Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. ...reveals a game that, according to John Perkins, is "as old as Empire" but has taken on new and terrifying dimensions in an era of globalization. And Perkins should know. For many years he worked for an international consulting firm where his main job was to convince LDCs (less developed countries) around the world to accept multibillion-dollar loans for infrastructure projects and to see to it that most of this money ended up at Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root, and other United States engineering and construction companies. This book, which many people warned Perkins not to write, is a blistering attack on a little-known phenomenon that has had dire consequences on both the victimized countries and the U.S. Cannot. Recommend. It. Enough. Your Recommendations?
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread All the President's Spin. Excellent look at Bush's clever use and manipulation of the media.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread In Defense of Global Capitalism is a compelling book on what is arguably the major economic issue of our time. In Johan Norberg, globalization has found a persuasive and passionate spokesman who may well reshape the terms of debate.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Knowledge and Decisions by Thomas Sowell. From the book jacket: "In modern society the number of separate individual decisions required to do something so apparently simple as bringing a slice of bread and pat of butter to the table- let alone something so formidably complex as exploring space- is staggering to the mind. Yet processes involving a multitude of of such decisions are undertaken every minute of the day by untold millions of people. ...Sowell describes in concrete detail by what general principles and under what constraints the fragmented knowledge embodied in the judgements and perceptions of millions of people gets coordinated into the making of decisions that are significant to our political, economic, legal, and other social processes. Increasingly, however, he warns, society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand, authenticated knowledge and decisions making, a gap that threatens not only our economic and politicial efficiency but our very freedom. What is particularly ironic about this growing disjunction betwen knowledge and policy is that it reflects the growing dominance of intellectuals, particularly in the fields of law and politics. For...in an environment influenced by intellectuals actual knowledge comes more and more to be replaced by assumptions based not on experience of what is nor on a real calculation of what can be but rather on an abstract and elitist social vision of what ought to be.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread If they're that good of books, they'll make movies out of 'em. I can wait. (I won't be getting The Gentle Art of Fisting on DVD, however.)
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread The Cheating Culture : Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead by David Callahan http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=lpr_g_1/104-7420625-8796735?v=glance&s=books Free cable television. Imaginary tax deductions. Do you take your chance to cheat? David Callahan thinks many of us would; witness corporate scandals, doping athletes, plagiarizing journalists. Why all the cheating? Why now? Callahan blames the dog-eat-dog economic climate of the past twenty years: An unfettered market and unprecedented economic inequality have corroded our values and threaten to corrupt the equal opportunity we cherish. Callahan's "Winning Class" has created a separate moral reality where it cheats without consequences-while the "Anxious Class" believes choosing not to cheat could cancel its only shot at success in a winner-take-all world. Updated with a new afterword analyzing the latest on cheating from the Martha Stewart trial to the Tyco and Enron sentencings, The Cheating Culture takes us on a gripping tour of cheating in America and makes a powerful case for why it matters.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must) by Ann Coulter http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400054184/anncoultedoto-20/ref=nosim/002-8975796-3813602 Review by Ben Shapiro November 1, 2004 http://www.townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/bs20041101.shtml There’s nothing more fun than shocking a liberal. Try it sometime. Tell a classroom full of Marxists that you support abolishing minimum wage and watch the reactions. Explain to affirmative action protestors that getting a combined 700 on your SATs doesn’t qualify you for a slot in the higher education system, and photograph their faces. Inform a Lyndon LaRouche campaign moron that you love war, and watch him blanch. Or give a liberal a copy of Ann Coulter’s newest book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter. Ticking off leftists has never been such fun. Coulter is brutally sarcastic, bone-crunchingly vitriolic and unbelievably funny. Reading this collection of columns, you’ll review the last few years of American liberal craziness: from Clinton to Kerry, from Monica’s thong to Ted Kennedy’s swimming ability, from protecting terrorists to killing fetuses. Just remember not to read this while eating, because you might spit out your food. This applies to everyone except Michael Moore, who never spits out his food. Fittingly, Coulter begins with a few tips on arguing with leftists. She reminds conservatives that arguing with liberals isn’t likely to end with a handshake: “Liberals traffic in shouting and demagogy. In a public setting, they will work themselves into a dervish-like trance and start incanting inanities: ‘BUSH LIED, KIDS DIED!’ ‘RACIST!’ ‘FASCIST!’ ‘FIRE RUMSFELD!’ ‘HALLIBURTON!’ Fortunately, the street performers usually punch themselves out eventually and are taken back their parents’ house.” Coulter’s strategy: fight fire with fire. Except make your fire intelligible and well-reasoned. Make sure to anger liberals, because watching them explode is fun: “If the liberal you’re arguing with doesn’t become speechless with sputtering, impotent rage, you’re not doing it right. People don’t get angry when lies are told about them; they get angry when the truth is told about them.” Her strategy is working; on Amazon.com, liberal reviewers have swarmed like lice from the head of Al Franken. Virtually none of them have read her book, but that’s probably because few of them can actually read. Those who can read should email me to receive an explanation of the difference between the words “their” and “they’re.” Once you hit the columns, the real fun begins. Even regular column-readers will be surprised and pleased to see these “director’s cut” pieces. If you thought Coulter was great at packing laugh lines into her columns, watch what she can do with a higher word count. I highly recommend this book! IntheNet
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Just to whet: ...Perkins writes, "The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in. John Perkins goes on to write: "I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop." But now Perkins has finally published his story...
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Don't Think of an Elephant, George Lakoff Quite simply the most important book for Democrats in the last few years. Lakoff's subject is the use of language to frame political debate. His analysis will help the Democratic party extracate itself from playing with the frame built by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (think tanks, leadership institutes, media outlets, etc). What's a frame? You know them -- "Death Tax", and "Tax Relief", and "Pro-life", and so on. Bush says, "We don't need a permission slip from the UN to defend the US", and suddenly, the Republicans have framed the runup to war in a certain way. Our mistake, as a party, has been our willingness to play within our opponents' frame, rather than building our own.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Open World by Philippe Legrain Patriots & Profiteers by R.T. Naylor
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America by William C. Davis My current "read du jour". May be a little too academic for some, but a good history nonetheless. Also try: The Civil War: A Narrative, Volumes 1-3 by Shelby Foote EXHAUSTIVE, but a different style than most. And, when you're feeling a little too smart for your own good: The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe by Stephen Hawking I have spent sleepless nights just thinking about this book and wondering what 4 other people on the planet can have a conversation with Hawking without him thinking they're idiots.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread By Dinesh D'Sousa What's So Great About America The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society By Thomas Sowell Classic Economics Basic Economics Applied Economics By FA Hayek The Fatal Conceit : The Errors of Socialism The Road to Serfdom The Constitution of Liberty Individualism and Economic Order By Joseph Schumpeter Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle By Francis Fukuyama State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century The End of History and the Last Man
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Here's one of them. Not sure if I'll pick this one up, as it sounds like it's above any level I'd be able to comprehend. Brian Greene might be another. I've read The Elegant Universe, but haven't started The Fabric of the Cosmos yet.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Some vital post-World War II American (domestic) histories: The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Thomas Sugrue Important for understanding why "white flight" occurred, why it began in the 1950s, not the 1960s, and how racial segregation in the North was enforced through both law and violence by White homeowners. Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America, Robin D. G. Kelley Engaging response to a generation of social scientists and government officials who have studied the "pathologies" of the "underclass." The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume II: Master of the Senate, Robert Caro Great political biography. Provides key understanding of how the legislative process works in modern America, especially within the Senate. Plus, more stories about LBJ forcing secretaries to take dictation while he crapped. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism, Adam Rome History of the how builders passed the environmental costs of suburbanization (septic problems, increased energy costs) on to homeowners, and how those problems sparked the growth of the environmental movement. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity, David Gutierrez History of the complicated views of Mexican Americans toward immigration and citizenship.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson. Seriously.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Theory of Moral Sentiment Adam Smith Culture and Anarchy Matthew Arnold On Liberty John Stuart Mill. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass The Conservative Mind Russell Kirk. Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Douglas Hoftadter Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism Daniel Bell No Ivory Tower:McCarthyism and the Universities Ellen Schrecker Cultivating Humanity Martha Nussbaum What Liberal Media? Eric Alterman Blinded by the Right David Brock
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Ann Coulter Treason, Ann Coulter Miles Gone By, William F. Buckley, Jr. War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom, Oliver North Arrogance: Rescuing America from the Media Elite, Bernard Goldberg Bias, Bernard Goldberg Shut Up & Sing, Laura Ingraham Because He Could, Dick Morris Let Freedom Ring, Sean Hannity Useful Idiots, Mona Charen Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, Jason Clarke Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day, Joe Scarborough
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Oh, and for anyone remotely interested in the history of New York and Northeastern politics, The Power Broker is a must. Its a beast, and is too big for its own good, but considering how few people know who Robert Moses is, let alone what he created, its essential.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Books with the author's picture on the cover are ALWAYS good!
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread Sitting down and reading Caro's three books will teach you a lot about the development of modern American politics. You'd better have a damn comfortable chair, though.
Re: Politics Board Book Recommendation Thread From the Left: Bush in Babylon By Tariq Ali (debunks many of the mainstream myths about Iraqi cultural history) Power Politics By Arundhati Roy (her novel, the God of Small Things won England's Booker prize, but her speeches and essays are just as good) Nickel and Dimed By Barbara Ehrenriech (what welfare reform REALLY means for people in this country) Dime's Worth of Difference (a critical look at the decline of the liberal left during the CLinton years by the editors at www.counterpunch.org) Iraq Under Siege Anthony Arnove (analysis of the sanctions) On the flip side of the coin, If you want to know how Wolfowitz, Cheney, view their world strategy: read any book by Zbigniew Brzezinski who was Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor and taught and worked with Paul Wolfowitz and others in the American Enterprise Institute.