Sunday, December 6, 2009

Irish in the South 1815 1877 or In the Path of Hizbullah

Irish in the South, 1815-1877

Author: David T Gleeson

The only comprehensive study of Irish immigrants in the nineteenth-century South, this book makes a valuable contribution to the story of the Irish in America and to our understanding of southern culture.

Lawrence J. McCaffrey

David T. Gleeson demonstrates that Irish America comes in different shades of green. In his perceptive, well-researched, and readable The Irish in the South, 1815-1877 he reveals its regional diversity.



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Forgotten People of the Old South1
Ch. 1The Irish Diaspora10
Ch. 2Urban Pioneers in the Old South23
Ch. 3Earning a Living38
Ch. 4Family, Community, and Ethnic Awareness55
Ch. 5Keeping the Faith74
Ch. 6The Irish, the Natives, and Politics94
Ch. 7The Know-Nothing Challenge107
Ch. 8Slavery, State Rights, and Secession121
Ch. 9The Green and the Gray141
Ch. 10Irish Confederates158
Ch. 11Postwar Integration173
Conclusion: Irish Southerners187
Occupational Status Classification195
Notes197
Selected Bibliography239
Index269

New interesting textbook: Bear Stays up for Christmas or Fancy Nancy

In the Path of Hizbullah

Author: ANizar Hamzeh

This book serves as a road map for understanding not only Hizbullah but also other Islamist groups and their challenges to contemporary politics. Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh examines the Hizbullah of Lebanon through a structural analysis using original and archival sources. Employing a theoretical framework drawing on a broad range of studies on crisis conditions, leadership, political parties, and guerrilla warfare, In the Path of Hizbullah stands alone in its qualitative and quantitative exploration of one of the most complex contemporary Islamist organizations and offers a thoughtful perspective on the party's future.

Choice

What makes Hamzeh's book unique is that it focuses not so much on Hizbullah's ideology but on its complex, sophisticated organizational structure. More than anything else, it is Hizbullah's structure that guides its operational choices and explains the inner workings of the organization's structural components. This illuminating and timely book looks objectively at the dynamics of one of the most important yet least understood forces in contemporary Lebanon and the Middle East. . . . Essential.



Saturday, December 5, 2009

Does It Take a Village or The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison

Does It Take a Village?: Community Effects on Children, Adolescents and Families

Author: Alan Booth

Does It Take a Village? focuses on the mechanisms that link community characteristics to the functioning of the families and individuals within them--community norms, economic opportunities, reference groups for assessing relative deprivation, and social support networks. Contributors underscore those features of communities that represent risk factors for children, adolescents, and their families, as well as those characteristics that underlie resilience and thus undergird individual and family functioning.

As a society we have heavy investments both in research and in programs based on the idea that communities affect families and children, yet important questions have arisen about the validity of the link between communities, children, and families. This book answers the question of whether--and how--it takes a village to raise a child and what we can do to help communities achieve this essential task more effectively.

Booknews

Focuses on mechanisms that link community characteristics to the functioning of families and individuals, discussing community norms, economic opportunities, assessment of relative deprivation, and social support networks. Highlights those features of communities that represent risk factors for children, adolescents, and their families, as well as characteristics that strengthen individual and family functioning. Material originated at a November 1998 symposium held at Pennsylvania State University, where the editors teach. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)



Book about: Streetwise Athens Map Laminated City Center Street Map of Athens Greece Folding Pocket Size Travel Map With Metro or Bill Brysons African Diary

The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison

Author: David B Mattern

From modest Quaker beginnings as the child of financially insecure parents and the wife of a stolid young lawyer to the excitement and challenges of life as the nation's first First Lady—arguably the most influential role in the American government's formative years—Dolley Payne Todd Madison (1768-1849) led an extraordinary life. David B. Mattern and Holly C. Shulman have culled a particularly rich selection of her letters to illuminate the story of the woman widely credited with setting the standard for successive generations of Washington's political women. This collection will prove an invaluable resource in current political and historical circles, where the role founding mothers played—both as supportive family members and as crucial political negotiators—is increasingly recognized and studied.

Organized chronologically into five sections reaching from her correspondence as a young adult in late-eighteenth-century Philadelphia up to the letters of her widowhood in 1840s Washington, and with a helpful contextualizing introduction to each section, The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison provides a long-overdue biographical sketch of one of the early republic's most fascinating personalities.



Table of Contents:
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Editorial Method
Introduction1
Quaker Beginnings, 1768-18019
A Washington Education, 1801-180938
The Politics of War, 1809-181790
A Well-Deserved Retirement, 1817-1836216
Washington Widow, 1836-1849317
Biographical Directory393
Index417

Friday, December 4, 2009

Small Strangers or The School Choice Hoax

Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in America, 1880-1925

Author: Melissa Klapper

Children are the largely neglected players in the great drama of American immigration. In one of history's most remarkable movements of people across national borders, almost twenty-five million immigrants came to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-from Mexico, Japan, and Canada as well as the more common embarkation points of southern and eastern Europe. Many of them were children. Together with the American-born children of immigrants, they made up a significant part of turn-of-the-century U.S. society. Small Strangers recounts and interprets their varied experiences to illustrate how immigration, urbanization, and industrialization-all related processes-molded modern America.

Garrett Berger - Virginia Quarterly Review

Small Strangers captures the essence of what it meant to be one of the many children whose families immigrated to America around the turn of the last century.

What People Are Saying

Roger Daniels
"Her culturally sensitive survey fills a gap in the histories of childhood and of immigration."--(Roger Daniels, author of Not Like Us)


Alice Kessler-Harris
"This small, provocative book is a gem . . . Small Strangers touches on an astonishing range of key issues...indispensable."--(Alice Kessler-Harris, author of Gendering Labor History)


Marilyn Irvin Holt
"[A] careful blending of personal accounts with the larger social issues and reform movements of the period."--(Marilyn Irvin Holt, author of Children of the Western Plains)


Kriste Lindenmeyer
"Skillfully shows how the experiences of immigrant children highlight the dramatic shift from farm to factory...[A]n engaging synthesis."--(Dr. Kriste Lindenmeyer, author of The Greatest Generation Grows Up)


Jonathan Zimmerman
"Klapper has written a brief gem of a book, examining immigrant children in all of their diversity, tragedy, and triumph."--(Jonathan Zimmerman, author of Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools)




Table of Contents:
Preface     xi
Acknowledgments     xvii
Childhood and Immigrants: Changing Ideas at the Turn of the Century     3
The Landscape of Early Childhood     18
At School, at Work, at Home, at Play     54
Adolescent Years     108
After the Door Closed: The Effects of Restrictive Legislation and the Depression     161
Immigrant Children and Modern America     177
Notes     183
A Note on Sources     195
Index     211

New interesting textbook: Ordinary Vices or Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism

The School Choice Hoax: Fixing America's Schools

Author: Ronald G Corwin

This book argues that the autonomy granted to choice schools has been a counterproductive dead end. Its authors see no proof that freedom has produced the outstanding results that charter school advocates promised. Nor has the competition from charter schools spurred the improvement in public schools that charter advocates predicted. Instead, charter schools and education vouchers promoted competition among schools that should be cooperating. Overburdened public school districts are faced with rivalry from schools that are merely duplicating conventional programs and competing for some students while ignoring others. Since choice schools are not meeting the expectations touted by their advocates, the authors maintain that they should be planned, monitored, and operated by school districts.



Wednesday, December 2, 2009

W E B Du Bois or The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations

W. E. B. Du Bois: Writings (The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, The Souls of Black Folk, Dusk of Dawn, Essays)

Author: W E B Du Bois

The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.



Read also Rich Dads Guide to Becoming Rich Without Cutting Up Your Credit Cards or Currency Trading for Dummies

The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century (Culture and Religion in International Relations Series)

Author: Scott M Thomas

"Here undoubtedly is a book that is both helpful and insightful for those of us who feel there has got to be a better way to promote global security and global welfare,"--from the foreword by Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Nobel Peace Laureate"Scott Thomas' work should be read not only by scholars interested in international relations and development, but also by leaders in civil society - in the NGO's, in the corporations, and in the churches. We neglect religious factors in contemporary history to our great peril. One may quibble with his treatment of certain theorists of "modernity," but he sees key global trends clearly, and argues artfully for policies could correct today's intellectual and moral blinders."--Max L. Stackhouse, Rimmer and Ruth DeVries Professor of Theology and Public Life, Princeton Theological Seminary, Author/editor of the series, God and Globalization"Post Cold War and post 9/11 politics have witnessed the global resurgence of religion, nationalism and ethnic identity and underscored the failure of international relations theory to anticipate and adequately address the role of religion and culture. Scott Thomas' The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations is a powerful corrective, demonstrating how and why religion and culture are significant forces world politics that have transformed our understanding of IR theory." --John L. Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University and author of Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam"The Global Resurgence of Religion is a vital topic on which mainstream international relations research has been oddly silent. In clear andmeasured prose Scott Thomas explicates the reason for our intellectual failures and develops an original, eclectic perspective that gives new relevance to the constructivist turn in international relations theory. More importantly, Thomas succeeds in illustrating empirically how and why religion matters in world politics. For those interested in regaining their voice on a crucial topic in world politics this book is essential reading."--Peter J. Katzenstein, Walter S. Carpenter Professor, Jr. of International Studies, Cornell University"To the surprise of most academics and many politicians, religion has become one of the most dynamic forces in 21st century world politics. Scott Thomas's insightful analysis of this phenomenon fills a gaping hole in international relations theory and should help policy-makers and thoughtful citizens alike think more clearly about the ways in which profound religious and moral convictions can help build a measure of order in world affairs."--George Weigel, Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Foreign Affairs

The global resurgence of religion has been widely noted, and this book provides a thoughtful reflection on its implications for Western ideas about modernity and international relations. The conventional view is that the upsurge in fundamentalism, particularly in the Middle East, reflects a stalled transition to modernity, giving militants an ideological kinship with previous antiliberal and antimodernist movements. Thomas, in contrast, asserts that the revival of religion — including among evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians in the developed world — is part of a more wide-ranging global phenomenon that represents a crisis of modernity itself. The grand narrative of Western progress is under challenge, and a search for "authenticity" is underway inside and outside the West, with communities of the faithful seeking to refashion political life in line with moral and religious values. This provocative claim is never convincingly established, but Thomas' more general point is well taken: Western scholars and policymakers need to rethink how the potent mix of religion, nationalism, and globalization is wreaking havoc on old traditions of diplomacy, development, and Western hegemony and transforming international affairs in the process.



Table of Contents:
Introduction : the struggle for the soul of the twenty-first century1
1"The revenge of God?" : the twentieth century as the "last modern century"21
2Blind spots and blowback : why culture and religion were marginalized in international relations theory47
3In the eye of the storm : explaining and understanding culture and religion in international relations71
4The soul of the world? : religious non-state actors and international relations theory97
5Wars and rumors of war? : religion and international conflict121
6"Creating a just and durable peace" : rethinking religion and international cooperation149
7Soulcraft as statecraft? : diplomacy, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding173
8Funding virtue? : rethinking religion, civil society, and democracy197
9Where faith and economics meet? : rethinking religion, civil society, and international development219
Conclusion : how shall we then live?247

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Comparative Politics or Give Me Liberty

Comparative Politics: Domestic Responses to Global Challenges

Author: Charles Hauss

This comprehensive text focuses on traditional issues and concepts in comparative politics, using a unique theme: domestic responses to global challenges. The author examines the growing interdependence among strong and weak states and discusses 12 countries, including the U.S. and the European community, to help students develop their skills of comparison, synthesis and interpretation, the author organized the text by economic development.



New interesting book: Prophetess of Health or The Face Lift Sourcebook

Give Me Liberty!: An American History

Author: Eric Foner

Adopted at over 600 universities, colleges, and schools across the country, Eric Foner's Give Me Liberty! is making a difference in the American history survey course. Featuring a single author and a single, comprehensive theme, Give me Liberty! presents American history with unparalleled clarity and coherence. The study tools in the book and the companion print and electronic package ensure student success in the course.

The Second Edition builds on the success of the first, retaining the unifying theme of freedom while becoming more comprehensive, and adding stronger coverage of Native American and immigration history. In addition, the pedagogy has been strengthened with new Voices of Freedom-paired primary sources in each chapter, chapter-opening chronologies, key terms, and more. Overall the presentation remains concise and crisp, free of the encyclopedic detail that clogs so many other survey textbooks.



Table of Contents:
List of Maps, Tables, and Figuresxvii
About the Authorxix
Prefacexxi
Part 1American Colonies to 1763
1.A New World4
The Expansion of Europe7
Peoples of the Americas12
The Spanish Empire15
The First North Americans23
England and the New World30
The Freeborn Englishman35
Voices of Freedom: From Henry Care, English Liberties, or, The Free-Born Subject's Inheritance (1680)40
2.American Beginnings, 1607-165044
The Coming of the English47
Settling the Chesapeake51
Origins of American Slavery57
The New England Way62
Voices of Freedom: From John Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General Court (July 3, 1645)64
New Englanders Divided69
The New England Economy73
3.Crisis and Expansion: North American Colonies, 1650-175078
Empires in Conflict81
The Expansion of England's Empire87
Voices of Freedom: From William Penn, England's Present Interests Discovered (1675)93
Colonies in Crisis94
The Eighteenth Century: A Growing Society101
Social Classes in the Colonies110
4.Slavery, Freedom, and the Struggle for Empire to 1763118
Slavery and the Empire121
Slave Culture and Slave Resistance130
An Empire of Freedom133
The Public Sphere138
The Great Awakening145
Imperial Rivalries148
Battle for the Continent151
Voices of Freedom: From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763)156
Part 2A New Nation, 1763-1840
5.The American Revolution, 1763-1783166
The Crisis Begins169
The Road to Revolution176
The Coming of Independence180
Voices of Freedom: From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)185
Securing Independence189
6.The Revolution Within200
Democratizing Freedom203
Toward Religious Liberty207
Defining Economic Freedom212
The Limits of Liberty215
Slavery and the Revolution220
Voices of Freedom: From Petitions of Slaves to the Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777)224
Daughters of Liberty228
7.Founding a Nation, 1783-1789234
America under the Articles of Confederation237
A New Constitution246
The Ratification Debate and the Origin of the Bill of Rights253
Voices of Freedom: From James Madison, The Federalist no. 51, and Anti-Federalist Essay Signed "Brutus" (1787)254
We the People261
8.Securing the Republic, 1790-1815270
Politics in an Age of Passion272
Voices of Freedom: From Address of the Democratic-Republican Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794)281
The Adams Presidency283
Jefferson in Power290
The "Second War of Independence"298
9.The Market Revolution306
A New Economy309
Market Society319
Voices of Freedom: From Josephine L. Baker, "A Second Peep at Factory Life," Lowell Offering (1845)328
The Free Individual330
The Limits of Prosperity335
10.Democracy in America, 1815-1840344
The Triumph of Democracy346
Voices of Freedom: From "The Memorial of the Non-Freeholders of the City of Richmond" (1829)348
Nationalism and Its Discontents353
Nation, Section, and Party358
The Age of Jackson363
The Bank War and After373
Part 3Slavery, Freedom, and the Crisis of the Union, 1840-1877
11.The Peculiar Institution386
The Old South389
Voices of Freedom: From John C. Calhoun, Speech in Congress (1837)398
Life under Slavery400
Slave Culture409
Resistance to Slavery414
12.An Age of Reform, 1820-1840422
The Reform Impulse424
The Crusade against Slavery434
Black and White Abolitionism441
The Origins of Feminism445
Voices of Freedom: From Angelina Grimke, Letter in The Liberator (August 2, 1837)448
13.A House Divided, 1840-1861456
Fruits of Manifest Destiny458
A Dose of Arsenic470
The Rise of the Republican Party477
Voices of Freedom: From William H. Seward, "The Irrepressible Conflict" (1858)484
The Emergence of Lincoln487
The Impending Crisis495
14.A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861-1865502
The First Modern War504
The Coming of Emancipation514
The Second American Revolution524
Voices of Freedom: From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore (April 18, 1864)525
The Confederate Nation532
Turning Points536
Rehearsals for Reconstruction and the End of the War539
15."What Is Freedom?": Reconstruction, 1865-1877548
The Meaning of Freedom551
Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865)558
The Making of Radical Reconstruction562
Radical Reconstruction in the South572
The Overthrow of Reconstruction577
Appendix
Documents
The Declaration of Independence (1776)2
The Constitution of the United States (1787)4
From George Washington's Farewell Address (1796)14
The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)18
From Frederick Douglass's "What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" Speech (1852)20
The Gettysburg Address (1863)23
Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865)24
The Populist Platform of 189225
Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address (1933)28
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, "I Have a Dream" Speech (1963)30
Tables
Presidential Elections32
Admission of States40
Population of the United States41
Historical Statistics of the United States
Workforce42
Immigration, by Origin42
Glossary43
Credits63
Index67

Monday, November 30, 2009

Spying on Ireland or Becoming Winston Churchill

Spying on Ireland: British Intelligence and Irish Neutrality during the Second World War

Author: Eunan OHalpin

Irish neutrality during the Second World War presented Britain with significant challenges to its security. Exploring how British agencies identified and addressed these problems, this book reveals how Britain simultaneously planned sabotage in and spied on Ireland, and at times sought to damage the neutral state's reputation internationally through black propaganda operations. It analyses the extent of British knowledge of Axis and other diplomatic missions in Ireland, and shows the crucial role of diplomatic code-breaking in shaping British policy. The book also underlines just how much Ireland both interested and irritated Churchill throughout the war.
Rather than viewing this as a uniquely Anglo-Irish experience, Eunan O'Halpin argues that British activities concerning Ireland should be placed in the wider context of intelligence and security problems that Britain faced in other neutral states, particularly Afghanistan and Persia. Taking a comparative approach, he illuminates how Britain dealt with challenges in these countries through a combination of diplomacy, covert gathering of intelligence, propaganda, and intimidation. The British perspective on issues in Ireland becomes far clearer when discussed in terms of similar problems Britain faced with neutral states worldwide.
Drawing heavily on British and American intelligence records, many disclosed here for the first time, Eunan O'Halpin presents the first country study of British intelligence to describe and analyse the impact of all the secret agencies during the war. He casts fresh light on British activities in Ireland, and on the significance of both espionage and cooperation between intelligence agenciesfor developing wider relations between the two countries.



Book review: Greenspans Bubbles or Small Business Owners Manual

Becoming Winston Churchill: The Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor

Author: Michael McMenamin

Today a forgotten figure, Bourke Cockran was acclaimed during his lifetime as America's greatest orator. He was also the lover of Jenny Churchill - Winston's mother - after the death of Lord Randolph. And, for twelve years (1895 to 1906), he was the young Winston's mentor. Until now, the story of the extraordinary and crucial relationship between them has not been told. At one level, the story is about politics, exploring the ways the young Churchill adopted Cockran's political and economic views - on democracy, capitalism, the Gold Standard, Free Trade, Socialism: issues that Churchill was to make his own. On another level, the story is biographical, chronicling the meetings between the men, and reproducing - for the first time in full - their private correspondence. It is the story of Churchill growing up. On yet another level, it is historical, vividly evoking the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, when Churchill was often in the thick of the action - fighting at the Khyber Pass in India or escaping from a Boer camp in Pretoria (and becoming a household name as a consequence) - all the while keeping up his correspondence with Cockran. The drama of such events is part of the book's irresistible appeal.

The book is written with a dramatic flair, bringing out the personalities of the two men. Each section begins, like a historical novel, with a recreation of a crucial moment in their lives. The general narrative is chronologically structured, with a powerful momentum, tracing the two men's growing intimacy over the years and interweaving their letters and meetings with the historical events in which they were involved. The story began in 1895 in New York, where Cockran took the young Winston under his wing. The following years, marked by turmoil in Cuba and Ireland, included the 1896 Presidential election, the great public debate about the gold standard and Cockran's private insistence to Churchill that principle must always be placed over party (something Churchill was to remember later when he crossed the floor of the House). 1899 saw Churchill's involvement in the Boer War, and his dramatic escape from a Boer prison camp, followed by his election to Parliament, visits to Cockran in America and, between 1901 and 1906, hard political fighting over the crucial issue of free trade, over which Churchill eventually left the Conservatives to join the Liberal party. The final years of Churchill and Cockran's friendship were dramatised by a number of public events - the American occupation of the Philippines, the victory of the Liberal Party in the British General Election, the First World War, about which they continued to correspond - but dominated by private ones: Cockran's remarriage, the death of Churchill's mother, and Churchill's own marriage. Throughout, the two men remained close, and, to the end, Cockran's influence on Churchill was unique and profound.



Sunday, November 29, 2009

Indian Orphanages or The Dark Side of Democracy

Indian Orphanages

Author: Marilyn Irvin Holt

With their deep tradition of tribal and kinship ties, Native Americans had lived for centuries with little use for the concept of an unwanted child. But besieged by reservation life and boarding school acculturation, many tribes—with the encouragement of whites—came to accept the need for orphanages.

The first book to focus exclusively on this subject, Marilyn Holt's study interweaves Indian history, educational history, family history, and child welfare policy to tell the story of Indian orphanages within the larger context of the orphan asylum in America. She relates the history of these orphanages and the cultural factors that produced and sustained them, shows how orphans became a part of native experience after Euro-American contact, and explores the manner in which Indian societies have addressed the issue of child dependency.

Holt examines in depth a number of orphanages from the 1850s to1940s—particularly among the "Five Civilized Tribes" in Oklahoma, as well as among the Seneca in New York and the Ojibway and Sioux in South Dakota. She shows how such factors as disease, federal policies during the Civil War, and economic depression contributed to their establishment and tells how white social workers and educational reformers helped undermine native culture by supporting such institutions. She also explains how orphanages differed from boarding schools by being either tribally supported or funded by religious groups, and how they fit into social welfare programs established by federal and state policies.

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 overturned years of acculturation policy by allowing Native Americans to finally reclaim their children, and Holt helps readers to better understand the importance of that legislation in the wake of one of the more unfortunate episodes in the clash of white and Indian cultures.

Publishers Weekly

Riding the wave of interest in adoption issues and Native American history, Holt (The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America) examines the development of orphanages in a half-dozen major Native American tribes, covering the late 1800s, the Depression and the decades up to the 1978 federal reversal on Indian adoption policy. From the outset, community-oriented Indian society bewildered white missionaries and social workers, who deemed deviations from the nuclear family pernicious. Yet "orphans" didn't exist in, for instance, Shawnee culture, where tribal "grandmothers" helped raise the young, and families welcomed parentless children. Holt's balanced view of orphans' dual experience being equipped for mainstream culture and stripped of their own distinguishes her account. While most poor ethnics were subject to Americanization, Indians had it worse: many whites, bent on eliminating Native Americans, targeted orphanages, often the only available school. While many may have been awful (Holt doesn't say much about daily life), the orphanages kept kids on the reservation, unlike subsequent programs. Holt combs official reports, teasing her story out of dry numbers (enrollment stats, spending per pupil) from several orphanages. Thematic organization and further Indian perspectives (understandably scarce) would have made her book more accessible and compelling. Still, it's a useful, if turgid, volume for specialists. 19 photos not seen by PW. (Sept.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Holt (The Orphan Trains) carefully examines the establishment of Indian orphanages in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a previously little-studied subject. She discusses the emergence of orphanages in tribal communities ranging from the Seneca to the Sioux and their provision of basic care, including education. In reality, those orphanages underscored the destructive interchange with Euro-American peoples. Orphanages became necessary, Holt contends, after "war, disease, starvation, relocation, removal, ill-conceived federal policies, and missionary influences" had transformed traditional networks and kinships. Many non-Indian administrators viewed orphanages as a means to ward off complete immersion in white society. All the while, the orphanages worked to acculturate Indian children into the mainstream. Beginning in the 1930s, social welfare programs, foster care, and adoptions supplanted orphanages, whose closure often resulted in children being separated from "their own people." Not until 1978, with the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, did Congress recognize "the transmission of Indian culture to future generations." Though the chronological makeup can be confusing and the prose occasionally leaden, this is a solid, well-researched study that scholars will appreciate. Recommended for academic libraries. R.C. Cottrell, California State Univ., Chico Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.



Table of Contents:
Introduction : roots of protest1
1Crumbling culture18
2First solution : Seneca49
3Orphans among us : Cherokee84
4After the war : Chickasaw115
5The missionaries : Choctaw and Creek148
6Tribal dissolution : Oklahoma182
7Catholic outposts : Ojibway and Sioux216
Epilogue : final transition251

Interesting book: Our Iceberg Is Melting or The Gone Fishin Portfolio

The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing

Author: Michael Mann

This comprehensive study of international ethnic cleansing provides in-depth coverage of its occurrences in Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, as well as cases of lesser violence in early modern Europe and in contemporary India and Indonesia. After presenting a general theory of why serious conflict emerges and how it escalates into mass murder, Michael Mann offers suggestions on how to avoid such escalation in the future. Michael Mann is the author of Fascists (Cambridge, 2004) and The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge 1986).

Publishers Weekly

In addressing the origins of ethnic cleansing, UCLA sociologist Mann (Fascism) locates differing stages of political participation as a major factor. He begins with stable authoritarian regimes (e.g., Tito's Yugoslavia) that exclude participation; when such regimes break down, there is a period of everybody scrambling for power and trying to exclude somebody else with the "else" usually defined on ethnic lines. Other examples include Armenia, the Holocaust and Rwanda, as well as India (the Sikhs and Muslims) and Indonesia (the Chinese). Eventually, the author's somewhat optimistic scenario argues, we arrive at stable participatory societies, with everybody somewhat included and limits set on what can be done to exclude groups (the Voting Rights Act of 1964 in the U.S.). Free from sociological jargon and abundant in historical data, this study sufficiently allows lay readers access. It can be difficult at moments to tell if Mann's prediction of the high body count in the Third World's coming century or so of ethnic cleansing is Eurocentric, callous or grimly realistic, but such moments always resolve into that last choice. Mann proposes some feasible remedies and scales of intervention. (Nov.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Ethnic cleansing is typically seen as the work of primitive evildoers operating outside of modernity. In this important and provocative book, the distinguished sociologist Mann argues that murderous ethnic cleansing is in fact an ugly facet of our modern democratic age-that "it belongs to our own civilization and to us." Mann suggests that democratization in particular multiethnic settings can create situations in which "rule by the people" is defined in ethnic terms, leading a majority group to tyrannize minorities. A "danger zone" is reached when rival ethnic groups lay claim to the same territory, and do so with some legitimacy and prospect of success. Often an outgrowth of an unrelated crisis such as a war, ethnic cleansing breaks out when the weaker side fights because of the promise of outside aid-as in the Yugoslav, Rwandan, Kashmiri, and Chechen cases-or when the stronger side believes it can cleanse a state at considerable profit and little risk-as in the Armenian and Jewish genocides. Mann's account is not the last word on ethnic cleansing, but it certainly is among the most sophisticated yet.



Saturday, November 28, 2009

Mortal Evidence or The Second Plane September 11

Mortal Evidence: The Forensics Behind Nine Shocking Cases

Author: Cyril H Wecht

Foreword by Dr. Henry C. Lee

World-renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht leads you into the heart of nine fascinating investigations, focusing each chapter on a single engrossing drama. He reveals the most startling evidence that shows why JonBenet Ramsey's killer most likely came from within her home, why O. J. Simpson probably had an accomplice in the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, shocking revelations about Robert Berdella's grisly torture and sex-abuse crimes against young men, and many intriguing facts about other infamous cases.

If you find the fictional plots of such dramas as C. S. I. exciting, you will be amazed by the true stories told by Dr. Wecht, with the help of two top-flight veteran reporters, Greg Saitz and Mark Curriden.



Table of Contents:
Foreword   Dr. Henry C. Lee     7
Preface     11
Acknowledgments     17
Teenage Baby Killers? The Truth behind the Death of Baby Boy Grossberg     19
A Fallen Beauty Queen: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey?     43
Sex, Drugs, and a Dead Casino Magnate: How Ted Binion Died     87
The Real Fugitive: Sam Sheppard and His Wife's Murder     125
Shoot-out in Miracle Valley: The Killing of Religious Sect Members     157
Standing by Her Man: Tammy Wynette's Final Song     185
The Trials of O. J.: The Final Verdict     199
Robert Berdella: Madman or Just Murderer?     243
Heavy Metal Murder: The Curious Demise of Robert Curley     275
Afterword     297
Notes     299
Bibliography     307
Index     309

New interesting textbook: Dear Mrs Roosevelt or U S Presidents Factbook

The Second Plane. September 11: Terror and Boredom

Author: Martin Amis

A master not only of fiction but also of fiercely controversial political engagement, Martin Amis here gathers fourteen pieces that constitute an evolving, provocative, and insightful examination of the most momentous event of our time.

At the heart of this collection is the long essay “Terror and Boredom,” an unsparing analysis of Islamic fundamentalism and the West’s flummoxed response to it, while other pieces address the invasion of Iraq, the realities of Iran, and Tony Blair’s lingering departure from Downing Street (and also his trips to Washington and Iraq). Amis’s reviews of pertinent books and films, from The Looming Tower to United 93, provide a far-ranging survey of other responses to these calamitous issues, which are further explored in two short stories: “The Last Days of Muhammed Atta,” its subject self-evident, and “In the Palace of the End,” narrated by a Middle Eastern tyrant’s double whose duties include epic lovemaking, grotesque torture, and the duplication on his own body of the injuries sustained by his alter ego in constant assassination attempts.

Whether lambasted for his refusal to kowtow to Muslim pieties or hailed for his common sense, wide reading, and astute perspective, Amis is indisputably a great pleasure to read—informed, elegant, surprising—and this collection a resounding contemplation of the relentless, manifold dangers we suddenly find ourselves living with.

The Washington Post - Warren Bass

…the argument in The Second Plane bristles with intelligence.

Publishers Weekly

These chronologically ordered essays and stories on the September 11 attacks proceed from initial bewilderment to coruscating contempt for radical Islam. Novelist Amis (House of Meetings) rejects all religious belief as "without reason and without dignity" and condemns "Islamism" as an especially baleful variant. Amis attacks Islamism's tenets as "[a]nti-Semitic, anti-liberal, anti-individualist, anti-democratic" and characterizes its adherents, from founding ideologue Sayyid Qutb to the ordinary suicide bomber, as sexually frustrated misogynists entranced by a "cult of death." He also takes swipes at Bush and the Iraq war, which he describes as botched and tragically counterproductive, if well intentioned, but scorns those who draw a moral equivalence between Western misdeeds and the jihadist agenda. Amis's concerns are cultural and aesthetic as well as existential: terrorism threatens a reign of "boredom" in the guise of tedious airport security protocols, pedantic conspiracy theories and the dogma-shackled "dependent mind" fostered by Islamist theocracy. As much as Amis's opinions are scathing, blunt and occasionally strident, his prose is subtle, elegant and witty-and certainly never boring. (Apr.)

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

Stephen K. Shaw - Library Journal

Amis has a reputation, well deserved, for being an intellectual provocateur. This reputation will only grow with the publication of these latest musings on life in what he calls "the Age of Vanished Normalcy." As John Updike, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, and others have before him, Amis seeks to make sense of a world in which passenger airplanes are used as weapons of destruction and religious fanaticism has muscled out reasoned deliberation. His critique of Islamism may seem enlightened to some, imbecilic to others. Amis rejects the chimera of moral equivalence between modern, secular civilization and radical Islamic jihadists. He argues that he is not Islamophobic but rather Islamismophobic-that is, opposed to militant Islam. Amis contends that the West shares no common discourse with jihadism and contrasts the Western, secular mind of intellectual curiosity with the strident, noncurious mind of the likes of Mohamed Atta. The most impressive of these 14 pieces is "Terror and Boredom: The Dependent Mind," in which Amis mounts his own crusade against religious violence and secular triumphalism. Amis is intentionally and controversially combative in this work, which makes it essential reading. Recommended for all libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Fourteen essays on the theme that "our understanding of September 11 is incremental and can never hope to be intact and entire."Islamism (Islamic fascism to some, Islamofascism to others), notes the ever-provocative British novelist and essayist Amis (House of Meetings, 2007, etc.), may be associated with Saudi Arabia, but it had its modern origins in Greeley, Colo., in 1949. "The story is grotesque and incredible," he writes, "but then so are its consequences." One of those curious consequences, familiar to anyone who has experienced war, terror or extreme stress, is boredom, for in such endeavors when one is not scared witless there is by definition not much going on. The war against Islamist terror has, Amis hazards, an especially boring additional component, our presumed inability to begin to communicate with "a mind with which we share no discourse." Amis's alignment as a self-described "Islamismophobe" puts him in a similar orbit with sometime friend and sometime rival Christopher Hitchens, save that, unlike Hitchens, Amis does not support the war in Iraq, as one of the pieces, an in-flight interview with Tony Blair, makes clear. (But then, that interview hints, Blair didn't much like the war either.) Amis is rather less blustery than Hitchens; one piece is a surprisingly empathetic attempt to get inside 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta's mind. As always, Amis proves eminently readable, his observations enlightening. Who other would ascribe to Kuwait City an "almost artistic cheerlessness" that speaks to the deadening touch of women-hating fundamentalism "under a sinister mist of damp dust"? Amis may not make any friends among the PC set, but he makes clear and inarguable the fact thatthe Islamist enemy is an enemy of reason, just like Hitler and Stalin. "The only thing Islamism can dominate, for now, is the evening news," Amis concludes in good fighting spirit. His book fires a welcome, left-tending salvo.



Thursday, November 26, 2009

Freire for the Classroom or Compassionate Statistics

Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching

Author: Ira Shor

An anthology of essays by teachers using Paulo Freire's methods in their classrooms.



Books about: Regolazioni di sicurezze in breve

Compassionate Statistics: Applied Quantitative Analysis for Social Services (With Exercises and Instructions for SPSS)

Author: Vincent E Faherty

Compassionate Statistics: Applied Quantitative Analysis for Social Services (With Instructions for SPSS 14.0) is an attempt to "de-mythologize" a content area that is both essential for professional social service practitioners, yet dreaded by some of the most experienced among them. Using friendly, straightforward language as well as concrete illustrations and exercises from social service practice, author Vincent E. Faherty catapults students and experienced professionals to a pragmatic level where they can handle quantitative analysis for all their research and evaluation needs.

Key Features

  • Provides comprehensive coverage of the most important aspects of quantitative analysis: This is a complete, yet pragmatic, resource for social service professionals to use standard descriptive and inferential statistical techniques.
  • Offers an accessible format: Using unpretentious and plain language, this book introduces essential statistical procedures, one-at-a-time, in relatively short chapters in order to assist recall and facilitate new learning.
  • Applies statistical content to social service practice situations: Concrete applications are drawn from counseling, criminal justice, human services, social work, therapeutic recreation and vocational rehabilitation.
  • Presents case illustrations of how statistical material is reported in professional literature: Since social service professionals need to write up the results of their quantitative analysis, this book provides actual illustrations of how the various statistical procedures and tests are presented inpublished articles.
  • Addresses the use of SPSS on each covered statistical procedure and test: Specific directions are given so students can use the latest version of SPSS to complete each assigned exercise.
  • Includes in-chapter exercises: A series of realistic data sets that students can use to perform a number of planned exercises are offered in each chapter.
Intended Audience
This is an excellent core or supplemental text for a variety of advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Statistics for Social Services, Applied Statistics, Quantitative Analysis for Social Services, Statistics for Social Work, Social Science Research, Research Methods, Program Evaluation, and Grant Writing in the departments of counseling, human services, social services, social work, therapeutic recreation, and vocational rehabilitation.



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction, Overview, and Nondefinitions
2. Levels of Data: Nominal, Ordinal, and Scale
3. Presenting Data in Tables
4. Presenting Data in Figures
5. The 3 Ms: Mean, Median, and Mode
6. Standard Deviations, Ranges, and Quartiles
7. Other Descriptive Statistics
8. Probability and Statistical Significance
9. Chi-Square Test of Independence
10. Correlation: Scattergrams
11. Correlation: Spearman's rho and Pearson's r
12. t-Test for Paired Samples
13. t-Test for Independent Samples
14. One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) With Post Hoc Tests
15. Nonparametric Alternatives to Common Parametric Tests Appendix A: Getting Started With SPSS Appendix B: SPSS Data Sets Appendix C: Outline of Common Univariate and Bivariate Statistical Procedures Appendix D: Outline of Common Parametric and Nonparametric Inferential Tests Appendix E: Table of Random Numbers With Instructions Appendix F: Glossary of Terms Index About the Author Appendix E: Table of Random Numbers with Instructions Appendix F: Glossary of Terms About the Author

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Financial Statecraft or Freedoms Power

Financial Statecraft: The Role of Financial Markets in American Foreign Policy

Author: Benn Steil

As trade flows expanded and trade agreements proliferated after World War II, governments—most notably the United States—came increasingly to use their power over imports and exports to influence the behavior of other countries. But trade is not the only way in which nations interact economically. Over the past two decades, another form of economic exchange has risen to a level of vastly greater significance and political concern: the purchase and sale of financial assets across borders. Nearly $2 trillion worth of currency now moves cross-border every day, roughly 90 percent of which is accounted for by financial flows unrelated to trade in goods and services—a stunning inversion of the figures in 1970. The time is ripe to ask fundamental questions about what Benn Steil and Robert Litan have coined as “financial statecraft,” or those aspects of economic statecraft directed at influencing international capital flows. How precisely has the American government practiced financial statecraft? How effective have these efforts been? And how can they be made more effective? The authors provide penetrating and incisive answers in this timely and stimulating book.

Foreign Affairs

Steil and Litan note an increasing tendency by the United States to try to influence international capital flows in order to further its foreign policy goals — whether to punish errant countries, inhibit the proliferation of nuclear weapons, slow the financing of terrorism, or prevent the laundering of drug money. The authors call this "financial statecraft" and provide a trenchant critical analysis of these efforts, which often turn out to involve symbolic politics at its worst: they have no impact on the stated objective, because the scope and operation of financial markets are now worldwide; they harm U.S. economic interests; and in some cases, they harm the alleged beneficiaries (refugees in the Sudan, for example). But the authors also argue that in certain respects the United States has engaged in too little financial statecraft. They attribute the financial crises of emerging markets during the past decade largely to the existence of separate national currencies and make a spirited case for "dollarization" — the adoption of the U.S. dollar, or perhaps the euro, as a replacement for national currencies by many developing countries. The United States, they argue, should facilitate that policy by sharing with such adopters the modest financial gains, called seigniorage, that arise from issuing a currency widely used by the public.



Read also John Barleycorn or Lemongrass and Sweet Basil

Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism

Author: Paul Starr

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author, journalist, and intellectual argues for liberalism as the only viable response to the political and economic challenges of the modern world.

Liberalism in America is in greater peril than at any other time in recent history. Conservatives treat it as an epithet, and even some liberals have confused it with sentimentality and socialism. But Paul Starr, one of America's leading intellectuals, claims that, properly understood, liberalism is a sturdy public philosophy, deeply rooted in our traditions, capable of making America a freer and more secure country.

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" remains as good a definition of liberalism's aims today as it was when Thomas Jefferson borrowed the language of John Locke for the Declaration of Independence. From its origins as constitutional liberalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the complexities of today's global political systems liberalism has provided the basis of the most prosperous and powerful states in the world. At a time when conservative policies are weakening America's long-term fiscal, economic, and international strength as well as its liberties, reinstating the power of liberalism is more urgent than ever.

The New York Times - Michael Lind

Freedom's Power is an impressive achievement that deserves to be pondered by the critics of contemporary American liberalism no less than by its supporters.

The Washington Post - Lynn Hunt

Riding to the rescue of those still traumatized by 20 years or more of successful demonization by the Republicans, Paul Starr…offers a lucid and well-informed explanation of the origins, history and current prospects of liberalism. Starr's achievement is not minor, for liberalism is devilishly difficult to pin down…Starr has more in mind, however, than a useful historical survey; he aims to provide a guide for the present. Believing that American conservatives have failed to achieve much of substance while in power these past decades, he senses an "opportunity to rebuild a political majority by showing how liberal ideas make sense for America and by reopening a conversation with people who believe that liberals have not shown any concern or respect for them." He is much more successful at justifying liberal ideas than at reaching out to skeptics.

Publishers Weekly

Part political theory and part intellectual history, this book tracks the development of liberalism as the world's dominant political tradition and argues for its continued ascendancy as the best guarantor of individual rights and prosperity on the global stage. Starr, a Princeton sociology and public affairs professor and founding editor of the American Prospect, explains modern liberalism as an evolutionary process, rooted in classical laissez-faire liberalism, and gradually accreting a greater role for the state to provide a social safety net, defend equal rights for all and institute true democratic pluralism. Defending liberalism from its socialist as well as its conservative critics, Starr sees his ideology as a middle path, harnessing the creative power of the free market while tempering some of its capriciousness. A central thesis is that "[t]he peculiar internal tension of liberal constitutions is that they constrain power even as they authorize it—that is, they attempt to curb the despotic power and ambitions of individual rulers and officials and, by doing so, to permit stronger systemic capacities." The first section of the book discusses the causes and consequences of liberal revolutions in Britain, America and France, while later chapters cover recent events, including the 2006 congressional elections. Complex macroeconomic, demographic and philosophical trends are presented engagingly and understandably for casual readers and political buffs alike. (Apr.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Foreign Affairs

Starr, a distinguished political sociologist, offers an eloquent restatement of the principles and promise of modern liberalism. In recent decades, the "liberal project" in the United States seems to have lost its way, while conservatism has come into its own. Starr sets out to recover the guiding ideas of American liberalism and defend their relevance today. Part of his book is a sweeping intellectual history of "constitutional liberalism" -- a retelling of the great movements of Anglo-American liberal political development, in which citizenship rights and limited government were secured. He argues that liberalism is not simply a set of principles about freedom and equality but a "discipline of power" -- ideas about how to both control and create power. Accordingly, the singular achievement of liberalism has been restricting arbitrary power and thereby unleashing the ability of society to generate wealth, knowledge, inclusion, and opportunity. Starr acknowledges the decline of liberal innovation in recent the decades, but he resists the conservative charge that New Frontier and Great Society liberalism was tried and failed. To reinvigorate the liberal project, he urges a public philosophy of "partnership," which at home means moving beyond interest-group liberalism and abroad means a return to multilateralism and a community of democracies. Starr's contribution is to help restart the national conversation about the sources of American greatness.

Jack Forman - Library Journal

Written as "a rebuttal to contemporary conservatism and as a corrective to some currents of liberal thought and progressive politics," this intellectual history and political analysis attempts to show that modern liberalism is really a continuation of the classic liberal tradition, emphasizing constitutional government and individual rights. Starr (sociology & public affairs, Princeton Univ.; editor, The American Prospect; The Social Transformation of American Medicine) defines liberalism as "a design of power in support of freedom" and argues clearly and convincingly for liberalism as a middle ground between conservatism and socialism. In discussing the development of classical liberalism and modern democratic liberalism, Starr ranges far and wide over English, French, and American history. In looking at the present, he attacks Bush's unilateralism, insensitivity to the world's environmental problems, and lack of concern for economic equality. He believes that liberalism can regain a national majority by looking at domestic bread-and-butter issues in terms of the national interest rather than the objectives of specific interest groups and by recommitting to a multilateral approach to foreign policy. For academic and larger public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Pulitzer Prize-winner Starr (The Creation of the Media, 2004, etc.) is liberal and proud of it. The editor of The American Prospect offers a decidedly upbeat account of the liberal tradition. It best reflects America's founding ideals of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," argues Starr (Sociology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.), and has proven a workable basis for strong, enduring liberal democracies in our time. In its broadest meaning, he writes, liberalism refers to the principles of constitutional government and individual rights that emerged in the 17th- and 18th-century writings of such thinkers as Locke, Montesquieu and Madison. It animated the American and French Revolutions and led to the birth of the modern liberal state. By constraining arbitrary power and unleashing freedom's power, constitutional liberalism sought to create a free, fair and prosperous society. Beginning in the late-19th century, democratic forces spurred the rise of modern liberalism, with its penchant for government regulation, stronger protection of civil liberties and respect for cultural diversity. While criticized from both the right and left, liberal democracies work, Starr avers. They have proven flexible, pragmatic and successful; they have weathered depressions and world wars. In the 1960s, when many deemed liberalism a failure, they fostered a great moral transformation that rectified injustices, expanded freedom and democracy and changed America for the better. Analyzing the consequences of the Bush administration's conservative policies-growing economic inequality, environmental deterioration, long-term fiscal problems, the Iraq War-the author believes liberals now have anopportunity to build a political majority and lead the nation in a progressive direction. To do so, they must develop organizational strength, achieve intellectual coherence reflecting liberal principles and create a program based on shared prosperity. An informed and eloquent case for liberalism as the American way.



Saturday, February 21, 2009

Red Moon Rising or Exemplar of Liberty

Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age

Author: Matthew Brzezinski

“In his exuberant narrative of the superpower space race . . . [Brzezinski] tells the story of American and Soviet decisions with remarkable dramatic—even cinematic—flair.”—The New York Times Book Review

In Red Moon Rising, Matthew Brzezinski recounts the dramatic behind-the-scenes story of the fierce battles on earth that preceded and followed the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. He takes us inside the Kremlin, the White House, secret military facilities, deep-cover safe houses, and the halls of Congress to bring to life the Russians and Americans who feared and distrusted their compatriots at least as much as their superpower rivals.

Drawing on original interviews and new documentary sources, Brzezinski tells a story rich in the paranoia of the time. The combatants include three U.S. presidents, survivors of the gulag, corporate chieftains, ambitious apparatchiks, rehabilitated Nazis, and a general who won the day by refusing to follow orders. The true story of the birth of the space age has never been told in such dramatic detail, and Red Moon Rising brings it vividly and memorably to life.

The Washington Post - Bryan Burrough

…however broad Brzezinski's strokes, one comes away not only entertained but informed, with a clear sense of why the pennywise Soviets leapt ahead in missile technology while the Americans, focused on developing bombers to reach Russian soil, failed to realize the importance of space until they woke beneath a communist moon…Throughout, Brzezinski remains in firm control, carving a fast-moving narrative from his own interviews and the research of others…In the end, what you think of Red Moon Rising probably depends on what you expect from popular history. Want a fun, easy read, something you can gulp down while idling in the after-school pickup line? Buy it. Want something comprehensive, authoritative, Caro-like? Pass. Whatever your preference, keep in mind the name Matthew Brzezinski. This book feels like a practice run from a young author destined for big things.

The New York Times - Mark Atwood Lawrence

There is nothing especially new in Red Moon Rising, which is heavily indebted to painstaking research by legions of historians who came before. But Brzezinski, a former Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, tells the story of American and Soviet decisions with remarkable dramatic—even cinematic—flair.

Publishers Weekly

The writing is fast-paced and crisp, the stakes high and the tension palpable from the first pages of this high-flying account of the early days of the space race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., a race ignited by the Soviet launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. Brzezinski (Fortress America), a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, says this battle for military and technological control of space, part of the larger Cold War, had lasting consequences. Brzezinski illuminates how the space race divided Americans: for instance, then Sen. Lyndon Johnson wanted to aggressively pursue the race, but President Eisenhower thought the ambitious senator was merely seeking publicity. The author also dissects the failed American spin: despite White House claims that Sputnik was no big deal, the media knew it was huge. Sputnik II, launched a month later, was even more unsettling for Americans, causing them to question their "way of life." The principals-Khrushchev, Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, rocket scientist Werner von Braun-are vividly realized. Yet even more than his absorbing narrative, Brzezinski's final analysis has staying power: although the U.S. caught up to the U.S.S.R., it was the Russians' early dominance in space that established the Soviet Union as a superpower equal to America. (Sept.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Kirkus Reviews

The famous satellite's shiny metal orb reflects the entire nerve-racking history of Soviet/American relations during the Cold War. Brzezinski (Fortress America: On the Front Lines of Homeland Security-An Inside Look at the Coming Surveillance State, 2004, etc.) brings years of experience as a Moscow-based journalist to bear on his subject, the very earliest days of the space race. His exhaustive research among newly opened archives in both Moscow and Washington is evident. He begins with a terse, dramatic description of a V-2 rocket attack on London before moving on to the cutthroat contest between former allies to find, isolate and capture Hitler's rocket technology, including the visionary scientists like Werner Von Braun (see Michael J. Neufeld's Von Braun, 2007, for more information) who created it. The story is told in fast-paced, parallel narratives with the taut undertones of a spy novel as Brzezinski intertwines the Sputnik program's technical achievements with the global conflict growing between the emerging superpowers led by Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev. Though the author focuses primarily on events leading to the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, subsequent chapters cover the launch of Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite in February of 1958. In the process, Brzezinski demonstrates, America and Russia both changed drastically as a new culture of competition emerged. His anecdotes range from absurd (Von Braun and actor Ronald Reagan host a Disney program on "Tomorrowland") to prescient (Eisenhower observes that a war waged with atomic missiles "would be just complete, indiscriminate devastation") to terrifying (as Moscow detonates its first atomic bomb, GeneralCurtis LeMay grumbles over the lost opportunity to completely destroy Russia with an anticipatory atomic attack). Extrapolating the space race's impact on future technology, the author offers largely superfluous and obvious conclusions in the epilogue. Otherwise, his well-drawn expose of this fundamental conflict is first-rate. A chilling portrait of rocket scientists and cold warriors at work. Agent: Scott Waxman/Waxman Literary Agency



Book about: Cosmetic Surgery or Astanga Yoga

Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy (Native American Politics Series No. 3)

Author: Donald A Grind

A definitive study of how the founders of the United states combined European, American and Indian ideas into a new political system.

Booknews

Explains how to implement logic programming languages on parallel computers to most effectively exploit the inherent parallelism of the language and efficiently utilize the parallel architecture of the computer. Assumes basic knowledge of Prolog. No index. Maintaining the thesis that the character of American democracy evolved importantly from the examples provided by the American Indian confederacies that bordered the British colonies, the authors provide a thoroughly researched picture of how these native confederacies operated, and how important architects of American institutions and ideals perceived them. Published by the American Indian Studies Center, 3220 Campbell Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1548. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)



Friday, February 20, 2009

Adam Smith in Beijing or The Myth of Moral Justice

Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century

Author: Giovanni Arrighi

An authoritative exploration of China's emergence as the most dynamic center of economic and commercial expansion in the world today.

In the late eighteenth century, the political economist Adam Smith predicted an eventual equalization of power between the conquering West and the conquered non-West. In this magisterial new work, Giovanni Arrighi shows how China's extraordinary rise invites us to read The Wealth of Nations in a radically different way than is usually done. He examines how the recent US attempt to bring into existence the first truly global empire in world history was conceived in order to counter China's spectacular economic success of the 1990s, and how the US's disastrous failure in Iraq has made the People's Republic of China the true winner of the US War on Terror. In the 21st century, China may well become again the kind of non-capitalist market economy that Smith described, under totally different domestic and world-historical conditions.

Jim Doyle - Library Journal

Here are the experiences of five British veterans who survived World War I physically but came home damaged goods. It is the psychic impact of the horrific war that Barrett (English, Univ. of London; Imagination in Theory) examines through the experiences of Willis Brown, Douglas Darling, Ronald Skirth, William Tyrrell, and Lawrence Gameson. Each was the victim of shell shock or what is now known as posttraumatic stress disorder. Yet Barrett reveals that these succinct mental classifications do not do justice to what these men experienced. It was the cumulative effect of death as a constant companion that changed these veterans forever. They all returned home to apparently normal lives but beneath the surface there was illness, alcoholism, bitterness, and depression. Through interviews with the soldiers' descendants and a careful reading of archival material buried in the Imperial War Museum, Barrett evokes the bloody crucible these five men passed through. She may be criticized for not offering more in-depth documentation of the archival resources used, but no one will question the authenticity of her compelling characterizations of these five veterans of the Great War. Sadly, this is a timely work. A worthy addition to the extensive literature on the mental health of combat veterans; recommended for all libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

A collective biography of five shell-shocked veterans of trench warfare. Delving into mountains of personal papers, letters and photographs in London's Imperial War Museum, Barrett (Modern Literary and Cultural Theory/Queen Mary, Univ. of London; Imagination in Theory: Culture, Writing, Words, and Things, 1999, etc.) tells stories of three soldiers and two military doctors. All witnessed terrible things, suffered mental breakdowns and seemed to recover, but the experience permanently colored their lives. Investigating the flood of psychiatric casualties among uninjured soldiers, World War I physicians preferred an organic cause, so the term "shell shock" entered the vocabulary. Experts explained that soldiers in proximity to explosions suffered subtle brain injuries, but readers will share the author's shock at discovering how much the simple horror of trench life contributed to their breakdowns. Soldiers walked, slept, ate and fought among dead and rotting bodies and body parts. The smell of decaying corpses grew more intense during the summer and after battles, but it never vanished. "I thought by now the horrors of war could no longer shock me. I was wrong," writes Bombardier Ronald Skirth. "It must have been some ghoulish influence that drew me to the old battlefield and three months after the fighting had ceased the mangled, putrefying bodies of men and beasts still lay awaiting burial." Classic WWI memoirs (by Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and others) mention disgusting details of trench warfare, but those were written for publication and after time had softened the memories. The soldiers profiled here recorded their uncensored feelings on the spot. "The significant context ofthese life stories," writes Barrett, "is not what can be remembered, but what has survived for us to study." Fear and the death of comrades figure prominently, but it was the nauseating sights and smells that dominated their thoughts. When one of the author's subjects, a doctor, revealed this to a postwar Parliamentary investigation into shell-shock, it was censored. A unique contribution to war literature.



See also: Managing Business Process Flows or The Definitive ANTLR Reference

The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right

Author: Thane Rosenbaum

We are obsessed with watching television shows and feature films about lawyers, reading legal thrillers, and following real-life trials. Yet, at the same time, most of us don't trust lawyers and hold them and the legal system in very low esteem.

In The Myth of Moral Justice, law professor and novelist Thane Rosenbaum suggests that this paradox stems from the fact that citizens and the courts are at odds when it comes to their definitions of justice. With a lawyer's expertise and a novelist's sensability, Rosenbaum tackles complicated philosophical questions about our longing for moral justice. He also takes a critical look at what our legal system does to the spirits of those who must come before the law, along with those who practice within it.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Kirsch

Rosenbaum seems to realize that there is not much chance that his proposed reforms will be adopted in any formal sense, and he readily acknowledges that many lawyers will find the whole idea to be "ludicrous." But his book ought to be required reading in law schools and continuing legal education classes, if only because at least a few of his readers will be humanized by the experience. And that is, above all, what "The Myth of Moral Justice" is really about.

The New York Times - Dahlia Lithwick

Rosenbaum should still be read by every law student in America. His assessment of attorneys as unhappy shells of people and his statistics about the rates of depression and addiction remind us of the dangers inherent in locking your heart in the parking lot each morning. Being more empathetic, attempting to broker compromise, encouraging parties to apologize, becoming, as he puts it, ''feelers'' rather than mere ''thinkers'' -- all are crucial steps toward making lawyers emotionally intact again. But the single most moral thing lawyers can do is to urge clients to understand that even if they win their case they won't necessarily be happy and that they can't get their old life back. That happens in church, or therapy, if it happens at all. The myth behind The Myth of Moral Justice is that the law would be more moral if it could become more than it is. The truth is, we'd all be better off if we looked to it for far less.

Publishers Weekly

A professor at Fordham Law School, Rosenbaum (The Golems of Gotham) observes that American culture is enthralled by lawyers and courtroom proceedings, yet Americans distrust lawyers and find the quality of justice in this country deficient. He ascribes this what he feels is ambivalence regarding the lack of morality and emotional complexity in law offices and in courtrooms. Rosenbaum calls for a "morally inspired transformation of the legal system," a "massive attitude adjustment" that would replace the sterile formality of the law with conscience and spirituality. To accomplish this, he advocates fewer settlements of cases and more trials, at which injured parties would be permitted, even encouraged, to vent rage at their oppressors. A novelist as well as teacher of law and literature, Rosenbaum believes in the power of storytelling as a means of healing and insists the storytelling should continue even after judgment is entered. A second trial phase should immediately convene, one in which all participants would discuss their grief, disappointment and shame. No one would be permitted to leave until all the stories had been told in full. On other themes, Rosenbaum urges that a duty to rescue should be recognized in American law as a moral imperative, and endorses apologies as beneficial to victims and wrongdoers alike. Readers will recognize that this book is more visionary than practical, and lawyers will be annoyed at the author's scolding and superior tone. But perhaps provoking lawyers is part of the book's point. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Rosenbaum (law, Fordham Univ.) here critiques the current state of the legal system, decrying its lack of a soul or tenderness. He argues that the system fails to consider the basic question of why people bring lawsuits or prosecute criminals. The desire for a moral lesson, an apology, or an ability to express feelings is currently suppressed by the law. Using examples from movies, plays, and fiction, he contrasts the grievances and expectations of justice of individuals entering the system and the institutionalized results the system delivers. Rosenbaum suggests that the law should provide moral remedies and strive to restore human relationships for the good of the entire community. He further argues that, instead of reducing damages to dollars and cents, the law should require apologies to the injured. This well-written book ranges widely in its use of examples, which include the Torah, Seinfeld, and the courtroom movies of John Grisham. Recommended for large collections.-Harry Charles, Attorney at Law, St. Louis Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.



Table of Contents:
Introduction1
1Doing the right thing : the split between the moral and the legal11
2A new paradigm of moral justice30
3Pound of flesh48
4Story as remedy61
5The various faces of grief79
6Aborted trials and lying under the law92
7The best-kept secrets of zealous advocates114
8Forbidden emotions in a world out of order139
9Judges who feign not having feelings157
10Apology as moral antidote to the legal disease179
11Apologies in practice194
12Restoration or revenge212
13Repair in practice226
14The non-duty to rescue under American law246
15Rescue as moral imperative258
16The law's preference for the body over the soul266
17Frustrated lawyers and the public's discontent285
18The artist and the law296
Conclusion313
Acknowledgments319
Notes321
Index341

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Citizenship Papers or Spinoza

Citizenship Papers

Author: Wendell Berry

There are those in America today who seem to feel we must audition for our citizenship, with "Patriot" offered as the badge for those found narrowly worthy. Let this book stand as Wendell Berry's application, for he is one of those faithful, devoted critics envisioned by the Founding Fathers to be the life's blood and very future of the nation they imagined. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison would have found great clarity in his prose and great hope in his vision. And today's readers will be moved and encouraged by his anger and his refusal to surrender in the face of desperate odds. Books get written for all sorts of reasons, and this book was written out of necessity. Citizenship Papers, a collection of 19 essays, is a ringing call of alarm to a nation standing on the brink of global catastrophe.

Kirkus Reviews

Cagey uses of the essay as a town meeting to air threats to the commonweal. Our times are uneasy, Berry (Jayber Crow, 2000, etc.) states; critical elements of the American democratic tradition are being lifted wholesale from the foundation and carted away in broad daylight. A case in point is our new national-security policy, which "depends on the acquiescence of a public kept fearful and ignorant, subject to manipulation by the executive power, and on the compliance of an intimidated and office-dependent legislature." That ignorance will spell our doom, as will the "selfishness, wastefulness, and greed that we have legitimized here as economic virtues." Berry doesn't flinch when exhorting us to meet "the responsibility to be as intelligent, principled, and practical as we can be." His agrarian argument, which he has been making and remaking for decades, requires the recognition of our dependence on and responsibility to nature, and the concomitant responsibility for human culture. Likewise, Berry champions human-scale projects and an intimate knowledge of-not to mention reverence and gratitude for-our landscapes. "Consumers who understand their economy," he contends, "will not tolerate the destruction of the local soil or ecosystem or watershed as a cost of production." His refusal to abandon the local for the global, to sacrifice neighborliness, community integrity, and economic diversity for access to Wal-Mart, has never seemed more appealing, nor his questions of personal accountability more powerful. Where did the meat on our plates come from? Under what conditions were the clothes we're wearing made? Does biotechnology make sense considering the unforeseeable consequences? Mostblistering of all: "How many deaths of other people's children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) 'at peace'?" A clangor of worries, offering the antidotes of civility, responsibility, curiosity, skill, kindness, and an awareness of the homeplace.



Table of Contents:
A Citizen's Response1
Thoughts in the Presence of Fear17
The Failure of War23
Going to Work33
In Distrust of Movements43
Twelve Paragraphs on Biotechnology53
Let the Farm Judge57
The Total Economy63
A Long Job, Too Late to Quit77
Two Minds85
The Prejudice Against Country People107
The Whole Horse113
Stupidity in Concentration127
Watershed and Commonwealth135
The Agrarian Standard143
Still Standing153
Conservationist and Agrarian165
Tuscany175
Is Life a Miracle?181

Book review: Xbox 360 Achievements or Real World Nikon Capture NX

Spinoza: Theological-Political Treatise

Author: Benedictus de Spinoza

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise (1670) is one of the most important philosophical works of the early modern period. In it Spinoza discusses at length the historical circumstances of the composition and transmission of the Bible, demonstrating the fallibility of both its authors and its interpreters. He argues that free enquiry is not only consistent with the security and prosperity of a state but actually essential to them, and that such freedom flourishes best in a democratic and republican state in which individuals are left free while religious organizations are subordinated to the secular power. His Treatise has profoundly influenced the subsequent history of political thought, Enlightenment 'clandestine' or radical philosophy, Bible hermeneutics, and textual criticism more generally. It is presented here in a new translation of great clarity and accuracy by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel, with a substantial historical and philosophical introduction by Jonathan Israel.