Books

Since Godwin's Law is no longer in effect

by Prometheus 6
May 21, 2005 - 11:10pm.
on Books | Culture wars | Media | Politics

I'm going to suggest you get The Nazis: Warning from History from England because it's cheaper, and on DVD. All the US sources I found only have the VHS version. BBC has a DVD/book set which I this I'll go for at £22.99. I think that's like $40 (this week).

This is from The History Channel's description of the VHS set

The rise of Hitler was inevitable. The Gestapo received little help from ordinary Germans. The Nazi government was organized and efficient. There was widespread German resistance to the Nazis. Many people believe these statements. They are all false.

THE NAZIS: A WARNING FROM HISTORY is the definitive history of the Third Reich, exposing many widely-held myths. Extensive commentary from world-renowned scholars like Ian Kershaw, bestselling author of Hitler and The Hitler Myth, recently discovered documents and archival footage from former Soviet-Bloc nations and riveting eyewitness testimony combine in this landmark series.

The critical piece is the first segment:

I may have to read this sucker

by Prometheus 6
March 7, 2005 - 2:12pm.
on Books

'Angry Black White Boy': The Way I Am

By NATHANIEL RICH

Title:  Angry Black White Boy : A Novel
Author:  ADAM MANSBACH

Macon Detornay hates the Beastie Boys, loves hot sauce and is highly skeptical of John Brown's motives at Harpers Ferry -- all of which leads him to conclude that he is the ultimate ''down whiteboy.'' A graduate of Newton South High School, Macon has grown up as a Jewish kid on the leafy streets of the Boston suburbs, where he has witnessed liberal white hypocrisy first hand. ''Even the most concerned white people,'' he observes, ''have always been able to back away from race . . . when the truth is too ugly or complicated.''

I should get some sleep, huh?

by Prometheus 6
March 31, 2004 - 11:20pm.
on Books

I was just looking at this book, Mind Wide Open.

0743241657.01.jpg

And I pictured actually running across someone with grooves etched in their head like that. Kind of grossed me out.

The return of Jesus

by Prometheus 6
March 29, 2004 - 9:02am.
on Books

You have noooooooo idea how tempted I am to get this book. Only the first book in the series tempted me as much.



In 12th Book of Best-Selling Series, Jesus Returns
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Like Christian booksellers across the country, Bob Fillingane is doing everything he can to prepare the way for "Glorious Appearing," the climactic installment in the "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic thrillers that goes on sale tomorrow.

Mr. Fillingane, owner of Lemstone Books in Hattiesburg, Miss., has arranged television, radio and newspaper advertisements and even a marquee over the front of his local mall, and next week he will hold a book signing by the authors, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, on a Bible Belt bus tour from Spartanburg, S.C., to Plano, Tex.

Not that "Glorious Appearing" needs his help, Mr. Fillingane said.

"I really believe that there is a blessing on this series from the Lord," he said. "Just like with the 'Passion' movie, it is all part of the warning we get before Christ returns." He added, "Many people have asked me, Do you think they will finish the series before Christ comes?"

Over the last nine years, the "Left Behind" series, which is based on Dr. LaHaye's literal, bloody interpretation of the Book of Revelation, has become one of the biggest surprise hits in American popular culture. The first 11 novels have sold more than 40 million copies. The authors have unseated John Grisham as the best-selling novelists for adults and, in some places where evangelical Christians are common, the books rival the Harry Potter series in sales. Along the way, the "Left Behind" books have drawn sharp criticism for elements like their emphasis on the conversion of Jews and their focus on the brutal rule of the Antichrist, who happens to head the United Nations.

"Glorious Appearing" is the most anticipated and potentially most controversial "Left Behind" novel yet: it is the installment in which Jesus himself finally returns.

"There is not going to be anything bigger than that," said Chuck Wallington, president of the Christian Supply store in Spartanburg. He said he expected 1,000 buyers to turn up tomorrow for a book signing.

Book lineup

by Prometheus 6
January 25, 2004 - 8:09am.
on Books
AMERICA UNBOUND
The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy.
By Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay.
246 pp. Washington: Brookings Institution Press. $22.95.
THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE
Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic.
By Chalmers Johnson.
389 pp. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $25.
THE BUBBLE OF AMERICAN SUPREMACY
Correcting the Misuse of American Power.
By George Soros.
207 pp. New York: PublicAffairs. $22.
BUSH IN BABYLON
The Recolonisation of Iraq.
By Tariq Ali.
Illustrated. 214 pp. New York: Verso. $20.
SUPERPOWER SYNDROME
America's Apocalyptic Confrontation With the World.
By Robert Jay Lifton.
211 pp. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books. Paper, $12.95.
CRISIS ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA
How to Deal With a Nuclear North Korea.
By Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki.
230 pp. New York: A Brookings Institution Book/ McGraw-Hill. $19.95.
AFTER THE EMPIRE
The Breakdown of the American Order.
By Emmanuel Todd. Translated by C. Jon Delogu. Foreword by Michael Lind.
233 pp. New York: Columbia University Press. $29.95.

The Only Superbad Power
By SERGE SCHMEMANN

It is difficult to believe that George W. Bush has been in the White House for only three years. It seems ages now that we have been living in a new world, in which his administration is closely identified with new passions, new fears, new enemies. Sept. 11, of course, is the dominant reason; it has effectively divided our life into a ''before'' and an ''after,'' pushing the 20th century with its hot and cold wars, its thickets of nuclear missiles and its arguments into a foggy past. George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton managed the immediate consequences of the collapse of Communism, but they did so when the presumption was still that the main threat to the world had been lifted, when there seemed no pressing need to define a new, post-Communist order.

For better or for worse, it was left to George W. Bush to propose that new order, and it hasn't worked out the way many had expected -- a world in which arsenals would be sharply reduced and democracies would cooperate in resolving conflicts, ensuring human rights and protecting the environment. Instead, Bush and his team disdainfully chucked out containment and deterrence and declared that America had the right to ensure its security any way it deemed proper, including pre-emptive war. The triumphant America of the 21st century would use multilateral institutions only when it suited American aims. Not only that; guaranteeing its safety required that America impose its democratic values, starting in the Middle East.

Someday Bush may be proven right, and a harmonious chain of friendly democracies may stretch from Central Asia to the Mediterranean. For the time being, the new American order has generated a tsunami of anti-Americanism, with the United States perceived in some quarters as a greater threat to world peace than Al Qaeda. Deep fissures have developed between the United States and its allies; American policies have threatened to undermine Europe's drive toward unity; Muslims around the globe have turned against the United States; many leaders in Asia now look to China for their economic and political security; and Americans themselves have become polarized in their attitude toward the rest of the world. The ''war on terrorism'' has gotten mired in an anarchic Iraq; Guantanamo has come to represent a willful violation of civil rights; and tyrants have seized on the concept of pre-emptive war to justify their own suppression of opponents, now labeled terrorists.

Not unexpectedly, the rise of so contentious a new order, and the man who so unexpectedly launched it, have hatched a considerable library of condemnation, all the more as his re-election campaign gets under way. Of the books reviewed here, two -- "America Unbound'' and ''Crisis on the Korean Peninsula'' -- can be classified as reasonably evenhanded, though the first is broadly critical of the Bush approach and the second implicitly so. The others leave no doubt of what they think, ranging from George Soros's declared hope that his book will contribute to sweeping Bush out of office to Robert Jay Lifton's image of a ''malignant synergy'' between the United States and Al Qaeda ''when, in their mutual zealotry, Islamist and American leaders seem to act in concert.'' From across the Atlantic, Emmanuel Todd contributes the wistful notion that the United States, the true empire and axis of evil in his view, is already near collapse. These are only a portion of a swelling anti-Bush literature, for now only partly offset by equally ardent pro-Bush books.

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