General Books - Page 12

A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

Glenn Greenwald

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Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

What will be the legacy of President George Walker Bush? In this fascinating, timely book, Glenn Greenwald examines the Bush presidency and its long-term effect on the nation. What began on shaky, uncertain ground and was bolstered and propelled by tragedy, has ultimately faltered and failed on the back of the dichotomous worldview—good versus evil—that once served it so well. In A Tragic Legacy, Greenwald charts the rise and steep fall of the current administration, dissecting the rhetoric and revealing the faulty ideals upon which George W. Bush built his policies.

On September 12, 2001, President Bush addressed the nation and presented a very clear view of what was to come—a view that can be said to define his entire presidency: “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil.” Based on his own Christian faith and backed by biblical allusions, Bush’s worldview was basic and binary—and everyone was forced to choose a side. Riding high on public support, Bush sailed through the early “War on Terror,” easily defining our enemies and clearly setting an agenda for defeating them.

But once the war became murkier—its target unclear, its combatants no longer seen in black-and-white—support for Bush and his policies dropped precipitously. Glenn Greenwald brilliantly reveals the reasons behind the collapse of Bush’s power and approval, and argues that his greatest weakness is the same rhetoric that once propelled him so far forward. Facing issues that could not be turned into simple good versus evil choices—the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, his plans for Social Security “reform,” and, most ironic, the failed Dubai ports deal—Bush faltered and fell. Now, Greenwald argues, Bush is trapped by his own choices, unable to break out of the mold that once served him so well, and indifferent to the consequences.

A Tragic Legacy is the first true character study of one of the most controversial men ever to hold the office of president. Enlightening, powerful, and eye-opening, this is an in-depth look at the man whose incapability and cowboy logic have left America at risk.

Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America And Changing Our World Forever

Eric Greenberg, Karl Weber

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the last three years, the Millennial Generation has emerged as a powerful political and social force. Currently including 95 million young people born between 1978 and 2000, the Millennials are the largest generation in history. They are also the first post-ideological, post-political, and post-partisan generation, and they are spearheading a period of sweeping change in America and around the world.

Generation We explores the emerging power of the Millennial Generation, shows how they (and their supporters from other generations) are poised to change our nation and our world for the better, and lays out a powerful plan for progressive change that today s youth is ready to implement. Generation We presents for the first time the results of a major research study into the characteristics of the Millennial Generation, including an in-depth survey of 2,000 individuals and a series of twelve geographically- and demographically-diverse focus groups, all sponsored by author Eric Greenberg and conducted by Gerstein | Agne Strategic Communications, one of the most respected research organizations in the United States. It s the essential guide to the values, dreams, and enormous potential of the Millennials, and could serve as a spark to help kindle the coming youth movement that will restore the damaged American dream.

The young members of Generation We are inheriting a world rife with war, environmental degradation, dysfunctional health and educational systems, dangerous dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil, creeping totalitarianism, diminished civil rights, and a fragile economy. Generation We believes that we must innovate our way out of this complex set of problems, discovering and implementing solutions that will work on a global scale and we need to do it soon.

Generation We suggests an agenda by which today s youth can help lead an American renaissance. As Greenberg and Weber show, the best way to launch the Millennial revolution is with Project FREE, a massive scientific and industrial program to move America beyond fossil fuels by inventing the next generation of non-carbon based energy a program that will save the environment, end our dependence on foreign oil, create millions of jobs, and jump-start a massive economic boom. Project FREE could be one of humankind s greatest achievements and a proud legacy for the Millennial generation.

Generation We also answers the question, What can I do to help turn this vision of a better America into reality? It offers a list of specific steps citizens of any age can take to help promote the progressive ideals and program outlined in the book. Generation We is the book that can inspire a generation to achieve new heights of greatness, allowing Americans to take back control of our lives, our communities, our country, and our future.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East (Politically Incorrect Guides)

Martin Sieff

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A most insightful work (as far as it goes) 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book is not a scholar's take on the Middle East. There are no pesky footnotes, no sources provided for many of the fascinating socio/politico/historical facts brought to the reader's attention. Nonetheless, this is an excellent guide to understanding the Middle East, because it is written from the point of view of a NON-cultural relativist, that is, someone who doesn't believe in the multiculturalist axiom that all cultures or civilizations are equal, or one burdened by "white man's guilt syndrome" who deep down believes that non-Western cultures are superior to Western civilization.

This work is a page-turner, with a fresh insight, little-known factoid, or counterintuitive take on practically every page. If you want to better understand the Mideast, you won't go wrong buying this book!

In spite of my encomiums for this book, it has one huge shortcoming. It is actually a big shame that the book pretty much ignores the elephant in the room, the overarching ideological, social, political, cultural and civilizational influence for 1,400 years in what until the 1960s used to be called the Orient (as contradistinguished from the Occident, nowadays, the West), then the Near East, today the Mideast. Martin Seiff inexplicably leaves out a decent primer of indisputably far-and-away the overrarching influence in the region, I-S-L-A-M.

At the dawn of Islam in the 7th Century, most of what is now the Middle East was either Christian or Zoroastrian, with Jews sprinkled about everywhere. North Africa (peopled by the then Euro-centric Berbers) and Egypt (also non-Arab descendants of the ancient Pharoanic Egyptians) were Greco-Christian civilizations, the Levant, Anatolia and Mesopotamia were likewise Christian lands (likewise peopled by non-Arab ethnicities), and Persia was Zoroastrian. All of these non-Muslim, non-Arab lands were conquered by Jihad, and then fully Arabized and Islamicized, with many millions killed or enslaved, and their native civilizations completely annihilated.

The Arabs were and are the greatest imperialists of all time, following the example of the founder of Islam, Mohammed, a socio-political control freak and warrior unsurpassed in world history, because people die every day somewhere in the world in Jihad -- most world terrorism is carried out by Islamists -- in accordance with the teachings of Mohammed, known as the Sunna.

There are a number of highly respected commentators who conclude that the theology of Islam is essentially incompatible with Western-style liberal democracy, individual, minority and human rights, and a civil society marked by rule of law rather than autocracy or dictatorship. Diana West, Serge Trifcovic and the pseudonymous "Spengler" at Asia Times Online come to mind: none of them buy the neocon twaddle that Muslim lands in the Middle East can become democracies, because they understand the role of Islam, the doctrines of Jihad and submission (all Muslims must "submit" -- that is what the word "Islam" means!) -- slavelike, to Allah -- who is akin to an Oriental despot, not the loving God of the Old and New Testament -- and all Jewish and Christian infidels must submit to Islam as dhimmis, semi-slaves under Islamic Law, the Shari'a, while all other kaffirs, "unbelievers" consigned by Allah to Jahahum, Hell and fair game to be killed, robbed, abused, raped, enslaved, etc., such as "polytheists" or animists can be massacred if they do not submit, i.e., convert, to Islam). All of these doctrines of normative Islam are detailed in the three sacred texts of Islam, the Koran, the Hadith (sayings/traditions of Mohammed), and the Sira (canonical biographies of Mohammed).

The real question is, why didn't the author talk about any of this? Two reasons: (1) Most all writers on current events and foreign affairs don't understand the power and influence of Islamic theology and dogma, because they mostly all come from a decidedly secular-humanist background, as opposed to a deeply religious one. They fail to understand that Western values are based on Judeo-Christian doctrines and ethics which are in turn grounded in the ethic of reciprocity (Golden Rule), which does not exist -- alone of the world's great religions -- in Islam! (2) It is supremely politically incorrect to point out that political Islam is in fact diametrically opposed to Judeo-Christian values, something that was openly discussed during the "golden age" of Western Islamic studies by non-Muslim scholars of Islam, circa 1870-1970. If one goes online and reads the entries in the Catholic Encyclopedia of around 1910 (it is in the public domain, no copyright) for "Mohammed" and "Islam," one will get a good (and fascinating) picture of the pre-politically correct Western appraisal of Mohammed and the doctrines of Islam.

Thus, I vehemently disagree with the author's incredibly ill-informed benign view of the retrograde Saudi polity -- a most repressive regime that is the last on earth not to allow women drivers' licenses, that recently banned Bibles from its national airline, and finally got around to outlawing slavery in the 1960s -- which, since the early 1970s, has been pushing a virulently anti-Western, anti-American, antisemitic and profoundly anti-democratic Jihadi version of Islam around the world with its endles billions in petrodollars, namely Whahabbism.

The solution is not to "kill the bastards" Anne Coulter-style. The solution is first to "know our enemy" -- political Islam -- and then to follow through on a longterm plan of disengagement and containment. Then, instead of a "clash of civilizations" we will have a "crash of civilizations" (I got this apt trope from Niall Ferguson, a very insightful historian and commentator), as the different Muslim sects and ethnicities fight each other (the Iran-Iraq War was the longest conventional war of the last century, resulting in over one million dead Muslims!), as they have been wont to do for 1,400 years.

Editorial Review:

In this informative, iconoclastic book, veteran foreign correspondent Sieff offers a jaw-dropping survey of the history and politics of a region that people know surprisingly little about--even though it's never off the front pages.

Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender

Kenneth R. Timmerman

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Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

“An alarming but necessary book that reads like a thriller. By raising uncomfortable questions, Ken Timmerman has performed a significant public service.”
–Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host

Some have called it the CIA’s greatest covert operation of all time.

It is an intelligence war conducted behind the scenes, aimed at confusing, misleading, and ultimately defeating the enemy. The goal is nothing less than toppling the regime in power. A network of agents has been planted at key crossroads of power, stealing secrets, planting disinformation, and cooking intelligence. The plan involves sophisticated political sabotage operations that bring in opposition forces who can challenge the regime openly, in a way the CIA cannot. The scope is breathtaking.

Who is the target of this vast, sophisticated CIA operation? Not the mullahs in Tehran or North Korea’s power-mad Kim Jong Il; the target is America’s president, George W. Bush.

Drawing on exclusive information from senior government officials, intelligence operatives, and many others, investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman provides the full, untold story of the sabotage that occurs behind the scenes at key government agencies like the CIA and State Department–and the profound effect it has on America’s ability to confront its most dangerous enemies. In Shadow Warriors, Timmerman brings to light the vast underground working to undercut our nation’s efforts to win the war on terror–revealing the when, where, how, and who for the first time. He also exposes the Democratic politicians who have sold out America’s national security for political gain.

In Shadow Warriors you’ll learn:

•How the CIA and State Department sabotaged the administration’s Iraq war plans from the start–sparking the insurgency in the process
•How a high-level State Department official gathered aides after Bush’s reelection to insist they owed no allegiance to the president or his policies
•How pre-war intelligence on Iraq was cooked–not by the Bush administration, but by its opponents
•How and why the shadow warriors have leaked details of virtually every covert U.S. intelligence tool used in the war on terror
•How the leaks have devastated our efforts to fight terrorism–such as when a key U.S. ally rebuffed the CIA director’s request for assistance by saying, “You Americans can’t keep secrets”
•Why U.S. intelligence refused to examine important documents detailing the secret Iraqi networks that became the heart of the insurgency
•How newly discovered Iraqi government documents reveal the extent of Saddam Hussein’s ties to international terrorists and the truth about his WMD arsenal

Shadow Warriors shows that George W. Bush never got the first rule of Washington: People are policy. He allowed his political enemies to run roughshod over his administration. This insider’s look at secret White House meetings, political backstabbing, and war-room summits is an eye-opening account of the mind-set that is crippling our effectiveness in Iraq and around the world.

Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him

Humberto Fontova

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Total reviews: 63 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The perfect conservative contrast to the upcoming movie about Che.

Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the mainstream media celebrate Ernesto “Che” Guevara as a saint, a sex symbol, and a selfless martyr. But their ideas about Che — whose face adorns countless T-shirts and posters — are based on the lies of Fidel Castro’s murderous dictatorship.

Che’s hipster fans are classic “useful idiots,” the name Stalin gave to foolish Westerners who parroted his lies about communism. And their numbers will only increase after a new biopic is released this fall, starring Benicio Del Toro.

But as Humberto Fontova reveals in this myth-shattering book, Che was actually a bloodthirsty executioner, a military bumbler, a coward, and a hypocrite. In fact, Che can be called the godfather of modern terrorism.

Fontova reveals:

• How he longed to destroy New York City with nuclear missiles.
• How he persecuted gays, blacks, and religious people.
• How he loved material wealth and private luxuries, despite his image as an ascetic.

Are Che fans like Angelina Jolie, Jesse Jackson, Carlos Santana, and Johnny Depp too ignorant to realize they’ve been duped? Or too anti-American to care?

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

His Own Worst Enemy 2 out of 5 stars.
15 of 21 people found this review helpful.

I'm embarassed to say that I used to support this toad. What can I say? I was young and impressionable and I got a kick out of all his on-air screaming and ranting and demands for justice. To be fair, I think there is a semblance of truth to SOME of what he argues, but at bottom, he is just a paranoid, rage-filled, ego-maniac. I'm still not sure if it's all an act or if he really is that demented. I just caught part of his radio show the other night for the first time in years and it was like I never missed a beat. Domestically, he sees everything as some vast left-wing socialist conspiracy; he was talking about the pharmaceutical companies and how they're in on some grand scheme to turn the country into a doped up, ie complacent, socialist paradise. I suppose it wouldn't occur to him that these companies would be out to make a profit, ideology be damned. On top of all that, he is a classic neo-con chicken hawk who would just as soon drop a bomb on any country that dares to look at the US the wrong way, never once considering that perhaps his beloved America shares any blame. And all of this is done with a nauseating self-aggrandizement that would lead the unsuspecting listener/reader to believe he is God's latest prophet. So for entertainment purposes, Savage is great, but if you want a serious, sober analysis of current events, you'd be better off talking to a fifth grader.

Editorial Review:

Talk radio sensation and New York Times bestselling author Michael Savage again goes for the jugular in this latest brash, incendiary attack on the corrosive effects of liberalism on our culture. Where The Savage Nation took shots at everything under the political spectrum, this book focuses squarely on the dangers assailing the cornerstones of American life, pointing out how liberal propaganda and agendas are seeping into our churches, our schools, even our families. Bold, sometimes angry, and always controversial, this book is pure, no-holds-barred Michael Savage, one of the strongest, most original voices in America today.

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

Sean Hannity

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Total reviews: 1672 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

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.

State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind

Bryant Welch

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Finally, the answer to the many questions that have been preying on the minds of millions of Americans has arrived. Why are Americans so vulnerable to divisive political tactics? Why did Americans get dragged into such an unwise war in Iraq? Why do fundamentalist religious groups, Fox News, and right-wing radio still play such influential roles in America’s political landscape? And why are long-accepted rational scientific ideas like evolution under siege? These questions hold America’s future in the balance. Ultimately, they are questions about the American mind.  Psychologist-attorney Dr. Bryant Welch has the answers.

If America is going to change the mind-set that led us to war in Iraq and left us unable to confront our serious national problems, this book is vitally important. Drawing on his unique experience both as a clinical psychologist and a Washington, D.C., political figure with the American Psychological Association, Dr. Welch shows how the long-term effects of sophisticated new forms of political manipulation have not only led to our debacle in Iraq but are also currently undercutting America’s ability to address its very serious problems. In the 1944 movie Gaslight, a husband drives his wife to the brink of insanity by playing games with her sense of reality. Just as in the movie, America’s most recent political “gaslighters,” such as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and many religious leaders, have generated and exploited confusion in the minds of countless Americans.

Gaslighters prey on their victim’s vulnerability to paranoia, sexual perplexity, and envy to undermine the mind’s ability to function rationally. Welch examines why millions of Americans, in response to such assaults, subconsciously and dangerously create their own simplistic reality, even if it is completely different from the more complex reality of the world.

Most important, State of Confusion explains how and why Americans must act now to fight back against this harmful manipulation before it’s too late. Dr. Welch’s exploration of the American mind is both fascinating and frightening, and State of Confusion is a must-read for everyone who cares about the future of this great country.

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC MENTALITY, THE (Lib Works Ludwig Von Mises PB)

LUDWIG VON MISES

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Envy or Conceit? 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

The Anti Capitalistic Mentality is Mises' attempt to uncover the driving force behind the socialist movement of the early twentieth century. As such, it should be seen as an alternative to Hayek's `Fatal Conceit/Abuse of Reason' hypothesis. Mises and Hayek agree on some points. Mises claims that "everyone is prone to overate his own worth and deserts" (p10). This is consistent with Hayek's Fatal Conceit hypothesis, but Mises takes the idea that people overate themselves inn a different direction. Hayek thought that intellectuals disdain capitalism because it offends their intellectual pride. Those who see themselves as the best and brightest cannot accept the idea that spontaneously evolved orders outperform any system that they can consciously design.

Mises emphasizes envy and resentment, along with the lack of proper economic education. As Mises puts it on page 36 socialists "are blinded by envy and ignorance. They stubbornly refuse to stuffy economics ... they pretend to trust only in experience. But they also stubbornly refuse to take cognizance of the undeniable facts of experience".

The main problem with this book is that it is too short. Mises did not develop his ideas in this book to the extent he developed other ideas elsewhere. Also, Mises relies too much on the notion that people hate capitalism because the market value of their wage is below their self-evaluation. People do tend to overate their own worth. However, it should be noted that even those who succeed often hate capitalism. Consider the following list of highly successful wealthy capitalism haters: John Lennon, James Cameron, George Soros, Stephen Speilberg, Warren Beatty, Ted Turner, Jane Fonda... These people passed the market test and then some. Yet they hate the system that made them wealthy and famous. Why? Lack of economic education might explain more than does envy. Who would they envy?

The Anti Capitalistic Mentality is still an important book. It explores vital issues that should be sorted out more completely. Since Mises kept this book brief, the task of developing this and Hayek's work on the motivations behind the socialist/interventionist movement will be left to their intellectual heirs.

Editorial Review:

In "The Anti-capitalistic Mentality", the respected economist Ludwig von Mises plainly explains the causes of the irrational fear and hatred many intellectuals and others feel for capitalism. In five concise chapters, he traces the causation of the misunderstandings and resultant fears that cause resistance to economic development and social change. He enumerates and rebuts the economic arguments against and the psychological and social objections to economic freedom in the form of capitalism. Written during the heyday of twentieth-century socialism, this work provides the reader with lucid and compelling insights into human reactions to capitalism.

More: Utopia (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

Thomas More

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Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Utopia: Not As Free As You Might Think 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

When Thomas More wrote UTOPIA in 1516, he attempted to postulate how human beings could create a society that would be as nearly perfect as possible. At least that is what is commonly believed that he tried to do. For those who have read his book, they immediately see some troubling issues. The first sticky point is to define what he meant by the term "utopia." Did he mean a totally democratic state; such as the ancient Greeks had, in which each citizen had direct voting in all issues? Or perhaps More was simply updating Plato, who saw his Republic as a society governed by a carefully selected breed of rulers who would rule an equally carefully selected brood of subjects? Or again, was More attempting to strike an impossible balance between the burgeoning rise of Renaissance humanism with a stifling set of conflicting Christian religions? It is too easy for moderns to suggest that he was merely holding up Utopia as a fun-house type mirror by which he wished his contemporaries could see themselves reflected as zigzag images and perhaps be ashamed enough--or exhorted enough--to alter their behavior for the better. We today are tempted to judge his meaning by 20th century standards, which do not always draw a clear distinction among the virtues that More's Renaissance contemporaries took for granted but today we dismiss as outdated, or worse, irrelevant.

The book itself has two parts. The first includes More, who places himself in the book as a traveler to Antwerp who meets Peter Giles, who in turn introduces him to Raphael Hythloday, a name that Moore punningly notes that in Greek means "nonsense speaker." Hythloday mentions that he journeyed with Amerigo Vespucci to America and along the way encountered the mythical land of Utopia. This first part is slow reading in that More does little more than discuss some general reforms of potential benefit to England, most of which involved agrarian, economic, judicial, military, and criminal justice matters, all of which obliquely suggest that what worked in Utopia might work in England as well. It is the second part that has generated considerable controversy as to what More really meant his readers to grasp.

For those who come to the second part of UTOPIA and expect a 16th century version of Eden, the results are profoundly shocking. When More details the basic government setup as one in which its citizens are living in a ruthless police state with the death penalty meted out for a variety of reasons, readers suddenly grasp that Utopia may not be all that different from Plato, who similarly envisioned his society as one free from the degenerating influences of poetry and the basic tenets of free speech. When this sobering concept sinks in, then the term "utopia" begins to lose its cache as a synonym for a land of unrivalled happiness. But if these readers look at Utopia through the eyes of More and not their own, then a different Utopia arises. As an educated classicist fully versed in traditional Christian orthodoxy, More was trained to evaluate any social structure according to the non-Christian but humanistic Cardinal Virtues of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice, and then compare these to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity. More made it clear that both sets of virtues were needed to make Utopia an enduring entity. More was not optimistic enough to truly believe the social inequities in England (or Utopia for that matter) could be so easily eliminated merely by rearranging the pieces of the social pie. What humans of any society needed to ensure genuine freedom from tyranny was mastery of the far more unmanageable Seven Deadly Sins. Of these More suggests that by downplaying the importance of gold, by limiting the nature and amount of material wealth, and by forcing all citizens from the highest to lowest to share in all types of drudgery, that the worst of the sins, Pride, will be vanquished, thus leaving Utopia as ready to endure in the face of what to other and less advanced societies would be tantalizing but deadly temptations.

What emerges then in Utopia is a mythical land based on equally mythical virtues that can house a citizenry such as never existed in human history nor is likely to. But More felt that even if his contemporaries managed to alter for the better their profligate ways, then a small sliver of Utopia might result. For More and perhaps for us today, that might be good enough.

Editorial Review:

Thomas More's Utopia is one of the supreme achievements of Renaissance humanism. His complex and ironic account of an imaginary communist society has not only given rise to the genre of utopian fiction but has been an inspiration to generations of political reformers. The present edition differs from other English-language editions in that it includes all the ancillary materials that were included, at More's behest, in the early editions (encompassing letters and poems on Utopia by More and several of his humanist associates), in that it presents a new version of the highly-regarded translation by Robert M. Adams, and in that its introductory materials and annotations assimilate important recent scholarship.