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

Book Description

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

Customer Reviews:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton Studies in American Politics)

Average customer rating:

Excellent history of urban decline
Bad thesis but a story that still needs to be looked at
How a Frightening Economic Powerhouse Became Just Plain Frightening
a grad student
Well researched, well written

The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton Studies in American Politics)
Thomas J. Sugrue
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691121869

Book Description

Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit over the last fifty years has become the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of racial and economic inequality in modern America, Thomas Sugrue explains how Detroit and many other once prosperous industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Probing beneath the veneer of 1950s prosperity and social consensus, Sugrue traces the rise of a new ghetto, solidified by changes in the urban economy and labor market and by racial and class segregation.

In this provocative revision of postwar American history, Sugrue finds cities already fiercely divided by race and devastated by the exodus of industries. He focuses on urban neighborhoods, where white working-class homeowners mobilized to prevent integration as blacks tried to move out of the crumbling and overcrowded inner city. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II.

In a new preface, Sugrue discusses the ongoing legacies of the postwar transformation of urban America and engages recent scholars who have joined in the reassessment of postwar urban, political, social, and African American history.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent history of urban decline.......2007-07-18

This was required reading for a graduate course in American history.
Thomas J. Sugrue attempts to prove that resistance to the civil rights movement had much deeper roots than the white backlash of the 1960s and 1970s. The author contends that resistance to the civil rights actually emerged as opposition to the New Deal coalition. Urban, anti-liberal, northern whites, as well as corporate leaders, unionists and politicians limited the possibilities of reform. Sugure maintains that northern urban white workers initially were the "backbone" of the New Deal coalition. And they found a common cause as the New Deal unified varied constituents in America. Yet, Sugure argues that underneath the seeming unity of the new coalition, were unresolved questions of racial identities. These unresolved issues began to fester, and were then exacerbated by liberal policies, specifically, public housing. And it is here that Sugure places the ''white rebellion" against the New Deal and liberalism, in the urban north.

From the 1940s until the 1960s, Detroit's racial geography changed dramatically. Sugure refers to Detroit as a "magnet' for African Americans after World War II, due to the lure of the defense and
automobile industries. When increasing numbers of African Americans began to search for housing in the predominantly white sections of the Detroit, racial tensions began to increase. Post World War II was described at "dark ages of Detroit." Riots and white flight occurred, coupled with a decline in the Detroit's post war economy. As layoffs mounted, and a national housing shortage, white homeowners feared foreclosure on their homes, as the economic ability to own home became increasingly precarious.

Sugure claims that race and housing became inseparable in the minds of white Detroiters. Basically, he contends that white homeowners feared that the influx of blacks would ruin their fragile economic security. Familiar racial fears and myths emerged; blacks were associated with crime and vice. White Detroiters even cited Jim Crow as a model for "successful race relations." In response to the "black invasion" and their increased economic stability, working class whites began to form neighborhood associations. Essentially, these associations were political organizations aimed at stymieing black constituents from moving into white neighborhoods. Sugure contends that these associations espoused the notions of values, protection, achievement and tradition, and were aimed at paternalistically protecting the neighborhood from vice-ridden blacks. They also served to foster a sense of "whiteness" among members (silent majority etc). These organizations corresponded with public officials and real estate agents (who played to both black and whites) to block African Americans from certain neighborhoods in various ways, including violence and intimidation.

By examining this, I believe the author uncovered a very prominent theme in American history and politics. What should be the level of government assistance in a capitalistic society? In this specific case, should the government have supplied urban housing for its poorer constituents, or should it have upheld the rights of privacy and association of its more affluent constituents? The affluent white constituents criticized the government when it tried to "force people" (blacks) down their throats," they cried for their freedoms of privacy and association, yet they called on that same "tyrannical" government to aid them in blocking the settlement of African Americans in their neighborhoods. Sugrue hits on this contradiction but does not pursue it. Which constituents should the government help and when should it help them? When is the government infringing on the rights on its citizens, and when is it fighting to uphold their rights? A fine line is drawn and illustrated by the struggle in post war Detroit.

I think the author is extremely misleading when he discusses the "black invasion" of Detroit. He presents blacks as a stifling, crime-ridden, vice infested monolith. I understand the aim of the article was to examine the position of the urban white class, but nonetheless, the quotes the author uses to describe migrating blacks is extremely derogatory, and in some cases, the author makes the white backlash almost seem justified. The black race is not a monolithic entity, no race is. I believe Sugrue should have at least written a few sentences dispelling the notion of the "black invasion" as a monolithic entity.

In summation, Sugure challenges the historian to probe deeper when trying to locate the backlash to the civil rights movement and liberalism. Instead of just viewing it narrowly as southern whites, Sugure contends that resistance developed among a very unlikely group, a group which initially formed the "backbone" of the New Deal coalition. Yet, as the housing shortage pressed, old racial tensions flared up and urban, working class whites banned together to resist liberalism and the "black invasion" in the 1940s and 1950s, a generation prior to the civil rights movement.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history, civil rights history.

Bad thesis but a story that still needs to be looked at.......2006-12-17

Sugrue takes a look at one of the crisis to hit not only Detroit but the rest of the country in his book on race and inequality. While there have been a lot of disturbing factors that have occurred during urban renewal Sugrue takes his text a little far. His flagrant bashing of urban planning gets old after the first two chapters and the book tends to drag on. This is an important issue that bears further studying but hopefully it will be done in a more academic way. This book does have all the information you need to start studying the subject and is a good way to begin looking at urban renewal.

How a Frightening Economic Powerhouse Became Just Plain Frightening.......2006-08-29

In 2005, Detroit looks more like a city awaiting reconstruction after a series of aerial bomber raids than the dynamo of manufacturing it was at the close of the Second World War. The combinations of white flight, race riots, massive deindustrialization by the automotive industry and the industries attached to it coupled with chronic unemployment and discrimination and racism in nearly every facet of life did a great a deal to make Detroit the wasteland it is today.

Thomas J. Sugrue's short study of Detroit, from the late 1930's through the 1970's is an attempt to understand the structure of Detroit's decline in racial, political, economic, and sometimes spatial terms. Through analysis of all these factors, Sugrue creates a cogent explanation of why so many formerly industrial cities of the United States are increasingly poorer, blacker, and more hopeless about their future with every passing year.

Sugrue sees the problems of Detroit stemming from a multiplicity of conscious and unconscious decisions made on the part of local and national government officials, corporate boards, union leadership, neighborhood associations, and self-interested individuals in day to day life. This is nothing new in the study of post-war urban and industrial decline. What is new, and rather eye opening, is that Sugrue traces the beginnings of Detroit's economic woes to be nearly co-terminus with the war and not after the disastrous riot of 1967. This analysis is incredibly important for understanding how a massive black underclass with only minimal connections to the job market came into existence, and expanded, in the 1950's.

By a combination of discrimination and bad luck, a large number of black workers missed out on the relatively high paying automotive jobs that allowed huge numbers of white blue collar workers to aspire to home ownership and middle class respectability. For a small number of black workers who were able to find auto jobs immediately before or during the war some measure of job security and the upward mobility. This was not the situation of most black workers though. Without the benefits of seniority, most often confined to jobs that were made redundant by automation or plant movements and closure, black workers were most likely to be the victims of the vagaries of Detroit's labor market. The vast body of black workers most often found themselves getting the hot end of the economic poker.

Sugrue's analysis of race and the meaning of postwar liberalism is the most succinct and cogent portion of the work. One of the great conundrums post-war Detroit politics with overwhelming presence of the militant and fighting union UAW-CIO could not prevent housing segregation from becoming so thoroughly entrenched. In recounting the wartime and post war fights over public housing, Sugrue points to the dual identities that white male union members had as rank and filers and bread winning home owners tenuously holding onto newly won middle class status and their own whiteness.

The part of Roman Catholic identity is something Sugrue finds to be very important to the territorial fights that occurred in residential Detroit, as well as the grass roots neighborhood organizing which occurred in white neighborhoods--both factors he identifies as being woefully under analyzed. Through Sugrue's descriptions of neighborhood attempts to stop racial turn over, or the pernicious practice of "block busting" by opportunistic real estate agents, the reader is privy to seeing grass roots mass mobilization which would have most likely have formally adopted segregation if there had been legal means to do so. The housing battles of the forties and fifties were a grim precursor of white working class abandonment of the city proper and savage and complicated forms of inequalities that plague the rust belt today.

One of the most interesting portions of Sugrue's work is his analysis of how the automotive industry, in line with a great many other industries the country over, left the cities in the Northeast, Middle Atlantic and Midwest portions of the country--cities whose advantages laid in their location vis-à-vis lakes, rivers, or railway hubs. In line with Cold War planning which expected major metropolitan areas to be first strike targets by the Soviets, and because of the massive highway system built during the Eisenhower administration, it became possible for industry to disperse over greater distances than ever before. Facing the prospect of negotiating with militant unions in urban areas with powerful allies in public offices at every, much of the auto industry was more than happy to relocate to areas where unions were either weak or simply not organized--after 1947 the Taft-Hartley act made this much simpler as even Southern states with strong union presence enacted "right to work" legislation.

Mixing national security rationales with a great deal of pecuniary interest, Sugrue recounts how huge sections of the automotive industry simply left Detroit without the slightest concern for what their departure would mean for the future of the city. Sugure shows how the UAW and other Detroit area unions were possibly lost a golden opportunity to redefine corporate responsibility when they did not oppose shareholder and corporate prerogatives about the free movement of property anywhere they pleased. Although any union would have had a difficult time attempting to halt the movement of corporate property from one area of the country, no international union gave their support to stopping what the militant members of Detroit's UAW Local 600 called the "Runaway Shop," and we call deindustrialization. Some restrictions on the free flow of corporate property may have insured that Detroit's colossal unemployment of the late twentieth century would not be so colossal and seemingly intractable.

The Origin of the Urban Crisis is possibly the most solid book on why so many areas of the United States sit in utter ruin today. The analysis of Detroit he gives can be extended de-industrialized cities in every region of the country with their largely black and poor inner cities and their outlying more prosperous suburbs.

a grad student.......2005-11-30

Sugrue's thesis in this book is that endemic racism (along with economic decline) is responsible for Detroit being largely Black, poor and greatly in decline. He's a revisionist historian who wants to refute older narratives that Detroit is corrupt (because all the city governments after 1967 have been run by Democrats and Blacks). Instead he attempts to refute that by showing the deeply ingrained racism in the community.

Sugrue's attempt at political polemics is bad history. He fails to mention the obvious: Detroit is over-taxed and run by incompetent, corrupt politicians. It's public unions have caused government workers to be some of the highest paid in the country with little to show for it. This is thanks to former-Mayor Young who instituted an arbitration law. To pay for this, the city's taxes are exorbitant which pushes businesses further out. Because of this, Detroit never found other businesses to take the place of the declining auto-industry which has inflated pay for its jobs in the first place.

Of the past three mayors, two have been highly corrupt. Archer who was mayor in the '90s, after a distinguished career in the state Supreme Court, tried to reform the city but was kicked out of office. Young and the current mayor, Kilpatrick, are very corrupt. Just do a google news search of "Kwame Kilpatrick" and "corrupt" and you'll see the various scandals that have plagued him. Other than stealing city funds for himself and his family he turned down a $200,000,000 private gift to the city for charter schools because the teacher's unions were against it. Young, mayor in the '70s and '80s, made room for a GM plant by confiscating private land through eminent domain. Few could understand why he buldozed tax producing land when he could have given over acres of abandoned property, except that the residents of that neighborhood voted overwhelmingly against him.

Yes, white people with means fled Detroit for the suburbs. But Sugrue glosses over that fact that middle class Black residents left as soon as the could too. Southfield, a surburb township, is overwhelming Black and middle class, populated by those who couldn't stand the crime and corruption of Detroit.

Far from being an example of a typical post-industrial American City, Detroit is the exception. It should be held up as a prime example of how not to run a city. That being said, unless you've been assigned this book, don't read it. Sugrue gives excuses and vague general reasons (aka racism) for Detroit's decline when the real problems are staring him in the face

Well researched, well written.......2004-01-03

The Detroit metropolitan area today is arguably the most racially segregated region in the United States, with a primarily African-American, largely abandoned and dilapidated urban center surrounded by layers of primarily white, affluent suburbs. This book is essential reading for anyone who lives in southeast Michigan as well as other cities that have similar histories of industrialization, urban decline and concentrated poverty such as Cleveland, Gary, Philadelphia, and South Chicago.

Thomas Sugrue provides a thoughtful, well-researched, and fascinating analysis of systematic racial inequality in Detroit during the post World War II automotive industry boom of the 1940s through deindustrialization and "white flight", and ending with the catastrophic race riots of 1967. Sugrue avoids the current, common oversimplifications of blaming Detroit's urban crisis on the '67 riots or Mayor Colman Young by weaving together a complex story of human behaviors, fears, and incentive structures backed by data, references, and personal accounts: "By the time Young was inaugurated, the forces of economic decay and racial animosity were far too powerful for a single elected official to stem."

Sugrue's analysis provides insight to understand major groups of stakeholders and their interactions: Workers flocked from the southern states to Detroit seeking relatively high-paying automotive jobs. In the free market, resulting housing shortages allowed landlords to divide properties into tiny apartments and charge premium prices, protecting their investments by being selective in their choice of "low risk" white tenants. Bankers also preferred "low risk" clients, resulting in unequal access to funds. White home owners, wanting to protect their families and financial investment, resisted neighborhood integration to avoid declining property values and perceived dangers. Real estate agents capitalized on fears of mixed neighborhoods by buying property from fleeing whites at junk prices and selling immediately to blacks at premium prices. Labor unions protected seniority, which unequally benefited whites, and tended to compromise on racial issues in order to gain bargaining ground. Store owners avoided hiring black workers, wishing to avoid offending or frightening mostly white, mostly female, customers. Suburban tax incentives and new technology made large, flat assembly plants more efficient than the old multi-story plants. This drove automakers away from Detroit, where the rail and riverside real estate was largely developed, and contributed to unemployment and race and class polarization.

Book Description

Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World

New Foreword by Edward Friedman and James C. Scott

"A landmark in comparative history and a challenge to scholars of all lands who are trying to learn how we arrived at where we are now."
-The New York Times Book Review

Customer Reviews:

Examing Modernization.......2007-05-03

Moore seeks to examine the paths to modernity adopted by various countries and the subsequent political outcomes. Principally, more concentrates on the emergence of democracy, fascism, and communism. Moore argues that each path to modernization is characterized by a certain level of revolution. The driving factor to the development of the political path is at which level in society does the revolution begin; the aristocracy (above), the bourgeoisie (middle), or the peasant (below)? As such, the dependent variable can be summed up as political systems, while the independent variables stem from class interactions (landed aristocracy, the state, bourgeoisie, and peasant). Of particular importance for Moore is the relationship between the landed aristocracy and the state. In situations where the aristocracy is weak, the potential for peasant revolution is great. In situations where the state is strong, it retains the coercive force to repress potential uprisings. These relationships, coupled with the relationship between agriculture and commerce - particularly whether or not the landed aristocracy has made a move towards the commercialization of agriculture.

Moore begins his work in discussing the capitalistic, democratic path to modernity as characterized by England, France, and the United States. In the case of England, the landed aristocracy moved towards the commercialization of agriculture. This essentially eliminated the wide peasant base from the equation, thus removing a potentially revolutionary class. Additionally, the move towards commercialized agriculture decreased the power of the absolutist Crown. Furthermore, the commercialization of agriculture leads to the development of towns and a trading class (bourgeoisie). Once combining forces, the landed aristocracy and the bourgeoisie were able to rebel against the Crown and demanded political recognition. Following a long civil war, a parliamentary (democratic) system of government was established. In this case, the emergence of the bourgeoisie was imperative for the democratic transition. This illustrates Moore's classic line "no bourgeoisies, no democracy."

In order to explain the path towards communism, Moore examines the case of Russia and China. In the case of Russia and China, the landed aristocracy failed to make the transition to commercialized agriculture. This failure led to the continued existence of massive peasant population. This massive peasant population created a tremendous barrier for the transition to democracy, and subsequently possessed a high revolutionary potential. With a weak state unable to function repressively, the environment was ripe for a revolution from below; a peasant revolution led to a communist government.

Moore's last path of modernization, fascism, is illustrated by case studies of Germany and Japan. Although Germany and Japan undertook a capitalist path to modernity, the outcome was drastically different from those nations achieving a democratic outcome. In Germany and Japan, the landed aristocracy formed a ready alliance with the burgeoning commercial and industrial classes. This allowed for the transition to commercial agriculture as well as an expansion in the industrial sphere. This transition, coupled with capacity of the state to repress rebellion and dissension allowed for the emergence of a fascist form of government.

In short, Moore seeks to explain the various paths to modernity; democracy, fascism, and communism. These paths to modernity are primarily driven by relations between class groups, and the type of transition to commercial agriculture.

IS DEMOCRACY A `NATIONAL' PHENOMENON?.......2007-04-26

In an age where `democracy' is almost sanctified and nations lacking a democratic system are alienated by the international community, books like Barrington Moore's are of immeasurable value. In his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Moore does a phenomenal job in tracing the emergence of democratic systems in the West back to the specific types of the relations between monarchs, landlords, bourgeoisie, and peasants. His using `method of agreement' and `method of difference' alike in his comparisons of the different societal relations in Europe and Asia gives the reader the chance to think beyond a national context and therefore strengthens the theoretical value of his arguments.

The main shortcoming of Moore's otherwise `classic' book is that the author pays very little attention to the international and systemic contexts that strongly effect the developments in national systems. This omission, which seems a deliberate attempt for the sake of theory-building, is likely to lead the readers to a flawed understanding of `democracy' as a `national' phenomenon. I personally think that the international/systemic context cannot be detached from the national ones and even argue that the former is to take precedence in our analysis, for it is the variable that renders certain developments possible and others not.

To understanding the rise of fascism to power in Germany and in Italy we have to take into account the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European context, in particular the balance of power among the major powers. In the German case, its being a `late-industrialized' country, its rivalry with Britain for the hegemony in the continental Europe, and its `dissatisfaction' with the existing status quo provided a favorable condition for the non-liberal/non-democratic forms of governments. After all, it was the same Germany whose `constitutional republicanism' circa 1890 was regarded by Woodrow Wilson as "the shining model of self-government" to be emulated by the United States. The Italian case is more interesting in that Italy before the World War I was among the few `stable' democracies in Europe. Yet only four years after the war, in1922, Mussolini regime managed to come to power in Italy (not due to the relations between different classes of the Italian community, but mostly because of the Italian dissatisfaction both with its development level and the European status quo. Thus, not ignoring the influence of societal factors, we may say that powerful states that are dissatisfied with the international status quo are more likely to establish non-democratic forms of government.

As for the development of communism in Russia and China, we have to include their `dependent' situation vis-à-vis Western powers. While the economic dependence of these countries (actually, almost all countries which are called `Third World' today) prevented them from following independent economic policies and having an indigenous capitalist class, their political dependence impeded the development of nationally-oriented regimes in these countries. The later rise of totalitarian regimes was therefore partly a response to the economic and political dependence of these countries. Thus, we may say that it was the combination of poverty, injustice, and dissatisfaction that `paved the way' to non-democratic forms of governments in Russia and China.

A brilliant tour de force whose significance is still not appreciated.......2005-09-09

I read this book in the early 70's as a graduate student. It impressed me then as it still does as an example of a cogent analysis of the development of political systems of modern industrial states, solidly based on empirical grounds. Previous reviewers have provided much detail so I will content myself with the observation that how much better it would have been if the present US administration had absorbed the lessons of this book before embarking on the Mission (Impossible?) to bring democracy to Iraq.

Poorly Written.......2005-04-15

This is a seminal work, because it was the first work to take a comparative approach to political theory and it is the bane of many Poli Sci graduate students' existence.

I am a graduate student, who was forced to read this poorly written and very painful text. It attempts to cover too much material.

An interesting book, but...........2003-11-06

There are a couple of quick points I'd like to add. First, these ambitious books often cover so much (and I think well in this case) that historical errors are bound to crop up. For example, Japanese historians have pointed out errors in the Japan chapter that should be considered.

Second, the end of Adam's otherwise very informative review is simply incorrect. China with a GDP/capita of around $4500 has NOT outstripped Russia at $9000 GDP/capita. This , of course, does not reflect at all on the book, but too often those who eschew statistical based political science run the risk of being way off in evaluating success/failure or change. Certainly not everyone, but I have seen this strong tendancy.

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Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects
Richard Sandbrook , Marc Edelman , Patrick Heller , and Judith Teichman
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521686873

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Social Democracy in the Global Periphery focuses on social-democratic regimes in the developing world that have, to varying degrees, reconciled the needs of achieving growth through globalized markets with extensions of political, social and economic rights. The authors show that opportunities exist to achieve significant social progress, despite a global economic order that favours core industrial countries. Their findings derive from a comparative analysis of four exemplary cases: Kerala (India), Costa Rica, Mauritius and Chile (since 1990). Though unusual, the social and political conditions from which these developing-world social democracies arose are not unique; indeed, pragmatic and proactive social-democratic movements helped create these favourable conditions. The four exemplars have preserved or even improved their social achievements since neoliberalism emerged hegemonic in the 1980s. This demonstrates that certain social-democratic policies and practices - guided by a democratic developmental state - can enhance a national economy's global competitiveness.

Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism

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Highly Recommended!

Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism
Charles Perrow
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691123152

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American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued? In this book, the first organizational history of nineteenth-century America, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow says no. He shows that there was nothing inevitable about the surge in corporate size and power by century's end. Critics railed against the nationalizing of the economy, against corporations' monopoly powers, political subversion, environmental destruction, and "wage slavery." How did a nation committed to individual freedom, family firms, public goods, and decentralized power become transformed in one century?

Bountiful resources, a mass market, and the industrial revolution gave entrepreneurs broad scope. In Europe, the state and the church kept private organizations small and required consideration of the public good. In America, the courts and business-steeped legislators removed regulatory constraints over the century, centralizing industry and privatizing the railroads. Despite resistance, the corporate form became the model for the next century. Bureaucratic structure spread to government and the nonprofits. Writing in the tradition of Max Weber, Perrow concludes that the driving force of our history is not technology, politics, or culture, but large, bureaucratic organizations.

Perrow, the author of award-winning books on organizations, employs his witty, trenchant, and graceful style here to maximum effect. Colorful vignettes abound: today's headlines echo past battles for unchecked organizational freedom; socially responsible alternatives that were tried are explored along with the historical contingencies that sent us down one road rather than another. No other book takes the role of organizations in America's development as seriously. The resultant insights presage a new historical genre.

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Highly Recommended!.......2005-09-23

You may never have given a second thought to the very existence of the Fortune 500, but author and academic Charles Perrow has. In this eye-opening sociological account, he argues that the huge organizations that dominate today's business world in the United States would have been unthinkable to the nation's Founding Fathers, who viewed centralized money and power with great suspicion. Perrow's fascinating study points out the importance of big organizations in shaping American society. Yet for all his sweeping - and well-reasoned - arguments, Perrow focuses only on a couple of diminished industries. Still, this intriguing work is an important read for responsible corporate citizens. We recommend this social history to those leaders who want American corporations to be more than profit-making machines.

The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America's Selective Colleges and Universities

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The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America's Selective Colleges and Universities
Douglas S. Massey , Camille Z. Charles , Garvey Lundy , and Mary J. Fischer
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0691113262

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African Americans and Latinos earn lower grades and drop out of college more often than whites or Asians. Yet thirty years after deliberate minority recruitment efforts began, we still don't know why. In The Shape of the River, William Bowen and Derek Bok documented the benefits of affirmative action for minority students, their communities, and the nation at large. But they also found that too many failed to achieve academic success. In The Source of the River, Douglas Massey and his colleagues investigate the roots of minority underperformance in selective colleges and universities. They explain how such factors as neighborhood, family, peer group, and early schooling influence the academic performance of students from differing racial and ethnic origins and differing social classes.

Drawing on a major new source of data--the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen--the authors undertake a comprehensive analysis of the diverse pathways by which whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asians enter American higher education. Theirs is the first study to document the different characteristics that students bring to campus and to trace out the influence of these differences on later academic performance. They show that black and Latino students do not enter college disadvantaged by a lack of self-esteem. In fact, overconfidence is more common than low self-confidence among some minority students. Despite this, minority students are adversely affected by racist stereotypes of intellectual inferiority. Although academic preparation is the strongest predictor of college performance, shortfalls in academic preparation are themselves largely a matter of socioeconomic disadvantage and racial segregation.

Presenting important new findings, The Source of the River documents the ongoing power of race to shape the life chances of America's young people, even among the most talented and able.

The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times

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A cemetery of accumulations? Capitalism is a means, not an end
Arrighi Makes Sense of History
Contours of the 21st Century
Fascinating, challenging, erudite.
A must read

The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times
Giovanni Arrighi
Manufacturer: Verso
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1859840159

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A cemetery of accumulations? Capitalism is a means, not an end.......2006-11-11

G. Arrighi's Twentieth Century is very long indeed. It begins in the fourteenth century.
The author wants to lay bare Braudel's third layer of economic power (the real home of the predators), which covers the self-sufficient economy (the 1st) and the market economy (the 2nd). The predators are those particular communities or governmental and business blocs who accumulate on a world scale an ever-increasing capitalist power.

The author sees 4 historical centers of global accumulation: 1. the Italian city States (Venice, Genoa); 2. the Seventeen Provinces (Holland); 3. Great-Britain; 4. US; 5. ?
Each of these global accumulations is characterized by three capitalist cycles: 1. financial expansion; 2. consolidation and accumulation; 3. renewed financial expansion and emergence of competition.

His analysis is profound and detailed. However, the author doesn't take enough crucial demographic and political factors or decisions into consideration.
There is a phenomenal difference between the first two and the third and fourth accumulation. The 3rd one caused a demographic explosion which is still going on. Its success for the human species is truly exceptional (E. Hobsbawm).
The fall of the British empire was at least accelerated by two world wars which were declared by foreign countries and which left Great-Britain bankrupt (Keynes, Skidelsky).
The basic of the US empire is the dollar (W.G. Tarpley). The fall of the dollar in 1971 was countered by a political decision to inflate the oil prize (W. Engdahl), whereby the dollar recaptured its lost central place in international finance and US banks and oil corporations were catapulted at the zenith of world power (the real predators).

This book is already partly out-of-date. It ends with the Japanese formidable but already extinct expansion, not with the lurking Chinese one (a truly perfect combination of State and capital).
Do we see actually the final capitalist crisis, so many times claimed by pure Marxists? Absolutely not. Engel (not Engels)'s law is still highly in force with a nearly unlimited supply of cheap labor at the disposal of all transnational corporations.
Adam Smith's (and Marx's) law of the tendency of a falling rate of profit is an illusion, because in the long run capital chases earnings.
Finally, in our society, capitalism is not an end but a means to grab power and power means survival. Through history, the members of the ruling class live much longer than the ruled.

This book is a very worth-while read, although its analysis and vocabulary is nearly pure Marxist.

Arrighi Makes Sense of History.......2005-09-16

Giovanni Arrighi's "Long 20th Century" is a must-read for those who want to understand the global history and dynamics of power and capitalism, and especially the likelihood that in the next couple of decades, the U.S. will continue its current trend, and finally undergo a decisive loss of economic hegemony and power, quite likely to be replaced by China and other Asian economies. Whether such a shift will be accepted by the U.S. and its allies without a cataclysmic resort to military violence is very much in doubt--Arrighi demonstrates that the 3 major similar shifts in the past have been concomitant (both as cause and effect) with continental or global wars.

Arrighi's is a bird's-eye view of history from the 14th century onward, focusing on the repeated, cyclic tendency of leading capitalist groups/states/empires (hegemons) to be superceded by larger and more organized such groups. This has been due, roughly, to increasing nation/state competition for surplus capital that is largely not re-invested in trade and production by the existing hegemon. Such "finance" capital is sought most successfully by the hegemon that will overtake the existing one, but the competition in general has inevitably led to war, after which the superceding hegemon emerges as best positioned to lead the building of a larger world-capitalist system of trade and production.

Eventually, though, the cyclic process begins anew, though Arrighi doesn't claim that the "cycles" are closed loops--the means by which these new hegemons succeed involve technological, political, military, and organizational innnovations. Thus, Arrighi is a small-m marxist, retaining the best of, and building upon, but not limiting himself to, Marx's analysis, particularly regarding the tendency of capitalist re-investment of growing profits in production to eventually depress said profit-rates, as competition for limited markets drives them down. This has happened most significantly to 4 major hegemons: Genoese Italy's 14th century dispersed capitalist merchants, the Dutch nation/state, the British Empire, and finally the U.S. Any notion that U.S. power has ended such cyclic processes, and will "dominate" the world forever, is undermined by his argument--which only goes to 1994, yet is uncannily predictive (in general) of the effects of current events.

The brief summary above does not do justice to the book, which is fascinating in every detail, and truly comprehensive in its consideration of the history of world power and politics. The level of writing is high, but not incredibly dense--it does require close reading, but most educated and interested lay readers should find it amenable. It also has a great bibliography of similarly fascinating reading on related topics. Finally, Arrighi has many articles available online, of which several that I have read are just as cogent and valuable, including a couple recent ones in New Left Review that update his arguments from Long 20th Century to 2004.

Contours of the 21st Century.......2004-12-08

Giovanni Arrighi's text is the most under-rated as well as the most brilliant of all theoretical works on historical capitalism and its futures. Unlike the claims of recent scholars like Hardt and Negri, the text is NOT about one historical cycle succeeding another. Such a claim is one of the worst examples of intellectual misrepresentation that I have ever come across. Their own work ('Empire' and then 'Multitude') are vain and failed attempts to come to terms with Arrighi's work. As a student of Marx, Braudel, and Schumpeter, Arrighi knows better than most that no two systemic cycles are ever the same. Each one not only ruptures the world system, it also creates conditions for its own supersession, in what Arrighi, drawing upon Braudel, calls 'financial expansions', and what David Harvey following Arrighi, calls 'accumulation by dispossession'. By drawing insightful comparisons between four long systemic cycles starting with the medieval Genoese financial expansion, Arrighi demonstrates the novelty of the cycle underlying the long twentieth century as well as pointing to what lies ahead. This is an absolute must read for anyone interested in capitalism, the interstate system, the social movements (though here the text is somewhat deficient), and the possibility of a future different from the lackluster present. Arrighi's work is simultaneously historical and theoretical (theory after all comes from a deep grasp of historical currents). Although much misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misrepresented, and often appropriated without adequate acknowledgement, The Long Twentieth Century is destined to become the classic work of the 21st century. Ten years after it first came out, almost all of Arrighi's predictions are turning out to be accurate, so much so that his school of imitators is becoming as vast as his train of never-ending admirers. To those who like large meta-narratives that combine spatial dynamics with temporal rhythms - and there are only a few out there (Marx, Weber, Braudel, Schumpeter, Perry Anderson, Michael Mann, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Charles Tilly)- Arrighi's work will be the unsurpassable horizon of our times. Arrighi is a master-synthesizer. One of the challenges he raises is the question of synthesis itself. What is entailed in the act of synthesizing without distorting particulars, is the capacity to give each particular its due (as if that were ever possible!). Arrighi's deep compassion for the struggles to bring about a different global future guide much of his architecture. Unlike many who call themselves socialists, Arrighi carries none of their presumptuous and often ridiculous baggage. To read this text is like experiencing a breath of fresh air after so many sterile polemics on the Left. It is a tall order to go beyond the Long twentieth century. Future attempts will invariably find themselves repeating an insight already developed in some obscure page of the Long Twentieth Century. It is the challenge of the 21st to come up with something at least as good as the offering of the Calabrian maestro.

Fascinating, challenging, erudite........2003-07-23

I consider myself fairly well educated: I have a Ph.D. and I've thrived on books in this genre, such as _Europe and the People Without History_ and _The Colonizer's Model of the World_. But I find Arrighi's book a difficult one--a little beyond most readers, I should think.

There are three main reasons for this: a.) Arrighi fails to write for a larger audience and b.) fails to write as clearly as he could; and c.) Arrighi is assuming fluency in Braudel, Wallerstein, Abu-Lughod, and a host of other scholars who have tackled the rise of capitalist empires.

I think most Americans, who have a mediocre background in Marxist theory, world systems theory, class dynamics, and hegemony, might want to pass. Does the name Gramsci ring a bell? How about the basic premises of Lenin? Which way did you nod your head when I mentioned Abu-Lughod? If these notions aren't a part of your working knowledge, take a pass on this book. Try one of the two books I mentioned at the top. And if you *are* well-versed in Braudel, macro-economic theory, and critical discussions of imperialism, you might venture to read this difficult work. Arrighi has put together an ambitious, provocative work, a serious investigation into the power-economies of empires.

A must read.......2001-03-20

If you are a student of the international system or international relations this is a must read. It should be considered the second part in a five volume set. The first should be something about world systems theory by Wallerstein, a reader will do, then Fernand Braudel's Perspective of the World, followed by Hopkins and Wallertein's Age of Transition. For the final book I recommend Robert Gilpin's response to these works, The Challenge of Global Capitalism published in 2000.

Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution

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Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution
Michael Sonenscher
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 069112499X

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Ever since the French Revolution, Madame de Pompadour's comment, "Après moi, le déluge" (after me, the deluge), has looked like a callous if accurate prophecy of the political cataclysms that began in 1789. But decades before the Bastille fell, French writers had used the phrase to describe a different kind of selfish recklessness--not toward the flood of revolution but, rather, toward the flood of public debt. In Before the Deluge, Michael Sonenscher examines these fears and the responses to them, and the result is nothing less than a new way of thinking about the intellectual origins of the French Revolution.

In this nightmare vision of the future, many prerevolutionary observers predicted that the pressures generated by modern war finance would set off a chain of debt defaults that would either destroy established political orders or cause a sudden lurch into despotic rule. Nor was it clear that constitutional government could keep this possibility at bay. Constitutional government might make public credit more secure, but public credit might undermine constitutional government itself.

Before the Deluge examines how this predicament gave rise to a widespread eighteenth-century interest in figuring out how to establish and maintain representative governments able to realize the promise of public credit while avoiding its peril. By doing so, the book throws new light on a neglected aspect of modern political thought and on the French Revolution.

Non-proliferation Export Controls: Origins, Challenges, And Proposals for Strengthening

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Non-proliferation Export Controls: Origins, Challenges, And Proposals for Strengthening

Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 075464460X