Practical Politics Book: 2008

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

No Future Without Forgiveness or The Much Too Promised Land

No Future Without Forgiveness

Author: Desmond Tutu

The establishment of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a pioneering international event. Never had any country sought to move forward from despotism to democracy both by exposing the atrocities committed in the past and achieving reconciliation with its former oppressors. At the center of this unprecedented attempt at healing a nation has been Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whom President Nelson Mandela named as Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With the final report of the Commission just published, Archbishop Tutu offers his reflections on the profound wisdom he has gained by helping usher South Africa through this painful experience.

In No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu argues that true reconciliation cannot be achieved by denying the past. But nor is it easy to reconcile when a nation "looks the beast in the eye." Rather than repeat platitudes about forgiveness, he presents a bold spirituality that recognizes the horrors people can inflict upon one another, and yet retains a sense of idealism about reconciliation. With a clarity of pitch born out of decades of experience, Tutu shows readers how to move forward with honesty and compassion to build a newer and more humane world.

Publishers Weekly

This insightful book about South Africa's healing process is no simple feel-good tale. In 1995, Tutu was looking forward to a well-earned retirement from his role as Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town. He had given his life to the antiapartheid struggle and had spoken the truth to those in power so many times that, in 1984, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Still, in 1996, President Mandela and others prevailed upon him to postpone retirement's pleasures to give South Africa one more thing: his leadership as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Tutu speaks frankly of this call, of the struggle that preceded it and of the betrayals and jubilations of this unique commission. The TRC's work was unprecedented not only in its emphasis on restorative over retributive justice but in the spirituality that permeated its work, the bulk of which constituted hearings from the "victims" and "perpetrators" of apartheid. Ubuntu, Tutu explains, is the African expression that was at the heart of the TRC's labors. Meaning something like "a person is a person through other people," ubuntu sums up Tutu's philosophical framework for addressing apartheid's hard truths and beginning the reconciliation process necessary to move beyond apartheid's legacy. Despite the occasional factual inconsistency and some clich s (the book seems hastily written), Tutu's wisdom and experience come through. Human rights, he affirms, cannot stand without ubuntu's deeper foundation; the future cannot be without forgiveness. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, retired as Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, in 1998. Here, he reflects on the wisdom he gained as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a group formed to expose crimes committed under apartheid and to achieve reconciliation with South Africa's former oppressors. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The story of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and a meditation on evil and forgiveness from Nobel laureate Tutu (The Rainbow People of God: The Making of a Peaceful Revolution, 1994). In 1994, South Africa faced a historically unique situation. A long-oppressed majority had peacefully taken power from its minority oppressor. As Tutu explains, the question facing the nation was, What then to do? Should Nuremberg-like trials be held against those who had maintained the ghastly system of apartheid? Or, as many whites wished, should the past be forgotten, let bygones be bygones? The new regime found what Tutu calls "a third way" to deal with the past: the TRC. Those who had committed politically motivated crimes during the apartheid era would receive amnesty if they made full and truthful public disclosures. In turn, the victims of such acts would be allowed to tell their stories in the hopes that this would restore a measure of their human dignity. Over 18 months some 20,000 victims appeared before the commission, imparting their tales of personal anguish—of torture, rape, imprisonment—but also exposing a system perpetrated and supported by the highest levels of government, military, and police. No longer could anyone deny knowledge of the past, as so many whites had; never again would such an evil be allowed to exist in South Africa. Yet it would be not only supporters of apartheid answering for their deeds. Those who had committed crimes in the fight against the system, including Winnie Mandela, would answer for their acts as well. Bishop Tutu's writing on this process is nothing short of miraculous. He is strong in his defense of the commissionthat so many doubted as either too harsh or too lenient. He is also anguished by the depths of human depravity the commission hearings revealed, but passionately hopeful that human caring and unity might prevail, in South Africa and the world. In its sober depiction and searing indictment of evil and in its never-maudlin advocacy of love, this is a masterpiece. (Author tour)

New interesting textbook: Managerial Accounting or Modern Human Relations at Work

The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace

Author: Aaron David Miller

For nearly twenty years, Aaron David Miller has played a central role in U.S. efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace as an advisor to presidents, secretaries of state, and national security advisors. Without partisanship or finger-pointing, Miller records what went right, what went wrong, and how we got where we are today. Here is a look at the peace process from a place at the negotiation table, filled with behind-the-scenes strategy, colorful anecdotes and equally colorful characters, and new interviews with presidents, secretaries of state, and key Arab and Israeli leaders.

Honest, critical, and often controversial, Miller’s insider’s account offers a brilliant new analysis of the problem of Arab-Israeli peace and how it still might be solved.

The New York Times - Ethan Bronner

…[a] revealing and well-written…Apart from such self-criticism, what is unusual about this memoir when compared with other, similar ones is how lively, even irreverent, it is. Mr. Miller is a fine raconteur who fills his pages with real characters and sly observations.

The Washington Post - Glenn Kessler

If Miller had been secretary of state or national security adviser, he might have used his memoir to maintain or restore his reputation. But he does not have to worry much about history's judgment on him personally. And so he has the freedom to recount the many mistakes he and other American diplomats made…the value of the book is its rich and colorful history of past negotiations, and Miller's sharp-edged analysis of what went wrong and right. Memo to the secretary of state: The next time you head off to Jerusalem, throw out some of those briefing papers to make room for this book in your briefcase.

Publishers Weekly

In this extraordinary account of 20 years on the front lines of Arab-Israeli peacemaking, career diplomat Miller provides an impressively candid appraisal of Middle East peace efforts. Drawing from his extensive experience and 160 interviews with presidents, advisers and negotiators, he apportions censure and praise with an even hand, sparing not even his failures or those of his colleagues. Miller evinces genuine compassion for both sides in the conflict (stressing that Americans cannot fully understand the life-and-death stakes in the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians), while maintaining a detachment that allows him to draw hard conclusions. Miller says that though the two sides hold ultimate responsibility for their shared fate, American involvement is imperative and calls for the tough-love approach of Kissinger and Carter, arguing compellingly that such engagement is "now more vital to our national interests, and to our security, than at any time since the late 1940s." Although occasionally paternalistic, Miller's writing is both approachable and deeply smart; this and his absolute failure to take sides mean that this work will doubtlessly influence and enrage-and certainly inspire. (Apr.)

Kirkus Reviews

A word to the next president regarding peace talks in the Middle East: "If you're not prepared to reassure the locals while cracking heads as needed (and both will be needed), don't bother."So ventures negotiator and Middle East specialist Miller, a veteran of many incidents requiring tough talk and tough action and a survivor of Yitzhak Rabin's legendary wrath. (Rabin called Miller's Clinton-era Declaration of Principles "the worst American text since Camp David.") This book combines memoir with what might be called a primer on diplomacy, ending with some carefully reasoned suggestions for the next president to heed. He is a diplomat through and through, but it doesn't take much between-the-lines reading to discern that he finds the present administration wanting in that regard. Its vaunted road map, he writes, had little chance "to get the car out of the parking lot, let alone onto the highway." Yet, just as clearly, Miller takes seriously the need to fight a long war on terror and the fact that Israel is a chief battlefield in that war. He warns that the Middle East is a "bad, bad neighborhood," fraught with perils of many kinds. He also opines that the golden age of Arab-Israeli diplomacy is past, with no current leaders of the likes of Rabin, Hussein, Begin and Sadat to take up the difficult job of peacemaking in an atmosphere where many of their compatriots do not seem to want it. Yet, Miller urges, majorities on both sides do want peace, and if they are to have it Washington must take the lead, even if "the primary responsibility for peacemaking rests with the Arabs and Israelis, not with the Americans."Despite a few bad baseball metaphors and some misplaced breeziness, Miller'saccount is well considered. Recommended reading for the next administration, if not this one. Agent: Deborah Grosvenor/Grosvenor Literary Agency

Phoebe the Spy or Cooking with Grease

Phoebe the Spy

Author: Judith Berry Griffin

True story about 13-year-old Phoebe, a free black, who, disguised as the housekeeper in the home of an American Revolutionary war general, was really a spy whose job was to guard his life.

Interesting textbook: Critical Marketing or Managing Risk

Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics

Author: Donna Brazil

Cooking with Grease is an inspiring, behind-the-scenes memoir of the life and times of a tenacious political organizer and the first African-American woman to head a major presidential campaign.

Donna Brazile fought her first political fight at age nine -- campaigning (successfully) for a city council candidate who promised a playground in her neighborhood. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, she committed her heart and her future to political and social activism. By the 2000 presidential election, Brazile had become a major player in American political history -- and she remains one of the most outspoken and forceful political activists of our day.

Brazile grew up one of nine children in a working-poor family in New Orleans, a place where talking politics comes as naturally as stirring a pot of seafood gumbo -- and where the two often go hand in hand. Growing up, she learned how to cook from watching her mother, Jean, stir the pots in their family kitchen. She inherited her love of reading and politics from her grandmother Frances. Her brothers Teddy Man and Chet worked as foot soldiers in her early business schemes and in her voter registration efforts as a child.

Cooking with Grease follows Donna's rise to greater and greater political and personal accomplishments. But each new career success came with its own kind of heartache, especially in her greatest challenge: leading Al Gore's 2000 campaign, making her the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign.

Cooking with Grease is an intimate account of Donna's thirty years in politics. Her witty style and innovative political strategies have garnered her therespect and admiration of colleagues and adversaries alike -- she is as comfortable trading quips with Karl Rove as she is with her Democratic colleagues. Her story is as warm and nourishing as a bowl of Brazile family gumbo.

Publishers Weekly

Brazile's lifelong love affair with politics culminated in September 1999, when she became Al Gore's presidential campaign manager. She was also the first African-American woman to head a mainstream national presidential campaign. Both achievements are the subject of this lively, sometimes moving memoir. After joining the Dukakis campaign at age 21, through wise strategy choices and sheer ability, Brazile carved out a place at the table with the primarily male, white, middle-aged political elite. Her colorful observations about the high-profile politicians she met (black and white) are often entertaining, although she tries not to slam the door on potential future campaign positions. Bill Clinton "had the mind of six men..."; Rev. Jesse Jackson "was brilliant in terms of politics and he was a master of manipulation when it came to the media." Yet for all the insider look at the Gore campaign, the book's strength is Brazile herself, a self-described "abrasive Black woman." And while some may find self-serving her penchant for distancing herself from the Gore campaign's mistakes, readers will respond positively to the loving description of her Louisiana roots, her remarkable sense of purpose and her fierce loyalty to friends and family. Being a black woman informs all of Brazile's experiences, and readers get an invaluable glimpse of what it is like to be who she was, where she was, during one of America's most tumultuous political moments. Agent, Robert Barnett. (June 4) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This engaging memoir by a consummate Washington insider offers a unique look at the intersection of race, gender, and politics in the context of national campaigns. Brazile, the first black woman to manage a national presidential campaign as head of the Gore campaign in 2000, has served as adviser, emissary, mediator, broker, and, on occasion, window dressing. One of nine children in a working-class New Orleans family, she chose politics as her game early in life. Having worked on behalf of Democratic presidential candidates from Jimmy Carter on, Brazile dishes the kind of dirt that will fascinate political junkies, particularly about the role of Rev. Jesse Jackson. She also describes with great charm the family back in New Orleans who supported her in what appeared to be a risky set of career decisions. That Brazile remains at the Democratic National Committee as chair of its Voting Rights Institute is testament to her considerable political acumen. Recommended for libraries with a large readership in politics and in African American subjects. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/04.]-Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Al Gore's presidential campaign manager explains what went wrong. Among other topics, that is, including the long struggle for voters' rights in longtime Democratic operative Brazile's native Deep South: racism prevailed in the '60s, racism prevailed in Florida in 2000. While working to make Gore president, Brazile writes, she remarked to a Washington Post reporter, "As a Black woman, I was the most invisible person on the planet. And I told her, 'I'm in the White boys' world now and I've got to beat them just to get a seat at the table, but I'm ready for them.' " Which, of course, led to wounded cries of reverse racism on the part of offended white politicos, who dug up graveyards full of dirt on Brazile: her having been fired from the Dukakis campaign in 1988 ("I had ended up flying all over the country with Dukakis just so he could avoid having an all-White campaign," she grumbles) and her involvement with gay-rights organizations. "Race is the third rail of American politics," she observes, theoretically off-limits until, as if by magic, it becomes an issue-usually, the author suggests, thanks to Republican machinations. ("Whenever Republicans go down in the polls, they unleash the most horrific personal attacks on a candidate.") Not that the Dems are faultless, she notes: to her anger, Gore refused to accept the possibility, at least publicly, that racism had a role in the disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida, which contributed to his losing the election. And, Brazile hints, not that Gore was any great shakes; after the race he abandoned leadership of the Democratic National Committee, putting it back into the hands of the Clintons and shunting her aside in favor of TerryMcAuliffe "without consulting the Black leadership." In other words, politics as usual. Though not without bland tropes of its own ("God never abandoned me on my journey," etc.), Brazile's insider account will appeal to wonks, activists, and reformers. Agent: Bob Barnett

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Gulag Archipelago 1918 1956 or 1968

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

Author: Aleksandr I Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn's gripping epic masterpiece, the searing record of four decades of Soviet terror and oppression, in one abridged volume, authorized by the author

Books about: Coming to Term or Its Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

1968: The Year That Rocked the World

Author: Mark Kurlansky

In this monumental new book, award-winning author Mark Kurlansky has written his most ambitious work to date: a singular and ultimately definitive look at a pivotal moment in history.

With 1968, Mark Kurlansky brings to teeming life the cultural and political history of that world-changing year of social upheaval. People think of it as the year of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yet it was also the year of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy assassinations; the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; Prague Spring; the antiwar movement and the Tet Offensive; Black Power; the generation gap, avant-garde theater, the birth of the women’s movement, and the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. From New York, Miami, Berkeley, and Chicago to Paris, Prague, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Tokyo, and Mexico City, spontaneous uprisings occurred simultaneously around the globe.

Everything was disrupted. In the Middle East, Yasir Arafat’s guerilla organization rose to prominence . . . both the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Biennale were forced to shut down by protesters . . . the Kentucky Derby winner was stripped of the crown for drug use . . . the Olympics were a disaster, with the Mexican government having massacred hundreds of students protesting police brutality there . . . and the Miss America pageant was stormed by feminists carrying banners that introduced to the television-watching public the phrase “women’s liberation.”
Kurlansky shows how the coming of live television made 1968 the first global year. It was the year that an amazed world watched the first live telecast from outer space, and thatTV news expanded to half an hour. For the first time, Americans watched that day’s battle–the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive–on the evening news. Television also shocked the world with seventeen minutes of police clubbing demonstrators at the Chicago convention, live film of unarmed students facing Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia, and a war of starvation in Biafra. The impact was huge, not only on the antiwar movement, but also on the medium itself. The fact that one now needed television to make things happen was a cultural revelation with enormous consequences.

In many ways, this momentous year led us to where we are today. Whether through youth and music, politics and war, economics and the media, Mark Kurlansky shows how, in 1968, twelve volatile months transformed who we are as a people. But above all, he gives a new understanding to the underlying causes of the unique historical phenomenon that was the year 1968. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written–full of telling anecdotes, penetrating analysis, and the author’s trademark incisive wit–1968 is the most important book yet of Kurlansky’s noteworthy career.

Publishers Weekly

By any measure, it was a remarkable year. Mentioning the Tet offensive, the My Lai massacre, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Democratic convention in Chicago, and the Prague Spring and its backlash gives only the merest impression of how eventful and transformative the year must have felt at the time. As Kurlansky (Cod, Salt, etc.) has made the phrase "changed the world" a necessary component of subtitles for books about mundane objects, his choice to focus on a year that so "rocked" the world is appropriate. To read this book is to be transported to a very specific past at once more naive and more mature than today; as Kurlansky puts it, it was a time of "shocking modernism" and "quaint innocence," a combination less contradictory than it first appears. The common genesis of demonstrations occurring in virtually every Western nation was the war in Vietnam. Without shortchanging the roles of race and age, Kurlansky shrewdly emphasizes the rise of television as a near-instantaneous (and less packaged than today) conduit of news as key to the year's unfolding. To his credit, Kurlansky does not overdo Berkeley at the expense of Paris or Warsaw or Mexico City. The gains and costs of the new ethic of mass demonstration are neatly illustrated by the U.S. presidential campaign: the young leftists helped force the effective abdication of President Lyndon Johnson-and were rewarded with "silent majority" spokesman Richard Nixon. 1968 is a thorough and loving (perhaps a bit too loving of the boomer generation) tapestry-or time capsule. Agent, Charlotte Sheedy. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

"The year 1968 was a terrible year and yet one for which many people feel nostalgia," says Kurlansky (Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; Salt: A World History) in this appraisal of many unrelated worldwide protests that occurred that year. Unlike Jules Witcover in The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America and Lewis Gould in 1968: The Election that Changed America, Kurlansky devotes little attention to the presidential election, focusing instead on protests in Czechoslovakia, France, and Mexico, as well as those in a number of South American and European countries. The book includes fascinating stories about prominent movement leaders, notably Czech Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcvaek and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the French student movement. Kurlansky concludes that 1968 was unique because of a convergence of the disdain for the Vietnam War throughout the world, a widespread mood of alienation among youth, the success of the Civil Rights Movement, and improvements in the media that brought visuals of world events into homes. Strongly recommended for most public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/03.]-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A masterful chronicle of a year when the world was living dangerously and everybody's hair was afire. Doing what he does best, Kurlansky (Salt, 2002, etc.) brings a descriptive glow to his subject, holding it up to the light and turning it in his hands. Kurlansky is not so much concerned with exegesis as narrative scope, though he's also happy to wade among the knots, thorns, and bafflements of 1968. It was a terrible, Dickensian year for the human toll it took in Biafra and Vietnam, across Europe, and in the US, but it was thrilling too, "a time when significant segments of population all over the globe refused to be silent about the many things that are wrong with the world." The author, who was 20 that year and very much a child of those times, makes real the passion that pervaded the air: the widespread antiestablishment, antiauthoritarian movements; the student-and, in some cases, worker-uprisings in Paris, Berlin, Prague, Mexico City, New York, and elsewhere; Tom Stoppard, Peter Brooks, and Julian Beck shaking up the theater; Jacek Kur-n, Adam Michnik, and others acting as reluctant heroes in Poland; Tommie Smith and Lee Evans clenching their fists from the Olympic platform; SNCC eclipsing SCLC, and the rise of Black Power; television networks broadcasting undistilled and unpackaged news; feminism rising again. Instead of wanting to Be Like Mike, young people in 1968 aspired to act "como Che!" Assassinations, invasions, napalmings, and near-genocides made a grim backdrop for the year's millenarian dreams. Kurlansky is handy with the quick character sketch, but celebrities don't overwhelm the writing; he's more interested in context and events, circumstances and consequences, a goodexample being how he threads the US presidential race and its many permutations through the course of the narrative. Says so much so well about a year that still steals your breath away, even with so many of its hopes dashed. (Illustrations throughout) Author tour. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy

Best Little Stories from the Life and Times of Winston Churchill or Blue Covenant

Best Little Stories from the Life and Times of Winston Churchill

Author: C Brian Kelly

Winston Churchill was one of the most extraordinary figures of the twentieth century. Able to see clearly when so many were blind to the threat posed by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, Churchill was strong in a time of crisis and inspired nations to greatness. His colorful and stimulating prose, his perseverance in facing adversity, his prodigious contributions to literature, his devotion to the ideal of liberty, and his courageous leadership are there for all to see and follow.

Best Little Stories of Winston Churchill is a collection of stories from the great man's life. Prepared in conjunction with the author's lectures on Churchill at Oxford University in the summer of 2007, it includes stories such as:

*The many times as a boy, youth, and young man he almost died due to illness, accident, or repeated brushes with death on the battlefield.
*His prediction during his teen years that one day he would be the defender of London-and England itself-in a horrible war.
*Draining a pond to recover a watch-a present from his father, Lord Randolph Churchill-he had lost while swimming.
*His capture and incredible escape from the Boers in the Boer War after hiding in a coal mine among a colony of white rats.
*His maiden speech in parliament in 1901 at age 26, which was closely covered by England's major newspapers.
*Learning how to overcome his lisp from an Irish-born American politician who taught him "how to hold thousands in thrall" as a speaker.
*His secret and fortunately mild heart attack suffered shortly after Pearl Harbor while visiting the White House for Christmas in 1941.
*His remarkable ascent up the political ladder as a young blueblood incontrast with his parliamentary partnership with David Lloyd George in creating Britain's early welfare legislation.

Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water

Author: Maude Barlow

An Inconvenient Truth of water.

“Imagine a world in twenty years, in which no substantive progress has been made to provide basic wastewater service in the Third World, or to force industry and industrial agriculture production to stop polluting water systems, or to curb the mass movement of water by pipeline, tanker and other diversion, which will have created huge new swaths of desert."

“Desalination plants will ring the world’s oceans, many of them run by nuclear power; corporate nanotechnology will clean up sewage water and sell it to private utilities who will sell it back to us at a huge profit; the rich will drink only bottled water found in the few remote parts of the world left or sucked from the clouds by machines, while the poor die in increasing numbers. This is not science fiction. This is where the world is headed unless we change course.”
— Maude Barlow

Dubbed “Canada’s best-known voice of dissent” by the CBC, Maude Barlow has proven herself again and again to be on the leading edge of issues Canadians care deeply about. In Blue Covenant, Barlow lays out the actions that we as global citizens must take to secure a water-just world — a “blue covenant” for all.

Publishers Weekly

Canadian antiglobalization activist Barlow (Blue Gold) calls for a "blue covenant" among nations to define the world's fresh water as "a human right and a public trust" rather than a commercial product. Barlow marshals facts and figures with admirable (if often dry) comprehensiveness, noting that as many as 36 U.S. states could reach a water crisis in five years; that once vast freshwater resources like Lake Chad and the Aral Sea are becoming briny puddles; and a handful of multinational water companies, abetted by World Bank monetary policies and United Nations political timidity, are bidding for the "complete commodification" of formerly public water resources. Her passionate plea for access-to-water activism is buttressed with some breakthroughs; Uruguay has enshrined public water rights in its constitution (the only nation to do so), and "water warriors" are fighting back in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, where activists have forced private water companies to cede control of municipal water systems. There's a noble tilting-at-windmills quality to the author's call for private citizens and nongovernmental organizations to challenge corporate control of water delivery, agitate for equitable access to clean water and confront the reality that freshwater supplies are dwindling. (Feb.)

Monday, December 29, 2008

A Remarkable Mother or Pet Food Politics

A Remarkable Mother

Author: Jimmy Carter

Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter was a registered nurse, physicians' assistant, pecan grower, university housemother, nursing home manager, Peace Corps Volunteer, and renowned public speaker and raconteur. She ignored the restrictive mores and prejudices of the racially segregated South of the Great Depression years, and was an avid lifelong supporter of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers because she happened to attend the first major league baseball game in which Jackie Robinson, from Cairo, Georgia, ever played.

"Miz Lillie" was a favored guest on television talk shows, including those of Johnny Carson and Walter Cronkite, usually able to "steal the microphone" from her hosts.

Carter writes: "My mother was often gone from home when I was a boy, serving as a nurse on private duty in her patients' homes. She was supposed to receive six dollars for her twenty hours of service, but knew in advance that most of her families would never be able to pay. Since she came home around midnight to bathe and change into a fresh uniform, we children would sometimes miss seeing her for more than a week at a time. She would not forget, however, to leave written instructions on the front room table that prescribed our multiple chores."

President Carter loved his parents deeply and he particularly ascribes to his mother, the inspiration for his life's work.

The Washington Post - Carolyn See

…although this little book may have been timed for Mother's Day, it's far from the sentimental tribute one might expect…In her personal journey from farm wife to public figure, Lillian Carter (who died in 1983) was part of a larger sea change in American life: from a mostly rural society to an expansive, prosperous, confident player on the world stage. This is an unexpectedly engrossing family chronicle.

Publishers Weekly

Former president Carter (author of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid as well as many inspirational books) now offers readers the story of his extraordinary mother, Lillian Carter (1898-1983). After laying out some family history, he comes to Lillian's teen years, when she trained as a nurse at the onset of World War I. Health conditions in rural Georgia, especially later, during the Depression, were so dire that nurses were often diagnosticians as well as caregivers. Nursing also brought Lillian close to the black community, building personal bonds that paved the way for later political alliances. After her husband died, Lillian moved from wife and mother to full-fledged "matriarch," and later volunteered for the Peace Corps and worked in India. Being able to help such needy people was intensely satisfying, although she never got preachy about it. She'd write home, for example, that the Indian doctor she worked with was so "damned good you can't imagine him going to the bathroom." Modern readers who assume that church-going Southern Baptists don't swear, drink or work to promote birth control will find Lillian an eye-opener. She played an unofficial though vital role as the Carter administration's goodwill ambassador around the world-she almost persuaded our government to let Muhammad Ali bargain with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini for our hostages taken in 1979. Carter offers wonderful stories about a great woman. B&w photos throughout. (Apr.)

Pam Kingsbury - Library Journal

Former U.S. President, Nobel prize winner, and New York Times best-selling author (Our Endangered Values) Carter has written-and here reads-a lovely, humorous, and moving homage to his mother, "Miss Lillian," crediting her for instilling in him his lifelong sense of duty, commitment, and faith as well as acknowledging her generous, forward-thinking, and collaborative-minded sensibility. Carter's reading is heartfelt and earnest, and his affection for everyone in his family, particularly his mother, is palpable, making it difficult to imagine encountering the contents of the story in any other format. [Includes a bonus CD from the original audio series "Sunday Mornings in Plains: Bible Study with Jimmy Carter"; the S. & S. hc was "recommended for all libraries," LJ4/1/08.-Ed.]

Kirkus Reviews

Former president Carter (Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope, 2007, etc.) affectionately remembers his mother, the redoubtable Miss Lillian. When he was governor of Georgia, Carter visited her at the family home in Plains. "Mama," he confided, "I've decided to run for president." "President of what?" she wanted to know. On reflection, she admitted, "Well I was pleased. I figured that if he was elected president, someone would open a good restaurant in Plains." Blunt without malice and disarmingly unfettered, Lillian Carter was a powerful force, remembered here by her son with not only fondness, but great respect for her role as an agent for good. She shared whatever fortune she had without making a big deal of it; knew a bum when she saw one (Joseph McCarthy, for instance, and not the tramps who knocked on her farmhouse door during the Depression); and "just ignored the pervasive restraints of racial segregation." When her husband died in 1953, the author noted that she "seemed to be searching for whatever was provocative, adventurous, challenging, and gratifying." Thus she spent eight years as a housemother to a rowdy Auburn University frat, lent her nursing talents to the Peace Corps for two years in a small village in India and became her son's goodwill ambassador. While she tirelessly campaigned for her son and served as the face of his administration on countless occasions, mostly state funerals, she also took care of herself, tuning out the world when her chosen soap opera aired and enjoying a strong toddy in the late afternoon. The author isn't shy to note that Miss Lillian could be high maintenance-"She was quite harsh in her criticism when any ofus failed to make a regular pilgrimage to pay our respects"-but Carter makes it clear that she passed on her unvarnished decency and sense of fair play to her son. A low-key, well-balanced tribute. Agent: Lynn Nesbit/Janklow & Nesbit

Books about: Death by Chocolate or Fondue

Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine

Author: Marion Nestl

Marion Nestle, acclaimed author of Food Politics, now tells the gripping story of how, in early 2007, a few telephone calls about sick cats set off the largest recall of consumer products in U.S. history and an international crisis over the safety of imported goods ranging from food to toothpaste, tires, and toys. Nestle follows the trail of tainted pet food ingredients back to their source in China and along the supply chain to their introduction into feed for pigs, chickens, and fish in the United States, Canada, and other countries throughout the world. What begins as a problem "merely" for cats and dogs soon becomes an issue of tremendous concern to everyone. Nestle uncovers unexpected connections among the food supplies for pets, farm animals, and people and identifies glaring gaps in the global oversight of food safety.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.

For author and public health professor Nestle (Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health), the March 2007 pet food recall was the canary in the coal mine that would lead to a blitz of questions regarding the safety of imported food and goods. Begging comparison with Sinclair's The Jungle, Nestle begins with a real-life whodunit, tracing an outbreak of kidney failure deaths among cats and then dogs. A major pet food manufacturer had recently switched wheat gluten suppliers, paying 20 to 30 percent less to a broker importing from China (natch). Soon, it's revealed that two Chinese suppliers were passing off cheaper, toxic additives as gluten. As Nestle demonstrates, it's the tip of the iceberg; unraveling the links among "food safety, health policy, international trade, and the relationship of corporations to government," Nestle examines continuing food scandals, as well as the Chinese toy scare. Nestle finds most fault with the FDA; "still operating under food and drug laws passed in 1906 and modified in 1938," it's a systematically underfunded organization with an ever-increasing mandate and ever-shrinking powers of oversight. Though informative, this quick, clarifying read might easily make you sick to your stomach.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Robert Kennedy or On The Wealth of Nations

Robert Kennedy: His Life

Author: Evan Thomas

Robert Kennedy has been viewed as hero and villain -- as the "Good Bobby" who, as his brother Ted eulogized him, "saw wrong and tried to right it,...saw suffering and tried to heal it" -- or as the "Bad Bobby" of countless conspiracy theories, the ruthless and manipulative bully who plotted with the Mafia to kill Castro and lusted after Marilyn Monroe. Evan Thomas's achievement is to realize RFK as a human being, to bring to life an extraordinarily complex man who was at once kind and cruel, devious and honest, fearful and brave.

Thomas had unusual access to his subject's life. He is the first biographer since Arthur Schlesinger to see RFK's private papers, and he interviewed all of Kennedy's closest aides and advisers, many of whom were forthcoming in ways that they had not been before.

The portrait that emerges is unvarnished but sympathetic, fair-minded and always readable. It is packed with new detail about Kennedy's early life and his behind-the-scenes machinations: his involvement in a cheating incident in prep school; his first attempt at romance; and his many back-channel political operations -- with new revelations about the 1960 and 1968 presidential campaigns, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his long struggles with J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson, both of whom were subtly and not-so-subtly trying to blackmail the Kennedys.

In a clear and fast-paced narrative, Thomas cuts through the mythology to reveal a character who, though he died young just as he was reaching for ultimate power, remains one of the century's most fascinating men.

Book Magazine

Thomas has succeeded in writing the first full-fledged biography of Robert Kennedy since Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Robert Kennedy and His Times. Thomas had access to some of RFK's personal papers that Schlesinger did not see, and the result is one of the most readable and compelling political biographies in years. Here the author addresses the complexities surrounding RFK's life and legacy and delves into his struggles for recognition while growing up among the competitive Kennedy clan. Not surprisingly, Thomas concentrates on RFK's relationship with his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and explains how RFK evolved from kid brother to the most important confidant in the administration. The author traces the drama of RFK's integral involvement in the Cuban missile crisis and the civil rights movement, as well as his personal life. After his brother's assassination, RFK's life was clouded by the tragedy, and he became haunted by a sense of his own mortality. In the closing chapter, Thomas writes a moving account of RFK's ill-fated 1968 campaign for the presidency. One can only ruminate on the might-have-beens had RFK lived, but Thomas, to his credit, does not sentimentalize this biography. Instead, he delivers an even-handed, temperate account of a complex man who would be president.
—Glenn Speer

Publishers Weekly

Thomas has made a career writing about Washington insiders (he was co-author, with Walter Isaacson, of The Wise Men). A high-ranking editor at Newsweek, Thomas (an insider himself) has now written a nuanced biography of one of the 20th century's most iconic insiders. Although there are no startling revelations in this capably written, thick book, there is a lot of new information, thanks to the increasing openness of Kennedy's surviving colleagues and the new availability of oral histories, RFK's personal files, declassified national security documents and other sources. As a result, Thomas offers an illumination of the man's failings as well as his strengths, and unravels the complex knot of relationships within the Kennedy family. Portraying RFK as a man whose "house had many mansions," Thomas calls him "the lucky one"--he was raised in the shadow of his brothers, and his passion-filled life shined a light into "the family cave" of secrets. Throughout, Thomas highlights the contradictions of Kennedy's persona--he was an extraordinarily wealthy individual who could act spoiled one day, then express empathy with the have-nots on the next; he was a devoted, sometimes around-the-clock protector of his often wayward older brother, John, but still established his own career; he was shy but sought out publicity; and he was an enthusiastic family man who ran for the presidency despite its obvious risks. Though primarily a tribute to a man whose potential for greatness was cut short, Thomas's book sheds new light on a man--and an era, and a family--about whom Americans will probably never know the whole truth. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Since 1996, a number of fine books have investigated aspects of the life and legacy of this enigmatic political idol. If the Kennedys are America's royal family, then Robert F. Kennedy was the tribune of the poor. He is well served by this gracefully written, thoroughly researched, and accessible popular biography by Thomas, the assistant managing editor of Newsweek. This study is not as detailed as Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s uncritical Robert Kennedy and His Times (LJ 8/78) or James Hilty's Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (LJ 4/15/98), which is the first of two volumes. But Thomas's narrative, skillfully woven from numerous interviews, vividly reveals a very human Kennedy struggling to come to terms with his brother's assassination, his role in wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr., and his fatal decision to take on Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 Democratic primary. Thomas's chilling account of the Cuban Missile Crisis shows Kennedy at his best, while his portrayal of his feuds with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Cuban president Fidel Castro reveal him at his worst. Thomas convincingly debunks a number of the myths that envelop Kennedy. Highly recommended for public libraries.--Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

New York Observer - Terry Golway

With subtle foreshadowing and an objective eye, Evan Thomas makes the case that Bobby Kennedy's transformation came from within. Even the worldly and the cynical will take away from this biography a greater appreciation of the Kennedys in general and Robert Kennedy in particular. And it is always good to remember, in such times as ours, that Bobby, like his brothers Jack and Joe, was a young man who died for his country.

The New York Times Book Review - Michael Lind

[T]his judicious and thorough book is likely to be the most comprehensive and balanced study of the life and career of Robert F. Kennedy for a long time to come.

Time Magazine - Lance Morrow

Thomas' telling of the story is clear eyed, richly detailed and riveting, mainly because of his shrewd feelings for the nuances of Kennedy's character and internal conflicts.

Kirkus Reviews

Newsweek assistant managing editor Thomas (The Very Best Men, 1995, etc.) enlivens his engrossing RFK biography with fresh interviews and the use of previously restricted sources.

	Prologue	17
Chapter 1	Runt	29
Chapter 2	Tough	47
Chapter 3	Moralist	67
Chapter 4	Manipulator	90
Chapter 5	Protector	109
Chapter 6	Testing	126
Chapter 7	Goad	141
Chapter 8	Intrigue	153
Chapter 9	Play	175
Chapter 10	Crisis	195
Chapter 11	Brink	209
Chapter 12	Causes	230
Chapter 13	Threats	240
Chapter 14	Worn	262
Chapter 15	Mourner	276
Chapter 16	Searcher	297
Chapter 17	Conscience	311
Chapter 18	Ghosts	327
Chapter 19	Courage	343
Chapter 20	Quest	362
Chapter 21	Legend	383
	Source Notes	395
	Bibliography	479
	Index	489

Go to: Alzheimers Activities That Stimulate the Mind or Marilu Henners Total Health Makeover

On The Wealth of Nations

Author: P J ORourk

As one of the first titles in Atlantic Monthly Press' "Books That Changed the World" series, America's most provocative satirist, P. J. O'Rourke, reads Adam Smith's revolutionary The Wealth of Nations so you don't have to. Recognized almost instantly on its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long: the original edition totaled over nine hundred pages in two volumes--including the blockbuster sixty-seven-page "digression concerning the variations in the value of silver during the course of the last four centuries," which, "to those uninterested in the historiography of currency supply, is like reading Modern Maturity in Urdu." Although daunting, Smith's tome is still essential to understanding such current hot-topics as outsourcing, trade imbalances, and Angelina Jolie. In this hilarious, approachable, and insightful examination of Smith and his groundbreaking work, P. J. puts his trademark wit to good use, and shows us why Smith is still relevant, why what seems obvious now was once revolutionary, and why the pursuit of self-interest is so important.

The New York Times - Allan Sloan

Think of it as a hardcover blog, in which O'Rourke cites Smith's essential points, and riffs while preaching Smithian doctrine … this book is well worth reading. You'll pick up a few good lines, you'll see a primo stylist at work. And you'll see why Adam Smith is so often quoted but so rarely read.

The Washington Post - Daniel Gross

It's an incongruous pairing. Smith embarked on a systematic, lengthy, earnest examination of the economic world. "My job is to make quips, jests, and waggish comments," O'Rourke states. But like chocolate and salt, this unlikely combination works well together. In this book, O'Rourke is a charming, highly literate blogger -- one who thinks before actually writing -- elucidating Smith's arguments and making insightful comments along the way. It's a safe bet the words "Talmud" and "P.J. O'Rourke" have never been used in the same sentence. Yet there is something slightly Talmudic to the approach..

Publishers Weekly

The famous satirist headlines a new series of Books That Changed the World," in which well-known authors read great books "so you don't have to." While irreverently dissecting Adam Smith's 18th-century antimercantilist classic, The Wealth of Nations, O'Rourke continues the dogged advocacy of free-market economics of his own books, such as Eat the Rich. His analysis renders Smith's opus more accessible, while providing the perfect launching pad for O'Rourke's opinions on contemporary subjects like the World Bank, defense spending and Bill Moyers's intelligence (or lack thereof, according to O'Rourke). Readers only vaguely familiar with Smith's tenets may be surprised to learn how little he continues to be understood today. As O'Rourke observes, "there are many theories in [The Wealth of Nations], but no theoretical system that Smith wanted to put in place, except `the obvious and simple system of natural liberty [that] establishes itself of its own accord." Libertarian that he is, O'Rourke would probably agree that one shouldn't take only his word on Smith. Still, the book reads like a witty Cliffs Notes, with plenty of challenges for the armchair economist to wrap his head around. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Best-selling political satirist O'Rourke (Peace Kills) brings his satirical style to bear on 18th-century moral philosopher Adam Smith's life, works, and especially Smith's pioneering economics treatise, The Wealth of Nations. O'Rourke criticizes it as being overly long and, in many places, dull and contradictory. Going beyond merely explaining Smith's ideas, he throws in numerous satirical quips and asides-this is where his attempt to make Smith less tedious becomes tedious itself. For example, during his explanation of Smith's views on government, O'Rourke digresses to remark about political pundits on Fox News. O'Rourke's satire falls flat because when it comes to Smith, he must first explain what he is satirizing. While he seems to have a good grasp of Smith, and this could have been a fine introductory work, in the end it fails. Its audience seems limited to historians of economics who happen to be O'Rourke fans. A better recent title for academic libraries is James Buchan's The Authentic Adam Smith.-Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The opus magnum of the Scottish philosopher who defined free-market economics, usurped by O'Rourke as a matrix for social commentary and humor. Willing in the past to skewer policy disasters on both sides of the Congressional aisle (Peace Kills, 2004, etc.), the conservative satirist displays his softer side in this laudatory consideration of The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith's 18th-century dilation on the French proto-economic theme of laissez-faire, which advocates a free market self-regulated by self-interest, is still right on the money as far as O'Rourke is concerned. "What Smith wanted us to do," he asserts, "was to use our mental and physical capabilities to render the rulers of mankind as unnecessary and inconsequential as possible." O'Rourke does have a few criticisms of Wealth: Slogging through a 67-page digression on fluctuations in the value of silver over four centuries, he flatly states, is "like reading Modern Maturity in Urdu." He stresses that full appreciation of the Scotsman's thinking requires delving into Theory of Moral Sentiments as a counterpart to Wealth. (O'Rourke doesn't feel that full appreciation includes familiarity with Smith the man, or with his life, about which he admits a paucity of knowledge.) The author credits Smith with proving that the world economy is not a zero-sum game; only "leftists and everybody's little brother," he states, believe that somebody's gain always has to be somebody else's loss. An entertaining alternative to the heavy lifting required in confronting Adam Smith firsthand. First printing of 75,000; $75,000 ad/promo

Sunday, December 28, 2008

A Theory of Justice or Libertys Blueprint

A Theory of Justice

Author: John Rawls

Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book.

Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition—justice as fairness—and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.

Thomas Nagel

The writings of John Rawls, whom it is now safe to describe as the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century, are very different. They owe their influence to the fact that their depth and their insight repay the close attention that their uncompromising theoretical weight and erudition demand.

The New Republic

Liberty's Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World

Author: Michael I Meyerson

Aside from the Constitution itself, there is no more important document in American politics and law than The Federalist-the series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to explain the proposed Constitution to the American people and persuade them to ratify it. Today, amid angry debate over what the Constitution means and what the framers’ “original intent” was, The Federalist is more important than ever, offering the best insight into how the framers thought about the most troubling issues of American government and how the various clauses of the Constitution were meant to be understood. Michael Meyerson’s Liberty’s Blueprint provides a fascinating window into the fleeting, and ultimately doomed, friendship between Hamilton and Madison, as well as a much-needed introduction to understanding how the lessons of The Federalist are relevant for resolving contemporary constitutional issues from medical marijuana to the war on terrorism. This book shows that, when properly read, The Federalist is not a “conservative” manifesto but a document that rightfully belongs to all Americans across the political spectrum.

Publishers Weekly

Thomas Jefferson called it "the best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written." High praise, indeed, for The Federalist, that compendium of brilliant essays on power written in 1787-1788 by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (with an assist from John Jay) to persuade waverers to ratify the proposed Constitution. Recent scholars have downplayed the work's influence, claiming the essays circulated only among New Yorkers or convinced no one who wasn't already convinced. Meyerson (Political Numeracy), a professor of law at the University of Baltimore, argues conversely that The Federalistremains of critical importance for understanding not only early America but today's divisive debates on issues like clean-air regulation and medical marijuana. In the book's first half, he succinctly narrates the astonishing story of how Hamilton and Madison-the first combustible and heedless, the other priggish and intellectual-subsumed their differences and forged a genuine friendship that lasted only as long as their writing partnership. In the second part, Meyerson analyzes the various meanings and conflicting interpretations of The Federalistover the following centuries. By combining the personal and the constitutional, law and history, Meyerson has produced a remarkably insightful volume on a crucial American document. (Mar.)

Steven Puro - Library Journal

Meyerson (law, Univ. of Baltimore; Political Numeracy) provides both historical and contemporary analyses of the Federalist Papers, examining their key democratic principles and how the papers' main authors, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, conveyed those principles to persuade state conventions to ratify the Constitution. He demonstrates that Madison's and Hamilton's principles remain central to our controversies over the interpretation of the Constitution and the question of "original intent." Ongoing issues range from the separation of powers and the abuse of government power to the war on terrorism to medical marijuana. Meyerson extends his study to suss out the intricate personal relationship between these two men, as well as their political relationship. In spite of their many conflicts, their intellectual legacy cannot be underestimated. Both public and academic libraries will find this book a useful source for interested readers.

Kirkus Reviews

Cogent, accessible survey of the drafting of The Federalist, spotlighting the lessons these early essays still hold for today's interpreters of the Constitution. Meyerson (Law/Univ. of Baltimore; Political Numeracy: Mathematical Perspectives on Our Chaotic Constitution, 2002) focuses on the unlikely partnership of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, who under the pseudonym "Publius" published The Federalist over a feverish period of seven months, from October 1787 to May 1788, in several New York newspapers. (Fellow Founding Father John Jay wrote a few early essays before illness halted him.) The 85 essays laid out the entire range of issues involved in the debate over ratification. They aimed to sway New Yorkers to back the fledging Constitution, which was designed to rectify the defects in the Articles of Confederation. Hamilton and Madison later fell out, and Meyerson devotes a chapter to the disintegration of their relationship after Hamilton became the first Secretary of the Treasury in 1789. Two years earlier, however, eager for a share in history's making, the two brainy writers were pleased to collaborate on The Federalist. Hamilton wrote the sections devoted to "the power of the sword and of the purse," while Madison propounded on the dangers of factions, delineated the relationship between the state and national government, elucidated the separation of powers and offered a minute dissection of each part of the federal government, including the notorious three-fifths compromise, without ever mentioning the word slavery. Meyerson portrays the era's roiling debates over ratification, including the ultimately successful clamor for a Bill of Rights, and examines the essays'modern-day relevance, particularly in terms of current Supreme Court arguments between "originalists" and "non-originalists."A useful study of the Founders's noble minds and fallible ideas.

American Sphinx or Rediscovering God in America

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

Author: Joseph J Ellis

For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight--and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at Monticello a virtual hotel, as well as by more than one thousand letters per year, most from strangers, which he insisted on answering personally. In his twilight years Jefferson was already taking on the luster of a national icon, which was polished off by his auspicious death (on July 4, 1896); and in the subsequent seventeen decades of his celebrity--now verging, thanks to virulent revisionists and television documentaries, on notoriety--has been inflated beyond recognition of the original person.

For the historian Joseph J. Ellis, the experience of writing about Jefferson was "as if a pathologist, just about to begin an autopsy, has discovered that the body on the operating table was still breathing." In American Sphinx, Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams." For, at the grass roots, Jefferson is no longer liberal or conservative, agrarian or industrialist, pro- or anti-slavery, privileged or populist. He is all things to all people. His own obliviousness to incompatible convictions within himself (which left him deaf to most forms of irony) has leakedout into the world at large--a world determined to idolize him despite his foibles.

From Ellis we learn that Jefferson sang incessantly under his breath; that he delivered only two public speeches in eight years as president, while spending ten hours a day at his writing desk; that sometimes his political sensibilities collided with his domestic agenda, as when he ordered an expensive piano from London during a boycott (and pledged to "keep it in storage"). We see him relishing such projects as the nailery at Monticello that allowed him to interact with his slaves more palatably, as pseudo-employer to pseudo-employees. We grow convinced that he preferred to meet his lovers in the rarefied region of his mind rather than in the actual bedchamber. We watch him exhibiting both great depth and great shallowness, combining massive learning with extraordinary naпvetй, piercing insights with self-deception on the grandest scale. We understand why we should neither beatify him nor consign him to the rubbish heap of history, though we are by no means required to stop loving him. He is Thomas Jefferson, after all--our very own sphinx.

Publishers Weekly

Penetrating Jefferson's placid, elegant facade, this extraordinary biography brings the sage of Monticello down to earth without either condemning or idolizing him. Jefferson saw the American Revolution as the opening shot in a global struggle destined to sweep over the world, and his political outlook, in Ellis's judgment, was more radical than liberal. A Francophile, an obsessive letter-writer, a tongue-tied public speaker, a sentimental soul who placed women on a pedestal and sobbed for weeks after his wife's death, Jefferson saw himself as a yeoman farmer but was actually a heavily indebted, slaveholding Virginia planter. His retreat from his early anti-slavery advocacy to a position of silence and procrastination reflected his conviction that whites and blacks were inherently different and could not live together in harmony, maintains Mount Holyoke historian Ellis, biographer of John Adams (Passionate Sage). Jefferson clung to idyllic visions, embracing, for example, the "Saxon myth," the utterly groundless theory that the earliest migrants from England came to America at their own expense, making a total break with the mother country. His romantic idealism, exemplified by his view of the American West as endlessly renewable, was consonant with future generations' political innocence, their youthful hopes and illusions, making our third president, in Ellis's shrewd psychological portrait, a progenitor of the American Dream.

Library Journal

Historian Ellis (Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, LJ 4/15/93) does not attempt to give a full-scale biography of the Sage of Monticello. Rather, he offers a balanced meditation on Jefferson's character and ideals. Reaffirming and taking further what some previous authors have stated, Ellis maintains that Jefferson's ambiguous, secretive character was able to support mutually contradictory positions on a variety of issues. Moreover, Jefferson often retreated into romantic illusions rather than face reality. Ellis's work is based on many years of research into this period of American history, and it is perfectly pitched to appeal to both general readers and specialists. Attorney Gordon-Reed (New York Law School) presents a lawyer's analysis of the evidence for and against the proposition that Jefferson was the father of several children born to his household slave Sally Hemings. Gordon-Reed is not concerned with Jefferson and Hemings as much as she is with how Jefferson's defenders have dealt with the evidence about the case. Her book takes aim at such noteworthy biographers as Dumas Malone, who has been quick to accept evidence against a liaison and quick to reject evidence for one. In sum, the Jefferson who emerges from these two books is a great though deeply flawed man. Both books are highly recommended as essential reading for all libraries.
--Thomas J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure University, N.Y.

Library Journal

School Library Journal

In studying historical leaders, students rarely get a look at the individuals behind the myths that have grown up around them. Here, Ellis does an excellent job of showing that Jefferson was a human who made many decisions and some mistakes. On the one hand, he was a great historical figure who is due respect; on the other, he was a debt-ridden man with family problems. Ellis does not have an agenda to promote; he has a story to tell, and he tells it well. In a book that reads like fiction, he combines exciting plot turns with information. At the end, readers may not know for certain that Jefferson's life had a happy ending; but they will see him as flesh and blood instead of as a stiff statue or fixed painting in the Capitol rotunda. This absorbing study concludes with an appendix dealing with the Sally Hemmings scandal as well as extensive notes and an excellent
-- Rebecca L. Woodcock, formerly of Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Cleveland Plain Dealer

A brilliant, unconventional look at Jefferson.

Brent Staples

The book "is fresh and uncluttered but rich in historical context."
-- New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

In the latest of a spate of books on his legacy, Ellis (History/Mount Holyoke Coll.; Passionate Sage, 1993) argues that Thomas Jefferson was neither the saintly hero of myth nor the devious hypocrite depicted by some revisionist studies, but a protean character whose complex qualities evoke the best and worst aspects of our history and culture.

Ellis notes that, unlike the largely forgotten John Adams, Jefferson is an iconic figure who maintains a continuing symbolic significance for modern Americans, either as an apostle of democracy or as an exemplar of the racism that has disfigured American history. Studying five crucial periods in his life, Ellis traces the unique mix of the brilliant and the fallible in Jefferson's character. We see him in turn as the young, sensitive, high-strung drafter of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776; a seasoned diplomat in Paris in 178489; a gentleman farmer (179497); a besieged president (180104); and finally, an elder statesman (181626). Ellis points out that Jefferson's career had disasters as well as successes. He was, for instance, a failure as governor of Virginia (his administration left the state's economy in shambles). He also argues that Jefferson's thought cannot easily be taken out of its historical context. Crucial aspects of his outlook have been outmoded by time: Such concepts as slavery, states' rights, and the primacy of the agrarian in American life were wiped out by the Civil War. The growth of a multicultural society and the development of a culture of equal rights for minorities and women undermined his vision of an Anglo-Saxon society dominated by men. Nonetheless, Ellis asserts that there are enduring aspects of Jefferson's legacy—including his emphasis on individual rights, an abhorrence of centralized government, and a belief in the necessity for religious freedom—that continue to shape our political culture today.

A thoughtful and respectful, but not worshipful, reassessment of the enduring meaning of Jefferson's life and work.

Preface and Acknowledgments	ix
Prologue. Jeffersonian Surge: America, 1992-93	3
1. Philadelphia: 1775-76	24
2. Paris: 1784-89	64
3. Monticello: 1794-97	118
4. Washington, D.C.: 1801-04	169
5. Monticello: 1816-26	229
Epilogue. The Future of an Illusion	291
Appendix. A Note on the Sally Hemings Scandal	303
Notes	309
Index	353

Book about: Eating in America or Anne Lindsays New Light Cooking

Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation's History and Future

Author: Newt Gingrich

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

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Conservatives Without Conscience or Abraham Lincoln the Illustrated Edition

Conservatives Without Conscience

Author: John W Dean

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

Abraham Lincoln, the Illustrated Edition: The Prairie Years and the War Years

Author: Carl Sandburg

Originally published in six volumes, which sold more than one million copies, Carl Sandburg’s Pulitzer Prize winner Abraham Lincoln won praise as the most noteworthy historical biography of his generation. He later distilled his monumental creation into one volume that critics and readers alike consider his greatest work of nonfiction.
Magnificently produced, this special abridged and illustrated edition features foil stamping on the spine, an imitation cloth case, high quality paper, and collaged endpapers in four-color sepia. More than 250 engaging and often rare historical photos, along with descriptive captions, allow readers to visualize Lincoln’s journey from country lawyer to perhaps the most influential and beloved president of the United States. The fascinating pictures—many in color—provide a very intimate glimpse into Lincoln’s world. You’ll see his personal handwritten copy of the Gettysburg address, the gun that tragically ended his life, as well as a variety of rarely-viewed paraphernalia and personal effects. The images come from such notable artists as the esteemed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady, Joseph Boggs Beale, Currier and Ives, and Alexander Gardner.

The Idea of Pakistan or Thirteen Days

The Idea of Pakistan

Author: Stephen Philip Cohen

In recent years Pakistan has emerged as a strategic player on the world stage—both as a potential rogue state armed with nuclear weapons and as an American ally in the war against terrorism. But our understanding of this country is superficial.

To probe beyond the headlines, Stephen Cohen, author of the prize-winning India: Emerging Power, offers a panoramic portrait of this complex country—from its origins as a homeland for Indian Muslims to a militarydominated state that has experienced uneven economic growth, political chaos, sectarian violence, and several nuclear crises with its much larger neighbor, India.

Pakistan's future is uncertain. Can it fulfill its promise of joining the community of nations as a moderate Islamic state, at peace with its neighbors, or could it dissolve completely into a failed state, spewing out terrorists and nuclear weapons in several directions? The Idea of Pakistan will be an essential tool for understanding this critically important country.

Author Description:
Stephen Philip Cohen is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of classic books on India's and Pakistan's armies and the widely praised India: Emerging Power (Brookings, 2001). He was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State and before joining Brookings was a faculty member at the University of Illinois.

Foreign Affairs

When he founded Pakistan in 1947, Muhammad Ali Jinnah-an impeccably dressed Westernized Muslim with Victorian manners and a secular outlook-promised the subcontinent's Muslims that they would finally be able to fulfill their cultural and civilizational destiny. Although the new nation arose from a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence, and its fundamental premise was that Hindus and Muslims could never live together, its early years nevertheless held some promise of a liberal, relatively secular polity. But with time, Jinnah's Pakistan has grown weaker, more authoritarian, and increasingly theocratic. Now set to become the world's fourth most populous nation, it is all of several things: a client state of the United States yet deeply resentful of it; a breeding ground for jihad and al Qaeda as well as a key U.S. ally in the fight against international terrorism; an economy and society run for the benefit of Pakistan's warrior class, yet with a relatively free and feisty press; a country where education and science refuse to flourish but which is nevertheless a declared nuclear power; and an inward-looking society that is manifestly intolerant of minorities but that has never seen anything like the state-organized pogroms of India, Afghanistan, Iran, or China.

In The Idea of Pakistan, Stephen Philip Cohen sets out to understand this enigma of modern history. Cohen is the United States' leading analyst of South Asia, and this authoritative work of broad scope and meticulous research will surely become required reading on Pakistan. It also provides a view from the heart of the American empire, an analysis of how Washington can best advance its interests in South Asia.Cohen's facts are indisputable, his logic cold and clear, and his omissions deliberate and meaningful.

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Author: Robert F Kennedy

The unique, gripping account of the perilous showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In a clear and simple record, he describes the personalities involved in the crisis, with particular attention to the actions and attitudes of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. He describes the daily, even hourly, exchanges between Russian representatives and American. In firsthand immediacy we see the frightening responsibility of two great nations holding the fate of the world in their hands.

Friday, December 26, 2008

First They Killed My Father or Grant Writing for Dummies

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Author: Loung Ung

From a childhood survivor of Cambodia's brutal Pol Pot regime comes an unforgettable narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.

Until the age of five, Lounge Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights, and sassing her parents. While her beautiful mother worried that Loung was a troublemaker--that she stomped around like a thirsty cow--her beloved father knew Lounge was a clever girl.

When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung's family fled their home and moved from village to village to hide their identity, their education, their former life of privilege. Eventually, the family dispersed in order to survive.

Because Lounge was resilient and determined, she was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, while other siblings were sent to labor camps. As the Vietnamese penetrated Cambodia, destroying the Khmer Rouge, Loung and her surviving siblings were slowly reunited.

Bolstered by the shocking bravery of one brother, the vision of the others--and sustained be her sister's gentle kindness amid brutality--Loung forged on to create for herself a courageous new life.

San Francisco Chronicle

A riveting memoir...an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore.

New York Times

[Ung] tells her stories straightforwardly, vividly, and without any strenuous effort to explicate their importance, allowing the stories themselves to create their own impact.

Library Journal

In this "Age of Holocaust," Ung's memoir of her childhood in Pol Pot's Cambodia offers a haunting parallel to the writings of Anne Frank in the Europe of Adolf Hitler. A precocious, sparkling youngster, Ung was driven from Phnom Penh in April 1975 to relatives in the countryside, then to Khmer Rouge work camps. Here she recalls her fear, hunger, emotional pain, and loneliness as her parents and a sister were murdered and another sister died from disease. By the 1979 freeing of Cambodia by Vietnamese troops, she was a hardened, vengeful nine year old. Although written nearly 20 years later, this painful narrative retains an undeniable sense of immediacy. The childlike memories are adroitly placed in a greater context through older family members' descriptions of the political and social milieu. Recommended for public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/99.]--John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

YA-Ung was a headstrong, clever child who was a delight to her father, a high-ranking government official in Phnom Penh. She was only five when the Khmer Rouge stormed the city and her family was forced to flee. They sought refuge in various camps, hiding their wealth and education, always on the move and ever fearful of being betrayed. After 20 months, Ung's father was taken away, never to be seen again. Her story of starvation, forced labor, beatings, attempted rape, separations, and the deaths of her family members is one of horror and brutality. The first-person account of Cambodia under the reign of Pol Pot will be read not only for research papers but also as a tribute to a human spirit that never gave up. YAs will applaud Ung's courage and strength.-Katherine Fitch, Rachel Carson Middle School, Fairfax, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

The New York Times - Bernstein

During the three years that the Khmer Rouge tried to create an agrarian utopia in Cambodia, two million people are believed to have died from execution, starvation and disease. Two million -- a horrifying number, but so large as to seem almost an abstraction, like the distance to the nearest star. The number gains far greater psychological force with [this] new memoirs, whose author, a young girl in the Cambodia of the time, describes the terror and losses she suffered during the Khmer Rouge revolution in wrenchingly particular terms... [Ung] tells her stories straightforwardly, vividly, and without any strenuous effort to explicate their importance, allowing the stories themselves to create their own impact.

What People Are Saying

Lucy Grealy
This is a harrowing, compelling story. Evoking a child's voice and viewpoint, Ung has written a book filled with vivid and unforgettable details. I lost a night's sleep to this book because I literally could not put it down, and even when I finally did, I lost another night's sleep just from the sheer, echoing power of it.
— (Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face)

Helen Prejean
Despite the tragedy all around her, this scrappy kid struggles for life and beats the odds. I thought young Ung's would make me sad, but this funky child warrior carried me with her in her courageous quest for life. Reading these pages has strengthened me in my own struggle to disarm the powers of violence in this world.
— Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

Patrick Leahy
In this gripping narrative, Loung Ung describes the unfathomable evil that engulfed Cambodia during her childhood, the courage that enabled her to survive, and the determination that has made her an eloquent voice for peace and justice in Cambodia. It is a tour-de-force that strengthened our resolve to prevent and punish crimes against humanity.
— U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, Congressional Leader on Human Rights and a Global Ban on Land Mines

Queen Noor
This is a story of triumph of a child's interminable spirit over the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge over a culture where children are trained to become killing machines. Loung's subsequent campaign against land mines is a result of witnessing first hand how her famished neighbors, after dodging soldier's bullets, risked their lives to traverse unmapped mine fields in search of food. Despite the heartache, I could not put the book down until I reached the end. Meeting Loung in person made me reaffirm my admiration for her.

Dith Tran
Dith Tran, whose work and life is portrayed in the award winning movie, The Killing Fields
Loung has written an eloquent and powerful narrative as a young witness to the Khmer Rouge atrocities. This is an important story that will have a dramatic impact on today's readers and inform generations to come.

	Author's Note	ix
	Phnom Penh April 1975	1
	The Ung Family April 1975	7
	Takeover April 17, 1975	17
	Evacuation April 1975	23
	Seven-Day Walk April 1975	28
	Krang Truop April 1975	38
	Waiting Station July 1975	44
	Anlungthmor July 1975	50
	Ro Leap November 1975	56
	Labor Camps January 1976	69
	New Year's April 1976	79
	Keav August 1976	93
	Pa December 1976	101
	Ma's Little Monkey April 1977	113
	Leaving Home May 1977	120
	Child Soldiers August 1977	129
	Gold for Chicken November 1977	144
	The Last Gathering May 1978	151
	The Walls Crumble November 1978	158
	The Youn Invasion January 1979	165
	The First Foster Family January 1979	175
	Flying Bullets February 1979	184
	Khmer Rouge Attack February 1979	195
	The Execution March 1979	203
	Back to Bat Deng April 1979	209
	From Cambodia to Vietnam October 1979	218
	Lam Sing Refugee Camp February 1980	228
	Epilogue	235
	Acknowledgments	239
	Resources	241

Grant Writing for Dummies

Author: Beverly A Browning

Are you writing a grant application for the first time? Maybe you’re a veteran fundraiser looking to sharpen your grant writing skills. No matter how experienced you are at writing requests for money, people and organizations are not going to support you just because you’re in need.

Grant Writing for Dummies, 2^nd Edition shows you the most effective way to compose a grant proposal and get funding from governments, corporations, foundations, and more! This hands-on, step-by-step guide leads you through researching options, dealing with application forms, handling potential sponsors, and getting the money you need. Revised and up-to-date, this book covers everything you need to know to:

• Fill out federal grant application kits

• Win grants from corporations and foundations

• Gain support from an individual grantor

• Obtain grants from international funds

• Meet the review criteria of government grants and contracts

• Choose the right word to win funds

• Master cover letters, abstracts, and more

• Let prospective grantors know your deal

• Put the finishing touches on your application

Demystifying the process of grant writing, this all-out guide gives you just the facts with no information withheld. You’ll get savvy tips on organizing your writing, developing your style, personalizing your requests, and how to handle your rejection and move forward. Also included is a complete example of a grant application narrative. With Grant Writing for Dummies, 2^nd Edition, you’ll be able tocraft effective proposals and go for the gold!

No Ordinary Time or The Complete Idiots Guide to American Government

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front in World War II

Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin

No Ordinary Time describes how the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 was unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become the preeminent economic and military power in the world.

Using diaries, interviews, and White House records of the president's and first lady's comings and goings, Goodwin paints an intimate portrait of the daily conduct of the presidency during wartime, and the Roosevelts' extraordinary constellation of friends, advisers, and family.

Bringing to bear the tools of both history and biography, No Ordinary Time relates the unique story of how Franklin Roosevelt led the nation to victory against seemingly insurmountable odds and, with Eleanor's essential help, forever changed the fabric of American society.

Publishers Weekly

Goodwin's account of the Roosevelt presidency during WWII highlights America's changing domestic front. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Goodwin (The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, LJ 2/15/87) here focuses upon the wartime White House, "a small, intimate hotel" frequented by Churchill, Harry Hopkins, Lorena Hickock, Missy LeHand, and other guests of the state and of the Roosevelts. Goodwin's eye for life's details catches Franklin's ongoing quarrel with the kitchen, the feel of the map room, Eleanor's unease at the cocktail hour, FDR's delight in this ritual, and many other scenes. Her portraits of ER and FDR are highly sympathetic, showing them heroically-but by no means flawlessly-leading an unwilling nation into the wartime effort that helped defeat the Axis and changed America unimaginably. Goodwin's narrative, based upon interviews and other primary research and deeply informed by the scholarship of others, will keep company with the best works in the vast Roosevelt canon and will absorb and delight a wide readership. For all libraries.-Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.

Book review:

The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Government

Author: Mary Shaffrey

The most up-to-date general reference book on the history and structure of U.S.government.

This overview of all the government's major institutions and agencies, the election process, and the creation and passing of laws and taxes has been updated with the latest information on such important issues as campaign finance reform, fundraising, and homeland security.

• Completely updated resource section includes the latest government websites
• The only American government book to include the results of the 2004 presidential election
• Re-structured to complement high school and college political science/civics courses

Author Biography: Mary Shaffrey is the Washington correspondent for the Winston- Salem Journal. In 2004, she covered the presidential and later vice presidential campaign of U.S. Senator John Edwards.
Melanie Fonder is the press secretary for Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle. She most recently was associate editor for WisPolitics.com, an online political news service. Fonder is working on her M.A. at the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin.

Ch. I	Justice as fairness	3
Ch. II	The principles of justice	54
Ch. III	The original position	118
Ch. IV	Equal liberty	195
Ch. V	Distributive shares	258
Ch. VI	Duty and obligation	333
Ch. VII	Goodness as rationality	395
Ch. VIII	The sense of justice	453
Ch. IX	The good of justice	513

1	The idea of Pakistan	15
2	The state of Pakistan	39
3	The army's Pakistan	97
4	Political Pakistan	131
5	Islamic Pakistan	161
6	Regionalism and separatism	201
7	Demographic, educational, and economic prospects	231
8	Pakistan's futures	267
9	American options	301

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

No Future Without Forgiveness

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace

The New York Times - Ethan Bronner

The Washington Post - Glenn Kessler

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews

Phoebe the Spy

Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

1968: The Year That Rocked the World

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Best Little Stories from the Life and Times of Winston Churchill

Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water

Publishers Weekly

Monday, December 29, 2008

A Remarkable Mother

The Washington Post - Carolyn See

Publishers Weekly

Pam Kingsbury - Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine

Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents:

Robert Kennedy: His Life

Book Magazine

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

New York Observer - Terry Golway

The New York Times Book Review - Michael Lind

Time Magazine - Lance Morrow

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

On The Wealth of Nations

The New York Times - Allan Sloan

The Washington Post - Daniel Gross

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Sunday, December 28, 2008

A Theory of Justice

Thomas Nagel

Table of Contents:

Liberty's Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World

Publishers Weekly

Steven Puro - Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Library Journal

School Library Journal

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Brent Staples

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation's History and Future

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Conservatives Without Conscience

Abraham Lincoln, the Illustrated Edition: The Prairie Years and the War Years

The Idea of Pakistan

Foreign Affairs

Table of Contents:

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Friday, December 26, 2008

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

San Francisco Chronicle

New York Times

Library Journal

School Library Journal

The New York Times - Bernstein