Amazon.com
In April 1994, South Africa held its first ever democratic elections, ushering Nelson Mandela into office as the nation's first black president. What has followed that election, as the country attempts to reinvent a society founded on racism and the indignities of apartheid, is the subject of Fault Lines. "How does a nation deal with the memory of its brutal past?" is perhaps the question that most guides David Goodman, a journalist and longtime observer of South African life. Like the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, the political instrument of South Africa's struggle to come to terms with apartheid-era crimes, the strength of Fault Lines rests on an unflinching yet compassionate quest for truth. Goodman brings all his investigative skills to the task of getting an answer from all sides. He juxtaposes profiles of a victim of police brutality and the former security officer who helped torture him, or a well-off Afrikaner farmer and his neighbor, a black South African forcibly removed from his land. While formal apartheid has ended, Goodman finds "an unfinished revolution," with many citizens still mired in terrible economic and social injustice. Fault Lines is fascinating, if disturbing, reading for anyone interested in understanding the history and present of what the author calls "the most exciting country in the world." --Maria Dolan
Book Description
South Africa has experienced one of the world's most dramatic political transformations. David Goodman, a journalist and activist who has witnessed South Africa's struggles since the darkest days of apartheid, chronicles the historic transition from apartheid to democracy. This compelling story is told through the lives of four pairs of South Africans who have experienced apartheid from opposite sides of the racial and political divide. Taken together, these profiles provide the first in-depth look at the social dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa.
Part social history and part personal drama, Fault Lines is an account of what happens to real people when their country is reinvented around them. The struggle to reconcile past evils is captured in the stories of a former police assassin and his intended victim. The rise and fall of South African racism is portrayed through the lives of the late Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd--the notorious "architect of apartheid"--and his grandson, now a member of the ruling African National Congress. The battle to break out of poverty is detailed in the story of two black women: one an impoverished domestic worker and new city councilor, the other a Mercedes-driving member of South Africa's new black elite. The struggle for the land is told through the eyes of two neighbors: a black farmer who was evicted from his lands in the 1980s and has returned to start over, and a conservative white farmer who participated in the eviction and now does business with the man whose life he nearly destroyed. These powerful stories are accompanied by the photography of award-winning South African documentary photographer Paul Weinberg.
Customer Reviews:
Views from both sides.......2004-01-22
Goodman has compiled a great book here with views on important events in South African history. These events are examined with narratives from both sides, white and black. The aftermath of each event is traced as well.
Well-written, but not exactly as advertised.......2002-12-14
I originally bought this book because it was published about five years after Apartheid's official demise and promised to be about "the New South Africa." There aren't many stories that come out of that country these days and it is difficult finding real information about the transition to full democracy. Regretfully, this book adds little to the quest for answers about South Africa's future.
The author does a good job of interviewing various segments of South African society, but nearly 75% of the book focuses on Apartheid, which has been effectively dead since 1990. This book has the same feel as the many dozens of others that were written prior to Mandela's election. Technically the author is conducting the interviews post-Apartheid, but the reliance is on the old ghosts of the past to excuse tacit failure.
Perhaps most frustrating are the slight clues dropped along the way that hint at corruption and crime, two areas most indicative of national direction (especially in Africa), although the author never indulges us with detail. This is unfortunate because a lot of effort was spent to put together a book that gives precious little insight into whether South Africa will wind up as another Zimbabwe, or if the continent's last great hope will manage to retain its economy and pull up its neighbors as many of us were so hopeful of in 1990.
An excellent introduction to present-day South Africa.......1999-05-23
I first heard about this book on a radio talk show and immediately ordered it through Amazon.com. Listening to the author talk about his views on South Africa was quite interesting because he loves the country and its people and is cautiously enthusiastic about its future, but reading his book reveals that the vast problems South Africa faces are incredibly complex and that it may well take several generations to create an egalitarian society. One really wonders if South Africa will stand the test of time and not become another Rwanda or Yugoslavia.
The author intelligently divided the book into four parts: an introduction in which he talks about his early trips in South Africa under apartheid and the current social situation of the country, four portrait sections in which he includes a pair of interviews with people on opposite sides of the current post-apartheid experience, and a sensible personal conclusion. The reader should expect moving as well as harrowing personal accounts of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Many things throughout the book will bring hope to the reader; however, that hope will be checked by Goodman's well-informed statistics on criminality and unemployment in present-day South Africa. The book definitively deserves a wide readership.
Expands on what I saw in South Africa, October, 1998.......1999-04-10
Having visited South Africa in October, 1998, and seen the extensive squatters areas described by the author, I do not believe that readers of his book can adequately understand the extreme poverty he describes. It has to be seen and experienced to be appreciated. Mr. Goodman's portraits of the eight people in his book gives flesh and humanity to the otherwise dehumanizing nature of apartheid. I think his work is best appreciated if you have seen South Africa for yourself. For your readers who have not been to South Africa, they owe it to themselves to see it. I believe you can not remain unmoved by what you see and one must come away from that experience a better person.
Book Description
A chilling journey into the networks of right-wing radicals at home and abroad, Into a World of Hate unravels the shocking story behind the growth of white nationalist extremism through the lives of its true believers.
Award-winning investigative reporter Nick Ryan spent six frightening years talking to neo-nazis, skinheads, and white supremacists from the U.S. to London to terrorist cells in Scandinavia and Europe, gaining unparalleled insight into what drives these groups.
In bars and backstreets, Ryan got to know the pale faces of the boy-next-door killers, barely men, burning with frustration, needing belief, prepared to act--loners and zealots like Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. Ryan spoke to people who loved their children, worked nine to five and thought of themselves as respectable citizens, yet subscribed to organizations bent on creating a self-contained nationalist homeland where only white Christians are welcome. Sometimes in fear for his life, he interviewed some of the topmen running the biggest hate organizations in the world.
A disturbing work of investigative journalism at its best, Into a World of Hate gives us a fearless and troubling look into a tribal world of maleness, hate and violence.
Visit Nick Ryan's website at: http://www.nickryan.net
Customer Reviews:
racists are sooo scary.......2006-10-13
I found this book interesting but quite distasteful. The "journalist" is so biased its laughable. As western communities crumle and become more disfunctional white people will have to wake up and face some unpleasant truths. We owe this to ourselves and our children! The multi culti morass we find ourselves in is a terrible failure and we need to wake up and fix this problem. Weak men like Ryan are a product of 30 odd years of marxist, feel good, sappy politics.
It's personal.......2006-02-27
This book is a great read. OK, fair enough, this isn't the one you want if you're looking for a book with academic analysis of the far-right; it's too anecdotal, too personal. But it's pretty clear from the get-go that a stuffy but fair academic treatise is not what the author intends. He intends to provide a personal account of his journey through the far right, which of course is going to be pretty anecdotal. And in this he succeeds. There's lots to shake your head at, both in the sense of dismay and also disbelief; plenty to get riled up about and also the occasional chortle (choking in your throat a bit). Whatever you get out of this, you won't regret having spent the time reading it.
A really interesting read.......2005-11-15
An interesting and well written book. Many thanks to the author Nick Ryan - this vivid account of his experience with the far right took me right out of my comfort zone. Thank you!
a justified comparison to Orwell.......2005-04-14
Nick Ryan HOMELAND tells the story of an epic journey across Europe and the United States, in the underground world of right wing extremism. This was a concealed world until September 11 and its tidal wave of nationalism gave it the impetus to emerge with a new strength.
Ryan's journey starts in London where he meets members of secretive right wing extremist groups such as Combat 18 (18 because of the position of Adolph Hitler's initials in the alphabet). These small size groups are nonetheless powerful and thrive on fear and violence. They are often associated with football and a music scene that conveys their ideology and which provide them with an important source of income.
In this universe, the British National Party is the clean and presentable face of a movement whose roots dive deeper into the Nation and the Western World. At the heart of these movements, Ryan meets up with your "white next-door neighbour", usually a single young man who is looking for simple answers to the questions of life and identity.
Lost in a world whose values and customs are increasingly varied and entangled, our white supremacist is looking for moral guidance and a sense to give to his life. He is in need of beliefs, craving to belong to a community.
Ryan's first chapters are not an easy read mainly because he decided to blend narratives and dialogues. However, this helps us remembering that we are here facing real individuals and not imaginary monsters. Pass the first sixty pages and the journey kicks off. Ryan meets more and more people involved in the dark side of the western civilisation and starts to earn their trust. This long and painful process (both professionally and personally) will open many doors that would have remained closed to many lounge-investigators.
Nick Ryan will ultimately be introduced to some of the white supremacists "thinkers". They are recluse or outsiders but can also be very public figures such as Pat Buchanan who entered the US presidential election. Ryan describes how they feel ignored by the politics, their voice unheard and their feeling of being powerless. Therefore, it becomes a sense of duty to protect the white race, to act even if this means violence because the political system and the society do not offer any other choice. Ryan's interlocutors define their way as being outside conventional politics and the old concept of Right and Left. This is a way which concern is to save the White race endangered by other "lower cultures".
During this journey Ryan is crossing from one world to another and is undergoing a maturation process. He will sometimes become friend with the people he meets and interviews and realise that it is not all black and white even in a White world.
By the end of his odyssey, Ryan is back to where the right wing movements are the most developed, East Germany. Shouldn't that be extremely worrying that these extremists' movements are booming and thriving in the country that invented and put into action the principle of National Socialism?
Ryan's writing is both informative and emotionally powerful. This is not an essay on nationalism or white supremacist movement but a personal journey, a document, a piece that can be used to expose the real driving force behind racism and nationalism.
One of the many merits of Ryan's book is that it provides a useful resource to understand these extremist's beliefs and respond to them. It is an edifying piece of work about a rising phenomenon becoming more and more acceptable and a different approach prompting a justified comparison to Orwell's journey to Wigan.
An important and prescient book.......2004-12-20
Nick Ryan has written an excellent book that will one day be recognised for its prescience. Courting a web of extremists, he travels in search of explanations for the often sordid and pathetic reality of race haters. There are some truly frightening revelations here: about the 'comradeship' networks of modern Germany, the tortured Christian fundamentalist in Arkansas, the links to the suave Pat Buchanan, the brutality of Combat 18 leader Charlie Sargent. Homeland is an important book, ahead of its time, worthy of comparison with the reportage of Orwell and Paul Theroux at their best.
Customer Reviews:
Poor writing, and shallow.......2007-10-10
I wished I could say this more politely, but it cannot be avoided. Edna is, first and foremost, a Christian. Therefore, she treated the Christian terrorists in the northeast extremely gently, almost apologetically. Those who do not know, the Christian terrorists in northeastern states are killing Hindus, not just the settlers form the plains, but also their own folk who refuse to convert. The purpose is to establish Christendom. I think her real purpose for writing the book was to criticize the "Hindu" crook Thackerey. She did not hold back on using harsh language for him. It is a farcical, and extremely biased book.
Entertaining, funny, and shallow........2007-07-09
Religious fundamentalists are funny to listen to. If not for the tremendous atrocities and nefarious schemes tied to their simple words, that the fundamentalists do not seem to completely comprehend, they could be considered proper comedians. In the area of religious fundamentalism, similar to other areas such as arts, architecture, music, movies, religion, India has so much to offer. For there seem to be all kinds of religious fanaticisms thriving posing a threat to the secular nature of the Indian republic.
The author takes the approach of interviewing some key figures who seem to be fanning these flames and those who have been burnt and scarred by them. Her interviews are funny. The entertaining detail she provides is the stuff of romantic and dramatic novels rather than that of a contemporary history book and makes for a quick reading.
However, when it comes to the task of providing the meaning in the bigger context that the "warriors" themselves are clearly missing, the author takes a rather shallow approach. The historical context she provides is fragmented and linked to only a few well-known events in the recent past rather than the description of a psyche which has been influenced and built over hundreds and thousands of years. The nuances of identities, affectations, and affiliations built over the centuries is given only superficial treatment.
The tying in of these communal forces to the bigger context of religious pluralism, leave alone secularism, humanism, and Indian egalitarian law, is completely lacking. There is no overall theme or premise, those are left for the reader to surmise. All the reader gets is a set of interviews which are, in the name of equal treatment and even handedness, categorized into the four religious strifes related to Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam.
In the end I was left with a feeling about the book the author herself tries to draw from her interview with a beauty queen who won the Miss World in 1999. The beauty queen seems to be drawn into campaigning for the Hindu Nationalist Party (BJP) in 2004 without properly understanding what she stands for and what the consequences of her actions entail. I wished the author had provided a structure to her investigations on the lessons to be learned and the rightful actions to be taken to curtail such evil forces. But I understand that it is a daunting task when one spreads the canvas as wide on a problem as that of religious fundamentalism in India. However, it was within her reach.
As a reader it is for you to infer what those lessons are, the author does provide some interesting and provocative material. The book, if not for anything, is entertaining.
God on whose side?.......2006-07-08
This is a remarkable, brave, moving, disturbing, funny and at times beautiful book. It tackles head-on the great Indian paradox, which most observers tend to ignore or obfuscate: that India is a centre of religion and spirituality, and hence of tolerance, celebrating the many paths available to those seeking the Godhead; yet it has also been home to some of the most terrible atrocities committed anywhere in the name of religion. Ms Fernandes's insight is to see that this is not really a paradox at all: "Home to all the major religions, India is also, inevitably, host to virtually every type of religious fanatic."
Her book takes us on a tour of India's religious flashpoints: to the Islamic seminary in Deoband in the state of Uttar Pradesh; to Gujarat, where a terrible pogrom in 2002 saw Hindus slaughter hundreds of Muslims with the connivance of the state government; to Ayodhya, where the destruction of a mosque built on what Hindu fundamentalists claim is the birthplace of the god Ram still reverberates in national politics; to Amritsar, where the storming of the Sikhs' holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, by government forces in 1984 was followed by the assassination of a prime minister, a decade of violent insurrection and a brutal repression; to Goa, home of her ancestors, where she finds the brutality of the Christian inquisition still echoing in contemporary disputes; to Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, now in its seventeenth year of bloody insurgency; and to Nagaland, in the north-east, where Baptist Christians have been waging one of the world's longest-running independence struggles.
What makes the book a riveting read, besides the inherent interest of the theme, is Ms Fernandes's skill as an observer, as a listener, and as a writer. She has an astonishing gift for bringing her interlocutors to life, and a flair for descriptive humour. (At Goan get-togethers in the London of her childhood "rhino-rumped Goan matrons swathed in purple satin would dance with diminutive husbands to the cha-cha-cha and tango."). The Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jami Masjid, spiritual leader of India's 150m Muslims, is a "grizzled old lion...behind gold-framed Ray Ban-style glasses". Prahmans Ramchandra Das, self-appointed keeper of the Hindu flame at Ayodhya, and aged 93 when she met him, just before he died, "looked like a sinister marmoset" (I can confirm the truth of this observation.)
Ms Fernandes seems to have won the trust of all her interviewees. They have opened to her and revealed themselves and their subject in new lights. Even the "supercop" K.P.S. Gill, who to some Sikhs will forever be the "butcher of Punjab", seems to have been unable to resist her charms.
She has not betrayed the trust. She has neither mocked her subjects unfairly, nor given them undue latitude. Among the book's delights are her occasional wry asides. After a hilarious description of khaki-knickered members of the RSS, a Hindu-fundamentalist mass organisation, at a "shakha", an early morning gathering for physical jerks with attitude, she quotes the blood-curdling prayer they sing calling for the "breaking" of Pakistan. "Not quite the Boy Scouts, then," she notes.
India is gaining plenty of international attention at the moment: as an emerging economic powerhouse, especially because of its "outsourcing" industries; as a nuclear power about to be legitimised by America; as an extraordinary triumph of democratic values in the face of internal disorder, external threat and unimaginable diversity. This book is an indispensible reminder that one of the most important forms of that diversity--religious--is also a source of some of the biggest threats it faces: bigotry, fear and hatred. "Holy Warriors" is also a joy to read.
Book Description
In the Red Zone, an American journalist's account of his daring solo expeditions through post-Saddam Iraq, is a vivid, frank, and unforgettable portrayal of the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. An eyewitness of the 9/11 attacks, Steven Vincent went to Iraq to experience the daily realities of life and death in the crossfire of the war on terror. His report is essential for understanding America's enemies and allies in the critical but confusing struggle against radical Islam.
Steven Vincent journeyed twice to Iraq, paying his own way, traveling without security or official connections, living by his wits. His four months in the war zone included a foray into the infamous Mosque of Ali in Najaf, a confrontation with Ayatollah Sistani's bodyguards, a brush with death in a Karbala bombing, meetings with assorted Western "peace activists," and run-ins with Iraqi "authorities" who alternately suspected him of being a CIA agent or a terrorist.
Vincent's encounters with doctors and cab drivers, imams and housewives, politicos and poets—and one unforgettable woman in Basra—provided him with special insight into what Iraqis think of their liberation, of America, and of the war. He describes a tormented society whose inhabitants—troubling, infuriating, yet often inspiring—survived the ghoulish dictatorship of Saddam Hussein only to face the death cult of radical Islam.
The war on terror and the war in Iraq, Vincent concludes, are closely connected. Victory in both conflicts requires that we look with a sympathetic but unsparing eye at the Iraqi people and the whole Islamic world.
Customer Reviews:
heart-wrenching.......2007-05-03
I make it a point to read pretty much every book that comes out about Iraq and environs. Though there has been no recent shortage of first-rate books about the region, this one packs a punch like you wouldn't believe.
To tell you the truth, I haven't seen the book since I first lent it out. The guy I lent it out to lent it out to someone else and so on and on. That I have yet to get it back should tell you something.
The basic story is that Steven Vincent was your typical dingbat liberal living in the Big Apple as an art critic, believing that God was in his heaven and that all was right with the world . . . and that in particular Islam was a basically peaceful but tragically misunderstood religion.
Then September 11th happened, and in a fit of shock, grief, duty, and curiosity, Vincent hied himself off to desert lands as more or less a roaming reporter for hire.
The book relates his transformation from smug liberal to one who was truly concerned about constructing a fairer portrait of the chances for peace and progress over there.
So far, so good. And whatever you think of his politics, and whatever your position on the war is, and blah blah blah blah.
Listen: the thing that really pushes this book over the edge into the realm of greatest books I've ever read is what happened to Vincent after he wrote it. I won't spell it out here, but you can easily find out on the net.
God, knowing the real ending makes the final third of this book unbearable. Truly unbearable. Some of the most emotionally exhausting and harrowing reading I've ever done.
See, he meets this woman named Nour. And God! God! I can't take it.
Sparrow, O sparrow!
In the Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq.......2006-03-08
Freelance journalist Vincent first visited Iraq in September 2003. While other reporters sheltered in insulated compounds or heavily-fortified hotels of the "Green Zone," he lived and traveled in the "Red Zone," that is without security and among ordinary Iraqis. In all, Vincent has penned one of the best-written accounts of post-Saddam Iraq, one of the few that captures the debates, issues, and contradictory emotions that Iraqis are juggling.
In the Red Zone fills a void left by the many think-tank pundits, academics, and journalists who wrote books in the wake of Saddam's fall, where the Iraqi voice is often lost. Vincent's account has the advantage of bringing to light his encounters with ordinary Iraqis. Among other experiences, he was in Karbala when a series of bombs killed 140 in the city in March 2004; and while traveling in Basra, he was briefly interrogated by U.S. intelligence. He makes no attempt to cover the minutiae of daily Iraqi politics but instead takes a big-picture approach.
That said, In the Red Zone has its limitations. There is little discussion of the Kurdish issue and minor errors of fact pop up--for example, the date when Iran's Safavid dynasty began.
In contrast to the usual journalistic practice of adding color to an article by including an occasional man-on-the-street interview, usually conducted by an Iraqi assistant, Vincent provides a deeper insight into Iraqis. He introduces the reader to Qasim, a Baghdad art gallery owner who, because of a club foot, managed to avoid the carnage of the Iran-Iraq war; Assad al-Abady, deputy director of the Iraqi National Organization for Human Rights; a secular Sunni woman torn between her love of freedom and the "humiliation" of having it delivered by foreigners; a Fallujah policeman who swears blood lust against Americans after U.S. soldiers kill his son; a Shi'ite taxi driver still euphoric over liberation; and a Christian woman in Basra whom Vincent later learns had been raped in her youth by Saddam's police.
Vincent also spent time with foreigners. He details a long conversation with a Canadian antiwar activist who lectured him about U.S. "human rights violations" but would not condemn insurgent terrorist attacks on Iraqi civilians or visit Saddam's mass graves. Vincent also describes a surrealistic encounter with CodePink, an American peace group, during which one member doubted that Saddam really was that bad. He also notes the Iraqi reaction to Western peace groups. "How can people accept for so long the crimes of a dictator, then rise up to try and stop a war begun to remove that dictator from power?" one Iraqi lawyer asked. "Antiwar activists should examine their consciences."
Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2005
Steven Vincent's opus and the reason he was murdered.......2006-02-15
First, let me say that Steven Vincent died for this book. He was murdered because he wrote brutally honestly about the dark underbelly of Iraq, about how here (and much of the Middle East) life is cheap and what passes for culture twists minds and perpetuates continued ignorance in the majority of the populace. Steven is gone now, but his opus is still available and if you only read one book about Iraq in your entire life, then In the Red Zone should be that one book.
I read this book in one sitting, from cover to cover, all 240 pages in the span of about six hours. Everything you need to know about the war, Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, the occupation, what the future could hold - it's in here. The good, the bad and the ugly are all laid out for you. This book will be of equal fascination to both pro and anti-war readers because Steven didn't sugarcoat a thing when he wrote In the Red Zone. He didn't sugarcoat Iraq one iota and he died for it.
Life is cheap in cultures that glorify death. Steven found that out the hardest way. His death has a silver lining - Nour - his brave Iraqi intrepreter. She was shot by the same vicious parasites that killed Mr. Vincent but survived and is still somewhere in Iraq (as far as I know), guarded, silenced or both. Steven and Nour are microcosms of the relationship between America and Iraq. Read In the Red Zone. It will force you to make adjustments to everything you thought you knew. In the Red Zone is Chapter 1 in the story of 21st century. Other Americans and Iraqis will be stepping forward to write Chapter 2. Are you one of them? Which side will you step forward on?
Thank you, Steven Vincent!.......2006-02-07
Although he died while free-lancing in Iraq, I am thankful that this great journalist was able to write this book before he left us. It is an extremely interesting look at life in Iraq, the Iraqi people, and the challenges we face there. I'm sorry about his untimely death, and wish he could have stayed around to write many more compelling and inspiring books such as this one. God bless his family and bless the memory of this brave man.
A Masterpiece, A Great Writer that I Admire!.......2005-11-29
I just finished reading Steven Vincent's "In the Red Zone", and I must say this is a great book on Iraq that I couldn't find another one these days. I was deeply moved and enthralled by the author's journalistic dedication, his great moral courage, his noble idealism, humanitarian perspectives on today's Iraqi society, all along with his amazing writing skills.
Sadly, we lost a hero, a real American hero! As a real journalist, Steven Vincent sacrificed his valuable life in Iraq. And if that will waken more of our people's consciences and firm our resolves on war to terrorism, his death is not in vain!
Average customer rating:
- Poignant, Admirable, Understated Portrait of a Sensational Place and Time
- Fascinating read
- Positive and Compassionate
- A life examined is worth living
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Ever Is A Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past
W. Ralph Eubanks
Manufacturer: Basic Books
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Binding: Paperback
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Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976-2006
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The Covenant with Black America
ASIN: 0465021050
Release Date: 2005-01-04 |
Book Description
In June of 1957, Governor James Coleman stepped before the cameras t the Press" and was asked whether the public schools would ever be integrated. "Well, ever is a long time," he replied,"[but] I would say that a baby born in Mississippi today will never live long enough to see an integrated school." In this extraordinary pilgrimage, Library of Congress Publishing Director W. Ralph Eubanks recaptures the feel of growing up during this tumultuous era, deep in rural Mississippi. Vividly re-creating a time and place where even small steps across the Jim Crow line became a matter of life and death, he offers eloquent testimony to a family's grace against all odds. Inspired by the 1998 declassification of files kept by the State Sovereignty Commission-an agency specifically created to maintain white supremacy-the result is a journey of discovery that leads Eubanks not only to surprising conclusions about his own family, but also to harrowing encounters with those involved in some of the era's darkest activities.
Customer Reviews:
Poignant, Admirable, Understated Portrait of a Sensational Place and Time.......2006-09-21
Rarely one reads a book that causes the reader to feel love for its author. I had that experience reading "Ever Is a Long Time." W. Ralph Eubanks' memoir depicts the struggles white supremacy thrust upon him and his family, from his white grandfather, who married a black woman, on down to his own children, whom he must introduce to their father's Mississippi.
Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s -- one imagines lynchings, injustice, heroism, sacrifice, history writ in blood.
Eubanks' memoir, though, is suprising in its quite and restraint. Eubanks's childhood was, in many ways, "idyllic," he reports. His parents were pillars of the community. He grew up on an eighty acre farm. He went fishing and climbed trees.
White supremacy, though, was an unavoidable evil. His father, a college educated professional, was denied simple toilet facilities at his work place. The family did not pave their driveway, so that if an uninvited guest brought trouble, the crunch of gravel would announce his presence. Eubanks' white grandfather's photograph was kept in the closet, lest it rouse questions, and trouble.
Eubanks grew up, and moved away. His sons' questions about Mississippi caused him to go back. In going back, he investigated the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state-sponsored spying agency that kept records of 87,000 of Mississippi's just over two million citizens. Its goal was to thwart civil rights workers and federal integration efforts. Eubanks' parents were included on that list of names.
Eubanks meets with a former Klan member, so torn by his own membership in that evil society that he breaks into tears after their meeting. Eubanks also meets with an unrepetent member of the MSC. Eubanks discovers that people he knew, liked, and trusted, including African Americans, were informants.
It was Eubanks' voice that was most attractive for me in this work. I never thought I'd read a memoir of life in the Jim Crow South, written by a black man, that was so affectionate, and so forgiving, of that South, while expressing appropriate rage and grief.
Eubanks comes through strongly as a very decent man. His book caused me to feel great respect and affection for his father.
It was a very worthy experience to encounter simple human goodness in a memoir of such terrible wrong.
Eubanks is to be thanked for this work.
Fascinating read.......2004-06-11
Eubank's autobiography is fascinating. The segues between his childhood, his investigation into the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, his trip back to Mount Olive and the historical pieces about the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi are sometimes missing or confusing. I also caught a couple editorial mistakes (duplicate words or funny gramatical stuff) that should have been caught by the editor.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading the book and feel I am coming away from it having learned a great deal about a time and place in history I am personally quite removed from. I read it just after having heard the NPR All Things Considered 5 part piece on the Brown vs. Board of Education decission so Eubank's memoir provided an interesting counterpoint.
Positive and Compassionate.......2004-04-30
This is an excellent memoir. It combines memories of a childhood in Mount Olive, Mississippi, with current historical research concerning the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Mr. Eubanks is now Director of Publications for the Library of Congress. His account of three years spent trying to reconcile his recollections of growing up in Mississippi with the stark reality of the history of that era makes for great reading. Mr. Eubanks final synthesis is both positive and compassionate. This is a book that every Mississippian who lived through that era should enjoy.
A life examined is worth living.......2003-09-19
First, I am a native Mississippian who has lived out of the South for about 10 years. Coincidently, I went to Ole Miss and lived in the same dorm as the author but a year earlier. I did not know Mr. Eubanks but may have had classes with him. Ever is a Long Time is a great look back on activities of both sides of the civil rights movement. The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission spied on all citizens of the state and had 87,000 names in its files including Mr. Eubanks' parents. I have found the names of parents of several very good friends; Parents who were on both sides of the segregation question. It is a troubling story for a Mississippian to read and has led to phone calls and extended discussions with old friends. It has also increased my awareness of the times, our abilities to do mindless things, and to find the better way. There are some poignant interviews with past Sovereignty officials, a past member of the KKK, as well as leaders of the civil rights movement. These wonderfully display the frailty of humans, the need to cope, the darker side of man, and the ability to change. The passages about his children that open and close the work are among my favorites. The book is an honest, worthwhile read about cultural changes and the history of yesterday. (My copy did not have any pictures beyond the cover). Mississippi carries a brutal stigma regarding racial history. My time in other parts of the country have convinced me that the emotions of the 50's and 60's were not limited to Mississippi but rather widely held across the country. Mississippi, like other southern states, got the label and historical coverage and will always carry the stigma. It is a fading stigma that should have been widely shared across our healing nation. My heart gives it 5 stars, but objectivity demands 4 stars.
Book Description
Don't expect to find here the usual cliches about suicide bombers and what drives them. In this unique study, Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg render the story of two intertwining, often clashing journeys. The authors lived for six months with a Palestinian refugee family in Gaza at the beginning of the intifada, and offer a gritty, poetic portrait of the time. They also provide an unrivalled documentary of the underground media they collected during the course of six years in the area. Although they could not have surmised as much at the beginning, they soon found themselves led through these media into the world of the suicide bomber. Their early study, notably, anticipated the spread of suicide missions years in advance. Dispensing with the platitudes and dogma that typify discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the authors show that the suicide bomber is a complex, contradictory construction, and can be explained neither in terms of cold efficacy nor sheer evil. Theirs is the only book on the subject to illustrate the ecstatic, intoxicating aspects of suicide missions, and provide extensive access to materials that have remained largely unseen in the West despite the fact that they have served as indispensable tools in the construction and propagation of the suicide bomber. The book contains 86 illustrations drawn from the authors' archive as well as numerous conversations with leaders and followers of Hamas, including a rare interview with a suicide bomber whose bomb failed to explode on an Israeli bus in Jerusalem. Here is an important and timely work that will challenge the way we think about the intifada, suicide bombers, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Customer Reviews:
The book in perspective.......2006-08-06
Oliver and Steinburg's book is an excellent look into the world of the Palestinian suicide bomber. Unlike some reviewers that disparage the political analysis missing from this book, I found the authors' insights quite accurate. The authors' aims were not to provide the historical context, nor to provide a critique of suicide terrorism in general (a la the comment concerning the Tamil Tigers above), but to give an experential portrayal of Palestine during the first intifada. Paradoxically, a couple reviewers bemoaned the book because it portrayed Palestinian suicide bombers as religious zealots and nuts, which makes one wonder if they actually read the book because one of the central themes of the book is the understanding of the suicide bomber as a rational actor.
This book puts Palestinian suicide bombing into the context of Palestine, which is why the understanding of the religious theme becomes incredibly important in contrast to secular groups such as the Tamils, which are motivated purely by politics. A major failure in the understanding of terrorism comes from secular scholars who don't or can't understand religious motivations because those of us in the West no longer regard it as important, though to believe this of the rest of the world is a severe misunderstanding of contemporary social realities and ends up projecting one cultures assumptions onto a completely different one with different mores and values. The primary reason given by suicide bombers for their actions is revenge, but understanding the religious background in the Palestinian context is very important to understand some of the justifications behind their actions. Of course, both religion and politics will remain factors that provide the background for understanding suicide bombing, while the primary factors motivating these individuals will always be personal experiences of oppression and/or abuse (in their eyes).
This book gives one an inside look into the world of the Palestinian terrorist and does not claim to provide ultimate causes, a look at Palestine outside the world of religious terrorism, in-depth analyses of all factors, or a look at suicide bombing in general. For students of terrorism this is an intriguing glimpse into a particular social reality of Palestine - that of the world of those who fight as religious terrorists. It's extensive, and forever irrecoverable, collection of intifada media, as well as an in-depth look at the language of the intifada make this book worth the time it takes to understand the insider worldviews, dialogues between believers, and images it records.
The conclusions are fundamentally flawed and misleading!.......2006-05-16
As one reviewer so eloquently pointed out, Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg show a complete disregard for political and social factors in their extremely superficial and biased analysis of suicide terrorism. In order to describe the true motives behind suicide attacks, one must look into the root causes of suicide terrorism. Contrary to popular belief, a typical suicide bomber is not a religious zealot seeking to destroy the West because he abhors our liberal values. In point of fact, most suicide bombers are secular individuals, as corroborated by the fact that the group responsible for most suicide attacks in the world the Tamil Tigers are adamantly opposed to religion. Admittedly, religion is often used as a tool to recruit new suicide bombers by promising them eternal life in paradise. Nonetheless, religion is by no means a primary motive behind suicide terrorism. While its importance should not be downplayed or denied, it only plays a secondary role.
Robert Pape has in my opinion conducted the most meticulous and comprehensive study of suicide terrorism. What makes Pape's study so superior to every other book on suicide terrorism is that it refuses to make simplistic and unsubstantiated claims. It delves deep into the root causes of suicide terrorism and is not afraid to ask the dangerous questions. Pape's study demonstrates without a doubt that most suicide bombers are driven primarily by political motives. According to Pape, the principal motive of suicide bombers is to obliterate the presence of foreign powers from the areas that suicide bombers consider to be their homelands. Therefore, simply labeling a Palestinian suicide bomber as a religious fanatic driven solely by religious motives is a gross overgeneralization and oversimplification. Most Palestinian suicide bombers have divulged that their primary motive is to fight the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and to relieve the suffering of their people. They believe that the only way to fight a much more powerful adversary is to resort to suicide missions. In the view of the Palestinian suicide bombers all targets are legitimate since they are at war with Israel. They also believe that they have the right to retaliate against the Israeli killing of the Palestinian children and women which Israel by the way conveniently labels as the "collateral damage".
Understanding suicide terrorism does not suggest in any way that it is morally justifiable. But if we really wish to understand its root causes then we must tell the truth and refrain from making sensationalistic albeit incorrect and misleading conclusions. People who live under the Israeli occupation are subjected daily to humiliation and derogatory comments. They live in abject poverty where desperation, despair and hopelessness are omnipresent. It is out of these gruesome conditions that suicide terrorism emerges. Imagine being humiliated and mistreated every day in your own country by an extremely powerful bully. What would you do?
All these factors are somehow overlooked or at best downplayed in this book. Subsequently, the conclusions are erroneous, inaccurate and biased. I recommend Robert Pape's brilliant book Dying to Win The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism and John Esposito's Unholy War Terror in the Name of Islam. In addition to these books, I recommend an extremely powerful and disturbing movie Paradise Now.
Partisan Misrepresentations.......2005-07-24
This book is one of the most obnoxious partisan screeds I have come across in a long history of reading about this region. The authors conveniently ignore the entire political context, that of Isreal's belligerent military occupation of Palestinian territories, which is what the people they have written about are fighting against. Such decontextualized, depoliticizing representations lead readers to interpret the subjects of this book as simply deranged individuals, rather than politically motivated people who are shaped by and reacting to their history and social context. In addition, the authors either misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent the range of complex meanings associated with martyrdom in Palestinian society, which in fact go well beyond the issue of suicide bombers. Drawing on the most cliched set of Orientalist caricatures, the authors portray their subjects as alternately murderous, backwards, bizarrely exotic, sadistic, or simply crazy. This is not a book for anyone who actually wants to learn about the social, political and religious situation in Palestine and their relationship to martyrdom and suicide bombers.
A scary look at suicide bombers.......2005-01-18
This book shows how Arab society in the Levant has supported a culture of death and destruction. It shows the elements of the incitement and manipulation that create this culture. And it makes it clear that suicide bombings are not just a few acts of a small minority, but have become an inherent aspect of the overall community. It makes one sad to see all the destruction, and it makes one worried about the future of the Arab community as a whole, which appears to be its own worst enemy right now.
Still, I had to take away a star from my rating. That is because the authors make a huge effort to be totally neutral in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They do not entirely succeed in this, but that isn't my complaint. My problem with this attitude is that neutrality between aggressors and victims is a stand in itself. Neutrality favors aggression and insanity, both of which need to be condemned severely. Arab aggression is not helping Arabs or Jews. It isn't helping the region to become more peaceful. Quite the contrary. Aggression needs to be opposed. And the authors ought to have done just that.
Facinating book.......2005-01-17
Great book! I was captivated from cover to cover. It's great to read a gritty, realistic view of the beginings of the intifada.
Average customer rating:
- Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery.
- Worthy cause, aggravating exposition
- Fascinating, Courageous, and Real.
- disappointing
- Excellent work of Pan-African humanitarianism...
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Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery
Samuel Cotton
Manufacturer: Writers & Readers Publishing
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Book Description
Research expose
Customer Reviews:
Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery........2001-08-06
Slavery - the crude ownership of a person and his exploitation like a beast of burden - has two major venues in the contemporary world, Sudan and Mauritania. The Sudanese practice results in large part from a war conducted by Muslims against Christians; when the former conquer the latter, they frequently enslave them (and often convert them to Islam). Mauritania has no war and no religion other than Islam-it close to being a purely Muslim country - but it does have a racial divide of (light-skinned) Arabs and (dark-skinned) "Negro-Africans," as they are known. Out of a total population of some 2 million, some tens of thousands of Mauritanians are enslaved. When Cotton, a graduate student at Columbia University and part-time journalist, learned about this situation, it horrified and absorbed him. His short but intense trip to Mauritania in early 1996 showed him first-hand of the existence of this foul institution; and as a black American, he felt the servitude of the black Mauritanians with special poignancy. Cotton began his researches as a reporter, thinking that the mere exposure of facts would affect other African-Americans much as they did himself, as they startled at the racism and servitude in Mauritania, somewhat akin to the experience of their own ancestors. But they did not. He found that black leaders (Louis Farrakhan, mainstream black American Muslims, former congressman Mervyn Dymally, and academics at Howard University) not only pooh-pooh the issue but in many cases actively apologize for the slave system. So he became an activist. Thus far, he has found, even his seeming successes, such as passing a NAACP resolution condemning slavery, turned out to have no operational significance.
Cotton's account of the Mauritanian scene is harrowing, his personal story moving, and his report on African-American reactions depressing. Some two centuries after the great American abolitionist effort, a new iteration is needed, this time focusing on the Muslim world.
Middle East Quarterly, December 1999
Worthy cause, aggravating exposition.......2000-11-28
Samuel Cotton's account of his own awakening to the issues of slavery in Africa falls into four sections.
1/ The commissioning of a journalistic article, which leads him to examine available documentary evidence about slavery in Mauritania,
2/ A trip to see for himself,
3/ His return to the US, where he delivered evidence to a US Congressional sub-committee.
4/ A call to arms.
An African-American, his commitment is plainly sincere ("I had found my history. I had found my future. I had found myself.") He has achievements to show for it - his own anti-slavery organisation "CASMAS", and success in changing official US policy through a Congressional resolution based on evidence gained from his field trip.
In giving voice to the people that he met in bondage in Mauritania and Senegal, he has borne witness to lives that need and deserve all the help they can get.
He also accurately identifies the failure of so many Muslims of otherwise good standing to put pressure on regimes that nod and wink at the practices of slavery. Sudan is an appalling offender through its sponsorship of slave-raiding militias that attack the black, Christian South.
But it is Sam Cotton's very emotiveness - understandable as it might be - that weakens his argument. He is guilty of extreme sloppiness. At one point he accuses the US Ambassador to Mauritania, among others, of having their silence "bought" by "plenty of envelopes passing under the table" from the Islamic government. This is a scandalous charge, which if proven would have the Ambassador doing time in jail, but Cotton offers no evidence whatsoever to support it. It is purely an expression of his frustration.
And while he resolutely stands by his evidence that Arabs still persist with chattel slavery in Mauritania, he quickly dismisses evidence that black Africans also keep black African slaves. "It is a thing of the past...a charge that does not stand up to inspection," he insists, refusing to apply the same tests (are they paid? are their children educated?) that he applies to the "slaves" of Arabs.
On the material Cotton (and others before him) have gathered, Mauritania certainly has a case to answer that slavery still exists. Furthermore, it should be required to answer it, and the world should not tolerate any fudging.
Cotton has added something to the fund of knowledge, and deserves acknowledgment for that. But his writing is too cliche-ridden, too unexamined, too hasty in seeing what it wants to see. And Cotton, inexperienced in African conditions, also overlooks another reality of life on that continent. People do what they must to survive. Millions work in terrible conditions for no cash return. Millions of their children go without food, let alone education. I little doubt slavery exists in Mauritania. I have seen it myself, and written about it, in Sudan. Beating it, however, requires a discipline of approach that is not enough in evidence in this otherwise worthy account.
Fascinating, Courageous, and Real........1999-07-21
Samuel Cotton has displayed in this book what many poeple around the world ignore-truth, anguish, submission, and power. Contaray to what some readers may think, Mr. Cotton did not just take a trip to Mauritania and say "Oh I wanna exploit slavery here, I heard about yeay", he does much more with this information. He does a great job at explaining the previous research he sought out about this issue and the inner emotions that were embedded into his heart and mind throughout his life connecting to the African Struggle. I believe that any person that stands for any ideal on this planet should confront this book. I found it to be most inspiring and beneficial as a woman interested in politics, society, and the benefit of our brothers and sisters all over the world not just in Africa. Government officials should be challenged with the facts that Mr. Cotton has exploited and try to figure out an answer to why this tradgedy continues to occur in this part of the world along with any other nation (even the USA). This book is true, it's real. Why else would a man risk his life?
disappointing.......1999-06-11
I am a recently returned Peace Corps volunteer from Mauritania. During my service I had the privilege to integrate myself into all aspects of Maurtanian society, Arab-Berber (Moor) and black African (comprising mainly three ethnicities-Pular, Soninke, and Wolof). Any foreigner traveling in Mauritania is immediately struck by the complexity of the multi-layered social structure. It is easy to see how Mr. Cotton's brief trip to Mauritania resulted in such an erroneous and disappointing book.
Although slavery did exist in Mauritania and it's legacy is still painfully evident (as it also is here in the USA), slavery (i.e. the commercialization of human beings) is no longer practiced in Mauritania. What continues is the same intense social and economic inqualities glairingly evident throughout the developing world. Unpaid servitude still remains, but under no circumstances can it be truthfully claimed that involuntary servitude still exists. This important distinction seems to have been lost on Mr. Cotton on his quick trip to Mauritania. It is unfortunate that the young nation of Mauritania, painfully struggling overcome the grips of poverty, should fall victim to Mr. Cotton's irresponsibility.
Excellent work of Pan-African humanitarianism..........1999-05-28
I salute Samuel Cotton for his courageous and principled mission to expose the entire world to the evils of slavery in Africa. Mr. Cotton risked his life to bring the plight of enslaved Africans to the attention of the world. I just hope the courageous Africans who guided Samuel's Cotton's journey are still alive and well. Their courage and commitment to resist slavery in Mauritania is truly remarkable and inspiring.
This book challenges continental Africans and African Americans to stand up and support our enslaved brothers and sisters in Mauritania, Sudan and other parts of North Africa. Black Muslims are duty-bound to challenge the Islamic world to live up to the pious ideals of their religion. I strongly recommend this book to all freedom-loving people. This book is a must read for Pan-Africanists throughout the world. Dr. John Henrik Clarke and Dr. Chancellor Williams would be proud of Samuel Cotton's important book.
Amazon.com
Theodore B. Taylor was among the most ingenious engineers of the nuclear age. He created the most powerful and the smallest nuclear weapons of his time (his masterpiece, the Davy Crockett, weighed in at a svelte 50 pounds) and also spearheaded efforts to create a nuclear-powered spacecraft. But in his later years, Taylor became increasingly concerned that compact and powerful bombs could be easily built not just by nations employing experts such as himself, but by single individuals with modest technical ability and perseverance. McPhee tours American nuclear installations with Taylor, and we are treated to a grim, eye-opening account of just how close we are to witnessing terrorist attacks using homemade nuclear weaponry. The Curve of Binding Energy is compelling writing about an urgently important topic.
Book Description
Theodore Taylor was one of the most brilliant engineers of the nuclear age, but in his later years he became concerned with the possibility of an individual being able to construct a weapon of mass destruction on their own. McPhee tours American nuclear institutions with Taylor and shows us how close we are to terrorist attacks employing homemade nuclear weaponry.
Customer Reviews:
books can kill.......2007-07-22
I picked up this book to learn something about the risks associated with nuclear technology in the hands of terrorist states. What I read instead was an unexpected cautionary tale about the risks of irresponsible journalism.
The Curve of Binding Energy is an early piece by the talented essayist, John McPhee. McPhee explores the psyche and experience of a nuclear engineer, Ted Taylor, who in the 1950's made substantial contributions to the miniaturization of fission bombs and then became an advocate for "nuclear safeguards" - i.e. methods and policies to keep weapons-grade material or bomb-making technology out of criminal or terrorist hands.
Mr. Taylor's involvement in the book is highly ironic. Like most in the nuclear weapons community, he originally justified the work for its deterrent potential. Looking back two decades later, Taylor tells McPhee that the original rationale was naive. But unconsciously applying the same logic, Taylor was now willing to publicize all that he knew about the easiest ways to make a cheap A-bomb in the hope that proliferation of that knowledge would scare governments into adopting more effective safeguards.
Throughout the book, McPhee relates conversations in which he pumped Taylor for technical details about bomb construction. Each time, Taylor states that he has gone into just as much detail as he can on various subjects without breaching official secrets. This of course is nonsense. Any attempts to delineate the bounds of official secrets, and especially the juxtaposition of related methods and means are expressly forbidden by the security oath that Taylor once swore. If a terrorist nuclear bomb is ever detonated, Taylor will bear direct personal responsibilty.
Fortunately, the value of Taylor's technical insights is much less that McPhee implies. He reports many kind comments about Taylor from distinguished nuclear physicists who worked on the same projects. But none of these scientists express particular respect for his technical skills. And at least one of Taylor's important judgments in this book - that successful fission detonations are easy to achieve - was proved untrue last year when a DPRK demonstration fizzled.
No, to date no one has been killed or injured by one of Ted Taylor's creations. But the same cannot be said of John McPhee. The most intriguing details in The Curve of Binding Energy are its repeated speculations about the attractiveness of the WTC towers as terrorist targets and their vulnerability to destruction from a sub-nuclear explosion. It appears highly likely that this book was the original motivation behind O. A. Rahman's truck-bomb attack in 1993 and K. S. Mohammad's follow-on attack in 2001.
This is not a personal criticism of John McPhee. The point is that journalists - even great journalists - plying their own craft can do just as much unintended damage as any of their usual suspects.
The story of Theodore Taylor, nuclear bomb designer, and problems of safeguarding of nuclear materials in the 1960's and 70's.......2007-03-11
This book was first published in 1973 and its basic premises are straightforward. Plutonium is an almost unavoidable byproduct of a uranium based nuclear power industry. It is incredibly easy to make a working atomic bomb with plutonium. It is also incredibly easy to steal plutonium. It is possible to make a nuclear bomb as small as a rugby football. Terrorism with a plutonium bomb seems to be inevitable.
Much of the book is about Theodore Taylor, who was one of America's most brilliant nuclear bomb engineers. Technically, he was a physicist, but he was really lousy at true theoretical physics, and he ended up working at Los Alamos as a nuclear bomb designer only because he had flunked out of the Ph.D program at UC Berkeley. Taylor was more of an inventor with the mentality of an engineer in the way he focused on using best estimates and trial and error experimentation to solve difficult practical problems.
Later in his life, Taylor was involved in the abortive Orion project (a space ship that was to be powered by hundreds of small nuclear bombs), and became a strong advocate of improved safeguarding of nuclear materials in the nuclear power industry. It should be clarified that after he quit as a nuclear bomb designer, Taylor never became an anti-nuclear activist. I say this mainly because this book does seem to have been used by the anti-nuclear movement.
The remainder of the book is mostly devoted to describing just how lax the safeguarding of nuclear materials was at the time, as well as brief descriptions of the chemical processes needed to isolate enough plutonium from these byproducts to make a crude bomb.
One annoying aspect of this book is its coy squeamishness at revealing the secrets of making hydrogen (fusion) bombs. Hydrogen bomb design is actually pretty straightforward once you have a fission bomb to ignite the fusion materials - other books like "Dark Sun" lay out the basic details that this book would not.
A major concept missing from this book is that, while stealing several kilograms of plutonium and making one or two plutonium bombs might be fairly simple, when it comes to governments building a nuclear bomb, it is clearly more advantageous to have a complete nuclear industry, so as to be able to build an endless supply of nuclear bombs with either uranium or plutonium. And so these states would want to start by first developing a uranium enrichment capability together with nuclear power plants. This is in fact how things have played out today.
And so, this book turns out to be somewhat myopic in its fears. Its warnings against the production of plutonium by the nuclear power industry, while important, and salient at the time (1970's) to the fears of terrorism by small radical groups, pale in comparison to the much greater current problem of global nuclear weapons development by nation-states. The book misses completely the fact that today, almost any technologically advanced country, and many that are not so advanced, can build entire arsenals of nuclear bombs if they want to.
Is nuclear war inevitable? That possibility seemed to have faded with the breakup of the Soviet Union, but has risen again as the numbers of conflict states developing nuclear weapons increase.
But then look on the bright side, for all of you liberal, anti-growth, anti-nuclear, anti-people environmentalists out there. The nuclear winter first predicted by Carl Sagan, together with an accompanying drastic reduction in the numbers of homo sapiens defiling this planet, could be just the cures for global warming and global over-population that you are seeking.
Nuclear Bombs for Dummies.......2006-07-08
Theodore B. Taylor, the physicist who was the subject of this book died in 2004, but not before he had completed his spiritual journey from nuclear bomb maker to nuclear protester. Even though the text of this book originally appeared in "The New Yorker" in 1973, Taylor was still driven to publish his own works on the dangers of nuclear proliferation. McPhee has a very understated style ("just the facts, ma'am"), but this book is still the most frightening I've ever read. I can't decide whether I would want him to write a sequel, because the threat of a nuclear bomb explosion is even greater today than it was in 1973. Just ask yourself the following questions:
Is there more plutonium available to terrorists in 2006 than there was in 1973? Yes.
Do more nations have nuclear capability? Yes.
Can a nuclear bomb be built that is even smaller and more efficient than its 1973 counterpart? Yes.
Are the instructions for building a nuclear device more readily available than they were in 1973? Yes.
Do some people hate America even more than they did in 1973? Decide this one for yourself.
John McPhee, staff writer for the "New Yorker" and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of twenty-seven books on subjects as various as oranges and the merchant marine, has written a nuclear explosion of a book in "The Curve of Binding Energy." It's one of those books that is even more relevant now than when it was written. Essentially, it's a blueprint of how to build a nuclear device using materials at hand, along with a chunk of rather easily stolen U-235 or plutonium. Theodore B. Taylor, himself the creator of smaller, more efficient nuclear bombs, tells us where to steal the plutonium, how to assemble a bomb, even gives hints on where to plant it--one of the eeriest parts of this book has Taylor and McPhee exploring the now-vanished towers of the World Trade Center, trying to pick the spot where a nuclear device could do the most damage.
"The Curve of Binding Energy" is a must read for every man, jack, and paper-pusher in the Department of Homeland Security, not to mention both houses of Congress. I imagine the first reaction of many Congresspersons would be to ban this book, but it's way too late for that, my friend.
Prophetic, scary and still important.......2006-06-19
John McPhee is a writer for the New Yorker with a particular focus on science and nature. His heroes tend not to be the pure scientists but the engineers, the doers. His 1987 profile of the Old River Control Structure, the enormously complex and epic-scale engineering works that prevent the main body of the waters of the Mississippi from spilling down the Atchafalaya as they really want to, was widely linked at the time of the New Orleans floods last year and deservedly so -- search for "McPhee Old River Control" to read it, it's well worth it. He has a love for the concrete that doesn't prevent him having a good understanding of the underlying science that his engineers use and writes clearly and with energy.
The Curve of Binding Energy is about Ted Taylor, a physicist from Los Alamos, his efforts to develop the lightest fission bomb that he possibly could, and how his research pushed him in the direction of proper oversight of post-fission materials. The writing is excellent, pacey and readable, though at times tending too much to the New Yorker structure of "At facility Y I was ushered in to meet Expert X. He had shrewd eyes and an expansive, welcoming half-smile at the corners of his mouth. He said Z." The basic message is: (1) plutonium is easy to get access to; (2) with current (1974) practices and volumes the amount necessary to produce a bomb (15 kg) would be lost in the statistical noise; (3) this will only get worse as volumes produced go up, and they're projected to go up massively.
This is all from the perspective of 1974, of course. Since then, prompted in part by the concerns this book raised (and in part by independent factors such as a fall in the price of oil), the US cut back hugely on reactor starts. Nevertheless, nuclear power in the US grew from 114.0 billion MwH (out of a total of of 1867.1 billion MwH) in 1974 to 763 out of 3721 in 2004, in other words from 6% to 21%. Global annual plutonium production has gone up by a factor of 4, which granted is a lot but isn't the exponential increase predicted by the book. This is in part because the US contributes much less plutonium than you'd expect, in part because it hasn't adopted fast breeder reactors.
So the good news is that the US seems to have taken the issue relatively seriously. The bad news is that the UK and France between them hold 50% of the civilian plutonium in the world. I'm shocked by the lack of serious public awareness and serious official response in those two countries -- the protests seem to have died down a lot since the 80s but the problems have just got worse. The other bad news is that nuclear material keeps going missing in Russia, though under a 1994 agreement the US is continuing to pay some of the costs of shutting the relevant reactors down and moving to fossil fuels.
Ultimately, given that deterrence works against states, the question is how to prevent terrorists from getting the bomb? One part of the answer is simply increased vigilance, which has the advantage of protecting against all attacks: the terrorists don't necessarily need the bomb, after all. Another part is increased spending on counter-proliferation measures like the Russia program. Another part, perhaps, is engaging with countries that want to develop nuclear power to make sure that their plants are efficient and safe. And another part, unfortunately, is probably to accept that in the future there will be the occasional bomb in a major city and people will die but life will go on. All of these conclusions are reached in the book: they haven't dated, and in an important sense neither has the book itself.
Absorbing, Fascinating and Still Pertinent .......2006-06-16
Despite being written 30 years ago this is still an amazing and pertinent book about all things nuclear.
First off it is another McPhee homerun. His style of just following tangents, paying attention to all the interesting details that paint the full picture and which most authors would ignore, until the tangents all coalesce into a bigger story works incredibly well. So well that I'm surprised he seems to be one of the only authors to use it, but he does it masterfully.
This book is about the life of Theodore Taylor, a brilliant nuclear engineer and weapons designer. And about mining nuclear material, and processing it into fuel (not only how, but WHERE, what the plants look like, how big they are, how many people work there, what comes in one end and what comes out the other end and where does the stuff go after that), and transporting nuclear materials, and the Manhattan project, and nuclear weapon testing, and nuclear reactor design, and nuclear safety, and the Orion spaceship design, and building coast to coast underground tunnels with specially designed nuclear bombs, and a thousand other incredibly interesting topics.
The writing style is immensely absorbing, and perhaps the biggest theme is safeguarding commercial nuclear material so that terrorists cannot get a hold of it and build a bomb that could topple the World Trade Center. Considering this book was written in the early seventies its foresight is unbelievable, and in a post 9-11 world where nuclear power is again receiving attention as an oil alternative the information in this book is still relevant.
Highly recommended!
Product Description
Classrooms were never sufficient for Jared Cohen; he wanted to learn about global affairs by witnessing them firsthand. While studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, he took a crash course in Arabic, read voraciously on the history and culture of the Middle East, and in 2004 he embarked on the first of a series of incredible journeys to the Middle East. In an effort to try to understand the spread of radical Islamist violence, he focused his research on Muslim youth. The result is Children of Jihad, a portrait of paradox that probes much deeper than any journalist or pundit ever could.
Written with candor and featuring dozens of eye-opening anecdotes, Cohen's account begins in Lebanon, where he interviews Hezbollah members at, of all places, a McDonald's. In Iran, he defies government threats and sneaks into underground parties, where bootleg liquor, Western music, and the Internet are all easy to access. His risky itinerary also takes him to a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, borderlands in Syria, the insurgency hotbed of Mosul, and other frontline locales. At each turn, he observes a culture at an uncanny crossroads: Bedouin shepherds with satellite dishes to provide Western TV shows, young women wearing garish makeup despite religious mandates, teenagers sending secret text messages and arranging illicit trysts. Gripping and daring, Children of Jihad shows us the future through the eyes of those who are shaping it.
Average customer rating:
- Thoroughly enjoyable memoir!
- A riveting and unforgettable true-life memoir
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The Circuit: The True Story of a Policewoman's Journey from the Streets of London into the Dangerous World of Covert Operations
Jacqueline Davis
Manufacturer: Lucky Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Biographies & Memoirs
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Women
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Rich & Famous
| Leaders & Notable People
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Law Enforcement
| Criminal Law
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ASIN: 0971331898 |
Book Description
This book is a fascinating account of Jacquieline Davis' experiences as one of the top operators in a male-dominated profession: the secretive, often dangerous world of covert operations.
Customer Reviews:
Thoroughly enjoyable memoir!.......2005-05-26
A terrific memoir of a female cop, bodyguard, undercover operative, investigator, security consultant and imperfect human being. Ms. Davis is an amazing woman with tons of courage. She shares fascinating, moving and funny experiences from her diverse career and her life. A must-read for women in law enforcement or security. Should be assigned reading for our male colleagues, too. An enjoyable read for anyone. It's a very human story that doesn't get bogged down in professional details that would bore readers outside the field.
A riveting and unforgettable true-life memoir.......2003-09-23
The Circuit is the true story of Jacquieline Davis, a young female London police officer who dared to enter the dangerous realm of covert operations. Jacquieline's duties would lead her to infiltrate a Columbian cocaine cartel, rescue hostages from Asia and the Middle East, protect a royal family, and more. A riveting and unforgettable true-life memoir, The Circuit is a welcome contribution to Criminology Studies reference collections, as well as being of intense interest to non-specialist general readers with an interest in how police approach such global problems as organized crime and political terrorism.
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