Party The Books

Hayden Wood is the Jamie Oliver of cocktails. He writes in a very friendly and approacable manner with hints of humour and stories from his experience. This book explains the basics in detail so that anyone can make cocktails at home. He emphasizes the use of equipment that can be obtained easily if you don't already have it at home; and the drinks are focused mainly on using fresh ingredients that are cheap and readily available, rather than a whole shelf of ready-made liquers.

For the experienced bartender, this book is full of new and refreshing ideas with stunningly sexy pictures of the cocktails. I'd highly recommend it to anyone.

THE LIQUID KITCHEN: PARTY DRINKS joins a growing number of books covering mixed drinks; but what sets this part is its author, who has won Best Drinks Book in the World 2004 and other awards - and the innovative new drinks he's designed just for parties. Color photos and reflections on competitions, mixed drink winners and more accompany easy recipes any party cook will find appealing and different. From a Honey Nectarine Martini to a 'Solar' variation on a Bronx cocktail, THE LIQUID KITCHEN's recipes won't be in any other cocktail guide.

I bought this book for my daughter a few months before she turned 2, and it became her absolute favorite leading up to her 2nd birthday. She loved lifting the flaps and calling out the answers to the questions posed by Little Bill's family. This is the best by far of the three Little Bill books we own.

If you like Little Bill, then you will love this lift the flap story. Children will like the friendly faces as well as the interactive nature of the flaps. Parents will like the theme that while we wish for great things, we can also be content with what we have.

This book was a great book. It was a book that kept me going.It touched me in so many ways and if u don't belive in christ and wanna no more about him read this book.this was like the first book i ever read from cover to cover. If you don't the saten is real you better believe it cause he is here to stay. there is a part in this book where greg encounters a life event with saten and god speaks to him and it talks about a church in illinois. it is a great book overall. It also talks about Peer pressure, Sex, and how you should use ur body through god,why you should read the bibal and many more things but i will leave it to u to buy so you can find out more.

I met Greg Speck at a youth retreat in Ocala, Fl. He had come all of the way from Chicago to speak with us, and was very funny, but more than that, he seemed to know the answers to everything. He addressed almost every single one of my many questions without me asking them. At the end of the weekend, he announced that he had brought some copies of his books. I bought "Living For Jesus When the Party's Over."

This book is so interesting and full of information that I couldn't stop reading it. Mr. Speck discusses such topics as Bible study, how to share your faith, fasting and praying, and he does so in such an easy to understand, witty way that you can be sure to feel changed after reading this book. I loved and highly recommend it, and I can't wait until I save up enough money to buy his other book. This is a great book to read, especially if you're a teenager trying to build your relationship with Jesus Christ.

Reading Al-Takarli's 'The Long Way Back' took me away from my comfy sofa to the rich sumptuous orient in the Baghdad of the 1960s.
The translation by Catherine Cobham is excellent.

Finally, readers in the English language will catch up with their French counterparts and get the chance to read the first of Fuad Al-Takarli's novels 'The Long Way Back'. A story of love, friendship, ambition and murder in 1960s Baghdad.
Being one of a small number of Iraqi works of fiction available in English, it will serve to acquaint the reader with aspects of life in that country that go beyond the usual suspects whenever Iraq is mentioned. The common humanity of the people of this ancient nation, with a history stretching back to thousands of years, will become that bit more obvious.
I can not recommend it enough...

This book encapsulates years of research to provide what used to come from investigative journalists -- before mainstream corporate media cornered the market on misinformation and tabloid news. A loser can win a rigged election in America because counting the vote is now the privy of private enterprise. Allegations of election fraud are doused by a state of denial that it can't happen in the greatest democracy in the world. But fact after fact reveals that, just like the public airwaves, there is no Fairness Doctrine when it comes to elections. Loser Take All equally blames Republican operatives, spineless Democrats, and a complacent Fourth Estate for turning our great republic into a renegade nation. There is a sliver of hope to return our government to We the People. Read this book, if you dare, and then share it with others.

Unlike the reportage leading up the invasion of Iraq, which relied heavily on anonymous sources who spoon fed mainstream reporters wild tales of Iraq's vast weapons cache, lapped up by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists and printed as fact, the reports about stolen elections and the massive purge of minorities and poor people from voter rolls in "Loser Take All" is backed up by smoking gun evidence in the form of documents and on the record accounts from public officials and behind-the-scenes executives employed by e-voting companies.


"Loser Take All" is indeed an important historical document; a damning indictment of the electoral process that also tells the real story of how Bush was "elected" to a second term.

This was a book I had, read to my children, and wanted to read to my grandson. Book was in excellent condition.

Anyone who has ever had a birthday party as a child will be swept back to the excitement, the fears and the adventure of their first parties through the eyes of Lyle the Crocodile. Endearing and touching, any child (or adult) will lose themselves in this book. I write from memory-my mother read the Lyle books to me when I was four years old and they have stayed alive for me ever since. My sisters and myself are now buying them for our families.

Upon reading this book I was filled with gratitude. An activist/organizer with some decades under their belt had taken the time to assemble a TON of information into a very easily digestable form. This book may have helped me avoid a decade's worth of brick walls I would have stumbled into without having read it. I can honestly say that I run much faster, into brick walls that are much thicker thanks to this book. So thanks.

My copy of the book seemed to need a good copy editor to clean up the typos, but the story is riveting and right on! The characters are easy to care about and believable. And, again, the rare perspective into the history of organizing is invaluable. The book has a lot to say about the way we live. And some good suggestions about how we might do better.

If You Write It
Activist Mark Dunlea put his hard-earned political knowledge into Madame President, a novel he hopes will have a positive impact on the system

http://nys.greens.org/rachel

By Shawn Stone
Metroland Magazine (Albany, NY Aug. 19, 2004)

`Imagine if we had a Green Party President on September 11, 2001."

That probably got your attention, didn't it? It's the tagline for Madame President, the debut novel by longtime local political organizer Mark Dunlea. How in the world, you may wonder, could a Green Party candidate end up in the White House?

Using the disastrous 2000 election as a template, Dunlea cleverly works it all out to the last vote in the electoral college. In this alternate universe, the Greens' party-building in the late 1990s makes it a national political factor, thanks to their presidential candidate, Barry Frost (think Ralph Nader). The debacle in Florida happens, and-with the Greens on hand to counter Republican shenanigans in a way the real-life Democrats never tried-the election is decided according to the Constitution. When the Greens are accused of being spoilers, the future Ms. President tartly replies: "You can't spoil anything that's already rotten."

The Greens horse-trade their way into the vice-presidential slot. The new administration takes office, the Democratic president croaks and-voila-Madame President.

Needless to say, Rachel Moreno is not a typical president. Her reactions to every problem, foreign and domestic, are from a Green perspective. The citizens are actually consulted. Corporations are not coddled. Wars are not declared.

Mark Dunlea is more than just a well-known local figure in progressive politics. He's an institution. Over the last 30 years, from his student days at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Albany Law through his political activities with the Citizen's and Green parties, he helped found the New York Public Interest Research Group, the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, organized "the first statewide meeting of the Green Party of New York State," and most recently has been involved with the creation of the Hudson-Mohawk Independent Media Center. He hosts a weekly show on WRPI, and, oh, still holds down his day job with the Hunger Action Network of New York State. A detailed listing of his CV would likely take up the entire space allotted for this article; what made him want to write a novel?

"There are a number of reasons," he explains. "One was that I wanted to help educate young people starting off on their careers as organizers. I've been doing organizing for 30 years, and wanted to share my experiences and insights-so they don't have to repeat all the mistakes I made."

Thus, the novel charts Rachel Moreno's career as political activist and environmental organizer in a way that is intended to be instructive, not instructional.

"The second reason," he continues, "was to give people a better understanding of what Green philosophy was, and a sense that they might be more willing to read it if it was a novel, with a least some humor to it and not just a dry treatise or that sort of thing."

Dunlea was still only halfway through the novel in 2001 when he realized he had to deal with the issue of violence, to answer the question of how a Green president would react to an attack on the United States from outside. Late on the evening of Sept. 10, Dunlea remembers discussing this touchy plot problem with a former campaign manager, and asking him: "How many people could we realistically kill in the United States through a terrorist attack?"

"And six hours later," he recalls, "these planes [crash] into the World Trade Center."

Again, truth is proved stranger than fiction.

Dunlea enjoyed the writing process, especially considering the political climate of the last few years, as the Bush administration ignored mass protests and went to war in Iraq. It was, he remembers, "much more enjoyable to come home and talk about how Rachel was responding to this, rather than deal with the reality of how Congress was not listening to what we had to say."

Once finished-and it took a few drafts, along with some friendly literary advice from his editor-Dunlea self-published it under the Big Toad Books impint in the spring of 2004. He couldn't find a mainstream publishing house interested in a progressive political novel; conversely, most progressive publishers focus on nonfiction.

The timing of the book was no accident-the book was also intended to influence Green Party politics and policies going into this election year.

So what does Dunlea think about the Greens' place in the 2004 elections? The Greens, you may have read, spurned gadfly Ralph Nader, nominated lawyer David Cobb for president and adopted a Safe States strategy-Cobb will campaign only in electorally "safe states" (safe, that is, for Democratic nominee John Kerry), but avoid states in which the presidential race is close.

"I think it's a mistake, but it's understandable," Dunlea says. "People are very confused and very frightened at this point."

Fear, he contends, is why many progressives have not only deserted Nader, but also, to a lesser extent, the Green Party; more importantly, it explains why they are saying nothing while the Democrats actively work to keep Nader off the ballot in states across the country.

Dunlea is not alone in this view. As lawyer and Nader supporter Carl Mayer recently told The New York Times, "It's an unprecedented assault. The bellyaching and whining by the Democrats about how Ralph supposedly cost them the election in 2000 is relentless."

"We have such a messed-up electoral system, and the only response for maybe 95 percent of progressives is `stand down, shut up, and don't challenge the two corporate parties,' " he laments. "This is such a retreat, such a loss of democracy, and so many people of the left are participating in it."

The problem, Dunlea says, is that too many people believe that George W. Bush is "a more radical and dangerous" president than Ronald Reagan was. And, Dunlea argues, he is not.

"It makes you wonder if people were asleep (in the '80s). . . . People have this collective amnesia-as time goes on, they forget how bad things were."

"Reagan," he continues, "was a much more radical transformation of the political process than Bush is."

Though no longer New York state chairman, Dunlea is still active in the Green Party, serving on one of their national committees. He has also been busy with the drive-which ended Tuesday, Aug. 17-to collect enough signatures to get Green U.S. Senate candidate David McReynolds on the New York state ballot. With that effort over, Dunlea is going to concentrate on Madame President. (He has a number of speaking engagements lined up for the fall.)

"At this point," he notes with some satisfaction, "I've broken even on the book. . . . I control it, I own it." Because of this, he feels he can now take it to the bookstore chains and online booksellers; they take such a big percentage of each sale, Dunlea explains, that it wouldn't have made sense to work with them before making the break-even point.

As for visibility, Madame President, he recounts, has been discussed on National Public Radio and the liberal Air America radio network; it has also received some local and national press. It's available in one area bookstore so far (the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza), and Dunlea just put it on Amazon.com, a move he had resisted. "It costs so much money," he laughs, as Amazon considers itself both a bookstore and distributor-and, accordingly, takes two bites out of the sales of each book.

Dunlea seems to genuinely enjoy promoting the novel; he's done it well enough to break even, after all. At a recent noontime appearance at the Albany Public Library, Dunlea answered questions, signed books and read from his work with a seasoned campaigner's enthusiasm. (Every politician, whatever their party, has something of the actor in them.)

Dunlea's thinking reflects a mix of realism and optimism. At one point in this interview, he reminisced about his early-'90s tenure as an elected member of the Postenkill Town Board: "I thought I was cynical about electoral politics until I got elected to office, then I became far, far more cynical having actually experienced it."

The book, however, eschews cynicism in favor of hope. At the library, Dunlea read with a convincing seriousness and passion an excerpt from President Moreno's Sept. 11 memorial speech, which concludes with a sentiment that runs through Dunlea's political beliefs: "There is no way to peace, peace is the way."

Madame President: The political novel as field of dreams.

Grab a copy of this book and keep it handy - this book will surely make a difference in your life! Let me share just one example of how it changed my life. Thanks to Robyn Spizman and her most recent book (she's written several)I have re-discovered the joy in taking the what-I have-come-to-dread annual holiday picture. I have three boys and every year it has been a hassle to get them dressed, combed and smiling for that annual picture. What a hassle - and all just so we could have a picture to send out with our holiday cards - ba humbug! But on page 17, Robyn writes about the growing family who each year poses in an ordinary spot, but makes the photo MEMORABLE because each family member holds something unique and special representing that particular time in his or her life. I absolutely love this idea - one of hundreds in Robyn's book. Never again will I dread the photo session. In fact quite the opposite - I'll be so anxious to see what each of my boys and husband brings with them and from now on I'll focus on the greater purpose of this "memorable" exercise! There's so much more useful and practical information in this book - you'll want to get it right away!

Robyn Spizman's newest book certainly lives up to its title! With personal entries that will wow everyone you know, Make It Memorable shows us how to leave our friends and families in awe. From birthday party themes to wedding showers, favors and clever gift wrap, Robyn provides countless examples of how to add that little extra touch to make any event more personal. Lasting memories are created by details--witty catch phrases and attention-grabbing invitations that will have guests still talking about your party at the next big gathering. For readers who want to have it all and find themselves pressed for time, Make It Memorable has solutions for quick and easy details and themes that will dazzle the most discerning party guests. In fact, don't even think about giving a party without this book! Get a copy for yourself, and keep an extra on hand so that when your best friend asks where you get all of your wonderful ideas, you can let her in on your little secret!

Believe it or not, this is exactly how it was. I was there. It really happened -- and it really was this zany.

Never had the fans of a Television show flocked in such droves with so much excitement to demand the return of their favorite fare.

Fans of television shows were always dismissed as ineffectual by Hollywood. After this book came out, which is based on an expansion of Joan Winston's contribution to the Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES!, Hollywood learned that a TV show's fans really do matter.

While reading this book, remember all this happened before email, before the Web, before the internet was anything more than a klonky connection among university campuses.

This is one of a handful of non-fiction books about Star Trek that tells the story of what really happened that has in fact changed the entertainment industry if not the whole world.

Read it. Believe it. It really happened -- and could happen again.

Reading about how a friendly gathering turned into a large gathering and then spun out of control into a massive deluge of people...walking around with toilet paper badges stuck w/ little gold stars is very funny. Joan Winston has a great way of turning phrases and putting you into the scene...even though it happened so many years ago.

This collection of essays, published in 2006 before the elections, is a valuable peek into elections, how those elected write the rules of the elections, and the electoral results of those rules. Several studies point to the resulting high rate of incumbency reelection, which since 1945 has usually been over 90% for most state and national offices. Still, this does not mean that elections are always secure. In 1980, 55% of incumbent Senators were reelected, a notable exception to the general reelection expectations. Plus, the book was written before the 2006 primaries and elections which experienced a higher rate of incumbent defeated than in the past.

While individual incumbents have become more secure in winning reelections, political parties have diminished. The research reported in this book indicates that the public's affiliation with any political party has been lessening since the 1960s. Yet without strong political parties, incumbents are finding it easier to win reelections in part due to decreased competition. Redistricting decisions tend to make it more difficult for challenging parties to successfully defeat incumbents. Research also shows that challengers have tended to have less previous experience, indicating that fewer experienced, and thus weaker, political challengers have emerged.

The redistricting advantage is currently particularly effective for Republicans, according to research discussed in this book. It credits Republican leaders with successful gerrymanders in Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. Authors in this book conclude that the attempts of one political party to gerrymander have had unintended results of not achieving the best partisan result sought by the gerrymanders. When attempts are made to maximize the number a seats a political party could win, the result often turns out instead to increase in the number of competitive seats.

Electoral competition usually decreases in each successive election following redistricting. Incumbents are most vulnerable in their new districts and become better established and less vulnerable over time. Ironically, this failed to happen in 2002, the first election after the 2000 redistricting, leading some observations that incumbents had become better skilled at devising redistricting to protect themselves.

The per cent of voters participating in U.S. House elections has been declining over past decades, although the rate of decline has been erratic. It has reached a historic low. Apparently this reduced turnout has favored incumbents.

State legislative elections find incumbent reelection rates in several states as over 80% or 90%, with the highest rates found in some elections of 99% in Pennsylvania to 98% in New York, Michigan, and Massachusetts. The increased incumbency reelection rates produces stability of membership to legislatures. In the 1930s, each session saw half of its membership as new members. In the 1980s and 1990s, legislatures kept about three quarters of their members between sessions. Not running for reelection was a leading cause of not returning, rather than being defeated.

Legislatures have become more professional over the decades, and research shows the electoral competition decreases in states with more professional legislatures. Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and Wisconsin have the least competitive state legislative elections, and voter approval of their professional legislators along with the greater ability of professional legislators to serve and communicate with their constituents contributes to this reduced competition.

While campaign contributions have become a more important part of politics, researchers note that many candidates do not raise funds from local sources. Over half of all Democratic funds raised and about 40% of Republican funds nationwide are raised from contributors located in only 50 counties.

Term limits have increased competition for state legislative seats. From 1991 through 2002, 698 seats nationwide were created by term limits, and 82% of those open seats were contested by the two major parties. By comparison, there were 4,754 open seats that occurred in states without term limits, and 74% of those seats were contested between the two major parties. Despite the increased competition caused by term limits, greater political party turnover was found in the non-term limited open seats, where 19% switched parties, as opposed to the term-limited open seats were 12% switched parties.

In sum, this book discovers that elections have become less competitive. If democracy is truly a marketplace, then the market is purchasing more determinant elections and less electoral uncertainty.

Edited by Michael P. McDonald (an assistant Professor as George Mason University and a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings institution) and John Samples (Director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute), The Marketplace Democracy: Electoral Competition and American Politics is an anthology of essays by political experts concerning the stagnancy of modern American democracy. Since 1998, US House incumbents have won 98% of the reelection races, and electoral competition is on the decline in most state and primary elections. The resources of two respected organizations, the Brookings Institution and the Cato Institute, pool their talents to investigate the historical background, legal development, and political nuances of a system that is supposed to be responsible and adaptable, yet is effectively self-perpetuating and anti-dynamic. Presenting a wealth of policy options to help revitalize American democratic politics, The Marketplace Democracy is a desperately needed and strongly recommended contribution to modern political debate.