History & Theory Books - Page 5

Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America

Allen C. Guelzo

Amazon Price: $17.16 List Price: $26.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Amazon Marketplace: 53 new & used starting at $5.40

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 19th Century -> Antebellum
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 19th Century -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General

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

Editorial Review:

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln was known as a successful Illinois lawyer who had achieved some prominence in state politics as a leader in the new Republican Party. Two years later, he was elected president and was on his way to becoming the greatest chief executive in American history.

What carried this one-term congressman from obscurity to fame was the campaign he mounted for the United States Senate against the country's most formidable politician, Stephen A. Douglas, in the summer and fall of 1858. Lincoln challenged Douglas directly in one of his greatest speeches -- "A house divided against itself cannot stand" -- and confronted Douglas on the questions of slavery and the inviolability of the Union in seven fierce debates. As this brilliant narrative by the prize-winning Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo dramatizes, Lincoln would emerge a predominant national figure, the leader of his party, the man who would bear the burden of the national confrontation.

Of course, the great issue between Lincoln and Douglas was slavery. Douglas was the champion of "popular sovereignty," of letting states and territories decide for themselves whether to legalize slavery. Lincoln drew a moral line, arguing that slavery was a violation both of natural law and of the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence. No majority could ever make slavery right, he argued.

Lincoln lost that Senate race to Douglas, though he came close to toppling the "Little Giant," whom almost everyone thought was unbeatable. Guelzo's Lincoln and Douglas brings alive their debates and this whole year of campaigns and underscores their centrality in the greatest conflict in American history.

The encounters between Lincoln and Douglas engage a key question in American political life: What is democracy's purpose? Is it to satisfy the desires of the majority? Or is it to achieve a just and moral public order? These were the real questions in 1858 that led to the Civil War. They remain questions for Americans today.

The Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Amazon Price: $6.99 List Price: $6.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: BN Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 22 new & used starting at $3.55

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Motivational
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Collectivism Against Individuality 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 8 people found this review helpful.

The fallacy is in his assumption that individuals must forfeit all sovereignty to the state. The second specious argument is in the creation of a General Will. The third is that the general will will not do anything to harm any of the individuals within the collective.

The collectivist social contract was most assured well intentioned, but it's opposition to individualism has obviously anti-individualist consequences.

This is evident in his support of democratic censorship. If the general will is offended, then censorship is justified.

In his desire to create equality, he justifies both socialism and communism, and democracy in its purest form - majority rule.

Editorial Review:

"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains." These are the famous opening words of a treatise which, from the French Revolutionary terror to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, has been interpreted as a blueprint for totalitarianism. But in "The Social Contract" Rousseau (1712-1778) was at pains to stress the connection between liberty and law, freedom and justice. Arguing that the ruler is the people's agent, not its master, he claimed that laws derived from the people's general will. Yet in preaching subservience to the impersonal state he came close to defining freedom as the recognition of necessity. Rousseau's powerful treatise expresses views on the rights, liberty and equality of all people. It remains a classic of political theory and one of the most influential works of abstract political thought in the Western tradition.

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Issues of Our Time)

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $8.30

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Ethics & Morality
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Political
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Globalization

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

Becoming Cosmopolitan 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

One of the most pernicious ideas has spung from the myth that we are necessarily separated and segregated into groups that are defined by criteria like gender, language, race, religion or some other kind of boundary. And it is easy to see that these boundaries are a major cause of conflict.

The author of this enthralling book - Kwame Anthony Appiah - challenges this kind of separative thinking by resurrecting the ancient philosophy of "cosmopolitanism." This school of thought that dates back almost 2500 years to the Cynics of Ancient Greece. They first articulated the cosmopolitan ideal that all human beings were citizens of the world. Later on, these ideas were elaborated by another group of philosophers: the Stoics.

According to Appiah, the influence of cosmopolitanism has stretched down the ages and through to the Enlightenment. He takes Immanuel Kant's notion of a League of Nations and the Declaration of the Rights of Man to be two manifestations of this ancient idea.

Appiah sees cosmopolitanism as a dynamic concept based on two fundamental ideas. First is the idea that we have responsibilities to others that are beyond those based on kinship or citizenship. Second is something often forgotten: just because other people have different customs and beliefs from ours, they will likely still have meaning and value. We may not agree with someone else, but mutual understanding should be a first goal.

The book is full of personal experiences. I doubt that anyone else could have written it: His mother was an English author and daughter of the statesman Sir Stafford Cripps, and his father a Ghanaian barrister and politician, who reminded his children to remember that they were "citizens of the world."

Appiah was educated in Ghana and England and has taught in both countries. He now holds a chair of Philosophy at Princeton. He is no starry eyed idealist, and he knows that differences between groups and nations cannot be wished away or ignored. But he contends, rightly, I think, that differences can be accepted without being allowed to become barriers.

As he says, "Cosmopolitans suppose that all cultures have enough overlap in their vocabulary of values to begin a conversation. But they don't suppose, like some Universalists, that we could all come to agreement if only we had the same vocabulary." The reason is simply this: most of us arrive at our values not on the basis of careful reasoning, but by lifelong conditioning and subjective beliefs and attitudes.

In parts of Europe, there have recently been misgivings about the growing diversity and multiculturalism of countries like the United Kingdom, with people asking whether it is doing no more than fracturing society. Appiah tackles this question head on. He has this to say, "If we want to preserve a wide range of human conditions because it allows free people the best chance to make their own lives, there is no place for the enforcement of diversity by trapping people within a kind of difference that they long to escape. There simply is no decent way to sustain those communities of difference that will not survive without the free allegiance of their members."

Cosmopolitanism, balances our "obligations to others" with the "value not just of human life but of particular human lives," what Appiah calls "universality plus difference." He remains skeptical about simple maxims for ethical behavior such as the Golden Rule. He swiftly demonstrates its failings as a moral precept. He argues that cosmopolitanism is the name not "of the solution but of the challenge."

This is an important book that will inevitably be controversial. In a world that is becoming more interconnected and shrinking by the day, and where the "clash of cultures" threatens our existence, Appiah has many new perspectives as he articulates a precise yet flexible ethical manifesto. He does not claim to have all the answers, but this book should be of interest to all of us as we try to make sense of the turmoil, challenges and opportunities of our globalizing world.

Editorial Review:

"A brilliant and humane philosophy for our confused age."—Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell

Kwame Anthony Appiah's landmark new work, featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, challenges the separatist doctrines espoused in books like Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. Reviving the ancient philosophy of "cosmopolitanism," a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence on the ethical legacies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Raised in Ghana, educated in England, and now a distinguished professor in the United States, Appiah promises to create a new era in which warring factions will finally put aside their supposed ideological differences and will recognize that the fundamental values held by all human beings will usher in a new era of global understanding.

A Conservative History of the American Left

Daniel J. Flynn

Amazon Price: $18.15 List Price: $27.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Crown Forum Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $12.97

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Political

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From Communes to the Clintons

Why does Hillary Clinton crusade for government-provided health care for every American, for the redistribution of wealth, and for child rearing to become a collective obligation? Why does Al Gore say that it’s okay to “over-represent” the dangers of global warming in order to sell Americans on his draconian solutions? Why does Michael Moore call religion a device to manipulate “gullible” Americans?

Where did these radical ideas come from? And how did they enter the mainstream discourse?

In this groundbreaking and compelling new book, Daniel J. Flynn uncovers the surprising origins of today’s Left. The first work of its kind, A Conservative History of the American Left tells the story of this remarkably resilient extreme movement–one that came to America’s shores with the earliest settlers.

Flynn reveals a history that leftists themselves ignore, whitewash, or obscure. Partly the Left’s amnesia is convenient: Who wouldn’t want to forget an ugly history that includes eugenics, racism, violence, and sheer quackery? Partly it is self-aggrandizing: Bold schemes sound much more innovative when you refuse to acknowledge that they have been tried–and have failed–many times before. And partly it is unavoidable: The Left is so preoccupied with its triumphal future that it doesn’t pause to learn from its past mistakes. So it goes that would-be revolutionaries have repeatedly failed to recognize the one troubling obstacle to their grandiose visions: reality.

In unfolding this history, Flynn presents a page-turning narrative filled with colorful, fascinating characters–progressives and populists, radicals and reformers, socialists and SDSers, and leftists of every other stripe. There is the rags-to-riches Welsh industrialist who brought his utopian vision to America–one in which private property, religion, and marriage represented “the most monstrous evils”–and gained audiences with the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison. There is the wife-swapping Bible thumper who nominated Jesus Christ for president. There is the playboy adventurer whose worshipful accounts of Soviet Russia lured many American liberals to Communism. There is the daughter of privilege turned violent antiwar activist who lost her life to a bomb she had intended to use against American soldiers. There are fanatics and free spirits, perverts and puritans, entrepreneurs and altruists, and many more beyond.

A Conservative History of the American Left is a gripping chronicle of the radical visionaries who have relentlessly pursued their lofty ambitions to remake society. Ultimately, Flynn shows the destructiveness that comes from this undying pursuit of dreams that are utterly unattainable.

Mein Kampf

Adolf Hitler

Amazon Price: $22.00 List Price: $22.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Mariner Books Amazon Marketplace: 76 new & used starting at $2.65

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Political

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 153 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The angry ranting of an obscure, small-party politician, the first volume of Mein Kampf was virtually ignored when it was originally published in 1925. Likewise the second volume, which appeared in 1926. The book details Hitler's childhood, the "betrayal" of Germany in World War I, the desire for revenge against France, the need for lebensraum for the German people, and the means by which the National Socialist party can gain power. It also includes Hitler's racist agenda and his glorification of the "Aryan" race. The few outside the Nazi party who read it dismissed it as nonsense, not believing that anyone could--or would--carry out its radical, terrorist programs. As Hitler and the Nazis gained power, first party members and then the general public were pressured to buy the book. By the time Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, the book stood atop the German bestseller lists. Had the book been taken seriously when it was first published, perhaps the 20th century would have been very different.

Beyond the anger, hatred, bigotry, and self-aggrandizing, Mein Kampf is saddled with tortured prose, meandering narrative, and tangled metaphors (one person was described as "a thorn in the eyes of venal officials"). That said, it is an incredibly important book. It is foolish to think that the Holocaust could not happen again, especially if World War II and its horrors are forgotten. As an Amazon.com reader has pointed out, "If you want to learn about why the Holocaust happened, you can't avoid reading the words of the man who was most responsible for it happening." Mein Kampf, therefore, must be read as a reminder that evil can all too easily grow. --Sunny Delaney

Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the College De France)

Michel Foucault

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Palgrave Macmillan Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $15.99

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Europe -> France -> General
Subjects -> History -> Europe -> France -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Social History

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Marking a major development in Foucault's thinking, this book derives from the lecture course which he gave at the Collège de France between January and April, 1978. Taking as his starting point the notion of "bio-power," introduced in his 1976 course Society Must be Defended, Foucault sets out to study the foundations of this new technology of power over population. Distinct from punitive, disciplinary systems, the mechanisms of power are here finely entwined with the technologies of security, and it is to 18th century developments of these technologies with which the first chapters of the book are concerned. By the fourth lecture however Foucault's attention turns, focusing on a history of "governmentality" from the first centuries of the Christian era to the emergence of the modern nation state. As Michel Sennelart explains in his afterword, the effect of this change of direction is to "shift the center of gravity of the lectures from the question of biopower to that of government, to such an extent that the former almost entirely eclipses the former ..." Consequently, in light of Foucault's later work, it is tempting to see these lectures as the moment of a radical turning point at which the transition to the problematic of the "government of self and others" would begin.

Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

Fredric Jameson

Amazon Price: $17.95 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Duke University Press Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $11.14

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Schools, Periods & Styles -> Modern
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Criticism & Theory -> Semiotics
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> History & Criticism -> Movements & Periods -> Postmodernism

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 3 out of 5 stars.
78 of 95 people found this review helpful.

The term, Postmodernism refers to the cultural and ideological configuration that is taken to have replaced or be replacing Modernity. New movements in architecture and the arts as well as social theories indicate a change from modernity to postmodernity.
Frederic Jameson, an American Marxist social theorist and the author of the book, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, draws the attentions to the differences in culture between the modern and postmodern periods. In order to explain his arguments, Jameson is specially interested in the fields of architecture, art and other cultural forms. He places the heaviest emphasis on architecture. In his article, Jameson's basic argument is that postmodernism is a dominant cultural form and that is indicative of late capitalism.
Jameson's article begins with the comparison of Van Gogh's painting to Warhol's. Jameson contrasts Van Gogh's painting with Warhol's "Diamond Dust Shoes," He refers to the former as the symptom of a typical "modernist" work and the latter as a prime example of a "postmodernist" one. His main assertion here is that cultures and production has experienced important changes and these changes must be accounted by even more significant changes in history . He focuses on these changes on the individual level in postmodern society and his main concern was the cultural expressions and aesthetics that is associated with the different systems of production.
Jameson suggests that postmodernism is differed from other cultural forms by its emphasis on fragmentation. He specially emphasizes on the term, fragmentation. For Jameson, the fragmentation of the subject replaces the alienation of the subject which characterized modernism. Postmodernism always deals with surface, not substance. There is no center, rather everything tends to be decentralized in postmodernism. Postmodernist works are often characterized by a lack of depth. According to Jameson, individuals are no longer anomic and anxious, because there is nothing from which an individual could cut his or her ties. The liberation from the anxiety that characterized anomie may also mean a liberation from other kind of feeling as well. For him, this is not to say that the cultural products of the postmodernism are devoid of feelings, but rather such feelings are now free-floating and impersonal.
Jameson defines the late capitalist age as a distinct period, which focuses on commodification and the recycling of old images and commodities. Jameson provides an example of Warhol's work, (Diamonds Dust Shoes) as well as Warhol himself. Jameson refers to this cultural recycling as historicism (the random cannibalization of all styles of the past.) It is an increasing primacy of the 'neo'(new) and a world was transformed into sheer images of itself. the actual organic tie of history to past events is being lost.
All of these cultural forms in art and architecture are indicative of postmodernism, late capitalism, or what Jameson calls present-day multinational capitalism. Jameson claims that there has been a radical shift in our surrounding material world and the ways, in which it works. He refers to an architectural example, a postmodern building Symbolic of the multinational world space which people function in daily. Jameson suggests that the human subjects who occupy this new space have not kept pace with the evolution which produced it. There has been a mutation in the object, yet we do not possesses the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace. Therein lies the source of our fragmentation as individuals.
Jameson also suggests that this latest mutation in space, postmodern hyperspace, (he provides the Bonaventura hotel as an example) has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world. This is the symbol and analogue of our inability at present to map the great global multinational and decentered communicational network in which people find themselves caught as individual subjects. He continues, we now live in a world where our daily life, our experiences, our cultural languages are dominated by categories of space rather than by categories of time, which was dominant in past eras. For Jameson, late capitalism aspires to a total space and a vastness of scale.
Jameson's argument in this article is that postmodernism is a dominant cultural form, not simply a style, and Jameson considers this dominant cultural form (postmodernism) as a sign of late capitalism. In explaining postmodernism as a dominant cultural form, he is specially concerned with the field of architecture, art and other cultural forms. Yet, as far as I have seen in this article, Jameson seems to emphases much more on the field of art and architecture than on social and political aspects of postmodernism. For example, he does not explicitly give much attention or interest to social theories such as poststructuralism, which is highly associated with postmodernism. Secondly, although the term, "Late-Capitalism" implies multinational capitalism, media-capitalism, the modern world system and postindustrial society, in the article he only talks about multinational capitalism and he neither explicitly touches nor sufficiently explains the terms like; modern world system and postindustrial society.
I would also like to commend on Jameson's style of writing, in the article, he produces sentences that sometimes can run more than half a page, I think this makes the article a little bit harder to read. Nevertheless, Jameson's article is worth to read since it stands as one of the best written books on postmodernism, besides it also offers detailed analyses of postmodernism and late capitalist age.
In conclusion, by his article -The cultural logic of late capitalism"- Jameson tries to argue that all of the characteristics of contemporary art, architecture and cultural forms reflect the structure of late capitalism as well as contemporary society - (i.e. domination by multinational corporations, the decline of national sovereignty). Moreover he argues that postmodernity is a part of the cultural logic of late capitalism and this is what brings about cultural fragmentation. Although, in this article, social, political and other aspects of postmodernism have not been emphasized as much as art, architecture, and cultural aspects of postmodern age have been, this article clearly explains the connection and relation between postmodernism as dominant cultural form and late capitalist age.

Editorial Review:

Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of “postmodernism.” Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low,” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.

Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right

Ann Coulter

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Three Rivers Press Amazon Marketplace: 137 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> History & Theory
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> Political Parties
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1236 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Liberals have been wrong about everything in the last half century," writes conservative pundit Ann Coulter, author of the bestselling anti-Clinton tome High Crimes and Misdemeanors. They've been especially wrong about Republicans, she writes. The bulk of Slander, in fact, is a well-documented brief dedicated to the proposition that most of the media despises anybody whose political opinions lie an inch to the right of the New York Times editorial page. This is hardly an original observation, though few have presented it with such verve. Coulter is the shock-jock of right-wing political commentary, able to dash off page after page of over-the-top but hilarious one-liners: "Liberals dispute slight reductions in the marginal tax rates as if they are trying to prevent Charles Manson from slaughtering baby seals." There's a certain amount of irony about an author who says "liberals prefer invective to engagement" also declaring, "The good part of being a Democrat is that you can commit crimes, sell out your base, bomb foreigners, and rape women, and the Democratic faithful will still think you're the greatest." But then carefully measured criticism never has been Coulter's shtick--or her appeal. Fans of Rush Limbaugh and admirers of Bernard Goldberg's Bias won't want to miss Slander. --John Miller

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt

Amazon Price: $12.92 List Price: $19.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvest Books Amazon Marketplace: 72 new & used starting at $7.81

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> History & Theory
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Unreadable 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I am sure that there are some important points made in this book, but its turgid prose is so difficult to understand, it is not worth the effort. It takes its place on my bookshelf next to Being and Nothingness. Next time you see it on someone's bookshelf, ask them to summarize it, or discuss what they thought of it. You will probably get a few uncomfortable looks.

Arendt's Opus Magnum 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Origins, an incredibly detailed analysis of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, shows Arendt's versatility in political thought. I have yet to see a political philosopher/thinker publish a work with this much depth to it, and I think it will be a long time before we see anything like it.

Many of the reviews here have done better justice to her legacy, so I will just say that if you are thinking twice about pursuing this work because of it's length, think three times.

Editorial Review:

Generally regarded as the definitive work on totalitarianism, this book is an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political movements. Arendt was one of the first to recognize that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were two sides of the same coin rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. “With the Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt emerges as the most original and profound-therefore the most valuable-political theoretician of our times” (New Leader). Index.

Guerrilla Warfare

Ernesto Che Guevara

Amazon Price: $8.99 List Price: $8.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: bnpublishing.com Amazon Marketplace: 23 new & used starting at $4.59

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> Central America -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> Central America -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> Military -> Strategy

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Don't buy this. 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 5 people found this review helpful.

You're better off going to the library and checking this one out there. I didn't care for this book at all. Only good as if you want to build your personal reference books library.

Insightful...yet seriouly outdated. 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Ernesto "Che" Guevera was the leader of a tin pot commie insurgency.
In this book it outlines how to gain followers for your cause,care and feeding of your guerillas, how to spread propoganda and how to use hit and run attacks againsted a large incompetent 3rd world military force.

This book could be useful for possibly an anarchy situation (causing one rather than surviving one) create your own communist mercenary group, or further reading for those in the middle class who read "Motorcycle Diaries" and value all of Che's "wisdom" ... zen master he is not.

I hope every terrorist reads this book and goes by it to the letter...The information is so hopelessly obsolete!

All good for the perspective terrorist or social misfit. For me as a former Soldier the only value this book had is showing the basic mindset of a common terrorist.

Knowing how our enemies think, makes it easier to defeat them. And rest assured we are killing scores of insurgents like Che on an hourly basis...and the terrorists are losing, believe me.

This book is the true companion of his other Magnum Opus "The Motorcycle Diaries"

In conclusion: You can get some useful yet obsolete info on how terrorists work but this is no Art of War.

More like the "The complete idiot's guide" version. Ernesto Che Guevara is a ovverated retard. Read for a good laugh.

Editorial Review:

This indispensable book includes three of Che Guevara’s most influential essays describing his tactical philosophy of fighting a guerrilla war in Latin America. Guerrilla Warfare, written in 1960, outlines Guevara’s doctrine for guerrilla fighters, especially against Caribbean-style dictatorships. In Guerrilla Warfare: A Method (1963) and Message to the Tricontinental (1967), Guevara modified some of his earlier tenets. These latter two works move away from his earlier dogmatism, suggesting that Marxist revolution was possible even in purportedly democratic regimes. All three essays reflect his deeply held belief that a small, rural-based guerrilla army could trigger a revolution.