Best Political History
But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as tax-deductible “philanthropy.”. These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity. This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decision—a case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network. In a taut and utterly convincing narrative, she traces the byzantine trail of the billions of dollars spent by the network and provides vivid portraits of the colorful figures behind the new American oligarchy. "Jane Mayer's Dark Money is utterly brilliant and chilling — no matter how much you think you already know. Lay aside the endless punditry about Donald’s belligerence or Hillary’s ambition; Mayer is telling the epic story of America in our time. It is a triumph of investigative reporting, perhaps not surprising for a journalist who has won most of the awards her profession has to offer.... She’s a pro, and she’s given the world a full accounting of what had been a shadowy and largely unseen force. "The book is written in straightforward and largely unemotional prose, but it reads as if conceived in quiet anger. Mayer believes that the Koch brothers and a small number of allied plutocrats have essentially hijacked American democracy, using their money not just to compete with their political adversaries, but to drown them out. Dark Money emerges as an impressively reported and well-documented work. The importance of Dark Money [flows] from its scope and perspective. It is not easy to uncover the inner workings of an essentially secretive political establishment. She makes a formidable argument.” —From the cover of the New York. Times Book Review “Revelatory. Only the most thoroughly documented, compendious account could do justice to the Kochs’ bizarre and Byzantine family history and the scale and scope of their influence.” — The New York Times.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The fortune they possess together is greater than those of Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffet, and other private individuals who are often characterized as the richest people in the world. As Mayer reveals, the brothers — Charles, especially — preside over a network of billionaires and centimillionaires who operate in tandem in support of the most virulent, Right-Wing causes and candidates in the country’s politics. In 1964, Scaife set out to change the terms of political debate by investing heavily in think tanks and academic centers to espouse a radical “free-market” ideology and imprint it on a new generation of scholars, lawyers, and activists. In addition to Scaife and the Koch Brothers, the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” they set in motion includes the aging casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, an obsessively pro-Israel donor who has outpaced everyone else in the country in political spending in recent elections, and the De Vos family of Michigan, owners of Amway, as well as other members of the 0.01%, a majority of whose fortunes were built on oil, gas, coal, and finance. The plutocrats in the Kochs’ network profess similar political beliefs which they characterize as “conservatism” to promote “freedom” and the “free market” in America. On the contrary, it’s clear from Mayer’s account that the common intellectual thread that runs throughout this group of supremely privileged individuals is a determination to turn back the clock to the nineteenth century, repealing every political reform instituted under Teddy Roosevelt and all his successors. What these people want is clearly nothing less than the “freedom” to pollute, exploit their employees, avoid taxes, dictate the terms of political debate, and pass their vast wealth on to their children and grandchildren in dynastic fashion. They live in multimillion-dollar homes (usually, several of them), preside over huge businesses, and donate millions of dollars to “charity” (usually, arts institutions and universities that will place their names on buildings). At the same time, they consciously set out to foster the grassroots efforts that eventually produced the Tea Party, by creating phony populist organizations (“Astroturf”), providing funding and political expertise, and subsidizing sympathetic media. All this is possible now after the 2010 Citizens United decision and its sequels in the courts, which freed what Bernie Sanders calls “the billionaire class” to dominate federal elections to a greater extent than was feasible even under the Robber Barons in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Others, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Kochs’ most identifiable political venture, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), are well known and substantial. Most of the organizations created by the members of the network exist merely to launder money from wealthy donors, funneling it through a series of obscurely named entities to avoid the few remaining campaign finance disclosure requirements. The most dramatic revelation in Mayer’s book is her account of the way the Koch brothers’ father built the fortune that was the foundation of their enormous wealth. A scholar who studied Koch’s work for Nazi Germany concluded that “the American venture became ‘a key component of the Nazi war machine.’ Historians expert in German industrial history concur.”. Some readers may also find surprises in Mayer’s accounts of the central role of the Koch Brothers and their allies in launching and funding the Tea Party and the protracted (and successful) effort to undermine the public consensus about the serious threat that climate change poses to human life in the near future. Charles and David had outspent what was then the world’s largest public oil company, ExxonMobil, by a factor of three.”. About the author. Jane Mayer is an investigative journalist who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker for twenty years."
"The book is not anti-republican, rather it highlights the funding of anti-government movements and intentional divisions within the republican party as a result of libertarian ideas held by the Koch brothers. Throughout the book, every time a major economic player is introduced, Mayer underscores that introduction with a reference to a specific court battle or lawsuit due to fraud that that particular individual is facing. I understand that it is used to underscore why specific persons being referenced may have a disdain against the government, but in some situations, knowing the pending lawsuits for fraud are not advantageous to moving the story forward. Yet, the family background does serve well to highlight where the wealth of the Koch brothers originated from and ideologies of anti-government that came from their father who was also a member of ultra conservative groups while alive. It is a vital, well cross-referenced read, that chronicles the long growing investment of big business into politics, which has reached the plateau of influence in the election game."
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation―that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" ( The Atlantic ), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north. “Masterful…The Rothstein book gathers meticulous research showing how governments at all levels long employed racially discriminatory policies to deny blacks the opportunity to live in neighborhoods with jobs, good schools and upward mobility.”. - Jared Bernstein, Washington Post. “Rothstein’s work should make everyone, all across the political spectrum, reconsider what it is we allow those in power to do in the name of 'social harmony' and 'progress' with more skepticism… The Color of Law shows what happens when Americans lose their natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or in the case of African-Americans, when there are those still waiting to receive them in full.”. - Carl Paulus, American Conservative. “Original and insightful…The central premise of [Rothstein’s] argument…is that the Supreme Court has failed for decades to understand the extent to which residential racial segregation in our nation is not the result of private decisions by private individuals, but is the direct product of unconstitutional government action. “Through meticulous research and powerful human stories, Rothstein reveals a history of racism hiding in plain sight and compels us to confront the consequences of the intentional, decades-long governmental policies that created a segregated America.”. - Sherrilyn A. Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"When William Julius Wilson writes that a book is "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation," it grabs your attention. Rothstein's book is exactly that--a seminal work on the history of housing discrimination that is required reading for anyone who cares about the effect of residential segregation on cities and schools in our country. Stegner and friends formed a cooperative to purchase a 260-acre ranch in Palo Alto in which they planned to build 400 affordable homes for low-paid professors and other working-class families. Because the Veterans' Administration also relied on FHA rules for underwriting, black servicemen were similarly barred from receiving the same VA loans for housing that white vets enjoyed."
"That I was shocked as a 57 year old white American man aware of this nation’s racist past is part of the bond I share with those young men in Charleston. ‘The Color of Law’ is a great book because it is focused on disputing the legal amnesia of the Robert’s Court that plays to the safety of continued white privilege by denying the reality of decades of intentional racism which manifests itself as segregation. Rothstein marshals his evidence like a lawyer to show all the ways in which this nation knowingly pursues policies to keep the American dream white and restricted."
"I am currently working in the credit analysis area and it was an eye opining for me that the US Government was in-fact institutionalizing discrimination by not insuring (such as the FHA) or not guaranteeing (such as the Veteran's Administration (VA) ) mortgage loans if the builder or the lender was selling to African-Americans (AA)."
In this classic guide to acquiring and maintaining political power, Machiavelli used a rational approach to advise prospective rulers, developing logical arguments and alternatives for a number of potential problems, among them governing hereditary monarchies, dealing with colonies and the treatment of conquered peoples. That Machiavelli's name has become synonymous with cold-eyed political calculation only heightens the intrinsic fascination of The Prince - the world's pre-eminent how-to manual on the art of getting and keeping power, and one of the literary landmarks of the Italian Renaissance.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Perhaps now little more than 500 years ago but it can be argued that CAUTION is now more necessary than ever before since weapons have improved a lot as well as the means to deliver them. Machiavelli was a real genius completely disregarding all ideologies of his time, mostly religious and seeing things as they were. Is this book required reading for all courses of 'political science' on all of our places of higher education?"
"This is definitely a book you can read over and over again."
"It's a great book."
"I would highly recommend this one above the others because of the authors long experience with the subject matter."
"Observations about power, strategy, and leadership that made for very interesting reading and some re-thinking and review of some of my own views about some of them."
"The Prince is among the most influencial and least understood masterpieces of the literature of the world. I have been pleased to read this three times over the many years since I discovered it. The assignment of four stars to this item is more than likely because I am not used to listening to books rather than reading them."
"It was enlightening the effect Napoleon had in ousting Austrian troops from Italy with troops lacking appropriate footwear."
"Content not the issue--the size of the type face and condensed format made it impossible to read."
Best Political Science
#1 New York Times Bestseller |. Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • The Seattle Times • Esquire • Time Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction | Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction | Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award | Finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize | Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize | An American Library Association Notable Book A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.” —David Cole, The New York Review of Books “Searing, moving . Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful.” —Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review “Inspiring . Stevenson is not only a great lawyer, he’s also a gifted writer and storyteller.” — The Washington Post “As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty.” —The Financial Times “Brilliant.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South. Just Mercy is his inspiring and powerful story.” —John Grisham “Bryan Stevenson is one of my personal heroes, perhaps the most inspiring and influential crusader for justice alive today, and Just Mercy is extraordinary. But at the same time that [Bryan] Stevenson tells an utterly damning story of deep-seated and widespread injustice, he also recounts instances of human compassion, understanding, mercy, and justice that offer hope. Just Mercy is a remarkable amalgam, at once a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.” —David Cole, The New York Review of Books. For decades he has fought judges, prosecutors and police on behalf of those who are impoverished, black or both. Injustice is easy not to notice when it affects people different from ourselves; that helps explain the obliviousness of our own generation to inequity today. Against tremendous odds, Stevenson has worked to free scores of people from wrongful or excessive punishment, arguing five times before the Supreme Court. The message of the book, hammered home by dramatic examples of one man’s refusal to sit quietly and countenance horror, is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Stevenson has been angry about [the criminal justice system] for years, and we are all the better for it.” —Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review “Inspiring . “As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty.” —The Financial Times “Brilliant.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South. Bryan Stevenson, however, is very much alive and doing God’s work fighting for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, and those with no hope. The stories told within these pages hold the potential to transform what we think we mean when we talk about justice.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow “A distinguished NYU law professor and MacArthur grant recipient offers the compelling story of the legal practice he founded to protect the rights of people on the margins of American society. It is inspiring and suspenseful—a revelation.” —Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns “Words such as important and compelling may have lost their force through overuse, but reading this book will restore their meaning, along with one’s hopes for humanity.” —Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains “Bryan Stevenson is America’s young Nelson Mandela, a brilliant lawyer fighting with courage and conviction to guarantee justice for all. It is as gripping to read as any legal thriller, and what hangs in the balance is nothing less than the soul of a great nation.” —Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"My tendency is to put things into "liberal" and "conservative" buckets and this one seemingly fit into the liberal bucket and I am a professed conservative."
"I have a new hero . Bryan Stevenson. This is a great book."
"This is a system that condemns children to life imprisonment without parole, that makes petty theft a crime as serious as murder, and that has declared war on hundreds of thousands of people with substance abuse problems by imprisoning them and denying them help. JUST MERCY explores a number of devastating cases, including children as young as fourteen facing life imprisonment, and scores of people on death row - mostly poor, and mostly black - who have been unfairly convicted. But the central focus is on Walter McMillan, a black man sentenced to death for the murder of a prominent young white woman. Ours is no longer a country that sees compassion as a virtue; instead, we write harsher and harsher laws that demand longer and longer sentences for those we consider undesirables. It's rare these days to meet someone who truly dedicates himself to those least able to help themselves, especially someone who isn't after media attention or self-promotion."
"Corruption and prejudice in the 1950's led to sending many innocent blacks and poor people to prison."
Best International Relations
A sweeping and dramatic history of the last half century of conflict in the Middle East from an award-winning journalist who has covered the region for over forty years, The Great War for Civilisation unflinchingly chronicles the tragedy of the region from the Algerian Civil War to the Iranian Revolution; from the American hostage crisis in Beirut to the Iran-Iraq War; from the 1991 Gulf War to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Combining a novelist's talent for atmosphere with a scholar's grasp of historical sweep, foreign correspondent Fisk ( Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon ) has written one of the most dense and compelling accounts of recent Middle Eastern history yet. In the second, held four years later in Afghanistan, he declared war on the Saudi royal family and America.Fisk, who has lived in and reported on the Middle East since 1976, first for the (London) Times and now for the Independent , possesses deep knowledge of the broader history of the region, which allows him to discuss the Armenian genocide 90 years ago, the 2002 destruction of Jenin, and the battlefields of Iraq with equal aplomb.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Mr. Fisk continues his unbiased all encompassing report from the most volatile part of the world."
"People’s lives were ripped apart by cruel self-serving dictators, megalomaniacs, half-wit imbeciles and murderous thugs whose fanatical displays of religious fanaticism and political ideology affected millions. I see no hope for the Middle East until education is compulsory for all children, free from religious bondage, dictators removed without decent into chaos, and from that point forward it will take 100 years or more for peace to come to the region."
"I put the book down several times with tears in my eyes; some passages concerning the plight of women and children caught between warring factions are disturbing."
"He is a truly independent reporter."
"i Had this book on my wish list for some time i was interested as i knew it was the only british authored book that osama bin laden said was truthful and honest journalism."
"I wanted to understand what happens in the Middle East, what is the root cause of the Islamic violent movements."
Best Italian Literature
Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets. “Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths.” –Robert Fagles, Princeton University.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I'm happy to report that Clive James has made even this abstract exploration of light and doctrine (and, I might add, occasionally smug self-righteousness on Dante's part) a fascinating journey. James has chosen an unusual verse form - quatrains, with an abab rhyme scheme - to translate this, but it works well: it moves quickly and smoothly, each line pulling you forward to the next. For example, the "one who made the great refusal" is identified in the verse as Pope Celestine: if you have to pick one among many, that IS the closest to a scholarly consensus; but purists would argue against closing off other possibilities."
"This item which goes for just about full price compared with the print media is the Kindle version of the John Ciardi translation of the entire DIVINE COMEDY, all three parts which you can prove by downloading the free sample to your Kindle."
"While Dante's writing is full of allegory it is still very beautiful."
"Mark Musa, the translator, included exceptionally good notes to help the reader understand the story."
"Being a book collector and a Dante devotee, this edition was a special find. It's always wonderful to conduct a transaction with a company/seller who have the customers best interest at heart."
"First read was in high school and I didn't know I needed a general knowledge of Greek mythology to get references in this book."
"The story is separated by Cantos and it lends to how the story was told."
"Definitely enjoyed this book, it went beyond my expectations with the story and the book in general."
Best Administrative Law
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation―that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" ( The Atlantic ), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north. “Masterful…The Rothstein book gathers meticulous research showing how governments at all levels long employed racially discriminatory policies to deny blacks the opportunity to live in neighborhoods with jobs, good schools and upward mobility.”. - Jared Bernstein, Washington Post. “Rothstein’s work should make everyone, all across the political spectrum, reconsider what it is we allow those in power to do in the name of 'social harmony' and 'progress' with more skepticism… The Color of Law shows what happens when Americans lose their natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or in the case of African-Americans, when there are those still waiting to receive them in full.”. - Carl Paulus, American Conservative. “Original and insightful…The central premise of [Rothstein’s] argument…is that the Supreme Court has failed for decades to understand the extent to which residential racial segregation in our nation is not the result of private decisions by private individuals, but is the direct product of unconstitutional government action. “Through meticulous research and powerful human stories, Rothstein reveals a history of racism hiding in plain sight and compels us to confront the consequences of the intentional, decades-long governmental policies that created a segregated America.”. - Sherrilyn A. Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"When William Julius Wilson writes that a book is "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation," it grabs your attention. Rothstein's book is exactly that--a seminal work on the history of housing discrimination that is required reading for anyone who cares about the effect of residential segregation on cities and schools in our country. Stegner and friends formed a cooperative to purchase a 260-acre ranch in Palo Alto in which they planned to build 400 affordable homes for low-paid professors and other working-class families. Because the Veterans' Administration also relied on FHA rules for underwriting, black servicemen were similarly barred from receiving the same VA loans for housing that white vets enjoyed."
"Rothstein modestly suggests a number of "remedies" to compensate for the financial losses and missed educational opportunities their kids suffered because they were deliberately forced by discriminatory federal government housing and lending policies and local laws to live in segregated low-income city neighborhoods. His book's great value comes from showing readers that it was deliberate government policies, not private choices or voluntary social forces, that created, enforced and perpetuated racial segregation in the North for nearly a hundred years. I wish I had been able to read this book last year when I was writing 30 Days a Black Man: The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South,' which only touches lightly on how Northern cities like Pittsburgh, Portland and Washington, D.C., kept their neighborhoods rigidly segregated."
"I am currently working in the credit analysis area and it was an eye opining for me that the US Government was in-fact institutionalizing discrimination by not insuring (such as the FHA) or not guaranteeing (such as the Veteran's Administration (VA) ) mortgage loans if the builder or the lender was selling to African-Americans (AA)."
Best Classic Roman Literature
The revised edition of Grube's classic translation follows and furthers Grube's noted success in combining fidelity to Plato’s text with natural readability, while reflecting the fruits of new scholarship and insights into Plato's thought since publication of the first edition in 1974. Reeve has taken the excellent Grube translation and, without sacrificing accuracy, rendered it into a vivid and contemporary style. In the cave of translations, Reeve’s revision of Grube's Republic is closest to the sun.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"His joint book with Terry Penner on the Lysis, for instance, falls far short of giving us an unbiased, expansive, authorative commentary on the dialogue, especially when compared to more sober competitors like Michael Bordt's in the Göttingen Plato. His renderings of Plato's Politicus (Statesman) and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the latter published with Sarah Broadie, are probably the most authoritative around. In general, translations of the Republic usually err on the side of either trying too heavily to recreate the literary qualities of the original, or miss out so much of that detail because they try to be super exact on technicalities, that in either case the English falls far short of giving us a good understanding of Plato's Greek. Others, like Cornford, Waterfield, or Grube (even when revised under Reeve) can be safely avoided, for having the translators' hobby horses intrude on and mar the main text. At the same time, Rowe's translation comes with seven hundred footnotes, and these are meticulously researched and show him on top of the current scholarly game. Mistranslations of these lines have encouraged generations of interpretors to saddle Plato with the view that one can posit a (Platonic) Form for each general term, no matter how gerrymandered. A Platonic dialogue proceeds, usually, with (alternating) dominant speakers eliciting agreement or disagreement on particular points from their interlocutors. While Rowe's notes are characteristically informative of what's going on in these passages, and warn readers of the potential inconsistenties on artefact Forms, his translation looks rather unsure, tendentious even. In Republic, book X, translators like Lee (1974) and Griffith (2000) render σκευή, not as furnishing, but as furniture, given that Plato illustrates the term by the examples of a table and a couch. As far as the publisher is concerned, Penguin can be congratulated for sponsoring a new translation so soon after revising Lee's twice in the past ten years, under the careful leadership of Melissa Lane and Rachana Kamtekar. I can't speak for Lane's, but Kamtekar's version of Lee offered helpful diagrams and illustrations in notes and appendices. Undergraduates, not to mention lay readers, find a lot of Plato's text hardgoing without the occasional image to explain how things 'hang together'. Kamtekar's edition had helpful illustrations on such points, and retained Lee's wonderful introductions to sub-sections of the main text, which set the scene and pre-empted some of the more current misunderstandings that twentieth and twenty first century readers are prone to. While I'm glad to see Verity Harte's and Myles Burnyeat's efforts recognized in this area, Alexander Nehamas' older - and equally good if not superior - offerings have been chopped off. The same is true for a great many other essays and books that, I feel, deserves mention to a first time audience coming to Plato."
"As a student and owner of the Hackett Complete Works Plato Complete Works avoid the Grube translation and embrace the literal translation of Bloom."
"Easton Press books often reside on the shelves of those more interested in presenting an image of oneself rather than being read."
"Reeve's translation of Plato Republic is easy reading for a follower of ancient Greek philosophers."
"I really loved Bloom's version of the republic.."
"One of the finest translations of the Republic, the central work in the Platonic corpus, with a solid introduction and helpful notes."
"Translation navigates well between remaining true to the literal meaning of the original and producing fluid conversational prose updated for twenty-first century readers."
"In it we find Plato through Socrates discussing the perfect society and reasoning his way through why things should be the way he suggests."
Best Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
Common Sense cites the evils of monarchy, accuses the British government of inflicting economic and social injustices upon the colonies, and points to the absurdity of an island attempting to rule a continent.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Wonderful example of a work written by, at the time, a relatively unknown person, which caught the imagination of people and leaders and acted as one of the more important catalysts of independence."
"Got the kindle version as resource for the kids to have as ready access for history/social studies in school."
"It uses God's biblical views of what a human king will do with the people, a view of a utopian kingdom, and concludes with the British monarchy of the time of Thomas Paine."
"Open the book to any point and start reading....you will learn something from just 1 page."
"I love this series of books, and seeing what was actually written by the actual Founders that people mention helps to cut through the bogus to get to the Truth."
"Every one should have to read this treatise on why our country wanted freedom from the British, if they haven't already."
"All-time classic."
"Wonderful insight into the mindset and thinking of the Founding Fathers."
Best Renaissance Literary Criticism
In this classic guide to acquiring and maintaining political power, Machiavelli used a rational approach to advise prospective rulers, developing logical arguments and alternatives for a number of potential problems, among them governing hereditary monarchies, dealing with colonies and the treatment of conquered peoples. The person who held the aforementioned office with the tongue-twisting title was none other than Niccolò Machiavelli, who, suddenly finding himself out of a job after 14 years of patriotic service, followed the career trajectory of many modern politicians into punditry.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"What can one say about Nicole Machiavelli........He was prescient and wasn't, ultimately, afraid to present his views."
"For a more modern take, a modern, but much much better written book to this one in many ways is "The 33 Laws of power" by Robert Greene - a book i cannot recommend highly enough."
"There is nothing false about Niccolo Machiavelli."
"I have to agree with T. Simons previously - The idea of "reviewing" this is kind of silly, but I thought I'd put in a quick note for those looking to read it on the Kindle."
"This is a classic about how to run a government to stay in power and suit your own needs."
"The Prince is, of course the foundation stone for all modern political writings on the art and science of governing."
"Liked the great summary of the BIG general ideas of The Prince."
"Niccolo Machiavelli was a genius - he understood human nature."