General Books - Page 14

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.

Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America

Laurie Kaye Abraham

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Mama Might Be Better Off Dead is an unsettling, profound look at the human face of health care. Both disturbing and illuminating, it immerses readers in the lives of four generations of a poor, African-American family beset with the devastating illnesses that are all too common in America's inner-cities.

The story takes place in North Lawndale, a neighborhood that lies in the shadows of Chicago's Loop. Although surrounded by some of the city's finest medical facilities, North Lawndale is one of the sickest, most medically underserved communities in the country. Headed by Jackie Banes, who oversees the care of a diabetic grandmother, a husband on kidney dialysis, an ailing father, and three children, the Banes family contends with countless medical crises. From visits to emergency rooms and dialysis units, to trials with home care, to struggles for Medicaid eligibility, Abraham chronicles their access (or lack of access) to medical care.

Told sympathetically but without sentimentality, their story reveals an inadequate health care system that is further undermined by the direct and indirect effects of poverty. When people are poor, they become sick easily. When people are sick, their families quickly become poorer.

Embedded in the family narrative is a lucid analysis of the gaps, inconsistencies, and inequalities the poor face when they seek health care. This book reveals what health care policies crafted in Washington, D. C. or state capitals look like when they hit the street. It shows how Medicaid and Medicare work and don't work, the Catch-22s of hospital financing in the inner city, the racial politics of organ transplants, the failure of childhood immunization programs, the vexed issues of individual responsibility and institutional paternalism. One observer puts it this way: "Show me the poor woman who finds a way to get everything she's entitled to in the system, and I'll show you a woman who could run General Motors."

Abraham deftly weaves these themes together to make a persuasive case for health care reform while unflinchingly presenting the complexities that will make true reform as difficult as it is necessary. Mama Might Be Better Off Dead is a book with the power to change the way health care is understood in America. For those seeking to learn what our current system of health care promises and what it delivers, it offers a place for the debate to begin.

Rise to Globalism

Stephen Ambrose, Douglas Brinkley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent overview of U.S. foreign policy since 1938 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This is a great book for those looking to understand the United States' position in the world today. Ambrose and Brinkley are two critically acclaimed authors who have an excellent grasp on America in the 20th century.

The current edition of the book covers the period from 1938 to the first Clinton administration. The authors provide a good explanation of all major military conflicts and foreign policy decisions the U.S. made during those years. Note, however, that this book only covers U.S. foreign policy and deals very little with domestic policy and events. Ambrose and Brinkley do an excellent job connecting major themes in American foreign policy, such as containment and the Truman Doctrine, to the actions Presidents and Secretaries of State and Defense made.

The book is an excellent overview for casual readers and historians looking to understand American foreign policy over the last sixty years. Sentences are kept brief and to the point. The chapters flow with a good narration of events and in a chronological order. Ambrose and Brinkley, while not providing a bibliography, do provide some good suggestions for further reading. Overall, this is an excellent starting point for casual historians and students of modern U.S. history concerned with foreign policy.

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Man, Animal -- Manimal! 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This essay was Rousseaus's submission to the Academy of Dijon contest, entitled, "Has the progress of the arts and sciences contributed more to the corruption or purification of morals?".

This text is his story about Nature, and Society, and the scandal that happens when people come together, build, divide, dance, sing, and compare themselves with one another. In many ways, it is his answer to the problem of evil.

Natural man is, in many ways, good, because his needs are immediately felt and immediately fulfilled. Social man begins to compete, to hoard, and to use cunning to enslave his fellows, to gain their esteem, take their property, and sometimes their lives.

His picture of the natural man is half what we think of an "animal" and half the "human" that we recognize in ourselves. He shifts his description as the flow of arguement dictates. The habitual provocateur, Rousseau - watch him!

In a way, he is rewriting the Christian "Creation Myth". In his version, evil does not originate at that moment when man eats the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" --to "be like God"; it happens when Adam wants a better apple than Eve's got for herself. Before society develops as we know it, Adam would have been fine with just a pear.

Editorial Review:

In Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau argues that inequalities of rank, wealth, and power are the inevitable result of the civilizing process. His sweeping account of humanity's social and political development epitomizes the innovative boldness of the Enlightenment, and it is one of the most provocative and influential works of the eighteenth century. This new translation by prize-winning translator Franklin Philip includes all of Rousseau's own notes, and Patrick Coleman's introduction builds on recent key scholarship, considering particularly the relationship between political and aesthetic thought.

Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know is Wrong

John Stossel

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Total reviews: 241 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now in paperback: The major national bestseller that the New York Times says "tosses sand on liberal sacred cows"John Stossel -- award-winning journalist, tireless consumer-rights crusader, and anchor of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20 -- has built his reputation on his willingness to debunk conventional wisdom, no matter the source. In his latest New York Times bestseller, which has sold more than 200,000 copies in hardcover, he busts the myths, lies, and downright stupidity clogging media outlets on all sides of the spectrum. Taking a shovel to the heaps of misinterpretations and outright mistakes passing for "fact" these days, Stossel proves:--That contrary to popular belief, Americans have more free time now than ever before; --How DDT could actually save millions of lives annually, if only we hadn't been wrongly convinced it caused cancer; --That Republicans don't shrink government -- they expand it; --Why bottled water is a rip-off (hint: not only doesn't it taste better than tap, it's no healthier either!); --How "defective product" lawsuits end up depriving us of safer products; --Why it's okay to marry your cousin; --And much, much more.Bursting with facts, sharp insights, and plain old common sense, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity is a modern muckraking classic.

A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments (American Ideals & Institutions)

Robert H. Bork

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Since at least 1971, when he published a seminal article on constitutional interpretation in the Indiana Law Journal, Robert Bork has been the legal and moral conscience of America, reminding us of our founding principles and their cultural foundation. The scourge of liberal ideologues both before and after Ronald Reagan nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1987, Bork has for fifty years unwaveringly exposed—and explained—the hypocrisy and dereliction of duty endemic among our nation’s elites, the politicization and adversary activism of our courts, and the consequent degradation of American society.

Now, for the first time, Judge Bork has gathered together his most important and prophetic writings in A Time to Speak, including a foreword and commentary by the author. The volume includes more than sixty vintage Bork contributions on topics ranging from President Nixon to St. Thomas More, from abortion to antitrust policy, and from civil liberties to natural law. It also includes several of his judicial opinions and transcribed oral arguments. A Time to Speak is an indispensable book for all who have harkened to the truths spoken so forthrightly, in season and out, by this great American original.

International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues (9th Edition) (MyPoliSciKit Series)

Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Extremely Informative 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 13 people found this review helpful.

A must read for any new-comer to the subject of international relations. Topics covered are varied and relevant. Very applicable to today's world.

Philosophy in disguise 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 13 people found this review helpful.

To say that this book is somewhat impenetrable is a bit like saying space is slightly chilly. There certainly are foundational theories that need to be explored in IR, but this book approaches it in the most condescending and repellent way possible. If you enjoy overly-complex, and self-aggrandizing prose, definitely pick one up. If not, there are likely better sources for this material.

Editorial Review:

Edited by two of the most respected international relations scholars, International Politics places contemporary essays alongside classics to survey the field’s diverse voices, concepts, and issues. Challenging students to use original scholarship to recognize and analyze patterns in world politics, this bestselling reader considers how to effectively understand politics under governments and beyond. Carefully edited selections cover the most essential topics and are put into conversation with each other to illustrate fundamental debates and differing points of view. Comprehensive and engaging, International Politics offers the best overview of the discipline as well as the forces shaping the world today.

This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

Barbara Ehrenreich

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

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America in the ’aughts—hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by the bestselling social critic hailed as “the soul mate”* of Jonathan Swift

Barbara Ehrenreich’s first book of satirical commentary, The Worst Years of Our Lives, about the Reagan era, was received with bestselling acclaim. The one problem was the title: couldn’t some prophetic fact-checker have seen that the worst years of our lives—far worse—were still to come? Here they are, the 2000s, and in This Land Is Their Land, Ehrenreich subjects them to the most biting and incisive satire of her career.

Taking the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory, Ehrenreich finds lurid extremes all around. While members of the moneyed elite can buy congressmen, many in the working class can barely buy lunch. While a wealthy minority obsessively consumes cosmetic surgery, the poor often go without health care for their children. And while the corporate C-suites are now nests of criminality, the less fortunate are fed a diet of morality, marriage, and abstinence. Ehrenreich’s antidotes are as sardonic as they are spot-on: pet insurance for your kids; Salvation Army fashions for those who can no longer afford Wal-Mart; and boundless rage against those who have given us a nation scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty.

Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation show once again that Ehrenreich is, as Molly Ivins said, “good for the soul.”

—*The Times (London)

J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

John Stuart Mill

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The great defender of individual liberty 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

John Stuart Mill, 1806-73, worked for the East India Co. helped run Colonial India from England. Minister of Parliament 1865-68 he served one term. Maiden speech was a disaster his second was great success. He was first MP to propose that women should be given the vote on equal footing with the men who could vote. He got 1/3 support, England gives franchise to women after U.S. He was a great Feminist, his essay "Subjection of Women" is written with great passion and prose. It was a brave position for him to take he was ridiculed for it. He favored democracy, and letting more men from lower classes the right to vote, but believed that people that are more educated should have more votes then less educated because they would make better decisions about what government should do. He would have wanted to extend education to the masses, so that all may have gotten 2-3 votes and so on. He didn't think it should be extended to where a small elite could carry the day on votes. The idea was that if the working class, and middle class, where divided on an issue, the people with more intelligence would have the power to tip the balance. Mill thought that people with more education would probably not only be better able to make political decisions, especially in terms of intellectually being able to see what would be best for the government to do, but that they would also be more concerned about the common good publicly then people in general. He was intensely educated by his father James. John could read Greek, and Latin at 6 yrs.; his Dad tutored him at home. Dad thought environment was everything. He was treated like an adult, never played games with kids; he had a very cerebral upbringing. He had a period of depression in his twenties, it changed his philosophy, and he recognized the importance of developing feelings along with the intellect, this is something that he stressed in his work. He read poetry to get out of depression; he became devoted to poetry and became a romantic. He fell in love with a married woman Harriet Taylor, was a platonic relationship, after her husband's death they married 3 years later and probably never consummated the marriage maybe due to his having syphilis. His dedication to "On Liberty" is to her, very devoted to each other. Both buried together in Avignon France where they used to vacation.

Mill as a moral theorist subscribed to a theory we call Utilitarianism. It means---In some way morality is about the maximization of happiness. Whether actions are right or wrong depends on how happiness can be most effectively maximized. I say in some way, because there are allot of different kinds of Utilitarians. Allot of different ways of saying exactly how it is the maximization of happiness comes into morality. Therefore, happiness is clearly an important idea for Utilitarians. Mill has a hedonistic view of happiness, he thinks that happiness can be defined in terms of "pleasure in the absence of pain." What is distinctive about Mill in this area is that he believes that some kinds of pleasure are better than others are, and add more to a person's happiness than other kinds of pleasures. He believes in what he calls, "higher quality pleasures." These are pleasures, he says, that we get from the exercise of faculties that only human beings happen to have. So the intellect, imagination, the moral feelings, these are the sources of higher quality pleasures people use. His view seems to be that a certain quantity of intellectual pleasure just adds more to your happiness, and a given quantity of some lower pleasure like a kind we would share with the animals such as sensation, taste, sexual pleasure, etc. His "higher quality pleasures" in a way echo Aristotle's ethics. The idea of those things that make us distinctly human that are the real key to our happiness, that is in Mill also. It is not as limited to reason and intellect as Aristotle thinks. Mill recognizes the importance of the appreciation of beauty, aesthetic pleasure, and moral pleasure. He frankly owes a debt to Aristotle that he never properly acknowledges, never gives him proper credit.

"On Liberty" is Mill's is his most widely read and enduring work. It is an indispensable essay on political thought, which strenuously argues for individual liberty. He is defending what he calls the "liberty principle." It is a principle that guarantees individuals quite a bit of personal freedom. "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." These quoted sentences in John Stuart Mill's book, "On Liberty," embody the crux of his argument; that the power of the state must intrude as little as possible on the liberty of its citizenry. In essence, Mill was against using the power of the state through its lawmaking apparatus to compel citizens to conduct themselves in ways that society deems moral or appropriate. Mill thought that people had not only a right, but also a duty to develop their intellectual faculties, which is indispensable to maximize their happiness. He believed that society improved for all its citizens when they where left unfettered to the maximum extent possible, allowing them to use their imagination and intellect to improve themselves. Mill postulates a theory that societies usually institute laws based primarily on "personal preference" of its citizenry instead of established principles. This lack of clarity of opinion often leads to the government frequently interfering in the lives of its citizens unnecessarily. For Mill, there are very few times when the state can infringe on the personal liberty of others. Firstly, the state has the right to promulgate laws that prevent a person's actions from harming others. Secondly, the state must protect those citizens who are not mature enough to protect themselves, such as children. Thirdly, he exempts, "... backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage." In Mill's view, immature societies need a benevolent leader to rule them until they have developed to a point where they, "... have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion ..." Mill said this third exemption did not apply to any of the countries in Europe. Mill believed that forced morality by the state on its citizen's liberties was destructive to their inward development, and could even lead to a violent reaction by them against the government.


There are different parts of his defense of this, different arguments that he gives. He has a long chapter on freedom of speech and press. He has some very specific reasons why he thinks those freedoms are important. Always in the background for Mill is the idea of development, and making it possible for more people to enjoy these higher quality pleasures. How do we help people develop their distinctly human faculties, in ways that will help them enjoy their higher quality pleasures? Because for him that is the way, we maximize the total amount of happiness that is enjoyed in the world, and that is the object of morality as far as he is concerned. Utilitarianists believe that maximizing happiness is ultimately, what morality is all about. That does not mean maximizing your own happiness that means maximizing the total amount of happiness that is enjoyed, not only by yourself but also by everybody else as well.

Roger Kimball, in his book "Experiments Against Reality" wrote, "On Liberty" was published in 1859, coincidentally the same year as "On the Origin of Species." Darwin's book has been credited--and blamed--for all manner of moral and religious mischief. But in the long run "On Liberty" may have effected an even greater revolution in sentiment.

I read this book for a graduate class in Philosophy. Recommended reading for anyone interested in philosophy, political science, and history.

Editorial Review:

John Stuart Mill is one of the few indisputably classic authors in the history of political thought. On Liberty, first published in 1851, has become celebrated as the most powerful defense of the freedom of the individual and it is now widely regarded as the most important theoretical foundation for Liberalism as a political creed. Similarly, his The Subjection of Women, a powerful indictment of the political, social, and economic position of women, has become one of the cardinal documents of modern feminism. This edition brings together these two classic texts, plus Mill's posthumous Chapters on Socialism, his somewhat neglected examination of the strengths and weaknesses of various forms of Socialism. The Editor's substantial Introduction places these three works in the context both of Mill's life and of nineteenth-century intellectual and political history, and assesses their continuing relevance.

The Worst Person In the World: And 202 Strong Contenders

Keith Olbermann

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Amazon.com Exclusive Video

The stinkers, the rascals, the reprobates. . . and the just plain dumb.

(Yes, Bill, he's talking about you.)

Geraldo Rivera. The Coca-Cola Company. Victoria Gotti. Tom Cruise. Various members of the Bush administration. All have earned the dishonor of "Worst Person in the World," awarded by MSNBC's witty and controversial reporter Keith Olbermann on his nightly MSNBC show Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Now, he brings all his bronze, silver, and gold medalists together in this wildly entertaining collection that reveals just how twisted people can be—and how much fun it is to call them out on it.

From tongue-in-cheek observations to truly horrific accounts, Olbermann skewers both the mighty and the meek, the well-known and the anonymous for their misdeeds, including:

Ann Coulter, for, among other things, calling Muslims "ragheads" in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington

Barbara Bush, for making a generous donation to the Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund earmarked exclusively for the purchase of computer software . . . software sold by her son, Neil

The staff of Your World with Neil Cavuto, for the story about the murders of Iraqi civilians that was accompanied by the on-screen graphic: "All-out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?"

Olbermann also reports on some of the recent fallout from his awards, such as the controversy with John Gibson and the mysterious disappearance of remarks about Cindy Sheehan on Rush Limbaugh's Web site. Plus, he reveals the winner of the most coveted award of all: "Worst in Show."

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