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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > General
The Korean War occupies a unique place in American history and
foreign policy. Because it followed closely after World War II and
ushered in a new era of military action as the first hot conflict
of the cold war, the Korean War was marketed as an entirely new
kind of military campaign. But how were the war-weary American
people convinced that the limited objectives of the Korean War were
of paramount importance to the nation?
In an important sense, Holcomb Noble spent most of his career at The New York Times preparing for this project, the first ten years as an acquisitions editor and rewrite person at the Sunday magazine. After stints as a science-section editor, metropolitan news editor, and business editor, he was made an investigations editor, during which he led two teams in year-long investigations that won back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes-one proving that the Star Wars anti-missile shield would not work, saving the nation an estimated cost of more than a trillion dollars, and the second uncovering corruption in the space industry, which directly accounted for the crash of the space shuttle Challenger and death of seven astronauts. His journalism career began as a reporter for the Worcester Telegram in Massachusetts after graduation from Amherst College. He joined the Associated Press in 1960 and went on to become day supervising editor of the AP's general news report. Part of his responsibilities included directing coverage of the moon missions of Apollo 12, 13, and 14 from the AP bureau at the space center in Houston. Cheney's War Crimes brings together for the first time the many
strands of the Shakespearean tragedy that is the story of Dick
Cheney. It gives an insider's account of his extraordinary seizure
of power in becoming the de facto president; makes shocking
disclosures about the chaos and confusion in response to the 9/11
attacks; and tells step by step how Cheney led the nation into two
destructive wars in the Middle East.
The still-prevailing notion among Western powers, including the United States, is that Russia is a democracy, or at least that it remains in the process of democratization. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Ostrow, Satarov, and Khakamada demonstrate in The Consolidation of Dictatorship in Russia. Journalists critical of Vladimir Putin's dictatorship, such as Anna Politkovskaya, are murdered. Nearly 100 investigative journalists, an average of two per month, have been murdered since Putin took power, and not one person has been charged or convicted of those crimes. In this book the authors seek to explain not just how Russia has become a dictatorship, but why Russia's leaders made the choices that undermined democratic political development, something no book has done until now. The still-prevailing notion among Western powers, including the United States, is that Russia is a democracy, or at least that it remains in the process of democratization. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Ostrow, Satarov, and Khakamada demonstrate in The Consolidation of Dictatorship in Russia. Journalists critical of Vladimir Putin's dictatorship, such as Anna Politkovskaya, are murdered. Nearly 100 investigative journalists, an average of two per month, have been murdered since Putin took power, and not one person has been charged or convicted of those crimes. Others critical of or in opposition to Putin often meet the same fate, as in the suspicious poisoning in London of Aleksandr Litvinenko. How did Russia manage to transition from dictatorship to dictatorship, when the hopes for democracy were so great and when Western conventional wisdom assumed for so long that democracy was inevitable there? The Consolidation of Dictatorship in Russia answers that question. Georgiy A. Satarov was President Boris Yeltsin's chief political counselor for much of the 1990s, and in that capacity was inside the Kremlin and present when most of the decisions this book details were made. Irina M. Khakamada was a Deputy in the Russian State Duma, a Deputy Speaker in the parliament, held a cabinet-level position in the government, and most recently was Putin's main liberal opponent in the 2004 presidential election. These individuals are among Russia's most prominent democratic activists and were participants in the events that led Russia away from the path of democratization. They share a unique perspective and knowledge of what happened and why. The authors seek to explain not just what Russia did and the consequences of those decisions, but why Russia's leaders made the choices that undermined democratic political development, something no book has done until now.
One of the greatest sources of America's troubles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans was the inability of our government's many parts to work well together. Often called interagency operations, applying everything that official Washington can do to keep Americans safe, free, and prosperous, is no easy task. The Pentagon, State Department, Homeland Security, Treasury, FBI, CIA, and other agencies have different capabilities, budgets, cultures, operational styles, Congressional oversight committees, and even operate under different laws. Getting them all organized on battlefields, after disasters, and during other times of crisis is often equated with herding cats. The history of getting government agencies to cooperate is replete with stories of courage, heart-breaking tragedy, and blundering incompetence. To meet the dangers of the 21st century, interagency operations will be more important than ever, yet few Americans understand the troubling history of Washington's failures and the pressing needs for reform. One of the greatest sources of America's troubles in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans was the inability of our government's many parts to work well together. Often called interagency operations, the coordination of everything official Washington can do to keep Americans safe, free, and prosperous, is no easy task. The Pentagon, State Department, Homeland Security, Treasury, FBI, CIA, and other agencies have different capabilities, budgets, cultures, operational styles, Congressional oversight committees, and even operate under different laws. Getting them all organized on battlefields, after disasters, and during other times of crisis is often equated with herding cats. The history of getting government agencies to cooperate is replete with stories of courage, heart-breaking tragedy, and blundering incompetence. To meet the dangers of the 21st century, interagency operations will be more important than ever, yet few Americans understand the troubling history of Washington's failures and the pressing needs for reform. This book is the first comprehensive history and sober analysis of one of the most pressing national security challenges of the century. The goal is to make a serious and unappreciated subject accessible to a wide audience through a series of engaging and informative historical case studies. The case studies span American history from the turn of the 20th century to today. They cover a variety of subjects from dealing with the great flu epidemic of 1918, to responding to natural disasters at home and abroad, to fighting wars and rebuilding countries after war. Each engaging chapter is a single case study written by a distinguished scholar who covers the historical context, the key players, actions, incidents, and, perhaps most important, lessons learned.
In the past year the elected leaders of the government of the United States have taken that nation down a road that can only lead to disaster. The federal government of the United States has borrowed more money in the past year alone than all of the debt accumulated since the nation's found more than 200 years ago. In the process of bankrupting America, the nationally elected leaders have on many occasions literally ignored the Constitution of the United States. The American people are patient; however, their patience has reached the breaking point, and, as a result, BIG changes are just around the corner for America. The book titled "Our 2nd American Revolution: Honoring the Sacrifice of our Founders" spells out how the American people will "take back" their nation beginning on November 2nd, 2010. This book includes a "Nine Point Plan to Save America from an otherwise certain demise" and breaks down step by step what must be done if America is to survive in the future. Our 2nd American Revolution is a book about saving America. America has drifted very far away from the fundamental principles that allowed her to become the richest and fastest growing nation ever to have existed. As a result, America is on a collision course with certain disaster. The goal of the "Our 2nd American Revolution" is to sound a loud wake up call to all Americans who love thier country and cannot bear to see the great American experiment fail. America can be saved if dramatic and bold action is taken soon. However, time is of the essence and the citizens of American must act, and act very soon.
Patrick Barr-Melej here illuminates modern Chilean history with an unprecedented chronicle and reassessment of the sixties and seventies. During a period of tremendous political and social strife that saw the election of a Marxist president followed by the terror of a military coup in 1973, a youth-driven, transnationally connected counterculture smashed onto the scene. Contributing to a surging historiography of the era's Latin American counterculture, Barr-Melej draws on media and firsthand interviews in documenting the intertwining of youth and counterculture with discourses rooted in class and party politics. Focusing on ""hippismo"" and an esoteric movement called Poder Joven, Barr-Melej challenges a number of prevailing assumptions about culture, politics, and the Left under Salvador Allende's ""Chilean Road to Socialism."" While countercultural attitudes toward recreational drug use, gender roles and sexuality, rock music, and consumerism influenced many youths on the Left, the preponderance of leftist leaders shared a more conservative cultural sensibility. This exposed, Barr-Melej argues, a degree of intergenerational dissonance within leftist ranks. And while the allure of new and heterodox cultural values and practices among young people grew, an array of constituencies from the Left to the Right berated counterculture in national media, speeches, schools, and other settings. This public discourse of contempt ultimately contributed to the fierce repression of nonconformist youth culture following the coup.
This book is step-by-step practical tool for a truly liberated life. It would help any reader to understand life threadbare and then manage it based on ancient Indian wisdom, universal love, and human values.
Are you tired of hearing about the complexities of the economy, unemployment, foreign policy, etc? Are you frustrated by politicians telling you the challenges America faces are too difficult for you to understand? I was too So, I decided to dive headlong into each issue and find the real truth behind the 'so called' complexities, and what I found may surprise you. The issues of today aren't mind boggling. They aren't huge algorithms. What they are is straightforward challenges, which we can solve with good old fashioned common sense solutions. The problem is most politicians can't balance a check book, let alone the national budget. They're also too busy running for re-election instead of working for their constituents. In order to make this topic easy to understand and to bring it closer to home, we'll follow Harold Barnes and his son Joshua as they go on an unexpected journey that starts with the writing of a Civics paper for school. The innocent and straightforward questions of a sixteen year old boy ignite their neighborhood, and then their state, into a political firestorm that eventually becomes The Franklin Party. If you want to recapture your pride in America and the spirit it was founded on, read this book.
Dr. Calvin J. Spann shares memories of his full, exciting life, including stories of his service in World War II. Due to the rigid pattern of racial segregation prevailing in the United States at that time, 966 black military aviators were trained at an isolated training complex near Tuskegee, Alabama. Training at this facility became known as the Tuskegee Experiment. Many black fighter pilots trained in Tuskegee fought in the aerial war over North Africa, Sicily, and Europe during World War II. Many people at the time believed that blacks were not capable of operating sophisticated airplane machinery-until these black airmen came home with the Red Star of Yugoslavia, Legions of Merit, and 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. They were called Schwarze Vogelmenschen (black birdmen) by the Germans and Black Red Tail Angels by the white American bomber crews because of the identifying red paint on their tail assemblies and their reputation for successfully providing fighter escort to bombing missions over strategic targets in Europe. Dr. Calvin J. Spann received his aviator training in the Tuskegee Experiment, serving his country from 1943 to 1946, and helped pave the way for desegregation of the United States armed forces.
Katutura, located in Namibia's major urban center and capital, Windhoek, was a township created by apartheid, and administered in the past by the most rigid machinery of the apartheid era. Namibia became a sovereign state in 1990, and Katutura reflects many of the changes that have taken place. No longer part of a rigidly bounded social system, people in Katutura today have the opportunity to enter and leave as their personal circumstances dictate. Influenced in recent years by significant urban migration and the changing political and economic situation in the new South Africa, as well as a myriad of other factors, this diverse community has held special interest for the author who did fieldwork there for several years prior to 1975. Pendleton's recent visits provide a rich comparison of life in Katutura township during the peak of the apartheid years and in the post-independence period. In his systematic look at urbanization, poverty, stratification, ethnicity, social structure, and social history, he provides a compassionate view of the survivors of the unstable years of apartheid.
This major new text analyzes changes and continuities in the current international order and their implications for understanding international development in the 21st century. The author assesses the extent and impact of globalization as well as the emergence of a more aggressive unilateralist and militarist stance by the United States and the debates this has provoked on hegemony, empire and imperialism. He offers a careful rebuttal of mainstream thinking on development and globalization while also challenging some key arguments of its radical critics.
A bird's eye-view of the difficulties facing the nation is first presented to the incoming Obama Administration and the new Congress. The specific problems are then described in some detail. Certain solutions, both from the current and futuristic perspective, are presented. An attempt has been made to keep the concepts and solutions explained in an understandable manner by mere mortals. The book has ten chapters, eight of which deal with a specific area of difficulty, its explanation and solutions. For example, in one chapter the issue of infra-structure development is described in detail. The sections in this chapter deal with simply asking the "meaning of change in Washington" to suggesting that the infra-structure of the city of Washington has to change first. This is followed by other terrestrial (bridges, roads, veteran's hospitals etc.) and extra-terrestrial (ground satellite tracking sites and other space related) infra- structure projects creating millions of jobs. This chapter then ends with: One might seriously look to see, if there is enough capacity in our heads to expand the non-governmental population in Washington's midst while creating an exemplary infrastructure underground and above ground for generations to marvel at. A city that looks and feels like the head and the heart of a nation on a planet far away. Tear down some buildings that are hard to maintain and environmentally archaic. This is change that Obama and his generation could be remembered for. Is it possible to ignore the skeptics and start the change that will begin the works programs creating so many opportunities; a new space age shall dawn. The Earth will have traveled through the space, crisscrossing the heavens, and the only sky visible will be from the future. I invite you to take a hard look at this book, dedicated to the founding fathers.
This account covers so many sites-a railway station in Berlin, Germany in 1933, a penthouse overlooking the mountains that surround Genoa, Italy, the World War II experience of picking cotton while an Athens, GA, high school student, to Atlanta, to St. Louis, to Chicago and eventually to the newly formed city of Sandy Springs, GA, which she created and leads as Mayor. The major issues of life in America for the past 60 years are addressed through the life of an unusual lady with humor as well as mature perception. The struggle between labor and management, the women's movement (we've got to get out into the world), the racial conflicts that engulfed the nation and especially the South, and the conflict between central cities and their suburbs, and finally the sometimes ridiculous aspects of politics all come alive as Eva narrates the twists and turns of her unusual life.
This book covers a wide range of issues and controversies within the world of sports-including drug use, economics, ethics, ethnicity, gender, globalization, politics, race, sexuality, and technology-from both a U.S. and global perspective. World Sports: A Reference Handbook covers a wide variety of sports-related controversies, including ethical, political, technological, business, and social issues related to the phenomenon of sports. Many of the larger topics are covered from multiple angles, often providing both a global and American perspective. The work provides unique insights into the commonly addressed subject of sports, supplying information that most readers will find unfamiliar and thought-provoking. Addressing forms of sports as diverse as American football, skateboarding, NASCAR auto racing, ultrarunning, and the disciplines of the Olympic Games, the title's topics are discussed in depth to illuminate the sport's specific issues and are backed with information from relevant sports organizations, biographies of important people, chronologies, and charts and graphs. The information within this handbook is based upon the latest academic research but presented in very accessible language, making it appropriate for high school and undergraduate students as well as general readers. A chronology of important events or innovations in sports A list of important sports organizations with descriptions of each A glossary of relevant terms such as "blood doping"
The debate over the federal budget-and the deficit spending it tends to produce-has assumed a renewed urgency for reasons that are painfully clear to all of us. Over the past thirty-two years-from the presidency of Jimmy Carter through that of George W. Bush-the U.S. government has in fact balanced its budget in only four of them, while the fiscal challenges confronting President Obama make a balanced budget anytime soon a remote possibility. Iwan Morgan's book provides a much-needed historical perspective on this perennially troubling issue. The prominent role of Congress notwithstanding, Morgan closely examines the role of presidents in the emergence of large federal budget deficits in the 1970s and 1980s, the reduction of the deficit problem in the 1990s, and its resurrection in the early twenty-first century. He focuses in particular on presidential budget policy to show how, over five administrations, deficit reduction merely complemented rather than took precedence over political priorities-and how Democrats came to support deficit reduction as necessary to preserve the liberal state, while Republicans largely tolerated deficits in order to safeguard their tax programs. Along the way, he considers such curiosities as why Carter and Clinton sought to reduce the deficit at a high level of revenue while Reagan and Bush 43 took the low road, and why Reagan and Bush 41 pressed for constitutional change prohibiting unbalanced budgets while Carter and Clinton opposed such an amendment. Through this historical perspective, Morgan offers an innovative analysis of the relationship between presidential budget policy and the Federal Reserve's direction of monetary policy and probes the emerging link between America's domestic public indebtedness and external indebtedness. He also provides a fresh look at the growth of the entitlement state in a generally conservative era and the failure of efforts to place it on a secure financial footing. The Age of Deficits boldly places the budget deficit at the center of modern American political history. Morgan clearly shows that, however much our recent leaders defined the deficit as a threat, their responses to it ultimately reflected their concern with reconciling its reduction with other elements of their governing agenda.
The first woman elected to lead a major Western power and the longest serving British prime minister for 150 years, Margaret Thatcher is arguably one the most dominant and divisive forces in 20th-century British politics. Yet there has been no overarching exploration of the development of Thatcher's views towards Northern Ireland from her appointment as Conservative Party leader in 1975 until her forced retirement in 1990. In this original and much-needed study, Stephen Kelly rectifies this. From Thatcher's 'no surrender' attitude to the Republican hunger strikes to her nurturing role in the early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process, Kelly traces the evolutionary and sometimes contradictory nature of Thatcher's approach to Northern Ireland. In doing so, this book reflects afresh on the political relationship between Britain and Ireland in the late-20th century. An engaging and nuanced analysis of previously neglected archival and reported sources, Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party and the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1975-1990 is a vital resource for those interested in Thatcherism, Anglo-Irish relations, and 20th-century British political history more broadly.
An international bestseller and winner of the Stonewall Book Award, which inspired an award-winning film 'A heroic work of journalism on what must rank as one of the foremost catastrophes of modern history.' The New York Times 'Stunning ... An impressively researched and richly detailed narrative.' TIME Randy Shilts was the first openly gay journalist dealing with gay issues for the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1981, the year when AIDS came to international attention, he quickly devoted himself to reporting on the developing epidemic, one which devastated his community and eventually took his life as well. Shilts interviewed over 1,000 people, weaving together extensive research in the form of personal stories and political reportage. He was perfectly placed to understand the cultural, medical and political impact of the disease on the gay community and United States society as a whole. And the Band Played On exposes why AIDS was allowed to spread while the medical and political authorities ignored and even denied the threat. This book remains one of the great works of contemporary journalism and provides the foundation for continuing debates over governmental failure in handling lethal epidemics.
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