The Seven Deadly Virtues: 18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell


Jonathan V. Last - 2014
    The Seven Deadly Virtues sits down next to readers at the bar, buys them a drink, and an hour or three later, ushers them into the revival tent without them even realizing it.   The book’s contributors include Sonny Bunch, Christopher Buckley, David “Iowahawk” Burge, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Graham, Mollie Hemingway, Rita Koganzon, Matt Labash, James Lileks, Rob Long, Larry Miller, P. J. O’Rourke, Joe Queenan, Christine Rosen, and Andrew Stiles. Jonathan V. Last, senior writer at the Weekly Standard, editor of the collection, is also a contributor. All eighteen essays in this book are appearing for the first time anywhere.   In the book’s opening essay, P. J. O’Rourke observes: “Virtue has by no means disappeared. It’s as much in public view as ever. But it’s been strung up by the heels. Virtue is upside down. Virtue is uncomfortable. Virtue looks ridiculous. All the change and the house keys are falling out of Virtue’s pants pockets.”   Here are the virtues everyone (including the book’s contributors) was taught in Sunday school but have totally forgotten about until this very moment.  In this sanctimony-free zone:   • Joe Queenan observes: “In essence, thrift is a virtue that resembles being very good at Mahjong. You’ve heard about people who can do it, but you’ve never actually met any of them.” • P. J. O’Rourke notes: “Fortitude is quaint. We praise the greatest generation for having it, but they had aluminum siding, church on Sunday, and jobs that required them to wear neckties or nylons (but never at the same time). We don’t want those either.” • Christine Rosen writes: “A fellowship grounded in sociality means enjoying the company of those with whom you actually share physical space rather than those with whom you regularly and enthusiastically exchange cat videos.” • Rob Long offers his version of modern day justice: if you sleep late on the weekend, you are forced to wait thirty minutes in line at Costco. • Jonah Goldberg offers: “There was a time when this desire-to-do-good-in-all-things was considered the only kind of integrity: ‘Angels are better than mortals. They’re always certain about what is right because, by definition, they’re doing God’s will.’ Gabriel knew when it was okay to remove a mattress tag and Sandalphon always tipped the correct amount.” • Sonny Bunch dissects forbearance, observing that the fictional Two Minutes Hate of George Orwell’s 1984 is now actually a reality directed at living, breathing people. Thanks, in part, to the Internet, “Its targets are designated by a spontaneously created mob—one that, due to its hive-mind nature—is virtually impossible to call off.”   By the time readers have completed The Seven Deadly Virtues, they won’t even realize that they’ve just been catechized into an entirely different—and better—moral universe.

Macroeconomic Theory and Policy


William H. Branson - 1972
    Detailed and clear exposition of such topics as traditional expectations, money demand, and policy rules are integrated into the text's readily accessible and popular format.

Secrets of Building Multi-Million Dollar Businesses


Adam Khoo - 2008
    The best part is that you don’t need to have lots of capital to invest, a prestigious degree or years of experience.Whether you are just starting out in business or an experienced entrepreneur, this book will give you powerful ideas and strategies that will multiply your business sales and profits exponentially. What You Will Master in this Book• Why 90% of Businesses Fail…and how the 10% Succeed• The Mindset & Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs • Develop the million-dollar idea that will blow away the competition • A Step-by Step Guide on building a business system that works without you• How to start a business with very little capital and turn in millions within 16 months• Build a Powerful Brand & Establish Yourself As the Market Leader• Powerful Marketing Strategies that Will Kill the Competition • Build a championship team of employees and partners• Master the Art of Cash Flow… How to Roll Millions with just a Few Thousand Dollars

Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One


Ze'ev Chafets - 2010
    For Zev Chafets, it was in a car in Detroit, driving down Woodward Avenue. Limbaugh's braggadocio, the outrageous satire, the slaughtering of liberal sacred cows performed with the verve of a rock-n-roll DJ-it seemed fresh, funny and completely subversive. "They're never going to let this guy stay on the air," he thought. Almost two decades later Chafets met Rush for the first time, at Limbaugh's rarely visited "Southern Command." They spent hours together talking on the record about politics, sports, music, show business, religion and modern American history. Rush opened his home and his world, introducing Chafets to his family, closest friends, even his psychologist. The result was an acclaimed cover-story profile of Limbaugh in The New York Times Magazine. But there was much more to say, especially after Limbaugh became Public Enemy Number One of the Obama Administration. At first Limbaugh resisted the idea of a full-length portrait, but he eventually invited Chafets back to Florida and exchanged more than a hundred emails full of his personal history, thoughts, fears and ambitions. What has emerged is an uniquely personal look at the man who is not only the most popular voice on the radio, but the leader of the conservative movement and one of the most influential figures in the Republican Party. While Limbaugh's public persona is instantly recognizable, his background and private life are often misunderstood. Even devoted Dittoheads will find there's a lot they don't know about the self-described "harmless little fuzzball" who has, over the years, taken on the giants of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party-from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama-with "half his brain tied behind his back, just to make it fair." Chafets paints a compelling portrait of Limbaugh as a master entertainer, a public intellectual, a political force, and a fascinating man.

The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes


Stephen Holmes - 1999
    Drawing from these practical, commonsense notions, The Cost of Rights provides a useful corrective to the all-or-nothing feel of much political debate nowadays (The Economist).

Los Angeles in the 1970s: Weird Scenes inside the Gold Mine


David KukoffLynne Friedman - 2016
    Marked by the Manson murders, rampant inflation, and recession, the decade seemed to usher in a gritty and unsightly reality. The city of glitz and glamour overnight became the city of smog and traffic, a cultural and environmental wasteland.Los Angeles in the 1970s was a complex and complicated city with local cultural touchstones that rarely made it near the silver screen. In Los Angeles in the 1970s, LA natives, transplants, and escapees talk about their personal lives intersecting with the city during a decade of struggle. From The Doors’ John Densmore seeing the titular L.A. Woman on a billboard on Sunset, to Deanne Stillman’s twisting path from Ohioan to New Yorker to finally finding her true home as an Angeleno, to Chip Jacobs’ thrilling retelling of the “snake in the mailbox” attempted murder, to Anthony Davis recounting his time as “Notre Dame Killer” and USC football hero, these are stories of the real Los Angeles—families trying to survive the closing of factories, teens cruising Van Nuys Boulevard, the Chicano Moratorium that killed three protestors, the making of a porn legend.Los Angeles in the 1970s is a love letter to the sprawling and complicatedfabric of a Los Angeles often forgotten and mostly overlooked. Welcome to the Gold Mine.

And The City Swallowed Them


Mara Hvistendahl - 2014
    Twelve days later, she was stabbed in a Shanghai stairwell. The actions of both police investigators and O'Brien's Chinese modeling agent soon aroused suspicion as her family sought answers from China's opaque legal system. Ultimately, their quest would put them face to face with her accused killer.At once a page-turning murder mystery and a work of deep investigation, And The City Swallowed Them is a true crime nonfiction story based on dozens of interviews with investigators, models, and both the victim's and the convicted murderer's families. The short book moves from Shanghai's back alleys to the seedy underbelly of high fashion, where young models travel alone to strange cities, often with falsified work papers, and sleep ten to an apartment between cover shoots. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai's explosive urbanization, the work also explores the world of China's liudong renkou, or floating population, where the hopes of newcomers from poor villages often turn to dust—leading some to horribly desperate acts.The debut digital title from the writers cooperative Deca, And The City Swallowed Them overturns assumptions about both China’s feared justice system, where the conviction rate for criminals is 99.9 percent, and the glamorous world of international modeling. More than a murder tale, And The City Swallowed Them lays bare the powerful forces that send two families on a collision course from distant sides of the Pacific.

Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader


P.J. O'Rourke - 2015
    O’Rourke has had a prolific career as one of America’s most celebrated humorists. But that career almost didn’t happen. As he tells it, “I began to write for pay in the spring of 1970. To tell the truth I didn’t even mean to be a writer, I meant to be a race car driver, but I didn’t have a race car.”Fortunately for us, he had to settle for writing. From his early pieces for the National Lampoon, through his classic reporting as Rolling Stone’s International Affairs editor in the 80s and 90s, and his brilliant, inimitable political journalism and analysis, P.J. has been entertaining and provoking readers with high octane prose, a gonzo Republican attitude and a rare ability to make you laugh out loud. Chris Buckley once described his work as “S.J. Perlman on acid” and when Penguin first published its Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations PJ had more entries than any living writer.For the first time Thrown Under the Omnibus brings together his funniest, most outrageous, most controversial and most loved pieces in the definitive P.J. reader. Handpicked and introduced by the humorist himself, Thrown Under the Omnibus is the essential P.J. O’Rourke anthology.

The Market for Liberty


Morris Tannehill - 1970
    But other classics are written in a white heat during the moment of discovery, with prose that shines forth like the sun pouring into the window of a time when a new understanding brings in the world into focus for the first time. The Market for Liberty is that second type of classic, and what a treasure it is. Written by two authorsMorris and Linda Tannehilljust following a period of intense study of the writings of both Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, it has the pace, energy, and rigor you would expect from an evening's discussion with either of these two giants. More than that, these authors put pen to paper at precisely the right time in their intellectual development, that period rhapsodic freshness when a great truth had been revealed, and they had to share it with the world. Clearly, the authors fell in love with liberty and the free market, and wrote an engaging, book-length sonnet to these ideas. This book is very radical in the true sense of that term: it gets to the root of the problem of government and provides a rethinking of the whole organization of society. They start at the beginning with the idea of the individual and his rights, work their way through exchange and the market, expose government as the great enemy of mankind, and thenand here is the great surprisethey offer a dramatic expansion of market logic into areas of security and defense provision. 169 page softcover

America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy


Francis Fukuyama - 2006
    Here he explains how, in its decision to invade Iraq, the Bush administration failed in its stewardship of American foreign policy. First, the administration wrongly made preventive war the central tenet of its foreign policy. In addition, it badly misjudged the global reaction to its exercise of “benevolent hegemony.” And finally, it failed to appreciate the difficulties involved in large-scale social engineering, grossly underestimating the difficulties involved in establishing a successful democratic government in Iraq.Fukuyama explores the contention by the Bush administration’s critics that it had a neoconservative agenda that dictated its foreign policy during the president’s first term.  Providing a fascinating history of the varied strands of neoconservative thought since the 1930s, Fukuyama argues that the movement’s legacy is a complex one that can be  interpreted quite differently than it was after the end of the Cold War. Analyzing the Bush administration’s miscalculations in responding to the post–September 11 challenge, Fukuyama proposes a new approach to American foreign policy through which such mistakes might be turned around—one in which the positive aspects of the neoconservative legacy are joined with a more realistic view of the way American power can be used around the world.

Death and Justice


Mark Fuhrman - 2004
    Are innocent people being executed? Is capital punishment justice or is it revenge? Into the debate steps Mark Fuhrman, America's most famous detective, and no stranger to controversy himself.Fuhrman seeks to answer these questions by investigating the death penalty in Oklahoma, where a "hang 'em high" attitude of cowboy justice resulted in twenty–one executions in 2001, more than any other state. Most of these cases came from one jurisdiction, Oklahoma County, where legendary DA Bob Macy bragged of sending more people to death row than any other prosecutor, and police chemist Joyce Gilchrist was eventually fired for mismanaging the crime lab. Examining police records, trial transcripts, appellate decisions and conducting hundreds of interviews, Fuhrman focuses his considerable investigative skills on more than a dozen of the most controversial Oklahoma death penalty cases.

The Real History of the American Revolution: A New Look at the Past


Alan Axelrod - 1999
    But that’s just the start of the story, as historian Alan Axelrod so brilliantly shows in this eye-opening book. Axelrod offers a fascinating examination of what really caused the breach across the Atlantic and how the revolutionary movement began. The American Revolution brought something unique to the world: an entirely new kind of nation, founded on a set of ideas. In engrossing, conversational prose, Axelrod brings the birth of America to life by digging beneath the classically taught history to explore everything from little-known facts to alternate realities, along with the eyewitness testimony, pop culture, and art of the period. From the seeds of dissent through the long fight to glorious victory, the astonishing story of America’s revolution finally comes fully to light.

Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond


Gideon Rachman - 2017
    Easternization is the defining trend of our age the growing wealth of Asian nations is transforming the international balance of power. This shift to the East is shaping the lives of people all over the world, the fate of nations, and the great questions of war and peace. A troubled but rising China is now challenging America s supremacy, and the ambitions of other Asian powers including Japan, North Korea, India, and Pakistan have the potential to shake the whole world. Meanwhile the West is struggling with economic malaise and political populism, the Arab world is in turmoil, and Russia longs to reclaim its status as a great power. As it becomes clear that the West s historic power and influence is receding, Gideon Rachman offers a road map to the turbulent process that will define the international politics of the twenty-first century."

Globalization and its Discontents


Joseph E. Stiglitz - 2002
    Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz had a ringside seat for most of the major economic events of the last decade, including stints as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist at the World Bank. Particularly concerned with the plight of the developing nations, he became increasingly disillusioned as he saw the International Monetary Fund and other major institutions put the interests of Wall Street and the financial community ahead of the poorer nations. Those seeking to understand why globalization has engendered the hostility of protesters in Seattle and Genoa will find the reasons here. While this book includes no simple formula on how to make globalization work, Stiglitz provides a reform agenda that will provoke debate for years to come. Rarely do we get such an insider's analysis of the major institutions of globalization as in this penetrating book. With a new foreword for this paperback edition.

Theodore Roosevelt


Lewis L. Gould - 2011
    Naturalist. Warrior. President. There are so many sides to Theodore Roosevelt that it is easy to overlook one of his most enduring contributions to American public life: the use of fame to fuel his political career.In this concisely written, enlightening book, presidential historian Lewis L. Gould goes beyond the bully pulpit stereotypes to reveal how Roosevelt used his celebrity to change American politics. Based on research gleaned from the personal papers of Roosevelt and his contemporaries, TheodoreRoosevelt recaptures its subject's bold activism and irrepressible, larger-than-life personality. Beginning with his privileged childhood in New York City, the narrative traces his election to the New York Assembly, where he quickly rose through the ranks of the Republican Party. It is here that hefirst applied his shrewd ability to keep himself in the spotlight--a skill that served him well as commander of a volunteer regiment (dubbed Roosevelt's Rough Riders) in the Spanish-American War. Gould shows how Roosevelt rode a wave of popular acclaim at the war's end, assuming the governorshipof New York and serving as president from 1901 to 1909. While covering his major accomplishments as chief executive, including his successes as a trust-buster, labor mediator, and conservationist, Gould explains how fame both sustained and limited Roosevelt when he ran for president in 1912 andopposed Woodrow Wilson's policies during World War I.Theodore Roosevelt delivers the most insightful look yet at a pioneer of political theater--a man whose vigorous idealism as a champion of democracy serves as a counterpoint to the cynicism of today's political landscape. The book will coincide with the 100th anniversary of Roosevelt's third partyrun for the Progressive or Bull Moose Party.