Government Agencies Books

Being a person of limited intellect when it comes to fuel cell technology and its' applications, I found Ms. Koval's issue paper to be not only informative, but at the same time I was able to follow the complex issues that this 21st century technology brings to the fore. Ms. Koval seems to have command of the subject matter and has exhaustively researched this topic so as to write a fair and accurate analysis of fuel cell technology.

This book, Donovan: America's Master Spy, is about William Wild Bill Donovan; Medal of Honor recipient while fighting with the famous New York Fighting 69th Irish regiment, Wall St. Lawyer, child of the Irish First Ward in Buffalo, confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt and the man who ran the OSS during World War II that later became the CIA under President Truman.

Richard Dunlop worked for Donovan during WWII and was given access to his private papers and spoke with Donovan for hundreds of hours in preparation for writing this biography. Truly a fantastic book about a man whose record of public service is both shadowy and well known; both amazing and hard to believe.

This should be required reading for every American. William Donovan is a man who embodies many of the qualities we all should emulate.

This dense, rich work gives both the "big picture" and the fine details of the sea changes in British intelligence in India. It is very thorough; it would be hard for either a serious high school student or a serious researcher to consult this work for even 10 minutes without coming away with valuable insights. Bayly is able to pull facts together to give a vivid picture of the place and time. If you are doing a paper on British India, this book will serve you well.

This work provides details on a plethora of federal government
programs, grants and loans. For instance, social security
disability benefits are described for the disabled. HUD insurance for mobile homes is set forth. Federal Procurement
Procedures are set forth for doing business with the government
at the agency level. HUD Rental Assistance Programs are explained in detail. Direct loans for housing the elderly and
handicapped are described together with mortgage insurance programs for low income persons. The Department of Education-
Center for International Education provides funding for
doctoral research and foreign studies. United States Employment
Services for the handicapped and disabled are described and
set forth. The work is worth the price charged for the significant value of the research provided. A strength of the
presentation is its brevity. It is a sole-source
reference for virtually every major government funding initiative.

Written by Elaine C. Kamarck, a former senior policy advisor to the Clinton administration, The End of Government...As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work is a nonpartisan examination of the failings of bureaucratic government models with newer, leaner, and more creative approaches in keeping with the fast-paced and ever-changing information age. Chapters address the problem of homeland security and why bureaucratic thinking has failed to solve it, tools for reinventing the public sector such as waivers, applying the reinvention of government to the problem of welfare dependence (one such positive example is the use of an electronic benefit card to supplant food stamps - since food stamps can be used like cash and are thus more susceptible to corruption) and much more. A plain-spoken, serious-minded plethora of twenty-first century solutions to problems compounded by bureaucratic quagmires left over from the twentieth century. Highly recommended, especially for anyone active in local, state, or federal government.

Highly recommended is Robert W. Collin's THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY: CLEANING UP AMERICA'S ACT. While this could've been featured in our Political Shelf area (it's part of Greenwood's 'Understanding Our Government' series), it's better featured here, for it's vital importance to the issues involved in cleaning up environmental problems. The EPA is a young, powerful federal agency which is faced with the task of environmental protection in a world daily affected by changing technology and its after-products. Chapters chart political and social controversies but also survey its organization, programs, key events, and social impact. Details on environmental clean-up challenges are particularly insightful, offering clues on how the agency responds and operates.

Cord Meyer is a cult personality. Every american alive after 1945 should read this book

This book is a contender for the title of "Best Book on the Vietnam War." This is not a "war story" book or a record of military fights on the battlefield. Instead, it recounts the struggles among the allies, both in Indochina and in Washington, D.C., to find and pursue a strategy. The fact that it took the U.S. so long to come to a winning strategy explains why the American Congress eventually lost enthusiasm for the war and pulled the plug just when the South Vietnamese had risen to the point of viability as an independent nation capable of self-defense against the determined enemy that controlled the people of the North.

The title of this book is questionable because it's not a good guide to the wide range of subjects treated authoritatively by the book, nor does it deal exclusively with the CIA's role as the title might suggest. It is taken from the name of the allied effort to crush the communists' war-directing apparatus among the thousands of South Vietnamese villages. That effort was intially conceived by a South Vietamese military officer who had served in the North Vietnamese military forces before becoming disillusioned with the communists' heavy-handed approach to dominion over all the nationalist groups working for independence. The author pegs his story around the history of that officer. The book's special strength is in the first-hand information obtained by the author's interviews of key actors in the key events of the war.

It is also of importance that the author picks up the story at the end of World War II. Without that background, it is difficult to put later developments into meaningful context, or to see the continuity of the French and American wars. The French had been in Indochina for over a century, and the drive to wrest independence from the French -- and, later, to maintain it in the face of well-intended but often misdirected U.S. invervention -- was fundamental to the Vietnamese motivations throughout the war.

From the Vietnamese point of view there was simply one war -- a 40-year war for independence. From the Western perspective, there was first the "French War" and then the "American War."

The major American strategic gaffes are made evident, along with the background that explains how they happened. The gaffes include America's misguided and high-handed killing of South Vietnam's president, Ngo Dinh Diem (and the author provides the evidence that U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge was instrumental in eliminating Diem and his entire government), the only South Vietnamese patriot of sufficient stature to have had a chance of rallying the moral opposition to the communists under Ho Chi Minh in the North; the introduction of American fighting forces onto a field that should have been occupied only by the contending North and South Vietnamese (and the corollary neglect of the essential political and military mobilization of the South Vietnamese); and, ultimately, the U.S.'s egregious abandonment of the South Vietnamese when the Southern people, relying on promised American military aid, had fully mobilized themselves to resist Northern aggression. The invidious role of the American media, some of whose leading representatives became involved to the point of taking sides in the strategic wrangling, is covered more explicitly and pertinently here than in most other accountings.

The author does not explore the possibility of an earlier military victory had American politics not precluded the allies cutting the enemy's supply lines into the South. That possibility, and the curious story behind it, is well told in "Laos: The Key to Failure." But the author does cover the events in Laos and Cambodia that were critical to the war in Vietnam. Indeed, for the commmunists it was all one war for control of Indochina. America's keeping the wars compartmentalized was another strategic error.

"Phoenix" nicely moves between the battlefields of Indochina and the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. And "Vietnam" cannot be understood without a grasp of that vital connection.

The four books that I would recommend for a basic grasp of the Vietnam War are 1) "A soldier Reports" by William Westmoreland (the Eagle Scout who lacked Asian experience and who had little sense of the complex political nature of the war he was fighting, but who made many crucial decisions during four critical years of the war); 2) "Lost Victory" by William Colby (who worked on Indochina longer than any other senior U.S. official, and who had a keener insight into what happened there and why; 3) "Laos: The key to Failure" by Norman Hannah (who saw the Indochina theater more strategically than most from his post in Hawaii with the Commander in Chief of the Pacific); and 4) the book here reviewed -- "Facing the Phoenix" by Zalin Grant. These four will provide an understanding of the hisorical background, the complex reasons for the U.S. taking the decisions it did, the people who played significant roles on all sides of the conflict, the mistakes that were made in pursuing American aims in Vietnam (and Southeast Asia more generally),and the strategic successes and failures of the undertaking.

Under the guise of "homeland security" the US government has made unprecedented legal attacks on the civil liberties and civil rights of the people of this country. From immgrants to librarians, from union activists to anyone who talks on the telephone, covert and overt attacks on the civil rights of Americans continue to grow. Their target is not "terrorists" but against the threat of working class resistance to the growing attacks on living conditions. They are afraid the entire working class will follow the example immigrants are setting by coming into direct action against them, rather than depending on the Republicans and Democrats who are in the pockets of the rich.

This book documents the historic victory the Socialist Workers Party won in its suit against the US government's illegal Cointelpro attacks on the SWP and on the trade union, Black liberation, women's right, and antiVietnam war movements the SWP was a part of. Read these documents, and you will see that the FBI and the other federal agencies have no concern for "law and order," or "terrorism." Their real concern is to do whatever they can get away with inside and outside the law to disrupt struggles in the interests of working people.

Read this book so you will know not only of these crimes of the FBI and the government in the past, but so you will know how to fight them now and in the future.

Comprehensive information about grants available. Since it covers many different topics, some subjects do not have too much information but still great source. After all this guide is designed to be a starting point for doing the work. It helps you find the right grants to research more in detail