General Books - Page 6

Obama: The Postmodern Coup - Making of a Manchurian Candidate

Webster Griffin Tarpley, Bruce Marshall, Jonathan Mowat

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Barack Obama is a deeply troubled personality, the megalomaniac front man for a postmodern coup by the intelligence agencies, using fake polls, mobs of swarming adolescents, super-rich contributors, and orchestrated media hysteria to short-circuit normal politics and seize power.
Obama comes from the orbit of the Ford Foundation, and has never won public office in a contested election. His guru and controller is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the deranged revanchist and Russia-hater who dominated the catastrophic Carter presidency 30 years ago. All indications are that Brzezinski recruited Obama at Columbia University a quarter century ago. Trilateral Commission co-founder Brzezinski wants a global showdown with Russia and China far more dangerous for the United States than the Bush-Cheney Iraq adventure.
Obama's economics are pure Skull & Bones/Chicago school austerity and sacrifice for American working families, all designed to bail out the bankrupt Wall Street elitist financiers who own Obama. Obama's lemming legions and Kool-Aid cult candidacy hearken back to Italy in 1919-1922, and raise the question of postmodern fascism in the United States today.
Obama is a recipe for a world tragedy. No American voter can afford to ignore the lessons contained in this book.

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

Russell Kirk

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Definitive Volume for Conservatives 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

~The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot~ by the late Russell Kirk is arguably one of the greatest contributions to twentieth-century American conservatism. This is real conservatism, not the typical neocon tripe by David Frum or Sean Hannity that masquerades behind the appellation of 'conservative.' Kirk presents a rock-solid historical journey through the conservative mind. Conservatives are of course more sober-minded than the assorted radicals and progressives of the Left. Conservatives have a sound doctrine of anthropology, because they grasp man's nature, and are realistic about the implications of it. Whereas, the political Left has a positive view of man, and from that emanates romantic quixotic fixations that manifest themselves in repugnant ideology that seldom meshes with reality.

The vignette sketches of Edmund Burke, John Adams, John Randolph, John Calhoun, Thomas Macauley, James Fennimore Cooper, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Disreali, Irving Babbitt, George Santayana, and other luminaries represent insightful overview of the conservative movement in all its stripes. The essence of conservatism always lingered in the American mind, but when Russell Kirk distilled its core principles in his erudite works, he reinvigorated the intellectual groundwork for its defense and continuance. "People will not look forward to posterity", Burke wrote, "who never look backward to their ancestors."

"As the prophet of American conservatism, Russell Kirk has taught, nurtured, and inspired a generation. From... Piety Hill, he reached deep into the roots of American values, writing and editing central works of political philosophy. His intellectual contribution has been a profound act of patriotism. I look forward to the future with anticipation that his work will continue to exert a profound influence in the defense of our values and our cherished civilization."
--Ronald Reagan

Editorial Review:

The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk is arguably one of the greatest contributions to twentieth-century American Conservatism. Brilliant in every respect, from its conception to its choice of significant figures representing the history of intellectual conservatism, The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk launched the modern American Conservative Movement. A must-read.

The Closing of the American Mind

Allan Bloom

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Total reviews: 124 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Makes his points well, but exposes some serious intellectual blind spots 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Bloom makes a compelling case for embracing, through study, Western Civilization in general, and the Great Books in particular. He also does a good job of showing how today's universities exalt the natural sciences - which address only the material aspect of existence - while neglecting, to man's and society's peril, the social sciences and humanities, which speak to the immaterial aspects of existence.

In the course of making his case Bloom refers to Moses as a myth, or if not the man Moses, then certainly the story of him securing the 10 commandments from Mt. Sinai. At the same time Bloom acknowledges the great contribution of Moses, likening it to those contributions made my Aristotle, Socrates, or Shakespere.

Now, this is interesting logic for such an exalted intellectual as Bloom. He liken Moses to Aristotle, Socrates, and Shakespere but seems untroubled by the fact that one of them - Moses - claimed to receive what he passed down to humanity directly from God, even in face to face interaction. Neither Aristotle, Socrates or Shakespere made any such claim. If they had, wouldn't that change Bloom's opinion of those men - probably for the worse? Truth and deception have nothing in common. How would it be possible for a pathological liar to also provide man with some of the greatest moral truths ever known: "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt not murder"; "Thou shalt not bear false testimony"? How could a man who could speak this last mentioned commandment, at the same time be so out of touch with reality that he would state that he got the commandments from God? Even if it were possible that such a blend of truth and lies could reside with a man, why would Bloom venerate him?

Furthermore, Bloom convieniently shies away from calling the person, Jesus of Nazareth, a myth (a much harder case to make, even for natural sciences), and Bloom makes no attempt to account for the new paradigm erected by Jesus, especially at the Sermon-on-the-Mount. If Moses' apparently invented moral laws seem noble, if not mythically quaint, to Bloom, if Bloom were alive today would he be prepared to say the same things about Jesus's utterances in the Sermon-on-the-Mount?

Which of the following are quaint mythical statements, as likely fabricated by the mind of man as by God?

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. "

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Here again, we have the problem? If Jesus did say those things, so full of truth, how could he also tell the Samaritan women at the well:

"I who speak to you am he." (John 4:26)

after she made mention of the Messiah, if it were not true?

It is sad to see how intransigence toward the God of the Bible can make a muddle out of intellectual acumen.

Editorial Review:

A professor of social thought at the University of Chicago argues that the social and political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis. 11 cassettes.

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart

Bill Bishop

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided

America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote as we do. This social transformation didn't happed by accident. We've built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood -- and religion and news show -- most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work.

In 2004, the journalist Bill Bishop, armed with original and startling demographic data, made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by red state or blue state, but by city and even neighborhood. In The Big Sort, Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.

The Big Sort will draw comparisons to Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class and will redefine the way Americans think about themselves for decades to come.

Somebody's Gotta Say It

Neal Boortz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 132 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

I've come to the conclusion that roughly 50 percent of the adults in this country are simply too ignorant and functionally incompetent to be living in a free society.

You might think I'm off base, but every day around half the people in this country go out of their way to prove me right. --from Somebody's Gotta Say It

Think you've got it all figured out? Think again.

Neal Boortz--the Talkmaster, the High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth--has been edifying, infuriating, and entertaining talk radio audiences for more than three decades with his blend of straight talk and twisted humor. Now, the author of the smash number one bestseller The FairTax Book returns to gore every sacred cow in the pasture, from the subversive agendas behind children's books to the scam artists behind "High Art."

In Somebody's Gotta Say It, Boortz warms up for the coming political season with a preemptive strike in "the War on the Individual": "The Democrats' theme for 2008 will be 'The Common Good.' I can't speak for you, but I am an individual. Government exists to protect my rights, not to order my life. And I damn sure don't exist to serve government." He takes on liberal catchphrases like giving back ("Nobody--especially not the evil, wretched rich--actually earns anything anymore. Why do liberals think this way? Because they find it impossible to acknowledge that people work for money"), our rampant civic idiocy ("We are not a democracy. Never were. Weren't supposed to be. And we shouldn't be"), and Big Brother ("We have smoke-free workplaces. We have drug-free school zones. I say let's start establishing government-free oases, where we can be free to leave our seat belts unbuckled, and peel the labels off anything we choose"). And somehow, along the way, he finds room for pop quizzes, cat-chasing contests, and an answer, once and for all, to the eternal question, "Neal, why don't you run for president?"--in a chapter called "No Way in Hell."

Full of irresistible wisecracks and irrefutable libertarian wisdom, Somebody's Gotta Say It is one man's response to America at a time when the government overreaches, the people underperform--and the truth hurts.

33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask

Thomas E. Woods Jr.

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Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

News flash: The Indians didn’t save the Pilgrims from starvation by teaching them to grow corn. The “Wild West” was more peaceful and a lot safer than most modern cities. And the biggest scandal of the Clinton years didn’t involve an intern in a blue dress.

Surprised? Don’t be. In America, where history is riddled with misrepresentations, misunderstandings, and flat-out lies about the people and events that have shaped the nation, there’s the history you know and then there’s the truth. In 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, New York Times bestselling author Thomas E. Woods Jr. reveals the tough questions about our nation’s history that have long been buried because they’re too politically incorrect to discuss, including:

Are liberals really so antiwar?

Was the Civil War all about slavery?

Did the Framers really look to the American Indians as the model for the U.S. political system?

Did Bill Clinton actually stop a genocide in Kosovo, as we’re told?

The answer to all those questions is no. Woods’s eye-opening exploration reveals just how much of the historical record has been whitewashed,overlooked, and skewed beyond recognition. 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask will have you wondering just how much of your nation’s past you haven’t been told.

Nation et lutte de classe (10/18 [i.e. Dix/dix-huit] ; 1135 : Serie La Nation en question)

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Total reviews: 164 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Distrubed.... 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I'm disturbed by the amount of people bashing _Grendel_. It's simply an amazing novel. Perhaps those offering sour reviews simply misunderstand the novel--Gardner, from my reading, isn't really attempting a retelling of the _Beowulf_ story. Instead, he's attempting to cast a philosophical statement *against* a philosophical school of thought that was, and still is, gaining ground when Gardner wrote _Grendel_: existentialism and nihilism, which is embraced by the dragon. Gardner just uses the Beowulf story to frame this social commentary. Consider Gardner's philosophical statement: in a time in history when so many were and are embracing the pointlessness of life, Gardner tells us that there is meaning and real in the world around us. Beowulf smashes Grendel into the wall when they finally meet and forces him to sing walls to prove to Grendel that there is meaning and that reality does exist. And what does Grendel do? He sings walls and sees a different kind of dragon. Grendel, throughout that whole novel, searches for something real, something that carries meaning, and Beowulf becomes that. People read this novel and think it's depressing--it's not. In the end there's hope. Yeah, we know Beowulf is going to die, but before he does, he's going to accomplish great things, and there will be other great rulers after him.

If you're looking for an action story, stick with _Beowulf_. But if you're looking for a philosophical novel to controvert the overwhelming onslaught of postmodernism and beliefs that we're in the world all by ourselves and should find gold and "sit on it" as the dragon tells Grendel, _Grendel_ is one of the finest craftings written to date.

Perhaps those who would denigrate _Grendel_ simply do not understand its intent; it's intent isn't to entertain you; it's intent is to teach you and force you to question. And on those grounds, it's really hard to argue that it's not a fantastic book.

Editorial Review:

When Grendel is drawn up from the caves under the mere where he lives with his bloated, inarticulate hag of a mother into the fresh night air, it is to lay waste Hrothgar's meadhall and heap destruction on the humans he finds there. What else can he do? For he is not like the men who busy themselves with God, love and beauty. He sees the infuriating human rage for order and recognises the meaninglessness of his own existence. GRENDEL is John Gardner's masterpiece; it vividly reinvents the world of Beowulf. In Grendel himself, a creature of grotesque comedy, pain and disillusioned intelligence, Gardner has created the most unforgettable monster fantasy.

La audacia de la esperanza: Reflexiones sobre cómo restaurar el sueño americano (Vintage Espanol)

Barack Obama

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

En La audacia de la esperanza, el senador demócrata Barack Obama reclama una política diferente—una política para quienes están cansados del agrio partidismo, una política que se basa en la fe, la participación de todos y la nobleza de espíritu que es parte esencial de “nuestro improbable proyecto de democracia”.

En el corazón de este libro está la visión del senador Obama de cómo podemos superar nuestras divisiones para enfrentar los problemas concretos. Él examina la creciente inseguridad económica de las familias estadounidenses, las tensiones raciales y religiosas dentro del cuerpo político y las amenazas transnacionales—desde el terrorismo hasta las pandemias—que se congregan más allá de nuestras costas. En sus anécdotas acerca de su familia, amigos, miembros del Senado y hasta del presidente, existe un poderoso deseo de establecer conexiones: la plataforma de un consenso político radicalmente optimista.

Como senador y abogado, profesor y padre, cristiano y escéptico, y sobre todo como estudioso de la historia y de la naturaleza humana, el senador Obama ha escrito un libro de un poder transformador.

Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy

Gwyneth Cravens

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Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this timely book, Gwyneth Cravens takes an informed and clarifying look at the myths, the fears, and the truth about nuclear energy.

With concerns about catastrophic global warming mounting, it is vital that we examine all our energy options. Power to Save the World describes the efforts of one determined woman, Gwyneth Cravens, initially a skeptic about nuclear power, as she spends nearly a decade immersing herself in the subject. She teams up with a leading expert in risk assessment and nuclear safety who is also a committed environmentalist to trace the path of uranium—the source of nuclear fuel—from start to finish. As we accompany them on visits to mines as well as to experimental reactor laboratories, fortress-like power plants, and remote waste sites normally off-limits to the public, we come to see that we already have a feasible way to address the causes of global warming on a large scale.

On the nuclear tour, Cravens converses with scientists from many disciplines, public health and counterterrorism experts, engineers, and researchers who study both the harmful and benign effects of radiation; she watches remote-controlled robotic manipulators unbolt a canister of spent uranium fuel inside a “hot cell” bathed in eerie orange light; observes the dark haze from fossil-fuel combustion obscuring once-pristine New Mexico skies and the leaky, rusted pipes and sooty puddles in a coal-fired plant; glimpses rainbows made by salt dust in the deep subterranean corridors of a working nuclear waste repository.

She refutes the major arguments against nuclear power one by one, making clear, for example, that a stroll through Grand Central Terminal exposes a person to more radiation than a walk of equal length through a uranium mine; that average background radiation around Chernobyl and in Hiroshima is lower than in Denver; that there are no “cancer clusters” near nuclear facilities; that terrorists could neither penetrate the security at an American nuclear plant nor make an atomic bomb from its fuel; that nuclear waste can be—and already is—safely stored; that wind and solar power, while important, can meet only a fraction of the demand for electricity; that a coal-fired plant releases more radiation than a nuclear plant and also emits deadly toxic waste that kills thousands of Americans a month; that in its fifty-year history American nuclear power has not caused a single death. And she demonstrates how, time and again, political fearmongering and misperceptions about risk have trumped science in the dialogue about the feasibility of nuclear energy.

In the end, we see how nuclear power has been successfully and economically harnessed here and around the globe to become the single largest displacer of greenhouse gases, and how its overall risks and benefits compare with those of other energy sources.

Power to Save the World is an eloquent, convincing argument for nuclear power as a safe energy source and an essential deterrent to global warming.

Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America

Mark Levin

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Total reviews: 228 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Men In Black 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

When I bought this book I thought it was going to be about our corrupt judiciary, what is wrong with it, and how we might fix it. I was a little disappointed in the content, as from the first few pages I discovered it's more of a right hates left attack on liberalism circa the judiciary. It has more to do with how judicial decision affect party politics and how if you disagree with a verdict that judge must be an "activist." If that is what you are looking for, I recommend it.

I'm more interested in say, how judges use immunity to break the law, destroy lives, uphold blatantly unconstitutional government actions and protect their cronies while they fleece regular Americans.

Educational and Fascinating 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I recommend this book to everyone. The information contained in this book is not only educational, but it is pertinent to the cultural battle that is underway today by liberals using activist judges to circumvent our constitution. An easy read, and a must read, and you will understand how the courts are having an effect upon you and your children, whether you realize it or not, by bypassing the legislative process to make the government do things we would never vote for in a million years.

Editorial Review:

The bestselling Men in Black--first time in paperback! Lawyer and hugely popular radio talk show host Mark Levin throws the book at out-of-control liberal judges who ignore the Constitution, dismantle the rights of American citizens, and make up their own coercive law from the bench.