Outsourcing Security or The Case of Abraham Lincoln

Outsourcing Security: A Guide for Contracting Services

Author: John Stees

Outsourcing Security provides a complete management guide for contracting support services, particularly those associated with protective organizations. It helps security and facility managers through the quagmire of conceptual planning, proposal evaluation and contract negotiation, and helps them to realize cost savings, improve productivity, and elevate the quality level of the contracted service.



Outsourcing Security provides a complete management guide for contracting support services, particularly those associated with protective organizations. It helps security and facility managers through the quagmire of conceptual planning, proposal evaluation and contract negotiation, and helps them to realize cost savings, improve productivity, and elevate the quality level of the contracted service. This book:
-Defines successful methods to improve business efficiency and effectiveness through outsourcing,
-Helps managers achieve cost savings and enhance quality contract performance
-Emphasizes team concepts when evaluating outsourcing services

Defines successful methods to improve business efficiency and effectiveness through outsourcing,
Helps managers achieve cost savings and enhance quality contract performance
Emphasizes team concepts when evaluating outsourcing services

Booknews

Guides security and facility managers through the quagmire of conceptual planning, proposal evaluation, and contract negotiations. Highlights ways to save money, improve productivity, elevate the quality level of the contracted service, and reduce the risk of hiring a fox to guard the hen house. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

See also: You Are Thinking of Teaching or Capital Power and Inequality in Latin America

The Case of Abraham Lincoln: A Story of Adultery, Murder, and the Making of a Great President

Author: Julie M Fenster

In 1856, Abraham Lincoln was at a personal crossroads. Often despondent, he had grown bored with his work as a lawyer. He was beginning to see himself as just a former Congressman, without much of a future in politics. Later that year,  the gruesome murder of a Springfield blacksmith provided the case that defined Lincoln's legal career. The string of lurid revelations that followed the crime became front page news across the country, putting Lincoln back in the national spotlight. The Anderson case reflected the spirit of the times: an inescapable, dark world, hidden within the optimism and innocence of the young city of Springfield. With the Anderson murder, Lincoln's legal skills as a defender were challenged as never before and he was finally able to prove himself as a man with a great destiny.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Maps of Illinois and Springfield
Foreword - Lincoln in His Element
by Dr. Douglas Brinkley
Chapter 1 - March, 1856
Like a Cathedral
Chapter 2 - April
At the Anvil
Chapter 3 - The Beginning of May
Stranger in the Yard
Chapter 4 - Early May
Something About Strychnine
Chapter 5 - May 15
The Old Man Went Out
Chapter 6 - Mid-May
Excitement in the City
Chapter 7 - Late May
An Old Battered Stovepipe Hat
Chapter 8 - May 29
Major's Hall
Chapter 9 - June
Summer Days
Chapter 10 - July and August
The March of the What-y'a-call-ems
Chapter 11 - September
Boarding Men
Chapter 12 - October and November
A Motive Equal to Murder
Chapter 13 - November and Early December, 1856
The Best Hope of the Nation
Afterword
Endnotes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Voting the Gender Gap or The Role of Annuity Markets in Financing Retirement

Voting the Gender Gap

Author: Lois Duke Whitaker

This book concentrates on the gender gap in voting--the difference in the proportion of women and men voting for the same candidate. Evident in every presidential election since 1980, this polling phenomenon reached a high of 11 percentage points in the 1996 election. The contributors discuss the history, complexity, and ways of analyzing the gender gap; the gender gap in relation to partisanship; motherhood, ethnicity, and the impact of parental status on the gender gap; and the gender gap in races involving female candidates. Voting the Gender Gap analyzes trends in voting while probing how women's political empowerment and gender affect American politics and the electoral process.



Contributors are Susan J. Carroll, Erin Cassese, Cal Clark, Janet M. Clark, M. Margaret Conway, Kathleen A. Dolan, Laurel Elder, Kathleen A. Frankovic, Steven Greene, Leonie Huddy, Mary-Kate Lizotte, Barbara Norrander, Margie Omero, and Lois Duke Whitaker.

Interesting book: Tear up This Book or Can You See What I See The Night Before Christmas

The Role of Annuity Markets in Financing Retirement

Author: Jeffrey R Brown

Dramatic advances in life expectancy mean that today's retirees must plan on living into their eighties, their nineties, and even beyond. Longer life expectancies are the symbol of a prosperous society, but this progress also means that some retirees will need to plan conservatively and cut back substantially on their living standards or risk living so long that they exhaust their resources. This book examines the role that life annuities can play in helping people protect themselves against such outcomes.

A life annuity is an insurance product that pays out a periodic amount for as long as the annuitant is alive, in exchange for a premium. The book begins with a history of life annuity markets during the twentieth century in the United States and elsewhere. It then explores recent trends in annuity pricing and money's worth, as well as the economic value generated for purchasers of these products. The book explains the potential importance of inflation-protected annuities and stock-market-linked variable annuities in providing more complete retirement security. The concluding chapters examine life annuities in various institutional settings and the tax treatment of annuity products.

Table of Contents:

1	Introduction and Overview	1
2	A Brief History of Annuity Markets	23
3	Private Annuity Markets in the United States: 1919-1984	57
4	New Evidence on the Money's Worth of Individual Annuities	71
5	The Role of Real Annuities and Indexed Bonds in an Individual Accounts Retirement Program	107
6	The Costs of Annuitizing Retirement Payouts from Individual Accounts	153
7	Taxing Retirement Income: Nonqualified Annuities and Distributions from Qualified Accounts	185
	Index	227

Founding Brothers or Imperial Leather

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Author: Joseph J Ellis

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

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

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

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

Library Journal

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

New York Times Book Review - Michiko Kakutan

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

New York Times Book Review - Benson Bobrick

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

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Preface: The Generation	3
Chapter 1	The Duel	20
Chapter 2	The Dinner	48
Chapter 3	The Silence	81
Chapter 4	The Farewell	120
Chapter 5	The Collaborators	162
Chapter 6	The Friendship	206
	Notes	249
	Index	279

Books about: The Viagra Myth or AyurVeda and Life Impressions Bodywork

Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest

Author: Anne McClintock

Imperial Leather chronicles the dangerous liaisons between gender, race and class that shaped British imperialism and its bloody dismantling. Spanning the century between Victorian Britain and the current struggle for power in South Africa, the book takes up the complex relationships between race and sexuality, fetishism and money, gender and violence, domesticity and the imperial market, and the gendering of nationalism within the zones of imperial and anti-imperial power.

Anne McClintock explores the sexualizing of the terra incognita, the imperial myth of the empty lands, the dirt fetish and the "civilizing mission", sexuality and labor, advertising and commodity racism, the Victorian invention of the idle woman, feminism and racial difference, and anti-apartheid culture in the current transformation of national power.

Using feminist, post-colonial, psychoanalytic and socialist theories, Imperial Leather argues that the categories of gender, race and class do not exist in isolation, but emerge in intimate relation to one another. Drawing on diverse cultural forms--novels, advertising, diaries, poetry oral history, and mass commodity spectacle--the book examines imperialism not only as a poetics of ambivalence, but as a politics of violence. Rejecting traditional binaries of self/other, man/woman, colonizer/colonized, Anne McClintock calls instead for a more informed and complex understanding of catgories of social power and identity.

Library Journal

McClintock (English, Columbia Univ.) interprets 19th-century British imperialism as the focal point for that era's major "disclosures," including feminism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. She describes Victorian urban spaceincluding advertisingas being oriented to exhibit imperial spectacle based on racism and sexism. In turn, the colonies become stages for exhibiting a reinvented patriarchy, with Westerners symbolizing power and indigenous peoples a subdued domesticity. The text is an exercise in demonstrating preconceptions. While some of McClintock's evidence is original, the argument as a whole is conventional bien-pensant wisdom unlikely to convince anyone not already committed to the thesis. The presentation is further burdened by its reliance on the clichs and jargon of feminism, deconstructionism, and other currently fashionable academic ideologies. Imperialism was at once a simpler and a more complex phenomenon than McClintock's perspective allows. For large academic collections only.D.E. Showalter, Colorado Coll., Colorado Springs

Truth Imagined or Sea Ranch

Truth Imagined

Author: Eric Hoffer

Blind as a child, Eric Hoffer--one of America's most important thinkers--regained his sight at the age of fifteen and became a voracious reader. At eighteen, fate would take his remaining family, sending him on the road with three hundred dollars and into the life of a Depression Era migrant worker, but his appetite for knowledge--history, science, mankind--remained and became the basis for his insights on human nature. Filled with timeless aphorisms and entertaining stories, Truth Imagined tracks Hoffer's years on the road, which served as the breeding ground for his most fertile thoughts.

Book about: No Logo or 100 Years of Harley Davidson

Sea Ranch: Dwelling on the Edge

Author: Donlyn Lyndon

A hundred miles north of San Francisco on California Coast Highway 1, the Sonoma County coast meets the Pacific Ocean in a magnificent display of nature. Waves crash upon the rocks or wash up on beautiful stretches of sandy beaches. This is the location of The Sea Ranch, an area covering several thousand acres of large, open meadows and forested natural settings interspersed with award-winning architecture. When the area, a sheep ranch well into the last century, was rediscovered for its beauty in the 1960s, it came to be envisioned as a home community that harmonized with the environment.
Renowned landscape designer Lawrence Halprin's master plan for The Sea Ranch community accordingly incorporated a set of building guidelines that minimized the visual as well as physical impact upon the landscape. Subsequent buildings by architects such as Joseph Esherick, Charles Moore, William Turnbull, Obie Bowman, Donlyn Lyndon, and others have been recognized worldwide for environmentally sensitive planning and architecture. They sparked a generation of imitators that became part of what is known as "The Sea Ranch style," epitomizing what many people imagine when they think of Northern Californian architecture.
This beautiful monograph, lavishly illustrated with over 300 newly commissioned photographs and including maps, plans, detailed descriptions of the houses, and essays by Donald Canty and Lawrence Halprin, presents the definitive record of The Sea Ranch community.

Way out There in the Blue or Downsize This

Way out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War

Author: Frances FitzGerald

Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan. Drawing on extensive research, FitzGerald shows how Reagan managed to get billions in funding for a program that was technologically impossible by exploiting the fears of the American public. The Reagan who emerges from FitzGerald's book was a gifted politician with a deep understanding of the national psyche, and an executive almost totally disengaged from the policies of his administration. Both appalling and funny, Way Out There in the Blue is the most penetrating study of Reagan's presidency to date.

The Onion AV Club - Scott Tobias

Considering the sweeping influence of his administration, Ronald Reagan remains a strangely elusive figure--so elusive, in fact, that his official biographer, Edmund Morris, opted to invent a fictionalized version of himself to sketch in the empty spaces. But Frances FitzGerald, who sorted through the cloudy intricacies of the Vietnam War in her previous book (the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fire In The Lake), finds a more direct and illuminating route into his political mind with Way Out In The Blue, a sprawling history of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Better known by the more seductive name "Star Wars," SDI is the antiballistic missile system first introduced by Reagan during a notorious speech given in March 1983, when his presidency was at its lowest ebb. The idea of designing an "impregnable shield" in space to protect the country from nuclear holocaust was a fantasy that appealed to the general public, which feared any further escalation of the Cold War. But defense experts fumed, not least because such a system wasn't remotely plausible. Seventeen years later, SDI still isn't remotely plausible, yet congress recently allocated another $6.6 billion to a similar program, adding to the $60 billion already poured into the most expensive research project in American history. How could this happen? As FitzGerald argues, Star Wars is Reagan's greatest rhetorical triumph, an empty promise rooted in dubious science, mythology, and the movies, and carried out on the force of his charisma and imagination. Sorting through a dizzying array of personalities and technical jargon, FitzGerald investigates Reagan's detached, corporate-style approach to leadership and the tricky role SDI played in negotiations with the Soviets. Way Out There In The Blue rehashes a portrait of Reagan that's common to many left-leaning historical accounts, but by using Star Wars as an angle into his administration (and mystique), the author points to a disturbing legacy in which dreams and policy are virtually indistinguishable.

Publishers Weekly

Anyone who thinks that Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program is dead should read this shocking book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fitzgerald (Fire in the Lake, etc.). The former president's "Star Wars" plan--for laser weapons and space-based missiles intended to make the U.S. invulnerable to nuclear attack--was pure science fiction, writes Fitzgerald, and she notes that no technological breakthrough has occurred that would make Clinton's modified SDI program remotely feasible. Yet the U.S. has spent $3 to $4 billion a year on "Star Wars" in almost every single year since Reagan left office (and, as Fitzgerald observes, there has been almost no public discussion on this issue for several years). Why? The answer, suggests Fitzgerald in this painstakingly detailed study, lies partly in the way "Star Wars" was sold to the American public. By her reckoning, Reagan adroitly filled the role of mythic American Everyman endowed with homespun virtues. Prodded by the Republican right, by military hardliners such as limited-nuclear-war advocate Edward Teller and by deputy national security adviser Robert McFarlane (who, ironically, intended SDI primarily as a bargaining chip with the Soviets), Reagan wholeheartedly embraced the Star Wars concept for ideological reasons; he persuaded the people of its necessity by tapping into America's "civil religion" rooted in 19th-century Protestant beliefs in American exceptionalism and a desire to make the U.S. an invulnerable sanctuary. Part Reagan biography, part political analysis of "his greatest rhetorical triumph," Fitzgerald's study offers a withering behind-the-scenes look at the Iran arms-for-hostage crisis, the Iran-Contra scandals, Reagan's sparring with Gorbachev, arms-control talks such as the Reykjavik summit (at which both leaders almost negotiated away all their nuclear arms but were stalled over SDI) and the grinding of the wheels of the military-industrial establishment. Her book is sure to trigger debate. Agent, Robert Lescher. Author tour. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

Like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, President Reagan, who viewed himself as Salesman-in-Chief, believed that a leader has to dream. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was Reagan's dream of an impenetrable shield located in space that would destroy any nuclear missiles launched at the United States, observes Fitzgerald, 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. This massive, impressively researched investigation of the SDI, or "Star Wars," defense, incorporates a fascinating portrayal of a president buffeted by Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and his faction of conservatives, and Secretary of State George Shultz, the leader of the moderates. Reagan's evolving relationship with Soviet president Gorbachev is vividly told through accounts of the Geneva and Reykjavik summits: Reagan is credited with promoting Gorbachev's plan for changing the Soviet Union from the "evil empire" to a modern capitalistic state. Caution: the lengthy, complicated discussions on SDI technology and missile diplomacy are not for the casual reader. Highly recommended for academic and specialized collections on foreign policy and strongly recommended for larger public libraries.--Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

The Christian Science Monitor - Walker

This well-written book packs a lot into its 500 pages. It has far more laugh-out-loud anecdotes than a reader has any right to expect from a tome as full of arms-control jargon as this one necessarily is. It even has chortlesome footnotes.

The New York Times Book Review - Alan Brinkley

What is perhaps most striking is how clearly, eloquently and engagingly FitzGerald manages to describe a set of obscure and complicated events . . . One of the best inner histories of the Reagan administration yet to appear.

The Boston Book Review - Scott Stossel

...by far the most comprehensive and readable treatment of the Readan Administration's approach to the Soviet Union yet written...

Book review: A Modern Horse Herbal or Love Your Looks

Downsize This!: Random Threats from an Unarmed American

Author: Michael Moor

Americans today are working harder, working longer and yet for most of us, in this time of ruthless downsizing and political cronyism, job security, a decent standard of living and a comfortable retirement are becoming harder and harder to find. In this brilliantly funny and right-on-target diatribe, irreverent everyman Michael Moore gives his own bold views on who's behind the fading of the American dream.

Whether issuing Corporate Crook trading cards, organizing a Rodney King Commemorative Riot, sending a donation to Pat Buchanan from the John Wayne Gacy fan club (which was accepted) or trying to commit former right-wing congressman Bob Dornan to a mental hospital, the in-your-face host of TV Nation and director/star of Roger & Me combines an expansive wit with biting social commentary to make you think and laugh at the same time.

In hardcover, Downsize This! stormed the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and others. Given Michael Moore's enormous -- and growing -- constituency, this trade paperback edition brings his unique perspective on the nation to an even greater audience.

Publishers Weekly

Moore, whose documentary film Roger & Me and television series TV Nation have a strong cult following, takes on corporations, politicians and Americana in general in a mordant satire that will leave both conservatives and liberals reeling with embarrassment. Moore tears into corporations and labor unions alike. Citing "economic terrorism," he goes after the "Big Welfare Mamas"the CEOsdetailing their cozy tax deals with federal and local government, which have added to the deficit. He attacks the unions in "Why Are Union Leaders So F#!@ing Stupid," citing how they have collaborated with corporations (while taking huge salaries) to slash jobs from their own memberships. No one is immune; Moore scrutinizes the President, Bob Dole, NAFTA, Cuban refugees and Pat Buchanan. A scathing, funny book packed with facts, it will appeal to those who loved Al Franken's Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. Photos. Major ad/promo; author tour. (Sept.)

Library Journal

The man who brought you Roger & Me takes on the fat cats again.

Kirkus Reviews

The man behind the popular documentary Roger and Me and the short-lived series TV Nation takes a stab at authorship—and at every conservative sacred cow available.

Moore brings a uniformly predictable lefty perspective to a series of topics, including corporate downsizing of workforces, Bill Clinton's weakness in opposing the right wing, Congress's craven subjugation to special interests, NAFTA, white racism, anti-feminist hysteria, homophobia, and the demonization of welfare recipients. As in his film and video work, Moore is at his best when he leads the fuzzy-minded to the logical conclusions of their thought processes, for example, getting an anti-abortion activist to agree that male masturbation is a serious moral issue because life actually begins with the individual sperm. There is a good deal of useful political information spread through the book, including the names and deeds of a number of corporate executives and lobbyists whose power is seldom treated as critically as it should be by journalists. The humor is hit-and-miss, though, and readers who don't seethe along with Moore in his populist rage are likely to find the book as a whole tiresome. There's also a considerable amount of the nastiness that liberals decry among today's conservative polemicists, the low point being a suggestion to Bob Dole that he replace the pen with which he keeps his disabled right hand from closing in on itself with something more appropriate, such as a coathanger to symbolize his views on abortion.

Moore might consider, as he passes judgment on the hypocrisy of our time, that a writer who can muse on his frequent exasperation with limousine drivers should refer to the working class as something other than "we."

Table of Contents:

	The Etiquette of Downsizing	2
Ch. 1	Let's All Hop in a Ryder Truck	5
Ch. 2	Would Pat Buchanan Take a Check from Satan?	18
Ch. 3	"Don't Vote - It Only Encourages Them"	22
Ch. 4	Democrat? Republican? Can You Tell the Difference?	26
Ch. 5	Not on the Mayflower? Then Leave!	33
Ch. 6	Big Welfare Mamas	43
Ch. 7	Let's Dump on Orange County	56
Ch. 8	How to Conduct the Rodney King Commemorative Riot	62
Ch. 9	Pagan Babies	68
Ch. 10	Germany Still Hasn't Paid for Its Sins - and I Intend to Collect	76
Ch. 11	So You Want to Kill the President!	83
Ch. 12	Show Trials I'd Like to See	94
Ch. 13	If Clinton Had Balls ...	97
Ch. 14	Steve Forbes Was an Alien	104
Ch. 15	Corporate Crooks Trading Cards	108
Ch. 16	Why Are Union Leaders So F#!@ing Stupid?	127
Ch. 17	Balance the Budget? Balance My Checkbook!	136
Ch. 18	Mike's Penal Systems, Inc.	140
Ch. 19	Mandate? What Mandate?	147
Ch. 20	My Forbidden Love for Hillary	153
Ch. 21	A Sperm's Right to Life	161
Ch. 22	Let's Pick a New Enemy!	168
Ch. 23	Those Keystone Cubans	175
Ch. 24	What America Needs Is a Makeover	183
Ch. 25	O. J. Is Innocent	189
Ch. 26	The "Liddy Problem"	208
Ch. 27	I Try to Commit Bob Dornan	211
Ch. 28	Skip the Candidates - Vote for the Lobbyists!	221
Ch. 29	Harassing Gays for Extra Credit	229
Ch. 30	Take That Pen Out of Bob Dole's Hand	233
Ch. 31	Free Us, Nelson Mandela!	240
Ch. 32	NAFTA's Great! Let's Move Washington to Tijuana!	246
Ch. 33	Why Doesn't GM Sell Crack?	253
Ch. 34	I Want My Tax Break or I'm Leaving	258
Ch. 35	Mike's Militia	262
	Everyone Fired ... Wall Street Reacts Favorably	272
	Acknowledgments	274

Patrolling Baghdad or Andrew Jackson

Patrolling Baghdad: A Military Police Company and the War in Iraq

Author: Mark R Depu

For the 160 national guardsmen from America's heartland, Baghdad was more than just a long way from home. It also confronted the 233rd Military Police Company with America's most difficult challenge in Iraq: establishing security in a nation rife with religious, tribal, and sectarian conflict and violence. The first MP company assigned to patrol the heart of Baghdad, the 233rd (from Springfield, Illinois) was a key part of the American occupation forces from April 2003 to April 2004. Charged with helping rebuild the city's police force—not just reopening stations but training a new force to replace its corrupt and hated predecessors—these men and women waged a "military police war" while witnessing all of the larger conflict's central themes, from the shortcoming of prewar planning to ongoing security problems, from media coverage to humanitarian efforts. DePue recounts the 233rd's actions in the streets and alleyways of Baghdad and the inevitable clash of cultures, along with lootings, shootings, roadside and police station bombings, and the inevitable bureaucratic bumbling. Here are the horrors of firefights and summary executions and the drama of the UN bombing. Here too is the untold side of the war, as these volunteers on their own initiative reopened Baghdad schools and took under their wing a Catholic orphanage for handicapped children located in the heart of the city. Based on extensive interviews with the unit's members and others associated with their mission, DePue's eye-opening account also covers what it was like for the 26 women of the unit, how a romance blossomed between two MPs, and how support groups back home—with the help of theInternet—helped families cope with worry over loved ones.

Interesting book: Edible Ideologies or Gardeners Table

Andrew Jackson: Young Patriot (Childhood of Famous Americans Series)

Author: George E Stanley

Dear Reader:

The Childhood of Famous Americans series, seventy years old in 2002, chronicles the early years of famous American men and women in an accessible manner. Each book is faithful in spirit to the values and experiences that influenced the person's development. History is fleshed out with fictionalized details, and conversations have been added to make the stories come alive to today's reader, but every reasonable effort has been made to make the stories consistent with the events, ethics, and character of their subjects.

These books reaffirm the importance of our American heritage. We hope you learn to love the heroes and heroines who helped shape this great country. And by doing so, we hope you also develop a lasting love for the nation that gave them the opportunity to make their dreams come true. It will do the same for you.

Happy Reading!
The Editors

Marya Jansen-Gruber - Children's Literature

Andrew Jackson was the kind of boy who knew just he wanted to do. He knew that he did not want to have to continue going to the little local school, for one thing. After all, he knew more than the teacher did didn't he? What Andrew, or Andy, as he was called by those who knew him, wanted to do was to help his uncle drive the cattle to Charles Town. Later he wanted to help his fellow Patriots fight against the British. Andy felt very strongly that the British had no right telling his people, the Americans, how they should live their lives. Andy's widowed mother, however, was not in favor of him going off to war, and Andy did his best to do as his mother asked. But, there came a time when Andy had to defend his home and family. Still quite young, Andy found himself fighting against redcoat soldiers. The story of Andrew Jackson's youthful adventures is wonderfully told in this excellent addition to the "Childhood of Famous Americans" series. The author manages to capture Jackson's innocence at the beginning of the book, which, as the war takes its toll on the young boy, is lost by its close. We are able to understand the forces that shaped the boy and thus, what it was that made Andrew Jackson the kind of man he was. 2003, Aladdin Paperbacks,

English Civil War or Zionism Militarism and the Decline of US Power

English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain

Author: Diane Purkiss

In this compelling history of the violent struggle between the monarchy and Parliament that tore apart seventeenth-century England, a rising star among British historians sheds new light on the people who fought and died through those tumultuous years. Drawing on exciting new sources, including letters, memoirs, ballads, plays, illustrations, and even cookbooks, Diane Purkiss creates a rich and nuanced portrait of this turbulent era. The English Civil War's dramatic consequences-rejecting the divine right monarchy in favor of parliamentary rule-continue to influence our lives, and in this colorful narrative, Purkiss vividly brings to life the history that changed the course of Western government.

Publishers Weekly

There are many ways to approach the history of the 17th-century upheaval that beheaded a king and laid the foundations for democratic revolutions to come, and this absorbing, ungainly study tries them all. Oxford historian Purkiss (The Witch in History) draws a gallery of sharp biographical sketches of participants from Cromwell to ordinary soldiers, paying special attention to the oft-neglected doings of women, like aristocratic intriguer Lucy Hay and radical dissenter Anna Trapnel. She also slathers on plenty of social history, digressing on everything from contemporary housing to cookbooks. And she interweaves an avowedly disjointed, episodic kings-and-battles narrative of military campaigns and political maneuverings, replete with dramatic eyewitness accounts. Fixated on trees rather than the forest, Purkiss offers no clear overview of events or much coherent interpretation of the conflict, aside from some facile psychoanalysis ("Charles I's longing to make the monarchy independent of any hurtful criticism proceeded from the bullied child he was"). The book doesn't work as a general introduction, but readers who already know some of the history will find it full of colorful personalities and scenes and evocative period writings that bring to life the people, culture and violent turmoil of the age. Photos. (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

New interesting textbook: One Nation Underground or American Made

Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power

Author: James Petras

From 9/11 to the present, the pro-Israel power configuration in the United States has broadened its definition of 'the areas of interest to Israel', and thus the issues on which it will intervene. During the 1940s to 1950s, the main focus of the Lobby was to secure US diplomatic support for Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The Lobby's areas of interest to Israel extended to Israel's wars with Egypt and Syria in the 1960s and 1970s; to Lebanon and Iraq during the 1980s and 1990s; and to Iraq and Iran during the current decade. By defining the limits of action that the US President and Congress can take on issues relating to Israel, the Zionist Power Configuration now influences US policies toward the entire Middle East.

While it has been widely argued that the true reason for the US war on Iraq concerned oil, the influence of AIPAC and neoconservatives in the Bush administration acting on behalf of Israeli interests in the region has been largely ignored. Now, however, only pressure from the Lobby and the threat of pre-emptive attack by Israel can explain the current US aggressive posture (financial and economic sanctions, naval blockades) against Iran-all contrary to the interests of Big Oil, corporate America, and the weakened and overstretched US military.

In Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power, Petras empirically demonstrates how the rigid structural parameters of Israeli politics are transmitted via the Zionist Power Configuration in the United States into the basic contradictory reality of US-Israeli relations-a tiny, isolated, militarized, settler-controlled state blocking economic transactions of a globalized imperial economy by forcing it intodisastrous military adventures and economic decline, with calamitous results for the world at large.

About the Author:
James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York

Table of Contents:

Zionism and Us Militarism
How Zionist Power in the US Promotes US Wars in the Middle East     15
The True Cause of the War on Iraq: From Pretexts to Cover-ups     15
The War for Oil Argument     16
The National Security Argument     19
From Iraq War Cover-up to Iran War Propaganda     20
Israel, the ZPC and the Run-up to the Invasion of Iraq     22
War with Iran: The Highest Priority for the ZPC (and Israel)     25
Zionist Power in the United States     27
'Jewish Vote', 'Israel Lobby' or 'Zionist Power Configuration'?     29
War for Oil or for Israel: What the Public Record Reveals     31
Zionist Warmongering: Fear and Venom     34
From a Scratch to Gangrene: The Transition from Zionism to Zion-Fascism     35
Deflecting Peace Initiatives     37
The ZPC and Armenian Holocaust Denial: At the Service of Israel     39
Anti-Iraq War Democratic Presidential Candidates Pro-War on Iran     40
The Impact of Zionist Authoritarianism on American Democracy     42
War on Iran: The American Military versus the Israel Firsters     55
Introduction     55
Recent History of the Civilian Militarists versus Anti-War Movements     56
American Military Fights the ZPC over Middle EastWars     56
Israel-Firsters Win Round One     57
Round Two: American Military Resists War on Iran     58
Making the IAEA Report Safe for American Public Consumption     63
Fundamental Issues in Dispute by the US Military and Israel-Firsters     64
Military/Zion-Con: Punch and Counterpunch     68
Conclusion     69
Burying the National Intelligence Estimate     73
Introduction     73
Israel Rejects "the Intelligence Report from the Other Side of the Earth"     77
The "International Community" Climbs on Board     78
The Drumbeat Goes On     80
Provocations as Pretexts for Imperial War: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11     85
Provocation as Pretext for the US War Against Japan     86
Provocation as Pretext for the US War Against Korea     87
The US Indochina War: Johnson's Tonkin Pretext     89
Provocation as Pretext: 9/11 and the Afghan/Iraq Invasions     91
The Politics of Military Provocations     94
Military-Driven Empire Building: The Zionist Connection     96
The Terror Bombing: White House and Zionist Complicity     98
Provocations and Pretexts: The Israeli/US War Against Iran     99
Zion-Con Zelikow, the 2002 National Security Strategy and 9/11     102
Embracing the Israeli Modus Operandi of Endless War
The Palestinian Sewage Disaster: The Political Ecology of US/Israeli Responsibility in Microcosm     107
General Petraeus: From Surge to Purge to Dirge     111
Introduction     111
Petraeus' Phony Success in Northern Iraq     112
An Armchair Strategist     113
Madness in His Method: The Petraeus Manual     114
Petraeus' Double Discourse     118
Petraeus' Political Ambitions     119
Petraeus Panders to Israel's Fifth Column: "The Iran Threat"     120
Conclusion     121
Militarism and the Decline of Us Power
Military-Driven over Market-Driven Empire Building: 1950-2008     125
Introduction     125
Immediate Post-WWII: The Combination of Market and Military Roads to Empire     126
Divergence in the World Economy: US-Europe-Japan     127
Market Versus Military Empire Building in the 1990s     128
Historic Comparison of Market- and Military-Driven Imperialism     131
From the Gulf, to the Gulf and Back to the Gulf: 1990-2008 (and beyond)     132
Military-Driven Empire Building and Zionism     132
Imperial Wars, Social Revolutions and Capitalist Restorations      134
Was 'Socialism a Detour to Capitalism'?     135
Were 'Imperial Wars Necessary for Capitalist Expansion'?     136
Military-Driven Imperialism Today and the Newly Emerging Imperial Powers     138
Market-Driven Versus Militarist Alliances     138
Conclusion     141
US Militarism and the Expanding Israeli Agenda     145
Introduction     125
New Directions for US Policy: A Moderate Arab Agenda?     146
'New Facts' and the New Middle East Realities     147
The Iraq War: A Success for Israel     1149
Democrats Capitulate to the Pro-Israel Lobby on Bush War Powers     151
Israel-AIPAC-US Middle East Wars     152
Democratic House Majority Leader Serves as Israel's Messenger     154
Buying Israeli Permission for Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia     155
Democratic Party Presidential Candidates Truckle to the Lobby     156
The Lobby Versus Federal Prosecutors: The AIPAC Spy Trial     157
AIPAC Trial Inadvertently "Outs" Israel's Strategic Informant in the White House     158
Israel Pushes Islamo-Fascism Rhetoric     159
Re-arming Clients: The Washington/ZPC War Machine Rolls On     159
In Lebanon     160
In the Occupied Territories      160
In Iraq     161
In Somalia     162
Judeo-Centrism: From Ghetto Defense to Imperial Ambitions     163
Challenging the Lobby
American Jews on War and Peace: What the Polls Do and Don't Tell Us     169
Introduction     169
The Poll: A Re-Analysis     170
The Failure of Jewish Anti-Zionist Resistance     171
Israeli Anti-Arab/Muslim Racism     172
The Role of American Jews in the Peace Movement     173
Why Condemning Israel and the Zionist Lobby Is So Important     175
Introduction     175
ZPC Deniers: Phony Arguments for Fake Claims     175
The Careful Crafting of Critiques of Israel /the ZPC     177
The ZPC Lobbies For War     178
"Democratic" Israel Diminishes Democracy in the United States     179
Israeli Interests Trump US Interests     180
Social Opposition and Political Impotence     182
What Happened to the Peace Movement?     183
No Naming and Shaming for the Israel War Lobby     184
Why Confronting the Lobby Matters     185
Index     188

Community Service Learning or Shared Histories

Community Service-Learning: A Guide to Including Service in the Public School Curriculum

Author: Rahima Carol Wad

Service-learning, the integration of community service with academic course work, is a promising strategy for enhancing learning and developing active democratic citizens. This book responds to the many recent calls for youth involvement in service as part of the public school curriculum. While service- learning holds many benefits for students, teachers, and communities, there are also many challenges to effectively incorporatie it into the curriculum.

Each of the book's four parts provides a different scope and purpose. Part 1 addresses the components of quality service-learning programs; Part 2 introduces diverse models of service-learning programs at the elementary, middle, and high school levels; Part 3 allows students, agency members, and administrators to tell their own stories of service-learning involvement, to discuss issues with other individuals who share their roles, and to offer recommendations for effective action; and Part 4 asks readers to consider the future of service-learning in public schooling.

Community Service-Learning is a comprehensive resource that will be valuable for all those involved with K-12 service-learning programs: administrators, classroom teachers, students, program coordinators, and university teacher education programs.

Interesting textbook: Hamilton Adams Jefferson or To Perpetual Peace

Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue

Author: Paul Scham

There is no single history of the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli historical narrative speaks of Zionism as the Jewish national movement, of building a refuge from persecution, and of national regeneration. The Palestinian narrative speaks of invasion, expulsion, and oppression. Its no wonder peace remains elusive. This volume attempts to present both histories with parallel narratives of key points in the 19th and 20th centuries to 1948. The histories are presented by fourteen Israeli and Palestinian experts, joined by other historians, journalists, and activists, who then discuss the differences and similarities between their accounts. By creating an appreciation, understanding, and respect for the "other," the first steps can be made to foster a shared history of a shared land. The reader has the opportunity to witness first hand a respectful confrontation between the competing versions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Table of Contents:

1	Napoleon to Allenby : processes of change in Palestine, 1800-1918	13
	Continuity and change in Palestine : the late-Ottoman period, 1856-1918	23
	Discussion 1	30
2	The beginnings of Jewish settlement and Zionism, to World War I	62
	The prehistory of Palestinian nationalism	68
	Discussion 2	75
3	The Palestinian national movement, 1919-1939	92
	Zionist diplomacy, 1914-1939	101
	Discussion 3	109
4	The Holocaust, the establishment of Israel, and the shaping of Israeli society	135
	The Holocaust in the Palestinian perspective	148
	Discussion 4	154
5	The UN resolution of 1948 : why wasn't it implemented?	177
	The paradox of the UN 1947 partition plan	182
	Discussion 5	188
6	Israeli historiography of the 1948 War	205
	The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem in 1947-48	220
	Discussion	228
7	Holiness and conflict in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict	251
	Jerusalem refugees and property claims since the 1948 War	257
	Discussion	262

The Presidency of James Monroe or Manifest Destinys Underworld

The Presidency of James Monroe

Author: Noble E Cunningham

"Noble Cunningham's command of the material, his rich insights, and the vigorous flow of the narrative combine to make this the best work on Monroe ever written. Monroe's stature as statesman will certainly benefit from Cunningham's interpretation."—Robert Allen Rutland, author of The Presidency of James Madison

"This is a superb book by our most seasoned and judicious historian of the political life of the early Republic. It is well-informed, lucid, concise, and full of insights, surely the final word for our time on the last presidency of the Virginia dynasty."—Ralph Ketcham, author of Framed for Posterity: The Enduring Philosophy of the Constitution

Author Biography: Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., is the Curators' Professor of History at the University of Missouri, Columbia. His other books include In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson, which was a Main Selection of the History Book Club and also offered by the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Times Literary Supplement

A splendid account. Few historians have succeeded so well in grasping the relationship between the constitutional structures of the United States and the ebb and flow of day-to-day politics.

Library Journal

Cunningham (In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson, LJ 5/1/87) contributes another welcome reference in this latest volume in the University Press of Kansas's presidential series. Monroe was the last U.S. president to fight in the Revolution and the last of the Virginia presidential dynasty. Cunningham's portrait of Monroe emerges against a backdrop of the national drama that unfolded as power shifted. The author covers the major domestic and foreign policy issues of the two-term (1816-24) president: the First Seminole War, the Missouri Compromise, and the Monroe Doctrine. The treatment of the cabinet and the Congress especially will be welcomed by presidential scholars. The author portrays Monroe as a cautious politician without the education and intellect of Jefferson and Madison, but he views both terms as successful. This is a realistic picture of a slave-owning president who disliked political parties and who struggled with burdens imposed by demands of the presidency, personal financial stress, and an ill wife. Scholars and presidential buffs alike will find this a useful volume.-William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport

Booknews

A richly detailed biography of the president whose Monroe Doctrine continues to guide American policy to the present day. Cunningham (history, U. of Missouri) uses primary sources to portray Monroe, the last Revolutionary War hero to become president, as a cautious man whose policies helped to avoid disasters during the crises of his presidential term, including revolutions in Latin America, the Spanish possession of Florida, the 1819 depression, and Missouri's slavery controversies. The biography also highlights the inner workings of Monroe's cabinet, his relations with Congress, and the influences that future presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson exerted on Monroe's administration. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Table of Contents:

	List of Illustrations
	Foreword
	Preface
1	The Road to the Presidency	1
2	The Election of a President	15
3	First Months in Office	27
4	The New President and a New Congress	41
5	Andrew Jackson and the First Seminole War	55
6	Widening Horizons and Deepening Problems	71
7	The Missouri Compromise	87
8	Transition to a Second Term	105
9	Monroe as Chief Executive	115
10	Life in Monroe's Washington	133
11	The Monroe Doctrine	149
12	Domestic Concerns	165
13	Closing a Presidency	175
14	The End of an Era	185
	Notes	193
	Bibliographical Essay	231
	Index	237

New interesting book: Boomburbs or Your Money or Your Life

Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America

Author: Robert E May

In the first full history of 19th-century American filibusters, illegal invasions of foreign countries with whom the US was formally at peace, May explores what drew thousands of men to join these mercenary expeditions and considers the relationship between filibustering and broader issues of American imperialism.

James M. McPherson

The fullest, most detailed, most thoroughly researched book ever written on the antebellum filibuster movement. This book will become an essential reference work on its subject.

International Relations Theories or Breaking Rank

International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity

Author: Tim Dunn

This cutting-edge textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to international relations theory. Arguing that theory is central to explaining the dynamics of world politics, it includes a wide variety of theoretical positions--from the historically dominant traditions to powerful critical voices since the 1980s. The editors have brought together a team of international contributors, each specializing in a different theory. The contributors explain the theoretical background to their positions before showing how and why their theories matter. The book opens up space for analysis and debate, allowing students to decide which theories they find most useful in explaining and understanding international relations.

Book about: Womens Health Solutions or The Organic Foods SourceBook

Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing

Author: Norm Stamper

Opening with a powerful letter to former Tacoma police chief David Brame, who shot his estranged wife before turning the gun on himself, Norm Stamper introduces us to the violent, secret world of domestic abuse that cops must not only navigate, but which some also perpetrate. Former chief of the Seattle police force, Stamper goes on to expose a troubling culture of racism, sexism, and homophobia that is still pervasive within the twenty-first-century force; then he explores how such prejudices can be addressed. He reveals the dangers and temptations that cops face, describing in gripping detail the split-second life-and-death decisions. Stamper draws on lessons learned to make powerful arguments for drug decriminalization, abolition of the death penalty, and radically revised approaches to prostitution and gun control. He offers penetrating insights into the "blue wall of silence," police undercover work, and what it means to kill a man. And, Stamper gives his personal account of the World Trade organization debacle of 1999, when protests he was in charge of controlling turned violent in the streets of Seattle. Breaking Rank reveals Norm Stamper as a brave man, a pioneering public servant whose extraordinary life has been dedicated to the service of his community.

The FBI or Women in Power

The FBI: A History

Author: Rhodri Jeffreys Jones

This fast-paced history of the FBI presents the first balanced and complete portrait of the vast, powerful, and sometimes bitterly criticized American institution. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a well-known expert on U.S. intelligence agencies, tells the bureau’s story in the context of American history. Along the way he challenges conventional understandings of that story and assesses the FBI’s strengths and weaknesses as an institution.

 

Common wisdom traces the origin of the bureau to 1908, but Jeffreys-Jones locates its true beginnings in the 1870s, when Congress acted in response to the Ku Klux Klan campaign of terror against black American voters. The character and significance of the FBI derive from this original mission, the author contends, and he traces the evolution of the mission into the twenty-first century.

 

The book makes a number of surprising observations: that the role of J. Edgar Hoover has been exaggerated and the importance of attorneys general underestimated, that splitting counterintelligence between the FBI and the CIA in 1947 was a mistake, and that xenophobia impaired the bureau’s preemptive anti-terrorist powers before and after 9/11. The author concludes with a fresh consideration of today’s FBI and the increasingly controversial nature of its responsibilities.

 

 

Daniel K. Blewett - Library Journal

Both a chronological narrative of major events and an examination of the important issues regarding the FBI's controversial operations and policies (e.g., its illegal harassment of organizations and its hiring of relatively few women and minorities), this book carries on a theme of Jeffreys-Jones's (American history, Edinburgh Univ.) Cloak and Dollarthat intelligence agencies are playing confidence games on the public, exaggerating threats to get more resources and fewer restrictions. Using both secondary sources and FBI case files, the author touches on how American politics and society have affected the organization and the executive branch's efforts to control it. In contrast to other books highlighting FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's prominence, this one gives more emphasis to the efforts of the attorneys-general to guide and reform the bureau. Interest in racial problems and suspicion of African Americans are common threads throughout, making this book a good supplement to Kenneth O'Reilly's Racial Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972. Suitable for academic and large public libraries.

Book review: Power to Heal or Osteoporosis Handbook

Women in Power: The Personalities and Leadership Styles of Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher

Author: Blema S Steinberg

In Women in Power, Blema S. Steinberg explores the personalities and leadership styles of three remarkable female leaders, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher to help us understand the ways in which personality impacts on leadership. The personality traits of each woman are examined using insights from the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis, while their respective leadership styles draw upon measures developed by political scientists. Steinberg then tests the theoretical expectations concerning the relationship between different personality traits and leadership styles against the empirical evidence for each prime minister. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of her results.

Table of Contents:

Figures and Tables

Pt. 1 Indira Gandhi

1 Indira Gandhi: From Prime Minister's Daughter to Prime Minister 17

2 Mother India: The Personality Profile of Indira Gandhi 46

3 Indira Gandhi's Leadership Style 72

Pt. 2 Golda Meir

4 Golda Meir: From Immigrants' Daughter to Prime Minister 115

5 The Jewish Grandmother: The Personality Profile of Golda Meir 145

6 Golda Meir's Leadership Style 172

Pt. 3 Margaret Thatcher

7 Margaret Thatcher: From Grocer's Daughter to Prime Minister 211

8 The Iron Lady: The Personality Profile of Margaret Thatcher 239

9 Margaret Thatcher's Leadership Style 264

Conclusion 301

Appendix Conceptual Framework and Methodology 321

Notes 367

Bibliography 411

Index 423

Meltdown or Cuba Confidential

Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

Author: Mike Chinoy

Advance Praise for Meltdown

"It's easy to demonize the North Koreans, not quite as easy to dismiss them; although the Bush administration has tried to do both. Mike Chinoy brilliantly and painstakingly reconstructs the faltering and dangerous dynamic by which Washington and Pyonyang misread one another's intentions. It's a path that could well lead to nuclear catastrophe and a story that's been told here with unblinking clarity."—Ted Koppel

“Mike Chinoy’s superbly written book tells the tragic story of how Washington’s unwillingness to engage in serious diplomacy with Pyongyang contributed to a new nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, alienating our South Korean allies in the process.  He goes on to document the dramatic reversal of course that has seen the Bush administration drop its failed policy aimed at isolating and confronting North Korea, adopting instead a creative approach that, if North Korea acts wisely and rationally, could finally end the nuclear crisis, bring North Korea into the community of nations, and improve the lives of the North Korean people.  This book, and the blunt, no-holds-barred comments it contains from many of the key protagonists of this period, is not to be missed.”—Evans Revere, president, The Korea Society

“The explosion of a nuclear warhead by North Korea in October 2006 was the single greatest failure in a decades-long effort to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Mike Chinoy's Meltdown tells the tale of the tortured path that led to that failure, and the ongoing attempt to contain the fallout, with an authority and a wealth ofinsider detail that is unmatched. Meltdown is a diplomatic history that reads like a spy novel. It takes us inside the Washington wars that crippled the Bush administration's North Korea policy, and offers fresh insights into the view from Pyongyang, as well as from Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo. Meltdown will be the gold standard for reporting on the North Korean nuclear crisis for years to come."—Daniel Sneider, Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein Asia–Pacific Research Center, Stanford University

The Washington Post - Glenn Kessler

a tour de force of reporting…Chinoy clearly sympathizes with administration officials who favored engagement with North Korea. But he lets officials who wanted to isolate Pyongyang make their case. More than 100 people granted him interviews, and the list is a who's who of both senior and junior U.S. players on North Korea policy.

Publishers Weekly

The Bush administration's bellicose but feckless attempts to quash North Korea's nuclear weapons program were the nadir of its famously maladroit diplomacy, to judge by this revealing blow-by-blow. Ex-CNN Pyongyang correspondent Chinoy details the rancorous infighting during which hardliners like John Bolton and Dick Cheney talked down State Department doves to impose an intransigent North Korea policy, replacing negotiations with Axis-of-Evil rhetoric and unilateral demands. Their approach backfired disastrously, he argues, as Pyongyang restarted and escalated its dormant nuclear initiative and finally tested an atom bomb while the U.S. fulminated helplessly-a needless outcome, he suggests, given the North Koreans' oft-expressed readiness to abandon their nuclear program in exchange for aid and normalized relations. Chinoy presents a lucid exposition of the issues along with a colorful account of diplomatic wrangling in which U.S. officials rivaled their North Korean counterparts in dogmatism and prickly sensitivity to niceties. (One joint statement was almost derailed when the Americans insisted on changing the phrase "peaceful coexistence" to "exist peacefully together.") His is a fine, insightful diplomatic history of a dire confrontation-and a hard-hitting critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Photos. (Aug. 7)

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

Kirkus Reviews

A knowledgeable chronicle of U.S.-North Korean negotiations during the Clinton and Bush White House years. Chinoy (China Live, 1997, etc.) formerly covered North and South Korea for CNN and now studies them from afar as a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy. He shows that Kim Jong-Il is indeed a dictator who continues the repressive policies of his father. Unlike many other journalists and foreign-policy analysts, however, Chinoy analyzes U.S. and South Korean policymakers just as closely as the North Koreans, with China, Japan and other nations also figuring in the mix. This provides welcome context for North Korea's development of a nuclear arsenal. If Kim Jong-Il comes across as a villain driving an "Axis of Evil" nation, current President Bush is painted in colors just as dark. In scene after scene, meticulously sourced by Chinoy (though some of those sources insisted on and received anonymity), Bush and his chief foreign-policy advisors come across as ideologues at best, fools squandering an opportunity for nuclear disarmament at worst. The author does not appear to be a shrill, knee-jerk Bush administration critic, but a journalist taking the story where the facts have led him. The irony is that the Bush administration built its foreign policy around the desire to prevent countries like North Korea from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, but failed in part because of its inability to negotiate effectively. Chinoy's depiction of the visceral, personal hostility Bush developed for Kim Jong-Il is especially disturbing, because he shows a U.S. president making decisions based on emotion instead of reason. The only caveat to make about this splendid book is that itsdetail is so immense, the back and forth of diplomacy that it describes so lacking in rationality, that the narrative occasionally becomes overwhelming. A triumph of explanatory reporting about foreign policy. Agent: Mel Berger/William Morris Agency

Table of Contents:

1 "Without You There Is No Us" 1

2 So Close ... 21

3 Regime Change 43

4 "Axis of Evil" 65

5 The "Scrub" 81

6 High-Level Meetings 103

7 The Four-Letter Word 127

8 Meltdown 142

9 War Games 158

10 "Read My Statement" 175

11 "We Don't Negotiate with Evil. We Defeat It." 194

12 "Some Good, Some Bad, Some Ugly" 212

13 "We Have Manufactured Nukes" 225

14 The September 19 Declaration 241

15 Illicit Activities 252

16 Going Ballistic 274

17 The Bomb 292

18 "How Are We Going to Get Out of This?" 305

19 "We Are All Waiting for You" 322

20 "Dear Mr. Chairman" 340

Postscript 363

A Note on Sources 367

Notes 371

Select Bibliography 389

Index 391

Book about: A Theory of Incentives in Regulation and Procurement or Applied Economics

Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana

Author: Ann Louise Bardach

"Based on exclusive interviews with Fidel Castro, his sister Juanita, his former brother-in-law Rafael Diaz-Balart, the family of Elian Gonzalez, the friends and family of the legendary American fugitive Robert Vesco, the intrepid terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, and the inner circles of Jeb Bush and the late exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, Cuba Confidential exposes the hardball take-no-prisoners tactics of the Cuban exile leadership, and its manipulation and exploitation by ten American presidents." Bardach homes in on Fidel Castro and his cronies, taking us closer than we've ever been - and on the militant exiles who have devoted their lives, with CIA connivance, to trying to eliminate him. From Calle Ocho to Juan Miguel Gonzalez's kitchen table in Cardenas, from Guantanamo Bay to Union City to Washington, D.C., Ann Louise Bardach serves up an unforgettable portrait of Cuba and its exiles.

Publishers Weekly

The 2000 custody battle between little Eli n Gonz lez's father, acting, according to Bardach, as the surrogate for the Cuban government, and his exiled Miami relatives, the surrogate anti-Castro forces, became a relentless media event and international affair. The PEN award-winning investigative journalist uses the Elian story as a starting place to examine the larger issues that have roiled Cuba-U.S. politics for four decades. Relying on interviews with Castro, U.S. and Cuban government officials, relatives from both sides of Elian's family and members of the Cuban-exile community, she explores the sources of American enmity toward Cuba and the blood feuds (for example, the Florida congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart is the nephew of Castro's former wife) that inform anti-Castro sentiments among Cuban exiles. Along the way Bardach finds craven political opportunism (hoping to secure Cuban-exile support, Bush and Gore both backed keeping Elian in the U.S. during the 2000 presidential campaign), political corruption facilitated by the power of the Cuban-exile community in the Miami area, and a shocking tolerance, by post-September 11 standards at least, within the exile community and U.S. government for terrorism directed toward Cuba. Bardach's credibility is sometimes undermined by her failure to critically assess her informants' accusations-innuendoes about Florida governor Jeb Bush's philandering fall into this category-and her tendency to hint at political conspiracies everywhere. All in all, though, Bardach's muckraker is entertaining and disturbing, as it reflects on the power of the dubiously motivated Cuban-exile community. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW. Agent, Tina Bennett. (On sale Oct. 1) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

A marvelous and evocative deconstruction of the incestuous relationships and hardball tactics that have kept Cuba firmly under Fidel Castro and U.S. policy toward Cuba paralyzed under the influence of Miami's Cuban Americans. Bardach pulls no punches here, making her book the most accessible account of this sorry tangle yet. She has talked to everyone: crooks, spooks, politicos, hired assassins, the inner circle of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and even the garrulous and manipulative Castro himself. This is a story of betrayal, suspicion, and conspiracies, with agents and counteragents immersed in an ongoing Caribbean Cold War where John Le Carre would feel very much at home. Bardach also documents the exile community as it shifted from favoring paramilitary strikes against Castro to launching a brilliantly successful lobbying effort within the American political system in the early 1980s, modeled on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. As one former Washington official put it, "The Israeli lobby buys Democrats and rents Republicans, the Cubans buy Republicans and rent Democrats." As Bardach makes clear, the power of this lobby in Congress and beyond remains very much alive for now — as does Castro.

Library Journal

The quagmire of the shattered Cuban family is the background for PEN Award-winning journalist Bardach's investigation of the tragic parallel universes in the two Cubas: the largest island in the Caribbean and the diverse, multifaceted exile community in Miami. Since 1959, Cuban families have suffered, driven apart by politics, geography, conflicting convictions, secrets, and the anguish of separation. Four decades of seething betrayal, suspicion, and conspiracies culminated in world media attention during the Eli n Gonz lez affair, the single most transforming event of Cuba-U.S. relations since the Bay of Pigs. Drawing on ten years of reporting on Cuba and its exiles, Bardach transitions effectively between profiles of aging patriarch and leader Fidel Castro and Cuban exiles seeking freedom but shunted into silence by hard-liners committed to revenge, retribution, and power. Designed for a general audience, this compact volume offers clear explanations of events, individuals, and dynamics since the Cuban Revolution, telling the story of the Gonz lez family and many others. Bibliographic citations incorporate bilingual print, online resources, and interviews. Highly recommended for purchase by large public and academic libraries and specialized contemporary Latin American studies collections.-Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis, LIS Program, Coll. of Education, Univ. of Denver Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An illuminating portrait, by a first-class investigative journalist, of the half-century-long civil war that has divided Cuban against itself. Drawing on ten years of reporting among south Florida's exile communities and in Cuba, Bardach (ed., Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion, p. 453) offers an extraordinarily complete view of the personal and political gulf that separates Cubans. Here are all sorts of revelations, few of them comforting. Florida's Cubans, 95% of them white, disdain their mixed-blood and black island compatriots, in good part on racial grounds, so that, as one Miami talk-radio host remarked, had Eliбn Gonzбlez been black, "he would have been tossed back into the sea." Castro (who lobbied hard for the Soviets to launch a nuclear attack on the US), cursed with an elephant's memory and a deep well of vengeance, has devoted much of his energy to punishing former enemies, like the boyhood rival who served 20 years for having once punched him in the face. (Castro's friend Gabriel Garc'a Mбrquez was once moved to remark, "I can't think of a worse loser than Fidel.") At once pawns and generals in the superpower struggle, Cubans in the US have enjoyed unusual privileges, from the "wet foot/dry foot" policy that "grants any Cuban who makes it to land the right to stay" to perks such as free private-school tuition and special loans from the Small Business Administration. Bardach writes with an awareness of the Big Picture-two of her best moments come in deconstructing the Eliбn affair and in tracing the influence of Cuban exiles in all branches of the Bush family-but her focus tends to stay on individual actors, from exiled terrorists who dream of assassinating Castro tofamilies whose members, for political reasons, haven't spoken to each other for 40 or more years. Were Castro to die tomorrow, Bardach suggests, the Cuban civil war would flame up again unabated. Powerful, evenhanded, thoroughly edifying. Author tour

Guide to Participants in Peace Stability and Relief Operations or Class 11

Guide to Participants in Peace, Stability, and Relief Operations

Author: Robert M Perito

Peace, stability, and humanitarian operations typically involve the interaction of international organizations (IOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the U.S. government, and the U.S. military. The Institute’s highly successful Guide to IGOs, NGOs and the Military in Peace and Relief Operations, which was based on peace operations in the Balkans following the Cold War, has been instrumental in facilitating interaction between IOs, NGOs, and the military. The revised Guide for Participants in Peace, Stability, and Relief Operations is updated to reflect lessons learned from operations that have occurred since 2000, particularly in Iraq, Afghanistan, and areas affected by the 2004 Asian tsunami.

This invaluable guide provides short scenarios of typical international involvement in peace missions, natural disasters, and stability operations, as well as an introduction to the organizations that will be present when the international community responds to a crisis. Equally valuable are descriptions of the roles of the United Nations and other international institutions, NGOs, the U.S. military, and U.S. government civilian agencies, which were added because of their increased role in these operations.

Although the guide is particularly useful for those serving in the field because it is designed to fit easily into a pocket or backpack and has a durable cover, it will also help headquarters personnel to understand the structure and roles of other organizations. A unique educational resource, the guide will be useful for many who are not in the field, including military and agency trainees and university students.

Go to: Corporations and Other Business Associations or Human Value Management

Class 11: Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class

Author: T J Waters

Written by one of its own graduates, Class 11: Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class is a gripping insider's look at the first post-9/11 CIA training class--the most elite and secretive espionage training program in the country. Class 11 is a fascinating and moving portrait of an extraordinary group of Americans with the courage and resolve to make a difference in the war on terror.

The Washington Post - John Lehman

T.J. Waters has given us a very readable account of the first wave of this rebuilding in Class 11. Waters, now an intelligence consultant, was a member of the first post-9/11 class of recruits for the CIA's spy wing, and his book describes how very different it was from those preceding it … aters has done an excellent job recounting his experiences, and he and the CIA deserve much credit for a book that can only enhance the public's understanding of the importance of a rejuvenated clandestine service. This book should prove a useful recruiting tool.

Library Journal

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center spurred thousands of Americans to apply for service in the CIA in the days and weeks following 9/11. Waters, who had worked in a private firm specializing in intelligence collection and training prior to September 2001, was one of the chosen few who were accepted into the CIA's secret intelligence community. His class, dubbed "Class 11," reflected an assortment of individuals-pilots, bankers, single mothers, and others from backgrounds not usually associated with the spy game. Waters recounts his days as a student learning the espionage trade and provides many fascinating details about how contemporary spies are trained. Of course, since the CIA had to approve Waters's book, one is left wondering how much of his account is true and how much of it is manufactured by an agency that is expert at generating disinformation. Nevertheless, Waters's interesting look behind the curtain of the CIA should be of general interest to readers. For larger collections.-Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Listen up, recruits: CIA officers are officers, not agents. FBI agents are agents, and they're sissies. Suck it up, take out a bad guy for the team, be an American. There's a fair amount of cheerleading in Agent Waters's account of his time as a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service Training Program Class 11, "the volunteers who entered the CIA after the September 11 attacks-the largest training class in CIA history." Waters is rock-solid sure that he and his classmates are nothing less than "the best and the brightest the United States had to offer," which, if true, would be a welcome change from the past few slam-dunk, intelligence-light administrations of that august agency. Some of Waters's classmates are already in the CIA, moved to go over to the "Dark Side"-the Directorate of Operations-by the events of 9/11; one lost a spouse in the World Trade Center. Others are accountants, lawyers, former armed-forces personnel. In practice, whether conducting staged exercises or participating in real-world efforts to catch the DC sniper, Waters's squad looks very much like the cast of a World War II combat film brought up to date, with the wisecracker from Brooklyn, the deep thinker from the Midwest, the West Coast bohemian. And then, of course, there's the tough-as-nails drill instructor, even if she's now a she, and the white-coat types, even if they now enlist the Horse Whisperer in their quest to break the enemy's will. Collectively, they add up to "a new cadre of spy, an officer so versatile he or she defies stereotypes. Our enemies will never see us coming."Yet the agency is still the agency, which unaccountably attempted to block publication of this pleasant but, in the end,mild-mannered and rather unrevealing book. For the super-top-secret stuff-well, read Tom Clancy. Agent: Joe Veltre/Artists Literary Group

Introduction To Political Psychology or Slavery Capitalism and Politics in the AnteBellum Republic Volume 2

Introduction To Political Psychology

Author: Martha L Cottam

"The first comprehensive textbook on political psychology, this user friendly volume explores the psychological origins of political behavior. Using psychological concepts to explain types of political behavior, the authors introduce readers to a broad range of theories and cases of political activity to illustrate the behavior. The book examines many patterns of political behaviors including leadership, group behavior, voting, race, ethnicity, nationalism, political extremism, terrorism, war, and genocide." "Introduction to political psychology explores some of the most horrific things people do to one another for political purposes as well as how to prevent and resolve conflict, and how to recover from it. The goal is to help the reader understand the enormous complexity of human behavior and the significant role political psychology can play in improving the human condition." Designed for upper division courses on political psychology or political behavior, no prerequisites are required to understand this textbook. This volume also contains material of interest to those in the policymaking community who may be surprised to discover the extent to which perceptions, personality, and group dynamics affect the policymaking arena.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
Ch. 1	An Introduction to Political Psychology	1
Ch. 2	Personality and Politics	13
Ch. 3	Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions, and Attitudes in Political Psychology	37
Ch. 4	The Political Psychology of Groups	63
Ch. 5	The Study of Political Leaders	97
Ch. 6	Voting, Role of the Media, and Tolerance	125
Ch. 7	The Political Psychology of Race and Ethnicity	153
Ch. 8	The Political Psychology of Nationalism	191
Ch. 9	The Political Psychology of Political Extremists	223
Ch. 10	The Political Psychology of International Security and Conflict	257
	Glossary	277
	References	287
	Author Index	333
	Subject Index	337

See also: Food in the USA or Really Useful Guide to White Wine

Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic, Volume 2: The Coming of the Civil War, 1850-1861

Author: John Ashworth

This book asks why the United States experienced a civil war in 1861 and analyses the descent into war in the final decade of peace. The book systematically surveys southern extremists, Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, temperance advocates and Know Nothings. It advances a new and unique explanation of the origins of the Civil War, the most important event in the history of the most powerful country in the world.

George Washington or Presidential Anecdotes

George Washington: The Founding Father (Eminent Lives Series)

Author: Paul Johnson

George Washington is by far the most important figure in the history of the United States. Against all military odds, he liberated the thirteen colonies from the superior forces of the British Empire and presided over the process to produce and ratify a Constitution that (suitably amended) has lasted for more than two hundred years. In two terms as president, he set that Constitution to work with such success that, by the time he finally retired, America was well on its way to becoming the richest and most powerful nation on earth.

Despite his importance, Washington remains today a distant figure to many Americans. Previous books about him are immensely long, multivolume, and complicated. Paul Johnson has now produced a brief life that presents a vivid portrait of the great man as young warrior, masterly commander-in-chief, patient Constitution maker, and exceptionally wise president. He also shows Washington as a farmer of unusual skill and an entrepreneur of foresight, patriarch of an extended family, and proprietor of one of the most beautiful homes in America, which he largely built and adorned.

Trenchant and original as ever, Johnson has given us a brilliant, sharply etched portrait of this iconic figure—both as a hero and as a man.

Publishers Weekly

In this masterful addition to the Eminent Lives series, acclaimed historian Johnson (A History of the Jews; Art: A New History) concisely yet vividly portrays the life and legacy of our first president. Johnson traces Washington's life from his early manhood as a surveyor falling in love with the uncharted territory west of Virginia to his later, cunning military exploits. More than anything, according to Johnson, Washington loved property and sought to expand the boundaries not only of the colonies but also of his own land holdings. Washington's skills as a surveyor and a manager established him as a military leader in the French and Indian Wars and the Revolution, and helped him establish a strong executive office and an enduring constitution for the new republic. Johnson points out that Washington's deep moral conviction about the rightness of the war helped him to defeat King George III, who lacked any moral passion about the lands he was supposed to protect. While books like Joseph Ellis's His Excellency offer more detail, Johnson captures the key images of Washington's life and work in this sharply focused snapshot. (June 2) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Steve Forbes - Forbes Magazine

Historian and FORBES columnist Paul Johnson has just penned, as part of HarperCollins' Eminent Lives series, an excellent, brief biography of America's first Commander-in-Chief. This wee volume quickly makes us appreciate again what an extraordinary man George Washington was. He had amazing self-discipline. He mastered surveying and geography, critical subjects for living in the frontier country that America was then. "Like Bonaparte, he became an expert map reader, an accomplishment few senior officers in any country possessed." Washington honed his military skills early in his career, fighting with the British against the French and their Indian allies. In fact, he helped precipitate the Seven Years War (1756-63) when he attacked an armed French camp near modern-day Pittsburgh. (17 Oct 2005)

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This biography, written from the vantage point of a respected, conservative British historian, provides a new and fascinating picture of the first U.S. President. Johnson doesn't have Americans' natural inclination to deify Washington, but he does have a great deal of respect for his subject, delineating the man's merits and deficiencies. The author also brings the situation in Britain at the time-the backdrop against which Washington reached the heights of his fame-into perspective. These well-written and well-thought-out interpretations will benefit anyone interested in the man or his times.-Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A slender, interpretation-laden biography of the first president. George Washington poses certain contradictions for a historian, as the prolific Johnson (Art: A New History, 2003, etc.) very gamely allows. For one thing, though he kept virtually every scrap of paper that came under his eye, carting a sizable archive with him even in the thick of the Revolutionary War, and was as careful a self-chronicler as any subsequent chief executive, Washington was also famously guarded about what he revealed of himself. An august and confident leader, he was also responsible for a disastrous episode that led directly to the worldwide Seven Years War. He despised slavery but did not press the point while he was in a position to do so. Some of his contemporaries-his vice president, John Adams, among them-thought him thick and unpresidential, to which Johnson responds that Washington was a fine actor: he knew how to by-God a lieutenant into submission, and "he liked to play the Old Man card when needed." He professed a little false modesty, lived a little better than he could afford to and was perhaps a little too wedded to his time's what's-in-for-me ethic. But, Johnson writes, Washington was also indisputably if not entirely selflessly devoted to the cause of an independent American nation. Johnson is sometimes unconvincing when he confronts contradiction head-on and attempts to reconcile it; he notes, for instance, that Washington was a deist, disinclined to pay much attention to matters of God ("In his twenty volumes of correspondence there is not a single mention of Christ"), yet asserts, in keeping with his conservative bent, that "the notion that the First Amendment would be twisted into aninstrument to prohibit the traditional practices of Christianity would have horrified him"-though probably not to the point, given what we know of him, that Washington would have inserted an "under God" clause into the national pledge. Slight, sometimes debatable but thoroughly well written: a good starting point for those who want to brush up on why Washington matters all these years later.

See also: Le Lecteur du Costa Rica :l'Histoire, la Culture, la Politique

Presidential Anecdotes

Author: Paul F Boller

This is a collection of humorous stories about U.S. Presidents throughout history. Originally published in 1981, this edition is updated to include anecdotes on George Bush and Bill Clinton.

Booknews

A collection of presidential anecdotes from Washington to Clinton revealing much about the character of each, their successes and failures, and the brilliant or silly ways in which they handled the office. Culled from autobiographies, letters, journals, and interviews with family and friends, the quips are both apocryphal and based on fact. Washington did hatch away at his father's cherry tree, but didn't actually cut it down, Harding had a way with words that made H.L. Mencken apoplectic, Eleanor Roosevelt appears funnier than Franklin D., and Reagan was, like Henny Youngman, the king of the one-liner. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)