This House Has Fallen or When States Fail

This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis

Author: Karl Maier

To understand Africa, you have to understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. In the tradition of Philip Gourevitch's bestselling We Regret to Inform You... and Redmond O'Hanlon's No Mercy, This House Has Fallen is a bracing, disturbing, evocative report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dysfunctional nation.

Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared the most corrupt state in the entire world. A nation into which billions of dollars of oil money flow, Nigeria's per capita income has dramatically fallen in the past two decades. All of the money has been stolen by elites. Also stolen has been democracy. Nigeria's leaders tend to elect themselves, often with the help of a gun. Military coup follows military coup. A rare democratic election is often merely a prelude to the next seizure of power by a general who wants greater access to the state's rapidly depleted vaults. A country of rising ethnic tensions and falling standards of living, Nigeria is a bellwether for Africa. And yet some think it is on the verge of utter collapse, a collapse that could overshadow even the massacres in Rwanda.

A brilliant piece of reportage and travel writing, this book looks into the Nigerian abyss and comes away with insight, profound conclusions, and even some hope.

Africa Confidential - Patrick Smith

Maier deftly combines history, journalism, and a novelist's eye for detail to tell the Nigerian story, but most of all he lets the country's diverse and energetic voices speak for themselves.

Financial Times - Michael Holman

If you care about Africa, if you are fearful for its future, baffled by its complexity, astonished by its resilience, read This House Has Fallen by Karl Maier. Few reporters can match the author's capacity to get to the heart of a nation and assess the hopes and fears of its people.

Booklist

Maier (author of the internationally well-received Into the House of the Ancestors, 1998) explores the promise and paradox of Nigeria, a nation of fractious ethnic groups, legendary corruption, and bountiful resources, overseen by dictators for all but 0 years since its independence in 1960….This is a revealing look at a complex and troubled nation.

Publishers Weekly

Maier puts a human face on a disheartening situation that seems remote and impersonal to most Americans.

The Economist - Richard Dowden

To most of us Nigeria is a mysterious country, hot, scary, and a long way off. Coolly, clearly, Maier tells its extraordinary story; sometimes horrifying, often hilarious, never boring. If it offers little hope for Nigeria, this book inspires admiration for the resilience, resourcefulness, and humanity of Nigerians. The best book on contemporary Africa for years.

Booknews

It has become a clich<'e> that Nigeria is the most corrupt nation in Africa, even in the world <-->a nation receiving billions of petrodollars while 90 percent of the populace slogs through poverty thick as oil; a country so shot through by repeated military coups and political corruption it faces collapse. Maier, a reporter with a respectable list of books and journal articles behind him, introduces readers to Nigeria's military leaders, its soldiers for democracy, and its peoples<-->the Igbos, Yorubas, Hausas, Fulanis, Tivs, and Ijaws. Through them, conflicts are investigated: that between Big Oil and the Ijaw and the Ogoni (recall the story of Ken Saro- Wiwa), between Christians and Muslims in Northern Nigeria over the move to impose Islamic law, and Yoruban youth in Lagos demanding a separate Yoruban state. Geared toward a generally educated, rather than an academic audience. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Financial Times - Michael Holman

If you care about Africa, if you are fearful for its future, baffled by its complexity, astonished by its resilience, read This House Has Fallen by Karl Maier . . . Few reporters can match the author's capacity to get to the heart of a nation and assess the hopes and fears of its people.

Mother Jones

With a firm grasp of Nigeria's embattled past -- military coups, secessionist uprisings, clashes in the oil-rich Niger River Delta -- Maier examines the nation's cracked foundation and broken pillars.

The Economist - Richard Dowden

To most of us Nigeria is a mysterious country, hot, scary and a long way off. Cooly, clearly, Maier tells its extraordinary story; sometimes horrifying, often hilarious, never boring. If it offers little hope for Nigeria, this book inspires admiration for the resilience, resourcefulness and humanity of Nigerians. The best book on contemporary Africa for years.

Business Week

. . . THIS HOUSE HAS FALLEN is the absorbing, heartbreaking story of Nigeria from its creation in 1960 through forty years of failure and disappointment to a time of renewal--apparent renewal, we had better say. Maier's firm grip on history and keen journalistic eye produce an analysis that is grimly realistic. [He] captures the sorrows and laughter of a nation that is desperate and resilient all at once.

Kirkus Reviews

Vivid scenes from a potential meltdown, as veteran Africa reporter Maier (Into the House of the Ancestors, 1997) gives the history of Nigeria and suggests that regional tensions and pervasive corruption threaten its survival. Like many journalists, Maier is at his best when reporting on events or interviewing newsmakers and ordinary citizens. He is less successful at making those incisive connections that transform reportage into history. Nigeria, which he describes as "perhaps the largest failed state in the Third World," was only formed in 1914, when the British united the tribes of the Niger delta with those of the north and central region. These tribes had, and continue to have, little in common: the northerners are mostly Muslim and (because they dominate the military) have led most of the post-independence governments that seized power unconstitutionally. Delta tribes like the Ogoni were once enriched by trade—first in slaves and then in palm oil—but they have lately failed to benefit from the oil discovered in the region. The central tribes, mostly Christian, resent the role of the northerners in the coups that have roiled Nigeria, and their efforts to establish Muslim law—the Sharia. Maier visits each region and talks with its leaders and community activists. He meets General Babangida (whose decision to annul elections in 1993 provoked a national crisis) and the family of noted writer and Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa (who was executed in 1995 despite an international outcry). He notes that although Nigeria has earned $280 billion from its oil, at least half the population is poor and lacks access to clean water. Literacy is below that of the DemocraticRepublic ofCongo, and a wealthy ten percent enrich themselves at the expense of the rest. The current ruler, former General Obasanjo, was democratically elected in 1999, and Maier believes (although he is unable to convey much conviction after this depressing litany) that he represents Nigeria's last chance to avoid falling apart. A quick and lively study that doesn't dig too deep.

Go to: Foundation Form Creation with Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES or How to Write and Publish Your Own eBook in as Little as 7 Days

When States Fail: Causes and Consequences

Author: Robert I Rotberg

Since 1990, more than 10 million people have been killed in the civil wars of failed states, and hundreds of millions more have been deprived of fundamental rights. The threat of terrorism has only heightened the problem posed by failed states. When States Fail is the first book to examine how and why states decay and what, if anything, can be done to prevent them from collapsing. It defines and categorizes strong, weak, failing, and collapsed nation-states according to political, social, and economic criteria. And it offers a comprehensive recipe for their reconstruction.

The book comprises fourteen essays by leading scholars and practitioners who help structure this disparate field of research, provide useful empirical descriptions, and offer policy recommendations. Robert Rotberg's substantial opening chapter sets out a theory and taxonomy of state failure. It is followed by two sets of chapters, the first on the nature and correlates of failure, the second on methods of preventing state failure and reconstructing those states that do fail. Economic jump-starting, legal refurbishing, elections, the demobilizing of ex-combatants, and civil society are among the many topics discussed.

All of the essays are previously unpublished. In addition to Rotberg, the contributors include David Carment, Christopher Clapham, Nat J. Colletta, Jeffrey Herbst, Nelson Kasfir, Michael T. Klare, Markus Kostner, Terrence Lyons, Jens Meierhenrich, Daniel N. Posner, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Donald R. Snodgrass, Nicolas van de Walle, Jennifer A. Widner, and Ingo Wiederhofer.

Foreign Affairs

The failure of nation-states is nothing new. But in the age of global terrorism, the consequences of state failure for the international order are potentially much more damaging than ever before. This volume brings together experts to explore the problem of weak states in the developing world and to offer ideas about how to strengthen rights and rule. It is most useful in providing a framework for diagnosing the ailments that afflict states in various stages of decay in Africa, Asia, and Latin America: weak states fail to provide key public goods such as security, law, property rights, banks, schools, and hospitals; failed states (Mobutu Sese Seko's Zaire, the Taliban's Afghanistan) are characterized by chronic violence, corruption, deteriorating infrastructure, and predatory ruling regimes; and in collapsed states (Lebanon in the 1970s, Somalia in the 1980s, Nigeria and Sierra Leone in the 1990s), rule by the gun wipes away any pretense of public authority.

The authors identify many causes of state failure, but almost all cases are associated with civil violence and the rise of warring nonstate groups flush with revenue from minerals or narcotics. The international community can often help resuscitate failed states by sponsoring elections and committing to long-term security protection. But several contributors warn that, in the worst instances, major powers and the United Nations must be willing to "decertify" failed states while parties disarm and the country is put back together.

Table of Contents:

	List of Maps
	Preface
1	The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown, Prevention, and Repair	1
Pt. 1	The Causes and Prevention of Failure	51
2	Domestic Anarchy, Security Dilemmas, and Violent Predation: Causes of Failure	53
3	The Global-Local Politics of State Decay	77
4	The Economic Correlates of State Failure: Taxes, Foreign Aid, and Policies	94
5	The Deadly Connection: Paramilitary Bands, Small Arms Diffusion, and State Failure	116
6	Prevention State Failure	135
Pt. 2	Post-Failure Resuscitation of Nation-States	151
7	Forming States after Failure	153
8	Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration: Lessons and Liabilities in Reconstruction	170
9	Establishing the Rule of Law	182
10	Building Effective Trust in the Aftermath of Severe Conflict	222
11	Civil Society and the Reconstruction of Failed States	237
12	Restoring Economic Functioning in Failed States	256
13	Transforming the Institutions of War: Postconflict Elections and the Reconstruction of Failed States	269
14	Let Them Fail: State Failure in Theory and Practice: Implications for Policy	302
	Contributors	319
	Index	323

Fear of Small Numbers or The Way Home

Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger

Author: Arjun Appadurai

The period since 1989 has been marked by the global endorsement of open markets, the free flow of finance capital and liberal ideas of constitutional rule, and the active expansion of human rights. Why, then, in this era of intense globalization, has there been a proliferation of violence, of ethnic cleansing on the one hand and extreme forms of political violence against civilian populations on the other?

Fear of Small Numbers is Arjun Appadurai’s answer to that question. A leading theorist of globalization, Appadurai turns his attention to the complex dynamics fueling large-scale, culturally motivated violence, from the genocides that racked Eastern Europe, Rwanda, and India in the early 1990s to the contemporary “war on terror.” Providing a conceptually innovative framework for understanding sources of global violence, he describes how the nation-state has grown ambivalent about minorities at the same time that minorities, because of global communication technologies and migration flows, increasingly see themselves as parts of powerful global majorities. By exacerbating the inequalities produced by globalization, the volatile, slippery relationship between majorities and minorities foments the desire to eradicate cultural difference.

Appadurai analyzes the darker side of globalization: suicide bombings; anti-Americanism; the surplus of rage manifest in televised beheadings; the clash of global ideologies; and the difficulties that flexible, cellular organizations such as Al-Qaeda present to centralized, “vertebrate” structures such as national governments. Powerful, provocative, and timely, Fear of Small Numbers is a thoughtful invitation to rethink what violence is in an age of globalization.

What People Are Saying

Charles Taylor
"Arjun Appadurai is already known as the author of striking new formulations which have greatly illuminated contemporary global developments, notably in Modernity at Large. In this new book, he tackles the most burning and perplexing problems of collective violence which beset us today. The book is alive with new and original ideas, essential food for thought not just for scholars, but for all concerned with these issues."
—author of Modern Social Imaginaries

Partha Chatterjee
"In this book, Appadurai follows up Modernity at Large with a look into the seamy side of globalization. Analysing the growing inequalities and endemic violence of the past decade, he still sees signs of hope in less noticed trends of 'globalization from below.' These are important new thoughts from an influential thinker of our times."
—Director, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York

Go to: Geekonomics or Murachs Visual Basic 2005

The Way Home: A German Childhood, an American Life

Author: Ernestine Bradley

In this moving and candid memoir we meet Ernestine Bradley, the wife of former senator and presidential hopeful Bill Bradley. She stood out among Senate wives: a German-born lover of languages and a transplant to America, Ernestine had a full-time career in New Jersey as a professor of comparative literature, commuted weekly to Washington, D.C., and ran two households—she was in constant motion.
As the book opens, Ernestine takes us to the small town of Passau, Germany, her childhood home, offering a vivid picture of ordinary German life during the Nazi period and just after World War II. As kids on the loose while the fathers were away at war and the mothers were working, Ernestine and her pals explored the town’s winding alleys and its three rivers, experiencing a sense of adventure and freedom (despite the privations of war) that would be a touchstone throughout her life. Ernestine vividly describes how she came to see opportunity in defeat as she watched the American troops roll through her little town; this was a primal moment that helped her to face everything that was to come. We follow her as she leaves West Germany, lands a glamorous job as an airline stewardess, and arrives in America, where she marries unhappily and divorces before finally meeting the basketball star and future senator. We watch their romance become an inspiring marriage of equals, his steadiness the perfect complement to her passionate, sometimes flaring nature, as their lives are soon crowded with family, the demands of their individual careers, politics, and, finally, Ernestine’s fight with breast cancer.
This is a wonderful, inspiring story from a woman who hastriumphed—both publicly and personally—against great odds. It is also the introduction to an exuberant voice, one that invites us to reflect on all that we have and on how far we may have to travel to find our way home.

Publishers Weekly

"Memories, to me, are like illuminated islands floating in an ocean of darkness," begins Bradley's memoir. Wife of Bill Bradley, the former senator and candidate for the 2000 presidential election, Ernestine Bradley recounts her rocky childhood in Germany during and after WWII and her move to the U.S. as an adult. Bradley's recollections of her childhood and adolescence in Germany provide an insightful portrait of a family in flux during the Nazi regime, but the flow of emotion is often interrupted by unnecessary parenthetical comments and uncertainty (e.g., "This I don't remember, but it makes sense"). Bradley's parents' intense-and at times unconventional-relationship is a focal point of the author's childhood confusion and adolescent resentment, and inspires heartfelt descriptions. Her strength is apparent as she describes her flight from the confines of her family-appropriately enough as an airline flight attendant-and her subsequent challenges as a wife, mother, academic (in the field of comparative literature) and breast cancer survivor. Her descriptions of her later life are short but accurately relay the difficulties she dealt with as a woman balancing a career and a family during the 1960s and '70s. While at times stiff and defensive, Bradley's memoir is a fine portrait of a childhood spent in wartime and an adult's search for true identity. Illus. Agent, Philippa Brophy. (Mar. 1) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Penelope Power - KLIATT

Ernestine Bradley's autobiography illustrates the value to the US of immigration. Growing up in Germany during WW II gave her a different outlook; her husband says in his autobiography that his wife "was a child of the defeat." Certainly she had a childhood that no native-born American had to experience. However, the thread throughout her book is not the German experience, but the family experience, a universal story. When she writes about mid-century German history she is clear and concise, as befits a professor of literature. When she writes about her own family, the emotional ties to her mother, father and stepfather, she is not so clear. Certainly her relationship with her mother was the most important influence in her life. The war colored her childhood, even if she did not understand the ramifications of the German defeat until she began teaching at Spellman College in Atlanta, in the early 1960s, after the collapse of her first marriage. She then began to appreciate the universal evil of racism through her growing awareness of the Holocaust: when she was growing up no mention was made of Germany's role in the murder of millions of Jews. The author has had experiences on many fronts, beginning with the care of a younger brother and sister at the end of the war. Breast cancer was diagnosed and treated in the early '90s; she has been cancer-free since. (She continues to talk about breast cancer on the lecture circuit.) She was active and involved in her husband's unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. There is much more to Ernestine Bradley's life than immigration. We do, however, appreciate the determination and contribution of immigrants like her with similarstories to tell. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2005, Random House, Anchor, 259p. illus., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

From a childhood in Nazi Germany to work as an airline stewardess to a professorship in comparative literature and marriage to a basketball-playing senator. With a four-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The spouse of the former senator from New Jersey speaks about her history and emotional life. In an autobiography characterized by such thoughts, Ernestine Bradley reveals that sometimes she thinks of herself as "a mangrove tree with roots hanging in the air," a conceit prompted principally by her childhood in postwar Germany. What with American soldiers, ersatz sausages, lice, and a truck that was fueled by wood, it seems to have been the worst of times for kleine Wuschi and her family in the Bavarian town of Passau. She had, it appears, two fathers. There was the loving biological one, who was a member of the Luftwaffe, and then there was the hairdresser, a member of the Nazi party, who was a temporary loving father of convenience for a while. It's little wonder that an operatic attitude dominates the first part of this before-and-after story. In the 1950s, when she was 21 (and had excellent language skills), Ernestine emigrated to the US and the excitement of New York, working as a Pan Am stewardess. Soon, she was living in Atlanta, the wife of a physician and the parent of a daughter. But that life didn't work out. Next, divorced and back in New York, she met the smart pro basketball player. She joined the academic world and settled in New Jersey, married to terrific Bill Bradley. He is, she assures us, the best of husbands, especially during her victorious bout with breast cancer. There are certain lacunae, to be sure, with virtually nothing relating to Senator Bill's career or his run for the Oval Office. Rather, here's Oprah-style self-awareness, presented with careful skill. It might not have helped a presidential campaign, anyway. With its bit of Teutonic flavor, this isn't thestory of a typical Jersey Girl-nor is it the most unusual or gripping of revelatory journeys.

Women at War or Publics and Counterpublics

Women at War: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Conflicts

Author: James E Wis

Today, women in all U.S. military services are involved in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They serve as pilots and crewmen of assault helicopters, bombers, fighters, and transport planes, and are frequently engaged in firefights with enemy insurgents while guarding convoys, traveling in hostile territory, or performing military police duties. Like their male counterparts, they carry out their missions with determination and great courage. The advent of the insurgency war, which has no rear or front lines, has made the debate regarding women in combat irrelevant. In such a war zone anyone can be killed or injured at any moment. The stories of these courageous women are told by James E. Wise and Scott Baron, who use a format similar to the one employed with such success in the book Stars in Blue. The profiles of some thirty women and their photographs are included. To record their stories, the authors conducted numerous personal interviews, and in every case Wise and Baron were struck by the women's extraordinary display of dedication to their mission and to the soldiers and sailors with whom they served. Because the service of women in the military has been under reported to date, most of the women included in this book will be unknown to readers and reveal another dimension to the service of women in the desert and the vital role they play in the armed forces. While the book's focus is on today's women in combat, it also reaches back to Vietnam, Korea, and World War II to offer selected stories of inspiring women who served at the "cusp of the spear" as they fought and died for their country.

Book review: The Merry Baker of Riga or Aromas and Flavors of Past and Present

Publics and Counterpublics

Author: Michael Warner

Most of the people around us belong to our world not directly, as kin or comrades, but as strangers. How do we recognize them as members of our world? We are related to them as transient participants in common publics. Indeed, most of us would find it nearly impossible to imagine a social world without publics. In the eight essays in this book, Michael Warner addresses the question: What is a public?

According to Warner, the idea of a public is one of the central fictions of modern life. Publics have powerful implications for how our social world takes shape, and much of modern life involves struggles over the nature of publics and their interrelations. The idea of a public contains ambiguities, even contradictions. As it is extended to new contexts, politics, and media, its meaning changes in ways that can be difficult to uncover.

Combining historical analysis, theoretical reflection, and extensive case studies, Warner shows how the idea of a public can reframe our understanding of contemporary literary works and politics and of our social world in general. In particular, he applies the idea of a public to the junction of two intellectual traditions: public-sphere theory and queer theory.

War on the Middle Class or Coloniality at Large

War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back

Author: Lou Dobbs

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

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction     1
War on the Middle Class     13
Class Warfare     23
The Best Government Money Can Buy     37
The Politics of Deceit     65
He Says, She Says     76
The Exorbitant Cost of Free Trade     92
Exporting America     108
Broken Borders     131
A Generation of Failure     157
Health Care: It's Enough to Make You Sick     173
The Best of Intentions     186
Taking Back America     197
The Declaration of Independence     215
The Constitution of the United States     221
The Bill of Rights     237
The Constitution: Amendments 11-27     241
Notes     253
Index     269

See also: Right from the Beginning or Law as Politics

Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate

Author: Mabel Morana

Postcolonial theory has developed mainly in the U.S. academy, and it has focused chiefly on nineteenth-century and twentieth-century colonization and decolonization processes in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. Colonialism in Latin America originated centuries earlier, in the transoceanic adventures from which European modernity itself was born. It differs from later manifestations of European expansionism in other ways as well. Coloniality at Large brings together classic and new reflections on the theoretical implications of colonialism in Latin America. By pointing out its particular characteristics, the contributors highlight some of the philosophical and ideological blind spots of contemporary postcolonial theory as they offer a thorough analysis of that theory's applicability to Latin America's past and present.

Written by internationally renowned scholars based in Latin America, the United States, and Europe, the essays reflect multiple disciplinary and ideological perspectives. Some are translated into English for the first time. The essays include theoretical reflections, literary criticism, and historical and ethnographic case studies focused on Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, the Andes, and the Caribbean. Contributors highlight the relation of Marxist thought, dependency theory, and liberation theology to Latin Americans' experience of and resistance to coloniality, and they emphasize the critique of Occidentalism and modernity as central to any understanding of the colonial project. Analyzing the many ways that Latin Americans have resisted imperialism and sought emancipation and sovereignty over several centuries, they delve into topics includingviolence, identity, otherness, memory, heterogeneity, and language. Contributors also explore Latin American intellectuals' ambivalence about, or objections to, the "post" in postcolonial; to many, globalization and neoliberalism are the contemporary guises of colonialism in Latin America.

Attack the Messenger or By Order of the President

Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media

Author: Craig Crawford

Attack the Messenger is an objective look at the loss of public trust in the news media-and the resulting threat to American democracy. Biased, sloppy, and sometimes deceitful reporting is partly to blame, but this book primarily examines how politicians declared war on the media's role as an honest broker of information-and won. Craig Crawford takes readers who crave truth in news through the power struggle between the government and mainstream media, as well as directs them on how to avoid political propaganda and find the most reliable news sources.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Turning the Tables     1
The Setup     3
The Sting     4
The Fallout     10
Media on the Run     11
Blame the Messenger     15
The Downside of the Media's Fall     17
Bring Back Believable Reporting     19
Arrogance Is a Blinding Weakness     22
Media Wimps     23
Standing Up to Power     25
A President Lies     29
Parse That Sentence     30
Choosing to Lie     32
That Other West Wing Affair     33
"I Did Not Have Sexual Relations..."     37
Spinning Lies     43
Gambling with the Truth     44
The Rewards of Lying     47
The History of Propaganda     49
Spinning the Drug War     50
The Spin Room     52
A War Story     59
A Press Subdued     61
Jefferson and Lincoln against the Press     62
The White House Briefing as Performance Art     64
The TV Generals     65
Who Will Tell the Truth?     73
Losing Public Faith     74
Dropping the Ball     75
Media Glory Days     76
Drawing Conclusions     79
The "Dover Test"     81
The End of an Era     87
Rather Moments     90
Chilling Effect     90
Vietnam Redux     91
The Son Rises     96
Winners and Losers     97
Old Media versus New Media     99
A "Huge Assumption"     101
At the Mercy of Spin     102
Fear in the Newsroom     105
The Politicians Win     107
Media Culpa     109
Struggling to Matter     111
My Hate Mail     113
Getting It Wrong     117
Why I Don't Vote     117
Explaining Ourselves     118
How to Get the Real Story     121
C-SPAN     121
The Associated Press     122
Public Broadcasting     125
Don Imus     126
The Gray Ladies     127
Ombudsmen and Critics     128
The National Networks     128
Opinion as News     129
Shouting the News     131
Cable Watch     132
The Internet      134
Old Media's Comeback Trail     137
What Now?     141
Taking the Lead     142
Acknowledging Bias     144
Politicians on the Loose     145
Let Us Be Rude Again     146
Keep It between the Ditches     148
Poll Watch: Public Confidence in the Press     149
Media Resource Guide     155
Notes     163
Index     173
About the Author     181

Book about: The Ruby Way or Mmixware

By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans

Author: Greg Robinson

On February 19, 1942, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and Japanese Army successes in the Pacific, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a fateful order. In the name of security, Executive Order 9066 allowed for the summary removal of Japanese aliens and American citizens of Japanese descent from their West Coast homes and their incarceration under guard in camps. Amid the numerous histories and memoirs devoted to this shameful event, FDR's contributions have been seen as negligible. Now, using Roosevelt's own writings, his advisors' letters and diaries, and internal government documents, Greg Robinson reveals the president's central role in making and implementing the internment and examines not only what the president did but why.

Robinson traces FDR's outlook back to his formative years, and to the early twentieth century's racialist view of ethnic Japanese in America as immutably "foreign" and threatening. These prejudicial sentiments, along with his constitutional philosophy and leadership style, contributed to Roosevelt's approval of the unprecedented mistreatment of American citizens. His hands-on participation and interventions were critical in determining the nature, duration, and consequences of the administration's internment policy.

By Order of the President attempts to explain how a great humanitarian leader and his advisors, who were fighting a war to preserve democracy, could have implemented such a profoundly unjust and undemocratic policy toward their own people. It reminds us of the power of a president's beliefs to influence and determine public policy and of the need for citizen vigilance to protect the rights of all against potential abuses.

Publishers Weekly

In 1942, FDR authorized the army to evacuate more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans from the Pacific Coast states, stripping them not of their citizenship, which he considered "absolute," but of their civil rights, which he considered "contingent." Robinson, a historian at George Mason University, argues that, because of FDR's deserved reputation as a humanitarian, this action has been treated as an aberration and, therefore, not thoroughly explored. In this lucid, comprehensive and balanced examination, Robinson maintains that Roosevelt's decision was, in fact, "not fundamentally inconsistent with his overall political philosophy and world view." Rather, a deep-seated belief that Japanese-Americans were biologically "incapable of being true Americans" enabled FDR, though he "deplored open prejudice," to be "willingly misled" by bad counsel and misinformation about the perceived Japanese-American threat, despite reliable reports, including one by J. Edgar Hoover, to the contrary. Since boyhood, FDR had admired Japan's naval strength, but following Japan's victory over Russia in 1904-1905 and its invasion of China in the 1930s, Roosevelt saw Japan as a potent economic and political rival. Consequently, after the Pearl Harbor attack incited anti-Japanese hysteria, West Coast politicians and the military pressured FDR to take action at home; the president's racist views, compounded by what Robinson describes as his loose administrative style and lack of moral leadership, contributed to his passive indifference toward the physical and psychological fate of a group of Americans. Robinson's conscientious arguments and meticulous documentation movingly clarify a little-understood failure ofAmerican democracy. Agent, Charlotte Sheedy. (Oct. 26) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Prof. John E. Boyd - KLIATT

Although Roosevelt had maintained a longstanding friendly relationship with Japan, the situation began to change in the 1930s as Japan cast her eye on her resource-rich neighbors. War with Japan seemed to be inevitable but FDR wanted Japan to make the first strike. This book examines the people, places, and events surrounding the internment of West Coast Japanese civilians during WW II. It should appeal to serious future history and political science majors, students of WW II, and others who are interested in learning about the mistreatment and confinement of this segment of the population. Terms like "concentration camp" and "the Japanese problem" may conjure up images of Nazi Germany. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which provided the legal base for interment. It was met with opposition, its constitutionality was questioned, and there was no evidence that the West Coast Japanese were a danger to the nation. Once the Japanese were interned, it was difficult to reverse the process and the reasons were not only security: prejudice and greed played a part. The author explores FDR's own prejudices and concerns as well as the events following his death in 1945. He concludes that the president could have done more to protect the rights of those of Japanese ancestry. The writing style and format make it unlikely that YAs are the target audience but those with a serious interest in the topic will find it rewarding. Some will be intimidated by the length, fine print and lack of illustrations. Sections could easily be turned into graduate-level lectures. This is definitely not recreational reading but it might serve as a research tool for topics related to Japanese-American relations from1900—1950. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Harvard Univ. Press, 336p. bibliog. index., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

Robinson (J.N.G. Finley Fellow in History, George Mason Univ.) focuses on one aspect of Roosevelt's presidency during World War II, the internment of Japanese Americans. Two recent books, Kenneth S. Davis's FDR: The War President, 1940-43 (LJ 10/15/01) and Thomas Fleming's The New Dealers' War: F.D.R. and the War within World War II (LJ 6/1/01) only briefly mention the internment. Using memos, reports, diary entries, letters, and other documents written by FDR and his staff, this book offers the first in-depth look at the role of Roosevelt and his advisers in making the decision to intern. While racist attitudes were widespread and many people influenced the final decision to issue Executive Order 9066, Robinson also cites Roosevelt's long-held belief that the Japanese were innately different and therefore did not deserve citizenship. This refusal to accept them as citizens along with considerable war hysteria allowed him to strip them of their rights for the duration of the war. The book sheds some light on a dark episode in our history. For academic and large public libraries, especially World War II and constitutional history collections. Katharine L. Kan, Allen Cty. P.L., Fort Wayne, IN Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A thorough, scholarly, and troubling analysis of FDR's decision in the early days of WWII to hold in internment camps more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans. Robinson (History/George Mason Univ.) begins with an FDR news conference on November 21, 1944, one of the few public occasions when the President even mentioned the internment of tens of thousands of loyal American citizens-a disturbing episode that Robinson calls "a tragedy of democracy." Robinson endeavors to uncover the causes of the decision. He notes that FDR's first government appointment was as an assistant secretary of the Navy, a position that led him to worry about Japanese aggression in the Pacific. In the 1920s, FDR urged a conciliatory position toward the Japanese, hoping that liberal elements in Japanese leadership would be able to soften their government's foreign policy. But in 1924, a US immigration act froze Japanese arrivals, legislation that outraged the Japanese. As their military became more adventurous in the Pacific, anti-Japanese attitudes in America hardened, and racists (especially in California) began to sing their ugly songs. According to Robinson, FDR viewed Japanese-Americans as Japanese first, American second. Despite virulent rumors to the contrary, there was no sabotage of US facilities by Japanese-Americans (as J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly informed FDR), but wartime paranoia (especially after Pearl Harbor) soon held sway. The author also believes political pressures from the West Coast influenced FDR, as did his unenlightened racial views (views not shared by his wife, who crusaded for the release of those interned). The president seems to have been uninterested in hearing contrary opinions-even whenhis principal advisers were urging him to rescind Executive Order 9066, the internment authorization, which he signed on February 19, 1942. It wasn't until late summer of 1944 that the releases began. Splendid scholarship shines a harsh light on one of the darkest episodes in American history.

When Every Moment Counts or Stealing Democracy

When Every Moment Counts: What You Need To Know About Bioterrorism From the Senate's Only Doctor

Author: Bill Frist

Bioterrorism has quickly become one of the most pressing and disturbing issues of our time. Our nation's leaders warn that the threat of germ weapons by terrorists is real, and, more importantly, that the United States remains highly vulnerable. Such statements have led to a national sense of fear and unease. Every American wants answers--what can we do to protect our families and loved ones? Enter Senator Bill Frist, M.D. At this crucial time, Senator Frist wants to provide all Americans with an accessible and comprehensive guide to dealing with the realistic threat of bioterrorism. Written in an easy-to-use question and answer format, complete with photographs of the varying symptoms and a full index, When Every Moment Counts is an essential manual for every American.

Publishers Weekly

First a Republican senator from Tennessee, brings his experiences as a heart and lung surgeon and a ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Health to this extremely informative, very approachable guide to coping with the bioterrorism threat, the only such guide available today. The book's linchpin is a chapter called "Safe at Home: A Family Survival Guide, straightforward, q&a-style set of guidelines for everything from choosing a filtration mask and putting together a disaster supply kit to preparing children for emergencies without giving them nightmares. The rest the book, also in q&a format, provides basic information on the most likely bioterrorism agents, such as anthrax, smallpox, plague and botulism. Frist clearly and knowledgeably explains the symptoms, incubation period and available treatments for each ages providing specific details, like the definition of "weaponized" anthrax and the government plan for containing a smallpox of break. Sidebars describe how the organism have been used as weapons in the past. The book also includes a chapter on chemical weapons and one on the food and water supply. Thought his tone is generally optimists Frist is candid about weaknesses in the public health system, such as the dearth of vaccine research on children or the FDA's inability to meet its food inspection goals. He's concerned, above all, about the lack of rapid communication among doctors and health agencies (citing that "one in five public health offices does not have email"), and concludes with his proposals to increase funding for state and local public health organizations and other suggestions for government. This reassuring thorough resource undoubtedly will prove a comfort to many readers-and, in the case of a bioterrorist attack, has the potential to save countless lives. This is an important book and deserves high attention and sales. Color photo insert of organisms and, to aid in diagnosis of skin rashes (comparing for instance smallpox chickenpox). (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Frist, a Republican senator from Tennessee, brings his experiences as a heart and lung surgeon and a ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Health to this extremely informative, very approachable guide to coping with the bioterrorism threat, the only such guide available today. The book's linchpin is a chapter called "Safe at Home: A Family Survival Guide," a straightforward, q&a-style set of guidelines for everything from choosing a filtration mask and putting together a disaster supply kit to preparing children for emergencies without giving them nightmares. The rest of the book, also in q&a format, provides basic information on the most likely bioterrorism agents, such as anthrax, smallpox, plague and botulism. Frist clearly and knowledgeably explains the symptoms, incubation period and available treatments for each agent, providing specific details, like the definition of "weaponized" anthrax and the government plan for containing a smallpox outbreak. Sidebars describe how the organisms have been used as weapons in the past. The book also includes a chapter on chemical weapons and one on the food and water supply. Though his tone is generally optimistic, Frist is candid about weaknesses in the public health system, such as the dearth of vaccine research on children or the FDA's inability to meet its food inspection goals. He's concerned, above all, about the lack of rapid communication among doctors and health agencies (citing that "one in five public health offices does not have email"), and concludes with his proposals to increase funding for state and local public health organizations and other suggestions for government action. This reassuring, thorough resource undoubtedly will prove a comfort to many readers and, in the case of a bioterrorist attack, has the potential to save countless lives. This is an important book and deserves high attention and sales. Color photo insert of organisms and, to aid in diagnosis, of skin rashes (comparing, for instance, smallpox to chickenpox). (Mar.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

When anthrax began showing up in the mail in fall 2001, one of the most sought-after and frequently seen guests on news shows was Senator Frist (R-TN), a practicing physician. His calm and levelheaded replies to a flurry of questions about anthrax and other potential biohazards reassured a jittery nation. In this book, Frist provides the same quality information in a question-and-answer format that addresses major biological and (to a lesser extent) chemical threats, their signs and symptoms, their transmission, vaccines, and effective treatments. Practical suggestions on preparing a disaster kit, easing children's anxieties, and handling suspicious mail, among other issues, are numerous and well conceived. A list of reliable web sites gives readers access to current information, and color illustrations help with the identification of anthrax and smallpox. The book concludes with an excellent index. While the occasional political point slips in (e.g., Frist advocates antitrust relief to drug companies), this book remains a solid lay reader's guide. A similar title, Dr. Philip Tierno's Protect Yourself Against Bioterrorism (Pocket, 2002), covers much the same ground. Given the high interest, both could be added at a small cost to the library. Anne C. Tomlin, Auburn Memorial Hosp. Lib., New York Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Book about: Direction de Sécurité Efficace

Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Voter Suppression

Author: Spencer Overton

"A must-read for anyone who is concerned about our deeply flawed electoral system."—Congressman John Conyers Jr.

Politicians spew shallow words describing a self-governing American people, who select their representatives. In reality, politicians maintain power by selecting voters. Elected officials and bureaucrats control thousands of election practices—from district boundaries to English-only ballots—that determine political winners and losers. Through real-life stories, Spencer Overton shows how these practices determine policies on issues that shape our lives, and he provides strategies for restoring government by the people. Overton's compelling case is vital to the future of our democracy. With a new afterword.

Publishers Weekly

Overton takes a wonky but worthy look at the "matrix" of "thousands of election regulations and practices" that can discourage-if not completely suppress-citizens from voting or make their votes count less. A law professor and election reform activist, Overton makes concrete proposals for restoring power to voters. Redistricting, he says, is often conducted in a partisan manner; Overton recommends that the United States assign the responsibility to an independent commission. He calls for federal standards for counting ballots and the provision of voting machines. The much-debated Voting Rights Act, Overton argues, remains vital, though those invoking it should more carefully analyze "practices that disadvantage voters of color." In answer to those bilingual education opponents who might withhold "democracy from Americans with limited English skills," he also argues that bilingual ballots would "advance citizen engagement." Overton warns that a photo ID requirement for voting would exclude those (e.g., the poor, many people of color) who don't have driver's licenses. Citing relatively low voter turnout and lack of centralized election oversight, the author notes how the United States "deviates from democratic norms" of other established democracies, concluding with profiles of activists to inspire the citizens' movement needed to enact the sensible reforms he advocates. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The U.S. Constitution assigns most of the management of elections to the states, which, in turn, allow their two major parties to dictate voting terms. For Overton (George Washington Univ. Law Sch.), a member of the Carter-Baker Election Reform Commission of 2005, the patchwork quilt of 102 party organizations (the Democratic and Republican parties in each state plus the two national committees) has produced a nefarious collection of rules that has suppressed the votes of too many citizens, especially the poor and people of color. He argues that the voting system isn't fair, balanced, efficient, or predictable but is instead controlled by the partisan organizations to keep their own members in office; as in The Matrix, the powers-that-be have manipulated the public into believing that it is in control. While the film analogy may help the book appeal to younger readers, its hint of conspiracy theory lessens the legitimacy of Overton's argument. Furthermore, the organization of elections has been in the hands of the states and political parties since the early 19th century, an arrangement our federal courts have consistently upheld. Nonetheless, Overton's book offers clear and cogent insights into the problems of our voting system. A worthy purchase for all public and academic libraries and essential for any collection that holds the Carter-Baker Commission Report. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Voting rights are under siege in America, declares the author, who proposes several sweeping remedies. With expertise honed while working for the National Voting Rights Institute and the Carter/Baker Election Reform Commission, Overton (Law/George Washington Univ.) explains how democracy can be subverted without citizens even noticing. Disenfranchisement does not always occur at the voting booth, he warns, providing cautionary tales about computer gerrymandering, partisan oversight of elections and systemic discrimination based on race, class, native language and criminal history. At every turn, Overton finds self-interested politicians maneuvering to cut deals, protect their jobs and tip the scales for their allies. Many readers will be sympathetic to reform after reviewing his litany of undemocratic incidents and self-incriminating remarks about rigging elections made by unwary politicos. Overton cites encouraging precedents for major electoral reform, from the intricate case law advancing African-Americans' voting rights to the constitutional amendments enfranchising women, minorities and draft-age Americans. (The 26th Amendment granted the right to vote to those as young as 18 after the Vietnam War.) But he also warns that some enemies of democracy are trying to co-opt reform to reduce voter turnout. Dissenting from the Election Reform Commission on which he served, he skewers new photo-ID requirements as unnecessary barriers to voting and instead advocates universal voter registration. The book's rigid formula-a brief history, recent case study and bite-size solution offered in every chapter-sometimes wears thin. Yet Overton makes a compelling case that beneath the rhetoricalflourishes, American democracy is governed by a flawed election system: often capricious, sometimes unjust and rarely understood by the general public. To change this, Americans will need energy, optimism and "a mindset of resistance and independence."An approachable and constructive work.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction : the matrix	11
1	How to big elections	17
2	Patchwork democracy	42
3	Does race still matter?	65
4	No backsliding	87
5	La Sociedad Abierta	121
6	Fraud or suppression?	148
	Conclusion : the choice	168

Paris After the Liberation 1944 1949 or The Huey P Newton Reader

Paris After the Liberation 1944-1949

Author: Antony Beevor

In this brilliant synthesis of social, political, and cultural history, Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper present a vivid and compelling portrayal of the City of Lights after its liberation. Paris became the diplomatic battleground in the opening stages of the Cold War. Against this volatile political backdrop, every aspect of life is portrayed: scores were settled in a rough and uneven justice, black marketers grew rich on the misery of the population, and a growing number of intellectual luminaries and artists- including Hemingway, Beckett, Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Cocteau, and Picasso-contributed new ideas and a renewed vitality to this extraordinary moment in time.

Library Journal

Beever and Cooper's highly regarded 1994 volume profiles the political fallout in Paris following the defeat of the Nazis and the rise of communism. It was a time when U.S. and other Allied troops were considered by many French citizens to be the new invaders trying to take over their country. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Book about: Manual of Clinical Hospital Psychiatry or American Economic Development Since 1945

The Huey P Newton Reader

Author: Huey P Newton

The First Comprehensive Collection of writings by the Black Panther Party founder and revolutionary icon of the black liberation era, The Huey P. Newton Reader combines now-classic texts with never-before-published writings from the Black Panther Party archives. Topics include: the formation of the Black Panthers; African Americans and armed self-defense; prison martyr George Jackson; Eldridge Cleaver's controversial expulsion from the Party; FBI infiltration of civil rights groups;the Vietnam War; and the burgeoning feminist movement. Among the new writings that are being published here for the first time from the Black Panther Party archives and Newton'n private collection, are articles on: President Nixon; environmentalism; Pan-Africanism; James Baldwin; and affirmative action.

Library Journal

This is the first collection of writings by the founder of the Black Panther Party since his death in 1989. Ten of the 36 selections were published in To Die for the People, an earlier collection released in 1972; the remainder were written after that publication. The book represents the many transformations of Newton's and the party's political ideologies and motivations, including support of the feminist and gay rights movements. Between the opening coverage of how and why Newton and Bobby Seale mobilized the black community to support a program of armed self-defense to the closing excerpts from Newton's Ph.D. dissertation outlining the FBI's COINTELPRO activities to dismantle the Black Panther Party are passionate and captivating writings that reveal a widely read political theorist committed to putting theory into practice to make a better world. This book is essential reading and primary-source research material for understanding the Black Panther Party, grass-roots organizing at its best, and the black power movement. Suitable for public and academic libraries. Sherri Barnes, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara Libs. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Co-edited by one of Newton's former colleagues in the Black Panther Party, this collection combines published and previously unpublished writings from the founder of the American black liberation organization. After excerpts from Newton's autobiography detail aspects of his early life and the founding of the party, the evolution of his political thought is traced through political tracts, interviews, speeches, and his doctoral dissertation , in which he details the FBI's attempts to suppress the organization through any means necessary, including assassination. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

	Foreword	7
	Introduction	9
	Scoring	25
	Freedom	38
	Bobby Seale	44
	The Founding of the Black Panther Party	49
	Patrolling	53
	Sacramento and the "Panther Bill"	67
	Crisis: October 28, 1967	73
	Trial	79
	Fear and Doubt: May 15, 1967	131
	From "In Defense of Self-Defense" I: June 20, 1967	134
	From "In Defense of Self-Defense" II: July 3, 1967	138
	The Correct Handling of a Revolution: July 20, 1967	142
	A Functional Definition of Politics, January 17, 1969	147
	On the Peace Movement: August 15, 1969	150
	Prison, Where Is Thy Victory?: January 3, 1970	154
	The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements: August 15, 1970	157
	Speech Delivered at Boston College: November 18, 1970	160
	Intercommunalism: February 1971	181
	On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community: April 17, 1971	200
	Statement: May 1, 1971	209
	On the Relevance of the Church: May 19, 1971	214
	Black Capitalism Re-analyzed 1: June 5, 1971	227
	Uniting Against a Common Enemy: October 23, 1971	234
	Fallen Comrade: Eulogy for George Jackson, 1971	241
	On Pan-Africanism or Communism: December 1, 1972	248
	The Technology Question: 1972	256
	A Spokesman for the People: In Conversation with William F. Buckley, February 11, 1973	267
	Eldridge Cleaver: He Is No James Baldwin, 1973	285
	Who Makes U.S. Foreign Policy?: 1974	295
	Dialectics of Nature: 1974	304
	Eve, the Mother of All Living: 1974	313
	The Mind Is Flesh: 1974	317
	Affirmative Action in Theory and Practice: Letters on the Bakke Case, September 22, 1977	331
	Response of the Government to the Black Panther Party: 1980	337
	Publication History	360
	Selected Bibliography	361

Jefferson and the Indians or Beyond Slavery

Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans

Author: Anthony F C Wallac

In Thomas Jefferson's time, white Americans were bedeviled by a moral dilemma unyielding to reason and sentiment: what to do about the presence of black slaves and free Indians. That Jefferson himself was caught between his own soaring rhetoric and private behavior toward blacks has long been known. But the tortured duality of his attitude toward Indians is only now being unearthed.

In this landmark history, Anthony Wallace takes us on a tour of discovery to unexplored regions of Jefferson's mind. There, the bookish Enlightenment scholar—collector of Indian vocabularies, excavator of ancient burial mounds, chronicler of the eloquence of America's native peoples, and mourner of their tragic fate—sits uncomfortably close to Jefferson the imperialist and architect of Indian removal. Impelled by the necessity of expanding his agrarian republic, he became adept at putting a philosophical gloss on his policy of encroachment, threats of war, and forced land cessions—a policy that led, eventually, to cultural genocide.

In this compelling narrative, we see how Jefferson's close relationships with frontier fighters and Indian agents, land speculators and intrepid explorers, European travelers, missionary scholars, and the chiefs of many Indian nations all complicated his views of the rights and claims of the first Americans. Lavishly illustrated with scenes and portraits from the period, Jefferson and the Indians adds a troubled dimension to one of the most enigmatic figures of American history, and to one of its most shameful legacies.

KLIATT

This is not your father's Thomas Jefferson. It might be startling to a reader brought up on the Jefferson of the Declaration of Independence to read an author who, quite early in the text, accuses the third president not only of writing deceptive reports in regard to land dealings, but of being responsible for "ethnic cleansing" in regard to the Native American populations of the eastern coastline. While we have recently become accustomed to accounts of Jefferson's treatment or mistreatment of his slaves, we may still see him as the amateur philosopher-archeologist who collected vocabularies of Native American languages and conducted methodical digs of burial mounds left by eastern tribes. Here Wallace gives us a Jefferson who, while he had a deep objective interest in anthropology, had a land speculator's interest in the territories to the immediate west of the 13 original states. He saw the young nation as an expanding entity, and this growth as impeded by the various tribes then living in the lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. His solution: move them west. According to Wallace, as president it was Jefferson's aim to obtain Indian land "at almost any cost." The result of Wallace's extensive research is not, however, a cursory debunking of Jefferson but rather a detailed portrait of a man of his time, flawed and pragmatic. Wallace's prose is smooth and the text is extremely well organized with copious notes, although no separate bibliography. Recommended for all serious students of American history. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Harvard Univ. Press, Belknap, 394p. illus. maps. notes.index. 23cm. 99-21558., $18.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Patricia A. Moore; Brookline, MA , July 2001 (Vol. 35, No. 4)

Library Journal

While Bernard W. Sheehan's Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (1974) explores the Jeffersonian period, Wallace, an emeritus anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and recipient of the Bancroft prize for Rockdale, provides a probing intellectual history of Jefferson himself. Jefferson's attitude toward Native Americans reflect his overall complexity as a thinker; he was fascinated by the first Americans but at the same time engaged in "civilizing" them. Wallace traces the context in which Jefferson existed and then examines his political rhetoric; considerable attention is also given to his studies of Indians and his presidential policies toward them. While the absence of citations to sidebar quotations is disappointing and the lack of a bibliography unfortunate, this fascinating account of an unexplored topic is highly recommended.--Daniel D. Liestman, Kansas State Univ. Lib., Manhattan Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

ForeWord - Peter Skinner

The book's great strength stems not only from its compelling narrative, but also from the rich cast of supporting players among whom heroes, saints and sinners abound. Excellent illustrations add to this masterful account.

Kirkus Reviews

Returning to his interest in the native tribes (The Long Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians, 1993, etc.), Bancroft Prize–winning historian Wallace gives us a book that immediately becomes the best among very few other studies of its subject. The author, an anthropologist deeply knowledgeable about American native cultures, reveals his colors early on: Jefferson's acts concerning the Indians were "hypocritical, arbitrary, duplicitous, even harsh," the Squire of Monticello himself a liar and self-serving. While he studied the natives, knew some, and thought carefully about their lives and cultures, he could not rid himself of the conviction that these American tribal peoples must either become "civilized"—give up hunting and gathering, become farmers, and adopt Euro-American ways—or disappear. But Jefferson didn't stop there: throughout his life, he effectually harried the Indians into war, land cessions, or flight and thus, in Wallace's view, must be held responsible both for inaugurating the failed 19th-century policy of removing the Indians to the far west and then onto reservations and for their drastic decline in numbers. This is a harsh indictment, made harsher still by Wallace's inappropriate likening of Jefferson's policies to genocide, a holocaust, and ethnic cleansing. After all, neither Jefferson nor most of his contemporaries sought the Indians' extermination. Yet, fortunately, these overwrought anachronistic charges do not affect much of the book, which otherwise makes clear the complexities of native-European interaction in the post-Revolutionary era. One result is that a reader comes away from the book's pages less critical of Jefferson thanWallace probably wishes, more accepting of the limits upon Jefferson's misguided views, and deflated by a sense of the near inevitability of the Indians' fate. One wishes that Wallace had occasionally lifted his eyes from the details of his subject—to compare, for example, the contributions of Indian removal and slavery to white man's democracy. A searching scholarly study of one of the great American dilemmas. (60 photos, 3 maps)

Go to: Caring and Social Justice or Healing the Heart of the World

Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor and Citizenship in Post-Emancipation Societies

Author: Frederick Cooper

In this collaborative work, three leading historians explore one of the most significant areas of inquiry in modern historiography—the transition from slavery to freedom and what this transition meant for former slaves, former slaveowners, and the societies in which they lived. Their contributions take us beyond the familiar portrait of emancipation as the end of an evil system to consider the questions and the struggles that emerged in freedom's wake.

Thomas Holt focuses on emancipation in Jamaica and the contested meaning of citizenship in defining and redefining the concept of freedom; Rebecca Scott investigates the complex struggles and cross-racial alliances that evolved in southern Louisiana and Cuba after the end of slavery; and Frederick Cooper examines the intersection of emancipation and imperialism in French West Africa. In their introduction, the authors address issues of citizenship, labor, and race, in the post-emancipation period and they point the way toward a fuller understanding of the meanings of freedom.

About the Author:
Frederick Cooper is Charles Gibson Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Thomas C. Holt is the James Westfall Thompson Professor of American and African American History at the University of Chicago. Rebecca J. Scott is Frederick Huetwell Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

What People Are Saying

Ira Berlin
An extraordinary book of breathtaking scope that addresses matters of signal importance.

David Montgomery
[For] everyone concerned with race, class, and modern intellectual history.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
	The Essence of the Contract: The Articulation of Race, Gender, and Political Economy in British Emancipation Policy, 1838-1866	33
	Fault Lines, Color Lines, and Party Lines: Race, Labor, and Collective Action in Louisiana and Cuba, 1862-1912	61
	Conditions Analogous to Slavery: Imperialism and Free Labor Ideology in Africa	107
	Afterword	151
	Notes	157
	Index	189

America Alone or The Real Odessa

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It

Author: Mark Steyn

In this, his first major book, Mark Steyn--probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world--takes on the great poison of the twenty-first century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had better win.

New interesting textbook: Eichmann in Jerusalem or Howard Zinn on Democratic Education

The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina

Author: Uki Goni

Drawing on American and European intelligence documents, Uki Goni shows how from 1946 onward a Nazi escape operation was based at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, harboring such war criminals as Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. Goni uncovers an elaborate network that relied on the complicity of the Vatican, the Argentine Catholic Church, and the Swiss authorities. The discoveries made in this meticulously researched book reveal the entangled web of the Nazi regime and its sympathizers and has prompted Argentine officials to demand closed files on the Nazi era from their current government.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgements	vii
	Abbreviations	ix
	Key Players	xi
	Foreword	xix
1	War Games	1
2	Peron Leaps to Power	16
3	Undesirable Immigration	25
4	The Abandonment of Argentina's Jews	45
5	Extortion of the Jews	51
6	The Nazi Escape Begins	63
7	Cardinal Recommendations	93
8	Peron's Odessa	100
9	Digging for Clues	116
10	Criminal Ways	122
11	The Nordic Route	128
12	The Swiss Connection	136
13	The Belgian Way	163
14	The Slovak Committee	193
15	Flight of the Ustashi	200
16	A Roman 'Sanctuary'	229
17	Erich Priebke	252
18	Gerhard Bohne	266
19	Josef Schwammberger	273
20	Josef Mengele	279
21	Adolf Eichmann	292
	Conclusion	320
	Afterword	327
	Notes	349
	Documentary Sources	390
	Bibliography	392
	Index	401

The Echo of Battle or Why Do People Hate America

The Echo of Battle: The Army's Way of War

Author: Brian McAllister Linn

From Lexington and Gettysburg to Normandy and Iraq, the wars of the United States have defined the nation. But after the guns fall silent, the army searches the lessons of past conflicts in order to prepare for the next clash of arms. In the echo of battle, the army develops the strategies, weapons, doctrine, and commanders that it hopes will guarantee a future victory.

In the face of radically new ways of waging war, Brian Linn surveys the past assumptions—and errors—that underlie the army's many visions of warfare up to the present day. He explores the army's forgotten heritage of deterrence, its long experience with counter-guerrilla operations, and its successive efforts to transform itself. Distinguishing three martial traditions—each with its own concept of warfare, its own strategic views, and its own excuses for failure—he locates the visionaries who prepared the army for its battlefield triumphs and the reactionaries whose mistakes contributed to its defeats.

Discussing commanders as diverse as Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Colin Powell, and technologies from coastal artillery to the Abrams tank, he shows how leadership and weaponry have continually altered the army's approach to conflict. And he demonstrates the army's habit of preparing for wars that seldom occur, while ignoring those it must actually fight. Based on exhaustive research and interviews, The Echo of Battle provides an unprecedented reinterpretation of how the U.S. Army has waged war in the past and how it is meeting the new challenges of tomorrow.

Kirkus Reviews

A history of the U.S. army during peacetime examines the lessons its intellectual leaders learned from previous wars and how they planned for the next. Having read nearly every available report, memoir, article and public speech on the subject, military historian Linn emphasizes that history teaches many lessons, only a few of which turn out to be useful, and that we learn the rare accurate prediction of the future in hindsight. An American military establishment didn't appear until after the War of 1812, but it quickly got down to business, drawing wrong conclusions from the past and preparing for a future war that never happened. Ignoring the embattled frontier, until after 1900, leaders concluded that predatory European powers were our major threat-most likely, a massive cross-ocean invasion by Britain. Since the War of 1812 featured attacks on coastal areas, leaders gave first priority to protecting ports, devoting most of the army's modest budget to constructing defensive coastal fortifications. They played no part in America's next two foreign wars (in 1846 and 1898), which were entirely offensive, and the Confederacy obtained only modest benefit from those it occupied. Examining the enormously increased firepower-machine guns, repeating rifles and rapid-fire artillery, among others-available by the turn of the 20th century, military thinkers concluded that these would make future wars so expensive and destructive that fighting would be short-lived. A minority insisted that the vast destructive power of new weapons made war obsolete, repeating both errors when they considered aircraft a generation later and again with atomic weapons. Fighting terrorism, guerrillas and insurgentforces had ample precedent in campaigns against Indians, Confederate bushwhackers and Philippine rebels, but until the 1990s few thinkers considered this a worthy occupation for a warrior. Now, "irregular warfare" is considered the wave of the future, a disturbing forecast if it is as accurate as previous ones. An unsettling but stimulating review of American military planning.

Table of Contents:

Prologue

1. Fortress America


2. Modern Warfare


3. Unconventional Wisdom


4. Providing for War?


5. Dissenting Visions


6. Atomic War


7. From Reformation to Reaction

Epilogue

Abbreviations


Notes


Acknowledgments


Index

Book about: IPTV Crash Course or Outlook 2007

Why Do People Hate America?

Author: Ziauddin Sardar

The controversial bestseller that caused huge waves in the UK! The Independent calls it "required reading." Noam Chomsky says it "contains valuable information that we should know, over here, for our own good, and the world's." We call it our biggest book so far and will be backing it from day one with guaranteed co-op spending, a national publicity and review blitz, talk radio bookings, various retail sales aids including postcards, and of course the usual full court press on the Web and via email.

This is NOT just another 9/11 book: it is the book for those of us trying to understand why America-and Americans-are targets for hate. Many people do hate America, in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa, as well as in the Middle East. Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies explore the global impact of America's foreign policy and its corporate and cultural power, placing this unprecedented dominance in the context of America's own perception of itself. In doing so, they consider TV and the Hollywood machine as a mirror which reflects both the American Dream and the American Nightmare. Their analysis provides an important contribution to a debate which needs to be addressed by people of all nations, cultures, religions and political persuasions-and especially by Americans.

Described by The Times Higher Education Supplement as "packed with tightly argued points," the book is carefully researched and built to withstand the inevitable criticism that will be aimed at it. A book that some reviewers will love to hate and others will praise for its insights, it's guaranteed to cause a stir.

Ziauddin Sardar is a prominent and highly respected journalist andauthor. Prolific and polymath, he is a familiar U.K. television and radio personality.

Merryl Wyn Davies, writer and anthropologist, is a former BBC television producer.

Selections from Moyers on Democracy or Women of Spirit

Selections from Moyers on Democracy

Author: Bill D Moyers

Bill Moyers on America today:

“Here in the first decade of the twenty-first century the story that becomes America’s dominant narrative will shape our collective imagination and our politics for a long time to come. In the searching of our souls demanded by this challenge . . . kindred spirits across the nation must confront the most fundamental liberal failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility—the gift we have received and the legacy we must bequeath.
“Although our sojourn in life is brief, we are on a great journey. For those who came before us and for those who follow, our moral, political, and religious duty to make sure that this nation, which was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are equal under the law, is in good hands on our watch.”
—from “For America’s Sake”

People know Bill Moyers mostly from his many years of path-breaking journalism on television. But he is also one of America’s most sought-after public speakers. His appearances draw sell-out crowds across the country and are among the most reproduced on the Web. “And one reason,” writes noted journalist Bill McKibben, “is that Moyers pulls no punches. His understanding of America’s history is at least as deep as his understanding of Christian tradition, which is an integral part of his background . . . With his feet firmly planted in the deepestAmerican traditions, Bill Moyers is helping to keep alive an oratorical tradition that is fading after two centuries. Trained by his career in broadcasting, he writes for the ear, his cadences and his repetitions timed to bring an audience to full realization of its role and its power.”
And that is the message of this book. Moyers on Democracy collects many of Bill Moyers’s most moving statements to connect the dots on what is happening to our country—the twinned growth of private wealth and public squalor, the assault on our Constitution, the undermining of the electoral process, the accelerating class war against ordinary (and vulnerable) Americans inherent in the growth of economic inequality, the dangers of an imperial executive, the attack on the independence of the press, the despoiling of the earth we share as our common gift—and to rekindle the reader’s conviction that “the gravediggers of democracy will not have the last word.” Richly insightful and alive with a fierce, abiding love for our country, Moyers on Democracy is essential reading in this fateful presidential year.

Book about: Quick and Easy Cooking or Asian Diet

Women of Spirit: Stories of Courage from the Women Who Lived Them

Author: Katherine Martin

Thirty-five women who succeeded in making a difference in the world relate their experiences in this inspiring collection. Katherine Martin introduces each first-person account with background information on the writer and the obstacles she faced. Lesser-known heroines include Debra Williams, who blew the whistle on medical malpractice in a midwestern prison; Sonya Bell, a blind teenager who became an award-winning runner; and Carrie Barefoot Dickerson, who stopped the construction of a nuclear power plant. Other stories, told in their own words, are about SARK, Judith Light, Julia Butterfly Hill, Joan Borysenko, Geraldine Ferraro, Iyanla Vanzant, and others.

Terrorism As Crime or The Rights of Man

Terrorism As Crime: From Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and Beyond

Author: Mark Hamm

"As a recognized expert in the field, Hamm is eminently qualified to prepare this text on the subject of terrorism from the criminal law perspective. . . . The text is written in a clear, lively manner."
—Choice

"Drawing on six case studies of terrorist attacks by radical Islamists and right-wing racists, Hamm writes that American counterterrorist agencies have neglected some basic insights from scholarly criminology."
—The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Read this book to understand the important nexus between terrorism and crime! This cutting edge analysis suggests a new approach to defeat the terrorist threat to the United States."
—Marc Sageman, author of Understanding Terror Networks

"Hamm's clear writing style, careful research and theoretical insights promise to make this a classic in criminology."
—William J. Chambliss, author of Power, Politics, and Crime

"[Provides] the first detailed account of how crime provides logistical support for terrorist strikes. By blending the study of terrorism and criminology, Hamm offers the possibility of detecting and stopping terrorism through the pursuit of conventional methods of criminal investigation."
—Gary LaFree, Director, START, National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism University of Maryland Department of Criminology/Democracy

Car bombing, suicide bombing, abduction, smuggling, homicide, and hijacking are all profoundly criminal acts. In Terrorism as Crime Mark S. Hamm presents an understanding of terrorism from a criminological point of view, arguing that the most successful way tounderstand, detect, prosecute and deter these acts is to use conventional criminal investigation methods. Whether in Oklahoma City or London, Terrorism as Crime demonstrates that criminal activity is the lifeblood of terrorist groups and that there are simple common denominators at work that can remove the mystery surrounding many of these terrorist groups. Once understood the vulnerabilities of these organizations can be exposed.

This important volume focuses in on six case studies of crimes committed by jihad and domestic right wing groups, including biographies of more than two dozen terrorists along with descriptions of their organizations, strategies, and terrorist plots. Terrorism as Crime offers an original and significant framework for explaining international and domestic terrorism, as well as how future acts might be detected or exposed.

Book about: The Resume Writers or Law and the Information Superhighway

The Rights of Man (Everyman's Library)

Author: Thomas Pain

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

The authorities in power in England during Thomas Paine’s lifetime saw him as an agent provocateur who used his seditious eloquence to support the emancipation of slaves and women, the demands of working people, and the rebels of the French and American Revolutions. History, on the other hand, has come to regard him as the figure who gave political cogency to the liberating ideas of the Enlightenment. His great pamphlets, Rights of Man and Common Sense, are now recognized for what they are–classic arguments in defense of the individual’s right to assert his or her freedom in the face of tyranny.

Rightward Bound or Understanding Generalist Practice

Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in The 1970s

Author: Bruce J Schulman

Often considered a lost decade, a pause between the liberal Sixties and Reagan’s Eighties, the 1970s were indeed a watershed era when the forces of a conservative counter-revolution cohered. These years marked a significant moral and cultural turning point in which the conservative movement became the motive force driving politics for the ensuing three decades.

Interpreting the movement as more than a backlash against the rampant liberalization of American culture, racial conflict, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, these provocative and innovative essays look below the surface, discovering the tectonic shifts that paved the way for Reagan’s America. They reveal strains at the heart of the liberal coalition, resulting from struggles over jobs, taxes, and neighborhood reconstruction, while also investigating how the deindustrialization of northern cities, the rise of the suburbs, and the migration of people and capital to the Sunbelt helped conservatism gain momentum in the twentieth century. They demonstrate how the forces of the right coalesced in the 1970s and became, through the efforts of grassroots activists and political elites, a movement to reshape American values and policies.

A penetrating and provocative portrait of a critical decade in American history, Rightward Bound illuminates the seeds of both the successes and the failures of the conservative revolution. It helps us understand how, despite conservatism’s rise, persistent tensions remain today between its political power and the achievements of twentieth-century liberalism.

What People Are Saying

Nelson Lichtenstein
A new generation of American historians demonstrates that the decade of the 1970s proved the crucial seed time for the rise of modern American conservatism. There was nothing inevitable about the nation's march to the right, which makes this book all the more fascinating and necessary for those who want to understand twenty-first century America. --(Nelson Lichtenstein, author of Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century America)

Gary Gerstle
Rightward Bound is the most comprehensive and incisive history to date of the conservative mobilization that surged through and transformed the United States in the 1970s. It will prove essential reading for anyone seeking to understand conservative ideologies, institutions, and organizing strategies as well as the complexities of politics and culture in late twentieth-century America. --(Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University)

Laura Kalman
Rightward Bound brilliantly demonstrates how American conservatism emerged as a full-blown movement in the 1970s and, in the process, created the United States of the twenty-first century. It is a wonderful book! --(Laura Kalman, University of California, Santa Barbara)

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction   Bruce J. Schulman   Julian E. Zelizer     1
Mobilizing the Movement
Inventing Family Values   Matthew D. Lassiter     13
The Evangelical Resurgence in 1970s American Protestantism   Paul Boyer     29
Make Payroll, Not War: Business Culture as Youth Culture   Bethany E. Moreton     52
Gender and America's Right Turn   Marjorie J. Spruill     71
Civil Rights and the Religious Right   Joseph Crespino     90
The Decade of the Neighborhood   Suleiman Osman     106
Cultural Politics and the Singer/Songwriters of the 1970s   Bradford Martin     128
Financing the Counterrevolution   Alice O'Connor     148
The Battle Over Policies and Politics
The White Ethnic Strategy   Thomas J. Sugrue   John D. Skrentny     171
The Conservative Struggle and the Energy Crisis   Meg Jacobs     193
Turnabout Years: Public Sector Unionism and the Fiscal Crisis   Joseph A. McCartin     210
Detente and Its Discontents   Jeremi Suri     227
Carter's Nicaragua and Other Democratic Quagmires   Derek N. Buckaloo     246
Conservatives, Carter, and the Politics of National Security   Julian E. Zelizer     265
Epilogue   Bruce J. Schulman   Julian E. Zelizer     289
Notes     295
List of Contributors     349
Index     351

Go to: The Pleasures of Eating or Low Cholesterol Low Fat Cooking

Understanding Generalist Practice

Author: Karen K Kirst Ashman

Organized around the authors' coherent and cohesive Generalist Intervention Model, this introductory guide to generalist social work practice gives you the knowledge and skills needed to work with individuals and families, as well as the foundation knowledge from a generalist perspective to work with groups, communities, and organizations. The authors fully explore the interrelationship between micro, mezzo, and macro levels of social work practice. This edition reflects the latest Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards with empowerment and strengths perspectives for partnering with clients.

Booknews

New edition of a text that provides a framework for social work students to view the world from a generalist perspective. Emphasizing a core of micro-skills, Kirst-Ashman (U. of Wisconsin-Whitewater) and Hull (U. of Utah) present 16 chapters that discuss relationship- building, interviewing, and problem-solving abilities necessary for working with individual clients. They also orient students to think not only in terms of individual needs but also of group and community needs. New focus points include cultural competency, empowerment of people with disabilities, interviewing children in the context of abuse, updated information on substance abuse, and confidentiality with respect to electronic record-keeping. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)