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Victor Gold, a loyal Republican since he served as Barry
Goldwater's press aide in the 1964 campaign, and still one as of
when we was speechwriter for George Bush the elder, has a new
problem.
The author of
Invasion of the Party Snatchers :
How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP
is the latest influential Republican to say that Big Government
ideology and "theocracy" have captured his
political party.
Mr. Gold even cheered for the Democrats in the 2006 elections.
What's more, he won't abide by the tradition of
repeating that the soldiers are dying for our freedom. The
soldiers' lives are being "wasted", he asserts.
(Hardcover, 246 pages, published by
Sourcebooks.)
We are pleased to be able to reprint the review of
The Second Gilded Age: The Great Reaction in the United States, 1973-2001
by Dr. Michael McHugh.
BOOK REVIEW
If you liked Elizabeth Cunningham's 2006 historical novel,
The Passion of Mary Magdalen
BOOK EXCERPT
, then you will also like the 2007 prequel,
Magdalen Rising : The Beginning
BOOK EXCERPT
BOOK REVIEW --
David A. Clary,
Adopted Son :
Washington, Lafayette,
and the Friendship
that Saved the Revolution
The newest book by scientist and social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich is
Dancing in the Streets : A History of Collective Joy
. For thousands of years people have celebrated life with
feasts, carnivals and dances of religious ecstasy. Society's
rulers often repress that tendency, in order to make people behave in a
more "civilized" fashion. That usually means something like: stop
partying get back to work -- or -- show more respect for
the authorities.
(Metropolitan Books, Hardcover, 336 pages)
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK EXCERPT
Religion professor
Linford Stutzman and Mrs. Stutzman bought a sailboat
and set out to visit every place that the sailing enthusiast
Paul the Apostle went in the first century A.D., as reported in
the Book of Acts.
SailingActs : Following an Ancient Journey,
is the true story of
fourteen months during which they traveled to Greece, Turkey,
Cyprus, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Malta, Italy and Jordan.
(Good Books, Paperback, 300 pages)
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK EXCERPT
Body of Lies
is an intriguing novel about a CIA plan to inject misinformation
into al Qaeda that will hopefully induce the criminal
organization to eliminate one of its own leaders.
The scheme involves planting a dead body with false documents on
it. The terrorists who find it must conclude that it is the body
of a CIA agent with whom their own
leader seems to have
collaborated.
It is the sixth novel by Washington Post columnist David Ingatius,
viewed among journalists as an expert on Middle East affairs, but
increasingly a favorite to fans of spy thrillers.
(Hardcover, 320 pages, Published by Norton,
April 2007)
Some commentators are surprised that statisticians
report a general loss of public confidence in corporations,
including the media and medical industries. I'm only suprised
that some people are actually surprised.
We live in age without reciprocity. The
enlightened self-interest of which economist Adam Smith wrote in
1776 didn't predict today's corporate practice of businesses
pouncing on their employees and customers like hungry lions on
prey. Corporations today lay off workers, not because profits are
down, but because profits are up and they believe that layoffs
will make those profits higher still. A CEO who screws up
terribly will be punished by being given millions of dollars in
bonuses and stock options. More than ever, government regulators
have personal capital invested in the industries they are supposed
to regulating. Has "business ethics" become the
oxymoron of the millennium?
These thoughts went through my mind as I began to
read
Profit With Honor : The New Stage of Market Capitalism
by Daniel Yankelovich.
The author, who in the past has been a board member
of several corporations, now advocates what he calls
"stewardship ethics."
Several other proponents of the Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) theory have expressed, he says, an
"ambivalent attitude about corporate profits," but the
author is not among them. His own conception "retains profit
making as a top corporate priority." [page 13]
A business will be more profitable, he believes, by
"taking better care of its employees, its customers, its
community, and the larger society." [14]
The author insists, "... I endow the concept
of civil society with a definite set of moral values."
[73]
But is it really just matter of recognizing an
already-existing truth? If it's really more profitable to be
honest and respect human rights, instead of mistreating and
cheating people, why hasn't one of the large U.S. corporations
already stumbled across this truth and actually tried it by
now?
I find it tempting and too easy to misunderstand
and exaggerate Mr. Yankelovich's actual position. In truth, the
author is more cautious and discerning than his first few pages
would make him seem.
He explains: "More subtly, free-market
visionaries attribute ethical virtues to the market that it does
not, in fact, possess. The virtues they emphasize --
individualism, freedom, democracy, choice, flexibility,
creativity, openness, adaptability, self-improvement,
self-discipline, leadership and responsibility -- are in fact
not inherent in the operations of free-market
economies." [74-75]
Profit with Honor
is part of the Future of American Democracy book
series from Yale University Press.
(Paperback, 208 pages, published June 2007.)
READ A BOOK EXCERPT
The Go Point
by Michael Useem offers a unique method for learning the skill of
making decisions. It places the reader into virtual scenes.
Learn how to size up an important situation and make a critical
choice by being a Civil War general, the leader of a group in a
survival situation, or the director of a crisis-ridden company.
(Crown Business Books, Hardcover, 288 pages)
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK EXCERPT
What does Chrysler have in common with the French
cosmetic company L'Oréal? They have hired cultural
anthropologist Clotaire Rapaille
to explain "archetypes" to them. Check out
The Culture Code
(Broadway Books, Hardcover, 224 pages)
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK EXCERPT
We recently completed reviews of two new books
about the alternative news media:
Static
is by Amy Goodman and David Goodman of Democracy Now!.
The authors describe
Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back.
(Hyperion Books, hardcover, 352 pages)
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK EXCERPT
Air America -- The Playbook
is an anthology by the staff and supporters of the liberal radio
network, among them Al Franken, Randi Rhodes, Rachel Maddow,
Sam Seder, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The book presents What a Bunch of Left Wing Media
Types Have to Teach you about a World Gone Right.
(352 pages in hardcover from Rodale Books)
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK EXCERPT
Two physics professors from the University of
California at Santa Cruz take on the subject of mind and matter.
In
Quantum Enigma : Physics Encounters Consciousness
they investigate several interpretations of the discovery that
"objective reality" cannot be separated from the observer.
(Hardcover, 224 pages,
June 2006 from Oxford University Press)
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK EXCERPT
How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place
is a symposium of fourteen authors who compare proposed solutions
to world poverty, global warming, overpopulation, water supply,
underfunded education, trade barriers, communicable disease, civil
war, and other social challenges. The general format of each
chapter is the contributing author's brief survey of a public
problem and a reform proposal, with either a graph or a small
table of data to illustrate costs and benefits. Generally each
essay is followed by an opponent viewpoint. A theme that pervades
is "opportunities". An inexpensive paperback edited by
Bjorn Lomborg, who teaches at the Copenhagen Business School.
(218 pages, Cambridge University Press, paperback, June 2006.)
BOOK EXCERPT
Some lines here were moved to
science
book reviews.
Although we wish that he may be wrong, oil industry analyst George
Orwel believes that the rise in prices will continue until a
peak occurs between the years 2015 and 2020. The only salvation is
that new investment funds traded on the American Stock Exchange,
available for the first time as of April 2006, make it easier than ever
before for ordinary folks to tie their saving to this trend.
Orwel's new book,
Black Gold -- The New Frontier in Oil for Investors
, advises: "Don't panic because the boom will last, but have
a plan." [page 170] The book also studies the transition to
alternative energy sources (chapter 3) that is being undertaken by
such companies as General Electric, British Petroleum and Shell.
Historical and geographical issues, and international politics,
are considered -- even the mysterious mathematical field called
game theory. (Hardcover, 216 pages, published
June 2006 by Wiley.)
The newest book by historian of religion Karen
Armstrong asserts that
The Great Transformation
took place several centuries B.C. It was the pivotal moment when
the Jewish pioneers of spiritual thought, Confucius, Lao-Tzu, and
the Buddha, working independently, rejected the selfish ego as
well as metaphysical speculations which cannot be answered. The
transcendence of the self, they said, is achieved through worldly
acts of cooperation and compassion. The philosopher Karl Jaspers
called it the Axial Age, and today's world religions, Armstrong
explains, are merely its "secondary flowerings." Not
until the scientific revolution did the world encounter another
reversal of thought of comparable magnitude. (Hardcover, 496 pages, published March 28, 2006 by
Knopf.)
Timothy Leary
by Robert Greenfield is the biography of the former
Harvard psychology professor who was called "the apostle of
LSD."
Dr. Leary's
books
and speaking engagements expressed the viewpoint that an LSD trip
is a religious sacrament, and he took hundreds of journeys to meet
with his spiked-sugar-cube god. For practicing his lysergic
religion, Leary was hounded by the law, chased from one country to
another, and threatened with 25 years in Folsom Prison.
Greenfield is a well-known counterculture biographer, who
previously wrote down the famous oral
memoirs
of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia , worked as the
ghostwriter for the
autobiography
of Fillmore East and Fillmore West rock concert promoter Bill
Graham , and also published
another book
about his experience accompanying the Rolling Stones on a tour in
1972. (Hardcover, a whopping 704 pages, June 2006 from
Harcourt.)
A sincere thank you and good luck to
journalist Helen Thomas. Known as the one member of the
White House press team who could be relied upon to ask the tough
and embarrassing questions, this winner of numerous awards will be
retiring soon. After covering the administrations of nine
presidents beginning with JFK, she exits with a loud bang. Her
new book is
Watchdogs of
Democracy? -- The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public
. Thomas charges both reporters and media management
with being passive and silent, afraid that they would be called
"unpatriotic" if they dared to probe the Bush
administration's flimsy case for invading Iraq. The media
sacrified the right of the people to know what our
elected leaders are really up to. (Hardcover,
240 pages, published June 20, 2006 by Scribner.)
Progressive activist Arianna Huffington has
taken a break from writing about the class struggle. In her latest book,
On Becoming Fearless
, she discusses family relationships and situations, the
importance of assertiveness, men and women, self-image, careers,
phobias, thoughts about death, and more. (Little, Brown & Co,, Hardcover, 240 pages.
Coming in September and available now for pre-order.)
What is this article? These are some of my
preliminary notes about the titles for which I haven't yet
completed full-length book reviews. Please use the links in the
left column to find completed reviews.
Our thanks go out to author Dean Koontz and
Bantam Books for granting crimsonbird.com permission to reprint an
excerpt from Koontz's new, thrilling and bestselling novel,
The Husband
.
Visitors to this site are invited to
read an excerpt from Chapter 1
.
Thomas Dietrich, author of the 2005
The Origin of Culture and Civilization
, has contacted us to let us know that he liked the
crimsonbird.com book review so much that he is using
our review
as the target link in his own advertisements. It's good to hear
that our work is getting distributed.
According to the New York Post of July 2, 2006, right-wing extremist
Ann Coulter has been caught committing plagiarism in her latest waste of pulp
entitled
Godless : The Church of Liberalism
. As reported in the newspaper article by Philip Recchia and
Susannah Cahalan, pattern recognition researcher John Barrie,
Ph.D. put the book through his iThenticate plagiarism detection
software. The program allegedly found extensive passages that
were copied almost word-for-word from books, articles and
pamphlets written by others. Similar instances of plagiarism were
found in Coulter's newspaper columns. I haven't read the book,
and I anticipate that I won't bother with it, after I
examined one of Coulter's earlier books
in considerable detail, and found nothing at all of value within
it. (Hardcover from Crown Press, 320 pages, June
2006.)
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have decided out of conscience
that they needed to revise their bestseller
Freakonomics
, the first edition of which (May 2005) sold 1.5 million copies in
its first year. The authors have determined that the story they
told about reporter and civil rights proponent Stetson Kennedy
contained some inaccuracies. The changes will be made in the
book's
paperback large print edition
(due out in November) and in the
audio book on CD
which is read by Dubner (due out in October). A number of
historical researchers have concluded that Kennedy had exaggerated
about some of his activities working undercover inside the Ku Klux
Klan in the 1940s, as described in his 1954 book (1990 reprint
available)
The Klan Unmasked
. Oddly enough, the Kennedy activities as described by Levitt and
Dubner are offered merely as an example to illustrate a point
(the economic concept of an asymmetry of information). The
apparent and minor inaccuracies in the first edition don't really diminish
the book's quality. (First edition published by William Morrow;
large print and audio CD editions published by Harper.)
You recall the news reports about three days in
April of 2003 when looters devastated the Iraqi National Museum
in Baghdad. The mob took more than ten thousand Babylonian and
Sumerian artifacts of the "cradle of civilization", some
of the pieces more than 5,000 years old. To apply American-style
detective work to the task, an assistant district attorney from
New York City, already in Basra at the time as part of his role in
the U.S. Marines Reserves, was appointed to go to Baghdad that
same month. Matthew Bogdanos describes his investigation and
findings in
Thieves of Baghdad
. One of the author's innovations was to distribute photos of
valuable artifacts on "wanted" posters, which resulted
in several recoveries. The author concludes that at least some of
the looting had to be an inside job, since someone acquired a
hidden key and also knew of its corresponding cabinet hidden
behind a bricked-up wall. A year after the book's original
publication in October 2005, a
paperback reprint
is expected to be released in October 2006. (First edition in hardcover of October 2005, and
paperback reprint of October 2006, both 320 pages and published by
Bloomsbury Books.)
Terrorism needs to be addressed by emulating the
policies of Cold War era liberals like JFK, says New
Republic columnist Peter Beinart. It requires a U.S.
leadership that will promote and not erode civil liberties at
home. This will set an example that will inspire the more
progressive elements in the Islamic parts of the world to take
their own countries back from the extremists. A U.S.
administration that would defend the standard of living of the
working class, and cease to take orders from corporate lobbyists
and donators of campaign funds, would give encouragement to
Islamic people that the principle of democracy is no sham. A U.S.
foreign policy upholding reciprocity, and demanding of the U.S.
the same ciivlized rules that the U.S. expects of other
countries, would show the world that Americans are not hypocrites.
President Bush conveys one message in his political sermons, and a
different message with his actions. Beinart's book is
The Good Fight
. Its subtitle is
Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the
War on Terror and Make America Great Again.
The book is also available as an
audio book
. (Hardcover of 304 pages, and audio book on
CD, both from HarperCollins in June 2006.) .
Danny Schechter, who worked at ABC News for eight years, was often
a lone voice in the media to protest the U.S. government's use
of Hollywood-style story-telling techniques to conduct
"perception management". The deficiency was never more
pronounced than it has been during Bush
Administration's use of willingly submissive media
organizations to sell
its reactionary policies to the public. After
releasing his 2005 documentary film
WMD -- Weapons of Mass Deception
, Shechter went on to write the book
When News Lies
. The book also includes the documentary DVD. Shechter would
like to remind us that the special position given to the press in
the U.S., with its liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, also
implies the responsibility to be honest with the public or face
accountability. (Select Books, January 2006,
paperback, 176 pages.)
Something tells me that the government would prefer that you not read
Overthrow : America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
by Stephen Kinzer. The author details ten occasions in which the
U.S. overthrew the governments of other countries, generally to
install dictators who would be favorable to U.S. corporations,
and in some cases toppling democratically elected leaders. After
the first democratically elected president to lead Guatemala in
many years decided in 1954 to take possession of (by eminent
domain, with full compensation) land owned by the United Fruit
Company, the U.S. seized control, and caused 30 years of civil
war. Read also about the intervention in Nicaragua in 1910, which
had the purpose of giving U.S. mining companies effective control
of the country. Hawaii eventually became a state because the decision by
that small island nation's queen to charge U.S. companies
tariffs on sugar imports prompted the U.S. to send in the Marines
in 1893. Kinzer also covers the the forced installation of the
Shah of Iran, and the U.S. government's orchestrated
assassinations of South Vietnam's President Diem in 1963 and
Chile's President Allende in 1973. (Times Books,
April 2006, hardcover, 400 pages.)
Reza Aslan, who was born in Tehran but moved to the U.S. during
early childhood, focuses largely on the prospects for Islamic
societies' internal development in the direction of democratic
institutions.
No god but God : The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
is less about theology or history than it is about the current
unfolding within Islam that is in some ways comparable to
Christianity's Reformation. The Holy Prophet taught that Islam,
Judaism and Christianity should coexist, and some measure of
religious plurality was part of Islamic tradition for a longer
time than the current headline-grabbing intolerance has been
practiced. The Islamic nations will eventually democratize, a
growth which other nations can help to nurture but cannot coerce.
Other nations can assist if they will first realize that this
development will occur, not through Jeffersonian separation of
religion and state, but through a uniquely Islamic kind of
acceptance of religious plurality. (From
Random House in January 2006, paperback, 352 pages.)
For a former CIA field officer to write
Jawbreaker
required not only resigning but also suing the agency. The CIA
had forbidden the publication of some of its contents, and
procrastinated in deciding whether to permit others. Gary
Berntsen, who was in the CIA for 23 years, supports the agency's
mission, and also supports the Bush administration; he is merely
critical of the errors made in the responses to intelligence data.
The book, the subtitle of which is The Attack on Bin Laden and
Al Qaeda -- A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field
Commander, describes events in the time period 1998 through
2001. The author, who had previous experience in the study of
Hizbollah and activities in Iran, was part of a small CIA team
that went to Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks, to work with the
Northern Alliance in the hope of capturing al Qaeda leaders.
After 9/11, and the U.S. entry into Afghanistan, the CIA was
given certain rote tasks, such as transmitting al Qaeda
coordinates to military recipients, for use in the guidance of
"smart" weapons. It appears, however, that strategic
advice from CIA officers was not welcomed. Berntsen requested the
deployment of troops to surround Bin Laden and thereby prevent his
escape. The U.S. government denied this request, and also got
rid of the trouble-maker who had issued it, by transferring
Berntsen to a new assignment in South America.
(With coauthor Ralph Pezzullo; hardcover, 352 pages, from Crown
Books, December 2005.)
George Friedman makes the case that the U.S.
invaded Iraq for the main purpose of sending a message to Saudi
Arabia in a dramatic way. That message is: We didn't forget that
Saudi Arabia refused the request by the U.S. that Saudi citizens
be barred from contributing money to al Qaeda, and you should note
that the U.S. is willing to go to war if necessary. Friedman's
book is
America's Secret War : Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between the United States and Its Enemies
. (In paperback from Broadway Books, October
2005, 384 pages.)
Maybe the police wanted to get promoted, the
prosecuters liked to see their names in the paper, the witnesses
were bribed, the judges were vindictive, or the members of the
juries were lazy. However it may have happened,
Surviving Justice
consists of interviews with 13 people who were wrongfully
convicted of crimes in the U.S., and later proven to be innocent
by DNA analysis. One of these victims of the "justice"
system was Christopher Ochoa, who was beaten by the police until
he was willing to sign a rape confession, and then spent 12 years
in prison, until university-based legal volunteers were able to
arrange for the DNA test which both cleared him and implicated a
different person. Most of the exonerees continue to experience
psychological trauma, and volunteer organizations attempt to
assist their return to normal life, to supplement the absolutely
nothing that the government does to assist them. Interviews
conducted by journalism graduate students, and edited by Lola
Vollen and Dave Eggars. (Released November 2005
by McSweeney's, 512 pages in paperback.)
Psychology and sociology have often been
criticized for noticing correlations and then presenting these as
causal connections. Sometimes the method does give the right
answers, so you may decide for yourself. Douglas E. Morris concludes
that the style of urban planning -- if we want to call it
"planning" at all, in the absense of any public policy
to address it -- is a major cause of the United States having such
a high rate of violent crimes per capita. Proponents of
morality-based theories tend to blame the crime rate on everything
from divorce to violent movies, but, in the author's view, such
factors must be rejected as possible explanations, because they
are found in the countries with the lowest as well as the highest
crime rates. Consider, instead, the peculiar feeling of
loneliness in a crowd, and the admissions by many urban and
suburban residents that they don't know their nextdoor neighbors.
Consider the paradox of increased reliance on job commuting at the
same time that the use and availability of public transportation
are in decline. Compare this, in your imagination, to a new
system of "small town" environments interconnected with
a modern transit system. Would the latter help to alleviate the
social signs of alienation?
It's a Sprawl World After All
will never become a bestseller, but its message should be weight
by those interested in politics and the social sciences. The
subtitle is: The Human Cost of Unplanned Growth -- and Visions
of a Better Future. (288 pages in paperback
from New Society Publishers, September 2005.)
The first nonfiction book from a novelist and
column writer begins with an overview of terrorism suspects in the
U.S. who went about unimpeded because local police and airport
security didn't have access to CIA data. Such uncommunicated
records indicate by example what Larry Beinhart refers to by the
term
Fog Facts
, but the absense or deemphasis of certain facts from news
reporting is the worst form of all. Facts in their entirely would
have shown the process of the Bush administration concocting its
assertions of Iraq's WMDs and an alleged connection between Iraq
and al Qaeda. The facts would reveal several people on record
prior to 9/11 having warned about hijackers steering airliners
into buildings. If the media were to report on themselves, they
would disclose that they buried the results of their own studies
of the 2000 election. To hear the media tell it, the U.S. is the
only country that is by definition incapable of having committed
wartime atrocities, and each of the government's terrorism
suspects is necessarily guilty without the need to bother hearing
a defense. Our news is "junk food" according to the
book with the subtitle Searching for Truth in the Land of
Spin. It is the mission of journalism that must be changed,
Beinhart says, beginning with the the profession's understanding
of what obectivity means. (Hardcover from
Nation Books, 219 pages, October 2005.)
...To be continued ....
Mike Lepore · crimsonbird.com ·
Last update December 8, 2007
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