Political Doctrines Books - Page 16

The No Spin Zone: Confrontations with the Powerful and Famous in America

Bill O'Reilly

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Total reviews: 456 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

no spin zone 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Bill wrote a great book.No Spine Zone was terrific.My grandma read it to me and explained and answered my questions.
Thanks Bill for a great book.

Editorial Review:

Bill O’Reilly is even madder today than when he wrote his last book, The O’Reilly Factor, and his fans love him even more. He’s mad because things have gone from bad to worse in politics, in Hollywood, in every social stratum of the nation. True to its title, The No Spin Zone cuts through all the rhetoric that some of O’Reilly’s most infamous guests have spewed to expose what’s really on their minds, while sharing plenty of his own emphatic counterpoints along the way.

Shining a searing spotlight on public figures from President George W. Bush and Senator Hillary Clinton to the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to his former CBS News colleague Dan Rather, The No Spin Zone is laced with the kind of straight-shooting commentary that has made O’Reilly the voice of middle America’s disenfranchised.

Escape from Freedom

Erich Fromm

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Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An Honest and Sincere Analysis 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Following in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm was trained in psychoanalysis and became a consulting psychologist. Writing this book in 1941, Fromm was intrigued by how dictators like Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin were able to gain the support of their mass populations and, in effect, lure them away from freedom (insofar as they had any to begin with). His study is partly driven by his assetion that this luring force toward fascism widely prevails "in millions of our own people", referring to Americans, and is the reason I read this book.

His thesis then becomes that in a state of freedom (independent, rational, objective), individuals are alone and alienated and have doubt. Man longs for security and a sense to belong.

In support of his thesis, Fromm begins with lessons drawn from the middle ages and the Renaissance, a time when "The masses who did not share the wealth and power of the ruling group had lost the security of their former status and had become a shapeless mass, to be flattered or to be threatened-but always to be manipulated and exploited by those in power. A new despotism arose side by side with the new individualism. Freedom and tyranny, individuality and disorder, were inextricably interwonen".

He, furthermore, uses examples of "masochistic perversion because it proves beyond doubt that suffering can be something sought for".

The book becomes more relevant when Fromm finally gets to 20th century America and writes, "The principal social avenues of escape in our time are the submission to a leader, as has happened in Fascist countries, and the compulsive conforming as is prevalent in our own democracy".

And then Fromm gets to the mechanisms of escape. The one I find particularly intersting is "automaton conformity". In his words, "...the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offerred to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between "I" and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness...The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self".

And this, patient reader, is the relevance of Erich Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" to the American Republic. If 300 million individuals lose their "self" to their "leader" (because they want to conform) then what we have is a totalitarian dictatorship exactly like Hitler's, Stalin's, and Mussolini's. And, as I went to great detail to show in my review of the book, Propaganda, the invisible government of the USA has been conditioning our minds and snatching our thought without us even being aware of it. This conditioning is, for all intensive purposes, complete. Expect the other shoe to drop within the next twelve months.

Fromm writes, "...if we do not see the unconscious suffering of the average automatized person, then we fail to see the danger that threatens our culture from its human basis; the readiness to accept any ideology and any leader, if only he promises excitement and offers a political structure and symbols which allegedly give meaning and order to an individual's life. The despair of the human automaton is fertile soil for the political purposes of Fascism".

Editorial Review:

If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism. This is the central idea of Escape from Freedom, a landmark work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time, and a book that is as timely now as when first published in 1941. Few books have thrown such light upon the forces that shape modern society or penetrated so deeply into the causes of authoritarian systems. If the rise of democracy set some people free, at the same time it gave birth to a society in which the individual feels alienated and dehumanized. Using the insights of psychoanalysis as probing agents, Fromm’s work analyzes the illness of contemporary civilization as witnessed by its willingness to submit to totalitarian rule.

The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Churches, Schools, and Military

Michael Savage

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Total reviews: 197 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Popular radio host Michael Savage returns to print with another attack on the forces of liberalism that he believes are tearing America apart. Using the same brash, abrasive style in his writing that has become a trademark of his radio show, he writes that "the Left operates specifically to undermine God, country, family, and the military" and that liberalism is "either treason or insanity" or "a mental disorder." He also takes on illegal immigration, the state of health care in the U.S., the "Hollywood Idiots," and the decline of schools and morality in general, all of which he blames on Liberals. Savage also drops bombshells such as: "Federal courts and judges in America today are to be more feared than al-Qaida," and Ruth Bader Ginsberg's appointment to the Supreme Court is "akin to appointing the general counsel of the Ku Klux Klan to the bench."

Statements as bombastic as these deserve to be backed up with substance and well-thought out arguments, yet Savage offers little more than an anecdote or two before moving on to the next rant. This is not to say he doesn't make some good points or highlight blatant abuses by government, questionable suits brought by the ACLU, or morally bankrupt product coming out of Hollywood, but one can't help noticing that several shades of gray have been left out of his black-and-white arguments. Due to this lack of hard facts and background, Savage's book is not particularly convincing. Still, Savage does consistently challenge readers with controversial opinions and conclusions, so it would be a shame for potential readers to dismiss his book simply on ideological grounds alone. And if he really sets your blood boiling, you can always call him up on his show and take him to task. --Shawn Carkonen

Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West

Benazir Bhutto

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Editorial Review:

Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007, after eight years of exile, hopeful that she could be a catalyst for change. Upon a tumultuous reception, she survived a suicide-bomb attack that killed nearly two hundred of her countrymen. But she continued to forge ahead, with more courage and conviction than ever, since she knew that time was running out—for the future of her nation, and for her life.

In Reconciliation, Bhutto recounts in gripping detail her final months in Pakistan and offers a bold new agenda for how to stem the tide of Islamic radicalism and to rediscover the values of tolerance and justice that lie at the heart of her religion. With extremist Islam on the rise throughout the world, the peaceful, pluralistic message of Islam has been exploited and manipulated by fanatics. Bhutto persuasively argues that America and Britain are fueling this turn toward radicalization by supporting groups that serve only short-term interests. She believed that by enabling dictators, the West was actually contributing to the frustration and extremism that lead to terrorism. With her experience governing Pakistan and living and studying in the West, Benazir Bhutto was versed in the complexities of the conflict from both sides. She was a renaissance woman who offered a way out.

In this riveting and deeply insightful book, Bhutto explores the complicated history between the Middle East and the West. She traces the roots of international terrorism across the world, including American support for Pakistani general Zia-ul-Haq, who destroyed political parties, eliminated an independent judiciary, marginalized NGOs, suspended the protection of human rights, and aligned Pakistani intelligence agencies with the most radical elements of the Afghan mujahideen. She speaks out not just to the West, but to the Muslims across the globe who are at a crossroads between the past and the future, between education and ignorance, between peace and terrorism, and between dictatorship and democracy. Democracy and Islam are not incompatible, and the clash between Islam and the West is not inevitable. Bhutto presents an image of modern Islam that defies the negative caricatures often seen in the West. After reading this book, it will become even clearer what the world has lost by her assassination.

More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (Hoover Institution Press Publication ; No. 453)

Walter E. Williams

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Editorial Review:

In this new collection of thoughtful, hard-hitting essays, Walter E. Williams once again takes on the left wing's most sacred cows with provocative insights, brutal candor, and an uncompromising reverence for personal liberty and the principles laid out in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. He challenges the assumptions of contemporary liberalism with ruthless honesty, presenting an impressive array of powerful ideas and substantive information to frame his perspectives on the issues facing America in such critical areas as race, sex, government, law, education, the environment, and international relations. Williams's often controversial views include commentary on

• Women in the Military. "At Parris Island, it was discovered that 45 percent of female Marines were unable to throw a hand grenade far enough to avoid blowing themselves up. If I were in a foxhole with a woman about to toss a hand grenade, I'd consider her the enemy."
• Racial and Gender Quotas. "The only reason the elite haven't mandated quotas for women, Japanese, and other underrepresented groups in the NBA and the NFL is because the folly and costs of their cosmic justice vision would be exposed."
• Affirmative Action. "Too many blacks receive twelve years of fraudulent primary and secondary education that cannot be overcome by four years of college. Unfortunately, liberals and civil rights organizations add to that disaster by giving unquestioned support to a corrupt education establishment that produces the fraud."
• The Americans with Disabilities Act. "In some quarters, the ADA is taken to stand for 'Attorney's Dream Answered.' And who pays? You and I, through higher prices or less convenience."
• The Minimum Wage. "Low wages are more a result of people being underproductive than being underpaid. They simply do not have the skills to produce and do things their fellow man highly values. The minimum wage law is evil legislation and deserving of repeal altogether."

Using the fundamentals of economics—and basic common sense—to prove his points, Williams offers wise, witty, and stimulating insights on these and other controversial subjects, including corporate welfare, gun control, environmental regulations, free trade, abortion, the public school system, tobacco industry regulation, and more.

Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State

Steven Heller

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Editorial Review:

It was just over 60 years ago that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, two of the world's most powerfully imposing leaders, died and their regimes crumbled. One of the most illuminating facts about this dark era of history is the way in which these tyrants, and others like them, used graphic design as an instrument of power. But how did these regimes succeed in influencing the minds of millions? It is in the visual language the imagery, the typeface, the color palette that the answers truly take shape.



Phaidon Press is pleased to announce the publication of Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State by Steven Heller, the first illustrated survey of the propaganda art, graphics, and artifacts created by the totalitarian governments of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Communist regimes of the USSR and China. The book sets the disturbingly powerful graphic devices in historical context.



The infamous symbols produced by these regimes are recognized universally: the swastika and gothic typography of Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's streamlined Futurist posters and Black Shirt uniforms, the stolid Social Realism of Stalin's USSR and Mao s Little Red Book. Author Steven Heller, a world-renowned design historian, who has long collected two-and-three-dimensional examples from this period, reveals how these symbols were used in a wide variety of propaganda, from posters, magazines and advertisements to uniforms, flags and figurines.



In addition to using logos and symbols, all of the leaders researched in this book deliberately cultivated certain personal characteristics (Hitler's mustache, Mussolini's baldness, Lenin's goatee, Mao's smile), in an attempt to transform their corporeal selves into icons. These regime personalities were blanketed across public venues, from monuments to postage stamps. The Nazis, for example, installed an intricate graphic program that featured Hitler s face as a ''logo,'' a system remarkably similar to modern corporate identity creations.



By integrating color images of artifacts with archival black and white photographs, Iron Fists offers unique insight into how these regimes were effective in using graphic design to further their causes. In the section on Fascist Italy, for example, there are numerous reproductions of stylized posters, magazines and handbooks designed to excite impressionable youth. Heller then connects this printed propaganda with historic photographs of Italian children dressed as men prepared for battle stoic and serious their small hands clutching guns instead of toys.



Divided into four sections by regime, Heller also explores the color systems (each dictatorship had a distinctive palette), typefaces, and slogans used to both rally and terrorize the populace. In result, he demonstrates how these elements were used to ''sell'' the totalitarian message. The first extensively illustrated book on the subject, Iron Fists will have an obvious appeal to graphic designers but will also be an important contribution to the study of the history of the totalitarian state.

The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s

G. Calvin Mackenzie, Robert Weisbrot

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Editorial Review:

A vibrant and revelatory history of the liberal moment of the 1960s, one which argues that Washington was not simply a target of reform but was, in fact, the era’s most effective engine of change

In most accounts of the 1960s, Washington is portrayed as a target of reform—a reluctant group of politicians coaxed into accepting the radical spirit the day demanded. In the newest volume in the award-winning Penguin History of American Life, Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot argue that the most powerful agents of change in the 1960s were, in fact, those in the traditional seats of power, not the counterculture. A masterly new interpretation of this pivotal decade, The Liberal Hour explores the seismic shifts that led to an era when demands that had lingered on the political agenda for years finally entered the realm of possibility.

By the time John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, the political system that had prevailed for most of the century was based on crumbling economic, social, and demographic realities. The growth of the suburbs meant power had shifted out of the cities, rendering urban political machines and party bosses increasingly irrelevant, which in turn allowed younger, more independent-minded politicians to rise. In Congress, Democrats retained their long held control, but the Southern wing of the party was finally loosening its grip. Postwar prosperity led many Americans to believe there was enough wealth to go around, an optimism that lent powerful support to antipoverty programs, not to mention civil rights. And for once the Supreme Court, which has traditionally served the country’s dominant interests, was aligned with the progressive spirit of the age. The 1960s all in all represented a rare convergence—a public ready for change, and a government ready to act.

Liberal reform may have begun with JFK’s New Frontier, but his assassination only gave emotional urgency to his agenda. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, knew he had a brief window of opportunity before the forces of reaction would set in, an awareness that may have fostered his occasionally bullying tactics to push legislation through Congress. Still, the result was a burst in government initiatives—for civil rights, consumer protection, and environmental reform, among others—that has not been matched in American history. Ultimately, as our authors reveal, the liberal hour promised too much, and couldn’t afford both a costly and unpopular war abroad and a Great Society at home, but when it passed it left in its wake a vastly altered American landscape.

With elegant and accessible prose, The Liberal Hour casts one of the most dramatic periods in American history in a new light, revealing that for all that has been written about the more attention-grabbing protest movements, the most powerful engine of change in that tumultuous decade was Washington itself.

Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand

Benjamin Carter Hett

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Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

During a 1931 trial of four Nazi stormtroopers, known as the Eden Dance Palace trial, Hans Litten grilled Hitler in a brilliant and merciless three-hour cross-examination, forcing him into multiple contradictions and evasions and finally reducing him to helpless and humiliating rage (the transcription of Hitler's full testimony is included.) At the time, Hitler was still trying to prove his embrace of legal methods, and distancing himself from his stormtroopers. The courageous Litten revealed his true intentions, and in the process, posed a real threat to Nazi ambition.
When the Nazis seized power two years after the trial, friends and family urged Litten to flee the country. He stayed and was sent to the concentration camps, where he worked on translations of medieval German poetry, shared the money and food he was sent by his wealthy family, and taught working-class inmates about art and literature. When Jewish prisoners at Dachau were locked in their barracks for weeks at a time, Litten kept them sane by reciting great works from memory. After five years of torture and hard labor-and a daring escape that failed-Litten gave up hope of survival. His story was ultimately tragic but, as Benjamin Hett writes in this gripping narrative, it is also redemptive. "It is a story of human nobility in the face of barbarism."
The first full-length biography of Litten, the book also explores the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic and the terror of Nazi rule in Germany after 1933. [in sidebar] Winner of the 2007 Fraenkel Prize for outstanding work of contemporary history, in manuscript. To be published throughout the world.

The Covenant with Black America

Tavis Smiley

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Total reviews: 71 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Six years' worth of symposiums come together in this rich collection of essays that plot a course for African Americans, explaining how individuals and households can make changes that will immediately improve their circumstances in areas ranging from health and education to crime reduction and financial well-being. Addressing these pressing concerns are contributors Dr. David Satcher, former U.S. surgeon general; Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of the research think tank PolicyLink; and Cornell West, professor of Religion at Princeton University. Each chapter outlines one key issue and provides a list of resources, suggestions for action, and a checklist for what concerned citizens can do to keep their communities progressing socially, politically, and economically. Though the African American community faces devastating social disparities—in which more than 8 million people live in poverty—this celebration of possibility, hope, and strength will help leaders and citizens keep Black America moving forward.

Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism

Sean Hannity

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Editorial Review:

Nearly three years have passed since that tragic day in September. Since then, our wounds have healed, but our senses and memories have dulled.

At first, the nation rallied behind its leader. But by the time the confrontation with Iraq presented itself, our courage and moral certainty seemed to fade in the face of partisan bickering and posturing.

Now the political left and the Democratic Party are trying to use the demanding aftermath of the war to exploit our national cause for their own political advantage.

How could we allow ourselves to forget so soon?

--from Deliver Us from Evil

Sean Hannity's first blockbuster book, the New York Times bestseller Let Freedom Ring, cemented his place as the freshest and most compelling conservative voice in the country. As the host of the phenomenally successful Hannity & Colmes on the Fox News Channel and The Sean Hannity Show on ABC Radio, Hannity has won a wildly devoted fan base. Now he brings his plainspoken, take-no-prisoners style to the continuing War on Terror abroad -- and liberalism at home -- in Deliver Us from Evil.

"Evil exists," Hannity asserts. "It is real, and it means to harm us." And in these pages he revisits the harsh lessons America has learned in confronting evil in the past and the present, to illuminate the course we must take in the future. Tracing a direct line from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin through Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, he reminds us of the courage and moral clarity of our great leaders. And he reveals how the disgraceful history of appeasement has reached forward from the days of Neville Chamberlain and Jimmy Carter to corrupt the unrepentant leftists of the modern Democratic Party -- from Howard Dean and John Kerry to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

As Americans face the ongoing war against terrorists and their state sponsors around the world, Sean Hannity reminds us that we must also cope with the continuing scourge of accommodation and cowardice at home. With his trademark blend of passion and hard-hitting commentary, he urges Americans to recognize the dangers of putting our faith in toothless "multilateralism" when the times call for decisive action. For only through strong defense of our freedoms, at home and around the world, can we preserve America's security and liberty in the dangerous twenty-first century.