American Government or Founding Brothers

American Government (SparkNotes 101)

Author: SparkNotes Editors

Covers the U.S. Constitution, the federal bureaucracy, domestic and foreign policy, civil rights and civil liberties, interest groups, and other important concepts taught in introductory-level American government classes. The book also features key terms, sample test questions, lists of suggested reading and worthwhile websites, A+ student essays, and a comprehensive glossary.

Read also Third Term or Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Author: Joseph J Ellis

An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic--John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.

During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation--and perhaps any--came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Ellis focuses on six discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel, and what may have really happened; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton's financial plan; Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery--his last public act--and Madison's efforts to quash it; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice; Adams's difficult term as Washington's successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.

In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis recounts the sometimes collaborative, sometimes archly antagonistic interactions between these men, and shows us the private characters behind the public personas: Adams, the ever-combative iconoclast, whose closest political collaborator was his wife, Abigail; Burr, crafty, smooth, and one of the most despisedpublic figures of his time; Hamilton, whose audacious manner and deep economic savvy masked his humble origins; Jefferson, renowned for his eloquence, but so reclusive and taciturn that he rarely spoke more than a few sentences in public; Madison, small, sickly, and paralyzingly shy, yet one of the most effective debaters of his generation; and the stiffly formal Washington, the ultimate realist, larger-than-life, and America's only truly indispensable figure.

Ellis argues that the checks and balances that permitted the infant American republic to endure were not primarily legal, constitutional, or institutional, but intensely personal, rooted in the dynamic interaction of leaders with quite different visions and values. Revisiting the old-fashioned idea that character matters, Founding Brothers informs our understanding of American politics--then and now--and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history.

Library Journal

Ellis holds the Ford Foundation Chair in American History at Mount Holyoke College and is the author of American Sphinx, a National Book Award-winning study of Thomas Jefferson. His new book contains six chapters on unconnected events in the formation of the American republic, featuring Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and George Washington as principal characters. Ellis is deeply steeped in the literature, and his style is crisp and full of subtle ironies. He brings fresh insights into such well-worn topics as the Hamilton-Burr duel and Jefferson's feelings about slavery. If there is a central theme that runs through the chapters, it concerns the fragility of the early years of the republic. Ellis calls the 1790s one long shouting match between those, like Hamilton, who championed the power of the central government and those, like Jefferson, who defended the rights of states and individuals. The question of slavery was so explosive that most Founding Fathers avoided discussing it at all. Ellis clearly admires the irascible John Adams. Perhaps surprisingly from the author of American Sphinx, however, the Founding Father who comes off least well here is Jefferson himself. Highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/00.]--T.J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ., NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

New York Times Book Review - Michiko Kakutan

... as the historian Joseph J. Ellis points out in his compelling new book, the achievement of the American Revolution was considerably more improbable at the time....a lively and illuminating, if somewhat arbitrary book that leaves the reader with a visceral sense of a formative era in American life.

New York Times Book Review - Benson Bobrick

A splendid book -- humane, learned, written with flair and radiant with a calm intelligence and wit. Even those familiar with 'the Revolutionary generation' will [find much] to captivate and enlarge their understanding of our nation's fledgling years.

The Late Great USA or American Raj

The Late, Great USA: The Coming Merger with Canada and Mexico

Author: Jerome R Corsi

In the New York Times bestseller The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada, Jerome Corsi proves that the benignly-named "Security and Prosperity Partnership," created at a meeting between George W. Bush, Stephen Harper and Vincente Fox, is in fact the same kind of regional integration plan that led Europe to form the EU. According to Corsi, the elites in Europe who wanted to create a European nation knew that "it would be necessary to conceal from the peoples of Europe just what was being done in their name until the process was so far advanced that it had become irreversible." Could the same thing be happening here? Is American sovereignty doomed?

Using dozens of documents secured through the Freedom of Information Act and his trademark hard-hitting interviews, Jerome Corsi sets out a chilling view of America's possible "harmonized" future—one being created covertly, without voter input or Congressional oversight. Could our government's unfathomable position on illegal immigration be tied to the prospect of an integrated North American Union?

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American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World

Author: Eric S Margolis

"In 1993 Samuel P. Huntington turned conventional political wisdom on its head by arguing in a provocative essay that the secularized West and the fundamentalist Islamic world were destined to clash - a clash of civilizations." "At about the same time, veteran journalist and foreign policy expert Eric S. Margolis was arguing virtually the same point - but from a unique vantage point: inside and on the ground in the Muslim world itself." "American Raj: Liberation or Domination? is the culmination of all those years of feet-on-the-ground reporting and analysis - many of them spent actually fighting alongside mujahedeen - as well as a lifetime of insight into the complex reality of the way the Muslim world really operates. It is a masterful synthesis of experience and insight that answers the most pressing questions we in the West confront: Why does the Muslim world distrust us? Is the idea of a secular Muslim world - especially one based on the western model - realistic? Has ideology blinded Western powers to both political and historical reality? Is accommodation between these two ideological adversaries possible?" "What can be done to prevent a clash of civilizations?" American Raj: Liberation or Domination? takes the reader behind the conventional headlines and into the thinking and world view of anti-Western Islamic radicals throughout the Muslim world, and identifies the historical, political and religious factors that have played such a huge role in generating Islamic hostility towards the West.

Table of Contents:

Maps 8

Preface 15

1 The Arc of Anger 23

2 The Muslim World in Chains 56

3 The Great Muslim Revolts 67

4 The Mirage of Independence 93

5 Dawn of the American Raj 102

6 The Sun Never Sets on the American Raj 113

7 Palestine: The Fountains of Rage 135

8 Osama bin Laden 166

9 The Long Agony of Afghanistan 194

10 Debacle in the Garden of Eden 220

11 Iran: Revenge of the Mullahs 248

12 Chechnya: Genocide in the Caucasus 275

13 Final Solution in the Balkans 296

14 The Curse of Lebanon 314

15 Fighting the Fires 341

Bibliography 383

Index 388

Camelia or What Was Asked of Us

Camelia: Save Yourself by Telling the Truth - A Memoir of Iran

Author: Camelia Entekhabi Fard

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What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It

Author: Trish Wood

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Propaganda or A More Perfect Union

Propaganda

Author: Edward Bernays

"Bernays' honest and practical manual provides much insight into some of the most powerful and influential institutions of contemporary industrial state capitalist democracies."-Noam Chomsky

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."-Edward Bernays, Propaganda

A seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays (1891—1995), pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed "engineering of consent." During World War I, he was an integral part of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise and sell the war to the American people as one that would "Make the World Safe for Democracy." The CPI would become the blueprint in which marketing strategies for future wars would be based upon.

Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become inregards to organized manipulation of the masses.

This is the first reprint of Propaganda in over 30 years and features an introduction by Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder.

Library Journal

Released in 1928, this was the first book that explored the use of propaganda as a government and business means of manipulating the masses. Bernays, the first public relations guru, was in charge of the U.S. Committee on Public Information, which had the task of designing an ad campaign to make World War I look like a good idea. Somehow it worked. He discusses that and much more here. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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A More Perfect Union: The Story of Our Constitution

Author: Betsy Maestro

This easy-to-understand book tells why and how the Constitution of the United States was created. "Simple, attractive, informative....The most accessible history of the Constitution to date."--School Library Journal.

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4 Once again, the Maestros have produced a simple, attractive, and informative book about a milestone in American history. Here they cover the birth of the Constitution from the initial decision to hold the convention, through the summer meetings in Philadelphia, the ratification struggle, the first election, and the adoption of the Bill of Rights. The facts are put forward clearly, but in no way is this a detailed account. Left out, for example, are the events leading to the Convention and the debates on the slavery issue which occured during its course. Instead, the focus is on the most basic issuethe decisions on the organization of the government which resulted in the Great Compromise. The book does get to the core of the achievement of the Constitutionthe establishment of a governmental structure which has been adaptable to change for 200 yearsbut some of the significance is lost in this pared-down description. The pastel-colored paintings are most effective when they present panoramas and least effective when depicting the members of the convention, most of whom look alike except for hair color. A final section includes lists of the signers as well as of all those who attended; chronologies of events and the dates of ratification; and simple summaries of the Articles of the Constitution and amendments to it. The simplest and most accessible history of the Constitution to date. Christine Behrmann, New York Public Library

The Fifth Book of Peace or Tactical Pistol Marksmanship

The Fifth Book of Peace

Author: Maxine Hong Kingston

A long time ago in China, there existed three Books of Peace that proved so threatening to the reigning powers that they had them burned. Many years later Maxine Hong Kingston wrote a fourth Book of Peace, but it too was burned -- in the catastrophic Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire of 1991, a fire that coincided with the death of her father. Now in this visionary and redemptive work, Kingston completes her interrupted labor, weaving fiction and memoir into a luminous meditation on war and peace, devastation and renewal.

The New Yorker

When, fourteen years ago, Kingston embarked on a sequel to her delightful novel “Tripmaster Monkey,” she called it “The Fourth Book of Peace,” echoing a half-remembered Chinese legend about Three Books of Peace. But the manuscript was destroyed in a fire—a suggestive occurrence to Kingston, because the books in the legend were also burned. Here she re-creates her lost fictional narrative and sets it alongside an account of her life after the fire, so that the Vietnam-era doings of her antic hero, Wittman Ah Sing, who moves to Hawaii to evade the draft, are juxtaposed with her own experience teaching writing workshops for veterans of Vietnam and other wars. The book is rich in empathy and moral conviction, but Kingston is such an exuberant storyteller that fans may regret that the fictional part remains unfinished.

Publishers Weekly

In September 1991, Kingston (The Woman Warrior; China Men; etc.) drove toward her Oakland, Calif., home after attending her father's funeral. The hills were burning; she unwittingly risked her life attempting to rescue her novel-in-progress, The Fourth Book of Peace. Nothing remained of the novel except a block of ash; all that remained of her possessions were intricate twinings of molten glass, blackened jade jewelry and the chimney of what was once home to her and her husband. This work retells the novel-in-progress (an autobiographical tale of Wittman Ah Sing, a poet who flees to Hawaii to evade the Vietnam draft with his white wife and young son); details Kingston's harrowing trek to find her house amid the ruins; accompanies the author on her quest to discern myths regarding the Chinese Three Lost Books of Peace and, finally, submits Kingston's remarkable call to veterans of all wars (though Vietnam plays the largest role) to help her convey a literature of peace through their and her writings. Kingston writes in a panoply of languages: American, Chinese, poetry, dreams, mythos, song, history, hallucination, meditation, tragedy-all are invoked in this complex stream-of-consciousness memoir, which questions repeatedly and intrinsically: Why war? Why not peace? The last war on Iraq and the current one meld here, as do wars thousands of years old. Complicated, convoluted, fascinating and, in the final section, poignant almost beyond bearability, this work illumines one writer's experience of war and remembrance while elevating a personal search to a cosmic quest for truth. This is vintage Kingston: agent provocateur, she once again follows her mother's dictate to "educate the world." (Sept. 8) Forecast: As previous winner of the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Kingston has a commanding audience to rally for this long-delayed and -awaited book. Knopf plans a 50,000-copy first printing. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Acclaimed writer Kingston (The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts) has created a lyrical memoir of momentous events in her life-the death of her father and her mother, the destruction of her house by fire on the day she attended her father's funeral, the search for the ancient Chinese Books of Peace, and the organization of a series of writing workshops for Vietnam War veterans. Kingston explains that the Books of Peace were born when Chinese civilization came into being but then were lost. She works to find them, believing that their recovery may save the world from the never-ending horror of war. Kingston writes her own Book of Peace here, telling the story of a Vietnam War draft dodger. Her vivid portrayal of the too familiar elements of the Vietnamese conflict-war protests, peace demonstrations, AWOL GIs, and hippies-is disturbing and convincing. And the admirable goal of the writing workshops she conducted with the Vietnam vets was to help them "put that war into words, and through language make sense, meaning, art of it." With this memoir, Kingston continues her life's admirable task, given to her by her mother, of educating the world. Hence her powerful admonition: "In a time of destruction, create something." Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/03.]-Kathryn R. Bartelt, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A mix of memoir and fiction attempts to reconstruct a novel that burned-along with the author's home and family keepsakes-in the terrible Oakland Hills fire of 1991. "If a woman is to write a Book of Peace, it is given to her to know devastation," NBA-winner Kingston (Tripmaster Monkey, 1989, etc.) begins in the eloquent first section, an account of the day that fire destroyed The Fourth Book of Peace, her novel-in-progress. It is also the day of her father's funeral, and as Kingston drives home into the heart of the fire, she has two thoughts: either "the fire is to make us know Iraq" (it takes place during the first Gulf War), or "my father is trying to kill me, to take me with him." Pursuing memories of her immigrant father in a series of free-associative leaps, she remembers the Chinese lore that he and her still-living, eccentric mother have imparted to her, much of it guidance for dealing with the aftermath of devastation. A few days later, at a conference, Kingston remembers the impetus for her lost novel-to rediscover the vanished Chinese texts of the legendary Three Books of Peace-and resolves to do two things to honor it: reconstruct the text, and initiate a series of writing workshops for Vietnam veterans. The rest rambles somewhat. The reconstructed novel, set during the Vietnam War, tracks a young family fleeing California for Hawaii to avoid the draft and has little plot beyond the characters' opposition to the war; it feels rushed. The final section-a diaristic account of the workshops for vets-is well-meaning but lacks the splendid insights of Kingston's best writing. A colorful meandering that is most original and compelling when it focuses on the author's hard-won peacewith her family. First printing of 50,000; author tour

Table of Contents:

	Fire	1
	Paper	43
	Water	63
	Earth	239
	Epilogue	399
	Permissions Acknowledgments	403

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Tactical Pistol Marksmanship: How To Improve Your Combat Shooting Skills

Author: Gabriel Suarez

Best-selling author Gabe Suarez provides a graduate-level course in shooting with lightning speed and dead on target during the intensity of an actual gun battle. In Tactical Pistol Marksmanship, Suarez revisits some of the topics in the classic book The Tactical Pistol and presents even more gun-handling techniques, different twists on basic skills and unique tricks to help fine-tune how you aim and fire a gun under stress. Just some of the topics he covers are the primary requirements for the ideal service pistol according to combat vets; the rule of thumb for choosing a serious combat caliber; the 4 most important fundamentals of combat marksmanship; secrets to shooting in extremely low light situations when even tritium sights are of no use; the solutions to emergency failure-to-stop situations; and practical drills you can perform safely at home.