Practical Politics Books: February 2009

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Garibaldi or Pregnancy and Power

Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero

Author: Lucy Riall

Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary leader and popular hero, was among the best-known figures of the nineteenth century. This book seeks to examine his life and the making of his cult, to assess its impact, and understand its surprising success.
For thirty years Garibaldi was involved in every combative event in Italy. His greatest moment came in 1860, when he defended a revolution in Sicily and provoked the collapse of the Bourbon monarchy, the overthrow of papal power in central Italy, and the creation of the Italian nation state. It made him a global icon, representing strength, bravery, manliness, saintliness, and a spirit of adventure. Handsome, flamboyant, and sexually attractive, he was worshiped in life and became a cult figure after his death in 1882.
Lucy Riall shows that the emerging cult of Garibaldi was initially conceived by revolutionaries intent on overthrowing the status quo, that it was also the result of a collaborative effort involving writers, artists, actors, and publishers, and that it became genuinely and enduringly popular among a broad public. The book demonstrates that Garibaldi played an integral part in fashioning and promoting himself as a new kind of “charismatic” political hero. It analyzes the way the Garibaldi myth has been harnessed both to legitimize and to challenge national political structures. And it identifies elements of Garibaldi’s political style appropriated by political leaders around the world, including Mussolini and Che Guevara.

Publishers Weekly

With his trademark red cape, full beard and regal bearing, Italian revolutionary hero Giuseppe Garibaldi cut a swashbuckling swath through European politics during the mid-19th century. In Riall's (Sicily and the Unification of Italy) exhaustive and sometimes exhausting study of this supremely charismatic man and his tumultuous times, Garibaldi's life and legacy echo through the fascist dictators of the 20th century to the Marxist revolutionaries of the 1970s. Born in Nice in 1807, Garibaldi lived a peripatetic life until he "discovered his true vocation-not as a (failed) merchant sailor nor as a (outlawed) political conspirator, but as a soldier hero" and returned to Italy in 1848, a year of widespread political upheaval in Europe. The Italy that Riall describes is a conflicted place seething with nationalist fervor, waiting for a hero to fan the flames and lead the people to their rightful place among nations. As much a product of behind-the-scenes manipulations as his own desires and ambitions, Garibaldi became that hero. A deeply researched and resourced scholarly text, this is not for the general reader. Riall's extensive use of contemporary primary source material makes for some heavy sledding. Still, for the 19th-century European history buff or the revolutionary hero completist, this is a useful and illuminating read. (June)

New interesting book: Sports Medicine Essentials or My Personal Path to Wellness

Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America

Author: Rickie Solinger

"Readers will find within this book a deeply researched and fine analysis of reproductive politics spanning 250 years. It definitely should be of interest to legal scholars and law students and also to political and social historians."
—The American Journal of Legal History

"Solinger is impressively optimistic about America's potential not only to evolve into 'a country of reproductive justice,' but also to overcome centuries of the sex, race, and class prejudice that have literally built our society.'
—Bitch

"A concise historical overview. . . . Based primarily on a vast array of well-documented secondary sources, this book is a well-written and useful overview of the politics behind pregnancy in the U.S. . . . Highly recommended."
—Choice

"This succinct, highly readable political and cultural history of a wide range of reproductive issues is a near-perfect primer on the topic."
—Publishers Weekly

"The book is well documented and well written... I expect this book to find a place in many classrooms."
— The Journal of American History

"Rickie Solinger puts today's 'culture wars' over abortion, birth control and sex education into a historical context that is rich, complex and full of surprises. A deeply researched-and highly readable-book that should reach the widest possible audience."
—Katha Pollitt, author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture

"An extraordinary accomplishment. In a courageous exploration of American history, Solinger demonstrates how public supervision of sex and social reproduction haveserved to maintain racial privilege."
—Alice Kessler-Harris, author of In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America

"Pregnancy and Power definitively demolishes the myth that reproductive politics has ever been about women's choice. Rickie Solinger's brilliant and comprehensive analysis shows that, throughout U.S. history, reproductive regulation has served a social agenda that especially disadvantages women of color."
—Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

"We must all be grateful to Rickie Solinger for another of her pithy, compelling interpretive histories. Pregnancy and Power offers a thoughtful, lucid overview of reproductive issues throughout U.S. history—an extremely valuable contribution that should be widely read."
—Linda Gordon, author of The Moral Property of Women: Birth Control Politics in America

"Solinger shows how the past is truly prologue as she connects contemporary political struggles over pregnancy and pregnancy limitation to racism and colonialism in the United States"
—Loretta J. Ross, co-author, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice

"Pregnancy and Power embraces far more than the usual perspective."
—MBR: California Bookwatch

[R]eading Rickie Solinger's Pregnancy and Power felt in some ways like taking a medicinal tonic. She provides a vision of what a society dedicated to reproductive justice could be... [Pregnancy and Power] made me think— and for that, I like this book immensely.
—The Women's Review of Books

A sweeping chronicle of women's battles for reproductive freedom throughout American history, Pregnancy and Power explores the many forces—social, racial, economic, and political—that have shaped women's reproductive lives in the United States.

Leading historian Rickie Solinger argues that a woman's control over her body involves much more than the right to choose an abortion. Reproductive politics were at play when slaveholders devised breeding schemes, when the U.S. government took Indian children from their families in the nineteenth century, and when doctors pressed Latina women to be sterilized in the 1970s. Tracing the diverse plot lines of women's reproductive lives throughout American history, Solinger redefines the idea of reproductive freedom, putting race and class at the center of the effort to control sex and pregnancy in America over time.

Solinger asks which women have how many children under what circumstances, and shows how reproductive experiences have been encouraged or coerced, rewarded or punished, honored or exploited over the last 250 years. Viewed in this way, the debate over reproductive rights raises questions about access to sex education and prenatal care, about housing laws, about access to citizenship, and about which women lose children to adoption and foster care.

Pregnancy and Power shows that a complete understanding of reproductive politics must take into account the many players shaping public policy-lawmakers, educators, employers, clergy, physicians-as well as the consequences for women who obey and resist these policies. Tracing the diverse plotlines of women's reproductive lives throughout American history, Solinger redefines the idea of reproductive freedom, putting race and class at the center of the struggle to control sex and pregnancy in America.

Publishers Weekly

This succinct, highly readable political and cultural history of a wide range of reproductive issues is a near-perfect primer on the topic. Independent historian Solinger (Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade) writes from a broad, multi-issue, feminist perspective, placing the struggle for reproductive freedom at the center of a variety of political battles. This approach yields unique new insights. Detailing antimiscegenation laws and common assumptions about family life and reproduction in Chinese-American communities, Solinger shows how immigration laws favoring Chinese merchant-class women over poor women "shaped the demographics of Chinatowns around the country." Similarly, she discusses how the relationship between civil rights and reproductive rights in the 1960s gave different cultural meanings to the "fertile body of women of color" in the eyes of the white establishment and within the African-American community. Solinger succeeds in moving the discussion of the social and legal politics of reproduction out of a confining category of "women's issues" and into the broader sphere of U.S. history and national politics, and her study will be helpful to anyone interested in how current debates about abortion, the morning-after pill and sex education were historically formed. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

	Introduction : what is reproductive politics?	1
1	Racializing the nation : from the Declaration of Independence to the Emancipation Proclamation, 1776-1865	27
2	Sex in the city : from secrecy to anonymity to privacy, 1870s to 1920s	63
3	No extras : curbing fertility during the Great Depression	103
4	Central planning : managing fertility, race, and rights in postwar America, 1940s to 1960	131
5	The human rights era : the rise of choice, the contours of backlash, 1960-1980	163
6	Revitalizing hierarchies : how the aftermath of Roe v. Wade affected fetuses, teenage girls, prisoners, and ordinary women, 1980 to the present	209

Friday, February 20, 2009

Becoming King or Democracys Good Name

Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

Author: Troy Jackson

In Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader, Troy Jackson chronicles King's emergence and effectiveness as a civil rights leader by examining his relationship with the people of Montgomery, Alabama. Using the sharp lens of Montgomery's struggle for racial equality to investigate King's burgeoning leadership. Drawing on countless interviews and archival sources and comparing King's sermons and religious writings before, during, and after the Montgomery bus boycott, Jackson demonstrates how King's voice and message evolved to reflect the shared struggles, challenges, experiences, and hopes of the people with whom he worked.

Library Journal

Jackson (senior pastor, University Christian Church, Cincinnati; editor, The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. Vol. 6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963 ) has written a convincing reinterpretation of the role of King in the Montgomery, AL, bus boycott of 1955-56. Jackson grants that King's inspirational oratory and ability to communicate to African Americans across class lines made him a powerful symbol and chief spokesman of the movement there. However, the black community in Montgomery had laid the groundwork through its organizing activities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Local activists, white and black, including NAACP leader E.D. Nixon and Women's Political Council president Jo Ann Robinson, as well as civil rights lawyers Virginia and Clifford Durr and librarian Juliette Morgan, planted the seeds that flowered in the boycott. Jackson concludes that in many ways, King did not make the boycott movement; the blacks of Montgomery made him. Highly recommended for all major libraries.-Anthony Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN

See also: Cocidos Ollas y Pucheros or Mmmm

Democracy's Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World's Most Popular Form of Government

Author: Michael Mandelbaum

The last thirty years have witnessed a remarkably rapid rise of democracies around the world. In 1975, only thirty countries were democracies. Today, 119 of the world’s 190 countries are democratic. How did democracy establish itself so quickly and so widely? Why do some important countries and regions remain undemocratic?
In Democracy’s Good Name, Michael Mandelbaum, one of America’s leading foreign policy thinkers, answers these questions. He discusses the relationship between democracy, on the one hand, and war and terrorism, on the other, and assesses the prospects for the establishment of democracy in Russia, China, and the Arab world. And he explains why the United States has found it so difficult to foster democratic governments in other countries.

Publishers Weekly

Democracy, until recently, was an anomaly in a landscape of monarchies, dictatorships and empires; its critics-including America's founding fathers-associated it with mob rule and demagogic tyranny. In this engaging treatise, Mandelbaum (The Ideas That Conquered the World) explains how the modern democratic fusion of popular sovereignty-i.e., majority rule-with individual liberty came to dominate the world's polities. His first reason is straightforward: democracy works. Democratic nations, he notes, especially the flagship democracies of Britain and the U.S., are wealthier, stronger and more stable and inspire other countries to emulate them. His second, more provocative explanation, is that the modern spread of free markets provides a "school for democracy" by establishing private property (the fundamental liberty), respect for law, civil society, organized economic interests as the forerunners of political parties, and the habit of settling differences by negotiation and compromise rather than violence. Mandelbaum's market rhetoric-he calls democracy the "leading brand of political system" among "knowledgeable political consumers"-can be a bit simpleminded. But readers will find a lucid, accessible blend of history, political science and sociology, with a wealth of fresh insights into the making of the contemporary world. (Aug.)

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     xi
The Origins of Democracy     1
The Triumph of Democracy     1
The Two Traditions     7
The Odd Couple     16
The Career of Popular Sovereignty     27
The Trials of Liberty     37
Democracy from Without: The Course of Modern History     47
The Leading Brand     47
English Exceptionalism     52
The Two World Wars     66
The Contest of Systems     72
The American Era     82
Democracy from Within: The Magic of the Market     93
The Constant Companion     93
The Wealth Effect     100
Civil Society     104
The School for Democracy     110
Market Failures     121
Democracy and Peace     137
Modernity and Peace     137
Popular Sovereignty and Peace     146
Liberty and Peace     151
Democracy Versus Peace     159
Democracy and Terrorism     169
The Future of Democracy     179
Democracy-Promotion     179
Democracy in Russia     190
Democracy in China     205
Democracy in the Arab World     218
Democracy in the Democracies     235
Notes     245
Index     299

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Jarhead or The Pirate Queen

Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

Author: Anthony Swofford

In his New York Times bestselling chronicle of military life, Anthony Swofford weaves his experiences in war with vivid accounts of boot camp, reflections on the mythos of the marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family.

When the U.S. Marines--or "jarheads"--were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 for the Gulf War, Anthony Swofford was there. He lived in sand for six months; he was punished by boredom and fear; he considered suicide, pulled a gun on a fellow marine, and was targeted by both enemy and friendly fire. As engagement with the Iraqis drew near, he was forced to consider what it means to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man.

The Los Angeles Times

Swofford's book is about the man who feels cheated because the Gulf War was over so quickly, and he was, perhaps, both relieved and horrified. "I am not well," he writes, "but I am not mad." He describes what it was like getting ready for the war, and his book, he wants us to know, "is neither true nor false but what I know." He knows an immense amount as a member of the Surveillance and Target Acquisition Platoon, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. In short, he was a scout-sniper and a good one. Although it might be said snipers are often very peculiar people. — Gloria Emerson

The Washington Post

Swofford's war ends in a strangely appropriate fashion, as he and a colleague are sent out on a mission far from their battalion. The Iraqi army quits, the fighting stops. And no one remembers the men who have been left out in the desert.

That's a story Philip Caputo and James Webb would have understood well. — Chris Bray

The New Yorker

In 1990, Swofford, a young Marine sniper, went to Saudi Arabia with dreams of vaporizing Iraqi skulls into clouds of "pink mist." As he recounts in this aggressively uninspiring Gulf War memoir, his youthful bloodlust was never satisfied. After spending months cleaning sand out of his rifle -- so feverish with murderous anticipation that he almost blows a buddy's head off after an argument -- Swofford ends up merely a spectator of a lopsided battle waged with bombs, not bullets. The rage the soldiers feel, their hopes of combat frustrated, is "nearly unendurable." Swofford's attempts at brutal honesty sometimes seem cartoonish: "Rape them all, kill them all" is how he sums up his military ethic. He is better at comic descriptions -- gas masks malfunctioning in the desert heat, camels picked off during target practice -- that capture the stupid side of a smart-bomb war.

Publishers Weekly

A witty, profane, down-in-the-sand account of the war many only know from CNN, this former sniper's debut is a worthy addition to the battlefield memoir genre. There isn't a bit of heroic posturing as Swofford describes the sheer terror of being fired upon by Iraqi troops; the elite special forces warrior freely admits wetting himself once rockets start exploding around his unit's encampment. But the adrenaline of battle is fleeting, and Swofford shows how it's in the waiting that soldiers are really made. With blunt language and bittersweet humor, he vividly recounts the worrying, drinking, joking, lusting and just plain sitting around that his troop endured while wondering if they would ever put their deadly skills to use. As Operation Desert Shield becomes Desert Storm, one of Swofford's fellow snipers-the most macho of the bunch-solicits a hug from each man. "We are about to die in combat, so why not get one last hug, one last bit of physical contact," Swofford writes. "And through the hugs [he] helps make us human again." When they do finally fight, Swofford questions whether the men are as prepared as their commanders, the American public and the men themselves think they are. Swofford deftly uses flashbacks to chart his journey from a wide-eyed adolescent with a family military legacy to a hardened fighter who becomes consumed with doubt about his chosen role. As young soldiers might just find themselves deployed to the deserts of Iraq, this book offers them, as well as the casual reader, an unflinching portrayal of the loneliness and brutality of modern warfare and sophisticated analyses of-and visceral reactions to-its politics. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In his memoir on life as a U.S. Marine, Swofford starts out by admitting that what he describes "is neither true nor false, but what I know." This is in no sense a chronicle of the Gulf War but instead an interior monolog reflecting Swofford's inner journey from despised childhood to coming of age as an enlisted marine and finally coming somewhat to terms with the man he has become. For Swofford, warfare was the culmination of everything he had experienced, so that his existential narrative hangs on his pivotal nine-month tour of duty. The boredom, frustration, fear, physical exertion, and relentless training all contributed to his sense of self, but in the end he felt capable of backing away from the total absorption of combat to live in the real world. Unfortunately, reconnection with civilian life turned out to be no easier than living in the combat zone. Many libraries may be put off by the book's pervasive sex and profanity, but it is an eloquent depiction of the martial enthusiasm of young men. Recommended for comprehensive military collections.-Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

The New York Times

The descriptions of the 1991 gulf war in Anthony Swofford's harrowing new memoir feel like something out of a Hieronymous Bosch painting of hell, combined with something out of "Blade Runner": spectral oil well fires burning day and night, as a petrol rain falls on the blasted desert and psy-ops helicopters fly overhead, blasting tapes of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones — music from another war — in an effort to unnerve enemy soldiers. Wearing jungle camouflage gear that makes them "look like mulberry bushes marching through the desert" — because their sand-colored suits haven't arrived — small battalions of American soldiers trek across a wasteland, dotted with the smoking ruins of Iraqi tanks and the rotting corpses of dead Iraqis, blown away by American air power.

At night the marines dig shallow sleep pits in the sand as protection against small arms and artillery, but there is the constant fear of a gas attack. "In my dark fantasies," Mr. Swofford writes, "the chemicals are gassy and green or yellow and floating around the warhead, the warhead on its way to me, my personal warhead, whistling its way to the earth, into my little hole."

By turns profane and lyrical, swaggering and ruminative, "Jarhead" — referring to the marines' "high-and-tight" haircuts, which make their heads look like jars — is not only the most powerful memoir to emerge thus far from the last gulf war, but also a searing contribution to the literature of combat, a book that combines the black humor of "Catch-22" with the savagery of "Full Metal Jacket" and the visceral detail of "The Things They Carried."

Mr. Swofford, who served in a United States Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon during the operation known as Desert Storm, drinks, carries on and trash-talks with the rowdiest of his comrades. But he is also the one who reads the "Iliad," "The Stranger" and "Hamlet" in his spare time, and he has found in his own book a narrative voice that accommodates both parts of his temperament: an irreverent but meditative voice that captures both the juiced-up machismo of jarhead culture and the existential loneliness of combat. He can be unsparingly candid about the ugly emotions released by war — one of his platoon mates brutally desecrates Iraqi corpses — and Mr. Swofford admits to feeling blood lust, afraid he won't get a kill before war ends. But he is also eloquent about the terrible physical and psychological costs of combat and the emotional bonds shared by soldiers.

He makes us understand the exacting and deadly art practiced by a sniper, going after the "pink mist" of a kill or making a "dime group at a grand," that is, three shots that can be covered by a dime, on a target 1,000 yards away. He makes us feel the rhythm of boredom and terror of preparing for an enemy attack and the sheer physical ordeal of humping 100 pounds of gear 20 miles in the desert heat. He tells us how he contemplated committing suicide in the days before the war and how his roommate Troy talked him out of pulling the trigger, and he tells us how he survived the actual war only to come close to dying when he casually walked into an empty but booby-trapped Iraqi bunker.

Like so many war memoirs and novels, "Jarhead" takes the form of a bildungsroman: it traces the familiar real-life sequence of initiation, from boot camp to shipping out to combat, while chronicling the author's passage from innocence to disillusion. Instead of writing a strictly chronological account, however, Mr. Swofford uses flashbacks and flashforwards to tell his story, an effective strategy in this case, as it juxtaposes his youthful idealism with adult cynicism and despair, gung-ho bravado with doubts and fears and crumbling religious faith.

We learn that Mr. Swofford's father served in Vietnam, his grandfather in World War II, and that despite the postwar trauma sustained by his father, the author understood from a very early age "that manhood had to do with war, and war with manhood, and to no longer be just a son, I needed someday to fight."

Though his parents refused to give him permission to join the Marines at 17 — by way of encouragement, the recruiter told them that their son would "be a great killer" — he joined several months later, when he was able to sign the contract on his own. In part, he says in retrospect, he joined the corps to compete with his brother, Jeff, who had joined the Army; in part "to impose domestic structure upon my life, to find a home" in the wake of his parents' collapsing marriage.

Mr. Swofford's account of boot camp and the long wait in Saudi Arabia for the war to begin is rich in the absurdities of military bureaucracy: one colonel, seeing that reporters are on hand, insists that the platoon play football for an hour, wearing gas masks and protective suits (which raise the body temperature to 130 degrees). Not surprisingly the author and many of his fellow recruits quickly develop a cynical humor. Their loyalty is to one another and to privately held ideals of honor and valor, not to the mission to which they've been assigned.

"We joke about having transferred from the Marine Corps to the Oil Corps, or the Petrol Battalion," he writes, "and while we laugh at our jokes and we all think we're damn funny jarheads, we know we might soon die, and this is not funny, the possibility of death, but like many combatants before us we laugh to obscure the tragedy of our cheap, squandered lives."

In the course of "Jarhead" Mr. Swofford conveys a chilling sense of what it is like to be under enemy fire, and he also communicates a palpable sense of the fog of war: the chaos of fighting in a desert landscape offering little cover, where the hazards of friendly fire are nearly as great as the danger of being hit by the enemy, where months of training and discipline can be undone in a second by malfunctioning equipment or a fellow soldier's momentary inattention.

Although the reader wishes that the portraits of some of the author's comrades in arms had been more fully fleshed out, that some of the asides about unfaithful girlfriends and obnoxious acquaintances had been trimmed back, Mr. Swofford writes with such ardor and precision that these lapses are quickly forgotten.

With "Jarhead," he has written the literary equivalent of a dime group at a grand.

Kirkus Reviews

War is hell. And maybe just a little fun, once some of the shock has worn off. So this literate and nuanced if sometimes self-conscious coming-of-age tale instructs. Swofford's debut covers all the bases: a stint in basic training with a brutal drill instructor, drunken episodes with prostitutes, fights with sailors, explosions and their attendant airborne body parts, postwar trauma and depression. Yet there's not a clichйd moment in this rueful account of a Marine's life, in which the hazards are many and the rewards few. Swofford, for instance, recounts a bout with one of those hazards, dysentery, earned by consuming a stolen vat of salad greens while awaiting orders to attack the opposing Iraqi line along the Saudi border: "The lettuce came from Jordanian fields where they use human feces as fertilizer. So here we are, defending a country none of us gives a shit about, eating its neighbors' shit, and burying ours in the sand." Another hazard, we learn, is the presence of battle-deranged fellow squad members, one of whom takes to systematically disfiguring a fallen Iraqi fighter: "He says the look on the dead man's face, his mocking gesture, is insulting, and that the man deserved to die, and now that he's dead the man's corpse deserves to be fucked with." Still another hazard, quite apart from dangerous food and dangerous psychopaths, is the endless politicking of the brass, one of whom keeps Swofford, a sniper, from assassinating an Iraqi officer and perhaps inducing that officer's charges to surrender rather than fight on. And so on. For all the dangers, the author allows, a certain exhilaration attends the facing of a deadly enemy and living to tell the tale, a joy that no civiliancan possibly understand-though Swofford does his best to explain. Extraordinary: full of insight into the minds and rucksacks of our latter-day warriors.

Book about: Das Schaffen Wirksamer Mannschaften: Ein Guide für Mitglieder und Führer

The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire

Author: Susan Ronald

Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, Elizabeth I was feared and admired by her enemies. Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power. Her visionary accomplishments were made possible by her daring merchants, gifted rapscallion adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council, including Sir William Cecil, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Sir Nicholas Bacon. All these men contributed their vast genius, power, greed, and expertise to the advancement of England.

In The Pirate Queen, historian Susan Ronald offers a fresh look at Elizabeth I, focusing on her uncanny instinct for financial survival and the superior intellect that propelled and sustained her rise. The foundation of Elizabeth's empire was built on a carefully choreographed strategy whereby piracy transformed England from an impoverished state on the fringes of Europe into the first building block of an empire that covered two-fifths of the world.

Based on a wealth of historical sources and thousands of personal letters between Elizabeth and her merchant adventurers, advisers, and royal "cousins," The Pirate Queen tells the thrilling story of Elizabeth and the swashbuckling mariners who terrorized the seas, planted the seedlings of an empire, and amassed great wealth for themselves and the Crown.

Kirkus Reviews

Popular historian Ronald (The Sancy Blood Diamond, 2004, etc.) struggles mightily to find a fresh promontory from which to observe Elizabeth I's favorite rovers: John Hawkins, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, the Earl of Essex. They helped fill her coffers, weaken Spain, lay the foundation for Britain's empire. Is there anything new to say about these celebrated folks and their often execrable behavior? This author's success is moderate. Her framework is the oft-told biography of the Virgin Queen. Ronald quickly assesses the sorry economic and geopolitical state of the country in 1558, when young Elizabeth assumed the throne. The country needed cash, and Spanish treasure ships were queued up across the Atlantic delivering the bounties of the New World. Enter those aforementioned English pirates. Ronald offers the biography of each, narrates the necessary adventures, pauses periodically to quote (sometimes at excessive length) from relevant documents or to sketch biographical, political and geographical background. She rehearses a bit of the story of the first successful English slave trader, John Hawkins (for much more, see Nick Hazlewood's The Queen's Slave Trader, 2004). Then the text, like Elizabethan history itself, comes alive with Francis Drake swaggering onto the stage and quite literally stealing his way into the queen's heart. Ronald chronicles Drake's voyages with confidence, knowledge and patent admiration for his naval skills: At one point she describes him as "one hell of a captain and navigator." Eventually, he circumnavigated the globe, defeated the Spanish Armada, sort of retired, died. Mary, Queen of Scots, Essex and Raleigh lost their heads, but by the time James I mountedthe throne in 1603, England was poised for global greatness. What will certainly strike many readers is Elizabeth's serial dissembling-lying was one of her greatest talents-and the use by all European powers of deception, theft and violence as their principal instruments in the cacophonous symphony of international relations. Oft-told stories about people as familiar as family still retain their power to animate and educate.

Illustrations     x
Acknowledgments     xii
Author's Note     xiv
Introduction     xx
The Desperate Quest for Security
The Lord's Doing     3
A Realm Exhausted     8
The Queen, Her Merchants and Gentlemen     17
The Quest for Cash     26
The Merchants Adventurers, Antwerp, and Muscovy     38
The Politics of Piracy, Trade, and Religion     55
Raising the Stakes     67
Cunning Deceits     78
The Gloves Are Off     96
Lovell's Lamentable Voyage     106
The Troublesome Voyage of John Hawkins     112
Harvesting the Sea
The Queen and Alba's Pay Ships     129
The Cost of Failure     138
Undeclared Holy War     144
Drake's War     144
The Dread of Future Foes     154
Drake at the Treasure House of the World     164
From a Treetop in Darien     170
Success at a Cost     175
Dr. Dee's Nursery and the Northwest Passage     179
Dark Days at Rathlin Island     191
Drake's Perfect Timing     197
The Northwest and the Company of Kathai     206
In theShadow of Magellan     214
Into the Jaws of Death     221
The Famous Voyage     225
The World Is Not Enough     237
Elizabeth Strikes Back in the Levant     244
Katherine Champernowne's Sons Take Up the American Dream     248
The Defeats of 1582-84     256
Water!     263
Roanoke     269
The Spanish War
The Queen Lets Loose Her Dragon     277
The Camel's Back     291
Cadiz     295
The Plundering of the Spanish Armada     306
America Again...and Again?     316
The Last Gasp of the Early Roaring '90s     321
Dawn of Empire
The Alchemy That Turned Plunder into Trade     335
Essex, Ireland, and Tragedy     346
Raleigh, Virginia, and Empire     356
The East and the East India Company     363
Epilogue     370
The Petty Navy Royal     374
The Flotilla from New Spain of August 1587     384
Endnotes     386
Glossary     419
Select Bibliographical Essay and Suggested Reading     430
Index     443

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Culture War or Archibald Cox

Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America

Author: Morris P Fiorina

Part of the "Great Questions in Politics" series, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America combines polling data with a compelling narrative to debunk commonly-believed myths about American politics–particularly the claim that Americans are deeply divided in their fundamental political views. This second edition of Culture War? features a new chapter that demonstrates how the elections of 2004 reinforce the book’s argument that Americans are no more divided now than they were in the past. In addition, the text has been updated throughout to reflect data from the 2004 elections.

Ch. 1	Culture war?	1
Ch. 2	If America is not polarized, why do so many Americans think it is?	11
Ch. 3	A 50:50 nation? : red and blue state people are not that different	33
Ch. 4	A 50:50 nation? : beyond the red and blue states	57
Ch. 5	A closer look at abortion	79
Ch. 6	A closer look at homosexuality	109
Ch. 7	Have electoral cleavages shifted?	127
Ch. 8	The 2004 election and beyond	145
Ch. 9	Reconciling micro and macro	165
Ch. 10	How did it come to this and where do we go from here?	187

Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation

Author: Ken Gormley

By October 1973 special prosecutor Archibald Cox was tracing the Watergate cover-up to the Oval Office. President Nixon demanded that he stop. In the “Saturday Night Massacre” two heads of the Justice Department quit before Nixon found a subordinate (Robert Bork) willing to fire Cox. Immediately public opinion swung against the president and turned Cox into a hero—seemingly Washington’s last honest man.Cox’s life was distinguished well before that Saturday night. He had been a clerk for the legendary judge Learned Hand, a distinguished professor at Harvard Law School, and the Solicitor General, arguing many Supreme Court cases. He exemplified what we want lawyers to be. At its core Archibald Cox is the story of a Yankee who went to Washington but refused to leave his principles behind.

Kirkus Reviews

The jurist who gave Richard Nixon fits receives his due in a satisfying biography.

Gormley (Law/Duquesne Univ.) approaches Cox as an exponent of a particularly tough, independent-minded, Yankee kind of approach to the law. Born in 1912, Cox came of age in a time when the legal profession was nearly universally respected and when whole lineages devoted themselves to the practice of law (Gormley notes that Cox's great-grandfather William Maxwell Evarts defended Andrew Johnson when impeachment proceedings were undertaken against him in 1868). After clerking for the eminent federal judge Learned Hand, Cox became a government labor lawyer, then a Harvard professor, and then entered politics somewhat reluctantly as a speechwriter for presidential candidate John Kennedy. Despite his solid résumé, Cox was seemingly unprepared for the scrutiny that would attach to his work as the government's special prosecutor in the Watergate investigation of 1973. Gormley examines Nixon's charge that Cox was a politically motivated hit man who, with his staff, "bored like termites through the whole executive branch," noting that Cox was in fact something of a legal conservative who criticized such rulings as Roe v. Wade and who found the whole business of turning up evidence against a sitting president personally distasteful. Gormley gives a careful account of the events leading up to Cox's dismissal at Nixon's orders; the man who fired him was a federal judge named Robert Bork, whose role as hatchet man would come back to haunt him more than a decade later as a nominee for the Supreme Court.

Students of the Watergate years will find a few other gems in Gormley's pages, including an admission from Nixon's chief of staff Alexander Haig that the president "could well be guilty." Otherwise, this well-written biography will be of most interest to students of law in the public interest.

Monday, February 16, 2009

The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence or Silent Travelers Germs Genes and the Immigrant Menace

The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence

Author: Raymond J Batvinis

As the world prepared for war in the 1930s, the United States discovered that it faced the real threat of foreign spies stealing military and industrial secrets-and that it had no established means to combat them. Into that breach stepped J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

Although the FBI's expanded role in World War II has been well documented, few have examined the crucial period before Pearl Harbor when the Bureau's powers secretly expanded to face the developing international emergency. Former FBI agent Raymond Batvinis now tells how the Bureau grew from a small law enforcement unit into America's first organized counter-espionage and counterintelligence service. Batvinis examines the FBI's emerging new roles during the two decades leading up to America's entry into World War II to show how it cooperated and competed with other federal agencies. He takes readers behind the scenes, as the State Department and Hoover fought fiercely over the control of counterintelligence, and tells how the agency combined its crime-fighting expertise with its new wiretapping authority to spy on foreign agents.

Based on newly declassified documents and interviews with former agents, Batvinis's account reconstructs and greatly expands our understanding of the FBI's achievements and failures during this period. Among these were the Bureau's mishandling of the 1938 Rumrich/Griebl spy case, which Hoover slyly used to broaden his agency's powers; its cracking of the Duquesne Espionage Case in 1941, which enabled Hoover to boost public and congressional support to new heights; and its failure to understand the value of Soviet agent Walter Krivitsky, which slowed Bureau efforts to combat Soviet espionage in America.

In addition, Batvinis offers a new view of the relationship between the FBI and the military, cites the crucial contributions of British intelligence to the FBI's counter-intelligence education, and reveals the agency's ultra-secret role in mining financial records for the Treasury Department. He also reviews the early days of the top-secret Special Intelligence Service, which quietly dispatched FBI agents posing as businessmen to South America to spy on their governments.

With an insider's knowledge and a storyteller's skill, Batvinis provides a page-turning history narrative that greatly revises our views of the FBI-and also resonates powerfully with our own post-9/11 world.

Go to: Iraq or Christianity and Law

Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the Immigrant Menace

Author: Alan M Kraut

Epidemics and immigrants have suffered a lethal association in the public mind, from the Irish in New York wrongly blamed for the cholera epidemic of 1832 and Chinese in San Francisco vilified for causing the bubonic plague in 1900, to Haitians in Miami stigmatized as AIDS carriers in the 1980s. Silent Travelers vividly describes these and many other episodes of medicalized prejudice and analyzes their impact on public health policy and beyond. The book shows clearly how the equation of disease with outsiders and illness with genetic inferiority broadly affected not only immigration policy and health care but even the workplace and schools. The first synthesis of immigration history and the history of medicine, Silent Travelers is also a deeply human story, enriched by the voices of immigrants themselves. Irish, Italian, Jewish, Latino, Chinese, and Cambodian newcomers among others grapple in these pages with the mysteries of modern medicine and American prejudice. Anecdotes about famous and little-known figures in the annals of public health abound, from immigrant physicians such as Maurice Fishberg and Antonio Stella who struggled to mediate between the cherished Old World beliefs and practices of their patients and their own state-of-the-art medical science, to "Typhoid Mary" and the inspiring example of Mother Cabrini. Alan M. Kraut tells of the newcomers founding of hospitals to care for their own the "Halls of Great Peace" (actually little more than hovels where lepers could go to die) set up by Chinese immigrants; the establishment of St. Vincent's Hospital in New York as an institution sensitive to the needs of Catholic patients; and the creation of a tuberculosis sanitarium in Denver by Eastern European Jewish tradespeople who managed to scrape together $1.20 in contributions at their first meeting. Tapping into a rich array of sources - from turn-of-the-century government records to an advice book aimed at Italians financed by the DAR, from the photog

Library Journal

Fear of the ``other'' has long been part of life in America. Historian Kraut chronicles that fear as it manifests itself as fear of contamination by new immigrants. He describes how health policy was and is used to segregate communities and to exclude classes of people from entry into the United States. In particular, he looks closely at tuberculosis, cholera, and bubonic plague and at the institutional and governmental response to health crises. Kraut also emphasizes the importance of culturally relevant medicine and how it has come into conflict with the desire to Americanize the immigrants. These are important issues today, when tuberculosis and AIDS are often viewed as outsider's diseases, as when Haitians were singled out as a nation of AIDS carriers. No other current volume covers immigration and health from a historical perspective. The material is well presented and engrossing. Recommended for all history and health collections.-- Eric D. Albright, Galter Health Sciences Lib., Northwestern Univ., Chicago

Booknews

Traces the American tradition of suspicion of the unassimilated, from the cholera outbreak of the 1830s through the great waves of immigration that began in the 1890s, to the recent past, when the erroneous association of Haitians with the AIDS virus brought widespread panic and discrimination. Kraut (history, American U.) found that new immigrant populations--made up of impoverished laborers living in urban America's least sanitary conditions--have been victims of illness rather than its progenitors, yet the medical establishment has often blamed epidemics on immigrants' traditions, ethnic habits, or genetic heritage. Originally published in hardcover by Basic Books in 1994. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

	Preface
	Introduction: The Double Helix of Health and Fear
1	"The Breath of Other People Killed Them": First Encounters
2	"A Scourge, a Rod in the Hand of God": Epidemics and the Irish Mid-Century
3	"Proper Precautions": Searching for Illness on Ellis Island
4	A Plague of Nativism: The Cases of Chick Gin and "Typhoid Mary"
5	"That Is the American Way. And in America You Should Do as Americans Do": Italian Customs, American Standards
6	Gezunthayt iz besser vi Krankhayt: Fighting the Stigma of the "Jewish Disease"
7	"The Old Inquisition Had Its Rack and Thumbscrews": Immigrant Health and the American Workplace
8	"There Could Also Be Magic in Barbarian Medicine": American Nurses, Physicians, and Quacks
9	"East Side Parents Storm the Schools": Public Schools and Public Health
10	"Viruses and Bacteria Don't Ask for a Green Card": New Immigrants and Old Fears
	Appendix I: Classification of Excludable Medical Conditions According to the 1903 Book of Instructions for the Medical Inspection of Immigrants
	Appendix II: Classification of Excludable Medical Conditions According to the 1917 Book of Instructions for the Medical Inspection of Immigrants
	Notes
	Credits
	Index

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Implementation or Making Peace

Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland: or, Why It's Amazing that Federal Programs Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Mo

Author: Aaron B Wildavsky

Three substantial new chapters and a new preface in this third edition explore and elaborate the relationship between the evaluation of programs and the study of their implementation. The authors suggest that tendencies to assimilate the two should be resisted. Evaluation should retain its enlightenment function while the study of implementation should strengthen its focus on learning.

National Review

There are innumberable ways to profit from this fully documented yet highly readable tale of earnest but relatively unsuccessful ways of spending the taxpayers' money.

New Republic

They make an unimpeachable case for close attention to the modes of implementing policy, and . . . their chapters five and six constitute the first solid survey of the adminsitrative thickets through which future urban policies will have to make their way.

New York Times Book Review

Of universal application . . . this is an analysis of why the urban crisis has proved so intractable . . . . Nobody who reads this book will ever again be surprised by the gulf between promise and performance in a program to help revive or save or rebuild the country's cities.

Books about: Marketing or Teaching Today

Making Peace

Author: George Mitchell

UPDATED WITH A NEW PREFACE
Fifteen minutes before five o'clock on Good Friday, 1998, Senator George Mitchell was informed that his long and difficult quest for an Irish peace effort had succeeded--the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland, and the governments of the Republic of Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, would sign the agreement. Now Mitchell, who served as independent chairman of the peace talks for the length of the process, tells us the inside story of the grueling road to this momentous accord and the subsequent developments that may threaten, or strengthen, the chance for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

Washington Monthly - Fred Barbash

We...congratulate George Mitchell for his role in Northern Ireland. He is a tremendous hero, in ways most Americans have yet to recognize, in part because the Norwegians foolishly left his name off when they gave the Nobel Peace prize in 1998...

Boston Globe

Compelling.

Irish America Magazine

...[A]n interesting account of [Mitchell's] time as chairman of the peace talks which ultimately led to the signing of the Good Friday agreement.

Brill's Content - Rifka Rosenwein

It's no small feat to keep a story suspenseful when the reader already knows the outcome, but former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell manages to do so...

The New York Times Book Review - Warren Hoge

...[A]n account of [Mitchell's] participation that characteristically focuses less on himself than on the process he put in motion....The narrative usefully chronicles how Mitchell constructed a trustworthy ladder for people who needed enormous persuasion to reach out for the first rung....It was an unaccustomed and short-lived moment of euphoria for Northern Ireland. Putting the agreement into place has faltered, and Mitchell has been dispatched by President Clinton to lead the salvage effort.

Publishers Weekly

Politics, according to Bismarck, is the art of the possible. Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, used his mastery of this art to achieve the seemingly impossible: a peace settlement in Northern Ireland. This is his account of his role as chairman of the interparty negotiations and of how the major nationalist and unionist political parties — and the British and Irish governments — managed to forge the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. Recruited by President Clinton to serve as an intermediary in the peace process, Mitchell spent nearly three years trying to create the conditions that made the final agreement possible. It wasn't easy. The IRA temporarily abandoned its ceasefire in the middle of the process, and extremist unionist and nationalist paramilitary groups tried their utmost to thwart the process by continuing to conduct bombings and shootings. Mitchell describes the twists and turns of the peace process in comprehensive detail, and his overview of the conflict provides a concise introduction to the turbulent history of Northern Ireland. He came to know all of the major protagonists very well, and his shrewd assessments of Gerry Adams ("sincerely trying hard, in difficult and dangerous circumstances, to bring his supporters into the grand tent of democracy"), David Trimble ("he saw the opportunity to end a long and bitter conflict, and he did not want to go down in the history books as the man who let it pass") and other political leaders enrich the book. In discussing the crucial final negotiating session, the narrative becomes as fast-paced as any thriller. While noting that the peace remains fragile, Mitchell provides solid evidence for believing the Good Friday agreement will hold and that the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland have finally come to an end.

Library Journal

The landmark 1998 Good Friday Agreement of Northern Ireland still holds, however threatened. That agreement was the result of several years of intense, difficult negotiations led by former senate majority leader Mitchell (Not for America Alone: The Triumph of Democracy and the Fall of Communism, LJ 4/15/97). Here he presents a readable, illuminating portrait of the negotiation process, offering vivid snapshots of the key players and the high and low points of the whole affair. His understanding and observations are characterized by the same good sense and fairness that have long been regarded as hallmarks of his character and key elements in his successful senate career. Mitchells unusual family backgroundhis orphaned Irish American father was raised by Lebanese Americans, and his mother is Lebanesemay account for some of his understanding of and obvious patience with ethnic and religious tensions and differences. Highly recommended for larger public and academic libraries where such political fare is of interest.Charles V. Cowling, Drake Memorial Lib., Brockport, NY

Philadelphia Inquirer - Jonathan Stevenson

The paramount quality that shines through Mitchell's narrative is his cool professionalism, uncorrupted by ego or American chauvinism...He won the trust of most of those involved and got an improbable result. Making Peace faithfully memorializes that marvelous achievement.

The Washington Monthly - Fred Barbash

Sunday Times(London) - Paul Bew

A significant and decisive contribution to our understanding of the most serious attempt yet to achieve a historic compromise in Ireland.

Irish Voice - Niall O'Dowd

Riveting...Thoughtful and incisive.

The New York Times Book Review - Warren Hoge

Brill's Content - Rifka Rosenwein

It's no small feat to keep a story suspenseful when the reader already knows the outcome, but former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell manages to do so...

Kirkus Reviews

A rather dry firsthand account of the difficult negotiations leading up to the 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland, as told by the former senator and negotiations chairman. Mitchell's inestimable political genius played a crucial role in achieving the historic Good Friday Agreement. As it emerges here, his unwavering patience, vast experience, and supreme evenhandedness steered the bickering parties toward consensus, pushing the peace process forward against powerful tides of sectarian hatred. Mitchell makes clear how his years as Senate majority leader prepared him well to confront the polarized political climate of Northern Ireland, where incendiary rhetoric and rifles have often substituted for political discourse. For the first time in eight decades, overwhelming international pressure (especially from Britain, Ireland, and the US) played a decisive role in creating the momentum for peace. The opposing Irish nationalists and pro-British Unionists, who have traded atrocities for 30 years, felt this pressure intensely, but also felt pressure from their own (often extremist) constituents who feared that compromise would be a "betrayal." Every inch the politician, Mitchell implicitly understood the tightrope walk that both sides were being asked to take. He performed brilliantly as a trusted, honest broker, enabling the parties to hammer out the details of an agreement. While Mitchell's political acumen is undeniably world-class, he's less skilled as a chronicler of events. He simply doesn't flesh out the critical personalities (Tony Blair, David Trimble, John Hume, Gerry Adams, etc.), nor does he provide enough historical background to explain the profound sectarianmistrust that continues to scar Northern Ireland. On the paramount issue of weapons decommissioning, Mitchell offers almost no insights. What emerges most clearly is not Mitchell's ability as a historian or memoirist, but his tremendous desire to bring the parties together. Despite horrific personal tragedy and diplomatic setbacks that would have driven a lesser person to hair-pulling insanity, Mitchell kept up the good fight. A middling book by an exemplary peacemaker and human being. (b&w photos) (First printing of 40,000)

What People Are Saying

Kevin Cullen
Mitchell's account of the negotiating sets the benchmark against which any subsequent books on that part of the peace process will be judged...One of its strengths is that while Mitchell is refreshingly honest in his descriptions of the various political leaders in Northern ireland, he is remarkably restrained and nonjudgmental.

	Preface	xi
	Introduction	xv
1	"I have never known peace."	3
2	"Would you be willing to help?"	7
3	First Steps	22
4	A Different Route	39
5	"No. No. No. No."	46
6	No Progress	71
7	An American Interlude	76
8	Beyond Reason	84
9	Smear Tactics	89
10	No Turning Back	96
11	"The settlement train is leaving."	101
12	Sinn Fein Comes In	107
13	Andrew's Peace	120
14	"I don't talk to murderers!"	129
15	An Agreement at Last	143
16	Peace	184
	Notes	189

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Globalized Islam or Best Laid Plans

Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

Author: Olivier Roy

The spread of Islam around the globe has blurred the connection between a religion, a specific society, and a territory. One-third of the world's Muslims now live as members of a minority. At the heart of this development is, on the one hand, the voluntary settlement of Muslims in Western societies and, on the other, the pervasiveness and influence of Western cultural models and social norms. The revival of Islam among Muslim populations in the last twenty years is often wrongly perceived as a backlash against westernization rather than as one of its consequences. Neofundamentalism has been gaining ground among a rootless Muslim youth -- particularly among the second- and third-generation migrants in the West -- and this phenomenon is feeding new forms of radicalism, ranging from support for Al Qaeda to the outright rejection of integration into Western society.

In this brilliant exegesis of the movement of Islam beyond traditional borders and its unwitting westernization, Olivier Roy argues that Islamic revival, or "re-Islamization," results from the efforts of westernized Muslims to assert their identity in a non-Muslim context. A schism has emerged between mainstream Islamist movements in the Muslim world -- including Hamas of Palestine and Hezbollah of Lebanon -- and the uprooted militants who strive to establish an imaginary ummah, or Muslim community, not embedded in any particular society or territory. Roy provides a detailed comparison of these transnational movements, whether peaceful, like Tablighi Jama'at and the Islamic brotherhoods, or violent, like Al Qaeda. He shows how neofundamentalism acknowledges without nostalgia the loss of pristine cultures, constructinginstead a universal religious identity that transcends the very notion of culture. Thus contemporary Islamic fundamentalism is not a single-note reaction against westernization but a product and an agent of the complex forces of globalization.

Go to: Supportive Care for the Renal Patient or Breast Cancer

Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook and Your Future

Author: Randal OTool

Drawing on 30 years of experience reviewing hundreds of government plans, Randal O'Toole shows that, thanks to government planners, American cities are choked with congestion, major American housing markets have become unaf-fordable, and the cost of government infrastructure is spiraling out of control. The book makes the case for repeal of federal planning laws and closure of gov-ernment planning offices. Every American who worries about the insidious growth of the Nanny State must read this book.

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     1
Forest Planning     7
The Case of the Fake Forests     9
Garbage In, Gospel Out     15
A Process of Natural Selection     23
Analysis Paralysis     33
The Return of Fire Dominance     41
Why Planning Fails     45
Radical Doctrine or Rational Decisionmaking?     47
Human Barriers     57
Planning Is Not Necessary     69
Land-Use Planning     73
Urban Renewal     75
Turning Portland into L.A.     83
How Smart Is "Smart Growth"?     93
Smart Growth as Oppression     105
Homeownership     111
Housing Affordability     117
Housing Bubbles     127
It's Supply, Not Demand     133
Portland Housing     137
Smart Growth and Crime     143
Portland Planning Implodes     149
Why Planners Fail     157
The Planning Profession     159
The History of Planning     167
The Ideal Communist City     171
Urban Renewal in the United States     179
From Radiant City to SmartGrowth     185
Typical Planning Methods     189
Transportation Planning     195
Planning vs. Chaos     197
The Benefits of the Automobile     203
Costs Exaggerated     221
The Panic Over Peak Oil     227
Planning for Congestion     237
Building Auto-Hostile Streets     243
The Rail Transit Hoax     249
Transportation Myths     267
Why Government Fails     279
Power and Rationality     281
Legislators: Seeking Reelection     289
Special Interests: Looking for Handouts     293
Bureaucrats: Maximizing Budgets     297
The Executive: Distracted by Detail     303
Courts and Voters: The Last Lines of Defense     307
Instead of Planning     311
246 Varieties of Cheese     315
Make the Market Work     319
Turn Open-Access Resources into Property     325
Protect Public Goods with Trusts     329
Understand Government's Limits     335
Reforming Public Land Management     339
Reforming Transportation     343
Reforming Land Use     349
The American Dream      353
Notes     357
Index     393

Friday, February 13, 2009

Blood Stripes or Cleansing the Fatherland

Blood Stripes: The Grunt's View of the War in Iraq

Author: David Danelo

A sometimes harrowing, often humorous, and occasionally tragic look at the Marine Corps from the inside out in its struggle with the insurgency in Iraq. Drawing from personal experience in the confusing, deadly conflict currently being fought in the streets and back alleys of Iraqi towns and villages, Danelo focuses on the young Marine leaders—corporals and sergeants—whose job it is to take even younger Marines into battle, close with and destroy an elusive enemy, and bring their boys back home again. Sadly, there are losses, but true to the Marine Corps spirit, they soldier on, earning their blood stripes the only way they know how—the hard way. The author interviewed charismatic and controversial Marine Gen. James N. "Mad Dog" Mattis, a legendary Marine commander revered by the grunts and uncovered new details about the fierce battle for Fallujah.

Author Biography: David J. Danelo, a former U.S. Marine Corps infantry captain, deployed to Camp Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. While overseas, he served in several billets, including the Operations Officer, Intelligence Officer, and Convoy Commander for the I Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group. A 1998 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Danelo was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal with Combat "V," Combat Action Ribbon, and Purple Heart. Danelo also speaks, reads, and writes Arabic. He lives near Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Look this: Insulin Resistance or Exercise for Older Adults

Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene

Author: Gotz Aly

"The chapters in this volume painfully drive home the point that certainly as far as Germany is concerned, the lessons of the Third Reich have not yet been learned... These significant attempts by younger recruits to the larger medical establishment to change things through eye-opening reflection and analysis, however uncomfortable, need support."--Michael H. Kater, author of Doctors under Hitler, in the foreword.

The infamous Nuremberg Doctors' Trials of 1946-47 revealed horrifying crimes --ranging from grotesque medical experiments on humans to mass murder--committed by physicians and other health care workers in Nazi Germany. But far more common, argue the authors of Cleansing the Fatherland, were the doctors who profited professionally and financially from the killings but were never called to task--and, indeed, were actively shielded by colleagues in postwar German medical organizations.

The authors examine the role of German physicians in such infamous operations as the "T 4" euthanasia program (code-named for the Berlin address of its headquarters at Number 4 Tiergartenstrasse). They also reveal details of countless lesser known killings--all ordered by doctors and all in the name of public health. Maladjusted adolescents, the handicapped, foreign laborers too illto work, even German civilians who suffered mental breakdowns after air raids were "selected for treatment." (One physician who persisted in speaking of "killings" was officially reprimanded for his "negative attitude.")

The book also includes original documents--never before published in English--that give unique and chilling insight into the everyday workings of Nazi medicine. Amongthem:

• Minutes from a 1940 meeting of the Conference of German Mayors, at which a Nazi official gives the assembled politicians detailed instructions for the secret burial of murdered mental patients.

• A pre-Nazi era questionnaire sent by the head of a state mental institution to parents of disabled children. (Sample question: "Would you agree to a painless shortening of your child's life after an expert had determined him incurably imbecilic?" Sample answer: "Yes, but I would prefer not to know.")

• The diary of Dr. Hermann Voss, chief anatomist at the Reichs University of Posen (and later a highly respected physician in postwar Germany), who delights in the flowers blooming outside his window and worries that the overstock of Polish cadavers from his Gestapo suppliers might cause his crematory oven to break down.

• Letters of Dr. Friedrich Mennecke, director of the notorious Eichberg Clinic, who writes with cloying sentimentality to the wife he calls "mommy" and comments offhandedly about visiting concentration camps to select "patients" for death.

Today, as reports of mass death in Europe are once again cast in terms of public hygiene, and as euthanasia is advocated--even applauded--on U.S. television, the relevance of what Michael H.Kater here calls "the lessons of the Third Reich" is perhaps greater than ever. Against this background, Cleansing the Fatherland sends a stark message that is difficult to ignore.

Publishers Weekly

It's no wonder this book caused a flurry when first published in Germany. The authors, who are German, offer compelling evidence that the 350 doctors tried at Nuremberg in 1946-47 were not the so-called black sheep of the German medical profession, but rather a small part of a much larger group of doctors, university professors, scientists and researchers involved in medical crimes. The authors draw their chilling conclusions directly from the archives of mental institutions, hospitals and experimentation centers. An abundance of evidence, sometimes absorbing, sometimes overwhelming, demonstrates how the Nazis employed medicine to ``cleanse'' Germany of the ``sick, alien, and disturbing''-a goal firmly supported by the intelligentsia. By 1939, euthanasia was the method ordained by the Nazis to eliminate the infirm, mentally ill, socially or racially ``inferior'' and anyone unable to work. Hundreds of thousands, including children, were killed while medical professionals profitted. Dr. Hermann Voss, chief anatomist at the Reich University of Posen, turned a handsome profit on the sale of the skeletons and skulls of dead Poles. His diary is an illustration of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil, ``Yesterday, two wagons full of Polish ashes were taken away. Outside my office, the robinias are blooming beautifully, just as in Leipzig.'' Much of this information, which was available at the end of WWII, was suppressed because many of those involved in these heinous crimes still hold leading positions. Readers may be driven to examine their own beliefs concerning the benefits of doctor-assisted suicide, when confronted with a society that takes this seemingly benign idea and turns it into a great evil. (Sept.)

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Warrior or Hidden Iran

Warrior: An Autobiography

Author: Ariel Sharon

Israel's newest prime minister as of February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon is a dynamic and controversial leader. A hero in Israel's wars, perhaps the most daring and successful commander in Israel's extraordinary military history, Sharon has always been a warrior, whether the enemies were hostile Arab nations, terrorists, Time magazine, or rival politicians. The public man is well known -- aggressive in battle, hard-line in politics -- but the private man has always been obscured by Sharon's dazzling career and powerful personality. In this compelling and dramatic auto-biography, the real Sharon appears for the first time: a complex man, a loving father, a figure of courage and compassion. He is a warrior who commands the respect and love of his troops, a visionary, and an uncompromising, ruthless pragmatist.

Sharon tells his story with frankness, power, intelligence, and a brilliant gift for detail. Always controversial, he is as outspoken as his friends -- and enemies -- would expect him to be.

Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic

Author: Ray Takeyh

A leading expert explains why we fail to understand Iran and offers a new strategy for redefining this crucial relationship

For more than a quarter of a century, few countries have been as resistant to American influence or understanding as Iran. The United States and Iran have long eyed each other with suspicion, all too eager to jump to conclusions and slam the door. What gets lost along the way is a sense of what is actually happening inside Iran and why it matters. With a new hard-line Iranian president making incendiary pronouncements and pressing for nuclear developments, the consequences of not understanding Iran have never been higher.

Ray Takeyh, a leading expert on Iran’s politics and history, has written a groundbreaking book that demystifies the Iranian regime and shows how the fault lines of Iran’s domestic politics serve to explain its behavior. In Hidden Iran, he explains why this country has so often confounded American expectations and why its outward hostility does not necessarily preclude the normalization of relations. Through a clearer understanding of the competing claims of Muslim theology, republican pragmatism, and factional competition, he offers a new paradigm for managing our relations with this rising power.

Publishers Weekly

In this well-constructed sketch of American-Iranian relations, Takeyh (senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) critiques the U.S.'s unnuanced approach to Iran since its 1979 revolution as well as the failure of successive administrations to note that decades of sanctions and containment haven't significantly changed Iranian behavior. A picture emerges of a complex society marked by cultural struggle and compromise, as Takeyh criticizes the perception of Iranian politics as monolithic. He concludes that the "chimera of regime change" must finally be rejected, and pointedly observes that "it is rare... for a state that views nuclear weapons as fundamental to its security interests to dispense with such weapons under relentless threats." Takeyh urges America to look beyond President Ahmadinejad to such institutions as Iran's powerful Supreme National Security Council and Foreign Ministry, each of which distanced themselves from Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel rhetoric. Takeyh even suggests areas in which Iran and the U.S. might forge a "selective partnership"-not least their shared need for a stable Iraq. Though he occasionally slips into a too-casual assumption of the inevitability of his forecasts, Takeyh (The Receding Shadow of the Prophet) provides a well-argued, seldom heard viewpoint. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Think Iraq is a mess? Wait until the neocons get to Iran, warns Council on Foreign Relations fellow Takeyh. Getting Iran wrong is the single thread that has linked American administrations of all political persuasion, writes the author. In some instances, getting Iran wrong has involved overestimating its people's willingness to endure oppression, as with the hated Pahlavi dynasty, which fell in 1979. In other instances, it has involved overestimating the power of religious orthodoxy-and misreading the very nature of the Iranian theocracy. In the case of the Bush administration and its think-tankers, misreadings are tinged with ideological certainty that Iran is indeed a member of the league of rogue nations: Thus, former CIA director James Woolsey deems Iran the "central antagonist" in World War IV ("the third evidently being the Cold War," Takeyh glosses), while Iraq war architect Richard Perle urges the overthrow of "that miserable government." Takeyh argues that Iran seeks only to be regionally influential, though it has an unfortunate habit of projecting its power via terrorist proxies, as with Hezbollah in Lebanon and various Shiite factions in Iraq. All that aside, Iran is best understood as a nation in search of itself, one in which Islamic ideology, factional politics (including reformist, democratic organizations) and pragmatic national interests are in constant struggle. Even if the 2005 presidential election seemed to secure the ascendancy of conservative power, opposition politics is very much alive. It does no good, Takeyh urges, to isolate Iran; the specter of an "impudent American president castigating Iran as part of an 'axis of evil,' or denigrating its political processby proclaiming its elections a fraud even before they take place, only provides ammunition to hard-liners decrying Iran's democrats as unwitting agents of Western machinations."Think of Iran as China, Takeyh concludes in this useful essay, a nation with whom it is possible to compete and cooperate at once. We'll see. Agent: Larry Weissman/Larry Weissman, LLC

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Politics of Collective Violence or Asia America and the Transformation of Geopolitics

The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics Series)

Author: Charles Tilly

Are there any commonalities between such phenomena as soccer hooliganism, sabotage by peasants of landlords' property, road rage, and even the events of September 11? With striking historical scope and command of the literature of many disciplines, this book seeks the common causes of these events in collective violence. In collective violence, social interaction immediately inflicts physical damage, involves at least two perpetrators of damage, and results in part from coordination among the persons who perform the damaging acts. Charles Tilly argues that collective violence is complicated, changeable, and unpredictable in some regards, yet also results from similar causes variously combined in different times and places. Pinpointing the causes, combinations, and settings helps to explain collective violence and also helps to identify the best ways to mitigate violence and create democracies with a minimum of damage to persons and property. Charles Tilly is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. He has published more than twenty scholarly books, including twenty specialized monographs and edited volumes on political processes, inequality, population change and European history.

Foreign Affairs

Why do people who have lived together peacefully for years suddenly start killing each other? Tilly, a leading historical sociologist, thinks there are patterns to collective violence that run through its various forms — barroom brawls, peasant rebellions, labor strikes, ethnic struggles, civil wars, and even interstate wars. Although Tilly relies on jargon and abstractions in his quest for a unifying framework to make sense of these diverse types of violence, a dedicated reader will pick up some interesting insights. Tilly argues that the activation of latent political identities that separate people into "us" and "them" often triggers violence. But the violence emerges less from preexisting hatred than from sudden uncertainties and shifting social conditions, particularly the declining capacity of authorities to enforce agreements or police existing boundaries. Tilly supports this claim with the useful finding that the character and intensity of collective violence depend mightily on the type of government and its capacities. Democratic regimes tend to experience less group violence than authoritarian ones because of broader participation and a more extensive array of rights and institutions, and thus, he concludes, they are the best cure for collective violence.

Asia, America and the Transformation of Geopolitics

Author: William H Overholt

American security and prosperity now depend on Asia. William H. Overholt offers an iconoclastic analysis of developments in each major Asian country, Asian international relations, and U.S. foreign policy. Drawing on decades of political and business experience, he argues that obsolete Cold War attitudes tie the U.S. increasingly to an otherwise isolated Japan and obscure the reality that a U.S.-Chinese bicondominium now manages most Asian issues. Military priorities risk polarizing the region unnecessarily, weaken the economic relationships that engendered American preeminence, and ironically enhance Chinese influence. As a result, despite its Cold War victory, U.S. influence in Asia is declining. Overholt disputes the argument that democracy promotion will lead to superior development and peace, and forecasts a new era in which Asian geopolitics could take a drastically different shape. Covering Japan, China, Russia, Central Asia, India, Pakistan, Korea, and South-East Asia, Overholt offers invaluable insights for scholars, policymakers, business people, and general readers.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Outsourcing America or Rome from the Ground Up

Outsourcing America: The True Cost of Shipping Jobs Overseas and What Can Be Done About It

Author: Ron Hira

In the debate over outsourcing, one fact is clear: Most companies still believe they can save a tremendous amount of money by shipping jobs overseas. But how much is too much? Revised and expanded, this new edition of Outsourcing America exposes the hidden ways this alarming trend affects us all, revealing just how much outsourcing is taking place, what its impact has been and will continue to be, and what can be done about the loss of jobs.

More than an expose, Outsourcing America shows how offshoring is part of the historical economic shifts toward globalism and free trade, and demonstrates its impact on individual lives and communities. In addition, the book now features a new chapter on immigration policies and outsourcing, and advice on how individuals can avoid becoming victims of outsourcing. The authors discuss policies that countries like India and China use to attract U.S. industries, and they offer frank recommendations that business and political leaders must consider in order to confront this ongoing crisis.

About the Author:
Ron Hira, Ph.D., P.E., is a recognized expert on outsourcing, and the only person to testify twice before Congress on its implications

About the Author:
Anil Hira, Ph.D., is a specialist in international economic development and innovation issues

Rome from the Ground Up

Author: James McGregor

Rome is not one city but many, each with its own history unfolding from a different center: now the trading port on the Tiber; now the Forum of antiquity; the Palatine of imperial power; the Lateran Church of Christian ascendancy; the Vatican; the Quirinal palace. Beginning with the very shaping of the ground on which Rome first rose, this book conjures all these cities, past and present, conducting the reader through time and space to the complex and shifting realities—architectural, historical, political, and social—that constitute Rome.

A multifaceted historical portrait, this richly illustrated work is as gritty as it is gorgeous, immersing readers in the practical world of each period. James McGregor's explorations afford the pleasures of a novel thick with characters and plot twists: amid the life struggles, hopes, and failures of countless generations, we see how things truly worked, then and now; we learn about the materials of which Rome was built; of the Tiber and its bridges; of roads, aqueducts, and sewers; and, always, of power, especially the power to shape the city and imprint it with a particular personality—like that of Nero or Trajan or Pope Sixtus V—or a particular institution.

McGregor traces the successive urban forms that rulers have imposed, from emperors and popes to national governments including Mussolini's. And, in archaeologists' and museums' presentation of Rome's past, he shows that the documenting of history itself is fraught with power and politics. In McGregor's own beautifully written account, the power and politics emerge clearly, manifest in the distinctive styles and structures, practical concernsand aesthetic interests that constitute the myriad Romes of our day and days past.

Publishers Weekly

This intricate, literary traveler's guide explores the contiguous cities of Rome built on the Tiber floodplain over the centuries. McGregor, co-head of the University of Georgia's department of comparative literature, chronologically traces the successive periods of intense architecture and planning that helped Rome achieve strategic greatness, from the Etruscan management of the Tiber Island ford 3,000 years ago, to the city's unparalleled artistic stamp by Bramante and Michelangelo during the Renaissance, to Mussolini's monumental Fascist vision, to the precarious repairs heralding the Jubilee Year of 2000. The ancient historian Strabo remarked that while Greek cities were esteemed for their beauty and wealth, Rome excelled in the construction of roads, aqueducts and sewers, and on this theme McGregor dwells expertly, giving readers an excellent tour of ancient landmarks. As an official residence of emperors until the fourth-century displacement of the capital to Constantinople, Rome gushed with water in the form of baths and fountains; with the return of the popes from Avignon in 1377, the Vatican assumed prominence, and Bramante's restructuring of Old St. Peter's became a beacon for Rome's new mission. Here is a walking tour in stately, inviting prose that renders wonderfully manageable a massive history lesson for the intellectually curious and adept. Illus. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A pleasing history of Rome from antiquity to the modern era, tied to monuments, buildings and other structures throughout the city. The heart of Rome is the Tiber River, and there McGregor (Comparative Literature/Univ. of Georgia) begins. "Like all too many urban rivers," he writes, "it lies far below street level in a deep and narrow chasm, visible from above but almost out of reach." Not quite; the homeless get to it easily enough. But the point is well taken; the Tiber stands as a rebuke in a city full of splendors but also of graffiti and litter, one that is "being internationalized at an unprecedented pace" and made ever more chaotic with bigger and more numerous motor vehicles. Step away from the river, and McGregor's tour of the city becomes calmer and more reflective, and even longtime students of Roman history stand to learn something from his pages. Among the lessons offered along the way: The Basilica Julia represents a major urban renewal project on the part of Julius Caesar, who bought up a big chunk of the ancient Forum at "Manhattan prices" (whether of Pieter Minuit or Donald Trump we do not know) for the purpose. The Piazza di Spagna is so named because the Spanish embassy was once located there, and with it the office of the Institute for the Propagation of Faith-for it made sense for the proselytizers to associate with busy conquerors. Benito Mussolini engineered some urban renewal of his own, clearing out hundreds of houses in order to make his grand Via del Impero. And so on, in a wealth of detail and with well-chosen illustrations. Well worth consulting before planning a tour of the Eternal City. McGregor might have spent more time-or time at all-on certain well-knownpoints on the Roman map (the Campo dei Fiori, the Gardens of Sallust, the Baths of Caracalla), but Georgina Masson's Companion Guide to Rome (1974) fills in the blanks.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Radical Prunings or The Last Best Hope

Radical Prunings: A Novel of Officious Advice from the Contessa of Compost

Author: Bonnie Thomas Abbott

This rather deceptive work purports to be the collected horticultural columns of one opinionated Mertensia Corydalis. As Mertensia answers her readers' innocent gardening questions, she reveals more than she intends about her life, her relationships (from her prissy ex-husband to questionable interactions with her employees, Miss Vong and Tran), and her state of mind.

Radical Prunings is a literate, funny, and surprisingly bittersweet fiction debut from a writer with a sharp wit and a very green thumb.

Interesting book: Breathing Underwater or Wilderness First Aid

The Last Best Hope: A Democracy Reader

Author: Stephen John Goodlad

Sponsored by the Institute for Educational Inquiry

What are the conditions necessary for democracy to exist and flourish? Is democracy a sustainable ideal? What does individual freedom mean in a democracy? What is the relationship between democracy and morality? What roles does or should education play in a democratic society? Address some of the most important issues confronting democracy in the twenty-first century with this comprehensive anthology.

In addition to providing a provocative view of a complex subject, this collection will also be invaluable to anyone seeking a general introduction and overview of contemporary thought on the subject of democracy and education. Democracy demands of its citizens the ability to discuss, debate, and learn from one another. The Last Best Hope, a companion volume to Developing Democratic Character in the Young, encourages and makes a major contribution to such discourse.

Source Texts.
Introduction (S. Goodlad).
Acknowledgements.
The Editor
WHY DEMOCRACY?
Democracy (N. Postman).
An Aristocracy of Everyone (B. Barber).
CONCEPTS AND COMPLEXITIES.
What Makes Democracy Work? (R. Putnam).
The Democratic Virtues (C. Lummis).
Was Democracy Just a Moment? (R. Kaplan).
CITIZENSHIP AND CHARACTER.
The Masses in Representative Democracy (M. Oakeshott)
Reorientation in Education (B. Bode).
The Education of Character (M. Buber).
DEMOCRACY AND ITS TROUBLES.
Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order (N. Chomsky).
Law and Justice (H. Zinn).
Jefferson, Morrill, and the Upper Crust (W. Berry).
THE PUBLIC AND THE PERSONAL.
Democracy and Human Nature (J. Dewey).
Egalitarian Solidarity (P. Green).
Moral Imagination (M. Johnson).
EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY.
How Colleges of Education Package the Myth of Modernity (C. Bowers).
Democratic Education in Difficult Times (A. Gutmann).
What Is Education For? (D. Orr).
HUMAN POTENTIAL AND DEMOCRACY'S FUTURE.
The Domain of the Future (M. Csikszentmihalyi).
Practical Utopianism (M. Midgley).
Index.

	Preface
1	Varieties of Violence	1
2	Violence as Politics	26
3	Trends, Variations, and Explanations	55
4	Violent Rituals	81
5	Coordinated Destruction	102
6	Opportunism	130
7	Brawls	151
8	Scattered Attacks	170
9	Broken Negotiations	194
10	Conclusions	221
	References	239
	Index	255

1	Tiber Island and the ancient port	5
2	The Roman forum	33
3	The imperial city	61
4	Early Christian churches	107
5	Vatican revival	151
6	Renaissance in the river bend	193
7	Baroque expansion	237
8	The survival of history	281

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero

Publishers Weekly

Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America

Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents:

Friday, February 20, 2009

Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

Library Journal

Democracy's Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World's Most Popular Form of Government

Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents:

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

The Los Angeles Times

The Washington Post

The New Yorker

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

The New York Times

Kirkus Reviews

The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America

Table of Contents:

Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation

Kirkus Reviews

Monday, February 16, 2009

The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence

Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the Immigrant Menace

Library Journal

Booknews

Table of Contents:

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland: or, Why It's Amazing that Federal Programs Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Mo

National Review

New Republic

New York Times Book Review

Making Peace

Washington Monthly - Fred Barbash

Boston Globe

Irish America Magazine

Brill's Content - Rifka Rosenwein

The New York Times Book Review - Warren Hoge

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Philadelphia Inquirer - Jonathan Stevenson

The Washington Monthly - Fred Barbash

Sunday Times(London) - Paul Bew

Irish Voice - Niall O'Dowd

The New York Times Book Review - Warren Hoge

Brill's Content - Rifka Rosenwein

Kirkus Reviews

What People Are Saying

Table of Contents:

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook and Your Future

Table of Contents:

Friday, February 13, 2009

Blood Stripes: The Grunt's View of the War in Iraq

Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene

Publishers Weekly

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Warrior: An Autobiography

Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics Series)

Foreign Affairs

Table of Contents:

Asia, America and the Transformation of Geopolitics

Monday, February 9, 2009

Outsourcing America: The True Cost of Shipping Jobs Overseas and What Can Be Done About It

Rome from the Ground Up

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews