Book Description
“It’s hard to imagine any American reading this book and not seeing his country in a new, and deeply troubling, light.”—The New York Times Book Review
The United States has repeatedly asserted its right to intervene militarily against “failed states” around the globe. In this much-anticipated follow-up to his international bestseller Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky turns the tables, showing how the United States itself shares features with other failed states—suffering from a severe “democratic deficit,” eschewing domestic and international law, and adopting policies that increasingly endanger its own citizens and the world. Exploring the latest developments in U.S. foreign and domestic policy, Chomsky reveals Washington’s plans to further militarize the planet, greatly increasing the risks of nuclear war. He also assesses the dangerous consequences of the occupation of Iraq; documents Washington’s self-exemption from international norms, including the Geneva conventions and the Kyoto Protocol; and examines how the U.S. electoral system is designed to eliminate genuine political alternatives, impeding any meaningful democracy.
Forceful, lucid, and meticulously documented, Failed States offers a comprehensive analysis of a global superpower that has long claimed the right to reshape other nations while its own democratic institutions are in severe crisis. Systematically dismantling the United States’ pretense of being the world’s arbiter of democracy, Failed States is Chomsky’s most focused—and urgent—critique to date.
Customer Reviews:
Very good analysis of the catastrophic U.S. foreign policy.......2007-09-19
This is my first Chomsky book. It is quite clear he is an academic and able to say the same thing in different ways (at least through out the first half of the book) but the context is nevertheless good and important- as a nation, we are "bullies" and it is ok for us to break laws but not for everyone else. He gives specific examples like treaties that have been violated and UN resolutions that we vetoed and violated too in order to protect and pursue our national security interests. And given the new generation of politicians- neoliberals and neoconservatives- it is nothing new when it comes to the Iraq War- It's all in the name of national security. We really don't care about democracy in the Middle East only that our thirst for oil is met.
The second part of the the book he clarifies the context and the meaning of the failed states. He delineates several examples after World War II in which we meddled into foreign country affairs and created "failed states"- from countries in Central America, South America, and the Middle East. Now because of our corrupt, immoral, and greedy influence, we are now more than ever looking like a failed state.
I thought he made several very good points but it was nothing new to me given that I have already read various books relating to U.S. foreign policy already. The only criticism I had was that it seemed redundant at times. Overall though, very good and recommended.
The bias of a Chompsky.......2007-09-10
Mr. Chompsky never fails me. Whenever I want to read something that makes me dislike America, I can count on Noam. His failure to be honest in this book is apparent from about page 5 onward. His positive reviews are pretty much canned and produced by the Jim Jomes style followers he courts on college campuses. I give this book only 2 stars. One star because he uses a few big words and another star because in actually writing a book and marketing it, he is contributing to capitalism. Other than that, his rhetoric is tedous.
FAILED STATES: THE ABUSE OF POWER AND THE ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY.......2007-08-31
THIS WELL-RESPECTED AUTHOR HAS DONE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE A GREAT FAVOR WITH THIS EASILY READ, WELL DOCUMENTED BOOK. TO ADMIT THAT WE, AS AMERICANS, HAVE INDULGED IN AND ALLOWED SUCH ABUSES OF POWER IS HUMILIATING. BUT WITH THIS AWARENESS, THERE IS HOPE WE CAN CHANGE COURSE AND MOVE AWAY FROM BEING A "FAILED STATE."
Great.......2007-08-06
Well researched, well thought out. Another fine book. I will use it with my history students.
an uneasy reality.......2007-07-21
Reading Chomsky is like being sprayed in the face with a garden hose. Just as there is no question that you are now soaking wet, there is no question about what our country has become. Noam Chomsky is an excellent author who manages to get his point across with a good dose of truth and factual evidence. There is no denying what he says and it makes you fear the path our nation's leaders have chosen despite the wishes of the citizens. The author demonstrates a real need for change and gives you ideas on how to effect those changes. A quick read loaded with fact and not all that preachy. A good book to be sure.
Average customer rating:
- Calculations are only as good as your numbers
- Pants on fire?
- Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
- Very Interesting
- History as Science Fiction
|
History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
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ASIN: 2913621058 |
Book Description
Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.
I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.
Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.
Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.
I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.
This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.
Book Description
Written by renowned international relations expert Joseph S. Nye, this lively book gives readers the background in history and political concepts they need to understand the issues facing our world today: the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, and much more.
Origins of the Great Twentieth-Century Conflicts; Balance of Power and World War I; The Failure of Collective Security and World War II; The Cold War; Intervention, Institutions, and Regional Conflicts; Interdependence and Globalization; The Information Age; A New World Order?
Anyone interested in understanding international relations today.
Customer Reviews:
Good Detail of Topics Relating to International Politics.......2006-03-01
I had to purchase this book as a second book for a class I had taken. This book helped cover many of the topics I had to study and this book did a better job of describing several topics relating to nationalism, imperialism history of international politics, foreign policies, international law and organization and human factors in international politics. I would recommend this book to anyone who is trying to learn the basics or even get more indepth details on certain topics of international politics.
An interesting book indeed.......2003-12-22
An interesting book indeed, written by an excellent writer who took me in a journey through history beginning with the Peloponnesian war and passing through world war one and two and the cold war after that, and ending with the new world order.
The book starts with the two views of the anarchic politics ( Realism & Liberalism ) and a very wise explanation for both of them, and I liked the way the writer analyzed the two world wars and their reasons and I agree with him about the inevitability part as I believe that the war wasn't inevitable but I quote him by saying "Ironically the belief that war is inevitable played a major role in causing it", and also the part about ethics and morality is very interesting and I liked what the French diplomat said when he was asked about what's moral and his answer was "what's moral is whatever is good for France", and also the part about counterfactuals was very exciting.
I don't agree with the writer about some points concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict but the book as a whole is a very good one.
I agree with the "back to the future" theory in some points as all I see now is "the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accepts what they have to accept".
I'll quote him again to end my review by saying "Has global society made war socially and morally unthinkable? We have to hope so, because the next hegemonic war would probably be the last".
Excellent book :).......2003-12-08
The basis for "Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History" is, as the author explains in the preface, a course on international conflicts in the modern world he taught for a long time in Harvard. Nye says that the aim of the book is "to introduce students to the complexities of international politics by giving them a good grounding in the traditional realist theory before turning to liberal and constructivist approaches that became more prominent after the Cold War". I believe he excels at doing exactly that...
I found the book very interesting, and full of examples taken from history that made the concepts easier to grasp. Moreover, it takes into account the three levels of causation: the individual, the state and the international system. It also includes suggested reading material, that allows the reader to delve deeper in those subjects she/he finds more interesting...
The book is very well organized. It was a foreword, a preface, 9 chapters and an index. Each chapter deals with a main theme, and some related topics. The themes of the chapters are:
chapter 1:"Is there an enduring logic of conflict in world politics?";
chapter 2: "Origins of the great 20th century conflicts";
chapter 3: "Balance of power and World War I";
chapter 4: "The failure of collective security and World War II";
chapter 5: "The Cold War";
chapter 6: "Intervention, institutions and regional and ethnic conflicts";
chapter 7: "Globalization and interdependence";
chapter 8: "The information revolution, transnational actors, and the diffusion of power";
chapter 9: "A new world order?".
All in all, I strongly recommend this book to those interested in international relations... I think the author was successful in doing what he set out to do: he didn't want to give all the answers, he merely tried to help the readers to look for them. In his own words: "provide our students with conceptual tools that will help them shape their own answers as the future unfolds".
On the whole, a keeper :) Enjoy it !!!
Superb, Post 9-11 Update, Excellent Adult Foundation.......2003-01-11
First, it is vital for prospective buyers to understand that the existing reviews are three years out of date--this is a five-star tutorial on international relations that has been most recently updated after 9-11. If I were to recommend only two books on international relations, for any adult including nominally sophisticated world travelers, this would be the first book; the second would be Shultz, Godson, & Quester's wonderful edited work, "Security Studies for the 21st Century."
I really want to stress the utility of this work to adults, including those like myself who earned a couple of graduate degrees in the last century (smile). I was surprised to find no mention of the author's stellar service as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council--not only has he had full access to everything that can be known by secret as well as non-secret means, but he has kept current, and this undergraduate and affordable paperback was a great way for me--despite the 400+ books I've read (most of them reviewed on Amazon.com) in the past four plus years--to come up to speed on the rigorous methodical scholarly understanding of both historical and current theories and practices in international relations. This book is worth anyone's time, no matter how experienced or educated.
Each chapter has a very satisfactory mix of figures, maps, chronologies, and photos--a special value is a block chart showing the causes for major wars or periods of conflict at the three levels of analysis--international system, national, and key individual personalities, and I found these quite original and helpful.
Excellent reference and orientation work. Took five hours to read, with annotation--this is not a mind-glazer, it's a mind-exerciser.
excellent intro book to International Affairs.......1999-11-11
One of the few textbooks I truly enjoyed, Nye's Understanding International Conflicts was a clear, easy-to-read, and yet insightful book. Its focus is on the three levels of influence on a state's behavior: the interstate system, intrastate politics, and individual. It is one of the few entry-level IA books to discuss the effect of personality on the actions of a state. Even in my graduate-level seminars and papers, I found it to be useful.
Book Description
This Foreign Affairs bestseller from MSNBC terrorism expert Walid Phares allows a frightening look into the future of jihad. Phares--who has served as an expert with the Justice Department, briefed the Defense and State Departments, and testified to Congress--shows that ther has been a fundamental misunderstanding about al Qaeda's ultimate goal in the West and what victory means to jihadists. Future Jihad shows how our defenses have been infiltrated; identifies the future generation of home-grown terrorists; and points the way for America to win the ideological war at the heart of jihad.
Customer Reviews:
If you want to see how they are going to destroy us..........2007-09-03
Read on... This is a must for anyone who wants to see how they are destroying us, and what they intend. It is an absolute must for every American, Canadian, European, Latino.... this is a war of culture, religion, and people versus people. We are in the last stage of war, where one people rise up against another irrespective of nation, politics, philosophy, resources or technology. It is an all out war to the death of one, or the other. There is no compromise, there is no middle ground, there is no peace. There is only death or surrender.
A must read!!.......2007-09-03
This book is a must read for anyone who is a true student of counterterrorism studies. Well writen, a real eye opener!
Informative.......2007-08-11
The book provides historical prospective and covers current Jihad plans and tactics. It is a read that all Americans should read to understand our current Terrorist situation and challenge. I highly recommend it for all Americans, especially our elected officials who are invovled in protecting American.
Essential Primer for Dealing with Global Jihad.......2007-07-03
Lecturing and writing about world jihad in the 1990s when hardly anyone was listening, Walid Phares, who hails from Lebanon and who fled the violence and found exile in the United States in 1990, has written the essential primer in order for America, and the Western free world, to repel global jihad. He shows with mastery that jihad is not some recent crackpot idea that Osama Bin Laden cooked up in the last decade or so. To the contrary, jihad is part of a master plan that was set into motion when the Islamacists conquered the Medina back in the Eighth Century. Phares goes into the mind of the jihadist and shows how his jihad, currently sponsored by Saudi-funded Wahabism, is a long-term goal, namely, to make the entire world beholden to strict Muslim Law, Sharia. The tenacity and Machiavellian techniques employed are blood-curdling. After analyzing the jihadi master plan, Phares explains America's denial and complacency, characteristics that will result in our demise if we don't wake up soon. This book is that wakeup call. It is the definitive primer to dealing with global jihad and mates perfectly with the narrative of 9/11, Lawrence Wright's masterpiece The Looming Tower.
Puts It All Together.......2007-06-26
Not a difficult read...yet puts together in historical context the development of the different lines of Islam, their internecine conflicts, leading to the state of Jihad today and for the future.
If you ever wondered how the Grand Mufti could have become an SS General in Berlin, or how "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" has led to chaos in the modern world, this book will make sense to you. It will help you understand what world Jihad is all about, and why a united Muslim front is difficult to obtain.
Most highly recommended for serious student of modern geopolitics!
Book Description
"One of the great political works of our time, . . . the twentieth-century successor to John Stuart Mill's essay, 'On Liberty.'"—Henry Hazlitt, Newsweek
"A reflective, often biting, commentary on the nature of our society and its dominant thought by one who is passionately opposed to the coercion of human beings by the arbitrary will of others, who puts liberty above welfare and is sanguine that greater welfare will thereby ensue."—Sidney Hook, New York Times Book Review
In this classic work Hayek restates the ideals of freedom that he believes have guided, and must continue to guide, the growth of Western civilization. Hayek's book, first published in 1960, urges us to clarify our beliefs in today's struggle of political ideologies.
Customer Reviews:
Philosophy - Libertarian perspective .......2007-06-18
This review will be mostly technical in nature. Some good reviews already exist that discuss the overview of the material.
1. Part 1 The Value of Freedom, 8 chapters.
2. Part 2 Freedom and the Law, 8 chapters
3. Part 3 Freedom in the Welfare State, 8 chapters
4. Postscript: Why I am not a Conservative, 13 pages
5. End Notes = 100 pages
6. Analytical Table of Contents (valuable for reference), listing sub-topics by page number = 7 pages
7. Name Index = 10 pages
8. Subject Index = 16 pages.
My Remarks: this is philosophy of government, plus some historical development, plus economic theory-and-practice. It is a rather tough read, exact logic and completed thoughts until each point is carefully constucted and then commented on.
There are many quote-able passages, and the exhaustive referencing confirms the scholarly style.
The print is small: 42 lines per page, 17 characters per inch.
So, the 3-stars are given so as to ward-off readers that are looking for libertarian views of a popluar nature. Though the reading is somewhat hard, the individual cases discussed make this a perfect source for a dedicated libertarian to reference.
The greatest political philosophy book of the 20th century.......2007-05-27
This is the most consistent level headed book of political philosophy I have read. The first section in particular has a new fascinating idea on almost every page. Hayek was not a libertarian. His thought allowed a fair amount of elbow room for public policy as the third section will show. I also found his postscript "Why I'm not a conservative" very interesting.
Individual Freedom.......2007-05-24
Frederich August Hayek
"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom."
"Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom."
"If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this justly and equitably."
Excellent book service.......2007-02-20
The book came very quickly and was packaged well. Service excellent. Book was in excellent condition, even better than advertised. I appreciate the professional service.
Hayek--Orwell's Mentor.......2006-01-02
At the height of socialist popularism in England, cir. 1944, George Orwell, a leading proponent of socialism, believing in its promises as did many,if not most of Eurpose's leading intellectuals and politicians, wrote a review of Hayek's famous book, "The Road to Serfdom." Orwell wrote the review in the "Observer," London April 9,1944.
Hayek, mentions this fact as a footnote in chapter 17 of his classic book, "The Constitution of Liberty" published in 1960, as evidence of the disillusionment of socialist intellectuals, when they were confronted with the observation that individualism and socialism were mutually exclusive. Those same intellectuals had not accepted the proposition when advanced by Karl Mannheim in his book, "Man and Society in an Age of Reconstrucion" (1940). Mannheim had been a long opponent of socialism, but Orwell had only been converted after being exposed to "The Road to Serfdom." By 1960, when Orwell had become a world renowned author and staunch opponent of Big Brother doublespeak, Hayek recognized that the political proponents of socialsm which was dying as a political ideal, were now introducing the concept of the welfare state.
While virtually everyone alive today have been effected by Orwell's works and his prescient warnings about Big Brother, how many of us are aware of Hayek's infulence on him?
"The Constitution of Liberty" provides its readers with an enormous wealth of knowledge, of which this one footnote is only a small example. Each reader is bound to be effected in one way or another by the knowledge imparted to them, and this is one of the main lessons to be learned about "liberty" which requires the "rule of Law" to exist in today's society, but that Rule of Law must be understood. The failure of today's inteligencia is to fail to fully comprehend the meaning of liberty and its necessity in a world full of confusion from the confrontation of competing civilizations.
Unfortunately, Hayek is no longer alive to help guide us through the new millenium. Fortunately, he has left us a large volume of work, perhaps more relevant today than it was when written years ago. While "The Constitution of Liberty" is voluminous in itself, it should be kept as a reference book. Hayek's other works, "The Road to Serfdom" and his last published volume, "Fatal Conceit-the Evils of Socialism" published in 1980 is a magnificent continuation of Hayek's life long discertation on the evolution of mankind's growth from a tribal, familial society which did not require man to understand or protect Liberty, to a group of city-states that prospered because of the Liberties protected in Athens, but only moderately understood, so that such a great and wise philosopher as Aristotle would believe that freedom could only exist as far as a man could yell.
Hayek's understanding that Western Civilization has prospered from individualism, that it has grown and prospered from the freedom to travel, to trade, to exchnge property, material, real and intellectual. He explains why man must be humble, that humans progress from trial and error, not from conceited belief that one way or another way is correct. That to be free and liberated is to be free to make mistakes and government should exist to protect individuals'rights to make mistakes while they attempt to profit in their own ideals and beliefs.
Book Description
What does economics have to do with law? Suppose legislators propose that armed robbers receive life imprisonment. Editorial pages applaud them for getting tough on crime. Constitutional lawyers raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. Legal philosophers ponder questions of justness. An economist, on the other hand, observes that making the punishment for armed robbery the same as that for murder encourages muggers to kill their victims. This is the cut-to-the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting.
Drawing on numerous commonsense examples, in addition to his extensive knowledge of Chicago-school economics, David D. Friedman offers a spirited defense of the economic view of law. He clarifies the relationship between law and economics in clear prose that is friendly to students, lawyers, and lay readers without sacrificing the intellectual heft of the ideas presented. Friedman is the ideal spokesman for an approach to law that is controversial not because it overturns the conclusions of traditional legal scholars--it can be used to advocate a surprising variety of political positions, including both sides of such contentious issues as capital punishment--but rather because it alters the very nature of their arguments. For example, rather than viewing landlord-tenant law as a matter of favoring landlords over tenants or tenants over landlords, an economic analysis makes clear that a bad law injures both groups in the long run. And unlike traditional legal doctrines, economics offers a unified approach, one that applies the same fundamental ideas to understand and evaluate legal rules in contract, property, crime, tort, and every other category of law, whether in modern day America or other times and places--and systems of non-legal rules, such as social norms, as well.
This book will undoubtedly raise the discourse on the increasingly important topic of the economics of law, giving both supporters and critics of the economic perspective a place to organize their ideas.
Download Description
What does economics have to do with law? Suppose legislators propose that armed robbers receive life imprisonment. Editorial pages applaud them for getting tough on crime. Constitutional lawyers raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. Legal philosophers ponder questions of justness. An economist, on the other hand, observes that making the punishment for armed robbery the same as that for murder encourages muggers to kill their victims. This is the cut-to-the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting. Drawing on numerous commonsense examples, in addition to his extensive knowledge of Chicago-school economics, David D. Friedman offers a spirited defense of the economic view of law. He clarifies the relationship between law and economics in clear prose that is friendly to students, lawyers, and lay readers without sacrificing the intellectual heft of the ideas presented. Friedman is the ideal spokesman for an approach to law that is controversial not because it overturns the conclusions of traditional legal scholars--it can be used to advocate a surprising variety of political positions, including both sides of such contentious issues as capital punishment--but rather because it alters the very nature of their arguments. For example, rather than viewing landlord-tenant law as a matter of favoring landlords over tenants or tenants over landlords, an economic analysis makes clear that a bad law injures both groups in the long run. And unlike traditional legal doctrines, economics offers a unified approach, one that applies the same fundamental ideas to understand and evaluate legal rules in contract, property, crime, tort, and every other category of law, whether in modern day America or other times and places--and systems of non-legal rules, such as social norms, as well.
Customer Reviews:
Layman Introduction to Economics of Law.......2007-08-04
Law's Order is an introduction of applying economics analysis on laws for common layman. Comparing with the other textbooks on economics analysis of law, Law's Order is less academic. In Law's Order, David Friedman firstly introduces daily life situations, such as "marriage, sex and babies", "tort", "antitrust", etc..., and apply the economic analysis on these situations and discuss how the law can help these situations attain a better result according to economics analysis. The reader should find that the Law is more or less economics efficiency. Although this is not a textbook but it is suitable to be used as a textbook on Law and Economics.
chris tam
hong kong
Enlightening, Fun & Important Read.......2006-05-27
It's a dense and fun work in a very interesting and important topic. It was my first book on law&economics, and I am very satisfied with it. I highly recommend it especially for those who love economics--you will learn fascinating insights. The chapters on tort and criminal law were my favorites. David Friedman is a great teacher, in print or talk (if you haven't seen him speak, don't miss a chance).
Should Voodoo practice be punishable?.......2004-01-06
As soon as I was finished with this book, I turned around and read it again. Friedman is picking up a theme that he introduced towards the end of the revised Machinery of Freedom, in which he states that in order to understand certain mechanisms, we must undertake the economic analysis of law. This discipline was generally considered to have been initiated by Ronald Coase and taken up and popularized by Richard Posner. Friedman's own work advances the study into areas of law that relate to the internet and computers.
This particular book, however, concentrates on advancing the work done by Posner to a wider audience. Posner's perspective is that of a very, very talented legal theorist attempting to apply economic tools to law; Friedman's is that of a very talented economist applying his own discipline to law.
The complete book is available online; in fact the book was intended to be an off-line anchor for a number of other links. Friedman does away with references to landmark cases, mathematics, and other references in the book, and moves them all to the online version. While it seemed like a good idea at thte time, I ultimately found it to be annoying.
I would say that this is the first book I've read that connects technical economic ideas - like efficiency, the Coase Theorem, externalities, and rent-seeking - to the real world with practical applications.
Like whether or not voodoo practice should be punishable as attempted murder (huh? Read the book - this and other stories are both entertaining and enlightening).
interesting read, annoying footnote approach.......2003-08-07
Liked the book. But instead of using citations and footnotes, he uses icons that point to his web site. This is supposed to be make it easier to read, but it's very annoying. I hope this doesn't become a trend.
Nice, but a little bit too biased.......2003-07-14
David Friedman is anarcho-capitalist who teaches economics to law students. This book, written mainly for laymen, shows both sides of him. He explains the relevant ideas from economics quite well and applies them to legal questions. He argues that even apart from moral arguments, many laws can be justified by economic efficiency.
The logic is something like this: Stealing is a process where someone takes something away from someone without the consent of that person. One loses, one gains. So what's the problem? The problem is that the thief spends energy on stealing, the potential victims on securing themselves and to some degree they produce less, since they may not keep everything. Therefore stealing is inefficient in a certain sense. Many laws can be justified on such grounds.
He also describes the legal system of ancient Iceland, a system that worked without government. Inspired by that, Friedman proposes some rather radical ideas like allowing murderes to buy themselves free. It also happens that the more radical ideas are the ones with the worst arguments in favor of them. He makes some rather strange assumptions (like that murderes are able to pay millions of dollars...).
The book is clearly biased, but it is well written and explains economic ideas quite nicely. It's also pobably the only book on law and economics that is written for laymen.
Book Description
The Spirit of the Laws is without question one of the central texts in the history of eighteenth-century thought, yet there has been no complete scholarly English language edition since 1750. This lucid translation renders Montesquieu's problematic text newly accessible to a fresh generation of students, helping them to understand why Montesquieu was such an important figure in the early enlightenment and why The Spirit of the Laws was such an influence on those who framed the American Constitution. Fully annotated, this edition focuses on Montesquieu's use of sources and his text as a whole, rather than on those opening passages toward which critical energies have traditionally been devoted.
Customer Reviews:
Iran.......2006-03-28
This is a good book which gives you first hand impression about how laws are design by authority.
Excellent review for our present members of congress and anyone with the interest to put in the time........2005-09-08
This is very interesting about Montesquieu. Every member of congress should read it and take it to heart. It appears that the majority of our founding fathers did read it and take it very seriously. It is something that all Americans who are interested in our government should consider reading. It is amazingly quite easy to read though, I would suggest having a good dictionary handy while reading it. Some of our members of congress I just do not believe would understand, even if someone was reading the dictionary for them. That is a sad commentary about the facts we all must face, however.
Not the great book people seem to think it is........2004-12-20
This is a book that could (should?) have faded into history without being a great loss to the world. Yes, there are a few interesting bits of political philosophy, but they're far and few between, and mainly either just thrown out as Montesquieu's personal opinions with little to no evidence or examination, or flimsily based on historical examples. As a reader, I didn't find most of his arguments (where he didn't seem to be contradicting himself, which happens frequently) very convincing. This was obviously written with the 18th century French salon crowd in mind, and reads as such. I'm sure it provided a lot of aristocrats with conversation fodder to make them appear intelligent and educated at the time, but these days it just seems like an antiquated bit of history.
He claims the book has to be read as a whole to see the structure and his overall goal; well, I did read the whole book and at the end couldn't see an overarching structure at all. The work just seemed like a long, rambling, unorganized mess. The only people I might really recommend this to are people interested in Greek, Roman, and French history (especially legal history), but not to people interested in political science or philosophy.
Bump this one to the bottom of your list of classics on historical thought, there are much more interesting reads out there.
Important book in the history of ideas.......2002-08-28
There are mainly two reasons why Montequieu's book is important. One is for his ideas, which still have relevance for current political issues, such as separation of church and state. The second is that it represents an important historical milestone in political thought. The real bonus is that, in the translation, his work reads in a way that is both intellectually engaging, by which I mean he gets you thinking about the issues, and also engaging (if entertaining is not quite the right word) as a series of philosophical perspectives delivered in a direct way generally free of jargon.
The most interesting part of his book for me was at the outset, in his comparison of despotism, republics and democracy.
The really important aspect of his book is that so many of the threshold policitical issues that he discusses are still live issues. How much should the state intervene? What constitutes good laws? What parts of life in a political society are the business of the state?
Good book, but not really a philosophical treatise..........2002-08-09
Montesquieu doesn't really put forward a unified philosophically based political system here, so don't read it expecting something like The Republic, Leviathan or the Two Treatises. Stylistically this is very like Machiavelli; that is, no (overt) overiding system, rather just a long series of pithy pieces of advice for people actually in (or intending to make their own) government. If you've read Machiavelli's Discourses, you'll know what to expect.
I recommend you read at least Locke's Two Treatises and Machiavelli's Discourses before this, and then you'll get the theorectical background behind many of Montesquieu's points. Like Locke he thinks of liberty and republics being fine things, but like Machiavelli he cautions that circumstances should always be taken into consideration, and there is no one form of government that is always the right one for every people at all times, even republics. Because of this most of the book is spend enumerating various circumstances that might come up and appropriate reactions. For example, an early section is spend discussing the effect of climate on the people of that area, and given this, what form of government suits them best.
What this means is that while his work may not stand at a level with The Republic or Leviathan in terms of philosophical merit, if you are looking for knowledge that will be useful in the real world, this book is probably superior to those.
I definitely recommend you check this book out. It's imposing length is split into much easier to digest mini-chapters, so it doesn't seem as long as it is, and the use of examples makes it more interesting than many of the other drier works of political philosophy you might come across.
Amazon.com
If the 20th century was the American century, the 21st century may be a time of reckoning for the United States. Chalmers Johnson, an authority on Japan and its economy, offers a troubling prognosis of what's to come. Blowback--the title refers to a CIA neologism describing the unintended consequences of American activity--is a call for the United States to rethink its position in the world. "The evidence is building up that in the decade following the end of the Cold War, the United States largely abandoned a reliance on diplomacy, economic aid, international law, and multilateral institutions in carrying out its foreign policies and resorted much of the time to bluster, military force, and financial manipulation," writes Johnson. "The world is not a safer place as a result." Individual chapters focus on Okinawa (where American servicemen were accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in "Asia's last colony"), the two Koreas, China, and Japan. The result is a liberal-leaning (and Asia-centric) call for the United States to disengage from many of its global commitments. Critics will call Johnson an isolationist, but friends (perhaps admirers of Patrick Buchanan's A Republic, Not an Empire) will say he simply speaks good sense. All will agree he is an earnest voice: "I believe our very hubris ensures our undoing." --John J. Miller
Book Description
Brilliant and iconoclastic.Los Angeles Times Boldly provocativeA useful and timely alert. The New York Times
Customer Reviews:
Blowback? Nah---mainly just Blow........2007-08-23
Chalmers Johnson might very well have entitled this manifestly overrated little jeremiad of gloom, doom, and rice-paddy Manchurian manifest destiny "Everything I know about Geopolitics I learned from the Golden Rule".
That's "Blowback": do unto others, O Mighty Great Satan, as you would have them do unto you. Or as the learned geo-strategist and member of the Council on Foreign Relations grandmaster funk-flash rapper extra-ordinaire Jay-Z once put it (in verse, and to a funky hip-hop beat, which is *way* more than Johnson accomplishes in this nearly cranium-anesthetizing snoozer):
"now you shoot my my dog/
I'ma gonna kill yo' cat/
just the unwritten Laws/
in Rap."
Word. Basically, Johnson is saying that all those nasty, naughty, uber-meanie things the U.S. did (or might have done, deniability, baby, deniability) in the last century (and now, yes, tiresomely the first part of the 21st century) are gonna come back to haunt us. Payback's a bizzle, fo shizzle.
Or, to dip deeply into the cliche snuffbox, what goes around, comes around. Or better still, if you're up for Chinese---4th BC Chinese---: "if you sit by the River long enough, you will see the bodies of all your enemies float by."
There: in this review, you've gotten the gist of Johnson's 'argument', and you've saved yourself the misery of having "Blowback" inflicted on you. You should be grateful.
OK: so example---we helped supply, feed, & train the Mujahadeen to fight a nasty and ultimately successful insurgency against the Soviets. The Jihadis won, kicked the Soviets out, and replaced a doddering, backward, socially repressive & economically retarded 19th century system with a---get this---doddering, backward, socially repressive & economically retarded 7th century system.
Progress? Yes. Blowback? NO! Not Blowback, not that bit anyway. Blowback was what happened when the Taliban and their buddies (including our Bon Ami et Frere Amicable Osama bin "Gin & Juice" Laden) got tired of crushing homosexuals beneath stone walls, blowing up ancient Buddha statues, and strangling dogs. Those crazy Talibs! We got 9/11, the ultimate "blowback.". Or blowup. Or something like that.
Now, it's true that Chalmers Johnson's 'idea' has a nice, simple symmetry to it, in the same way the delightful childrens' potty book "Everything Poops" does: it's, well, true. And obvious.
But seen from a different angle (say, that of adulthood), it's a bit retarded. Or, let's be kind, simplistic. It says, if you, as an Empire, or Republic, or whatever you are---if you do something, something's going to happen. Man, go tell it to the Spartans! (or Newton). Actions have consequences. If you read "Blowback", for instance, the blowback might be that you hear your brain cells scream as they die.
Take the British, who for years now have done everything they can to pretend to be a stodgier, duller, more moldy version of Canada, & what has that gotten them? Flaming gate crashers at Glasgow airport and having their Royal Marines publicly humilated and dressed by Tehran's answer to Today's Man.
But like Paul Kennedy yammering, with yen besotted yuppies back in the early eighties, that the Land of the Rising Sun was about to make us all eat sushi and do Shinto devotionals before our morning calisthenics prior to ruling the World---well, Blowback is just not all that. It's too elementary, man: it's thermodynamical.
And in politics, in affairs of state, in war and manipulation & sabotage, in all of that, it's not even necessarily true. The point being: if you're brutal enough, there will be no blowback.
Think about that for a moment: you don't even have to consult antiquity for examples where if you're willing to play around in a little bit of blood and crack some skulls, there will be no real `blowback'. Russia has ruthlessly crushed & decimated Muslim movements in its former Asian provinces and puppet states, the latest being the pathetic instance of Chechnya. And for all that, I have yet to hear Russia denounced by any imams as even a moderate-sized Satan. Hell, Russia & Iran are great buddies, so long as the latter keeps those rent checks coming on the old Bushehr reactor.
China is another great example: for more than five decades, China has occupied Tibet and taken every step possible to destroy its society and culture. For all of that, wanna know China's "blowback" from this merciless, honestly fascist occupation? The 2008 Olympic Games, a few thousand pathetic "Free Tibet" bumper sticker affixed to the bumpers of liberals' Priuses, & Richard Gere.
To dragoon Orwell's delicious little phrase, if you stomp on a man's face long and hard enough---you know, until you hear bone snap & soft tissue turns to jelly and the eyeballs pop out---there ain't gona be enough to---well, blow back.
In summary: Chalmers gets a big fat F for his stupid "Blowback" and should wear a duncecap in public.
That said, I can find one example---right here, right now!---that supports Johnson's thesis. Are you ready?
Johnson writes his tired, pathetic, dull little ratturd of a book.
In return, I gut his book like a sick fish in a quick and deadly online review.
Now that's what I call blowback.
JSG
Enlightening.......2007-08-17
The book's idea is that US foreign policy, made to win the cold war, has consequences. For instance, in '53 when we installed the Shah of Iran to act as a puppet for the West (overthrowing the democratically elected Mosaddeq because of oil) he repressed the people until he was overthrown in Jan. 1979. We'd be crazy to believe that the people who overthrew Persia's most ruthless dictator not be anti-American (since we installed that dictator). To this day I see people asking why Iran's government dislikes the US - "Do they hate us for our freedoms?" Taking this idea of "unintended consequences," Johnson talks specifically about East Asia and its history during the Cold War and after. In particular, he mentions Indonesia, Korea, China, and Japan.
I found the book very enlightening. Since 9/11 the US news and media's idea of international news coverage has been Middle-Eastern news coverage (except for natural disasters around the world and other frivolous events). Also, I went to public-school - I didn't know anything about Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries (and I took all AP history classes). So, there was this vacuum of knowledge about East Asia I had, which this book filled quite nicely.
Also mentioned in the book, briefly, are neoclassical economics, WTO, IMF, World Bank, 1997 economic crisis, Hungarian revolution, and the '73 Chilean coup as well as some other US interventions in the Middle-East.
Very informative, but drawn out and wordy............2007-08-04
This book is very informative and the first and last chapters are worth paying for the entire thing just to read them. Not the most Pro-American book I've ever read, but will give you an interesting take on things. Very in depth and revealing. Certainly shows how our American Empire can throw our weight around when necessary - and when not. Not bad, but a bit too wordy for me. Still good though.
Pull Your Head Out or Die With It In The Sand.......2007-07-17
This book deserves five stars, but I can tell you it's nothing like listening to this man speak in person. As in "Blowback" he lays it all out on the table. Sadly he says, "We just may have gone pass the point of no return." Americans now know that authors like Chalmers Johnson, Norm Chomsky, Webster Griffin Tarpley and Paul Waldman are not just over-educated nay sayers. We know that we're in real trouble, we just don't know what to do about it. If 9/11 proved nothing else, it proved that aircraft carriers, F16's, and smart bombs are useless against terrorists and apathy.
Dr. Johnson summarizes the status quo: "We have a strong civil society that could, in theory, overcome the entrenched interests of the armed forces and the military-industrial complex. At this late date, however, it is difficult to imagine how Congress, much like the Roman senate in the last days of the republic, could be brought back to life and cleansed of its endemic corruption. Failing such a reform, Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits patiently for her meeting with us."
I am without the education to travel in the circles of the aforementioned authors, but I can in my own way address my fellow blue collar workers... The media has dubbed me one of America's most controversial writers. I think it's because I criticize my own party, the Republican Party, instead of the Democrats. This unorthodox approach of mine gives people the wrong idea about me. I don't hate predators. If there weren't hawks in this country, those in other countries would show up here. Do not misinterpret "Hawk" to mean I approve of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney and their Hermann Goering protégés in the Pentagon. Bush is a mouth and a pen; he's in a different league altogether than his vice president. Cheney is a vulgar, immoral, sadistic subhuman. Does that make me a Libertarian?
Catastrophic consequences for America's "hopeless hypocrisy".......2007-06-29
When Blowback was first published in the spring of 2000, about eighteen months before the 9/11 attacks, many foreign policy journals ignored it; a review in Foreign Affairs even said that it "read like a comic book." After all, Johnson's book was filled with gloomy warnings, including this one in his last few pages: "the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorist attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including the United States (p. 223, my emphasis). While American critics ignored him, the international community resonated with Johnson, and the book was immediately translated into German, Italian, and Japanese. That his early critics could have been so badly wrong, and Johnson so presciently right, is symptomatic of the problems he describes, and only one indicator of the importance of this book and its two sequels, The Sorrows of Empire (2004) and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007).
Blowback is "another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows." The term first appeared in a 1953 CIA document about its overthrow of the Iranian government, and described the predictable but unintended consequences of America's covert operations and foreign policies. What many people around the world "hate" about America, Johnson argues, is not our freedom and way of life, as Bush likes to say, but our global militarism and predatory economic policies which virtually assure future retaliations for decades to come. Even if most Americans are ignorant about our government's secret activities, and believe that our country's motivations are virtuous, most peoples and nations think differently and have long memories; cf., for example, Steven Kinzer's book Overthrow that documents the fourteen nations where America has toppled governments in just the last hundred years.
Johnson examines American foreign policy over the last fifty years, and the parallels between America and the demise of the Soviet Union. His special focus is Asia and the last ten years. The "peace dividend" at the end of the Cold War did not bring a period of American demilitarization, but the exact opposite. Instead of prudence, we have acted with what is now predictable condescension towards other nations and myopia about the certain consequences. Our deliberate "global military-economic dominion," and careless disregard for how the rest of the world understands our predations, are "seeding resentments that are bound to breed attempts at retaliation." Separate chapters look at Okinawa, South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan, and the 1997 economic meltdown in East Asia.
In characterizing America as a "rogue super power" Johnson is polemical but not partisan. The problems that he describes are far broader and deeper than any single administration. Given that many people around the world resent our "exploitative hegemony" as a "hopeless hypocrisy," "one must ask when, not whether, our accidental empire will start to unravel." Johnson asked that question over eight years ago. The subtitle of Nemesis (2007) gives his answer; we are already in "the last days of the American republic."
Book Description
This anthology presents, for the first time, full texts of the twenty most important works of American legal thought since 1890. Drawing on a course the editors teach at Harvard Law School, the book traces the rise and evolution of a distinctly American form of legal reasoning. These are the articles that have made these authors--from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to Ronald Coase, from Ronald Dworkin to Catherine MacKinnon--among the most recognized names in American legal history.
These authors proposed answers to the classic question: "What does it mean to think like a lawyer--an American lawyer?" Their answers differed, but taken together they form a powerful brief for the existence of a distinct and powerful style of reasoning--and of rulership. The legal mind is as often critical as constructive, however, and these texts form a canon of critical thinking, a toolbox for resisting and unravelling the arguments of the best legal minds. Each article is preceded by a short introduction highlighting the article's main ideas and situating it in the context of its author's broader intellectual projects, the scholarly debates of his or her time, and the reception the article received.
Law students and their teachers will benefit from seeing these classic writings, in full, in the context of their original development. For lawyers, the collection will take them back to their best days in law school. All readers will be struck by the richness, the subtlety, and the sophistication with which so many of what have become the clichés of everyday legal argument were originally formulated.
Customer Reviews:
anti-edited.......2006-12-04
Nice to have all the texts together in one place, but errors have been injected throughout. A footnote to Ihering, "Geist des roemischen Rechts," becomes "romsichen Recht"; a quote from Ronald Dworkin, with the note from Robert Cover "emphasis in original," has the emphasis left out (it was the word "meaning"). In other words, the editors have taken texts almost entirely available on Westlaw and had them retyped with many errors. Wait for the second edition, or at least don't touch the hardcover.
Books:
- Family Wealth--Keeping It in the Family: How Family Members and Their Advisers Preserve Human, Intellectual, and Financial Assets for Generations
- Frank Lloyd Wright's Rosenbaum House: The Birth And Rebirth of an American Treasure
- From the Cradle to the Grave: Selected Drawings
- Full Faith and Credit:: The Great S&L Debacle and Other Washington Sagas
- Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams
- Godless: The Church of Liberalism
- Good Intentions Corrupted: The Oil for Food Scandal And the Threat to the U.N.
- Health Security for All: Dreams of Universal Health Care in America
- Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History (Herzog & de Meuron)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
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Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project)
Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (American Empire Project)
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
