Government and Politics Books

Tall men have a much better chance of becoming president, especially when running against a shorter man! Military service used to be an important aspect of a candidates qualifications; not so anymore.
This is a light, entertaining look at why our past presidents won their elections. It brings political history alive.

Ben Shapiro writes excellently on excellent subject matter. He has yet to produce a mediocre or sub par piece of printed literature.

Project President is an interesting take on a not so interesting subject. Don't be fooled by the latter, as Shapiro has fact-mined some really fascinating items and put them together in a delightfully entertaining and educational book.

Recommended for any politico or anyone with even the slightest of historical interest. You don't need to be a politics junkie to enjoy Bens work in general and this book is no exception.

I bought this book on a whim at the airport, and I gotta say that I was pleasantly surprised. It's a fun overview of our presidents from a unique perspective.

This book is great read. The analysis is flawless and the book is filled with numerous facts and pieces of information that will delight the reader.

I will go ahead and tell you this is not a review on the book. If I wrote a review on the book it would be positive anyway because of how I feel about Trey Ragsdale. I am a slow reader and read everything I can on my own feild of asset management and financial planning.

Anyway, Trey Ragsdale is a first rate citizen. He really enjoys politics and lives it out in his own life. He has a strong family heritage in politics, dating all the way back to James Ogelthorpe. So he is qualified to write this book. His friend Joe put his life on the line for the US in war.

All I can say is that I have learned alot from watching Trey Ragsdale think from another person's perspective and effectively build relationships with people that way. I'm sure this book, which I did buy, is an excellent one because the authors are excellent people.

I believe this book is great. It has all the important documents and things you might need for research or just for reading. I liked the facts about each President, the introduction, and how each inaugural address was included. My favorite section had to be about the Electoral College because Urban and Ragsdale explained it very well, regardless of your prior political knowledge.

I really think more people should read PurePolitics: The Foundations of Our Nation. If you don't think it sounds that great in my description, that is because you just haven't read it yet!

This book is a must read for all political pros. It is well organized and captures the key documents every American should know. As a political scientist, I use this readily available book as a reference when I am involved in any substantial political debate.
I highly recommend this book!

The Foundations of Our Nation illustrates how words in documents and verbal speech can affect society today and for generations to come. Reading the historic documents, speeches, quotes and trivia one can realize the complexity of the decisions that our leaders have had to make. Since Sept. 11th, our country has had to rediscover from whence we have come from. This book is a great resource guide that shows us how our leaders of the past made difficult decisions. This compilation of great works from our democracy which includes famous speeches, founding documents, trivia, and quotations from American leaders inspireed me to become further educated in the arena of politics and to get involved with my community.

The Question is, without doubt, the single best argument against torture under any circumstances. It is a brutally true and personal account of a man caught up under the circumstances beyond his control during the Algerian War of Independence. It was a time when the French, desperate to maintain control over Algeria, had allowed its army to use torture in order to obtain information about its main insurgent enemy, the FLN (Front Liberation Nationale). The author literally puts the reader into his shoes, and one can literally feel the pain of electric shock, the suffocating hell of water boarding, or the miserable mind warping experience of truth drugs.

In wars such as the current GWOT (Global War on Terror) as well as in Algeria, there is always the temptation by politicians to use acts like torture in order to gain an advantage over an insurgent enemy. However, make no mistake. Just as the revelations of torture had undermined the perceived legitimacy of the French cause in Algeria, the same danger also exist in today's struggle in the GWOT.

Regardless of one's opinion on the matter, one must read this simple book in order to gain an understanding of what a torture victim goes through. The book is beautifully written as well as brutally honest. One can easily read it in a day.

Finally, it is important to keep in mind that there is no politics in this book. It is just an account of the hard reality of man's inhumanity against man.

If you are interested in what exactly waterboarding is, and the physical and moral impact on victim and torturer, you need to read this book.

tHIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF EUROPEAN HYPOCRACY, LIBERTE, FRANTERNITE ET EQUALITE. THIS BOOKS REVEALS THAT THE ABOVE SOLOGAN IS FOR ONLY CERTAIN PEOPLE OF THE WORLD,BUT NOT FOR AFRICANS. ONCE, AGAIN THIS BOOK REVEALS THAT NOT ALL FRENCHMEN AGREED WITH THE DE GUALLE GOVERNMENT OFOPRESSION.ADDITIONALLY,IN READING THIS BOOK AND OTHERS OF THIS NATURE,SHOULD REINFORCED THE STOPPING OF TORTURE ADN NOT MATTER WHEN IT HAPPEND THERE SHOULD NOT BE A STATUE OF LIMITATION. PROSECUTION SHOULD MANDATORY AND THOSE GUILTY SHOULD BE HELD RESPONSIBLE.

I read _The Question_ when I was in high school, back in 1958 or 1959. It made a major impression on me, more than most of the books I was reading at the time. The subject is the use of torture in dealing with terrorism and the author did not sugarcoat the subject. He was fairly graphic about the techniques used. The book is short, less than 100 pages, but it gets the point across. What makes the book timely today is the combination of the publication of _The Battle of the Casbah_, two years ago, wherein one of the French Army's practioniners of torture tells his story for the first time and the fact that the United States is now engaged in fighting a war against terrorism. For those who believe that the issue of torture as an element in fighting terrorism has not been surfaced in the past, the fact is that for those who wanted to know, the information was available all along. As we ask ourselves about this interrogation "technique" it is good to go back and review what has been said in the past.

This is a brilliant book which goes far toward explaining why racism still exists nearly 150 years after the end of slavery. It explains that racism does not persist because of ignorant, uneducated white people, but because the capitalist rulers of America find racism too useful and profitable to part with. To prove this thesis, Camejo goes into fascinating detail about how Radical Reconstruction began to transform the American south, as Blacks, armed with guns and the right to vote, began to direct their own destiny. He then shows how the Republican Party abandoned Blacks as the Party consolidated its economic grip on the south, and "reconstructed" it in their own capitalist image. His analysis of the "Myth of the 1877 Compromise," which historians have mystified for so many years, is particularly helpful. Finally, Camejo does a great job of showing how and why other historians have failed to explain these truths clearly to generations of students. Don't miss this book!!!

Anyone interested in combating the horrors of racism should read this book. To fight effectively it is necessary to understand who or what is reponsible for keeping racial bigotry and oppression alive. This book explains that the roots of racism in the United States are bound up with the history of capitalist development and the needs of the ruling capitalist class.
The ideology of white supremacy was developed as a justification for slavery in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. But the civil war, 1861 to 1865, put an end to the trafficking in human commodities, undermining the social basis for racism. In the aftermath of that revolutionary conflict, a dynamic upsurge of emancipatory activity swept through the communities of the newly-freed slaves throughout the South. Rapid progress was achieved in jobs, education and political representation. This was Radical Reconstruction, which for about two decades headed in the direction of complete equality in the political and social conditions of Blacks and whites.
But the achievement of full equality by Black workers and farmers was seen as a threat to the interests of the high-riding class of wealthy money-grubbers based in the North. Radical Reconstruction was overthrown to make way for Jim Crow segregation-for nearly a century a pillar of capitalist exploitation in North America. Black workers were pitted against white workers for the sake of Mr. Moneybags' bottom line. Camejo sums up this lesson saying, "the responsibility for this defeat and continued racial oppression rests with the industrial and finance capitalists who still dominate the United States. That is the foremost lesson of the defeat of Radical Reconstruction."
This book is a penetrating Marxist explanation of the historical events that laid the basis for the democratic and social struggles of working people that came later, and are still to come.

The U.S. Civil War was not a "War Between the States." It was a revolutionary war that replaced the rule of the plantation-based slaveowners with that of the rising capitalist class. But these capitalists could only overthrow the slaveowners by allying themselves with small farmers and, most importantly, with the slaves themselves. Camejo tells the story of the struggles of these freed slaves. They were the key factor in the Union?s victory, and continued their fight for freedom in its aftermath. The initial post-slavery governments in the South reflected the revolutionary power of the freed people. They saw some of the broadest democratic reforms in American history in education, civil liberties, and many other fields. But the ruling northern capitalists turned back the freed slaves? struggles for a genuine land reform and for armed self-defense. The Republican establishment set the ground for a new and bizarre form of white supremacy: the vile Jim Crow system, which kept the descendents of slaves in a form of legal inequality for three quarters of a century. This book is an irreplaceable guide to this crucial period of U.S. history.

Un momento crítico en la historia de los Estados Unidos fue la culminación de su Guerra Civil. Por unos años los campesinos y negros reorganizaron los ex estados esclavistas en ejemplares de servicios sociales: educación, salud, redistribución de la tierra.

Funcionaron unos años y la Reconstrucción fue derrotado por ... los mismos Republicanos que ganaron la guerra en el nombre de terminar con la esclavitud. ¿Porqué? ¿Porqué devolvieron el mando de esta región a sus amos anteriores, los integrantes del partido Demócrata y su ala armada ¡la Ku Klux Klan!? ¿Cómo es posible que los Republicanos victoriosos les dejaron inventar el horror de segregación y su grotesca justificación llamado "racismo"?

Con esta historia -junto con la de la gran huelga de ferrocarrileros en el mismo año de la derrota de la Reconstrucción, 1877- comprendemos como la perversión del racismo reina hoy en día en Washington y Wall Street. Este volumen es fundamental en la lucha para acabarlo.

Excellent collection of activism throughout history of the US. Very interesting and thourough

This was required reading for a class I was taking in College. Most books that I have to buy for classes I never touch again after the end of the semester, except this book. Not only are the documents in the book interesting, but the chronological and categorical layout is brilliant.

Great range of material set up in a book one can read for academic purposes or use as a casual "bathroom" read.

The ordinary American's personal experience of history is often organized around a pantheon of readings and tomes that view our democratic experience as a pristine and elevated philosophical exercise by icons of verity and probity. Recent treatments such as Howard Zinn's "A People's History of The United States" and the wonderful "Founding Brothers" by Joseph J. Ellis have helped us to recognize the fact that while brilliant they were, the founders of this country were both mortal and fallible, and were hardly disinterested and objective idealists. This superb work by Timothy McCarthy and John McMillan (both history professors at Harvard) offers us over 150 short but spellbinding works by a wide variety of authors that help to widen the reader's understanding of the radical American experience, and to demystify the highly emotional and politically explosive issues and concerns that have faced us in terms of home-grown radical perspectives regarding social and political issues ranging from the original Articles of Confederation to those surrounding slavery, from corporate sponsored police brutality against union organizing to the war in Vietnam, from strident environmentalism to the current protests against the war in Iraq. All of it is here, and wonderfully so.

In essence, the authors have culled a treasure-trove of radical statements and observations that breathe life into our rather checkered history. Far from the sanitized and revisionist efforts one finds in most public school treatments of American history, herein one discovers a masterfully articulated series of articles written in colorful prose by those intimately involved in the radical protest, and most usually written from the radical perspective. The reader fins himself on an incredible journey into the various issues and concerns that have animated our long and often fractious progress toward a more perfect civil union. The book is organized into eleven principal chapters, each of which offers an absorbing selection of articles pertaining to cross-cutting issues such as the American revolution; the utopian visions relating to the very idea of a constitutional republic itself; abolitionism; suffrage and feminism; labor, anarchism, and socialism; civil rights; the new left and the counterculture; radical environmentalism; gay rights; and an epilogue with articles directed to some recent transcending issues and the radical writings relating to them.

The list of notable authors included ranges from Samuel Adams to Ralph Nader, from Thoreau to Frederick Douglas, from Susan B. Anthony to Huey Long, and from Barry Commoner to Malcolm X. The list of worthwhile notables just goes on and on. Without a doubt, this is the most readable, provocative, and useful collection of American critical writings by radical thinkers I have personally had the joy and benefit of reading. What I truly love about it is that it is the perfect way to read short articles and thought-pieces without spending hours plowing through individual chapters. The length of the individual articles ranges from two to seven pages, so the book is a great way to spend some break time or lunch time reading material along and to be able to finish the particular piece in a single short sitting. It is also provides an extremely eclectic and electrifying range of views and opinions for one to have the chance to experience, and adds immeasurably to the reading experience as a companion teaching device one could use admirably as an adjunct to a text such as Zinn's for use with the average undergraduate student. This is a book I would heartily recommend for anyone interested in a fascinating exploration of radical American thought and critiques of the mainstream culutre, and one that is certainly a terrific way to give a meaningful educational gift to aloved one this holiday season! Enjoy!

This book is real treasure of various ideas and the people behind them. A great resource for scholars or teachers. The curious person who enjoys US history will find something in here that they will enjoy.

Meredith did a fantastic job decribing where GenXer are coming from and where we are most likely going. The fact that she is an Xer herself gives her the insight to bring us this well researched and comprehensive masterpiece. It is a must read for rising star GenXers. It provides a reality check on many of the social and political issues that we Xers have been ignoring, but will one day have to face as we resume control of the country.

Written for a general audience, Rational Exuberance provides a clear, thoughtful examination of the next generation of employees and customers and what can be done to manage and retain them as both employees and customers. Since most of your future customers, employees and competitors will come from Generation X, it is necessary to separate fact from fiction and get a more accurate view of it. Meredith Bagby believes that the dire predictions about the future of the American economy at the hands of Generation X have been overstated. The view that GenX'ers are all a bunch of slackers is untrue. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, people aged 25-35 work 3.6 percent longer each week than the national average. However, they do have a new work ethic. Unlike the Baby Boomers, GenX'ers don't measure their lives by their career status. Since many GenX'ers come from broken homes and families with two working parents, they are seeking a balance in their lives between their work and home lives.

This book describes Generation X people who will be most of your customers, competitors and leaders,especially in the High Tech. They witnessed the downzisings of the 1980s..and today they can decide the future. This book shows their enthusiasm in a wide spectrum of activities.. In one word, how they are rationally exuberant.

In a clear, concise, and down to earth writing style, Meredith Bagby attacks the generation-x slacker label. With countless examples, Ms. Bagby details the influence that gen-x'ers have had on the economy to-date. More importantly, Rational Exuberance provides inspiration for ever member of gen-x to make a positive impact on society.

Recapturing the Growth Track is a practical, step-by-step guide to making change happen starting at the very top of an organizatoin. It is written directly to leaders of entrepreneurial organizations who have hit the proverbial wall.

It teaches them to look in the mirror to find the ultimate source of most growth stoppages. It gives them a paved road, not a trail of breadcrumbs, to navigate their way out of the woods.

As an organizational consultant and executive coach, I found the book very helpful in structuring my thinking around change activities. I felt that the authors were generous in sharing every ingredient in their secret formula for successful executive-level interventions.

Recapturing the Growth Track is a valuable addition to my business library. It is a book that I will not only read but consult.

I have personally read this book from cover to cover and believe me it is awesome!! Mr. Utech tells business owners/executives how to recapture the efficiency, energy, and drive that your company used to have when it was smaller and younger. This is not a gimmicky "system" or "process" that probably won't help you anyway. This is a PROVEN way of allowing people at all levels in your organization to COMMUNICATE effectively and extremely honestly so as to promote a positive accountability . Lack of proper communication and accountability saps efficiency by promoting dissatisfaction and a culture of blaming others. This program restores that lost efficiency and competitiveness that every company needs. Don't buy this book if you want a magic miracle cure. This book will show you the way by challenging you, as the leader, to grow and to change your disempowering ways. This book is all about personal growth that leads to business growth-this book will deeply challenge you! I guarantee you that you've never seen these ideas before (unless you are in one of the companies that are now market leaders after having hired Mr. Utech as a consultant.) I don't know why we have never thought of this before. If you implement these ideas now you will be ahead of the curve because in a couple of years everyone worldwide will be talking about the "Utech Cure".

Recapturing the Growth Track is a practical, step-by-step guide to making change happen starting at the very top of an organizatoin. It is written directly to leaders of entrepreneurial organizations who have hit the proverbial wall. It teaches them to look in the mirror to find the ultimate source of most growth stoppages. It gives them a paved road, not a trail of breadcrumbs, to navigate their way out of the woods.

As an organizational consultant and executive coach, I found the book very helpful in structuring my thinking around change activities. I felt that the authors were generous in sharing every ingredient in their secret formula for successful executive-level interventions. Recapturing the Growth Track is a valuable addition to my business library. It is a book that I will not only read but consult.

Virtually every manager and CEO wonders why his or her organization doesn't perform better ... like it used to! What's gone wrong?
When, despite using all the cutting-edge techniques, effectiveness has gone stale, the authors contend the malaise probably rests with how the leaders are inadvertently behaving ... causing an unclear, unfocused, sub-energized organization. What worked before (when challenges were less complex) no longer does. It's not a case of just "doing differently." It's a need for the CEO to better understand his/her drivers because they're being perceived with ambivalence.
These drivers aren't the normal ones like integrity, quality and responsiveness. Rather they are even deeper, more personalized. They derive from old fears, past successes, and major aspirations.
This How To, easy-to-read book helps the CEO and his/her organization learn what these inherent drivers and especially their limitations are ... and then model the key leadership trait of vulnerability so that others want to help them ... and their peers ... succeed! They see a leadership team more in sync, as well as how their own skills are critical to creating success. They then model this new behavior themselves, holding each other accountable, practicing a self-actrualizing peer dynamic rather than a controlling boss-subordinate one. This book describes a process which will ensure better execution, more motivated employees, higher productivity, more new ideas, more satisfied customers, and increased profits.

This book was fascinating from the first page until the last. Mr.Kunen has a way with words that will grip the reader as he did me. The intimate details of the crash and the lives of the young victims will bring a tear to your eye. And how Ford Motors was defeated in the end will have you cheering in a bittersweet way. A masterpiece. I have read hundreds of books and this book tops my list to this day even though I first read it 6 years ago.

I happen to know the grandparents (both sets) of one of the students killed in this crash. The book has a big impact on me, not only for the tragedy itself, but that it has a personal meaning also. I had a hardcopy of this book in the library in which I worked and now I want my own copy.

My math teacher was on the bus when it crashed and allowed me to read one of his two copies of this book, 3 of his friends were killed and if it was n't for his other friend he would have died too for he was sitting 3 rows from the front and saw the youth director get blown up when the explosion occured.

I had seen a road sign in Kentucky referring to a bus crash, but didn't know anything about it. One day I saw Mr. Kunen's book at a local bookstore and realized it was the same thing. When I started reading the book I couldn't put it down. Up until that day it was a road sign; afterwards it was a tragic memorial to the death of the innocent.

Reclaiming the Commons is an excellent read for anyone interested in the natural history of New England, community farming, open space issues, and the value of farms in the landscape. This is a well written, thoughtful book that offers an inspiring vision for a future of locally produced food, protected farmland, and community involvement that farms help to create.

OUTSTANDING!Very impressive! Pointed, engaging, and inspiring from the get-go. And extraordinarily well-written -- my innate and involuntary tendency to mentally edit anything I'm reading was off in another county someplace.

This book,written by a newcomer in the environmental landscape, will become a landmark. It points the way to transform the suburban way of life into one that is sustainable.This it would do by converting suburban open spaces into community sanctuaries for agriculture,husbandry and forestry, administered by suburbanites themselves,especially by their youngsters.The great strength of the proposals is that they have been demonstrated to work by the author and his associates in the upscale Boston suburb of Weston. Another plus is the grace and humor with which the book is blessed.

In Reclaiming the Commons, Brian Donahue has given us a remarkable portrait of a thriving community farm in Weston, Massachusetts called Land's Sake. In 1980 the nonprofit organization Land's Sake was formed in Weston, a suburb of Boston, to work closely with the town's Conservation Commission on managing and using the town's growing public land. Its three founding principles were to care ecologically for Weston's land, to involve the community and especially young people with the land, and to be as self-supporting as possible through the sale of products and services. By thinking of the land as a rural space that could "benefit from our presence, rather than need to be protected from us," they opened the possibility that they could engage suburban youth with the land and produce high-quality natural products for local sale, offering ample educational and recreational activities while striking "a balance between protecting natural ecosystems and making sustainable, productive use of the land."

Land's Sake sends about one-fifth of their fresh organic produce to Boston's homeless shelters and food pantries, as well as sponsoring a Harvest for Hunger every September, thus ensuring that their surplus finds an assured wholesale market (the town pays the price to send the food to the inner city) which benefits the disadvantaged and disenfranchised in the nearby urban areas. Donahue shows that suburbia "is the condition of residing outside the city proper with little functional connection to one's neighbors, aside from the schools, and almost no functional connection to the land," and he shows that community farms on common land offer a vibrant opportunity to keep farmland from being lost to development, and to transform the suburban condition from alienation to connection. This is a surprisingly powerful and exciting book that will show suburban and city readers how to become more connected to their land and to their source of food.

This book is a valuable resource for students of Eastern European History. Adam Broner's first person narrative skillfully connects the author's personal story with the larger events surrounding his life. The wide scope and long time period provide a neutral perspective and a greater understanding of the events. Broner's personal stories draw the reader into history and bring it to life in a new way. The book would easily fit into a curriculum covering World War II, Communism, Eastern Block History, Anti-Semitism, and particularly Poland. This remarkable biography can be enjoyed by anyone, but it will be especially appreciated by all scholars of history.

This man's story has touched this woman's heart. It is a simple, easy to read, straightforward, historical and personal account of the human and his indomitable spirit. This eye-opening account leaves me with a lifetime education. I am humbled by this man's love for his faith, family and country.

A fine book about the history of these trying times reported by a person that lived the story. It reflects great memory and great research. It should be read by all students now and in the future interested in this period of world history.

Adam Broner's book is a well-written, very readable one person's story of the most important event of the 20th century, World War II. It is a remarkable, I would even say unique story. At that turbulent time, most people let themselves be pushed where the changing fates of war were throwing them. Not so the young Adam Broner. He repeatedly made his own decisions, sometimes risky but right and courageous. The most important of these was to desert the "working battalions" in Siberia, and to join the army fighting the Nazis. It may sound strange, but Adam Broner's story is also unique because it tells the plain truth. He has not adapted his narrative to the now prevalent ideas. Broner simply tells us how it was. A good book. Richard Fenigsen, M.D., Waltham, Massachusetts.