Product Description
A magnificent one volume pictorial and narrative history of the United States with more than five hundred exceptional illustrations, many reproduced here for the first time.Amazon.com Review
The Library of Congress is the largest library on earth, withmore than 111 million items. Eyes of the Nation'snearly 400 lavishly illustrated pages take the reader into the vaultsof the library to see such priceless relics as Thomas Jefferson'sdraft for the Declaration of Independence, James Madison's handwritten"Notes on Debates on the Bill of Rights," and Abraham Lincoln'smanuscript of the Emancipation Proclamation. And not only the obviousartifacts of American history are featured. Also included are maps soold that cartographers drew sea serpents cavorting in the ocean waves,a galley of Leaves ofGrass with Walt Whitman's handwritten corrections, anda poster advertising the Grateful Dead at San Francisco's AvalonBallroom.

Besides the abundant and well-captioned illustrations, each chapter isintroduced by an essay by historian Alan Brinkley,a professor at Columbia and winner of the National BookAward. Brinkley's text could stand alone as a solid, balanced overviewof American history. It also adds essential structure and context tothe book's parade of images. Eyes of the Nation is arare combination of ravishing visuals with substantive, carefullyconceived text and structure. For anyone interested in the vastAmerican experience, it's nearly impossible to open its pages withoutbeing drawn in. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

2005 Writers Notes Book Award First Runner-Up
Visiting the Library of Congress is like entering the vaults of the Smithsonian-fascinating, intelligent, and unavoidably eclectic. Such is the case with Eyes of the Nation, which calls upon the Library of Congress' print collection to reveal America from Columbus to the near present. Among the scores of important papers, maps, and photos, you'll find pictures of an unfinished Capitol Rotunda during Lincoln's inauguration, Oppenheimer's notes on nuclear reactions, and the real faces of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, not to mention his actual manuscript pages. Historian Alan Brinkley binds the collection with poignant direction, making it as much a reference text as a work of art.

Fresh and intense look at who we were and are
This is a fascinating and valuable look at the United States presented with a number of rarely seemed photographs. You will learn something here even if you think you know the whole story of our nation's 200+ years. The only caveats are a few photos which, while presenting some of the true (and unfortunate) incidents of our history, may be too graphic for children (and some adults!) Overall a fine volume worthy of any library.

An heirloom for every American
As the Library of Congress marks our country's history as the U.S.'s continual time capsule;this tome offers a glance into her walls.Beautifully assembled, this keepsake will instill pride in its citizenry. Making selections from myriad possibilities must have been a direundertaking, but those represented indicate a fair cross-section of timeand geography.An excellent tribute to a worthy source! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

The Slow Death of Imperialism
To most people the United Nations was created after World War II to provide an international organization that would help prevent armed conflicts throughout the world.After suffering through two world wars and the failure of the League of Nations,the United Nations was to provide the vehicle to prevent these catastrophes from happening again.
The above scenario describes the so-called sanitized version of the forming of the United Nations.What Mazower brings to the table is something very different.The Author goes into the imperialistic ways of the League of Nations with an in depth look at the thoughts and politics of Jan Smuts whose perception of an international organization would resemble the likes of the British Commonwealth.In essence the victors of World War I, along with the demands of The Treaty of Versailles created the League of Nations which was nothing more than a vehicle to dictate terms to the vanquished.In essence the very European imperialistic attitudes prevailing in the League of Nations caused its failure.It was ineffective.
Mazower goes into depth on the political thoughts and actions of Alfred Zimmern whose interests also included Commonwealth ideas which still leaned toward European imperialism.When the United Nations finally came to fruition the controlling old remnants of empire still were prevalent with the Security Council commanding the most power.The five permanent members holding veto power were the main victors of World War II.
Mazower continues his thesis of the death of all European empires with the fall of Nazism as explained in his book "Hitler's Empire:How the Nazis Ruled Europe".The Author explains that politicians from the British Commonwealth wanted to extend the remnants of the old British Empire through the inner workings of the United Nations.
This book is groundbreaking and provides all historians with a much needed eye opener.Mazower explains why the United Nations never did become that utopia it was meant to be.The book shows the Author's expertise and knowledge of 20th Century Europe.No one is better.Mazower is the eminent scholar in this area, bar none.Excellent read offering a new perspective of an area of history not really explored before.7 Stars!!No Problem!!!
... Read more

Product Description
Below the surface of public attention, internationalists have been working for decades to build the United Nations into an all-powerful world government. In this carefully documented study, William F. Jasper shows that, with the United Nations, the American people are being offered what amounts to poison disguised as candy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Bring yourself up to speed about World Government
If you are one of the small, but growing, minority of people on Earth who are just now waking up to the reality that national sovereignties and individual liberal liberties have been gradually handed over to the powerful elite financial families and organizations who invented the United Nations, then this book will enhance your education. Focus on the intentions that were set in motion by such people as cult-crazed Maurice Strong to engineer a phoney Global Warming propaganda stream designed to fleece wealth from wealthier nations and funnel that money and control to a New World Government. These creatures claim that their intention is to control all wealth in the world so that they can divide prosperity equally among all peoples of Earth - yes the ultimate Communist Shangri-la. However, since the world is nowhere near total global prosperity, it is evident that the intent of these UN Elitists is to "rob from the rich and keep for themselves." Of particular note to me was the fact that the UN presents itself as a secular, humanist organization. However, in reality, their policymakers are ruled by age-old demonic religious cults whose authority is based on the idea that The Few have achieved the proper Illumination to give them the right to rule the world. [My note, but not in the book: The good news is that the New World Order is doomed to failure. Once the Anglo-American empire falls --and it will-- all human efforts at world governance will be destroyed once and for all by our Creator. (Daniel 2:44) ]

Well-Researched & Relevant
This is a very important read for anyone unacquainted with the UN's true agenda. Watching the TV news or reading entertainment masquerading as journalism (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News) will not do this subject justice. In addition, the writing style is engaging and friendly to the general reader. Anyone who reads this book with an open mind will walk away stunned. Jasper has long researched the UN and has been in attendance at many of their functions. His footnotes and documentation are exemplary. I use this book, along with a few others, as a cornerstone source for the Foreign Policy unit lecture notes I give students in my Senior U.S. Government class.

In case you're interested, the others are:
"The Shadows of Power" by James Perloff
"The Costs of War" & "Reassessing the Presidency" by John V. Denson, ED.
"A Republic, Not An Empire" by Patrick J. Buchanan

Given the two unfair reviews below it is incumbent upon me to also point out that one should actually read the book one is reviewing in order to make a positive contribution to the Amazon.com review system. Embarrassing yourself with worthless comments may be thrilling as an excuse to see your name on the internet, but many of us prefer intelligent discourse instead. As the two "reviewers" below pointed out, this book is published by the John Birch Society. Unlike those two "reviewers", however I will not proceed at this point to engage in an ignorant, uninformed attack on that organization. The discredited smears against the John Birch Society are based on intemperate, usually out of context, anti-Eisenhower remarks made by their founder in the 1950s, out of his frustration with the decline of freedom in this once great nation. Are you going to smear the ACLU because their founder specifically declared communism to be their chief goal? Are you going to smear Planned Parenthood because their founders' intentions were to prevent non-whites from overbreeding? The John Birch Society is and always has been comprised of kind, God-fearing, well-intentioned Americans who are genuinely concerned about liberty. Their opposition to the "Civil Rights" racket as well as their clear-eyed view of Nelson Mandela (both alluded to in the two "reviews" below) are evidence of thoughtful, independent analysis, as opposed to politically correct capitulation. To begin your review with, "i(sic) have not read this book...", pretty much says it all.

know where your information is coming from...
i have not read this book, i stumbled across the listing on amazon and looked at it, so i can't actually comment as to the comments. but i want people to realize that the publisher is listed as the john birch society, a very right-wing fringe group that among other things in its history, was against the civil rights movement. look them up on wikipedia or something if you want more information, i just wanted to let people who are not familiar with the jbs know who was responsible for publishing this.

murderous thug
I used to live in Appleton, the hometown of the Bircher's.I picked this book up at a used bookstore, and later resold it about a year ago.What really stood out for me was when Jasper TWICE--without any explanation--called Nelson Mandela a "murderous thug."Take that for what it's worth.read the book for all I care.

junk
Who is this guy?

I spent 20 years covering the UN and never saw this guy....

What needs to be exposed is this phoney and his phoney book....

This guy couldn't tell Kofi Annan from Mr. Coffee....

The UN may be a rip off but so is this book....

Save your money and give it to UNICEF...not this crook. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Is this your kid's textbook? Be very afraid!
The textbook is very instructive!It will instruct parents who have doubted that anything is wrong with their schools!It's utterly unconscionable how an school could claim that this fiasco is suitable as an American history textbook.

"One Nation Many People" would be better described as a history of protected minorities and left-wing movements in the United States.We tried a little exercise here:I asked my wife to close her eyes, open the book at random and drop her finger on any text.In all 5 out of 5 tries -- all 5! -- the text was on some aspect of the "Holy Trinity" of race, class and gender!I also took the thing with to work, and asked some others to play this "game".The results:one person had "hits" on 3 out of 3 attempts, someone else had 4 out of 4.Aaaarrrrggghhh!

What a nightmare.Just as a taste of this textbook, let's look at how it covers World War II.First of all, the chapter is lamely named, "The Nation Fights Another War."

Here is the text's ENTIRE CONTENT concerning Italy in WWII:

"In 1936, Germany signed a treaty with Italy. Italy also
had a fascist government. Together Germany and Italy
called themselves the Axis powers."

Here is the text's ENTIRE CONTENT concerning the war in the Pacific in between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima:

"The Japanese also advanced. They invaded the Philippines
and conquered parts of Southeast Asia. They also took over
many islands in the Pacific Ocean. ... Nothing could stop
the Japanese during 1942. However, in the spring the U.S.
Navy defeated them twice in the Pacific. In early 1943,
the United States began driving the Japanese back."

Here are people, places and events that are NOT MENTIONED AT ALL in the text on World War II:

Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, Marshall, Patton,
Churchill, Chamberlain, Stalin, Mussolini,
Eichmann, Mengele, Himmler, Speer, Goebbels, Goering, Rommel,
Hirohito, Tojo, Brown Shirts, Kristallnacht, Manhattan Project,
Enigma, Dunkirk, Battle of Britain, Wake Island,
Doolittle Raid, Corregidor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Warsaw Ghetto
uprising, Vichy, Anzio, Salerno, Luzon, Battle of the Bulge,
Bataan Death March, Rape of Nanking, Mindanao, Iwo Jima,
Midway, Guam, Okinawa

However, this textbook DOES have space to devote a half-page to one Dorie Miller, a black who was a hero at Pearl Harbor.There is a full page on women's efforts on the home front, plus a page and a half on blacks and Latinos during WWII.

There are THREE AND A HALF pages devoted to the Japanese internment.

The rest of the text reads the same way, with endless PC stuff squeezing out other material.Many presidents are never mentioned at all.There isn't room for all ten of the Bill of Rights."African American Culture Thrives in the Jazz Age" is given a full chapter.But Thomas Edison is given only half a sentence ("the inventor of the light bulb"), and the Wright Brothers are never mentioned at all.The 1969 moon landing gets only a couple of sentences, and nothing at all is said about the space program that led up to it.

But that's not even the worst of it. First, there's the alarming problem of the text itself.It's almost impossible to keep focused on this text, given that it's written in a belligerently simple-minded style, with terse declarative sentences and no challenging words.This stuff is as deadly dull as a Dick and Jane primer!

Finally, the book is also simple minded in its almost nonstop flat statements of purported facts about many issues that are in fact highly debatable.It hardly needs stating, but the consistent and overwhelming bias is leftward.The book offers not a hint of suggestion of any criticism of Roosevelt's New Deal or Johnson's Great Society, for example.Tax cuts under Reagan are slammed, tax cuts under Kennedy are never mentioned. The Bay of Pigs fiasco just simply "happened" while Kennedy was in office.Gorbachev is given sole credit for the demise of the Soviet Union. An astonishing two-thirds of a page is spent defending Hillarycare.The final chapter, "American People Face the 21st Century" starts off with a section on what we must conclude the authors think is the most important thing to say about our country:"United States Has More Diversity Than Any Other Nation".

Not only should you avoid this book at all costs, but if your local school has chosen it as a text, you should seriously question whether that school is the right choice for your children. ... Read more

Product Description
Long positioned and respected as a bestseller for the market segment that focuses on political history as its framework, this textbook's most significant strength is its rich and distinctive prose. For this Tenth Edition, Garraty selected a distinguished co-author, Mark Carnes of Barnard College at Columbia University, to join him in revising The American Nation. The two have collaborated on and co-edited the prestigious American National Biography Series by Oxford, as well as Mapping America's Past, a well-known trade atlas for Henry Holt.Throughout the new Tenth Edition, the authors updated the scholarship, integrated more social and cultural history, revised the final chapters, and added a new chapter (33) to better address issues of the 1990s that culminated in the Clinton impeachment scandal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Great!
The product arrived promptly, in described good condition. I am satisfied with the customer service I received and the quality of the product.

American Nation
It came very soon after I had ordered it and it was in the exact condition that I payed for. Thank you!!

Poor
This book is filled with too much details and words. It takes too much effort to just read and understand the details in each chapters. It is boring to read and the only good thing about it is that it comes with alot of datas in the American history. If you are a History major, don't miss it.

Worst History Book in a long time
Even as a lover of history, I find this book boring, overwritten and incable of reliable use.When looking up a term, not only can it not be found by reading the chapter, but the index points you to the wrong page! This book is a waste of money and I suggest that you do not purchase it.

A Fabulous Guide to American History in Class and Beyond
This text is absolutely unsurpassed in terms of clarity, conciseness and general usefulness.I first used Garraty's book in 8th grade, then again as a supplement to some other texts in a U.S. A.P. class in high school (I got a 5 on the test, which I am confident is owed entirely to Garraty) and still use it for general reference in college.In a little over 1000 pages, Garraty covers just about every major event in United States history in interesting and extremely clear prose.I have yet to find any book that communicates such an enormous amount of information in such a small amount of space with such an enormous degree of clarity.I promise that this book will not only improve your understanding of U.S. history, but will also serve as a lifelong reference source. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

It's a good resource
I use this book to teach formerly at-risk adults, mostly minorities, in an adult school, diploma-track program.Having read the first review on this site, I was prepared to hate his book, but I realized one important fact:where the book is lacking, that's where the teacher comes in.No textbook teaches a student, teachers do.So, I do miss Eisenhower, and I'd like to see more on the Progressives, the Civil War and Vietnam, but that's where I use other resources to fill in the gaps.This book makes it easy for adults to comprehend history; the reading level is not collegiate, and therefore the information is accessible to those who struggle with reading.It's not for college courses, but that's not its intention.I like it.

Excellent for Learners with Special Needs
This publisher focuses on publishing texts for students with lower reading levels than their grade level or lower than the grade level their textbook is written for. While lacking in details about world history, probably becuase it is a UNITED STATES HISTORY textbook, the text is written in a language that is easily understood by students, especially those with learning disabilities. It does focus on minorities, but an overwhelming number of students with special needs are minorities increasing their interest in the content. Overall, textbooks all have their faults. If your student struggles with social studies this book will help them to gain a better understanding. As a social studies teacher and a graduate student doing a thesis on textbooks, I believe this textbook is a good choice, especially for students with learning disabilities.

Is this your kid's textbook? Be very afraid!
The textbook is very instructive!It will instruct parents who have doubted that anything is wrong with their schools!It's utterly unconscionable how an school could claim that this fiasco is suitable as an American history textbook.

"One Nation Many People" would be better described as a history of protected minorities and left-wing movements in the United States.We tried a little exercise here:I asked my wife to close her eyes, open the book at random and drop her finger on any text.In all 5 out of 5 tries -- all 5! -- the text was on some aspect of the "Holy Trinity" of race, class and gender!I also took the thing with to work, and asked some others to play this "game".The results:one person had "hits" on 3 out of 3 attempts, someone else had 4 out of 4.Aaaarrrrggghhh!

What a nightmare.Just as a taste of this textbook, let's look at how it covers World War II.First of all, the chapter is lamely named, "The Nation Fights Another War."

Here is the text's ENTIRE CONTENT concerning Italy in WWII:

"In 1936, Germany signed a treaty with Italy. Italy also
had a fascist government. Together Germany and Italy
called themselves the Axis powers."

Here is the text's ENTIRE CONTENT concerning the war in the Pacific in between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima:

"The Japanese also advanced. They invaded the Philippines
and conquered parts of Southeast Asia. They also took over
many islands in the Pacific Ocean. ... Nothing could stop
the Japanese during 1942. However, in the spring the U.S.
Navy defeated them twice in the Pacific. In early 1943,
the United States began driving the Japanese back."

Here are people, places and events that are NOT MENTIONED AT ALL in the text on World War II:

Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, Marshall, Patton,
Churchill, Chamberlain, Stalin, Mussolini,
Eichmann, Mengele, Himmler, Speer, Goebbels, Goering, Rommel,
Hirohito, Tojo, Brown Shirts, Kristallnacht, Manhattan Project,
Enigma, Dunkirk, Battle of Britain, Wake Island,
Doolittle Raid, Corregidor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Warsaw Ghetto
uprising, Vichy, Anzio, Salerno, Luzon, Battle of the Bulge,
Bataan Death March, Rape of Nanking, Mindanao, Iwo Jima,
Midway, Guam, Okinawa

However, this textbook DOES have space to devote a half-page to one Dorie Miller, a black who was a hero at Pearl Harbor.There is a full page on women's efforts on the home front, plus a page and a half on blacks and Latinos during WWII.

There are THREE AND A HALF pages devoted to the Japanese internment.

The rest of the text reads the same way, with endless PC stuff squeezing out other material.Many presidents are never mentioned at all.There isn't room for all ten of the Bill of Rights."African American Culture Thrives in the Jazz Age" is given a full chapter.But Thomas Edison is given only half a sentence ("the inventor of the light bulb"), and the Wright Brothers are never mentioned at all.The 1969 moon landing gets only a couple of sentences, and nothing at all is said about the space program that led up to it.

But that's not even the worst of it. First, there's the alarming problem of the text itself.It's almost impossible to keep focused on this text, given that it's written in a belligerently simple-minded style, with terse declarative sentences and no challenging words.This stuff is as deadly dull as a Dick and Jane primer!

Finally, the book is also simple minded in its almost nonstop flat statements of purported facts about many issues that are in fact highly debatable.It hardly needs stating, but the consistent and overwhelming bias is leftward.The book offers not a hint of suggestion of any criticism of Roosevelt's New Deal or Johnson's Great Society, for example.Tax cuts under Reagan are slammed, tax cuts under Kennedy are never mentioned. The Bay of Pigs fiasco just simply "happened" while Kennedy was in office.Gorbachev is given sole credit for the demise of the Soviet Union. An astonishing two-thirds of a page is spent defending Hillarycare.The final chapter, "American People Face the 21st Century" starts off with a section on what we must conclude the authors think is the most important thing to say about our country:"United States Has More Diversity Than Any Other Nation".

Not only should you avoid this book at all costs, but if your local school has chosen it as a text, you shoukld seriously question whether that school is suitable for your children. ... Read more

Product Description

The United Nations has been called everything from "the best hope of mankind" to "irrelevant" and "obsolete." With this much-needed introduction to the UN, Jussi Hanhimaki engages the current debate over the organizations effectiveness as he provides a clear understanding of how it was originally conceived, how it has come to its present form, and how it must confront new challenges in a rapidly changing world.
      After a brief history of the United Nations and its predecessor, the League of Nations, the author examines the UN's successes and failures as a guardian of international peace and security, as a promoter of human rights, as a protector of international law, and as an engineer of socio-economic development.  Hanhimaki stresses that the UN's greatest problem has been the impossibly wide gap between its ambitions and capabilities. In the area of international security, for instance, the UN has to settle conflicts--be they between or within states--without offending the national sovereignty of its member states, and without being sidelined by strong countries, as happened in the 2003 intervention of Iraq. Hanhimaki also provides a clear accounting of the UN and its various arms and organizations (such as UNESCO and UNICEF), and he offers a critical overview of how effective it has been in the recent crises in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, for example--and how likely it is to meet its overall goals in the future.
      The United Nations, Hanhimaki concludes, is an indispensable organization that has made the world a better place.  But it is also a deeply flawed institution, in need of constant reform.

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

Product Description
Southern barbecue and barbecue traditions are the primary focus of Cornbread Nation 2, our second collection of the best of Southern food writing. "Barbecue is the closest thing we have in the United States to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes," writes John Shelton Reed. Indeed, no other dish is served a dozen different ways just between Memphis and Birmingham.

In tribute to what Vince Staten calls "the slowest of the slow foods," contributors discuss the politics, sociology, and virtual religion of barbecue in the South, where communities are defined by what wood they burn, what sauce they make, and what they serve with barbecue. Jim Auchmutey links barbecue to the success of certain Southern politicians; Marcie Cohen Ferris looks at kosher brisket; and Robb Walsh investigates why black cooks have been omitted from the accepted histories of Texas barbecue, despite their seminal role in its development.

Beyond the barbecue pit, John Martin Taylor sings the virtues of boiled peanuts, Calvin Trillin savors Cajun boudin, and Eddie Dean revisits his days driving an ice cream truck deep in the Appalachian Mountains. From barbecue to scuppernongs to popsicles, the forty-three newspaper columns, magazine pieces, poems, and essays collected here confirm that a bounty of good writing exists when it comes to good eating, Southern style. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Mostly Barbecue, All Very Interesting
Obligatory reading for anyone who's a food geek, especially if you are a barbecue wonk. If you've spent a whole day (or night) cooking a 10 pound pork shoulder or obsessed about which combination of 15 spices will taste best on a chicken thigh (and really, who hasn't?) then this book is for you.

About three quarters of the book is dedicated to barbecue - the rest is dedicated to southern cooking and food, including a chapter on a geophagy, something I never heard of... the eating of dirt. Who knew that mudpies were a nutritional staple in some parts of the world!!??

Overall, it is very good writing on a specific topic - you'd better like barbecue enough to read story after story about it - which makes it not for everyone, but great read for those looking for it.

"The only thing left to do is savor and smile."
The Southern Foodways Alliance was founded to celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the food cultures of the American South.Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue is a collection of stories, poems, and essays about the foodways of the mountain South. It is one of a continuing series which includes Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing.

Lolis Eric Elie writes in the introduction: "Other foods cover the geographic expanse of this nation, just as barbecue does. You can find fried chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza from coast to coast. But none of these foods enjoy the great regional variation that barbecue does. None of them exemplify the competing themes of American unity and diversity as barbecue does. You don't hear heated arguments about the fundamental differences between the hamburgers in Albuquerque and those in Altoona. Hamburgers just ain't that deep. As John Shelton Reed reminds us in "Barbecue Sociology: The Meat of the Matter," "Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes."

While there are a few non-barbecue pieces in this second edition of the series devoted to southern foods, barbeque is the name of the game. It points out that getting together for barbecues was popular before the Revolutionary War. George Washington hosted barbecues including one at Accotinck in May 1773 and buying flour "for barbecue" [for biscuits?] in August.

"Barbecue" is an amalgam from the Haitian "barbacoa" and "babracot," believed to be from Guianian Indians, according to the "Oxford English Dictionary." Fish or meat were cooked over a fire on a wooden grill of sticks set on posts. There is still intense debate over whether the best barbecue is pork, beef, chicken, fish or lamb. As Elie points out: "Though the various versions of barbecue differ from each other as much as cows differ from sheep, or as much as tomatoes differ from mustard seeds, the common themes of wood and smoke, meat and sauce, family and fellowship transcend regional rivalries and recipe differences."

This edition is padded out with a few non- barbecue pieces which are well worth enjoying. Pat Conroy teaches us that food and funerals go together in "Love, Death, and Macaroni." John Martin Taylor is eloquent on boiled peanuts. Susan Allport's "Women Who Eat Dirt" describes a practice common in the south, and even now in Harlem grocery stores there are enormous offerings of starch, not for starching shirts but to meet the need for "clean" earth, awfully hard to come by in New York City.

At one time, New York City was considered a barbecue wasteland, like Paris, London and L.A. But there is a new smoker technology that the Department of Health has approved, and a number of topflight barbecue restaurants have opened here. If you find your mouth watering after reading some of these pieces, you'll be able to satisfy your hunger for an authentic style. As this excellent book proves, making that choice is not trivial.

Robert C. Ross 2008

Not Only Barbecue
This is a welcome addition to a promising series, although it is slightly misleading, due probably to the nature of the series. It is only about half to two-thirds about barbecue, although within that are some really terrific and far-ranging essays. The balance is about other Southern foodways, including boiled peanuts (as a previous reviewer noted)and boudin, although any book on any subject is enhanced by Calvin Trillin's contribution. He HAS written on barbecue (indeed, his piece on Arthur Bryant's is a landmark), but the Cornbread Nation does not promise to be inclusive. It sho' nuff makes one hungry though!

Every Barbecue Lover Should Have This Book
Cornbread Nation 2 should have been printed using waterproof paper! Reading the varied writings contained between its covers will have anyone who appreciates barbecue drooling like Pavlov's dogs.
Elie has done a masterful job of assembling some of the most vivid food writing-on barbecue-imaginable. The depth of subject matter is both stunning and satisfying in what it brings to the table.

It is my opinion that including Smith's Rhetoric of Barbecue treatise is alone worth the investment in this book. Often quoted as snippets in other books,here it is in it's entirety for the very first time.

Quite simply, this is a book to be treasured by anyone who loves barbecue, southern culture or U.S. history. I can safely bet that once you begin reading Cornbread Nation 2, you'll find yourself becoming ravenous for some good slow cooked barbecue! ... Read more

Product Description
This carefully documented, chilling history presents a radically different view of the profound role that slavery played in the founding of the republic, from the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution through the creation of the Constitution. The book begins with a novel explanation about the impact slavery had on the founding of the republic. In 1772, a judge sitting in the High Court in London declared slavery "so odious" that it could not exist as common law and set the conditions which would consequently result in the freedom of the 15,000 slaves living in England at that time.

This decision eventually reached America and terrified the predominantly southern slaveholders because America was then a collection of British colonies and as such were subject to British law, and they feared that this decision would cause the emancipation of the slaves here. Thus, to ensure the preservation of slavery, the southern states joined the northern colonies in their fight for "freedom" and their rebellion against England.

This decision was codified in the First Continental Congress in 1774 when John Adams promised southern leaders the support of their right to maintain slavery and drafted a Declaration of Colonial Independence from Parliament. What follows is a fascinating account of the role slavery played in the drawing of the United States Constitution. It was only in the end, when the northern states threatened to walk out over the issue of slavery, that the southern states agreed to the prohibition of slavery north of the Ohio River,embodied in the Northwest Ordinance which created the largest slave-free area in the world.This would eventually give birth to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which codified Benjamin Franklin's affirmative action plan.

Features an introduction by Congresswoman Elanor Holmes Norton, and an in requiem poem by Barbara Chase-Riboud. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

An Outline, Not A Thesis
I had reached tentative conclusions similar to the authors from my own readings and induction. I had hoped that the Blumrosens would present the sorts of primary references that would indisputably support the patternI thought I had detected.

The question I asked myself is: why would the rich and successful plantation owners of the South support the rebellion? The main answer I could find was the preservation of slavery.

Unfortunately,this book makes the argument, but it lacks the evidence. As another reviewer notes, the authors weaken their own case by their methods. (I find particularly unacceptable phrases such as "must have" when trying to ascribe motivations to individuals or groups. Are the authors psychics?If it isn't on record you can't make the assumption)

My own opinion is that it is difficult to imagine that the book's argument is not correct; but that is my opinion, it is not history. Though definitely worth reading, "Slave Nation" is also not good history.

An important milestone in historical method (ironically !!)
I will not elaborate here my opnion (because, namely, it is that - an opinion); however: is it just me, or is a one-paragraph thumbnail sketch of this text's premise more convincing *after* reading this text than *before*?I've read about sixty monographs and maybe half that many secondary sources on this topic, so I'm certainly no scholar; but the evidence (and by that word I mean "data," not "proof") enclosed here does more to negate the premise than support it.Were it not the reputation garnered by the authors, I would had certainly commended them for slyly suggesting that the information available for supporting their notion- that slavery was a major factor in unionizing the States - is more or less unfounded.I read most of this book in one reading, and was honestly expecting an assertion of "GOTCHA" in an epilogue.But this never happens, and as a result I just have to wonder how convinced the authors are of their suppositions laid out here.Perhaps, *perhaps*, this book needed to be edited, and what was left on the cutting room floor (if indeed there is such a thing in the book editing industry) was important manna; and if this is the case, I certainly owe the authors an apology for supposing the absurd.Indeed, they have done their scholarly rounds.I simply feel uneasy about their conclusions.

The South preserves the Union (the North trades slaves for Ohio)
This book convincingly argues its unflattering central thesis:that a slavery-limiting London court case inspired southern slave owners to join forces with independence-minded Massachussets firebrands.(Despite being only a limited and technical ruling that fugitive slaves could not be arrested in Great Britain).The authors overreach at times--they are lawyers, not logicians--but demonstrate the decisive importance of slavery to the southern leadership, including specific delegates attending the congresses and committees they consider.

One significant contribution is their thesis that the Northwest Ordinance was a southern concession to the interests of northern abolitionists, made to preserve the union.This is accompanied by proof that the Ordinance did not "implicitly" legalize southwestern slavery, as sometimes contended, because that was already explicitly legal.

The authors argue that the Northwest Ordinance was in fact proposed to resolve the (well-documented) north-south impasse that threatened an end to the Union.They prove that southern Congressmen were in the right places at the right times to make this physically possible within the known timeframes.They also endeavor to deduce who was most likely by temperament to propose the compromise and to carry it to Congress.While that speculation is only an interesting aside, the demonstration that the proposal could have been proposed at the Convention is vital to their important thesis of a southern effort to avoid northern secession.

Readers will also be interested in the portrait the book draws of Jefferson laboring carefully to exclude the right to property from his Declaration of Indepence, specifically to inspire the eventual liberation of slaves (albeit at a date too late to affect his own economic interests).

England & America Divided By This Issue.
Before the national issue in America in the middle 1800s concerning owning African slaves, a century earlier England had 15,000 of their own slaves from the West Indies.An application to Parliament in 1766 concerning their 'property' or 'commodity' was of great commercial conern to the slave owners who, no doubt, being British called them 'servants.'

"On June 22, 1772, nearly a century before the slaves were freed in America, a British judge, with a single decision, brought about the conditions that would end slavery in England.His decision would have monumental consequences in the American colonies, leading up to the American Revolution, the Civil War, and beyond.Because of this ruling, history would be forever changed.This book is about that decision and the role of slavery in the founding of the United States."In 1749, a nine-year-old boy growingup in a West African village was kidnapped and transported 'via the infamous Middle Passage' to America where he was bought by Charles Stewart of Norfolk, Virginia.He was a young Scottish-born merchant who was drawn to the tobacco industry and trained 'Somerset' as his own personal servant and business assistant, always at his side as a young man.After twenty years of co-dependence, Charles Stewart sailed to England with Somerset to help raise his sister's children after the death of her husband. The servant had never known such freedom as an adult and insinuated himself into "a black community of thousands of former slaves and free persons, mainly from the British West Indian colonies."

After two years in London, he left Stewart's home and refused to return.Since leaving his master, he had "insulted his person," caught and set to be deported to Jamaica to be sold as the slave he'd been for 23 years."Some London blacks were free.Some, like Somerset, were slaves to colonials living in London.Some had been freed by their masters.Some worked; some were beggars known as the "St. Giles Blackbirds."Some were popular artists and singers.Some were seamen or servants.Some had been runaways whose owners had given up looking for them."

Lord Mansfield, the chief justice of the Court of King's Bench, ruled in favor of Somerset who then became a free man.Stewart's lawyer had argued "that freeing the fourteen or fifteen thousand slaves in England would produce profound disruption and that the owners would suffer a loss of 700,000 life or an average of 50 life per slave."It is documented that Mansfield was prejudiced when he "decided that a slave could not be held captive by his master.This, he said, would effectively abolish slavery in England."In the end, James Somerset merged into the black community of London, but his case lived on.'Somerset never knew that his private quest for freedom was the spark that helped start the American Revolution and that has haunted the nation down to the present day."

Thus, the American Revolution when the southern states joined the northern colonies, to rebel against England's domination and the First Continental Congress was formed in 1774 by John Adams.Thomas Jefferson supported the end of international slave trade as distinct from slavery itself.By 1776, we had a United States Constitution which encompassed ten new states in the Northwest Territory, half slave, half free, "hardly a republic anyone could call united."The Articles of Confederation were adopted in November, 1777, with the help of John Rutledge of South Carolina and Thomas Burke of North Carolina."Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."

It took the War Between the States and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to settle the issue of slavery once and for all."Ultimarely, the Civil War resulted from the southern decision to try for a second time to preserve slavery by seceding from a government which challenged it.Secession from Britain had worked the first time, extending slavery an additional thirty years beyond its abolition in the British Empire.This dream of a souther slave empire fueled the secessionist movement. The dream ended at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in early July, 1863, the anniversary month of the Declaration of Independence.Of the nearly 180,000 black troops that served in the Union Army during the Civil War, at least 138,000 were former slaves."The end of the Civil War meant the end of formal slavery in the United States, but race subordination perpetuated the inferior position of the former slaves and their descendants for a century.

The "intent of the framers" of the Constitution was to preserve legal slavery
Slave Nation should be required reading in the areas of American history and constitutional law. To reply to one Amazon reviewer's comment, the British high court decision in the matter of James Somerset did not free the slaves in the colonies.It determined was that slavery was not lawful in Britain under the British Common Law because slavery was an unnatural and odious condition, and could only exist as a property right in jurisdictions where it had been legislated into existence. Because no law was ever enacted in Britain to create that right, James Somerset became free when he stepped onto British soil. However, the colonial legislatures had legalized slavery in their jurisdictions. This is the origin of the "sacred" principle of "state's rights"-- invented by the politicians who made the American Revolution and authored the Constitution in order to bring the southern colonies into the revolution and keep them as part of the new United States.

Slave Nation brilliantly and clearly describes the economics of slavery in colonial and post-Revolution America, and--very important--shows how the Constitutional Convention was held at the same time as the Continental Congress which was negotiating the terms of the Northwest Ordinance. That law determined the allocation new states to be created from the (then) Northwest Territory into free and slave state jurisdictions.

While Slave Nation is necessarily less detailed as it moves nearer in history from the time of the founders and framers, it certainly documents the truth that Lincoln so clearly admitted in his Second Inaugural Address: slavery was (and its relics are) a source of national guilt, not just a sin of the South. The revolutionary leaders from the North made a deliberate devil's bargain with the South as the incentive to a unified cause. That bargain created the principles held holy by the Confederate States in the 1860s and the Confederacy's conservative heirs in 2005.

The leaders and slaveholding class of the southern colonies in 1773, the year of the Somerset decision, had hoped for the integration of the colonies into Great Britain, with Americans taking their places in Parliament and the House of Lords. This is the meaning of "representation" in the phrase "no taxation without representation." After Somerset, that hope, if fulfilled, would have put the colonies under the Common Law, making slavery illegal. The Somerset ruling destroyed Southern hopes for union with Britain. It also, in part by describing slavery as an "odious" institution, warned of the eventual abolition of slavery in all the British colonies.Without Somerset (and the forces in Britain behind that view of slavery), the generally pro-Tory American South of the time would never have joined the Revolution.

Nor would the southern states have stayed in the United States without a constitution which protected their right to legislate the existence of slavery and defend the human property rights of slave owners. (An examination of the affirming decisions written in the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court as well as the writings showing the legal principles used to justify the secession of the states of the Confederacy in 1861 will show the "state's rights" element of the 1773 Somerset decision as a guiding common law principle permitting the states to create nationally enforceable property rights for human slavery.)

Slave Nation is an important book, long needed. It is a strong caution for those who might be misled by rhetoric which tries to sanctify the "intent of the framers" of the Constitution.The dark compromise made by politicians to protect their newborn and vulnerable country was a terrible price which was paid, not a guiding principle to be revered. ... Read more

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Provides supplementary instruction and increases students' chances for academic success by helping them get the most out of their textbooks.

Customer Reviews (6)

Incomplete and Biased
I thought this text presented a very anti-American picture. While America's history includes actions that would draw criticism if weighed against current values, I don't think it is appropriate to apply modern values when judging leaders of our past in a textbook. Additionally, I found the text's use of facts one-sided, as exemplified by the omission of the significant MAGIC transcripts and the part they played in the decision to relocate those of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast during WWII. The only good thing I can say about the text is I found it easy to read.

Be aware of history before speaking out
There is no such thing as a "facts and figures" kind of text book-- all texts books are subjective in what they choose to include and focus on and what they dont...and guess what, "facts and figures" can be made from false or misleading scholarship. The book in which you are being so critical of is written by the top historians in America!!! They have done more research than you could imagine...just because America's past is complicated and full of ugly events doesnt mean telling that story makes them really "left". It is our history and the sooner we own up to it the better off our country will be. Great book and great primary source use for the classroom- loved it!

History
Although I have no knowledge of this book yet.I have to say that History is a cultural study.There are facts and chronological events, but learning and teaching history should relate to the "Why?"

"Hunters will cease to be heroes when lions write history."

An interesting book
I found this book have a different point of view about history. It makes things is more interesting because there is something that doesn't just dreaming about us, Americans.

Maligning fantasy
Although I appreciate the easy reading narrative format, I am incensed about the blatant defamatory rhetoric of the authors against "white Americans" as exploiters of American pioneering. They portray "white Americans" as superhuman, immune from hardship and failure as they waltzed across the western frontier purposely exploiting everyone and everything in their path. In my opinion the authors exhibit a personal vindictiveness against "white Americans".
My understanding has always been that the West was hard won. "White Americans" ventured west searching for a chance to a better life just like any people do today.
The authors ramble on with out any footnotes to historical documents to support their claims. Without reference they contradict themselves from one paragraph to the next.
My greatest worry, this book is being used as a text book to teach students in a required American history course in California universities.
Which way America? ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Interesting book with some flaws
`Complicity With Evil', the title of this interesting and important work, is derived from the U.N's self-critique of its operations in the 1990s. In short this is LeBor's thesis, the U.N has paved a road to hell with good intentions in the Balkans, Rwanda and lately in Sudan. Many readers may find it troublesome that half the book is devoted to the Bosnian-Serb war, and principally to the massacre at Srbrenica in 1995. LeBor notes that he hopes to "provide a detailed template for understanding why the U.N has not stopped genocide in Darfur." This is a worthy endeavor, but it sheds light on the most significant problem with this book, it is far too detailed on the subject LeBor is most familiar with: Bosnia, and ignores the really massive genocides of the last thirty years, from Cambodia to Rwanda and Darfur, where millions of have died, rather than thousands, where whole peoples have been almost whiped off the earth.
The greatest contribution of this book is the analysis of the inner-workings of the U.N, its slow incompetence and competing interests that time and again frustrated any efforts by any parts of it to do anything in the conflicts discussed. However LeBor's claim to offer a new insight into the Balkan wars and the ethnic-cleansing(page 7) is inaccurate when it comes to framing the Bosnian-Serb conflict. LeBor's bias against the Serbs is shown again and again: "The Bosnian-Serbs killed their prisoners...many of the killers enjoyed their work" and "the killings of Srbrenica were not carried out by battle-enraged soldiers."(pages 117-118) "The Bosnian-Serbs proved less efficient in fighting proper soldiers than in shelling women and children.(page 129)"

The author asks rhetorically "where did this come from, this hatred of Bosnian Muslims." Perhaps LeBor should have asked the same questions to the Croats who elected Tudjman and admired their Nazi ancestors, the Ustasha, or the Bosnians who also ethnically cleansed all the Serbs from the Muslim parts of Bosnia. Unlike in the Holocaust, the hate in the Balkans never went one way. Boutros-Ghali was also correct in 1992 when he noted that there were "ten other places all over the world"(page 29) that had more problems than Sarajevo. One of those places was Sudan, another would soon be Rwanda.

Chapter 6 is devoted to Sudan and the following chapters detial the hypocrisy of the Arab member states of the U.N and the Islamic blocs support of the Sudanese genocide as well as the African blocs ignoring of the Rwandan genocide.

The book insinuates that the U.S has frustrated the U.N in its ability to confront genocide. However the fact is that there are more than 180 other member states of the U.N who ignored genocide in the last thirty years and two security council members, France and China, collaborated in the Rwandan and Sudanese genocides respectively.

The book's conclusion that "arguably the world is more, not less in need of the United Nations(page 265)" is hard to swallow in light of litany of evil that the book has described.

However the wealth of information provided by Lebor on obscure massacres, such as those carried out by Robert Mugabe in Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, the Egyptian massacre of Sudanese, and the thousands of Arab mujahadin that came to fight in Bosnia is important. But these interesting asides also illustrate the general lack of organization in the second part of the book. Unlike the first section on Bosnia, which is lucid, well written, and brilliantly told(if biased), the second seems to be a little cobbled together. In the final analysis, any book which takes the U.N to task for its failures is important and this book makes significant steps in the right direction.

Seth J. Frantzman

Mixed Bag
This book excites conflicting emotions and thoughts in me.On one hand, I have little use for the UN as a force for security in the world.Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Iraq, and Darfur have convinced me that if I ever was told that my life was in the hands of the UN, I should start writing out my last will and testament.

On the other hand, I spent six months in the former Yugoslavia in 1994 in the American contingent to the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR).I was located up in Zagreb, Croatia and only got into Sarajevo once.

But I feel that I had a pretty good handle on what was going on down there, and I don't totally agree with the author's take on it.LeBor pretty much scoffs at the "ancient hatreds" theory of the conflict, laying virtually all the blame at the door of Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic, and many other infamous Serbs.But while I am willing to say that Milosevic and his murderous little helpers bear the main share of the blame for what happened in Croatia, Bosnia, and later Kosovo, they couldn't have done what they did without some historical factors giving them material to work with.

Let's talk about the "ancient hatreds" problem first. LeBor doesn't explore why the Serbs would have been so susceptible to a leader like Milosevic.You don't have to go back to the medieval era to know why.You just have to go back to World War II.In that conflict, the Serbs suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis' minions in Yugoslavia, the Ustasha (fascist Croats) and worthies from the "Handschar Division" (a Bosniak division of the Waffen SS).It's too complicated to get into here, but with that sort of "not so ancient history," one can understand why the Serbs might be a little unhappy at being minorities in a Croatian state or in a Bosnian state dominated by Croats and Muslims.

Now, I stress, this in no way whatsoever excuses the conduct of the Serbs, but it does better explain it than the "monster plot" theory of the Balkan Wars (i.e. "but for the machinations of Slobodan Milosevic, everything would be right as rain in the Balkans").

... Read more

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The #1 New York Times bestselling author provides a shocking analysis of the crisis in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and the West.

Ahmed Rashid is “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter” (Christopher Hitchens). His unique knowledge of this vast and complex region allows him a panoramic vision and nuance that no Western writer can emulate.

His book Taliban first introduced American readers to the brutal regime that hijacked Afghanistan and harbored the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Now, Rashid examines the region and the corridors of power in Washington and Europe to see how the promised nation building in these countries has pro-gressed. His conclusions are devastating: An unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan, a renewed al’ Qaeda profiting from a booming opium trade, and a Taliban resurgence and reconquest. While Iraq continues to attract most of American media and military might, Rashid argues that Pakistan and Afghanistan are where the conflict will finally be played out and that these failing states pose a graver threat to global security than the Middle East.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and the crisis in Pakistan are only the beginning. Rashid assesses what her death means for the region and the future. Rashid has unparalleled access to the figures in this global drama, and provides up-to-the-minute analysis better than anyone else. Descent Into Chaos will do for Central Asia what Thomas Rick’s Fiasco did for Iraq — offer a blistering critique of the Bush administration and an impassioned call to correct our failed strategy in the region. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (59)

An Indispensible Guide to the AfPak Disaster
Rashid's "Descent into Chaos" is probably the most important and useful book on current events I've ever read. A highly-acclaimed journalist based in Pakistan, Rashid has been following the Taliban long before they became a household word in the United States, tracking them from their rude origins in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan through their various fortunes in Central Asia to the present day.

In this book Rashid focuses on the geopolitics of Pakistan and Afghanistan over the last 15 years, and the portrait that emerges is a damning one. Unfettered corruption, imperial hubris, belligerent adventurism by the US, and an utter failure of nation building by NATO, the EU, and UN have converged to produce a hotbed of terrorism that only worsens as the years grind on.

Rashid's knowledge of the region is immense. He has traveled extensively throughout Central Asia, sometimes at considerable risk to life and limb. Rashid's relationship with Hamid Karzai dates back more than twenty years, when he was still an unknown resistance organizer unable to enter his own country. He has served in an advisory capacity to several European missions, and has met one-on-one with most of the key players, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Musharraf.

Anyone who follows international news will be familiar with many of the key events chronicled in this book, but the extraordinary detail and the vividness of Rashid's writing organize a sometimes-confusing sequence of events into a coherent narrative that gives shape to some of the most urgent issues of our time.

Some of the questions I brought to this book were: What is Karzai's character really like? Is he corrupt, or a US puppet, or a decent ruler? Why did the US become so closely involved with Pakistan? What is the nature of Al Qaeda? Is it an actual organization, or is it more of an ideological banner? How does India's ongoing conflict with Pakistan relate to all this? Why did we not ally with democratic India instead of military dictatorship Pakistan? Is there an immanent danger of a Taliban takeover of nuclear-armed Pakistan?

This book answered these questions and many more. A primary focus is Pakistan's instrumental role in creating and sustaining the Taliban and Al Qaeda and the circumstances that produced it. Rashid argues that by allowing a short-sighted and ideologically-dominated Pentagon to absolutely dictate foreign policy in the region, the US pumped massive amounts of money into regional dictatorships in order to gain key strategic access to the region. By directing those funds overwhelmingly toward military aid, the US has essentially funded the Taliban, and by extension, Al Qaeda, throughout the Bush years. That this is so is widely corroborated by media accounts, and is not a matter of dispute by anyone but the most partisan ideologues.

Why have we been willing to act with such outrageous stupidity? Tragically, it looks like the Pentagon believed this to be the most effective way to avoid committing to nation-building in Afghanistan so it could free resources to conduct another, unrelated war in the region, the invasion of Iraq.

It was clear by 2006 that our dismal failure to commit to nation building in Afghanistan along with our unquestioning support of the duplicitous and murderous Musharraf encouraged the resurgence of the Taliban, and all but guaranteed that when we slink out of the region, we will leave it in the Taliban's hands, at least in part.

Instead of fighting our real and deadly enemy, Al Qaeda, we opted to fund their supporters by offering massive support to Pakistan's ISI. Throughout the region we've funded mass murderers, tyrants, and drug-dealing warlords, rather than risk the political fallout associated with building roads, hospitals, and schools. Why this has been our policy, and to what end we chose to ignore a murderous and dangerous foe in order to invade Iraq, is anyone's guess. However, our commitments have not gone unnoticed in the region, and has dramatically increased hatred of the United States, which is correctly perceived as uninterested in the welfare of the great masses of people, who are to be readily sacrificed to brutal thugs on the altar of political expediency.

Post-9/11 policy directed by the Neocon Bush White House emerges from this book as a monstrous parade of abuses, lies, unbridled arrogance, catastrophic shortsightedness, unilateralism, and a bestial disregard for the welfare of the victims of oppressive regimes from Turkmenistan to Uzbekistan to the FATA, where Al Qaeda and the Taliban operate with impunity. All this, at a cost to US taxpayers that exceeds the inflation-adjusted expenditure of World War II. It is perhaps the greatest policy failure in US history, the kind of debacle that ends empires, and there is no end in sight.

More LikeAfghanistan and Pakistan
Let me begin by saying that I liked Descent into Chaos by Ahmed Rashid because it provided a useful and readable of the events surrounding Pakistan and Afghanistan leading up to and post 9-11 and the United States war there. However, the book is labeled as a discussion of the failure of nation-building in Central Asia. Most of the chapters revolve around Afghanistan and Pakistan with a brief word tied in occasionally about the other countries. The point that the fates of all of these places is interconnected because they deal with many of the same problems of radical extremism, ruling corruption, and bad economic and educational conditions, but I would've wanted to hear a little bit more about the other countries of the Central Asia regions he discusses. I was also concerned when he referred to Harmid Karzai as his good friend in the first few pages of the book that it was going to be a Karzai love piece...by taking care to criticize Karzai for failings at several points he alleviated those concerns. Overall a good book on the nuts and bolts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but you'll need another book to dig further into the larger Central Asia region.

Ahmed Rashid the Lion Heart
I am not going to say much about the book apart from telling you that if you are someone who prides him/herself on being well informed and especially if you are from the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan or India then you would be making a huge blunder in not reading this book not to mention owning a copy.The contents are chilling, mind boggling and will leave you like the sheeted dead squeaking and gibbering ere the mighty Ceasar fell.The import of my message is:Even in today's dollar driven world, there are still people like Ahmed Rashid who put their life on the line everyday by simply doing their work.I am from India and I really dont know why the ISI havent either assasinated Ahmed Rashid or atleast maimed him so that he cant continue his work.God forbid this should happen but read the book and you will find out that the man has earned the ire of the ISI.The amazing thing is he lives in Lahore!!!He is truly one Lion Hearted guy.His pen is startlingly unbiased and his passion shines forth as a truly concerned citizen of the region and not just Pakistan.His love for Afghanistan seems very evident in fact.A truly altruistic man, a Pakistani I lift my hat off to, a man I would love to meet, shake his hand, ask his autograph and tell him that night and day I pray for his safety and the continuation of his work.God bless you Ahmed Rashid.

The frustrations of Afghanistan
This importantbook has recently been added to the U.S. Marine Corps Commandants list as required reading for senior officers. It is a hard but needed read. You will soon find yourself emeshed in tribal lore, corruption and desperation. But that comes with the territory. Most people will not be able to read every page with understanding but by the time you put this book down you will know how desperate the situation is in Afghanistan and how absolutely fruitless it is for us to be trying to establish a Western Type goverent there. Many will say it is too harsh on the Bush Administration but facts are facts and this author is an expert on this area. Don't fool yourself this is a hard read but one well worth the effort.

Descent Into Chaos
Although chaos may be an apt description of the subject of this book, South and Central Asia, it also characterizes the book itself, which is a disorganized mishmash of truth, obfuscation, conjecture and falsehoods. Divided haphazardly into four parts there is no unifying theme within each of the book's separate sections. While easy to follow the author hasn't constructed his book well to support his argument that Afghanistan needs a Marshall Plan-like investment to bring peace and prosperity to the world.

The author presents all of the stories of the Afghan War that everyone is familiar with, the rise and fall of the Talib tribes, occupation and withdrawal of Russian forces in Afghanistan, the Daniel Perl beheading, the Abu Grab and rendition scandals, the Afghan elections, etc., with no more depth than a newspaper article. He doesn't make any attempt to explain the region in regards to the dynamics of the groups that make up South and Central Asia. He doesn't explain the people of Afghanistan well, whose hearts and minds he wants the west to win. All of the events are presented to validate certain preconceived notions supporting US intervention. The author is careful not to offend these supporters.

The book is frequently contradictory. In an earlier chapter he explains how great the Afghan elections were only to criticize them as corrupt towards the end of the book. He applauds the initial US invasion of Afghanistan citing its cost as under a billion dollars but then cites figures hundreds of times more later in the book. I noticed this a lot. When not contradicting himself the author sometimes makes stuff up. He recounts a meeting with a State Department official who he asked for a comment about Donald Rumsfeld's announcement of Afghan troop withdrawals. He said the official looked up, and from the one look he writes several hundred words of reaction. I don't object to the use of unnamed sources, but I do object to putting words into the mouths of unnamed sources.

I'm not sure if there is a language or translation problem but the author consistently relates events as if they happened chronologically when the later events actually happened years before. The oddest occurrence of this is when he says he met a man who died fighting. While that particular passage was odd, most of the time the author was arguing a cause and effect relationship, saying that later events caused the former events.

The book is loose with it's facts. The author identifies the group that hijacked a Pakistani airliner. After identifying them, he continues to refer to them as Al Queda. They are not. He does the same thing when identifying the group arrested for plotting to attack a US military installation in Germany.

I think the book fails for the most part because the author isn't able to understand US foreign policy or consider that US interests are not the same as Pakistani interests. The author is a Pakistani. Pakistan is a major trading partner with Afghanistan. The more money that pours into Afghanistan, the more Pakistan benefits. The book is mostly whining and complaining, not valid reasons why the US-Pakistani interests should align. ... Read more

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The United Nations Development Programme is the central network co-ordinating the work of the United Nations in over 160 developing countries. This book provides the first authoritative and accessible history of the Programme and its predecessors. Based on the findings of hundreds of interviews and archives in more than two dozen countries, Craig Murphy traces the history of the UNDP's organizational structure and mission, its relationship to the multilateral financial institutions, and the development of its doctrines. He argues that the principles on which the UNDP was founded remain as relevant in a world divided by terrorism as they were in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, as are the fundamental problems that have plagued the Programme from its origin, including the opposition of traditionally isolationist forces in the industrialized world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Academic History of th UN Development Programme
This work is a product of two years of research and interviews conducted by Professor Craig Murphy of the University of Massachusetts Boston and formerly of Wellesley College, who was hired by Kofi Annan to write a academically driven history of the UN Development Programme. The book is written as a work directed for academia and graduate students of international relations - which is reflected in the belabored anecdotal explanations of the programme's past that is laced with high-flying jargon.

As one reads this somewhat pedantic book on UNDP, one has to concede that Murphy has put a considerable amount of energy into writing this book. However, it seems that when he wrote this book, he neglected to take the time to put a number of critical issues into context at a number of junctures. For instance, when he explained the divergence of the states who would become the "developed" nations of the world and those who would be labeled "developing", he gave a rather haphazard explanation of why the divergence took place other than to say that the West industrialized and the rest did not. Any knowledgeable and conscious thinker would know that this is not the answer or at least not a complete picture of our modern history.

The writing is hindered by the floral language used by Murphy and nonchalant style of his writing. Had he been more careful about writing for a general audience, his work would be received by his readers with more sympathy and approval for a piece of important history on the UNDP.

This book is worth reading, but one must be incisive to get to heart of his message about the work of the UNDP. It's also important to consider his ideological stance on the whole matter. As someone who has studied under him, it can be said that he is highly supportive of the mission of the UNDP and the UN in general. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first major exploration of the United Nations Security Council's part in addressing the problem of war, both civil and international, since 1945. Both during and after the Cold War the Council has acted in a limited and selective manner, and its work has sometimes resulted in failure. It has not been--and was never equipped to be--the center of a comprehensive system of collective security. However, it remains the body charged with primary responsibility for international peace and security. It offers unique opportunities for international consultation and military collaboration, and for developing legal and normative frameworks. It has played a part in the reduction in the incidence of international war in the period since 1945.

The United Nations Security Council and War examines the extent to which the work of the UN Security Council, as it has evolved, has or has not replaced older systems of power politics and practices regarding the use of force. Its starting point is the failure to implement the UN Charter scheme of having combat forces under direct UN command. Instead, the Council has advanced the use of international peacekeeping forces; it has authorized coalitions of states to take military action; and it has developed some unanticipated roles such as the establishment of post-conflict transitional administrations, international criminal tribunals, and anti-terrorism committees.

The book, bringing together distinguished scholars and practitioners, draws on the methods of the lawyer, the historian, the student of international relations, and the practitioner. It begins with an introductory overview of the Council's evolving roles and responsibilities. It then discusses specific thematic issues, and through a wide range of case studies examines the scope and limitations of the Council's involvement in war. It offers frank accounts of how belligerents viewed the UN, and how the Council acted and sometimes failed to act. The appendices provide comprehensive information--much of it not previously brought together in this form--of the extraordinary range of the Council's activities.

This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. ... Read more

Product Description
Now ratified by 73 countries from every geographical region, representing every stage of economic development and every major legal and economic system, the United Nations Convention on Contracts of the International Sales of Goods (CISG) has changed the way international sales contracts are drafted and resulting disputes settled. In the decade since the Third Edition of Professor John Honnold's classic commentary, there has been vast growth in the number of decisions from tribunals around the world which have applied the CISG, an explosion of new scholarly analyses of the Convention, and remarkable developments in the research infrastructure that permits access to those materials. These developments have raised many new issues, and have deepened our understanding of (or, in some instances, effectively resolved) old ones. The remarkable progress of this epoch-making uniform international law calls for an updated edition of Professor Honnold's treatise.This Fourth Edition retains the original's incisive article-by-article commentary, as well as its insistence on how the parties' duties and the corresponding remedies need to work together (like scissor-blades, to quote Professor Honnold's vivid simile) and the many concrete examples that illustrate and test the Convention's response to problems that arise in international trade. It deals definitively with the crucial aspects of sales contracts, including the following, taking fully into account the myriad variations among distinct legal systems:delivery of the goods and handing over of documents; conformity of the goods and third party claims; remedies for breach of contract by the seller; payment of the price; taking delivery; remedies for breach of contract by the buyer; anticipatory breach and instalment contracts; damages; interest; exemptions; effects of avoidance; and preservation of the goodsconclusion ( formation) of contracts. In explicit recognition of Professor Honnold's unique understanding of the Convention's development and the issues that occupied those who drafted and finalized the text, the substantial new textual material incorporated into this new edition is set in bold italics, allowing the reader to distinguish the work of the editor from text preserved from earlier editions, and thus identifying the material that carries Professor Honnold's special authority.Over three decades Professor Honnold's almost intuitive grasp of the instrument has guided governments, tribunals, scholars and practitioners towards an enlightened international understanding of the treaty. This new edition provides tribunals, practitioners, and scholars with even more invaluable insights into the meaning of each article of the Convention. The hundreds of decisions cited, many of them dating from the last few years, will continue to influence the promotion of international sales contract uniformity, encourage the settlement of disputes, and help to reinforce consensus in the application of the Convention. ... Read more