The Empire Books

There are many myths in the history of environmentalism. The author, Gregory Barton, has carefully taken apart a multitude of myths about the origins of the environmental movement. Carefully researched and carefully reasoned this thoughtful book explains the sub-continental beginning of the Ideas and legislation that has protected nature around the world. I cannot praise this book too highly.

In this remarkable book, Gregory Barton answers the most important questions that can be asked in environmental history. Where did environmentalism come from? How did it arise? How did it change the earth? How did it change us? Where is the movement going from here? Most environmental history is centered on the United States and misses the global dynamics of the movement. I am sorry to say that many environmental history books share in the general malaise of bad academic writing, or are such a jumble of superfluous footnotes that little meaning can be extracted, even with the most strenuous effort on the part of the reader. This book can not be more different. Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism place the environmental movement in clear global perspective, giving us the When, Where, Why, and How it all began. It ties together legislation, political propaganda, economics, trade, empire, and of course, forestry, to weave a single explanatory narrative. In this ambitious endeavor, Gregory Barton brilliantly succeeds. The result is a highly readable and convincing argument that introduces a cast of historical actors?wholly forgotten-- that have forever changed the face of the world.

Environmentalism, Barton argues, began in British India. From there it spread to the other colonies and then to the United States. The magnitude of the changes are mind boggling. Lord Dalhousie introduced ?the constitution of environmentalism? in India in 1855, the Forest Charter, decisively changing the status of ?waste land? into government property. This is a key intellectual revolution. Private property?in the absolute sense?had been carved out by the British land owning elite in England in 1688 and is thought by many scholars to be the foundation of the industrial revolution. Barton reveals how the government of British India extended this private concept of absolute property from the individual to the state. Here also is born the concept of ?multi-use,? the idea that government land must be professionally and scientifically managed for the whole national family, peasants, industry, and romantic conservationists alike, a concept that still guides the management of most protected forest areas. The Forest Charter became a model that overcame political opposition to conservation and quickly spread to the other British colonies and the United States.

This book clears away long-standing myths. Victorians were not only conservative--but innovative, practical and romantic all rolled into one. Imperialists were not mere exploiters--the altruism of the Indian foresters who sacrificed health and sometimes their life to preserve nature can be described as nothing less than heroic. Christianity did not postulate a radical divorce between God and nature--most of these early environmental innovators were Christian. Environmentalism did not arrive in the early twentieth century from the American frontier full grown, with murky parentage in the Romantic Movement and pagan country dances. Imperialism mothered environmentalism and gave environmentalism all the nourishment it required to grow--the rule of law, absolute property rights (for individuals and government), police action, romantic concern for nature, concern for global climate stability, and great doses of fair play to ?settle? the conflicting land claims.

A note on the author?s sources. He translates from a variety of languages, and utilizes archives in Europe, the United States, Africa, and the Subcontinent. The book, for all its impressive research, is actually rather short and gives a lot of information for a brief read. But his scholarship doesn?t stand in the way of telling an exciting story. Surprisingly, I learned a fascinating fact about my favorite piece of literature, the Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. I did not know that Kipling wrote his first Mowgli story with Mowgli an adult, discovered by empire foresters in the jungles of India. Kipling wrote a now forgotten short story that preceded the Jungle Book. Mowgli, raised entirely by Mother Nature, became the perfect recruit to join the Queen?s service as an early conservator? an empire forester. With a pension at the end to retire on.

This book must be in the library of anyone interested in foreign policy of Japan. The author brilliantly combines history with International Relations and offer many clues to understand current foreign relations of Japan. His approach takes the reader to a journey of Japanese intellectual history as early as Meiji era in addition to domestic politics, and convincingly establish their relevance in the study of Japanese foreign policy.
The author utilizes original Japanese material as well as interviews as his sources. A look at his list of sources would reveal the amount of work he put in this work. Although the subject matter he tackles is very dense, his language is easy to follow. This is neither a superficial journalist account nor a dry work that discard history and domestic politics.

Professor Welfiel study of Japan's strategic relationship with US during the cold war is very impressive. He draws a mandala of Japanese political leaders from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and their rules in one of the most important alliances during the cold war. What is more impressive, is to know that the author has met nealy all those important figures and got their views first hand. Having studied East Asian cold war history under Prof. Welfield brilliant presence, the book is the cream of many years of observation from a very knowledgable man.

Steven Spielberg is, without doubt, one of the most gifted and imaginative filmmakers of his generation. To my mind, he has few, if any equals in making films that can profoundly move an audience, excite and enlighten anybody watching truth flicker by at the requisite 24 frames per second. You walk out of "Jaws," as many of us did, knowing you've been frightened half to death, yet also knowing that you've seen great filmmaking at work, the best of the medium, a pure "movie movie," as it was once called when I was kicking around Hollywood in my early days as a writer and journalist.
It was all there, of course, early on, if you want to go back in film history and check out his first feature "Duel." And it's been an amazing ride ever since, from "Jaws" and "ET" to "Indiana Jones" and "Schindler's List" and beyond to "Minority Report" and "War of the Worlds." Spielberg never ceases to amaze and dazzle the audience with his command of the medium.
Now Andrew Gordon has explained, in great detail, why and how. In his masterful, brilliant study of Spielberg's career, Gordon provides an in-depth look at each of the several dozen or more films that comprise the master's work. The various of pieces of Spielberg's career and the critical responses to his movies are woven together in a rich tapestry of film scholarship. Gordon has done his homework in spades. His insights into the Spielberg canon are both illuminating and astute. This is no easy task, given the range of emotions that each Spielberg movie appears to evoke. Gordon steps both forward and back in assessing how he reacted to each picture, and how others reacted. In particular, I liked Gordon's chapter on Spielberg's "A.I.," the movie he finished for Stanley Kubrick. Although not a great commercial success, and one that certainly divided the critics, I still remember parts of the film with greater recall and emotional resonance than other Spielberg creations. Gordon, again, explains why, digging with psychological clarity into the various themes of the lost child expressed in the story.
The beauty of Gordon's book is that he is able to connect the various and complex themes that run through Spielberg's work from film to film; we see continuity, interrelationships, the struggle of the artist at work, the hits and misses, and ultimately, the ways in which we always, seemingly, happen to return to the world of Spielberg's boyhood home in suburbia, to all the hopes and promises of the American dream itself. If you're a film scholar, this book is must reading; if your interest in Spielberg is casual and curious, you'll find the text to be highly informative, with penetrating insight into the artist and his remarkable style of filmmaking.

Shakespeare states, 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on...'. Professor Gordon has authored a tome remarkable both for its breadth AND depth. Having written and optioned several screenplays myself,I truly believe that this book is in the vanguard of Spielberg scholarship, and a fine chronicle of our creative status as remade dreams.

This book is very unique as it is one of the very few written on the subject of Alberta history. It is very interesting, and an excellent resource for teachers. I would also recommend the book "Feasting on Misfortune", also by David Jones, if this subject interests you. I have taken University courses from David Jones, and have never met a man more enthusiastic and having such love of subject as him.

Empire Of Dust: Settling And Abandoning The Prairie Dry Belt by David C. Jones (Professor of History, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is an impressive compendium of Canadian agricultural history. Tracing the inevitable result of over-expansion in towns such as Alderson, Alberta, Empire Of Dust is a real-life cautionary tale of the dangers of depleting the land to the point where it can no longer nourish the livestock and the people. Carefully researched, engagingly presented, and, enhanced with black-and-white photography, Empire Of Dust is very highly recommended reading and a welcome addition to Agricultural Studies and Canadian History reference collections.

In this book Lipovetsky makes explicit ideas that one could find in a more timid way in earlier books. The basic idea of his thought is that fragmentation of society does not, in the way it is thought commonly, mean destruction of morals or democracy. On the contrary, democracy is formed by the powers that are able to join fragmentation and continuity. This is what he shows with fashion. Fashion is from where he can understand what is "the essence" (although it isn't an essenciallist thought)of Western Culture. He uses the concept of fashion to synthetize the opposites: fragmentaed indivilualistic society and universal democratic society. As Hegel, he sees the union of both opposites through the whole reconstruction of Fashion. Not science or Reason but fashion is what explains us better what we are and why we are like that.

Unlike the stuffy American academics who turn their nose up at the world of fashion, Lipovetsky realizes the importance of fashion - not just as a result of liberalism and/or capitalism - but as a contributor to these structures. Lipovetsky basically argues that modern fashion contributes to democratization by allowing individuals more choices and also by obscuring social classes (Does Bill Gates dress signify his social or financial superiority in any way?). He also gives a pretty concise and coherent history of fashion which helps us understand where we stand today. On top of all that, it's well written. I don't know whether to thank him or Porter for that. All and all, an outstanding and entertaining rejection of the tedious, reductive Marxist explanations of fashion.

Economic conservatives and neoliberal "spinners" from James Fallows and Reed Hundt through Bill Clinton (singled out in one passage) are exposed as frauds, liars and enablers for a China of modern myth in this power-packed new book.

French journalist, politician and philosopher (and why can't we get that combo in America), exposes the lies of both the Chinese Communist Party and its Western apologists, which range from hardcore economic conservative American capitalists to French communists.

There's a few basic lies that underscore the scores of surface lies both the Chinese Party and its western enablers tell.

Sorman says Lie No. 1 is that capitalism will lead to democracy. He has a clear, albeit much smaller, counterexample - Singapore, led by, ironically or not, Chinese.

Lie No. 2 is that there is a "Chinese mindset," "Chinese way of business," or whatever, that is antithetical to democracy. Variants of that include references (usually wrong ones, according to Sorman) to Confucianism, etc. Counterexample? Taiwan. Daoism, repressed in China, flourishes there along with Confucianism, Buddhism and Protestant and Catholic Christianity -- along with traditional Chinese culture.

Lie No. 3 is the lie of Chinese economic statistics. Sorman says that even if you don't discount the costs of environmental degradation, Chinese growth rates are almost surely somewhat overstated, and possibly highly overstated.

Lie No. 4 might be a partial variant of No. 2, and would be the "China isn't all that bad" lie, especially if you compare it to the former Soviet Union. Sorman argues the other way around, that China is arguably more repressive than the Soviets of Khrushchev and beyond, at least in some ways.

As a result of all this, Sorman says, we really don't have that much to fear from China as a foreign power in general or a military adventurer in particular. On the economic side, in fact, he expects the rich-poor gap to be likely to worsen, not improve.

Another "sublie" would be the one that Western countries, through "economic involvement" with China, can moderate its behavior. China isn't going to be moderated by that. And, as a sidebar, Sorman estimates that about half the Western-owned factories in China are money-losers.

Read this book and get an unvarnished view of today's China.

Most TIMELY profound analysis of the Chinese govt, and what can lead China to become a truly great nation. Confirms for me that China's brand of Communism will likely devolve like USSR.

I just finished reading both of Brown's books on the New York Times best seller list, and Richard Crabbe's book is every bit as worthy of making the list. Richard combines a descriptive, sometimes violent but thoughtful style of writing that puts you in the hunt for Jim Tupper in what must be a breathtaking part of the country- It's fast, sometimes furious and a quality mystery/thriller... Dan Brown, you have company!

In August 1889, Mohawk Indian Jim Tupper kills a Manhattan construction site foreman. Although the police catch him, he breaks free when the Black Maria he?s transported in has an accident. He buys a bayonet before making his way by boat to his home in the Adirondack Mountains where he signs on at the logging camp owned and run by industrialist William West Durant.

At the same time Tupper is making his way home, New York Detective Bureau Chief Tom Braddock and his family vacation at the Prospect House resort hotel. Tom?s son Mike has taken up with the housemaid Lellie and when she is murdered, the local doctor thinks he is the killer. When Tom learns that via telegraph that Tupper is in the area and the maid was murdered by a bayonet, he believes Tupper is the killer. Tom sets out to bring this killer back so that his son?s name will be cleared, but the savvy Indian leads Tom and the authorities on a difficult chase that leads to a greater tragedy for all concerned.

THE EMPIRE OF SHADOWS is an action-packed historical thriller that gives the audience chills, thrills and a sense of adventure. Throughout the whole story line, readers will feel as if they don?t see the full picture because the audience senses there is more than just a killer on a rampage yet everything points to one killer in plain sight. That magic and the ability of Richard E. Crabbe to bring to life a bygone golden age that will never be seen again turns this work into a breathtaking tale.

Harriet Klausner

This is one novel that stays in my shelf which I pick up and read at least once a year. It's well written and like the previous review, the description of Afghanistan in 1870 is very similar to the situation today. The romance set behind the exotic settings is enjoyable to read and it's a pity the book had to end ... definitely a keeper.

This book is a superb romance novel. It is the very highest quality writing. Smart & resourceful heroine (except for a mistake she makes toward the end, putting herself & hero in grave danger...but love makes fools of us all, and she suffers for it, so I forgave her) and sexy, smart & wonderful hero! Setting is 1870's Afghanistan, India, and England -- how's that for different locales? (Also, it's amazing how the author's thoughts on Afghanistan are relevant to today's situation.) Everything about the plot is great, you can't stop reading it from the minute you open it...I am SO glad I took the trouble to get this long-out-of-print book. Even the supporting characters are so well written! The entire novel is a treat and a definite keeper. I was honestly sorry when it ended! What more can you ask of a romance novel?

"The Empire Reloaded: Socialist Register 2005" by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys (editors) brilliantly explores themes pertaining to finance, culture and the impact of U.S. imperialism around the world. The penetrating analyses offered by the sixteen outstanding writers in this collection makes a powerful statement about the Socialist movement's continued relevance in our increasingly fractured world.

The first two articles describe how globalization has been constructed through U.S. imperialism. Varda Burstyn's article draws inspiration from the works of several great Socialist writers from the past to find their ideas operative in the present. Burstyn connects President George W. Bush's shifting political alliances and doublespeak with the work of George Orwell; similarly, Burstyn finds that the bioscience and pharmaceutical industry's work towards engineering and pacifying the privileged classes had previously been imagined by Aldous Huxley. Stephen Gill explains how U.S. military and political power has been used to control international trade but believes that deficits resulting from imperial overstretch and growing negative public opinion might signal a turning point against the U.S.

Two works focus on the U.S.' domination of the post-World War II financial system. Interestingly, both Panitch and Gindin's and Christopher Rude's articles find that crisis has served as an integral component in the financial system's ability to discipline both labor and recalcitrant governments. Contrasting the institutional protections that have been built for financiers with the insecurities of the working class, the authors believe that increasing inequality and political illegitimacy may open the door for popular anti-capitalist movements to emerge.

Several articles explored the relationship between the media and ideology. Scott Forsyth suggests that the Hollywood action film's promotion of the U.S. engaging in a 'good war' is becoming an increasingly difficult idea to sell to the rest of the world. Yuezhi Zhao traces the Chinese State's embrace of corporate news and entertainment to the class alliance between transnational capitalists and China's ruling elite, which in turn has led to a culture of consumption that has left vast numbers of Chinese citizens impoverished.

Three articles addressed the topic of development. Harriet Friedmann highlights the myriad shortcomings of the industrial agriculture system and makes a case for indigenous rights and self-determination. Vivek Chibber's history of developmentalism shows how capital used the state to first repress labor and then take control of the state itself, whereupon subsequent development has benefited mostly private interests at the expense of the public. Gerald Greenfield discusses how nationalism has been exploited by leaders in the global South to restructure their states to meet capitalist requirements, suggesting a need to confront both class and capital and not merely U.S. imperial ambitions.

A collection of very interesting articles about the European Union (EU) challenges the idea that the EU might provide a more attractive alternative to U.S. leadership. John Grohl writes a history of the EU that stresses its economic and political domination by the U.S. and the subsequent nurturing of a pro-corporate legal system, the repression of labor, and a decline in the quality of life for many people. Dorothee Bohle points to the EU's exploitation of Eastern Europe as evidence that the EU is keen to implement an extreme neoliberal agenda and, in the case of Yugoslavia, is incapable of political leadership in the absence of U.S. military power. Frank Deppe critiques Jurgen Habermas' manifesto for an EU that embraces U.S.-style neoliberalism while wishing itself independent from the U.S., arguing that Socialism remains the best hope for distinguishing the EU if it hopes to lead the world towards a sustainable and just future.

Other articles discuss South Africa, Columbia, Russia, and Latin America. In each case, the authors stress the critical role the state plays in promoting corporate interests at the expense of people and the environment. Yet struggles for justice persist, suggesting that public discontent can develop into a broad-based movement that can successfully challenge capitalism.

As the legendary Tony Benn states in a profound interview in the concluding chapter: "...you can't hold people down, and that has been the lesson of history".

This is arguably the best Socialist Register yet -- the issues covered have never been more pertinent or provocative. The lead article by Varda Burstyn, "The New Imperial Order Foretold", frames the whole volume and is a pleasure to read. It is organized around Orwell and Huxley and their relevance today, and ranges from Orwellian war to Huxleyan "militainment" to nano-technology to mind conditioning to advertising techniques to artificial procreation to criminalizing dissent: a wild, and ultimately chilling ride. The next three articles lay bare the fundamental role of neoliberalism in the shaping of the global order today. Next, Scott Forsyth's "Hollywood Reloaded" is a wonderful discussion of the new order's characteristic film genre: the action blockbuster. Harriet Friedmann's "Feeding the Empire" is a fundamental historical treatment of a critical topic that is simply not talked about enough: food. The regional articles on China, SE Asia, S. Africa, Russia and E. Europe are all good, but the one that boggled my mind was the one on "counterinsurgency" in Columbia -- a mind-bending expose' of the so-called war on drugs, which is in reality a war of terror against popular forces in order to protect forest and oil resources in Venezuela. The book closes with an interview with the "grand old man" of the British left, Tony Benn, focusing on the Bush-Blair relationship: a fitting end to an extremely thought-provoking volume. And all this in just over 300 pages!

When I needed to launch my history project I chose this book. Not only was it attractive but intriguing! I was fastenated about the information brought upon in this book. Gini Holland wrote an excellent, well organized piece of work in my opinion. And if you read it you will agree, no doubt.

A picturesque book about creating The Empire State Building collates interesting data from some historical perspective sometimes new even for an adult reader.

Leaving some writer's explanations on socio-economical issues off the text, it is a nice easy-reading educative story providing a significant quantity of sharp-to-the-point information with a reasonable volume of pages illustrated perfectly.