Current Events Books

The book is rather boring but contains a lot of information. Thats about all i have to say.

This book definetely among the best modern international history books that I have read. The text is clear and concise and uses new information revealed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the book is of a suitable length and utilizes a writing style that is informative and yet, not too bland. A casual reader and a history buff could both use this book well.

Positively framed and very well described, indeed one of the best books describing the changing world since 1945.

A great book which introduces the reader to history starting from World War II. Covers topics from the nuclear arms race to the creation of the European Union. Very engaging book and not boring like many others. Pick this one up.

I wanted to say that every word in the book is exactly how I feel. I think it took lots of nerve to actually put all of those complaints into a book. I think that it is worth putting it in public places to show how alot of us America citizens feel. Maybe hotels, like the Gidieon Bible, if you know what I mean. Way to go. I plan to tell more people about the book. Great title by the way!

This book is full of well founded concern. It speaks the opinion of many. If you are unsure what your position is on the language issue here in America, you will most likely form one at the conclusion of reading this book. Gets the blood pumping. I stand in agreement with this book.

This book says what a lot of people think but are afraid to say. I am in the medical field and am frustrated with it being my responsibility to speak spanish when I live in America. I do understand that it is a hard language to learn, but we are not helpling by enabling. I live FAR away from a border and this effects me in everyday living. Way to go, you hit a sensitive subject right on the nose!

I found this book to be a very good read. It seems to say it like it is and gives credit to the "melting pot" that America is. It also puts a perspective on the respect needed from all immigrants wishing to be a part of our culture. As a veteran, it expressed my opinion very well. Thought provoking, it challenges everyone to speak up and make a stand for our national language and traditions. I loved this book! Well worth the emotional stir.

This is a well-written story of an Army Special Forces trooper in Afghanistan, and it's effect on him and those of us at home. Long on humanism, and short on gore, it's interesting to see how Captain Diggs Brown reacts to his year in the 'Stan. His including many of the emails and letters he sent and recieved with both friends and strangers back home makes this a heart-warming story of our rebuilding of this shattered country.

Rebeccasreads highly recommends YOUR NEIGHBOR WENT TO WAR as a collection of emails, letters, photos & essays about this good American's tour of duty in Afghanistan, from thoughts about his deployment as a reservist to flying into enemy territory; from corresponding with the children back home to visiting a little village to teach English. Then Captain Diggs has a birthday out on desert patrol with the Taliban making life dangerous, & many more months to go before he heads for Home Sweet Home.

YOUR NEIGHBOR WENT TO WAR is an inspirational glimpse of what our soldiers are doing on our behalf, & how our voices make the duty easier. It is a unique & much-needed album of insights & outpourings from strangers & friends.

CPT Brown provides a unique and compelling look at the war on terror in Afghanistan. He allows the reader to see this war through his eyes. Through the many thoughtful e-mails he sent during his deployment, you will witness the positive affect of our presence on the citizens of Afghanistan and on our soldiers. If you've ever indicated that you support our troops, this book is for you.

CPT Diggs Brown has done a great service to our nation, both as an individual serving his country and as an author sharing the "good news" of success in the war on terrorism. This is especially important when most of the print and television media are presenting only the casualty lists.
In July 2002, his unit was informed to prepare for deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Diggs shares what it was like to leave all the "comforts of home," leave his successful civilian job for an entire year, and switch from "weekend warrior" to full-time soldier in a combat zone as a Special Forces officer in the Army National Guard.
He tells his story by sharing the many EMAILs and letter back and forth. He describes his many activities, while the main unit is working to train the New Afghan National Army, CPT Diggs and his fellow soldiers,and the unit chaplain, and the unit medics, all are also working equally hard to help the children and families living around the bases where they are stationed, teaching English, repairing schools, providing aid to orphanages, etc. His activities are in keeping with traditional Special Forces values, attempting to "win the hearts and minds" of the Afghan people he is helping to liberate. CPT Diggs is an excellent example of the Special Forces Latin motto...."de opresso liber", or "To liberate the oppressed."

one of the best books on the jfk assasination, ive read well over a dozen on the subject & this one was up near the top. Probably not the best written, the author makes a couple of minor mistakes including referring to the 1957 appalachin meeting of mafia bosses as the meeting in the appalachian mountains! however, does include some very important info about the people responsible for the jfk assasination- those same cia agents, cuban exiles & mafia bosses who were active in the plots to get rid of castro. read this along with craig roberts' Kill Zone & u will solve the mystery surrounding the jfk assasination. This book gets to the point of the actual people there in dallas that fateful day & craig roberts' Kill Zone shows the conspirators who actually ordered the assasination. Read them both if u want to know the truth about who killed kennedy.

I recently had a holiday in Cuba and found this book available in English everywhere. I found it very convincing as to who was behind the conspiracy. If you plan a holiday in Cuba pick up a copy there.

The same group that was trying to kill Castro did succeed in assassinating President Kennedy. They are: anti-Castro Cubans, CIA, mafia, and the Watergate burglers.

"ZR Rifle" appeared at about the time when Fonzi's "Last Investigation," Scott's "Deep Politics," and Prouty's "JFK" showed up in the bookstores. Since Ms. Furiati has been characterized as "sympathetic" to Castro's revolution, I approached it with caution, only because I needed to know if the book itself could be discredited as another strand of misinformation in an entire web of misinformation spun over the course of forty years.

What I find instead is another well-researched and objective attempt to explain more clearly the strands in the conspiracy web already suggested by the contemporary literature. As I began reading "ZR Rifle," I attempted to verify each fact presented in succession against what I know from other independent sources. I relaxed those efforts after fifty or sixty pages because the book is well-footnoted and the documentary support for its explanation is solid. The book, which can be read in one sitting, adds more detail and clarity to the speculations and background provided by the other authors of this last decade's research.

"ZR Rifle"s strongest point is its reliance on documents and testimony provided by General Fabian Escalante, a veteran official of the Cuban State Security Service -- Castro's intelligence agency. Imagine, if you will, a country in a state of seige, a country made a pawn in the dangerous game of Cold-War nuclear weapons strategies, and a country that began to suspect itself as the intended scapegoat of a conspiracy hatched on American soil to murder an American President. Escalante occupied a position at the center of Cuba's own investigation to discover the Truth about the Guns of Dallas. Such a perspective provides ponderous advantages, because, unlike the problem of the fox guarding the chicken-coup, Cuban intelligence was able to place its own agents among the Cuban-exile community with a primary objective of turning up new facts. And these new facts substantiate what we already know about the complicity of David Atlee Phillips and other non-mob actors within the CIA itself.

The book presents a new challenge for researchers of both the "serious" and armchair variety who want to unravel the complicated inconsistencies concerning the "Oswald in Mexico" story. Cuban documents -- specifically passport applications -- controvert the idea that Oswald was never in Mexico. The facts that document his presence there raise additional questions as to why the CIA propagated the photos of the beefy-looking Oswald imposter, and the meaning of last November's revelations about voice-print identification inconsistencies with the real Oswald. The one certainty that stands out, other than the Cuban evidence, is that all the paradoxes concerning Oswald in Mexico bear the trade-mark of David Atlee Phillips.

My own model of the assassination has the shape of an hour-glass, or two pyramids each facing the opposite direction and intersecting at their apex. As with any methodical murder investigation, the "bottom-up" approach represented by Furiati and Fonzi fills in the details of the actual operations and execution of the conspiracy. Prouty's book, "JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Assassination of . . ." represents a perspective from the other pyramid. The implications about the power-elite responsible for the Guns of Dallas are clear, but more evidence is needed. Americans in the year 2000 can easily vote on their suspicions alone. Those citizens of a more cerebral inclination can simply cut to the chase and formulate their own alternative replacements to the US Constitution. But to actually implement such a change requires massive public support that can only derive from a ponderous body of facts.

That is probably why Furiati was unable to publish her book in the United States. Again, there is a smoking gun in the hands of unidentified media influentials. One can only speculate that someone -- someone -- still worries about the sort of name-dropping that occurs on page 15 of Furiati's book. The fact that the ARRB Final Report was published in the same month that Congress voted to impeach Clinton, and that chapter 6 of that report contains thought-provoking comments about the individual mentioned by Furiati -- is no mean or insignificant coincidence.

If you are proud of the role that Orthodox Jews have played in developing the modern Zionist movement, you will love this reader compiled more than 35 years ago (and back in print). Orthodox rabbis and Zionist leaders Yehuda Alkalai, Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, Yechiel Michel Pines, Meir Bar-Ilan, Shmuel Chaim Landau, Samuel Mohilever, Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook and Isaac Reines take up a disproportionate amount of space in Hertzberg's rich work. And for good measure you will find the writings of Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky.

This is an anthology of works by major Zionist thinkers. It introduced me to the fact that Zionism was primarily a radical project of self-criticism and not a whining diatribe against the Gentiles. The ruthless mode of thought and pitiless self criticism of the founding fathers of Zionism makes one realize that this is our strength in the face of our enemies, who clearly lack the ability to engage in self-criticism. I try to follow in the footsteps of this tradition of Zionist self-criticism in my own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century"
The Introduction by Rabbi Hertzberg is brilliant and worth the price of the book alone. If you want to know something about Zionism, Israel, and modern Jewish history, buy this book and read the Introduction!

the a hundred page introduction of this work is absolutely essential for people of every ilk who want to undertand the whole zionist idealogy in one fine, easy-read scoop. the rest of this work is a presentation of every important leader of zionism in the course of 19th and 20th centuries with a short description of the writers life, endeavors, and accomplishments in the beginning of every excerpt.
this book serves on two fronts which makes it into a bona-fide classic of zionist literature: (a) someone who wants to throughly understand the conception of the movement must read this book because without it even fine, scurpulous research is incomplete. (b) someone who wants to cursorly scan the movement to form a capsule of the zionist idea in his mind for all practical intents and purposes.
i'm not a zionist, but this book gave me a clearer percpective of zionism. now i'm confident to vouch that i know precisely what zionism holds and so should you!

What is modern Zionism? Is it Jewish nationalism? Is it simply an ideology of human rights for everyone, including Jews? These are questions that I hoped would be answered (and are answered) in a book that contains articles written from 1843 to 1948 by about three dozen leading Zionists.

A doctrine of human rights for all would permit any group, including Jews, to bid on land in and near Jerusalem and (upon obtaining it) pass laws ensuring their rights of life, liberty, and property there. As well as continued immigration. I wanted to see if most Zionists saw it that way, arguing that there are many Jews (and many Jewish nationalists) and that Zion is the Jewish homeland, with Jerusalem its capital.

Moreover, I wanted to know if any of these thinkers said or implied anything like the following:

1) We Jews don't care for Zion, but many non-Jews do, so we'll buy Zion and displace those who really love the land.

2) We Zionists love Zion, so we'll steal it from the rightful and legal owners.

3) We don't care about human rights. We want special treatment, so we can have privileges that are denied to non-Jews.

Not one of these authors displayed any of the above three attitudes. None of them advocated wastefulness, greed, destruction, theft, or unfairness. They did indeed argue for the rights of Jews to be equal to those of other nationalities. And they went on to discuss Jewish culture, Hebrew universities, Jewish religion, and the need for a people to have a common language and a state. These days, when the international information supply is saturated with antizionist misinformation, it's worth noting all this.

In this book, we see Theodor Herzl say that the Jews are a people, one people. A people that he thinks "will not be left in peace." And, most important, that he is not aiming to arouse sympathy on behalf of the Jews: "All that is nonsense, as futile as it is dishonorable." Those who ask that we make the dubious stipulation that Zionism is merely a claim of sympathy for what has happened to the Jews of Europe might want to note that!

We then see Ahad Ha-am say that he wants to focus on a national culture, with Zion providing merely a "secure refuge," rather than starting with a state and relying on it to produce a national culture. That's a good answer to those who ask today what Ahad Ha-am would have said about Israel's desire to continue to exist as a refuge for Jews.

Two other authors who are often quoted by "post-Zionists" are Judah Magnes and Martin Buber. I'd advise reading what they say as well. In particular, Buber splatters Mahatma Gandhi's argument that the Levant "belongs to the Arabs" by pointing out that "God does not give any one portion of the Earth away." A powerful comment for those who might otherwise think that the Jews, not the Arabs, are the ones who are regarding the Levant as theirs by Divine Right!

Vladimir Jabotinsky is often given as an example of someone who favored Jewish greed over Arab need. Guess again! Here we see him speak forthrightly about there being "no question of ousting the Arabs," And that Arabs will be a minority in Israel, but that is no hardship. And that he asks "only for the same condition as the Albanians enjoy."

If you want to learn something about Zionism, read this.

I read this book for a media class I took, and I enjoyed it very much. Minow has been an advocate for quality television since he was Kennedy's FCC chairman, and he obviously continues to champion for what should be a simple thing. Minow and LaMay have a great chapter in this book about the history of television that beats everything I've previously read. I particularly liked the way they talked about a stranger in the house, and how our society allows violence and bloodshed into our homes everyday without a care for what our children are seeing, or how they are reacting to it. Their discussion of the talk shows that are on TV during after-school hours was a shock to me. There must be something we can do as a society to give our children the gift of quality TV without violence.I think Minow and LaMay should be commended for their insights and willingness to tackle such a huge problem.

Newton Minnow is a former chairman of the FCC. Minnow is also an excellent writer who argues in this book that television is most probably unsuitable for children. Why?

Television is focused on profit alone; sells young viewers to advertisers; wastes 23 hours a week of the average child; brings about violence and obesity, low grades, irresponsibility and poor social patterns in some children; is controlled by advertising agencies and not by people who serve the real needs of children; probably leads children away from reflective thinking and toward information-processing; gives some children negative impressions that will last a lifetime; hunts for children viewers like sharpshooters; is the subject of over three thousand sociological studies; has a history of calling "an intrusion" that which is a reasonable limit; is in the business of making a profit alone; has six and a half hours of program-length commercials on Saturday mornings; is motivated by a compulsion and not sound reasons based on studies in child psychology; and tends to trigger prejudice, fear and despair. The above is unsuitable for children.

Minnow writes on page 12, "Broadcasting and television industries quickly drew their own map of the United States. Communities became markets, citizens became customers, and children became fair game."

In the 1960's, one of the things requested by the leaders of the Black Movement was the more frequent appearance on television of Black performers. Specifically, these performers were to be in programs where they portrayed competent, contributing people. Such programs as Amos n' Andy, under pressure from Black leaders and Civil Rights advocates, were removed from television. Their demands were guided by the belief that the way in which Black people were portrayed on television would have a marked effect upon society's evaluation of the Black race.

In the Sep 2003 U.S. News and World Report magazine article regarding the 100 documents which affected our country's history, it is stated that the words we use to communicate our ideas to one another have the power to provoke images and emotions which can revolutionize our society.

The ability of literature, whether written or performed, to transform people's values and thus society is not a radical or new notion. It is the principle upon which our American education system is based. We do not believe that human beings are locked into a set of values which they either inherited or which were formed strictly from association with close relatives. We believe that education and environment can alter our principles.

I agree with all the previously stated ideas, so it always amazes me how so many of the people who are proponents of the power of education, proponents of the power of literature to shape our values, are often the most vehement in denying that television, music and movies have had a profound effect upon our society's values. The only way that I can reconcile these blatantly contradictory notions is that perhaps what these people are meaning to say is that, books, television, movies, and music do have the power to modify our ethics, to modify our stereotypical perceptions of a race or a gender, and do have the power to affect our notions of equity, but with regards to the sex and violence that saturate these mediums, these are just things that temporarily excite us and have little affect upon our values.

This belief is not supported by either logic or experience. The reason that our entertainment is saturated with sex and violence is because there are few things which have a greater capacity to affect us, to arouse us, to absorb our attention. For better, for worse we are chained to one another for our most intense emotions. The egocentric sweetness of self-fulfillment pales in comparison to the emotions generated by the adulation or domination of our fellow human being. Logically, you do not repeatedly arouse human beings' most intense emotions without creating an even greater appetite for more stimulation. However, although we might have a longing for this stimulation, most people will subordinate these desires to society's expectations of socially acceptable behavior. Thus few of us become sexual addicts or sadists or serial killers. Hence, the assertion by the media and others that this steady dose of sex and violence has little affect upon us. But it has. We have allowed ourselves to enjoy the reduction of a human being to a sexual object. We have allowed ourselves to enjoy seeing another human being physically harmed. This enjoyment reduces our aversion to these emotions and when a significant percentage of society finds pleasure in these emotions, its eventuates in the altering of socially acceptable behavior. And we are seeing the results of these changes, children killing children, a drug-infested youths, schools patrolled like prisons, babies having babies, a plethora of families without fathers.

However, many people feel that even if this type of entertainment does have deleterious effects, our freedom is more endangered by censorship than it is by these aforementioned negative consequences. First, let me state that we already have censorship. We do not allow nudity or acts of fornication in public or on commercial broadcast stations. We do not allow cigarette or alcohol advertisements in elementary or high schools. We do not allow teachers in these schools to teach hatred of a religion or race or gender. We do not allow the advertisement or sale or consumption of narcotics. In most states, prostitution is illegal. Censorship already exists. Second, the notion that censorship of literature or entertainment is a threat to the freedom of being able to criticize the policies of our government is a relatively new concept in the United States. Up until the 1960's censorship of entertainment was considered a given in the United States. The fact that this country, the most free society that the world has ever known, was able to not only survive but thrive for over 150 years while at the same time having a censorship of entertainment policy negates the notion that freedom is threatened by such a situation. England is another example where freedom to criticize the government was considered to be very different from the freedom to make one's living by appealing to the prurient interests of the public. Victorian England allowed Karl Marx to promote his ideas whereas libidinous France banished him from their country. There are a multitude of other examples where the government was a dictatorship but there existed no censorship of entertainment. It is to a dictator's advantage for the populace to be a slave to their passions, rather than a people working together to determine what literature and entertainment will promote within their children respect for the dignity of people.

I am very thankful for such books as "Abandoned in the Wasteland". Mr. Minow recognizes and is trying to combat the crisis which this steady dose of sex and violence and consumerism is breeding in our youth.

Mary Ann Glendon tackles a very difficult task with great care and precision - she attempts to engage in a conversation about two very emotional and complex subjects which usually find people either at polar extremes from one another or completely ambivalent and ignorant of the real discussion at hand - these two issues are abortion and divorce. To embark on this conversation, Glendon suggests that we consider not how America has addressed these issues, but rather how the rest of the Western world has done so through their laws and regulations - and she does so with great precision.

Would you be surprised to discover that the United States has the most liberal laws regarding both the regulation of abortion and the application of divorce in the entire western world?! I was. But Glendon doesn't just stop with the comparison, she seeks to examine how and why this situation exists and it is through her careful examination that one can learn how to better address and speak to these complex and controversial subjects here in America.

The book is not an easy read, but I believe it is an important read for everyone wanting to not merely understand the current situation of abortion and divorce on demand, but also wish to change the present landscape on these issues. Glendon realizes that changing any one law isn't going to change the perception or attitude of an entire country, but she does realize that something must be done and she seeks to better prepare and equip those entering into the fray with solid background information that can be used to advance much needed change in these areas.

Professor Glendon of the Harvard Law School is a rare voice of sanity, compassion and honesty in America's abortion debates. She is an especially rare voice within the legal academy. Glendon shows that America's abortion regime, set into place by the Supreme Court in its infamous Roe v. Wade ruling, is the most radical in the Western world. In the United States, the richest nation in the world, we have the least amount of legal protection for unborn children; to use Orwell's phrase, they are "unpersons" as far as our laws are concerned.

But Dr. Glendon's book is about much more than looking at comparative abortion laws. Glendon demonstrates that abortion laws are necessarily related to the provisions a society makes for vulnerable women and families facing difficult pregnancies. Glendon adopts a wholistic, communitarian-based approach to the issue of abortion, arguing that it is more a question of societal responsibilities than individual rights. Thus, the current rhetoric, especially popular on the "pro-choice" side, that posits a conflict of rights between mother and child, is very misguided ... and as we have witnessed, deadly to unborn children and damaging to the fabric of our society.

I believe Dr. Glendon's book represents a prophetic call to a new way of thinking about abortion, and our response to this tremendous national tragedy.

Mary Ann Glendon is among the most talented members of the faculty of the Harvard Law School, and this book is a detailed comparison of abortion and divorce laws in the major developed nations. Such a comparison leads to the conclusion that American law on these matters is the most extreme in the developed world. Glendon then argues that the peculiar extremity of our legal situation reflects the deficiencies of a constitutional order that places unprecedented importance on rights, a contention which is further developed in her book, Rights Talk. This book is very valuable in dispelling the notion that where we Americans stand with regard to abortion and divorce is simply consistent with the law of other Western nations.

Written by American Enterprise Institute research fellow John C. Fortier, Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils is examines how nearly a quarter of Americans today vote before election day, either through absentee ballot or early voting places. Absentee and Early voting questions whether or not the convenience of these practices has undermined the integrity of the process and weakened a unifying civic experience. Exploring the legal and historical reasons for alterations in the voting system, as well as the many variations across states, Absentee and Early Voting offers measured, rational conclusions about that changes in the system have meant for the nation across the decades, how America can better protect itself against voter fraud, and what should be America's next step. A cutting-edge study as accessible to lay readers as it is to scholars, Absentee and Early Voting is enthusiastically recommended for political science library and reference shelves.

This study of the rise of absentee and early voting is quite informative. There is more information here about the numbers of votes cast by traditional, early, and absentee methods in each state than I have ever seen. The author admits that some of this data had to be estimated because not all the states collect the information precisely.

John C. Fortier is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and is the principal contributor to the election reform project the AEI has with Brookings. While I have a number of civic, logistical, security, integrity, and timing issues with the large us of voting in anyplace than the traditional voting booth on a single election day, I recognize that my view is in the minority and dwindling at that.

I did live in Australia for two years from 1973-75 and saw their universal vote-by-mail system. There and then, if you were of age you faced a fine if you did not return a signed ballot on time. You could vote for Mickey Mouse, but you had to vote. Of course, theirs is a parliamentary system with most of the focus being on electing the local MPs from among a myriad of parties. There are two big parties there, and in those days both were leftish and really left. But their country is larger than the continental United States with something like one tenth of our population (or less). Going to polling places there is simply not practical because so many voters live in amazingly remote areas.

As the author recounts the history of absentee voting to accommodate soldiers during the Civil War and traveling businessmen, he also notes how small a percentage of the electorate this was. It was more symbolic of enfranchisement and civic duty than anything more than a marginal impact on the number of votes cast.

We are then taken through the rise of absentee and early voting. This rapid growth really begins in the 1970s. It first began with the notion that it would expand the participation of more eligible voters, but has proven to be more about convenience than getting new voters. There is some evidence of retaining sometime voters as more regular voters.

However, early voting has proven popular and the percentage of ballots being cast absentee is rising significantly in recent years. Fortier does take us through the pitfalls, but does not provide detailed anecdotes of the problems. He assures us that the problems, while serious to the integrity and confidence of voters in their system, are not significant in number. I am not so sanguine. We have had a great deal of evidence that when third parties get involved in "assisting" in registrations and the handling of ballots that corruption occurs. We get dead people voting, Alzheimer patients voting, and the potential exists in some situations for voting more than once - absentee and at the polling place.

The author offers some general recommendations that emphasize more the early voting, but tightening it up as far as security and in time frame (no more than ten days). For places like Oregon that have gone to 100% voting by mail there is no going back, but there are additional security tools they can add.

This is a good and informative piece. I don't think Fortier goes far enough in exposing the voter fraud that exists today, but I suppose that isn't really the focus of this book.

Recommended to all who are interested in the integrity of our voting process and how it is changing in recent years.

The author of this book is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he serves as the principal contributor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project. The list of AEI fellows, posted at the back of this 2006 book, included former President Gerald Ford, Lynne V. Cheney, the wife of the Vice-President, two 2008 potential Republican Presidential candidates--Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson--and numerous veterans of Republican Presidential elections.

The author admirably does a superb job of research. Getting data from 50 states and the federal government, he notices gaps and differences in terminology and--rare among researchers--he follows up and fills the gaps and reclassifies the information according to national criteria. In doing so, he provides an excellent model of how national state by state research should work.

The author worries as he documents the increasing trend away from a single voting day and toward increasing use of absentee ballots and early voting. It started with the no-excuses absentee balloting law passed in California in 1978, and it reached its point with Oregon's universal vote by mail plan passed in 1998. Many states have been unaffected or only modestly affected by this trend, my state of Pennsylvania among them, but he warns that the genie can not be put into the bottle and the trend is gathering steam as sthe reform-friendly states are being held up by some as national models.

The author prefers early voting to no-excuses absentee voting. Under early voting, polling places are set up to cover areas much larger than a single precinct before the election at places which attract a large amount of traffic, such as governmental offices and shopping centers. Early voters share in common with regular voters an ability to get to polling places; early voting works best for voters who have no mobility problems but suffer from time constraints on election day.

No-excuses absentee voting, however, allows people with mobility problems a better opportunity to participate. These people tend to be elderly, disabled, low-income and housebound due to duties to take care of children or elderly parents.

The author rightly worries about the integrity of absentee ballots, noting the possibilities of fraud, coercion, or just a desire to please someone else by letting the other person (a more politically concerned spouse, a party worker, a neighbor, a co-worker, etc.) fill out the ballot. He expresses legitimate concerns about the erosion of voter privacy by absentee ballots, and wisely suggests machine readable signature checks as a safeguard. He also notes that directly mailing the ballots to all voters, as Oregon does, removes the opportunity for manipulation of the ballot request process by party workers or others. Certainly, those who work to expand absentee voting should work to devise safeguards to minimize the possibility for fraud or distortion of any voter's viewpoint.

The author helpfully provides charts classifying states by the systems they use. The results of these charts, however, hint at the possibility of a partisan interest. The five states which only allow early voting, the author's preferred reform--Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia--all went for President Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Of those 11 states with high absentee voting, however, seven--Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington--went against President Bush at least once, and further, two of the four remaining states--Alaska and Montana--had significant Democratic gains in 2006.

Similarly, four of the nine states with a mix of high absentee and early voting--Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, and New Mexico went against President Bush at least once, and a fifth state--Colorado--scored Democratic gains in 2006.

The low-absentee states are generally the older states. They split 12 to 9 for Bush in 2000, and 11 to 10 for Bush in 2004.

The author does not mention the partisan implications of his recommendations, leaving it to well-informed readers to figure them out. I personally believe it would have been more credible to openly discuss it, but I can understand the case for leaving that discussion to others.

Beyond partisan concerns lie other questions. The author professes admiration for the civic involvement of bringing people together on election days, but dismisses the civic involvement of workers engaging in one to one discussions with voters about absentee ballots. This reviewer believes he is the missing the boat here.

Further and of fundamental importance, the author simply does not address the issue of why people with mobility problems should not be aided to vote. A greater use of absentee ballots is required to help these people, and more days for going to polling places simply does not solve the problem of voting access for people who cannot get to polling polling places without a lot of pain or a lot of inconvenience whenever the polling places are open.

Although I quarrel with the author's apparent blind spots, he is to be commended for putting together a compilation of state and national research that materially moves forward the discussion of how voting should be expanded. Advocates for the elderly, the disabled, the low income and the low-mobility folks in general, however, will need to rely on other works to gain support for the full enfranchisement of these under-represented groups.

This book provides an excellent introduction to the world of international politics. It has several very detailed chapters exploring such issues as timber logging, for example, and then goes into detail describing how various groups influence the industry.

The focus of their book is how "advocacy networks", as opposed to the traditional government agencies, effect change. These advocacy networks work alongside and often against governments in often non-traditional methods to achieve a desired result. In the case of timber harvesting, for example, advocacy networks were unsuccessful in persuading governments to alter their poicies so the organizations within that network focused on the consumers of timber. They successfully exposed the objectionable timber harvesting practices of various companies and enabled consumers to exert pressure on timber harvesting companies to change their practices.

Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikink's "Activists Beyond Borders" is almost certainly the most significant book yet to have appeared on the role of activist networks in shaping global politics. It's a joy to read, theoretically rich but never overly dense, and it's also inspiring -- probably why it received the prestigious Grawemeyer World Order Award. The introduction, on "Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics," would make an excellent reading for a graduate course on International Relations theory. But the same could be said for almost every chapter in the book. The case-studies build upon the prior research of both authors to present fascinating overviews of the evolution of activist networks in the fields of human rights, the environment, and violence against women. In each instance, the authors are careful to include examples of networks that did *not* crystallize in certain issue-areas, and to explain why some endeavours succeeded while others failed (or were less successful). While the book will be of considerable interest to I.R. scholars, it should also be read by activists, who will learn a great deal about how to maximize their reach and influence.

Who are the most relevant actors in international relations? The answer is states for both neorealists and neoliberals though the latter also consider some non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations (MNC) as remarkable units in international politics. Constructivists, on the other hand, pay considerable attention to non-state actors while they also keep states as central actors. Margaret E. Keck and, Kathryn Sikkink present us a well-designed discussion about the significance of non-state actors of world politics in Activist Beyond Borders. First of all, they classify transnational actors into three groups; MNC and international banks that have instrumental goals, epistemic communities that insist on causal ideas and transnational advocacy networks (TAN) that carry principal ideas.Then, they analyze the significance of TAN in international politics by searching for how do TAN work and how do they change conceptions of national interest and principles of policies organizations? Keck and Sikkink mention four fundamental strategies of TAN; information politics, symbolic politics, leverage politics, and accountability politics. They generate information, use symbolic elements, put pressure on states and international organizations, and follow their accountability to international norms. Their effectiveness, however, depend on the issue and actor characteristics that they are targeting. What they do? They cause to reformulation of national interests and they eventually change behavior of states. The principled ideas are the key for TAN and they also lead ideas to transformation of states interests and policies. Activist Beyond Borders has three case studies in the area of TAN; human rights, environment, and violence against women. In these cases, transnational human rights advocacy networks changed authoritarian Latin American governments' notions and policies of human rights. TAN in environment shifted the World Bank's funding policies in corresponding to the protection of environment. TAN in women's rights lead to change state policies in two areas. One of the most significant arguments for IR theory that Keck and Sikkink state is that TAN lead to changes in state understandings of sovereignty. Then states begin to accommodate to re-conceptualized sovereignty at the expense of realist notion of absolute sovereignty. In this sense, they question the realist premises of state interests. They also emphasizes that TAN are important source of new ideas, norms and identities that make repercussions over behavior of states and international organizations. They carry transformative and mobilizing ideas into international system and finally shape fundamentally policies of both state and non-sate actors in world politics. In addition, the authors stress upon the importance of domestic actors for TAN to be successful. Overall, Activists Beyond Borders asserts that TAN endeavor to transform the terms and nature of the debate on fundamentals of international politics.

> This book is an inspiration. The interviews range from funny to militant,
> the organizing strategies range from creatively loopy to brave and
> brilliant. What the reader absorbs from these wonderful and diverse
> activists is an infectious sense of commitment to improving society, and a
> sense of idealism about the potential we all have to make those changes. We
> see and feel how lives are made whole by engagement with social change.

This masterful collection of intimate interviews is even more than the sum of its wonderful parts. While there are many books about activists, this is the only one that embraces activists across diverse disciplines, ranging from community arts and culture to banking and finance. After reading this book, I have come to the conclusion that interviews may be the only way to authentically capture the perspectives of visionary leaders. Marie Cieri and Claire Peeps clearly engendered an intimacy with their subjects that resulted in an outpouring of insight and honesty. As a reader, you feel that you've actually had a personal conversation with these special human beings. And perhaps the greatest gift of this book is that it humanizes these activists, focusing on the everyday choices that these leaders made in their lives, and the simple improvisational skills they demonstrated in the face of life's surprising curves. The result is that the reader is inspired to believe that he or she could actually make changes in their own world. And what better reason is there to write a book? I purchased a stack of these books for my family, frioends, and colleagues. I heartily recommend buying this book for everyone you know.

This is a great book for everyone interested in arts and activism to read because there are no easy answers or facile solutions given here. The editors respect the individual voices of the 15 artists and activists they interviewed. They don't try to tidy up the narrative and impose their own generalizations and comparisons. What they give us through these interviews are tough questions and real inconsistencies that we must try to figure out. Why are so many people indifferent to artists today? Can art help us relate across generations and build stronger communities? Can involvement in activism challenge artists to do better work? To me, this book contains the kind of information and inspiration that represents art and activism at its best.