You Dont Know Me or House to House

You Don't Know Me: A Citizen's Guide to Republican Family Values

Author: Win McCormack

Shocking, illuminating, profoundly disturbing, You Don't Know Me: A Citizen's Guide to Republican Family Values details over 100 cases of sexual misconduct by Republican officials, office holders, and ideological supporters. In addition to augmenting the public's knowledge of recent infamous scandals (such as those involving Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly, and Larry Craig), You Don't Know Me unearths a multitude of other instances of Republican sexual waywardness and criminality. The book has an intellectual and historical context as well. Author Win McCormack's introduction explores parallels between Republican abuses of power in the sexual and political realms and traces their common intellectual and psychological origins. You Don't Know Me exposes the true extent of Republican hypocrisy, dealing a deathblow to the moral pretensions of the GOP leadership of recent times.

Publishers Weekly

Editor-in-chief of Tin House magazine, McCormack catalogues over 100 cases of sexual misconduct and criminality committed by Republican officials and supporters in an entertaining effort to expose the hypocrisy of America's self-professed "family values party." Readers hungry for a helping of schadenfreude will relish the A-Z illustrated collection of misdeeds featuring prominent GOP personalities involved in bestiality, pedophilia, incest, autoerotic asphyxiation and lengthier musings on the exploits of Republican heavyweights including Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly and George W. Bush. Along the way, the author raises unintended questions; his crime blotter seems to speak less about GOP failings and more about the moral decline of American society at large. Indeed, the book's sample is so large that the evidence suggests something awry in the polis, not just the party. And while reading about Rev. Ted Haggard's methamphetamine-fueled romp with a male prostitute is hardly dull reading, the book's most compelling section is its introduction, where McCormack invokes Adorno and social science research to link repressed sexuality to authoritarianism in a fascinating argument that leaves the reader eager for additional analysis that sadly never materializes. (Aug.)

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

New interesting textbook: Seminar in Physical Education or Managing Now

House to House: A Soldier's Memoir

Author: David Bellavia

"Blood flows over my left hand and I lose my grip on his hair. His head snaps back against the floor. In an instant, his fists are pummeling me. I rock from his counterblows. He lands one on my injured jaw and the pain nearly blinds me. He connects with my nose, and blood and snot pour down my throat. I spit blood between my teeth and scream with him. The two of us sound like caged dogs locked in a death match. We are."

On the night of November 10, 2004, a U.S. Army infantry squad under Staff Sergeant David Bellavia entered the heart of the city of Fallujah and plunged into one of the most sustained and savage urban battles in the history of American men at arms.

With Third Platoon, Alpha Company, part of the Army's Task Force 2/2, Bellavia and his men confronted an enemy who had had weeks to prepare, booby-trapping houses, arranging ambushes, rigging entire city blocks as explosives-laden kill zones, and even stocking up on atropine, a steroid that pumps up fighters in the equivalent of a long-lasting crack high. Entering one house, alone, Bellavia faced the fight of his life against six insurgents, using every weapon at his disposal, including a knife. It is the stuff of legend and the chief reason he is one of the great heroes of the Iraq War.

Bringing to searing life the terrifying intimacy of hand-to-hand infantry combat, House to House is far more than just another war story. Populated by an indelibly drawn cast of characters, from a fearless corporal who happens to be a Bush-hating liberal to an inspirational sergeant-major who became the author's own lost father figure, it develops the intensely close relationships that form between soldiers under fire. Their friendships, tested in brutal combat, would never be quite the same. Not all of them would make it out of the city alive. What happened to them in their bloody embrace with America's most implacable enemy is a harrowing, unforgettable story of triumph, tragedy, and the resiliency of the human spirit.

A timeless portrait of the U.S. infantryman's courage, House to House is a soldier's memoir that is destined to rank with the finest personal accounts of men at war.

Publishers Weekly

Staff sergeant Bellavia's account of the fierce 2004 fighting in Fallujah will satisfy readers who like their testosterone undiluted. Portraying himself as a hard-bitten, foul-mouthed, superbly trained warrior, deeply in love with America and the men in his unit, contemptuous of liberals and a U.S. media that fails to support soldiers fighting in the front lines of the global war on terror, Bellavia begins with a nasty urban shootout against Shiite insurgent militias. Six months later, his unit prepares to assault the massively fortified city of Fallujah in a ferocious battle that takes up the rest of the book. Anyone expecting an overview of strategy or political background to the war has picked the wrong book. Bellavia writes a precise, hour-by-hour account of the fighting, featuring repeated heroic feats and brave sacrifice from Americans but none from the enemy, contemptuously dismissed as drug-addled, suicidal maniacs. Readers will encounter a nuts-and-bolts description of weapons, house-to-house tactics, gallantry and tragic mistakes, culminating with a glorious victory that, in Bellavia's view, will go down in history with the invasion of Normandy. Like a pitch-by-pitch record of a baseball game, this detailed battle description will fascinate enthusiasts and bore everyone else. (Sept.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Kirkus Reviews

Staccato account of infantry combat in Iraq. In November 2004, Army staff sergeant Bellavia led his men into the chaotic urban fighting described here. They were part of the successful recapture of Fallujah, a command base for Iraqi insurgents. Months earlier, the burnt corpses of four American contractors had been hung from a bridge in the same city. Written with military historian Bruning (The Devil's Sandbox, 2006, etc.), this rapid-fire recreation of the block-by-block fighting captures perfectly the horror-and horrible peak-experience attraction-of war. In an era of high-tech weaponry, Bellavia puts us on the ground with modern-day grunts who could just as easily be fighting in World War II in Europe. They are filthy, hot, tired and dehydrated as they slog through rubble, broken glass and dead bodies to conduct risky searches of houses that may be "clean" or filled with booby traps and enemy soldiers. The frantic, present-tense narrative abounds with scenes and dialogue that make this account of battle read like a realistic war novel. Bellavia emphasizes the close bonds among disparate comrades, including Lance Ohle, master of the light machine gun, who talks like a gangsta rapper; Piotr Sucholas, the Michael Moore-loving liberal with ice water for blood; and Bryan Lockwald, the guitar-playing intellectual with wire-rimmed glasses and a handlebar mustache. The men enter homes through holes blown into walls by tanks, work their way to rooftops and engage a resourceful enemy, one of whom the author knifes to death in vicious hand-to-hand combat. Discharged in 2005, Bellavia finds he misses the feeling of importance and usefulness he derived from combat, returns to Iraq briefly as aWeekly Standard journalist, then comes home to try to repair strained relations with his wife and son. Take his word for it: "War's a bitch, wear a helmet."Agent: Jim Hornfischer/Hornfischer Literary Management