Arms Control Books

Workbench Silencers: The Art Of Improvised Designs (Silencers)

George M. Hollenback

Amazon Price: $10.88 List Price: $16.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Paladin Press Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $9.56

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Military Science
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Antiques & Collectibles -> Firearms & Weapons
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Crafts & Hobbies -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Workbook Silencers 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book might make you think you can manufacture a suppressor with your pocket change, and you can, but you'll probably end up wounded, maimed, jailed, or dead. The pressures created by modern firearms requires fairly precise engineering to build a safe, functional suppressor. Other requirements such as accuracy, securing the suppressor to the weapon, maintainence etc, require the same level of engineering effort. But this book does have a purpose, it serves as a perfect example of how not to manufacture a suppressor, AND, to bring those out of the woodwork who think we should not be allowed to exercise our First Amendments Rights. Case in point is the reviewer who thinks the law should keep tabs on those who purchase books of this topic and then come get us. But if you are new to this topic the book is useful as a way to learn how to identify unsafe features of home made suppressors. And remember, many people in the emergency room (and many serving a sentence) got there with this famous phrase, "Hey, check this out!".

Editorial Review:

Here is a slew of new and interesting improvised silencer designs featuring innovative couplings plus variations on aluminum cans, oil filters, PVC pipe, plumbing devices, water sprinkler pieces and other unique materials. Warning: It is illegal to possess or make firearm silencers without BATF registration. For academic study only.

More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws

John R. Lott Jr.

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University Of Chicago Press Amazon Marketplace: 65 new & used starting at $3.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Military -> Weapons & Warfare -> General AAS
Subjects -> Law -> Business -> Labor & Employment
Subjects -> Law -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 166 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Multiple regression analyses are rarely the subject of heated public debate or 225-page books for laypeople. But John R. Lott, Jr.'s study in the January 1997 Journal of Legal Studies showing that concealed-carry weapons permits reduced the crime rate set off a firestorm. The updated study, together with illustrative anecdotes and a short description of the political and academic response to the study, as well as responses to the responses, makes up Lott's informative More Guns, Less Crime.

In retrospect, it perhaps should not have been surprising that increasing the number of civilians with guns would reduce crime rates. The possibility of armed victims reduces the expected benefits and increases the expected costs of criminal activity. And, at the margin at least, people respond to changes in costs, even for crime, as Nobel-Prize winning economist [TAG]Gary Becker showed long ago. Allusions to the preferences of criminals for unarmed victims have seeped into popular culture; Ringo, a British thug in Pulp Fiction, noted off-handedly why he avoided certain targets: "Bars, liquor stores, gas stations, you get your head blown off stickin' up one of them."

But Lott's actual quantification of this, in the largest and most comprehensive study of the effects of gun control to date, a study well-detailed in the book, provoked a number of attacks, ranging from the amateurish to the subtly misleading, desperate to discredit him. Lott takes the time to refute each argument; it's almost touching the way he footnotes each time he telephones an attacker who eventually hangs up on him without substantiating any of their claims.

Lott loses a little focus when he leaves his firm quantitative base; as an economist, he should know that the low number of rejected background checks under the Brady Bill doesn't demonstrate anything by itself, because some people may have been deterred from even undergoing the background check in the first place, but he attacks the bill on this ground anyway. But the conclusions that are backed by evidence--that concealed-weapons permits reduce crime, and do so at a lower cost to society than increasing the number of police or prisons--are important ones that should be considered by policymakers. --Ted Frank

Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible

Douglas Farah, Stephen Braun

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $7.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Specific Groups -> Criminals
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Praise for Merchant of Death

"A riveting investigation of the world's most notorious arms dealer--a page-turner that digs deep into the amazing, murky story of Viktor Bout. Farah and Braun have exposed the inner workings of one of the world's most secretive businesses--the international arms trade."
—Peter L. Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know

"Viktor Bout is like Osama bin Laden: a major target of U.S. intelligence officials who time and again gets away. Farah and Braun have skillfully documented how this notorious arms dealer has stoked violence around the world and thwarted international sanctions. Even more appalling, they show how Bout ended up getting millions of dollars in U.S. government money to assist the war in Iraq. A truly impressive piece of investigative reporting."
—Michael Isikoff, coauthor of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War

"Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun are two of the toughest investigative reporters in the country. This is an important book about a hidden world of gunrunning and profiteering in some of the world's poorest countries."
—Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

"In Merchant of Death, two of America's finest reporters have performed a major public service, turning over the right rocks that reveal the brutal international arms business at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In Viktor Bout, they have given us a new Lord of War, a man who knows no side but his own, and who has a knack for turning up in every war zone just in time to turn a profit. As Farah and Braun uncover and document his troubling role in the Bush Administration's Global War on Terror, his ties to Washington almost seem inevitable."
—James Risen, author of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration

"An extraordinary and timely piece of investigative reporting, Merchant of Death is also a vividly compelling read. The true story of Viktor Bout, a sociopathic Russian gunrunner who has supplied weapons for use in some of the most gruesome conflicts of modern times--and who can count amongst his clients both the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the U.S. military in Iraq--is a stomach-churning indictment of the policy failures and moral contradictions of the world's most powerful governments, including that of the United States."
—Jon Lee Anderson, author of The Fall of Baghdad

Two respected journalists tell the incredible story of Viktor Bout, the Russian weapons supplier whose global network has changed the way modern warfare is fought. Bout’s vast enterprise of guns, planes, and money has fueled internecine slaughter in Africa and aided both militant Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan and the American military in Iraq. This book combines spy thrills with crucial insights on the shortcomings of a U.S. foreign policy that fails to confront the lucrative and lethal arms trade that erodes global security.

The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

John R. Lott

Amazon Price: $19.85 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Regnery Publishing, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 49 new & used starting at $6.27

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Military -> Weapons & Warfare -> Control
Subjects -> Law -> Criminal Law -> Law Enforcement
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Current Events -> Arms Control

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Americans Aren't Stupid! 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

John R Lott is a true patriot and his book, 'The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong' should be included as part of the Bible. Every God-fearing American is duty-bound to heed Lott's warning about the liberal, jelly-back movement that is threatening to destroy the country's long-cherished freedoms. However, while I agree 100% with the author, there is a significant argument missing when he says that everything you've heard about gun control is wrong. It's an obvious point that we haven't heard and one that is intellectually unassailable; GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, BULLETS DO! Therefore, pass a law allowing everyone to own as many guns as they want; 10, 20, 100. Sell them in libraries, bookshops, gas stations, nightclubs and schools. Give them to children, psychopaths, teachers, social workers, prisoners and even terrorists. But at the same time, pass another law banning bullets. It's that simple. This revolution in social policy will not only silence the white ants in the White House, it will also show the rest of the world that Americans can solve problems that lesser minds find impossible to conquer.

Editorial Review:

Slicing through the emotional--but factually wrong--arguments of gun control advocates this book busts a number of myths, demonstrating with hard statistical data and riveting anecdotes.

Haarp: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy (The Mind-Control Conspiracy Series)

Jerry E. Smith

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Adventures Unlimited Press Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $5.72

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Military -> Weapons & Warfare -> Control
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Current Events -> Arms Control
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

More food for thought 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Personally, I prefer to follow the subject of U.F.O.'s, but now and again I find an interesting sidetrack... HAARP; The Ultimate Weapon of the onspiracy is one of those interesting side tracks. Jerry E. Smith has shown, once again, that the government can spew out the lies, and almost everyone that hears them will acccept them as gospel.... It's time to open not your eyes, but your minds...this book may help you do just that!

What is HAARP? 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

-Ionosphere heater? -Over the horizon radar? Radio transmitter for submarines? - Ground penetration radar? - Weather manipulation device? - Futuristic star wars weapon capable of zapping missiles out of the sky? - Scalar weapon or super beam weapon? -mind control device? Or everything above? When I read this book I somehow came to the conclusion Jerry had a paranoia factor. After reading Jerry's new Adventures Unlimited Book Weather Warfare I find I share this factor with Jerry as well as a countless amount of concerned American citizens. HAARP first started to draw attention when Nick Begich Published Angels don't play this HAARP in 95. Both Jerry and Nick write about the fantastic inventions of Tesla. Jerry is also known for his involvement in activism, poetry, radio broadcasting and has authored and coauthored fictional and non fictional books. Jerry tries his best to respond to emails and personally answers the phone for what is quite possibly the largest press company in the world with over 430 titles! I personally feel that topics such as weather modification pose the biggest threat to the stability and long Gevity of the ecosystem. The military has used the weather as a weapon since project pop eye in Vietnam when they cloud seeded over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Like Jerry says in the end of HAARP it is now up to us because after all it's our planet!

Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Mitchell G Bard

Amazon Price: $13.45 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) Amazon Marketplace: 57 new & used starting at $2.79

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Current Events -> Arms Control
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

the lie of the "palestinians" 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 9 people found this review helpful.

In one of those ironies of questionable scholarship, just as a battle over a Barnard scholar's book about Israeli archeology had inflamed her application for tenure, heavy equipment was tearing away at the ancient crown of Jerusalem's 36-acre Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site. Nadia Abu El-Haj's book, Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, originally a doctoral thesis, questions the historical existence of a Jewish link to Israel, and her provocative claims have caused her to become the center of a fractious debate about her qualifications for tenure as a Barnard professor of anthropology.


Meanwhile, in Jerusalem last week, Hebrew University's Dr. Eilat Mazar, along with representatives from the Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities, was in the Israeli High Court of Justice attempting to halt the work on the Temple Mount being conducted by the Muslim Waqf, the religious trust charged with oversight of the location. The excavation, a trench 500 meters long and 1.5 meters deep, is, according to the complainants,


"causing irreversible damage to antiquities and archaeological artifacts of the greatest importance . . , is being carried out illegally, [and] entails damage to ground layers, some of which may have been in place since the first Temple stood there 3,000 years ago."


The effrontery of this recent, but not isolated, act by the Waqf is made all the more troubling by the fact that the archeological contempt shown by the trust reflects their attitude that a Jewish historical connection to the site is only apocryphal. In the same way that El-Haj denies a Jewish component to the archeology of Israel, the Waqf's oversight of the Temple Mount has contributed to an effort, in pursuit of the Palestinian's nationalistic cause, to erase or obscure Judaism and replace it with a Muslim historical narrative which predates a Jewish one. Hebrew University's Yitzhak Reiter, who conducted a study for the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, observes that this has been a deliberate strategy, that


"In the last generation, the Islamic and Arab history of Jerusalem has gradually been rewritten. At the heart of this new version is the Arabs' historic right to Jerusalem and Palestine. The main argument is that the Arabs ruled Jerusalem thousands of years before the children of Israel. In addition to building the Arab-Muslim case, the Muslim thinkers are formulating a denial and negation of the Jewish-Zionist narrative. Included in that effort is the de-Judaizing of the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and Jerusalem as a whole."


A second, but concurrent, assault on that Jewish history is "post-colonial" scholarship like that of El-Haj, which makes, what author Stephen Schwartz calls,


"the hallucinated claim that Jewish identity is a modern, nationalist, and Zionist-imperialist `construct' rather than a product of thousands of years of recorded history and religious tradition."


El-Haj's book has been widely denounced precisely because it seems not to be authentic scholarship on archeology of the Holy Land at all, but a revisionist history based on political ideology -- the notion that any historical relationship between Jews and Jerusalem, indeed to Israel itself, is merely a construct, a fiction, a professional fraud hoisted upon the world of scholarship by Israel archeologists who sifted through digs and artificially `built' a historical link between the Jews and Israel, thus of course, denying the Palestinians their own historic connection. Israel, a "colonial settler state," had to contort history through selectively revealed archeological finds and, she says,


"the colonial dimension of Jewish settlement in Palestine cannot be sidelined if one is to understand the significance and consequences of archaeological practice. . . ."


She thus disingenuously, and apparently without worrying about science, fact, or history, dismisses or ignores generations of professional archeology carried out by actual archeologists (which she is not), and posits that "the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins" is a "pure political fabrication," an "ideological assertion comparable to Arab claims of Canaanite or other ancient tribal roots."


That may be El-Haj's way of wanting to appraise the history of Israel, but it unfortunately flies in the face of all scholarship on the antiquities of Israel and Palestine, and would require that previous scholars and archeologists overlook facts and embrace her politically-shaped theory. In fact, Diana Muir and Avigail Appelbaum, two Barnard graduates who wrote a review of her book, feel that the


"outrageous nature of this demand is breathtaking. Not only does Abu El- Haj take upon herself the privilege of dismissing large bodies of evidence, she demands that other scholars ignore or deliberately distort evidence to conform to her political bias."


Of course, "distorting evidence to conform to political bias" is ubiquitous amid Palestinian propagandists, who, along with their apologists in the West, have assiduously attempted to rewrite a historical narrative with themselves as an indigenous people and Israelis as European colonial usurpers with no real connection to the land of what became Israel. So to overcome that inconvenient set of facts, El-Haj contends, Israeli-directed archeology took it upon itself to sift through a past rich with Muslim relics, but ignored them, and looked for, identified, and recorded only those findings which confirmed a historical Jewish connection to the land.


"The work of archaeology in Palestine/Israel is a cardinal institutional location for the ongoing practice of colonial nationhood," El-Haj writes with the politicized syntax of her ideological mentor, Columbia's Edward Said, "producing facts through which historical-national claims, territorial transformations, heritage objects, and historicities [sic] `happen.'"


The problem with coming up with a book of archeology which defies logic and history, as El-Haj has done here, of course, is that one would have to condemn or marginalize the work of all archeologists in the field whose work had formed the basis of the historical record she is determined to negate. One of the reasons that critics oppose her being granted tenure at Barnard is precisely because she has defamed noted professionals in the field, based on anonymous sources and anecdotal evidence for which she offers the thinnest bits of evidence. In fact, one of El-Haj's fellow professors at Barnard, Alan F. Segal, Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies, recently took her to task in an op-ed in the Columbia Spectator for what he perceived to be one of her severest scholarly offenses, a claim:



"that Israelis deliberately mislabel Christian sites as Jewish and tear down churches . . [and] that they use bull-dozers to level sites and wipe out evidence of Palestinian habitation."


Professor Segal finds the assertion that bulldozers have been used in "contemporary archeology" to be El-Haj's "most outrageous charge," not only because Israeli archeologists are fastidious in methodology and practice, but also, given what is happening currently atop the Temple Mount itself -- one of the world's richest archeological and historical sites -- it is something that the Waqf, not the Israelis, should have to answer for.


Many will remember, for instance, the howls of outrage that arose from the Arab world in February 2007 when Israeli authorities initiated a project to rebuild a ramp to the Mugrabi Gate, an entrance to the Temple Mount plaza and the Al Aqsa Mosque platform that had been damaged in an earlier storm. Riots and protests began immediately, with accusations against Israel coming from throughout the Arab world for its "scheme" and treachery in digging under and threatening to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque itself. The committee of Muslim scholars in Jordan's Islamic Action Front, for one, "urge[d] . . . proclaiming jihad to liberate Al Aqsa and save it from destruction and sabotage from Jewish usurpers," a spurious claim since construction was taking place well outside the Mount platform, some 100 meters from the mosque, and clearly posed no possible threat.


So while riots ensued when Israelis initiated a carefully supervised reconstruction project near the Temple Mount, the Muslim guardians of the Judaism's holiest site have felt no compunction in brutally gouging the historic surfaces when it suits their own purposes, either currently as they create a deep trench or as they did in 1999 when they opened a gaping hole in what is known as Solomon's Stables -- 18,000 square feet in area and 36 feet deep, for new mosques. Most seriously, 13,000 tons of rubble from that criminal dig, containing rich archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods, was scattered clandestinely in the Kidron valley dump without any professional archeological oversight and before experts could evaluate any unearthed items of significance.


The Arab world's own complicity in playing fast and loose with history, and obscuring the actual "facts on the ground" in their attempt to create a historical narrative conforming to their political agenda, makes El-Haj's accusations against Israeli archeologist all the more disingenuous. Notes Ralph Harrington,


"The claim that Israel practices `bulldozer archaeology is an explosive one and draws on images of ideologically-driven Israeli destructiveness that are deeply rooted in contemporary Palestinian perceptions,"


but it is explosive because it is part of a pattern of lies. In yet another example of "turnspeak," the Arab world has accused Israel of the misdeeds, lies about history, and destruction of a nationhood that they themselves are committing. It is part of a relentless and continuing effort to delegitimize Israel and finally eliminate it through a false historical narrative that is repeated in Palestinian schoolbooks, in sermons, in the Arab press, in Middle Eastern study centers at universities, and in the politicized scholarship and dialogue generated by Israel-haters, anti-Semites, and Palestinian apologists around the world.


At the heart of this . . . is a monstrous lie," says professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno, Bruce Thornton, "the airbrushing of Jews from the history of Jerusalem, an Orwellian rewriting of history started by the Arabs and abetted by some politicized Western scholars." That is the core problem with Facts on the Ground -- that it is not a scholarly attempt to shed light on the rich archeological history of the Levant at all. Instead, it is ideology parading as scholarship; it is the work of a dilettante who is not an archeologist, never visited a dig, reads no Hebrew, and used anonymous sources and anecdotal evidence as the foundation of her research to craft what Haaretz columnist Nadav Shragai called a "tissue of lies" about Israeli archeologists, who, perhaps lacking the political motivations that so clearly subsume El-Haj's own work, in fact uncovered the true facts on the ground that shape the uninterrupted 3000-year Jewish presence in the land that became Israel.

Editorial Review:

"Too many people are unfamiliar with the basic history of the conflict or simply don't have concise, fact-based replies to falsehoods propagated about Middle East issues," say author Dr. Mitchell Bard, one of the country's leading experts on U.S. Middle East policy. "This book offers documented historical facts about all aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and has been updated to include the latest information about Israel's security fence, disengagment from Gaza, the road map and more.

Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

Mike Chinoy

Amazon Price: $18.45 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: St. Martin's Press Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $7.50

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Asia -> Korea -> General
Subjects -> History -> Asia -> Korea -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> Asia -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Meltdown is the riveting inside account of an American diplomatic disaster

When George W. Bush took office in 2001, North Korea’s nuclear program was frozen. Kim Jong-Il had signaled to the outgoing Clinton administration he was ready to negotiate an end to his missile program. Today, North Korea has become a full-fledged nuclear power, with enough fissile material to stage an underground test in 2006, manufacture as many as ten more warheads, and—in the worst-case scenario—provide nuclear material to rogue states or terrorist groups. How did the United States fail to prevent a long-standing adversary like North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons?

Drawing on more than two hundred interviews with key players in Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing, including Colin Powell, John Bolton, and ex-Korean president Kim Dae-jung, as well as insights gained during fourteen trips to Pyongyang, longtime CNN correspondent and North Korea expert Mike Chinoy provides a blow-by-blow account that takes readers behind the scenes of secret diplomatic meetings, disputed intelligence reports, and Washington turf battles as well as inside the mysterious world of North Korea. Meltdown shows how the U.S. refusal to engage in serious diplomacy spurred Kim Jong Il to stage his nuclear breakout, and provides a wealth of new material about the subsequent reversal of course that led the Bush administration to abandon confrontation in the hope of negotiating an end to the nuclear crisis.

Chinoy has produced a gripping account of one of America's longest-running, most volatile foreign policy crises that explains why North Korea remains a danger today—and why it didn't have to be this way.

Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons

Joseph Cirincione

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Columbia University Press Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $10.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Military -> Weapons & Warfare -> Nuclear
Subjects -> History -> Military -> General
Subjects -> History -> Military -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Comprehensive, Yet Succinct. Expansive, But Relevant 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Bomb Scare fills in the blank spaces that other books leave. It completes the picture of the history of nuclear weapons and brings into sharper focus their role in the future. It broadened my comprehension of the issues. And, Cirincione provides a balanced assessment of the interplay between policies, politics, and weapons.
Bruce A. Roth
www.daisyalliance.org
Author of No Time To Kill

Editorial Review:

Beginning with the atomic discoveries of the 1930s, Joseph Cirincione unravels the science, strategy, and politics that have fueled the development of nuclear stockpiles and increased the chance of a nuclear terrorist attack. He also explains why many nations choose not to pursue nuclear weapons, pulling from this a solution to the world's proliferation problem that balances force and diplomacy, enforcement and engagement to yield a steady decrease in deadly arsenals. A unique blend of history, theory, and security analysis, Bomb Scare not only offers a clear understanding of this issue but also provides the tools to prevent another nuclear attack.

The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed, Second Edition

Scott D. Sagan, Kenneth N. Waltz

Amazon Price: $18.67 List Price: $19.70 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $3.85

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Current Events -> Arms Control
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Current Events -> Terrorism
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Freedom & Security -> International Security

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Simple debate, tremendous consequences 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This books puts together two colliding authors on whether the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a good idea or not. Waltz, one fo the premier figures of realpolitik, argues (brilliantly, even though I disagree with him) that proliferation is a good idea. Sagan argues there are too many organizational risks in the proliferation system.

The two present their arguments, and then respond to each other's argument. It is a fascinating argument, one that can be discussed in 1000 pages, but the authors do a tremendous job of synthesizing it and pointing out the major strenghts and weaknesses of each other's argument. In today's world, where we are willing to go to war to prevent proliferation, it is useful to take a step back and really understand what the main problems arising by proliferation are.

Editorial Review:

In this text, two leading scholars of international politics debate the pros and cons of nuclear weaponry. This text serves as a concise introduction to an issue that encapsulates some of the most basic themes in international relations: are states rational? Are states sovereign? Does international organization work? New to this second edition is a case study of the precarious relations between India and Pakistan, exploring specific problems and consequences of nuclear competition.

Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

James Fulcher

Amazon Price: $9.56 List Price: $11.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 49 new & used starting at $5.19

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Economic History
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Free Enterprise
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> International

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Thought Provoking 4 out of 5 stars.
23 of 26 people found this review helpful.

Teaching capitalism in today's world is like describing water to a fish; we are surrounded by it, can't live without it and are unaware of the alternatives. Most have never experienced the depression, many have forgotten the days when communism was actually a threat. We are blind to the absolutely crucial nature of how our world works. Although we watched the stock market plummet in 1987 and have all learned valuable lessons from the internet boom & bust, I picked up this book because I wanted to know a bit more about how the scholars view capitalism.

The book takes the reader through a history of capitalism while briefly summarizing everything you forgot from college economics. While the discussion of the development of capitalism focused on some interesting questions of historical interpretation, the strength of this work is the description and analysis of how the capitalistic system works differently in different countries.

The power of capitalism is set forth as its ability to adapt. Where other systems--feudalism, communism, socialism, etc--failed was that they could not adapt to change. The book was an excellent overview; it was current, easy to read, and contains a fine list of resources for further study.

Editorial Review:

The Oxford Illustrated History of Shakespeare on Stage is a chronological series of information-packed essays written by actors, writers, and academics, including Judi Dench, Robert Smallwood, and Michael Dobson. It's a thoughtful book that details the multifarious ways in which Shakespeare's kaleidoscopic plays have been interpreted during their 400- year life. But it's probably the sections dealing with the 19th and 20th centuries that readers will find most interesting. Consider the role of actor managers or the influence of Ibsen and Brecht. Then, of course, there were two wars and, eventually, that extraordinary 1970 A Midsummer Night's Dream, which Peter Brook directed at Stratford and triggered a whole new urge to go back to the text and let it speak. There's certainly plenty in this entertaining and informative book both for students and theatergoers alike. - -Susan Elkin, Amazon.co.uk