George Washington Plunkitt rose from impoverished beginnings to become ward boss of the Fifteenth Assembly District in New York, a key player in the powerhouse political team of Tammany Hall, and a millionaire. In a series of utterly frank talks given at his headquarters at Graziano’s bootblack stand inside the New York County Court House, he revealed to a sharp-eared and sympathetic reporter named William L. Riordon the secrets of political success as practiced and perfected by Tammany Hall titans. The result is not only a volume that reveals more about our political system than does a shelf load of civics textbooks, but also an irresistible portrait of a man who would feel happily at home playing ball with today’s lobbyists and kingmakers, trading votes for political and financial favors.Doing for twentieth-century America what Machiavelli did for Renaissance Italy, and as entertaining as it is instructive, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall is essential reading for those who prefer twenty-twenty vision to rose-colored glasses in viewing how our government works and why.

    Robert Kagan, a leading scholar of American foreign policy, forces both sides to see themselves through the eyes of the other. Europe, he argues, has moved beyond power into a self-contained world of laws, rules, and negotiation, while America operates in a “Hobbesian” world where rules and laws are unreliable and military force is often necessary.Tracing how this state of affairs came into being over the past fifty years and fearlessly exploring its ramifications for the future, Kagan reveals the shape of the new transatlantic relationship. The result is a book that promises to be as enduringly influential as Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations.

    His work has affected the teaching of any number of disciplines and remains, twenty years after his death, critically important. This newly available edition is drawn from the complete collection of all of Foucault's courses, articles, and interviews, and brings his most important work to a new generation of readers.Ethics (edited by Paul Rabinow) contains the summaries of Foucault's renowned courses at the Collège de France, paired with key writings and interviews on friendship, sexuality, and the care of the self and others.

    The rosary is perfect for those times when words can't express our feelings, when we want to contemplate the basic truths of our faith, or when we simply want to enter into God's presence. Finley includes a brief and accurate history of the rosary, explains why it is a Christ-centered prayer, and provides background on the individual prayers of the rosary and a short commentary on each of the twenty mysteries.This book will help Catholics who have prayed the rosary all their lives but want to know more about it as well as those who want to begin anew or try it for the first time.

    Author of over a hundred books and articles, Belloc was a journalist, polemicist, social and political analyst, literary critic, poet, and novelist. The Servile State has endured as his most important political work. The effect of socialist doctrine on capitalist society, Belloc wrote, is to produce a third thing different from either—the servile state, today commonly called the welfare state.

    . . . This book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing examination of our current debt crisis, one that deserves our full attention.--Publishers WeeklyThere is a growing consensus that the planet is heading toward environmental catastrophe: climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, global freshwater use, loss of biodiversity, and chemical pollution all threaten our future unless we act. What is less clear is how humanity should respond. The contemporary environmental movement is the site of many competing plans and prescriptions, and composed of a diverse set of actors, from militant activists to corporate chief executives.This short, readable book is a sharply argued manifesto for those environmentalists who reject schemes of "green capitalism" or piecemeal reform. Environmental and economic scholars Magdoff and Foster contend that the struggle to reverse ecological degradation requires a firm grasp of economic reality. Going further, they argue that efforts to reform capitalism along environmental lines or rely solely on new technology to avert catastrophe misses the point. The main cause of the looming environmental disaster is the driving logic of the system itself, and those in power--no matter how "green"--are incapable of making the changes that are necessary.What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism tackles the two largest issues of our time, the ecological crisis and the faltering capitalist economy, in a way that is thorough, accessible, and sure to provoke debate in the environmental movement.

    This text contains portions of great works in their original form to whet the appetite and to encourage discussion within the classroom. By providing historical context and current scholarship, Alan Ebenstein builds upon the framework of influences that have shaped current political thoughts and theories.

    Sympathetic but critical, serious yet witty, the book shows a country in which the familiar becomes strange, and the strange familiar.

    What Is Marriage? identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage is unnecessary, unreasonable, and contrary to the common good.Originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, this book’s core argument quickly became the year’s most widely read essay on the most prominent scholarly network in the social sciences. Since then, it has been cited and debated by scholars and activists throughout the world as the most formidable defense of the tradition ever written. Now revamped, expanded, and vastly improved, What Is Marriage? stands poised to meet its moment as few books of this generation have.Rhodes Scholar Sherif Girgis, Heritage Foundation Fellow Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George offer a devastating critique of the idea that equality requires redefining marriage. They show why both sides must first answer the question of what marriage really is. They defend the principle that marriage, as a comprehensive union of mind and body ordered to family life, unites a man and a woman as husband and wife, and they document the social value of applying this principle in law.Most compellingly, they show that those who embrace same-sex civil marriage leave no firm ground—none—for not recognizing every relationship describable in polite English, including polyamorous sexual unions, and that enshrining their view would further erode the norms of marriage, and hence the common good.Finally, What Is Marriage? decisively answers common objections: that the historic view is rooted in bigotry, like laws forbidding interracial marriage; that it is callous to people’s needs; that it can’t show the harm of recognizing same-sex couplings, or the point of recognizing infertile ones; and that it treats a mere “social construct” as if it were natural, or an unreasoned religious view as if it were rational.If the marriage debate in America is decided soon, it will be with this book’s help or despite its powerful arguments.

    No other collection competes with the comprehensiveness of this one. As well as Kant's most famous moral and political writings, the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, and Toward Perpetual Peace, the volume includes shorter essays and reviews, some of which have never been translated before. There is also an English-German and German-English glossary of key terms.

    Peter Fenwick is an eminent neuropsychiatrist, academic and expert on disorders of the brain. His most compelling and provocative research has been into the end of life phenomena, including near-death experiences and deathbed visions of the dying person, as well as the experiences of hospice and palliative care workers and relatives of dying people. Dr. Fenwick believes that consciousness may be independent of the brain and so able to survive the death of the brain, a theory which has divided the scientific community. The "problem with death" is deeply rooted in our culture and the social organization of death rituals. Fenwick believes that with serious engagement and through further investigation of these phenomena, he can help change attitudes so that we in the West can face up to death, and embrace it as a significant and sacred part of life. We have become used to believing that we have to shield each other from the idea of death. Fear of death means we view it as something to be fought every step of the way.Aimed at a broad popular readership, The Art of Dying looks at how other cultures have dealt with death and the dying process (The Tibetan "death system", Swedenborg, etc.) and compares this with phenomena reported through recent scientific research. It describes too the experiences of health care workers who are involved with end of life issues who feel that they need a better understanding of the dying process, and more training in how to help their patients die well by overcoming the common barriers to a good death, such as unfinished business and unresolved emotions of guilt or hate.From descriptions of the phenomena encountered by the dying and those around them, to mapping out ways in which we can die a "good death", this book is an excellent basis for helping people come to terms with death.

    Marx’s Das Kapital For Beginners is an introduction to the Marxist critique of capitalist production and its consequences for a whole range of social activities such as politics, media, education and religion. Das Kapital is not a critique of a particular capitalist system in a particular country at a particular time. Rather, Marx ‘s aim was to identify the essential features that define capitalism, in whatever country it develops and in whatever historical period. For this reason, Das Kapital is necessarily a fairly general, abstract analysis. As a result, it can be fairly difficult to read and comprehend. At the same time, understanding Das Kapital is crucial for mastering Marx’s insights to capitalism.  Marx’s Das Kapital For Beginners offers an accessible path through Marx’s arguments and his key questions: What is a commodity? Where does wealth come from? What is ‘value’? What happens to work under capitalism? Why is crisis part of capitalism’s DNA? And what happens to our consciousness, our very perceptions of reality and our ways of thinking and feeling under capitalism?  Understanding and learning from Marx’s work has taken on a fresh urgency as questions about the sustainability of the capitalist system in today’s global economy intensify.

    Memoirs of a Superfluous Man By Albert Jay Nock 1994 Paperback

    Where we don't, we read, we ask, we learn and then, we solve! What happens when there are no answers though? When nobody in the world knows! When we see the need to invent Gods even if we can't discover Him. Through a string of poems, the author narrates such an experience with his non-verbal and autistic daughter, Enya. What started as a week of babysitting for him soon became a seeking to change her into 'normal'. But, that seeking ended up transforming the seeker!The narrative in the form of poetry touches upon the revelation that comes out of desperation of not finding an answer at all and therefore, the thoughts getting tired of themselves and the mind taking a back seat. In that silence, the author says, things become clear and all aspects of life show their inter-relation! The intellect gives way to the intelligence, the body and mind as 'me' gives way to the world as 'me'! The mind map once seen, one starts to see the true nature of the 'me' and that perspective and clarity make everything clear and possible in life...

    In spite of seeming completeness, he suffered from inner chaos and restlessness which resulted in constant panic attacks. And suddenly everything stopped and he was helpless. He recognizes his incurable illness and decides to end his life but fortunately he fails before the attempt. But, his destiny unfolds a rare experience and he sees things which he thought did not exist. He leaves everything that he possessed behind and sets off on a random journey. Jako travels and experiences things which were beyond his imagination. He meets people who deceive and delude him, though he travelled to find answers, Jako returns home with treachery and delusion. On his way back, Jako reaches a small town with an isolated beach. He stays there meets a mysterious traveler; at first, Jako was confused to consider this man as a guardian angel or a mentalist. But as time passes they get along and this mysterious man solves all the riddles that surround Jako. They both sit at the beach and discuss life, Destiny, Freewill, Dreams, Dejavu's, Reality, Hypocrisy, Philosophy, Pleasure, God, Beauty, Love, Infatuation, Psychology, Wisdom, Intellect, Happiness, Boredom. Jako throws strange questions at this man and he answers them with wise stories. Jako answers all his questions by himself. Jako finishes his remarkable journey and returns home rehabilitated. P.S. : Kindly write a few words/lines review about this book. It will inspire others to read it.