Boob Jubilee, 2003, etc.), "and in the election of 2000 the Republican candidate for president, George W. Bush, carried it by a majority greater than 80 percent." How, Frank wonders, can it be that such a polity-honest toilers descended from free-soil, abolitionist progressives and prairie socialists-could back such a man who showed little concern then and has showed little concern since for the plight of the working class? And how can it be that such a place would forget its origins as a hotbed of what the historian Walter Prescott Webb called "persistent radicalism," as the seedbed of Social Security and of agrarian reform, to side with the bosses, to back an ideology that promises the destruction of the liberal state's social-welfare safety net? Whatever the root causes, many of which seem to have something to do with fear and loathing of big-city types and ethnic minorities, Kansas voters-and even the Vietnam vets among them-seem to have picked up on the mantra that the "snobs on the coasts" are the enemy, and that Bush ("a man so ham-handed in his invocations of the Lord that he occasionally slips into blasphemy") and company are friends and deliverers. Frank ventures several convincing, if sometimes contradictory, reasons for what he clearly considers to be a tragedy; as he writes, "Kansas is ready to lead us singing into the apocalypse." Even so, he sees the tiniest ray of hope for modern progressives: after all, he notes, the one Kansas county that sports a NASCAR track went for Al Gore in 2000. A bracing, unabashedly partisan, and very smart work of red-state trendspotting.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Caught in the Middle or Contemporary Human Behavior Theory

Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism

Author: Richard C Longworth

A sharp, brilliantly reported look at how globalization is changing America from the inside out.

The Midwest has always been the heart of America—both its economic bellwether and the repository of its national identity. Now, in a new, globalized age, the Midwest is challenged as never before. With an influx of immigrant workers and an outpouring of manufacturing jobs, the region that defines the American self— the Lake Wobegon image of solid, hardworking farmers and factory hands—is changing at breakneck speed. As factory farms and global forces displace old ways of life, the United States is being transformed literally from the inside out. In Caught in the Middle, longtime Chicago Tribune reporter Richard C. Longworth explores the new reality of life in today’s heartland and reveals what these changes mean for the region—and the country. Ranging from the manufacturing collapse that has crippled the Midwest to the biofuels revolution that may save it, and from the school districts struggling with new immigrants to the Iowa meatpacking town that can’t survive without them, Longworth addresses what’s right and what’s wrong in the region, and offers a prescription for how it must change—politically as well as economically—if it is to survive and prosper.

Publishers Weekly

Ex-Chicago Tribunecorrespondent Longworth (Global Squeeze) paints a bleak, evocative portrait of the Midwest's losing struggle with foreign competition and capitalist gigantism. It's a landscape of shuttered factories, desperate laid-off workers, family farms gobbled up by agribusiness, once great cities like Detroit and Cleveland now in ruins, small towns devolved into depopulated "rural slums" haunted by pensioners and meth-heads. But the harshest element of the book is Longworth's own pitiless ideology of globalism. In his telling, Midwesterners are sluggish, unskilled, risk-averse mediocrities, clinging to obsolete industrial-age dreams of job security, allergic to "change," indifferent to education and "totally unfit for the global age." They are doomed because global competition is unstoppable, says Longworth, who dismisses the idea of trade barriers as simplistic nonsense purveyed by conspiracy theorists. The silver linings Longworth floats-biotechnology, proposals for regional cooperation-are meager and iffy. The Midwest's real hope, he insists, lies in a massive influx of mostly low-wage immigrant workers and in enclaves of "the rich and brainy," like Chicago and Ann Arbor, where the "creative class" sells nebulous "information solutions" to "dropouts and Ph.D.s." It's not the Middle West that's under siege in Longworth's telling; it's the now apparently quaint notion of a middle class. (Jan.)

Kirkus Reviews

Nearly three years after Thomas L. Friedman famously declared the world "flat," a former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent and native Iowan examines the Midwest's struggle with the new world economy. If the global age belongs to the spry and imaginative, then the American Heartland, sclerotic and dull, needs to beware. Once liberally dotted with neatly prosperous, iconic small towns-including Freeport, Minn., the model for much of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, and Eldon, Iowa, backdrop for Grant Wood's American Gothic-the region has suffered a four-decade decline from the shocks of the Japanese invasion of the 1980s, the deleterious effects of NAFTA and, now, the white-collar phase of globalization, where even service jobs evaporate. Urban centers like Detroit and Cleveland are all but dead, and St. Louis and Milwaukee are on life support. Relying on agricultural, industrial and census statistics, a variety of professional analyses and, most of all, on his lively reporting, Longworth (Global Squeeze: The Coming Crisis for First-World Nations, 1998) examines a region once dominant in manufacturing products and growing food, now grown tired and shabby, caught flat-footed in a flat world where money, jobs and ideas have no regard for borders. Having convincingly diagnosed the problem, even as much of the Midwest remains in denial, Longworth rejects "solutions" handed down from the national government (too clumsy) or up from city and state governments (too small). Instead, he argues that only the region itself, drawing on its acknowledged heritage and resources, can be both nimble and powerful enough to marshal the necessary financial and intellectual forces to compete successfully inthe global age. He calls for the creation of a Global Midwest Forum, the establishment of a high-speed train and a first-class digital-communication system, the founding of a regional journal with global coverage and the rethinking of the area's education system. He stresses the need for the Midwest to speak with one voice from its trade and investment offices and to open the door as widely as possible to immigration. A well-reported take on the Midwest's precarious economic, political and social condition, with a provocative prescription for its survival in the global world. Agent: Gary Morris/David Black Literary Agency

New interesting book: Dude Wheres My Country or Young Stalin

Contemporary Human Behavior Theory: A Critical Perspective for Social Work

Author: Susan Robbins

Contemporary Human Behavior Theory: A Critical Perspective for Social Work, Second Edition, is the first HBSE text to approach the subject from a comparative theory perspective, providing coverage of the most current and contemporary theories as well as traditional theories. This text encourages students to develop critical thinking skills in analyzing and comparing theories, and includes contemporary developments in traditional lifespan theory, theories of political economy, and a separate chapter on transpersonal theory.

The Communist Manifesto or The Woman at the Washington Zoo

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.

Interesting book: A Primer on Quality in the Analytical Laboratory or Managing Workforce 2000

The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate

Author: Marjorie Williams

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

Pt. 1	Profiles
	Protocol (Archie and Lucky Roosevelt)	3
	The philanthropist (Gwendolyn Cafritz)	12
	The pragmatist (Richard Darman)	30
	The wife (Barbara Bush)	55
	The rainmaker (Vernon Jordan)	77
	The hack (Tony Coelho)	99
	The sibling (Jeb Bush)	118
	Scenes from a marriage (Bill Clinton and Al Gore)	132
Pt. 2	Essays
	Makeup and Ms.	155
	Reader, I married	160
	Persuasion	166
	Why character matters in politics	170
	Thank you, Clarence Thomas	181
	The princess puzzle	185
	Entomophobia	189
	The alchemist	196
	In conversation	209
	Bill Clinton, feminist	220
	Why parents still matter	234
	Flying to L.A.	240
	A second thought on assisted suicide	248
	The cat race	250
	Grandparents' rights	253
	The parent rap	256
	The art of the fake apology	259
	Real complicated	262
	Dying for dollars	265
	Do parents suffer discrimination?	268
	The political wife, RIP	271
	The widow's mandate	274
	Uriah Heep goes to Washington	277
	Run for your life	280
	A woman's place is at the bar	289
	Mommy at her desk	292
	Liar, liar	295
	The heart-full dodger	298
	A working mom's comedy	300
	A woman who knew her due	302
Pt. 3	Time and chance
	Hit by lightning : a cancer memoir	307
	Telling the real, real truth	340
	The random death of our sense of ease	343
	The doctor factor	346
	The Halloween of my dreams	349

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Herbert Hoover or Are We Rome

Herbert Hoover: The 31st President, 1929-1933

Author: William E Leuchtenburg

The Republican efficiency expert whose economic boosterism met its match in the Great Depression

Catapulted into national politics by his heroic campaigns to feed Europe during and after World War I, Herbert Hoover—an engineer by training—exemplified the economic optimism of the 1920s. As president, however, Hoover was sorely tested by America’s first crisis of the twentieth century: the Great Depression.

Renowned New Deal historian William E. Leuchtenburg demonstrates how Hoover was blinkered by his distrust of government and his belief that volunteerism would solve all social ills. As Leuchtenburg shows, Hoover’s attempts to enlist the aid of private- sector leaders did little to mitigate the Depression, and he was routed from office by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. From his retirement at Stanford University, Hoover remained a vocal critic of the New Deal and big government until the end of his long life.

Leuchtenburg offers a frank, thoughtful portrait of this lifelong public servant, and shrewdly assesses Hoover’s policies and legacy in the face of one of the darkest periods of American history.

Publishers Weekly

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) would have satisfied anyone who believed a businessman would make an ideal president. In this outstanding addition to the American President series, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Leuchtenburg (The FDR Years) points out that while writers describe Hoover as a mining engineer, he was really a promoter and financier who traveled the world and made a fortune. He vaulted to fame after brilliantly organizing relief for the Belgian famine during WWI. Appointed secretary of commerce in 1920, he operated with a dictatorial manner that infuriated colleagues, but his dynamism and popularity made him a shoo-in for the Republican nomination in 1928. As president, his political ineptitude offended Congress and discouraged supporters even before the 1929 crash. Afterward, he backed imaginative programs to stimulate the economy but insisted that direct relief was socialistic and that local governments and charities were doing fine. In fact, they weren't, and this insistence combined with a dour personality made him a widely hated figure. A veteran historian of this period, Leuchtenburg brings vivid prose and strong opinions to this richly insightful biography of a president whose impressive business acumen served him poorly. (Jan. 6)

Kirkus Reviews

Slim, thoroughly satisfying account of the president overwhelmed by the Great Depression. Veteran historian Leuchtenburg (The White House Looks South: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, 2005, etc.) makes no attempt to rehabilitate Hoover (1874-1964), though he acknowledges that the brilliantly successful entrepreneur quickly became a worldwide celebrity after turning to public service at age 40. In London at the outbreak of World War I, Hoover agreed to organize relief for the famine that followed the German advance into Belgium and performed superbly. Widely touted as a 1920 presidential candidate, he offended Republican leaders with a self-serving statement announcing that he would join their party only if it fulfilled certain conditions. Newly elected Warren G. Harding appointed Hoover Secretary of Commerce even though colleagues resented his dictatorial manner, and his nonstop energy made him a media icon. When Coolidge declined to run in 1928, the fact that he and his cabinet detested Hoover did not prevent him from easily winning the nomination. Leuchtenburg disagrees with historians who feel that Hoover would rank among our better presidents if it were not for the Depression. Even before the 1929 crash, his lack of political acumen and terrible relations with Congress had soured most supporters. He made genuine attempts to alleviate the Depression but opposed federal relief programs, insisting that this was the responsibility of local government and private charities, which were doing a good job. (In fact, they were bankrupt.) Leaving office, he was so widely hated that Republicans considered him political poison and kept him away from conventions untilafter WWI. A brilliantly written cautionary tale for those who believe a hard-nosed businessman would bring a breath of fresh air to the American presidency.

Interesting textbook: The Enterprise and Scrum or Python Web Development with Django

Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

Author: Cullen Murphy

The rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds from the beginning of our republic. Today we focus less on the Roman Republic than on the empire that took its place. Depending on who's doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action or a dire warming of imminent collapse.

The esteemed editor and author Cullen Murphy ventures past the pundits' rhetoric to draw nuanced lessons about how America might avoid Rome's demise. Working on a canvas that extends far beyond the issue of an overstretched military, Murphy reveals a wide array of similarities between the two empires: the blinkered, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of venality in public life; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic though various forms of privatization. He persuasively argues that we most resemble Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside -- two things that are in our power to change.

In lively, richly detailed historical stories based on the latest scholarship, the ancient world leaps to life and casts our own contemporary world in a provocative new light.

The New York Times - Walter Isaacson

Laudably, he ends on some optimistic notes, and some prescriptions, rather than wallowing in declinism. "An empire remains powerful so long as its subjects rejoice in it," the Roman historian Livy wrote. To that end, Murphy suggests, America needs to instill in its citizenry a greater appreciation for the rest of the world. At home, it should resurrect the ideals of citizen engagement and promote a sense of community and mutual obligation, rather than treating most government as a necessary evil. With its capacity to innovate and reinvent itself, and with its faith in progress, America need never become as stagnant as Rome. "The genius of America," Murphy concludes, "may be that it has built 'the fall of Rome' into its very makeup: it is very consciously a constant work in progress, designed to accommodate and build on revolutionary change."

Publishers Weekly

Lurid images of America as a new Roman Empire—either striding the globe or tottering toward collapse, or both—are fashionable among pundits of all stripes these days. Vanity Faireditor Murphy (The World According to Eve) gives the trope a more restrained and thoughtful reading. He allows that, with its robust democracy, dynamic economy and technological wizardry, America is a far cry from Rome's static slave society. But he sees a number of parallels: like Rome, America is a vast, multicultural state, burdened with an expensive and overstretched military, uneasy about its porous borders, with a messianic sense of global mission and a solipsistic tendency to misunderstand and belittle foreign cultures. Some of the links Murphy draws, like his comparison of barbarian invaders of the late Empire to foreign corporations buying up American assets, are purely metaphorical. But others, especially his likening of the corrupt Roman patronage system to America's mania for privatizing government services—a "deflection of public purpose by private interest"—are specific and compelling. Murphy wears his erudition lightly and delivers a lucid, pithy and perceptive study in comparative history, with some sharp points. (May 10)

Kirkus Reviews

Imperial Rome and imperial America have many points in common, writes former Atlantic Monthly editor Murphy (Just Curious, 1995, etc.), not least that both "have considered their way to be the world's way."Murphy ventures nothing new with the mere observation that Rome and America have similarities; even the Founding Fathers thought as much. But, writing with fluency and grace and possessing a solid grounding in the classics, he actually serves up specifics: a telling comparison of the Roman road system, for instance, with our interstates, and of our president's mode of international travel with that of the emperors and their flying squadrons. Murphy draws six major parallels that, he reckons, ought to serve as warnings and guidelines for better behavior. One concerns military power, with considerable points against the use of mercenaries and auxiliaries, for instance, whether Ostrogoths or the "Halliburtoni and the Wackenhuti." Murphy does acknowledge, however, that "the most capable, well-rounded, and experienced public executives in America today are its senior military officers, not its Washington politicians." Another parallel is what Murphy loosely terms privatization, "which can often also mean 'corruption,'" which is to say, the trouble certain Romans had and certain Washingtonians have in drawing the line between their things and those in the public domain. A further point of resemblance is the executive's arrogating power unto itself without due concern for senatorial counsel, a habit that yields Caesars now as then. And so forth, all adding up to decline and fall, which, Murphy gently observes, doesn't have to happen so long as we Americans take a broader view of the world anda narrower view of the Constitution and, even if we "don't live in Mr. Jefferson's republic anymore," start comporting ourselves not as Romans but as Americans. An essay in the Walter Karp-Lewis Lapham mode that's sure to irk the neocons. Agent: Raphael Sagalyn/Sagalyn Literary Agency

The Post American World or Cop in the Hood

The Post-American World

Author: Fareed Zakaria

A Prophetic Assessment of America's Changing Place in an Increasingly Global Age

For Fareed Zakaria, the great story of our times is not the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else—the growth of countries such as China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Kenya, and many, many more. This economic growth is generating a new global landscape where power is shifting and wealth and innovation are bubbling up in unexpected places. It's also producing political confidence and national pride. As these trends continue, the push of globalization will increasingly be joined by the pull of nationalism—a tension that is likely to define the next decades.

With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, Zakaria draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past five hundred years—the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States—to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the "rise of the rest." Washington must begin a serious transformation of global strategy and seek to share power, create coalitions, build legitimacy, and define the global agenda. None of this will be easy for the greatest power the world has ever known—the only power that for so long has really mattered. But all that is changing now. The future we face is the post-American world.

Publishers Weekly

When a book proclaims that it is not about the decline of America but "the rise of everyone else," readers might expect another diatribe about our dismal post-9/11 world. They are in for a pleasant surprise as Newsweekeditor and popular pundit Zakaria (The Future of Freedom) delivers a stimulating, largely optimistic forecast of where the 21st century is heading. We are living in a peaceful era, he maintains; world violence peaked around 1990 and has plummeted to a record low. Burgeoning prosperity has spread to the developing world, raising standards of living in Brazil, India, China and Indonesia. Twenty years ago China discarded Soviet economics but not its politics, leading to a wildly effective, top-down, scorched-earth boom. Its political antithesis, India, also prospers while remaining a chaotic, inefficient democracy, as Indian elected officials are (generally) loathe to use the brutally efficient tactics that are the staple of Chinese governance. Paradoxically, India's greatest asset is its relative stability in the region; its officials take an unruly population for granted, while dissent produces paranoia in Chinese leaders. Zakaria predicts that despite its record of recent blunders at home and abroad, America will stay strong, buoyed by a stellar educational system and the influx of young immigrants, who give the U.S. a more youthful demographic than Europe and much of Asia whose workers support an increasing population of unproductive elderly. A lucid, thought-provoking appraisal of world affairs, this book will engage readers on both sides of the political spectrum. (May)

Marcia L. Sprules - Library Journal

According to Newsweek International editor Zakaria, the weakened global economic and political position of the United States results not from the waning of its own powers but from the rapid rise of many other global players. The optimistic tone of his previous book, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, permeates this work. After 500 years of world dominance and following the decline of great states in other parts of the world, the Western powers are seeing countries such as China and India emerge as new and formidable rivals. Zakaria is sharply critical of the current U.S. presidential administration, citing its dysfunctional political stalemate and foreign and military policies that hinder adaptation to the current realities. He argues that it is incumbent upon the Western powers to adapt if they want to thrive instead of trying to reverse these realities, and he remains optimistic that they can change, as they have historically shown themselves able to do so. Zakaria's arguments are accessible to general readers, and his supporting data are not overwhelming to digest. Most libraries will want this. [See Prepub Alert, LJ1/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

Pity the poor think-tanked neocons: Just a moment ago, the talk was of empire and the new world order, and now, it seems, America's day in the sun is about to grow cold. Newsweek International editor Zakaria (The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, 2003, etc.), born in India and a longtime resident of New York, seems unconcerned that his adopted country is sailing down the tubes: "This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else." He enumerates: Macao takes in more gambling revenue than Las Vegas, the biggest Ferris wheel in the world is in Singapore, Bollywood has surpassed Hollywood. Even as the global population grows, the number of those living in extreme poverty is falling, at least in three-quarters of the world's nations. Even after 9/11, the author notes, the world economy "grew at its fastest rate in nearly four decades." Inflation exceeds 15 percent only in a dozen-odd failed states such as Burma and Zimbabwe, and fewer and fewer people are dying in wars or spasms of political violence than ever. That all should be good news to globalists, and it's comforting to know, as Zakaria helpfully points out, that Iran spends less than a penny for every dollar we spend on the military. Yet the United States has dawdled, economically speaking, as China, India and other nations have skyrocketed. It helps, Indians note, that the Chinese government, the commander of that nation's command economy, hasn't really had to respond to public opinion, though even that is changing. The good news? By Zakaria's account, America's strength will lie in freedom and diversity-and the post-American era may not last all that long, sinceAmerica's population is growing, and growing younger, while the demographics of Asia and Europe are largely pointing to older populations and, in time, fewer workers. A sharp, well-written work of political economy.

Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District

Author: Peter Moskos

Cop in the Hood is an explosive insider's story of what it is really like to be a police officer on the front lines of the war on drugs. Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos became a cop in Baltimore's roughest neighborhood--the Eastern District, also the location for the first season of the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire--where he experienced real-life poverty and violent crime firsthand. This revised and corrected edition of Cop in the Hood provides an unforgettable window into the world that outsiders never see--the thriving drug corners, the nerve-rattling patrols, and the heartbreaking failure of 911.

Moskos reveals the truth about the drug war and why it is engineered to fail--a truth he learned on the midnight shift. He describes police academy graduates fully unprepared for the realities of the street. He tells of a criminal justice system that incarcerates poor black men on a mass scale--a self-defeating system that measures success by arrest quotas and fosters a street code at odds with the rest of society--and argues for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence and let cops once again protect and serve. Moskos shows how officers in the ghetto are less concerned with those policed than with self-preservation and maximizing overtime pay--yet how any one of them would give their life for a fellow officer. Cop in the Hood ventures deep behind the Thin Blue Line to disclose the inner workings of law enforcement in America's inner cities. Those who read it will never view the badge the same way again.

Publishers Weekly

A Harvard-trained sociologist, Moskos set out to do a one-year study of police behavior. Challenged by Baltimore's acting police commissioner "to become a cop for real," he accepted. During his six months in the police academy and 14 months on the street, he "happily worked midnights, generally the least desirable shift" in one of the city's least desirable precincts: the Eastern District (where HBO's The Wire is filmed). Moskos frankly records his experiences with poverty, violence, drugs and despair in the gritty ghetto. During "field training," he first encountered "drug dealers, families broken apart, urban blight, rats, and trash-filled alleys. Inside homes, things are often worse." Moskos's overview of policing problems covers everything from arrest quotas, corrupt cops and excess paperwork to the reliance on patrolling in cars, responding to a barrage of 911 calls, rather than patrolling on foot to prevent crimes. Moskos blends narrative and analysis, adding an authoritative tone to this adrenaline-accelerating night ride that reveals the stark realities of law enforcement while illuminating little-known aspects of police procedures. (May)

Friday, December 26, 2008

Total Leadership or Boardwalk Empire

Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life

Author: Stewart D Friedman

Now more than ever, your success as a leader isn't just about being a great businessperson. You've got to be a great person, performing well in all domains of your life -- your work, your home, your community, and your private self.

That's a tall order.

The good news is that, contrary to conventional wisdom about "balance," you don't have to assume that these domains compete in a zero-sum game. Total Leadership is a game-changing blueprint for how to perform well as a leader not by trading off one domain for another, but by finding mutual value among all four. The author shows you how to achieve these "four-way wins" as a leader who can:

• Be real: Act with authenticity by clarifying what's important

• Be whole: Act with integrity by respecting the whole person

• Be innovative: Act with creativity by experimenting to find new solutions

With engaging examples and clear instruction, Friedman provides more than thirty hands-on tools for using these proven principles to produce stronger business results, find clearer purpose in what you do, feel more connected to the people who matter most, and generate sustainable change.

Most leadership development books focus only on your professional skills, while books about personal growth concentrate on your needs beyond work. Total Leadership is different. It's a unique and long-awaited resource that shows how to win in all domains of life.

The New York Times

Students talk about Stewart D. Friedman, a management professor at the Wharton School, with a mixture of earnest admiration, gratitude and rock star adoration.

Booklist

Friedman . . . offers thoughtful insight into important leadership qualities that will improve results while allowing for a fulfilling life for leaders and their followers.

Interesting book: Greysheet Recipes Cookbook 2009 Greysheet Recipes Collection From Members Of Greysheet Recipes or Good Housekeeping Great Baking

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City

Author: Nelson Johnson

Through most of the 20th century, Atlantic City was controlled by a powerful partnership of local politicians and racketeers. Funded by payoffs from gambling rooms, bars, and brothels, this corrupt alliance reached full bloom during the reign of Enoch "Nucky" Johnson - the second of three bosses to head the Republican machine that dominated city politics and society.

In Boardwalk Empire, Nucky Johnson, Louis "the Commodore" Kuehle, Frank "Hap" Farley, and Atlantic City itself spring to life in all their garish splendor. Author Nelson Johnson traces "AC" from its birth as a quiet seaside health resort, through the notorious backroom politics and power struggles, to the city's rebirth as an international entertainment and gambling mecca.

Irresistibly told, with characters and pacing worthy of a well-crafted novel, Boardwalk Empire is the true story of a colorful city and its unique political culture.

The Works or Memo to the President Elect

The Works: Anatomy of a City

Author: Kate Ascher

How much do you really know about the systems that keep a city alive? The Works: Anatomy of a City contains everything you ever wanted to know about what makes New York City run. When you flick on your light switch the light goes on--how? When you put out your garbage, where does it go? When you flush your toilet, what happens to the waste? How does water get from a reservoir in the mountains to your city faucet? How do flowers get to your corner store from Holland, or bananas get there from Ecuador? Who is operating the traffic lights all over the city? And what in the world is that steam coming out from underneath the potholes on the street? Across the city lies a series of extraordinarily complex and interconnected systems. Often invisible, and wholly taken for granted, these are the systems that make urban life possible.

The Works: Anatomy of a City offers a cross section of this hidden infrastructure, using beautiful, innovative graphic images combined with short, clear text explanations to answer all the questions about the way things work in a modern city. It describes the technologies that keep the city functioning, as well as the people who support them-the pilots that bring the ships in over the Narrows sandbar, the sandhogs who are currently digging the third water tunnel under Manhattan, the television engineer who scales the Empire State Building's antenna for routine maintenance, the electrical wizards who maintain the century-old system that delivers power to subways.

Did you know that the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is so long, and its towers are so high, that the builders had to take the curvature of the earth's surface into account when designing it? Did you know that the George Washington Bridge takes in approximately $1 million per day in tolls? Did you know that retired subway cars travel by barge to the mid-Atlantic, where they are dumped overboard to form natural reefs for fish? Or that if the telecom cables under New York were strung end to end, they would reach from the earth to the sun? While the book uses New York as its example, it has relevance well beyond that city's boundaries as the systems that make New York a functioning metropolis are similar to those that keep the bright lights burning in big cities everywhere.

The Works is for anyone who has ever stopped midcrosswalk, looked at the rapidly moving metropolis around them, and wondered, how does this all work?

Interesting book:

Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership

Author: Madeleine Albright

The next president, whether Democrat or Republican, will face the daunting task of repairing America's core relationships and tarnished credibility after the damage caused during the past seven years. In Memo to the President Elect, former secretary of state and bestselling author Madeleine Albright offers provocative ideas about how to confront the striking array of challenges that the next commander-in-chief will face and how to return America to its rightful role as a source of inspiration across the globe.

Much more than a set of policy prescriptions, Secretary Albright's writing blends lessons from the past with forward-looking suggestions about how to assemble a first-rate foreign policy team, anticipate the actions of other key countries, make full use of presidential power without repeating the excesses of the Bush administration, and revive America's commitment to its founding ideals.

Albright's advice is candid—as conveyed in a confidential memo—and seasoned with humor and stories from her years in office. Drawing on her extensive experience as an advisor to two presidents and a key figure in four presidential transitions, she provides an insider's analysis of U.S. options in addressing the decisive issues of our era: terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rivalries in the Middle East, the potential for nuclear war, and headaches created by such troublesome leaders as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Russia's Vladimir Putin, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, and North Korea's Kim Jong-il.

The 2008 election promises to be one of the most dramatic in our nation's history. Memo to the President Elect offers indispensableguidance for the next occupant of the White House—and a wealth of insights for voters to think about before deciding who that person will be.

Publishers Weekly

Former secretary of state Albright's professionalism shines through as she does double duty as author and narrator. As simple and straightforward as her reading is, Albright creates a personal atmosphere, given the book's insider material and anecdotes. Addressing everything from the current war in Iraq to stories of her origin in politics, Albright reaches out to her listeners in her charismatic and clear-sighted manner. While there is little shift in her tone and voice, the reading is clear and well pronounced, allowing the material the respect it deserves. Audiences will find themselves intrigued and entertained by Albright's tales and her narration. Simultaneous release with the Harper hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 26, 2007). (Feb.)

Prologue     1
Part 1
A Mandate to Lead     13
What Kind of President?     33
Thy Staff Shall Comfort Thee     51
The Art of Persuasion     79
Fifty Lady Sharpshooters     105
Be Sure You're Right; Then Go Ahead     129
The Lion and the Lion-tamers     147
Part 2
New Foundations     169
Hoops of Iron     197
America's Place in the Asian Century     231
Pride and Prejudice in Russia and South Asia     263
One Iraq Is Enough     295
Middle East: The Power to Choose     329
Isolating Al Qaeda     355
Part 3
Above the Thundering Abyss     379
Notes     391
Acknowledgments     411

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Ever Wonder Why or Constitutional Law

Ever Wonder Why?: And Other Controversial Essays

Author: Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell takes on a range of legal, social, racial, educational, and economic issues-along with "the culture wars"-in this latest collection of his controversial, always thought-provoking essays. From "gun control myths" to "mealy mouth media" to "free lunch medicine," Sowell gets to the heart of the matters we all care about with his characteristically unswerving candor.

Sowell skewers the "mealy mouth media" that calls terrorists "insurgents" and rioters "demonstrators." He reveals how "the idiocy of relevance" in learning has been particularly destructive in the education of minority students at all levels. He explains how a free market and a strict construction of the 14th Amendment would never have permitted the laws that asked Rosa Parks to give up her seat to a white man. And he clarifies the confusion between equal opportunity and equal results that resides behind many kinds of "spoiled brat politics."

With Ever Wonder Why?-drawn from the best of his popular syndicated newspaper columns-Sowell once again takes dead aim at the self-righteous and self-important forces in government, media, education, and other areas of our society, offering the thoughtful perceptions, commonsense insights, and straightforward honesty we have come to expect from one of conservatism's most articulate voices.

About the Author:
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Preface     xiii
The Culture Wars
Ever Wonder Why?     3
Animal Rites     6
"Us" or "Them"?     9
Twisted History     12
Explaining to the Grand Kids     15
Human Livestock     18
The Wright Stuff     21
The Legacy of Eric Hoffer     24
One-Uppers versus Survival     27
The Equality Dogma     30
The Inequality Dogma     33
Equality, Inequality, and Fate     36
Hiroshima     39
The Tyranny of Visions     42
The Tyranny of Visions: Part II     45
The Tyranny of Visions: Part III     48
The Immigration Taboo     51
The Left Monopoly     54
I Beg to Disagree     57
4th Estate or 5th Column?     60
Economic Issues
Why Economists Are Not Popular     65
Housing Hurdles     68
The "Cost" of Medical Care     71
Subsidies Are All Wet     74
A Taxing Experience     77
Profits without Honor     80
Profits without Honor: Part II     83
Two Earthquakes     86
Peter Bauer (1915-2002)     89
Journalists and Economics     92
Stock Crash Aftermath     95
Milton Friedman at 90     98
"Price Gouging" in Florida     101
Economic "Power"     104
A Relic of the Recent Past     107
Who Can Afford It?     110
Free-Lunch Medicine     113
Free-Lunch Medicine: Part II     116
Free-Lunch Medicine: Part III     119
Manufacturing Confusion     122
A Cold Shower     125
An Old "New Vision"     128
Third World Sweatshops     131
Third World Sweatshops: Part II     134
Privatizing Social Security     137
Privatizing Social Security: Part II     140
"Living Wage" Kills Jobs     143
A Happy Birthday?     146
Legal Issues
Calculated Confusion     151
Judges and Judgment     154
Justice for Little Angelo     157
Property Rites     160
Property Rites: Part II     163
Property Rites: Part III     166
Foreign Law Is Not Law     169
Medical Lawsuits     172
Fixing the Jury System     175
Half a Century after Brown     178
Half a Century after Brown: Part II     181
Half a Century after Brown: Part III     184
Umpires, Judges, and Others     187
Big Business and Quotas     190
The Grand Fraud     193
The Grand Fraud: Part II     196
The Grand Fraud: Part III     199
The Grand Fraud: Part IV     202
Saving Quotas     205
The High Cost of Nuances     208
The Polio Fallacy     211
Political Issues
Spoiled Brat Politics     217
Spoiled Brat Politics: Part II     220
The "Compassion" Racket     223
Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)     226
Gun Control Myths     229
Gun Control Myths: Part II     232
A Painful Anniversary     235
The High Cost of Shibboleths     238
"Why Do They Hate Us?"     241
Foreign "Allies"     244
My Platform     247
The Oldest Fraud     250
The Left's Vision     253
The Left's Vocabulary     256
Abstract People     259
Looking Back     262
Social Issues
Mealy Mouth Media     267
Achievements and Their Causes     270
Talkers versus Doers     273
Talkers versus Doers: Part II     276
Liberals and Class     279
Liberals and Class: Part II     282
Liberals and Class: Part III     285
The Autism "Spectrum"     288
The High Cost of Busybodies     291
The High Cost of Busybodies: Part II     294
The High Cost of Busybodies: Part III     297
The High Cost of Busybodies: Part IV     300
"Partial Truth" Abortion     303
Lying about Yosemite     306
Growing Old     309
April Fools' Party     312
Education Issues
Choosing a College     317
The Idiocy of "Relevance"     320
Julian Stanley and Bright Children     323
For What Purpose?     326
School Performances     329
School Performances: Part II     332
School Performances: Part III     335
College Admissions Voodoo     338
Summer De-Programming     341
Fat in California's Budget     344
A Scary Report     347
"Teaching to the Test"     350
"Teaching to the Test": Part II      353
"Teaching to the Test": Part III     356
Smart "Problems"     359
Vouchers Vindicated     362
Artificial Stupidity     365
"Good" Teachers     368
A Sign of the Times     371
Suspicious Stats     374
Peers and Pied Pipers     377
Racial Issues
Older Budweiser     383
Rosa Parks and History     386
"Friends" of Blacks     389
"Friends" of Blacks: Part II     392
Recycled "Racism"     395
Dangerous Democracy?     398
Are Cops Racist?     401
Rattling the Chains     404
Roasting Walter Williams     407
"Diversity" in India     410
Race and IQ     413
Race and IQ: Part II     416
Race and IQ: Part III     419
An Old War and a New One     422
Silly Letters     425
Black History Month     428
Bravo for Bill Cosby     431
Quota "Logic"     434
Quota "Logic": Part II     437
Random Thoughts
Random Thoughts     443

Book about:

Constitutional Law

Author: Erwin Chemerinsky

In its first edition, Erwin Chemerinskys CONSTITUTIONAL LAW proved that a casebook does not have to be simplistic to be student-friendly. Revised and updated for its Second Edition, this class-tested casebook is a comprehensive, accessible, and current alternative that will enliven your class and enlighten your students.

The book retains its distinctive characteristics:

thorough, yet concise to avoid overwhelming students with superfluous detail

presents the law solely through case excerpts and author-written essays

provides both background information and context on constitutional law doctrine

flexible organization, no chapter assumes that students have read other chapters for adaptability in the classroom

straightforward, accessible writing style

Look for these changes in the Second Edition:

new subsection, Presidential Powers and the War on Terrorism, in the chapter on federal executive power, which examines executive authority, detentions, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and the constitutionality of military tribunals

expanded treatment of sovereign immunity, to better reflect the way the topic is taught

enriched coverage throughout the book, with fuller presentation of some cases and the inclusion of some dissents

This careful revision also presents the most recent and significant cases in a number of areas, such as:

partisan gerrymandering and the political question doctrine (Vieth v. Jubelirer)

sovereign immunity (University of Alabama v. Garrett, Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, Tennessee v. Lane)

preemption (Lorrilard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, American Insurance v. Garimendi)

state action, emphasizing entwinement (Brentwood Academy Secondary School v. Tennessee Athletic Association)

the taking clause (Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, Tahoe Sierra Preservation Counci, Inc.l v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington)

the overruling of Bowers v. Hardwick in Lawrence v. Texas

affirmative action (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger)

the First Amendment (Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition, Virginia v. Black, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, Good News Club v. Milford Central School)

the Establishment Clause as it pertains to vouchers (Zelman v. Simmons Harris), the Pledge of Allegiance (Elk Grove Unified School Dist. v. Newdow), and the question of whether the government must allow its scholarships to be used by students studying for the clergy (Locke v. Davey)

Ghost Plane or Applied Economics

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

Author: Stephen Grey

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

New interesting textbook: Ending Global Poverty or Coal

Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One

Author: Thomas Sowell

This revised edition of Applied Economics is about fifty percent larger than the first edition. It now includes a chapter on the economics of immigration and new sections of other chapters on such topics as the “creative” financing of home-buying that led to the current “subprime” mortgage crisis, the economics of organ transplants, and the political and economic incentives that lead to money earmarked for highways being diverted to mass transit and to a general neglect of infrastructure. On these and other topics, its examples are drawn from around the world. Much material in the first edition has been updated and supplemented. The revised and enlarged edition of Applied Economics retains the easy readability of the first edition, even for people with no prior knowledge of economics.

Ideas On Liberty

Thomas Sowell is one of the fine scholars of our time.

Policy

If there is a single recent book that can advance economic literacy in this country, it is Thomas Sowell's latest book, Basic Economics.... Sowell has managed to make economics humane again, relevant and interesting to young people and ordinary citizens.... Buy a copy and read it immediately—no: buy two, and give one to a school teacher, a journalist, or a politician near you!

Publishers Weekly

While politicians squabble over the pros and cons of price controls on prescription drugs, onlooking citizens are often left scratching their heads. Many of today's economic issues are obscured by their inherent complexity and the blarney coming from political talking heads. In his follow-up to Basic Economics, Sowell, a leading conservative spokesman and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, seeks to alleviate this confusion. He highlights the major differences between politicians (who act for the short term, i.e., reelection) and economists (who look at the long-range ramifications of policy), and urges voters to keep these differences in mind. Sowell then focuses on a few issues, including some political hot potatoes: medical care, housing, discrimination, insurance and the development of nations. He urges readers to consider not only the intended, immediate goal of a particular policy, but also its unintended, long-range impact. For instance, he says, supporters of nationalized health care overlook the fact that it often results in health-care shortages, reduced quality of services and black markets. The great achievement of Sowell's book is its simplicity. His writing is easy and lucid, an admirable trait considering the topic at hand. This book will not satisfy hard-core economic junkies, and Sowell does not pretend it will. His target audience is the average citizen who has little or no economics background, but would like the tools to think critically about economic issues. Some readers will be turned off by Sowell's preference for free-market principles, but the author is an esteemed economist and his explanations fit well within the mainstream. As a basic primer for the economically perplexed, this volume serves very well. (Dec.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This new book is a spirited and controversial examination of how economic choices in public policy often result in unforeseen consequences. Sowell, a professor of public policy at Stanford and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, examines labor, medical care, housing, and other areas of economic activity. He says that in stage-one thinking, making housing affordable by setting rent controls would seem to be self-evident but that such rent controls both reduce the stock of low-rent housing and cause that stock to deteriorate in condition. He explains that many landlords don't bother to offer properties when rents are low and that those who do find very little incentive to maintain them. On the institution of slavery in the American South, Sowell says slaves were usually better cared for than other laborers because of the slave owners' economic self-interest. He defends the existence of slums as low-cost housing that in the past allowed the residents who chose to live in them to use their funds for other purposes. His predictably laissez faire approach to economics will grate on many readers, but his reasoning is clear and thoughtful. Every library covering economics or public administration will require a copy.-Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

The American Way of War or The Prize

The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril

Author: Eugene Jarecki

In the sobering aftermath of America's invasion of Iraq, Eugene Jarecki, the creator of the award-winning documentary Why We Fight, launches a penetrating and revelatory inquiry into how forces within the American political, economic, and military systems have come to undermine the carefully crafted structure of our republic—upsetting its balance of powers, vastly strengthening the hand of the president in taking the nation to war, and imperiling the workings of American democracy. This is a story not of simple corruption but of the unexpected origins of a more subtle and, in many ways, more worrisome disfiguring of our political system and society.

While in no way absolving George W. Bush and his inner circle of their accountability for misguiding the country into a disastrous war—in fact, Jarecki sheds new light on the deepest underpinnings of how and why they did so—he reveals that the forty-third president's predisposition toward war and Congress's acquiescence to his wishes must be understood as part of a longer story. This corrupting of our system was predicted by some of America's leading military and political minds.

In his now legendary 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of "the disastrous rise of misplaced power" that could result from the increasing influence of what he called the "military industrial complex." Nearly two centuries earlier, another general turned president, George Washington, had warned that "overgrown military establishments" were antithetical to republican liberties. Today, with an exploding defense budget, millions of Americans employed in the defense sector, and more than eight hundred U.S. militarybases in 130 countries, the worst fears of Washington and Eisenhower have come to pass.

Surveying a scorched landscape of America's military adventures and misadventures, Jarecki's groundbreaking account includes interviews with a who's who of leading figures in the Bush administration, Congress, the military, academia, and the defense industry, including Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Colin Powell's former chief of staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and longtime Pentagon reformer Franklin "Chuck" Spinney. Their insights expose the deepest roots of American war making, revealing how the "Arsenal of Democracy" that crucially secured American victory in WWII also unleashed the tangled web of corruption America now faces. From the republic's earliest episodes of war to the use of the atom bomb against Japan to the passage of the 1947 National Security Act to the Cold War's creation of an elaborate system of military-industrial-congressional collusion, American democracy has drifted perilously from the intent of its founders. As Jarecki powerfully argues, only concerted action by the American people can, and must, compel the nation back on course.

The American Way of War is a deeply thoughtprovoking study of how America reached a historic crossroads and of how recent excesses of militarism and executive power may provide an opening for the redirection of national priorities.

Publishers Weekly

A scholar and documentary film maker (Why We Fight), Jarecki presents a succinct explanation of why modern presidents can make war whenever they feel like it. Jarecki writes that America's founders worried about presidential belligerence, so the Constitution gave war-making authority to Congress, which declared all our foreign wars through WWII-and none afterward. Drawing on historical research and interviews, he emphasizes that the young America was less isolationist than histories proclaim, invading Canada and Mexico several times and taking great interest in international affairs. But war fever really arose only with the start of the Cold War. Suddenly presidents commanded an enormous peacetime force and wielded the immense powers Roosevelt had acquired in WWII. Since then, Congress has gone along with presidential decisions to make war (then grumble if it doesn't go well). Today President Bush asserts that terrorism requires a perpetual state of emergency and that he will launch a pre-emptive war if he detects a threat to America's security. In this illuminating-and to some, perhaps, discouraging-book, Jarecki says there is only a modest groundswell of opinion to curb presidential powers. (Oct. 14)

Edwin B. Burgess - Library Journal

Jarecki (founder, the Eisenhower Project), director of the documentary films Why We Fight and The Trials of Henry Kissinger, here traces the evolution of the military-industrial complex and its often troubling consequences, which include the concentration of power and secrecy in the Executive Branch. Using selective quotes and evidence, Jarecki argues that apparently reasonable defense policies have in fact led to such deleterious results as the creation of the Defense Department and the CIA after World War II. Much of the book rings true, but it's a hard read and the author imputes "imperial presidency" motives to every military policy decision in sight. A large part of the book attacks Bush and a prostrate Congress for mismanagement, proliferation of secrecy, lack of accountability, unconstitutional arrogation of power to the President, and perversion of such arcane military strategy theories as John Boyd's OODA loop (for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) and the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) concept. Not for the lay reader; dedicated military and political enthusiasts will be interested, but only libraries with extensive subject collections need consider.

Kirkus Reviews

A pithy historical exploration of why it's so easy for American presidents to make war. Today's neoconservatives who assert that America is a force for good in the world and should use its armies to spread this goodness insist they follow a hallowed American tradition. They are only partly wrong, concedes international-affairs scholar and documentary filmmaker Jarecki. Isolation was never a U.S. policy. From the beginning, America took an interest in European affairs and went to war whenever it seemed advantageous. Yet despite attacks on Canada in 1814, Mexico in 1845 and 1914 and Spain in 1898, pugnacious presidents were inhibited by a minuscule standing army and a citizenry that never felt threatened. This changed after 1945, when most Americans accepted that the Soviet Union was a deadly menace. For the first time, Congress approved a massive peacetime military force and allowed the president to retain vastly expanded executive powers. Today the Defense Department spends 93 percent of America's money devoted to foreign affairs; the State Department gets the other seven. Jarecki makes a convincing case that immense peacetime military procurement has corrupted Congress. All legislators, however liberal, fight fiercely to bring contracts into their districts and oppose cuts. The collapse of communism threatened this system, but 9/11 reopened the floodgates to another avalanche of defense appropriations, almost all irrelevant to fighting terrorists. When President Bush discusses military action against another country (e.g., Iran), editorials debate the pros and cons but take for granted that the decision is his alone. Jarecki points out that the president enjoyed almost universal supportwhen he invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. He lost it when they turned into quagmires, but few voices advocate restricting his powers. Disturbing and depressing.

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

Author: Daniel Yergin

Pulitzer Prize Winner -- and Now an Epic PBS Series

The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations. The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of this history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm.

The cast extends from wildcatters and rogues to oil tycoons, and from Winston Churchill and Ibn Saud to George Bush and Saddam Hussein. The definitive work on the subject of oil and a major contribution to understanding our century, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement -- and great importance.

Publishers Weekly

Yergin ( Shattered Peace ), a much-quoted energy consultant, here offers a timely, information-packed, authoritative history of the petroleum industry, tracing its ramifications, national and geopolitical, to the present day. Oil, ``the world's biggest and most pervasive business,'' he shows, has played a central role in most of the major wars and many of the critical international situations of the 20th century, has changed the lives of virtually everyone on the planet and is currently at the heart of the first post-Cold War crisis of the 1990s. Yergin describes how, after an oil glut replaced the panic at the pump of the early 1980s, ``Hydrocarbon Man'' once again took petroleum for granted--only to be shattered by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait this past August. Whatever the evolution of the international order, oil will remain the ultimate strategic prize, predicts the author in a book that will be widely discussed. He points out, however, that the environmental movement is gaining significant strength as more and more citizens of the world express a willingness to trade off energy production for environmental protection. Photos. Major ad/promo. (Jan.)

Library Journal

This book does not require recent events in the Persian Gulf to make it an essential addition for most public libraries as well as all college libraries. Written by one of the foremost U.S. authorities on energy, it is a major work in the field, replete with enough insight to satisfy the scholar and sufficient concern with the drama and colorful personalities in the history of oil to capture the interest of the general public. Though lengthy, the book never drags in developing its themes: the relationship of oil to the rise of modern capitalism; the intertwining relations between oil, politics, and international power; and the relationship between oil and society in what Yergin calls today's age of ``Hydrocarbon Man.'' Parts of the story have been told as authoritatively before, e.g., in Irvine Anderson's Aramco: The United States and Saudi Arabia ( LJ 7/81), but never in as comprehensive a fashion as here.-- Joseph R. Rudolph Jr., Towson State Univ., Md.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805

The New York Times - William Grimes

The Washington Post - Sudip Bose

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey

Who Was Eleanor Roosevelt?

The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country

The New York Times - Robert A. Dahl

Publishers Weekly

Michael O. Eshleman - Library Journal

School Library Journal

The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

John Adams: The American Presidents Series

The Los Angeles Times

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

All the President's Men

Monday, December 29, 2008

The Holy Grail of Macro Economics: Lessons from Japan's Great Recession

Introduction to Emergency Management

Table of Contents:

Power to the People

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

The Washington Post - Corey Robin

The New Yorker

Foreign Affairs

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

Contemporary Human Behavior Theory: A Critical Perspective for Social Work

The Communist Manifesto

The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate

Table of Contents:

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Herbert Hoover: The 31st President, 1929-1933

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

The New York Times - Walter Isaacson

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

The Post-American World

Publishers Weekly

Marcia L. Sprules - Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District

Publishers Weekly

Friday, December 26, 2008

Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life

The New York Times

Booklist

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City

The Works: Anatomy of a City

Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership

Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents:

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Ever Wonder Why?: And Other Controversial Essays

Table of Contents:

Constitutional Law

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One

Ideas On Liberty

Policy

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Table of Contents:

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril