Government and Politics Books

I applaud the author for this effort and will gladly donate the cost of the book to any non-profit organization that is "helping to make the world a better place" in return for an electronic copy of the book. Ideas such as this should be available to everyone.

I have not read the book, so this is really not a review, but how could anyone give a negative review of such a work? I look forward to reading this material and as a result, taking action where possible to help reach the goals.

Presentation:
The interior text is formatted nicely. I don't recall encountering any typos. No interior illustrations, graphics, or photos. The text is divided up into headings, subheadings, etc to lend sufficient visual interest, and this makes it significantly easier to skim the book if necessary. The writing style is neither humorous nor bland.

Subjects covered:
The book is divided into eight parts, is further divided into 33 chapters by subject, and is further divided into 116 "actions."

The parts are these: Building community. Raising the next generation. Computer activism. Protecting the environment. Food, hunger, and agriculture. Socially responsible banking and investing. The responsible consumer. Peace, Justice, and social change.

Each "action" is fairly brief, only a couple pages, and tells you some background information about the subject, argues why something should be done, and tells you what you can do, and who to contact to learn more and actually do some things. There are plenty of things you can do other than donating money to organizations, such as volunteering or making changes in your lifestyle. Interestingly, the last action listed in the book, number 116, is about supporting gay rights.

Since this book was published in 1995, much of the information may no longer be of use:
~ References to the Internet are obsolete, since this was before the World Wide Web.
~ Changes may have happened to mailing addresses, phone numbers, and fax numbers of organizations to contact. You'll have to Google them and find out where they are now.
~ Statistics aren't fully up to date, although ten-year-old statistics are probably satisfactory information.

Suggestions:
~ Since a lot of this book is disappointingly out of date, get it from the library rather than buying it. Don't feel bad, since the book itself says that getting library books is better than buying a book you're doubtful about, since it conserves resources.
~ Read this book with a notepad at hand, to jot down things you found interesting: points, actions, and names of organizations to look up later.
~ You can read this book in short breaks when you're fairly busy with other things, since its layout makes it very easy to find your spot again to resume reading, or to skim.

This book is different from most books of the 50 Ways to Save the Earth genre because it covers a diverse array of social, political, ethical, and environmental problems in an in-depth fashion. The authors explain tough issues like the environmental effects of eating styles in clear, calm terms. The suggestions to make the world a better place range from extremely easy acts to reduce personal consumption to ambitious, challenging proposals for personal engagement with the homeless, the homebound, and others in need of assistance. Not only has it changed my own daily behaivor, I've found it to make a great, thought-provoking gift

This is a great book, reminding us that no matter what we do, it affects the whole world. So we might as well direct our attention and affect our world in a positive way by following the suggestions the authors have put together. Extremely well researched and organized book. Everyone can make a difference. I wish everyone would read the book to find out how!!!

The book is an eye opener for sure. It really puts the war on drugs (the people) in the real world. It's a got to read kind of book, do your self a favor and read it!

Ibogaine, the illegal, boycotted and most effective treatment for addiction known to man. The ibogaine story reveals the behind the scene story of ibogaine and the bogus war on drugs. Ibogaine is a broad spectrum anti-addictive natural substance that has been used for thousands of years by native people. The attempt by the US government and pharmacutical companies to keep it off the market (and information about it from the public) is cruel and criminal. Being safer than asprin and not subject to any abuse potential it does not qualify as a schedule 1 controlled substance with the likes of heroin and cocaine, yet it is so scheduled. Why? Could the government actually want drugs on our streets? Could it be a threat to many billion dollar medications? Read the book for the answers.

The in-depth information on the theoretical/pharmacological actions of addiction (and Ibogaine's role on resetting the mind's regulatory systems) alone should be enough of a motivation to buy this book. OK, the story line gets a bit muddled here and there - as the authors weave many independent threads into this contemporary account of growing public awareness of the importance of Ibogaine - but don't let this stop you from reading this book. The research covered by this presentation is about as exciting as REAL science gets. After all, scientific discovery is truly a human drama.

Since the overt suppression of research on "psychedelic" (mind-manifesting) drugs, few animal studies - and far fewer human studies (almost none) - have been authorized by the FDA. This book clearly emphasizes the importance of on-going research based in these important chemicals.

Anyone truly interested in the mechanisms of human consciousness and behavior should absolutely read this seminal work. Our potential as individuals (and by extension as a race) is eternally tied to our ability to understand (and ultimately control) the mechanisms governing individual consciousness. As this book clearly illustrates, addiction is a malfunction of the biomechanics of consciousness - as well as the result of bad decisions. Yet, it appears that it may take more than self-help programs to permanently reverse the damage done. When it comes to curing individuals - and by extension society - of addictive behavior, Ibogaine appears to be just the tool we need to tackle this problem at the source.

I might append "The Ibogaine Story" with this epilogue. The maintenance of our own bodies is an individual responsibility. Learning to do so intelligently is nothing less than a primordial right. Put another way, "big brother" has no authority inside the soul's temple. When it comes to the eternal "war on tyranny," if information is power, than THIS BOOK IS A WEAPON OF MASS ENLIGHTENMENT.

The topics of ibogaine and the drug war in America are covered nicely in this book, with an emphasis on historical perspective and cultural insights. This is an important book, but it is also somewhat confused in its overall presentation. By that statement, I mean that it goes so deeply into the topic that it begins to confuse the average reader. This book is a must have however, for anyone interested in the current politics and background of ibogaine.

In 1947, Hanson Baldwin, the military correspondent for The New York Times asked whether the United States could "prepare for the next, truly total war...without becoming a `garrison state.'" According to Princeton Professor Aaron Friedberg, by the middle of the 20th, "the imminent threat of war produced pressures for the permanent construction of a powerful central state." Friedberg argues, however, that the size and scope of the federal government was held in check during the Cold War by a tradition and ideology of anti-statism. Although this book merely synthesizes previously- published works, it effectively argues that the apparatus of the American state grew less during the Cold War than might have been have been expected.

Friedberg examines "five main mechanisms of power creation: those intended to extract money and manpower and those designed to direct national resources toward arms production, military research, and defense-supporting industries." Friedberg explains: "In the span of only two decades the United States was engulfed in three waves of crisis as depression, world war, and cold war followed each other in rapid succession. The onset of each emergency produced a powerful impetus toward state-building." The early-Cold War debate about defense spending demonstrates Friedberg's point. He writes that "the American people wanted a state that was strong enough to defend them against their foreign enemies but not strong enough to threaten their domestic liberties," defending the country was expensive. In 1949, when President Truman wanted to hold defense spending for the next fiscal year, to $14.4 billion, the Secretary of Defense instructed the service chiefs to base their estimates "on military considerations alone," which resulted in a "wish list with a staggering $30 billion price tag." Truman's final budget message estimated the annual cost of sustaining his planned long-term force posture to be $35 to $40 billion. According to Friedberg, President Eisenhower's "commitment to holding down defense spending was a logical outgrowth of his essentially anti-statist philosophy of political economy," and, in June 1954, he warned that a massive new buildup would involving transformation of the United States into "a garrison state." In 1960, John Kennedy asserted that Eisenhower's "excessive attention to the budget" had "resulted in a serious weakening of the nation's defenses." Compulsory military service also generated intense debate. Senator Robert Taft warned that the adoption of universal military training would transform the United States into a "militaristic and totalitarian country." According to Friedberg, "the strongest and most consistent congressional opposition to came from the Republican party, and in particular from its conservative midwestern wing. It was in this part of the country that principled anticompulsion arguments struck their most responsive chord." According to Friedberg: "The widespread animosity to statism that characterized the early post-war period...played a critical role in blocking the creation of new, powerful governmental industrial planning institutions." Friedberg explains: "Even in the face of an enemy, and to a remarkable degree even in wartime, the American system has proven itself to be highly resistant to centralized industrial planning." Friedberg writes: "[T]he push for privatization, and the ideological language in which it was couched, also raised troubling questions about the legitimacy of the military's large-scale industrial activities, even those with long traditions. In the context of a worldwide contest with communism, private ownership of the means of production came to be regarded...as morally superior to any alternative form of economic organization." According to Friedberg: "The postwar privatization of American arms production was the end result of a protracted process of debate and political struggle...At the most general ideological level the burgeoning anti-statist sentiments in the 1940s and 1950s tended to strengthen the hands of the privatizers and to discredit those who advocated anything that savored of socialism." In discussing the structure of the U.S. research and development system and its performance during the Cold War, Friedberg asserts that the "large, open, and loose-limbed American system was well suited for promoting innovation, and it tended over time to outperform its more rigid, closed, and hierarchical Soviet counterpart." According to Friedberg: "[F]or nearly a half century, the pursuit of qualitative superiority [in military technology] was a central, persistent feature of the entire American defense effort." Friedberg explains: "Before the Second World War had ended and the Cold war began, senior American scientists and top military planners were already agreed that the preservation of a `preeminent position' in weapons technology must be a central goal of peacetime defense policy." "The clear emergence of the Soviet Union as the most likely enemy in any future war added urgency and a clear focus to the discussion of the role of technology in American strategy." Friedberg reports: "`Atomic weapons used tactically are the natural armaments of numerically inferior but technologically superior nations,' declared one congressional enthusiast in 1951." He explains: "The Eisenhower administration elevated the substitution of firepower for manpower to the position of key organizing principle of national strategy. Atomic and thermonuclear weapons of every conceivable yield were...at the heart of Western defenses;" and "For the West, by the mid-1950s, preserving technological supremacy had become even more essential and urgent than it had appeared only a few years before." According to Friedberg: "Critics and enthusiasts alike agree that the American research and development system was highly productive of technological advances, that it tended over time to outpace its Soviet counterpart, and that the superior performance of the American system was connected in some way to its structure."

Was there ever a real likelihood that Cold War America would turn into a "garrison state?" The clear answer is: No. References to the garrison state were rhetorical devices used most often by congressional opponents of the concentration of power in the executive branch in Washington, D.C. But Friedberg is absolutely correct that anti- statist rhetoric had powerful antecedents in American history and, therefore, resonated deeply with the public. The specter of creating a garrison state was ominous, even when it was intentionally exaggerated.

Friedberg has written the best book on international relations since John Gaddis' "Strategies of Containment". Like Gaddis, Friedberg is one of a handful of authors who possess a sophisticated knowledge of both American diplomatic history and modern theories of international relations.

With the aid of his groundbreaking archival research, Friedberg shatters existing paradigms by showing that American culture played a leading, perhaps dominant role in the forging of the United States' Cold War grand strategy.

Friedberg's book is indispensable reading for every scholar and student of international relations. It is a classic that will be read and reread for generations.

Harold Lasswell developed the idea of the garrison state in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He proposed that "under conditions of continual crisis and perpetual preparedness for total war, every aspect of life would eventually come under state control." In 1947, Hanson Baldwin, the military correspondent for The New York Times asked whether the United States could "prepare for the next, truly total war...without becoming a garrison state." George Orwell popularized the notion with his 1949 release of 1984, a harrowing view of totalitarian control by the garrison state. To a large extent, these arguments fuel Aaron Friedberger's premise that "war and the threat of war required the creation of military power, and, over time, the creation of military power led to the construction of strong, modern states." (3)

From this premise Friedberg contends that the growth of the American state was held in check during the Cold War by a tradition and ideology of anti-statism. The Cold War produced pressures for the permanent construction of a powerful central state. "In the American case," Friedberg argues, "these pressures came comparatively late in the process of political development... they were met and, to a degree, counterbalanced, by the strong anti-statist influences that were deeply rooted in the circumstances of the nation's founding. (3-4) Friedberg identifies the mechanisms for state growth between 1945 and 1960 as "the product of a collision between these two sets of conflicting forces." (4) He effectively demonstrates that the apparatus of the American state grew less during the early years of the Cold War than might have been have been expected.

Friedberg examines "five main mechanisms of power creation: those intended to extract money and manpower and those designed to direct national resources toward arms production, military research, and defense-supporting industries." (5) In each of these areas he finds anti-statist influences holding state-building in check. "Mounting popular and congressional resistance to taxes and controls compelled the Truman administration to lower its sights and to accept the necessity of a slower and, in the end, smaller military buildup." (121) Friedberg concludes "Eisenhower's commitment to holding down defense spending was a logical outgrowth of his essentially anti-statist philosophy of political economy." (127) Friedberg finds that "in the absence of sustained public opposition, the pressures for universal military training would probably have proved overwhelming," except that it raised doubts over legitimacy. (167) Like the rejection of universal military training, Friedberg also identifies the demise of centralized defense industrialization policy as "at least as much a product of domestic anti-statist influences" as a "logical, inevitable response to the advent of nuclear weapons." (199) Anti-statist influence not only resisted centralized planning and industrial dispersal, but it also strengthened the hand of privatizers, discrediting "those who advocated anything that savored of socialism." (247) Finally, Friedberg maintains that "each of the essential structural characteristics of the American Cold War research and development system was strongly influenced by ideological considerations and by the workings of American domestic political institutions [both identified as anti-statist forces]." (296) Friedberg identifies the strengthening of civilian rule in the Department of Defense, resistance to centralization, heavy reliance on private contracting and government sponsorship of domestic vice purely military technology as anti-statist influences that reduced the size, scope and effect of America's garrison state. With remarkable clarity Friedberg is able to conclude that domestic constraints on state expansion--including those stemming from mean self-interest as well as those guided by a principled belief in the virtues of limiting federal power--protected economic vitality, technological superiority, and public support for Cold War activities. He identifies the strategic synthesis that emerged by the early 1960s from this collision between anti-statist ideology and security imperative as functional and stable; it enabled the United States to deter, contain, and ultimately outlive the Soviet Union precisely because the American state did not limit political, personal, and economic freedom.

Friedberg is not a historian, and at times his lack of attention to culture, race, gender and class make this abundantly clear. Several broad assertions, while supported in the text, lack specificity. For example, Friedberg describes American business's post-war ideology in their own simplistic terms, "Free enterprise was good; too much government was not only bad for the economy, it was a profound threat to traditional American liberties," (50) without putting those statements in an anti-New Deal context.

In Friedberg's well documented 351-page text synthesis, one sees Samuel Huntington's influence (The Soldier and the State, 1957). Friedberg provides a nice tonic for Huntington's pessimism and places the entire civil-military, liberal-statist conflict in perspective. He takes a much more positive view of American liberalism's retardation of military professionalism and other state influences. Essentially agreeing with Huntington, Friedberg comes to a different conclusion: that this was not a bad thing. Of course, Friedberg has the luxury of viewing the Cold War from its successful conclusion whereas Huntington contemplated its ominous beginnings. Because it gives us insight into our current reaction to September 11, 2001, and hope that militaristic trends as expressed in the current war in Iraq will not leave permanent scars on the American state, In the Shadow of the Garrison State deserves attention at all levels in the collegiate setting.

For those interested in the dynamics and interplay of domestic and national security issues, this book is fantastic. Friedberg frames and then details key power transforming institutions and elements such arms, technology, supporting industrial complex, money and manpower, and how they formed the basis of both a powerful deterrence and a relative stable, non-garrison state that excelled economically.

Not a book for all readers, but for those pundits and novices of national security or Cold War history, this is a must have book. Sure to become required reading for top notice public policy and political science departments in leading universities.

A great insight into undercover narcotics investigations and patroling. I could not put this book down, a great read! Thank you for writing this exciting book!

From beginning to end INCONCEIVABLE DANGER had me hooked. I'm usually not one to read police stories but, this one is most definately the exception. Easily a one day read; INCONCEIVABLE DANGER leaves you breathless, wanting more and hardly able to wait for the next book by this outstanding author. BRAVO!!!!

...THANK YOU, OFFICER FORD, FOR YOUR OUTSTANDING SERVICE TO YOUR COUNTRY AND YOUR COMMUNITY.

This is an action packed book that kept me in suspense. Just when I thought I was figuring out what was going to happen next, a surprise to me would occur. This book is truly suspenseful, exciting and keeps you on the edge of your seat all the time you are reading this book. It is a fine book of literature written here. I really enjoyed it. Jim

Inconceivable Danger takes you into the world of an undercover police officer who pursues a kingpin drug dealer known as Skyscraper; the most dangerous and ruthless criminal Dale and his partner had ever tried to arrest.

One mistake with this criminal meant certain death for any officer.

This book is action packed and a great thriller for all readers who like crime stories.
The sacrifices made by Dale and his partner are what legends and heroes are made of.

This story takes you into the mountains of southeast Oklahoma where contact with the suspect reveals the most vicious monster ever conceived by the two officers.

Inconceivable Danger promises to be a satisfying read for even the most discerning crime story readers. The author makes no apologies for the death and violence contained within it's pages; it is not for the faint of heart.
Dale Ford spent twenty years as an active police officer working undercover for five of those years as a narcotics investigator. He also served five years as an Officer and Chief of Southern Corrections Prisons and Asst. Chief of New Directions all women's Prisons.

Officer Ford continues to serve his community in 'off-duty' police assignments.

There is a paucity of political sociology textbooks available these days. The (2005) Handbook of Political Sociology is an excellent edited collection but does not provide the fundamentals for undergraduates.

Kloby's (2004, second edition) 'Inequality, Power, and Development: Issues in Political Sociology' introduces basic concepts and then grounds the approach in political economy. Readers are introduced to basic Marxian principles such as surplus value and imperialism.

He does a great job of explaining how old money (Rockefellers, etc.) got rich and juxtaposes that process next to the high levels of exploitation (including job fatalities) faced by railroad, steel, and oil workers who worked for the old money capitalists.

He goes over neoliberalism in the United States by covering rising income inequality. Not only does he cover rising income inequality, but he goes over its link to health insurance, economic growth, home ownership, the CEO pay explosion, union decline, strike decline, etc. He covers these major transformations/trends in American society. Following this is a chapter that links the first and second half of the book: corporate power plus globalization.

He covers the basics of corporate power, includes an analysis of the Enron scandal.

By chapter five, and this is somewhat unconventional, he introduces major theories in political sociology: pluralist, power elite, marxian structuralist. The following chapters cover development and world-system approaches as well as the Cold War.

At first I did not like that he waited until chapter 5 to introduce theory, but I think it actually works well because the first chapters provide students with concepts of power and historical political economy as well as the corporation.

There could be an expanded coverage of Foucault, surveillance, and the panopticon principle. He does mention COINTELPRO , but this should be expanded to include how racism operates.

Certainly the best political sociology textbook I've yet encountered.

"Few sociology texts extensively review global issues of inequality even as economic inequality grows prolifically and causes significant damage to the world's ethnic minority peoples across all geographic borders. However, Kloby's book accomplishes this feat by extensively reviewing the relationship between transnational corporate exploitation, the extensive reach of Western political institutions, and the alleged "free trade" or neo-liberal policies of the world's richest nation-states and international financial institutions.

Even for those of us who fail to include a political sociology course in our curriculums, this text is a necessity for introductory sociology courses, inequality courses, and criminology courses that dare to take a critical worldview of current socio-economic and political dynamics.

... this book is a necessity for any Introductory Sociology class, not simply political sociology classes. It should be mandatory reading for all sociology students at some point in their undergraduate curriculum and furthermore, a necessary adjunct to any graduate class. Jerry Kloby has spoken the truth in the fashion of Noam Chomsky and bell hooks..."

Read the full review at: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3719/is_200407/ai_n9434774

Inequality, Power, and Development: Issues in Political Sociology, 2nd edition by Jerry Kloby (Humanity Books) More than ever before the world is being shaped by the interests of transnational corporations and their partners in global financial institutions such as the IMF and WTO. What are the consequences of such concentrated power for the great masses of people throughout the world? One clearly emerging pattern is the growing disparity between the developed nations and the rest of the world. In this excellent analysis of power distribution and its effects, sociologist Jerry Kloby presents data on the increase of wealth and income inequality, and argues that many of the policies pursued by the developed nations and transnational corporations have led to a deterioration of both living standards and the environment in many parts of the world. He also discusses a power shift in the United States that has weakened the working class.
Kloby creates a comprehensive picture of global society from many diverse events and trends-local and international, contemporary and historical. The many graphs and tables containing supporting data guide the reader toward a heightened understanding of the complex forces underlying contemporary developments. He also clearly explains the meaning and relevance of such sophisticated but important terms as neoliberalism, dependency, civil society, and social capital.
This fully revised and updated edition will have enduring value for students and scholars of sociology, political science, economics, and international relations.

Inequality, Power, and Development: Issues in Political Sociology, 2nd edition by Jerry Kloby (Humanity Books) is an invaluable resource for the student or professor of social science that looks critically at global power and inequality. At once impressive for its breadth, depth and readability, this work speaks to audiences beyond the classroom and should therefore earn a more popular readership among activists, organizers and engaged citizens of diverse political orientation or interest.

The book begins with an introduction to the origins, rise and crises of capitalism and its attendant socio-political conditions along with theories of political economy that prepare the reader for a tour of economic inequality in the United States, corporate and state power, and global development.

The chapter that directly addresses the sociology of development provides an honest and cogent appraisal of the prevailing theoretical approaches to development in our time in a way that is potable for both high school and college students and rich enough for scholars of inequality and development.

Overall, Kloby's book is a grand and critical tour of US and global power relations in the 20th century and the present that concludes with valuable speculation about grassroots challenges to corporate, state and neoliberal hegemony.

The wealth of data and information that is invested in the work provides a valuable resource for classroom discussion and an unmistakable transparency to the skeptical reader. I have used Inequality, Power and Development in the classroom with great success and I will be sure to continue.

This original book draws into historical studies to illustrate the evolution of economics institutions. The application of economics, history and game theory is very creative and a definitely achievement of the book, in the tradition of North's "Understanding the Process of Economic Change" or other recent followers like Acemoglou's "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and democracy".

The book is divided in four main sections and 14 chapters. First, the author explains institutions as systems in equilibria, applying history and game theory. Then, he enlightens institutional dynamics as historical process (focusing on endogenous change or how history affects institutions and cultural beliefs) only to conclude with a method to apply in sociological and historical studies.

This is a seminal work and Greif's is able to clarify how market institutions work and evolve, how control and oversight institutions are created and how this questions relate to economic history and theory. Moreover, he illustrates them with real examples, like the evolution of medieval trade. It is a careful, readable and historical approach to economic development, applying economic and game theory to explain institutional patterns and change. Interesting!

This is a very good book of historic institutionism, It deserves possession.

This is one of the best examples of the analytical study of institutions in history. Highly recommended for courses in political economy and institutional analysis.

No question that this book that sums up 10 years worth of articles by one of the most remarkable scholars of his times is a must-read for anybody interested by economics and economic history. That being said the book has its defaults. Some are linked to the difficulty to gather good sources from the medieval Muslim world, but the readers will regret that no statistical approach was attempted even for the European side of the research.

Furthermore, the book is particularly poorly written and often enough it seems as if Greif was just making his sentences complicated to make his work sound smarter than it really was. It is unfortunate and many students will hate him for that. Still the conclusions are often brilliant and the book is well worth buying.

Egil "Bud" Krogh gives a detailed and fascinating look into the Nixon White House and how basically honest, but naive staffers (and one in particular) were misled or failed to question their orders and proceeded to break the law to stop perceived security leaks. Mr. Krogh writes a very compelling explanation of his reasoning for breaking the law, then describes events and his own logic that led him to admit his guilt and start the long road to redemption beyond a prison sentence and disbarment. It made me realize that it could happen to me or anyone who doesn't look carefully into the long term consequences of their decisions, and thus made it easy to identify with his predicament. For people like me who followed the Watergate proceedings with great interest, it is a book that you can't put down.

He was a Navy officer serving on the USS Yorktown by the age of 22, in law school at 26, a staff assistant to the counsel to the president at 29, and Undersecretary of Transportation at 33. At 34, he was in jail. How could this happen to a man raised in a highly moral family, with an excellent education, with Christian Middle American values and a strong sense of patriotism? Yet here was Egil "Bud" Krogh at 33, starting a prison sentence for violating the civil rights of Dr. Lewis Fielding, a California psychiatrist. Bud says the principal cause was the collapse of integrity of those members of the White House's Special Investigative Unit (SIU) who conspired, ordered and carried the break-in of the doctor who had been consulted by Dr. Daniel Ellsburg, the "leaker" of the Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times in early 1971.

In this short book on integrity and decision-making, Bud Krogh tells his story as an advisor in the White House during the Nixon administration and his role as co-director of the SIU. The reason for the book is quite clearly stated in the Dedication: "To those who deserve better, this book is offered as an apology, an explanation, and a way to keep integrity in the forefront of decision-making".

After leaving the Navy in June of 1965, Bud was assisted in his career by John Ehrlichman, a close family friend and father figure to whom he admits he owed complete personal loyalty. Bud was working for Ehrlichman's law firm in Washington State when Ehrlichman was named counsel to the president upon Richard Nixon's election in 1968, and jumped at the chance to move to Washington to assist in the transition, eventually acting as assistant counsel and deputy counsel to the president.

In June of 1971, the "Pentagon Papers", revealing that the United States government was deliberately expanding its role in the war while President Johnson was promising not to do so, were leaked to the New York Times by Dr. Daniel Ellsberg. Subsequent attempts by the Nixon Administration to prevent disclosure failed, including a ruling by the Supreme Court halting Administration attempts to prevent publication. Together with a article in the Times revealing the fall- back position of the U.S. in the first SALT talks, these disclosures created a "crisis of major proportions" in the Nixon White House. Bud was selected to co-direct the White House's Special Investigations Unit (better known as the "Plumbers"), and tasked with stopping leaks of top secret information related to the Vietnamese War, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and other foreign policy operations. The SIU included such now famous names as G. Gordon Liddy, David Young and E. Howard Hunt, and according to Bud the group felt that it "had been given a critical responsibility by the president, and we were embarking on a quest that held great import for the security of the nation."

Bud's SIU decided to go forward with its own investigation. During deliberations, no one in the SIU questioned the necessity, legitimacy, legality, or morality of the proposed covert action. Relying on the president's declaration of a national security crisis, the unit never asked whether their actions were "right". Instead, the unit focused on questions such as who had the skills, who could be trusted, and who would pay for it? They assumed it was "right" because the president was pressing for action and because they believed that information from Dr. Fielding's office would help prevent further leaks from undermining Nixon's plan for ending the Vietnam war. Their loyalties were to their principals and to the president personally.Staff members had been hired on the basis of loyalty to the president and to the senior presidential aide who had recruited him or her. To suggest that national security was being improperly invoked would have been to invite a confrontation with both patriotism and loyalty, well beyond what he was capable of at that time. (In the Foreword, Daniel Ellsberg relates although he had taken an oath of office a number of times, he first noticed the Code of Ethics for Government Service hanging on a wall while he was a visitor at a New Mexico correction facility. He was particularly struck by the first principle: "Put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department." Ellsberg admits that he didn't recall that it ever occurred to him that he was taking on obligations to the Constitution that might contradict the demands of a cabinet secretary or the president.)

And so the members of the SIU conspired to break into the psychiatrist's office because national security mandated an assessment of Ellsberg's mental state to determine if he was likely to release other classified information. It was seven weeks from the "crisis" declaration to the break-in. Bud sums it up: "In those seven weeks, the SIU had undergone a journey from suspicion to certainty to covert action to frustration to zealotry: hardened by their first action, the Plumbers knew that the rules of engagement had been changed and the conventional respect for laws set aside. A botched break-in, evidence by a few Polaroids, didn't seem to represent much. In practice, however, it was the first irreversible step by which a presidency ran out of control."

The efforts of the SIU didn't end with the break-in of Dr. Fielding's office. Failing to garner any information on Dr. Ellsberg, it was suggested that a break-in be conducted at Dr. Fielding's home. After Bud rejected this idea, his involvement with covert action ended, but his troubles had just begun.

In February of 1973 Bud was confirmed as undersecretary of Transportation. In May he reisgend his position. In August, he was indicted for making a false declaration to the DOJ regarding the travel to California by the Plumbers. Then, in November of 1973, while on a vacation in Williamsburg, VA with his family, he admitted to himself that he felt uncomfortable with the soundness of using national security as a defense: "The more I tried to align my thought with a higher sense of right, the more problematic it became." He recognized that here he was under federal and state indictment, but still free to travel wherever he wanted, speak to the press, worship freely, etc. , but had nonetheless violated another man's civil rights in order to protect the country. If he continued to justify violating rights he continued to enjoy, he felt he would not only be a hypocrite, but a traitor to the fundamental American idea of the right of an individual to be free from unwarranted government intrusion in his life. He decided to plead guilty: "While there may have been some damaging impacts upon national security from Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers, those impacts simply could not justify the invasion of Fielding's rights that this operation involved."

Four days after making his decision, Bud walked into the office of Leon Jaworski, the special prosecutor for Watergate and related crimes and offered to plead guilty to the more serious charge of the deprivation of civil rights in exchange for a dismissal of lesser federal and state charges. His one other stipulation - to avoid any suggestion that he was seeking leniency through testifying, and in the belief that it would be wrong to benefit directly from sharing a truth that would damage others, Bud made it clear that his guilty plea was conditional on the prosecutor's agreement that he would not talk with them or the grand jury until after he'd been sentenced: "It was critically important to me that Judge Gerhard Gesell sentence me solely on the basis of what I did, not for what I might say that would implicate others." Bud pled guilty on November 30th and was eventually sentenced to a term of two to six years of which he was to serve six months, with two years of unsupervised probation.

Bud spices up the book with a few tales that have only a tertiary relationship to the issue of integrity. He tells one story of working in the Nixon transition office as one of those screening the backgrounds of the president's nominees. He also discusses his experiences in Vietnam in December of 1967 studying land reform as a method of defeating the Viet Cong insurgency; the famous May, describes the 1970 Nixon "wee hours" of the morning meeting with war protestors at the Lincoln memorial; and challenges the decisions of the current Bush Administration regarding interrogation techniques and wiretapping.

Reflecting back upon his actions, Bud concludes that his absolute loyalty to President Nixon personally and to his view of the national security threat had skewed his perspective. This kind of absolute loyalty lacked integrity, he came to understand, because it was unbalanced and too exclusive. Loyalty to the president was obviously important up to a point. However, loyalty to the Constitution, to the rule of law, and to moral and ethical requirements should have been key factors in his decisions as well: "The key point I had not internalized was that the integrity in which the president was reposing special trust was my own. Not his integrity, not the integrity of someone else on the staff, but my own. In short, no one can check their personal integrity at the door when they walk into work at the West Wing or anywhere else".

This is an excellent book addressing the competing pressures of individual integrity and personal loyalty and is recommended reading for all, both private and public sector.

I would primarily like to "second" the previous review (A Needed History Lesson for Our Times). The reviewer says what I would have said, and says it well, particularly in regard to how this valuable book relates to current issues. I would add that I thought I knew the history of the Vietnam era, but I learned so much from this book, and not only concerning the Nixon White House. A very interesting thing to me was the concept of "land reform" and how that issue related to Vietnam, and still is of importance in the world today, when considering how to raise people out of poverty. Bud writes about his time spent in Vietnam, when he was a law student, doing research on land reform issues. He speaks about traveling in the country with reporters who were seeking out members of the Viet Cong to interview. This is just an example of the firsthand and unexpected material that draws a reader in and is so much more involving than one might expect from a book on ethics and integrity. I highly recommend this book, as history, as an explanation of an ethical journey, and, as the previous reviewer said, as a lesson for our time.

At a time when we are governed by an administration that whole-heartedly believes "the ends justify the means", it is crucial to step back and look at history; to see where that motto has failed again and again. Bud Krogh writes an insightful and extremely timely account of his time in the White House under Nixon and his direction of the "Plumbers"--created to seal up real (or perceived) leaks that were threatening our national security.

After the 2000 elections, Krogh wrote an open memo, published in the Christian Science Monitor, to Bush's new staff--VP Cheney, Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld--all of whom Krogh had worked with under Nixon in the 1970s. He said as he watched them raise their right hands and swear to uphold the Constitution, it brought back a flood of memories for him when he stood before Nixon and swore to the same oath.

"As I pondered what the new Bush staff would encounter, I realized that I might be able to help by writing a memo to them about one of the central ideas that I had not understood as well as I should have when I was on the White House staff...the absolute imperative to maintain one's sense of integrity in the face of enormous pressures to get results at any cost."

Krogh explains how a good person, raised in the right way, given all the advantages of a young American male, could end up pleading guilty to depriving another of his civil rights and going to prison. Loyalty to his superiors, including Nixon, overshadowed his oath to uphold the Constitution and that lead him to orchestrate the illegal break-in of Dr. Louis Fielding's Psychiatric office in California for the express purpose of stealing Daniel Ellsberg's personal file to try to discredit him. Ellsberg had leaked the "Pentagon Papers" to the press and Nixon believed this to be a serious national security threat.

History has remembered Watergate as the downfall of Nixon's administration, but through Krogh's easy-to-read narrative of the events leading up to Watergate, we find that the break-in and burglary of Dr. Fielding's office was the "seminal event in the chain of events that led to Nixon's resignation".

Obviously, Krogh's letter to the Bush staff has gone largely unheeded as we learn almost daily about unwarranted wiretapping; holding prisoners without cause; torture at Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay; Rove; Libby; the list goes on and on.

Who was it that said "those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."?

At the end of his book, Krogh has created a model called the "integrity zone"; steps that each individual in public or private life can take to ascertain whether the path they have chosen is one of integrity or convenience. With three questions: Is it whole and complete? Is it Right? Is it good? one can quickly figure out if they're standing on solid ground or standing at the edge of a slippery slope. After the events of 9/11, if the Bush administration had stopped to ask those questions, we may well be living in a vastly different world than the one we live in today.

For anyone who is concerned about today's political environment and interested in where we've come from and how we got here, this is a must read. I think Krogh is an appropriate person to get this message across. It speaks volumes about who Bud Krogh is as a man of integrity that Daniel Ellsberg wrote the forward and calls him a friend today.

I first learned about Madam & Eve when taking the African Politics class at my school. When it came time to do term papers, I ended up exploring the issues in Madam & Eve (which meant I read all the books my prof had - and scared my roommates because I kept breaking into laughter). Madam & Eve is a wonderful comic, very smart and VERY funny. I recommend it to anyone who likes political commentary, as well as a good laugh.

The best of the first five years of South Africa's (and a few other places) favourite couple, Madam & Eve. This book provides a history, a deeper look into and of course, their greatest hits. I've got em all, mostly all signed by the authors and i'm told my collection is getting worth a few hundred dollars now! New edition out every year, get em while you can, you won't be disappointed.

All Madam and Eve comic books are great. They are full of comics about things happening in South Africa, toyi toyi, government, hijacking and problems between white and black people. These books are really funny, but you have to know certain things aboutt the country to understand some of the comics.

If you are a South African, former South African, or anyone, this book is a MUST HAVE! These are some of the best comics on Earth. This is the type of book that you pick up and read in one sitting, even though it is a comic book. This book is actually a wonderful collection of most of the comics past, and includes commentary of how the comic has changed and just tid bits of knowledge from the author. This is a must have for any Madam and Eve fans and for anyone who has never heard of Madam and Eve. You will love this book. I gaurantee it.

This Book Has More Meat In IT Than A 2-FT Long Philly Cheesesteak Sandwhich. Every time I see this book lying around the house, I pick it up and lose myself in it. It's absorbing for its information, not its easy readability. Author Dan Smoot is a man in the know. His profile near the back lists him as "a former member of the F.B.I. headquarters staff in Washington...and [who]authored the bestselling "The Business End of Government". The book, "Invisible Government" is a companion to those of us who realize how absurd it is that the mega wealthy would accept the democratic principles of the US Constitution (which supposedly gives governing power to the people). With chilling support, Smoot writes that the real government (the Invisible one) is composed of certain secret and pseudo-secret societies such as the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) and the Trilateral Commission. Members of these societies (and he gives lists and names plenty of very familiar people) are then placed within the US Government in very key positions and control world events, with the president merely a puppet, a public face man who smiles at the public and is the receiver of their trust-and their wrath when things go bad. (Who could doubt this, given the George W. Bush tenure?) Smoot tells us about the founder of the CFR, Col. Edward M. House, and that the CFR is only the US branch of the secret society, with the main branch known as the RIIA, Royal Institute of International Affairs, founded in Great Britain under the stewardship of certain members carrying on the mission set forth in the will of Cecil Rhodes, see my review of Rhodes: Race for Africa. Col. Edward M. House wrote a novel in 1912 entitled "Phillip Dru: Administrator" in which House details numerous laws that eventually became laws in the US over the next 20 years, including the income tax, the federal reserve, social security, and giving women the franchise. House was President Woodrow Wilson's closest advisor, who lived in the White House and was NOT a government employee. Thus began the puppet presidencys, beginning with Woodrow Wilson. There is too much more to tell, but to doubt this book is to stick your head in the sand, which is a natural sport for mankind, allowing such things to happen in the first place. For an easy read on the whole nine yards of what is going on, why and how, see the book, Don't Weep for Me, America: How Democracy in America Became the Prince (While We Slept).

Smoot's book "The Invisible Government," is a great historical record that is informative, disturbing, and well documented.
If your're interested in the elitist policies, the history of globalization, and the shadow government behind it all, then, this book is for you !!

Smoots isn't the greatest writer I've ever read, but the story is so important that it should find it's way to everyone's bookcase. Most people believe that only kooks believe in a government within a government, but here is a former FBI agent that found exactly that.

Some will remember the IPR - China scandle that brought communism into China right after WWII. Those that don't will be educated on it. Those that do remember, we be taken down into the motives and reasons behind the actions of the IPR and the men that backed them.

Dan Smoot's "Invisble Government" sold about 1 million copies through self-publishing alone, but it did not appear on the New York Times "Best Sellers List" of 1962.

Essentially it is a book dealing with organization called The Council on Foreign Relations founded by Edward Mandel House, one of the Dullers brothers and others devoted to bringing "socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx.", to quote House, to this country.

The writing is dry but effective. I think that had he lived, Senator Joseph McCarthy might have written this book himself since the Council is one of groups that he was getting into his sights before Eisenhower stopped him.

What Dan Smoot revealed is how it'c control of the national medias is so pervasive that true and vital news seldom gets to the populace at large. For instance, current members of the CFR include: Dan Rather, Tom Browkaw, Charlene Hunter Gault, and many others we have intrusted to inform and protect us.

His anaylsis of it's goals bear close attention for those who are interested in anwering befuddling questions about U.S. foreign and domestic policies.

Over twenty six years later "The Shadows of Power" by James Perloff, brought the CFR up to date, and the report on how this subversive organization has not been dealt with is not good!

From what one may gather after reading "The Invisible Government" is how many lives have been ruined or lost in order to fulfill the dreams of a few determined to create a "New World Order". If you think this is only the stuff of Ian Flemming or H.G. Wells, this book goes a long way to prove otherwise.

Other books, and there are many, devoted to exposing suberversion in high places frequently mention the CFR and its offspring the Trilateral Commission. While the news tends to focus on people in particular, the infulence of the CFR is seldom given proper consideration, if at all.

Dan Smoot revealed how the CFR is clearly anti-American, pro-socialists, and in league with organizations and individuals hostile to our form of government and way of life and he provided ample documentation that still serves interested parties to this very day.

For an interview with the author about his book search the net for "Radio Liberty". This host, Dr. Stanley Monteith" managed to get an interview with Mr. Smoot revealing the travails he had in getting his book out.

Mr. Smoot has done an invaluable service. And it lifted the weight of confusion and mystery about what is and is not true about rescent history of the Unted States.

In his opening pages of The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis, Reese Erlich introduces you to the people of Iran and immediately makes you feel comfortable with them. You quickly get his sense for both the simplicity of their world and the complexity of the situation there. His discussions of the U.S.-Iranian relations since the 50's are historical and straightforward, free from the typical spin-and-bias of today's reporting. Despite the fact that his book brings you to the reality of just how far astray U.S. foreign policy has gone, it is an extremely enjoyable read.

Erlich makes sense out of all the forces that are present, be they global, regional or internal. He easily moves between religious histories, petroleum politics, ethnic minorities and media credibility with an objectivity that is rarely found in today's rush to war. His descriptions of blatant and alleged covert activities of several of the players makes one realize that there are many forms of `terrorism' currently being employed by our leaders to manipulate today's public opinion. His closing thought could not be more prophetic -

`If the governments of the United States and Iran won't make peace, the people of our two countries must.'

Bob Magnant is the author of The Last Transition... - a fact-based novel about Iran, Iraq and the Middle East...

A theocratic democracy? by Tim Redmond, Thursday September 20, 2007, San
Francisco Bay Guardian Online.

My old friend Reese Erlich is remarkably optimistic about Iran, which is a pleasant perspective. I'm glad somebody is.

In his insightful, if sometimes choppy, new book, The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis, he offers an alternative view of a nation and a culture that has been either ignored or demonized by the mainstream press for more than 30 years. His basic thesis -- that US policy toward Tehran is moronic, driven by foolish politics, bad information, and greedy geopolitical aims -- is hard to dispute. His subtext -- that there's real hope for democracy in Iran -- is a bit of a tougher sell.

Erlich has done what few US journalists ever do: he's visited Iran, repeatedly, and taken the time to meet not just with government officials and activists but with ordinary Iranians. Almost across the board, they condemn the United States and support the Islamic state.

We're presented with "liberal" politicians -- which might be a bit of a stretch -- and radical activists, including Marxists, who offer a vision of a democratic Iran. Me, I'm dubious about any hope for theocratic democracy; as a proud atheist, I think that separation of church and state -- strict, inviolable separation -- is essential for any functioning democracy.

But Erlich's willing to give other cultures and ways of thinking a break, which is one of the main reasons he's such a good reporter. And in The Iran Agenda he presents a picture of a nation far more complex than the caricatures we've seen depicted by the administration and the evening news.

That's the real value of this book: you get a sense from a veteran journalist of what you've been missing all these years. Erlich tries to sort out the ethnic geopolitics of Iran and explain which groups are aligned with whom (and why the United States supports some of them). It's all somewhat dizzying, but that's part of the point. This situation is more complicated than most American opinion makers are willing to admit.

And for all that, it's a good read.

Journalist Reese Erlich grew up in Los Angeles just south of UCLA. As a child he used to walk up Westwood Boulevard toward Westwood village, past a stockbroker's office and the Crest movie theater. At the time there was no Tehrangeles. The Westwood legal offices I visited last year to fix my Iranian passport mess used to house the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society. As an aborigine of sorts, Erlich has no grievances against the Iranians who have colonized the Westwood of his childhood. On the contrary, he seems to delight in the cultural upgrade. His latest book, The Iran Agenda: the real story of U.S. policy and the Middle East crisis, should however give the American reader a nostalgic lump in the throat. Not because of old memories of a neighborhood now transformed; but because this seasoned journalist writes in a tradition now mostly abandoned by the US media. Trustworthiness.

Erlich identifies his sources by name, and gives references which independently corroborate his statements. By contrast the average American's perception of Iran has been largely defined by "unidentified sources." The Iran Agenda begins in the real Tehran bazaar where Erlich--along with actor Sean Penn and columnist Norman Solomon--had put their journalistic "boots on the ground" to report on the Iran situation. Erlich mentions other American reporters in Iran, but he observes, "Most American reporters I met saw Iran as an evil society and a danger to the United States. While many expressed disagreement with President Bush's policies, they believed Iran was developing nuclear weapons that threatened America. In short, their views tracked the political consensus emanating from Washington. Rather than proceeding from reality, they filtered their reporting through a Washington lens. When a Washington official makes a statement, even a false one, the major media dutifully report it with few opposing sources."

Of course this is not news to we Iranians. The value of The Iran Agenda is its usefulness as a tool of argument in discussions with curious Americans who ask us to be their tour guides on the Iran subject. Most educated Iranians carry an overall knowledge of the Iran-US quarrel, from Mossadegh's overthow, to the hostage crisis, to the US Navy's shooting down an Iran Air passenger jet. The Iran-Iraq war, NPT, human rights violations, student protests, worker's union discontent, Ganji, Ebadi, Ossanlou, are all swimming somewhere in our data base. But it takes a professional like Erlich to organize these floating facts into an engaging story with a strong moral. To undo years of skilful propaganda, equal skill is needed. And Erlich is certainly a talented story teller.

While he informs us that the Kurdish PJAK guerrillas are funded by the US and Israel, Erlich simultaneously evokes a feeling of action and travel reminiscent of the colorful adventures of Tintin:

"The PJAK camps are located in inhospitable terrain. During winter months, the snowy roads are accessible only on foot or by tractor. Luckily the snow hadn't yet blanketed the area, and we drove up easily--if slowly--over winding dirt roads. Suddenly, young women in green pants in the distinctive Kurdish head scarf were walking along the road. They were female guerrillas. PJAK claims its troops are almost 50 percent women."

Erlich's very brief history of the Kurds updated me on some interesting statistics. For example, I was under the impression that Kurds were mostly Sunnis. This is true in general, but in Iran 50% of this minority is Shiite. This figure makes a difference in my thinking on the Kurdish issue.

Erlich goes on to remind his readers of other ethnic minorities, the Azeri, Baluchi and Arab Iranians, who could destabilize the Iranian regime. Little of this is intelligently discussed in the US media. For obvious reasons even the Iranian media tend to keep the lid on news of ethnic unrest.

Not all of Erlich's criticism targets mainstream media. He has harsh words of advice for Iran's exile media in his native Westwood backyard. He mentions Amir Taheri's infamous false report about a Majils law requiring Iranian Jews to wear a yellow stripe on their clothing. "With each phony or exaggerated story," Erlich warns, "the LA newscasters and commentators [who continued to play the story long after it was falsified] think they are helping the popular struggle against the Iranian government. But repeated over time, the distortions discredit the exile media and, by extension, all exile opposition." Erlich describes another, bitterly funny incident--the Hakha affair-- as being "something right out of the Keystone Kops." I can't find a web link that explains this fiasco nearly as well as Erlich's narrative.

Clarifying his own agenda in writing The Iran Agenda, Erlich says, "...I personally don't trust mainstream politicians, lobbyists, and think tank gurus to resolve anything soon. Nor do I trust the clerics in Tehran to stop their belligerence. A pro-peace, pro-democracy movement exists within Iran. I think people in the United States need to build one as well." It seems Westwood had earthy, smart people long before Iranians arrived.

Hannes Artens is the author of The Writing on the Wall, the first anti-Iran-war novel.

At one of my discuss and book signing events for The Writing on the Wall I had the privilege to share the stage with Erlich. His enviable ability to explain the most complex intricacies of Iranian politics in just a few concise, laconic sentences, almost adopting the prover