Poles Jews and the Politics of Nationality or The End of Alliances

Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892-1914

Author: Joshua D Zimmerman

The Jewish experience on Polish lands is often viewed backwards through the lens of the Holocaust and the ethnic rivalries that escalated in the period between the two world wars. Critical to the history of Polish-Jewish relations, however, is the period prior to World War I when the emergence of mass electoral politics in Czarist Russia led to the consolidation of modern political parties. Using sources published in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian, Joshua D. Zimmerman has compiled a full-length English-language study of the relations between the two dominant progressive movements in Russian Poland. He examines the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), which sought social emancipation and equal civil rights for minority nationalities, including Jews, under a democratic Polish republic, and the Jewish Labor Bund, which declared that Jews were a nation distinct from Poles and Russians and advocated cultural autonomy. By 1905, the PPS abandoned its call for Jewish assimilation, and recognized Jews as a separate nationality. Zimmerman demonstrates persuasively that Polish history in Czarist Russia cannot be fully understood without studying the Jewish influence and that Jewish history was equally infused with the Polish influence.

Table of Contents:

	Maps, Tables, Figures, and Illustrations
	Acknowledgments
	Note on Transliterations, Dates, and Terms
	Introduction	3
1	Industrialization and the Rise of the Polish Socialist Party in Tsarist Russia, 1892-97	9
2	The First Sproutings of the Jewish Socialist Movement, 1890-95	36
3	Into the Polish Heartland: The Spread of the Jewish Movement to Warsaw, 1895-97	69
4	Organizational Breakthrough: The Formation of the Jewish Labor Bund, 1897-98	83
5	Ideological Transformation: The Turn to a National Program, 1899-1901	106
6	Polish Socialism Responds: The First Years of the PPS Yiddish Press, 1898-1902	126
7	Toward a Recognition of Jewish Nationality: The PPS and Its Jewish Section, 1902-4	165
8	The 1905 Revolution in Russia and the Transformation of PPS-Bund Relations	191
9	From Politics to the New Yiddish Culture: The Bund in the Period of Revolutionary Defeat, 1907-11	227
10	The PPS and the Jewish Question on the Eve of the First World War	255
	Conclusion	273
	Abbreviations	279
	Notes	281
	Bibliography	333
	Index	349

Interesting book: Appetites or Yoga for Living

The End of Alliances

Author: Rajan Menon

Why should the United States cling to military alliances established during the Cold War when the circumstances are now fundamentally different? In The End of Alliances, Rajan Menon argues that our alliances in Europe and Asia have become irrelevant to the challenges we face today. The United States must be actively involved beyond its borders, but by relying on coalitions whose membership varies depending on the issue at hand. While a strategy that ceases to rely on alliances will mark a dramatic shift in American foreign policy, he reminds us that states routinely reassess and reorient their strategies. The United States, which studiously avoided alliances for much of its history only to embrace them during the Cold War, is no exception. The End of Alliances predicts that the coming change in American strategy will force our traditional allies to rethink their choices and create new patterns in world politics. The controversial argument advanced by Menon will provoke debate among foreign policy specialists and the general public.

The New York Times - Mick Sussman

…Menon is a level-headed analyst, and though his prescription for an updated grand strategy is tentative, his diagnosis of the ills besetting the current one is persuasive.

Foreign Affairs

Alliances have been the cornerstone of U.S. foreign relationssince the 1940s. Even now, they remain the foundation for global security cooperation. But in this provocative book, Menon asserts that such formal military ties are destined to fade away. It is not a return to isolationism that will drive the dissolution of alliances but rather a slow -- and, to Menon's mind, welcome -- strategic reorientation of the United States' global position, with more informal and shifting alignments of states. Menon's thesis is based partly on his reading of the past: the United States has always been ambivalent about security commitments and maintaining a long-term overseas military presence, a national orientation only temporarily overcome by the Cold War. The new security environment, Menon goes on to argue, marked by the rise of terrorism and the absence of threatening great powers, makes alliances dispensable. Moreover, Washington's European and Asian allies are now economically revived and able to provide for their own security. In the end, Menon offers a clear picture of the global shifts that have thrown the role of alliances into question, but his argument that the costs of alliances are rising relative to their benefits is less convincing. Nor does he explore the role of the U.S. alliance system in facilitating cooperation among the advanced democracies. Today's alliances may have outlived their historical causes, but their usefulness remains.

Jeffersons Empire or Encyclopedia of the Palestinians

Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood

Author: Peter S Onuf

Peter S. Onuf's book traces Jefferson's vision of the American future to its roots in his idealized notions of nationhood and empire. Onuf's recognition that Jefferson's famed egalitarianism was elaborated in an imperialist context yields original interpretations of our national identity and our ideas of race, of westward expansion and the Civil War, and of American global dominance in the twentieth century." "In Onuf's view, Jefferson's quest to define a new American identity also shaped his ambivalent conceptions of slavery and Native American rights." "Jefferson's ideas about race reveal the limitations of his conception of American nationhood. Yet, as Onuf strikingly documents, Jefferson's vision of a republican empire - a regime of peace, prosperity, and union without coercion - continues to define and expand the boundaries of American national identity.

What People Are Saying

McCoy
In this lively and engaging collection of essays that will stimulate scholars and general leaders alike, Peter Onuf succeeds admirably in taking a fresh look at a subject of vital concern in both Jefferson's world and our own. (Drew McCoy, Clark University)

Drew McCoy
In this lively and engaging collection of essays that will stimulate scholars and general leaders alike, Peter Onuf succeeds admirably in taking a fresh look at a subject of vital concern in both Jefferson's world and our own. (Drew McCoy, Clark University)

Pauline Maier
This thought—provoking study of Jefferson's vision for the American nation is an important contribution to contemporary historical scholarship. It forces readers to ask whether in multiracial, cosmopolitan America, tolerant of cultural differences and at home with partisan conflict, can in any sense be called 'Jeffersonian.'
—(Pauline Maier, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Joyce Appleby
Peter Onuf has written a fine study of Jefferson's political thought approached as a coherent body of principles and affirmations formed during the critical years between his entering the lists as a polemicist for the patriot cause and his move to form an opposition to the Federalist policies in Washington's administration twenty years later. Jefferson's Empire is tightly argued, forcefully written, and intellectually challenging.
—(Joyce Appleby, University of California, Los Angeles)

Lance Banning
Jefferson's Empire is brilliant work by the historian best qualified to give us a new and thorough analysis of Jefferson's concepts of empire, nation, and union. It offers both a fresh angle of vision on Jefferson himself and a superb contribution to the renewed understanding of the importance of Federalism to the founding generation.
—(Lance Banning, University of Kentucky)

New interesting textbook: Keep Your Kids Safe on the Internet or The Dream of Eternal Life

Encyclopedia of the Palestinians

Author: Philip Mattar

The Palestinian people and their region are continually in the news and at the forefront of international diplomacy. Yet much about their history remains obscure.

The Encyclopedia of the Palestinians objectively details the historical and political factors behind such controversial topics as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Coverage concentrates primarily on the modern era—from the beginning of the late Ottoman period to the present. The ancient and medieval history of the region is also explored.

Led by Philip Mattar, Ph.D. andexecutive director of the Institute for Palestinian Studies, a distinguished group of 50 scholars and regional experts has contributed more than 350 alphabetically arranged articles to create this book.

These fully crossreferenced entries cover:

• Politics:
"National Bloc Party," "Palestinian National Charter," "Palestinian National Council," "Reform Party," "United Nations and the Palestinians," "Liberal Party," "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine"

Library Journal

The Palestine conflict has been at the core of the Arab-Israeli dispute for over half a century. There are numerous fine books on various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Palestinian issues have received extensive media coverage throughout the world. Yet misperceptions about the Palestinian people and their history abound in both popular and, to some extent, scholarly circles in the West. The editor, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian American, is the executive director of the American branch of the Institute for Palestine Studies and deputy director of the Journal of Palestine Studies. In this solid reference work, the editor and approximately 50 other scholars have put together extremely useful entries on all aspects of historical and contemporary issues affecting the Palestinian people. The topics covered include politics, culture, society, history, economics, and geography. Also included are significant events and biographies of important individuals whose lives have shaped the contours of modern Palestinian history. This encyclopedia will remain a definitive work on Palestine for years to come. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.--Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, AL Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Journal Library

In this solid reference work the editor and 50 other scholars have put together extremely useful entries on all aspects of historical and contemporary issues affecting the Palestinian people. . . . this encyclopedia will remain a definitive work on Palestine for years to come. Highly recommended. (May 1, 2000)

Securing Americas Future or The Priestly Tribe

Securing America's Future: A Bold Plan to Preserve and Expand Social Security

Author: Max J Skidmor

About the Author:
Max J. Skidmore is Thomas Jefferson Fellow and the Curators' Professor or Political Science at the University of Missouri at Kansas City

Table of Contents:

Foreword   George McGovern     vii
Introduction     1
The Forgotten Piece of National Security: Franklin D. Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights     5
Misinformation about Social Security: It Ain't What People Don't Know ...     15
The Gospel of Wealth: Amid Acres of Diamonds     39
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Plan and Its Enemies Emerge     49
From Miss Fuller's First Check     61
Frightening Facts or Persistent Politics?     77
A New Plan that Truly Would Improve Social Security     93
The Enemies Regroup: Rallying 'Round Reagan     101
Presidential Attitudes toward Social Security: "Only Desperate Men with Their Backs to the Wall"     127
The Special Problem of Health Care: The Fortunes to Be Made     151
Some Final Words to Sum It All Up     163
Text of Recording of "Operaton Coffeecup"     169
Internet Nonsense about Social Security     177
Social Security and Ponzi Schemes     185
Bibliography     189
Index     197
About the Author     205

Interesting textbook: Astrological Gastronomy or Opaa Greek Cooking Detroit Style

The Priestly Tribe: The Supreme Court's Image in the American Mind

Author: Barbara A A Perry

Perry illuminates the Supreme Court's unique advantages in sustaining a noble public image by its stewardship of the revered Constitution, its constant embrace of the rule of law, the justices' life tenure, its symbols of impartiality and integrity, and a resolute determination to keep its distance from the media. She argues that the Court has bolstered these advantages to avoid traps that have marred Congressional and presidential images, and she demonstrates how the Court has escaped the worst of media coverage.

All American Monster or Your Fathers Voice

All-American Monster: The Unauthorized Biography of Timothy McVeigh

Author: Brandon M Stickney

At 9:02 A.M. on April 19, 1995, the serenity of America's heartland was destroyed when a massive explosion leveled one side of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the reality of terrorism shocked the nation. Damage from the blast covered many city blocks; 168 men, women, and children were killed; and an estimated 500 were injured. On April 21, Timothy McVeigh was formally charged as a suspect in the bombing. More than a year after the bombings, as the wheels of justice grind slowly toward a trial, the nation, in its shock and horror, still asks: Who is Timothy McVeigh? Why would anyone commit such a horrible act? What turned a seemingly ordinary small-town boy - a decorated former soldier and war hero - into an alleged mass murderer and the most hated man in America? Journalist Brandon M. Stickney answers many of the compelling questions surrounding McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, and puts this critical information into the broader perspective of McVeigh's childhood, his educational and military service, and his efforts to find meaning and purpose in life. In this thoroughly researched and sensitively written biography, the author, a reporter and native of the western New York area where McVeigh was born and raised, draws on his own personal experience, available documents, and numerous interviews with McVeigh's family, friends, and associates to offer intimate details of McVeigh's life - factors that contributed to his startling transformation from all-American boy to "All-American Monster."

Journal of Psychohistory

The raging part of McVeigh often made him seem like two people, similar to people who have multiple personality disorders...

Publishers Weekly

A reporter for the Lockport, N.Y., Union-Sun and Journal, Stickney is well suited to write a biography of accused Oklahoma City bombing suspect and Lockport native McVeigh, since he is a lifelong resident of the area. He utilizes that advantage in this admirable search for the influences that shaped the personality of his subject. Stickney reveals a young man of average abilities and no particular distinction except for a fascination with guns and comic books, distraught by the divorce of his parents and the exposure of widespread corruption among government officials in his home county. McVeigh served in the Army and participated in Desert Storm but failed to stay the course in training for the Special Forces. After leaving the service, he was drawn into the orbit of the radical right. It is clear that Stickney considers McVeigh and his friend Terry Nichols guilty of the bombing, but he admirably retains his focus on the formative factors in his subject's development. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)

Booknews

Stickney, a reporter, answers many of the questions surrounding McVeigh and the Oklahoma bombing and puts this information into the broader perspective of McVeigh's childhood, education, and military service. Utilizing little-known information and an exclusive interview with McVeigh's younger sister, Stickney speculates about McVeigh's thoughts, feelings, and motivations in connection with the bombing. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Book review: Learning in Real Time or Exploiting Software

Your Father's Voice: Letters for Emmy about Life with Jerem...and without Him after 9/11

Author: Lyz Glick

On September 11, 2001, Jeremy Glick boarded United Flight 93 only because a fire at Newark Airport had prevented him from flying out the day before. That morning, he called his wife, Lyz, to tell her the plane had been hijacked and that he and a group of others were going to storm the cockpit, an effort that doomed Glick and his fellow passengers, yet doubtless saved lives on the ground and instantly became known worldwide as a heroic moment of resistance. But Lyz wanted the couple’s daughter, Emmy, only three months old when the plane crashed, to learn much more of her father’s story than just the ending.
Your Father’s Voice  narrates Lyz’s struggle to come to grips with her husband’s death in a series of letters from Lyz to Emmy that give a wrenching but clear-eyed account of Lyz’s first years without Jeremy.
Through it all, Lyz pragmatically details the challenges of a single parent raising a daughter in the aftermath of horrific tragedy, and urges Emmy to listen for what Lyz can still hear when the wind is right: her father’s voice.

Publishers Weekly

This unflinching and emotionally powerful portrayal of Jeremy Glick's life and role as one of the passengers on United's flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pa., on 9/11, takes the form of a series of letters to the Glicks' daughter, who was three months old when Jeremy died. Out of her grief, Lyz has produced this beautiful book memorializing her husband, who became a media hero for his role in the probable attack on the hijackers. She relates their precious last words when he called from the plane and describes the ways Jeremy's unique background prepared him well for that day's terrible challenges. Jeremy was a huge and powerful man (a judo champion, too), and a tender, caring father who deeply loved his high school sweetheart and their tiny daughter. With this book, Lyz Glick gives their daughter (and readers) an honest look at the daily trials she continues to face: unwelcome media attention, repeated political tributes and group meetings with the coroner. Lyz's epistolary account will comfort others dealing with loss; by book's end, it's clear she's begun the daunting task of moving on, but never forgetting. Photos. (Sept.) Forecast: Glick's book is bound to receive media attention, as its publication date coincides with the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman or Secret Empire

Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman

Author: Abbie Hoffman

The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman tells the story of one of America's most influential and imaginative dissidents, a major figure in the 1960s counterculture and anti-war movement who remained a dedicated political organizer right up until his death in 1989. With his unique brand of humor, wit, and energetic narrative, Abbie Hoffman describes the history of his times and provides a first-hand account of such memorable actions as the "levitation" of the Pentagon, the dropping of dollar bills onto the New York Stock Exchange floor, and the Chicago 8 Trial, which followed the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention, as well as his friendships with Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Allen Ginsberg, and many others. Originally published in 1980 as Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture, this memoir has been out of print for nearly 10 years. This edition includes a new selection of photographs chosen by his widow, Johanna Lawrenson, as well as a new afterword by Howard Zinn celebrating Hoffman's enduring activist legacy.

New interesting book: Belleza universal or YMCA Healthy Back Book

Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage

Author: Philip Taubman

In a brief period of explosive, top-secret innovation during the 1950s, a small group of scientists, engineers, businessmen, and government officials rewrote the book on airplane design and led the nation into outer space. Led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, they invented the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the first reconnaissance satellites that revolutionized spying, proved that the missile gap was a myth, and protected the United States from Soviet surprise nuclear attack. They also made possible the space-based mapping, communications, and targeting systems used in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Veteran New York Times reporter and editor Philip Taubman interviewed dozens of participants and mined thousands of previously classified documents to tell this hidden, far-reaching story. He reconstructs the crucial meetings, conversations, and decisions that inspired and guided the development of the spy plane and satellite projects during one of the most perilous periods in our history, a time when, as President Eisenhower said, the world seemed to be "racing toward catastrophe."

This is the story of these secret heroes, told in full for the first time.

The New York Times

Secret Empire, by Philip Taubman, a longtime correspondent for The New York Times and now its deputy editorial page editor, chronicles the development of these ''national technical means,'' the euphemism for overhead reconnaissance, both aerial and space-based. Concentrating on the Eisenhower years, Taubman celebrates ''the inventors and risk-takers who revolutionized spying'' and calls for a new generation of technological swashbucklers to create tools for the perils facing the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. — Alex Roland

The Los Angeles Times

For more than half a century, small teams of engineers, physicists, mathematicians and scientists have spent their working lives in virtual anonymity building America's vast arsenal of overhead spy machines. Sealed in windowless rooms behind cipher-locked doors, they exist in an "Alice in Wonderland" world of code words, black budgets and retina scanners. The early pioneers of this strange land are the subject of Philip Taubman's Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage.

Taubman, a New York Times editor, discovered while on the paper's spy beat that most of America's intelligence came not from agents but from supersophisticated machines, many located high above. "The massing of Soviet forces on the Afghan border in 1979 -- the indication that an invasion was imminent -- had been tracked by spy satellite," he writes. "When Soviet troops assembled for a possible invasion of Poland in December 1980, satellite photographs helped to alert Washington." — James Bamford

The Washington Post

The book is mostly small-bore, resolutely sticking to a step-by-tiny-step history of the program. Frequently, the only obvious point seems to be to get it all down on paper. The result, unfortunately, is often something only a satellite buff, or perhaps a product manager, could love. — Eric Umansky

Publishers Weekly

In this exciting, meticulously researched spy story, Taubman takes readers behind the closed doors of the Eisenhower administration to tell about the small group of Cold Warriors whose technological innovations-including the U2 spy plane and Corona, the country's first spy satellite-revolutionized espionage and intelligence gathering. The author, an award-winning New York Times editor who has reported on national security issues for more than two decades, gives an account drawn from previously classified documents, oral history archives and scores of interviews with the men who were there. The new technology was driven by the need for safer ways to spy on the Soviet Union-hundreds of pilots had been killed or lost in aerial reconnaissance missions-and, as Taubman argues, it served as a peacekeeper by eliminating the fear of surprise attack. Through the U2 program, CIA analysts determined that the U.S.S.R. was neither outpacing the U.S. in the manufacture of long-range bombers nor fielding hundreds of intercontinental missiles as feared. This book functions marvelously as a history of science, detailing the research, engineering and policy decisions behind the U2 and Corona, but it's also an excellent social history of the Cold War in the 1950s and early '60s. It's a page-turner as well, notably with Taubman's narratives of the first U2 flight, Sputnik and the downing of Francis Gary Powers's U2 over the Soviet Union and the resulting blow to the Eisenhower administration's credibility. Taubman sheds light on a era when the nation's lawmakers were regularly kept in the dark about CIA and other spy agency activities. In an epilogue, the author addresses some unintended consequences in light of September 11, exploring the neglect of conventional manned spying. Agent, Amanda Urban. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

During the 1950s and early 1960s, the development of first the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft and then spy satellites transformed the world of intelligence. Although the outlines of this story are well known, particularly concerning the U-2, Taubman provides a wealth of detail on all aspects of these projects, based on many interviews and copious research. He weaves together complex strategic, organizational, and engineering issues, managing to convey the drama and excitement of a race to find some way of getting consistent and reliable intelligence on Soviet nuclear missiles at a time when the United States was widely assumed to be falling behind. The story shows Dwight Eisenhower at his most decisive and shrewd, ready to listen to the advice of tough-minded outsiders, such as James Killian of MIT and Edwin Land of Polaroid, and to hand over critical projects to the CIA.2

Library Journal

Taubman, deputy editorial page editor for the New York Times, knows how to tell a good story. And what a story it is! Eisenhower, who was often accused of "putting and puttering" and "goofing and golfing," is portrayed here as a remarkable risk taker who supported the creation of highly sophisticated spy-satellite and spy-plane technology by going around the stodgy Pentagon bureaucracy and using the best minds he could find. Although Taubman's is not the first account of this subject to appear recently (Curtis L. Peebles's The Corona Project and Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona Spy Satellites, edited by Dwayne A. Day, both tell the same story), it displays his impressive skills at writing crackling prose while juggling numerous details. This excellent book is recommended for all collections.-Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

New York Times editorial-page editor and Polk Award-winner Taubman delivers an expertly related, accessible account of a turning point in American intelligence, when on-the-ground spying gave way to a belief that technology could cure all ills. Having been caught unawares at the Battle of the Bulge by a lack of reliable information about German troop movements, Dwight Eisenhower had long been determined to improve American capabilities. The death of Josef Stalin in 1953, however, saw the US again caught off guard; as Eisenhower complained, "Ever since 1946, I know that all the so-called experts have been yapping about what would happen when Stalin dies and what we, as a nation, should do about it. Well, he's dead. And you can turn the files of our government inside out-in vain-looking for any plans laid. We have no plan." Demanding better and timelier information about Soviet military capabilities and deployments, Eisenhower authorized the development of two innovations: high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft such as the U2 and SR-71, which enabled "timeliness, geographical coverage, accepted accuracy"; and supposedly secret satellites that could photograph every inch of the Soviet empire. Those goals were met, but only after severe technical obstacles were overcome by throwing millions and billions of dollars at them. The results were both good and bad, Taubman writes. Eisenhower and his successors had the benefit of better information about such things as missile silos and moving tank columns, but in the end they would also have to contend with "distortions in the nation's intelligence agencies, including an overreliance on dazzling machines and a shortage of resources in moretraditional fields like the recruitment and training of spies"-a shortcoming recently and keenly underscored by the attacks of September 11, 2001. Absorbing throughout, and meaty stuff for intelligence and aviation buffs.

Asymmetrical Warfare or The Opium Season

Asymmetrical Warfare: Today's Challenge to U. S. Military Power

Author: Roger W Barnett

In this concise and penetrating study, Roger Barnett illuminates the effect of operational, organizational, legal, and moral constraints on the ability of the U.S. to use military force. As the tragic events of September 11 demonstrated, potential adversaries can take advantage of these limitations, thus spawning "asymmetrical warfare." Barnett defines asymmetrical warfare as not simply a case of pitting one's strength against another's weakness but rather of taking the calculated risk to exploit an adversary's inability or unwillingness to prevent, or defend against, certain actions. For instance, launching chemical, biological, or suicide attacks; taking indiscriminate actions against critical infrastructure; using hostages or human shields; deliberately destroying the environment; and targeting noncombatants all constitute possible asymmetrical warfare scenarios. Against these acts, the U.S. has not prepared any response in kind. Indeed it either cannot or will not undertake such responses, thus making these attacks especially difficult to counter. This refusal to retaliate in an "eye for an eye" fashion complicates the dilemma of American policymakers who seek to wield power and influence on the world stage while simultaneously projecting a peaceful and benign image. Barnett concludes that the U.S. must create a formal system of selectively eliminating the constraints that dictate our response to certain situations or scenarios. Failure to make such changes will only increase paralysis and, when the use of force is required, contribute to the already heightened risks.

Foreign Affairs

If the United States can threaten force only in terms that the political marketplace can bear — in line with international law, moral precepts, the sensitivities of allies, and a determination to avoid casualties — then how can it practice deterrence against contemporary enemies that take advantage of these constraints? This to Barnett is the challenge of asymmetrical warfare today, which he believes can be overcome only by a readiness to transcend these constraints, accepting the full nastiness of war while seeking to bolster deterrence by improving strategic defenses. The argument is vigorous and challenging, although Barnett provides few grounds for supposing that political and military leaders will adopt as robust an approach as he would wish. More seriously, he does not adequately address the role of alliances in isolating enemies nor the question of whether America's enemies will really adopt the appropriate asymmetrical strategies he fears — inflicting maximum harm on noncombatants and civil society.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction	1
Ch. 1	Operational Constraints	25
Ch. 2	Organizational Constraints	49
Ch. 3	Legal Constraints	61
Ch. 4	Moral Constraints	83
Ch. 5	Effects	93
Ch. 6	Remedies	133
Ch. 7	Conclusion	149
	Selected Bibliography	157
	Index	173
	About the Author	183

New interesting book: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge or Rebound Rules

The Opium Season: A Year on the Afghan Frontier

Author: Joel Hafvenstein

Joel Hafvenstein was hired for perhaps the most undesired job in the world today: join a team of contractors in Afghanistan’s harsh and brutal Helmand Province seeking to convince local farmers to stop growing poppies, the source of opium. Helmand, one of the world’s largest opium-producing areas, is also home to a large base of Taliban and AK-47 toting drug lords-all of whom harbored great enmity toward the West and Americans in particular.
THE OPIUM SEASON is a story of intrigue,excitement, success and heartbreaking failure at the far edge of the world.
At the height of the program’s success, the Taliban attacked, killing two close friends of the author and nine other men associated with our work. The ambushes destroyed our project and heralded a new Taliban onslaught across south Afghanistan, targeting anyone seen to be supporting the new government – aid workers, teachers, officials, religious leaders.
In the tradition of Walking Across Afghanistan and The Kite Runner, OPIUM SEASON describes the odyssey of an American in the midst of chaos, with a high-minded goal but far from reason and order. This is a riveting story that will draw national attention from the media, and from book readers hungry to know more about what it is that keeps Afghans pulled apart by so many influences.

Joel Hafvenstein, a graduate also of Yale University, works in London for a global reforestation program. His work has appeared in the Yale Journal of Ethics and Oxblog. This is his first book.

The New York Times - William Grimes

The sobering dispatches in Opium Season, a wrenching account of lofty hopes and bitter disappointments, shed a dismal light on American efforts to improve the lot of ordinary Afghans. All over the country development projects are under way aimed at winning over the Afghan people, depriving the Taliban of popular support and propping up Hamid Karzai's government. The obstacles are as steep as the surrounding mountains, as Mr. Hafvenstein discovered and ruefully recounts in this bitter but affectionate book about his three stints in Afghanistan from October 2003 to May 2005.

Publishers Weekly

In May 2005, four employees of Chemonics International, a Washington, D.C.-based contractor with the U.S. Agency for International Development, were among 11 Afghans killed in two separate attacks on aid workers operating in Afghanistan's Helmand province. First-time author Hafvenstein was then a young administrator for Chemonics, having eagerly joined in 2003 a small team working on U.S.A.I.D.'s Alternative Incomes Project, aiming to create thousands of jobs building a new infrastructure to offset planned eradication of the opium poppy, the mainstay of the rural economy and the raw basis for heroin sold around the world. Beginning with the news of his colleagues' deaths, Hafvenstein retraces his rapid immersion into the deeply fractured and danger-strewn politics and society of post-Taliban Afghanistan. His personal narrative gracefully introduces this complex and troubled land, measuring the impact of warlordism and police corruption on what he comes to see as the ultimately misguided U.S. emphasis on poppy eradication. While that conclusion will hardly surprise those following the escalating violence since 2005, Hafvenstein offers a revealing if narrowly critical insider perspective on the workings of U.S.-sponsored international development schemes in Afghanistan and worldwide. (Nov.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Nader Entessar - Library Journal

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 has resulted in another wretched chapter in the recent history of that volatile country. Six years after the overthrow of its fundamentalist Taliban government, chaos and uncertainty characterize daily life there. Notwithstanding elections that have led to the establishment of a nominal central government in Kabul, the country continues to exhibit all the hallmarks of a failed state. The opium trade has once again become the most important source of revenue in Afghanistan, where a combination of opium growers and the so-called warlords exercise more political and socioeconomic control than do the country's elected officials and its government. This very readable and engaging book recounts the harshness of daily life in Afghanistan, as seen from the vantage point of an American who spent a year in the country's rugged Helmand province for an aid organization seeking to train farmers to cultivate other crops than opium. The author, who has published articles on Afghanistan, describes in a diary format his experience of violent political intrigue and criminal alliances resulting in the murderous drug trafficking, and the impossibility of his mission, in that country. Recommended for public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Long-winded, superfluously stuffed account of the author's vain attempts to induce the Afghans to give up their primary cash crop. From November 2004 to May 2005, Hafvenstein worked as a development coordinator for Chemonics International, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in the military outpost of Lashkargah near the Helmand River, deep in the heart of opium-growing country. His urgent assignment was to wean the growers from poppy while the Afghan government supposedly pushed for its eradication. The USAID team was charged with creating enough temporary paying jobs to cushion the economic damage to opium farmers. However, the scale of the 2004 harvest was hugely lucrative; the Afghans produced a whopping 87 percent of the world's illegal opium. The author and his colleagues faced an arduous, dangerous task: to manage the walis (provincial governors) as well as the tribal groups and the remnants of Taliban rebels, while securing the safety of the agency's personnel. They learned that this area was the site of a previous American reconstruction effort in the 1940s, the damming of the Helmand and Arghandab rivers by American engineering company Morrison-Knudsen, one of the contractors on the Hoover Dam. Hafvenstein's team insinuated itself into the powerful Afghan government agency controlling the rivers' modern irrigation system in order to secure local jobs clearing drainage ditches. They were threatened by warlords still tied to the Taliban and ultimately defeated by the government's halfhearted commitment to eradication. Kidnapping and murders forced out the American agency, overwhelmed by the scale and significance of the project. Not likely towin any new converts to America's cowboys-and-Indians approach to fixing foreign countries' deep-seated problems.

Democracys Discontent or The World of Mexican Migrants

Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy

Author: Michael J Sandel

The defect, Sandel maintains, lies in the impoverished vision of citizenship and community shared by Democrats and Republicans alike. American politics has lost its civic voice, leaving both liberals and conservatives unable to inspire the sense of community and civic engagement that self-government requires.

In search of a public philosophy adequate to our time, Sandel ranges across the American political experience, recalling the arguments of Jefferson and Hamilton, Lincoln and Douglas, Holmes and Brandeis, FDR and Reagan. He relates epic debates over slavery and industrial capitalism to contemporary controversies over the welfare state, religion, abortion, gay rights, and hate speech. Democracy's Discontent provides a new interpretation of the American political and constitutional tradition that offers hope of rejuvenating our civic life.

Booknews

Sandel (government, Harvard U.) adds his views to the growing recognition that beneath American affluence and social justice lies a suspicion of government, a lack of control of our lives, and the unraveling of the moral fabric. He traces the problem to an impoverished vision of citizenship and community and a loss of a civic voice that prevents both liberals and conservatives from inspiring a sense of community and civil engagement that self- government requires. He calls for storytellers who can create an inspiring and convincing society to strive toward. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

George F. Will

American political discourse has become thin gruel because of a deliberate deflation of American ideals. So says Michael Sandel in [this] wonderful new book, ...Sandel's book will help produce what he desires -- a quickened sense of the moral consequences of political practices and economic arrangements. -- George F. Will, Newsweek

Kirkus Reviews

A wide-ranging critique of American liberalism that, unlike many other current books on the matter, seeks its restoration as a guiding political ethic.

"Despite the achievements of American life in the last half-century," political theorist Sandel (Harvard) writes, "our politics is beset with anxiety and frustration." He suggests that the growing public mistrust in the federal government, whose manifestations range from the conservative sweep of Congress in the last election to the Oklahoma City bombing, can be addressed only by reevaluating the liberal assumption that "government should be neutral on the question of the good life," and by putting in its place a social-democratic concern for the spiritual well-being of the citizenry. The "utilitarian calculus" of the past has helped preserve individual liberties, Sandel observes, but it finds little room for weighing the finer questions of morality in recommending action. (For instance, Sandel remarks, minimalist liberalism of the sort that is practiced today could scarcely find room for the antislavery arguments of the abolitionists a century and a half ago, relying as those arguments did on "appeals to comprehensive moral ideals.") This indifference to the character of the citizenry, Sandel adds, is not the province of liberalism alone; where liberals have defended abortion rights on the grounds that government has no place in moral issues, conservatives have likewise argued for laissez-faire economic policies, claiming "government should be neutral toward the outcomes" of a market economy. Sandel is strong on tracking the history of this value-neutralization of government; he is less successful in identifying the particulars of a practical yet value-laden ethic that can "repair the civic life on which democracy depends" while not trampling on anyone's liberties—one of the thorny dilemmas of current reformist politics.

A book rich in ideas, if not in blueprints for action.

New interesting book: Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent or A Handbook of Invalid Cooking

The World of Mexican Migrants: The Rock and the Hard Place

Author: Judith Adler Hellman

By the acclaimed author of the bestselling Mexican Lives, a surprising, behind-the-headlines look at the lives of Mexican migrants, in the tradition of Oscar Lewis's classic Five Families

"Either you work, or you work. Those are the two choices!"—Sara, a street vendor in East Los Angeles

In her groundbreaking book Mexican Lives, Judith Adler Hellman profiled fifteen Mexicans, both poor and rich, each of whom was struggling to survive the radical economic and political shifts of Mexico in the 1990s.

The World of Mexican Migrants looks at the aftereffects of these changes through the eyes of those who, no longer able to eke out even a modest living in their homeland, have come to the United States. In New York and Los Angeles, we meet, among others, construction workers, restaurant staff, sweatshop laborers, and street vendors. We encounter deliverymen who race through the streets to bring us our food. We hear stories of astonishing border crossings—including one man's journey riding suspended from the undercarriage of a train, and another's deadly three-day trek across the desert. Back in Mexico, Hellman visits family members of migrants who live on remittances from their husbands and relatives al Norte.

Drawing on five years of in-depth interviews, Hellman offers a much-needed humanizing perspective on the estimated 6 million undocumented Mexican migrants living in the United States, people whose voices are rarely heard in the din of angry political debate and talk-radio rhetoric on immigration.

Kirkus Reviews

A sympathetic, wide-ranging portrait of the lives of Mexicans on both sides of the border. Go to the Mexican consulate in Tucson, Ariz., and you'll be among the few waiting for services; go to the same consulate in New York City, and you'll join a line a block long. That may seem odd, but to Hellman (Political Science/York Univ.; Mexican Lives, 1994, etc.) it speaks volumes about how central New York has become to border-crossers: "Mexicans-depending on whether we count both documented and undocumented people-have one of the highest, if not the highest, birthrates of any national group in the city." But why travel so far from the border? For one thing, there are jobs available, even if too many of them require workers to swallow their pride, since protesting unfair conditions can lead to deportation. Yet there are other considerations, Hellman observes. It's possible to get around by public transportation, which removes the need for private transportation and thus registrations, licenses and other things that require identification. Thus Staten Island and Long Island are full of esquineros, the men who wait on the corner for odd jobs and daily construction work. Meanwhile, down at the border, the Border Patrol is concerned not just with stemming the tide, but with triage. Says one top officer, "economic migrants are just the clutter that we need to brush away so we can get at the really bad guys . . . meaning the dope smugglers and the people smugglers." The presence of so many Mexicans may make some Anglos nervous, but their self-appointed guardians in the so-called Minutemen aren't much help; as critics note, they make big noise but mostly sit in lawn chairs and drink beer while thealambristas hop the fence to become esquineros and do the jobs no one else wants. Humane and helpful, Hellman removes the shrillness from the border debate to show what the crossers do and why they do it-and why most Americans don't object to their presence.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Prologue     xiii
Introduction     1
The Rock
Beto: Those Not with Us     17
Nopal Verde: The Life of a Town     23
San Rafael: A Life of Cooperation     35
Marta: The Tyranny of In-Laws     45
Dolores: "We Only Speak on Sundays"     57
The Journey
Tomas: Traveling in Style     65
Elena: "Absolutely Still"     77
Angel: Cat and Mouse     83
Fernando: "A Snake's Breakfast"     87
The Tucson Consulate     93
No More Deaths     99
Shanti and Daniel     107
"Walking Around, Living Their Lives"     113
The Hard Place
Carlos: Names and Networks     119
Sara: "Ten Words in Ten Years"     137
Francisco: The Hardest Place     145
To Stay or to Return Home
Julio: A Quick Exit     169
Manuel: Life After Amnesty     177
Patricia: Weighing the Good and the Bad     191
Conclusion     211
A Note on Methodology     233
Notes     243
Glossary     247
Suggested Reading     251

GUILTY or Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony

GUILTY: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America

Author: Ann Coulter

In her most controversial and fiercely argued book yet, Ann Coulter calls out liberals for always playing the victim - when in fact, as she sees it, they are the victimizers. In GUILTY, Coulter explodes this myth to reveal that when it comes to bullying, no one outdoes the Left. GUILTY is a mordantly witty and shockingly specific catalog of offenses which Coulter presents from A to Z. And as with each of her past books, all of which were NYT bestsellers, Coulter is fearless in her penchant for saying what needs saying about politics and culture today.

Go to: The Hidden Pattern or Black White Photography Techniques with Adobe Photoshop

Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Against an Aristocracy of Sex, 1866-1873, Vol. 2

Author: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Against An Aristocracy of Sex, 1866 to 1873 is the second of six planned volumes of The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. The entire collection documents the friendship and accomplishments of two of America's most important social and political reformers. Though neither Stanton nor Anthony lived to see passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, each of them devoted fifty-five years to the cause of woman suffrage.

The second volume picks up the story of Stanton and Anthony at the end of 1866, when they launched their drive to make universal suffrage a priority of Reconstruction. Through letters, speeches, articles, and diaries, this volume recounts their years as editor and publisher of the weekly paper the Revolution, their extensive travels, and their lobbying with Congress. It touches on the bitter division that occurred among suffragists over such controversial topics as marriage and divorce, and a national debate over the citizenship of women under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. By the summer of 1873, when this volume ends, Anthony stood convicted of the federal crime of illegal voting. An irate Stanton warned, "I felt afresh the mockery of this boasted chivalry of man toward woman."

What People Are Saying

Geoffrey C. Ward
This volume, masterfully edited by Ann D. Gordon, lays bare some of the most dramatic- and most painful- years in the struggle for woman rights...
—(Geoffrey C. Ward, author of Not For Ourselves Alone: Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony)

Anne Firor Scott
Meticulously edited, these are among the most significant surviving documents for our understanding of the changing world of the nineteenth century.
—(Anne Firor Scott, author of Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History)

Lynn Sherr
In this rich and important collection, Ann Gordon applies a scholar's integrity, a woman's sensitivity, and a personal curiosity to the works that define these cherished foremothers...
—( Lynn Sherr, ABC News correspondent and author of Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words)

Christine Stansell
Christine Stansell, Princeton University

A captivating and enchanting book, beautifully edited, full of rich brilliantly chosen selections.

Ellen Carol Dubois
Ellen Carol Dubois, UCLA

The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony is an extraordinary scholarly achievement. It has restored these unparalleled historical figures to their deserved national reputations...

Means without End or The Psychology of Working A New Perspective for Career Development Counseling and Public Policy

Means Without End: Notes on Politics

Author: Giorgio Agamben

An essential reevaluation of the proper role of politics in contemporary life. A critical rethinking of the categories of politics within a new sociopolitical and historical context, this book builds on the previous work of the distinguished political philosopher Giorgio Agamben to address the status and nature of politics itself. Bringing politics face-to-face with its own failures of consciousness and consequence, Agamben frames his analysis in terms of clear contemporary relevance. He proposes, in his characteristically allusive and intriguing way, a politics of gesture-a politics of means without end.

Among the topics Agamben takes up are the "properly" political paradigms of experience, as well as those generally not viewed as political. He begins by elaborating work on biopower begun by Foucault, returning the natural life of humans to the center of the polis and considering it as the very basis for politics. He then considers subjects such as the state of exception (the temporary suspension of the juridical order); the concentration camp (a zone of indifference between public and private and, at the same time, the secret matrix of the political space in which we live); the refugee, who, breaking the bond between the human and the citizen, moves from marginal status to the center of the crisis of the modern nation-state; and the sphere of pure means or gestures (those gestures that, remaining nothing more than means, liberate themselves from any relation to ends) as the proper sphere of politics. Attentive to the urgent demands of the political moment, as well as to the bankruptcy of political discourse, Agamben's work brings politics back to life, and life back topolitics.

Giorgio Agamben teaches philosophy at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy. He is the author of Language and Death (1991), Stanzas (1992), and The Coming Community (1993), all published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Vincenzo Binetti is assistant professor of Romance languages and literature at the University of Michigan. Cesare Casarino teaches in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota.

Theory Out of Bounds Series, volume 20

Translation Inquiries: University of Minnesota Press

Table of Contents:

	Preface
	Form-of-Life	3
	Beyond Human Rights	15
	What Is a People?	29
	What Is a Camp?	37
	Notes on Gesture	49
	Languages and Peoples	63
	Marginal Notes on Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle	73
	The Face	91
	Sovereign Police	103
	Notes on Politics	109
	In This Exile (Italian Diary, 1992-94)	121
	Translators' Notes	143
	Index	147

New interesting textbook: Sendo Preto, Vivendo na Vermelhidão - Corrida, Prosperidade, e Política Social na América

The Psychology of Working A New Perspective for Career Development, Counseling, and Public Policy

Author: David Blustein

In this original and major new work, David Blustein places working at the same level of attention for social and behavioral scientists and psychotherapists as other major life concerns, such as intimate relationships, physical and mental health, and socio-economic inequities. He also provides readers with an expanded conceptual framework within which to think about working in human development and human experience. As a result, this creative new synthesis enriches the discourse on working across the broad spectrum of psychology's concerns and agendas, and especially for those readers in career development, counseling, and policy-related fields. This textbook is ideal for use in graduate courses on counseling and work or vocational counseling.

Breaking of Nations or Major Problems in the History of American Workers

Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century

Author: Robert Cooper

In this landmark book, Robert Cooper sets out his radical interpretation of our new international order. He argues that there are now three types of state: lawless "pre-modern" states; "modern" states that are fiercely protective of their sovereignty; and "post-modern" states such as those that operate on the basis of openness, law, and mutual security. The United States has yet to decide whether to embrace the "post-modern" world of interdependence, or pursue unilateralism and power politics.

Cooper shows that the greatest question facing our post-modern nations is how to deal with a world in which missiles and terrorists ignore borders and where Cold War alliances no longer guarantee security. When dealing with a hostile outside enemy, should civilized countries revert to tougher methods from an earlier era - force, preemptive attack, deception - in order to safeguard peaceful coexistence throughout the civilized world? The Breaking of Nations is a prescient examination of international relations in the twenty-first century.

THe New York Times

On the toughest issues, the trans-Atlantic divide really may be unbridgeable, at least until Tony Blair becomes president of Europe and installs Robert Cooper as his national security adviser. — Max Boot

Publishers Weekly

Cooper, a senior member of Tony Blair's cabinet, worries that the 21st century may wind up being the worst era in European history, as Western governments continue to lose control over the technology of mass destruction. Advocating "better politics rather than better technology" to combat the encroaching chaos created by unstable nation-states and rising terrorist organizations, he lays out a cogent argument for why the governments of Europe should present a united front and take an active role in promoting geopolitical stability, perhaps even through increased military presence. Only by pooling their resources, he suggests, can European nations offer a viable alternative to American policy mandates. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

The United States has Fukuyama, Huntington, and Kagan as its prophets of the coming world order. Who does Europe have? The answer is Robert Cooper, a former adviser to Tony Blair and an EU diplomat. This small book of essays offers a sweeping interpretation of today's global predicament. Cooper argues that two revolutionary forces are transforming international relations: the breakdown of state control over violence, reflected in the growing ability of tiny private groups to wield weapons of mass destruction, and the rise of a stable, peaceful order in Europe that is not based on either the balance of power or the sovereignty of independent states. In this scheme, the Westphalian system of nation-states and power politics is being undermined on both sides — by a postmodern Europe and a premodern world of failed states and post-imperial chaos.

Cooper makes a good case that the growing threat of terrorism necessitates new forms of cooperation and a reconstructed international order that goes beyond the balance of power or hegemony. Stable order in the new age must be built on legitimate authority and more inclusive political identities. But apart from these postmodern urgings, Cooper's vision remains sketchy.

Kirkus Reviews

A slender but not slight consideration of Europe's future on a hostile planet. British diplomat Cooper, once the UK's ambassador to West Germany and now head of the government's Defence and Overseas Secretariat, posits a world divided not into first, second, and third parts, pace Chairman Mao, but into "pre-modern," "modern," and "postmodern": the first made up of such hopelessly backward, even failed states like Afghanistan, the next of distinct nation-states such as China, and the last of super, or perhaps supra, states-those that make up the European Union. These states coexist uneasily, pre-modern Rwanda alongside modern Argentina alongside postmodern Japan ("Unfortunately for Japan it is a postmodern country surrounded by states firmly locked into an earlier age," each with its own sense of destiny). The US stands apart, in its way, if only because it has vastly outspent the rest of the world militarily-and then, Cooper writes, spent more efficiently-so that "were all the rest of the world to mount a combined attack on the United States they [sic] would be defeated." Problem is, the world is changing; the most dangerous enemies of the peace are not states but nongovernmental groups, the most common wars civil and not imperial or state against state-and in any event, the world is probably no safer with one superpower than with many ("However admirable the United States may be-and for many it is the embodiment of freedom and democracy-would those qualities survive a long period of unilateral hegemony?"). In these three essays, Cooper wrestles with the implications, concluding that if Europe is to hold its own in this new world, it will have to have America's ear: "And that means weshall need more power, both military power and multilateral legitimacy." Recommended reading for policy wonks, realpolitikers, and other students of the modern (and pre-modern, and postmodern) world.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgements
	Preface
Pt. 1	The Condition of the World	1
1	The Old World Order	7
2	The New World Order	16
3	Security in the New World	55
Pt. 2	The Conditions of Peace: Twenty-First Century Diplomacy	81
Pt. 3	Epilogue: Europe and America	153
	Notes	173
	Index	176

See also: Practical DV Filmmaking or Books in the Digital Age

Major Problems in the History of American Workers: Documents and Essays

Author: Eileen Boris

This text, designed for courses in US labor history or the history of American workers, presents a carefully selected group of readings that allow students to evaluate primary sources, test the interpretations of distinguished historians, and draw their own conclusions. Major Problems in the History of American Workers follows the proven Major Problems format, with 14-15 chapters per volume, a combination of documents and essays, chapter introductions, headnotes, and suggested readings.

The Irony of Democracy or Refuge Denied

The Irony of Democracy: An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics

Author: Thomas R Dy

While most American politics texts address American politics from a pluralist perspective, THE IRONY OF DEMOCRACY: AN UNCOMMON INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN POLITICS, Fourteenth Edition, approaches the subject by addressing the theme of elitism and contrasting it with democratic theory and modern pluralist theory. Its key question is, "How democratic is American society?"

New interesting textbook: A Theory of Incentives in Regulation and Procurement or Applied Economics

Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust

Author: Sarah A Ogilvi

In May of 1939 the Cuban government turned away the Hamburg-America Line’s MS St. Louis, which carried more than 900 hopeful Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany. The passengers subsequently sought safe haven in the United States, but were rejected once again, and the St. Louis had to embark on an uncertain return voyage to Europe. Finally, the St. Louis passengers found refuge in four western European countries, but only the 288 passengers sent to England evaded the Nazi grip that closed upon continental Europe a year later. Over the years, the fateful voyage of the St. Louis has come to symbolize U.S. indifference to the plight of European Jewry on the eve of World War II.

Although the episode of the St. Louis is well known, the actual fates of the passengers, once they disembarked, slipped into historical obscurity. Prompted by a former passenger’s curiosity, Sarah Ogilvie and Scott Miller of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum set out in 1996 to discover what happened to each of the 937 passengers. Their investigation, spanning nine years and half the globe, took them to unexpected places and produced surprising results. Refuge Denied chronicles the unraveling of the mystery, from Los Angeles to Havana and from New York to Jerusalem.

Some of the most memorable stories include the fate of a young toolmaker who survived initial selection at Auschwitz because his glasses had gone flying moments before and a Jewish child whose apprenticeship with a baker in wartime France later translated into the establishment of a successful business in the United States. Unfolding like a compelling detective thriller, Refuge Denied is a must-readfor anyone interested in the Holocaust and its impact on the lives of ordinary people.

Publishers Weekly

The doomed ship St. Louis-carrying German-Jewish refugees and refused permission to dock in Cuba and Florida in 1939-became a potent symbol of global indifference to the fate of European Jewry on the eve of the Holocaust. While 288 of the more than 900 passengers found sanctuary in Great Britain, 620 were forced to return to mainland Europe, and close to half of those passengers sent to Belgium, France and Holland were murdered during the Holocaust. Among the survivors, a Miami-area retired baker and Korean War veteran, Herbert Karliner, got through WWII posing as a Catholic and working as a hired hand for a pro-Vichy farmer near Lyon. Another, Hannelore Klein, who in her 70s confesses to still feeling like a displaced person, was 12 when she was sent to Holland, survived Auschwitz (her mother was gassed) and returned to Amsterdam to live with her grandparents, Theresienstadt survivors. Prodigiously researched and generously illustrated with photographs-most from the St. Louis and the Westerbork internment camp-this valuable contribution to Holocaust studies provides emotionally satisfying closure as the authors, staffers at D.C.'s U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, track the passengers and give a human face to mass tragedy. (Oct. 20) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Killing the Black Body or Ellis Islands Famous Immigrants

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

Author: Dorothy Roberts

In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts gives a powerful and authoritative account of the on-going assault - both figurative and literal - waged by the American government and our society on the reproductive rights of Black women. From an intersection of charged vectors (race, gender, motherhood, abortion, welfare, adoption, and the law), Roberts addresses in her impassioned book such issues as: the notion of prenatal property imposed upon slave women by white masters; the unsavory association between birth control champion Margaret Sanger and the eugenics movement of the 1920s; the coercive sterilization of Black women (many of whom were unaware that they had undergone the procedure) under government welfare programs as late as the 1970s; the race and class implications of distributing risky, long-acting contraceptives, such as Norplant, through Medicaid; the rendering of reproduction as a crime of prosecuting women who expose their fetuses to drugs; the controversy over transracial adoption; the welfare debate (who should pay for reproduction?); and the promotion of the new birth technology (in vitro fertilization and egg donation) to serve infertile white couples.

Library Journal

From forced breeding and involuntary sterilization to the use of invasive methods of birth control (Norplant and Depo-Provera) and more recently welfare reform legislation, Rutgers law professor Roberts traces the history of social policies used by the dominant power structure to control black women's reproductive freedom. Her well-documented work convincingly reveals why black people, and women in particular, have reason to mistrust the medical establishment and government programs, especially those related to family planning. Roberts argues for an expanded concept of liberty that will "facilitate the processes of choice and self-determination" as well as protect individuals against government coercion. -- Faye Powell, Portland State University Library, Oregon

Library Journal

From forced breeding and involuntary sterilization to the use of invasive methods of birth control (Norplant and Depo-Provera) and more recently welfare reform legislation, Rutgers law professor Roberts traces the history of social policies used by the dominant power structure to control black women's reproductive freedom. Her well-documented work convincingly reveals why black people, and women in particular, have reason to mistrust the medical establishment and government programs, especially those related to family planning. Roberts argues for an expanded concept of liberty that will "facilitate the processes of choice and self-determination" as well as protect individuals against government coercion. -- Faye Powell, Portland State University Library, Oregon

Kirkus Reviews

Roberts's exploration of the history of African-American women and reproductive rights is brilliant, controversial, and profoundly valuable. The author, a professor of law (Rutgers University), brings forth a view of black women wholly ignored by mainstream America. Beginning with slavery and moving to the present day, she argues that white America has perpetuated a legacy of pathological social violence against black women and their reproductive capabilities. Female slaves, Roberts asserts, were often bought with the express purpose of using them as breeders; white males profited by raping black women and selling their children. Later, in the first half of the 20th century, the eugenics movement turned contraception from a tool of women's liberation into a tool of control to cut birth rates among southern blacks, and as late as the 1970s black women were routinely sterilized by hysterectomies that were not medically necessary. More recently, poor black women living in urban areas have been forced by courts, doctors, and health care organizations to be implanted with the Norplant birth-control device; doctors frequently refuse to remove it on request. Roberts's arguments are especially convincing because they are so well researched and thoroughly dissected. Drawn from documented cases, African-American theorists, and media reports, Roberts's knowledge of her subject is total. Instead of painting black women as passive victims of this reproductive racism, she represents them through the image offered by a former slave, Anna Julia Cooper, who characterizes the black woman fighting to protect the bodies of her daughters as "an entrapped tigress." Roberts outlines an agenda for change in thefinal chapter, positioning the book as an important stepping-stone toward transforming the way black women and their children are treated in America."The denial of Black reproductive autonomy serves the interests of white supremacy," Roberts states, and she demands her reader rethink the relationship between race and reproduction.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	3
Ch. 1	Reproduction in Bondage	22
Ch. 2	The Dark Side of Birth Control	56
Ch. 3	From Norplant to the Contraceptive Vaccine: The New Frontier of Population Control	104
Ch. 4	Making Reproduction a Crime	150
Ch. 5	The Welfare Debate: Who Pays for Procreation?	202
Ch. 6	Race and the New Reproduction	246
Ch. 7	The Meaning of Liberty	294
	Notes	313
	Index	358

Books about: Organisations

Ellis Island's Famous Immigrants (Images of America Series)

Author: Barry Moreno

Since 1776, millions of immigrants have landed at America's shores. To this day, their practical contributions are still felt in every field of endeavor, including agriculture, industry, and the service trades. But within the great immigrant waves there also came plucky and talented individualists, artists, and dreamers. Many of these exceptional folk went on to win worldly renown, and their names live on in history. Ellis Island's Famous Immigrants tells the story of some of the best known of these legendary characters and highlights their actual immigration experience at Ellis Island. Celebrities featured within its pages include such entrepreneurs as Max Factor, Charles Atlas, and "Chef Boyardee"; Hollywood icons Pola Negri, Bela Lugosi, and Bob Hope; spiritual figures Father Flanagan and Krishnamurti; authors Isaac Asimov and Kahlil Gibran; painters Arshile Gorky and Max Ernst; and sports figures Knute Rockne and Johnny Weissmuller.

Virginia in the Vanguard or Imperial Life in the Emerald City

Virginia in the Vanguard: Political Leadership in the 400-Year-Old Cradle of American Democracy, 1981-2006

Author: Frank B Atkinson

Virginia in the Vanguard continues the story begun in The Dynamic Dominion, detailing the resurgence of Virginia's Democratic Party in the 1980s and the Republicans' efforts to turn back the gains made by Chuck Robb and Douglas Wilder. It closes with Democrat Tim Kaine taking the governor's seat and former Republican and Democratic governors George Allen and Mark Warner poised to enter the 2008 presidential primaries.

Table of Contents:

	Preface : flood tide of freedom
I	Robb, Wilder, and the Democratic decade : 1981-1992
1	Reversal of fortune : the Democratic Southern strategy	3
2	The watershed Robb victory of 1981	17
3	Improbable journey : Wilder's way to the top	47
4	Swinging suburbs : making money and making history	83
II	George Allen and the "Virginia renaissance" : 1993-1999
5	Reagan populism and the positive politics of reform	123
6	From insurgent to insider : the 1993 Allen landslide	153
7	John Warner and the politics of independence	179
8	New world : America's oldest legislature transformed	217
III	Mark Warner and the "sensible center" : 2000-2006
9	Taxing times and the tactic of bipartisanship	261
	Epilogue : a concluding reflection on Virginia's legacy of freedom	297

Interesting textbook: War on the Middle Class or Coloniality at Large

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

Author: Rajiv Chandrasekaran

The Green Zone, Baghdad, 2003: in this walled-off compound of swimming pools and luxurious amenities, Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority set out to fashion a new, democratic Iraq. Staffed by idealistic aides chosen primarily for their views on issues such as abortion and capital punishment, the CPA spent the crucial first year of occupation pursuing goals that had little to do with the immediate needs of a postwar nation: flat taxes instead of electricity and deregulated health care instead of emergency medical supplies.

In this acclaimed firsthand account, the former Baghdad bureau chief of The Washington Post gives us an intimate portrait of life inside this Oz-like bubble, which continued unaffected by the growing mayhem outside. This is a quietly devastating tale of imperial folly, and the definitive history of those early days when things went irrevocably wrong in Iraq.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Mr. Chandrasekaran, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and the paper's former Baghdad bureau chief, spent nearly two years reporting from Iraq, and in Imperial Life in the Emerald City he draws a vividly detailed portrait of the Green Zone and the Coalition Provisional Authority…that becomes a metaphor for the administration's larger failings in Iraq…By focusing closely on the goals, initiatives and missteps of individuals involved in the Coalition Provisional Authority, Mr. Chandrasekaran is able to re-examine the mix of motives involved in the American invasion and the roles that hubris, idealism and denial played in shaping the occupation. His book gives the reader a visceral—sometimes sickening—picture of how the administration and its handpicked crew bungled the first year in postwar Iraq, showing how decisions made in that period contributed to a burgeoning insurgency and growing ethnic and religious strife.

The New York Times Book Review - Michael Goldfarb

It would have been worthwhile if Chandrasekaran had given us a greater sense of what he thought about overthrowing Hussein and, more to the point, what he felt upon returning to Washington after having seen the bloody result of its policies. But that is a philosophical difference I have with the author. This is a clearly written, blessedly undidactic book. It should be read by anyone who wants to understand how things went so badly wrong in Iraq.

Publishers Weekly

As the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, Chandrasekaran has probably spent more time in U.S.-occupied Iraq than any other American journalist, and his intimate perspective permeates this history of the Coalition Provisional Authority headquartered in the Green Zone around Saddam Hussein's former palace. He presents the tenure of presidential viceroy L. Paul Bremer between May 2003 and June 2004 as an all-too-avoidable disaster, in which an occupational administration selected primarily for its loyalty to the Bush administration routinely ignored the reality of local conditions until, as one ex-staffer puts it, "everything blew up in our faces." Chandrasekaran unstintingly depicts the stubborn cluelessness of many Americans in the Green Zone-like the army general who says children terrified by nighttime helicopters should appreciate "the sound of freedom." But he sympathetically portrays others trying their best to cut through the red tape and institute genuine reforms. He also has a sharp eye for details, from casual sex in abandoned offices to stray cats adopted by staffers, which enable both advocates and critics of the occupation to understand the emotional toll of its circuslike atmosphere. Thanks to these personal touches, the account of the CPA's failures never feels heavy-handed. (Sept. 22) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

"Rajiv Chandrasekaran has not given us "another Iraq book." He has given us a riveting tale of American misadventure. . . . He shows us American idealism and voyeurism, as well as the deadly results of American hubris. And by giving us the first full picture from inside the Green Zone, he depicts a mission doomed to failure before it had even been launched."
---Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

"This is a dazzling, important, and entertaining work of reportage about the American civilians who tried to remake Iraq, and about the strange, isolated city-state in Baghdad where they failed. Every American who wants to understand how and why things went so badly wrong in Iraq should read this book."
---Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars

"This amazing book pulls back the curtains of deception and reveals in stunning fashion what really went on inside the Emerald City in the crucial year after the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Chandrasekaran's reporting is vivid and relentless as he documents the mix of idealism, confidence, energy, hubris, political miscalculation, cultural blindness, and fantastical thinking of those who came to save Iraq yet made a difficult situation worse."
---David Maraniss, author of They Marched Into Sunlight

"An extraordinarily vivid and compelling anatomy of a fiasco. Imperial Life in the Emerald City is an indispensable saga of how the American liberation of Iraq turned to chaos, calamity, and civil war. Chandrasekaran takes us inside Baghdad's Green Zone as no one else has."
---Rick Atkinson, author of The Long Gray Line

Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration or The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements

Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration

Author: John Lock

Among the most influential writings in the history of Western political thought, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration remain vital to political debates today, more than three centuries after they were written. The complete texts appear in this volume, accompanied by interpretive essays by three prominent Locke scholars. Ian Shapiro's introduction places Locke's political writings in historical and biographical context. John Dunn explores both the intellectual context in which Locke wrote the Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration and the major interpretive controversies surrounding their meaning. Ruth Grant offers a comprehensive discussion of Locke's views on women and the family, and Shapiro contributes an essay on the democratic elements of Locke's political theory. Taken together, the texts and essays in this volume offer invaluable insights into the history of ideas and the enduring influence of Locke's political thought.

Author Biography: Ian Shapiro is William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor and chair, Department of Political Science, Yale University. John Dunn is professor of social and political science at Cambridge University. Ruth Grant is professor of political science at Duke University.

Rethinking the Western Tradition Series

Look this: Open Source for the Enterprise or Managing Industrial Knowledge

The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements

Author: David A Snow

The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements is a compilation of original, state-of-the-art essays by internationally recognized scholars. Covering a diverse range of topics in the field of social movement studies, this volume offers an illuminating guide to understanding the dynamics and operation of social movements within the modern, global world.

The abundance of social movement activity throughout the world, both violent and nonviolent, has made the study of social movements a valuable resource for helping students and scholars to engage and understand their own social world. Issues covered in this one volume include: historical, political, and cultural contexts; leadership; organizational dynamics; social networks and participation; consequences and outcomes; and synthetic overviews of major social movements, including labor, anti-war, women’s, religious, ethnic and national, and environmental movements.

Table of Contents:

	Contributors
	Acknowledgments
1	Mapping the Terrain	3
2	Protest in Time and Space: The Evolution of Waves of Contention	19
3	The Strange Career of Strain and Breakdown Theories of Collective Action	47
4	Political Context and Opportunity	67
5	The Cultural Contexts of Collective Action: Constraints, Opportunities, and the Symbolic Life of Social Movements	91
6	Resources and Social Movement Mobilization	116
7	Beyond the Iron Law: Rethinking the Place of Organizations in Social Movement Research	155
8	Leadership in Social Movements	171
9	Movement Allies, Adversaries, and Third Parties	197
10	Policing Social Protest	217
11	Bystanders, Public Opinion, and the Media	242
12	"Get up, Stand up": Tactical Repertoires of Social Movements	262
13	Diffusion Processes within and across Movements	294
14	Transnational Processes and Movements	311
15	Networks and Participation	339
16	The Demand and Supply of Participation: Social-Psychological Correlates of Participation in Social Movements	360
17	Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields	380
18	Emotional Dimensions of Social Movements	413
19	Collective Identity, Solidarity, and Commitment	433
20	The Legislative, Organizational, and Beneficiary Consequences of State-Oriented Challengers	461
21	Personal and Biographical Consequences	489
22	The Cultural Consequences of Social Movements	508
23	The Consequences of Social Movements for Each Other	531
24	The Labor Movement in Motion	555
25	Feminism and the Women's Movement: A Global Perspective	576
26	Environmental Movements	608
27	Antiwar and Peace Movements	641
28	Ethnic and Nationalist Social Movements	666
29	Religious Movements	694
	Index	717

There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster or Americas Presidents

There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina

Author: Gregory Squires

There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster is the first critical scholarly book on the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. The disaster will go down in record as one of the worst in American history, not least because of the government's generally inept and cavalier response. But it's also a huge story for other obvious reasons. Firstly, the impact of the hurricane was uneven, and race and class (and tied to this, poverty) were deeply implicated in the unevenness. It was not by accident that the poorest and blackest neighborhoods were the ones that were buried under water. Secondly, the response underscored the impoverishment of social policy (or what passes for it) in both George W. Bush's America and more specifically the Republican-dominated South. Thirdly, New Orleans is not just any place - it's a great American city with a rich and unique history. People care about the place and what happens there. Fourthly, what happened and what will happen there can tell us a greatdeal about the state of urban and regional planning in contemporary America.
The book, edited by two eminent scholars/authors, gathers together ten excellent scholars to put forth a multifaceted portrait of the social implications of the disaster. And the disaster was primarily social in nature, as the title reminds us. The book covers the response to the disaster and the roles that race and class played, its impact on housing, the historical context of urban disasters in America, the nature of contemporary metropolitan planning, what the hurricane has taught us about planning, the role of the vast prison system in all of this, the future of economic development, the roles of businessand the media, and how the hurricane disproportionately impacted female headed households. In total, it offers a critical and comprehensive social portrait of the disaster's catastrophic effects on New Orleans.

Read also Une Approche de Systèmes à la Petite Action réciproque de Groupe

America's Presidents: Facts, Photos, and Memorabilia from the Nation's Chief Executives

Author: Chuck Wills

Colorful images, removable memorabilia, and authoritative but easy-to-understand text combines to tell the story of all of America's Commanders in Chiefs from George Washington to George W. Bush-their personalities, their politics, and their significant contributions.

Naked Public Square or The Broken Branch

Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America

Author: Richard John Neuhaus

Underlying the many crises in American life, writes Richard John Neuhaus, is a crisis of faith. It is not enough that more people should believe or that those who believe should believe more strongly. Rather, the faith of persons and communities must be more compellingly related to the public arena. "The naked public square"—which results from the exclusion of popular values from the public forum—will almost certainly result in the death of democracy.

The great challenge, says Neuhaus, is the reconstruction of a public philosophy that can undergird American life and America's ambiguous place in the world. To be truly democratic and to endure, such a public philosophy must be grounded in values that are based on Judeo-Christian religion. The remedy begins with recognizing that democratic theory and practice, which have in the past often been indifferent or hostile to religion, must now be legitimated in terms compatible with biblical faith.

Neuhaus explores the strengths and weaknesses of various sectors of American religion in pursuing this task of critical legitimation. Arguing that America is now engaged in an historic moment of testing, he draws upon Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish thinkers who have in other moments of testing seen that the stakes are very high—for America, for the promise of democratic freedom elsewhere, and possibly for God's purpose in the world.

An honest analysis of the situation, says Neuhaus, shatters false polarizations between left and right, liberal and conservative. In a democratic culture, the believer's respect for nonbelievers is not a compromise but a requirement of the believer's faith. Similarly, the democratic rights of those outside the communities of religious faith can be assured only by the inclusion of religiously-grounded values in the common life.

The Naked Public Square does not offer yet another partisan program for political of social change. Rather, it offers a deeply disturbing, but finally hopeful, examination of Abraham Lincoln's century-old question—whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

Wall Street Journal

Richard John Neuhaus addresses the relationship of religion and democracy with a steadiness and vitality rare in such discussions....The Naked Public Square challenges us to consider afresh the relationship of religion and public life. This book is elegant in execution and sweeping in scope.

Choice

For those interested in the role of religion in American life, this book is a must.

New York Times Book Review

"A substantial book. It should be read by anyone concerned with the current debates over the emergence of the "new Christian right.""

Commentary

This is a large-minded book, and its sophistication and intelligence advance our understanding of the religion/politics issue far beyond the confusions and incomprehensions that dominate most discussions of the subject.

Theology Today

Whether readers support or oppose his major contentions, Neuhaus has skillfully produced a lively forum for our moral discourse regarding church-state relations and democratic values.

George F. Will

The book from which further debate about church-state relations should begin.

Books about: Managing Business Relationships 2nd Edition or Economics of the Law

The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track

Author: Thomas E Mann

Congress is the first branch of government in the American system, write Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, but now it is a broken branch, damaged by partisan bickering and internal rancor. The Broken Branch offers both a brilliant diagnosis of the cause of Congressional decline and a much-needed blueprint for change, from two experts who understand politics and revere our institutions, but believe that Congress has become deeply dysfunctional.
Mann and Ornstein, two of the nations most renowned and judicious scholars of government and politics, bring to light the historical roots of Congress's current maladies, examining 40 years of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House and the stunning midterm election victory of 1994 that propelled Republicans into the majority in both House and Senate. The byproduct of that long and grueling but ultimately successful Republican campaign, the authors reveal, was a weakened institution bitterly divided between the parties. They highlight the dramatic shift in Congress from a highly decentralized, committee-based institution into a much more regimented one in which party increasingly trumps committee. The resultant changes in the policy process--the demise of regular order, the decline of deliberation, and the weakening of our system of checks and balances--have all compromised the role of Congress in the American Constitutional system. Indeed, Speaker Dennis Hastert has unabashedly stated that his primary responsibility is to pass the president's legislative program--identifying himself more as a lieutenant of the president than a steward of the house. From tax cuts to the war against Saddam Hussein to a Medicare prescriptiondrug benefit, the legislative process has been bent to serve immediate presidential interests and have often resulted in poorly crafted and stealthily passed laws. Strong majority leadership in Congress, the authors conclude, led not to a vigorous exertion of congressional authority but to a general passivity in the face of executive power.
A vivid portrait of an institution that has fallen far from the aspirations of our Founding Fathers, The Broken Branch highlights the costs of a malfunctioning Congress to national policymaking, and outlines what must be done to repair the damage.

The Washington Post - Robert G. Kaiser

… it is easy to recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Congress, how it works and how it should work. [Dennis] Hastert would be particularly well-served by spending a few hours with The Broken Branch.

Publishers Weekly

Until recently, one could be forgiven for thinking that the present Congress is essentially an arm of the Bush administration, according to Mann and Ornstein, nationally renowned congressional scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, respectively. Their book argues persuasively that relentless partisanship and a disregard for institutional procedures have led Congress to be more dysfunctional than at any time in recent memory. Looking back to the arbitrary and sometimes authoritarian leadership of Democratic speaker Jim Wright and the Abscam scandals of the 1980s, the authors demonstrate how they presage the much worse abuses of power committed by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. In outlining more than 200 years of congressional history, Mann and Ornstein sometimes allow just a sentence or two to explain the policies and philosophies of an important politician or even an entire party, even as they catalogue deviations from obscure points of procedure in extensive detail. Their book may be useful and enjoyable to the specialist, though recent conservative pushback on issues from the Harriet Miers nomination to warrantless wiretapping and immigration will make some wish the authors had had the opportunity to add a postscript. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The United States Congress has ceased to be a deliberative body, according to two eminent political scientists with some ideas about how to fix it. Mann (Brookings Institution) and Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute), both of whom arrived on Capitol Hill in 1969 with fellowships to study Congress, and have been doing so ever since, here review the evolution of Congress from the republic's founding to early 2006. Bipartisanship was already waning in the final years of the era of Democratic dominance, they argue. The Republican leadership, which was trying to be provocative in order to "nationalize" Congressional races, was often denied a role in drafting important legislation, while the Democrats used the rules to pass bills with little discussion. The authors note that Speaker Newt Gingrich's initiatives after the Republican landslide of 1994 were in the spirit of earlier reforms, de-emphasizing seniority and seeking to foster bipartisanship-but this attempt was abandoned. When George W. Bush won the presidency, House majority leaders saw themselves as mere agents of presidential policy. Party-line votes on important matters have since become the norm. Members of Congress now seem to feel they are in Washington to vote rather than to adequately discuss policy. Key pieces of legislation are badly written because amendments are not allowed. When they can, many Congressmen stay in Washington only three days a week, resulting in a decline in the quantity and quality of their work. Members of Congress have little interest in overseeing the executive branch or in how Congress functions; the latter neglect has occasioned a host of ethics scandals, which the authors discuss in detail. Theyalso suggest independent oversight of lobbyists and five-day congressional workweeks, while recognizing that polarization in Congress reflects polarization in the country as a whole. Most of the criticism here goes to Republicans-largely because they are in power-but the wealth of detail offered by Mann and Ornstein gives partisanship a good name.

Table of Contents:

Ch. 1	Introduction	1
Ch. 2	The first branch of government : theory and practice	14
Ch. 3	The seeds of the contemporary problem, 1969-1994	47
Ch. 4	A decade of Republican control	96
Ch. 5	Institutional decline	141
Ch. 6	The case of continuity	192
Ch. 7	Conclusion	211