History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (Longman Classics in Political Science)

Average customer rating:

Good Detail of Topics Relating to International Politics
An interesting book indeed
Excellent book :)
Superb, Post 9-11 Update, Excellent Adult Foundation
excellent intro book to International Affairs

Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (Longman Classics in Political Science)
Joseph S. Nye
Manufacturer: Longman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0321209451

Book Description

Written by renowned international relations expert Joseph S. Nye, this lively book gives readers the background in history and political concepts they need to understand the issues facing our world today: the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, and much more. Origins of the Great Twentieth-Century Conflicts; Balance of Power and World War I; The Failure of Collective Security and World War II; The Cold War; Intervention, Institutions, and Regional Conflicts; Interdependence and Globalization; The Information Age; A New World Order? Anyone interested in understanding international relations today.

Customer Reviews:

Good Detail of Topics Relating to International Politics.......2006-03-01

I had to purchase this book as a second book for a class I had taken. This book helped cover many of the topics I had to study and this book did a better job of describing several topics relating to nationalism, imperialism history of international politics, foreign policies, international law and organization and human factors in international politics. I would recommend this book to anyone who is trying to learn the basics or even get more indepth details on certain topics of international politics.

An interesting book indeed.......2003-12-22

An interesting book indeed, written by an excellent writer who took me in a journey through history beginning with the Peloponnesian war and passing through world war one and two and the cold war after that, and ending with the new world order.

The book starts with the two views of the anarchic politics ( Realism & Liberalism ) and a very wise explanation for both of them, and I liked the way the writer analyzed the two world wars and their reasons and I agree with him about the inevitability part as I believe that the war wasn't inevitable but I quote him by saying "Ironically the belief that war is inevitable played a major role in causing it", and also the part about ethics and morality is very interesting and I liked what the French diplomat said when he was asked about what's moral and his answer was "what's moral is whatever is good for France", and also the part about counterfactuals was very exciting.

I don't agree with the writer about some points concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict but the book as a whole is a very good one.

I agree with the "back to the future" theory in some points as all I see now is "the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accepts what they have to accept".

I'll quote him again to end my review by saying "Has global society made war socially and morally unthinkable? We have to hope so, because the next hegemonic war would probably be the last".

Excellent book :).......2003-12-08

The basis for "Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History" is, as the author explains in the preface, a course on international conflicts in the modern world he taught for a long time in Harvard. Nye says that the aim of the book is "to introduce students to the complexities of international politics by giving them a good grounding in the traditional realist theory before turning to liberal and constructivist approaches that became more prominent after the Cold War". I believe he excels at doing exactly that...

I found the book very interesting, and full of examples taken from history that made the concepts easier to grasp. Moreover, it takes into account the three levels of causation: the individual, the state and the international system. It also includes suggested reading material, that allows the reader to delve deeper in those subjects she/he finds more interesting...

The book is very well organized. It was a foreword, a preface, 9 chapters and an index. Each chapter deals with a main theme, and some related topics. The themes of the chapters are:

chapter 1:"Is there an enduring logic of conflict in world politics?";
chapter 2: "Origins of the great 20th century conflicts";
chapter 3: "Balance of power and World War I";
chapter 4: "The failure of collective security and World War II";
chapter 5: "The Cold War";
chapter 6: "Intervention, institutions and regional and ethnic conflicts";
chapter 7: "Globalization and interdependence";
chapter 8: "The information revolution, transnational actors, and the diffusion of power";
chapter 9: "A new world order?".

All in all, I strongly recommend this book to those interested in international relations... I think the author was successful in doing what he set out to do: he didn't want to give all the answers, he merely tried to help the readers to look for them. In his own words: "provide our students with conceptual tools that will help them shape their own answers as the future unfolds".

On the whole, a keeper :) Enjoy it !!!

Superb, Post 9-11 Update, Excellent Adult Foundation.......2003-01-11

First, it is vital for prospective buyers to understand that the existing reviews are three years out of date--this is a five-star tutorial on international relations that has been most recently updated after 9-11. If I were to recommend only two books on international relations, for any adult including nominally sophisticated world travelers, this would be the first book; the second would be Shultz, Godson, & Quester's wonderful edited work, "Security Studies for the 21st Century."

I really want to stress the utility of this work to adults, including those like myself who earned a couple of graduate degrees in the last century (smile). I was surprised to find no mention of the author's stellar service as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council--not only has he had full access to everything that can be known by secret as well as non-secret means, but he has kept current, and this undergraduate and affordable paperback was a great way for me--despite the 400+ books I've read (most of them reviewed on Amazon.com) in the past four plus years--to come up to speed on the rigorous methodical scholarly understanding of both historical and current theories and practices in international relations. This book is worth anyone's time, no matter how experienced or educated.

Each chapter has a very satisfactory mix of figures, maps, chronologies, and photos--a special value is a block chart showing the causes for major wars or periods of conflict at the three levels of analysis--international system, national, and key individual personalities, and I found these quite original and helpful.

Excellent reference and orientation work. Took five hours to read, with annotation--this is not a mind-glazer, it's a mind-exerciser.

excellent intro book to International Affairs.......1999-11-11

One of the few textbooks I truly enjoyed, Nye's Understanding International Conflicts was a clear, easy-to-read, and yet insightful book. Its focus is on the three levels of influence on a state's behavior: the interstate system, intrastate politics, and individual. It is one of the few entry-level IA books to discuss the effect of personality on the actions of a state. Even in my graduate-level seminars and papers, I found it to be useful.

Average customer rating:

Very good book
Understanding Vietnamese writers
WOW
Excellent!!! Very accurate!!! Must Read!!!!!!!!
Outstanding.

Understanding Vietnam
Neil L. Jamieson
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520201574

Book Description

The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding.
Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese--both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither--to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences.
By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.

Customer Reviews:

Very good book.......2007-04-13

I grew up with a lot of second generation Vietnamese and had a relatively significant amount of exposure to the culture. After reading this book I can look back and understand a lot of things better. For example I knew that Viet people are tremendously loyal to thier parents but after reading this book I have a much better understanding of why.
I thought the way he used Yin and Yang to explain things throughout the book was very neat. I think my one complaint is that it does get a little confusing in a couple of places, especially the section covering the 1950's. But I get the empression that the 1950's were a just a confusing time in Vietnam and the rest of the book is great. Much of it does read like a novel.

Understanding Vietnamese writers.......2004-05-10

I bought this hoping to learn more about the Vietnamese people and their history. I got bogged down with all the poetry and prose quoted by the writer. While he brushes off the importance of the battle of Dien Bien Phu in a couple of lines; he drones on quoting (translating) obscure Vietnamese writers until the reader becomes weary. His premise seems to be that if you understand some writer (who he thinks is interesting) and attach importance to what he said then you will understand Vietnam. His annoying treatment of Yin and Yang finally caused me to put the book down and look for another way to understand Vietnam. If you like words such as "efficacy" and "entropy" you will love this writer; if such words irritate you, give this book a pass.

WOW.......2003-04-15

This book's focus on contemporary Vietnamese literary sources through the years makes it absolutely unique in the field. Its blend of straight history narrative and multiple-voice literature excerpts fleshes out Vietnamese society in a way that was sorely needed in the field. To those well-read in Asian studies: this book can almost be seen as a Vietnam analog to Patricia Ebrey's book "Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook," which is a collection of contemporary Chinese sources through history.

The history is instructive and concise, with little excess prose. Jamieson writes in an eminently readable style, and focuses on the most interesting events in order to keep the reader from being bored. He does a pretty good job of giving both Northern and Southern Vietnamese viewpoints, although he does focus a little more than would be preferable on South Vietnam, especially in the later parts of the book. The twentieth century chapters do a better job than almost any book on the market in focusing on the Vietnamese, rather than on the multi-decade war in which they fought.

My only complaint is that the extended yin/yang analogy used to explain societal trends was not very helpful. On the whole, though, I'm really impressed.

Excellent!!! Very accurate!!! Must Read!!!!!!!!.......2002-07-20

I think this book is amazing! Jamieson accuately protrays Vietnam and Vietnamese culture through the eyes and views of the Vietnamese in a way never before written by a Westerner. He is articulate of the moods and feelings faceing the Vietnamese, well educated in the arts and literature of Vietnam, understands the importance to the core family structure, and scholarly in his research of what it means to be Vietnamese. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand the Vietnamese people who live in Vietnam, in the US, or anywhere...

Outstanding........2002-01-26

This is a somewhat difficult book to understand, although it turns out to be a gem.

The author sets out to demonstrate that Vietnamese society, history, and culture from 1700 to 1990 revolve around the yin and yang system. While harmony derives from a balance between these two elements, an imbalance on the other hand results in revolution and war. The forces, which have been pulling the Vietnamese community apart since 1920, came to a head-on battle in 1945-50.

During the 1954-1975 war, the northern yang being stronger and more refined than the southern one led to a northern invasion and collapse of South Vietnam. The hegemony and repression of the north, however, caused a violent reaction of the southern yin during the post 1975 years: exodus of hundreds of thousands of boat people, and refusal of farmers to participate in the collectivization of the agriculture causing a decrease in productivity. Those who could not escape survived by peddling their belongings at flea markets, which over a period of time grew into a vibrant capitalistic system thanks in part to the money sent home by relatives abroad, especially in the U.S. A decade later, the southern economy rebounded while the northern counterpart floundered. This led to a reversal of the dogmatic northern policy and implementation of the "doi moi" policy in 1985.

The author also suggests that happiness and prosperity cannot come to Vietnam unless true freedom and basic human rights are respected.

Book Description

While showing how both evangelicals and liberals misread Scripture, a leading Bible scholar and Anglican bishop shows how to restore the Bibleâ€™s authority today for guiding the church through its many controversies.

Customer Reviews:

The Last Word. N.T. Wright........2007-03-26

In this volume, N.T. Wright's two anchoring themes are (1) the authority of Christian canon, i.e., as a standard measure, and (2) the imperfection of our understanding of the canon, i.e., the importance of humility in cooperating with scripture's philology in finding its intent. Knowledge of scripture is, in many instances, permanently tentative (as is scientific knowledge) and proceeds along lines that are better recognized as being iterative and partial than immediate or whole. Christian humility and 'teachability' demands as much, as do the ubiquitous exegetical disputes and the inherent subtleties and mysteries of ancient texts whose impulsion was 'beyond' its human penmen. To paraphrase this view in my own clumsy way - "stop pretending you've got it all figured out and start studying so as to be taught, instead of 'studying' to support your delusions of final insights." With apologies to Wright for my paraphrase, I heartily agree with him. It's a bit interesting that Wright chose the title that he did; by it he can only mean that "the Last Word" is the final import of scripture, not that he, or anyone else, can provide a final interpretation or exposition of the Last Word.

Wright on the relationship of Christian scripture and Christian tradition: "The challenge of living with tradition is not so much, as in official Roman Catholic understandings, that one should let tradition and scripture flow together straightforwardly into a single stream, but that tradition should be allowed to be itself; that is, the living voice of the very human church as it struggles with scripture, sometimes misunderstanding it and sometimes gloriously getting it right. That is why the challenge comes fresh to each generation. Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going." p 119

It is true that some of Wright's work is a kind of flash-point in some scholarly circles, Christian and otherwise -- too orthodox for some, too liberal for others, not Calvinist enough for the heavy-handed determinists, not Roman enough for the 'one true church' audience, and so forth. But all of this speaks to the level-headed carefulness of his theology and biblical scholarship. If, on some point(s) you find that you disagree with Wright, I hope that you can do so with the intellectual openness and spiritual humility that characterize this author; if you are a Bible-thumping know-it-all, then you need this book more than most of us do. Thank God for N.T. Wright.

A Concise Exposition of Anglican Theological Thinking.......2007-03-09

N. T. Wright continues to be a voice of centrist sense within the roil of contemporary Christian controversies. This clear, concise exposition of the traditional Anglican "via media" is a very useful primer, or refresher, on how Anglicans balance the threads of Scripture, Tradition, and human reason. The objective is to understand how to live out the Christian call, and how to understand timeless lessons in a rapidly changing world. I've loaned my copy to several friends across the Christian belief spectrum as a clear and fairly concise summary of how my branch of Christ's church lives in to our call.

A good but brief treatment on the authority of scripture.......2007-01-30

Tom Wright wrote an article "How can the bible be authoritative" for Vox Evangelica in 1991. This book flushes out the themes in more detail and provides some more historial context. The title might be a bit misleading since a "new understanding" could mean recovering an older understanding. My perspective is that the title is not as alarming as it sounds. What I have always appreciated about Tom Wright is that he is able defend his orthodox christian views using rigorous academic methods. Sure, he is often critized by both sides. So the conservative christians accuse him of not being fully orthodox, while the academics accuse him of compromising his rigor due to his personal faith. Regardless of one's theology position, this book should be a worthwhile read. A more detailed treatment is contained in "NT and the people of god". It is only in my second reading that I am appreciating and starting to understand the book. So for those of you who would like more depth, I would recommend "NT and the people of god". If you are interested in the subject of the authority of scripture, you might also be interested in reading more on narrative theology and the emerging/emergent church movement.

Happy reading.

Wright is Worth the Read!.......2007-01-24

Wright cuts through the noise in the North American biblical scholarship debate. He knocks the legs out from under "conservatives" and "liberals" and offers us a solid foundation of good hermeneutics. He explains why both "sides" are missing the mark and how we can get back on the right track. Good book!

Read Paul: In Fresh Perspective for a better glimpse into N.T. Wright's wonderful contributions and insights into New Testament scholarship.

A Bit Thin.......2007-01-12

Having read his thoroughly naratived approach in Jesus and the Victory of God I was expecting something more substanial. Given that most reading of the scriptures is first devotional and personal the corporate/hierarchical conclusion seemed lopsided.

The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain

Average customer rating:

The World of Chess Through a Telescope...
SImply Outstanding!
A personal and rather shallow book
A Fun, Not Technical, Chess History -- and MORE!!
We're living through a mini golden age for chess literature

The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain
David Shenk
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0385510101
Release Date: 2006-09-05

Book Description

Why has one game, alone among the thousands of games invented and played throughout human history, not only survived but thrived within every culture it has touched? What is it about its thirty-two figurative pieces, moving about its sixty-four black and white squares according to very simple rules, that has captivated people for nearly 1,500 years? Why has it driven some of its greatest players into paranoia and madness, and yet is hailed as a remarkably powerful intellectual tool?

Nearly everyone has played chess at some point in their lives. Its rules and pieces have served as a metaphor for society, influencing military strategy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and literature and the arts. It has been condemned as the devil’s game by popes, rabbis, and imams, and lauded as a guide to proper living by other popes, rabbis, and imams. Marcel Duchamp was so absorbed in the game that he ignored his wife on their honeymoon. Caliph Muhammad al-Amin lost his throne (and his head) trying to checkmate a courtier. Ben Franklin used the game as a cover for secret diplomacy.

In his wide-ranging and ever-fascinating examination of chess, David Shenk gleefully unearths the hidden history of a game that seems so simple yet contains infinity. From its invention somewhere in India around 500 A.D., to its enthusiastic adoption by the Persians and its spread by Islamic warriors, to its remarkable use as a moral guide in the Middle Ages and its political utility in the Enlightenment, to its crucial importance in the birth of cognitive science and its key role in the aesthetic of modernism in twentieth-century art, to its twenty-first-century importance in the development of artificial intelligence and use as a teaching tool in inner-city America, chess has been a remarkably omnipresent factor in the development of civilization.

Customer Reviews:

The World of Chess Through a Telescope... .......2007-10-02

and what an interesting world it is. An insightful look at the history, pyschology, philosophy, and implications for the future of the world's oldest and greatest game.

This book should please chess lovers, as it is a rare thing in the crowded gamut of chess books... a broad survey of the game. Many of us play the game, and we study chess books and chess software, we play computer progams and human opponents, but perhaps we do not stop to look at the game from a distance. This book does that for us. And there is much we can learn, in my opinion.

Mr. Shenk is a talented and capable writer, and he has done his work well. He builds on his personal relationship with the game. While he is not an avid player, his great great great grandfather was a Grandmaster. The book is a fun to read and a page turner, and while it delights, it also instructs. Not so much as how to play the game, but perhaps why.

Chess is the world's 3rd biggest sport. It was supposed to be killed by the computer - and yet paradoxically the computer has greatly enhanced the game. It is one of the oldest games and yet it defies mastery. This book looks at this and more, from wacky Grandmasters to precocious school kids and dedicated patzers. It examines the history of chess in ancient Persia, to Bobby Fischer versus Spassky in Iceland to Big Blue versus Kasparof in New York.

Most chess books place the game of chess under a "microscope" - they analyze one specific aspect of the game, by breaking the game into pieces with diagrams and algebraic notion. This book is so welcome and necessary because it looks at the big picture of chess... from a distance, through the years, chess through a "telescope".

My only critique is that I wish the book had been even longer!
This book will be of interest to all, from chess expert to novice to the non-player who merely wants an entertaining education about the world's greatest game.

SImply Outstanding!.......2007-09-17

What an outstanding read - part documentary, history, biography and mystery novel. David Shenk has stimulated all of my mental faculities by writing was is arguably one of the most compelling chess history book ever written. From Novice to Grand Master, lots of good moves within this read. Thank you for a job well done!

A personal and rather shallow book.......2007-08-19

Readers looking for a decent history of chess won't find it in this book. They will find a highly personal account of the author's chess experiences and rather indulgent reflections on those experiences, and a grab-bag of topics with some historical connection to chess - but treated in a superficial and almost journalistic style.

The last chapter (Chess and the future of human intelligence) is particularly trivial. Shenk observes a group of kids in an American Chess in Schools program. It is pure mawkisness - perhaps I should say silliness. Dialog is recorded verbatim. Portentious claims are made.

What makes the book interesting is that Shenk intersperses a famous chess game (The Immortal Game between Anderssen and Kieseritzky in 1851) among the otherwise forgettable chapters. One rushes through the chapters just to get to the next phase of this gripping chess game. This was an excellent device to inject interest into what could easily have been a dry, technical account.

The book will interest readers with no knowledge of chess, but who are curious about it and just want an entertaining and interesting read with minimum intellectual demands upon them. Readers who want a more scholarly and coherent account of chess should look elsewhere.

A Fun, Not Technical, Chess History -- and MORE!!.......2007-07-08

When I got this book, my wife took one look at the title and laughed. "A history of chess? Have fun with that." A lot of people will think that about this book, and that's a shame. The Immortal Game is far more than a history of chess.

Shenk does cover a lot of the history of chess. He traces the roots of the game to the Middle East, and traces its spread throughout Europe. But he traces the history of chess through how it is used - chess is used as a metaphor throughout history, and what it serves as a metaphor for tells us a lot about each time period.

Muslims enjoyed chess because it was not a game of chance. It emphasized the idea of personal responsibility and free will over strict determinism and fatalism. Medieval Christians embraced this symbolism as well, even as they changed the pieces to suit their own society (the Elephant of the Muslim game became the Bishop in Christian Europe, for example). Shenk tells of a Dominican monk who wrote what many consider the most influential chess book of all time -- Liber de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium as popularium sive super ludo sacchorum -- which translates as The Book of Morals of Men and the Dutie of Nobles and Commoners, or On The Game of Chess.

Shenk sees chess as a metaphor for life, and the responsibilities of each member of society. He goes so far as to justify the movement of each piece by the role its namesake played in society. Even today, chess is used by psychologists studying human thought processes and how intelligence develops. Computer scientists teach their supercomputers chess in an effort to simulate human consciousness and develop truly artificial intelligence. Elementary school children are taught chess to develop creative thinking skills. Each era adopts chess as its own metaphor, and the game continues to flourish.

Interspersed with the history of the game, Shenk offers a play-by-play of "The Immortal Game," a practice game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kiesseritzky in 1851. The game began as something of little consequence, played between two acquaintances as they were waiting for the next game of their match, but quickly became something of note. The game has been studied by chess students ever since - Kiesseritzky even published a report in his own chess magazine immediately after it was over.

The Immortal Game is a history of the game of chess, but it's more than just a history. It's an attempt to answer the question, why chess? What has made this game so popular? Why has it lasted for over a thousand years? It's a study of the use of metaphor throughout history. It's a discussion of what intelligence really is. And it's an encouragement to novice chess players all over the world that there is a reason to study this game.

We're living through a mini golden age for chess literature.......2007-03-22

There have been a number of chess books published recently, most of them in expensive hardback format: Bobby Fischer vs. Russians, Kasparov's My Illustrious Predecessors, even Shahade's uneven Chess Bitch. Now add to those titles The Immortal Game, a great overview of chess by David Shenk. The author became interested in chess rather late, and he'll never be a great player, and he knows it. But that doesn't mean the game can't be fascinating. One of the things to take away from this book is you don't have to be a Grandmaster to get a lot of out chess.

The book follows the history of the game as it also tracks one famous encounter between two chess players in 1851. Dubbed "The Immortal Game," it sums up what is so magical about chess--its unpredictability, its sudden reversals, and the feeling that no matter how much you play it, you will never fathom its depths. That's also the point Shenk drives home in the part of the book not devoted to the game, as he looks at how chess has shaped thinking on everything from math to science to social class to warfare to art to computers to psychology. He talks about great achievements brought about by chess, and the game's darker side, which has led to more than one case of madness, more than one suicide, and a reclusive American genius' raving anti-semite comments. No other game, he argues, has impacted the world as much, and few have lasted as long.

This is a well-written book, and very engaging. It does not have to be read by a person deeply-immersed in, and it's not overly-technical. I have to quibble a little about his insistence that chess geniuses are made and not born. While I don't doubt that thousands of hours puts the Garry Kasparovs and Susan Polgars of the world ahead of the rest of us, he ignores the fact that many other a would-be champ devoted equal effort to the game and failed miserably. He also doesn't seem to get that much of the "research" that has "proven" effort over aptitude is effected and infused by social and PC bias of the time, just as research on the subject half a century ago was similarly biased in the other direction. We seem to hesitate to say there may be a "chess gene" because the game is predominantly male and almost completely excludes certain racial groups. Be honest and ask yourself if we'd approach the sport of basketball with the same convictions.

Overall this is a very good book, however, and I recommend it for both the devoted fan and the casual, as well as curious, person, as a fine entertainment. Hopefully we are seeing a chess-publishing revival in the book world, and renewed interest in the game in the U.S.

Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, 3d Edition

Average customer rating:

Great work!
Solid introduction into the world of intelligence
good introductory book ...
Thinking About Intelligence
Solid Introduction to Intelligence Activity

Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, 3d Edition
Abram N. Shulsky , and Gary J. Schmitt
Manufacturer: Potomac Books Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1574883453

Book Description

A thoroughly updated revision of the first comprehensive overview of intelligence designed for both the student and the general reader, Silent Warfare is an insiderâ€™s guide to a shadowy, often misunderstood world. Leading intelligence scholars Abram N. Shulsky and Gary J. Schmitt clearly explain such topics as the principles of collection, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action, and their interrelationship with policymakers and democratic values. This new edition takes account of the expanding literature in the field of intelligence and deals with the consequences for intelligence of vast recent changes in telecommunication and computer technologyâ€”the new â€œinformation age.â€ It also reflects the worldâ€™s strategic changes since the end of the Cold War. This landmark book provides a valuable framework for understanding todayâ€™s headlines, as well as the many developments likely to come in the real world of the spy.

Customer Reviews:

Great work!.......2007-02-02

The book came right on time and in EXCELLENT condition. I will definately buy with this seller again!

Solid introduction into the world of intelligence.......2006-06-13

I would say that this book would be a good first read for anyone interested in learning more about the intelligence community. It covers a wide variety of information without getting to in-depth into any one subject, so it feels like a pretty well-rounded experience. I also felt that the use of some historical examples really helped not only to make the book more interesting to read but to make some of the concepts easier to understand.

My biggest problem with this book is that at points it reads like a college textbook, which isn't always a particularly good thing. I also found some of the sections that talked about the relations between policy and intelligence to be pretty dull. Overall this book is a pretty informative and a mostly enjoyable read.

good introductory book ..........2006-04-01

A good introduction book to the Intelligence subject. In this book the author browse all the elements and methods of intelligence in a mix with history examples, that helps you understand all the facts of this world and the importance for a goverment to use it in order to be updated and alert of international events.

Thinking About Intelligence.......2005-10-24

This book was first published in 1991, but is as current today as it was 14 years ago. This is because the authors have succeeded in conceptualizing intelligence functions and activities in an abstract, but very accurate manner. Although the authors provide a conceptualized view of intelligence, they also provide concrete historical examples to illustrate specific concepts. As a result the reader is given an understanding of intelligence that transcends current trends and practices within the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). The book is an excellent introduction to the discipline of intelligence independent of specific agencies or practices of the IC. For this reason the book should be of interest not only to folks with no background in intelligence, but also to experienced intelligence professionals. One of the biggest obstacles to real intelligence reform in the IC is the inability of reformers to formulate broad concepts of the purposes and functions of intelligence. Reading this book could go a long way in helping them to develop such concepts. As the final chapter of the book suggests, it shows the way to a theory of intelligence.

"Silent Warfare" is the best introduction I have found to the arcane world of intelligence and is an excellent textbook for an introductory course. However, in a utopian world that course would be taught over a year and in its second semester students would read another excellent intelligence text, "Intelligence From Secrets to Policy" by Mark Lowenthal, which moves from the abstract to general, but specific practices and operations of the U.S. IC. The two books compliment each other very well.

Solid Introduction to Intelligence Activity.......2005-09-19

Both the authors, Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt, are respected intelligence organization professionals who have taken up university-level teaching and writing. The book is focused on intelligence theory and organization - not on tradecraft. As such, the principal audience of this book would likely be future intelligence policymakers or foreign intelligence organizations trying to gain an insight into US intelligence systems.

The book does a solid job of identifying what intelligence is, how it is collected (humint vs. techint), how it is processed, how it is systematically protected, and what counter-intelligence includes. In addition, it addresses the gray areas of covert action (Is it intelligence or military activity?) and plausible denial. Although much of this discussion could apply to most nations' intelligence bureaus, the authors only explicity describe the American intelligence system.

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of the book is the wealth of sources it contains. Many of these are freely and immediately available on the web for all to read. All the footnotes are very thoroughly explained and usually refer to a specific source. The source list itself adds tremendous value to the book by guiding the reader to so many numerous definitive works on intelligence operations.

All in all, this is a solid introduction to intelligence and a great book for pursuing its addition sources.

What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat

Average customer rating:

Over promises and under delivers
Makes a strong argument for not being carried away by fear of terrorists
Indispensable!
Know your enemy, learn from history
The definitive book for "know yourself, know the enemy"

What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat
Louise Richardson
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1400064813
Release Date: 2006-09-05

Book Description

“This is at the top of my list for best books on terrorism.”
–Jessica Stern, author of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill

How can the most powerful country in the world feel so threatened by an enemy infinitely weaker than we are? How can loving parents and otherwise responsible citizens join terrorist movements? How can anyone possibly believe that the cause of Islam can be advanced by murdering passengers on a bus or an airplane? In this important new book, groundbreaking scholar Louise Richardson answers these questions and more, providing an indispensable guide to the greatest challenge of our age.

After defining–once and for all–what terrorism is, Richardson explores its origins, its goals, what’s to come, and what is to be done about it. Having grown up in rural Ireland and watched her friends join the Irish Republican Army, Richardson knows from firsthand experience how terrorism can both unite and destroy a community. As a professor at Harvard, she has devoted her career to explaining terrorist movements throughout history and around the globe. From the biblical Zealots to the medieval Islamic Assassins to the anarchists who infiltrated the cities of Europe and North America at the turn of the last century, terrorists have struck at enemies far more powerful than themselves with targeted acts of violence. Yet Richardson understands that terrorists are neither insane nor immoral. Rather, they are rational political actors who often deploy carefully calibrated tactics in a measured and reasoned way. What is more, they invariably go to great lengths to justify their actions to themselves, their followers, and, often, the world.

Richardson shows that the nature of terrorism did not change after the attacks of September 11, 2001; what changed was our response. She argues that the Bush administration’s “global war on terror” was doomed to fail because of an ignorance of history, a refusal to learn from the experience of other governments, and a fundamental misconception about how and why terrorists act. As an alternative, Richardson offers a feasible strategy for containing the terrorist threat and cutting off its grassroots support.

The most comprehensive and intellectually rigorous account of terrorism yet, What Terrorists Want is a daring intellectual tour de force that allows us, at last, to reckon fully with this major threat to today’s global order.

KIRKUS- starred review
"The short answer? Fame and payback, perhaps even a thrill. The long answer? Read this essential, important primer.

Terrorist groups have many motives and ideologies, notes Richardson (Executive Dean/Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study), but they tend to similar paths: They are founded by mature, well-educated men but staffed by less learned and certainly more pliable youths; they are fueled by a sense of injustice and the conviction that only they are morally equipped to combat it; they see themselves as defenders and not aggressors; they often define the terms of battle. And, of course, this commonality: "Terrorists have elevated practices that are normally seen as the excesses of warfare to routine practice, striking noncombatants not as an unintended side effect but as a deliberate strategy." Thus massacres, suicide bombings and assassinations are all in a day's work. Richardson argues against Karl Rove, who after 9/11 mocked those who tried to understand the enemy, by noting that only when authorities make efforts to get inside the minds of their terrorist enemies do they succeed in defeating them, as with the leadership of the Shining Path movement in Peru. Still, as Rove knows, if terrorists share a pathology, then so do at least some of their victims: Once attacked, people in democratic societies are more than willing to trade freedom for security. Richardson closes by offering a set of guidelines for combating terrorism, with such easily remembered rules as "Live by your principles" and "Engage others in countering terrorists with you"–observing, in passing, that the Bush administration's attack on Iraq and subsequent occupation will likely be remembered as serving as a recruiting poster for still more terrorists.

How to win? Develop communities, settle grievances, exercise patience and intelligence. That said, watch for more terrorism to come: "We are going to have to learn to live with it and to accept it as a price of living in a complex world."
_________________________________________________________________________________
“Louise Richardson . . . has now produced the overdue and essential primer on terrorism and how to tackle it. What Terrorists Want is the book many have been waiting for.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
“Lucid and powerful, Richardson’s book refutes the dangerous idea that there’s no point in trying to understand terrorists. . . . rich, readable.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“The kind of brisk and accessible survey of terrorism-as-modus operandi that has been sorely missing for the past five years . . . [What Terrorists Want] ought to be required reading as the rhetoric mounts this campaign season.”—The American Prospect
“Richardson is one of the relative handful of experts who have been studying the history and practice of terrorism since the Cold War. . . . This book is a welcome source of information. It’s written by a true expert, giving her measured thoughts.”—Christian Science Monitor

“Richardson’s clear language and deep humanity make What Terrorists Want the one book that must be read by everyone who cares about why people resort to the tactic of terrorism.”–Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus

“This is a book of hope. Terrorism, like the poor, will always be with us in one form or another. But given sensible policies, we can contain it without destroying what we hold dear.”–Financial Times

“A passionate, incisive, and groundbreaking argument that provocatively overturns the myths surrounding terrorism.”–Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

“In its lucid analysis and summary, [What Terrorists Want] is simply the best thing of its kind available now in this highly crowded area.”–The Evening Standard

“If a reader has the time to read only one book on terrorism, What Terrorists Want is that book. Extensive historical knowledge, personal contacts, enormous analytic skills, common sense, and a fine mix of lucidity and clarity, make of this work a most satisfying dissection of terrorists’ motives and goals, and of the effects of September 11, 2001. Richardson also offers a sharp critique of American counterterrorism policies, and a sensible plan for better ones.”–Stanley Hoffmann, Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University

“An astonishingly insightful analysis by one of the world’s leading authorities on terrorism, this book is filled with wisdom–based not only on the author’s extensive and long-term study of terrorism but also on her experience growing up in a divided Ireland.”–Jessica Stern, author of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill

“A wide-ranging, clear headed, crisply written, cogently argued anatomy of terrorist groups around the world.”–Peter Bergen, senior fellow, New America Foundation, and author of The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader

“Among the numerous books published on terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, Louise Richardson’s stands out as an unusually wise, sensible, and humane treatise. An engrossing and lucid book, which hopefully will be read by many and spread its unique spirit of realistic optimism.”
–Ariel Merari, Professor of Psychology, Tel Aviv University

“Thoughtful and stimulating . . . Controversially, and indeed courageously, [Richardson] argues that, instead of regarding the terrorists–even al-Qaeda types–as mindless and irrational creatures motivated by dark forces of evil, it would be more constructive to examine and seek to moderate some of the grievances that drive previously normal and even nondescript characters to kill and maim innocent people they don’t even know.”– The Irish Times

“A textbook and a myth-buster . . . [Richardson] is calling for nothing less than a total re-evaluation of how we consider, and react to, terrorism. . . . What Terrorists Want ought to be on the bookshelf in every government office. Certainly, for any student of international affairs it is an essential reading.”
– The Atlantic Affairs

Customer Reviews:

Over promises and under delivers.......2007-08-11

I was disappointed in this book. If you pick up a copy of What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat thinking you will learn what terrorists want, that you'll understand them better or figure out what to do about them, you'll be disappointed too. The lukewarm review from Publisher's Weekly is the one to heed; the reviews by the amateur enthusiasts lack objectivity.

Ms. Richardson devotes the first 200 pages explaining the history and culture of terrorism. She obviously has studied many terrorist movements around the world, both historical and current. Her survey is interesting. She proves that tactics of terrorism or suicidal warfare weren't invented on 9/11, if you had doubts.

Inter alia, she illustrates the mistakes made by the Bush Administration in pursuit of al-Qaeda. Many of her points seem buttressed by the historical examples she cites. At this point in the conflict in Iraq, however, finding mistakes by the Bush administration ex post is like shooting fish in a barrel: It's so easy there's little sport in it. There are many other books on the market that recount authors' personal experiences with the war on terrorism and its many ills, written with greater credibility, from better vantage points than Boston, MA.

Where the book really falls down is when Ms. Richardson switches from historical perspective to policy directive. That switch from ex post to ex ante analysis is the tricky part for most of us. "Predicting is hard, especially about the future," said Yogi Berra.

What do terrorists want? All kinds of different things, apparently. The multiple long-term objectives she cites in her analysis (page 75-76) are so varied that not even Ms. Richardson attempts to draw any broad lessons. She instead focuses on "secondary motives" which have the three Rs--"revenge, renown, and reaction"--in common. That's interesting--coincidental that they all start with "R"--but less helpful as a policy tool. What grievous American action warranted the "revenge" strike upon the World Trade Towers?

Terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology. It's useful for small groups of zealots to use because it's inexpensive to implement and tough to combat. This insight was my biggest takeaway from the book. But grouping users of the tactic together might be no more meaningful than looking for common threads among militants who use the AK-47 assault rifle.

Understanding terrorism simply as a tactic, however, undermines the premise of writing Richardson's text. Examining users of terrorism collectively may be no more revealing than any other book on military tactics (e.g., "Use Of Camouflage Throughout The Ages").

She labels as "fallacious" the view that "democracies are particularly vulnerable to terrorism and that the freedoms granted citizens in democratic societies can be exploited by terrorists..." (page 206) Really? Rights to privacy, freedom of movement and freedom of association don't make life easier for terrorists?

She recommends knowing "how and where terrorists operate, how they organize themselves, how they communicate with each other, how they finance and plan their operations." You have to wade through to page 208 before encountering this bromide. I thought, in fact, that details like these were the promise of the book, not merely a recommendation that someone else do this work.

She allows that "penetrating terrorist groups is no easy task. Developing a good intelligence network takes time, connections, language skills, cultural knowledge and deep engagement in the region the groups come from." (page 211). I'm not sure the American polis would have been mollified if any President had told them after the fall of the twin towers that the US would immediately send people to language school in order to penetrate al-Qaeda.

She recommends playing "Let's Make A Deal." She writes, "We take as a given that their demands are so extreme as to be non-negotiable, but it would be worth finding out if that is, in fact, the case." (page 212). Maybe al-Qaeda isn't serious after all about banishing Americans from certain parts of the earth or establishing Islamic government in Iraq (citation from al-Zarqawi on page 218). Maybe we just need to know them better.

She ignores an important difference between most of the terrorist examples she cites and the American situation after 9/11: The terrorists aren't working from our territory. The British fought the IRA on territory the British controlled. Likewise the state governments fighting Basque separatists, the Russian anarchists, the ANC, Red Army Faction, Tamil Tigers, Shining Path, PKK and Aum Shinrikyo. But Americans couldn't gain access to the territory used by the terrorists without inserting themselves by military force. That using such force had additional consequences is undeniable. But what was the alternative? Initiating more "study abroad" fellowships and sending in the Peace Corps?

In spite of the title, Ms. Richardson is a pessimist (defeatist?). One chapter is entitled, "Why the War On Terror Can Never Be Won." At the end of the book, she concludes "We are going to have to learn to live with it [terrorism] and to accept it as a price of living in a complex world" (page 237).

Well, that would have been a reassuring message for a President of any party to deliver on September 12, 2001. Ms. Richardson missed her calling as a speech writer.

If your purpose in reading this book is to reinforce your smugness about mistakes made by the Bush administration, you'll be pleased to have your perspicacity confirmed. But if you really read the book to answer the questions in its title--what terrorists want, how to understand them better or what to do about them--this book won't help.

Makes a strong argument for not being carried away by fear of terrorists.......2007-07-18

In her book Ms. Richardson makes a strong argument for not being carried away by fear and
loathing of terrorists' atrocities in the United States on 9/11 and in other countries around the
world. She is a lecturer at Harvard and is dean of Harvard's affiliate the Radcliffe Institute for
Advanced Study. Rather, she says, we of the western world should make a genuine effort to
understand the motivations of the terrorists and to devise rational ways to protect ourselves from
them. She talks not only of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists but also of other terrorist
organizations in other places and times: the Shining Path in Peru, the FARC in Colombia, the
Basque ETA in Spain, the Japanese cult that released deadly sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in
1995, the Irish Republican Army, the Red Brigades in Italy, and others.

First, she makes the argument that terrorists are not greatly different emotionally from the rest of us.

...terrorists...are, by and large, not crazy at all...the one shared characteristic of terrorists is
their normalcy, insofar as we understand the term...Some are introverted, some extroverted:
some loud, some shy; some confident, some nervous...Terrorists see the world in Manichean,
black-and-white terms; they identify with others and they desire revenge. They have a highly
oversimplified view of the world in which good is pitted against evil and in which their
adversaries are to blame for all their woes.

Most of the leaders of the Islamic militants are well educated, many with advanced university
degrees. Three conditions are usually required for the making of an individual terrorist: dedication
to a cause, an enabling structure (an organization for him to join), and an overarching ideology.

The author discusses the question of the extent to which states sponsor terrorist
organizations--she argues that generally "terrorism is the behavior of substate groups". But she
does contend that some countries do, at certain times, sponsor terrorist groups; the Soviet Union
and Cuba did so in the 1970's, Iran and Libya in the 1980's, and Iraq and Syria in the 1990's. And
the USA would, in the opinion of those in the world who dislike us, also fall into that category
given our support of the Contras in Nicaragua, the mujahedin in Afghanistan, those who would
overthrow Castro in Cuba, and those who did overthrow Allende in Chile.

More and more impoverished people in the world resent the USA because of our wealth:

With global mass communications and American TV shows broadcasting American affluence
around the world, it is not difficult to mobilize a sense of resentment of American wealth.
Previously one compared oneself to others nearby, but the contrast between American wealth
and Arab poverty is now being broadcast daily into people's tiny homes.

In a chapter entitled "Why the War on Terror Can Never Be Won" the author comments:

When the history of the immediate post-9/11 years comes to be written, it will be seen as a period
marked by two major mistakes and two major missed opportunities. The mistakes were a
declaration of war against terrorism and the conflation of the threat from al-Qaeda with the
threat from Saddam Hussein. The missed opportunities were the opportunities to educate the
American public to the realities of terrorism and to the costs of our sole superpower status and
the opportunity to mobilize the international community behind us in a transnational campaign
against transnational terrorists.

Far from trying to educate the public, U.S. leaders played to their fears......Rather than
attempting to put the terrible atrocity of 9/11 into perspective, it fanned the outrage. Rather than
countenance the possibility that certain of its actions might have fueled resentment toward it, it
divided the world into good and evil, and those who were not with the United States were with
the terrorists.

In the concluding chapter "What Is to Be Done?" she sets out "Rules." Rule 1 is "Have a
Defensible and Achievable Goal."

......had our government declared its goal on the evening of September 11 simply to be to
capture those responsible for the attacks, it might very well have been successful. The goal would
have required a different political and military strategy in Afghanistan and it would have kept us
out of Iraq......The particular brand of terrorism that currently poses a threat to us is terrorism
used by Islamic militants; therefore, our goal today should be to stop the spread of Islamic
militancy. In order to contain the spread of Islamic militancy, we must isolate the terrorists and
inoculate their potential recruits against them.

Other "Rules" are:

"Live by Your Principles."
"Know Your Enemy"
"Separate the Terrorists from Their Communities"
"Engage Others in Countering Terrorists with You"
"Have Patience and Keep Your Perspective"

In considering U.S. counterterrorist policy since September 11, it is very clear that we have not
followed these six rules. We set ourselves an unattainable goal, we have been seen to abandon
many of the principles that have guided our democracy, the inadequacies of our intelligence
have been exposed, our actions have served to strengthen ties between terrorists and the
communities from which they come, we have failed to engage others in the campaign against
terrorists, and we have failed to demonstrate either patience or a sense of perspective.

And she is outspoken about our misadventure in Iraq:

Whatever the virtue of the other arguments in favor of the war in Iraq, from the point of view of
counterterrorism the invasion of Iraq was a calamitous mistake......the Iraq war, far from being
an effective policy against terrorism, immeasurably strengthened the hand of our adversaries
and weakened our own. We have alienated the international community and united our enemies
against us. We have provided a training ground for our adversaries, spawned a new generation
of terrorists convinced that we are at war with Islam, and failed to bring security to the country.
The inadequacy of our postwar planning was grossly negligent. We appear never to have taken
the time to challenge the assumptions on which we based our policy; instead, we simply assumed
that the policy would be effective and never inquired as to the cost.

Ms. Richardson's ideas for dealing with terrorists--trying to understand why they hate us ("know
your enemy"), maintaining our own principles, working with others in the world to defend against
terrorism, etc.--make sense if it can be assumed that those who oppose us are rational, people
who will not want to harm us if they sense that we are fair and just in all that our government
does that affects them. But she seems not to consider that there are times when madmen are at
large and can only be dealt with by force--Neville Chamberlain and the world finally saw that with
Hitler. It may be that, with all the hateful teaching in the Islamic madrassas and the hatred of the
modern world preached to the masses by radical Moslem clerics, we will have to one day
conclude that we face an implacable enemy who can only be dealt with by force.

Indispensable!.......2007-06-22

The book jacket asserts that this book is the most comprehensive and intellectually rigorous account of terrorism yet. I agree completely.

Some other reviewers complain about style and repetition. I have no such complaints. The author's approach matched my needs completely.

The section on the serious consequences of our repudiation of the Geneva Conventions was particularly informative and helpful to me.

This book provides a much-needed coherent way to view terrorism and efforts to minimize its prevalence and impact.

Know your enemy, learn from history.......2007-05-07

Americans seem to think that everything changed on 9/11. Subjectively, that may be true, but terrorism has been around for hundreds of years. 9/11 may be the deadliest attack yet, but that doesn't mean that the threat differs in kind from what has gone before.

Richardson places 9/11 in its historical context and shows how we should be dealing with it, which is very different from how we are dealing with it.

First off, declaring war on terrorism is folly. The British never defeated the IRA, the Russians haven't defeated the Chechnyans, and Israel hasn't defeated Hezbollah. The best we can hope for is to contain terrorism, not eliminate it. The roots are too small, scattered, and diverse to be able to pull up every one.

Another key issue is maintaining our principles. Flouting the Geneva Conventions is neither practical nor admirable and makes us more enemies, not more allies. We also need to do a better job of working with our allies, many of whom (most notably the British) have decades of experience dealing with terrorism.

The prose is somewhat dry and academic, but perhaps that is just as well. It is high time Americans took a deep breath, counted to ten, and stopped to think for a while about the right way to deal with terrorism, rather than just lashing out at any remotely plausible target without regard to the consequences.

I would hope that the members of the current and any future administration will read this book and consider it carefully.

The definitive book for "know yourself, know the enemy".......2007-03-18

This book is easily one of the best books for both the history of terrorism and recommendations on fighting it. She reveals how terrorism has roots going back not decades, but centuries. In addition to giving numerous historical examples, she critiques both the successful strategies (Britain containing the IRA) and the arguably unsuccessful strategies (The Bush Jr. administration attacking Iraq) in dealing with terrorism.

Some academics merely sit from a desk reading reports on terrorism from paper or a computer. Louise Richardson lived it with her childhood in Northern Ireland during the Troubles period. Whether you are an intellectual or a lay person, this book will provide you insight into America's enemy of the 21st century.

Understanding International Conflicts (6th Edition) (Longman Classics in Political Science)

Average customer rating:

First Rate, Post 9-11 Update, One of Two Core Works

Understanding International Conflicts (6th Edition) (Longman Classics in Political Science)
Joseph S. Nye
Manufacturer: Longman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0321393953

Book Description

Part of the âLongman Classics in Political Scienceâ series, Nye's best-selling text has been completely updated with new discussions about Middle East politics, including the Israel-Palestine dispute and the Iraq war, terrorism in general and radical Islamic terrorism in particular, the global politics of oil, and much more. Replete with illustrative examples and written in a lively, engaging manner, this is a brief, inexpensive book that students will buy and actually enjoy reading. It deftly balances theory and history to help students develop a well-rounded, informed framework for analyzing the international issues confronting us at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Customer Reviews:

First Rate, Post 9-11 Update, One of Two Core Works.......2007-06-10

First, this is a five-star tutorial on international relations that has been most recently updated after 9-11. If I were to recommend only two books on international relations, for any adult including nominally sophisticated world travelers, this would be the first book; the second would be Shultz, Godson, & Quester's wonderful edited work, "Security Studies for the 21st Century."

I really want to stress the utility of this work to adults, including those like myself who earned a couple of graduate degrees in the last century (smile). I was surprised to find no mention of the author's stellar service as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council--not only has he had full access to everything that can be known by secret as well as non-secret means, but he has kept current, and this undergraduate and affordable paperback was a great way for me--despite the 400+ books I've read (most of them reviewed on Amazon.com) in the past four plus years--to come up to speed on the rigorous methodical scholarly understanding of both historical and current theories and practices in international relations. This book is worth anyone's time, no matter how experienced or educated.

Each chapter has a very satisfactory mix of figures, maps, chronologies, and photos--a special value is a block chart showing the causes for major wars or periods of conflict at the three levels of analysis--international system, national, and key individual personalities, and I found these quite original and helpful.

Excellent reference and orientation work. Took five hours to read, with annotation--this is not a mind-glazer, it's a mind-exerciser.

Security Studies for the 21st Century

Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War

Average customer rating:

understanding World War II
The luxury of a safe view
War ain't no picnic.
Excellent
Fussell returns to the Second World War

Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War
Paul Fussell
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0195065778

Amazon.com

Paul Fussell, a distinguished literary historian, served as an infantry officer during World War II, and the experience has haunted him ever since. It has also informed his books, among them The Great War in Modern Memory and Wartime, a book that is part memoir, part cultural-critical study, and that is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of conflict. Fussell conjures the small details of battlefield experience -- the way a bird's song falls silent just before an artillery barrage, the curious plunking sound a spinning bullet makes, the drift of smoke over an obliterated village; he also evokes the Zeitgeist of the war years, an era when hometown grocery stores bore signs like this one: "Did you drown a sailor today because YOU bought a lamb chop without giving up the required coupons?"

Book Description

Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's classic The Great War and Modern Memory remains one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. In its panoramic scope and poetic intensity, it illuminated a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world. Now, in Wartime, Paul Fussell turns to the Second World War, the conflict in which he himself fought, to weave a more intensely personal and wide-ranging narrative. Whereas his former book focused primarily on literary figures, here Fussell examines the immediate impact of the war on soldiers and civilians. He compellingly depicts the psychological and emotional atmosphere of World War II by analyzing the wishful thinking and the euphemisms people needed to deal with unacceptable reality; by describing the abnormally intense frustration of desire and some of the means by which desire was satisfied; and, most importantly, by emphasizing the damage the war did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity, and wit. Of course, no book of Fussell's would be complete without serious attention to the literature of the time. He offers astute commentary on Edmund Wilson's argument with Archibald MacLeish, Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine, the war poetry of Randall Jarrell and Louis Simpson, and many other aspects of the wartime literary world. In this stunning volume, Fussell conveys the essence of that war as no other writer before him has.

Customer Reviews:

understanding World War II.......2007-09-07

Cynical, skeptical, and above all ironic, WARTIME explores -- from a social, cultural, literary, and psychological point of view -- what one might call the underbelly of World War II, that wide world beneath the myths of the "good war," the "greatest generation," and "band of brothers." Fussell, who gave World War I similar treatment in THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY, strives not so much to malign as to understand, to put events in perspective, to seek the truth through all the propaganda and distortion and cant and outright lies, to find the reality of the war.

One need not agree with all of Fussell's arguments nor share his cynicism to enjoy the book. Indeed, it's difficult to agree with such an overwrought description as "Japanese soldiers were being massacred on New Guinea and Guadalcanal." Understanding and truth-seeking require making distinctions, and there's nothing shameful in finding American troops -- despite the atrocities which they committed and which do deserve more attention -- more humane on the whole than their Japanese counterparts.

Still, WARTIME is a useful corrective to popular (and bromidic) accounts of the war that often imply that everyone marched off to war willingly and gleefully, that everyone was united in support of the war and the way it was waged, that everyone high-mindedly fought for freedom. Yes, there were heroism, courage, and nobility, but there were also nastiness, brutishness, cruelty, and dishonesty. By exposing the latter, Fussell says, we elevate the former. He concludes the book with the statement Eisenhower prepared in case the D-Day invasion failed. In it, the general takes full responsibility for the failure, a gesture Fussell calls "a bright signal in a dark time" -- a gesture that means nothing if we believe all the many millions of men in uniform would have done the same thing.

The luxury of a safe view.......2006-11-07

While Paul Fussell does an outstanding job of recreating the wartime tricks and habits that kept the war effort humming in the USA and England, he writes as if the entire war was an unnecessary, even childish distraction from more serious business. And perhaps to some extent the war was optional for America. But national survival hung in the balance for dozens of other countries, who didn't ask for the war, but once in, had to find ways to survive - an aspect of war some might find of interest. True, the war demanded that money be raised, industry retooled, soldiers schooled, workers motivated - and all quickly and without the elegance or finesse that Fussell would have preferred. So he meticulously documents the entire war effort, and especially on the home front, as puerile, incompetent, self-contradictory, fatuous, superficial. So if you want a good "anti-war" read to convince yourself that wars are stupid, this book is for you. But don't look for sympathetic insights into how countries have to cope once caught in the crossfire.

War ain't no picnic........2005-04-09

Fussell attempts to capture what it was like being a combat soldier during WW II. He stresses the horror of the real thing as compared to the heroic, sanitized version that most people like to talk about. His tone is bitter, though, and also pro-British at the expense of the American soldiers. All of this, I think, is meant to shock us, but it's so heavy-handed that it doesn't, really. Fussell is a good writer, however, and this book is well written.

Excellent .......2004-09-26

One of the best books I have read about the psychology and mindset of soldiers (or for that matter, all people). The best chapter is Chicken S***.

Fussell returns to the Second World War.......2004-04-09

I read this book for a university History class. My professor's take on the book? Not a good history, and not even an effective piece of literature. Gee, then what is it? What my professor did admire about it is that it attempted to strip away the myths romanticizing the war experience.

My own personal take on the book? Having read The Great War and Modern Memory, I had some serious doubts about whether Fussell would be capable of writing a book like Wartime adequately. He is an English professor, not a historian. The Great War and Modern Memory, indeed, was a sophisticated study on WWI literature, but as a history it was flawed. Wartime, on the other hand, is categorized only as a history. Reading the book, I indeed noted one nearly fatal flaw. Many of Fussell's observations are not referenced, and many that are are referenced to fictional works. Still, Fussell being a veteran of the war, I suppose he would have been able to pick out what in the fictional works stood out to him as real. Wartime, then, reads better as a memoir, but even that is tricky since Fussell rarely refers to himself. I have no idea what battles Fussell even fought in, though I believe he was in Europe.

The book sheds some light on what conflict was like in WWII. At least one other reviewer has said that people already had a general idea of the realities, but the fact today is that a new generation lives in an age of cruiser missiles and embedded journalism, and it's hard to think of "precision bombing" in WWII without thinking of the 1990-1 Persian Gulf and 2003-4 Iraq Wars. I respected Wartime for its blunt honesty, and for the times when it seemed like a sequel to The Great War and Modern Memory for tying general war experiences with the depelopment of war literature. Some have complained the chapter on readings in the war was tedious. In fact, I sympathized with his take on the publication Horizon, since my enjoyment of the arts is mostly limited to a similar compilation of works. I also found his despription of comic book clubs sympathetic. This is a time, after all, when fan base for Lord of the Rings is soaring.

I know that I now view the fighting in WWII in a less romantic light, more like Vietnam. The book is similar to Saving Private Ryan in that way. Other reviewers of Wartime have bashed that movie as romanticism paying lip service to war-is-horrible, but I viewed it more as a way of saying "These soldiers have sacrificed all of this for you. What are you doing to earn this?" I still think WWII was a just war (just think about an Axis victory), but it was by no means an adventure.

Average customer rating:

Wonderful ....

intriguing critique of traditional ethics; a bit vague in its positive contribution to ethics

A different way of living

Sooo Bad

very low level bs

Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (Wo Es War)
Alain Badiou
Manufacturer: Verso
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Ethics & Morality | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Good & Evil | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
History & Surveys | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Being and Event

Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Cultural Memory in the Present)

Metapolitics

Infinite Thought: Truth And The Return To Philosophy (Continuum Impacts)

The Parallax View (Short Circuits)

ASIN: 1859844359

Amazon.com

With this little black book, Alain Badiou sows the seeds of intellectual revolt in the fields of contemporary ethical theory. He argues that the bedrock of present-day ethics--the normative conception of human rights--is morally bankrupt. "It amounts to a genuine nihilism, a threatening denial of thought as such," he writes. As Badiou sees it, current ethics has been enlisted in the army of capitalist-liberalism: "The theme of ethics and of human rights is compatible with the self-satisfied egoism of the affluent West, with advertising, and with service rendered to the powers that be." In support of his startling claim, he sketches a history of ethical theory and argues that today's ethics--the traffic not only of philosophers, but of politicians and professionals--is rooted in Kantian origins and a facile understanding of evil.

Badiou proposes a positive doctrine that he calls "The Ethic of Truths," ultimately arguing that "there is no ethics in general." Instead, there are only "processes by which we treat the possibilities of a situation." The book's main failing is its length. It is simply too short to do justice to the panoply of literature on ethics or to inoculate Badiou against a host of objections that are lurking nearby. Nonetheless, his reasoning is powerful and surprising, marking some of the best writing in current European philosophy, and his credentials are impeccable. He teaches at the École normale supérieure in Paris and is author of a half dozen well-regarded books on a range of philosophical topics. --Eric de Place

Book Description

Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve ultimately to reinforce an ideology of the status quo and fail to provide a framework for an effective understanding of the concept of evil.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful ...........2006-05-20

.... just wonderful. His critique of the liberal position on difference and sameness penetrates right to the core. Badiou throws a stink-bomb into the bunker in which the smug liberal philosophers skulk, and the bomb contains the distilled essence of their own discourses. He represents a batch of new radical philosophers who have been coming on stream in the past twenty years or so, and long may it continue. Let's see how long the liberals can tolerate the stink of the barbarism that their past acts of tolerance have allowed to fester under the floorboards being wafted in their faces. As soon as they start grimacing and coughing, that's the sign that they're certainly not the ones to be informing our ethico-political lives.

intriguing critique of traditional ethics; a bit vague in its positive contribution to ethics.......2005-12-31

This is a very worthwhile text for anyone interested in ethical theory, or drawn to appeals rooted in human rights. It begins with a strong critique of the dominant strands of Western ethical theory (rights based, virtue-based and utilitarian; also deontology, though there are elements of Kantian theory that Badiou respects) -- that if nothing else should serve as a kind of gadfly to provokes theorists to reconsider the upshot of their labors. In a nutshell, Badiou's critique suggests that ethics as we know it merely serves the status quo -- whether by proposing an unrealizable "ought" or by limiting its prescriptions to what is realizable within the status quo and leaving politics and economics untouched. He argues (taking his cue from a rough approximation of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals) that what is really wrong/dangerous/weak in Western ethics is that it takes for granted the existence of evil (reality is such that there will be innocent suffering, people are such that they will inflict suffering on others in the pursuit of their own aims) and defines its good negatively as what would mitigate this evil. These theories have no positive conception of the good. His critical observations are quite powerfully stated and constitute a very reasonable challenge, that ought to be addressed.

In the positive side of his "doctrine," things get a little more muddled. It seems like he is trying to do two things: (1) formulate another ethical system that would begin from a positive conception of the good, and define evil as that which hinders or distorts that good; (2) articulate the ethical implications of his thinking regarding "events," developed elsewhere over the period of several years, and only partially clarified in this text (his master work: "Being and Event" has not yet appeared in English translation, but it will appear soon -- I can't say anything about that book though I have read a couple of other things by Badiou that have already appeared in English). The combination of these two aims is, I think, partially successful here but remains pretty vague. It is most successful (and most significant for contemporary thinking about issues like terrorism) in its description of the evils that pervert the good.

Roughly what he wants to say is that there can be no ethics within the "situation" -- this is a loose application of the is-ought distinction we find already in Hume: the situation is the world as it is, as it is understood by a present age and while this understanding gives rise to expectations and demands and limitations, it doesn't carry with it an "ethical" dimension. Ethics has to involve something more -- but since Badiou doesn't believe in a transcendent moral reality, he puts this something more into the "future," and not merely the temporal future but the radical possibility of bringing something new into the world -- the something more is the "event" that brings something new into the world, that opens up a new horizon of meaning that is irreducible to the mere situation. It makes possible relations that were not foreseen or foreseeable in the situation as it was. He mentions events like "falling in love": when someone falls in love all of a sudden we have not merely a situation but a relation between elements (two people) of the situation that in the event becomes absolute, for the lovers it is not merely a bare fact but an undeniable "truth" (a word he uses in a sense that is not well defined, but is more or less clear; it is emphatically not "truth as correspondence"). The question then becomes whether and how they will adhere to this "truth." The good, or the positive ethical "precept" for Badiou is "be faithful to the event" or "keep going, don't let this event fade, don't let it become a merely historical fact". The evil would be to either deny this truth, to be unfaithful to the lover, or alternately to treat this truth as an absolute fact -- with the possible consequence in this case that the lover terrorize his beloved, refusing to acknowledge her freedom to break away. He addresses politics (where an event would be a revolution) and science (where the event would be something like a Kuhnian paradigm shift) as other areas where events might generate a truth that can be either held to or despised.

So far, so good. There's a lot here that is worth taking seriously and thinking about. The water gets a bit murky though, in a number of places. For example, he wants to insist that the "truths" that arise from "events" are in some way universal or eternal, and what is particular is the question how the individual who finds herself compelled by the truth will live out her fidelity to that truth in the situation. It's hard to see, though, how the truth that emerges from the event of MY falling in love becomes a universal truth - unless he means something very peculiar by "universal" or unless he means that the "same" thing could happen to anyone even though it will be unique to each in the event, or that in loving another person I love what is universal, that which enables them and all human beings to be faithful to events. Some things he said suggested something like that, but other things he said make me think he'd resist such a reading. There's a lot to sort out, and I'm still not sure what to make of his positive ethic -- but it's intriguing enough and there is enough interesting material here to make me want to try and go back again and figure it out. His book on Paul makes a worthwhile companion text to this one, that helped me clear up some (but not all) of the murky areas of this text.

A different way of living .......2005-04-24

I enthusiastically reccommend this book to those that are ready to examine a another way of being in this world and for those that can move beyond narrow clingings to their safe and dominant worldviews. Badiou asks the question about our Western identity politics and ethics "how is it working out for us?!" Upon the answers that we receive: war, unsustainable environmental harm, implicit and explicit oppression, etc. Badiou offers another way of being. It concerns being faithful to a truth process- fluid, individuated, and NOT transcendent universals, morals, and ethics. The argument against ethics is that it places one person as an "other or lessor" and another as "benefactor". Example: it is the ethical thing for me (the benefactor) to help the poor (lessor/other) homeless.

Instead of "othering" poeple in our hubris that we are ethical and saintly, Badiou speaks of fidelity to a truth process. With truth as the focus and not our ethical, moral, and saintly wonderful self, transcendent evil is changed. Evil is reconceptualized as three forms: 1.being faithful to a false image of truth, 2."cheating on" your truth by giving up because of the difficulties associated with fidelity to truth, and 3. abusing the power of the truth to control others and/or amass power. What is most interesting in this book to me is the discussion of the truth process. This book is accessible yet difficult becuase it really pushes the ideas that we hold dear to accout for themselves. Well Badiou writes the book because these ideas are struturally weakened under the scrutiny. I would reccomend that upon reading you identify where you are afraid and push through the fear to follow the ideas and see where they take you. A stubbon proud mind will be frustrated with this text because it threatens one's current paradigm and they way we live in the Western world. Hope this helps you.

Sooo Bad.......2004-04-13

This book largely consists of bad reasoning and rhetorical, statetist platitudes. It has little to do with evil and a lot to do with leftover propaganda from the era of Marcuse and other peddlers of communitarian/Marxist nonsense. For a much more thorough and rational consideration of evil, ethics, and economics, read M. Berumen's Do No Evil.

very low level bs.......2003-12-16

Badiou is a joke. Ultimately his definition of Evil is that it's simply anything he wants it to be. It's like sophomores throwing the word "fascist" around. Capitalism causes every sex murder, every murder by a mother of her child. And Mao was a "genius" whose ideas have been insufficiently explored. Sure.

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