Military Law Books

Just stick with the book through the boring first half and a gem of understanding about our current situation in the Middle East will be presented that puts the war in an historical context. It also helped me understand more deeply than the tv sound bites some of the forces that have shaped and continue to change this important area of the world.

The author Robert Merry is president and publisher of Congressional Quarterly. In this fascinating book he explores various influential ideas about foreign policy common among the US ruling class.

He proposes that the key divide is between the idea of progress, which he claims leads to interventions abroad, and the cyclical view of history, which he claims leads to non-intervention. He presents the five resulting foreign policy options: expansionism, liberal and conservative interventionisms, and liberal and conservative isolationisms.

He notes that Francis Fukuyama upholds the idea of progress, telling us that globalisation will end all history, including wars, as we all become American. Merry notes that Norman Angell presented the same idea back in 1910, predicting that the growing economic interdependence between countries made wars impossible. Now New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a bugler for globalisation, says that Angell was `actually right', little details like the world wars having clearly escaped his magisterial attention. It certainly seems that the globalisation can only be achieved by wars to impose it on reluctant nations.

Merry himself espouses Samuel Huntington's cyclical view of history as the eternal, inevitable clash of civilisations. But what is peaceful about this vision? Civilisations clash only when states invade other people's countries.

Yet Merry opposes Bush's foreign policy and his bellicosity against Iran, Russia and China. Merry also opposes Bush's policy of getting Turkey into the EU, noting that Bush fatuously said, "As a European power, Turkey belongs in Europe."

Of the current US war against Islam, Merry writes, "In such a war, unprecedented in modern history, probably the most destabilizing approach would be a combination of Theodore Roosevelt's Will to Power imperialism and Woodrow Wilson's missionary idealism. And yet that is precisely the dual policy that emerged from the George W. Bush administration after 9/11." He writes of Bush's "post-9/11 foreign policy destined from the beginning to lead his country toward calamity." Is the USA a crusader state fighting endless wars, with British forces as its Gurkhas?

Merry's primary point is that President Bush's emphasis on "Missionary Democracy" is both naive (a recent Russian poll found 53% opposed Democracy, with only 22% supporting) and likely also counterproductive.

Most of the book covers various theories of history in an effort to build a foundation for analysis of Iraq. However, the book could have instead simply focused on an overall history of Iraq - a "nation" made up of people more loyal to their historic tribes than any overall nationalistic spirit. Thus, Sunni's are likely to relinquish centuries-long control, and the Shia's will not give up their dream of a government dominated by higher clergy. Merry believes that the Bush team failed to think about the likely outcome of deposing Hussein - fragmentation, and should have first listened to experts before proceeding. The result was that the U.S. was surprised to not be greeted as liberators, but instead as occupiers.

Finally, Merry concludes that the U.S. in a cultural "war with Islam." Few others refer to it as such; however, our non-stop insensitive actions (eg. establishing a large, permanent base in Saudi Arabia, support/bias for Israel, prisoner abuses, invading Iraq) that antagonize countless passionate Islamic followers seem to steadily make the situation worse.

The author's thesis stands in and of itself but comes wrapped up in a series of ruminations on Progress, Decline, Toynbee, Spengler and Fukuyama, plus Huntington. This wrapper makes the book very interesting, and yet it is questionable whether the interpretation given is really correct. The question of the idea of progress, after an all too partial history of the idea's own progressions, is then mapped onto the Bush foreign policy. The change of scale is misleading and counterproductive. Similar problems arise with the cyclical views of Toynbee and Spengler. Then the Hegelian End of History thesis is grafted onto the discussion in a way that doesn't quite fit. In a way it is good to raise these issues and attempt the 'philosophy of history' genre as a backdrop to cultural discussion, but the key to doing that has been lost, if it was ever found, and the result is a kind of ad hoc historicism. The idea of progress gets a bum rap these days, and that's not surprising if it is claimed that Bush is its representative. But the idea, on the right scale, is an essential component to historical understanding. The problem is that historical dynamics and the machinations of ideologicalpolicy mongers become scrambled.

I think, beyond the analysis, the cautionary critique of the false universalism of imperial presidents remains of value in the book, but the overall result goes begging for some relief from the cliches of rival pastiche versions of the philosophy of history. Interesting book in any case.
The right way to reconcile the contradictions of cyclical theories, the idea of progress and the confusion over Hegel's 'end of history' can be found in the reviewer's _World History and The Eonic Effect_. The works of Spengler/Toynbee and naive versions of the Progress idea need to be scrapped/upgraded to something more usable.

Besides challenging the reader to think about our foreign policy towards peoples not of our culture, Robert Merry covers a history of the tragedies of the Serbian people. This history I was totally ignorant of and I could not help wondering if our officials in Washington considered the history of the Balkans when we became involved in the Bosnian war. The author is highly readable. His book is a must read for students of the middle eastern culture.

"Crimes of War" is a unique document. It provides a brief but illuminating look into what is broadly termed "international humanitarian law" or the laws of war. Expert journalists, historians, academics, military officials, and international activists provide vivid descriptions of various violations of international law as well as other issues and case studies; for example, "forced labor," "incitement to genocide," "aggression," "Chechnya," "civil war," etc. It is organized like an encyclopedia of human tragedy, basically. The photographs that accompany the entries are powerfully evocative of the suffering they represent, as well.

The subtitle, "What the Public Should Know," is right on target. I think it is vital that all Americans be aware of the laws of war and their violations, both historical and contemporary. Reading a smart collection like this one also gives the reader considerable insight into the nature of international conflict seen as a whole.

From the moment of its publication, I was a fan of this book and have referred to it often. Somehow, this book has managed to condense a complex area of international law into a brief, highly readable, and easy to understand guide.

A project of The Crimes of War Project, this book was designed to serve as a handbook for journalists and other foreign correspondents in the field who routinely cover wars and humanitarian emergencies. Relief and aid workers are usually the first "outsiders" on the scene of such upheavals. However, as the editors point out, "their training usually does not encompass trying to stop or even report on war crimes." NGOs and watch groups have expert staff, but often have limited access to "hotbed" areas and can be slow to respond. Journalists often cannot make necessary distinctions between legal and illegal acts and may not fully understand the international or legalistic import of what they are witnessing. Finally, the general public is often unable to make such distinctions as well.

This book and accompanying website are an attempt to better educate journalists, consumers of news media, and other on the ground workers by providing an easy to use overview in the form of brief entries, arranged by topic of international humanitarian and human rights law, so that we can all better serve as watchdogs and advocates for human dignity and the rule of law.

Both laymen and more informed readers will appreciate the quality of the entries, written by nearly 150 experts from human rights law, journalism, history, the military, and NGOs as well as the strong, graphic quality of the photographic layout by award-winning photojournalists and graphic artists that poignantly--and sometimes shockingly--illustrate human rights violations from a number of recent conflicts around the globe.

Covering topics such as the distinction between internal and external conflicts in international law, the rights of refugees and soldiers, collateral damage, use of biological weapons, incitement to genocide, terrorism, treatment of the wounded, enforced prostitution, guerilla fighters, the rights of victims, and destruction of cultural property, among countless others, Crimes of War manages to cover an astonishingly wide range of topics within humanitarian law, yet remains highly readable and highly accessible to laypersons.

Well worth the price, it's an excellent, easy to understand guide to the internationals treaties and covenants that govern crimes of war and should be a mainstay for anyone who needs a quick and basic overview of topics in humanitarian law and the law of war.

Crimes of War by Gutman and Rieff is simply in a league of its own. It is the first field guide of its kind and deserves the attention it is finally receiving (thanks to the photo of Angelina Jolie reading it.) It is logically organized alphabetically by war crime and each one has an article and photographs to accompany it.

I recommend this for anyone, from a high school student to a professional journalist in the field, who wants to be educated and informed on world affairs and who cares about human rights.

Brooks Simpson wrote:
> HWAYNE wrote:
> > your suggestion that maybe there were no rapes
> > reported because maybe women wanted to be raped
>
> You must either quote where I said this or stand revealed as the liar
> we know you to be.
>
> So which is it?

By the way, on February 1, 2004, Cash, after researching H. Wayne Elliott's previous assertion on this issue, concluded as follows:

"Note that Brooks does not
claim he believe women want to be raped but is instead suggesting that
perhaps HWayne might believe it as an explanation of why HWayne
earlier appeared to deny women slaves had been raped by their masters.
HWayne's claim about Brooks appears to be false."

Now, the best H. Wayne Elliott could come up with in reply was the following:

"Actually, what the fool suggested was that I advocated rape because I posted
an excerpt from a post-war treatise on slavery which included a discussion
of the law of rape and the claim that there were no known cases of whites
raping slaves. Now, the fool decided that merely posting that excerpt would
permit him to distort that into a charge that I must believe that women
wanted to be raped. As there is no way any rational person (Yes, I know,
Professor Simpson would only rarely be considered to be rational.) could
have reached that conclusion from the mere fact that I provided a quote from
a long out of print book, is it not reasonable to conclude that when the
fool made that bizarre statement he was actually revealing his own strange
ideas of rape?"

Ignore the twisted assertion at the beginning: apparently H. Wayne Elliott wants you to believe that he's been accused of advocating rape for reasons best known to himself. Instead, note the admission at the end that I said no such thing, but that it's a product of H. Wayne Elliott's twisted and perverted imagination.

Copy to Jim Flaggart at American Military University.

This A-to-Z guidebook is absolutely amazing. Without falling into the trap of legalese (which is beyond most lay people), this book manages to teach us numerous things about the conduct of war and how difficult it is to apply the numerous chapters and laws in modern conflicts, be they international or internal.

The photographs that accompany most articles are striking; some of them are rather gruesome, but this is war, and the more suffering we see, the more likely we are to commit ourselves to not seeing this kind of inhumanity ever again. To do so, we have to put action behind political rhetoric, to give substance to our words (Vaclav Havel's motto).

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested about the law, war, man's inhumanity to man, and the legal architecture which, over decades, has been taking form to protect us from ourselves.

This book is a travesty, a misuse of important historical sources. These letters, rediscovered by the Dodd family in 1990, should have been compiled into a book by a historian of the Nuremburg trials, combined with letters by Dodd to other correspondents, with notes filling in context and their relation to the historical record. In this way, they would have provided interesting views of Germany after the war and insight into how the Nuremburg prosecutions were put together. Instead, Chris Dodd has put the letters from Thomas Dodd to his wife into a campaign book, with family photos, purporting to show the human side of Dodd. The great romance which is supposed thereby to be revealed amounts to a lonely husband complaining that his wife--who is taking care of five children, one a toddler--is not writing long enough letters. These passages are repetitive and boring. By all means read the book for the historical information--but then go find a good history of the Nuremburg trials.

Dodd's letters truly present the allies (except the USSR) effort to insure that future generations would see the fairness and lawfullness of their deliberations.It comes at a time in history that individuals are being held by one of the allies without trial 5 years after their capture. Nuremburg 1 1/2 year Gitmo 6 years The Taylors, Jacksons and Dodds would be ashamed.Aside from the Legal?Historical perspective the book is an excellent example of a husbands love and devotion. Christopher Dodds has good genes.

This is a great book that provides a unique perspective on the Nuremberg trials. Highly recommended.

After reading Ellie Wiesel's characterization of this book as "an important contribution to history", I wonder if he actually read the book or just skimmed some pre-publication proofs. Mr. Dodd's letters provide more detail about his living accommodations, dinner meetings, and travels than about the war crimes trials or the defendants. The defendants' cases are glossed over. You keep reading, waiting for details, waiting for insight. It's not there. The book is mildly interesting, but adds nothing to our knowledge of the war criminals or their trials.

This book was nothing like expected from the reviews I read before purchase. It started out a little interesting, but quickly became dull, boring, and endlessly repeating, repeating, repeating. I expected the excitement to build, it never did. His fathers letters should have remained a family secret,well hidden if possible, they have no business in print for rest of the world. I wouldn't buy this book again if it was on the $1.00 table at a rummage sale.

Former Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat is a man of great moral conviction and political savvy. He epitomizes what it means to be a true public servant. His passion for justice comes through very clearly in this book. Historians of the Clinton administration and of Europe's response to the Holocaust will find this book invaluable.

That said, I found this book quite difficult to read. Eizenstat's blow-by-blow descriptions of the seemingly endless negotiations lack dramatic structure and are far too detailed for a book intended for the general reader. When Eizenstat looks at the big picture -- the differing political cultures of France and the United States, the Austrians' cramped apologetics for their role in the Holocaust -- he is convincing. But far too much of this book feels as if it's written by a lawyer for other lawyers. It needed an editor who could get past Eizenstat's note cards and create a real narrative.

On one level, this book is worth reading just to affirm that there have in fact been times when important people, in this case one in particular -- the author -- cared fiercely about showing many suffering and powerless thousands that the world cared about the unfathomable injustices they had suffered. The victims didn't really get justice, as that was, as the title acknowledges, not remotely possible. But at least they knew that, finally, after decades of wall to wall indifference, someone was listening and trying, seriously, to do what could be done.

But what will make it hard for many readers to put this book down is that it is both a good story, entertainly told, and a shrewd analysis of a complex multi-party, multi-governmental, legal and political negotiation with high stakes, bitter differences, and high-powered protagonists. The book is certainly one of the best case-studies in captivity of the tricky and combustible mix of law, diplomacy, and politics both bureaucratic and democratic, that drives such processes. That this episode stayed on track to reach the best result that it could have was very far from a sure thing, from the beginning to the end. Eizenstat's seasoned, sometimes cynical, frequently amusing exegisis of the calculations, mistakes, and victories of the players makes the book hugely instructive for professionals as well as entertaining for casual students of government. It could be a popular teaching aid in law schools, especially for Eizenstat's exposition of his own strategies, and his often surprisingly candid Monday Morning quarterbacking of himself.

You MUST be interested in the Nazi era to a radical degree to stick with this book. It is a left-nostril account of nuances of negotiations, mainly regarding Swiss and German reparations, mainly for Jewish Holocaust survivors. Complicating the reading effort are grammatical errors (see, for example, page 198) and some apparent scholarship inconsistencies. (To illustrate, contrast discussion in next to the last paragraph on page 206 with descriptive matter associated with the first photograph on the sixth page of photographs.) Moreover, in my view, the book is as much about its author's sense of self-importance as it is about the negotiation process it describes.

Imperfect Justice is a book that will appeal to many readers . . . but for different reasons. At one level, it's a magnificent story of turning back the clock to right wrongs dating back to the 1930s. At another level, it's an intriguing story of how to secure agreement among those who have vastly different interests and are pursuing them aggressively. At a third level, it's a tale of how a negotiating team learned from its experiences. At a fourth level, it's an inspiring tale of what the U.S. can accomplish when it focuses its attention on improving life for everyone. At a fifth level, it's an insightful case history of how agreements can have negative, unintended consequences. At a sixth level, it's a template for working on other important international issues in the future. I felt greatly enriched by this book, and am sure you will to. I believe this book deserves many more than five stars.

Although I had read about some of the many settlements made in the 1990s by European countries and companies concerning slave labor, looted bank accounts, and misdeeds during World War II, I had no idea of the scope of that experience and effort until I read this book. It's a candid appraisal of how class action lawyers, Jewish groups, the U.S. government, some state government officials, some well-meaning Europeans and lots of recalcitrant parties came together to recognize wrongs that had been previously ignored.

To me, it was shocking to recognize the full extent of misbehavior during World War II. The numbers of slave laborers and the conditions are beyond easy comprehension.

The misbehavior of companies and countries since then to take advantage of those who were victims of the Holocaust and the Nazi era was even more shocking. The insensitivity and lack of concern for others described in this book made me shake my head in disgust.

I also came away with a different impression of the leaders and Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, Israel and many other countries as a result of understanding more about how they handled these issues. It's an important education that you should have for yourself.

Ultimately, we must all be very grateful for the good will of those who worked so hard to provide some justice (including apologies and some payments) for those who had been overlooked and ignored for so long. Those who obstructed the process know who they are (and the book names many of them), and should be ashamed of themselves.

I was pleased to see that this paperback version has a new epilogue to update the implementation of the agreements since the end of the Clinton administration. I was disappointed to see that the Bush administration has not been very effective in following up on the fine work that preceded them in office in this important area.

If you think justice is important, read this book!

I am glad that all copies of this book on Swiss territory were confiscated yesterday by order of the Geneva district attorney. The author insults my country by showing our national flag together with a fascist symbol.

Future War would have been a great work of fiction. It's intriguing subject matter and there are some really entertaining scenarios that would keep you turning pages long into the night.

However. If you're in the market for a well-researched, factual account, you should probably look elsewhere, especially if you are, like myself, a relative new-comer to the whole non-lethal weapons field.

Col. Alexander gets some extraordinary things wrong. He uses Ruby Ridge as an example of law enforcement gone wrong and to point up the need for non-lethal alternatives to lethal force. No arguments there. But he must have been thinking of a different Ruby Ridge, because in this one, Kevin Harris doesn't survive. I found that interesting, seeing as how Kevin Harris ended up giving a report to the FBI and getting tried in a court of law after the standoff ended. Reports of his death in this book are greatly exaggerated.

Col. Alexander would also like us to believe that Tazers don't burn. Even in the Nineties, law enforcement was aware that Tazers burn the skin. Several court cases have included evidence of the burn patterns unique to different models of stun guns. He also seems to take great pleasure in claiming that they are never lethal, which is an interesting claim to make about something meant to deliver tens of thousands of volts of electricity into the human body. "Never" is a word that an ostensibly learned man should not have employed to describe such a weapon, even given the state of knowledge in the 90s.

I won't spend this space dissecting the plethora of other errors I've found. I just want to present a caution to anyone incautious enough to buy this book: before getting excited about any one claim, make sure you get the facts from another source. You can't trust this book to be right.

This is an excellent book covering all the weapons that are available to fight an enemy,now and in the near future.Of course,as the title suggests, it leans on non-lethal weapons.This is not a book of Si-Fi stuff because we have already seen the use of many of the weapons described,although many have been used in various degrees,locations and purposes.As the author shows,there are many forms of weapons that do not involve a projectile or explosives but nonetheless have huge impact in warfare.Elimination of supplies,exploitation of media,disruption of communications,just to name a few.Non-lethal weapons have the greatest effect when the enemy has little or no knowledge of the other sides capability or use involved.Breaking of the German and Japanese codes was an excellent example of this 50 years ago.There has never been any magic bullet nor any new weapon that lasted too long before the other side found a counter weapon;so the way to maintain superiority lies in the ability to keep ahead.The reason America has managed to keep ahead in this is the extremely high value it places on the safety and security of every one of its citizens.Above all else this is the number one responsibility of the government.
This book shows not only the types of weapons that are available but also the thought process that goes into deciding which best solves the threat involved.Reading this book will convince you why any nation which truly values it freedoms must spend the resources to maintain superiority in all forms of weapons. Being second best is not an option.

Future war is a brilliant look at the varied types and systems of Less, Less Than, and Non-Lethal technologies.(and the difference between the three)
Dr. Alexander is very creative and colorful when it comes to conceptualising situations that these technologies could be utilised, both in Law enforcment and military/peace keeping engagements, as well as pulling out actual cases and tests.

While heavily footnoted, the book avoids becoming too overly technical, but could possibly bog down a reader not familiar with some of the terminology. Unfortunatly the book also doesn't go into nearly enough technical detail as some might hope, and in some cases leaves the reader confused about certain devices and aspects.

Another aspect about this book is that it was written several years ago, and the technologies talked about are in a relativly rapidly advancing field. By today, some of the things mentioned have been phased or or dropped, and whole new one have cropped up.

But all things considered this is a good book, and a nice read, and makes a dandy reference.

As US/Allied forces this very day are engaging in military operations against Iraq, the emphasis is not only on victory but on the minimization of casualties, both military and civilian. This book discusses several approaches to the latter, via the use of "non-lethal" weapons, and some of these may in fact be employed in Operation Iraq Freedom. The discussion is fascinating, and one can only hope that future technological developments will make war less probable because of the ideas expoused by the author. In the foreword to the book, the author lets Tom Clancy remind the reader of the unique American viewpoint on warfare. Americans, because of the nature of the government in which they have chosen to create and participate, have always been reluctant to go to war. Every soldier is precious, indeed, human life is precious, and is not to be taken lightly. It is therefore not a surprise that precision-guided and non-lethal weapons have and are undergoing intense development in the last two decades in the United States. Hopefully this attitude will continue in this, the best of all centuries. The author seems confident that it will, and indeed we are fortunate to have individuals in the U.S. military who have his attitude and share his philosophy.

Some of the more interesting technological developments in non-lethal weaponry discussed in the book include: 1. Electromagnetic weapons: man-portable laser weapons, blinding weapons, isotropic radiator weapons, pulse weapons, stun guns. 2. Chemical non-lethal weapons: antimateriel chemical agents, superacids, pheromones. 3. Acoustic weapons, such as pulsed periodic stimulus, which causes perceptual disorientation in the individual.

This book has a pretty good introduction to the growing science and technology of non-lethal weapons. It should serve you well if you're looking for something to get you started on building your knowledge of this field. However, you will be disappointed if you are looking for in-depth details on specific systems and technology (these are in most cases still probably classified in any case). The book is still definitely worth reading, though.

This book defeats itself. Its description of America's imperial stretch is extremely tame. His analysis is overly deceitful. Twice in this book, Mr. Newhouse has claimed that the Iraqi liberation has ended. I suppose your thoughts can be scuttled when you rely heavily on what Chalmers Johnson considers the "establishment press- the Washington post, the new York times, or the los angeles times."
Although the book is a botched attempt at capturing historical fact, his brief interlude into North Korea's talks with president Clinton toward HEU reduction, and missile disarmament is interesting, nothing in this book is thought provoking in the manner in which it is intended.
Who decided to print this book? Mr. Newhouse, don't read your daily paper. It will only infect your mind with trivial matters that are not newsworthy at all.

This book catalogues the foreign policy actions and inactions by the first administration of George W. Bush that have angered foreigners and foreign governments. The author examines the administration's logic behind these actions, and lists alternatives to them. The facts presented by this author are correct, but the argument of the book must be placed into perspective, both with foreign policy actions unmentioned in this book, and actions by previous presidents. First, the former. One unmentioned foreign policy action by the Bush administration is the crackdown on sexual slavery and the sex trade. Though unsung and unmentioned in the popular press, this fight against smugglers, pimps and kidnappers often saves the lives of innocent women and children. Another unsung policy by the Bush administration is its apathy towards border control. Specifically, many in the Republican Party want to stop illegal immigration and kick out illegals currently in the country. The Bush administration, through their actions and inactions, have made it clear they would rather legalize those already here and keep our borders open. Illegal immigration of Hispanics to America is probably the most important foreign policy issue with regards to Latin America.

For the latter point, previous presidents have made policy as audicious as the Bush's administration stances in the War on Terror. A good example is the Monroe Doctrine, in which the US basically told all of Europe to stay out of the Western Hemisphere. In general, this book is alright, though not great.

No surprise that only nine of us have bothered so far to comment about this book. It's old news; word bytes from the various news/cable media; we've heard it before. A tedious read, the writing style is "word salad" at best, and it is hard to find the real tomatoes and cucumbers in there. Must have had a tight deadline to get this out to strike while the opportunities presented (sort of like the recent Clark book), and before the bytes became stale. Though the title and content is what the post Clintonian partisans seem to want. But it is very skimpy on real facts to support the book title and the author's global views and assertions. In some sections he even seems to contradict the book title premises. Anyway, what could we reasonably expect from recent authors whose government service was in the last two years of the Clinton administration?

If you are compelled to read this book, buy a used one for $1.95....difficult to justify even at that lofty price, I think. I was lucky to receive it free, from a friend in the news business who received it as a promo. copy, but who knew what it was about without even opening it. On the shelf, fiction section, next to the Clark book it goes.

John Newhouse calls Bush II and his colleagues radicals, members of the Republican party's hard right (its dominant wing). He illustrates it by evaluating the US foreign policy and more sporadically national legislation.

Ignoring internatinal institutions and against the will of some of its allies, the Bush II governmemt went on a lonely and for the author, catastrophic ride. It acts as if time is on its side. But, it isn't so.
The Iraq war was (and is) foolish and self-injurious. It is fought within the framework of the long-standing point of view that no regional power can be allowed to control the oil in the Middle East. But, it was inspired by Israel's Likud government.
For North-Korea, Bush II cut off the promising Clinton negotiations.
In Iran, he reinforced the interests of the hard-line mullahs against the secular reformers.

Apparently, the Bush II goverment needs (and creates) enemies in order to justify its massive and highly profitable military budget. For the author, the redundancy of the defense investments 'exceeds realistic threat assessments'.

Nationally, the author sees a jingoist security policy, mammoth deficits and biased massive tax cuts; e.g., 42 % of the profits of the elimination of dividend taxation go to the top 1 percent tax payers.
Under Bush II the US became the biggest debtor in the world, needing constant cash inflows from its main rival, China. A suicidal long-term policy.

John Newhouse's book gives an excellent analysis of historical facts (ex. the Halloween massacre), but, all in all, it lacks the broader vision of W.G. Tarpley, W. Bello, M. Chossudovsky, N.M. Ahmed or W. Engdahl.

A worth-while read.

Given the title of this book (IMPERIAL AMERICA: THE BUSH ASSAULT ON THE WORLD ORDER) one might be forgiven for assuming that this is a standard left-wing screed laying all the evils of the world at the feet of George W(MD) Bush. However, in this case, the cover isn't a great indicator of what lies beneath. There's blame for the Bush Administration aplenty, but the information is covered in a calm, rational narrative voice, and the author (John Newhouse, senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information) is more interested in detail than in rhetoric.

Newhouse's basic premise is that Bush failed in the aftermath of 9/11/01. After the terrorist attack, the outpouring of support given to America was without precedent. A French newspaper proclaimed, "We are all Americans." A moment of silence for the victims was held at an Iranian soccer match. But instead of seizing upon this moment to, for example, push for significant reform in Iran or demanding that Russia pay more attention to its dangerously unguarded stockpiles of nuclear weapons, the Bush Administration let these opportunities slip away.

Newhouse spends time focusing on one specific area of the world at a time. He describes many of the local problems, and details how those conflicts affect America and American interests. He then describes what position the Bush Administration found itself in, and then he offers possible solutions or diplomatic routes that the Administration could have followed. He compares these possible directions to where Bush actually went, and in most cases it's: "Bush decided to ignore the problem and instead focused on Iraq" (but we knew that already). Newhouse carefully shows how the absurd attention given to Saddam Hussein's (strangely absent) Weapons of Mass Destruction has actually weakened the global fight against terrorist extremists. It's interesting to note that this book came out well before Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 committee, yet contains a lot of echoes and concerns about an Administration focusing exactly on the wrong areas.

IMPERIAL AMERICA doesn't cover a lot of new ground; a lot of what is contained here has already been reported on in the press (though much of it has been buried underneath the latest Michael Jackson scandal, or whatever your media of choice has decided to waste time reporting). However, Newhouse conducted many interviews with government officials, so there is a little bit of insider information scattered here and there. My favorite tidbit of gossip was the official who likened a pre-9/11 Donald Rumsfeld to a cranky old man sending annoying, whining internal memos that interested no one.

I was frankly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Again, I was expecting something more along the lines of a Michael Moore-like screed, but what I got was a thoughtful, detailed and well-researched document. It certainly educated me to a lot of what is going on in the world outside of the Hot Spot Of The Week, and has given me a great start into more reading on these subjects. Recommend for anyone looking for a detailed, reasonable critique of the current Administration's rather glaring missteps.

Helps You Make the Most Out of the 2001 Tax Law!

The new, 2002 version of this book deserves more than five stars.

As background for reading and considering this review, please be aware that I am an attorney, did well when I studied tax in law school, and employ a top CPA to help me do my tax planning and prepare my returns. Despite all of this background, I find it hard to keep up with the tax laws. Since I became a member of the bar, the number of pages in the Internal Revenue Code has doubled as have the number of pages of tax regulations.

I was inspired to read this book when a conversation with my CPA left me with 14 areas that I wanted to understand in much more detail. I could have asked him, but that would be very costly because he charges by the hour and would have to do research to find out what I wanted to know. Realizing from experience that working with the IRS code and regulations could take many hours, I hoped this book would serve as a time saver, and it did! I found the answers to my 14 questions in less than an hour, and also located several hundred dollars of potential tax savings that I need to discuss with my CPA. The experience was a very satisfying one.

The Federal tax laws changed in 2001, applying to both your 2001 tax return and to future years. Whenever Congress changes the tax law, you need to be alert. If you continue to do what you have done before, you may well make costly mistakes that could lead to extra taxes needing to be paid or even worse, owing money for penalties and interest.

The Ernst & Young Tax Guide 2002 is remarkably helpful in dealing with the 2001 tax law changes. The book opens with a summary of what changed, and gives you references to the sections where you can get more details for your 2001 return. The following section goes on to describe the other changes that will be phased in during 2002 and later years.

To test the guide, I also checked out the most difficult questions that I had had to deal with in the last 20 years, where I was pretty sure the law had not changed. Each of these questions was also accurately and succinctly described.

I was very impressed that I could look up answers in any one of many different ways. The actual 2001 tax forms and instructions are bound into the volume. So that was one starting point. There were also detailed chapters on common topics, from handling mutual funds to taxes on child-care providers. So I could start there. The index was also very complete, and I could dive in from that direction. In addition, the cross-references in the text were very complete and would send me to the right section of the right page.

If you prepare your own returns and have a somewhat complicated return, you will also benefit from the many worksheets in the book. If you are about to start working with an accountant, you will save time and money by using the many lists in the book for what to collect and how to organize it (a pile of paper in a shoe box is not the right way to go!).

You might think that it's too late to affect your 2001 taxes. Actually, you still have some choices open, such as whether or not to make contributions to IRAs between now and April 15. If you are going to be late in making your last estimated tax payment in January, you may also be able to avoid penalties by filing before February 1 and paying what you owe when you file.

May your future not tax you needlessly!

This is the best tax guide on the market. We use it in conjunction with TurboTax to do our taxes, which we file electronically. The tax guide comes in handy for in-depth review of some aspects as well as having a hard-copy throughout the year (well after taxes are filed) so that we can make informed tax decisions. It is a little pricey, but the ton of information and good examples make it worthwhile.

This is the tax guide to buy each year. Unfortunately, it comes out later than the others. Fortunately, that helps ensure it is more accurate and up-to-date.

We have been doing our own taxes for many years, for ourselves, some relatives and volunteering for low-income families. This is the reference we have next to us.

The past couple years we have done BOTH paper and computer tax filing. This book is still needed with BOTH.

Actually, they should call this book Taxes for Retards. I bought it with the hope that it would make doing my taxes a little bit easier this time around. No such luck.

Most of the matter covered in the book is of a very elementary nature - that much you can figure out just by reading the IRS publications for the relevant forms.

In most instances, i found that i had to go back to the irs publication whenever i had any doubt - the book only covered everything superficially.

if you had no idea that irs publishes instructions for all forms or are among the esteemed few who think taxes are optional and/or that the slavery deduction is real- this book is for you. for others who have a fairly good idea of what you are doing, save the ** bucks and spend them elsewhere.

When it comes to understanding and preparing tax returns, or understanding taxation in general, you cannot beat Ernst and Young. When Canada first implemented the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the company of Ernst and Young was among the first to come out with a publication fully explaining this often frustrating, mind-boggling and sometimes complicated tax. Their tax guides are commonly found in many accounting firms and contain excellent resource material. As one who provides information on taxation to my business management class, I have found the information contained here to be thorough and up to date. If I have a taxation question (taxation laws are forever changing,) the Ernst and Young Taxation Guide is the first place I search for the answer. This guide is an excellent book for the resource library and one any business office should have on hand.

White attempts to get behind why Alger Hiss, a Soviet spy code-named "Ales", fought so hard and was able to convince so many leftists in the US (who apparently wanted to be convinced) of his innocence. Unfortunately for them (and Hiss), he was conclusively identified in the decoding of the Venona intercepts to be a Soviet spy. This information was released in 1995 & is now available to anyone who really wants to know in Romerstein & Breindel, "The Venona Secrets" (2000) and Haynes & Klehr, "Venona, Decoding Soviet Espionage in America" (2000). My criticism of White is that he skips over this information in five pages even though White's book wasn't published until 2004. The 50 year-long discourse on Hiss between those who wanted to believe that a patrician Harvard grad could not be a Communist or Soviet spy is now over. He was, and anyone (read the 1 star review) who still maintains he wasn't is delusional or has his own agenda. After all, there are still close to 200 Soviet spies found in the Venona transcripts that haven't been identified. But I.F.Stone (much respected by leftist journalists) was one (code-named Pancake), along with Julius Rosenberg, Laurence Duggan, Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Frank Coe, Lauchlin Currie, Ted Hall, Klaus Fuchs, Duncan Lee, Maurice Halperin, Harry Hopkins (yep, Roosevelt's most trusted advisor -- see Romerstein & Breindel) and Victor Perlo. The list goes on and on, a veritable "who's who" of leftists in the US. White's book as a psychological study of Hiss also throws light on the other spies and their stonewalling of the truth about their activities. The mystery is that so many people still believe that this was all a vast right-wing witch hunt. Maybe so, but the witches were there & they now (about 1/2 of them) have been conclusively identified. Watch out for those who "doth protest too loudly" about their possible activities, whether it's taking steriods or their patriotism.

Those who believe that that human understanding progresses over time may take comfort in the fact that for all but the most ideologically besotted and intellectually corrupt the question of Alger Hiss's guilt is no longer of much interest. For G.E. White, the Traitor Hiss was self-evidently just that and the real issue instead: why did he lie, lie for 40 years after his conviction and imprisonment for perjury, lie to his supporters, lie to his friends and, most of all, lie to and thereby debauch his own son, enlisting filial devotion in his selfish and ultimately futile quest for a thoroughly underserved vindication? White, the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, organizes his study around these psychological questions, but also he supplies an admirably concise review of the Hiss case, and, most importantly, describes the intellectual climate in which the traitor and his allies succeeded for a time in muddying the historical waters, not least for a younger generation of Americans raised on tales of America's Cold War perfidy.

Alger Hiss, for those schooled after the Vietnam War persuaded much of the American Left that anti-Communism merely licensed McCarthyite hunter-gatherers to trample civil rights and cut doe-eyed New Dealers from the pack, transcended relatively humble origins to fashion an identity as a rising star of the old Eastern Establishment. As Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston and New York attorney, and Agriculture Department price regulator, Hiss cultivated the erect posture, firm handshake and sincere bearing that carried him to the Department of State, where he again rose through the ranks, numbering among his friends future Secretaries of State Edward Stettinius and Dean Acheson, attended the Yalta Conference, then presided over the San Francisco Conference that created the United Nations, then as now the collective repository for mugwumpish internationalist idealism.

Hiss also was a Soviet agent, and eventually was fingered as such by former Party operative Whittaker Chambers. Chambers was portly, religious, dentally challenged--- hardly the sort for whom John Foster Dulles would arrange, as he did for Hiss, a golden parachute at the Carnegie Endowment when Alger's State Department career dimmed. But Chambers had stashed away typewritten copies of purloined State Department documents, as insurance against retribution when he broke with the Party. Those copies, the FBI concluded, had been typed
on the Hiss family typewriter. A perjury conviction and 44 month jail sentence followed, after which, in 1954, Alger Hiss began his life-long campaign to re-write the history books.

White's calls this campaign Hiss's `looking-glass wars.' A natural spy, Hiss "appears to have taken pleasure in the pursuit of covert goals and in the creation of devices to shield that pursuit from others." His strategy was to cultivate a persona of temperate reasonableness; in other words to convince others that "he was not the sort of person who could conceivably have such secrets." White traces this theme through four phases of Hiss's life: his Supreme Court Clerkship, when he dissembled his way past Justice Holmes' mandate that clerks remain unmarried during their term of employment; his `pillar of the establishment' defense to Chambers' charges; his term in Lewisburg federal penitentiary, where Hiss gradually earned the respect of his fellow prisoners; and finally, the serene countenance he subsequently presented, an invitation to all who gazed upon it to conclude that a man so at peace with himself (so different in this respect than his two principal tormenters: the at-times suicidal Chambers and the tenebrific Nixon) surely was innocent.

To the extent that internal peacefulness was genuine, its true source was of course Hiss' ideological commitment to Communism and political loyalty to the Soviet Union. A traitor to the end of his days, Hiss adhered to the standard Moscow demanded of all its agents: if exposed, deny; if convicted, maintain innocence all your life. Thus, while White is persuasive on the tactics of Hiss's campaign, the most interesting parts of his book explain instead how Hiss persuaded so many of his innocence in the face of mounting evidence from U.S. and Soviet archives to the contrary. The Hiss defense, it helps to recall, amounted to the assertion that Hiss was more credible than Chambers, toward whom the Hiss forces directed a notably vigorous whispering campaign alleging among other things Chambers' homosexuality, coupled with the lame hypothesis that it was all a set-up, involving the FBI and assorted other baddies (one that rather improbably required a duplicate typewriter and a decade-long conspiracy, all to frame one self-important mid-level official). Given the weakness of Hiss's case, the thorough and damning 1978 study by Allen Weinstein (appointed Archivist of the United States by President Bush in the face of an ad hominem attack not unlike the one Hiss's allies launched against Chambers), the documents that became available after the fall of the Soviet Union and finally the release of the "Venona Papers," transcripts of coded Soviet transmissions deciphered by the National Security Agency, all of which supported Chambers' allegations, the question remains: how could any one have been taken in?

As Hiss recognized from the very first, he at least was fortunate in his enemies. Chambers was a quixotic character, and his supporter was the Prince of Darkness himself. A Democrat congressional staffer once remarked "I don't think we can clearly nail Nixon as a liar, although he undoubtedly is one, in this instance, as in all others." Given the sheer venom that much of what we today call "Blue" America directed at Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and their ilk, Hiss shrewdly positioned himself as one of their many victims: were his accusers' reputations to suffer, ideally for misconduct toward real victims, Hiss would benefit. By depicting himself as the victim par excellence of rabid anti-Communism, Hiss similarly reaped the post-Vietnam rewards when American liberalism, with a few honorable exceptions, went AWOL for the balance of the Cold War.

By draping his cause in ideological standards, Hiss freed his supporters from contesting the still unfriendly facts of the case. And there should be no doubt that those supporters cared about defending Soviet Marxism and not the truth. When Allen Weinstein began work on Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, he was somewhat sympathetic to Hiss and expected to argue for his innocence. When the evidence persuaded Weinstein otherwise, friends of Hiss regretted bitterly their decision to cooperate with the project. "Weinstein came to see me under false colors," said one, "I never would have said a word to him if I'd known he was friendly to Chambers." Another announced tartly that the purpose of his assistance was "to prove that Alger was framed and a victim of McCarthyism. Otherwise, I was given a bum steer and my time and trouble was for nothing."

Hiss's campaign sought far more than his personal vindication. Were he to persuade Americans that prosecution of a Communist and genuine traitor was instead anti-Communist persecution of a liberal New Dealer, he would discredit anti-Communism as fundamentally illiberal and serve his Soviet masters even beyond their own ignominious demise. Among the segments of American society most susceptible to this anti-anti-Communism were the academy and the liberal media. While White does not address the former, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr's Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage more than amply plumbs how some American historians continue to prostitute themselves, debase their profession, and sully the cause of truth, the better to brand opponents of social collectivism as "McCarthyites" and worse.

White devotes considerable attention to "mainstream" media coverage of Hiss, contrasting nicely PBS's 1983 Hiss-friendly American Playhouse offering with the Reagan Administration's
decision to award the Medal of Freedom posthumously to Whittaker Chambers. Still worse was the Pavlovian response to the 1992 Volkogonov incident. In that year, Hiss cleverly wrote a number of Russian officials, asking that they attest he had never served the Soviet Union. One, the historian and former General Dimitri Volkogonov, on the basis of a mere two days research in the KGB archives (Hiss had spied for Soviet military intelligence, not the KGB) and after some prodding by a Hiss confederate issued the desired clean bill of health, which Hiss's allies released to the press on October 29.

With the publication of Volkogonov's letter, the liberal media was quick to trumpet Hiss's triumph. All three "major" television networks reported the story that very evening and CBS followed the next morning with the assertion that Hiss had been "apparently exonerated." "Hiss never spied," added USA Today while Newsweek announced the "bittersweet vindication." CNN aired a commentary asking why the U.S. government had not yet exonerated Hiss. The New Yorker afforded Tony Hiss a platform for "My Father's Honor," and, least surprising of all, National Public Radio reached into its stable of "experts," finding one who duly confirmed that the "vindication" of Hiss revealed the excesses of anti-Communism.

Unfortunately for the media pack, it only took a few weeks for Volkogonov to issue a damning retraction. "What I saw gives no basis to claim a full clarification," he wrote on November 24. His motives for writing the letter had been "primarily humanitarian" and an accommodation to Hiss's agent, who argued that Hiss "wanted to die peacefully" and "pushed me to say things of which I was not fully convinced." None of the television networks that reported Volkogonov's first letter, White observes, ever covered the retraction. No newspaper mentioned the retraction until December 17. As late as December 13, The New York Times still reported that Volkogonov had exonerated Hiss and that Chambers had never been a Soviet agent. The Palme d'Or, though, must be reserved for Peter Jennings, favorite news mannequin of Americans who otherwise take their news from the BBC. On Hiss's death in 1996, Jennings reported: "Hiss... protested his innocence until the very end.... And last year, we reported that the Russian president Boris Yeltsin said that KGB files had supported Mr. Hiss's claim."

Alger Hiss had the good sense to pass away just before the floodgates opened. In 1997, Allen Weinstein published the second edition of Perjury, grounded in primary research in the Comintern archives, and a subsequent analysis of KGB files. By 1999, these and the aforementioned VENONA transcripts had put paid to all but the most slippery claims for Hiss's innocence.

Even so, the name Alger Hiss retains enormous significance. Stripped of any respectable claim to innocence, Hiss remains a useful tool for those who would discredit his opponents--- not for accusing an innocent man but for defending freedom from a murderous ideology and the United States from an aggressive totalitarian adversary. For this reason their successors--- academic fellow travelers and media dupes--- seek to muddy the historical waters. We must not let them.

Historian Jeff Kisseloff has written an excellent debunking of G. Edward White's poorly researched and argued book on Alger Hiss. It can be found at this link: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/wars.html. To summarize:

* White never bothers to re-investigate the case, and substitutes a re-indictment for a re-trial. He presents only the evidence for the prosecution, and omits the defense. White has looked nowhere for new facts, and has instead been content to reassemble and rearrange from secondary sources all the accusations previously leveled at Hiss. His retelling of the case against Alger Hiss is a stripped-down model, thoroughly cleansed of complexity, and dismissive of any materials that might exonerate Alger Hiss. Factual errors, errors of omission, and errors of interpretation abound in the book.

* White (without the benefit of a certificate in psychoanalysis) devotes the bulk of his book to constructing a psychological profile of Hiss. White, who never met or spoke to Hiss, made no attempt to get in touch with anyone who knew Hiss well, such as his son or stepson. Hiss's lifelong quest for vindication, in this reading, somehow becomes further evidence of his guilt.

* U.S. government documents summarizing the substance of many of Chambers' interviews have been released. They contain numerous contradictions and demonstrably false allegations, so many in fact that even the FBI questioned Chambers' credibility. Hardly any of these issues, however, are examined by White.

* Regarding the search for the Woodstock typewriter, White claims that the defense didn't want it to be found. Instead of damaging Hiss's credibility, however, defense files actually support his story - consistently. Defense file documents suggested investigators check on a number of places where it might be found.

* White repeats Chambers' claim that Hiss had been a member of the underground organization the Ware Group. But while White points out that Hiss's former colleague, Lee Pressman, was an admitted member of the group, he omits Pressman's testimony before HUAC that Hiss was never a member. Two other admitted Ware group members, John Abt and Nathan Witt, said that Chambers both exaggerated the scope of the Ware group and also his own relationship with it.

* In 1992, Russian historian Dmitri Volkogonov stated that he had examined govt. archives in Moscow and determined that Hiss had never been an agent of the USSR. White erroneously claims that Volkogonov later "retracted" his statement, acknowledging that he had spent only two days looking in the KGB archive. White misrepresents both Volkogonov's research and his subsequent clarification for the press. In a follow-up interview Volkogonov was specifically asked whether he had looked through military intelligence files. Volkogonov responded, "Yes, we also asked to examine the military intelligence files and there, too, no traces of Alger Hiss have been found." Some months before the publication of "Looking-Glass Wars" - in time for White to include the information in his book, had he chosen to do so - General Julius Kobyakov, a retired Russian intelligence official, revealed that he had been the person who actually searched the files for General Volkogonov. Kobyakov in his postings said that he prepared his 1992 report that there was no indication that Alger Hiss had been either a paid or unpaid agent of the Soviet Union only "after careful study" of KGB archives and "after querying sister services" (military intelligence).

Everyone should read the devastating Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars and ponder its implications. White does not waste our time speculating about Hiss's guilt or innocence; Hiss, it is now as firmly established as it seems possible to establish, was guilty. Instead, White concentrates our attention on the implications of Alger Hiss and his saga that are of profound and timeless importance.

First, there are human beings who live among us with no conscience and who are utterly devoid of morality. Not everyone has something good and decent about them. And such people are not limited to the dictators, murderers, and rapists. Alger Hiss lied brazenly, publicly, and repeatedly, and as a matter of course over nearly 60 years, he took shameless advantage of the trust and affection of his countrymen, his friends, his co-workers, and his family. He was a thoroughly evil man.

Second, liberal institutions - academia and the media - have become purposefully blind to the mendacity and depravity of anyone deemed to be a friend to liberal causes (or an enemy to conservative causes). The extent to which such institutions go to re-write history and manipulate public perceptions of such cases has become bold and radical. Hiss represented a pinnacle of these efforts, as his reputation was resurrected by the time of his death - with, as White points out, not a shred of exculpatory evidence. Only the irrefutable evidence of his un-encoded name discovered posthumously in the Soviet GRU archives ended the charade for most, but not all (e.g., Bard College), of his defenders. And, as is becoming routine, our liberal institutions betray no remorse, no shame, and no soul-searching for having been so wrong and having contributed to such deceit.

And so, the cycle repeats itself. Before his name was uncovered in the GRU archives, Alger Hiss was the noble victim of a psychologically imbalanced accuser, Whitaker Chambers, and an out-of-control and paranoid right-wing prosecutor, Richard Nixon. Before the blue dress, President Clinton was the noble victim of a psychologically imbalanced accuser, Monica Lewinsky, and an out-of-control and paranoid right-wing prosecutor, Kenneth Starr. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

While not suggesting anything about President Clinton, Amazon should offer Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars in tandem with his My Life.

With the release of declassified materials in Russia and the United States, there is no doubt that Alger Hiss was indeed a Soviet spy. However, Mr. White goes beyond the evident conclusion of Hiss's guilt and explores the convict's tireless campaign for vindication. Since others have posted review links at this site, I would reccomend that readers consult Dr. Stanley Kutler's review at: http://www.hnn.us/blogs/entries/7050.html

Dr. Kutler, one of the foremost historians of our time and hardly a rabid conservative(infact Ann Coulter calls him the "liberal luminary."), provides the best scholarly review of "Looking Glass Wars." He also makes an important point:

"The mystery White adeptly explores is why some liberals persisted in reacting so defensively and for so long - especially when the result was to hand a victory to the opportunistic characters who went beyond Hiss's particular guilt to indict and convict a generation of New Dealers and liberals. A rotten apple did not spoil the barrel; liberals and leftists could and should have conceded Hiss's guilt; instead, they harmed their own credibility by maintaining his innocence."

What if Truman and Acheson had not foolishly defended Hiss? Would there have been a McCarthy era? Would Truman have had more bi-partisan support in shaping his foreign policy? We will never know because Truman and many New-Dealers ruined their credibility be defending a Soviet spy that would end up having a damaging effect on the U.S. for fifty years.

Excellent book...highly reccomended

I agree with all of the other positives that have been written about this book. Not only does the book provide a complete history of the Rangers, it does so with spurs jingling and guns loose in the holster. I read all of Louis Lamour's books and found this as fun to read as all but Lamour's best.

The Texas Rangers are one of the most controversial forces in United States history. Charles Robinson does an excellent job of recounting their history. The rangers were founded after independence with an idea to police the state and provide border security. Their role would change throughout time and come to a peak during the Mexican Revolution. They would fight in the Mexican American war where they would particularly abuse the Mexican populations earning them a bad reputation with US forces. Despite their brutality they were among the best soldiers trained in scouting and commando tactics that US forces lacked. They were an early special forces that earned their reputation during the war. Their story of development is expertly recounted here. For those looking for an intro to Texas history this is a great place to start.

Probably one of the best researched, and best written account of both Texas and Texas Ranger history.

I originally got the book for my own interest, but soon decided to use it as a primary resource for a major research paper.

Robinson even tells the part of The Alamo story that almost all high school Texas History teachers leave out.

This book should be one of the textbooks students should use for Texas History.

You can feel the power of Jack Hayes, the heat of the Texas desert, you fear for the men at The Alamo, and you feel like your riding along side the Rangers against the Indians.

This book is required reading for any Texan who wants to know more about the history of the state and many of its legends.

Although I have Walter Prescott Webb's classic work on the Texas Rangers, which was written decades ago, I was happy to see that there is a new history of the fabled frontier law enforcement unit had come out. The Texas Rangers were founded even before Texas independence in order to protect settlers from attacks from Comanche, Kiowa and Apache Indians, outlaws of more familiar origin, miscellaneous miscreants and eventually, after Texas joined the United States, cross-border Mexican bandits. While many of the early Ranger units were little more than sanctioned vigilantes who often conflated their law enforcement role with what can be described as extra-judicial enforcement of the law, they were tasked with an extremely difficult task - keeping Texans safe in a violent time. The Indians, who lived a hardscrabble existence on the windswept Texas plains, were resentful of intrusion of the white settlers and ranchers on their land and so more than five decades of raids ensued. Other works like the seminal "Trail Drivers of Texas" are full of stories of Texans who were killed by small war parties as the settlers pushed their way farther north and west. While Robinson does not attempt to whitewash the racism, brutality and ruthlessness of the early Texas Rangers, he puts their behavior into the proper context of the era in which they lived. His book is a narrative of short stories that illustrates live among the poorly paid Rangers and vividly portrays the heroism and endurance that was necessary to pursue outlaws and Indians across a barren and treacherous landscape. Robinson has augmented early accounts with further research that sheds light on the Rangers during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Period that followed. The history of the Texas Rangers is important for anyone who seeks to learn more about Texas as their story is intertwined with many other areas of Texas history including the rebellion against Mexico, the battle for the Alamo, post-war relations with Mexico and Texas law enforcement from the 1820's to the present day. Charles M. Robinson III, a native Texan, fills his book with truly larger-than-life characters like the immortal Captain McNelly who engendered great loyalty among his men and animosity from those he pursued. The Men Who Wore the Star provides those of us who love the American West with an excellent single volume history of the Texas Rangers. Jeffrey Morseburg

Being a native Texan I thought I had heard and read all there was with regards to the Texas Rangers, This book proved me wrong but delightfully so. An excellent book if you want the history of Texas as well as history of the Rangers. The detail with which Mr Robinson writes covers the ground they rode as well as their undying love of Texas and their duty.Although I did wish for some articles to be more detailed, it was hopefully due more to the loss of records then any intentional overlook by the author. Excellent reading, hard to put down.

This is a solid book for what it is and what it covers. However, as was mentioned in another review there needs to be more. The chapters could include more details, exercises & drills, etc. As we know, just reading about a subject doesn't improve knowledge and skills, only the application of the material can lead to improvements. I think the authors could have provided more ways for direct applications. However, it's a book that I would recommend to anyone interested in personal safety with or without the use of firearms.

Ed Lovette and Dave Spaulding believe that if a person makes the desicion to carry a handgun, he has a greater responsibility toward himself - and above else to his loved ones to confront the dangers found in the modern society. They have combined their vast law enforcement and military experience to create a handbook to help in such an effort. But, as the majority of this book is about non-gun issues (mental conditoining, awareness, operating a vehicle in an emergency, medical self-help and so on), also those people who don't carry a gun will benefit form reading this book.

Usually, books like this concentrate on guns and tactics - essentially surviving an armed encounter. This book, however, places emphasis on avoiding such situations altogether. That is such an common-sense approach to the subject, one has to wonder why other gun writers concentrate on surviving the attack, and not avoiding it in the first place.

The book covers just about all the important issues of the subject, and there doesn't seem to be anything essential missing. However, this is such a broad subject that a hundred pages is way too little to cover it in adequate detail. Therefore, this book serves mainly as an introduction to the subject - although a very good one.

IN CALIFORNIA YOU ARE SCREWED IF YOU IF YOU EVER THINK YOU CAN PROTECT YOUR SELF WITHOUT BEING ARRESTED AND GIVING LOTS OF EXPLAINING. YOU BETTER JUST RUN AWAY.

GREAT BOOK A MUST FOR GUN OWNERS.

Ed Lovette captures the essence of self protection. He is clear, concise and obviously knows his subject. The problem is basically space. There is not enough of it. The topics discussed could be expanded quite a bit, especially the aspects of handgun use, carry and choice. More information could be included regarding the psychology of self defence; and, the problems associated with fear, adrenaline and actual application of learned defensive skills in extreme situations. Holding a weapon while paralyzed with fear is a real situational problem. It requires a good deal of learning, practice and conditioning before a working, self defence action can be initiated.

All in all, an excellent book. It just needs to be fleshed out a bit.

The book covers most of the important issues, however, it does not give adequate detail on any of them. If you want a broad overview of those things you should consider, this is a good place to start. If you are looking for specifics, you will have to follow-up this book with several others that contain more details.

The focus is on awareness and avoidance. Discussion of firearms only makes up a small portion of this book. For those interested in pursuing self defense firearms, Dave Spaulding's Handgun Combatives would be a good follow-up book to read.

A high point is the short discussion on night shooting. This is the first book I have seen that gives clear pictues of all the generally accepted methods of holding a flashlight and a handgun at the same time.

Worth reading if you are starting to think about what you can do to enhance your personal security.