Governments

This book makes you think that even if you're really careful, really do your thorough research, persistently ask questions and get answers in writing, you are still a subject of the state.

Mugged by the State, by Randall Fitzgerald, is a series of succinct descriptions of cases in which government agencies destroyed small businesses and seized homes, cars, and other property from everyday people. In each case where the victim did break the law, it was a minor, technical violation that should not have triggered such a draconian reaction.
Each vignette in Mugged by the State is based on a true story that Fitzgerald wrote for Readers Digest.
Consider the case of Fred and Nancy Cline. They established one of the last remaining family farms in the country, only to have the Army Corps of Engineers issue a cease and desist order threatening them with ongoing fines of $25,000 a day for each day they were in violation of one of its wetlands regulations, plus one year in prison. After a second cease and desist order and ruinous legal expenses, the Army Corps of Engineers demanded they restore the entire farm to its preagricultural state. To intimidate the Clines, the Corps of Engineers began flying black helicopters over the property, only a very short distance from the ground.
It's clear that a person doesn't own what he doesn't control. When government at any level, Federal, state or local, denies a property owner the right to control what belongs to him, the government has seized ownership. Had they not received help from an unexpected source, the government would own the Clines' farm.
The Clines talked to a former chief of the Army Corps of Engineers' regulatory division who had played a major role in writing the portion of the Clean Water Act the Corps and DOJ accused the Clines of violating. The former chief of the regulatory division said everything the Clines did was legal. DOJ and the Army ultimately dropped the matter. Sadly, not everyone in the Clines' position is so fortunate.
Just as Federal and state agencies perform regulatory takings, zoning and other local regulations can be used to deny people ownership of land they own and pay taxes on. If you've been fortunate enough to avoid problems with the zoning board, it may come as a surprise to you that the Hood River Co., Oregon planning department prevented Tom and Doris Dodd from building their retirement home on land they had purchased for $33,000; zoning had lowered its value to $700. (The Dodds lost their lawsuit.)
Some may pass off the instances Fitzgerald documents as isolated anecdotes, but the reality is that many government officials really do face incentives to behave in the same fashion that led to the "muggings" recounted in Mugged by the State. Most "muggings" receive very little attention, and only the more fortunate victims get their property back.
And although Fitzgerald doesn't mention it every time, the victim's Constitutional rights to just compensation (5th Amendment), due process (5th or 14th), or freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures (4th) were violated in most of the anecdotes included in the book.
An entire chapter of the book is devoted to asset forfeiture, which allows many Federal agencies (and some state governments) to seize property they allege was involved in certain felonies. The authorities don't have to investigate or prosecute the owner, or even allege the owner consented to criminal activity or knew the property was being used in crime. In general, any private property is subject to forfeiture: typically real estate, money, cars, boats, and jewelry. Indeed, most of the alleged crimes used as triggers for forfeiture do not lead to any arrests or convictions. The Justice Department's own statistics show the vast majority of alleged crimes leading to forfeiture never lead to an arrest or a conviction.
The suffering this book documents is a very strong case for reforming eminent domain, zoning, asset forfeiture, the ADA, occupational licensing, and other practices. Mugged by the State will convince you that such practices have some very real problems that need to be corrected. The book makes for easy but informative reading material on a growing problem.

This book reports accurate accounts of government legislation directly aimed at releasing individuals of their property and rights for their own financial welfare, as they see fit. I am appauled at the poor ethics of our government officials! It appears that it's fine to release individuals of their livelihoods as long as "theirs" isn't threatened. Time and time again, this book gives exact examples of the government running scared only when it seems it might cost them their jobs. I find this greedy behavior sickening! Thanks for opening my eyes.

Drayton's main point is to show the inter-relatedness of imperial control over nature and people. Natural sciences and political economy became related. That is, an understanding of nature's laws would help improve the administration of people and things/environment. Botany facilitated improvement ["a commitment to the reform of the world as a whole" p. 104], and improvement by the state justified empire.

He seeks to show this by concentration on Kew as a place where science and expansion converged (even while sitting at the very heart of the center. "What matters is Kew as an agent and product of modern history, as a space in which ideas about nature, economy, and legitimate authority interacted with concrete policies over Imperial Britain's nineteenth century." p. xvii. "From the 1780s onwards, however, it became a de facto national collection, to which seeds and bulbs were sent from every part of the world. More strikingly, Kew became a source of plants, and of gardeners, sent outwards to Britain's overseas dominions." p. 108.

He offers this summary: "Botanical knowledge, linked to the global transit of exotic commodities, had come to symbolize an imperium both rational and divine." p. 25.

"Systems of classification, as much as sextants and chronometers, allowed Europeans to perceive themselves as the magistrates of Providence, equipped by their knowledge of its laws with responsibilities over all of creation." p. 45. This knowledge justified their dominion. "British 'improvers' moved, at home and abroad, in the faith that they ultimately knew better than those on the ground. Their confidence depended, in part, on the assumption that they possessed a more profound understanding of how Nature worked." p. 90.

Drayton wants to upset the idea of imperialism being simply the center imposing itself on the periphery, rather: "Over all, we should begin to conceive of European 'expansion' as the colonization of Europe by extra-European interests." p. xviii The periphery changed the culture at the center: "Tropical nature [and its defiance of categories framed by the likes of Linnaeus] had again overthrown a system too provincial in its dependence on Europe..." p. 19.

Having superior knowledge justified exploitation of foreign lands despite natives, but it also justified conserving resources despite native demands when it suited the empire. These points are Drayton's most interesting for me (I could have used a lot more thinking about this-perhaps at the expense of stuff on personal politics in and around Kew).

Drayton insists botany pave the way for empire in a number of ways: knowledge and expertise lent legitimacy to foreign intervention (the enlightened know best), botanists themselves were local agents of empire, and knowledge allowed for redistribution of plants for profit in the center and around the imperial periphery.

This is one of the most exciting books I have ever read. It connects so many different strands of intellectual history, British history, and world history into one elegantly organized story which works over four centuries. It is packed with original arguments and suggestions-- almost too many, at times it is difficult to keep track of all the arguments that are in play at the same time. Drayton has a gift for keeping lots of balls in the air. It is the kind of book which leaves you feeling smarter in a dozen kinds of ways. I thought the conclusion was pretty prophetic about the world of 9-11.

Drayton has penned a remarkable history and historical sociology of the planting of empire, science and of course, plants. A remarkable achievment, complemented by the high quality of production by Yale University Press. Highly recommended, even to those who might believe that they have no interest in either science or empire...deserves more than five stars!

I have read all the works of Harold Weisberg, included "Never Again" which is a summary of other books of Harold Weisberg. After studying his work for many years, is HW in my opinion the foremost researcher of this american tragedy. Read "Never Again" and be convinced.

This book appears to have been written by a man who was very mad at the JAMA article on the assassination. He wasted lots of space repeating and repeating that he had received info through the FOIA. I have not read the JAMA article, but it must have mentioned Weisberg by name to get him this cranked off. He also spent lots of time trying to tie down exactly what Dr. Hume had destroyed. Yet he has no proof that what was destroyed is any different from what Dr. Hume submitted. I found the book a "difficult read" and considered throwing to away as opposed to finishing it.

In yet another triumph of research, Harold Weisberg proves why the critics are slow to attack when they walk past "Old Yeller." The grandfather/watchdog of the JFK community, Weisberg puts time-tested wisdom to the post-Posner world of JFK, revealing new insights into the JAMA claim that supports the pro-Solution position, but in flagrant disregard of the physical evidence. Weisberg makes no qualms about his anger in this book, but the reader all the more appreciates the passion and animation that this brings to this factually solid, well-planned book. To the new and old alike, you WILL learn something here!!

¿Era una victoria para el imperialismo estadounidense el derrumbe de la URSS? No. ¿Porqué? El fracaso del estalinismo comprobó que una capa parásita no es tan fuerte como las fundaciones del estado obrero. Pueda que en un momento dado el sistema basado en explotación no parece estar en crisis plena, no obstante estamos inmersos en una época generalizada de la caída permanente en la taza de ganancias, y la única manera que el capital tiene para revertir esta caída es destruir capital y quienes lo producen, es decir, llevar a cabo una nueva guerra mundial.

Editado en forma de tesis cuando el Bush mayor dio el primero grito de victoria frente la caída del Muro de Berlín, El imperialismo perdió la guerra fría representa la única corriente que ha entendido como ni los mismos capitalistas se sienten libres, porque son esclavos de su capital -un capital que encoja de forma permanente-.

El derrumbe del estalinismo nos representa para los trabajadores y campesinos la mejor oportunidad en más de setenta años a arrebatar de los superricos el poder estatal para construir su propio gobierno, y así acabar con el último imperio que pueda desgraciar la faz de la Tierra.

For those swayed by the surface appearance of things and the propaganda of U.S. rulers, this title may appear out of this world. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of pretense by current leaders of Russia and other former European "socialist" states of being the heirs of Lenin and the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the U.S. military seemingly unchallenged - - where is the evidence that the U.S. lost the cold war?

Read this book and you will find the answer. I will give you a hint: capitalism has not been restored in Russia or Eastern Europe. Cuba's unblemished revolutionary example and other genuine communists will have an easier time influencing today's fighters for liberation.

This book shows how the expanded rights, power, and freedom workers and oppressed people in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have achieved since the late 1980s strengthened the ability of workers in this country and around the world to struggle, and weakened US imperialism. This book sets these victories in the context of the growing tensions between the US, Europe, and Japan, and the growing economic crisis of the capitalism system. It sets out a continued perspective of struggle for working people, youth, farmers, and other oppressed people in this country and around the world.

"We Lakota people have our giveaways. When something important happens we celebrate by sharing what we have," said the late Chief Mathew King, known as Noble Red Man in Indian Country. "Even the poorest among us share what we have....The more you share the more you're given to share."

Which is precisely what editor Harvey Arden has accomplished with his passion for keeping alive the wisdom of the American Indian. In this book, Arden, a former senior editor for National Geographic, has compiled a comprehensive volume of the thoughts, philosophy, humor and spirit of the great Oglala Lakota (Sioux) chief.

Noble Red Man was born Mathew King in 1902 in Grass Creek, S.D., a small community of Indians from different bands. He died in 1989. In the long stretch of time in between, he absorbed knowledge, wisdom and experiences that molded him into a sage and respected leader.

After three years in military school, his parents enrolled him in the Springfield Indian Seminary to become an ordained Episcopal minister. Hunger, more than faith, was his motivation.

"If you converted you ate better," said Noble Red Man. "To help feed the starving Lakota my father and uncles became missionaries." During training, he concluded that - despite being very spiritual - that the clergy was not his calling. He had misgivings over Christian theology. "I have always believed in the Great Spirit and worshipped Him in my own way," he said. "These people don't seem to want to change my belief in the Great Spirit, but to change my way of talking to Him."

Instead, Noble Red Man set out to do the Great Spirit's work by teaching Indians to "earn their bread by the sweat of their brow," finding work and securing labor rights for thousands of Indians over the years. He became a voice not only for the Lakota people, but American Indians everywhere, taking their case to court, before Congress and even overseas. His passion was fighting to regain South Dakota's Black Hills, sacred land promised the Lakota by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, but swindled from them five years later when gold was discovered.

The federal government belittled the Indians' claim to this revered land in the 1970s by offering them $100 million. Noble Red Man retorted: "The Black Hills aren't for sale. What if we offered you a hundred million dollars for the Vatican, for Jerusalem?" The money still sits in escrow, unclaimed.

Arden first met Noble Red Man in 1983, on the 10th anniversary of the Lakota occupation of Wounded Knee, S.D., a reservation hamlet that was the site of the American Indians' last stand in 1890, as federal troops massacred over 350 Indians. The 1973 occupation - which was met with an FBI siege for 71days - was staged by the American Indian Movement (AIM) in protest over the government's harsh treatment of Indians. He and venerated Chief Frank Fools Crow provided moral support to the occupiers, while placating armed FBI agents.

As Arden attempted to explain to Noble Red Man why he'd come to Pine Ridge, the chief shot back: "I know why you're here! White Man came to this country and forgot his original Instructions. We Indians have never forgotten our Instructions.... I can't tell you what those were, but maybe there are some things that I can explain...."

That is what Arden has done. Culled from his interview notes and tapes, Arden felt that he didn't have enough material to compile the book that was Noble Red Man's unrealized dream. After the chief's death, Arden visited his daughter, Lavon King, who had kept her father's old reel-to-reel tapes in a trunk. In a labor of love, by 1994 Arden finished the job he began 11 years earlier. With this book, he has put into print Noble Red Man's credo, reflections, recollections and hopes.

There is even a good measure of humor, which captures Noble Red Man's keen sense of irony. My favorite anecdote was how he became a smoker at age four (!) by rolling cigarettes for his grandmother, Cane Woman. She "was blind, and I had to guide her around with her cane. People really laughed when they saw us....We must have been quite a sight, the two of us, both smoking Bull Durham cigarettes while I led her around by the elbow."

Reading his words, I was struck by how senseless the gulf between American Indians and the Americans occupying their land is, for they aspire freedom in the truest sense. However, more than any other people, American Indians have been systematically denied that freedom.

Yet, Noble Red Man kept optimistic. He counseled his fellow Indians to stay true to their heritage.

"Only one thing's sadder than remembering you once were free, and that's forgetting you once were free. That would be the saddest thing of all. That's one thing we Indians will never do."

This book enlightened me with the wisdom of the original Americans. It's hard to believe the Christians were trying to convert a people most likely much closer to God than themselves. Several Indians performed acts that would be considered miracles by those of other faiths. Wonderful book.

Very good and truly authentic..

Thomas Jefferson's " Notes on the State of Virginia" is a brilliant piece of history, sociology, law, geology, government,and science. This work, Jefferson's only book, shows his powerful, brilliant mind at it's best. Jefferson shows the depth of his knowledge, not just on his own beautiful state, but on human nature itself. Some of the gems in this work are his views on education, advocating free public education for all, free government, advocating a revisal of the defective original Virginia Constitution. His knowledge of slavery, and the Indian races before his eyes are from personal experience and observation. Although painted by the deconstuctionist left as a "racist" Jefferson was a dangerous radical to the Virginia gentry due to his advocacy of emacipation and deportation of slaves. His views on black inferiority are exaggerated since he placed them forth as a scientific hypothesis based on personal observation. Jefferson could not see a "multicultural" society in America made up of former masters and slaves with resentment and prejudice still in the hearts of both. Many of his predictions about race relations have come true: hate, resentment, power struggles, and a continuing obsession which he forsaw would destroy the America Republic.

The best edited version of the is Koch and Peden's edited on in "The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson", but the full Notes is very good, but the reader must be prepared for numerous charts and tables. Overall a great book, and buy!

The book is written much like an epic poem- with lists of river, towns, economic conditions etc in 1780s. But also much more: His feeling on race. He obviously did not hate blacks, proposed a theory that they were less intelligent, had an aesthetic view of man akin to Gulliver's Travels and the horses. Theory of education is much akin to European model of today, much better than current theories in use. He opposed multiculturalism and opposed teaching children religion in schools or anyplace else, preferring Greek, Roman and European histories and philosophy for guidance of children. The difference between the America he wanted and the reality of today is striking. Which is better? Each must judge, but this is a must read book.

I recomend The book which was edited with an introduction and notes by William Peden. I have an orginal copy of "Notes on the State of Virginia" Second Amarican edition Printed in 1797, on loan to the Monticello, (of which I am welling to part with at the right price). This was a hard book to understand, once I read the one edited by William Peden, I had a much better understanding of what Mr. Jefferson wrote, as well as the history of Mr. Jefferson's efforts in acheaving it's final contents.

There are a lot of reasons to read about the recent political history of Texas. To understand the current winners in American politics and where they want to take us, you've got to understand their financial, cultural, and political lineage. Dave Richards' book about Texas from 1954 to the present is a story of the dominant conflict in America today, the war between the extreme right and the moderates. It's a cautionary and instructive tale.

Richards is one of the lawyers who changed Texas from a one-party, racist fiefdom to a two-party political moiety with a less tilted playing field for Hispanics, Blacks, students, women, nature-lovers, and other ordinary people. In 1954, Richards came of age in a segregated Texas with a poll tax and no Republican party. Conservatives voted in the Democratic primaries, maintaining the white, racist, oil-field culture's hold on the state. He and his cohorts, a coalition of Hispanic and student labor, labor unions, Blacks, and women, determined to redistribute the power. With the aid of new federal laws and the fortunate appointment of a new crop of federal judges, the populist, progressive coalition were able to solve problems that had throttled Texas for a hundred years: unrepresentative voting districts, disenfranchisement of students, censorship of the press, disenfranchisement of Blacks and Hispanics, and unequal public school financing.

There have been lasting effects of the effort to remake Texas. There is no longer a poll tax, there is a Republican party, there is desegregation, and women, Hispanics, and Blacks hold office at every level of government.

But Nixon promised to turn the Supreme Court so far right we wouldn't recognize it, and with the Reagan and Bush appointees the federal courts are no longer reliably part of the solution. The Dallas east Texas oil field crowd has prevailed again, despite all the coalition building; to read Richards' book is to follow how and why.

One familiar trick, the disenfranchisement of voters who are putative "felons," played so effectively in Florida in the year 2000 presidential election, was first pulled in Texas in 1982. That time, the trick was played long enough before the election that Richards was able to get a federal injunction requiring the withdrawal of the "felons" list and prohibiting the secretary of state from doing anything that would interfere with or violate the right to vote.

Look for this trick to return to your polling place soon. For other Texas tricks, read Richards' book, and prepare to hire good counsel, or give otiose assent to the current winners.

This book is well-written and compelling reading. It provides a overview of the politics in Texas from the time of the "Shivercrats" in the 50's through the upheaval of campus protests in the 60's to the current landscape where Republicans occupy the majority of statewide offices. The author is an attorney who was engaged over his career in Texas in a number of lawsuits seeking equity in voting rights for minorities and in funding among public schools, among other social justice issues.

The autobiographical structure of the book provides an engaging contrast between the (potentially dry) discussion of litgation and the personal growth and escapades of the author and his rowdy and adventurous friends. The legal points are explained in terms that non-attorneys can easily grasp and the outcomes of the cases demonstrate that progess can be made, bit by bit, in dragging civilization forward to a more progessive place if you are clever and persistent and sometimes just downright lucky. It is a must read for anyone wanting to understand the political history of Texas, or for students of public affairs seeking insight into the realities of how policies are made and changed.

It is also a very enjoyable read for anyone wanting to get a feel for Austin during its best years -- when the music was great and the living was laid back. Some of the anecdotes made me laugh out loud, which is one of the greatest compliments a book can elicit from me. The fact that there is much to be learned from reading it, and that it is a delightful read to boot, earned it a 5-star rating.

How is it that Texas politics could give the country Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, Ralph Yarborough and Phil Gramm? When Ann Richards became governor, the prison system, the juvenile justice system, and the mental health system were all to some degree under the control of federal courts because of state defaults. After her administration, all those systems were back under state control, employment was up and crime was down--yet, she got voted out. Why?

If questions like this hold no fascination for you, pass on this book...unless you are up for a string of hilarious shaggy dog stories involving the movers and shakers and noisemakers of Texas. The acid test for humor is whether you will laugh out loud when nobody else is in the room. This book passes so clearly that you might want to take it in small doses if you are prone to aches caused by belly laughs.

The reason why a first rate academic press would publish a memoir full of political anecdotes is because those anecdotes illustrate important strategy and tactics in the struggle to drag Texas toward the 21st Century. Where is it writ that you cannot learn important things and have fun at the same time?

Henry Friedlander provides a compelling and accurate portrayal of the origins of the Holocaust in the elimination of the mentally ill and physically handicapped. He starts with a description of the origins of German theories of racial superiority based upon social Darwinism which began long before the Nazis came to power. Many German physicians believed that the handicapped were a burden to society and that one of Medicine's chief functions was to be merciful and weed out the lame and feeble and remove them, painlessly, of course. With the advent of National Socialism and coming to power of Adolf Hitler, these doctors willingly joined in the sterilization and euthanistic practices of the Master Race. Gypsies and Jews were the main groups selected but all handicapped were gathered up. The author describes in detail the frustrations experienced by these teutonic genetic warriors because they could not more efficiently kill and maim and remove the untermeunschen. This book is a nightmare which can happen again. The world still witnesses the open genocide of Central Europe and parts of Africa and Asia. While Hitler's bodily presence has been gone for 55 years, his philosophical dementia remains with us. This book is an excellent reminder of science misused and politicized.

As a Deaf person and an activist for the rights of the disabled in education and medical care, I was appalled to find out that the disabled were singled out for sterilization and euthanasia long before the Jews had been. I was even more upset that prior to medical school, I had never even heard of the willing collaboration of doctors and scientists in Germany with the Nazi political machine to rid their race of defective people (it didn't seem to matter when impairment began or how, or these people were educable and able to work). Not to ever dismiss the horror of the Jewish Holocaust and the amount of lives taken, but it is imperative that we remember and we teach that the slope leading to extermination of races began with the ideas of Social Darwinism, natural selection, and survival of the fittest, which were the scientific theories/beliefs used to justify the removal of anyone with a difference. This belief system still pervades society today, when someone like Kervorkian (who only worked with dead bodies) could take it upon himself to decide whether someone's life was of any worth, on the basis of 'normalcy'.

Henry Friedlander does an excellent job of writing and researching into the lives and minds of the doctors and administrators who ran the secret programs that killed first, German children who were born with disabilities, then led to the removal from schools and homes of older children with disabilities to meet their deaths through starvation and drugs, and finally to include adults with disabilities in mass murders. It was on these people that the Nazis perfected their instruments of genocide, and yet, even at Nurenburg their suffering was dismissed as "lives unworthy of life" just because of their disabilities.

This can happen again, especially with the completion of the human genome. NO laws have been suggested to curtail the use of information gleaned from the genome to prevent discrimination of any kind against the disabled. It is of great concern that the disabled community watch opponents of the Americans with Disabilities Act try to get this civil rights act revoked as being expensive, especially since it serves those who many (including Clint Eastwood apparently) feel are not productive members of society. The slippery slope begins at this point, and with these mindsets.

It is imperative that students of medicine and students of science be made to read this book. It is only through education and remembering the children and families whose lives were destroyed that we can avoid allowing this Medical Holocaust from ever happening again. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

From Euthanasia to Genocide is a very very small step. This book is the best and wisest on the subject. It illustrates exactly how easy it was for Nazis to use the American psuedo-science of "eugenics" to aclimate Germany to "life unworthy of life." How simple to use the idea of "mercy death" to rid society of "useless eaters." The members of T4 were ruthless in their quest to define and rid Nazi Germany of deformed infants, the mentally ill, the deaf, the old, the young, the indigent, the DIFFERENT. No marginalised group was safe.

Of the killing centers, Hadamar is the best known -- a hub, so to speak. Nobody really knows how many people were gassed there. The buses arrived like clockwork, on schedule... Day in; day out.

Significantly, there was little civilian protest until T4 moved on to private Christian instutions. The "euthenasia" program was halted "officially" after several churches protested the gassings of institutionalised patients. (Unofffically, the program went on until AFTER the end of the war!) The members of T4 were absorbed into the killing machine known as the Final Solution. Which, of course, was the goal all along....

I reread The Origins of Nazi Genocide periodically just to remind myself that ANYONE can be marginalised -- including me and thee.

This is the work that made the now imminent French scholar of Islamism famous. Kepel was more or less the first scholar to frame "Muslim Extremism" as 1) an extremist phenomenon and 2) a real political threat to the region in such an explicit fashion. As such, this work has been much debated and criticized; however, it still remains a classic in the field.

Ideally, Kepel's work should be read in tandem with Mitchell's work on the Muslim Brothers as Kepel himself seemed to see this work as the follow-up to Mitchell's groundbreaking work. Mitchell's work stopped at the incarceration of the Brotherhood after the Free Officers now longer found their support politically desirable or expedient, and basically, Kepel's picks up at that point-the inhumanity of the prisons, the gallows, and the torture rooms.

Unlike Mitchell's work, however, Kepel's study is not confined to a study of the Muslim Brotherhood but is a study of the radicalization of the Islamic trend in Egypt which splinter into many factional, competing parts-at times as a result of state initiatives as under Sadat. The differing policies of the Nasser and Sadat regime are compared, the influence of Sayyid Qutb emphasized, the moderation and political compromise of the Muslim Brotherhood emphasized, and the desperation and impoverishment of the violent groups such as al-Jama'at al-Islamiyyah and Takfir wa-l-Hijrah are cited as their sources. These all became classic themes in the field. Kepel's work demonstrates that the sources of political Islam are as varied as its social manifestations.

This is without a doubt one of the best and most readable texts on the subject of the rise of Islamist movements in Egypt. It also works as a fitting sequel to Doanld Mitchell's groundbreaking volume - the only one of its kind ever translated into Arabic - on the Ikhwan al-Muslimin, the Muslim Brotherhood written almost two decades earlier. The book describes the social, historical and economic context behind the Islamist movements neither resorting to apologetic arguments or righteous accusations. Kepel shows that Egyptian Islamist organizations have adopted a variety of approaches that are, more often than not, peaceful such as to effectively constitute what may be civil society in Egypt. Indeed, such organizations as the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt have recently shown that some compromise is possible with the representatives of the status-quo as well as with rival factions by participating in national elections, such as to avoid a civil war scenario. The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt now opposes government policy from a legal and regulated official position but it faces pressure from more radical Islamist groups.
Nonetheless, intractable socio-economic problems have made it ever more difficult to contain unrest. The continuing reduction of the public sector since the late '70s and the failure to stimulate private economic enterprise has made it even harder for Egypt to sustain the precarious economic conditions that stimulate Islamist unrest. Although the Egypt achieved significant development in the '50s and '60s, it has pursued misguided economic policies that have fallen short of their potential. The benefits of the oil boom after 1973 and the Sadat-Mubarak economic liberalization policies that followed were mismanaged. Economic liberalization was primarily directed in the speculative construction and real estate sectors and failed to attract foreign investment in other labor intensive and professional areas. Unemployment persisted as the State reduced spending in conformance to IMF debt re-structuring that by 1986 brought about a gradual erosion of the human development achievements of the '50s and '70s. The series of economic reforms benefited the already wealthy. Islamist organizations have also gained popularity by absorbing the void left by the declining State.
Support and membership for such organizations has cut across class and income barriers and is representative of the frustration of a large portion of society, and youth in particular, with the current political establishment in Egypt. The government has not offered viable solutions to problems of unemployment, housing shortages, deteriorating municipal services or the poor quality of health care and education. Kepel also shows that Islamist organizations have solved problems that the government has been unable or unwilling to confront. Unlike government and private banks, the Islamic Brotherhood has operated Islamic Investment Companies (IIC) since the mid-'70s that have provided a real positive rate of interest. Ultimately, in view of chronic economic difficulties and the Government of Egypt's inability to adopt serious reform and tackle the problems of poverty and unemployment seriously makes Egypt very vulnerable to the zeal and violence of militant Islam.

This is the first book I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand (1) the agenda of Muslim extremist groups, and (2) what draws people to their "cause".

Kepel argues that the extremist groups have been around since the departure of the European imperialist powers, seeking to create a "pan-Muslim" state as an alternative to the secular nation-states that occupy the region today. Naiive, groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood were easily subverted, repressed and generally thought of as harmless until the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

Citing the poverty, lack of opportunity and political repression as the fertile ground that created these groups, Kepel sympathetically goes on to discuss their agenda - essentially that "secular" "nation-states" are alien and counter to the history and culture of the Islamic world. Truly and outstanding book.

Students were very absorbed in this book. They found the story exciting and it stimulated a great discussion. The idea that someone could dream about Martin Luther King Jr. and see him as a child and then as an adult allowed students to think about how different dreams are from reality. Students were anxious to borrow the book and share it with their families.

This beautifully illustrated and well written book was a must have for my daughters library. She's a new teacher and a lover of good books. What a delight to buy this book for her!

This is the best picture book I've come across concerning the Civil Rights movement of the 60's. The previous reviewer is correct in that the abstractness of the imagery is difficult for younger children, but that is precisely the beauty of the book. With a little explaining, my third grade class was still touched by the struggle of African Americans in this country. My class consisted of numerous minorities (Asian & hispanic) and they were able to come to see that MLK was fighting for them also. The way it is told is very moving and makes the book excellent for older children as well.

I still get choked up whenever I read it.