Book Description
Princess Margaret was not like the other royals. A free spirit, she broke away from the conventions that others imposed upon her and lived a life that has seemed to some scandalous, to others liberating. It was Margaret who had an illicit love affair with jazz musician Robin Douglas-Home, and letters from that relationship are reprinted here. When Douglas-Home was rejected by Margaret, he killed himself and was replaced by another lover. It is stories such as this, revealed in this book, that paint a portrait of one of the most secretive members of Britain's royal family.
Customer Reviews:
Not bad..........2005-06-14
Not great, but not bad. A nice easy read, this is unfortunately a one-sided portrait of an otherwise complex interesting character, focusing mostly on her romantic controversies. I would have liked to know a bit more about all of her, her hobbies, daily routines, relationship with other Royals. I was also disappointed at the photographs, whole pages of her lovers! I would have liked to see her homes, her clothes, and her beautiful wedding. Not a disappointment by any means but this could have been a richer read than as it stands.
A portrait lacking insight.......2002-04-28
I hesitated in deciding to review this book. Is it worth drawing the public's attention to a book that is, at best, descriptive journalism which promises more than it delivers? Only after reading the book did I acquaint myself with the author's journalistic reputation which helped explain some of my original disappointment with the book. As an academic, I cannot recommend this book to any serious reader interested in matters concerning the Windsor family. The book lacks proper endnotes and citations. Botham rarely identifies his sources but chooses convincing descriptive labels that suggest authoritative individuals with first hand knowledge. I am disappointed in Botham's "soap opera" treatment of a topic that is of genuine interest to many in the British Commonwealth. In short, save your money!
Amazon.com
Byron Nelson fired off one of sport's amazing runs in 1945 when he won 14 consecutive tournaments, 18 on the year. Throughout his career, he kept a statistical record, which is partially reproduced in facsimile in The Little Black Book. More valuable, however, are the commentaries and little lessons Lord Byron has added. Like most golf wisdom, much of it is obvious, but when a voice from the pantheon counsels that his way of playing was "Keep it straight, keep it safe," mere mortals would be foolish not to listen.
Book Description
A look at the game of golf through the eyes of one of its immortal figures.
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Thrillers: Seven Decades of Classic Film Suspense
John McCarty
Manufacturer: Carol Publishing Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 080651339X |
Book Description
Spliffs (the Jamaican word for joints) is more than just a book about marijuana (cannabis) and getting high. It's a celebratory trip that explores the versatility of cannabis and the profound influenceit has had on cultures throughout history. Special sections are devoted to the influence of marijuana on music, movies, media, and literary and comic book culture. Features include profiles of famous users, as well as a primer on the varieties of hash and grass, on how to roll functional and decorative joints, pot paraphernalia, recipes for cooking with herb, and a guide to Amsterdam's most famous coffeeshops. Fully illustrated with full-color photographs and drawings throughout.
Customer Reviews:
Joker, Smoker, Midnight Toker.......2006-02-11
Spliffs is written in british english so some of the slang may not make sense but don't let that sway you this is a great book. Including practically anything you ever wanted to know about marijuana and the delicate art of rolling spliffs (or joints). First read up on you marijuana history and learn things you never knew about your favorite smokable. Next take a look at an incredable collection of buds and hash from all around the world. Now after you clean up the puddle of drool at your feet you can experiment with some extraordinary joint rolling techniques. Although these can often be very time consuming they will make you the center of attention and get you way way way too stoned. You wont put the book down, that is untill your muscles have tensed up from excessive toking.
Everything that a smoker of marijuana could ask for. Buy it for your friends, your roommates, your boss or yourself. You wont regret it.
All heads should get this!.......2005-10-22
I got this book in a clothing store at the local mall, thought it looked like it would be fun to flip through when i'm... umm, spliffed. Great book, better than i had even hoped for. The history is very well done, and i would say its much more fun to look through than say, my copy of the Cannabible. With all the colors and pictures, its definately great to read under the influence, or even sober! Would reccomend to anyone.
Great book! .......2004-11-07
very informative and touches on a wide variety of subjects-all related to the joys of marijuana! Woderful pictures, great coffee table book-just put it away before mom and dad come over! Highly reccomend!
Average customer rating:
- Badly in need of an editor
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A Brit Of Trivia: Now That's Trivia
Mark Harrison
Manufacturer: iUniverse, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0595381405 |
Book Description
A Brit Of Trivia is the answer to every trivia lovers dream! Whether you want to make your own entertainment at home or maybe pass the time on your way to a trip, here is a unique book which includes mystery objects, mystery eyes, mystery puzzles, name that person, state capital maps, name that year, tie breakers, true or false and over 1000 other questions. Test your intellect if you dare and enjoy this fun and exciting trivia with a twist book.
Customer Reviews:
Badly in need of an editor.......2007-02-09
I like trivia, but this book is so badly constructed I can't enjoy it. It consists mostly of quiz sets of 21 questions each. Inexplicably, question #15 in every quiz is labeled a "Tiebreaker."
There's hardly a single page that's free of punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, typos, capitalization errors, grammatical errors, and just plain odd wording. There are some factual errors too, which makes me question how well the author checked his facts.
Example: He calls Def Leppard "Death Leopard" instead. Sheryl Crow becomes Sherly Crow.
Example: "All of these writers are known for their horror stories except A) Frank Barum B) Bram Stoker C) H.P Lovecraft" The answer: "A) Frank Barum he was author of children's books Oz books" Never mind the strange wording, it was L. Frank Baum who wrote the Oz books.
Example: "Butch Cassidy or Jesse James who's real name was Robert Leroy Parker"
Example: "Horse racing how many furlong in a mile."
Book Description
A comprehensive, step-by-step guide to grant writing
Webster's New World Grant Writing Handbook walks readers through every step of the grant writing process-from defining the project and getting and interpreting a foundation's guidelines to submitting and following up on the grant application. With clear, concise explanations, thorough coverage, illustrative examples, and expert advice, this helpful, complete resource gives grant writers all the information and guidance they need to succeed.
Sara Deming Wason (Syracuse, NY) holds a master's degree in nonprofit management from Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Wason has over 20 years' experience in nonprofit administration, including the last 10 years in higher education development. She is currently Executive Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Syracuse University where she is responsible for corporate foundation fundraising.
Download Description
P>A comprehensive, step-by-step guide to grant writing
Webster's New World Grant Writing Handbook walks readers through every step of the grant writing process-from defining the project and getting and interpreting a foundation's guidelines to submitting and following up on the grant application. With clear, concise explanations, thorough coverage, illustrative examples, and expert advice, this helpful, complete resource gives grant writers all the information and guidance they need to succeed.
Sara Deming Wason (Syracuse, NY) holds a master's degree in nonprofit management from Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Wason has over 20 years' experience in nonprofit administration, including the last 10 years in higher education development. She is currently Executive Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Syracuse University where she is responsible for corporate foundation fundraising.
Customer Reviews:
Helpful Grant Writing Handbook.......2007-03-09
I bought this book for a class and had never written a grant before. I also knew absolutely nothing about the world of grant writing. Because of this book, I was able to produce a quality grant. Wason's instructions are clear and easy to follow. The examples provided offer good examples of what to do. It would have been nice to see examples of what not to do as well.
Book Description
Set during the French and American wars, Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is a true story about an orphan, Quang Van Nguyen, who is adopted by a sixty-four year old monk, Thau, who carries great responsibility for his people as a barefoot doctor. Thau manages, against all odds to raise his son to follow in his footsteps and in doing so, saves his son, as well as a part of Vietnam's esoteric knowledge from the Vietnam holocaust. Thau is wanted by the French regime, and occasionally must flee into the jungle, where he is perfectly at home living among the animals. Thau is not the average monk; he practices an ancient lineage of Chinese medicine and uses magic to protect animals and help people.As wise and resourceful as Thau is, he meets his match in his mischievous son. Quang is more interested in learning Cambodian sorcery and martial arts than in developing his skills and wisdom according to his father's plan.Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is an odyssey of a single-father folk hero and his foundling son in a land ravaged by the atrocities of war. It is a classic story, complete with humor, tragedy, and insight from a country where ghosts and magic are real.
Customer Reviews:
A Long Dreamy Walk.......2007-05-17
The incredible story of a young man's life journey through the war-torn jungles of Viet Nam and Cambodia, learning from individuals who carry on their healing traditions amid chaos and change. The main character speaks to us as a child, in the "now", accepting every experience for what it is. His adventures, miracles and sorrows,are full of brilliant visions, taking you on a trip lit all the way by his magic "Shrew Stone". You will never forget it.
The best autobiography for my field!.......2007-03-01
So I'm a student in acupuncture as well a Vietnamese-American and this book hit home.
Alchemy, magic, spells, spirits, and monsters (to name a few), are all found in this book.
It's definitely a story that gave me goosebumps because of the fact that many or the supernatural stories are that in which my parents told me growing up. Also, if you're into acupunture/om you'll love this book for he gives a lot of insight to different ailments and Tx for them.
I think Dr. Quang Van Nguyen is a special person and Marjorie Pivar is generous to help him explain his story.
One of my top 5 books ever read.
Medicine for Body, Heart and Spirit.......2007-01-29
Fourth Uncle in the Mountain -- A Memoir of a Barefoot Doctor in Vietnam reveals a world that has all but disappeared in most of Asia, a world where Buddhas, earth spirits and shamans are as real as the food you eat and the bed you sleep in. The book itself opens in a trance, where Quang addresses the "flesh-eating sun" and makes the clouds "bang into each another." When I lived in Taiwan 25 years ago I had watched the shamans invite the earth god into their bodies, swallow ash, moan, jerk, swoon and beat themselves with red maces, write holy charms, and spray the afflicted with cascades of tea and saliva as fine as an evening mist. I was an outsider looking in. Quang's book, however, helps me see and understand what the shamans see. He writes from the perspective of an insider looking out, where it is the outer and not the inner world that is out of balance.
The imagery in this book is rich and yet the writing is clear and light. Arranged into short chapters, each story unfolds, offering at times distant and at others close, a perspective on the many people key in Quang's life. Their stories weave in and out of one another, each carrying his or her own yin and yang of energy. As one of the other reviewers commented, it is a pity that the Vietnamese names were transposed into American name order as this makes it harder to recognize and remember the identities of the personalities. Also, some of the Vietnamese terms were mispelled. However, these are issues that can easily be corrected in future editions of the work. What Nguyen Van Quang and his co-author Marjorie Pivar should be remembered for is their tireless devotion to revealing with loving detail the flowers, fruits, flavors, and fauna that make Vietnamese life so distinctive. These are the things that their "translation" of events make so alive and captivating.
Like the sweet smell of sandalwood incense, the story of Nguyen Van Quang's life transports the reader to that point in time and space where the spiritual and the material converge. In scene after scene he introduces the people who have changed his life. One after another he takes the reader to caves, temples, and street fairs to meet those that dwell within -- his adopted father, a Buddhist monk, who finds him as an infant abandoned in a basket on market day; Tiger, the truck driver who can outwit his competitors but not his own heart; Tattoo, the martial arts master who secretly teaches Quang the occult arts; and, many others, some that you will get to know but never quite "see."
This book is not just a well told collection of the remarkable characters in Quang's life. I have just returned from my third trip to Vietnam and Quang's quiet characterizations of the political legacies that constrain and drive Vietnam's modern life ring true. Chapter by chapter Quang takes you through the evolution of Vietnam's culture and drawing nearer and nearer, he reveals the sounds of that other world, the world of the dominating Chinese, the departing French, the opportunist Viet Minh, the conniving Viet Cong, the now-you-see-them-and-now-you-don't obliviousness of the American troops, and, the self serving fatuousness of the politicians of the South. Towards the end, as Khmer Rouge guerrillas terrorize the countryside and party politicians in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) neglect the very regions they had fought to liberate, Quang still hangs on. Despite the decades of war and centuries of foreign agression, he tells of another reality, where in his village near the Cambodian border Cambodians, Chinese, and Vietnamese trade, mingle, and marry one another, and how nearly all help each other, saving lives and suffering death together.
Quang's book is one that compels the reader to wonder what is more important in life and what is really real. Wile Quang seeks true realization in a cave apart from others, the outer world is lost in a cave of its own. He also reveals the rich world of Vietnamese spiritual and religious life, a world that values individual cultivation but for the benefit of society as a whole. As he grows older, Quang realizes that he can no longer live just in his small world of tigers, tunnels and charms, but go forth into the world of human relationships -- to meet the strong women and men of today who will become the Buddhas and memories that the shamans of the future world will call upon to guide, strengthen and heal.
If you want to understand Asian spiritual values, discover Asian history, or enjoy the tale of a life well lived, by all means read this book. This truly is one of those rare opportunities to view life not as an observer, but as a participant. Quang and Marjorie will truly take you down a path for which there is no map but for which there surely is a light.
Magical and Fascinating.......2006-11-14
I came across this book by pure chance. I didn't buy it for the Buddhism or medicine interest. I bought it because it piqued my interest. This book is fascinating and I could hardly put it down. I was reading the biography of a true sorcerer. I loved it.
My only downside to this book I did notice a few small contridictions in the text.
Esoteric Masterpiece.......2006-04-25
Old Asia hands, students of the Buddha, vets with old but vivid memories, practicioners who seek to heal both the body and the spirit...all will find familiar places, feelings, experiences in the pages of "Fourth Uncle in the Mountain." Vietnam is the most seductive and visceral place on earth. There, rarley is anything the way that is seems...the bizarre and uncanny are everywhere...irony is commonplace...and the spiritual world, though unseen, is omnipresent. Bac Si Quang knows...although he is in Vermont, his hands will guide me when I tend to the sick in Danang. With a bit of language practice and some Vietamese fonts, she will doubtless become the Umberto Eco of Southeast Asia.
Average customer rating:
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The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Intellectual Complex
Ron Theodore Robin
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
1945 - Present
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ASIN: 0691114552 |
Book Description
At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government enlisted the aid of a select group of psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists to blueprint enemy behavior. Not only did these academics bring sophisticated concepts to what became a project of demonizing communist societies, but they influenced decision-making in the map rooms, prison camps, and battlefields of the Korean War and in Vietnam. With verve and insight, Ron Robin tells the intriguing story of the rise of behavioral scientists in government and how their potentially dangerous, "American" assumptions about human behavior would shape U.S. views of domestic disturbances and insurgencies in Third World countries for decades to come.
Based at government-funded think tanks, the experts devised provocative solutions for key Cold War dilemmas, including psychological warfare projects, negotiation strategies during the Korean armistice, and morale studies in the Vietnam era. Robin examines factors that shaped the scientists' thinking and explores their psycho-cultural and rational choice explanations for enemy behavior. He reveals how the academics' intolerance for complexity ultimately reduced the nation's adversaries to borderline psychotics, ignored revolutionary social shifts in post-World War II Asia, and promoted the notion of a maniacal threat facing the United States.
Putting the issue of scientific validity aside, Robin presents the first extensive analysis of the intellectual underpinnings of Cold War behavioral sciences in a book that will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the era and its legacy.
Customer Reviews:
How the West won.......2003-07-20
More than an overview of the best university and think tank efforts to help American policy makers turn the Cold War into a propaganda battle that the West could win, THE MAKING OF THE COLD WAR ENEMY by Ron Robin (Princeton University Press, 2001) almost captures the perversity of the times in which World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam were not quite what everybody was expecting to happen next, but close enough to fit into the conceptual framework that explains how narcissism was the greatest enemy against which governments and the social planners on every side were sure to end up offending someone. Typical of the thinkers included, Thomas Schelling is given credit for maintaining a single idea. "Whether analyzing the strategies of America's global adversaries, domestic economic developments, or social trends at home and abroad, Schelling identified monopoly--economic, political, or ideological--as the source of all evil." (p. 39).
Don Quixote does not appear in the index of this book. Karl Marx isn't there, either, or any philosopher who might be associated with the concept, "end of ideology," which is an entry in the index and is discussed at several places in the book. After World War II, the shift in psychological warfare was not much, because "the task of the efficient psychological warrior was to devise a mechanism for circumventing the repressive devices of modern civilization in general and military life in particular in order to tap into the individual's natural state of narcissism. The exploitation of socially subversive primal drives was the main, if not the only, task of efficient psychological warfare." (p. 96). I was surprised that a journal article by Edward Shils, "The End of Ideology?" in 1955 was "credited with coining the phrase `end of ideology,' " (p. 130) in those contexts where "political rhetoric was of little significance." (p. 130).
There is a single entry in the index for Henry Kissinger, due merely to a comment he made for a New York Times article on reactions to the book, REPORT FROM IRON MOUNTAIN. "A chagrined Herman Kahn dismissed the report as `very bad satire,' while Henry Kissinger diagnosed the author as `an idiot.' " (p. 229). The seven pages of the index do not fully reflect the number of times that some names appear in the book. I'm not actually sure if the name, Don Quixote, appears in the book, but I know that other names in the book have prompted me to check the index, only to wonder if the author, a Professor of History at Haifa University in Israel, has a habit of referring offhandedly to characters of books, television shows, or movies, as President Ronald Reagan frequently did, which are just as fictitious as Don Quixote.
One name in the index, Carl Pletsch, is of an author whom I have slighted far more than he ever slighted me, and in 1981 he wrote a journal article, "The Three Worlds, or the Division of Social Scientific Labor, circa 1950-1975" which is covered by this book. "As historian Carl Pletsch has observed, modernization theorists approached the competing socialist bloc as a proto-modern development, encumbered temporarily by an ideology preventing its `efficient and natural' development. By contrast, the free world appeared to be at a higher evolutionary stage, `guided by invisible hands' and supposedly developing `without ideological prescription or management.' The assumption of `the more natural' developmental stage of capitalist democracies implied that the socialist world, once freed from the transitory encumbrance of ideological chains, would `slowly but surely approximate the free world.' " (pp. 32-33).
DON QUIXOTE is much longer than this book, but the form of suspense maintained by its author, Cervantes, in those episodes in which a great adventure was about to be told, but the narrative included so much detail that countless pages needed to be turned before the events of great renown could be fully disclosed, was frequently on my mind as I plowed through minor matters about behavioral science, opinion leaders, and political elites which became the epitome of perversity as long as Vietnam was an active issue in American politics or history. The tenth chapter was the goal of this quixotic quest, "Paradigm Lost: The Project Camelot Affair," on pages 206-225 would bring about "Extensive disenchantment with modernization as dominant theory and the demise of Project Camelot as exemplary praxis." (p. 224). The big excitement in the middle of the book is like a game theory applied to the negotiation of the armistice for the Korean War.
Key figures in the book include Harold Lasswell, who is mentioned far more frequently than merely for the six topics which cover the pages for his name in the index, Nathan Leites, whose listings include brainwashing, counter-insurgency, nuclear strategy, operational codes, and Vietcong psychological warfare, and Herbert Goldhamer, who is introduced on page 124 as a Rand Corporation author of Korean memoirs, who, "By late August 1951, he had assumed the unofficial position of coach and confidant at the armistice talks. His active participation in the negotiations during the fall of 1951 removed the stigma of irrelevance from Rand's social science division and thrust this hitherto marginal unit into the eye of the storm." (pp. 124-125). Warren Zevon once released a rock 'n' roll album called "The Envoy" in 1982, about 30 years after those negotiations, and this was my first opportunity to see if the intellectual involvement in the process was more exciting than the songs on that album. This book depends on the idea, "that communist elites were orthodox followers of a `secular religion.' As faithful followers they adhered rigidly to dogma" (p. 133) which was not quite as exciting as "Upon joining the team of armistice negotiators, Goldhamer distributed copies of THE OPERATIONAL CODE." (P. 134). " `Compromise' did not appear in the index." (p. 135). "They were communist clones of their Russian Bolshevik benefactors." (p. 135). There's one that America's rebels won't go on believing forever.
Customer Reviews:
Shell Game Morality.......2006-06-05
Cruelty is surely the dominant feature of the Arab world today. Cruelty marked by a nonchalant propensity for deadly violence, drawn out with frightful persecution, fed by nationalist fervor, and culminating in the cold embrace of death. What should be the reaction of the Arab intellectual elites? Surely something other than what the Arabist solidarity actually requires, which is silence. The silence is cruelty itself, denying the sufferings of other humans and the rights of those other humans the openly acknowledge their sufferings, secure in the knowledge that however much the Arab suffers at his brother's hand, the unity of Arabs against the rest of the world is inviolate. This is the central thesis of Cruelty and Silence, the well-named work by Iraqi Shiite dissident Kanan Makiya.
Makiya has chosen to break the work into two sections, titled, appropriately enough, Cruelty and Silence. In Cruelty, Makiya takes a mixed approach of interviews and personal testimony that are combined with narrative commentary on the issues of violence in Iraq today (or rather, in the mid 90's). In this section virtually all the stories are about Iraq, whether it be the invasion of Kuwait, the gassing of Kurds, the post-Gulf War uprising, or the general oppression of the Iraqi gulags as witnessed by random citizens. When he makes an aside about other Arab states or about Israel, it is only as a point of minor comparison. The stories the reader sees are graphic enough in their telling. In page after page we see how, not why, but how a human being can reject humane morality in favor of the most vicious and sadistic or dismissive mind-sets one can create. If there is one additional theme here, it is found in the repentant perpetrator - the regretful prison guard or the apologetic occupying soldier. On these rest Makiya's hopes that something can be salvaged from Arab society.
In Silence Makiya turns inward and intellectual. Gone are the case stories and present are the writings of the Arab intellectuals who remain so wordless on the butcheries of Arab strongmen like Saddam Hussein so long as such men can allow the Arab world to face down the West. Here is where Makiya's own voice is more clearly heard, sometimes for better and sometimes not. Most puzzling is his notion of criticizing Arab silence in favor of nationalism by citing numerous (and dubious) instances of Israeli abuse of Palestinians. One or two can be simply a point of comparison, but the accounts peppered in these sections seem only to detract from what seems to be intended as a focused work. On the subject of nationalism and Arabism, Makiya writes forcefully and with many examples, but by his own admission avoids the question of how things came to be as they are. In doing so, the honest reader can wonder how well-founded Makiya's central assertions are. Though he says nothing that readers familiar with some aspects of Middle-Eastern history won't recognize as consistent, it does tend to reduce the overall value of Cruelty and Silence to that of a snapshot. Makiya's voice is engaging here, but does it say as much new as is intended? This I cannot say.
Frightening, prescient study of Iraq under Saddam.......2005-12-27
Makiya achieves two goals in this 1993 book: he details the "rising curve of cruetly" in Iraq under the rule of Saddam Husein and more broadly throughout the Arab world, and he castigates Arab intellectuals for their silence on this topic.
Even though it is 13 years old, this book is highly relevant today for people trying to understand the middle east. Makiya warns that "Sunni-Shi'i hatred is today [in 1993] the most virulent potential source of new violence," thus accurately predicting Iraq's current quandry. Iraq's Sunni minority will "fight to the bitter end before allowing anything that so much as smells of an Islamic reupblic to be established in Iraq. They see in such a state -- whether rightly or wrongly is irrelevant -- their own annihilation." I wonder if the Bush administration was aware of this viewpoint as it planned the invasion of Iraq.
The book tackles the topic of cruetly through several first-person accounts, including a survivor of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, an Iraqi arrested and interrogated by the secret police, and Kurdish witnesses to chemical attacks and mass deportations and shootings. The reader learns about the anarchy of the intifada, the brief and unsuccessful uprising against Saddam in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, where rebels resorted to wanton vengence-killing, and the returning security forces were paid cash bonuses for killing Shi'i males. Based on documents captured by Kurdish fighters, Makiya analyzes the efforts of the Iraqi regime to eliminate the Kurdish independence movement as a threat to B'athist hegemony, an operation code-named "Al-Anfal," a reference from the Koran to parceling out the spoils of war, which appears to have involved the razing of thousands of villages, as well as the killing of 100,000 non-combatants. The author also touches on violence against women, a widespread problem in the mid-east, and apparently a tactic that the Iraqi regime institutionalized as a strategy for dishonoring entire families.
On their own, these stories are chilling, just like other historical accounts of terror and genocide. They are even more disturbing when one stops to consider the implications for peace and prosperity in the middle east today. Makiya notes that the "terrible force of memory...tends always to sow dragons' teeth in the shape of the children and survivors of the dead," and he warns that the legacy of Saddam Husain for Iraq may be a continuation of violence, terror, cruelty, and silence.
In the second part of the book, Makiya takes Arab intellectuals to task for their support of Saddam during the Gulf War and for their wilful ignoring of the violence and terror that characterized his regime and that are all too prevalent throughout the middle east. Ideologies based on cultural nationalism, which ignore the importance of human rights, are "morally bankrupt," in Makiya's view. I found his arguments persuasive, although to be fair I have not read the writings of those he criticizes.
Important Book.......2004-06-24
Makiya is not a Zionist or a Neo-Con, so it's hard for the Manichean anti-Americans to demonize his evidence and arguments against the totalitarian-drooling status quo in the Middle East. In the first half off the book, he relays heart-breaking anecdotes about sons unable to kiss their dying mothers after a chemical attack, children raped in front of their parents, prisoners forced to drink gasoline and shot so that they would explode, children surviving mass grave shooting, all in that "noble" Arab Gov't known as Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
The second half of the book is a scathing indictment of the Edward Saids and Noam Chomskys of the world who rationalize the inhumanity all too prevalent in the Mid-East, specifically in Iraq, "Saddam was a victim, The U.S. is worse, Saddam's strong!" and all that junk. Because Makiya isn't a GOP Zionist, these criticisms are particularly strong and persuasive. The book is a much needed call on the part of Arabs and Muslims to adopt a Liberty-based morality instead of a relativistic, ethnic allegience based morality. A good book for all to read.
Now it's our turn to prove we believe our own words........2003-11-04
Now that the American government is controlling Saddam's infamous Abu Ghraib/Ghurayb prison, the site of many atrocities like those described in Cruelty and Silence, we owe it to ourselves to study the crimes against humanity that were perpetrated there. Arguments about whether the old death chamber should be destroyed or maintained for future generations go without much notice in the United States, as do the reports of ongoing investigations to insure we follow legal guidelines in handling the prisoners we now hold at Abu Ghraib. We owe it to ourselves to operate this facility in a manner which testifies to our philosophy and way of life. And when we question ourselves, the cause in Iraq, the price we pay, the chances of success, we should understand the nature of the vicious regime which created the dysfunctional and factionalized Iraqi society we see today. Cruelty and Silence helps us develop a long-term perspective to the challenges ahead.
A witness to horror and courage.......2003-10-24
This is one of the best books I have read all year. Ten years old, it is still agonisingly relevant. In its bearing witness to human cruelty, human indifference but also human courage, it is as unflinching, as passionate and as magnificent as the works of Primo Levi. Beautifully written, meticulously observed, focussed on people, not abstractions, it is a book that haunts me and will continue to do so for a long time to come. If you have any doubts at all about the rightness of invading Iraq, read this book. There will be no doubts left, only a terrible regret that the ousting of the Saddam regime was not done long, long ago.
Customer Reviews:
A Cautionary Tale about the Effect of Pesticides on Humans.......2002-10-06
A retired lawyer has his house treated for termites with Dursban... and develops Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. This well-written book describes his deteriorating condition, his lawsuit to get compensation, and his fight to get his condition recognized as more than psychosomatic. It also is a cautionary tale for the rest of us -- what is the ultimate effect of all the pesticides and chemicals used in our environment? If they're deadly for insects... could they harm humans?
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Books Index
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