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by Peter Earle
ISBN: 041368170X
Hardcover: 352 pages
Condition: Used: Acceptable
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. No publisher marks, no shelf wear. Book appears as new on the outside but has underlining and marking in the margins. This book remains in a neat condition.
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by Alfred Cobban
ISBN: 0140138269
Paperback: 256 pages
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. Gently read copy in like new condition. No reading/ shelf wear.
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Customer Reviews
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From Napoleon I to Napoleon III
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-03-31
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Alfred Cobban succeeds in explaining the essence of 70 years of French history in a small book.
Those years were dominated, first, by the ambition of one man, and after, by 'the interest of property'. 'The men who ruled France were not economically minded, and their electorate was largely one of landed proprietors.'
The 'raison d'etre' of the Napoleonic state was war. Napoleon's policies ended in a catastrophe for France, after making 860.000 victims, of which half under 28.
He was replaced by those who represented the 'pays legal': only 9.000 people out of a population of 26 million ('le pays reel') could vote. The chasm between the two 'pays' was immense, but only very visible in the capital Paris.
It lead to the Revolution of 1848, where the few wealthy crushed the unemployed and starving masses, and in 1971, to the Paris Commune, again abolished in blood (20.000 victims).
In the meantime, France under the unscrupulous Napoleon III suffered a humiliating defeat by the Prussians.
This period was also characterized by the power struggle between the Church and the State, between the priest and the teacher, who had to spread the republican faith of anticlericalism. The Church clearly chose the cause of the oligarchy. In the papal Encyclical 'Mirari vos', the Pope attacked the abolition of censorship, freedom of education, universal suffrage and the separation of Church and State.
This period also posed the essential dilemma of the universal suffrage: has the sovereign people the right to repudiate democracy?
The great mass of electors were illiterate peasants likely to follow the lead of their clergy, local landowners and notables.
On the theoretical and revolutionary front, we meet Proudhon (property is theft), Fourier (the evils of civilization are traced to property), Louis Blanc (the right to work), Saint-Simon (the first Keynesian) and Lamennais ('They have said you were a flock and that they were your shepherds; you the beasts, they the men. Theirs, therefore, your fleece, your milk, your flesh'].
Alfred Cobban comments also the ongoing revolution in arts.
With his ironic style, he wrote a book that reads like a thriller.
Highly recommended, not only for historians.
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Excellent analysis on the French history of 1799-1871
Rating  (4)
Date: 2002-08-02
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
If you want to learn how Napoleon I conquered Europe, you should find another book. If you want to know how Napoleon III changed European balance of power, this book would not help you very much. But if you are curious about why French political history was so unstable in the 19th century, if you want to learn something about class struggle between the rich & the poor and struggle between clericalism & anti-clericalism, if you want to study the changes of electoral system and electoral management and if you want to know something about the struggle between church and state for control over education, this book will be your best choice.A small problem in this book is that Alfred Cobban frequently used French words without English interpretation thereby making me buy an otherwise unnecessary French dictionary. I'd like to recommend this book and A.J.P. Taylor's "Bismarck, the man and the statesman" at the same time. It would be wonderful to compare Alfred Cobban's orthodox view on Napoleon III's neutrality to Austro-Prussian War with A.J.P. Taylor's unorthodox view on it.
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by David G. Campbell
ISBN: 039571284X
Hardcover: 288 pages
Condition: Used: Acceptable
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. EX LIBRARY copy with library markings, in a good condition.
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Customer Reviews
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Brilliant
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-12-12
Modern day botanist Dr. Campbell's account of thirty years in this remote Amazon rainforest is both a captivating read of adventure and more importantly a daunting paradigm of what has happened to this esoteric land.
Every molecule of the natural, physical and anthropological world is magically transformed with zesty and passionate prose. The author's own escapades with jaguars, caimans and deadly snakes, to legends of tribes with tails and spirits with backward feet leaves the reader mesmerized.
Blend historical blunders of rubber exploitation, cattle farms, slavery, the Trans-Amazon Highway, etc. with the resulting decimation of native populations by disease and dilution of heritage, this book is a soothsayer of how humankind has not been so kind.
Everyone and everything loses from self-righteous and mindless practices such as occurred here. The outcome are ghosts with haunting apparitions from the past.
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One month later Still waiting for the book
Rating  (1)
Date: 2007-10-09
0 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I wouldn't mind reviewing this book but I still haven't recieved it yet. It's now a month since you posted it, perhaps you could please chase it up. Thankyou
Paul Lightfoot
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AMAZING TRAVEL AND SCIENCE WRITING ON THE AMAZON
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-09-08
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
Though there are many books that describe nature in the Amazon, David Campbell definitely is among the top writers on it. In this book he offers, from start to finish, a very interesting mix between storytelling with lyrical qualities and scientific analysis with social commentary.
He is a scientist, focused on botany, and his knowledge of all aspects of science related to the forest are outstanding. We learn about the strategies employed by frogs to reproduce, or by snakes to identify prey, or by trees to attach polen to beetles. While learning about the science behind such activities and how they evolved, the author leads the reader through his travel log, meeting people and species and learning much about the history of the region he is visiting.
Besides all the interesting science, the author also provides a very deep character description of the people who live in this remote frontier. The stories range from rubber tappers left over from a period of abundance, to old indians who became westernized, to occupants moving there from the south due to government incentives. Each has a story and a way to deal with the challenges of the forest; some have a way to prosper in the exact same circumstances in which others fail. Some characters are presented as integrated in the forest, some as aliens beaten by the forest, some as leaders beating the forest.
Most amazing than all the history, social aspects and science however are the narrative abilities of the author. The book is a work of art, as it becomes clear that every word has been hand picked and every metaphor was chosen to provide the reader with the correct image, texture, taste, sound and smell of the forest. Reading is an experience of immersion and is to be savoured as very few books provide such a deep experience. It becomes quite clear to anyone reading the book that the author has a deep connection with his subject, much beyond science.
This book is the very best description of the Amazon I have encountered, written with gusto. It is the kind of book you will wish you had written. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the region, in nature writing or in popular science.
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Richly textured
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-07-14
6 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book delivered much more than I expected. The author is a scientist, not just a traveler. Each observation went several steps deeper into the biology and history than typical with this kind of book. The story was made much richer by these details.
It is true that the vocabulary was a bit advanced. However, I never bothered to check the dictionary, and it didn't hurt the narrative.
Highly recommended.
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Excellent!
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-07-05
6 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
A Land of Ghosts is a splendid journey through Amazonian Brazil. Infused with enlightened historical, ecological, and anthropological perspective, Campbell stands alone in his ability to fuse eloquent science writing with a tale of adventure. At times haunting, this book reveals the deep causes of rainforest destruction in the region. However, this book presents these causes in a unique way, and, at least for me, marks a new style of conservation advocation. Indeed, a refreshing one. If you have any interest in tropical ecology, and like works by such authors as David Quammen or Tim Flannery you will love this brilliant work.
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by John C. Burnam
ISBN: 078671137X
Paperback: 362 pages
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. No shelf wear, no writing. This book is an early release from circulation, EX LIBRARY copy in a like new condition. Library markings present.
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Customer Reviews
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A Soldier's Best Friend
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-07-23
The author is NOT a great writer. But he lived the story and the book rings true to me, a fellow dog handler in Vietnam in 1968. Although his experiences are obviously not the same as I had, he captures the essence of the times, the place and the emotions. I recently odered extra copies through Amazon.com to give to each of my kids so they could get a glimpse at what those times were like and the small part I played in them.
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Clipper Would Appove!
Rating (4)
Date: 2003-09-01
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
" A Soldier?s Best Friend"is about John Burnham"s experience as a Scout Dog handler for the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam. This review drops the "Master Sergeant" from his name because he writes as a "short timer" enlisted man, not as the career non- commissioned officer he became. SBF is a 3 -part tale. The lst concerns the author?s original tour in Vietnam as an infantryman with the First Air Cavalry Division, known to vets as "The Cav". He is wounded, medevaced to Japan and reassigned to Okinawa. Thanks to the vagaries of the Army personnel system, he is assigned as an "OJT" guard dog handler around a Chemical Warfare dump. His time on that island is the 2nd segment. The 3rd part concerns Burnham?s return to Vietnam-after he re-enlists for another combat tour to get away from the chemical dump. (Stranger things have happened! This reviewer knew a guy who reupped for the 173rd Airborne in Vietnam because he was miserable in Wurzburg, Germany!) Burnham becomes a Scout Dog handler with the 25th. A handler and his German Shepherd almost always walked point in the field. They were the lead in the line of march and therefore highly vulnerable. Scout Dogs searched for trip wires, mines and other booby traps, injured GIs and sensed Viet Cong laying in ambush. They saved thousands of Americans casualties. The author himself acknowledges that without his main dog, Clipper, he would be another name on The Wall in Washington DC. This reviewer has not read a combat tale where I felt as close to the ground as in SBF. The author has a very simple and direct style that takes the reader right to the core of a patrol. I loved the recounting of Clipper zigging left, zagging right, dutifully leading a platoon around a series of booby traps. Small wonder that handlers said they felt safer with a good dog than another GI! SBF ends sadly as Burnham is forced to leave his buddy Clipper behind in Vietnam. Their final parting is wrenching to read. Unlike the Korea and WW2 conflicts, the US military forbade repatriation of dogs when a handler's tour was over. They were left behind for the "duration" or until they were killed. Their fate had to be cruel as Vietnamese regarded dogs as a source of food, not pets. The Appendix lists the 288 dogs killed in action as well as the 285 handlers who made the ultimate sacrifice. SBF is highly recommended for its' very personal look at one soldier's combat experience. It is further recommend for yet another unique look at the Vietnam War that affected so many of us. Just when one thinks he has heard every Vietnam story possible, along comes a book like SBF to show that he hasn?t. If the book has a weak spot, it is a common one: NOT ONE SINGLE MAP! Why do publishers constantly make this omission? This merits a reduction in rank for SBF from 5 stars to 4. That complaint aside, SBF rates "Number One"
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One of a kind -thus far
Rating (4)
Date: 2003-05-05
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Burnam's book was both informative and exciting to read. I initially picked it up because it was such a unique subject.The book is seemingly broken into two parts: Before the Scout Dog assignment and after. I thought that it would be dry getting to the Scout Dog portion. Not So! Each page is filled with an honest look at Vietnam as experienced by a young kid from the Mid-West. Not to ruin it for others, I won't mention them here, but there are several portions that are a hoot and some that are hard to read -emotionally. Burnam holds nothing back for sake of posterity or politics. He explains the military use of dogs in Vietnam and -sadly- the result of their service in how the U.S. Government chose to view the dogs and 'release' them from service. I've read several books about Vietnam and this has been the first one that has given such an honest view of a fairy unknown
(to the general public) portion of the military's arsenal. An excellent read!
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by Harry Ades
ISBN: 1566566541
Paperback: 452 pages
Condition: New
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. New, unread copy.
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by George Roche
ISBN: 0916308898
Hardcover: 368 pages
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. No publisher marks, no shelf wear.
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Customer Reviews
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Cultural damage control and renewal
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-05-06
George Roche, President of Hillsdale College, wrote this book 20 years ago, and it is even more relevant today. It is a wide-ranging, engaging, eye-opening book, the kind you want to start re-reading immediately after you finish it. Roche begins with a discussion of heroism - what it is, and where it seems to come from. He then explores why heroism cannot be fit into the culturally dominant, linked philosophies of naturalism, determinism, scientism and logical positivism which together he refers to as "materialism". Materialism is the "anti-heroic" philosophy, which states that the natural world is all there is, that everything in it is determined by natural laws and can be explained using scientific method. Roche then traces its roots from the late middle ages to its intellectual flood tide in the 19th century with Darwin, Marx and Freud, and its cultural flood tide in the 20th (now 21st). Materialism today dominates our institutions of education, entertainment and journalism, even after new scientific discoveries, notably Einstein's, destroyed the framework on which it is based. (Roche doesn't dwell on Nazism and communism, but does show how they sprouted from materialism.) Roche ends on a bright note. The good news, he says, is what DIDN'T happen. Materialism says that man must of necessity, and inevitably would give up his belief in God, but he has not. Faith, Roche says, is integral to a whole and integrated "heroic" understanding of what man is. Roche pleads for a better-informed, more humble understanding of what science is, and can do, and a wiser philosophy of man that understands him as a created being capable of free thought, free action, and....heroism! This is an important and challenging book that deserves wide reading by those who care deeply about our culture and the state of man today. It is rich in the history of science and philosophy, and for those who love the ongoing verbal battle of ideas, this book will make you more knowledgeable than you were. It might even change a few minds about where we are, how we got here, and how we go forward.
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Prescient Text
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-06-26
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is an underrated classic. You'll understand why postmodernism has led to a cynical view of heroes and why that's not a good thing. As Mr. Roche points out, a country and it's citizenry need heroes to inspire and bring out the best in us. As Roche writes: "Greater love hath no man... Risking or laying down one's life to save another is heroism laid bare. It is a purely sefless and beneficent act. There is no more striking example of our unique human contact with an Eternal Good."
We are living in an age of anti-heroism and it's why our culture has been eroding before our eyes. This book may be 20 years old, but its message is vital, now more than ever.
Give it a read.
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by Cathy O'Brien, Mark Phillips
ISBN: 096601653X
Paperback: 408 pages
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. This book appears in a like new condition with no reading/ shelf wear. Inscription/ writing on the first page, but no further writing or imperfections.
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Customer Reviews
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The Brightest Among Us Need to Read This Book!
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-11-09
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I think it is too much to ask every American to read this book, and I think it takes real intelligence plus caring to read, think and realize that this is NOT a hoax. I'm very sad to say it is not a hoax, because I would much rather it not be true. I have done a lot of my own research trying to prove to myself that I could not trust Cathy O'Brien or her husband, but the opposite happened. While very upsetting, I find Cathy's books to be uplifting as well in that I see in her and her husband a great Spirit for the good and regeneration in their lives despite great odds and long hard times. This book is a very important one that may never become well known but I sure hope plenty of movers and shakers with the wherewithal to do something about it will PLEASE read this book!
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If it's true, and I hope it is...
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-06-15
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Okay the book has some typos in it. However, the authors were apparently on a shoe string budget and Phillips has said elsewhere that he has dyslexia. Okay, the writing isn't Shakespeare. Who cares? It's like a letter from a concerned friend, and that was good enough for moi. :-)
If this is all true - and in their videos on Google they seem so believable - it's gotta be one of the greatest love and adventure stories on the planet. It doesn't make sense that they would be disinformationists. They name names and places. They have court records to back up much of what they are saying. They have helped thousands and thousands - including me - to wake up to what is really going on with the NWO agenda. On the other hand - and this is just my personal bias - they spoke against new age-ism, yet seemed to be buying into at times, themselves. They talk about how we need to get over social engineering and mind manipulation - and they are so right, hooray for them - but the one kind they obviously have not seen through yet is the farce of evolution. Sorry, I've investigated the truth of Genesis, and the smoke and mirrors pseudo science of evolution, through scientists from a large array of disciplines who ain't buyin' it, and I ain't buyin' it either. And I don't believe it is the one Cathy calls "mother nature" who is leading us to greater "spiritual evolution" but YHWH and His Son. The couple seems to know YHWH instinctively and that He IS Love. They seem to be pretty turned off by religion, which I can totally identify with. But they don't seem to have seen that YHWH and His Word, Sola Scriptura, is not religion. People only turn it into that.
Again, if what they say is true, what a wonderful, inspiring story. They had to have been, and must still be, surrounded by angels.
Wish I knew the latest on Kelly. Hope and have prayed that she is safe from abuse now.
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Every American Needs To Read This Book!!!
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-11-09
2 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is as excellent as O'Brien's first book (Trance Formation Of America). Americans need to open their eyes and start seeing what's really going on in our country, NAFTA and the New World Order. Politicians don't even deny it's their goal anymore.
I highly recommend this book!!!
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love the book
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-06-14
6 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
sad to say the government is full of deceit and lies and this book exposes the evil regime we are living under.
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Disinformation/Misinformation for True Patriots
Rating  (2)
Date: 2006-07-31
22 out of 32 customers found this reveiw helpful
"The documented journey from CIA mind control slave to successful US govenment whistleblower" declares the front cover to this sequel by (from the back cover) "the authors of the cult classic TRANCE Formation of America".
One of the authors, Mark Phillips, has an encounter with an attorney on page 104 in which he is told, "There are a lot of rumors flying around about you two; I've even been told you are a containment expert who is discrediting mind control survivors." I read Kathleen Sullivan's book, Unshackled, before this and in that (p163) she mentions that Mr Phillips is a "fake 'good guy'" who passed information on to the CIA about volunteers attempting to bring down a particular "cult network" from within and in the bibliography of her book she advises trauma survivors not to contact Ms O'Brien & Mr Phillips for help. So, I think it's fair to say that a certain amount of controversy swirls around what the motives are of the authors of this book.
I found this to be a poorly written book. It's not until page 155 that Phillips reveals his background and credentials. He states that he was hired as an audio tape engineer, selling tape to NASA and other "government operations". He then states: "Having a Top Secret Security Clearance gave me access to mind control information that I otherwise would not have been privy to." Other organisations he worked at while selling tape he mentions as being a Primate Center in Denver and the Center for Disease Control. He then states: "This put me in touch with other Top Secret installations like Jack Parson's laboratory 'JPL' in Pasadena, California."
Now one mystery in this book is the amount of spelling mistakes. I would think that if Mr Phillips had been in touch with the "JPL" laboratory then he would know that the man's name is Jack Parsons, not Jack Parson. But there are worse mistakes, e.g. Rupert Murdoch's surname is repeatedly spelled "Murdock", courier is persistently spelled "currier", and on p255 the Branch Davidians become the Branch Dividians to make some point about "dividing" US allegiances. In this book Ms O'Brien states she has a photographic memory so surely as soon as she sees a word then she should be able from memory to remember how to spell it correctly.
In the book it is suggested that the authors had their mail withheld from them by the CIA. Phillips describes the CIA as a "bunch of wimps". On page 186 he storms into a CIA front company and, after patting his front pocket, comes out with this line to the receptionist: "You know I have an Explosive temper. When people cheat me, threaten me, or steal my mail, I become Explosive. You don't want me to become Explosive now, do you?" He then left and everything was OK. After having read the Reed & Cummings book, "Compromised" I find Phillips's account of how he got the CIA to back off impossible to believe. Later, on page 219, Phillips is quoted in conversation saying "I hate trouble. But I love readjusting trouble makers."
Much of the book is anti-"New World Order", pro-Patriot/militia movement. So, page 306, O'Brien states gun ownership is needed to defend against "the violence being created in society through social engineering technology video games." On page 325 one elderly couple, "among the finest people Mark and I had met" are described as being "appalled to see [US Constitutional values] eroded and replaced with New World Orders."
It's not clear how much input Phillips had in the writing of this book as everything is written in the first person from O'Brien's perspective. Also, I wonder about the nature of her perspective on life. In the final chapter, she describes speaking in different countries of the world. This is what she says about Fiji: "Fiji is living proof that all of humankind's fondest hopes and ideals for a utopic shambala can be realised in light of love, peace, and wisdom." Leaving aside the use of the word "shambala", which I thought was odd in itself, it's clear she doesn't know what she's talking about if the search results generated by entering the words "fiji ethnic tension" into a search engine are anything to go by.
But the main problem with this book is the generalised nature of it. Very few dates are mentioned and she says that under mind control she didn't have concept of time or geography. There's loads of repetition about how love can conquer all and about "spiritual evolution". I would have given this book one star, were it not for the excellent list of websites for alternative news sources at the end.
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by Joanne B. Freeman
ISBN: 0300097557
Paperback: 384 pages
Condition: New
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. No publisher marks, no shelf wear.
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Customer Reviews
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When considering todays politics...
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-03-19
Before critics attack the mores and morals of today's politicians they need to read Joanne Freeman's Affairs of Honor. This in depth look at the political scene of the early republic brings to life the staid portraits and assumptions with which we view early political life in America.
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A thought-provoking framework
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-12-19
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Dr. Joanne B. Freeman has provided a thought-provoking history of the U.S. Founders. Extensively researched and documented, her findings and theories are solidly supported. Dr. Freeman avoids the unfortunately common temptation to simply "write off" what may seem to modern eyes and ears as irrational behavior. Rather, she develops a solid theory that convincingly and rationally explains what other historians have regarded as possible madness. Her description of the "Rules of Honor" is sufficiently detailed to give the uninitiated a real understanding of how concern for reputation and personal honor played such a heavy role during the period in question. I was personally pleased to see Dr. Freeman also resist the very common temptation to regard behavior dictated by rules of honor as childish. While she cites individuals and their reasoning behind resisting dueling or considering it paradoxically cowardly, for example, she never resorts to chiding the individuals involved. This book is a major contribution to understanding of the period. I would recommend A Proper Sense of Honor by Caroline Cox as additional reading.
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A nuanced model of historiography written with grace and lucidity
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-09-09
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Disclaimer: I am not an historian of the early Republic but rather a professor of American Studies and modern visual culture. So why did I assign this book to my intro class in AMST? Obviously, it covers a period about which I can teach little--but more importantly, it is a model of historiographic excellence that demonstrates by example what students should learn. From its astonishing array of sources,primary, secondary, and tertiary, to its discursive footnotes to its clear organization, the book is a model for students of history. It is also significant for distilling an enormous body of information into readable, lucid, and graceful prose. Freeman's seemingly unorthodox approach, of using the lens of honor culture to understand the politics of the early Republic, focuses on how individual personalities shaped policy. I admire Freemans's correct insistence that we suspend modern cultural beliefs and see through the eyes of those often anxious, striving, fretful, and honorable men (no error of pronoun: her topic is, as she puts it, "white men behaving badly"). By using a technique associated with anthropology, Freeman opens up the period to allow us to understand a culture more popularly described in hagiographic terms or deconstructed as a corrupt and self-interested group of graspers. She is willing, indeed insists, on seeing in terms of gray rather than black and white, in helping us to understand the period's paradoxes. She also communicates something I hope my students will feel: Freeman clearly loves history and her affection for her subjects shines through.
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Re: Questionable Research
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-12-01
3 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I read this book ONCE from cover to cover over two years ago. I am a political science graduate student. Ms. Freeman's book was one of the most stimulating pieces of intellectual history I have yet to encounter dealing with our,meaning American,Founding Fathers. One read and I still reflect back on it.
Mr. William L. Turner's superficially self-evident criticism of Affairs of Honor should be disregarded. Not only did Mr. Turner fail to read the book, but his "expert" criticism of a Ms. Freeman's brief comments on BookTV regarding the employment of silk as a protection against missle fire are equally shallow.
The use of a silk tunic as an under-garment to other forms of padded or metaled torso protection was a widespread practice in Ancient East Asia. Silk is a difficult material to tear. Therefore, when arrows penetrate flesh covered in silk the silk is taken untorn through the wound. The treatment of the person so injured was commenced by slowly pulling on the edges of the silk tunic to slowly "rewind" the missle back through the human body without causing additional damage.
I might add, I actually READ this in a book. An easy, relatively unscholarly book: James Chambers, The Devil's Horseman.
JMK
PS Still waiting for Ms. Freeman's next book !
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Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-10-10
2 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
An excellent, entertaining, historic read. Joanne Freeman brings to life some of America's primary and lesser known founding political figures.
More enjoyable then McCullough's 1776.
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by Richard A. Clarke
ISBN: 0743260244
Hardcover: 304 pages
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: Sold with pride and shipped with confirmation for US addresses. No publisher marks, no shelf wear.
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infuriating and depressing
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-11-23
I can't give this book 5 stars--horror really isn't my genre, and I'm not a fan of depressing endings.
Richard A. Clarke was a counterterrorism expert who served under 4 administrations--from Reagan through G. W. Bush. Against All Enemies tells about the war on terror, focusing primarily on what led up to 9/11 and the response to it.
Otto von Bismarck said "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." (or something like that--I've seen it quoted several ways) and that's certainly true in this case. An even better quote might be the daffynition of Politics, n: Poly "many" + tics "blood-sucking parasites".
It's ugly. Very ugly. Politicians pursuing their own agendas, refusing to listen to advice that doesn't fit, being distracted from or prevented from taking action because of politics, etc., etc.
One last quote:
"It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen." ~George E. MacDonald.
True, but does it have to be so far in the other direction?
If I had it to do over again, I'd read this in small doses instead of straight through. It was way too infuriating and depressing to read all at once.
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A Piece Of History That Will Never Outlive Its Value
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-11-20
How quickly the system of government can break down. Richard Clarke should be considered an American Hero, if not for his faithful service under four Presidents then for his defiance of the unseemly Bush Administration. The President, who is responsible for protecting the nation, did not step forward to assure the victims of 9/11 that he would not let this stand. Instead it was Richard Clarke who had to apollogize to those families and step out of government in order for his voice to be heard. His recollections of that infamous day and his suggestions afterwards are lessons that the entire nation must hear. This book marks a piece of history that will never outlive its value.
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History, Not Politics Anymore
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-10-25
The author of this book was in the White House as head of its Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) on 9/11. He served there as a career civil servant for 10 years on the National Security Agency staff beginning in 1992. He had previously served in intelligence positions in the State and Defense departments for 20 years before that. While Vice President Cheney and Condoleeza Rice were being ushered to a secure area Clarke was living the nightmare as one of the few people in charge of responding to the terror of 9/11.
Clarke unconsciously depicts how even the most advanced of nations can suddenly be required to operate and respond to crisis based only upon bits of information. His recounting of his experience at the beginning of the book vividly depicts the horror of the situation. The President of the United States, despite his objections, is on the run for the first time since the War of 1812. Clarke and his CSG are in the White House not knowing if it is on the terrorist hit list.
This book will be a great source for future historians. If you choose not to read it because of its controversial nature you will miss out on a very well presented and fascinating historical overview. It provides an intelligent, concise history of America's quite unwilling and unwitting collision with religiously motivated terrorism prior to 9/11.
The soul-less murders of our Marines in their barracks outside Beirut in 1982 was undoubtedly a state-sponsored murder. But that heinous act was the precursor of something most Americans had not previously seen. [...]
When Rabbi Meir Kahane was assassinated 10 years later in New York City an ordinary citizen probably concluded that it was a discrete political assassination. [...] Richard Clarke was serving on the National Security Staff in the George H.W. Bush White House from Kahane's assassination in 1992 through 9/11. He accurately records it as leading to the first arrest of an al-Qaeda terrorist, though no one in government knew that al-Qaeda existed at the time.
No student of history, professional or amateur, should pass on this book. After his chilling recollections of the events in the White House at the beginning of the book Clarke goes back in time and proceeds to recount the short and ugly history of America's encounter with religiously-motivated terror, using a mostly chronological approach,
This book provides the reader a view of the long process that was involved in discovering that a new and different type of threat to America had appeared. Clarke does an excellent job of reflecting how slowly and belatedly America's intelligence agencies, the FBI, and our presidents came to the realization that this was a different form of terror. It did not really crystallize until the Clinton administration as attacks became more spectacular and directed specifically at American targets.
Clarke was no weak-kneed bureaucrat. He may not profess it any longer, but he was a big fan of the "snatch" as he proudly recalls in this book. That technique later became known as "extraordinary rendition." He and members of the Clinton administration were more than pleased to snatch a terrorist and turn them over to a foreign intelligence agency, no questions asked.
It is obvious that the Bush Administration did not get it, partly out of disdain for Clinton; partly out of its own refusal to listen to its career experts, including Clarke and John O'Neill of the FBI among others. President Bush's reference to al-Qaeda as "swatting flies" is one of a number of pieces of evidence that his administration fatally underestimated the terrorist threat before 9/11.
Of all the people in the Bush administration Condoleeza Rice was in the best position, as National Security Adviser, to convince the president that fighting al-Qaeda was much more than swatting flies. Hers should have been the first resignation after 9/11. It is evident without Clarke ever saying so. She was in the process of transferring Clarke in a bureaucratic maneuver to lessen his visibility and influence when 9/11 occurred.
A final note related to George Tenet. He disclaims ever having said "slam dunk" about intelligence related to Iraqi WMD programs to President Bush. That disclaimer rings very hollow as Clarke's book unwittingly demonstrates at page 184 of the edition reviewed here (Free Press, hardcover 2004 ed.). Clarke relates that Tenet also assured President Clinton during the discussion of an intelligence matter that the accuracy of his information was a "slam dunk." It is obviously a phrase with which Tenet is quite familiar and quite fond. His should have been the second resignation.
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Against all enemies
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-08-10
For an Australian, this book gave a huge insight into the workings of high levels of U.S. government and the selfishness of the people ultimately responsible in the various organisations, eg FBI, Department of Defense, in making decisions that could have saved many lives, instead of thinking only of their own reputations or fear that another department might impinge on their territory. Dick Clarke has shown that political views cannot be upheld on beliefs from 10 years ago. Nowadays, history is only as far back as yesterday and we need to be informed and alert. We lost too many Aussies in Bali because of historical blinkers.
Thank you Dick Clarke for all you wrote.
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Buyer Beware
Rating (2)
Date: 2008-06-23
1 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
As targets of the political mass suggestion discussed in my reviews of: Propaganda, U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960 (Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication), and Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s-1950s, we must be careful with books like this from an "insider". The pattern is the same on all these books "written" by insiders who have "left" the administration: There is one and ONLY one controversial assertion given in the book (the hook to generate sales and publicity), with the remainder of the book running parallel with the party line.
I have no doubt, given corroborating evidence from other authors, that Clarke is correct that Bush and his cabinent were planning an Iraq invasion well before 9/11. The "Downing Street Memo" is the smoking gun on this.
The much bigger purpose of this book, in my opinion, is simply to disseminate the party line, yet again, that Osama bin Laden is the boogeyman, that his world-threatening military is al-qaeda, and that they can deliver mass destruction anytime, anywhere (you know, the Cold War program). It's the repeat, repeat, repeat that we get from George Tenet, Michael Scherer (sp) and all others who are wittingly or unwittingly part of the propaganda campaign.
The only question on Clarke is: is he witting or unwitting? The answer, however, is moot. As long as he is spewing party-line propaganda, his books are worthless to a suspicious public.
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