General Books - Page 2

America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

Mark Steyn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 502 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Where are the babies? Steyn knows... 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Whether you like the author or not (I do), and whether you dislike his dry wit or not (I'm all about it), you're going to have a hard time disagreeing with his main point: much of what will be decided in the world in terms of Islam has already been decided by birth rate. Many countries aren't producing enough babies to replace themselves, and they need immigrants in order to pay for their lavish social programs. Those immigrants, especially in Europe, are (a) most often Muslim, and (b) often very uninterested in doing anything other than recreating their respective countries in their god's image.

That being said, Steyn is able to tell this story with ample statistical and parenthetical examples of his claims along with the ability to predict the future by simply observing the present. It's a thought-provoking read, and it's certainly one worth considering.

Editorial Review:

It's the end of the world as we know it. Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer of a muezzin. Europeans already do. Liberals tell us that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, while the Supreme Court decides that sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious and provocative columnist Mark Steyn shows to devastating effect in this, his first book on American and global politics.

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Steve Coll

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Total reviews: 143 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the managing editor of the Washington Post, a news-breaking account of the CIA's involvement in the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and gave rise to bin Laden's al Qaeda.

For nearly the past quarter century, while most Americans were unaware, Afghanistan has been the playing field for intense covert operations by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies-invisible wars which sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks and which provide its context. From the Soviet invasion in 1979 through the summer of 2001, the CIA, KGB, Pakistan's ISI, and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department all operated directly and secretly in Afghanistan. They primed Afghan factions with cash and weapons, secretly trained guerrilla forces, funded propaganda, and manipulated politics. In the midst of these struggles bin Laden conceived and then built his global organization.

Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll tells the secret history of the CIA's role in Afghanistan, from its covert program against Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989, to the rise of the Taliban and the emergence of bin Laden, to the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998. Based on extensive firsthand accounts, Ghost Warsok is the inside story that goes well beyond anything previously published on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. It chronicles the roles of midlevel CIA officers, their Afghan allies, and top spy masters such as Bill Casey, Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al Faisal, and George Tenet. And it describes heated debates within the American government and the often poisonous, mistrustful relations between the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies.

Ghost Wars answers the questions so many have asked since the horrors of September 11: To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail?

An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems

Glenn Beck

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Total reviews: 444 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

FUNNY. OUTRAGEOUS. TRUE.

Have you ever wondered why some of the biggest problems we face, from illegal immigration to global warming to poverty never seem to get fixed? The reason is simple: the solutions just aren't very convenient. Fortunately, radio and television host Glenn Beck doesn't care much about convenience, he cares about common sense.

Take the issue of poverty, for example. Over the last forty years, America's ten poorest cities all had one simple thing in common, but self-serving politicians will never tell you what that is (or explain how easy it would be to change): Glenn Beck will. Global warming is another issue that's ripe with lies and distortion. How many times have you heard that carbon dioxide is responsible for huge natural disasters that have killed millions of people? The truth is, it's actually the other way around: as CO2 has increased, deaths from extreme weather have decreased. Bet you'll never see that in an Al Gore slideshow. An Inconvenient Book contains hundreds of these same "why have I never heard that before?" type of facts that will leave you wondering how political correctness, special interests, and outright stupidity have gotten us so far away from the common sense solutions this country was built on.

As the host of a nationally syndicated radio program and a prime-time television show on CNN, Headline News, Glenn Beck combines a refreshing level of honesty with a biting sense of humor and a lot of research to find solutions that will open your eyes while entertaining you along the way.

The Conscience of a Liberal

Paul Krugman

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Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"The most consistent and courageous—and unapologetic—liberal partisan in American journalism." —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books

In this "clear, provocative" (Boston Globe) New York Times bestseller, Paul Krugman, today's most widely read economist, examines the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age and the 1920s to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense economic and political inequality since the 1970s. Seeking to understand both what happened to middle-class America and what it will take to achieve a "new New Deal," Krugman has created his finest book to date, a "stimulating manifesto" offering "a compelling historical defense of liberalism and a clarion call for Americans to retake control of their economic destiny" (Publishers Weekly).

"As Democrats seek a rationale not merely for returning to power, but for fundamentally changing—or changing back—the relationship between America's government and its citizens, Mr. Krugman's arguments will prove vital in the months and years ahead." —Peter Beinart, New York Times

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)

F. A. Hayek

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century.

With this new edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek.  The volume includes a foreword by series editor and leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and publishing history and assessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's thought.  Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references and added helpful new explanatory notes.  Supplemented with an appendix of related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will be the definitive version of Friedrich Hayek's enduring masterwork.

Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works

Newt Gingrich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 83 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Jam packed with documented, accurate information! A MUST read for ALL Americans. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I bought the audio version because I drive a ton for my job. I cannot stop listening to this book. I learn something new every time. It is amazing how informative it is. Newt is smart. He knows his stuff. His theories on government are based on facts and they just make sense. Wow, why doesn't this guy run for President? Before buying this book I wasn't really into politics but now I can't help but get involved. More Americans need to be educated on what it means to live in a democracy and that government is not the answer to all our problems. We have been preconditioned to believe so. "We" are not government and government does not have the power and should not have the power to make decisions that are blatantly the opposite of what the majority of Americans want. We are the people!

Editorial Review:

What will take us from the world that fails to the world that works? Real change---the kind of change that happens when politicians drop their own agendas and respond to the will of the people. Newt Gingrich shows us how we can make real change a reality.

Culture Warrior

Bill O'Reilly

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Total reviews: 494 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

With three straight #1 bestsellers and more than 4 million copies of his books in print, the most powerful traditional force in the American media now takes off his gloves in the ongoing struggle for America’s heart and soul.

Bill O’Reilly is the very embodiment of the idea of a Culture Warrior—and in this book he lives up to the title brilliantly, with all the brashness and forthrightness at his command. He sees that America is in the midst of a fierce culture war between those who embrace traditional values and those who want to change America into a “secular-progressive” country. This is a conflict that differs in many ways from the usual liberal/conservative divide, but it is no less heated, and the stakes are even higher.
In Culture Warrior, Bill O’Reilly defines this war and analyzes the competing philosophies of the traditionalist and secular-progressive camps. He examines why the nation’s motto “E Pluribus Unum” (“From Many, One”) might change to “What About Me?”; dissects the forces driving the secular-progressive agenda in the media and behind the scenes, including George Soros, George Lakoff, and the ACLU; and dives into matters of race, education, and the war on terror. He also shows how the culture war has played out in such high-profile instances as The Passion of the Christ, Fahrenheit 9/11, the abuse epidemic (child and otherwise), and the embattled place of religion in public life—with special emphasis on the war against Christmas. Whatever controversies are roiling the nation, he fearlessly confronts them—and no one will be in the dark about which side he’s on.
Culture Warrior showcases Bill O’Reilly at his most eloquent and impassioned. He is an unrelenting fighter for the soul of America, and in this book he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long.

Machiavelli The Prince (Crofts Classics)

Niccolo Machiavelli

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Total reviews: 284 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Poor Translation 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This review was submitted on the web page presenting Mansfield's translation.

I have been using Wootton's translation of The Prince in a university program where the texts are set by the faculty. This year we changed to the Mansfield translation and I've requested that we return to Wootton's.

In his attempt to provide an "accurate" translation of the Italian, Mansfield made the mistake of many translators in overlooking the clarity of his English prose.

For example, where Wootton writes, "he increased the strength of one of the most powerful Italian states," Mansfield writes, "he . . . increased the power of a power in Italy." (15) There are other odd uses of diction in Mansfield, for example, where Wootton speaks of a "founder," Mansfield uses the word "introducer." (23) And though concise in places, Mansfield has a tendency to write long sentences, perhaps in imitation of the Italian, where Wootton is more to the point.

If you're still not convinced, compare the following passages:

Wootton: "So, too, with those who, having been private citizens, were made emperors of Rome because they had corrupted the soldiers. Such rulers are entirely dependent on the goodwill and good fortune of whoever has given them power. Good will and good fortune are totally unreliable and capricious."

Mansfield: ". . . as also those emperors were made who from private individual [sic] attained the empire through corrupting soldiers. These persons rest simply on the will and fortune of whoever has given a state to them, which are two very inconstant and unstable things."

Editorial Review:

What makes this well-annotated translation stand out from others is an insightful introduction by editor Thomas G. Bergin--especially helpful for achieving a better understanding of the times and the political scene in which Machiavelli worked, lived, and wrote. Also included are a list of important dates in Machiavelli's life, an index of proper names in the text and notes, and a selected bibliography.

The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate

David Freddoso

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Total reviews: 213 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

He's the media's darling, the fresh face of the Democratic ticket. But what does Barack Obama really stand for--and will his extreme liberal agenda and complete inexperience in global affairs endanger the country? That's what David Freddoso, investigative reporter and National Review Online columnist, examines in The Case Against Barack Obama. In this shocking exposé, Freddoso explores the reality behind the rhetoric, the plans behind the promises, and the faults behind the façade, revealing:

* Why Obama's inexperience and extreme left-wing voting record is more dangerous than any threat we face today
* Why the Rev. Wright debacle reveals Obama's poor judgment of character and deceitful nature
* Why it won't be politics of change with President Obama--it will be liberal politics as usual

Freddoso exposes the real Barack Obama: a typical big-government politician, the #1 most liberal U.S. senator, and--if he were commander in chief--a serious threat to our national security.

Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America

Ann Coulter

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Editorial Review:

“Liberals seem to have hit upon a reverse Christ story as their belief system. He suffered and died for our sins; liberals make the rest of us suffer for sins we didn’t commit.”

Who are the victims here? To hear liberals tell it, you’d think they do nothing but suffer at the hands of ruthless entities like the “Republican Attack Machine” and Fox News.

Really?

It’s just another instance of the Big Lie, of course, told so often that some people have actually started to believe it. In Guilty, Ann Coulter explodes this myth to reveal that when it comes to bullying, no one outdoes the Left.

Citing case after case, ranging from the hilariously absurd to the shockingly vicious, Coulter dissects these so-called victims who are invariably the oppressors. For instance:

• Single mothers: Getting pregnant isn’t like catching the flu. There are volitional acts involved–someone else explain it to Dennis Kucinich. By this purposeful act, single mothers cause irreparable harm to other human beings–their own children–as countless studies on the subject make clear.
• The myth of the Republican Attack Machine: The most amazing thing liberals have done is create the myth of a compliant right-wing media with Republicans badgering baffled reporters into attacking Democrats. It’s so mad, it’s brilliant. It’s one kind of lie to say the Holocaust occurred when the Swedes killed the Jews. But it’s another kind of lie entirely to say the Holocaust occurred when the Jews killed the Nazis.
• “Brave” liberals: In addition to being beautiful, compassionate tribunes of the downtrodden, liberals are brave. I know that because they’re always telling me how brave they are. Why, five nights a week, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann courageously books guests who completely agree with him. It doesn’t get much braver than that.
• Obambi’s luck: While B. Hussein Obama piously condemned attacks on candidates’ families, his media and campaign surrogates ripped open the court-sealed divorce records of his two principal opponents in his Senate race in Illinois.
• The offenders are offended!: Republican senator George Allen’s career was destroyed when he made a joking remark to a privileged Indian American harassing him at campaign stops. When did rich kids become a new protected category that must be shielded from words that are insulting in other languages? How did Sidarth become a specially anointed victim? What did we ever do to India? And why didn’t we ever hear about the far more offensive anti-Semitic flyers of Allen’s opponent Jim Webb?

One essential and recurring truth about self-righteous liberals, says Coulter, is that “they viciously attack all while wailing that they are the true victims.” With Guilty–a mordantly witty and shockingly specific catalog of offenses that liberals would rather we ignore and forget–Ann Coulter presents exhibits A through Z.