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95452-1
|
Iris Chang
|
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
|
More than fifty years since the end of World War II, the horrors of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust remain etched in our memory. Yet most Americans are comfortably unaware of the atrocities committed by Japanese armies in the Far East. In her important new book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II historian Iris Chang uncovers the savage butchery in China as she documents the destruction of the city of Nanking in 1937, then the capital of China. Graphic in its detail, The Rape of Nanking makes a clear connection between the powerful military culture in Japan and the orgy of violence in China. Japanese soldiers went through a dehumanizing regimen that erased individual morality. The routine beating of soldiers was termed "an act of love" and Chang notes that "those with the least power are often the most sadistic if given the power of life and death." Encouraged to see the Chinese as animals, invading soldiers often made a game out their excesses, laughing as they raped and murdered. The details of the massacre are horrific: A least 260,000 people were killed in a six- to eight-week period, more than the deaths from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Japanese soldiers used Chinese men and women for bayonet practice, held decapitation contests throughout the city, and used corpses as human bridges for army tanks. An estimated 80,000 women were raped, including young children; after being raped these women were often sadistically tortured or killed. Controversially, Chang asserts that Nanking suffered a second "rape" when crimes in the city were first covered up by wartime propagandists, and then denied by post-war Japanese governments. Her research reveals that the imperial family in Japan bears a direct responsibility for the massacre, a fact conveniently overlooked by both Japanese nationalists and Americans concerned with cold-war stability. Chang points out that Japan, unlike Germany, continues to avoid responsibility for its role during World War II: Japanese textbooks rewrite history to excuse the army, while ultra-nationalists recently shot a mayor in the back after he suggested that Emperor Hirohito should be accountable for the army's actions during the war. Additionally, THE RAPE OF NANKING brings to light the heroic efforts of a small international community who created a Safety Zone in Nanking. Thousands were saved by a few individuals with a deep commitment to humanity. Ironically, a member of the Nazi party, John Rabe, used his influence to protect innumerable Chinese, and on his return to Germany was imprisoned and questioned by the Gestapo. Chang believes his efforts were comparable to Oskar Schindler. Wilhelmina Vautrin, the dean of a women's college, stood firm against the marauding army, and kept an invaluable diary that may come to be judged as important as the one kept by Anne Frank. Chang's own grandparents escaped the massacre at Nanking. In her desire for justice and a passion for history she has drawn upon newspaper accounts, diaries of men and women on the scene, the testimony of Japanese officers and soldiers, as well as oral histories from survivors still living in the city. Published on the 60th anniversary of the massacre, THE RAPE OF NANKING is the compelling and powerful history of one of our century's worst events that should never be forgotten. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-01-11T00:00:00
|
0140277447
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/95452-1
|
51360-1
|
Alan Brinkley
|
The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People
|
Professor Brinkley discussed his book, Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People, published by Alfred A. Knopf. His intention was to avoid textbook-type writing. He wanted to make history more accessible to all levels of students, creating a concise, yet readable history. He included voting figures and various tables in the book.
| 1993-10-10T00:00:00
|
0679425489
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/51360-1
|
20073-1
|
Elaine Sciolino
|
The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis
|
Elaine Sciolino discussed her book, "The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis," published by John Wiley and Sons. It chronicled the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. She described the role of April Glaspie, the American ambassador to Iraq, in the days preceding the invasion and the rise to power of Saddam Hussein. Ms. Sciolino described the differences between Iran and Iraq and explained the purpose of her numerous visits to the Middle East.
| 1991-08-04T00:00:00
|
0471542997
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/20073-1
|
73822-1
|
James Lardner
|
Crusader: The Hell-Raising Police Career of Detective David Durk
|
James Lardner talked about his book, "Crusader: The Hell-Raising Career of Detective David Durk," published by Random House. He described the life and career of David Durk, a New York City police officer who struggled against corruption in the department and who helped others fight corruption in government and business throughout the nation.
| 1996-07-28T00:00:00
|
0394576489
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/73822-1
|
110059-1
|
Arnold Rogow
|
A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr
|
For almost two centuries, historians have had difficulty explaining the extraordinary duel that in July 1804 killed Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, and ended Vice President Aaron Burr's political career. It was well known that Hamilton disliked Burr—perhaps out of a protective fear for his own power and influence, or perhaps, according to another theory, because of jealousy over the attentions of one or more women. When Burr finally threw down his challenge, it followed more than a dozen years of difficult relations and political strife, culminating a few months earlier in Burr's defeat in the race for the governorship of New York, a defeat he attributed to Hamilton's machinations. But why a duel? In A Fatal Friendship , the distinguished political scientist and writer Arnold Rogow demonstrates for the first time that the roots of the fatal encounter lay not in Burr's (admittedly flawed) political or private conduct but, rather, in Hamilton's conflicted history and character. With his detailed archival research, his close (and unprecedented) examination of the friendship between the two heroic figures, and his bold, imaginative writing, Rogow's brilliant new book will change forever our understanding of honor, politics, and friendship in the early American Republic. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-09-13T00:00:00
|
0809047535
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/110059-1
|
63448-1
|
James Loewen
|
Lies My Teacher Told Me
|
Professor James Loewen described how his book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong," published by The New Press, resulted from two years of research at the Smithsonian Institution studying twelve popular high school history textbooks. It focuses on how these books omit certain events and gloss over others to mythologize American history. He points out that this homogenization alienates minorities and others by making history extremely uninteresting. In addition to criticism, he also provides remedies to make textbooks and teaching methods more useful and appealing to students.
| 1995-03-26T00:00:00
|
0684818868
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/63448-1
|
159433-1
|
Nina Easton
|
Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade
|
Easton offers interlocking portraits of the new conservative rebels, among them Bill Kristol and Ralph Reed, who have pushed the country to the right and forever changed the direction of American politics. Also includes portraits of Clint Bolick, Grover Norquist and David McIntosh. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-10-01T00:00:00
|
0684838990
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/159433-1
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176400-1
|
Azar Nafisi
|
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
|
—from the publisher's website We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice.
| 2003-06-08T00:00:00
|
0375504907
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/176400-1
|
10449-1
|
William Lutz
|
Doublespeak
|
William Lutz, professor of English at Rutgers University, discusses his most recent book Double-Speak: The Use of Language to Deceive You. A unique analysis of American English, examples of double-speak are "human kinetics" in place of "physical education," and "pavement deficiencies" instead of "potholes." Double-speak is consciously used to manipulate. Lutz points out that his mission is not to eradicate double-speak, but to eliminate double-speak from the discourse of important issues where it is most dangerous. He states that double-speak is most prevalent in government, followed closely by the advertising industry.
| 1989-12-31T00:00:00
|
0060919930
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/10449-1
|
163650-1
|
Philip Taubman
|
Secret Empire
|
—from the publisher's website During the early and most dangerous years of the cold war, a handful of Americans, led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, revolutionized spying and warfare. In great secrecy and beyond the prying eyes of Congress and the press, they built exotic new machines that opened up the Soviet Union to surveillance and protected the United States from surprise nuclear attack. Secret Empire is the dramatic story of these men and their inventions, told in full for the first time. In a brief period of explosive, top-secret innovation during the 1950s, a small group of scientists, engineers, businessmen, and government officials rewrote the book on airplane design and led the nation into outer space. In an effort no less audacious than the creation of the atomic bomb, they designed, built, and operated the U-2 and supersonic SR-71 spy planes and Corona, the first reconnaissance satellites -- machines that could collect more information about the Soviet Union's weapons in a day than an army of spies could assemble in a decade. Their remarkable inventions and daring missions made possible arms control agreements with Moscow that helped keep the peace during the cold war, as well as the space-based reconnaissance, mapping, communications, and targeting systems used by America's armed forces in the Gulf War and most recently in Afghanistan. These hugely expensive machines also led to the neglect of more traditional means of intelligence gathering through human spies. Veteran New York Times reporter and editor Philip Taubman interviewed dozens of participants and mined thousands of previously classified documents to tell this hidden, far-reaching story. He reconstructs the crucial meetings, conversations, and decisions that inspired and guided the development of the spy plane and satellite projects during one of the most perilous periods in our history, a time when, as Eisenhower said, the world seemed to be "racing toward catastrophe." Taubman follows this dramatic story from the White House to the CIA, from the Pentagon to Lockheed's Skunk Works in Burbank, from the secret U-2 test base in Nevada to the secret satellite assembly center in Palo Alto and other locations here and abroad. He reveals new information about the origins and evolution of the projects and how close they came to failing technically or falling victim to bureaucratic inertia and Washington's turf wars. The incredibly sophisticated spies in the skies were remarkably successful in proving that the missile gap was a myth in protecting us from surprise Soviet attack. But in some ways, the failure to detect the planning for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, can also be attributed to these powerful machines as the government became increasingly dependent on spy satellites to the neglect of human agents and informants. Now, as we wage a new and more vicious war against terrorism, we will need both machines in space and spies on the ground to fight back.
| 2003-04-13T00:00:00
|
0684856999
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/163650-1
|
12968-1
|
Christopher Ogden
|
Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power
|
Christopher Ogden, former Time Magazine bureau chief in London, interviewed Mrs. Thatcher several times. His book, "Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power," follows the life of the British prime minister from her childhood to her present role. Ogden described Mrs. Thatcher as being exactly what Britain needed, "the right person at the right moment with the right prescription." In regard to international relations, Odgen said, "If (President) Reagan was the chief executive officer of the West during most of the decade...Thatcher was his chief operating officer, keeping the president on track and the Alliance from backsliding."
| 1990-07-01T00:00:00
|
0671667602
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/12968-1
|
37701-1
|
Benjamin Stein
|
A License to Steal
|
Benjamin Stein discussed his book, "A License to Steal: The Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation," the product of Mr. Stein's investigations into the "junk-bond king" Michael Milken, and his manipulation of the stock market for profit.
| 1993-01-30T00:00:00
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0671742728
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/37701-1
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32597-1
|
Sen. Paul Simon
|
Advice and Consent
|
An insider's view of the Supreme Court appointment process chronicles the Senate's role in confirmation proceedings since the George Washington administration, suggesting that the president discuss potential nominees with the Senate before submitting his final choice. —from the publisher's website
| 1992-09-20T00:00:00
|
0915765985
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/32597-1
|
18335-1
|
George Friedman
|
The Coming War with Japan
|
Ms. LeBard and Mr. Friedman discussed their book, The Coming War With Japan, which hypothesizes that increasing economic and political conflicts between the U.S. and Japan will lead to conflict, political or military, in the next two generations. As the U.S.-Soviet conflict dominated the global political scene during the previous two generations, the trade battles between the U.S. and Japan will expand into conflict that will dominate the next two. The authors discussed their work at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania where they teach, their experiences and research that went into the book, and related the book's hypothesis to U.S. policy concerning Japan.
| 1991-06-09T00:00:00
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0312076770
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/18335-1
|
170563-1
|
Glenn Loury
|
The Anatomy of Racial Inequality
|
Speaking wisely and provocatively about the political economy of race, Glenn Loury has become one of our most prominent black intellectuals--and, because of his challenges to the orthodoxies of both left and right, one of the most controversial. A major statement of a position developed over the past decade, this book both epitomizes and explains Loury's understanding of the depressed conditions of so much of black society today--and the origins, consequences, and implications for the future of these conditions. Using an economist's approach, Loury describes a vicious cycle of tainted social information that has resulted in a self-replicating pattern of racial stereotypes that rationalize and sustain discrimination. His analysis shows how the restrictions placed on black development by stereotypical and stigmatizing racial thinking deny a whole segment of the population the possibility of self-actualization that American society reveres--something that many contend would be undermined by remedies such as affirmative action. On the contrary, this book persuasively argues that the promise of fairness and individual freedom and dignity will remain unfulfilled without some forms of intervention based on race. Brilliant in its account of how racial classifications are created and perpetuated, and how they resonate through the social, psychological, spiritual, and economic life of the nation, this compelling and passionate book gives us a new way of seeing--and, perhaps, seeing beyond--the damning categorization of race in America. —from the publisher's website .
| 2002-08-04T00:00:00
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0674006259
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/170563-1
|
46582-1
|
David Halberstam
|
The Fifties
|
Mr. Halberstam, author of The Best and the Brightest, discussed the research behind his latest book, The Fifties, published by Fawcett Books. He talked about the social climate of the 1950s including the effects of the spread of television across the country, the introduction of situational comedies, the birth control pill, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the H-bomb. He reflected on his own experiences during the 1950s and in writing the book.
| 1993-07-11T00:00:00
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0449909336
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/46582-1
|
155004-1
|
David Haward Bain
|
Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad
|
Bain draws on his historical/political savvy and his ability to breathe life into history in this saga of the building of the transcontinental railroad—a story which reads like a novel: color, lively, and dramatic. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-03-05T00:00:00
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0140084991
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/155004-1
|
10932-1
|
Peggy Noonan
|
What I Saw at the Revolution
|
Former presidential speech writer Peggy Noonan discussed her book "What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era." She answered her critics and talked of the publicity surrounding the book. Once a writer for newscaster Dan Rather, Ms. Noonan was a speech writer for Ronald Reagan during the last half of his presidency. She also wrote the well-known "thousand points of light" acceptance speech that George Bush delivered at the 1988 Republican convention. In addition to discussing her experiences at the White House, she reflected on the role of speech writers in politics and discusses her own political beliefs.
| 1990-02-18T00:00:00
|
0449001008
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/10932-1
|
55947-1
|
James Cannon
|
Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History
|
Mr. Cannon discussed the presidency of Richard Nixon and the turmoil left behind for President Gerald Ford. He talked about his book, Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment with History, published by Harper Collins, which centers on the effort that President Ford undertook to erase "the deception" of the Nixon presidency.
| 1994-04-17T00:00:00
|
0060165391
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/55947-1
|
177312-1
|
Adam Bellow
|
In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History
|
—from the publisher's website Certain to be one of the most controversial books of the year, In Praise of Nepotism is a learned, lively, and provocative look at a practice we all deplore — except when we’re involved in it ourselves. Nepotism, the favored treatment of one’s relatives, is a custom with infinitely more practitioners than defenders — especially in this country, where it is considered antidemocratic and almost un-American. Nepotism offends our sense of fair play and our meritocratic creed that we are supposed to earn what we get — not have it handed to us on a proverbial silver platter. For more than two centuries, a campaign has been waged against it in the name of fairness and equality in the courts, the legislatures, and in the public and private arenas — a campaign that has been only partly successful. For, far from disappearing, the practice has become so resurgent in recent years that we can now speak of a “new nepotism.” In settings ranging from politics, business, and professional life to sports, the arts, and Hollywood, the children of famous and highly successful people have chosen to follow in their parents’ career footsteps in a fashion and in numbers impossible to ignore. George W. Bush, Al Gore, Jr., and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are only the tip of the iceberg that is an accelerating trend toward dynasticism and family “branding” in the heart of the American elite. Many see this as a deplorable development, to which Adam Bellow replies, Not so fast . In this timely work (surprisingly, the first book ever devoted to nepotism), Adam Bellow brings fresh perspectives and vast learning and research to bear on this misunderstood and stigmatized practice. Drawing on the insights of modern evolutionary theory, he shows how nepotism is rooted in our very biological nature, as the glue that binds together not only insect and animal societies but, for most of the world and for most of history, human societies as well. Drawing on the disciplines of biology, anthropology, history, and social and political theory, Bellow surveys the natural history of nepotism from its evolutionary origins to its practice in primitive tribes, clans, and kingdoms to its role in the great societies of the world. These include the ancient Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the democratic and capitalistic societies of the past two centuries, with extended consideration of the American experience. Along the way, he provides fascinating (and freshly considered) portraits of such famous and/or infamous figures as Abraham, Pericles, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Benjamin Franklin, and such families as the Borgias, the Rothschilds, the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, and the Bushes. In his final chapter, Bellow argues that nepotism comes down to the bonds between children and parents, the transmission of family legacies, the cycle of generosity and gratitude that knits our whole society together. And since it is not going away anytime soon, he makes the case for dealing with nepotism openly and treating it as an art that can be practiced well or badly. In Praise of Nepotism is a book that will ruffle feathers, create controversy, and open and change minds.
| 2003-08-24T00:00:00
|
0385493886
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/177312-1
|
9304-1
|
Mort Rosenblum
|
Back Home: A Foreign Correspondent Rediscovers America
|
An experienced Associated Press (AP) foreign correspondent, Mort Rosenblum shares his views of the U.S. in "Back Home: A Foreign Correspondent Rediscovers America." Having started his career over twenty years ago in the Congo, and then covering events in over 140 countries, Rosenblum takes a look at America and its people from a different angle. In the interview he describes his career as an AP reporter, as well as the resistance to internationalization that exists in the U.S. He states that the U.S. fails to recognize its influence as a world leader. "I think we terribly overestimate our own ability to actually change a specific situation, like, `Why can't we get the hostages out?'" At the same time he says Americans underestimate how much the rest of the world looks to the U.S. for leadership in solving large problems such as ozone-layer deterioration.
| 1989-10-01T00:00:00
|
0688077803
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/9304-1
|
12151-1
|
Morley Safer
|
Flashbacks On Returning to Vietnam
|
Morley Safer discussed his book, "Flashbacks on Returning to Vietnam." In 1989, Mr. Safer returned to Vietnam after serving two tours in the region as a war correspondent in the 1960s. The book details his meetings and conversations with several Vietnamese, tells the stories behind his award winning coverage of the Vietnam War, and gives his observations of what was a fairly new politically unified country. Mr. Safer talked about his insights into the aftermath of the conflict both in Vietnam and in the United States. Mr. Safer also discussed his tenure at "60 Minutes" since 1970, and changes in journalism during his forty years of a journalist.
| 1990-05-06T00:00:00
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0312924828
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/12151-1
|
119003-1
|
Annette Gordon-Reed
|
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy
|
Possessing both a layperson's unfettered curiosity and a lawyer's logical mind, Gordon-Reed writes with an irresistible style and compassion about Thomas Jefferson's sexual involvement with his slave Sally Hemings. Her fascinating and convincing argument: not that the alleged 38-year liaison necessarily took place but rather that the evidence for its taking place has been denied a fair hearing. Rumors of Thomas Jefferson's sexual involvement with his slave Sally Hemings have circulated for two centuries. It remains, among all aspects of Jefferson's renowned life, perhaps the most hotly contested topic. With Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Annette Gordon-Reed promises to intensify this ongoing debate as she identifies glaring inconsistencies in many noted scholars' evaluations of the existing evidence. She has assembled a fascinating and convincing argument: not that the alleged thirty-eight-year liaison necessarily took place but rather that the evidence for its taking place has been denied a fair hearing. Possessing both a layperson's unfettered curiosity and a lawyer's logical mind, Annette Gordon-Reed writes with a style and compassion that are irresistible. Her analysis is accessible, with each chapter revolving around a key figure in the Hemings drama. The resulting portraits are engrossing and very personal. Gordon-Reed also brings a keen intuitive sense of the psychological complexities of human relationships—relationships that, in the real world, often develop regardless of status or race. The most compelling element of all, however, is her extensive and careful research, which often allows the evidence to speak for itself. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-02-21T00:00:00
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0813918332
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/119003-1
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66144-1
|
Robert D. Richardson, Jr.
|
Emerson: The Mind on Fire
|
Professor Richardson talked about his book, "Emerson: The Mind on Fire," published by the University of California Press. It focuses on the life of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous mid-19th century author. He also talked about the cluster of famous authors active in Concord, Massachusetts with Emerson, including Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Emerson is considered to be a force in the formation of the early American republic.
| 1995-08-13T00:00:00
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0520206894
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/66144-1
|
14942-1
|
Blaine Harden
|
Africa: Dispatches From a Fragile Continent
|
Blaine Harden spoke of his four year tenure as Washington Post sub-Saharan bureau chief, which is the basis for his book, Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent. The book's format focuses on individual people and their life experiences in different African nations, including Zaire, Ghana, Kenya, Sudan and Nigeria. Mr. Harden described Africa as being "a painful part of the world for Westerners to come to grips with." He contended that Westerners "weep for it more out of pity than understanding." The book's purpose is to give the problems of Africa a human face that will bring Westerners a better understanding of what it means to be African.
| 1990-11-11T00:00:00
|
0393028828
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/14942-1
|
155006-1
|
Howard Zinn
|
A People's History of the United States
|
With more than 300,000 paperback copies sold since its previous edition, this phenomenal bestseller, now revised for the first time, provides a "brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories" (Library Journal). —from the publisher's website
| 2000-03-12T00:00:00
|
0060926430
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/155006-1
|
155997-1
|
Ward Connerly
|
Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences
|
From his impoverished childhood in segregated pre-war Louisiana to his audience with Bill Clinton at the White House, Ward Connerly's panoramic book spans a civil rights story that's making headlines from coast to coast. Since 1995, when Connerly first burst onto the American scene in as the University of California Regent who forced the nation's largest public university to become color blind in its admissions policies, Connerly has led a national campaign to end race preference. In 1996, he passed Proposition 209 in California, and, a two years led I-200, an identical measure, to victory in Washington state. He is now battling Governor Jeb Bush in Florida as he attempts to put a Florida Civil Rights Initiative on the ballot there. A personal book that gives the inside story of Connerly's battle against race preferences, Creating Equal names names and tells it like it is. It is destined to provoke debate from the dining room table to the halls of Congress. Connerly's encounters with the great and near great ranging from Jesse Jackson and Al Gore to Bill Clinton and Rupert Murdoch illuminate this book that has been praised by writers such as Shelby Steele. Illustrated with family and political photographs. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-04-30T00:00:00
|
189355404X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/155997-1
|
10797-1
|
Charles Fecher
|
The Diary of H.L. Mencken
|
Charles Fecher, editor of the controversial book The Diary of H.L. Mencken, discussed the life of H.L. Mencken and his work in publishing Mencken's diary. A newspaper man, magazine editor, author, and critic, H.L. Mencken donated his personal writings to a Baltimore library upon his death in the 1950's, with the stipulation to make them publicly available after 25 years. Mencken's anti-semitic statements contained in his diary created a controversy. The editor of The American Mercury, an influential magazine of the 1920's and 30's, Mencken remains as one of the most influential personalities in American journalism.
| 1990-01-28T00:00:00
|
039456877X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/10797-1
|
182786-1
|
Denny Hastert
|
Speaker: Lessons from 40 Years in Coaching and Politics
|
—from the publisher's website Mr. Speaker! Denny Hastert is one of the most powerful men in America—and yet chances are you know little or nothing about him. And Denny Hastert likes it that way. Not because he has anything to hide, but because he doesn’t care about who gets the credit, he just wants to get the job done for the American people. In Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years of Coaching and Politics , Denny Hastert breaks his silence to tell a remarkable American story: of how he grew up among the fields of Northern Illinois, made a name for himself as a high school and collegiate wrestler, became a high school wrestling and football coach and civics teacher…and eventually found himself teaching, and learning about, civics in the most important forum in the world: in the United States Congress as Speaker of the House, the third most powerful man in government. Speaker is a true Mr. Smith Goes to Washington story, full of lived-in wisdom, funny anecdotes, and straight talk about what goes on in the “smoke-filled” rooms of congressional power. Along the way, you’ll learn: · The secret of winning in politics: under-promise and over-produce (the reverse of what most politicians do) · The Hastert formula: Build a team, leave the spotlight to others, be honest, be fair, and stick to your objectives as tenaciously as a fullback hammering at the goal line · Lessons from wrestling: there’s no one to blame but yourself if you get pinned · The shock of September 11—or actually, the non-shock: how Speaker Hastert kept Congress running smoothly during the crisis · How the Vatican could never find time to receive the Congressional Medal of Freedom that was voted for the pope—until it became clear that then-President Clinton would not be awarding it · Speaker Hastert’s agenda for the next Congress
| 2004-08-15T00:00:00
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089526126X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/182786-1
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116061-1
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Peter Jennings
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The Century
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"We have sought," write Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster, "to distinguish our story from other histories by holding each chapter up to a litmus test: Have we looked at this time from the perspective of someone who lived through it? And in doing so, have we captured a sense not only of the events of a particular era, but of the mood, the prevailing attitudes?" Thus, the experiences of ordinary men and women come to life in sidebars that appear throughout The Century . Sharpe James, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, recalls the sense of excitement and possibility he felt when Jackie Robinson became the first black ballplayer in the major leagues. Gilles Ryan remembers what it was like to be a high-school student in Dayton, Tennessee, during the Scopes Trial. Connie Chang talks about emigrating to the United States from Korea and establishing a liquor store in Los Angeles, only to have it destroyed in the civil unrest. Comparisons to Harold Evans's The American Century are, perhaps, inevitable, but in addition to the emphasis on ordinary lives, The Century is further distinguished by the effective use of color photography (as well as several black-and-white shots). The book's sweeping narrative, shaped by Jennings and Brewster's comprehensive text, also flows a bit more smoothly than Evans's telegraphic prose; one can almost imagine Jennings reciting from these pages as he hosts the ABC/History Channel documentaries to which this book is a companion piece. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-12-27T00:00:00
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0385483279
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/116061-1
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Jessica Stern
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Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill
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—from the publisher's website For four years, Jessica Stern interviewed extremist members of three religions around the world: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Traveling extensively -- to refugee camps in Lebanon, to religious schools in Pakistan, to prisons in Amman, Asqelon, and Pensacola -- she discovered that the Islamic jihadi in the mountains of Pakistan and the Christian fundamentalist bomber in Oklahoma have much in common. Based on her vast research, Stern lucidly explains how terrorist organizations are formed by opportunistic leaders who -- using religion as both motivation and justification -- recruit the disenfranchised. She depicts how moral fervor is transformed into sophisticated organizations that strive for money, power, and attention. Jessica Stern’s extensive interaction with the faces behind the terror provide unprecedented insight into acts of inexplicable horror, and enable her to suggest how terrorism can most effectively be countered. A crucial book on terrorism, Terror in the Name of God is a brilliant and thought-provoking work.
| 2003-10-12T00:00:00
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006050532X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/178163-1
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150469-1
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H.W. Crocker
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Robert E. Lee on Leadership
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Robert E. Lee was a leader of extraordinary talents who inspired an out-gunned, out-manned army to legendary heights. The man who Teddy Roosevelt called "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth," lived a life that was a model for anyone who seeks to shoulder the profound responsibility of leading others. Robert E. Lee on Leadership is the first book to present Lee's story in a way that today's business leaders and managers can use to achieve executive success. Author H. W. Crocker III illustrates the general's character, vision, and indomitable spirit in a page-turning narrative that captures the essence of true leadership. This book includes chapters that apply Lee's executive acumen to the tough battlefield of today's marketplace. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-08-08T00:00:00
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0761525548
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/150469-1
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27376-1
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Richard Ben Cramer
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What it Takes: The Way to the White House
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Mr. Cramer discussed the elements needed in a person to be elected president. He started the book in 1986 and examined the presidential candidates for the 1988 election. Mr. Cramer also described the process involved in writing over six years and with getting a 1000 page book published by Random House.
| 1992-07-26T00:00:00
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0679746498
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/27376-1
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77425-1
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Robert Ferrell
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The Strange Deaths of President Harding
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Professor Ferrell talked about his book, The Strange Deaths of President Harding, published by the University of Missouri Press. Mr. Ferrell discussed the president's physical death from a heart attack as well as the death of his reputation. He talked about the rumors that still haunt the 29th president, including the circumstances surrounding his death, whether he had an illegitimate child, and what he knew about Teapot Dome and other scandals during his administration. President Harding died in San Francisco on his way back from Alaska on August 2, 1923.
| 1997-01-12T00:00:00
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0826212026
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/77425-1
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175675-1
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Dorothy Rabinowitz
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No Crueler Tyrannies
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—from the publisher's website IN 1742, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, wrote, "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." Two hundred forty-three years later, in 1985, Dorothy Rabinowitz, a syndicated columnist and television commentator, encountered the case of a New Jersey day care worker named Kelly Michaels, accused of 280 counts of sexually abusing nursery school children -- and exposed the first of the prosecutorial abuses described in "No Crueler Tyrannies." "No Crueler Tyrannies" recalls the hysteria that accompanied the child sex-abuse witch-hunts of the 1980s and 1990s: how a single anonymous phone call could bring to bear an army of recovered-memory therapists, venal and ambitious prosecutors, and hypocritical judges -- an army that jailed hundreds of innocent Americans. The overarching story of "No Crueler Tyrannies" is that of the Amirault family, who ran the Fells Acres day care center in Malden, Massachusetts: Violet Amirault, her daughter Cheryl, and her son Gerald, victims of perhaps the most biased prosecution since the Salem witch trials. Woven into the fabric of the Amirault tragedy -- an unfinished story, with Gerald Amirault still incarcerated for crimes that, Ms. Rabinowitz persuasively argues, he not only did not commit, but which never happened -- are other, equally alarming tales of prosecutorial terrors: the stories of Wenatchee, Washington, where the single-minded efforts of chief sex crimes investigator Robert Perez jailed dozens of his neighbors; Patrick Griffin, a respected physician whose life and reputation were destroyed by a false accusation of sexual molestation; John Carroll, a marina owner from Troy, New York, now serving ten to twenty years largely at the behest of the same expert witness used to wrongly jail Kelly Michaels fifteen years previously; and Grant Snowden, the North Miami policeman sentenced to five consecutive life terms after being prosecuted by then Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno who spent eleven years killing rats in various Florida prisons before a new trial affirmed his innocence. "No Crueler Tyrannies" is at once a truly frightening and at the same time inspiring book, documenting how these citizens, who became targets of the justice system in which they had so much faith, came to comprehend that their lives could be destroyed, that they could be sent to prison for years -- even decades. "No Crueler Tyrannies" shows the complicity of the courts, their hypocrisy and indifference to the claims of justice, but also the courage of those willing to challenge the runaway prosecutors and the strength of those who have endured their depredations.
| 2003-05-04T00:00:00
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0743228340
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/175675-1
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Irvin Molotsky
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The Flag, The Poet and The Song
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Every American knows "The Star-Spangled Banner," even if we can't sing it to save our lives. But how many people know what really happened through the perilous night that led a Washington lawyer to pen his historic ode? Like the subjects of Cod or Longitude , our national anthem is something taken for granted. But it was not always so. In this remarkable, flawlessly researched book, New York Times reporter Irvin Molotsky tells the story behind the story and, in the process, reveals an important piece of our country's heritage. Molotsky brings both legendary and unknown events and figures to vivid life-from the flag's seamstress to the military heroes of the War of 1812. In witty, accessible language, he charts the little-known events leading up to the war, and the far-reaching impact this obscure conflict has had on our national psyche. The Flag, the Poet, and the Song also uncovers the facts and fallacies surrounding the flag and the song, from the tremendous size of the flag to why we continue trying to sing our anthem to this day. Brimming with fascinating Americana, The Flag, the Poet, and the Song is a book that will be readand reread, whether you're a lover of history, a patriot, or just waiting for the umpire to say "play ball!" —taken from jacket of the book
| 2001-09-09T00:00:00
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0525946004
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William Prochnau
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Once Upon a Distant War
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Mr. Prochnau discussed his book, Once Upon a Distant War: Young War Correspondents and the Early Vietnam Battles, published by Times Books. The book is about the six correspondents from various newspapers and news services who were sent to cover the Vietnam War in its early years. Peter Arnett and Neil Sheehan are among those covered.
| 1996-01-14T00:00:00
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0812926331
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/68823-1
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68215-1
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David Brinkley
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A Memoir
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Just how a young man growing up in a small southern town with only one one-hundred-watt A.M. radio station and no network affiliation became one of the world's most respected broadcasters in the nation makes for a "grand and glorious adventure" in itself. Now, in this fascinating and charmingly candid memoir of a career spanning half a century, David Brinkley recollects from his own unique vantage point the remarkable, shaky beginnings of television news, the ever-changing social and political landscape of our country, and the colorful people who have crossed his path. He includes priceless moments playing poker with Harry Truman, riding the rails with Winston Churchill, being whisked off by helicopter to Camp David by Lyndon Johnson, and receiving the distinguished Medal of Freedom from George Bush. From the New Deal to the Contract with America, David Brinkley has seen it all. . . and he knows how to tell a story--especially his own. —from the publisher's website
| 1995-12-10T00:00:00
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067940693X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/68215-1
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Erik Larson
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The Devil in the White City
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—from the publisher's website Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake. The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
| 2003-09-14T00:00:00
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0609608444
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Sam Tanenhaus
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Whittaker Chambers: A Biography Part 2
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Sam Tanenhaus discussed his book, "Whittaker Chambers: A Biography," published by Random House. Whittaker Chambers was a communist author and Soviet agent in his youth and later became a writer at Time. He was the main witness in the case against Alger Hiss as a Soviet agent. In this portion, Mr. Tanenhaus talked about some of his covert activities and his accusations against Alger Hiss. This was the second half of a two-hour interview.
| 1997-03-02T00:00:00
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0375751459
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/78894-1
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20346-1
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Len Colodny
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Silent Coup: The Removal of a President
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In a controversial new book on the Nixon resignation, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, the authors said that White House aide John Dean was responsible for the cover-up of the 1973 Watergate break-in, that General Alexander Haig was attempting to unseat President Nixon, and that General Haig was also "Deep Throat." The authors say that their book has been rejected by some critics because it "cuts too close to the bone of what's been accepted for 20 years." Mr. Colodny is a former Maryland politician and Mr. Gettlin was a reporter for Newhouse Newspaper in Washington.
| 1991-08-11T00:00:00
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0312051565
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/20346-1
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111331-1
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Juan Williams
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Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary
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From the bestselling author of Eyes on the Prize , here is the definitive biography of the great lawyer and Supreme Court justice. Thurgood Marshall stands today as the great architect of American race relations, having expanded the foundation of individual rights for all Americans. His victory in the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the landmark Supreme Court case outlawing school segregation, would have made him a historic figure even if he had not gone on to become the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court. As a young lawyer, Marshall dealt with criminal cases in which blacks were routinely sent to their deaths with barely a trial, and he was once nearly lynched while defending a client. Remembered as a gruff, aloof figure, Marshall in fact had great charisma and a large appetite for life. Away from the courtroom, he was a glamorous figure in Harlem circles, known as a man-about-town who socialized with prizefighter Joe Louis, singer Cab Calloway, and other black luminaries. He lived in every decade of the century and knew every president from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, becoming a respected member of Washington's power elite, known for his savvy and quick wit. But beneath Marshall's charm was a hard-nosed drive to change America that led to surprising clashes with Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X. Most intriguing of all was Marshall's secret and controversial relationship with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, revealed here for the first time. Based on eight years of research and interviews with over 150 sources, Thurgood Marshall is the sweeping and inspirational story of an enduring figure in American life, a descendant of slaves who became a true hero for all people. As Juan Williams shows, in page after vivid page, Thurgood Marshall fulfilled the promise of democracy and changed our history. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-10-11T00:00:00
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0812920287
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/111331-1
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Larry Sabato
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Feeding Frenzy
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Larry Sabato discussed his book, "Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics." In his book, Mr. Sabato discusses what he sees as the major changes that have occured in modern journalism in recent years. He believes that along with a decline in journalistic ethics, there is an increasing tendency among the media to overscrutenize the private lives of public figures, thus obscuring the genuine political issues.
| 1991-11-03T00:00:00
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0029276357
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/22477-1
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159925-1
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Michael Howard
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The First World War
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—from the publisher's website The First World War is an insightful narrative history, focusing on why the First World War occurred, how it was fought, and why it had the consequences it did. It examines in turn the state of Europe in 1914 and the outbreak of war; the onset of attrition in 1915 and the extension of the war; the 'crisis of the war' (1917-18), the collapse of Russia and the weakening and eventual surrender of the Central Powers; the making of peace; and the historical controversies surrounding the causes and conduct of war.
| 2003-03-16T00:00:00
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0192853627
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/159925-1
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18786-1
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Donald Ritchie
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Press Gallery
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Mr. Ritchie, the associate historian for the United States Historical Office, traced the evolution of Washington print reporting from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the advent of radio in 1932. He received his bachelor's and advanced degrees from the University of Maryland and spent several years teaching in Washington-area universities. Mr. Ritchie's book centers on the ethics of the early Washington correspondents and the ways which their ethical standards reflect the era in which they worked. He explored the changing relationship between journalists and elected officials and how that relationship influenced the public. Mr. Ritchie, who has been the associate historian of the U.S. Senate since 1976, explained that his book "starts in 1800, when the first reporters arrived in Washington, when Congress was really the center of attention rather than the presidency." He discussed the changes involved in the way the press covered issues concerning the President and Congress and politicians' responsiveness to questions from the press.
| 1991-07-07T00:00:00
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0674703758
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80477-1
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Jill Krementz
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The Writer's Desk
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Ms. Krementz talked about her book, "The Writer's Desk," published by Random House. It is a collection of photographs of writers near their desks from 1967 to the present. She also talked about many of the writers she has met and photographed over the years, including Kurt Vonnegut, her husband
| 1997-06-01T00:00:00
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0609000489
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/80477-1
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64862-1
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Ari Hoogenboom
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Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President
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Professor Hoogenboom discussed his book, Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President, published by University of Kansas Press. He talked about President Hayes' life and career and compared his post-presidential career to that of President Jimmy Carter, who also became active in social movements.
| 1995-07-02T00:00:00
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0700606416
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179913-1
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Abigail Thernstrom
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No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning
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—from the publisher's website Black and Hispanic students are not learning enough in our public schools. Their typically poor performance is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in America today. Thus, say Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, the racial gap in school achievement is the nation's most critical civil rights issue and an educational crisis. It's no wonder that "No Child Left Behind," the 2001 revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, made closing the racial gap in education its central goal. An employer hiring the typical black high school graduate or the college that admits the average black student is choosing a youngster who has only an eighth-grade education. In most subjects, the majority of twelfth-grade black students do not have even a "partial mastery" of the skills and knowledge that the authoritative National Assessment of Educational Progress calls "fundamental for proficient work" at their grade. No Excuses marshals facts to examine the depth of the problem, the inadequacy of conventional explanations, and the limited impact of Title I, Head Start, and other familiar reforms. Its message, however, is one of hope: Scattered across the country are excellent schools getting terrific results with high-needs kids. These rare schools share a distinctive vision of what great schooling looks like and are free of many of the constraints that compromise education in traditional public schools. In a society that espouses equal opportunity we still have a racially identifiable group of educational have-nots -- young African Americans and Latinos whose opportunities in life will almost inevitably be limited by their inadequate education. When students leave high school without high school skills, their futures -- and that of the nation -- are in jeopardy. With successful schools already showing the way, no decent society can continue to turn a blind eye to such racial and ethnic inequality.
| 2004-02-01T00:00:00
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0743204468
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Cal Thomas
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The Things That Matter Most
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Cal Thomas discussed his book, "The Things that Matter Most," published by HarperCollins. It concerns what he terms the "nine broken promises of the sixties." These promises include such things as the Great Society. He believes that America must return to these "things that matter most," such as traditional religious, moral and ethical values. In this collection of essays, Mr. Thomas argues that the ethics of earlier times as well as hard work, religion, and low taxes are the solutions to problems caused by liberalism in contemporary America.
| 1994-07-10T00:00:00
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0060926376
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/56895-1
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Robert Merry
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Taking on the World
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Robert Merry discussed his book, "Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop - Guardians of the American Century," published by Viking/Penguin. The Alsops were journalists and members of an old New England family. Mr. Merry chronicled their lives and careers with many anecdotes, including their close relationships with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
| 1996-03-24T00:00:00
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0140149848
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/69901-1
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97109-1
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Daniel Pipes
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Conspiracy
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Many of the greatest tragedies in human history are the result of the successful spread of conspiracy theories, from atrocities committed during the Crusades, to the Holocaust. Today, conspiracy theories are swirling with renewed vigor. CONSPIRACY, by eminent scholar Daniel Pipes, offers much needed perspective on the past and present of this special type of paranoia. Conspiracy theories are generated by two broad groups of people: the politically disaffected and the culturally suspicious. The former group often includes blacks and right-wingers, whose dislike of the existing order instigates a belief in the presence of powerful forces engaged in plots against them. Bill Cosby and Spike Lee believe that AIDS was created by human beings to be used as a weapon of oppression. Louis Farrakhan believes that Jews are responsible for both capitalism and communism, the two world wars, financing Hitler, controlling the Federal Reserve Board and Hollywood, and causing the U.S. government to go into debt. Rightist groups have raised alarms about an imminent invasion by United Nations forces. The result of such an attack, militia-members warn, will be a new world order in which all Americans will lose their constitutional rights and have tracking devices inserted into their buttocks. In the ranks of the culturally suspicious are conspiracy theory devotees such as Patrick Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Lyndon LaRouche and Ross Perot. Pipes traces the roots of western conspiracism to the Crusades, when anti-Jewish bias took on a violent, paranoid dimension and the first secret societies, like the Knights of Templar, came into being. Conspiracism grew steadily through to the Enlightenment, but didn't become a powerful political force until the years before the French Revolution when groups like the Freemasons and the Illuminati surfaced, and the Jewish emancipation began. With greater and greater frequency, those groups were accused of hatching plots to rule the world, and were assumed to have the power to do so. During the first half of the 20th century, conspiracism reached the peak of its power. In 1940-41, the paranoid style was so pervasive that several European nations were under the direct control of leaders whose ideologies were largely based on conspiracy theories. Since then, Pipes argues, western paranoia has declined, although it remains a threat to the existing order. Millions still buy the books of Pat Robertson, listen to the songs of Ice T., and watch the movies of Oliver Stone. CONSPIRACY offers a clear-eyed look at the disturbing power of organized paranoia, and a warning against its unchecked consequences. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-01-25T00:00:00
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0684831317
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38281-1
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Kay Mills
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This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
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Kay Mills discussed her research for "This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer," published by Dutton Publishers. Ms. Hamer was a major figure in the American civil rights movement and an activist in the Democratic party during the middle part of the twentieth century. Ms. Mills discussed Ms. Hamer's role in the civil rights movement, and her position as a woman in the movement.
| 1993-02-28T00:00:00
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0452270529
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/38281-1
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8062-1
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Sen. Robert Byrd
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The Senate: 1789-1989
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Senator Robert Byrd commemorated 200 years of Senate history in his recent book, The Senate: 1789-1989. The book consists of speeches Senator Byrd delivered on the floor of the Senate about its history. Senator Byrd includes stories about senators such as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay as well as his personal experiences with Presidents Johnson and Nixon.
| 1989-06-18T00:00:00
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0160064058
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/8062-1
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8380-1
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Simon Schama
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Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
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Simon Schama, former professor of history at Harvard University, discusses his work, "Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution." He discusses and contrasts the outcome of the French revolution with the American revolution, as well as with the recent events in China. He examines the French constitutions and compares the features of the five republics. Also, Schama discusses his own background as well as the reaction of his peers to his writing a narrative history of France, as opposed to an analytical history.
| 1989-07-14T00:00:00
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0679726101
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/8380-1
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101451-1
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Douglas Wilson
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Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln
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In HONOR'S VOICE: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln, a highly original . . . absorbing and first-rate contribution to Lincoln studies" (Kirkus Reviews), historian Douglas L. Wilson exposes the part of our sixteenth president's life we know the least about: his painful early years, when he proposed to no less than four women and sank deep into depression over his failures in love. Called "the best account of the emotional mysteries of a maturing Lincoln" by Garry Wills, HONOR'S VOICE shows how an uneducated boy from the Midwestern backwoods turned himself into a successful lawyer and politician in just 11 years despite crippling personal defeats. Wilson draws on letters, interviews, and other primary sources to depict a politically savvy young man—one who studied English grammar to erase his rural dialect and made shrewd political moves against opponents in battles of prairie politics—whose career was nearly derailed by unhappy entanglements with women, episodes serious enough to make friends fear for his sanity and guard against possible suicide. We see Lincoln's marriage to the aristocratic Mary Todd, often heavily romanticized as a classic American love story, for what it was—a long and torturous struggle over honor and obligation. And learn the truth about Lincoln's first and tragic love affair with Ann Rutledge. "Illuminating not only in what it says about Lincoln but about how history gets written and the way myths are created" (Publishers Weekly), HONOR'S VOICE breaks free of Lincoln legend to offer a very human portrait of one of the nation's most extraordinary leaders. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-03-29T00:00:00
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067940788X
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33238-1
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George Will
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Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy
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George Will discussed his book, "Restoration: Congress, Term Limits, and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy," published by The Free Press, in which Mr. Will criticized the American political process that encourages career politicians. He contrasted the original intentions of the Founding Fathers in creating the federal government and the modern state which has empowered American politicians to remain in office indefinitely.
| 1992-10-18T00:00:00
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0029347130
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/33238-1
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51801-1
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William F. Buckley Jr.
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Happy Days Were Here Again
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Author and commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. talked about his compendium titled Happy Days Were Here Again, published by Random House. The book is a collection of more than 120 articles and speeches written between 1985 and 1993. Beginning with Mr. Buckley's 1950 Class Day speech while a student at Yale, he addresses the Cold War, the passing of friends, the joys of sailing the open seas, liberty, and the comfort of faith. The selections, edited by his sister Patricia Bozell, include commentary from the author that provides historical context for his speeches.
| 1993-10-24T00:00:00
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9780679403982
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/51801-1
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110653-1
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Linda Davis
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Badge of Courage: The Life of Stephen Crane
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World famous at twenty-four, dead at twenty-eight, brilliant, reckless, and ultimately tragic—Stephen Crane is a dramatic study in contradictions. His most famous work, The Red Badge of Courage , is a classic antiwar novel. Yet Crane longed for military honors of his own and pursued a career as a war correspondent that took him to battlefields in Greece and Cuba. The son of a repressive Methodist minister who preached that novels were a filthy vice, he not only took up writing as a career but engaged in a public battle on behalf of a New York prostitute, which ruined his reputation and cost him the friendship of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. An Easterner who fancied himself a cowboy, he spent his last years on a ramshackle estate in England, entertaining his close friends Joseph Conrad, Henry James, H. G. Wells, and Ford Madox Ford. In the first accurate, in-depth biography of this legendary writer, Linda Davis vividly describes Crane's short but endlessly fascinating life. Providing a radically new interpretation, she documents the chronic illness that plagued him from childhood and that accounted for the dramatic risks he continually undertook. Badge of Courage is the first biography to break through the common myths and misconceptions surrounding Crane and offer a full portrait of the man himself and of his literary genius. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-09-06T00:00:00
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0899199348
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/110653-1
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Paul Greenberg
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No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton Watching
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Mr. Greenberg talked about his recent book, No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton-Watching, published by Brassey's. It is a collection of his articles and editorials written about President and Mrs. Clinton in the 1970s and 1980s for newspapers in Arkansas. He described the ambivalence about President Clinton among the public which is evident in his articles.
| 1996-07-07T00:00:00
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1574880055
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/72551-1
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Peter Maas
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Underboss: Sammy The Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia
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"They say I broke the oath. But it wasn 't the oath I thought I was taking I thought it was about honor and brotherhood. I mean, when you took the oath, that honor stuff got you as high as a kite when you were being made. You really believed in it, that it was worth living for and dying for and going to jail for. It was none of that. It was all about greed and power." —Sammy The Bull Gravano In March of 1992, the highest-ranking member of the Mafia in America ever to defect broke his blood oath of silence and testified against his boss, John Gotti. He was Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano, second in command of the Gambino organized crime family, the most powerful in the nation. Because of Gotti's uncanny ability to escape convictions in state and federal trials despite charges that he was the Mafia's top chieftain, the media had dubbed him the "Teflon Don." With Sammy the Bull, this would all change. Gravano's testimony would eventually lead to the convictions, guilty pleas or extended prison terms of dozens of key Cosa Nostra figures-including Gotti as well as key union officials involved in labor racketeering. His collaboration with the government would also spawn a "veritable flood" of cooperating witnesses from organized crime. Today, thanks in large part to Gravano, the Mafia is in shambles. In UNDERBOSS: Sammy The Bull Gravano's Story of Life in the Mafia, Peter Maas, bestselling author of The Valachi Papers and Serpico, chronicles the gangster life of Sammy Gravano—a participant in almost every key event of the modern Cosa Nostra. Based on dozens of hours of exclusive interviews with Gravano, and much of it written in Sammy the Bull's own voice, Maas's latest Mafia history ushers readers as never before into the uppermost secret inner sanctums of organized crime. It is an underworld of power, lust, greed, betrayal, deception, sometimes even honor, with the specter of violent death always poised in the wings. We have seen, read, and heard about this dangerously real world from the outside; now we are able to experience it in rich, no-holds-barred detail as if we were there ourselves. —from the publisher's website
| 1997-08-24T00:00:00
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0060182563
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/87686-1
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Robert Leckie
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Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II
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Robert Leckie talked about his book, "Okinawa: Last Battle of World War II," published by Viking Penguin. It focuses on the U.S. invasion of Okinawa in April 1945 by 180,00 troops, the last major step toward the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. He also talked about his service in the Marine Corps in Guadalcanal and career as a journalist and author.
| 1995-09-03T00:00:00
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067084716X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/66766-1
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Daniel Roos
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The Machine That Changed the World
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Daniel Roos discussed the book, The Machine That Changed the World, which he co-authored with James P. Womack and others. It an analytical comparison of American and Japanese auto manufacturing practices. According to the authors, the Japanese have developed a better way to make cars and other mass-produced goods. Development of the Japanese process, called "lean production," began after World War II and has been refined for the last 40 years. Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the competitive advantages of "lean production," the results of which were recently released by the International Motor Vehicle Program, directed by Mr. Roos. Aspects of "lean production" include: catching and fixing defects at the point they occur on the assembly line, robotization, labor teams, and cross-training in production skills. Statistical data were drawn from European, Japanese and United States auto companies and organizations.
| 1991-01-13T00:00:00
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0743299795
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/15684-1
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Michael Oren
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Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
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A gripping account of one of the pivotal events in modern Middle Eastern history--on the 35th anniversary of the war in Israel and the West it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War, or simply as "the Setback." Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in West Bank, the intifada and the rise of Palestinian terror: all are part of the outcome of those six days of intense Arab-Israeli fighting in the summer of 1967. Michael B. Oren's Six Days of War is the most comprehensive history ever published of this dramatic and pivotal event, the first to explore it both as a military struggle and as a critical episode in the global Cold War. Oren spotlights all the participants--Arab, Israeli, Soviet, and American--telling the story of how the war broke out and of the shocking ways it unfolded. Drawing on thousands of top-secret documents, on rare papers in Russian and Arabic, and on exclusive personal interviews, Six Days of War recreates the regional and international context which, by the late 1960s, virtually assured an Arab-Israeli conflagration. Also examined are the domestic crises in each of the battling states, and the extraordinary personalities--Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yitzhak Rabin, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin--that precipitated this earthshaking clash. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-08-25T00:00:00
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0195151747
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/171882-1
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David Kennedy
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Freedom from Fear
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In FREEDOM FROM FEAR: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, the first comprehensive study that spans the Depression, the New Deal and World War Il eras, Bancroft Award-winning historian David M. Kennedy tells the story of three of the most formative events in modern American history. Here Kennedy situates American history in the context of the world historical events of the era, including global economic crisis, the rise of Nazism, and Japan's quest for empire in Asia. In FREEDOM FROM FEAR, an important addition to the award-winning The Oxford History of the United States series, Kennedy examines in detail America's greatest economic crisis ever, and sheds light on all contemporary comparisons with that event. It also documents the techniques of presidential leadership developed by Franklin Roosevelt, arguably the most effective and consequential president of the century, and critically discusses the nature of FDR's great reform legacy. Finally, the book rehearses the momentous debate between 1935 and 1941 about American foreign policy, a debate that ended with American intervention in World War II and the end (for a time, at least) of a century and a haIf of isolationism—a debate that still echoes in discussions for foreign policy today. Kennedy addresses major controversies, such as: causes of the Depression, the Hoover presidency, the failures and successes of the New Deal, the role of Depression-era demagogues like Father Coughlin and Senator Huey Long, the rise of organized labor, the origins of Social Security, the "Constitutional Revolution" of 1937, the origins of WW II, the Pearl Harbor attack, the emergence of the American-British-Russian "Grand Alliance," the internment of Japanese-Americans in wartime, the American society in wartime, the Second Front debate, the liabilities of the "unconditional surrender" policy, the nature of the air war waged against Germany and Japan, the development of atomic weapons, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ultimately, FREEDOM FROM FEAR tells the story of how Americans endured, and finally prevailed in the face of two back-to-back calamities: The Great Depression and WW II. Kennedy describes the Depression's impact in vivid detail, and documents the New Deal's effort to wring lasting social and economic reform out of the Depression crisis. Kennedy also offers a compelling narrative of America's engagement in World War II, including fresh analyses of how and why America won, and the lasting consequences of American victory. Covering what are the most influential years of the 20th century, FREEDOM FROM FEAR is an exciting narrative of the foundations of modern America. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-06-20T00:00:00
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0195038347
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/124794-1
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Jennifer Toth
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What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? The Story of A Child Turning Violent
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On an icy night five years ago, Johnnie Jordan -- just fourteen years old -- brutally murdered his elderly foster care mother, leaving the state of Ohio shocked and outraged. He could not tell police why he did it or even how it made him feel; all he knew was that something inside him made him kill. At the time, few people predicted the swift emergence of a class of young so-called "super-predators" -- criminals like Johnnie who injure and kill without conscience, personified to the nation by the Littleton, Colorado, tragedy in 1999. In What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? acclaimed journalist Jennifer Toth, author of The Mole People and Orphans of the Living , once again takes a look at the people in our society whom we so often discard and altogether ignore. As Toth investigates Johnnie's crime and life, she unravels the mysteries of a child murderer unable to identify his emotions even after they converge in acts of fury and rage. In the course of her research, Johnnie grows dangerously into a young man who "will probably kill again," he says, "though I don't want to." Yet he also demonstrates great kindness and caring when treated as more than just a case number, when treated as a human. Through Johnnie's harrowing story, Toth examines how some children manage to overcome tragic beginnings, while others turn their pain, anger, and loss on innocents. More than a beautifully written narrative of youth gone wrong, this is the story of a child welfare system so corrupted by bureaucracy and overwhelmed with cases that many children entrusted to its care receive none at all. It is also the story of a Midwestern town struggling with blame and anger, unable to reconcile the damage done by so young an offender. From Johnnie's early years on the streets to his controversial trial and ultimate conviction, What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? is a seminal work on youth violence and how we as a society can work to curtail it. Ultimately, Toth ponders one of the most difficult and important questions on youth violence: If we can't control the way children are raised, how can we prevent them from destroying other lives as well? —from the publisher's website
| 2002-05-12T00:00:00
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0684855585
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/169320-1
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Sylvia Jukes Morris
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Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce
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Rage For Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce is, as its title implies, a soaring story. No American woman of this century aimed so accurately, or rocketed so far, as Clare Boothe Luce—legendary playwright, editor, politician, wit, and social seductress. "Her method was simple, aim for the top," wrote an envious colleague. Born illegitimate on New York's Upper West Side, with nothing to recommend her but blonde good looks and a ferocious intelligence, young Clare used sex, street smarts, acid humor, and money to plot a career more improbable than anything in her own fiction and drama. This biography—based on substantial interviews with Clare Boothe Luce and total access to her papers—tells how she transformed herself from an impoverished and itinerant child into a woman who, at thirty-nine, could seriously speak of becoming "the first lady Vice-President." Her teenage experiences as a stage and film actress fueled a lifelong hunger for bigger roles and larger stages to play upon. In her twenties she was already famous for the brilliance of her short stories and dazzling cocktail-part repartee. She was a successful playwright who wrote three Broadway hits in a row between 1936 and 1939. The dry-martini dialogue of her masterpiece The Women ("I'm a virgin...a frozen asset.") is still making audiences gasp around the world. (Indeed, just last year some of Hollywood's top female actresses, including Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, and Marisa Tomei, participated in a reading of a newly updated version of the script.) Even before Clare wrote her first play she was managing editor of Vanity Fair. She was at various times the lover of an extraordinary variety of men and wife to two millionaires—notably Henry Luce, influential publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune. Before she was forty she had also written a best-selling book on the Phony War, worked as a roving correspondent for Life in WWII, and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. In RAGE FOR FAME Sylvia Jukes Morris, author of Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady, has produced a sterling biography, as remarkable for its meticulous documentation (the fruit of fifteen years of research) as for the intimacy of its point of view. A few months before Clare Boothe Luce died in 1987 she told Ms. Morris, "I feel closest to you, because you know everything." —from the publisher's website
| 1997-07-27T00:00:00
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0394575555
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/86638-1
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161891-1
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Jason Epstein
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Book Business: Publishing: Past, Present, and Future
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The book industry stands at the edge of a historic transformation. Jason Epstein tells us what the future holds. Jason Epstein has led arguably the most creative career in book publishing during the past half-century. In 1952 he created Anchor Books, which launched the so-called quality paperback revolution and established the trade paperback format. In the following decade he was co-founder of the New York Review of Books. In the 1980s he created The Library of America and The Reader's Catalog, the precursor of on-line bookselling. In this short book, based on his W.W. Norton Lectures given at the New York Public Library in October 1999, he discusses the severe crisis facing the book business today—a crisis that affects writers and readers as well as publishers—and looks ahead to the radically transformed industry that will revolutionize the idea of the book as profoundly as the introduction of movable type did five centuries ago. —from the publisher
| 2001-03-18T00:00:00
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0393049841
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/161891-1
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112280-1
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Simon Winchester
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The Professor and the Madman
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A fascinating portrait of Dr. W.C. Minor, an American Civil War veteran confined to a British insane asylum, who contributed more than 10,000 definitions during the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, known as one of the greatest literary achievements in the history of English letters. Its creation began in 1857, took 70 years, drew from tens of thousands of brilliant minds, and organized the sprawling language into 414,825 precise definitions. But hidden within the rituals of its creation is a fascinating and mysterious story—that of two remarkable men whose strange 20-year relationship lies at the core of this historic undertaking. Professor James Murray, an astonishingly learned former schoolmaster and bank clerk, was the distinguished editor of the OED project. Dr. William Chester Minor, an American surgeon from New Haven, Connecticut, who had served in the Civil War, was one of thousands who submitted quotations illustrative of words to be used in the dictionary. But Minor was no ordinary contributor; he was remarkably prolific, sending thousands of neat, handwritten quotations from his home in the small village of Crowthorne, 50 milles from Oxford. On numerous occasions Murray invited Minor to visit Oxford and celebrate his work, but Murray's offer was regularly—and mysteriously—refused. Thus the two men, for two decades, maintained a close relationship only through correspondence. Finally, in 1896, after Minor had sent nearly 10,000 definitions to the dictionary but had still never traveled from his home, a puzzled Murray set out to visit him. It was then that Murray finally learned the truth about Minor—that, in addition to being a masterful wordsmith, Minor was also a murderer, clinically insane—and locked up in Broadmoor, England's harshest asylum for the criminally insane. The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness and genius, and the incredible obsessions of two men at the heart of the Oxford English Dictionary and literary history. With riverting insight and detail, Simon Winchester crafts a fascinating glimpse into one man's tortured mind and his contribution to another man's magnificent dictionary. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-11-08T00:00:00
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0060175966
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/112280-1
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152171-1
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Patrick Tyler
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A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China, An Investigative History
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A revelatory history of the complicated and combative relationship between the world's biggest and the worlds most powerful nations by the former Beijing bureau chief of the New York Times. A Great Wall is the definitive work on U.S.-China relations since the Cold War. Veteran journalist Patrick Tyler utilizes brilliant original reporting from his years in China; interviews with Presidents, secretaries of state, Chinese officials, and other key leaders; and 15,000 pages of newly declassified documents to chart the history of this fragile friendship over the last three decades, illuminating a relationship usually shrouded in secrecy, miscommunication, rivalry, fondness, and fear. Through vivid scenes and narrative Tyler captures the epic struggle by American and Chinese leaders over three decades to come to terms with each other, sworn enemies since Chinese troops overran the mainland in 1949 and bitterly divided over the fate of Taiwan. Unlike most foreign correspondents, Tyler is an investigative journalist by training, and it shows in A Great Wall's wealth of never-before-disclosed revelations. The result is a book that will make front-page news and receive enormous review attention. Will China be a threat or a partner in the future? As China emerges onto the world stage and into the global market place, A Great Wall will be an essential book for anyone interested in the shifting dynamics of post-Cold War geopolitics. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-10-31T00:00:00
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1891620371
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/152171-1
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67372-1
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Pierre Salinger
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P.S., A Memoir
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Pierre Salinger was only 35 when he became Pres. John F. Kennedy's press secretary. During those amazing years, he found himself at the center of many world events. After leaving the White House in 1964 (he stayed on for awhile as LBJ's press secretary) Salinger was, briefly, a senator from California &, even more briefly, a movie & TV actor. Following the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, which he witnessed, Salinger retired from politics & moved to his mother s native France. In 1978 he went to work for ABC television, soon becoming their Paris bureau chief, & over the ensuing decades, he covered every major story. —from the publisher's website
| 1995-11-12T00:00:00
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0312135785
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/67372-1
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121918-1
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Amity Shlaes
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The Greedy Hand
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The Greedy Hand is an illuminating examination of the culture of tax and a persuasive call for reform, written by one of the nation's leading policy makers, Amity Shlaes of The Wall Street Journal. The father of the modern American state was an obscure Macy's department store executive named Beardsley Ruml. During World War II, he devised the plan for withholding taxes from your paycheck, thereby laying in place a system that allows the hand of government to reach into your wallet and take what it wants. Today, taxes make up more than a third of our economy, the highest level in history outside war. We live in the nation revolutionary father Thomas Paine foresaw when he wrote of "the Greedy Hand of government thrusting itself into every corner of industry." This book is a cultural examination of the way taxes influence our behavior, how they force us into an arbitrary system that punishes families and individual enterprise. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-04-11T00:00:00
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0375501320
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/121918-1
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154827-1
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Gina Kolata
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Flu: The Great Influenza Pandemic
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The fascinating, true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-02-27T00:00:00
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0374157065
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/154827-1
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Eleanor Randolph
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Waking the Tempests: Ordinary Life in the New Russia
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Ms. Randolph talked about her recently published book, Waking the Tempests: Ordinary Life in the New Russia, published by Simon and Schuster. It focuses on how Russians of all backgrounds are handling their new political, economic and other freedoms at a very personal level. She also talked about the Russian elections and whether democracy will take root in Russia
| 1996-07-21T00:00:00
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0684809125
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/72926-1
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54538-1
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Bill Emmott
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Japanophobia
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Author Bill Emmott discussed his recent book, f2Japanophobia: The Myth of the Invincible JapanesefR, published by Times Books/Random House. The book deals with the popular perception during the 1980s that the nation of Japan was unstoppable in the business arena. He discussed the role of government intervention in the currency markets and how it increased this perception. He also discussed union membership and inflation in Japan, the United States, and Great Britain.
| 1994-02-13T00:00:00
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0812919076
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/54538-1
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70728-1
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Wayne Fields
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Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence
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Mr. Fields talked about his recent book, Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence, published by The Free Press. He talked about how American presidents use acceptance speeches, inaugurals and State of the Union speeches to define their administration's agenda. He described various ways U.S. presidents have spoken about the U.S. commitment to "a more perfect union" enshrined in the preamble to the Constitution. He also compared and contrasted the different rhetorical patterns of various presidents.
| 1996-04-14T00:00:00
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0684822857
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/70728-1
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31965-1
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Terry Eastland
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Energy in the Executive: The Case for a Strong Presidency
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Mr. Eastland discussed the main ideas of his book, Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency published by The Free Press, which addressed the powers and ethics of the presidency in contemporary politics. He discussed the governing methods of previous presidents, and spoke on the relative powers granted the executive branch by the Constitution. He argued in favor of expanding the powers granted to the president by the structure of the government.
| 1992-09-06T00:00:00
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0029086817
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/31965-1
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53222-1
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John Podhoretz
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Hell of a Ride: Backstage at White House
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Mr. Podhoretz, former speech writer for President Reagan and former special assistant in the Office of Drug Control Policy, discussed his recent book, Hell of a Ride: Backstage at the White House Follies 1989-93, published by Simon and Schuster. The book describes the White House from the perspective of mid-level staffers, from their euphoria immediately following the Persian Gulf War to the depression after the 1992 election loss. Podhoretz believes that President Bush won the presidency by running on the record of President Reagan, but, once in office, he turned away from the style of government which had made Ronald Reagan so popular. In the conclusion he describes the Bush presidency as a "cosmic joke."
| 1993-12-19T00:00:00
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0671796488
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/53222-1
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13176-1
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Caspar Weinberger
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Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon
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Caspar Weinberger discussed his book, "Fighting For Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon," which chronicles his tenure as defense secretary for President Ronald Regan. He discussed the build-up of American arms during the time he served as secretary of defense. Mr. Weinberger stated that he feels it is essential that the U.S. retain the military strength it had in the 1980s. In the book, Mr. Weinberger states his support for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Also discussed in the book are the Iran-contra affair, President Ronald Regan, and Robert McFarlane. Mr. Weinberger also discussed his childhood, including the influence of his father during his impressionable years. Mr. Weinberger recounted how he read the daily Congressional Record in high school and told of his interest in the life and writings of Winston Churchill.
| 1990-07-15T00:00:00
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0446392383
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/13176-1
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James Thomas Flexner
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Maverick's Progress: An Autobiography
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Mr. Flexner talked about his autobiography, Maverick's Progress, published by Fordham University Press. He is best known for his four-volume biography of George Washington. All 25 of his books, the first of which was Doctors on Horseback, published in 1937, remain in print. He talked about his development as a writer and his methodology as a biographer. He has been a poet, an historical adviser to 1950s dramatic historical television productions, and recipient of an award from the Smithsonian Institution for successfully creating international interest in American art as a genre.
| 1996-06-02T00:00:00
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0823216608
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Joseph Califano
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Inside: A Public and Private Life
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—from the publisher's website Joe Califano grew up in a tight-knit working class family in Depression-era Brooklyn. His parents instilled in their son a work ethic, sense of self, and devotion to Church that stayed with him as he rose through the ranks of America's ruling class. From Jesuit undergraduate schools to Harvard Law, influential law firms, Robert McNamara's Pentagon, Lyndon Johnson's White House, and Jimmy Carter's Cabinet, Califano was hard charging, effective, and committed to his causes—whether that meant reforming the military, working for equal rights for all, his struggle to be a committed Catholic in America, or finally his passion to combat addictions that ruin so many American lives. The book is called Inside , and that's where it takes us—inside his public and private life—as Califano worked in the power centers of three Democratic administrations. He shows us how hardball is often necessary to make government serve its people. Califano remained "inside" even out of government, representing the Washington Post and Democratic Party during Watergate. Inside is history, memoir, and a profoundly revealing personal drama of a powerful figure involved in many defining events of the last half century. It is a tale of how ambition, tenacity and courage, guided by deeply felt ethics, can move the world, from the inside.
| 2004-05-23T00:00:00
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0786737786
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/181902-1
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Jeff Greenfield
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Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow
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The one account you won't want to miss. From the bestselling author and television commentator comes a brilliant, hilarious, incisive look at just what happened on Election Night, and after. "Circumstances have changed dramatically since I first called you." - Al Gore to George W. Bush, November 8, 2000 Few people know the absurdities of American politics better than Jeff Greenfield, CNN's award-winning political and media analyst. Now for all those millions of Americans who are still trying to figure out how we ended up with America's closest, craziest election, Greenfield takes us behind the scenes to explore Election Night 2000 and its tumultuous aftermath in all their surreal glory. From November 7th itself and its famous media flipflops ("Oh, waiter!" Greenfield proclaimed aloud, "One order of crow!") to its hard-fought finale, he leads us through and Alice-in-Wonderland world of butterfly ballots and pregnant chads, shifting deadlines and Doomsday Scenarios, lawyers, recounts, spin doctors, demonstrations, felons and faithless electors. It is an exceptional work of commentary and living history, destined to be a political classic. —from jacket of the book
| 2001-07-22T00:00:00
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Anna Quindlen
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Thinking Out Loud
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Anna Quindlen, syndicated columnist and author of "Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the Private," published by Random House, discussed her approach to journalism and her work as a columnist at the New York Times. She also spoke on her sources and inspirations for columns, and her career as a journalist.
| 1993-05-16T00:00:00
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0449909050
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Richard Posner
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Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline
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In this timely book, the first comprehensive study of the modern American public intellectual--that individual who speaks to the public on issues of political or ideological moment--Richard Posner charts the decline of a venerable institution that included worthies from Socrates to John Dewey. With the rapid growth of the media in recent years, highly visible forums for discussion have multiplied, while greater academic specialization has yielded a growing number of narrowly trained scholars. Posner tracks these two trends to their inevitable intersection: a proliferation of modern academics commenting on topics outside their ken. The resulting scene--one of off-the-cuff pronouncements, erroneous predictions, and ignorant policy proposals--compares poorly with the performance of earlier public intellectuals, largely nonacademics whose erudition and breadth of knowledge were well suited to public discourse. Leveling a balanced attack on liberal and conservative pundits alike, Posner describes the styles and genres, constraints and incentives, of the activity of public intellectuals. He identifies a market for this activity--one with recognizable patterns and conventions but an absence of quality controls. And he offers modest proposals for improving the performance of this market--and the quality of public discussion in America today. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-06-02T00:00:00
|
067400633X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/169625-1
|
21239-1
|
Reuven Frank
|
Out of Thin Air: The Brief Wonderful Life of Network News
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Mr. Frank was president of NBC News from 1968-1973 and 1982-1984. He is author of the book Out of Thin Air: The Brief Wonderful Life of Network News. He shared his insights as an insider in the business for 40 years, and described the late 1950s to the 1970s as "the best years." He also shared his views on how decreasing budgets and competition from cable networks have contributed to the decline of network news.
| 1991-09-15T00:00:00
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0671677586
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/21239-1
|
23510-1
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Martin Gilbert
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Churchill: A Life
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British historian Martin Gilbert discussed the life and times of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the subject of his book Churchill: A Life. Gilbert, who served for twenty-five years as Sir Winston Churchill's official biographer, discussed the public and private lives of Britain's two-term Prime Minister. He told many stories about Churchill's family life and political experiences. He also explained how he researched his subject.
| 1991-12-22T00:00:00
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0805023968
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/23510-1
|
64308-1
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Michael Klare
|
Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws
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Michael Klare discussed his book, "Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America's Search for a New Foreign Policy," published by Hill and Wang. The book focuses on the first full-scale critical analysis of Pentagon strategy in the post-Cold War era and shows how the Pentagon's planners have created a new agenda that will justify Cold War levels of spending.
| 1995-04-30T00:00:00
|
0809082438
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/64308-1
|
14513-1
|
Harold Stassen
|
Eisenhower: Turning the World Toward Peace
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Harold Stassen, former adviser to President Dwight E. Eisenhower, discussed the book he co-authored with Marshall Houts, "Eisenhower: Turning the World Toward Peace." The authors used their personal experiences to chronicle President Eisenhower's two terms in the White House, from 1953-1961. Mr. Stassen, who assisted Dwight Eisenhower in his victory over Robert Taft in the first ballot in 1952, describes the president as an intelligent, effective communicator with great leadership qualities that played an integral role in his productiveness in office. Mr. Stassen spoke of the state of America when the World War II hero took office, and how decisions that President Eisenhower applied to the Cold War in the early 1950s moved the world "to the hopes of enduring peace, with devotion to freedom, justice, and human rights." The book praises President Eisenhower's leadership and highlights his accomplishments, such as ending the Korean War, building the interstate highway system, and holding the first televised press conference. The authors suggest, though, that the president has been undervalued by history. The other author is Marshall Houts, former FBI special agent and author of general interest books.
| 1990-10-14T00:00:00
|
187792704X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/14513-1
|
162904-1
|
Jeffrey Meyers
|
Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation
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A revealing look at the human face of the great writer and political thinker. Experienced biographer Jeffrey Meyers delves into the complex personal history of the man whose visionary work gave us the great anti-utopias of twentieth-century literature. Meyers draws on a close study of the new edition of George Orwell's Complete Works, interviews with his family and friends, and unpublished material in the Orwell Archive in London to shed new light on this most unusual literary figure. A child of the waning British Empire, Orwell came to reject the stifling class system of his birth, and through his writing forged a new social consciousness that continues to engage modern intellectual thought. Meyers's work also reveals the human failings of this creative visionary—his childhood insecurities, his political dilemmas, and his conflicted relationships with women. What emerges is a darker—but distinctly more nuanced—portrait of the legendary figure. —from the publisher
| 2001-03-11T00:00:00
|
039304792X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/162904-1
|
163674-1
|
Andrew Burstein
|
America's Jubilee
|
On July 4, 1826, the United States celebrated its fiftieth birthday with parades and speeches across the country. But what ultimately sanctified the national jubilee in the minds of the celebrants was an extraordinary coincidence: the nearly simultaneous deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the last pillars of the original republic, already venerated as legends in their own time. It was a watershed in the nation's history, a bright moment when the successors to the Revolutionary dream examined their own lives as they took inspiration from and found nostalgia in the accomplishments of the founders. In this fascinating book, the distinguished historian Andrew Burstein explores what it was to be an American in 1826. Drawing on private diaries and letters, daily newspapers, and long-buried publications, he shows us the personal lives behind the pageantry and reveals an acutely self-conscious nation anxiously optimistic about its future, eager to romanticize the Revolutionary past. We follow the Marquis de Lafayette, the only surviving general of the War of Independence, on his triumphant 1825 tour of all twenty-four states. We visit an Ohio boomtown on the edge of the "new West," a region influenced by the Erie Canal and the commercialism that canal culture brought with it. We see through the eyes of ordinary citizens the wife of a Massachusetts minister, the author of a popular novel of the day, the family of a prominent statesman and learn about their gritty understanding of life and death, the nuances of contemporary sexual politics, and the sometimes treacherous drama of public debate. And we meet headline-makers such as the ornery President John Quincy Adams, the controversial Secretary of State Henry Clay, and the notoriously hot-tempered General Andrew Jackson, struggling to act in a statesmanlike way as he waits to be swept into the White House. In this evocative portrait of the United States in its jubilee year, Burstein shows how 1826 marked an unforgettable time in the republic's history, when a generation embraced the legacy of its predecessors and sought to enlarge its role in America's story. —from the publisher
| 2001-04-15T00:00:00
|
0307424715
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/163674-1
|
159630-1
|
Bonnie Angelo
|
First Mothers
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First Mothers tells the captivating stories of the mothers who played such large roles in developing the characters of the modern American presidents. The book covers a wide range of memorable personalities, from formidably aristocratic Sara Delano Roosevelt to diehard Democrat Martha Truman, from zealous pacifist Ida Eisenhower to family matriarch Rose Kennedy, nurturing Rebekah Baines Johnson, stoic Hannah Milhous Nixon, and courageous Dorothy Ford. From outspoken Peace Corps mother Lillian Carter to would-be actress Nelle Reagan, champion athlete Dorothy Bush, and gambling, hard-living Virginia Kelley Clinton, First Mothers invites us into the historic lives of these extraordinary women. Much has been written about First Ladies, but now Bonnie Angelo, a veteran correspondent and bureau chief for Time, has captured the daily lives, thoughts, and feelings of these remarkable mothers and the relationships between them and their sons. Angelo recounts stories of traditional family values nurtured to the fullest, examples that should resonate with today's parents. She blends these women's stories with the texture of their lives and the colorful details of their times, and creates much more than faded daguerreotypes in their family albums. Her enthralling personal anecdotes leap off the page to reveal brilliant, moving lives, up close and personal. Based on dozens of interviews with the president-sons and other living relatives of these remarkable women, First Mothers is a richly textured, in-depth look at the lives, the influence, and the patterns that can be identified in the special mother-son relationships that nurtured the modern American presidents—the last eleven—to the pinnacle of power. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-11-05T00:00:00
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0060937114
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/159630-1
|
100446-1
|
Joseph Hernon
|
Profiles in Character
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Hernon's title is a deliberate take-off of Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. Unlike Kennedy's patriotic portrayal of various Senators, Hernon takes the position that the best-known U.S. senators throughout history don't deserve their renown as much as some lesser-known (or completely unknown) ones who served at the same time. Each chapter of his book pairs a famous Senator with his lesser-known counterpart. Over the course of ten biographical chapters, arranged chronologically, Hernon tells the story of sixteen men's lives in the Senate in relation to each other, in what amounts to a history of the U.S. Senate. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-02-15T00:00:00
|
1563249375
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/100446-1
|
105855-1
|
Edward Larson
|
Summer for the Gods
|
The 1925 Scopes Trial marked a watershed in our national relationship between science and religion and has had tremendous impact on our culture ever since, even inspiring the famous play/movie Inherit the Wind. In addition to symbolizing the evolutionist versus creationist debate, the trial helped shape the development of both popular religion and religious freedom in America. Yet despite its influence on the 20th century, there are no modern histories of the trial and its aftermath. This book fills that void not only by skillfully narrating the trial's events, but also by framing it in a broader social context, showing how its influence has cut across religious, cultural, educational and political lines. With new material from both the prosecution and the defense, along with the author's astute historical and legal analysis, Summer for the Gods is destined to become a new classic about a pivotal milestone in American history. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-06-28T00:00:00
|
0465075096
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/105855-1
|
168640-1
|
Frank Wu
|
Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White
|
In the tradition of W. E. B. Du Bois, Cornel West, and other public intellectuals who confronted the "color line" of the twentieth century, journalist, law professor, and activist Frank H. Wu offers a unique perspective on how changing ideas of racial identity will affect race relations in the new century. Often provocative and always thoughtful, this book addresses some of the most controversial contemporary issues: discrimination, immigration, diversity, globalization, and the mixed-race movement, introducing the example of Asian Americans to shed new light on the current debates. Combining personal anecdotes, social-science research, legal cases, history, and original journalistic reporting, Wu discusses damaging Asian American stereotypes such as "the model minority" and "the perpetual foreigner." By offering new ways of thinking about race in American society, Wu's work challenges us to make good on our great democratic experiment. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-03-31T00:00:00
|
0465006396
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/168640-1
|
69485-1
|
Dan Balz
|
Storming the Gates
|
Mr. Balz talked about the book he wrote with Ronald Brownstein, Storming the Gates: Protest Politics and the Republican Revival, published by Little, Brown and Company. It focuses on the relationship between voter discontent and Republican electoral success. It also examines the future of this relationship and the impact of the conservative grassroots movements in America. He also talked about the life of a political reporter and the general impact of voter discontent on U.S. politics.
| 1996-02-18T00:00:00
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0316080381
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/69485-1
|
77824-1
|
David Boaz
|
Libertarianism: A Primer
|
Mr. Boaz talked about his new book, Libertarianism: A Primer, published by the Free Press. The book contains the history of libertarianism, as well as its central tenets and its positions on various current public policy issues. He also talked about how he became aware of libertarian ideas and named some of the most well-known libertarians. He also talked about another book he edited, The Libertarian Reader, which contains libertarian ideas in the writings of philosophers over the centuries.
| 1997-01-26T00:00:00
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068484768X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/77824-1
|
165148-1
|
Herbert Bix
|
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
|
In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose sixty-three-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix shows what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status. Influenced by an unusual combination of the Japanese imperial tradition and a modern scientific worldview, the young emperor gradually evolves into his preeminent role, aligning himself with the growing ultranationalist movement, perpetuating a cult of religious emperor worship, resisting attempts to curb his power, and all the while burnishing his image as a reluctant, passive monarch. Here we see Hirohito as he truly was: a man of strong will and real authority. Supported by a vast array of previously untapped primary documents, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is perhaps most illuminating in lifting the veil on the mythology surrounding the emperor's impact on the world stage. Focusing closely on Hirohito's interactions with his advisers and successive Japanese governments, Bix sheds new light on the causes of the China War in 1937 and the start of the Asia-Pacific War in 1941. And while conventional wisdom has had it that the nation's increasing foreign aggression was driven and maintained not by the emperor but by an elite group of Japanese militarists, the reality, as witnessed here, is quite different. Bix documents in detail the strong, decisive role Hirohito played in wartime operations, from the takeover of Manchuria in 1931 through the attack on Pearl Harbor and ultimately the fateful decision in 1945 to accede to an unconditional surrender. In fact, the emperor stubbornly prolonged the war effort and then used the horrifying bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the Soviet entrance into the war, as his exit strategy from a no-win situation. From the moment of capitulation, we see how American and Japanese leaders moved to justify the retention of Hirohito as emperor by whitewashing his wartime role and reshaping the historical consciousness of the Japanese people. The key to this strategy was Hirohito's alliance with General MacArthur, who helped him maintain his stature and shed his militaristic image, while MacArthur used the emperor as a figurehead to assist him in converting Japan into a peaceful nation. Their partnership ensured that the emperor's image would loom large over the postwar years and later decades, as Japan began to make its way in the modern age and struggled—as it still does—to come to terms with its past. Until the very end of a career that embodied the conflicting aims of Japan's development as a nation, Hirohito remained preoccupied with politics and with his place in history. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan provides the definitive account of his rich life and legacy. Meticulously researched and utterly engaging, this book is proof that the history of twentieth-century Japan cannot be understood apart from the life of its most remarkable and enduring leader. —taken from jacket of the book
| 2001-09-02T00:00:00
|
006019314X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/165148-1
|
36020-1
|
Brian Kelly
|
Adventures in Porkland
|
Brian Kelly discussed his research for the book, "Adventures in Porkland: How Washington Wastes Your Money and Why They Won't Stop," published by Villard Books. He described the process of pork-barrel legislation in which members of Congress of both parties secure money and benefits for their own districts.
| 1992-12-13T00:00:00
|
0679406565
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/36020-1
|
161216-1
|
Arlen Specter
|
Passion for Truth
|
Imbued with rugged individualism and fierce independence from his youth on the Kansas plains, Arlen Specter became a renowned big-city prosecutor and then a respected, powerful U.S. senator. His remarkable forty-year career has encompassed such milestones as originating the Single-Bullet Theory for the Warren Commission; derailing Judge Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination; interrogating Anita Hill; and playing an important role in President Clinton's impeachment proceedings. In this brutally honest book, Senator Specter analyzes these and other controversies, assessing each through both a legal and a historical lens. Throughout, he tells the truth, naming names, identifying where the system worked and where it failed—and even admits to his own mistakes. This illuminating memoir is vintage Specter. thoughtful, provocative, and deeply informative. Specter opens Passion for Truth in 1959, recounting his beginnings as a newly minted assistant district attorney prosecuting union racketeers—and earning the recognition and respect of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who would later call on Specter to serve on the Warren Commission. He describes his election to the office of district attorney at the age of thirty-five and how he structured what would become the model for the modern prosecutor's office. He also details his landmark crusades to promote the legal rights of victims at sentencing, to preserve evidence for rape prosecution, and to expose the inhumane treatment of America's prison population. Elected to the Senate in 1980, Specter continued his tireless fight for crime control and judicial reform at the national level. His wisdom and experience would prove invaluable in such measures as the creation of the office of CIA inspector general—the only tangible reform to follow the Iran-Contra scandal—and the investigation of the killings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, which in turn led the FBI to change its rules of engagement on the use of deadly force. And as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee on Terrorism, he held top Pentagon officials accountable for the truck bombing of Khobar Towers, which left nineteen Americans dead at the U.S. Air Force base in Saudi Arabia. In this gripping political masterpiece, Arlen Specter brings all of these events to life, taking the reader into the courtroom, the cloakroom, and the Senate chamber, and offers a clear and honest vision for reforming the way Main Street and Wall Street are governed. —from the publisher
| 2001-01-28T00:00:00
|
0060198494
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/161216-1
|
34630-1
|
Derrick Bell
|
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism
|
Professor Bell discussed his book, "Faces at the Bottom of the Well," published by Basic Books, which addressed the problem of racism in America and the class differences involved in discrimination against minorities. In the book, he discusses the civil rights movement in American society, and concludes that racism is permanent, and will always be part of society.
| 1992-11-15T00:00:00
|
0465068146
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/34630-1
|
51559-1
|
Christopher Hitchens
|
For the Sake of Argument
|
Mr. Hitchens discussed the recent publication of his book, For the Sake of Argument, which is a compendium of articles that he has written. He stated that the purpose of this book was a reply to the widespread notion that society no longer needs critique from the left. He hopes to restore the left as a "very necessary part of the political argument." Articles included in the book were published in various periodicals.
| 1993-10-17T00:00:00
|
0860914356
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/51559-1
|
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