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Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

Chalmers Johnson

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Total reviews: 96 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

If the 20th century was the American century, the 21st century may be a time of reckoning for the United States. Chalmers Johnson, an authority on Japan and its economy, offers a troubling prognosis of what's to come. Blowback--the title refers to a CIA neologism describing the unintended consequences of American activity--is a call for the United States to rethink its position in the world. "The evidence is building up that in the decade following the end of the Cold War, the United States largely abandoned a reliance on diplomacy, economic aid, international law, and multilateral institutions in carrying out its foreign policies and resorted much of the time to bluster, military force, and financial manipulation," writes Johnson. "The world is not a safer place as a result." Individual chapters focus on Okinawa (where American servicemen were accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in "Asia's last colony"), the two Koreas, China, and Japan. The result is a liberal-leaning (and Asia-centric) call for the United States to disengage from many of its global commitments. Critics will call Johnson an isolationist, but friends (perhaps admirers of Patrick Buchanan's A Republic, Not an Empire) will say he simply speaks good sense. All will agree he is an earnest voice: "I believe our very hubris ensures our undoing." --John J. Miller

Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration's War on American Values

Keith Olbermann

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Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Short, sharp, and oftentimes shocking, Keith Olbermann s Special Comments have made his nightly MSNBC program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, must-see viewing and the fastest-growing news show on cable TV. In these segments, Olbermann calls out the perpetrators of mismanagement, brutality, cronyism, and the appalling lack of accountability at the highest levels of the Bush administration. In so doing, Olbermann goes where most of the mainstream media fear to tread and his rapidly expanding audience eagerly follows.

In Truth and Consequences, Olbermann collects the best of his Special Comments, presented here with additional observations and other new material. Whether taking to task the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and (the thankfully former) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who compare critics of the Iraq War to Nazi appeasers, or giving his impassioned perspective on why torture is un-American and what it really means to support our troops, or grilling timid lawmakers who fail to rein in presidential overreach and abuses of executive power, Olbermann s devastatingly blunt (and at times wickedly funny) commentary cuts to the core of the duplicity and cynicism of a government that has lost the ability to distinguish between leading our great nation and ruling it.

Naturally, Keith Olbermann s candor and razor-sharp polemic have earned him many detractors and enemies. His antagonists in the media, such as Bill O Reilly, have mocked him and accused him of rank intolerance. Yes, Keith Olbermann is intolerant of hypocrisy, demagoguery, fear-mongering, and especially the equation of dissent with treason. In Truth and Consequences, he fights to reclaim for himself and all Americans the dignity of speaking one s mind and acting on one s conscience.

Praise for Keith Olbermann
A truth-telling, Bush-bashing accidental liberal hero.
New York

The most honest man in news . . . Olbermann clearly relishes his feuds and doesn t seem to worry much about sparking new ones.
Rolling Stone

Part Jon Stewart (the funny), Dennis Miller (the erudite and biting sub-references), [and] H. L. Mencken (the skewering of power and stupidity in equal doses) as well as crusading journalist . . . Olbermann has emerged as a kind of force of nature.
San Francisco Chronicle

Intelligent, well-read, forceful and incisive.
Rocky Mountain News

What's So Great about America

Dinesh D'Souza

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Total reviews: 236 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Look again at the title of this book: it's not a question, but a statement. "America is the greatest, freest, and most decent society in existence," writes Dinesh D'Souza. "American life as it is lived today [is] the best life that our world has to offer." There are those who hate it, or at least essential elements of it, from radical Islamists to the likes of Patrick Buchanan (on the right) and Jesse Jackson (on the left). But they are wrong to hate it, and D'Souza grapples with all of them in this engaging and compelling volume. D'Souza is the author of provocative books such as Illiberal Education and The End of Racism, plus the appreciative Ronald Reagan. This may be his most personal book, with parts written in the first person as the India-born D'Souza describes his encounter with the United States, first as an immigrant and now as a citizen. Foreign authors such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Gunnar Myrdal have offered some of the most penetrating assessments of America, and D'Souza clearly shares in this noble tradition. "I am constantly surprised by how much I hear racism talked about and how little I actually see it," he writes. What's So Great About America is also vintage D'Souza, full of feisty arguments and sharp humor. He is perhaps better at explaining why America's critics are wrong than explaining why America's celebrants are right, but he's very good at both. Written in the months following the September 11 terrorist strikes, this book should find a large and receptive audience. --John Miller

Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter

Rick Shenkman

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Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Politicians tell us constantly that they trust the wisdom of "The American People." New York Times best-selling author Rick Shenkman explains why we shouldn't--at least when it comes to politics.

Levees break in New Orleans. Iraq descends into chaos. The housing market teeters on the brink of collapse. Americans of all political stripes are heading into the 2008 election with the sense that something has gone terribly wrong with American politics. But what exactly?

Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats. Greedy corporate executives, rogue journalists, faulty voting machines, irresponsible defense contractors--we blame them, too. The only thing everyone seems to agree on, in fact, is that the American people are entirely blameless.

In Just How Stupid Are We?, best-selling historian and renowned myth-buster Rick Shenkman takes aim at our great national piety: the wisdom of the American people. The hard truth is that American democracy is more direct than ever--but voters are misusing, abusing, and abdicating their political power. Americans are paying less and less attention to politics at a time when they need to pay much more: Television has dumbed politics down to the basest possible level, while the real workings of politics have become vastly more complicated.

Shenkman offers concrete proposals for reforming our institutions--the government, the media, civic organizations, political parties--to make them work better for the American people. But first, Shenkman argues, we must reform ourselves.

Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project)

Chalmers Johnson

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Total reviews: 73 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A New York Times bestseller, Nemesis is Chalmers Johnson’s “fiercest book—and his best” (Andrew J. Bacevich)

In his prophetic book Blowback, Chalmers Johnson linked the CIA’s clandestine activities abroad to disaster at home. In The Sorrows of Empire, he explored the ways in which the growth of American militarism and the garrisoning of the planet have jeopardized our stability. In Nemesis, the bestselling and final volume in what has become known as the Blowback Trilogy, he shows how imperial overstretch is undermining the republic itself, both economically and politically.

Delving into new areas—from plans to militarize outer space to Constitution-breaking presidential activities at home and the devastating corruption of a toothless Congress—Nemesis offers a striking description of the trap into which the reckless ambitions of America’s leaders have taken us. Johnson confronts questions of pressing urgency: What are the unintended consequences of our dependence on a permanent war economy? What does it mean when a nation’s main intelligence organization becomes the president’s secret army? Or when the globe’s sole “hyperpower” becomes the greatest hyper-debtor of all times?

Writing “as if the very existence of the nation is at stake” (San Francisco Chronicle), Johnson offers his most “bracing” and “important” (Los Angeles Times) exploration of the crisis facing America.

The Federalist Papers (Penguin Classics)

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay

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Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fascinating...For the Right Person 5 out of 5 stars.
17 of 22 people found this review helpful.

You don't need to be told that the Federalist Papers are not for everyone, but for a niche audience of which I happen to be a member. And so, the qualifications: you need to have a pretty fluent command of the English language, and not just modern usage but also more archaic structure and vocabulary; you have to have a good grasp of history, at least a rough outline of it solidly in mind; you have to have a love for politics, political science and the Constitution.

If all of that is true of you, you'll probably enjoy reading this. At least, to a point. The Federalist Papers, written mainly by "Father of the Constitution" James Madison and "Shot by Aaron Burr/Closet-Monarchist" Alexander Hamilton, is a very lengthy defense of the then-proposed Constitution, point by point. And what I mean is, they will take items over which there could be seemingly no substantial debate and then write a series of three or four essays on that point. And so, it is possible that even the die-hard history/political science buff will be bored by the thirtieth page of the debate over whether standing armies should be allowed to be kept during peace time.

The most laugh-out-loud moment (and yeah, there are a few) is when the "Interstate Commerce clause" is dismissed in a slip of a paragraph, which is, of course, one of the most important and controversial passages to the modern reading of the Constitution, forming the basis for a good deal of our current legislation. Whatever one feels about our current "construction" of the Constitution, I think a fair reading of the literature will show that it is not the same construction as that of its authors.

Not laugh-out-loud at all, however, is the roaring silence on the subject of slavery. It does come up, from time to time, but the lack of debate on these matters (there are, maybe, 2-3 pages on the 3/5 compromise and a paragraph on the ending of the slave trade) proclaims the volatility of the subject matter, even 100 years before the Civil War. Madison wasn't looking to offend his audience, after all.

Of course, all of these debates are mostly moot (with a couple of exceptions) and so the Federalist Papers are largely a historical artifact... but there is something very telling about them. That is, how incredibly learned, intelligent and eloquent our Founding Fathers really were. They debate calling on historical antiquity, philosophies ancient and modern, then-current foreign political systems, the Constitutions of the several states and the Articles of Confederation. These people knew what they were doing and it all mattered to them, very much. It's kind of sobering to see with what care and deliberation they forged this Constitution, and then to compare it with the "guardians of the flame" today who can't even seem to agree on the meaning of terms like "liberty," "democracy," or, in the case of one former President, "is." When reading, you'll wish we had Madisons and Hamiltons today, or even politicians who bothered to read them... or, maybe we do, but the general level of care and education of our country today does not allow men such as those to rise. The Federalist Papers is an interesting insight into the incredibly well-thought-out origins of our country.

Editorial Review:

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren ... should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties." So wrote John Jay, one of the revolutionary authors of The Federalist Papers, arguing that if the United States was truly to be a single nation, its leaders would have to agree on universally binding rules of governance--in short, a constitution. In a brilliant set of essays, Jay and his colleagues Alexander Hamilton and James Madison explored in minute detail the implications of establishing a kind of rule that would engage as many citizens as possible and that would include a system of checks and balances. Their arguments proved successful in the end, and The Federalist Papers stand as key documents in the founding of the United States.

Plan of Attack

Bob Woodward

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The 2003 American invasion of Iraq was contentious, not just in the arena of global public opinion, but within the tight-lipped world of the George W. Bush White House. As Bob Woodward reveals in Plan of Attack, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were part of a group leading the charge to war while Secretary of State Colin Powell, General Tommy Franks, and others actively questioned the plan to invade a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks while war in Afghanistan was still being waged. Woodward gained extensive access to dozens of key figures and enjoyed hours of direct contact with the President himself (more time, seemingly, than former Bush administration officials Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill claim to have had). As a result, he's able to cite the kind of gossip you won't find in a White House press release: Franks calls Pentagon official Douglas Feith "the f*cking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," Powell shares his alarm over how the cautious Cheney of the first Bush administration had transformed into a zealot, and Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar seems to enjoy significantly more entrée and influence than most anyone would have thought. Bush is shown as a man intent on toppling Saddam Hussein in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and never really wavering in his decision despite offering hints that non-military solutions could be achieved. Light is also shed on CIA director George Tenet, who insists that the evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was "a slam dunk" only to later admit that his intelligence was flawed when months of post-war searches turned up nothing. But the book's most interesting character is Powell. A former soldier himself, who finds himself increasingly at odds with the agenda of the administration, Powell rejects evidence on WMDs that he sees as spurious but ultimately endorses the invasion effort, apparently out of duty. Upon its publication, the Bush administration roundly denied many of the accounts in the book that demonstrated conflict within their circles, poor judgment, or lousy planning, but the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign nonetheless listed Plan of Attack as recommended reading. And it is. It shows alarming problems in the way the war was conceived and planned, but it also demonstrates the tremendous conviction and dedication of the people who decided to carry it out. --John Moe

The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire

Matt Taibbi

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Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A REVELATORY AND DARKLY COMIC ADVENTURE THROUGH A NATION ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN—FROM THE HALLS OF CONGRESS TO THE BASES OF BAGHDAD TO THE APOCALYPTIC CHURCHES OF THE HEARTLAND


Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush’s America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
Matt discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off—or radicalized—by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders (“they hate us for our freedom”) that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.
Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures: The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places.
Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

Ted Conover

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Total reviews: 103 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Most people know it's easier to get into prison than it is to get out. But for a journalist, just getting into Sing Sing, New York's notorious maximum-security prison, isn't easy. In fact, Ted Conover was so stymied by official channels that he took the only way in--other than crime--and became a New York State corrections officer: "I wanted to hear the voices one truly never hears, the voices of guards--those on the front lines of our prison policies, the society's proxies." Newjack is Conover's account of nearly a year at ground zero of the criminal justice system. What it reveals is a mix of the obvious and the absurd, with hypocrisies not unexpected considering that the land of the free shares with Russia the distinction of having the world's largest prison population. As of December 1999, it was projected that the number of people incarcerated in the United States would reach 2 million in 2000.

This is the world Conover enters when he, along with other new recruits, undergoes seven weeks of pseudomilitary preparation at the Albany Training Academy. Then it's off to Sing Sing for the daily grind of prison life. Conover correctly and vividly captures the essence of that life, its tedium interspersed with the adrenaline rush of an "incident" and the edge of fear that accompanies every action. He also details how the guards experience their own feelings of confinement, often at the hands of the inmates:

A consequence of putting men in cells and controlling their movements is that they can do almost nothing for themselves. For their various needs they are dependent on one person, their gallery officer. Instead of feeling like a big, tough guard, the gallery officer at the end of the day often feels like a waiter serving a hundred tables or like the mother of a nightmarishly large brood of sullen, dangerous, and demanding children. When grown men are infantilized, most don't take to it too nicely.

And not taking to it nicely often involves violence. Indeed, the constant potential for violence on any scale makes even humdrum assignments dangerous. It's astonishing that more doesn't happen, given that the majority of the 1,800 inmates have been convicted of violent felonies: murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, assault, kidnapping, burglary, arson. But beneath the simmering rage rests an unexpected sensitivity that Conover captures brilliantly. After encountering a Hispanic inmate with a tattoo of a heartbreaking passage from The Diary of Anne Frank on his back, he writes: "It was easier to stay incurious as an officer. Under the inmates' surface bluster, their cruelty and selfishness, was almost always something ineffably sad." Ultimately, the emphasis of Conover's work is on the toll prison exacts--most immediately on the jailed and their jailers, but also on a society that puts both there in increasing numbers. --Gwen Bloomsburg

American Government: Power and Purpose, Tenth Brief Edition

Theodore J. Lowi, Benjamin Ginsberg, Kenneth A. Shepsle

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Editorial Review:

American Government, Brief Tenth Edition, is the only brief text that offers an analytical approach, comprehensive coverage of the core concepts and major topics of American politics, and lots of pedagogical help for students.