Get a Life or Islamic Imperialism

Get a Life: You Don't Need a Million to Retire Well

Author: Ralph Warner

The financial-service industry wants you to believe that in order to avoid financial destitution, you need to put aside huge amounts of money that you — let's say it together — ""should have begun saving years ago.""
Not true, states Warner, the author of Get a Life. Although a sensible savings plan makes good horse sense, many other actions and decisions will determine whether you enjoy your retirement years.
Get a Life shows you how to beat the anxiety surrounding retirement, and to develop a plan to make your golden years the best of your life by:
* developing family relationships
* maintaining and creating friendships
* improving health
* keeping active
* developing a robust curiosity for the world
* realistically calculating how much money you need and how to secure it
Interviews with successful (and successfully) retired people illustrate how to put Warner's advice into action.

Chicago Tribune

Get a Life offers sound advice for achieving both financial success and developing areas of your life that will truly make a difference in retirement: good health and fitness habits, strong ties with family and friends, and a plate full of interesting things to do.

Reuters - Linda Stern

One of the best retirement books to come out in recent years, Get a Life: You Don't Need a Million to Retire Well puts money and the other essentials of retirement life in its place.

Chicago Tribune

Get a Life offers sound advice for achieving both financial success and developing areas of your life that will truly make a difference in retirement: good health and fitness habits, strong ties with family and friends, and a plate full of interesting things to do.

Ft. Worth Star Telegram

Some books slice through the media noise with clarity. Get a Life is one of them. Its author advises a life-enriching retirement plan.

Ft. Worth Star Telegram

Some books slice through the media noise with clarity. Get a Life is one of them. Its author advises a life-enriching retirement plan.

Publishers Weekly

Warner, attorney and founder of Nolo, the do-it-yourself legal publisher, has written a unique retirement guide which, despite its title, focuses on non-financial issues as well as the traditional retirement concerns. The book also includes conversations with notable people who have led productive "retirement" lives, including environmental activist and writer Ernest Callenbach and mathematician Arthur Levenson. By focusing on important concerns such as broadening circles of friends, relying on one's extended family, turning to hobbies and nonwork activities, the book will help readers gain a healthier perspective on retirement. The sections on friendship and love are particularly compelling. The chapters on specific financial planning are not as complete as readers might want; for example, there's only one brief chapter that explains how investments work. Warner can also be something of a contrarian in his financial advice. He maintains that experts who say people need roughly 80% of their pre-retirement income are wrong. In addition, Warner says (arguably) that the Social Security system is not actually in precarious shape and will be around for many years to come. Still this is one of the freshest and most practical approaches to retirement planning in a long time. (Aug.)

Table of Contents:

Books about: The Imperial Presidency or Peak Everything

Islamic Imperialism: A History

Author: Efraim Karsh

From the first Arab-Islamic Empire of the mid-seventh century to the Ottomans, the last great Muslim empire, the story of the Middle East has been the story of the rise and fall of universal empires and, no less important, of imperialist dreams. So argues Efraim Karsh in this highly provocative book. Rejecting the conventional Western interpretation of Middle Eastern history as an offshoot of global power politics, Karsh contends that the region’s experience is the culmination of long-existing indigenous trends, passions, and patterns of behavior, and that foremost among these is Islam’s millenarian imperial tradition.
The author explores the history of Islam’s imperialism and the persistence of the Ottoman imperialist dream that outlasted World War I to haunt Islamic and Middle Eastern politics to the present day. September 11 can be seen as simply the latest expression of this dream, and such attacks have little to do with U.S. international behavior or policy in the Middle East, says Karsh. The House of Islam’s war for world mastery is traditional, indeed venerable, and it is a quest that is far from over.

Library Journal

Karsh (Mediterranean studies, King's Coll., London) summarizes the history of the Islamic world as the rise and occasional setbacks of an empire whose center has shifted over time. In this different approach, he sees Islam's continuity in its ideal of a nonnational community of shared faith. Recent terrorism, he says, comprises attacks on the West's challenging power, not a reaction to specific U.S. policies. Worthy of attention by general and advanced readers. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.