Governments

This is an absolutely first rate book about American Jews in the 1920's and the efforts of several Jews, including Al Jolson and gangster Arnold Rothstein, to find a comfortable place in American society. This book has it all- crime, entertainment, law, bootlegging, etc. and is really, really difficult to put down. Excellently written and absolutely riveting

Dr. Alexander has provided us with an indispensable book. He manages to combine deftly different fields of scholarship, and his book is admirably lucid and short. Historians of modern religion, modern Jewry, ethnic identity, and plain old American history should read this book. In fact, they are professionally derelict if they don't. As for the rest of us, those just interested in a page-turner, this book has sex, violence, gambling, and, if not quite rock and roll, at least a precursor of it.

This is one of those books that's virtually impossible to put down once you've started. With an anecdotally proven thesis (that I happen to agree with strongly) whether you agree with it or not, it definitely gets you thinking... not so much about why the three individuals chosen identified with the subcultures they did, but why they received such strong support in the community. One might wonder though whether is was what they stood for, or really, simply "colorful" characters simply "making it" by becoming celebrities - - even if some of some of what they did was a "shande". Still, it is part of the Jewish conscience to integrate into American society yet "feel" if not be somewhat of an outsider, so perhaps they were the ultimate symbol of this - - Jews living the American dream... yet living on the fringes of it as well.

Written like an E.L. Doctoreau novel, Alexander tells the stories with ease and insight, painting great portraits of the men and the era... This is one of those books you lend out to all your friends, and buy new new copies when they're not returned when you get that inevitable urge to read it again !

Roberts, a Rutgers law professor, examines the sociopolitical reproductive history of black women--concluding this group did and still faces disparate treatment in public policy. The combined impact of race/ethnicity, sex and ecconomic status govern black women's relation to their own bodies--and treatment from policymakers and medical personnel.

While this premise has been previously examined by other scholars, Robert's contribution differs in legal analysis of the state/women relationship specifically as it applies to black women. She also faults fellow feminists for their ignorance, silence, and apathy towards black women's unique reproductive rights.

Begining with a critique of the predominantley white pro-choice movement for preoccupation with white middle class women and the assumption reproductive access means the same thing for all groups, Roberts holds black women's fertility is only valued if a predominantley white society can find ways to benefit from it.

She also notes that illegal abortion took the highest tolls on low-income black women who were unlikely to have the financial and political clout of rich white women to convince doctors to perform theraputic abortions in secret. At the same time, abortion should not be the sole issue of a truly progressive reproductive rights movement because coercive sterilization and contraceptive programs are also painful incidents in black women's reproductive history.

The pro-choice movement should oppose reccent 'welfare reform victories' because of the destruction such punitative measures have on black communities. Although most recipients were and continue to be white, policy debates were flooded with inferred images of the black "welfare queen" to foster and exacerbate racial and class tensions within the most conservative industrialized nation in the world.

Because anything else repeats the very conditions she is seeking to eliminate, a truly progressive reproductive policy supports the rights of all women to control their own bodies. Not enough to perform "multicultural" outreach, all feminist reproductive rights groups must fully intergrate a multi-pronged, class concious approach into their mission statement and policy objectives.

This book is an indispensible text for a social science course on reproductive rights, law, and/or social policy, but should be read by all who are concerned about securing freedom for all.

We all know about the plight of black men in society, the mainstream white society doesn't know about the plight of black women and their role in demonizing us by controlling our reproductive capacities and by destroying black families. Black women have long been stereotyped as breeders of unwanted children, matriarchs, and amoral jezebels. It's time for society to stop seeing blacks as problems and to start finding solutions to the growing poverty, lack of insurance, and family breakdown among blacks by assisting them economically, not by punishing black women's reproduction.

I want to thank Ms. Roberts for having the guts to say what was on her mind in her book.

I am fortunate to have picked up this book at a local feminist bookstore. This book taught me an abundant amount of information regarding the complex connections between reproduction, gender, and race in the United States. Starting with slavery, the author takes the reader all the way through to the present. Unfortunetly not much has changed since then. Society continues to control the reproduction of black women in order to keep the status quo of white male power structures alive and well. The most difficult chapter for me concerned the eugenics movement and forced sterilization. I knew this occurred but was not aware of how systematic it was. Who knows if doctors really stopped sterilizing black women without their consent in the 1970's as the author stated? I wouldn't be surprized if this practice continues. I had to have a couple drinks to process that chapter.

No longer can I hide behind ignorance of these events.

I read The Mantle of the Prophet many years ago. OSmehow the Amazaon computer knew me well enough to reccomend it, and it brought back the impression that this book left me. It is wonderfully written and relates the mix of socio-economic events and the Shi'a culture that coalesced to foment the Islamic Revolution in 1979. However, the sense the reder gets while rapidly going through it, is that the book presents this very thoughtful and clear historical and sociological argument in the manner of a novel, you can't put the book down. This no ordinary academic text and Mottahedeh combines the skills and art of the poet and novelist with the clarity and facts of an academic. I have never read such an interesting and clear - devoid of controversy or criticism - description of what's it like to study in a Shiá Madrasa, to undertand the curriculum and the stages that a student must follow to become an Ayatoallah. Mottahedeh also offers a simple and brilliant, powerful description of the cultural contrast that existed between the supericially modern and wealthy cosmopolitan Teheran and the countryside, which supplied so many of the clerics that influenced the masses living on the fringe. This book is as invaluable to the specialist, and is an excellent complement to the socio-hiostorical classic text by Ervand Abrahamian "Iran Bewteen two Revolutions", yet it can also be read and enjoyed by the non-specialist just the same. This was, however I look at it, one of the finest books I've ever read in my life

Very comprehensive information about the shia, shia philosophy, development of learned in shia hierarchy and finally Islamic revolution in Iran. The story is written about a certain person as he grow up in Iran, got his education in religious centers and involved in the actions. The history and information are given as the situation requires background about it. It is very nicely written, easy to read entertaining and informative.
Sometimes I found names mixed, to many names with too different philosophies to keep up, so it is a fast book to read, time to time you may have to come back and repeat.

Roy Mottahedeh skillfully weaves together the lives of several people from Iran to present a personal point of view of modern history with a vantage point rarely presented in other modern history texts. He also does not fail to address all the necessary points in history that set the stage for actions in Iran's recent history and give the reader an adequate foundation for understanding Iran's revolution.

Mark Danner's short book, The Massacre at El Mozote, is an extremely powerful depiction of not only what can go wrong with US foreign policy, but of the lengths politicians will go through to convince us that what they are doing is, in fact, right. The thoroughness and integrity of Danner's investigation cannot be disputed; on top of that, he is very adept at leaving readers to draw their own conclusions. The book may be the Hiroshima of our times.

While I agree with earlier reviewers, especially the point that what appears to be propaganda should not be immediately dismissed as such, I think the real lesson of the book is that the US, as a leader in world affairs, needs to choose its "friends" very carefully. Danner's book made me realize that while the US likes to shape Latin American policy, in point of fact the powerful "Good Neighbor" to the north is often manipulated by the very regimes it seeks to control. And as citizens of this great country, we have a hard time imagining such a thing.

The butchers of the El Salvador government, trained and financed by the US, knew that they could commit whatever atrocities they wished so long as they opposed the socialist rebels. Consequently, in December 1981, they murdered 767 people at El Mozote and in surrounding villages with impunity because they understood that the political stakes were much higher in Washington once the Reagan administration had committed itself to supporting the status quo. In its frantic attempts to dispute or to ignore the details of the massacre, the Reagan administration-which liked to portray itself as hard-line-really appears as the spineless weakling in this whole affair. Truly, the "tail wagged the dog."

This is an important lesson to bear in mind as the US conducts a new war on terrorism (the Communists having been vanquished years ago). Is our country going to find itself supporting human rights abusers once again because our leaders are afraid of political fallout, by appearing to be weak on combating terrorism or inept at finding WMDs? Human rights--and especially the right to life itself--should be the criteria our government considers when it decides to throw its support behind a foreign government.

Mark Danner has written a marvelously researched and page-turning account of one of the larger attrocities in Central America committed by U.S. trained, supervised and funded armies. After the American War in Vietnam, the U.S. made a strategic decision to pay the locals to do our fighting. In other words, a proxy war. Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, the crafty, spirited and charismatic officer who commanded the Salvadoran forces at El Mozote, trained in Panama at the U.S. training installation later moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia and named the School of the Americas. Graduates of the SOA have been implicated in the murders of thousands of civilians, Archbishop Romero and American nuns and priests.

What I found most interesting, contrary to my previous opinion, is that the Ambassador and at least several American officials in San Salvador believed something terrible had happened in El Mozote. Without access to the site - it had been recaptured by the FMLN rebels - they could prove nothing. Nevertheless, they attempted to communicate their fears to Washington. Washington decided not to believe. Instead, the New York Times recalled one of the reporters who had been to the site at FMLN invitation and had seen the bodies. The story seemed unbelievable.

The story was, of course, Communist propaganda and therefore not to be believed. Well, yes, the FMLN did broadcast the story with the intent of influencing Salvadorans and Americans. It was propaganda. It was also true.

There is a parallel in U.S. history. (There may be more than one.) During the 1920's and 30's and even later, the American and European press was rife with reports of mass murders in the Soviet Union. The press reporting these attrocities had for years been reporting and editorializing against the Soviet threat and Communist revolution, many times exaggerating or being more than a little creative. They had also supported the American-British-French invasion of the Soviet Union after WWI. Liberals regarded these sources as unreliable and untrustworthy, and continued to defend Stalin. The liberals were right, of course, just as the Reagan Administration was right: the reports were propaganda. The reports were also true.

Sometimes the enemy is right. We should take care to listen.

What a shame it would have been to the writers of the American constitution to see the policy that the US took in El Salvador and the Latin American region. How could a country with the ideals of liberty and freedom of oppression support a government whose army killed and cruelly repressed its innocent inhabitants? I was a young girl when El Mozote massacre occurred but I remember the fear that infused every sector of society. Where was the liberty that the US was promoting if the only emotion allowed in the population was fear? Dissent, protest even ideological differences were brutally repressed! Mark Danner is an excellent journalist and a corageous human being by bringing to the attention of the American society the barbarism committed with the funding and support of the US government. Danner tells the truth about events and violations of basic human rights by the US. supported Salvadorean regime. Danner wins 10 out of five stars in my rankings.

Oil, Power, & Empire is an invitation to "take the red pill" and see the truth behind the matrix of lies which the Bush administration has been promoting. The accuracy and clarity of Larry's presentation will be a real challenge to anyone whose sense of security is based on the idea that the present administration is being honest about what drives its agenda in Iraq, and what its plans for our future here in the "homeland" are. If you're ready for the challenge of being dis-illusioned, Larry's book is the place to start.

I've been watching Richard Clarke on TV tell how Bush was focused on Iraq from day one, and how he pushed Clarke to link Iraq to Osama bin Laden after 911 - even though Clarke knew there was no connection. But no one asks the key question: WHY was Bush focused on Iraq and why did the US invade? Oil, Power and Empire clearly answers this question (and documents its answer!) -- and much, much more.

As Daniel Ellsberg wrote in his blurb: "This remarkable account of US and UK policy toward Iraq--from its founding as a British colony after World War I to the immediate present--is brilliantly illuminating in an almost literal sense. It's as if the author had suddenly turned the lights on in the dark cellar of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Highly readable, studded with cogent, often startling quotations, the story is at the same time soberly told, factual and horrifying: but above all, enlightening. I can't recommend it too highly for the many struggling to fathom how America came to the present calamitous role of occupying Iraq against local resistance."

This is the best book of its type i've yet come across. Very complete, detailed, highly readable. Makes one mad, but it ends on a somewhat positive note, indicating some cause for hope. The author has fully documented all facts and allegations.

This book is a brilliant, inspirational guide to recognizing the inherent addictive and destructive nature of many dominant paradigms in our civilization. The authors weave their discourse around the spiritual insights of Rumi and Native American steps to "peace." The authors delineate how paradigms function and protect themselves from the threat of alternative approaches. They also expose the addictive nature of paradigms that dominate modern culture, while offering guidance for those wishing to consciously evolve and transcend the self-limiting, divisive patterns that dominate society. This book is a powerful, enlightened examination of what keeps humanity oppressed, allowing us to reflect on ourselves and the world around us. For those who recognize the flaws in existing patterns and paradigms, this book will resonate and provide insight into how we can individually and collectively develop a progressive, expansive framework for human civilization. I highly recommend this book!

The Paradigm Conspiracy is a "Bible"-type systemic 12-step philosophical analytical meditation which I hate to go anywhere without, and can open to any page to receive daily inspiration and hope. This is a thorough open disclosure of the violence of systemic abuse, and without leaving us in the despair of broken dreams, throws light into the tunnel of darkness by outlining the steps that WE, as groups, community-poli-social systems can take to heal[without controlling the outcome],dialoguing new paradigms and meta-paradigms for healthy societies. Assumptions, strategies, responses, and goals, all brilliantly graphed as well as spiralled in the tradition of our ancestral North American and Middle Eastern spiritual masters, esp. Rumi. Appreciating your wonderful truth, Denise and Christopher!

The authors have taken dynamic ideas from the minds ofbrilliant scholars, i.e. Thomas Kuhn, and brought them home straightto our hearts and minds. This book engages every part of the reader--making one deeply examine where s/he stands in relation to living one's truth.

As I read it I recognized the complex maze of ideas first introduced in grad school readings which presented how unknowingly we collude with a system of dominance and oppression. Yet in this text of hope, the authors lead us through the puzzle of problems to the endless possibilities and solutions. Solutions which start right here, right now, on an individual basis. The awarenesses this book brings forth can shake the soul at first, but staying with how the authors unfold this mystery ultimately lets us shake off the chains we didn't even know we were bound by.

Definitely worth reading, especially in conjunction with their next book: Love, Soul and Freedom. These outstanding books bring together what a soul thirsts for in a way that quenches far beyond expectation.

One of the graces of living in the United States is the ability to buy affordable real estate. The open market provides both buyer and seller a plot of Mother Earth in order to raise their children or develop a nest egg for the future. One of the casualties of the War on Drugs is legislation aimed at the drug dealer, could deeply effect the land-owning taxpayer. The following example will give you a clearer understanding. In the summer of 2000, state police discovered 517

marijuana plants growing in an isolated hollow in eastern Kentucky, unbeknownst to the property owners, Dale and Diedre Hall.

Authorities suspected the family, based on a tip from a drug informant. According to the Hall's family lawyer, police were unable to get enough evidence to make an arrest, let alone to secure an indictment or a conviction. Nevertheless, the Halls owe the state a little more than $1 million under a 1994 law that taxes marijuana dealers $1,000 a plant and penalizes those who do not pay the tax before they are caught. The law, upheld by the Kentucky Supreme Court, was modeled on statutes in other states that has passed muster with the US Supreme Court. The law has brought in close to $300,000 in revenue, at least some of which came from drug dealers who made confidential payments to the state.

The tax assessment does not require a conviction. The law is enacted when police report on the seizure or discovery of illegal drugs, which they are required to do within 72 hours. The Hall's lawyer said the tax blocks his client access to the judicial system, challenging the provision of the law that requires suspected dealers to post a bond equal to the amount owed before they can file a protest.

The area where the Hall's reside is located in coal country near the Kentucky-West Virginia border. The depressed coal industry has left many out-of-work coal miners to fend for themselves. Usually they do it through the cash crop of marijuana grown on parkland or, in the Hall's case, private property. According to an article by APB News, the 1994 law requires marijuana growers and dealers to buy tax stamps at the rate of $3.50 per gram or $1,000 per plant. While the process is confidential and payment of taxes cannot be used as evidence in a criminal case, the civil penalties are added to any criminal ones once someone is caught, along with an additional penalty for failure to pay, said state Rep. Charles Geveden. "It's not a ruse or an attempt to legalize marijuana," said Geveden, a Democrat from Wickliffe, in western Kentucky, who was one of the law's sponsors. "What it does is it creates a monetary penalty as well as the criminal penalty."

Too little too late for the Halls, who acquired the American dream of owning land through hard work and sacrifice. What saved them from total financial ruin was Dale's decision to follow Diedre's advice

about offshore asset protection. Now the Hall's life savings won't be burned up in tax levies from the discovery of some hemp plants.

The following case concerning property forfeiture comes from Rhode Island and is very illustrative as to the real goal of such government action: greed. Luz Rivera of Providence, RI was arrested in 1995 and charged with drug dealing. The police also confiscated $860 from her apartment after a search. Ms. Rivera had the charges against her dismissed in 1996 after she successfully proved she was at work and not at her apartment at the time of the alleged drug deal. Being found innocent of the charges, she naturally requested that her $860 be returned and obtained the necessary court order for this to happen. The state refused to honor the court order and Ms. Rivera contacted the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties union to assist her in obtaining the return of her money. The ACLU has threatened the state with a contempt order but the state attorney general's office has filed a motion to have the 1996 order requiring the return of the confiscated cash null and void. The state meanwhile maintains Ms. Rivera's cash was lawfully forfeited. Considering Ms. Rivera has been cleared of any charges of illegal activity, what is the basis of the state's claim? Very simply, it is the basis of greed. The state government wants Ms. Rivera's cash and has decided to keep it, all moral considerations, notwithstanding. A more clear example of the real reason behind property forfeiture could not be given. It is money pure and simple. Citizens have it and the government wants it.

The New York City Police Department has learned a valuable lesson from state and national law enforcement agencies. The Department will implement its "Zero Tolerance Drinking and Driving Initiative" sometime within the next month according to Police Commissioner Howard Safir. The stated goal of this new program is to discourage drunk driving and means anyone arrested for drunk driving in NYC will have their car seized until acquittal of the charges. The policy is based on the fact that city code permits police to seize "instrumentality's of crime." Commissioner Safir expects the program will result in thousands of cars being seized in the near future. According to criminal lawyer Gerald Lefcourt, this is a serious misuse of the forfeiture laws as they were not intended for this type of situation.

Mr. Lefcourt is right in his supposition that the forfeiture laws were not originally intended to address crimes such as drunk driving. Originally they were to punish drug dealers by confiscating the goods they bought and used with the proceeds from the drug trade. However, it has not taken government agencies long to realize the full potential of forfeiture laws since any property used in committing a crime or that results from illegal activities can be seized. This provides government an easy way to take from the public whatever it wants and is a natural motivator for unscrupulous, unethical and illegal actions by the government. In this case, if the city of New York wishes to discourage drunk driving it can increase jail time for a conviction, but its much more lucrative to confiscate a nice car.

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I really enjoyed this biography of Thomas Jefferson - the book itself. My overall impression is altered somewhat by the added dimension of having listened rather than read . . . I bought the CD version because of the many hours I spend on the road. Dan Cashman, the narrator, has a splendid voice, but I felt his reading was too slow and with too many poignant pauses for my taste. I would have liked the audio version more if he'd been more straight-forward in its reading with less tendency to pontificate. Be that as it may, the substance of the book itself opened up the world of it's protagonist in a way few books do.

Although the book meanders a bit at certain points, the reader feels he is in Jefferson's mind at times. I would have liked the author to have told us about more of Jefferson's close acquaintances and their relationships. Few of the other founding fathers are mentioned, Benjamin Franklin a case in point. Attention given to Washington and Adams is quite sparse. I felt too many pages were devoted to Jefferson's lopsided relationship with Maria Cosway whom he met after the premature death of his wife. Maria was a married woman he was romantically attracted to, but who would have nothing to do with him except as a friend. He couldn't let go of her over the years, however, and she was too polite to totally cut all communications (even though she lived in Europe and ended up becoming a nun).

One thing I liked about this book was the way Beran shed light on Jefferson's intimate interests, his way of looking at the world around him and the place he felt he occupied in it. Some of those interests and notions, or ways, of looking at people, places, his own personal psyche and health (among other things) seem alien to us today. But that is what's wonderful about how Beran puts it all together - in a way you can almost taste Jefferson's time, what was important to people and what they found motivating (people, at least, who were of the station and caliber of Jefferson - a rarity to be sure). Many of Jefferson's fears, shortcomings and idiosyncrasies are also covered, but in an affectionate way which makes him seem more human and less aloof.

I was pleasantly surprised and gratified to find that Jefferson appeared to become more disposed to the teachings of Christ later in his life, considering him the greatest teacher of the virtues of pure love who ever lived. Beran indicates that Jefferson came to believe Christ's teachings transcended those of the Greek philosophers in that Christ applied them across the board to all peoples. Jefferson even wrote a singular treatise on the subject, this after having held a largely hellenistic view of the world for most of his life.

I finished the book feeling I would have liked to have known Jefferson personally and been able to have conversed and debated with him as a friend. My reason for awarding the book only 4 stars rather than 5 is largely due to my disappointment in the audio version - If I were you I'd opt for paper.

As a pet subject for publishers, it seems that nothing can rival America's founding fathers, aside from, perhaps, Dr. Phil and the latest political screed. But even the most devoted student of history must ask himself: What more can be written about, say, Thomas Jefferson?

Plenty, in fact, as Michael Knox Beran reveals in "Jefferson's Demons," his profound and exquisitely written meditation on the mind of America's most enigmatic Founder.

We typically see Jefferson as the sunny champion of reason, tolerance and liberty. But this is an incomplete portrait. At several points in his life, Jefferson suffered bouts of severe depression -- "ennui," as he called it -- that crippled his ability to act. For a man already disposed to prefer wine, books and the tranquility of his mountaintop home to bold action, such episodes could have been disastrous.

The most intense of them occurred in the 1780s, when Jefferson was beset by personal tragedy and political irrelevance. After his mostly embarrassing stint as governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War -- he fled Monticello ignominiously when Lord Cornwallis sent a raiding party after him -- he watched his beloved wife, Martha, suffer an agonizing death in 1782. Congress sent him to Paris in 1784 as a diplomat; less than a year later his youngest daughter died.

Back home, the new republic's troubles under the Articles of Confederation led to the drafting of a new constitution. At that moment the country could have used what Mr. Beran calls Jefferson's "benign wizardry" for reducing "a complicated tangle of fact and theory to a few readily comprehensible truths." But he wrote little of political interest during his appointment in France, leaving his friend James Madison "to do what he himself could not."

Mr. Beran reminds us of such periods of apathy and despair not to make his subject more palatable to today's readers but rather to show us that even Jefferson needed "a philosophy that did more than reason and common sense could to facilitate the expedition of the will."

It is Mr. Beran's argument that Jefferson managed to rouse himself to action by listening to his own "demons." By this term Mr. Beran is not referring to the man's secret vices or mental problems but echoing the ancients' concept of genii or manes -- inner spirits that "either cripple a man's productive power or enable him to channel it more effectively."

Jefferson, a man steeped in classical learning, knew this concept well. Renaissance thinkers like Machiavelli and Montaigne, also classically minded, had adapted it, Mr. Beran notes, as "a metaphor to explain the complicated processes of human inspiration." From them, Jefferson learned to carry on an interior conversation with his demons, his varied interior personas. By freely manipulating these roles, he tapped into newfound wellsprings of creativity.

In Paris, he played the chaste squire-lover (found in the sentimental novels of the day) in his unconsummated romance with the married artist Maria Cosway. During his 1787 tour of southern France and the Mediterranean coast, he drew inspiration from his firsthand study of the ancients' architecture and from the "primitive rituals and blood-soaked imagery" of their cults -- imagery that Jefferson later incorporated into the friezes and moldings inside Monticello.

When Jefferson returned to America, he assumed the role of "persecuted prophet of democracy," which led to his most fertile period yet. During his battles with the Federalists, Jefferson drew deeply from another ancient source: the language of biblical prophecy. He denounced men who had been, during the Revolution, admirable "Samsons in the field & Solomons in the council" but who now seemed to have "had their head shorn by the harlot England." These "apostates" had succumbed to "heresies" (such as Alexander Hamilton's national bank) that Jefferson believed would plunge the young republic back into monarchy. The political effect of this powerful prophetic voice was to elevate Jefferson to the presidency and eventually destroy the Federalists.

Mr. Beran places the personal struggles of Jefferson within the context of his age, a decisive moment in the timeless quarrel between the Whig and Tory temperaments -- "between the realist and the mystic, between the matter-of-fact man and the artist, between the man of prose and the man of poetry." Jefferson, though the architect of a Whig revolution of liberty, "was always happiest contriving patterns of order that had about them a Tory enchantment of spirit." He admitted -- if not to others, at least to himself -- that the modern world of liberty and commerce cannot satisfy man's deepest longings for meaning, coherence and love.

In his role as a Greek poet-statesman, Jefferson believed these qualities could be cultivated in the family, local community and school. In his later years, he devoted himself "to constructing little pavilions of order strong enough to withstand the gales of the Whig world he had helped to build." These included Monticello and the family life it sheltered, as well as the University of Virginia -- where future generations could learn to master their own demons.

This book is a Bildungsroman: the Education of Thomas Jefferson. It's the story of how Jefferson struggled to form himself into a man capable of action--the story of his "paideia," as the author would have it, in a bow to his subject's lifelong love of the Greeks. JEFFERSON'S DEMONS describes the mysterious ways the Sage of Monticello educated himself and learned to tap his most profound creative instincts.

Like so many great men, Jefferson was engaged in an ongoing conversation with the great men of the past, with Montaigne, Homer, Solon, Tacitus, Milton, Isaiah, Socrates, Jesus. Beran lets the reader overhear these conversations, and he shows us how Jefferson drew on them both in his private life and his public work.

The author's richly allusive style is itself an instrument in the communication of his vision of Jefferson: there are passages in the book in which the prose has less affinity with the rhytmically and spiritually flat prose of the present than with that of the Caroline and late Elizabethan prose-stylists. This startling use of language and metaphor prepares the reader for the book's major reassessments of whole tracts of Jefferson's thought. The book provides a nuanced reading of Jefferson's "Whig" and "Tory" qualities, shows how deeply immersed Jefferson was in a Virginia culture of decadent feudalism, and contains an ingenious reading of the connection between Jefferson's "sentimentalism" and the mediaeval romance of the rose. Jefferson's architecture emerges as something more deeply felt than the pasteboard classicism it is often taken to be; and Beran ties his analysis of Monticello and the University of Virginia to his discussion of how Jefferson tried to reconcile his civic republican ideals (the communitarianism of the classical city-state, the Greek polis) with his commitment to Whig liberalism, with its emphasis on liberty of trade, liberty of the press, and liberty of conscience.

I loved this book. It's a splendid account of Jefferson's self-culture and his attempts to apply the lessons he learned in the young American Republic, and it enlarges the number of intellectual debates in which Jefferson participated and through which he must examined.

But the book's most important message is an intensely personal one. Jefferson spoke hopefully of the "progress to be made under our democratic stimulants until every American is potentially an athlete in body and an Aristotle in mind." Beran shows the reader how Jefferson, in trying to realize this potentiality in himself and in others, aspired to the Greek ideal of the statesman who is also an educator, one who can help people to know themslves and do their work.

This is a neat, fun, informative book for everyone, young and old alike. Facts, information, interesting anecdotes, and superb pictures and graphics. The handy size makes it perfect for kids working on reports for school as well. A super book for a number of reasons, and a great one to have on your shelf, especially if you have kids in school or simply want to know more about British Royalty.

I bought this book a couple of years ago. I read it and found it quite easy and enjoyable to read. Now I use it mainly for quick reference and usually find myself spending more time just browsing through its pages and enjoying it over and over. It has a lot of interesting historical facts! I wish there were similar books on other europpean royal houses!

Kings & Queens of England & Scotland is a great book! I use this on a regular basis and is a good source for reports. I would suggest this book. The individual biographies are great, and the events during the reign are really helpful. This book follows each dynasty and shows a family tree for each. I highly suggest this book for anyone.

This book shows everything that has gone wrong n latinamerica and it not only shows one side. It talks about the bad things that corporations, unions, dictators, politicians etc. have done and why thanks to all of them and also the peole latin america is as bad as it is today.

Brilliant! An excellent book for those really concerned about the social and economical future of Latin America...For those who want to make a change.

excelent book, I really enjoy it because tell the true history of Latin America