Sunday, October 2, 2011

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition

(The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2)
By: F. A. Hayek
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Date: 2007 pages: 296, PDF 16 Mb

An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production.

For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention.

The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century.

With this new edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek. The volume includes a foreword by series editor and leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and publishing history and assessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's thought. Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references and added helpful new explanatory notes.

Supplemented with an appendix of related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will be the definitive version of Friedrich Hayek's enduring masterwork.

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Sunday, September 18, 2011

Criminal Justice and Political Cultures

By: Tim Newburn, Richard Sparks
publisher: Willan
year: 2004, pdf 2.2 Mb

As crime increasingly crosses national boundaries, and international co-operation takes firmer shape, so the development of ideas and policy on the control of crime has become an increasingly international and transnational affair. These developments call attention not just to the many points of convergence in the languages and practices of crime control but also to their persistent differences.

This book is concerned both with the very specific issue of 'policy transfer' within the crime control arena, and with the issues raised by a more broadly conceptualized idea of comparative policy analysis. The contributions in the book examine the different ways in which ostensibly similar vocabularies, policies and practices are taken up and applied in the distinct settings they encounter

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Monday, September 5, 2011

The Limits of International Law

By: Jack L. Goldsmith, Eric A. Posner
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date: 2005, pages: 272, PDF 0.8 mb

International law is much debated and discussed, but poorly understood. Does international law matter, or do states regularly violate it with impunity? If international law is of no importance, then why do states devote so much energy to negotiating treaties and providing legal defenses for their actions?

In turn,
if international law does matter, why does it reflect the interests of powerful states, why does it change so often, and why are violations of international law usually not punished? In this book, Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner argue that international law matters but that it is less powerful and less significant than public officials, legal experts, and the media believe.

International law, they contend, is simply a product of states pursuing their interests on the international stage. It does not pull states towards compliance contrary to their interests, and the possibilities for what it can achieve are limited. It follows that many global problems are simply unsolvable.

The book has important implications for debates about the role of international law in the foreign policy of the United States and other nations. The authors see international law as an instrument for advancing national policy, but one that is precarious and delicate, constantly changing in unpredictable ways based on non-legal changes in international politics. They believe that efforts to replace international politics with international law rest on unjustified optimism about international law's past accomplishments and present

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Saturday, September 3, 2011

Barack Obama, The Aloha Zen President

by: Michael Haas
publisher: Praeger
year: 2011, pages: 461

How a Son of the 50th State May Revitalize America Based on 12 Multicultural Principles
Obama's aspiration to transform the United States using Hawai`i as his model has been a conspicuous theme in his books and speeches over the years. In them, he extols Hawai`i's multicultural ethos, describing how a normative, problem-solving mindset predicated on mutual respect and harmonious interchange is inculcated in the culture, politics, and society of the Islands.

Indeed, this "Aloha Spirit" is imbued in Barack Obama, is part of what made him irresistibly charismatic as a candidate, and explains why voters in 2010 were baffled at his demeanor after he became the 44th President of the United States.This unique book examines Obama's decisions as an adult and as president and exposes how they are directly linked to the culture of Hawai`i and Obama's multicultural life as a child.

The author and contributors also describe the ways in which native Hawaiians were dispossessed of their sovereignty and their land, how they steadfastly sought justice, and how their quest served as a model for Obama's mobilization of support for his candidacy.

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Mark R. Levin : Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

By Mark R. Levin
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2009-03-24
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1416562850
File Size : 1.8 Mb
File Type : Rar'd PDF

Description: Conservative talk radio's fastest-growing superstar is also a New York Times bestselling phenomenon: the author of the groundbreaking critique of the Supreme Court, Men in Black, and the deeply personal dog lover's memoir Rescuing Sprite, Mark R. Levin now delivers the book that characterizes both his devotion to his more than 5 million listeners and his love of our country and the legacy of our Founding Fathers: Liberty and Tyranny is Mark R.
Levin's clarion call to conservative America, a new manifesto for the conservative movement for the 21st century.

In the face of the modern liberal assault on Constitution-based values, an attack that has steadily snowballed since President Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s and resulted in a federal government that is a massive, unaccountable conglomerate, the time for re-enforcing the intellectual and practical case for conservatism is now. Conservative beliefs in individual freedoms do in the end stand for liberty for all Americans, while liberal dictates lead to the breakdown of civilized society -- in short, tyranny. Looking back to look to the future, Levin writes "conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are our founding principles." And in a series of powerful essays, Levin lays out how conservatives can counter the liberal corrosion that has filtered into every timely issue affecting our daily lives, from the economy to health care, global warming, immigration, and more -- and illustrates how change, as seen through the conservative lens, is always prudent, and always an enhancement to individual freedom.

As provocative, well-reasoned, robust, and informed as his on-air commentary, Levin's narrative will galvanize readers to begin a new era in conservative thinking and action. Liberty and Tyranny provides a philosophical, historical, and practical framework for revitalizing the conservative vision and ensuring the preservation of American society.

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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

By Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2000-02
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0316316962
File Size : 1 MB Type : PDF

Product Description:
The Tipping Point is that magical moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshhold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a sick individual in a crowded store can start can epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend or the popularity of a new restaurant to take off overnightor crime or drug use to taper off. Gladwell has explored this theory to great acclaim in several articles in The New Yorker.

Here, he shows how very minor adjustments in products and ideas can make them more likely to become hugely popular. He reveals how east it is to cause group behaviour to tip in a desirable direction by making small changes in our immediate environment. The Tipping Point contains a profoundly hopeful idea that people will embrace for its sense and simplicity: one imaginative person, applying a well-placed lever, can move the world. Examples are recognizable: in the New York subways, removing graffiti caused a dramatic reduction in crime; a specific hip group of teenagers wore Hush Puppies and suddenly sparked a national craze. This is a book that should be read by everyone in business, politics, marketing, advertising, and anyone interested in trends, fashion, fads, policy making, and human behaviour. In other words, all of us.

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Thursday, December 30, 2010

English and the Discourses of Colonialism By Alast Pennycook

Routledge Politics of Language Series
By Alast Pennycook
Publisher: Routledge
Pages: 240, ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0415178487
zip pdf 4.1 MB

Description:
Challenging and provocative, English and the Discourses of Colonialism looks at the English language and its colonial legacy. Through detailed analysis, Alastair Pennycook reveals how colonial practice permeated the discourses of both the colonial and colonized cultures, leaving lasting marks still evident today.

He explores the extent to which English is, as commonly assumed, a language of neutrality and global communication, and to what extent it is, by contrast, a language laden with meanings, still weighed down by its colonial past.

Travel writing, newspaper articles and popular books on English are all referred to, as well as personal experiences and interviews with learners of English in India, Malaysia, China and Australia. Pennycook concludes with an appeal to postcolonial writing as a means of creating a politics of opposition and rupture.

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Thursday, October 21, 2010

Obama's WARS

By Bob Woodward
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 464, Date: 2010-09-27, ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1439172498
Epub File 4.1 mb

Description:
In Obama's Wars, Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells the inside story of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret campaign in Pakistan and the worldwide fight against terrorism.

At the core of Obama's Wars is the unsettled division between the civilian leadership in the White House and the United States military as the president is thwarted in his efforts to craft an exit plan for the Afghanistan War.
"So what's my option?" the president asked his war cabinet, seeking alternatives to the Afghanistan commander's request for 40,000 more troops in late 2009. "You have essentially given me one option.... It's unacceptable."

"Well," Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates finally said, "Mr. President, I think we owe you that option."
It never came. An untamed Vice President Joe Biden pushes relentlessly to limit the military mission and avoid another Vietnam. The vice president frantically sent half a dozen handwritten memos by secure fax to Obama on the eve of the final troop decision.

President Obama's ordering a surge of 30,000 troops and pledging to start withdrawing U.S. forces by July 2011 did not end the skirmishing. General David Petraeus, the new Afghanistan commander, thinks time can be added to the clock if he shows progress. "I don't think you win this war," Petraeus said privately. "This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

Hovering over this debate is the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States. The White House led a secret exercise showing how unprepared the government is if terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in an American city--which Obama told Woodward is at the top of the list of what he worries about all the time.

Verbatim quotes from secret debates and White House strategy sessions--and firsthand accounts of the thoughts and concerns of the president, his war council and his generals--reveal a government in conflict, often consumed with nasty infighting and fundamental disputes.
Woodward has discovered how the Obama White House really works, showing that even more tough decisions lie ahead for the cerebral and engaged president.
Obama's Wars offers the reader a stunning, you-are-there account of the president, his White House aides, military leaders, diplomats and intelligence chiefs in this time of turmoil and danger.

From the Washington Post
By Steve Luxenberg, September 22, 2010:
President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in Obama's Wars.
According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

"This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room."

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