Amazon.com
Set in London during and just after World War II, Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is a pathos-laden examination of a three-way collision between love of self, love of another, and love of God. The affair in question involves Maurice Bendrix, a solipsistic novelist, and a dutifully married woman, Sarah Miles. The lovers meet at a party thrown by Sarah's dreary civil-servant husband, and proceed to liberate each other from boredom and routine unhappiness. Reflecting on the ebullient beginnings of their romance, Bendrix recalls: "There was never any question in those days of who wanted whom--we were together in desire." Indeed, the affair goes on unchecked for several years until, during an afternoon tryst, Bendrix goes downstairs to look for intruders in his basement and a bomb falls on the building. Sarah rushes down to find him lying under a fallen door, and immediately makes a deal with God, whom she has never particularly cared for. "I love him and I'll do anything if you'll make him alive.... I'll give him up forever, only let him be alive with a chance.... People can love each other without seeing each other, can't they, they love You all their lives without seeing You."
Bendrix, as evidenced by his ability to tell the story, is not dead, merely unconscious, and so Sarah must keep her promise. She breaks off the relationship without giving a reason, leaving Bendrix mystified and angry. The only explanation he can think of is that she's left him for another man. It isn't until years later, when he hires a private detective to ascertain the truth, that he learns of her impassioned vow. Sarah herself comes to understand her move through a strange rationalization. Writing to God in her journal, she says:
You willed our separation, but he [Bendrix] willed it too. He worked for it with his anger and his jealousy, and he worked for it with his love. For he gave me so much love, and I gave him so much love that soon there wasn't anything left, when we'd finished, but You.
It's as though the pull toward faith were inevitable, if incomprehensible--perhaps as punishment for her sin of adultery. In her final years, Sarah's faith only deepens, even as she remains haunted by the bombing and the power of her own attraction to God. Set against the backdrop of a war-ravaged city, The End of the Affair is equally haunting as it lays forth the question of what constitutes love in troubling, unequivocal terms. --Melanie Rehak
Book Description
The love affair between Maurice Bendix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly breaks it off. A chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, and Bendix hires a private detective to follow Sarah. Slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
Of loving the ones you hate; of hating the ones you love........2007-09-04
The End of the Affair has Graham Green's trademark brevity. Short sentences. Short chapters. Simple narrative. Deep insight. The chief protagonist is a writer Bendrix who has an affair with Sarah, the wife of a civil servant, Henry. One day Sarah stops meeting Bendrix. Two years later, Bendrix comes in contact with Henry and comes to know of Henry's suspicion about his wife having an affair. Driven by jealousy and hate, Bendrix hires a detective, Parkis to investigate Sarah and her affair.
As the novel progresses, we come face to face with Bendrix's love and hate for Sarah and the jealousy and risk that such an affair involves. A strange camaraderie between Parkis and Brendix as well as Brendrix and Henry is the highlight of the story. In many ways, the novel is also a story about the belief and disbelief in God, a question all protagonists face in their own way. The novel weaves a complex and very heartfelt story of adultery and hate, interspersed with romance without sentimentality, and spiritual contexts without the need for discourse.
Since the protagonist Maurice Bendrix is a writer, the novel has an erudite and expert discourse on art of novel as the backdrop. The ideas about craftsmanship, inspiration, need to have first hand experiences and information, the fickle fame or lack of it, monetary hardships, the drudgery of writing as a daily task and the humane side of author are all explored as an undercurrent.
The End of the Affair is a great read for it manages to convey so many aspects of human relationships and how the emotions evolve and inter-mesh with rational and irrational events and emotions. It is a great book about the nature of atheist and how a belief system knocks at his door in times of guilt, sorrow, melancholy, love or the inexplicable. It is as much a story of bonding and unbonding between people brought together by the carnal needs, as is a story of men joined together by shared pain and memories. The heroine Sarah is very likable, the writer Bendrix is very believable, Parkis is unforgettable and entertaining and Henry is a nicely crafted character. The book is fairly short in length and is recommended for all it encompasses.
A Devastating Read.......2007-08-07
The dog days have come to Washington D.C., that ambitious capital built on reclaimed swampland. . If you live in my neighborhood, August is a month like January; good for staying-in, eating, sleeping, and avoiding the weather (while the wealthy simply go . . .somewhere else). For this reason, I am on a reading kick, as reading is the rich pastime of the poor. I am discovering through nonstop reading authors I've missed . . . but shouldn't have.
To that end I exclaim: "Voila!" Graham Greene is too good to be true, his style is a fine example of the best that realism offers.
As I survive middle-age, the empty-nest, insufferable heat and lack of traveling funds, and especially for the sake of a great good read, I recommend "The End of the Affair." I can't imagine a serious reader this book could not reach and affect. It's all there, the combination of themes that (mea culpa) keeps humanity pinned to its cultural ground. . . Love, Life, Pain, Death . . .the whole damned Thing.
Graham Greene's lean, unaffected style in "The End of the Affair." has clear plot lines with sharp prose emptied of modernist stylings. As he once admitted, the book has a cinematic feel. Greene is a writer who can make you see into the heart of his characters without obtuse metaphors or over-description. His writing is intent on mining the internal life of his characters along with their emotional and spiritual turmoil juxtaposed against the harshness of ordinary life, which in this case is wartime England. His "realism" leads straight into the spiritual . . . showing how human failings are sometimes the battered road posts pointing the way out.
Sarah, Bendrix and Henry, the main characters in "End of the Affair." are a troubled couple full of world-weariness and cynicism. . . .Sarah, the love interest, is clearly searching for something than her jealous lover, Bendrix and her magnificently indifferent husband, Henry are not. Either good feminist scrutiny of her plight is due or it is forgone that had Sarah lived 30 years later, she would be still be searching. Bendrix, narrator of the book is an author and as such is so close to being the autobiograph of Greene, that I can't help feeling the story is as near to his personal truth as one might bear in such close proximity to a writer's psyche. Bendrix's self-scourging, self-loathing ways and his love for Sarah fails and exalts the reader in a strange way, even while his methods don't. I recommend this study of classic all-too human entanglement.
"When we get to the end of human beings we delude ourselves into a belief in God".......2007-07-05
This book is full of surprises, not the least of which is the exploration of spirituality and a direct relationship with God that is at the heart of the story. What begins as a detailed examination of more earthly pusuits through the remembrances of two individuals in an adulterous affair and the jealousies and passions aroused by this relationship ends with a man puzzling over how his lover has abandoned him in the end for a promise to God.
Graham Greene is always interesting in the way he portrays human foibles and weaknesses but in this book he peers into faith and skeptism , allowing his characters to portray and subscribe to both depending on their individual circumstances. Clearly the author has his point of view but his creation Sarah Miles goes through a spiritual and physical crisis that is gripping and thought provoking for readers on either side of the spiritual line.
moving.......2007-05-31
This is a deeply felt story of love set in WWII London and Greene offers a moving depiction of faith and loss. Greene's writing is at the top of his form and his understanding of human nature flawless. His use of imagery is consistent throughout his many novels and he constantly displays a sense of the gray areas of life, where there is no right or wrong.
Of love and hate.......2007-03-23
I wish it were possible to read certain books for the first time without knowing how they will turn out. But publishers seem to imagine that once a book becomes a classic (and this is one of Greene's masterpieces) the plot becomes common property. I read this in the Penguin Centennial edition, lovely to the eye and soft to the touch, yet the inside-cover blurb manages to reveal in two short paragraphs all the plot twists that Greene, as a master thriller writer, does not disclose until well into the second half of the book. You can see some reviewers on this site trying gamely not to let the cat out of the bag, but others (including the editorial reviews at the top) don't even try. So, if by some miracle you don't know how the novel turns out, stop reading NOW, buy the book, turn straight to page 1 without looking at the cover material, and enjoy. But fortunately, even if you do know the general outline, it is a finely written work of art which will give great pleasure anyhow.
The title is unusually apt. How daring to start a novel, literally, with the END of an affair! From this point where a novel might normally finish, Greene's character Maurice Bendrix begins not only to recall the course of his affair with Sarah Miles, the wife of a dull neighbor in the civil service, but also to gnaw on that word "end." Fueled by what he calls hate, but which we come to recognize as the obverse of his passion, he obsesses about how it ended, why it ended, and what happens after the end. Convinced that Sarah has left him for another man, he hires a private detective (Parkis, a surprisingly touching character) to follow her. Those who know Greene well may not find it hard to guess what Bendrix ultimately discovers, or that a rather sordid book about adultery would be transformed into a grueling challenge to the existence of God. It may in fact be the most explicitly religious of Greene's so-called Catholic novels, and too much for some readers, especially at the end. But it is a beautifully crafted work which never loses touch with the realities of this world (the Blitz, social conventions, physical sex) in its ultimate convergence on the next.
Customer Reviews:
Haldeman's apology.......2006-04-10
Forget conventional wisdom, or wisdom of any branch or brand. The "secret story of Watergate," according to H.R. Haldeman in `The Ends of Power,' was rooted in the Nixon Administration post re-election plans to reorganize government. More specifically, to reorganize the Cabinet into four `Super Cabinet' offices and, in the process, bypass the obstructionist federal bureaucracy that had proved so frustrating during Nixon's first term. Haldeman was Nixon's chief of staff until his resignation in April, 1973. Often likened to a Prussian guard, Haldeman was a loyal, stern and forbidding guardian of access to the President. That is, until he (Haldeman) became so mired in the ever-widening Watergate scandal that he was forced by circumstances to resign. Eventually he would go to trial for his role in the Watergate scandal and serve an 18 month prison sentence.
`The Ends of Power' is Haldeman's account of the scandal that brought down a president. Co-written with Joseph DiMona, it covers the period immediately following the break-in at the DNC headquarters in the Watergate to the resignation of President Nixon. Although it contains "most of what... I would like to ignore and forget," Haldeman attacks the topic with gusto. The topic is not the only thing he attacks, either. Credibility is assailed, as well. In Haldeman's scheme of things, an overwhelming re-election notwithstanding, the Nixon Administration was an embattled one. The `bureaucracy," filled with obstructionist New Deal holdovers, was only one of many enemies lurking in the shadows. Congress was controlled by the Democrats, the press was... well, the press, and Nixon could expect nothing from vitriol from them. The fourth great enemy, curiously, is the intelligence community, who had `plants' in the administration and, in one of a number of theories set forth by Haldeman to explain Watergate, may have "instigated the break-in in order to embarrass the president they feared."
To his credit, Haldeman discounts the CIA Trap Theory quickly after setting it forth. He discounts my favorite, the Democratic Party Trap Theory, just as quickly. The Democratic Trap Theory, first proposed by Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson, holds that the Democrats engineered the break-in to embarrass the administration. It's convoluted enough to hold two theories, but it had some currency with Republican apologists back then. Thompson, I was tickled to note, failed to return Haldeman's phone calls. I was equally tickled to finally read Haldeman's theory on who caused the break-in. Without giving too much away - if anything CAN be given away from a book published thirty years ago, that is - Haldeman combines presidential aide Chuck Colson, Nixon, the Dita Beard/ITT memo, DNC Committee Chairman Lawrence O'Brien and Howard Hughes in his explanation. If you don't recognize the names `Ends of Power' is NOT the first book on Watergate you should read. Out of context Haldman's theories make sense, and I'm sure they'll be prime fodder when the revisionists take hold of the subject. The starkest revelation, to me at least, was the willingness Haldeman, the once-loyal Haldeman, shows in throwing Nixon under the bus not only on the break-in but in the cover-up. Richard Nixon was, he writes, "involved in the cover-up from Day One."
Observers mighty and small have noticed a duality to Nixon's nature, and have usually attributed Watergate to the nasty synergy generated whenever he and Haldeman squared off behind their yellow legal pads. Haldeman, in the popular view, was the evil catalyst that energized Nixon's darker angels. Haldeman, sprightly enough, gives that role to Colson. Admitting -grudgingly, I imagine - his own mistakes and culpability, Haldeman portrays himself as a distracted chief of staff who conceived his post-breakin duty to be that of containment. "We had no intention to impede the Watergate investigation itself - only to avoid... lead(ing) the investigators... into `other things'." Well, other things were indeed found, the press called it a cover-up up and the courts ruled it obstruction of justice. Haldeman admits vaguely to mistakes being made, and for that he deserves some credit. His theories, and this is a book full of them, maintain a certain internal logic although they wither when examines against certain known facts. `Ends of Power' is not recommended for the first-timer, but Watergate wonks should get a kick out of it.
Cool, Efficient, and Slick.......2003-06-23
I reread *The Ends of Power* for two reasons. First, Sidney Blumenthal's recent *The Clinton Wars* recreates the White House when President Clinton was impeached. Richard Nixon was threatened with impeachment for more serious actions and resigned to avoid it--a neat contrast. Second, Professor William Gaines and his journalism class at the University of Illinois announced in May 2003 that Deep Throat, Bob Woodward's mysterious informant in *All the President's Men,* was John Dean's assistant Fred Fielding. In two tidy pages (136-137), H. R. Haldeman reaches the same conclusion. His brief is necessarily sketchier than that of the Gaines group, but his thinking is similar. On this topic, Haldeman is less sentimental, more objective and more briskly intelligent than Leonard Garment and John Dean, who ride hobby horses.
How does the rest of *The Ends of Power* hold up? The prose, probably Joseph DiMona's, is serviceable but slick. Most of the text is an explanation or defense of Watergate. The most insightful idea is Haldeman's linkage of Viet Nam to Watergate; however, as its title indicates, the book does not pretend to be a full account of Nixon's presidency. As Haldeman presents them, the facts are not apparently self-serving. They may thus be more subtly self-exculpatory.
Haldeman exhibits little moral feeling. There is no sense here of the country's having been done a great wrong or of the fact that Nixon's abilities--which the text names--were wasted by this ethical void. Watergate was surely a more consequential breach of behavior than oval office trysts, though the anguished evasions of Nixon and Clinton may appear eerily alike.
On the positive side, one feels that Haldeman succeeds, with a compression equal to his argument about the identity of Deep Throat, in making Nixon humanly understandable, even likeable. Longer and more balanced accounts of Nixon's administration do this task less effectively, and at greater length.
There is no index in *The Ends of Power.* That is outrageous and unforgivable!
He Only Followed Orders.......2002-05-16
This is HRH's memoir of his years in the Nixon White House, and the overwhelming failure known as Watergate. HRH was not a lawyer or politician; he was in advertising when he first became a volunteer for Nixon in 1956 (p.49).
HRH was not alarmed by the Watergate break-in. Nixon used wiretapping in his first term, and it was also used by LBJ and JFK; it was widespread in business (p.5). HRH blames Watergate on John Mitchell's neglect of his duties at CRP (p.10), which left Magruder in charge. Nixon told HRH it was "unimportant", when in reality Nixon blew up in a towering rage; HRH was being deceived by Nixon (p.13)!
HRH sealed Nixon's doom by meeting him on June 23, 1972 to discuss getting the CIA to stop the FBI's search into CRP money. Tell the CIA "this will open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing again", said Nixon. Helms and Walter denied any CIA connection with Watergate (p.34). But at least one of the burglars was still on the CIA payroll, and was reporting about the proposed break-in even before it happened; the first lawyer for the burglars was reportedly CIA-connected.
When the CIA at first refused to tell the FBI to back off, HRH played Nixon's trump: "this entire affair may be connected to the Bay of Pigs". Turmoil followed; HRH was absolutely shocked by Helms' violent reaction. And so the CIA asked the FBI to not investigate the Mexican bank and the CRP money. Years later the mystery of the "Bay of Pigs" connection was cleared up by reading Daniel Schorr's "Clearing the Air"; it was a code word for the assassination of JFK (pp. 37-39).
HRH said he protected Nixon by not following "petty vindictive orders" (p.58). But Charles Colson encouraged Nixon's dark impulses, and acted on them. Pages 62-64 tell that the associates who confronted Nixon's "dark" side would not survive on the job. HRH then says he was sorry he did not try to positively restrain the dark side of Nixon.
"The Mysteries of the Cover-Up" explains how their "containment" created a "cover-up" that the courts called "conspiracy to obstruct justice" (pp. 216-218). In retrospect, there were many indications along the way that could have caused him to wonder what was really going on. His responsibility was the operation of the office of the President; he chose not to know anything else at the time.
"The Hidden Story of Watergate" mentioned that Nixon planned a reorganization of the government that aimed to give him unprecedented control. This must have scared the Ruling Class much more than members of the Federal Bureaucracy! Nixon was only the President, not the absolute ruler of America. HRH gives a rationale for Nixon's termination, but doesn't seem to realize it!
Page 226 tells how Nixon would "have Buckley write a column" to push a policy. I always suspected Buckley was a hired voice who echoed opinions. I wonder who has this job today?
The "Conclusion" sums up his views on "Watergate". "Most of us would have been willing to sacrifice ourselves, if necessary, to save the Presidency that we believed in. But we couldn't even do that because we didn't know the real situation." "I can see that my loyalty to President Nixon and my assumption that I knew all that I needed to know led me to some serious errors of judgment." Yet if he had the chance to do it all over again, he would! Like the Bourbons, he remembered everything but learned nothing.
He Only Followed Orders.......2002-05-07
This is HRH's memoir of his years in the Nixon White House, and the overwhelming failure known as Watergate. HRH was not a lawyer or politician; he was in advertising when he first became a volunteer for Nixon in 1956 (p.49). HRH was not alarmed by the Watergate break-in. Nixon used wiretapping in his first term, and it was also used by LBJ and JFK; it was widespread in business (p.5). HRH blames Watergate on John Mitchell's neglect of his duties at CRP (p.10), which left Magruder in charge. Nixon told HRH it was "unimportant", when in reality Nixon blew up in a towering rage; HRH was being deceived by Nixon (p.13)!
HRH sealed Nixon's doom by meeting him on June 23, 1972 to discuss getting the CIA to stop the FBI's search into CRP money. Tell the CIA "this will open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing again", said Nixon. Helms and Walter denied any CIA connection with Watergate (p.34). But at least one of the burglars was still on the CIA payroll, and was reporting about the proposed break-in even before it happened; the first lawyer for the burglars was reportedly CIA-connected. When the CIA at first refused to tell the FBI to back off, HRH played Nixon's trump: "this entire affair may be connected to the Bay of Pigs". Turmoil followed; HRH was absolutely shocked by Helms' violent reaction. And so the CIA asked the FBI to not investigate the Mexican bank and the CRP money. Years later the mystery of the "Bay of Pigs" connection was cleared up by reading Daniel Schorr's "Clearing the Air"; it was a code word for the assassination of JFK (pp. 37-39).
HRH said he protected Nixon by not following "petty vindictive orders" (p.58). But Charles Colson encouraged Nixon's dark impulses, and acted on them. ...In retrospect, there were many indications along the way that could have caused him to wonder what was really going on. His responsibility was the operation of the office of the President; he chose not to know anything else at the time.
"The Hidden Story of Watergate" mentioned that Nixon planned a reorganization of the government that aimed to give him unprecedented control. This must have scared the Ruling Class much more than members of the Federal Bureaucracy! Nixon was only the President, not the absolute ruler of America. HRH gives a rationale for Nixon's termination, but doesn't seem to realize it!
Page 226 tells how Nixon would "have Buckley write a column" to push a policy. I always suspected Buckley was a hired voice who echoed opinions. I wonder who has this job today?
The "Conclusion" sums up his views on "Watergate". "Most of us would have been willing to sacrifice ourselves, if necessary, to save the Presidency that we believed in. But we couldn't even do that because we didn't know the real situation." "I can see that my loyalty to President Nixon and my assumption that I knew all that I needed to know led me to some serious errors of judgment." Yet if he had the chance to do it all over again, he would! Like the Bourbons, he remembered everything but learned nothing.
Might be the best of the "insiders" view on Watergate ..........2001-05-02
I must second the review of the reader from Malibu...a must read! Haldeman shows again (like in the "Haldeman Diaries") his human side and not the rigid company man that he's always made out to be. The break-in and subsequent cover-up (or as Haldeman says "containment") are explained with an insiders perspective and in what I must say, the best and most clarifying way that I've read (there's still a lot on Watergate that I haven't read though...). The only critique that I might make is I wonder how much of this was J.Dimona? S. Ambrose's "Ruin and Recovery" explains that Haldeman, in later years, refuted this book and it's conclusions and, if true, that would be a shame as the conclusions drawn from this book make the most sense given the advantage of over 20 years perspective. Even though this was published in 1979, many copies are still available and can be gotten for very reasonable prices ... so I'd again recommend this book highly.
Amazon.com
After nearly a decade of bull markets, Americans have come to equate free markets with democracy. Never one for mincing words, social critic Thomas Frank, editor of The Baffler and author of The Conquest of Cool, challenges this myth. With his acerbic wit and contempt for sophistry, he declares the New Economy a fraud. Frank scours business literature, management theory, and marketing and advertising to expose the elaborate fantasies that have inoculated business against opposition. This public relations campaign joins an almost mystical belief in markets, a contempt for government in any form, and an "ecstatic" confusion of markets with democracy. Frank traces the roots of this movement from the 1920s, and sees its culmination in market populism as a fusion of the rebellious '60s with the greedy '80s. The overarching irony is the swapping of roles--suddenly Wall Street is no longer full of stodgy moneygrubbers, but cool entrepreneurs "leaping on their trampolines, typing out a few last lines on the laptop before paragliding, riding their bicycles to work, listening to Steppenwolf while they traded." Meanwhile, "Americans traded their long tradition of electoral democracy for the democracy of the supermarket, where all brands are created equal and endowed by their creators with all sorts of extremeness and diversity." Frank's close reading of the salesmen of market populism nails such financial gurus as George Gilder, Joseph Nocera, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas Friedman. Their writings, he contends, have served to make "the world safe for billionaires" by winning the cultural and political battle--legitimizing the corporate culture and its demands for privatization, deregulation, and non-interference. Frank's incisive prose verges on brilliant at times, though his yen for repetition can be exasperating. In either case, his boisterous reminder that markets are fundamentally not democracies is worth repeating as the level of wealth polarization in America reaches heights not seen since the 1920s. --Lesley Reed
Book Description
In a book that has been raising hackles far and wide, the social critic Thomas Frank skewers one of the most sacred cows of the go-go '90s: the idea that the new free-market economy is good for everyone.
Frank's target is "market populism"--the widely held belief that markets are a more democratic form of organization than democratically elected governments. Refuting the idea that billionaire CEOs are looking out for the interests of the little guy, he argues that "the great euphoria of the late nineties was never as much about the return of good times as it was the giddy triumph of one America over another." Frank is a latter-day Mencken, as readers of his journal The Baffler and his book The Conquest of Cool know. With incisive analysis, passionate advocacy, and razor-sharp wit, he asks where we?re headed-and whether we're going to like it when we get there.
Customer Reviews:
revealing.......2007-01-06
although it seemed a bit repetetive at times, this book was right on. i guess it seemed that way to me because everything was so intertwined. Many thanks to pbs for bringing this author to my attention.
Very Worthwhile.......2006-08-14
If you want to know how the economy really works and who is really in charge, read this book. You don't need to agree with all of the author's conclusions, but the the facts and arguments presented are very compelling.
Solid thoughtful, nails our national policy failures in a big way.......2006-08-02
This is a very serious book, one that any candidate for President would do well to read, especially so the centrist candidates willing to announce that both the Democratic and Republican parties have sold the public into slavery to corporate fascism.
In summary, the author documents in detail how the Reagan Revolution, and especially the firing of the air traffic controllers and the wrongful use of military air traffic controllers as "union busting" scabs, eliminated the counter-vailing force of labor unions, at the same time that government deregulated and abdicated its responsibility for a social safety net, the media converted into advertising with a "news hole," and corporations lost all moral and social standards.
He deconstructs the "New Economy" in persuasive detail and caused me to re-evaluate some of my earlier readings, especially of Kevin Kelly and others in the WIRED generation who articulate with blind faith the democratic value of the network, but fail to see, as Robert Samuelson and this author would have us understand, that outsourcing is union busting, and the actual effect of the network has been to make it possible for corporations to outsource middle class jobs while importing poverty through illegal immigration. The net loser is the Nation, because one of its most important sources of national power, an educated engaged citizenry, is being sold short.
The author is brutally on target when he points out that corporations have achieved a slight of hand in disconnecting labor from the value of created wealth, claiming much more management value (to the point that CEOs make 400 to 1000 times what their workers make, up from 25 times long ago). He also points out that the democratization of the stock market is code for what Mark Lewis called, in "Liar's Poker," "exploding the client. The smart money rides the early surge and then sells out to the middle class dreamers, who end up losing 80-90% of their value over time.
I have a note in the flyleaf that this book is "quite extraordinary, almost breathtaking in scope, with a compelling array of well-ordered facts."
Overall, while many will not like the term "corporate fascism" and the author prefers to use "extreme capitalism" while others discuss immoral and predatory capitalism, or "class war" (see my review of Faux's "The Global Class War" and, somewhat less solid but still good, Pabast's "Armed Madhouse" (dispatches from the front lines of the global class war). The sorry reality is that Americans have been lulled to sleep like sheep for a slaughter, and do not seem to appreciate the fact that there has been a MASSIVE theft of public capital through what this author calls "the Wall Street tax" on America.
The greatest strength of the book is how the author documents the calculated and comprehensive manner in which Wall Street and the evangelical right came together to turn reality on its head, and persuade everyone including blue collar workers that it was okay to break the social contract with labor, and that what is good for Wall Street is good for America and its workers. In fact, as the author points out repeatedly, when workers get laid off, Wall Street stocks go up. His entire review reminds one of Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's classic "Manufacturing Consent." Public relations has been used in a classic manner by American corporations, to include penetration of teen-age sub-cultures and the manipulation of teen-age desires. In Europe they consider public relations to be, according to this author, advanced corporate lying.
The author draws an excellent connection between the "blind faith" that keeps the corporate illusion of free trade on the table, and the "blind faith" that led Dick Cheney to depose George Bush and invade Iraq without regard to the policy process, accountability, or reality. America is in the grip of a very destructive combination of corporate ideology, religious ideology, and political ideology.
The author is properly and comprehensively critical of the media for failing to do its job. Journalists, a few exceptions aside, have become "filler." The author excels at picking Tom Friedman apart, and at mocking the Wall Street Journal for idiocy in print.
The book ends on a sobering note, where the author points out that reality has a way of unmasking ideological pretensions in a most painful manner. He specifically suggests that George Bush Junior (he does not mention Cheney) will go the way of Herbert Hoover in the history books. Reality--that's what one White House staffer is reported to have said had no relevance, because this White House "creates its own reality." Yes it does--a reality of greed and theft and immorality at the top, poverty and disease at the bottom, and a loss of American honor around the world.
First class thinking and writing. A really strong book.
Enlightening romp through a decade of idiocy.......2006-05-07
From John Perry Barlow to Virginia Postrel, from _Liberation Management_ to _Who Moved My Cheese?_, from dot-com millionaires to cult stud academics, Thomas Frank summarizes, contextualizes, and debunks a decade's worth of pro-business propaganda. The major theme, he argues, was the concept of "market populism", the notion that The Market was far more democratic than actual democracies, doing whatever their copious focus groups had determined the people wanted. Frank, a serious supporter of genuine democracy, skewers their absurd myths and provides some insight into the harm they did to working people.
The Democracy Bubble.......2006-01-17
If there were two overall themes guiding this book, I'd say it was these:
During the late 1990s, it was pretty obvious that a rising tide was not lifting all boats. And for a very long time now, conservative and many liberal economists, business owners, investors, business writers and assorted pundits have equated democracy with the ebbs and flows of the free market.
I've never read What's The Matter With Kansas or The Baffler before. My introducation to Frank came through this book with it's marathon chapters, sometimes repetative thesis', and thoroughly damning evidence of our nation's continuing problems with a form of tulip mania and the delusion that a janitor/schoolteacher/truck driver playing the stock market with a few shares has economic parity with someone like Warren Buffett.
The title itself is an interesting look at the subject matter here: free market economics has long been a dogma among Americans. We are told time and time again that collective bargaining, state investment, and regulations over wages will lead us down the path to destruction. Also, supposedly, if we allow the foxes to guard the henhouse, someday we can all be rich.
Frank points out that this isn't a new ideology but it has become more and less popular over time. The end of the 20th century resembled the beginning more than any other time; the middle class was slowly eroding and obscene wealth consoled obscene lack of wealth with idea that even if you're living in poverty, you can just make a couple of smart investments, spend wisely, and the idea of the American Dream will be fulfilled and you'll get wealthy.
This might all seem painfully obvious, but Frank deserves credit for actually documenting it.
Book Description
"Elaine Kamarck shows us what we can expect if we want to go beyond the tired rhetoric of left and right to create a government capable of dealing with all the new challenges of this new century. She has had more practical experience with this challenge...than anyone else in the world."
--Al Gore
"This important book examines how bureaucracy can be updated to deal with the quickly evolving demands of the twenty-first century and also uses real-world examples to help us understand how new alternatives can best be applied."
--Richard W. Waterman, University of Kentucky
"Kamarck properly emphasizes the crucial importance of implementation for achieving results and makes clear that there are alternatives to creating yet another bureaucracy, shuffling the boxes on the organization chart, or creating another layer of management. Any member of Congress who takes congressional oversight seriously--and shouldn't they all?--would certainly benefit from reading this book."
--James Davis, Washington University in St. Louis
In the last decades of the twentieth century, many political leaders declared that government was, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "the problem, not the solution." But on closer inspection, argues Elaine Kamarck, the revolt against "government" was and is a revolt against bureaucracy--a revolt that has taken place in first world, developing, and avowedly communist countries alike.
To some, this looks like the end of government. Kamarck, however, counters that what we are seeing is the replacement of the traditional bureaucratic approach with new models more in keeping with the information age economy. The End of Government explores the emerging contours of this new, postbureaucratic state--the sequel to government as we know it--considering: What forms will it take? Will it work in all policy arenas? Will it serve democratic ideals more effectively than did the bureaucratic state of the previous century? Perhaps most significantly, how will leadership be redefined in these new circumstances?
Kamarck's provocative work makes it clear that, in addition to figuring out what to do, today's government leaders face an unprecedented number of options when it comes to how to do things. The challenge of government increasingly will be to choose an implementation mode, match it to a policy problem, and manage it well in the postbureaucratic world.
Customer Reviews:
A plain-spoken, serious-minded plethora of twenty-first century solutions.......2007-07-09
Written by Elaine C. Kamarck, a former senior policy advisor to the Clinton administration, The End of Government...As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work is a nonpartisan examination of the failings of bureaucratic government models with newer, leaner, and more creative approaches in keeping with the fast-paced and ever-changing information age. Chapters address the problem of homeland security and why bureaucratic thinking has failed to solve it, tools for reinventing the public sector such as waivers, applying the reinvention of government to the problem of welfare dependence (one such positive example is the use of an electronic benefit card to supplant food stamps - since food stamps can be used like cash and are thus more susceptible to corruption) and much more. A plain-spoken, serious-minded plethora of twenty-first century solutions to problems compounded by bureaucratic quagmires left over from the twentieth century. Highly recommended, especially for anyone active in local, state, or federal government.
Book Description
Excessive burning of oil, gas, and coal is raising our planet's thermostat to unacceptable levels-a problem which as already resulted in increased natural catastrophes: storms, floods, droughts, and fire. Yet big oil companies have repeatedly hijacked efforts to slow global carbon emissions.
The Carbon War is a major call-to-arms for the safety of our planet. Throughout the last decade, Jeremy Leggett, a distinguished scientist at Oxford University and former director for Green peace, has worked doggedly to alert human kind to the threat of ecological catastrophe, He contents that the main enemies-Arab countries, the United States government, oil companies, and automobile manufacturers-have used junk science, an army of lobbyists, and outright lies to ensure that their profits stayed safer than the planet's future.
With the grace of a novelist and the precision of a scientist, Leggett recount his maddening interactions with scientific councils, international governmental meetings, and business leaders. Still, despite the government's backpedaling on eco-promises, the media's laziness, and fossil fuel company rhetoric, the transition to solar energy is coming, he argues. Called the "best book yet about the politics of global worming" by John Gribbin the London Sunday Times, The Carbon War is a riveting read and a critical contribution to the fight for sustainable energy.
Customer Reviews:
The Carbon Policy Wars.......2007-01-16
For a geologist Jeremy Leggett is a suprisingly good writer. As described in the previous reviews he details some of the history leading up to the Kyoto accords and provides insight from the participants perception. The meetings, the debates, the radio and TV interviews are all here. You will also read about all the tension and conflict that this global problem with its immense economic immplications brings to a head.
This book is mainly about the politics of the world climate change policies and does not have very much content regarding the science of climate change. I would have liked to see more of the science and perhaps a bit less of the details of meetings after more meetings. If you want to learn more about the science I would recommend Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming and John Houghton's Global Warming: The Complete Briefing. If you want to read about the war between Exxon,big Coal,corporate media, and environmentalists, scientists, and the countries that are first in line to suffer from the consequences of global warming this is your book.
Required reading for the informed citizen.......2005-08-17
Many authors, in meticulous science journalism style, write good environmental science and policy books that are worth reading.
Jeremy Leggett's "Carbon War" is an outstanding contribution from the front lines. A journal from a key player in the carbon war, with insights on other key players on all sides.
Leggett puts you at the international summits, to witness the best and worst elements at work. There are many books that will inform you on global climate change issues (and some that will intentionally disinform you). But few, if any, let you peer into the international efforts (and counterefforts) to deal with climate change like the "Carbon War."
Climate Change and Politics.......2005-02-04
Jeremy Leggett's "The Carbon War" is the story of how the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 came about, and how companies in the business of thermal fuel (coal, oil, gas) - Leggett calls them the "Carbon Club" - tried to derail the process of setting enforceable goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. It is also the story of how self-interest, not surprisingly, overrides the general interest; how the United States, home to some of the largest oil and gas multinationals and the world's premier carbon dioxide emitting nation, sided with the Carbon Club; how Australia, the world's largest coal exporter, joined forces with the United States.
The Kyoto Protocol will come into force on 16 February 2005. It has been ratified by more than 55 of its signatory countries. The United States, led by George W. Bush, however, walked out on the agreement in March 2001.
The fact of global warming is hardly disputable. The five hottest years recorded since 1880 were 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2001, with 1998 having been the hottest. Whether the warming effect is man-made is still subject to discussion. But a full three quarters of scientists working in the field of climate change make the burning of fossil fuels responsible for the recorded increase in temperature.
The emission of carbon dioxide could be easily reduced if power could be economically generated by photovoltaic solar energy (PV). However, Adam Smith's invisible hand won't do the job in this particular case. It is a Catch-22 situation because PV will only be economically viable if the PV cells are mass-produced, but they are not mass-produced because people can't afford today's expensive PV products. This is a situation where government would have a proper role to fulfill - to jump-start a process that would help the common good where the mechanics of the market do not work. But unfortunately most governments do not care to do that.
Already in 1997, Leggett notes, "every country had its companies lost in skepticism about climate change. But in the USA the scale of the collective denial was unique." (264) Eight years later it is not much different. This denial comes at a cost, though. Not only the cost of becoming more and more isolated from global trends and losing the moral authority the USA enjoyed after Roosevelt and Truman established the country as a world power, but also an economic cost. State of the art ecological cars that really sell are not made by GM or Ford these days, but by Japan's Toyota. World-class oil companies with a comprehensive environmental policy are not ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco of the US, but BP and Shell of Europe.
Jeremy Leggett, by the way, founded his own company to promote and sell PV technology after he realized, with a certain bitterness, that his lobbying efforts to get emission limits agreed were not getting anywhere.
Front row seat.......2004-12-11
The author participated as an NGO spokesperson at many international meetings about CO2's contribution to climate change. His chronological treatment imposes order on the confusing, repeated climate prep meetings and negotiations of the 1990s. It was very helpful to read an unapologetic, informed account of these negotiations, replete with the hope & despair many felt about the participation of U.S. negotiators 1992-2000.
I bought it for my husband for his birthday, then proceeded to read it night after night until it was done. Leggett's first person accounts engaged and entertained me, and I admired his ability to switch between his memories of his own involvement and his descriptions of the state of science and policy at a given time. The sketches of the opposition always were worth reading, and I kept wondering whether he'd ever get really mean.
As a coda to reading the book, one could visit the website of OPEC to read their short policy statement on global climate change; see their FAQs number 20, an interesting read.
One of the Most Important Books of our Era.......2003-02-15
I have just finished reading Leggett's book about the war for the protection of our atmosphere. It is a riveting account of the strident efforts experienced and well-intentioned scientists from all over the world have made to try to bring humanity to a reasonable acceptance of the extreme dangers that ignoring the risks of global warming will bring upon our planet. It is shocking that so far they have clearly lost the war; oil, coal, and automobile interests have successfully undermined international conventions and treaties which were designed to protect the Earth. If fossil fuel, energy and automobile interests continue to "win" (although as pointed out in the book, it really amounts to a huge loss), we will all be affected, rich or poor, South or North, nobody stands to gain. As Leggett's book makes obvious, humanity has never before had its hands on so much information about its own substantive elements, its past and its future; and yet,seemed to be willing to throw its own intelligence into the wind, scrapping its safety catches, all for the sake of some weird sense of 'material progress' spoon-fed to us by commercial-driven media. This books points directly to the moments in time when human progress could have advanced into a more sane, and probably more interesting variety of developmental possibilities. Read it and relish its not-at-all hidden wisdom--it will be one of the unforgetable learning moments of your reading life.
Book Description
At the University of Pennsylvania, separate dorms have been set up for minorities in the name of racial harmony...
Among women soldiers returning on a troopship from Desert Storm, one in ten was pregnant...
In New Jersey, dentists who are HIV-positive do not have to tell their patients...
Grades are so inflated at Harvard that 85 percent of students graduate with "honors"...
These absurdities are a sampling of the spreading decay in the American culture, a phenomenon best-selling author Martin L. Gross has dissected in The End of Sanity, a carefully researched examination of contemporary social madness. Watching the nation's tradition of fairness and individuality decline, he describes how it is giving way to a reign of conformity and error, including the insidious "Political Correctness." The crisis he describes goes beyond an attack on reason--actually heralding the end of sanity in American life.
Spearheaded by what he calls the "New Establishment"--a coalition of anti-intellectual academics, bureaucrats, politicians, judges, military leaders, social workers--the concepts that made America great are being thrown onto the cultural scrap heap in favor of a new "experimental" society that favors the few and ignores the many.
But, says the author, there is a cure for America's ailment once we have diagnosed how deeply social and cultural insanity has infected the nation. Gross gets to the root of the problem, including examining the "gods" of the New Establishment, then provides remedies that can reverse the wrong-headedness.
The End of Sanity is the most explosive book yet from the New York Times bestselling author of The Government Racket. This new work is essential reading for everyone concerned about the direction in which our nation is headed--a much-needed guide on how to lead America out of the social and moral morass toward a greater, saner tomorrow.
Customer Reviews:
U.S. Supreme Court was in denial in 2003.......2006-08-19
Around the time that The End of Sanity was published (1997), I listened to a radio interview of Mr. Gross in which he predicted that "within 10 years" all forms of racial and gender preferences (a.k.a. - "affirmative action", "diversity", etc.) would be outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Well, here we sit in 2006 and the Supreme Court has yet to deal the deathblow to this nonsense. They had the perfect opportunity to end it in 2003 with the University of Michigan cases, but they took the cowardly way out, thanks to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who believes we need 25 more years of affirmative action insanity.
The End of Sanity, even today, is an eye-opener and will awaken those who have little knowledge of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that take place in the name of "affirmative action" "diversity" and "multiculturalism", among other things.
I think that, in light of the Michigan cases and O'Connor's exit from the Court, Martin Gross should write a follow-up book entitled "A Return to Sanity" chronicling recent developments that may finally put an end to the sham that is affirmative action.
still relevant, alas.......2006-06-19
Gross identifies the key ideas that are at the core of the current "insanity" in America and Europe and offers an explanation of where they came from:
(1) From Freud, the notion of repression tells us that what we think is real is not necessarily so. Hence, we need others to reveal things to us. Also, there is no such thing as free will (and hence, there can be no such thing as responsibility).
(2) From Marx, we get the notion that some segments of society suppress and exploit other segments.
(3) From Jesus, we get the notion of compassion: helping others is good. And the feeling of guilt: that we are partly to blame for the way the world is.
We can easily recognize these key ideas as cropping up again and again in classrooms and in the mass media. And we can see their key role in the operative notions of racism, sexism, etc. and in multiculturalism and in affirmative action--the three predominant instruments by which our society has been and continues to be changed. Tracing them to Freud, Marx and Jesus is plausible.
What this account leaves out is "postmodernism", the doctrine that truth is relative, that there is no such thing as evidence and no such thing as meaning (as in the meaning of a word). These ideas come from French theorists of the 1960s and 1970s and are essential in preventing or neutralizing any criticism or questioning of the key ideas or the operative programs.
So, Gross has told us WHAT and told us WHERE. What he has not told us are the even more interesting questions of WHY these things were done and WHO is doing them. (The only book I know that answers these question is While America Sleeps: How Islam, Immigration and Indoctrination are Destroying America from Within.)
On Target.......2004-09-10
Finally, someone with the guts to point out the New Establishment's raw deal and the intelligence to map out a plan of action. Anyone reading this with a critical eye and an objective viewpoint can see that Mr. Gross is right on target with his criticism of affirmative action, sexual harrassment, the public school system, etc. He is not sexist, racist or elitist; rather, he is truly concerned about the fact that women, minorities and the poor are being held to increasingly lower standards which do nothing but perpetuate problematic situations. He calls for raising expectations and making people more responsible for their actions. This is not a popular theory in our increasingly permissive society.
This should be required reading on all college campuses, where the New Establishment's PC codes and idealogical mumbo-jumbo run rampant. However, since it's not a touchy-feely "I'm okay, you're okay" sort of book, (and actually requires some thought when reading) I'm sure this will never happen.
Stop the insanity before its too late.......2004-08-20
Hate to sound like a broken record but for as long as democrats are in power this politically correct b.s. will continue.
Everything this book says is true and then some. I'm from Ukraine and I can attest to the fact that even high school graduates there have better education than college graduates here. I've met people who are 30 or 40 years old and they are nearly illiterate. 60% of people I've met here either never heard of Ukraine or think its somewhere in Asia. If that's not shameful I don't know what is.
I'm not even going to begin to tell you what's wrong with this sexual harassment nonsense. I'm sure there are women who have been harassed but according to various feminist mouthpieces its practically every other woman. Reality check, anyone? Where does it end? Are we going to keep going until we become "Socilist Republic of Canada"?
US passed by the borderline of sanity long ago.......2004-07-21
For the record:
The major crises in today's America calls for far more than the delusions of past political rhetoric where most cultural problems are simply ignored, or covered up. Americans deserve more for their loyalty and for their hope than to be considered children unable to know the truth. That is a reason Michael Moore was able to capture the national spotlight with his film documentary, and it doesn't begin to touch the surface on what is wrong with the U.S. From the gender and racial double standards to the negative campaigns meant to inflame and intimidate the public, the entire mess is not of the making by "ordinary citizens," but those who would be kings, those who fancy themselves already kings, and those who foolishly believe there are persons right for being kings in America - or queens!
Amazon.com
In 1905, an Arab journalist and Ottoman official observed that two important phenomena were rising in the corners of the Turkish Empire: the awakening of Arab nationalism and efforts by European immigrants to found a Jewish state in Palestine. "Both of these movements are destined to fight each other continually," he concluded, "until one of them wins." So it has seemed, and the title of British journalist Anton La Guardia's book speaks volumes: for the last century, when the children of the Diaspora began to return in numbers to Palestine, two visions of that "promised land" have battled for supremacy, with no apparent resolution in sight--as witness the daily headlines. La Guardia charts the origins and course of the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, remarking that much of it owes to all-too-human causes (the humiliation of the Arabs over having been defeated so often and so decisively in five decades of warfare; the mutual hatred of Arafat and Sharon) and offering thoughts from both sides on how peace might be reached, short of the annihilation of one or the other combatant. Those who themselves struggle to comprehend the news from the Middle East will find La Guardia to be a reliable, illuminating guide. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
The struggles of the Israelis and Palestinians command the obsessive attention of the world. Statesmen tinker with peace plans for the Middle East and generals worry about future wars there. Religious leaders stoke the passions of the devout while archaeologists dig to find the origins of humanity. Between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, dreams collide with the reality of nationalist struggle. With an experienced journalist's eye, Anton La Guardia offers a close look at the Israelis as they come to terms with the 'post-Zionist' demolition of national myths, and the Palestinians as they try to build their own state. 'Anton La Guardia's beautifully written new account provides fresh insights that expand our understanding. Pro-duc-ing an entertaining book valuable to all points of the knowledge spectrum is an impressive accomplishment.' -The Washington Post
Customer Reviews:
Blather Without End .......2007-09-02
A first-rate informative read on the modern Israeli-Arab conflict should grasp a firm grip on the intricate and coercive history of the heavily-contested Holy Land which is still ongoing today without any prospect of resolve after all these years. La Guardian's "War Without End" falls short of reciting a chronicle of the region which laid the foundation for modern Zionism far before there existed an Al-Aqsa mosque worth killing yourself for. The historical narrative of La Guardia's hack work begins with Theodor Herzl's ungrounded thirst for Ottoman land which shrouds readers from the more than three thousand year presence of the Jewish people in the region fiercely contested for today.
The book opens with Anton's experiences with the Israeli's "uncalled for" anti-terrorism security measures and overall portrayal of the authorities as rude and coarse. We then move on to eight protracted chapters that lack coherency, profoundness, or organization for such a tortuous subject. Most of which focuses on the author's personal experiences stationed in Eastern Jerusalem which obscure a clear direction the story is supposed to head or any correlation to his inconsistent strife to recount, what we assume to be a, sufficient and historically balanced background of the region.
Always quick to lay out the negative and detestable acts of the arduous past of the Jewish peoples' struggle to return to Zion after thousands of years, La Guardia omits the meritable events in Israel's past so that when a reader ultimately finishes the book, they're left with a sense of resentful loathe towards the freshly painted portrait of a nation of kippah-wearing, land hungry, inequitable, adamantly ruthless gun-totting warriors. The payot-draped IDF is in many ways in the author's mind, no different from the sadistic Mongols charging across the open-plains of Asia in a quest for others' land and wealth.
Failing to recount any creditable events in history such as; the 173 Jewish Nobel Prize
winners, eight of which were Israeli, holding the best human rights record in the Middle East, or being at the forefront of biomedical innovation. No, but we are well informed of the modern nation's unfavorable acts such as political assassinations, armed security measures, and involvement in Arab-sparked wars.
It is almost as if the author remains egocentrically content on referring to the Israelis as "circumcised Cossacks". When finished a reader will be convinced Mr. La Guardia truly believes they are along with all of his other disorganized tirades jumbled up into a 500 page tedious diatribe- what chutzpah!
If you're a reader with any question or doubt over whether the modern State of Israel has any right to exist or defend itself, you will likely get your main course and second helpings in "War Without End". There is no place this is more evidently clear then in the Epilogue where Mr La Guardia reveals his "solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian problem with a "structure, perhaps a confederation, encompassing Israel, Palestine, and Jordan." so in essence, his hopes for the future is not a solution for Israel but rather a solution to Israel. Sorry to spoil the ending for you.
Whether you agree or disagree with Mr. La Guardia's inclination on the conflict, the real reason this book should elude a potential reader's bookshelf is the palpable lack of consistency of the eight arid chapters which abstain from chronology or historical background adopting to focus on petty little punitive national security measures or condemnation of sectarian conflicts where the Israelis are usually the aggressors (ie 29' Riots) and mostly neglecting altogether Palestinian terrorism or the strife of the Jewish people not to mention the double standards Israel is held to in the international community. The six year age of the book is beginning to show today; La Guardia focuses at a point on Israel withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. The ending chapters are spent sympathizing with terrorist leaders and leave a very pessimistic taste for the future of the conflict. It would be too easy to dismiss the book as big, boring, and bias but Mr La Guardia does display a great deal of effort in his writing, however this characteristic alone fails to produce an accurate retelling of events which have led to the present situation in the Holy Land but rather bring forth a low-grade, one-sided assessment of the present situation that neither sheds light on solutions nor accentuates the actual underlying causes of the dissension that continues to retrogress today.
Magnificent book!!! A must for everyone interested in the subject.......2005-07-20
This is the third booki read on the situation between Israel and Palestine and so far is the best book yet.Mr La Guardia is an excellent historian with great knowledge of the situation in the Middle East.The way he tells the story is captivating and clear.One of the things i like the most was that he explains every detail of the conflict.He explains and describes every group involved, every city or place and the importance of every conflict.For example, he explains names like Hizbollah,Hamas,Mossad and a lot others that you hear a lot in the news.He also explains both sides of the conflict with accuracy using interviews and a lot of historical sources which gives you a very good understanding of the conflict.This is the book for complete understanding of the situation between Israel and Palestine.Fantastic work!!
Biased genetic studies?.......2005-06-07
Author La Guardia mentions how the Lemba of Africa have the Jewish gene. Fine! But when he deals (in several pages mind you)with the Falashas (also of Africa) he never mentions that genetic studies have positively shown these Jews NOT to be descended from the 12 Tribes of Israel despite the Falashas's longtime rep for possibly being a Lost Tribe of Israel which, again, has now been 100% disproven through genetic studies.
Mostly good, but author's bias peaks through ever so subtly.......2004-10-26
In general, a very good read by a well-informed and articulate writer. Maybe the best book on the subject since "From Beirut to Jerusalem." And the author is very good in exploring the inner minds of a lot of his subjects, his review of history is more informative than Friedman's was. However, I think that in spite of his honest attempts to write a balanced account, the author does not always succeed. His sympathy for the Palestinian cause, conscious or subconscious, resides in many of his pages. For example, it is interesting that almost all inconsistencies of Israeli policy over the last several decades are carefully reviewed and enumerated, but no similar critique is leveled at Arafat (with the exception only single reference to him as being unreliable). In discussing some of the reasons that led to the collapse of the Oslo process, the author omits what could possibly be the biggest one of all. He described the scene where Arafat rejected Barak's offer because it would have led to his funeral. What the author fails to mention is that Arafat never made the tough political decision Rabin had made to tell his people that they would have to reach a compromise with Israel. Instead from 1994 on the told them that one day they will have Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, and the rest. He was an irresponsible leader who promised something he could never deliver, who raised expectations of his people to a point where they could never be satisfied with any proposal that an Israeli politician could put forth and win a referendum on. Arafat's position in front of the Palestinians in 1994-2000 effectively precluded any possibility of a compromise final settlement. Yet in this entire work the author does not mention this once. Neither does he mention Arafat's famous doubletalk: one thing in English, another in Arabic.
In describing various Israeli inequities towards the Moslem holy places, the author manages to complete omit the fact that in 1948-1967 no Jew was allowed to approach his holy places at all.
An interesting example is provided by the author's description of the aftermath of the massacre of praying Palestinians by Dr. Goldstein -- a despicable crime and a truly low point for the settler movement. The author mentions that after Goldstein was overcome by the Palestinians, they began clashing with Israeli soldiers even though Goldstein was a lone shooter. The author appears very upset about the fact that the soldiers "for some reason... made a provocative appearance" at the hospital and then put the town on curfew even though it was the Jew who committed the crime in this case. But are curfews not usually imposed on a rioting city? Are soldiers not typically deployed to protect a hospital in a city beset with violence? The curfew had nothing to do with the shooting, but it had everything to do with the Palestinian riots that started immediately afterwards. The better question to ask is why "for some reason" the Palestinians "made a provocative appearance" on the streets and attacked the Israeli soldiers and settlers, who had nothing to do with the morning shooting.
The author does not miss a chance to call Israeli explanations "excuses;" its leaders are "corpulent" (Sharon) or former "terrorists" (Shamir), yet such labels are attached to Arafat. Reading the author's account of Camp David 2000, one might believe that it was Barak, not Arafat, who was responsible for the fiasco. Barak was too tough and confrontational, apparently, in spite of putting forth a stunningly generous offer (the best offer Israel could ever give), but Arafat merely was "suspicious." But I digress... The book is good, read it, but look for the author's opinions encroaching on history here and there; caution is warranted!
Opinionated yet valuable history of 20th-century Palestine.......2003-09-21
A combination of history and journalism, La Guardia's useful and readable book covers the formation of Israel, its recently immigrated Jewish populations, and the exiled or (to risk a loaded word) subjugated, mostly Islamic, Arab natives. While the book sketches the historical events of the last two millennia that led the world to the current impasse and describes the rise of Zionism and its role in the creation of the state, the bulk of its pages focuses on events since 1948.
Discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become so heated that it is surely impossible to write a book that would satisfy even a plurality of readers, much less most of them. La Guardia is not impartial: on the whole, his sympathies tend to lie with the plight of the Palestinians (and part of this bias may well be unavoidable, considering the disadvantaged David vs. well-armed Goliath nature of the conflict). Yet he also understands the motives, emotions, and events that supported both Zionism and the formation of a Jewish state early in the first half of the twentieth century.
His blunt criticisms are equally harsh, directed at the international blindness that seemingly pretended that Palestine was an empty territory before and especially after World War 2, the incendiary Israeli policy of permitting settlements amidst Palestinian territory, the anti-Semitism tainting the Palestinian cause, the intractable religious fanaticism that infects both sides. Furthermore, he is scathing in his criticism of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. For example, he excoriates Arafat's cynical manipulations, his administration of "a fiefdom in his own image," and his "laissez-faire attitude" to Palestinian violence. Similarly, he disparages Sharon for his role in the Phalangist massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Although extremists of either stripe will undoubtedly disagree, La Guardia's biases inform rather than contaminate his reporting.
The journalistic aspects of the book yield its one major shortcoming. Instead of presenting the history of Palestine/Israel in some linear fashion, his chapters divide his materials, very loosely, into a potpourri of overlapping topics: religious background, the early immigrations and kibbutzim, a history of twentieth century events, the shadow of the Holocaust and the creation of the Palestinian diaspora (provocatively titled "Victims of Victims"), the assorted native and immigrant Jewish communities, and recent political events. La Guardia mixes interviews, historical narration, and flashbacks; since he occasionally refers to people and events before he's introduced them, the result may well be confusing to those who don't already have a general historical background.
Written by a foreign observer with an impressive understanding of the Middle East, "War without End" is, for the most part, factually reliable--and the opinionated presentation of those facts will enlighten rather than prejudice. The reader closes the book, however, with a sinking pessimism reinforced by the book's title: that this morass really has no solution that we can expect to see in our lifetimes.
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- Manifesto for Good People Trapped in Bad Organizations
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End of Bureaucracy and the Rise of the Intelligent Organization
Gifford Pinchot , and
Elizabeth Pinchot
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Intrapreneuring in Action: A Handbook for Business Innovation
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Book Description
Everyone complains about bureaucracy--this book shows what can be done to replace it with more humane and effective systems of organization. The Pinchots describe effective organizations that fully utilize the intelligence of all employees, not just those at the top.
Customer Reviews:
Insightful!.......2001-04-12
How can citizens of a society that exalts freedom consent to spend the majority of their lives laboring within organizations that are hierarchical, slow-moving and dictatorial? Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot raised that question in their heralded 1993 book and provided the following answer: Not willingly and not for long. The Pinchots were among the first management scholars to predict the demise of the military-style command structure, along with its inherent secrecy and Machiavellian political sniping. Although a slew of books devoted to the same theme have been published since, none have done a better job at explaining the potential of informed and engaged employees who don't fear their bosses too much to take decisive action. We [...] strongly recommend this book, which brims with meticulous case histories showing how teams, employee-owned companies and internal free-market competition have transformed organizations. (In fact, the Pinchots coined the term "intraprenuership" to describe this process.) While you might not be convinced that a company run by consensus can ever compete with one run by The Prince, this book gives you hope that it can.
Manifesto for Good People Trapped in Bad Organizations.......2000-04-09
The seven essentials of organizational intelligence include widespread truth and rights; freedom of enterprise, liberated teams, equality and diversity, voluntary learning networks, democratic self-rule, and limited corporate government. It was this book, and the very strong applause that the author received from all those attending OSS '96, that caused me to realize that the U.S. Intelligence Community is just chock full of very good people that want to change, but are not being allowed to change by the organizational circumstances within which they are trapped-frozen in time and budget.
Book Description
"A much needed antidote, with its perceptive comments on the decline of the legal profession."--Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States, 1969-1986
This is the first searching examination of the troubled legal profession to be written by one of the nation's leading lawyers, and in it Sol Linowitz offers guidelines to a renewed professionalism among attorneys. The Betrayed Profession criticizes not the mouthpieces and the ambulance chasers that are the usual targets of public criticism, but the leaders of the bar--the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., firms that have created a "legal services industry" and turned a public calling into an increasingly narrowed business. Linowitz shows that many lawyers have lost their connection to the tradition that theirs is a public profession--that the lawyer's responsibility is not simply to the client, or to the highest fee obtainable, but to the court. Today, the bar association has become a trade union for lawyers, and the public is the loser. This book is an urgent call to action that neither the legal profession nor the public it is meant to serve can afford to ignore.
Customer Reviews:
Illuminating!.......2000-06-10
One other example for reality (truth - considering the author!)being far more riveting than fiction! The decay of american Law (and society, for that matter) is traced back to how a profession betrayed itself! The "Miranda" debacle of Bobby K. started the real breakdown. An entire virtual industry emerged from it and corroded the integrity of not only the legal profession, but dragged down with it also the medical one into a "profit-sharing" business! BRAVO! Mr. Mayer should team up with other disillusioned professionals to create similar eposes!
Average customer rating:
- Powerful and Well Written
- A Really Good Book
- Coastal Policy Has Killed the Oceans!
- One of the most devastating books I've read
- A great book
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Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas
Colin Woodard
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Against the Tide
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Defying Ocean's End: An Agenda For Action
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The Empty Ocean
ASIN: 0465015719
Release Date: 2001-02-19 |
Amazon.com
Take a pristine coral reef off the mangrove-forested coast of Belize, one that draws a handsome roster of fish and other sea creatures--and, therefore, a complement of scuba divers, sports fishermen, photographers, and other consumers of nature. Add an airstrip to serve these cash customers, then a hotel, then a seawall, then a golf course, then a desalination plant. In no time, thanks to the changes you've wrought on the coastal ecology, you'll have a dead reef in a dead patch of sea.
Such wanton destruction is the norm for today, writes science journalist Colin Woodard, who debarks from his travels on the world's seas with depressing and unremittingly bad news. One of the victims is the Black Sea of Eurasia, once a thriving extension of the Atlantic, now all but destroyed by "overfishing, oil spills, industrial discharges, nutrient pollution, wetlands destruction," and other ills. The ravaged Black Sea is mirrored in other places to which Woodard travels: the South Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico, the Antarctic. In such places significant ecological transformations are occurring, all in a very short period of time, all perhaps irreversible, all certainly dangerous to the health of the biosphere. "The oceans," Woodard urges his readers to consider, "are finite and destructible. Wastes dumped and drained into the ocean do not disappear; they are neither economic nor ecological externalities. Likewise, marine fish and animals are not commodities like iron, wheat, or broilers; they are wildlife." Adding to works such as Carl Safina's Song for the Blue Ocean, Woodard makes a clear and urgent call for the reversal of all this destruction and for the protection of the world's waters. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
"[Woodard] successfully brings to life the fascinating mysteries of marine science [and] outlines strategies that, he contends, must be taken to save our seas."-Publishers Weekly The Black Sea is already dead. Because of sea-level rise, an entire nation in the South Pacific, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is being washed away. Throughout the Caribbean Sea, vast stretches of coral reef-called the "rainforests of the ocean" because of their diversity of life-are dying at increasingly rapid rates. The reefs along the entire north coast of Jamaica are dead. Ocean's End is not about the damage our oceans could suffer (and inflict) in ten or a hundred years, if we're not careful. It's an eyewitness account, in compelling and vivid detail, of the massive worldwide destruction that's already happened.
Customer Reviews:
Powerful and Well Written.......2006-09-04
Wow, on the heals of reading Our Stolen Future, this was a bit of a shock...you know I had no idea the Black Sea was in such bad shape...I guess I really am out of touch with the world these days. Living in my own particular inner bubble, as it were, I seem to have missed out on some doings I used to pay a great deal of attention to.
I've long felt that we're slowly destroying our oceans and seas; I didn't realize we had actually accomplished it somewhere already. I strongly believe that nature is resilient and that it rights itself by restoring balance after we wreak havoc...but we also need to be taking some action and this book really brought that home for me. Ocean's End follows Woodward from the Black Sea forward on a global journey that touches on Newfoundland, the Mississippi Delta, Belize and the Great Barrier Reef, the Federated States of Micronesia, and finally to Antarctica.
In a compelling journey the documents the once pristine conditions, teeming with in all of these areas with their intensely interesting and varied ecosystems and the native peoples who lived (and still are trying to live) there, to the decline/destruction of these ecosystems and the empty bag they fisherman and villages in these places are left holding. He also takes care to point out that the decline of each ecosystem affects others and the world wide "chain" of them are all interconnected. Additionally, he points out that it's not a localized problem, many of the causes of an ecosystems decline happen far from the location where the ultimate damage is done (the Mississippi Delta for example).
Woodard really weaves it all together into a nice package that lays out the depth of the problem and he does give tentative solutions...if anything can successfully be done to "fix" this problem, it won't come easy or cheap and we definitely need to get away from the short-sighted profit driven solutions that have been developed in the past. I'd recommend this in a heart beat, if you don't think this is a serious problem, you should definitely read this book!
A Really Good Book.......2005-02-18
A really good "eye-opener". This is the third copy I've
The Heart of the Matter
Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics)
Brighton Rock
The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics)
The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
