Book Description
The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind delineates, in one slim volume, a complete system for achieving personal spiritual awakening, along with a straightforward, no-nonsense plan individuals and groups so enlightened can follow to awaken Humanity en masse and positively transform the world. This book contains keys to awakening. Awakening from our personal dream shatters the solid "box" of limitation memes have built around our lives, and frees us to fluidly craft our personalities, environments, relationships, careers, etc. as an artist paints a landscape or a sculptor teases form from formless clay. All of us awakening together from the shared dream of the planet will mark the birth of our species out of our current global nightmare of decline into a limitless future literally beyond our present ability to imagine, even in our "wildest dreams," indeed.
Customer Reviews:
Way Beyond "Socrates Revisited".......2007-08-22
After reading the commentary attached to the one star rating given by the young man from Texas, I feel compelled to step forward in defense of this very fine book. With only one exception, every point made in that negative review is simply wrong. Just not factually correct. The reviewer identifies himself as a young man (... "to my young mind"), and since all of his other Amazon reviews are of TV episodes on DVD, video games and rock music CDs I take him at his word. Well, I am an "old man," closing in on my sixty-third birthday, and I came to Mr. Casspriano's book after six decades of life experience, the last three of those decades a zealous practitioner of Zen Buddhism. I say this not to "brag," but simply to qualify myself as a reviewer before beginning.
I'll start where the one star reviewer closed his argument, with his statement that the simplest path reduces to two Socratic concepts: "Admit that you don't know anything" and "know yourself."
The first part is nominally true (the exception). Like Zen Buddhism, a central tenet of the simplest path is working to release the false notion we all hold that we know ourselves, other people, the world around us. But identifying and releasing our attachments to our illusions is a life's work, not some brash "I don't know nothin'!" as the young Texan seems to imply. Under normal circumstances, we go about our daily lives with no idea we are deluded about anything, as Maya (the illusion of the phenomenal world around and even inside us) is so convincing that most of us never even think to question its validity. Casspriano did not invent the notion of human beings being trapped in illusion, as this truth was known to the timeless authors of the Hindu Vedas and is central to all schools of Buddhism (not just Zen). But his scientific/spiritual exploration of the mechanism by which Maya ensnares our minds and can, with effort, be overcome is among the best "plain English" explanations of this process I have read. There is no "inscrutable mystery" in the simplest path (a criticism that has been accurately leveled toward Zen Buddhism, as a lot of Eastern thought truly does come off as "inscrutable" when translated into English and/or the metaphors of Western culture). Casspriano lays out in no-nonsense American English exactly what our brains are doing when they create the illusion we mistake for reality, then shows the reader in the same clear terms how to train his or her brain to break free of illusion and taste reality as-it-is. In just 216 pages, that is no mean feat. After thirty years of Zen practice and numerous kensho experiences (of varying depths and intensities), I can say from personal experience that Casspriano is correct. Enlightenment comes as the fruit of a long, incremental process of retraining the mind to touch reality in a new way, and the process described in the simplest path is the same as that followed in Zen practice, especially Rienzi Zen koan study (I'll have more to say about this in a later paragraph). Casspriano's approach and language is very different from traditional Zen (more "scientific," and no sitting meditation is required), which I think would appeal to Americans and other Westerners seeking to experience "awakening" without necessarily committing themselves to a religion like Buddhism, but the internal mental/spiritual process and final destination are the same.
"Know yourself," on the other hand, is not in this book at all, at least not in the way the young reviewer, or Socrates for that matter, uses the phrase. As in Buddhism, Casspriano takes pains to demonstrate that "self" is as much of an illusion as our misapprehension of the phenomenal world, and is a byproduct of exactly the same mind process that creates outer Maya. A core teaching of Buddhism is that our "self," our personality/ego, is nothing more than an aggregation of outside influences that cluster together in our minds like shiny stones gathered into a pile, and which we mistake not only for something "real," but tragically, for our essential selves. Yet this "pile" has nothing really to do with who we are at all. Buddhism teaches "no-self." Belief in the illusion of a unique and independent "self" is our greatest obstacle to enlightenment. Wasting time and energy getting to "know yourself" in the Western sense is foreign to Eastern thought. Casspriano again does a great job of translating the Buddhist concept of "no-self" into Western scientific/spiritual terminology. He shows the process by which our ego/personality aggregate "piles up," as well as how to take the pile down, stone by stone. Enlightenment is what the pile was covering up, and so it naturally appears as soon as the pile is removed - but oh how we cling to our personal pile of stones! "Self" is what we must trade for enlightenment, what must be surrendered, and Casspriano returns to this truth many times in the simplest path. My point is that the one star reviewer's reduction of the simplest path to "know yourself" has no basis at all in the actual book.
As to the book being "gimmicky": Yes, the words "The Simplest Path" recur frequently throughout the book, but not in reference to the book itself (at least that's not how I took it), but rather to the system of understanding the mind and working toward "awakening" Casspriano is describing - and it is a complete system that deserves to be considered as a whole, on its own. At times the repetition does have a feel of "branding" in the commercial sense, so I understand where the reviewer may have taken his impression. But the simplest path, while resonant with Zen Buddhism (and apparently, according to Casspriano, with the Toltec philosophy espoused by Carlos Castaneda, of which I have no personal knowledge, so I'll have to take the author's word for that) is far enough different that it needs its own "name" to set it apart from other schools of similar but not identical thought. The reviewer's criticism is like saying that every use of the term "Zen" in a book called "Zen Buddhism" should be taken as a reference to the book, and not to the larger practice of Zen Buddhism as a spiritual discipline that the book is describing. Casspriano's point in repeatedly linking The Simplest Path, Zen Buddhism and Toltec Shamanism throughout the book, at least as I understood it, is to highlight these three spiritual practices as related reliable paths through a dark forest of illusion, a forest in which many apparent (and more popular) paths, including most (all?) religious beliefs, actively vie to mislead travelers toward deeper ensnarement in the dream, rather than leading them toward "awakening."
I want to say a word about koan study in Rienzi Zen and how it relates to the simplest path. Koans are those quirky Zen sayings and stories like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" or "what was your original face before you (or your parents) were born?" that have no rational answer, and which Zen students turn and turn in their minds like the tumblers of a combination lock until their imprisoned psyches "explode" in a "super-rational" experience of reality beyond the illusion ("irrational" would be the wrong term, as that implies "nonsense"). That "super-rational" vision of reality is called "kensho." I have experienced it myself, more than once in my lifetime. I have come to think of Casspriano's "Key Questions" in the second half of the simplest path, especially the later seven of the ten, as "cultural koans" designed to trigger "collective kensho" for the whole human race at once. Like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?", unflinching consideration of the value of human life, of how our beliefs about the future shape the present, of the true origin and destiny of life on Earth, etc., especially as seen through the lens of Casspriano's "Key Question Technique," reveals that none of these questions have rational answers, yet all require our active and immediate response. Successful resolution of these larger riddles that impact everyone will require us all to eventually "explode" into reality, together, in a "super-rational" way. We'll have to break through the illusion and wake up together, as one (which has been the goal of Mahayana Buddhism, of which Zen is a sect, since around 200 BCE). That is the "Planetary Awakening" addressed in this book, and I believe Casspriano's "Key Questions" are a concrete step in that direction. I'm glad I spent my fifteen dollars.
This is my "old man" take on the simplest path, having encountered it after 30 years of Zen Buddhist practice (I'm not veering off my chosen path here, just bowing respectfully in passing toward Casspriano's). From a Buddhist perspective, the simplest path is true Dharma, though I do not get the impression from reading his book that Vincent Casspriano is himself a Buddhist or a follower of any religion. That to my mind makes his book all the more interesting.
True, but gimmicky.......2007-08-09
Casspriano's book is scientifically and philosophically sound as best as my young mind can tell, but I don't recommend this book. Its scattered with numerous pages of advertising about how his "program" works and how it compares to other religions and spiritual movements. Why must this author physically write out "The Simplest Path" in reference to his book every other page, and talk about his second volume? Perhaps because he's not out for pure truth, but for our money.
All this book comes down to after you strip away the nonsense is two things. First, admit that you don't truly know anything. Second, know yourself. Do those two things (they essentially both mean to question EVERYTHING), and you'll have Casspriano's "Planetary Awakening," with 15 bucks still in your pocket. And you'll be following the fundamental truths already said by Socrates.. so do yourself a favor and pick up Plato's "Apology" and read up on the Socratic dialogue on how to live a good life. And don't stop there, because you can't be sure he's right.
And I have 10 bucks that says these other couple of reviews were written by the book publisher. In any case, ignore the hype.
A Unique and Inspiring Wake-up Call.......2007-05-15
This is one of the most clear-headed books I've read in years on the subject of real, nitty gritty, get your hands dirty spiritual development (as opposed to the fru fru New Age variety). So much of what passes for "spirituality" in our time amounts to some author, celebrity, priest, philosopher or self-appointed guru telling us what to "believe," sight unseen, if we want to reach heaven, attain enlightenment, achieve "ascension," etc. Casspriano takes an at times startling opposite approach. For Casspriano, such unquestioned/unquestionable beliefs are not only NOT the path to spiritual awakening, they represent the chief obstacle blocking our realization of higher consciousness. And it's not just religious beliefs ("faith") he's talking about, but all our beliefs about reality, especially those that enclose our thinking in "boxes" that limit our freedom to find solutions to real-world threats like Peak Oil, overpopulation, Global Warming, etc. Though much of the book focuses on individual enlightenment, for Casspriano, these larger planetary issues are "spiritual," as well. Whether the issue is our personal inability to find happiness or Humanity's collective rush toward physical extinction, the cause is the same - our wrong-headed beliefs about what's real. The solution is the same, as well - continuous, deep questioning. Using Richard Dawkins' concept of "memes" as a central metaphor, Casspriano first breaks down the basic process of belief, showing the mechanism in our brains by which beliefs misdirect and control our psyches, then he walks the reader through an exploration of a series of ten "anti-meme questions" aimed at breaking down the walls of our mental "boxes" and setting our minds free. With each question, he supplies an exercise designed to allow the reader to attain a personal taste of reality "beyond the box," especially as flavored by that chapter's "Key Question." For the most part, this formula works very well (with a few rare moments of over-exuberance on the author's part, as already described in other reviews, though as a card carrying vegan environmentalist, I can't say I particularly minded), delivering a cumulative series of death-blows to some of the most basic "pillars" of our present human consensus reality. Beyond the walls those pillars supported lies real reality, where we are all interconnected and interdependent, and, in Casspriano's view, mutually destined for greatness, if we can just wake up and grab the reins of our runaway culture in time. This is not a book for spiritual "feel gooders" seeking soft assurances that they're perfect just they way they are and everything's going to be all right, no matter what. This is a wake up call, a tool kit and a concrete action plan for becoming individually enlightened and collectively saving the world, all rolled up into one. That, I think, is a cause well-worthy of exuberance.
Challenge Consensus Reality!.......2007-05-10
This is a thoughtful book that addresses how we may go about developing a process to question our everyday consensus reality. I suppose if I have learned anything in 49 years of life, it is that all personal and social problems stem from our fundamental views on the nature of reality itself. Vincent Casspriano uses the concept of a "meme" as a fundamental unit of ideas, assumptions, etc. that often block our understanding of reality itself. One such meme, for example, may be that we have to "fight for our freedom" or the world's a "fearful" place and hence, we have to be ready to kill to protect ourselves. I suppose you could also use the word "paradigm" here as well, but the essential point of this book is that we "unconsciously" function in our life with many limited points of view that block our ability to solve problems on both a personal and a social basis.
While Vince Casspriano is to be congradulated for producing a book that presents both a methodology and a motivation for personal transformation, there are a few pitfalls here that the potential reader should be aware of before tackling this material. The author has some rather strong views on fossil fuel consumption, meet consumption, and the role of humans in the cycle of procreation. While I generally agree with his analysis on fossil fuel consumtion and meat consumption (as I have viewed large tracks of deforrested grazing land in developing countries), these viewpoints can distract the reader from the essential point here which is to rigourously question consensus reality. Since I am single, and have no motivation to have children, I definitely disagree with his views on the necessity of human procreation on this planet, but here again, it is important to extract the essential meaning rather than get caught in the specific political/social debates that these issues may spawn.
If you are serious about personal transformation with the potential for changing our global consciousness, than this book can be an invaluable tool. I do agree with the Author that a world population of "high functioning" people can resolve every planetary problem we face today. As we systematically question our consensus reality, we will see our problems in new ways, and with this new perspective, problems can often be quickly resolved or transcended.
A Simple Cure For What's "Eating Us".......2006-11-13
I considered titling this review, "Stop Whining, Wake Up and Get Busy Saving the World," but decided "Eating Us" would be more attention-grabbing - which matters because I believe Vincent Casspriano, Jr.'s "The Simplest Path, Step One: FREE YOUR MIND" is an important book, and I want to do whatever I can to draw your attention to it. Pick the title you like best. Both very fittingly describe what you will find within the pages of this remarkable new release from New Paradigm Press.
I have selected three short quotations to explore in this review that I think best summarize Casspriano's overall message:
From Chapter One, "The Boxes We Dream In":
"Right now, this very moment, you are asleep... Even if you are reading these words in broad daylight - sitting at your desk or beside the kitchen table, your feet firmly planted on the floor, eyes open, senses alert, feeling the weight of this book in your hands as sounds of life rise and fall rhythmically around you - you are deeply asleep, and dreaming furiously"
Now, the idea that Humans are sleeping, and must therefore "awaken," is by no means unique to Casspriano's "Simplest Path" spiritual system, being the root observation underlying pretty much all Eastern religion, and a lot of Western Occultism and New Age metaphysics, as well. In fairness, Casspriano makes no claim to this as an original insight, openly supporting his assessment of the human predicament with quotations taken from Animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. He then flows seamlessly into a list of complementary illustrations from the secular realms of Quantum Physics, brain/consciousness research, and most to-the-point, the study of memes and memetics, ala Evolutionary Biologist and world's best-known cheerleader for scientific atheism, Richard Dawkins.
If you've never heard of memes or memetics, a quick Google of those terms will reveal hundreds of serious, information-rich websites devoted to this now thirty-year old science. In a nutshell, a "meme" is a sort of contagious thought-form that spreads between people by way of imitation. Obvious memes in our environment include advertising jingles, fads and fashions, etc. Casspriano somewhat radically extends the concept to include just about everything that makes up the contents of our individual brains and shared human culture. While he resists redefining the word "meme" wholesale, he decidedly expands its definition to make memes and "memeplexes" (what you get when a number of memes band together into an organic, relational unit, like a religion or cultural or political movement) the basic, fundamental building blocks of everything we habitually label "real..."
And then he demonstrates, in at times excruciating detail, the complete emptiness of the "apparent-reality" that is a byproduct of memetic activity in our brains. What we call "real" is not real at all. It's an illusion spun up by our memes. And our memes are not original to us. They are "viral invaders" assailing our minds from without. Worse - and, while even this thought is not wholly unique to Casspriano, he certainly gives it his own very effective spin - memes are by no means mere passive beliefs or simple "harmless ideas." They are, Casspriano believes, actively predatory psychic parasites whose survival depends on our buying into the illusions they create in our minds. Think of illusion (Samsara, Maya, etc.) as a web we're caught in. Memes are the spider. We are the fly. Gotcha.
One thing I like very much about Casspriano's book is that he never asks us to take anything on faith, least of all this rather ugly depiction of the human psychic/spiritual condition. He not only challenges readers to test his hypothesis firsthand in order to experience what is real and true for ourselves, he spends a large chunk of the book outlining specific exercises anyone can do to escape memetic interference and personally experience reality as-it-is. The exercises in Part II of the book are powerful medicine... But this is a digression, so let me return to the point.
Memes are the spider, and we are the fly. A better metaphor might be that memes are the farmer, and we are the cow. Domesticated and docile, we allow memes to milk us daily, to extract from our minds the potent human psychic energy which, if reclaimed by us and put to proper human use, would quickly and positively transform our lives and our world. This transformation is awakening, ascension, enlightenment, metanoia, the Buddha-like change of consciousness most religions and spiritual systems on Earth hint at, but few ever actually deliver to followers. In this analysis, Casspriano's "Simplest Path" is very much in line with Gurdjieff's "Fourth Way," Carlos Castaneda's Toltec sorcery, and a few other well known spiritual practices inhabiting a somewhat darker, though perhaps more realistic corner of the New Age. But unlike most of those other systems, Casspriano's prescription for escaping illusion and awakening to reality is remarkably, well... simple.
From Chapter Three, "Waking Up":
"The simple truth is that we are sleeping because we lack sufficient energy to wake up."
And later in the same chapter:
"The real work that brings about awakening, rather than merely granting the external appearance of "being spiritual," while actually embroiling us ever more deeply in the dream, is a rigorous, daily commitment to the identification and elimination of every self-serving belief from which our personal dream-lives are constructed."
For "belief" in the quotation above, read "meme/memeplex." Casspriano certainly does, treating the terms as largely interchangeable. In the end, this genuinely simple - at least in the sense of being uncomplicated and pragmatic - spiritual practice amounts to discovering reality as-it-actually-is less by searching for a glimpse beyond the illusion, than by systematically withdrawing our participation in, and identification with, the dream. When we disentangle our psyches from memetic illusion, only reality remains. We don't have to chase it; to a meme-free mind, reality just appears. This is "Satori" in Zen Buddhism. This is "stopping the world" in the Toltec sorcery of Castaneda and others. Casspriano's genius lies in his talent for exposing the core mechanism behind such complex and often inscrutable spiritual systems, and for putting into plain language clear instructions for unraveling the dream and achieving personal awakening. The virus-like process by which memes take over and control our human minds, as described by Casspriano is, to my mind, very complicated (but well worth struggling through). What is genuinely simple about "The Simplest Path," however, is Casspriano's prescription for breaking those bonds, once you've made the effort to understand how they are created and maintained. For Casspriano, remaining a victim of spiritual sleep and energetic exploitation by memes is a complex activity in which we unconsciously invest enormous amounts of psychic energy every day of our lives. Awakening is the product of a simple act of withdrawing that investment, which automatically re-energizes of our minds and lives. Or as Casspriano cleverly phrases it when closing Chapter Three, "Waking Up":
"Unweave the tapestry of the dream, and awakening happens."
Anyone can do this. Spiritual awakening, in Casspriano's view, may be hard work, but it is not complicated work. The path to enlightenment is really rather shockingly simple. Fall out of love with the dream. Reclaim your psychic energy. Wake up to reality.
The ten "Key Questions" Casspriano explores in the second section of the book are designed to put the theory laid out in Part I to practical and immediate use. Essentially, I think Casspriano sees these ten issues - why we treat enlightenment as an "airy-fairy" ideal instead of a measurable transformation of brain functioning, the excuses we make for avoiding personal responsibility and integrity along the lines of Castaneda's "impeccability," the fallacy of belief in a "separate self," etc. - as pillars of both our personal and collective human dreams. They are by no means an exhaustive listing of the memes twisting our minds. But they are primary keystones on which layers upon layers of the grand illusion are built. Topple these ten baseline pillars and the larger structure crumbles.
Casspriano explores some "Keys" more successfully than others. One downside to the book is that, especially in the "Keys," Casspriano's own memetic prejudices shine at times rather glaringly through, as when, in his discussion of the American "What Would Jesus Do?" religious fad, he characterizes the Evangelical Christian purveyors of WWJD as, "ultra-conservative, right wing ideologues." Even should the reader personally agree with such pronouncements, its hard to resist thinking, "Hey Vince! Your memes are showing!" But where he nails his point, Casspriano's prose can be downright inspiring, as with the "Key" cosmological study "Is Earth the Center of the Universe?," which explores the gap between what we know, scientifically, about the Universe and what our daily choices and behavior says we really believe, about the cosmos and about ourselves. His closing "Key" "Are We Alone?" so poetically frames the true stakes of our global human predicament - species survival VS extinction - that its hard to imagine anyone keeping their gaze glued squarely to their own self-involved navel in the wake of reading it. Of course we are not alone. There are six and a half billion of us on Planet Earth, and whether we awaken to what's best in us or follow our darkest drives over History's cliff into oblivion, we do so as one. One planet, one fate.
This notion of "oneness" and of a common, intertwined human spiritual and biological destiny is a core theme in The Simplest Path, Step One: FREE YOUR MIND that sets it apart from any spiritual book in recent memory. My final quotation from the book returns us to the opening lines of Chapter One, "The Boxes We Dream In":
"We are all aware of the challenges facing us as we enter together into the 21st Century:
· World oil supplies are running out.
· Global warming is transforming the Earth into a steamy greenhouse.
· Even as our technology connects the world, ideological extremism, terrorism and militarism divide us as never before.
· Headlines bombard us with news of war, famine, pestilence and death until we feel overwhelmed and unable to respond.
· Time is running out..."
Vincent Casspriano, Jr.'s "The Simplest Path to Personal and Planetary Transformation, Step One: FREE YOUR MIND" does not offer easy escape from these very pressing real-world human ills, but rather, a down to Earth, workable prescription for their cure. Yes, we must awaken as individuals, and, rest assured, "The Simplest Path" shows spiritual seekers exactly how to do that. But a prime message of "The Simplest Path" is that, for personal awakening to have meaning, it must occur within the context of a complete re-visioning of global culture, and a mass wrenching away of the wheel of History from the control of viral memes, that we might create a common cosmic human destiny worthy of our highest potential as a species.
Now that's a meme worth feeding.
Book Description
Violence begets violence—so believes the majority of people around the world who have stood up in protest against war. Stop the Next War Now is a reflective look and call to action to end violence, by acclaimed peace activists, experts, and visionaries, including Eve Ensler, Barbara Lee, Arianna Huffington, Janeane Garafalo, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many more. The book shares expert insight on the issues and powers-that-be that encourage war, including the media, politicians, global militarization, and the pending scarcity of natural resources. A powerful, smart, and passionate work, this book aims to educate and reflect on the effectiveness of peace movement activities and offer hope—through shared ideas, action steps, and checklists—to transform a culture of violence to a culture of peace. How can people humanize each other, ask the authors, and act as responsible global citizens? With vitality, joy, and a dash of CODEPINK-style humor, Stop the Next War Now insists that the time is ripe for the first-ever global movement to put an end to war—and tells readers what they can do about it.
Customer Reviews:
Great Ideas Needing Action.......2006-05-16
Tell everyone you know to read this book! What a great way to promote peace, and offer a very interesting read. I highly recommend this book to anyone concerned about where our world is headed right now.
less than 0 really.......2005-09-27
Susie Stalin aka Medea (child killer) Benjamin is a really disturbed maniac and should be ashamed of herself. This woman is devoid of any intellectual honesty. A puppet of the Left she disgraces peace. As anyone know there is no peace without justice. Apparently Ms Benjamin would rather live enslaved in a Communist state than as a free individual.
The best I can say about this book is it's comic in its infantile brashness.
Stop the Next War.......2005-09-24
What a bunch of liberal fanaticism. What a
shame so many trees had to die to print this trash.
Marie Jones, BookIdeas.com book reviewer states:.......2005-06-16
We live in dark and violent times. That is why a book like "Stop the Next War Now," edited by CodePink founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, is such an important tool in promoting peace, hope and the belief that a small group of individuals really can change the world...for the better.
This amazing and empowering book is a collection of essays by some of the leading female experts, scholars, artists, activists and journalists in the world, all coming together to talk about their vision for a world without war. But the essays are more than just wishful thinking, they are powerful and passionate pleas for peace and motivating and energetic calls to action that provide the reader with real and effective ways to make a difference.
Featured in "Stop the Next War Now" are such luminaries as Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Nobel Prize winner Jody Williams, author Naomi Klein, Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, Journalist Helen Thomas, activists such as Julia Butterfly Hill, Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, Doris "Granny D" Haddock, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and dozens more. The voices and visions of these great leaders speak of the terrors and horrors of war, the silent victims of violence, the tragedy of global poverty, the demand for corporate responsibility, the dangers of false democracy, the power of dissent, the need for non-violent solutions, the healing forces of hope and so many other topics, all from the viewpoint of women who have seen the sides of war and violence that the media rarely chooses to show us.
Editors Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans formed CodePink: Women For Peace (www.codepinkalert.org), an organization devoted to global peace issues, as a way for others like them - women who care about the world - to come together and protest, organize, educate and change. Since its inception in 2002, the organization has grown tremendously and is often mentioned in the news, challenging the rush to war and injustices of our own government, as well as those of other nations.
Mothers, artists, working women, political officials, activists... all women from all walks of life converge their resources, knowledge and passion in this amazing book that will no doubt serve as inspiration to generations currently working for peace, and generations to come, whose very survival depends on "stopping the next war now."
This is a moving and challenging book, a call to action, a tool for change and so much more. The stories and ideas of the authors who contributed to "Stop the Next War Now" have the ability to really make a difference...but only if enough readers choose to pick up this book, pay attention, and learn. Buy this book. Read it, then pass it on to a friend. If enough people learn that there are effective responses and alternatives to war and violence, who knows just how bright our future could be?
REV. MARIE JONES, author of LOOKING FOR GOD IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
Great ideas.......2005-05-24
I'm about 75 pages into this book so far, and I love it. It offers up a lot of food for thought, including ideas for moving from a "dominator" model in our society to a more democratic "partnership" model, how to educate your children in peacebuilding, and so on.
Book Description
The story of a man who risked life and limb to expose the atrocities of the Holocaust to the world
"I had the feeling from the moment I saw Karski that he carried secret, invisible wounds in him...I saw he was fighting back the memories."––
Elie Wiesel
"A significant account of personal heroismânot only dramatic as a story but also a compelling moral message regarding the human condition . . . a superb read."––
Zbigniew Brezinski
NOW IN PAPER!
Working for the Polish Underground, Jan Karski witnessed first hand the horrors of the Holocaust. Surviving Soviet captivity and Gestapo torture, he escaped Poland in 1942 and embarked on a heroic crusade to give Allied leaders his eye witness report of Nazi extermination of European Jews. Karski is the first definitive account of the little-known episodeâone of the earliest documentations of atrocities to reach the west and perhaps the most significant warning of the genocide to come. Karski's story introduces vital new insights about the Polish Underground, and about the Allies' reaction to the Holocaust.
E. THOMAS WOOD (Nashville, Tennessee) is a reporter for the Tennessean in Nashville. STANISLAW M. JANKOWSKI (Cracow, Poland) is a journalist and historian. He is the leading authority on the Polish Underground.
Customer Reviews:
An amazing, inspiring life, and an exciting read as well.......2002-08-21
I first heard about Jan Karski when I read his obituary in the New York Times a few years back. After reading the obituary, I thought that this guy led an exciting and profound life, and that his life story would make a great book and/or movie (Steven Speilberg, are you listening?). That's why I'm glad I found this book.
Jan Karski was a young diplomat in Poland when the Germans invaded in 1939. Before the invasion, he seemed to be more interested in the political power struggles of the day rather than the moral and ethical quandaries of war. That soon changed after he was taken prisoner and sent to both Soviet and Nazi prison camps. He spent the war years secretly delivering messages around Europe for the Polish underground, and word of his exploits soon spread among the Allies. He was later sent to Britian and later, the United States, where he became a citizen and lived out the rest of his life.
His near-famous quest to relay the horrors of the Holocaust to the skeptical Allies is only one facet of this individual's life. The authors excelled at opening my eyes to the political infighting among various factions of the Polish resistance (politics doesn't die in wartime, it just goes underground, I learned), and they seemed to paint Karski as an individual who became more interested in working for human freedom and dignity than for carving a political legacy for himself in a postwar Poland.
Karski's days in Britain got a bit dry in the book; his wartime adventures in occupied Europe and his postwar days at Georgetown University (as the world began to recognize his contributions) held my attention the most.
As a bonus, a guide to the many characters Karski dealt with in his life is included in the appendix...a handly tool for keeping track of who's who in this book.
An inspiring and exciting story.......2000-08-18
Jan Karski, who died in July 2000, was a larger than life hero from World War II, who tried to smuggle out information from Nazi occupied Poland to warn the rest of the world about the horrors happening to the Jewish population of his country. He was captured by the Nazis, tortured, escaped, eventually met with President Roosevelt, and truly lived an unbelievably brave and inspiring life. The story is better than any fictional thriller or Hollywood movie. You have to keep reminding yourself that what you are reading is true. It keeps your attention throughout the book, though the last couple of chapters are less exciting naturally than the rest, once the war is over. One has to wonder if there are people like Jan Karski living today...
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How to Stop A War
James F. Dunnigan , and
William Martel
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
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ASIN: 0385240090
Release Date: 1987-09-16 |
Book Description
As the postwar debate continues, a leading expert reveals the obstacles that stood between the United States and the fall of Saddam Hussein -- many of them within the U.S. government itself Laurie Mylroie's previous books, the number one New York Times bestseller Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (coauthored with Judith Miller) and The War Against America, were influential in building the case against Iraq. Now Mylroie reveals the story behind the buildup to Operation Iraqi Freedom -- a story known to few outside of Washington.
Combining important new research with an insider's grasp of Beltway politics, Mylroie describes how the CIA and the State Department have systematically discredited critical intelligence about Saddam's regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction. She reveals how major elements of the case against Iraq -- including information about possible links to al Qaeda and evidence of potential Iraqi involvement in the fall 2001 anthrax attacks -- were prematurely dismissed by these agencies for cynical reasons. Mylroie traces how the very idea of state-sponsored terrorism was pronounced dead after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, giving states like Iraq an open ing to underwrite terrorism without being detected. And she demonstrates that the war with Iraq was not only justifiable -- but the necessary and moral course of action.
Bush vs. the Beltway also includes an authoritative essay by Professor Robert F. Turner of the University of Virginia School of Law, who makes the case that -- based on not only standing U.N. resolutions but the totality of circumstances surrounding Saddam's regime -- the war was justified on both legal and moral grounds. As the world enters a new era in international relations, one in which the new realities of terror mingle deceptively with eternal truths about war, intelligence, tyranny, and evil, Bush vs. the Beltway offers sobering lessons in the realities of twenty-first-century conflict.
Customer Reviews:
Revisionist history.......2006-06-21
Absolute rubbish.
A truly fictitious attempt to discredit actual science-based examination of the phony evidence for war.
Start with the fact that the anthrax was U.S. military grade, straight from a U.S. lab, and that as soon as that came out the "investigation" into the source of those mailings was summarily shut down, and go from there.
This book is just another cover-up for neocon believers... people who will apparently believe anything, even if they are intelligent.
tragic!.......2005-10-20
If one wants to study the mind of Mossad, or is particularly interested in paranoid thought processes, this is for you. It's the kind of book you should be paid to read, rather than pay for.
A BOOK OF LIES.......2005-07-07
Where did the lies of the Bush administration to justify launching a war against Iraq come from? They were the result of their own lunacy, of course, but they also came from books of neocon disinformation like this one.
Now that the truth is out and that everybody knows that the neocon push to attack Iraq was a plot from day one, reading such a book throws a glaring light on the extent to which the pro-Israel conspiracy went towards engaging the United States militarily against Iraq, against international law and against world opinion, and, I may add, against the U.S. Constitution.
George W. Bush himself said on Sept. 17, 2003 that "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th attacks", even though he and Cheney kept linking the two in their own propaganda. It was all part of a strategy of disinformation and of psychological warfare to persuade Congress and the American people that Iraq must be invaded and occupied.
But now the record is clear and the evidence is overwhelming that the Bush administration's case for war was a fabrication. The Downing Street official Memos are all there to see that the Bush administration made a policy of war, then altered, twisted and distorted the facts to fit that policy.
Future historians will investigate books of this kind to understand how so much duplicity was possible and was tolerated in a large democratic country such as the United States. Who were the active collaborators in this historical hoax perpetrated on the American people? Obviously, the author of this war tract was one of them.
"A President has to be the calcium in the backbone.".......2004-10-13
This is an excellent book.It is a detailed A to Z coverage on what and who the Terrorists are. Since war was officially declared on America, by the Terrorists on 9/11,America has no option but to engage in the fight and eventually win;regardless.
President Bush understood his responsibility to protect the safety of the people and the Nation that gave him that responsibility.It is clear from this book why he will do everything necessary to fulfill that obligation.He is aware that he alone can't do and know everything;but is determined to get all the help possible from government bodies and the military to win.He has made the case of this threat at the UN as well as other countries that it is in their interest to join and support him.Though many countries have turned their backs on America,Canada included,President Bush will pursue the course as the leader of the country attacked.He would tell you that there is no other choice.His choice is made;other countries and organizations have to make theirs.
President is well aware of the futility of appeasement resolving anything except giving the enemy time to strengthening themselves and making the problem worse.This was amply demonstrated in the years leaning up to WWII,and more recently after the first attack on The World Trade Towers and other Terrorist attacks on America.
It's worth remembering:
"The price of doing nothing exceeds the price of taking action"
God Bless America.
The truth behind the "mainstream media" story on Iraq.......2004-04-06
Laurie Milroie writes a very convincing book on the truth behind the conflict between the CIA and the White House. This is a very insightful book on what goes on behind the scenes in Washington. The CIA and the State Dept had evidence of the complicity between Al Queada and Saddam Hussien. Laurie clearly details why the itelligence was not and is not still the Public knowledge norm for the war in Iraq. It seems clear that the CIA to avoid embarrasment and for fear of losing power inside of Washington is continously discrediting such information to this day. Not only did the CIA endanger our national security before 9/11 it is till doing so in a power struugle in our intelligence community today. Laurie also detail meetings between Iraqi intelligence and Muhammed Atta in the Chec Repuclic before the 9/11 attacks. The Checks still very much say this meeting took place. Yet this report is discredited by anoynomous leaks coming from sources inside the CIA. Also very important links show how Iraqi intelligence altered records of terrorists in Kuwati intelligence files during their occupation of Kuwait during the first Gulf War. There same terrorists are the very ones behind attacks on the USS Cole, The First World Trade Center Bombing, The Sept 11 attacks. Laurie also sheds light on Saddams revenge tactics on Egypt for participation in the first Gulf War. Saddam was complicit in a major terrorist attack on the tourists at Luxor in 1997. Saddam and his regimes evil is very much a subject of Ms Mylroies book which makes the most important humanitarian reason for the war in Iraq. Saddam was funneling money from the oil for food program and using it for his own weapons programs and funding of terrorist camps inside of Iraq. Which the main stream media refuses to admit Al Queada members trained in to hijack airplanes. All this while his people starved. Or if you openly dissented you where killed or tortured, or your family was tortured in front of you. And the U.N. and the world community did nothing. Read this book. You will learn alot of the inner workings inside the beltway. And Praise G.W. Bush for fighting a just war in Iraq. Thank You Laurie Mylroie
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- The War on Urbanism
- Could Have Been a Good Article, But is an Awfully Windy Book
- Basically well done, but . . .
- Demythologizing urban "decline"
- The city under siege
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America's Undeclared War: What's Killing Our Cities and How We Can Stop It
Daniel Lazare
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
History & Theory
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ASIN: 0151005524 |
Book Description
"I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1800, sounding a note that has echoed throughout American history. In this bracing reexamination, Daniel Lazare traces the progress of America's unwavering war on its cities and looks at the profound consequences.
From Jefferson through Henry Ford and Franklin Roosevelt to the present, we have labored to wither our cities, simultaneously fouling our air and our landscape, depleting our energy resources to feed our automobiles and neglecting any form of community other than hollow, homogenous suburbs. And yet the average American has a smaller share of the country's wealth than the average European and less opportunity to improve his or her lot.
Provocative and enlightening, America's Undeclared War exposes a prejudice both fundamental and destructive to American culture. With a mordant wit and a refreshing clarity, Lazare offers a vision that can re-invigorate us, our communities, and our future.
Customer Reviews:
The War on Urbanism.......2004-12-22
Daniel Lazare's America's Undeclared War: What's Killing Our Cities and How We Can Stop It carries a rather sensationalist title, but drives home a good deal of hardheaded historical analysis before succumbing to some woolly proposals. Lazare exposes antiurban bias from Jefferson through the Progressive movement, Fordism, Mumford (!) and their latter-day heirs. His take on the Progressives is revelatory: their distaste for urban "squalor" and their do-gooder program of uplift make me reach for my Mencken. He is right to chastise acclaimed urbanist Jane Jacobs for her anti-political mentality: her "microscopic approach was both her strength and her undoing." His critique of the Constitution, which references his previous work The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution is Paralyzing Democracy, warrants further inquiry. But he falls prey to an ungrounded exaltation of democracy that almost derails his sometimes sensible solutions.
Could Have Been a Good Article, But is an Awfully Windy Book.......2002-02-25
"America's Undeclared War" could have been a wonderful article for a quarterly publication, a format that would have afforded Daniel Lazare enough space to make his argument, but which would not have allowed him 300 pages to ramble.
An inelegant and windy writer, Lazare has a tendency to lose the reader's interest by filling page after page with information that is only tenuously connected to his argument. He frequently lopes off the path, including long dirges on Jeffersonianism and Jacksonian democracy, as well as a host of other subjects that, while no doubt significant, could have could have been greatly summarized with the attention of a ruthless editor. As it is, "America's Undeclared War" suffers from Lazare's inability to determine what's really germane to his argument, and what he considered interesting or notable during his research. A particularly egregious example of this tendency to prattle on is a two page summary of Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," which Lazare details to reflect the move toward urbanism in New York between the mid-1770s and the mid-1790s. The Rip Van Winkle connection could have been made much quicker, which is true of so much in this book -- a book that easily should have been 150 pages shorter.
When he finally gets to his argument, Lazare provides some interesting, though not new, information about how government policies have served to drain urban vitality, and produce a move to the suburban hinterlands. So little of Lazare's book is pathbreaking, and it takes the author so long to get to his subject, that "America's Undeclared War" is hardly worth reading. Kenneth T. Jackson's "Crabgrass Frontier," which details much of the same subject matter, but which was written about 15 years ago, is a far more potent, incisive narrative. Read that instead.
Basically well done, but . . ........2002-02-06
Too many weird tangents. As other reviewers have pointed out, Lazare correctly identifies a variety of government policies that have caused urban decay. But most of his points have already been made by other commentators (e.g. James Kunstler, Alex Marshall). Also, Lazare goes off on tangents about things like the life of Henry Ford, labor union policy, etc. which really aren't that relevant to his major point. Like many leftish urbanists, Lazare seems to think that good urbanism leads to a liberal welfare state -- yet that most urban of industrialized nations, Japan, has a government as small as that of America.
Demythologizing urban "decline".......2001-11-29
Lazare's account of the systematic destruction of American cities is an indispensable eye-opener. Lazare demolishes the conventional myths that pass for analysis in most discussions of this topic, and reveals the extent and origin of anti-urbanism in American life.
The city under siege.......2001-07-02
First a fair warning to readers. Any author who is called an "iconoclast" by his or her publisher will feel obliged to live up to the billing. So it is here with Daniel Lazare in AMERICA'S UNDECLARED WAR. The title alone should give an indication that he's ready for battle. He uses some heavy caliber firepower, when in ascribing blame for the demise of cities and the concomitant growth in the "culturally impoverished" suburbs, he says the following about the government. "The American system of limited government and fragmented political power allowed suburban communities to turn themselves into middle-class redoubts whose raison d'etre was to screen out blacks, Jews and anyone else deemed harmful to the municipal bottom line, while at the same time rendering cities powerless to fight back."
Criticizing the government though does not make one an iconoclast; it's taken as a duty, whatever your political perspective. Conservatives are critical of the Great Society social welfare programs of the 1960's which they say fostered dependency, bred crime, and raised expenses; liberals blame the same government for massive highway construction, subsidized home mortage loans, and promoting the automobile, all of which spurred suburban growth.
Where Mr Lazare starts to live up to his billing as an iconoclast is in the vehemence with which he slams suburbia and with whom he blames for the origins of what he calls our "anti-urban bias". He says the decline of cities "was not urban decay but a form of urban manslaughter in which a wide array of social policies came together in such a way as to reduce one city after another literally to rubble. A combination of federal tax breaks and direct government outlays fueled suburban development at the expense of the cities." Who was to blame? Try our founding fathers whom Mr Lazare calls "a group of provincial politicians"; specifically Thomas Jefferson who developed a "concept of democracy as something intrinsically anti-urban."
The irony is that it is in the sections of the book where he is blasting away at the historical figures of the past - from Jefferson through to FDR - that he is also most interesting and comes up with a very original thesis. Mr Lazare states that there were two early settlement patters in colonial America that reflected city values. The close knit settlements of New England reflected the Puritan values of "Christianity not as a faith of lonely believers wandering in the desert but as a highly social religion revolving around the congregation and community." Also in Pennsylvania where practical considerations made for crowded waterfront developments. In contrast, Virginia with its irregular shoreline with many small inlets only helped to reinforce the anti-urban political culture characteristic of the "royalist Cavaliers" who settled there in small, scattered settlements dominated by plantations.
Where Mr Lazare sticks to developing on this theme and tying this historical bias to technological developments such as the automobile, his book is original and very readable. When he attacks traditions and institutions simply for the sake of being critical, the book comes across as contrived.
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Common Ground CD: How to Stop the Partisan War That Is Destroying America
Manufacturer: HarperAudio
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
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Power to the People
ASIN: 006136360X
Release Date: 2007-10-09 |
Book Description
Inspired by their popular USA Today column, conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel show politicians of both stripes how to get beyond partisanship, restore civility, and move our country forward. Thomas and Beckel are a unique pair in today's political climate—pundits from opposite sides who not only talk to each other but work together to find common ground on some of the most divisive issues facing us, from the war in Iraq to gay marriage to the Patriot Act. Common Ground unmasks the hypocrisy of many of the issues, organizations, and individuals who created and deepened the partisan divide at the center of American politics, and makes a strategic case for why this bickering must stop.
Throughout, Thomas and Beckel explode conventional wisdom and offer surprising new conclusions:
- The Red State/Blue State divide: Myth!
- A "common ground" presidential candidate can win in 2008: Reality!
- "Polarizers" like Ann Coulter and Michael Moore are the future of political debate: Myth!
- Major-party politics faces extinction: Reality!
These guys should know. For years Beckel and Thomas contributed to the climate of polarization in Washington . . . and they admit it. "We're two guys who spent a lot of years in the polarizing business, but on opposing sides," they write. "We helped write the game plan, and we have participated in everything from getting money out of true believers to appearing on television to help spread the contentious message. In many cases, we wrote the message. We know the gig, and it's just about up."
In this much-needed book, Thomas and Beckel go beyond their column to offer a sobering overview of the current political divide and its corrosive effect on us all.They also explain how bipartisanship and consensus politics are not only good for the day-to-day democratic process but essential for our nation's future well-being.
Entertaining and informative, funny and healing, Common Ground is must reading for all concerned citizens.
Book Description
Inspired by their popular USA Today column, conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel show politicians of both stripes how to get beyond partisanship, restore civility, and move our country forward. Thomas and Beckel are a unique pair in today's political climate—pundits from opposite sides who not only talk to each other but work together to find common ground on some of the most divisive issues facing us, from the war in Iraq to gay marriage to the Patriot Act. Common Ground unmasks the hypocrisy of many of the issues, organizations, and individuals who created and deepened the partisan divide at the center of American politics, and makes a strategic case for why this bickering must stop.
Throughout, Thomas and Beckel explode conventional wisdom and offer surprising new conclusions:
- The Red State/Blue State divide: Myth!
- A "common ground" presidential candidate can win in 2008: Reality!
- "Polarizers" like Ann Coulter and Michael Moore are the future of political debate: Myth!
- Major-party politics faces extinction: Reality!
These guys should know. For years Beckel and Thomas contributed to the climate of polarization in Washington . . . and they admit it. "We're two guys who spent a lot of years in the polarizing business, but on opposing sides," they write. "We helped write the game plan, and we have participated in everything from getting money out of true believers to appearing on television to help spread the contentious message. In many cases, we wrote the message. We know the gig, and it's just about up."
In this much-needed book, Thomas and Beckel go beyond their column to offer a sobering overview of the current political divide and its corrosive effect on us all.They also explain how bipartisanship and consensus politics are not only good for the day-to-day democratic process but essential for our nation's future well-being.
Entertaining and informative, funny and healing, Common Ground is must reading for all concerned citizens.
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How to Stop Believing in War
Will Whittle
Manufacturer: Bookpeople
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Church & State
| Religious Studies
| Religion & Spirituality
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ASIN: 0931217008 |
Books:
- The Triumph of the Sun
- The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors
- The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations
- The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy
- The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943
- Thermopylae: The Battle for the West
- To Be a U.S. Army Green Beret (To Be A)
- To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13-25, 1864
- Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada (Issues in Low Intensity Conflict)
- Waffen-SS Encyclopedia
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