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SirReadaLot.org


We Review the Best of the Latest Books

ISSN 1934-6557

March 2007, Issue #96

Guide to This Issue

Business & Investing / Economics / Politics

Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice edited by Edward Stringham (Transaction Publishers)

Political economy has disapproved equally of monopoly and communism in the various branches of human activity, wherever it has found them. Is it not then strange and unreasonable that it accepts them in the industry of security? – Gustave de Molinari (1849)

Is government necessary? Private-property anarchism – also known as anarchist libertarianism, individualist anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism – is a political philosophy and set of economic arguments that says that just as markets provide bread, so too should markets provide law. If someone argued that because food is so important it must be supplied by government, most would respond that government provision of food would be a disaster. Private-property anarchism applies the same logic to law and argues that because protecting property rights is so important, it is the last thing that should be left to the state. Under private-property anarchy, individual rights and market forces would reign supreme; there would just be no state. Security would be provided privately as it is at colleges, shopping malls, hotels, and casinos; and courts would be provided privately, as they are with arbitration and mediation today.

According to Anarchy and the Law more scholars and general readers are seeing private-property anarchism as a viable and worthy alternative to the monopolistic and coercively funded state. Individualist anarchism has a long history but most of the early writing was published anonymously or in obscure places. Today, in contrast, private-property anarchism is now discussed in top economics journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, and in 2002 George Mason University economist Vernon Smith became the first private-property anarchist to win the Nobel Prize. In addition to being a potentially important normative position, anarchist research helps explain events and trends of historical and contemporary relevance. Consider, for example, that private security guards now outnumber the public police, and private arbitration – the so-called ‘rent-a-judge’ business – is booming.

Anarchy and the Law, edited by Edward Stringham, associate professor of economics at San Jose State University and a research fellow at the Independent Institute, assembles for the first time in one volume the most important classic and contemporary studies exploring and debating non-state legal and political systems, especially involving the tradition of natural law and private contacts. Anarchy and the Law includes essays explaining and giving historical examples of stateless orders. Led by economists and political theorists such as Murray Rothbard and David Friedman, the authors in this volume emphasize the efficacy of markets and the shortfalls of government.

Rather than attempt to present a unified vision of anarchy, Anarchy and the Law reprints articles about anarchism from many libertarian points of view. Although all anarchists agree that the state is unnecessary, many of the specifics are still debated. For example, some authors support anarchy using arguments about consequences, while others support anarchy using arguments about rights. Some authors highlight how markets can function with private law enforcement, while others highlight how markets can function without any formal law at all.

Anarchy and the Law's articles are organized in four categories: Section I presents the major theoretical works that argue in favor of private-property anarchism; Section II contains writings that debate the viability of private-property anarchism, presenting articles and responses from the classical liberal and anarchist perspectives; Section III contains some of the early works in individualist anarchism, as well as modern articles on the history of individualist anarchist thought and the different types of anarchism; Section IV presents case studies and historical examples of societies that functioned without public law enforcement.

Finally, a fit rejoinder to people who begin sentences with ‘There ought to be a law’ ...  – P. J. O'Rourke, author, Parliament of Whores and On the Wealth of Nations

Scholars interested in scrutinizing the links between political and legal institutions will find Anarchy and the Law an invaluable resource. – Tom W. Bell, Professor of Law, Chapman University

The dynamics of government growth has proven that no matter how benign the original intent and no matter how limited their scope, government programs will eventuate in abuse and malignancy. Anarchy and the Law assembles key essays that embrace this view. – Ronald Hamowy, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Alberta, Canada

Anarchy and the Law is a breakthrough work, one which anyone interested in politics will find intellectually exciting. – Ralph Raico, Professor of History, Buffalo State College

Anarchy and the Law is a ‘must read’ for anyone open to ideas and interested in the preservation of liberty. – Thomas J. Nechyba, Professor of Economics, Duke University

Anarchy and the Law is an essential book on the theory and history of ‘non-state’ legal systems in which law enforcement is privatized, including essays by both proponents and skeptics. – Lawrence H. White, Friedrich A. Hayek Professor of Economic History, University of Missouri, St. Louis

The state has worked for years to indoctrinate people of the necessity of government law enforcement. The chapters in Anarchy and the Law suggest that this government wisdom is wrong, and they are important from two perspectives. From an academic perspective they show that anarchism might be a useful lens to help us analyze the world. Do people only cooperate because of the threat of government law? Perhaps the answer is no. By taking a more realistic perspective, anarchists shed light on many situations that others cannot explain. The articles in this volume give readers a sampling of some of the more important works on the subject. By compiling all of the important articles in one place, these works are now accessible to more than just a handful of experts or fortunate students.

Business & Investing / Economics / Finance / Management

The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy by Richard Vedder & Wendell Cox (AEI Press)

Wal-Mart is under attack – from labor unions, urban planners, globalization critics, and community activists. The activities of Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers have become rallying cries for both sides of the political aisle. Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox's book, The Wal-Mart Revolution, is aimed at those involved in the current debates over Wal-Mart's impact on worker wages, labor issues, and health-insurance and land-use policies.

Big-box discount retailers have been vilified as selfish retailers that mistreat their workers, outsource American jobs, uproot communities, and harm the poor. Others, however, argue that these stores have improved Americans' standard of living, especially among the less affluent. Which of these competing visions is correct? Is Wal-Mart a saint or a sinner? In The Wal-Mart Revolution, Vedder, distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington; and Cox, international public policy consultant and principal of Wendell Cox Consultancy (Demographia), present an account of the dramatic changes transforming American retailing. They analyze the best available economic data and conclude that American consumers – particularly the less affluent – have benefited tremendously from Wal-Mart's ‘everyday low prices’; American consumers save tens of billions of dollars annually from the lower prices that Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers offer.

According to the book, Wal-Mart has also been a generally good employer, paying competitive market wages and offering fringe benefits (including health care) roughly comparable to other retailers. New Wal-Mart stores benefit local communities by boosting employment and income levels while providing local consumers lower prices and expanded product choices.

They also place the controversy in historical context – opposition to Wal-Mart is the latest chapter in a long history of resistance to retail innovation in America. In the late nineteenth century, local retailers complained about mail-order competitors such as Sears, Roebuck. In the 1920s and 1930s, small grocery stores bitterly fought the growth of chain groceries like the A&P. Today anti-Wal-Mart forces use zoning laws, mandatory health insurance requirements, and higher minimum wage requirements for large retailers to reduce Wal-Mart's competitive advantage. Founder Sam Walton’s relentless quest for efficiency created tremendous improvements in retail trade productivity that have raised America's GDP by hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Millions of Americans have enjoyed higher incomes, expanded consumer choices, and cheaper prices as a result. Certainly there have been losers from this process as well – small businesses unable to compete with Wal-Mart – but for every loser there have been many winners.

Vedder and Cox in The Wal-Mart Revolution painstakingly analyze available evidence before concluding that the economic transformation in American retailing which is personified by Wal-Mart has largely been good for Americans and the economy.

Looking at Wal-Mart, Vedder and Cox in The Wal-Mart Revolution comprehensively review conditions before and after Wal-Mart entered a local market and look more broadly at Wal-Mart's impact on wages, productivity growth and inflation. The Wal-Mart Revolution also provides useful facts about the company, the U.S. retail industry, labor economics, healthcare policy, and land-use realities in America today.

Business & Investing / Economics / Policy & Development

You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones are Connecting the World's Poor to the Global Economy by Nicholas P. Sullivan (Jossey-Bass)

[T]he people of Bangladesh are a good investment in the future . . . With loans for people to buy cell phones, entire villages are being brought into the Information Age. I want people throughout the world to know this story. – President Bill Clinton, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2000

Bangladeshi villagers sharing cell phones helped build what is now a thriving company with more than $200 million in annual profits. But what is the lesson for the rest of the world? This is a question author Nicholas P. Sullivan, publisher of the journal Technology, asks in You Can Hear Me Now, his tale of a new kind of entrepreneur, Iqbal Quadir, the visionary and catalyst behind the creation of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh.

GrameenPhone – a partnership between Norway’s Telenor and Grameen Bank, co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize – defines a new approach to building business opportunities in the developing world. You Can Hear Me Now describes what Sullivan calls the ‘external combustion engine’ – a combination of forces that is sparking economic growth and lifting people out of poverty in countries long dominated by aid-dependent governments. The ‘engine’ comprises three forces: information technology, imported by native entrepreneurs trained in the West, backed by foreign investors.

GrameenPhone's successful effort to provide universal telephony in a country that had virtually no phones, using micro-loans generated by Muhammad Yunus, co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, confirms the power of bottom-up development, which is creating millions of income opportunities for the rural poor and billions of dollars in national income. With similar success stories in other poor countries – such as those of Celtel, MTN, and Vodacom in sub-Saharan Africa, and of Globe Telecom and Smart Communications in the Philippines – cell phones are spreading like wildfire across the Southern Hemisphere and are helping to bridge the digital divide. You Can Hear Me Now describes an inclusive capitalism that engages and enables many of the four billion people at the bottom of the economic pyramid.  

You Can Hear Me Now is a powerful proof of the roles that the private sector can play in economic development. Sullivan, by picking one industry – wireless – and cleverly weaving the economics and the growth of the industry with the human dimension, provides a distinctively new perspective on what is possible. A must-read for all those who are concerned about eradicating poverty. Equally, a must-read for managers who are looking for new engines of growth. – C.K. Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor, The Ross School of Business, the University of Michigan; author, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

With the growing interest in how business can better serve the 'bottom of the pyramid' there is great need for both practical examples of how to do it and better understanding of how such strategies can truly benefit those caught in the poverty trap. This book delivers on both counts. – Stuart L. Hart, S.C. Johnson Chair of Sustainable Global Enterprise, Cornell University; author, Capitalism at the Crossroads

You Can Hear Me Now describes the human drama of the poor adopting technology to enhance their productivity. Well-researched and engaging, it expertly walks the reader through one surprising maze after another. – V. Kasturi Rangan, Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing, Harvard Business School; coauthor, Business Solutions for the Global Poor

The stories of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh, legendary in development capital circles, and Celtel in Africa, among others, read as colorfully as any of the stories of the Gold Rush in the U.S. in the 1840s. Nicholas Sullivan has recounted the struggle and subsequent success in an easy-to-read but factual manner that shows risks countered by perseverance and guts – proving that you can do well by doing good. – Alan Patricof, co-founder, Apax Partners and founder, Greycroft Partners

You Can Hear Me Now is the story behind GrameenPhone in Bangladesh, an incredible, compelling and inspiring story. At this time, when readers have become weary of the stories of the failures of economic aid to developing countries, stories like this one give us sorely needed hope.

Business & Investing / Personal Finance

Debt is Slavery: And 9 Other Things I Wish My Dad Had Taught Me About Money by Michael Mihalik (October Mist Publishing)

In November 2006, United States consumer debt reached an all-time high of $2.39 trillion. Real estate foreclosures are soaring nationwide, millions of jobs are being sent abroad, and pensions are being cut at iconic American companies such as Delta Airlines.

On the surface, it appears that the standard of living has also reached record highs. We are surrounded by the trappings of luxury: expensive cars, big houses, flat-screen TVs, and fashionable clothes. But the cars are leased, the big homes come with big mortgages, and the expensive TVs and fashionable clothes are purchased with credit cards. Americans are under a level of financial stress that hasn't been seen for decades.

Debt is Slavery takes a unique approach to personal finance by focusing on changing the way people think about money. In the past, Americans were taught to avoid debt, but now they are persuaded to embrace it. According to Michael Mihalik, the process starts early – high school students receive credit card solicitations although their only income may be from babysitting or mowing the neighbor's lawn. They take on debt without realizing that doing so subjects them to financial servitude, a form of slavery, in which their bills determine when and how much they have to work, often at jobs they don't even like. What is the result? Millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet.

But nobody should be a slave to their finances. Debt is Slavery teaches readers how to:

  • Change the way they think about money.

  • Gain control of their financial life.

  • Buy back their freedom.

  • Recognize and resist the constant attempts to separate them from their money.

  • Find a fulfilling job.

  • Produce income without trading away their time.

  • Achieve their financial goals.

Mihalik uses his personal triumph over debt to illustrate 10 lessons that can transform readers’ relationships with money. Mihalik says he ran up huge debts during college by using credit cards and other loans to finance a lifestyle he couldn't afford. Even after he graduated and began work as an aerospace engineer, his debts continued out of control. After years of feeling overwhelmed by his finances, Mihalik paid off his debt and regained control of his life. He created a money philosophy that freed him from the slavery of debt and led him to a life of financial prosperity and control. Mihalik has since expanded and refined his philosophy to a set of ideas and rules for financial security that can be applied at any income level.

"I live by those same rules today,” comments Mihalik. “They have helped me live through two other rough periods in my life without changing my lifestyle or accumulating more debt. Today, I'm debt-free and prosperous. I empathize with anyone who's struggling with debt because I've been there, and I know that they can recover, because I did. But first, they have to change the way they think about money."

Debt is Slavery offers hope – the book has the potential to help readers change their relationship with money so they can pay off their debt and proceed to live more fulfilling lives.

Business & Investing / Public Policy / Professional & Technical / Engineering / Environmental

Energy Autonomy: New Politics for Renewable Energy by Hermann Scheer (Earthscan)

For 200 years industrial civilization has relied on the combustion of abundant and cheap carbon fuels. But continued reliance has had perilous consequences. On the one hand there is the insecurity of relying on the world's most unstable region – the Middle East – compounded by the imminence of peak oil, growing scarcity and mounting prices. On the other, the potentially cataclysmic consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels, as the evidence of accelerating climate change shows.

Yet there is a solution: to make the transition to renewable sources of energy and distributed, decentralized energy generation. It is a model that has been proven, technologically, commercially and politically, as Herman Scheer demonstrates in Energy Autonomy. Further, Sheer shows that the alternative – a return to nuclear power, which is again being widely advocated – is compromised and illusory. Scheer is a member of the German Bundestag (Parliament) and President of Eurosolar, the European organization for renewable energies. In a career devoted to the replacement of nuclear and fossil fuels with environmentally sound energy sources, Dr. Scheer has received numerous awards, including the World Solar Prize and the Alternative Nobel Prize.

Scheer is all about political action, about what will motivate society to focus on solving this problem. According to Energy Autonomy, the advantages of renewable energy are so clear and so overwhelming that resistance to them needs diagnosis – which Scheer also provides, showing why and how entrenched interests and one-dimensional structures of thinking oppose the transition, and what must be done to overcome these obstacles. In the introduction, Scheer talks about the fallacy of reducing the overall problem to its components. He first discusses the questionable technological and economic premises of political action that are taken for granted as if they were established and solid facts:

  • Insufficient usable potential.
  • The lengthy time requirement.
  • The absolute necessity of large power plants.
  • Conventional energy's greater environmental benefits due to increased efficiency.
  • The functional priority placed on existing energy supply structures.
  • Protecting economic resources.
  • The economic burden of introducing renewable energy.

These fundamental technological and economic assumptions all create the impression of objective constraints that stand in the way of a full-scale reorientation towards renewable energy. The six other premises relate to political fields of action and methods are:

  • Renewable energy's dependence on subsidies.
  • The need for consensus with the energy business.
  • Fixation on competitiveness in energy markets.
  • The indispensability of global treaty commitments.
  • Environmental pollution caused by renewable energy.
  • The realism of taking small political steps.

According to Energy Autonomy, all these premises obstruct our view of renewable energy's real potential and of promising approaches to solving our energy problems. Prejudices are relatively easy to overcome for individuals, who benefit from information and leaps of recognition that fall. In society at large, however, overcoming bias is much more difficult, especially when prejudices keep getting cultivated and updated.

One of the consequences of starting from false premises is that discussions end up referring only to a section of the total problem, that guidelines for action are developed relating only to that part of the overall picture, and that these guidelines are subordinated to all other problems – so that one loses sight of solutions to other problems. These patterns of reducing large problems to their smallest components pervade the energy debate. If this debate is mainly conducted from the viewpoint of climate threats caused by fossil energy emissions, the dangers of nuclear energy and questions about energy security are pushed into the background. If it is mainly conducted from the viewpoint of nuclear dangers, this then confines perceptions about the dangers of energy usage. If it is conducted solely from the viewpoint of depleting oil stocks, this clouds awareness of potential dangers arising from other fossil energy sources and from nuclear energy.

These ways of reducing the overall problem to one of its components always lead to neglect of the diverse and grave reasons that speak on behalf of a general shift to renewable energy. The broad spectrum of reasons for a comprehensive strategy – the motifs of the renewable energy movement – emerge from four elementary differences between nuclear and fossil energy, on the one hand, and renewable energy, on the other:

  • The use of nuclear and fossil energy entails massive environ­mental disturbances, with tectonic consequences across the board, starting immediately with these fuels' initial production and continuing until the by-products of their consumption are emitted into water, air and the Earth's atmosphere generally; by contrast, the use of renewable energy is, in principle, free of such consequences.
  • Fossil energy can be depleted, which is why its continued use must inevitably lead to rising costs and supply bottlenecks and emergencies. Only inexhaustible renewable energy opens up the prospect of a permanent, secure energy supply for people everywhere.
  • Nuclear and fossil energy reserves lie in a relatively limited number of producing regions around the globe, so that their use requires lengthy supply chains. This inevitably entails major outlays in infrastructure, leads to growing dependence, and provokes economic, political and military conflicts. Every form of renewable energy, by contrast, is a type of energy that fits in with its natural surroundings and can be recovered directly with much smaller requirements in the way of infrastructure.
  • Fossil and atomic energy, as a result of the above-mentioned differences, are becoming increasingly expensive, both with respect to their direct and their indirect costs. Renewable energy, by contrast – if only because it accrues no fuel costs with the exception of bio-energy – becomes increasingly cheaper in the course of continuous technological improvement, industrial mass production, and intelligent new forms of application.

Sheer says that these motifs coalesce into a single grand motif of surmounting and avoiding crisis, a motif that is as explosive today as it ever was. The key to solving energy-determined crises is the shift to renewable energy. Focusing on this is not a ‘one-issue’ but rather a ‘multi-issue’ approach.

According to Sheer in Energy Autonomy, if an about-face to renewable energy cannot be pulled off over the next two decades, the world can be expected, in the foreseeable future, to slide into resource conflicts rife with violence. An about-face means not only expanding renewable energy, but also cutting back on the consumption of fossil and nuclear energy. It means preventing additional trillions from being devoured on the construction of new fossil and nuclear power plants and thereby from cementing the conventional structures of energy supply. It requires renewable energy to be activated much more quickly and in a manner that is more forced (both qualitatively and quantitatively) than is currently envisioned by government action programs – especially since it can be foreseen that the goals most of these programs proclaim cannot possibly be achieved given the plans and carriers they envision.

Sheer invokes the question was hammered by Martin Luther King into the consciousness of the US civil rights movement in the 1960s in order to persuade the movement that its chance to realize its goals was not far off: ‘How long? And the answer: Not long!’ – It is with this kind of determination and confidence that the imagination of many is stirred, the social atmosphere is revived and practical new ideas sprout up. ‘How long? Very long!’ is the kind of thinking that has been dominant in previous discussions about the time frame for a shift in energy. Even convinced ecologists behave this way to show that they are ‘realistic’. But lengthy time horizons release people from direct responsibility and lead them to surrender matters to ‘experts.’ Then the most important resource for renewable energy – the social resource – remains untapped. Sheer’s main interest is in discerning those approaches to renewable energy that permit the frequently posed question ‘how long?’ to be answered with ‘not long!’

The most important political book of the year. – Die Zeit

Hermann Scheer – principal architect of the policies that convened Germany into the world's leading market for solar energy – demonstrates that the German model can and must be replicated in every nation that aspires toward a healthy, peaceful future. – Denis Hayes, Former Director of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory

This book is a powerful indictment of how we meet our energy needs. In urging an acceleration of the transition to renewable energy, Scheer exposes the fallacies surrounding the current paradigm and looks beyond environmental benefits to outline the path to energy security. – Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute

Hermann Scheer has taken aim against a number of our planet's Goliaths all at once. The world needs pioneers like him. – Ernst Ulrich Von Weizsäcker, Dean of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara

Energy Autonomy, from the award-winning author of The Solar Economy and A Solar Manifesto, comprehensively demonstrates why the transition to renewable energy is essential and how it can be done. The new politics of renewable energy is about opening up spaces for initiatives, spaces in which initiatives can develop unhindered. Sheer passionately addresses the book to the growing number of renewable energy advocates, and to the even greater number of those who are simply curious about it. It outlines approaches to mobilize forces that may make a breakthrough in the near future.

Business & Investing / Small Business & Entrepreneurship

The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants by Tom Gegax, with Phil Bolsta (Collins)

Tom Gegax knows what that it’s like to be an entrepreneur. Years after running his Tires Plus franchise by the seat of his pants, blissfully unaware of how little he knew about getting the most out of people and managing a world-class organization, Tom was faced with a cancer diagnosis and a business on the brink of disaster. Resolved to change things around, he improved his mental clarity, health, and relationships and noticed that the more he profited on a personal level, the more his company profited. Tires Plus grew into a $200 million business with 150 upscale locations. He had learned the first lesson in Enlightened Leadership 101: Focus on the well-being of your employees and customers – as well as your own – and success will follow naturally.

In The Big Book of Small Business, Gegax shares his hard-earned lessons on how to become an enlightened, effective leader, and on how to do the small things right so the big decisions work. This all-in-one toolbox for small businesses is jammed with warm-hearted, tough-minded practices and street-smart tips, covering such aspects of a growing business as:

  • Starting, funding, and getting a new business off the ground.
  • Crafting a mission and growing a corporate culture that works.
  • Hiring the best people and maximizing their potential.
  • Communicating and negotiating with employees, customers, and suppliers.
  • Creating processes for continuous innovation and growth.
  • Protecting the business from unforeseen dangers.
  • Planning for growth.

Gegax has been an executive at one of the world’s largest corporations; a start-up entrepreneur; a CEO leading 1,600 employees; a business consultant; and a member of numerous boards. In The Big Book of Small Business, Gegax shares every tool in his kit – from finding capital, to inspiring and educating employees, to serving customers, to writing a mission statement to marketing and selling. The message: the secret to success is executing hundreds of little things rather than swallowing one magic pill.

His book delivers insight into managing small business and shows entrepreneurs how to beat the competition and the stress. He acknowledges that running a small business is not always easy and offers a frank account of business troubles that pushed his company to the brink of disaster.

The essential guide for business leaders wanting higher profits and lower stress. – Deepak Chopra, author of The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life

Tom Gegax has mastered the art of business. – Horst Rechelbacher, founder, Aveda Corporation and Intelligent Nutrients

Packed with road-tested tips and real-world success strategies. – Mary Brainerd, president and CEO, HealthPartners

All the good stuff and none of the fluff. – Richard Schulze, founder and chairman, Best Buy

Shows a business can be run with enlightenment as well as efficiency . . . brimming with brilliant strategies for achieving both. – Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and Customer Mania!

Get your hands on it before your competitors do! – Michael Coles, president and CEO, Caribou Coffee

The best business management guide on the market. It should be required reading at every business school.  – Rinaldo S. Brutoco, president and founder, World Business Academy

As thorough as a textbook and as lively as a news magazine, The Big Book of Small Business is a comprehensive and practical book on how to take a small business to the next level. Gegax's tips on operating and growing a small business show entrepreneurs how to steer clear of the high-stress, low-profit world of a ‘seat-of-the-pantser’ and transform themselves into enlightened entrepreneurs.

Business & Investing / Small Business & Entrepreneurship

The Way to Wealth by Brian Tracy (Entrepreneur Press)

What is the true way to wealth? A steady salary can only do so much. Winning the lottery is a pipe dream. According to The Way to Wealth, there's only one real way to unimaginable wealth, the kind of wealth where readers make money hand over fist faster than they can spend it, and that way is entrepreneurship. More people will become millionaires through entrepreneurship in the next few years than in the past 200 years combined.

The Way to Wealth gives readers access to business guru Brian Tracy's proven formula to start, build, manage and grow their business successfully. Readers learn how to:

  • Select the right product or service.
  • Get a leg up on the competition.
  • Close more sales than ever before.
  • Determine accurate costs and set appropriate prices.
  • Eliminate unnecessary costs and expenses.
  • Start and build the business using Tracy's ‘21 Keys’.
  • Test the market quickly and inexpensively.
  • Advertise and attract more prospects.
  • Get the money to grow the business.
  • Increase profits.
  • Develop and implement a powerful sales program.

With an entrepreneurial attitude – and the success secrets revealed in The Way to Wealth – the book promises readers wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

Bursting with big ideas, this latest resource from author and veteran businessman Tracy will guide persistent self-starters towards success, providing comprehensive attention to all aspects of business and broad applicability. Each chapter starts with an inspiring quote and ends with exercises, and Tracy's points are illustrated with clear-cut examples, research and true stories. … Tracy quotes liberally from bestsellers in the self-help business genre, making this volume a nice overview of essential reading for entrepreneurs. – Publishers Weekly

This fast-moving, entertaining series of lessons can be applied immediately to start a business, increase sales, reduce costs and boost profits. Armed with these ideas, concepts and business tools, with The Way to Wealth readers are supported in their dreams to move into the fast lane on their own ‘way to wealth.’

Computers & the Internet / Business & Investing

E-Business Innovation and Process Management edited by In Lee (Advances in E-Business Research Series: Cybertech Publishing)

E-business research is currently one of the most active research areas. With the rapid advancement in information technologies, e-business is growing in significance and is having a direct impact upon ways of doing business. As e-business becomes one of the most important areas in organizations, researchers and practitioners need to understand the implications of many technological and organizational changes taking place.

E-Business Innovation and Process Management, written by In Lee, associate professor in the Department of Information Management and Decision Sciences in the College of Business and Technology at Western Illinois University, covers a variety of topics, such as e-business models, e-business strategies, online consumer behavior, e-business process modeling and practices, electronic communication adoption and service provider strategies, privacy policies, and implementation issues.

With the advent of e-business, organizations have been fundamentally changing the way they do their business. From business operation to managerial control to corporate strategy, e-business has become an integral part in organizations. As e-business evolution continues with emerging technologies and business models, a solid understanding of e-business innovation, process, and strategy proves invaluable for the successful e-business development and management. E-Business Innovation and Process Management provides researchers, professionals, and educators with the most current research on e-business trends, technologies, and practices. The book is divided into five segments: Section I, which discusses various e-business models; Section II, which addresses e-business strategies and consumer behavior model; Section III, which discusses e-business process modeling and practices; Section IV, which evaluates various electronic communication adoption and service provider strategies; and Section IV, which addresses privacy policies and implementation issues.

Section I: E-Business Models consists of two chapters. Chapter I, "Different Types of Busi­ness-to-Business Integration: Extended Enterprise Integration vs. Market B2B Integration," by Frank Goethals, Jacques Vandenbulcke, Wilfried Lemahieu, and Monique Snoeck, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), argues that there exist two basic forms of business-to-business integration (B2Bi), namely extended enterprise integration and market B2Bi. This chapter clarifies the meaning of both concepts, shows that the difference between both is fundamental, and discusses the consequences of the difference in the realm of Web services development.

Chapter II, "E-Business Models in B2B: A Process-Based Categorization and Analysis of Business-to Business Models," by Mahesh S. Raisinghani, TWU (USA), Turan Melemez, Lijie Zou, Chris Paslowski, Irma Kikvidze, Susanne Taha, and Klaus Simons, Purdue University (USA), presents an in-depth study with examples from industry that provides a process-based approach to B2B e-commerce. A comparative examination of both the buy-side and the sell-side based on a process-related approach provides extensive insights for further comparative research and evaluation of products/services and models.

Section II: E-Business Strategies and Consumer Behavior Model consists of four chapters. Chapter III, "Drivers of Adoption and Implementation of Internet-Based Marketing Channels," by Jorn Flohr Nielsen, Viggo Host, and Niels Peter Mols, University of Aarhus (Denmark), analyzes factors influencing manufacturers' adoption and implementation of Internet-based marketing channels based on survey data from Danish, Finnish, and Swedish manufacturers.

Chapter IV, "Content is King? Interdependencies in Value Networks for Mobile Services," by Uta Wehn de Montalvo, Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (The Netherlands), Els van de Kar, Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), and Carleen Maitland, Pennsylvania State University (USA), investigates interdependencies in value networks for mobile services. This chapter analyzes the role of content and the content providers, respectively, in the process of value creation to bring these mobile services about.

Chapter V, "Buyer-Supplier Relationships in Business-to-Business E-Procure­ment: Effects of Supply Conditions," by Ravinder Nath, Creighton University (USA), and Rebecca Angeles, University of New Brunswick Fredericton (Canada), investigates the relevance of the resource dependency and relational exchange theories in explaining e-procurement activities of firms. Study findings show that supply importance and supply complexity primarily predict information exchange and operational linkages.

Chapter VI, "Consumer Factors Affecting Adoption of Internet Banking Services: An Empiri­cal Investigation in Taiwan," by Wen-Jang (Kenny) Jih, Middle Tennessee State University (USA), and Shu-Yeng Wong and Tsung-Bin Chang, Da-Yeh University (Taiwan), empirically examines the effects of consumer-perceived risk, personal involvement, and perception of banks' risk-reduction measures on their willingness to adopt Internet banking services. The results show that more experienced Internet users tend to involve themselves than their less-experienced counterparts in the use of Internet banking services.

Section III: E-Business Process Modeling and Practices consists of four chapters. Chapter VII, "A Simonian Approach to E-Business Research: A Study in Netchising," by Ye-Sho Chen, Louisiana State University (USA), Guoqing Chen, Tsinghua University (China), and Soushan Wu, Chang-Gung University (Taiwan), draws upon five seemingly unrelated research areas of Herbert Simon (skew distributions, near decomposability, docility, causal and effectual reasoning, and attention management) and proposes a holistic framework of attention-based information systems for firms to frame an enduring competitive strategy in the digital economy. This chapter illustrates the notation, its use, and its benefits with a supply chain management case study. It then briefly compares this approach to related modeling approaches, namely, use case-driven design, service-oriented architecture analysis, and conceptual value modeling.

Chapter IX, "How E-Services Satisfy Customer Needs: A Software-Aided Reasoning," by Ziv Baida, Jaap Gordijn, and Hans Akkermans, Free University Amsterdam (The Netherlands), and Hanne Sale and Andrei Z. Morch, SINTEF Energy Research (Norway), outlines an ontological approach that models how companies can electronically offer packages of independent services (service bundles) based on understanding their customers' needs and demands. The proposed approach for tackling this issue applies conceptual modeling and requirements engineering techniques to broadly accepted service management and service marketing concepts, such that software can be developed – based on the service ontology – that designs service bundles for a given set of customer demands.

Chapter X, "Personalization of Web Services: Concepts, Challenges, and Solutions," by Zakaria Maamar, Zayed University (UAE), Soraya Kouadri Mostefaoui, Fribourg University (Switzerland), Qusay Mahmoud, Guelph University (Canada), Ghita Kouadri Mostefaoui, University of Montreal (Canada), and Djamal Benslimane, Claude Bernard Lyon University (France), highlights the need for context in Web services personalization. This personalization aims at accommodating user preferences and needs.

Section IV: Electronic Communication Adoption and Service Provider Strategy consists of four chapters. Chapter XI, "Managing Corporate E-Mail Systems: A Contemporary Study," by Aidan Duane, Waterford Institute of Technology (Ireland), and Patrick Finnegan, University College Cork (Ireland), presents a multiple case study investigation of e-mail system monitoring and control. The study examines the interaction between key elements of e-mail control identified by previous researchers and considers the role of such controls at various implementation phases. The findings reveal eight major elements to be particularly important in monitoring and controlling e-mail systems within the organizations studied.

Chapter XII, "Predicting Electronic Communication System Adoption: The Influence of Adopter Perceptions of Continuous or Discontinuous Innovation," by Gary Hunter and Steven Taylor, Illinois State University (USA), investigates the factors predicting adoption of electronic communication systems. A contribution of the study is that it focuses on comparing factors predicting initial adoption relative to adoption of an upgrade.

Chapter XIII, "Computer Self-Efficacy and the Acceptance of Instant Messenger Technol­ogy" by Thomas Stafford, University of Memphis (USA), investigates motivations for instant messaging (IM) use in a technology acceptance framework that seeks to evaluate computer self-efficacy as an antecedent to critical TAM constructs. It is demonstrated that user self-efficacy is mediated in its impact on perceived usefulness of IM technology by the ease with which the technology can be used.

Chapter XIV, "User Perceptions of the Usefulness of E-Mail and Instant Messaging," by Philip Houle and Troy Strader, Drake University (USA), and Sridhar Ramaswami, Iowa State University (USA), describes research that explores the impacts of unsolicited traffic on the perceived usefulness of electronic message technologies. Two technologies were explored: e-mail and instant messaging. The hypothesis is that unsolicited message traffic would have negative effects on the perceived usefulness of the technologies. However, the findings did not support this expected result.

Section V: Privacy Policies and Implementation Issues consists of two chapters. Chapter XV, "Is P3P an Answer to Protecting Information Privacy?," by Noushin Ashrafi and Jean-Pierre Kuilboer, University of Massachusetts Boston (USA), aims at providing a brief explanation of P3P both as a new technology and as a standard. This chapter presents the background on use of technology for privacy protection. It then examines the role of P3P in privacy protection and presents a brief history of how it started.

Chapter XVI, "Semi-Automatic Derivation and Application of Personal Privacy Policies," by George Yee and Larry Korba, National Research Council (Canada), shows how personal privacy policies for e-business may be semi-automatically derived and applied. This chapter first examines privacy legislation to derive the contents of a personal privacy policy. It then describes two methods for semi-automatically generating a personal privacy policy, using community consensus to valuate privacy. The chapter concludes by presenting a privacy management model that explains how privacy policies are applied in e-business, followed by a discussion and a review of related works.

Recently, organizations have witnessed rapid improvement in e-business technologies and their deployment as a strategic weapon. The growing importance of e-business and its inevitable effect on organizations presents numerous challenges as well as opportunities for academics and practitioners. Sustained innovation, competitiveness, and market growth occur when e-business enables companies to redesign the business processes, develop new business models, and improve management practices. An outstanding collection of the latest research associated with the emerging e-business technologies and business models, E-Business Innovation and Process Management provides researchers and practitioners with study findings and insight valuable in advancing the knowledge and practice of all facets of electronic business.

E-Business Innovation and Process Management provides researchers and practitioners with valuable information on recent advances and developments in emerging e-business models and technologies.

Cooking, Food & Wine

Food Made Fast – Asian by Farina Wong Kingsley (Food Made Fast Series: Oxmoor House)

Asian cooking has never been so easy. – Chuck Williams, Series Editor

Modern life doesn't leave a lot of time for standing in front of the stove. Designed for the busy cook, Food Made Fast – Asian is all about good food, simply prepared. Asian ingredients and techniques are especially well suited to fast cooking – each recipe in this book can be made in three steps or fewer, using just a few readily available ingredients.

The book is authored by Farina Wong Kingsley, respected culinary instructor specializing in the cuisines of Asia, teacher at Tante Marie's Cooking School in San Francisco.

Food Made Fast – Asian has three sections:

  1. 20 Minutes Start to Finish – Simple recipes for the busiest of nights. From the kitchen to the table, these dishes are ready to eat in 20 minutes or less.
  2. 30 Minutes Start to Finish – Quick recipes for meals without a lot of fuss. Each dish takes no more than 30 minutes from beginning to end.
  3. 15 Minutes Hands-on Time – Easy meals for when readers don't want to spend much time in the kitchen. Each recipe takes no more than 15 minutes to prepare, giving the cook time with family and friends while it cooks.

Many of the recipes, such as savory Beef with Ginger and Caramelized Onions, take less than 20 minutes from beginning to end, making them ideal choices for weeknight suppers when time is especially short. Others, such as Miso-Glazed Scallops with Asian Slaw, can be on the table in fewer than 30 minutes. In the final chapter, readers find recipes like Roasted Honey-Soy Pork Tenderloin and Curried Chickpea and Potato Stew, that require just 15 minutes of hands-on time and then can be left to roast or simmer on their own, while the cook spends time out of the kitchen. In Food Made Fast – Asian readers will also find suggestions for meal planning, guidelines for keeping a well-stocked pantry, and tips for efficient shopping and cooking that will save them precious time and show them how to be a faster – and smarter – cook.

Designed for the busy home cook, Food Made Fast is the latest collectible series from Williams-Sonoma, edited by Chuck Williams, who has helped to revolutionize cooking in America, opening his first Williams-Sonoma store in the California wine country town of Sonoma. Using a straightforward approach to everyday cooking, Food Made Fast is about delicious food, simply prepared, with easy-to-follow recipes and tips. Each book emphasizes keeping a well-stocked pantry, planning ahead, and using fresh ingredients. Dedicated to a single subject – from Grill to Asian to Seafood – each volume makes it simple to plan, cook, and enjoy great-tasting food throughout the week.

Food Made Fast – Asian is composed of one dish meals, all of which are pictured; and mouth-watering they are too.

Cooking, Food & Wine

Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province by Fuchsia Dunlop (W.W. Norton)

As Tuscany is to Italy, so Hunan is to China, with its tradition of hearty peasant cooking, its warmth and hospitality, and the vibrancy of its people and landscapes. Hunan is a region of hot and spicy flavors – the red chili is king – but also of soothing stews and broths, delicate vegetable dishes, luscious smoked meats, and refreshing stir-fries.

Fuchsia Dunlop is the author of the much-loved and critically acclaimed Sichuanese cookbook Land of Plenty, which won the British Guild of Food Writers' Jeremy Round Award for best first book and which critic John Thorne called "a seminal exploration of one of China's great regional cuisines."

Now, with Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, she introduces us to the delicious tastes of Hunan, the little-explored home province of Chairman Mao. In the book, Dunlop, guest chef, radio journalist for the BBC World Service, who was trained as a Chinese chef at China's leading cooking school, the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu, brings readers in these 120 recipes the astonishing flavors, history, and tastes of the Hunan region.

Readers will want to look for late imperial recipes like Numbing-and-Hot Chicken, soothing stews, and a myriad of colorful vegetable stir-fries. The book contains a full range of recipes from easy starters and steamed dishes such as fresh peas with slivers of ginger to a Hunanese staple – the classic hotpot – to rich, tender, braised dishes such as Chairman Mao's red-braised pork.
Sumptuous fish and meat dishes are balanced by spicy soups and aromatic salads, such as cool coriander salad with a hot-and-sour dressing, delicious noodles, succulent sweets, preserves, and relishes, along with festival dishes that reflect the grandness of Hunan's banquet cuisine, including yolkless eggs with flower mushrooms.

In a selection of classic recipes interwoven with a wealth of history, legend, and anecdote, Dunlop in Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook brings to life this vibrant culinary region. With beautiful color photography, and fascinating stories from Hunan province, Dunlop makes vivid the picture of a region, which spawned a generation of revolutionary leaders – people who were as hot and fiery as the food they loved.

Education / Elementary / Special

The Practical Guide to Special Educational Needs in Inclusive Primary Classrooms by Richard Rose & Marie Howley (Paul Chapman Publishing)

In her seminal report of 1978, Mary Warnock (Department of Education and Science, Great Britain, 1978) suggested that as many as 20% of pupils have some form of special education needs (SEN) at some point in their school lives. Although this figure might be disputed, it has been largely agreed upon by many authorities.

Written for beginning and pre-service teachers, The Practical Guide to Special Educational Needs in Inclusive Primary Classrooms is an introduction to working with children of a range of abilities in inclusive primary classrooms. The book draws on recent research and innovation in the education of pupils with special educational needs to provide practical examples and advice on how to meet the challenges of developing effective teaching and learning in inclusive settings.

Since the publication of the Warnock Report, there have been many advances in the understanding of pupils with SEN and the approaches to providing them with an appropriate education. However, for many teachers, these pupils con­tinue to provide a challenge and in some instances remain on the periphery of learning. The demands of learning present many pupils with difficulties that may damage their personal self-esteem to an extent that it deters them from making progress and in some instances leads to general disaffection with school. The demands of the curriculum, approaches to classroom management and organization, the expectations of teachers and other adults, and the general ethos of the school are all factors which may support or impede the learning of pupils. These issues and the responsibility of teachers to ensure their effective management form the basis of The Practical Guide to Special Educational Needs in Inclusive Primary Classrooms.

Written by Richard Rose, Professor of Special and Inclusive Education and Director of the Centre for Special Needs Education and Research, and Marie Howley, senior lecturer in the Centre for Special Needs Education and Research, both at the University of Northampton, chapters in The Practical Guide to Special Educational Needs in Inclusive Primary Classrooms cover:

  • Becoming an inclusive teacher.
  • Pupils giving cause for concern.
  • Teaching and learning styles.
  • Creating inclusive classroom environments.
  • Creating teaching teams.
  • Learning from pupils.
  • Looking beyond school.
  • Developing further as a professional.

According to Rose and Howley, one of the most interesting aspects of being a teacher is that new challenges appear all the time, and that this requires tenacity and professionalism in order to be successful. New teachers soon realize the need to review continually their own work, and that the benefits of gaining new understanding and knowledge are a critical aspect of their professionalism. On too many occasions in the past, pupils described as having SEN have been regarded as being a problem. Sadly, new teachers will often hear their professional peers referring to some of the pupils in their classes in negative terms. The act of teaching cannot be divorced from human rights issues and must begin with a commitment on each new teacher’s part to respect all of the pupils in their classes and try to see the world from their set of experiences.

The Practical Guide to Special Educational Needs in Inclusive Primary Classrooms makes a call to commitment to this cause, further claiming that it can add significantly to our knowledge of how better to address the needs of pupils who have often found themselves marginalized within our schools.

Aimed at newly-qualified teachers and students approaching the end of their training courses, The Practical Guide to Special Educational Needs in Inclusive Primary Classrooms is a practical and accessible text designed as an introduction to help teachers begin their careers in special education. Coming out of Great Britain, it provides a fresh perspective for those on the near side of the ‘pond.’ With advice on building positive attitudes, developing specific teaching strategies and adapting a personalized teaching approach, the book helps teachers build upon their earlier training in both practical and reflective ways.

Entertainment / Music / Biographies & Memoirs

Tchaikovsky: A Listener's Guide by Daniel Felsenfeld, with 2 CDs (Unlocking the Masters Series: Amadeus Press)

He wrote one of the most popular works ever penned, the Nutcracker.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a composer of sublime music, an accomplished fabulist and fantasist whose work was rooted in personal torment. His melodies are exquisite, but the true power of this composer lies in his creativity, his boldness, his sense of inner voice. Tchaikovsky's musical universe – "a place full of fantastical characters, wild obsessions, an endless supply of gorgeous melodies (and inner melodies), and enough weird experiments to fill ten books of this exact sort," as author Daniel Felsenfeld describes it – is unveiled in his new book, Tchaikovsky.

Felsenfeld, a prolific composer and writer himself, takes readers on a tour of some of the ‘Little Russian’s’ most beloved works, including The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, the 1812 Overture, Romeo and Juliet, Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6 ("Pathetique"), the Serenade for Strings in C Major, and his Violin Concerto.

Tchaikovsky is a series of blow-by-blow listening sections matched to the music. In nontechnical prose Felsenfeld guides readers, illuminating the edges and fine points of these magical compositions. He invites musical novices and experts alike to experience anew Tchaikovsky's musical universe, "where beauty triumphs, sadness overwhelms, fancy flourishes, and delight is palpable and defiant."

From the twee delight’ of the Nutcracker, to the ‘bold, elegiac beauty’ of the Serenade for Strings, to the ‘puckish dash’ of the Violin Concerto and the ‘overt heart-on-sleeve anguish’ of the Romeo and Juliet Overture, Felsenfeld provides commentary. The book, from the Unlocking the Masters series, includes two full-length Naxos Records CDs.

Tchaikovsky gives interested but potentially uninitiated listeners the tools they need to listen to Tchaikovsky's music and to become more comfortable with classical music overall.

Entertainment / Television / Puzzles & Games

Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings (Thorndike Press Large Print Nonfiction Series: Thomson Gale)

One day back in 2003, Ken Jennings and his college buddy Earl did what hundreds of thousands of people had done before: they auditioned for Jeopardy! Two years, 75 games, 2,642 correct answers, and over $2.5 million in winnings later, Jennings emerged as trivia’s undisputed king. Brainiac traces his rise from anonymous computer programmer to nerd folk icon. But along the way, it also explores his newly conquered kingdom: the world of trivia itself.

Jennings, had always been minutiae-mad, pouring over almanacs and TV Guide listings at an age when most kids are still watching Elmo and putting beans up their nose. But trivia, he has found, is centuries older than his childhood obsession with it. Whisking readers from the coffeehouses of seventeenth-century London to the Internet age, Jennings in Brainiac chronicles the ups and downs of the trivia fad: the quiz book explosion of the Jazz Age; the rise, fall, and rise again of TV quiz shows; the nostalgic campus trivia of the 1960s; and the 1980s, when Trivial Pursuit again made it fashionable to be a know-it-all.

Jennings also investigates the shadowy demimonde of today’s trivia subculture, guiding us on a tour of trivia hotspots across America. He goes head-to-head with the blowhards and diehards of the college quiz-bowl circuit, the slightly soused faithful of the Boston pub trivia scene, and the raucous participants in the annual Q&A marathon in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, “The World’s Largest Trivia Contest.” And, of course, he takes readers behind the scenes of his improbable 75-game run on Jeopardy!

But above all, Brainiac is a love letter to the useless fact. What marsupial has fingerprints that are indistinguishable from human ones? What planet has a crater on it named after Laura Ingalls Wilder? What comedian had the misfortune to be born with the name 'Albert Einstein'? Jennings also ponders questions that are a little more philosophical: What separates trivia from meaningless facts? Is being good at trivia a mark of intelligence? And is trivia just a waste of time, or does it serve some not-so-trivial purpose after all?

… Sprinkling trivia questions throughout his first book, the former computer programmer is a charmingly self-deprecating guide to the subculture of esoterica as he relates how he answered his first trivia question about the Wright brothers at four and made his chops on the ego-driven college quiz bowl circuit; confides how he mastered the ‘tricky’ Jeopardy! buzzers; bonds with professional trivia writers; and describes being bested by the puzzler "Most of this firm's seven thousand seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year" (Jennings answered FedEx; H&R Block is correct). You don't have to be a couch potato to answer this: what's an eight-letter word for a highly entertaining, fast-paced read that demystifies "America's most popular and most difficult quiz show" while pondering how trivia is a cultural phenomenon that offers a tidy alternative to life's messiness as well as instant camaraderie between people from different walks of life? – Publishers Weekly
… This book provides a behind-the-scenes look at this holy grail of trivia contests. Jennings, perhaps the most famous Jeopardy! winner of all, completed a record 74-game winning streak over a six-month period in 2004, shortly after the five-game limit was lifted. Steeped in the world of trivia, he offers an in-depth history of the young sport, with its roots in English pub contests, the quiz shows (and accompanying scandals) of the 1950s, and the collegiate quiz-bowl circuit, where nerds reign supreme. Jennings informs and astounds us and manages to cram in enough fun facts to keep any trivia nut happy. – David Siegfried, Booklist

Uproarious, silly, engaging, and erudite, Brainiac is an irresistible celebration of nostalgia, curiosity, and nerdy obsession – in a word, trivia.

History / Americas / African Americans

The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown by Tim Hashaw (Carroll & Graf)

Vital to the formation of English-speaking America was the voyage made by some sixty Africans stolen from a Spanish slave ship and brought to the young struggling colony of Jamestown in 1619. It was an act of colonial piracy that angered King James I of England, causing him to carve up the Virginia Company’s monopoly for virtually all of North America. It was an infusion of brave and competent souls who were essential to Jamestown’s survival and success. And it was the arrival of pioneers who would fire the first salvos in the centuries-long, African-American battle for liberation. Until now, the story has been buried by historians.

Four hundred years after the birth of English-speaking America, as a nation turns its attention to its ancestry, The Birth of Black America reconstructs the true origins of the United States and of the African-American experience.

The Birth of Black America, written by Tim Hashaw, award-winning journalist, investigative reporter and descendant of Jamestown’s first Africans, reveals the untold history of the first Africans in English-speaking America. Evidence reveals that their arrival touched off a scandal that broke Virginia's monopoly of North America thereby opening America to colonization by a broad range of political, religious, and cultural adventurers who created the thirteen colonies and the framework for the later United States. As such, the voyage that founded America was not that of John Smith aboard the Susan Constant to build Jamestown in 1607 or the Pilgrims' Mayflower in 1620, but rather the voyage taken by two pirate ships that delivered the first Africans to America in 1619. This historical account goes on to chronicle the lives of that first African American generation to 1676.

According to Hashaw, contrary to the early characterization of the first Africans as ‘crude barbarians,’ the founding fathers and mothers of African America came from an advanced, Iron Age African civilization. Sociological studies of colonial era Africans such as Lerone Bennett's Before the Mayflower, Stephen Innes' Myne Owne Ground, Douglas Deal's Race and Class in Colonial Virginia and others have dealt briefly with the first African generation and have generally concentrated on African Americans in the 18th century. The Birth of Black America for the first time identifies many of the first Africans of Jamestown by name and reveals that many of their descendants later fought in the American Revolution and helped organize the Underground Railroad to free enslaved fellow Africans. Thousands of Americans alive today descend from the first African American generation of 1619-1676.

Author Hashaw chronicles their capture in West Africa; the attack on the San Juan Bautista by two English pirate ships – the Treasurer and the heretofore unidentified White Lion – that brought them to Jamestown; their various roles in the survival of the struggling colony; their efforts to purchase liberty and subsequently establish farms and communities in Tidewater Virginia; and their reaction to the increasingly restrictive laws preventing Africans from becoming free.

Four hundred years after the birth of English-speaking America, as the nation celebrates its ancestry, The Birth of Black America reconstructs the true origins of the United States and the African American experience. It is a story as essential to our national identity as those of John Smith, Pocahontas, and Jamestown; the Dutch of New Pork; the Pilgrims of Plymouth; the Quakers of Pennsylvania; and the Catholics of Maryland.

Hashaw (Children of Perdition: Melungeons and the Struggle for Mixed America) offers a welcome variation on early America and the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. Historians have long known that Africans first appeared in the Virginia record in 1619. Hashaw traces those first black Virginians back to Portuguese Angola: they were captives on a Spanish slave ship, which was attacked by two pirate vessels that eventually transported 60 or so Africans to Virginia and Bermuda. Hashaw recreates the lives some of these early African Virginians made for themselves: Benjamin Doll purchased six indentured English servants, became a plantation owner, learned to read and write, and was appointed by a white widow to serve as her attorney. Another eventually purchased African slaves. … Hashaw offers both an exciting story of crime on the high seas and a fascinating social history of 17th-century black America. – Publishers Weekly

A history that will surely temper its readers' views of early colonial America. – Kirkus Reviews

A group of black Virginia lawmakers last week announced legislation calling for a state apology for slavery... Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, Richmond Democrat and a sponsor of the resolution, said it is the right time to set an example for the nation with the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown this year. – Washington Times

Buried by history for centuries, The Birth of Black America is the exciting, true story of intrigue, piracy, slavery, and freedom surrounding the 1619 birth of black America. It is high time we acknowledge this contribution to the founding of “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

History / Americas / Biographies & Memoirs / Politics

Abraham Epstein: The Forgotten Father of Social Security by Pierre Epstein (University of Missouri Press)

Social Security has long been called the third rail of American politics – an unassailable institution for which we can thank Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Or can we?

Abraham Epstein was a major figure in American social reform during the first half of the twentieth century. His name and his theories appear in almost every book written on Social Security and the New Deal, but a full account of his life has never been made. Epstein's son, Pierre, now secures his legacy in Abraham Epstein telling for the first time the story of his father's role in the conception and enactment of Social Security while shedding new light on the inner workings of the Roosevelt administration.

Combining memoir and intellectual history, freelance writer Epstein takes readers behind the scenes of New Deal legislation to tell how his father's fast-moving career led him to become the real architect of Social Security – he even came up with those two words to explain his theories. A prolific journalist, founder of the American Association for Social Security, and author of numerous books, including Insecurity: A Challenge to America, Abe Epstein fought desperately with FDR to remedy the failings of the original Social Security Act – only to be cast aside by political machina­tions. Nonetheless, the exclusion did not stop him from making significant contributions to the 1939 amendments that solidified Social Security for coming generations of Americans.

In Abraham Epstein readers meet a colorful and tenacious player in the history of this critical piece of social insurance legislation – an obsessed reformer who mobilized support from the bottom up for his vision of Social Security. They also meet his family and learn of the struggles and frustrations Epstein faced in making his way in America as an immigrant Russian Jew.

All Americans who value Social Security and a dignified old age owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Abraham Epstein. This riveting, personal account of his life fills a gaping hole in the literature of the history of social insurance. I highly recommend this book. – Nancy J. Altman, author of The Battle for Social Security

This is a fascinating piece of social history about the life and times of one of the designers of Social Security. Students of the New Deal will learn much from reading it. – Dean Baker, coauthor of Social Security: The Phony Crisis

Abraham Epstein was one of the most extraordinary men I ever met. He was a rare combination of the Jewish scholar, the Madison Avenue publicist, the Broadway showman, the missionary social reformer, and the determined, persevering lobbyist. – Wilbur J. Cohen, former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1968-1969

Abraham Epstein fills a major gap in the historical record, showing that Social Security is more than a technical subject about finance and actuarial statistics, that it is primarily a human idea with deep philosophical roots. In the face of today's privatization controversy, Abraham Epstein's theories have much to tell us about the current debate while Pierre Epstein's insightful narrative shows us the underlying importance of one man's indelible legacy.

History / Americas / Military / Native American

Washita Memories: Eyewitness Views of Custer's Attack on Black Kettle's Village compiled & edited by Richard G. Hardorff (University of Oklahoma Press)

The Battle of the Washita is one of the most tragic – and disturbing – events in American history. On November 27, 1868, the U.S. Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer attacked a peaceful Southern Cheyenne village along the Washita River in present-day western Oklahoma. This U.S. victory signaled the end of the Cheyennes' traditional way of life and resulted in the death of Black Kettle, their most prominent peace chief.

Washita Memories is a documentary of the attack. It presents the combat recollections of officers, soldiers, and scouts on the one hand, and Indian survivors on the other hand. In the book, prolific author and independent scholar Richard G. Hardorff presents a broad range of views of the Washita battle with firsthand testimonies by Indians and whites of the battle that ended traditional Cheyenne buffalo culture. Eyewitnesses to the destruction of the Southern Cheyenne village included soldiers, officers, tribal members, Indian and white scouts, and government officials. Many of these witnesses recorded their memories of the event.

With Washita Memories, Hardorff's extensive research turned up firsthand accounts and oral histories of this clash of cultures on the southern plains, including oral narratives that had been handed down through Cheyenne families until they were finally recorded or transcribed. Written records consist of journal or diary entries, letters, personal accounts, newspaper columns, and official government documents. Each document is reproduced in full with an introduction and extensive annotation.

A general introduction places the campaign and its aftermath in historical context. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Cheyenne Indians made a desperate attempt to preserve their buffalo culture from the advance of white civilization. This confrontation resulted in the subjugation of the Cheyennes, who suffered numerous calamities afterward. Their decline commenced in 1830 with the capture and desecration of the Sacred Arrows by the Pawnees. In the following six decades, the power and independence of the Cheyennes were further eroded by cholera epidemics, genocide, the extermination of the buffalo, starvation, the eradication of their political system, and finally the loss of their lands.

Hardorff provides fourteen detailed maps of the battle site and campaign routes. As he uncovers the facts of the event, Hardorff also develops the personalities of the key players, Lt. Col. Custer and Chief Black Kettle. The text also includes the impressions of individuals who visited the battlefield shortly afterward as well as the views of Indian Bureau employees.

Hardorff has assembled an important compendium of documents and maps bearing directly on Custer's attack on the Southern Cheyennes. It is personal history at its most graphic, and the compelling reports and testimony from those on both sides of the struggle will appeal at once to buffs, site visitors, and serious scholars. – Jerome A. Greene, author of Washita: The U.5. Army and the Southern Cheyennes, 1867-1869

Complementing other narrative histories of the battle, Washita Memories is a major contribution to the history of U.S.-Indian conflicts during the nineteenth century. This collection of surviving docu­ments is a one-of-a-kind primary resource allowing readers to more fully reconstruct and interpret the Battle of the Washita. The contextual information adds dimension to the individuals and events men­tioned in the documents, enriches readers’ understanding and appreciation of the recorded and oral evidence, and enhances the overall historiographic value of the resulting work.

History / Military / Australia & Oceania

Darkest Hour: The True Story of Lark Force at Rabaul – Australia's Worst Military Disaster of World War II by Bruce Gamble (Zenith Press)

Barely a year after pilots of the Royal Air Force won the Battle of Britain in “their finest hour,” the little-known tropical island of New Britain was the site of the Australian Army’s darkest hour. Fourteen hundred men and six nurses had been deployed to the Southwest Pacific island in mid-1941 to fortify and defend Rabaul, capital of Australia’s mandated territories.

According to Darkest Hour, written by Bruce Gamble, retired Naval Flight Officer and former historian with the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation, the bulk of Lark Force was the 2/22nd Infantry Battalion, which was equipped with World War I-vintage weapons. They were a close-knit group, mostly volunteers from Victoria. After completing their fortification of the strategic port and its two airfields, they settled into the routine of garrison duties, confident of being relieved within a year.
But the Japanese had big plans for Rabaul. It was to be the linchpin of their campaign to conquer the Southwest Pacific, providing them with a major military complex that would support future offensives against the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and possibly even Australia itself. At 2:30 A.M. on January 23, 1942, the darkest hour of the day, an overwhelming Japanese invasion force swarmed ashore.

Overrun in a matter of hours, the Australian defenders withdrew deep into the jungles of New Britain, where the unforgiving environment, the Japanese, and even fate were against them. The invasion cost the Japanese only sixteen dead and forty-eight wounded, but the toll among Australian soldiers climbed to staggering proportions. Ultimately, less than a fourth of the garrison escaped from New Britain, the rest were taken prisoner. Of that number, approximately two hundred were executed, the majority in one horrific massacre.

The worst was yet to come. Five months after the invasion, 850 enlisted POWs and approximately 200 civilian men were crowded aboard a Japanese ship for transportation to Hainan Island, off the China coast. In a twist of fate, an American submarine torpedoed the ship at 2:30 A.M. on July 1, 1942. The prisoners, locked in the holds, had no chance of escape. The sinking of the Montevideo Maru remains the worst maritime disaster in Australia’s history.

Darkest Hour follows several key individuals through their experiences in Lark Force. One is an American-born soldier, Private Jim Thurst, a musician in the renowned battalion band. Another is Lieutenant Lorna Whyte, a tireless Army nurse. Others include affable soldiers and sharp junior officers who used ingenuity to overcome numerous hardships. Special attention is devoted to the dramatic stories of the men who escaped; their accounts of survival and heroism are among the most inspiring of the Pacific War.  

Based on exhaustive research, Darkest Hour is a gut-wrenching account of courage and sacrifice, folly and disaster.

History / Americas / African Americans

Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad by Mary Kay Ricks (William Morrow)

On the evening of April 15, 1848, seventy-seven slaves attempted one of history's most audacious escapes – and put in motion a furiously fought battle over slavery in America that would consume Congress, the streets of the capital, and the White House itself. Setting sail from Washington, D.C., on a schooner named the Pearl, the fugitives began a daring 225-mile journey to freedom in the North. Mary Kay Ricks's Escape on the Pearl brings to life the Underground Railroad's largest escape attempt, the seemingly immutable politics of slavery, and the individuals who struggled to end it. All the while, Ricks, former attorney at the Department of Labor, focuses her narrative on the intimate story of two young sisters who were onboard the Pearl, and sets their struggle for liberation against the powerful historical forces that would nearly tear the country apart.

Escape on the Pearl reveals the odyssey of those who were onboard, including the remarkable lives of fugitives Mary and Emily Edmonson, the two sisters at the heart of the story, who would trade servitude in elite Washington homes for slave pens in three states. The two young enslaved women, with four of their brothers, joined the other escapees on the 54-ton schooner that was to take them to freedom. Many of the Pearl's passengers were propelled onto the Underground Railroad to avoid being sold on the domestic slave trader some call the ‘Second Middle Passage.’ This little-known trade flourished after cotton spread across the Lower South and the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1808. Planters looked to buy their slaves from owners in the Upper South – including former first lady Dolley Madison – who often divided enslaved families to reap lucrative rewards. But on that chilly April night in 1848, luck was against them. As the little schooner made its way down the Potomac to reach the Chesapeake Bay and turn north, a storm stalled the Pearl long enough for a posse of city officials, owners, and adventure seekers, who had set out in a steamboat, to find them less than halfway to their destination.

The Escape on the Pearl chronicles the growth of an interracial Underground Railroad cell in the capital, the impact of the capture on the Edmonson family – part slave and part free – and all the fugitives, the pro-slavery riot in Washington ignited by the incident, the bitter debate that consumed Congress, the trial and conviction of the ship's captains, and the coming of the Civil War and freedom for all.

The story does end well for the Edmonson sisters, later immortalized in Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Through the efforts of the sisters' father and the northern ‘conductor’ who had helped organize the escape, an abolitionist outcry arose in the North, calling for the two girls to be rescued. Ultimately, Mary and Emily would go on to stand shoulder to shoulder with such abolitionist luminaries as Frederick Douglass and attend Oberlin College under the sponsorship of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

… of the last decades of American slavery and the country it divided. But most fascinating is her portrait of Washington, D.C., in the years before the Civil War, where North and South came together on territory where slavery was still legal, and where, for the African American residents of the city, the relative freedoms of the North and the terrors of transport to the brutal plantation slavery of the Deep South felt equally close.

… – Amazon.com

A valuable account…a moving précis of the fate of the Pearl’s people and their descendants. – Kirkus Reviews

In Escape on the Pearl, Mary Kay Ricks not only delivers the thrilling story of the largest mass escape of fugitive slaves in American History, but in recounting it she also carries us into the secret operations of the underground in the nation's capitol. … Thanks to Rick's meticulous research, long forgotten men and women speak to us again at last, from within the dark heart of American slavery. – Fergus Borderwich, author of Bound for Canaan: the Underground Railroad and The War for the Soul of America

… Her focus on one family, the Edmonsons – in particular the two enslaved sisters, Mary and Emily – deepens the reader's understanding of the tragedy of the failed escape. Ricks has done us all a favor by assuring that the story of the Pearl will not fall into the abyss of forgotten history. – Ann Hagedorn, author of Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad

… Mary Kay Ricks provides in her extensively and intensively researched book the most detailed account of the Pearl yet written. While she anchors the story in local and national contexts, she brings it to life by focusing on the role of the escape attempt in one family's continuing quest for freedom. This is a book that will appeal to anyone interested in the struggle over slavery that preceded the American Civil War. – Professor Stanley Harrold, author of Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865

A story of courage and determination, Escape on the Pearl revives one of the most poignant chapters of U.S. history. Ricks weaves together historical threads in a dramatic narrative epic with finely drawn characters personalizing a larger-than-life event. Combining extensive historical research with a gripping plot and extraordinary true-life people, Escape on the Pearl is a book that must be read, discussed, and remembered. By rescuing this little-known but influential incident, it changes the way we understand slavery, abolition, segregation, and their role in all of our nation's history. The Edmonsons, the other fugitives of the Pearl, and those who helped them can now take their place as American heroes.

History / Europe

Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Secret Past by Giles Tremlett (Walker & Company)

Spain still has its own particular set of historical ghosts. They, above all, are what make this country different. What many Spaniards have not yet learned to do, however, is love the idea of their own difference. And that is strange. Because it is precisely why so many outsiders, including this anglosajón, love them so. – from the book

2007 marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica – an atrocity that killed hundreds of innocents and armed republicans alike – by the German Luftwaffe at the request of General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. This specter of atrocity (memorialized famously in Picasso's Guernica) was one of many throughout the war; but not even the republicans would remain innocent. In Ghosts of Spain, Guardian correspondent, British ex-pat, and twenty-year Madrid resident Giles Tremlett confronts the legacy of Civil War atrocities in the post-Franco, democratic Spain.

In many ways Spain exists out of time. To be sure, it is the portrait of modernity and progress, and its developments in art, medicine, food, and architecture are second to none. It is also a country proud of its traditions, whose warm, talented, welcoming people are all too eager to show off its cultural treasures: the romantic and courageous matador, Basque cuisine that is the envy of the world, the picturesque dancers and inspiring music of Flamenco. Yet beneath this veneer of cultural pride lies a deep divide over a history its people have been unable, or unwilling, to reconcile. This point is made all too clear by the country's collective silence when a new mass grave of General Franco's victims is found. A pacto del olvido, or ‘pact of forgetting,’ permeates all corners of Spanish society, young and old, on the left and right alike.

Though the history of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath are contentious subjects not many Spaniards are willing to broach, in his travels through Spain, Tremlett digs deep beneath the surface of this collective, deliberate forgetting. Drawing on the author’s twenty years of experience living in Spain, Ghosts of Spain is a revelatory. Tremlett, celebrates the willingness of Spanish people to express themselves with passion and unveils the tinderbox of disagreements that mark the country today. Delving into such emotional questions as who caused the Civil War, why Basque terrorists kill, why Catalans hate Madrid, and whether the Islamist bombers who killed 190 people in 2004 dreamed of a return to Spain’s Moorish past, Tremlett finds the ghosts of the past everywhere. At the same time, he offers trenchant observations on more quotidian aspects of Spanish life today: the reasons, for example, Spaniards dislike authority figures, but are cowed by a doctor’s white coat, and how women have embraced feminism without men noticing. 

Ghosts of Spain reveals Tremlett's considerable talents as the Guardian's correspondent in Spain. His love of the country is as impressive as the range of his interviews and travels, which have taken him to such starkly contrasting places as the interior of the royal residence of El Pardo, a roadside brothel, and a run-down part of Seville where even the police are frightened of entering . . . Enjoyable, informative, and remarkably balanced. – Literary Review

Only 30 years after Franco's death, Spain has become a different country. Many of those differences are charted with shrewd perception in Ghosts of Spain . . . Tremlett has watched Spain close up for 20 years. He can see the immensity and complexity of the change, so much hidden potential suddenly tapped. – Guardian

Tremlett is as sound on social history as he is on recent politics. Ghosts of Spain is a book of remarkable scope…carried along by the author’s enthusiasm for his subject and his determination to capture this contemporary Spanish moment. It is a quest in which he succeeds brilliantly, and he emerges as a worthy member of that band of writers, from Richard Ford and Ernest Hemingway to Gerald Brenan and Michael Jacobs, who have fallen for Iberia. Ghosts of Spain is a warts-and-all love letter from someone who hopes never to recover from the coup de foudre. – Sunday Times (London)

Ghosts of Spain is a fascinating exploration of Spain's dark past, and a scintillating evocation of the country today. Tremlett's passion for his adopted country comes through in clear and elegant prose, weaving together past and present, and lending a voice to Spain's voiceless and long forgotten.

History / Europe

The Making of Victorian Values: Decency and Dissent in Britain: 1789-1837 by Ben Wilson (The Penguin Press)

Intellectual tumult, the repression of dissent, and the rise of political and moral hypocrisy all characterized the era of British history prior to the ascent of Queen Victoria, a period that provides an eerie echoing of our own times in Ben Wilson's radical tour de force, a brilliant reworking of the pre-Victorian age.

The Making of Victorian Values is the history of an era rather like our own – a time when dissenters and rebels were hemmed in by conformists and hardheaded authoritarians, a time when a nation on the eve of global domination fretted about its future. It was, however, a period when those who argued that a British empire would be a disaster for liberty were eventually squashed by imperialists, just as those who railed against mindless materialism were in the end rolled over by industrialists and the promoters of luxury goods.

Once portrayed by Paul Johnson in his bestselling The Birth of the Modern as the years when virtue finally trumped corruption, Wilson here reveals a far more complex and compelling story – and a more engrossing and scandalous one, too. A reworking of the pre-Victorian age, The Making of Victorian Values is a history of how rebels and dissenters who argued for equality and progress were crushed by the conformists and authoritarians – and how those who railed against the materialism and capitalism were rolled over by industrialists and the promoters of luxury products for the middle class. The Making of Victorian Values begins with the libertine spirit inspired by Byron and Shelley, the revolutionaries of the Romantic age, and ends with the rise and eventual triumph of more confining middle-class values.

It is a story about hypochondriacs and cranks, dandies and killjoys, rakes and priests, advocates of free-speech and those against it – people who were made awestruck by Britain's emerging role as the economic and political powerhouse of the world, but who were also deeply anxious about the responsibilities a vast empire might require.

The Making of Victorian Values reveals an era when people were obsessed with the need to appear authentic, and yet forever had doubts about who was and who wasn't – concerns familiar to the ‘me’ age we know so well. Wilson's historical acuity allows him to make parallels between this period and our own times, and to explain why we have every reason to fear a new Victorian era.

In this stimulating cultural history, Britain starts out vulgar, drunken, plain-spoken, unruly and sexually relaxed, but ends up prim, abstemious, euphemistic, conformist and sexually repressed – a reversal that was bitterly contested at every step. British historian Wilson links the sea change to fears of French invasion, domestic revolution and the demands of a burgeoning but unstable industrial capitalism. In response to these upheavals, he contends, a Scroogeian alliance of evangelical philanthropists, secular utilitarians and free-market ideologues blamed individual moral turpitude for crime, poverty and social turmoil, insisting that only imposed values of sexual propriety, hard work, self-denial and refined manners could save society. But creeping Victorianism, Wilson notes, was resisted by populists, Romantics and those "nostalgic for the free and easy, tolerant and gregarious culture of previous generations." These resisters denounced moral reformers as snobs, joyless Puritans, bullies and champions of a hypocritical ‘age of cant.’ Wilson's heart is with these dissidents, though his head doesn't entirely reject high-minded proto-Victorian impulses. He traces the conflict through a discursive, elegantly written survey of a wide range of subjects, from quack patent medicines to aristocratic sex scandals to London theater riots. The result is an insightful portrait of a culture war that's strongly reminiscent of modern-day America's. – Publishers Weekly

Engaging... A keen, compassionate understanding of the era. – Kirkus Reviews

The Making of Victorian Values, a work of remarkable scholarship, is the dazzling American debut of one of the UK's most promising and talented historians. Wilson is heir to the great radical historians of the twentieth century, E. J. Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson among them. He brushes aside scholarly politesse, refuses to join in unnecessary academic point settling, and possesses the sort of rare and invigorating literary gifts that bring to mind less the titles of other histories than the great works of nineteenth-century British fiction. Brilliant and provocative, The Making of Victorian Values marks the arrival onto the stage of a historian whose precocious talents cast a very long shadow.

History / World / Reference / Atlases & Maps / Travel

Historical Atlas of Exploration: 1492-1600 by Angus Konstam (Mercury Books)

On Friday the third day of August of the year 1492, at eight o'clock, we set out from the bar of the Saltes. We went with a strong sea breeze sixty miles to the southward, that is fifteen leagues before sunset; afterwards, to the southwest and south by west which was the course for the Canaries. – from the diary entry of Christopher Columbus.

In just over two months he would discover the New World.

The first voyage of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) did not mark the start of the period known as the ‘Age of Discovery,’ nor was he the first European to set foot in America. When he died he still refused to believe that the lands he found were anything other than a part of the Far East. The continent he discovered was named after another explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, and Columbus died a frustrated and broken man, spurned by the Spanish crown that had given him his golden opportunity. Despite this, of all the voyages of discovery made in the 15th and 16th centuries, that first voyage made by the Italian-born mariner is the one best remembered today. It has been hailed as a defining moment in world history, marking the end of the Middle Ages in Europe and ushering in a new era of scientific and geographical discovery.

The chain of events that culminated in Columbus's voyage began in the late 1300s, when European mariners took advantage of improved sailing craft and ventured further than they had before. As Europe emerged from the psychological restrictions of the Middle Ages, the new learning of the Renaissance emboldened a handful of adventurers to seek new horizons across the ‘Ocean Sea’. And so began the Age of Discovery. A story of intense passion, rivalry, and excitement, it is still seen as one of the greatest periods of global discovery. In Historical Atlas of Exploration, readers rediscover Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama's search for a sea route to the Indies, John Cabot's exploration of North America, and Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe. 

The book contains a wealth of information for the armchair traveler, including:

  • Comprehensive biographies of famous navigators of the age.
  • Over 200 color illustrations that capture the spirit of each era.
  • Detailed maps that chart the discovery of new worlds and their inhabitants.
  • Related timelines of dates and key events.

Historical Atlas of Exploration traces the story of the Age of Discovery by following each of the major explorers on their voyages. It shows how, in a period characterized by the Renaissance, the attitude of the explorers toward the people they came across was far from enlightened.

Recurring themes run through these accounts: greed, lust for gold, vanity, national pride, and callousness. These mingle with more admirable traits, including maritime skill, bravery, resourcefulness, and vision. More than in any other period in history, a handful of men made an impact far beyond the achievements of their fellows. Their story is one that still fascinates us in an era when transatlantic journeys are routine, and the exotic spices they sailed the world to find can be imported from those distant lands in a matter of hours.

Renowned historian and museum curator Konstam, in association with the National Maritime Museum, has produced a masterly account of exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries…. Lavishly illustrated with maps, charts, and paintings, this book includes informative chapters on the construction of ships and the navigational science of the era. Essential for all public and college libraries, this is an enjoyable book for lay readers as well as specialists. – D. Stanley Itkin, Hillside P.L., New Hyde Park, NY, Library Journal
A detailed look at 41 explorers who roamed the world during the Age of Discovery. – School Library Journal

Historical Atlas of Exploration contains a superb selection of contemporary illustrations and 70 detailed full color maps that follow each explorer on his travels. In this readable study, readers discover with them the wonders of the New World, the Pacific Islands, the Indies, the Spice Islands, and mysterious, colorful Asia.

Law / History / Americas / Politics

The Next Twenty-Five Years: How the U.S. Supreme Court Is Going to Make You Forget the Very Meaning of the Words Freedom, Privacy, and Civil Rights by Martin Garbus (Seven Stories Press)

Named by Time Magazine as "legendary... one of the best trial lawyers in the country," Martin Garbus has appeared before the United States Supreme Court and the highest courts throughout the nation. Newsweek, the National Law Journal and others cite Garbus as America's ‘most prominent First Amendment lawyer’ with an ‘extraordinarily diverse practice.’

In The Next Twenty-Five Years, Garbus looks to the changing of the guard in the country's highest court, presciently examining its impact on the future of our Republic. Drawing upon extensive knowledge of Constitutional law and legal precedents, Garbus defrocks the Bush administration's grip over the judiciary as an extension of its own executive powers. Looking to the gains of the New Deal and the civil rights era that ushered in a wave of social protections, expanding civil liberty and redressing legal inequalities that were first struck down with the Reconstruction Amendments, Garbus warns of the threat of an incoming ‘textualist’ bench that wishes to roll back more than a century's worth of hard-won reforms.

An ardent defender of our freedom, Martin Garbus reminds us that the Supreme Court directly affects the lives of all Americans. In the last half century, the Court has played a central role in the effort to make America a better and fairer land.... Garbus alerts us to what he sees as the current Court's undoing of much of that important work. – Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Mr. Garbus . . . argues that the ideological lock put on our federal court system in the past thirty years by the Republican right wing constitutes a clear and present danger to the basic legal and moral assumptions of a modern democratic republic. He lays out the evidence . . . and his case is sound. This work ought to be read by every voter in the country. – E. L. Doctorow

If you haven't read The Next Twenty-Five Years, you may awaken one morning and ask, ‘What happened to America?’ This is a clarion cry for every American to act before our constitutional way of life is all but a distant memory. – Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union

Martin Garbus' grasp of the importance of what is now happening to one of the greatest legal institu­tions in the world – the Supreme Court is brilliantly demonstrated in this analysis. … – Lady Helena Kennedy, member of the House of Lords in the British Parliament and author of Just Law: The Changing Face of Justice and Why It Matters

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