Policy Books

This is an excellent account of the effects of allowing marketing of Tamnbocor (flecainide) as an anti-arrhythmic based on "surrogate" intermediate endpoints. Later there was recognition that in fact the drug was associated with increased cardiac death rates when a "gold standard" randomized controlled trial was undertaken. It also shows the problematic relationships between the payment and support of academic researchers into drug effectiveness and the drug firms, many of whose products have been life saving and life transforming. A very well balanced book and very enjoyable reading. The author erroneously describes RA Fisher as an American Genius which would irritate the very English (& later Australian) Cambridge professor of Genetics!

This important investigative work explains HOW and WHY the American Pharmaceutical Industry KILLS and no one seems seriously interested in stopping it, least of all the FDA! Legally prescribed drugs are now the 4th LEADING cause of death in the US. We are trying to change this by helping to train physicians and the public to use natural approaches instead of drugs, inspite of the continous FDA and FTC harrassment of all doctors in Alternative Medicine. Our system that financially rewards doctors millions of dollars for KILLING people is seriously out of control. If natural therapies are even alleged to have slightly harmed even 1 patient, the FDA stands ready to seize ALL of the supplies and put everyone involved in jail. Yet drugs are provably killing over 100,000 each year and the GAME goes on. I believe this book could help everyone understand that this must all change and soon. This book merely describes the tip of the iceberg and the 70,000 dead from these heart medicines described in detail here, is just a fraction of the real number needlessly killed by American medicine and surgery everyday at great taxpayor expense. WE have safe and EFFECTIVE alternatives to virtually every drug, including aspirin (not tylenol!) and most heart surgery is done on the WRONG plaque and does not significantly reduce the likelihood of a heart attack. There are SAFE natural alternatives not just for heart disease but for virtually every one of the major diseases today! contact G.F. Gordon M.D.D.O. President Gordonresearch.com and InCALM.com 1-520-472-9086 Payson AZ

Ralph Moss wrote an excellent review of this book in the Spring 1997 edition of the Cancer Chronicles. I am writing only to put his review into context. There have been many books written describing the shortcomings of medicine, particularly those questioning claims of the efficacy of medical intervention. These include Robert Mendelsohn's Confessions of A Medical Heretic; Richard Taylor's Medicine out of Control; Ivan Illich's Medical Nemesis; the New Medical Foundation's Dissent in Medicine; Samuel Epstein's The Politics of Cancer; Ralph Moss' Cancer Industry and Questioning Chemotherapy; Ulrich Abel's Chemotherapy of advanced epithelial cancer - a critical survey; What Doctors Don't Tell You's Cancer Handbook, What's Really Working; and Neville Hodgkinson's AIDS, the failure of scientific medicine. (I have also published two papers questioning the efficacy of surgical treatment of cancer in Medical Hypotheses.) These together support and explain the claim in the editorial in the British Medical Journal of October 1991 (Vol 303: 198-99) "Where is the wisdom...? The poverty of medical evidence" that "Only about 15% of medical interventions are supported by solid evidence... This is partly because only 1% of the articles in medical journals are scientifically sound". Thomas Moore's earlier (1989) book Heart Failure describes the poor record of treating heart problems with bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty and drugs to lower serum cholesterol. Moore's more recent book homes in on particular drugs such as those used to treat arrhythmia. With deaths from heart disease accounting for more than 40% of all deaths these two books on the inefficacy of treatments for heart problems fill an important gap. As a scientist I found the section explaining how "surrogate endpoints" are used instead of actual therapeutic benefits to test efficacy particularly useful. It explains why so many claims for the efficacy of chemotherapy are invalid. It is a pity that the book is now out of print.

John Forester's latest book entitled "The Deliberative Practitioner encouraging Participatory Planning Process", (MIT press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 1999) develops the key ideas of his earlier writings on participatory planning processes by examining the challenges and difficulties of planning in the midst of contested power relationships.

Forester perceives planning as the effort to build consensus towards commonly perceived goals. Since the context of the planning is always fraught with differences, conflicts and inequalities, a planning process necessarily shapes opinion, creates value, transforms not just material conditions but human relationships.

The emphasis on democracy and participation is central to Foresters search for effective planning practices. Keenly sensitive to a world 'riddled with racial violence and discrimination with vast differences in levels of political organization and mobilization', Forester highlights the significance of public deliberations that give space to plural voices and strengthen democratic practices. Adversarial situations are not predetermining. They can be negotiated towards collaborative action. Deliberative planning is seen as a process of learning together to craft strategies towards greater community good. Forester's concern with planning focuses on the issues of rationality, emotional sensitivity and moral vision. Forester defines rationality as an interactive and argumentative process of marshalling evidence and giving reasons. By ethics, Forester understands not a system of fixed codes and predetermined standards, but the continuous allocation and recognition of value inherent in every pragmatic choice assessable by its quality of action and consequences. Emotional sensitivity is seen as a source of knowledge and recognition. "Deliberative practitioner" highlights these issues in a 'live' way by using 'stories' as a narrative method because stories deepen our understanding of planning as a human interaction. Stories bring into play our dual roles of actor and critic, crucial to planning. By capturing situations in their complexity, Forester sensitizes our perceptions to the significance of many non-formal processes and the elements of unpredictability and surprise in planning cautioning against a 'rush to interpretation' and simplistic cure-alls.

Forester's book makes significant contributions to the discussion on participatory planning. The stories he selects indicate how planners can through their technical inquiry, explicit value inquiry, and learning about social identities succeed in a pragmatic synthesis of rationality, ethical judgements and emotional sensitivities. Forester's book has special relevance to developing contexts, fraught with unevenness, caught between their indigenous cultures and the new cultures that the culture of external development aid brings with it. Development projects in such contexts, under the pressure of measurable, time-bound performance indicators, tend to abandon the process of deliberative planning. Forester's book reminds the planners in contexts of developing economies, of the need for culturally-sensitive planning process if sustainable development has to happen. It underscores the possibility and need of cross-context learning. It also reminds that in a situation of unequal relationship, participatory planning can be said to be successful only if existing relationship have been transformed through greater transfer of power to those who are the subjects of planning. Forester's book creates an effective, innovative way of educating planner, using theory and practice, the general and the particular, to mutually illuminate each other. Finally, and most importantly, it bridges the gap between theory and practice in a way that makes practice insightful and theory relevant, each enriching the other. It restores the practitioner to the centrality of planning discourse, and in doing so, the importance of people in planning.

Once I started reading this book I could not put it aside for long. Perhaps this is because so many of the insights that the author offers on what practioners of deliberative planning and rural development actually do resonates so much with the work I am involved with in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Unlike many other books I have read on planning and development, this book relates stories of planners' real world experiences. It appears that most of the skills practitioners use to deal with the diversity of interests in the face of conflict are rarely taught in universities or textbooks. One wonders where practitioners learn what they do best.

While a solid professional background is necessary, planners must also use improvisation to deal with deliberative processes which involve many stakeholders. What I enjoyed most about this book, unlike many others, is that it contrasts rationality with emotional sensitivity, calculation with improvisation, all of which are necessary for good practice.

The author aslo addresses an often overlooked aspect of deliberative processes in the design professions, that is, how to balance pragmatism in contexts where there has been a history of injustice towards particular groups.

The book makes use of extensive practical experiences of real-life planners and attempts to draw theory from that praxis. These experiences are just as fascinating to read as the authors' insights into theory. It's like being immersed into a deliberative dialogue.

As Forester explains in his Introduction makes, the title of his book is an intentional reference to Don Schön's path breaking The Reflective Practitioner. To use a trite cliché, that his book begins where Schön's book left off. There is, on the one hand, a remarkable similarity between the way Schön frames the situation the planner faces on the one hand, and Forester's description of the planner's world and his concept of deliberation on the other. The difference is in Forester's upfront, no-illusion understanding of the conflict-ridden nature of the world of planners and policy makers. Where Schön's reflection-in-action can, perhaps somewhat unfairly, be read as an improvement of the received view of professional knowledge as the sage expert who solves complex problems for clients in need, Forester has no illusions anymore about the moral and instrumental bankruptcy of the expert model. This becomes nowhere as clear as when we look at the examples each author uses. Where Schön uses one-on-one encounters between a psychotherapist and his supervisee, or an architect and his student, Forester examples include a bitter, entrenched fight over urban development in the Oslo harbour, a black home buyer counsellor in the overtly racist environment of a low income white settlement house, or housing improvement among poor campesinos in rural Venezuela.

Between Schön's and Forester's book lie almost twenty years of massive social, economic and political change, and, in its wake, almost twenty years of disenchantment, if not disillusion, with the role of politicians, administrators, and experts in the public domain. The world that Forester's planners or today's administrators inhabit is the fragmented, pluralistic, adversarial world that has eroded the steering capacity of central governments and that transferred policymaking power to a fragmented field of social and political actors. It is a world that has become so complex and tightly coupled, that the only thing that seems certain to policy makers is that their actions will generate massive unforeseen effects. A world in which the "privileged" knowledge of experts time and again dramatically fails to foresee or solve social and technical problems, and in which, consequently, citizens no longer take the authority of experts for granted. A world, moreover, in which debates about policy solutions are often less about the effectiveness of solutions as about the nature of the problem or the identity of the parties involved. As Forester makes clear, any theory of planning or policymaking or public administration that aspires to even a modicum of social or political relevance, has somehow to come to terms with this world. Listen to the way Forester, subtly commenting upon Schön, sets the stage for his book: "As planners work in between interdependent and conflicting parties in the face of inequalities of power and political voice, they have to be not only personally reflective but politically deliberative too."(1999: 2) Planners, in order to be effective in this pluralist and conflicted world, have no choice but to work with others in an open, transparent and mutually respecting way.

So what does democratic deliberation in the real world of politics and administration entail? Without being exhaustive, let me just touch upon some of the more startling insights of this rich and rewarding book. First, deliberation is more than debate and dialogue; more than the opportunity of being heard. (1999: 115) It is above all active participation in joint problem solving situations. Despite the practical stance of the book, it's key argument is epistemic and circles around the twin notions of unpredictability and complexity. Actors have no choice but to immerse themselves in the messiness, ambiguity, and open-endedness of practical situations. Not only are they literally captives of the everyday world, but the social-technical complexity of most public problems is such that it discounts any general problem solving strategy, and demands from the actors' immersion in the rich, diffuse detail of concrete situations. Knowledge, thus, is essentially local and relational.

In line with the book's epistemic theme, Forester argues that an important part of participatory inquiry consists of telling stories as a special, pragmatic kind of knowing. Much has been written in the last two decades about the role of stories in providing meaning to unstructured, conflictual situations. Forester is particularly insightful about the central role of storytelling in working through everyday political situations. Stories, he tells us, are not mere representations of meetings or encounters between planners and their clientele. Instead, stories are generative; they open up possibilities and close off unwanted or unfeasible lines of action by helping the actors narratively explore the complexities and contradictions of the situation at hand as it is situated in its proximal and distal environment. As Forester puts it, with a particularly happy phrase, stories do all sorts of moral and practical "work": "descriptive work of reportage, moral work of constructing character and reputation (of oneself and others), political work of identifying friends and foes, interests and needs, and the play of power in support and opposition, and, most important. ...deliberative work of considering means and ends, values and options, what is relevant and significant, what is possible and what matters, all together." (1999: 29) Stories are, thus, the prime means for practical judgement. They retain the rich detail that we need for a valid assessment of the situation at hand, yet, by situating the concrete event in a wider moral and causal landscape, stories allow us to connect the particular with the general, the concrete situation with the more general standard. In addition stories allow the actor to explore the emotional dimensions of his actions, both for himself and for others.

Hal O'Boyle is a hard hitting and extremely entertaining writer who hits you with the unvarnished, unspun truth right between the eyes.

You can love him or hate him, but you have to listen to him because in case you are not aware - and I hope to God you are - our real life political situation is far more horrific than George Orwell's '1984' or the latest science fiction movie.

Great read. I enjoyed reading a chapter and waiting a day or two as the ramifications of the author's messages are pondered. This is serious stuff. But how to be serious and have fun? This author knows how. The contents of Democracy: the Painted Whore are equally provocative and tragic. Here we learn of the absurdities conjured up by our government to control us, to tax us, to demean us and insult us. Why we take off our shoes at airports and how meaningless it is. Or how we allow our politicians to tax us into crisis by using inflationary policies to rob us. Or the Federal Drug Administration's failures; they attempt now to "prescribe"
what foods we will eat. Immigration, the War on Terror, the IRS. The Federal Reserve, Prohibition are all exposed by the author's keen insight as we Americans give up our individual power to government. Although he doesn't say it, Mr. O'Bolye's analysis of our current situation in America clearly designates our government as Public Enemy #1. And he proves it with keen observations.

This book is concise, compelling and insightful. Whether you believe that the government is malicious, or just blundering and ineffectual, you will like this book. The case is made repeatedly for less intervention in our lives and in a humorous and entertaining way though real life experiences. This should be on every Libertarian's bookshelf, as well as those disillusioned liberals and republicans that have lost the urge to make their neighbors behave properly in their private lives. If you value freedom, read this book.

Differentiated Coaching: A Framework for Helping Teachers Change

Awesome! I recommend this book to anyone who is responsible for helping teachers improve; administrators, educational consultants, instructional coordinators, instructional coaches, etc. I ordered this book because I wanted to figure out how to model differentiated instruction for the teachers that I work with. I not only have a game plan for differentiating my coaching, but also have a clear understanding of why what I was doing before was not working. This book helped me better understand myself, my teachers, and the students that we serve. Its the best book I've read on coaching yet.

I enjoyed the author's sharing of personal experiences. I believe it provides us, facilitators and coaches, a practical perspective on working with teachers.

The author knows instruction and knows people. This is book I can use in various situations .

The problems of the US mount daily from a ballooning deficit to heightened opposition from multiplying points on the globe. Walden Bello's Dilemmas of Domination is a tour de force dissection of the causes of these mounting problems. He argues from an objective and non-partisan position in the global South. Because he primarily works outside of the US and because his method relies heavily on history, his account is compelling. Dilemmas of Domination contends that the US has entered into a period of decline as the world's hegemon. Three crises characterize the loss of power and prestige. The first crisis is the problem of manufacturing and raw materials overproduction that leads to a decline in profits, and as wages are squeezed to stabilize profits demand falls further. Added to these problems is the fact that the US, the consumer of last resort, cannot continue to borrow and buy forever. The IOUs to the rest of the world will eventually have to be repaid. A second critical problem is military overextension. According to Bello, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate the US is not invincible. If it were, how could guerillas continue to move about these occupied nations so freely and make nation-building into such a farce? The US military is so strained that it has to hire mercenaries from companies like Blackwater to protect its corporate interests abroad because a draft would undermine all of its imperial adventures. The third crisis, perhaps the most enduring, is legitimacy. Ideologically, the US has lost its currency to lead the world. Because the US dominates international financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank and most of the regional development banks, their imposition of neo-liberal structural adjustments programs has led to a revolt against their destructive policies as witnessed by the left ferment especially in Latin America but also in the rest of the global South. Furthermore, the US bullying and sometimes insulting treatment of the UN has further sullied the US's reputation. Added to this international delegitimation is the quagmire of domestic politics from the surrender of civil liberties to the patently obvious corporate control of both major parties. For readers looking for a rich and clear formulation of why the US government is detested and feared by much of the earth's population this is the best primer.

In this stringent view from the South, Walden Bello discerns three different crisis levels beleaguering the US world domination: a military, a judicial and an economical level.

On the military front, the Iraq war shows clearly the limits of interventon: 'today the entire US military is either in Iraq, returning from Iraq or getting ready to go.'
The lesson for the South is that the US military supremacy can be brought to a halt with guerrilla warfare. A sledgehammer is useless in swatting flies.

On the judicial front, the US is loosing its legitimacy.
In Western societies, enhancement of individual freedom and democratic representation are the ideological cornerstones of the regime.
Nationally, recognized human rights (no access to personal information, privacy) are jeopardized in the US by the Patriot Act in the name of the war against terrorism.
For Walden Bello, the US government is becoming authoritarian, because it is in the hands of the military-industrial complex, which functions on a risk-free, cost-plus basis and grabs one half of the US budget. He quotes judiciously William Pfaff: 'The military is already the most powerful institution in the US government, largely unaccountable to the executive branch.'

Internationally, consensus and multilateralism are needed through international institutions.
However, the US behaves unilaterally. Dealings with the South are subordinated to strategic considerations (R. Zoellick: 'countries that seek free trade agreements with the US must cooperate on its foreign policy goals.')
Walden Bello's analysis of the WTO agreements is devastating. He calls them a free trade monopoly in the hands of corporate interests. WTO's agreement on Agriculture is not less than 'Socialism for the Rich'.

The result is that the US democratic messianism is seen as sheer hypocrisy by the rest of the world.

Economically, some of Walden Bello's arguments are a little of the mark.
Finite natural resources and ecological space are demographic problems. The conflict between a minority in command of assets and the majority of the population is a trade union and an election problem.
But some of his arguments are to the point. There is a widening inequality gap in the US: the richest 1% of the population pocketed more than half the benefit of the latest tax reduction. The actual US budget and trade deficits are unsustainable in the long run and certainly if the inflow of foreign capital comes to a halt.

Finally, there is a new hegemon at the horizon: China with its state-assisted capitalism. The author summarizes brilliantly China's behavior: 'nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.'

But what should the South do in the meantime: regional economic blocks, G-20, South-South cooperation, because 'the weak must hang together, otherwise they will hang separately'.

Walden Bello's hard hitting analysis of current events should be a vademecum for all politiciams and laymen.
A must read.

In this context, I also recommend the works of Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed and Noreena Hertz.

I've read lots of books about globalization and free trade but none exposes the uneven playing field of free trade as good as Walden Bello. He shows that not only the evenness of playing field but also how the way U.S. is imprudently trying to dominate the world by adapting short sighted policies. These kind of policies have become the distinctive mark of recent American ideology domestically and foreign.

Particularly impressive is the author's approach at presenting the Chinese thought process in such a manner that Westerners can not only understand the Chinese psyche, but respect and learn from it as well. This book was perhaps one of the most enlightening books I have read in a while. There is a a concerted effort to show business protocol and potential avenues of entry, but more importantly this book addresses the fundamental social concepts that need to be FULLY understood before attempting to grow in China.

Of the vast number of books about China, this one is a very useful account of how successfully doing business in China. Western Managers at the forefront in China should read this book which brings together a lifetime of research and practice on China.

Doing business in China!
Relation, Relation And Relation....

If you are using your American or European style to work and even partner with China's firms, you must be failure in the end.

Relationship with the Government and officials are the major concerns when you stepping into the door of China.

Think Global and hire Local Chinese people is the only way to have the final success with your partner in China.

China means: " Always in the historical culture "
So don't think about China with your American Standard !

Try to learn with your local Chinese people (doer)

Anyway, China is opened now and also needed to face the ways for WTO ! Reckon, China can learn from their European and American business partners from today.

It was suggested to me by someone very dear, to read this book. I can not tell you how it has changed my life. This young brave man, must be one of great determination and conviction to have met his challanges . I would imagine if one were to meet Paul Jockimo, you would be blessed beyond belief. Maybe someday, who knows, he will sign my copy of this book.
I thank the man who suggested my finding this book.His friendship has made a difference to me by sharing this book.
You see, we have choices in life to make, and Paul Jockimo made his, and that was to be the great person he would become. We have a chance in life to make a differnce, and he has.

this is an exciting but sad book that is a good way to show little kids that there are not all but perfect people in this world. But please Don't Feel Sorry For Paul

This is a great book. Having met Paul Jockimo, I can say that he is just as inspiring as they portray him in the book. Will, hopes and dreams can overcome anything perceived as a disability by the world at large. Paul Jockimo went on to become a firefighter and emergency services provider. He has trained many people in critical incident stress management, and he is a devoted father and husband. This book showed the spirit of the young man. That spirit has not diminished with time.

Driven By Drugs: U.S. Policy Toward Colombia by Russell Crandall (MacArthur Assistant Professor of Political Science, Davidson College) is a straightforward history of American relations vis-a-vis Colombia with particular emphasis on the last decade. An exhaustively researched, scholarly presentation surveying U.S. drug dependency, and its relationship with the roots of violence and guerilla groups in Colombia, as well as the volatile political situation revolving about who owns the land and what is to be done with it, Driven By Drugs is a fascinating, insightful, revealing, and greatly disturbing account of the troubled interaction between these two nations. Driven By Drugs is an important contribution to academic and community library International Studies supplemental reading lists and reference collections.

Russell Crandall's "Driven by Drugs" is an excellent guide to understanding the impact of U.S. policies and the current chaotic situation in Colombia. The author provides background on U.S.-Colombian relations and an overview of Colombian society to help the reader contextualize recent events. While violence in Colombia is rooted in that country's stratified social relations, it is America's "War on Drugs" that now might rip apart what little remains of Colombia's civil society.

Professor Crandall teaches Political Science at Davidson College. Crandall writes in a concise and scholarly manner, and his expertise on the subject matter is readily apparent. The author uses solid research; the numerous footnotes include a number of first-person interviews with knowledgeable sources as well as author translations of Spanish-language sources. The author's arguments are convincing and his conclusions are air-tight as they appear to be based on a rational evaluation of the evidence.

Principally, Crandall argues that Colombian-U.S. relations changed from a mutually-agreeable anti-Communist philosophy to a "narcotized" orientation by the mid 1980s. The narcotized state of affairs, Crandall suggests, is driven by America's multiple addictions; this includes of course the widespread consumption of illicit substances among its population and a congress dependent on defense industry dollars. (To this I might also suggest a peculiarly American need to rationalize its foreign policies in a moralistic manner.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, recent Colombian administrations have had mixed reactions to U.S. policies. Crandall writes that in fact our efforts have only succeeded in undermining Colombia's central government at the same moment when narco-trafficers, paramilitary groups, and guerilla fighters have exploited fear and uncertainty among the populace in order to gain strength. One hopes that Crandall's plea for U.S. policy makers to learn "from past mistakes" and instead implement policies that address Colombia's core socio-economic needs is heeded soon.

With so much of today's news reporting obsessed with other regions of the world, I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the decades-long war that America has been waging in Colombia.

Russell Crandall has broken new ground. His dynamic focus on U.S. policy during the Samper Administration (1994-1998) and the Pastrana Administration (1998-2002) provides a powerful insight as to why Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world after Israel and Egypt. The author also cautions of the many political landmines in the road ahead. Crandall is a tier-one academic and a polished writer.

I recommend this book highly. It is a well-written concise description of the transformation over the last decade of government policy/budgets and supporting media from helping citizens to tracking and punishing citizens. In combination with Gary Webb's Dark Alliance, it is an excellant tool to help understand how the "War on Drugs" works and how we have supported a variety of private and political purposes to use it and the enforcement bureaucracies to help ensure that wealth is controlled by a suprisingly small group of people in America. This is elitism at its most expensive and just the kind of environment that leads to symptoms like Y2K. When employees, organizations and constituents are out of alignment and financial disclosure of government investment not clearly and simply available by place and people, frightening things go on and citizens lose their ability and will to act. The American people can change this, and books like these help us see the world whole and begin a healthy and positive conversation.

I recommend this book highly. It is a well-written concise description of the transformation over the last decade of government policy/budgets and supporting media from helping citizens to tracking and punishing citizens. In combination with Gary Webb's Dark Alliance, it is an excellant tool to help understand how the "War on Drugs" works and how we have supported a variety of private and political purposes to use it and the enforcement bureaucracies to help ensure that wealth is controlled by a suprisingly small group of people in America. This is elitism at its most expensive and just the kind of environment that leads to symptoms like Y2K. When employees, organizations and constituents are out of alignment and financial disclosure of government investment not clearly and simply available by place and people, frightening things go on and citizens lose their ability and will to act. The American people can change this, and books like these help us see the world whole and begin a healthy and positive conversation.

I recommend this book highly. It is a well-written concise description of the transformation over the last decade of government policy/budgets and supporting media from helping citizens to tracking and punishing citizens. In combination with Gary Webb's Dark Alliance, it is an excellant tool to help understand how the "War on Drugs" works and how we have supported a variety of private and political purposes use it and enforcement efforts to ensure that wealth is controlled by a suprisingly small group of people in America. This is elitism at its most expensive and just the kind of environment that leads to symptoms like Y2K. When employees, organizations and constituents are out of alignment and financial disclosure of government investmen not clearly and simply available by place and people, frightening things go on and citizens lose their ability and will to act.

Douglas Husak approaches the subject with an objective in-depth analysis of key points in the issue of drug decriminalization. He examines what drugs are and are not (for example how they are often impossible to categorize into 'recreational' vs 'medicinal') - he describes what sort of rights we have already and how drug prohibition is incompatible with those we already are granted by the legal system. Through empirical evidence, sound arguments, and hypothetical cases, Douglas Husak is very convincing in his conclusion that drug prohibition infringes on the moral rights; and law, needing a grounding in morality (as argued also in the book) is currently inconsistent and needs a change.

This book, though written over a decade ago is still current in its arguments: because of Husak's approach to the subject. For slightly different arguments (and a simpler and shorter and cheaper read) consider Douglas Husak's "Legalize This!: The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs".

I used Husak's work to write a project for a logical reasoning undergrad class that claimed to prove deductively more than once over that Drugs should not be illegal in the U.S. The professor was pretty surprised it qualified as deductive.

There are some novel principles Husak employs unlike arguments I've read in other books. His logical tests of what a drug that deserved to be illegal would have to look like are important.

I was really pleased I decided to read this particular book on the subject, it was exactly what I was looking for as a critical thinker dubious of the War on Drugs and wondering whether or not the U.S. is totally off-base in its drug war.

The book is clear, fair, is not a manifesto by any means but a critical look at the arguments for and against laws-against-drugs by a legal, philosophical thinker and university professor.

This book examines the issue of whether the War on Drugs is morally permissible, and concludes that it is not.

Many books written about the issue of whether the U.S. government should be waging war on drugs engage in an exercise of weighing the costs of the war on drugs against the benefits of the war on drugs. These usually involve either pointing out the unintended negative consequences of the war on drugs, or pointing out the ineffectiveness of the war on drugs, and/or the would-be costs of not having a war on drugs. While these issues are interesting, it is far more interesting to question whether the war on drugs is morally impermissible in the first place.

This book does just that, and it argues that laws against recreational drugs are incompatible with moral principles that nearly all reasonable people agree with. In other words, the book argues that a government exceeds the moral limits of its authority when it incarcerates its people for merely using recreational drugs.

In other words, let's say we were wondering what we thought about a total criminal prohibition of eating cheesecake. While we may well wonder whether a ban on cheesecake wouldn't be better for our collective health, and we might also wonder whether such a ban might actually prove impossible to enforce, or whether it might cause more problems than it solves, the primary issue is obviously whether a ban on cheesecake-eating is morally permissible in the first place. If it's morally wrong to incarcerate people for merely eating cheesecake, then the costs and benefits of laws against cheesecake hardly matter.

For some mysterious reason, most thinkers about the war on drugs either completely overlook the issue of the moral impermissibility of criminal prohibitions of recreational drugs or give the issue short shrift, and even those not guilty of either do not treat the issue with the kind of philosophical sophistication and clarity involved in this book.

This book addresses this primary issue of the moral permissibility of laws against recreational drugs, in a serious and sophisticated and clear manner, without pinning itself to any particular theory of government. This book is a serious work of philosophy, by a serious philosopher, that argues from moral principles and intuitions that most reasonable people share, but it is very accessible and clearly-written--no special training is required to understand the force of its arguments.

At the time this book was written, Douglas Husak was a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University (widely considered to have a top 5 or top 10 philosophy program). He is now a law professor at University of Michigan School of Law (a top 5 or top 10 law school by all accounts).

This is the most important book about the war on drugs that has ever been written. If you are wondering about the issue of the war on drugs, this is definitely where to start. If you are opposed to the drug war, you may better be able to put your finger on exactly why you feel that way after you read this book. If you think you are in favor of the drug war, your confidence in your position will be seriously shaken, at the very least, if you give this book a fair chance.

Douglas Husak is also the author of LEGALIZE THIS! which is more recently published, shorter, and possibly even more accessible than this one. I would recommend starting with this one however, and then moving on to also read LEGALIZE THIS!

After you finish this, and LEGALIZE THIS!, only then should you bother reading any other book about the issue of the drug war. Either of these books will really open your eyes and clear your head.