Silent Takeover or Testimony

Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy

Author: Noreena Hertz

Of the world's 100 largest economies, 51 are now corporations, only 49 are nation-states. The sales of General Motors and Ford are greater than the gross domestic product of the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, and Wal-Mart now has a turnover higher than the revenues of most of the states of Eastern Europe. Yet few of us understand fully the growing dominance of big business.

Widely acclaimed economist Noreena Hertz brilliantly reveals how corporations across the world manipulate and pressure governments by means both legal and illegal; how protest is becoming a more effective political weapon than the ballot-box; and how corporations are taking over from the state responsibility for everything from providing technology for schools to healthcare for the community.

The Silent Takeover asks us to recognize the growing contradictions of a world divided between haves and have-nots, of gated communities next to ghettos, of extreme poverty and unbelievable wealth. In the face of these unacceptable extremes, Noreena Hertz outlines a new agenda to revitalize politics and renew democracy.

Publishers Weekly

Cambridge University economist Hertz asserts that Reagan's and Thatcher's brand of free market capitalism has had dire social and political repercussions, although it has triumphed as the dominant world ideology and brought prosperity to many. She sensibly argues that with government in retreat from its traditional rule-setter role, multinational corporations have grown so powerful 51 of the hundred biggest economies in the world are corporations that they determine political policies rather than operate subject to them. Market success may rule, but Hertz laments that the state, in appearing to serve business, may be nullifying democracy's social contract to represent and protect the rights of all citizens equally. WTO protests and activism reinforce her sense of growing political discontent not only about income distribution effects (97% of the increase in income over the past 20 years in the U.S. has gone to the top 20% of the families) but also about human rights issues. Campaign finance realities, declining voter participation, increasing alienation and terrorism amid glowing corporate results represent an urgent cry for reform to Hertz. Since corporations are not designed and cannot be expected to serve a general population's social and political needs, she argues that democracies need to move toward a realignment between the state's political power and the corporations' economic power so that all people have a positive stake in world economic progress. Hertz maps out a proposed agenda, and her eloquent call to action deserves the attention of every concerned citizen of our troubled world. (June 17) Forecast: Concern about the unchecked influence of multinational corporations in the political sphere both nationally and internationally is a hot topic, and Hertz's credentials as a respected academic with a Wharton MBA and a pro-free market mindset reinforce her arguments. This book and Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and Its Discontents (Forecasts, May 13) will catch the eye of those seeking to understand how business will and should be done responsibly in the future. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Rosabeth Moss Kanter
The Silent Takeover is a powerful wake-up call to a sleeping citizenry. Noreena Hertz's wide-ranging, provocative, and important book will shape the debate about the role of business versus government for years to come.
— Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School, bestselling author of World Class and Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow

George Soros
Noreena Hertz is one of the most forceful, passionate, and incisive writers to address the debate on globalization. Written with great clarity and intelligence, The Silent Takeover persuasively identifies the challenges facing business and government, and suggests a number of important changes to consider. This outstanding young woman is a voice to reckon with.

Interesting textbook: Fat Proof Your Family or Herbs and Nutrients for the Mind

Testimony: France, Europe, and the World in the Twenty-First Century

Author: Nicolas Sarkozy

In this important book from the newly elected president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy sets forth his personal vision of France's role in world affairs and his plans for modernizing the country and equipping it for the twenty-first century.

With unusual candor, President Sarkozy describes the difficulties France has faced in recent years—high unemployment, social tensions, inadequate education, a government that has not been responsive or responsible when confronting economic and social problems. In international relations, he calls for a new approach to the way France positions itself in the world. He is a great admirer of the United States, an unorthodox position for a French leader, and his vision for Europe is ambitious and far-reaching. His iconoclastic views on Israel and the Arab world, Africa, globalization, immigration, and the environment promise a sharp break with the past.

The ideas of France's new president are probably more daring, coherent, and compelling than those of any French leader in decades. Furthermore, he remains optimistic about France, insisting that the country is eager to embrace profound change. Bold, pragmatic, a risk-taker, President Sarkozy sets forth an exciting new direction for France as it enters the world of the twenty-first century.

Hmong in Minnesota or As It Was in the Beginning

Hmong in Minnesota

Author: Chia Youyee Vang

Minnesota has always been a land of immigrants. Successive waves have each made their own way, found their place, and made it their home. The Hmong are one of the most recent immigrant groups, and their remarkable and moving story is told in Hmong in Minnesota. Chia Youyee Vang reveals the colorful, intricate history of Hmong Minnesotans, many of whom were forced to flee their homeland of Laos when the communists seized power during the Vietnam War. Having assisted U.S. troops in the “Secret War,” Hmong soldiers and civilians were eligible to settle in the United States. Vang offers a unique window into the lives of the Minnesota Hmong through the stories of individuals who represent the experiences of many. One voice is that of Mao Heu Thao, one of the first refugees to come to Minnesota, sponsored by Catholic Charities in 1976. She tells of the unexpectedly cold weather, the strange food, and the kindness of her hosts. By introducing readers to the immigrants themselves, Hmong in Minnesota conveys a population’s struggle to adjust to new environments, build communities, maintain cultural practices, and make its mark on government policies and programs. Chia Youyee Vang was born in Laos and as a child escaped with her family to the United States. An assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, she specializes in the study of Hmong community-building efforts.

Table of Contents:

Foreword   Bill Holm     v
Hmong in Minnesota     1
A Brief History of the Hmong in Laos     1
Refugee Resettlement in the United States     9
Adjusting to Modern Life     21
Building Community     30
Cultural Practices     39
Achievements     54
Challenges     69
Conclusion     75
Personal Account: Reflections   Mao Heu Thao     77
For Further Reading     81
Notes     83
Index     87
Acknowledgments     92

New interesting book: Assault on Reason or Prince of the City

As It Was in the Beginning: The Coming Democratization of the Catholic Church

Author: McClory

Many assume the Catholic Church has always functioned with a top-down leadership model. But in this well-researched book, Robert McClory reveals that there have been long periods where lay people were consulted and had strong, leading voices. McClory also explains that a decentralized Chruch is around the corner and is inevitable. The books helps readers read the signs of the times to identify what is to come for the world's longest running corporation.

Bread Rising

As a church historian I enthusiastically recommend this book to inform and stimulate your late-night discussions about where the church has been and where and how it can possibly go. Here is your opportunity to pick a real winner!

Anna M. Donnelly - Library Journal

McClory (journalism, emeritus, Northwestern Univ.), who resigned from the priesthood in 1970, has published numerous articles (in the National Catholic Reporter, the Chicago Tribune, U.S. Catholic, and elsewhere) and several books on contemporary social issues debated within the Roman Catholic Church. Here, he handily documents lay movements developed since the 1960s and Vatican II to transition within the church from the traditional top-down leadership model toward a system of collaborative decision making. He recalls historical church councils and cites authorities such as Cyprian, third-century bishop of Carthage, who urged decisions to be made with the consent of the people, and 19th-century philosopher John Henry Cardinal Newman, who stressed the need for incorporating the sense and agreement of the faithful in matters of doctrine. He further documents the consequences of papal emphasis on ecumenism and the principle of subsidiarity, the growth of lay influence, and priest abuse scandals. Overall, McClory feels the time is now for a more democratized church. Recommended for public, academic, and religious collections.

The Republican War on Science or Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte

The Republican War on Science

Author: Chris Mooney

Science has never been more crucial to deciding the political issues facing the country. Yet science and scientists have less influence with the federal government than at any time since Richard Nixon fired his science advisors. In the White House and Congress today, findings are reported in a politicized manner; spun or distorted to fit the speaker’s agenda; or, when they’re too inconvenient, ignored entirely. On a broad array of issues-stem cell research, climate change, evolution, sex education, product safety, environmental regulation, and many others-the Bush administration’s positions fly in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus. Federal science agencies-once fiercely independent under both Republican and Democratic presidents-are increasingly staffed by political appointees who know industry lobbyists and evangelical activists far better than they know the science. This is not unique to the Bush administration, but it is largely a Republican phenomenon, born of a conservative dislike of environmental, health, and safety regulation, and at the extremes, of evolution and legalized abortion. In The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney ties together the disparate strands of the attack on science into a compelling and frightening account of our government’s increasing unwillingness to distinguish between legitimate research and ideologically driven pseudoscience.

The New York Times - John Horgan

As the title indicates, Mooney's book is a diatribe, from start to finish. The prose is often clunky and clichйd, and it suffers from smug, preaching-to-the-choir self-righteousness. But Mooney deserves a hearing in spite of these flaws, because he addresses a vitally important topic and gets it basically right.

Kirkus Reviews

A litany of indictments of misuse and abuse by the current administration, painstakingly documented by a journalist who has made science and politics his beat. Mooney (a writer for Mother Jones, Slate, the Boston Globe) traces the "war on science" back to the Reagan days (remember Star Wars? acid rain? the ban on fetal tissue research?). He goes on to chronicle the anti-science movement that gained momentum in the Gingrich-led Congress of the '90s, which dismantled the Office of Technology Assessment and stacked hearings with fringe scientists ready to deny the ozone hole, global warming and dioxin risks. Mooney catalogues the players, the right-wing think tanks and the administration spokespeople who continue to deny a human role in global warming or species destruction, who argue that condoms are unsafe, that abortion is linked to breast cancer and that "Plan B" will encourage teen sex. Add to these abuses the litmus tests for candidates for government science advisory councils and political censoring of what gets posted as health information on the Web. Perhaps the most chilling quote is from a Ron Suskind interview with a "senior advisor," who defined Suskind and others as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality," adding, "That's not the way the world really works anyone. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." One can fault Mooney for damning all Republicans in the title-he admits there are the John McCains, for example, as well as problematic Democrats. Sharper editing to eliminate some repetitiveness would also help. Mooney has put the right-wing handwriting on the wall, and the prospect is scary.

New interesting textbook: Low Carbohydrate Cooking for Health or Domestic Cookery Useful Receipts and Hints to Young Housekeepers

Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte: Volume II

Author: Louis Antonine De Bourrienn

This incredible set begins with Napoleon's birth in Corsica in 1769 and ends with his entombment in the Invalides in Paris in 1840, further set off by an additional section back of Volume IV, Napoleon's Will. (And, no, he didn't leave it all to Josephine. They divorced in 1809. Four months later, he married Archduchess Marie Louise. She didn't get anything either.) That aside, these four illustrated volumes include chronologies, text, letters, and many insights, both personal and professional, into the life and mind of a titan in world history.

People Before Profit or Brave New Neighborhoods

People Before Profit: The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis

Author: Charles Derber

Has globalization failed us? The promises of economic stability, increased prosperity, and cultural cooperation seem more like a pipe dream than ever before. But rather than stop globalization, Charles Derber challenges us to rewrite its rules in order to fulfill its potential as an agent of democracy and global harmony. In this provocative and optimistic work, one of the first examinations of globalization after September 11, 2001, Derber argues that only a democratic cure--begun at the grassroots level--will end global terror and economic insecurity. People Before Profit provides an essential understanding of our world economy as well as a practical guide for building a stable and more equitable global community.

Tom Hayden

Derber makes sense of such numbing issues as globalization, terrorism and world poverty...

Noam Chomsky

A provocative and stimulating work, directed to issues of the highest significance.

Ralph Nader

Derber describes the realities that affect everyday life...and elaborately presents sensible solutions for strong democracies [and] just economies...

...this book is about the urgent need to re-invent globalization to create a safe, democratic, and economically secure world.

Charles Kernaghan

This is a remarkable book, which deconstructs the myths of the global economy...

Naomi Klein

With any luck, it will help kick start a much needed debate on he principles that should unite our world.

Edward M. Kennedy

His ideas will be of interest to everyone who wants to know more about these basic issues of our time.

John J. Sweeney

...a thoughtful and penetrating assessment of the global economy, the inequities it has generated, and the global justice movement...

Publishers Weekly

Sociologist Derber (Corporation Nation) has a breezy writing style, slightly more academic than that of Thomas Friedman, whom he invokes often in this critique of the increasing trend toward globalization. Where Friedman sees globalization as an inevitable process, Derber believes we can still change globalization's direction, eliminating its market-driven excesses to provide truly universal economic development. The goals he proposes-ending global poverty, promoting local democracy and culture, making businesses socially accountable and creating a framework for genuinely collective peace and stability-aren't new, nor is his observance that people all over the world are coming together to achieve those goals, but what his analysis lacks in originality, it makes up in accessibility. Despite Derber's optimism that American citizens will sympathize with the emphasis of "third-wave" activists on combating corporate corruption and influence over government, he does admit his insistence that "we cannot have global democracy in a world so thoroughly dominated by the United States" is likely to meet with mainstream resistance. Reaction to that frank assessment is likely to overshadow other discussion, such as Derber's cogent explanation of the threats that the WTO and IMF pose to local sovereignty, especially with regard to labor and environmental legislation, and his 25 suggestions for "what to do right now," simple actions that almost anyone can take to become politically aware and active. It's clear Derber wants to do more than preach to the choir and less clear that the public is ready to listen. (Dec. 1) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An optimistic critique of globalization from Derber (Sociology/Boston Coll.; Corporation Nation, not reviewed). Despite the bluster of its proponents, the course of globalization is neither safe, democratic, nor economically secure, says Derber. This isn't because the system is inherently flawed or, as Thomas Friedman has it, outside of human intervention. Derber contends that globalization has within it the groundwork for a worldwide constitutional system that would allow active participants to think globally and act locally, pursue the basic set of human rights outlined in the UN Declaration of 1948, and seize the constitutional moment—aided by the technological innovation of instant global communication—at a time when "making history is a realistic prospect for ordinary people, as they find themselves caught up in seismic struggles over the basic rules of the world they inhabit." Today's globalization need be no more profit-driven, US-managed, or consumerist than, say, colonialism or the Gilded Age were socially flawed—those being examples of the fact that world systems have been with us since the beginning—if, as in Derber's scheme, a limited mega-government oversees global rights, with citizen-controlled national governments protecting participatory democracy on the local level and enforcing socially accountable global business standards. Obvious areas of reform include the antidemocratic, shadow governments of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization—though be it said that Derber is no conspiracy theorist, more a time-honored Social Democrat—as well as the tempering of the power grab by the US Fundamental in movingglobalization toward democracy is an informed, traveled, abolitionist, green, active citizenry, keen-eyed to all antidemocratic institutions and to interventionism and unilateralism. The effort "will involve engaging citizens not only in free and fair elections, but in active participation in local, national, and global politics through civic, grassroots, labor, feminist, and public-interest associations." Derber wants long-term stability, where accountability starts at and proceeds from the individual guided by the basic tenets of human decency.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction: 911 globe	1
1	Globalization's Ghosts	23
2	Three Myths	35
3	One World Under Business	59
4	The American Umpire	80
5	The WTO and the Constitution	105
6	The UN, the Barbershop, and Global Democracy	127
7	A Global New Deal	143
8	People Power	170
9	Sleepless in Seattle	199
10	Global Democracy as Antiterrorism	234
	Epilogue: What To Do Right Now	271
	Notes	285
	Index	308

Book about: Ismail Merchants Paris or Matsutake Mushroom

Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space

Author: Margaret Kohn

Fighting for First Amendment rights is as popular a pastime as ever, but just because you can get on your soapbox doesn't mean anyone will be there to listen. Town squares have emptied out as shoppers decamp for megamalls; gated communities keep pesky signature gathering activists away; even most internet chatrooms are run by the major media companies. Brave New Neighborhood s considers what can be done to protect and revitalize our public spaces.
In recent years, courts have upheld prohibitions preventing homeless people from begging in the subway, tenants from distributing newsletters to their neighbors, and activists from leafleting in front of the post office. Brave New Neighborhood s lays out the blueprints of the future towns these changes have created, and in this new geography, the First Amendment comes from the wrong side of the tracks.

Community Resources for Older Adults or The Basics of American Politics

Community Resources for Older Adults: Programs and Services in an Era of Change

Author: Robbyn R Wacker

Features and Benefits:

- Provides an overview of legislation that provides the foundation for aging related benefits and services

- Discusses theories that help predict service use, thus offering readers a framework to understand why older adults often do not use services

- Provides case studies that encourage critical thinking about the delivery and use of community resources

- Descrbes both public and private programs and services available to older adults, in-depth reviews of the current body of empirical literature in each program area, and discussions of the challenges programs and services will face in the future

- Includes best practice examples of community programs from around the country that illustrate unique ways to meet the needs of older adults

- Lists national organizations and Internet resources for each topic area

- Includes learning activities that challenge students to explore the community resources that exist in the reader's locale

Booknews

Community resources available to elderly Americans, including both public and private programs, are overviewed, theories on service use are discussed, and case studies that encourage critical thinking about the delivery and use of community services are presented in this book for professionals and students. Empirical literature in different program areas is reviewed, and legislation that provides the foundation for programs is explained. This second edition includes updated information on various programs and services such as the Older Americans Act, plus updated best practices and Web resources. Wacker is associate dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences and professor of gerontology at the University of Northern Colorado. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

	About the Authors
	Acknowledgments
Pt. I	The Social Context of Community Resource Delivery
1	On the Threshold of a New Era	3
2	Legislative Foundations for Programs, Services, and Benefits Supporting Older Adults	13
3	Patterns of Service Use and Theories of Help-Seeking Behavior	36
Pt. II	Continuum of Services
4	Information and Referral	53
5	Volunteer and Intergenerational Programs	73
6	Education Programs	92
7	Senior Centers and Recreation	115
8	Employment Programs	135
9	Income Programs	152
10	Nutrition and Meal Programs	167
11	Health Care and Wellness	189
12	Mental Health Services	218
13	Legal Services	237
14	Transportation	261
15	Housing	285
16	Case Management	315
17	Home Care Services	335
18	Respite Services	355
19	Long-Term Care Services	373
Pt. III	Preparing for the Future
20	Programs and Services in on Era of Change	403
App	State Units on Aging	409
	References	417
	Index	455

Interesting book: Cook and Deal or Low Fat Korean Cooking

The Basics of American Politics

Author: Gary Wasserman

This brief, nuts-and-bolts introduction to American government has been a student favorite and a bestseller for over 30 years because of its lively, straight-forward approach to the basics, its brevity, and its always inexpensive price.

This text uses a dynamic game metaphor to engage students in the basics of the American political system and the contact sport of politics. Beginning with a clear definition of politics, it introduces four governmental and four nongovernmental “players” who must abide by the “rules of the game” established by the Constitution and civil liberties. It ends by examining rival theories of who wins and who loses in American politics. Written to engage students and lay a flexible foundation for instructors, The Basics of American Politics covers all the terms and topics behind the current news, situating politics in the classroom and beyond.