Ingram
Все книги издательства IngramFlight of the Eagle
Like an eagle, American colonists ascended from the gulley of British dependence to the position of sovereign world power in a period of merely two centuries. Seizing territory in Canada and representation in Britain; expelling the French, and even their British forefathers, American leaders George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson paved their nation’s way to independence. With the first buds of public relation techniques—of communication, dramatization, and propaganda—America flourished into a vision of freedom, of enterprise, and of unalienable human rights.In Flight of the Eagle, Conrad Black provides a perspective on American history that is unprecedented. Through his analysis of the strategic development of the United States from 1754-1992, Black describes nine “phases” of the strategic rise of the nation, in which it progressed through grave challenges, civil and foreign wars, and secured a place for itself under the title of “Superpower.” Black discredits prevailing notions that our unrivaled status is the product of good geography, demographics, and good luck. Instead, he reveals and analyzes the specific strategic decisions of great statesmen through the ages that transformed the world as we know it and established America’s place in it.
Why Place Matters
Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of “place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life.Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel. And if these dangers are real and present ones, are there ways that intelligent public policy can begin to address them constructively, by means of reasonable and democratic innovations that are likely to attract wide public support?Why Place Matters takes these concerns seriously, and its contributors seek to discover how, given the American people as they are, and American economic and social life as it now exists—and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme—we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society.The book includes contributions from distinguished scholars and writers such as poet Dana Gioia (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts), geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, urbanist Witold Rybczynski, architect Philip Bess, essayists Christine Rosen and Ari Schulman, philosopher Roger Scruton, transportation planner Gary Toth, and historians Russell Jacoby and Joseph Amato.
Abuse of Discretion
Based on 20 years of research, including an examination of the papers of eight of the nine Justices who voted in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, Abuse of Discretion is a critical review of the behind-the-scenes deliberations that went into the Supreme Court's abortion decisions and how the mistakes made by the Justices in 1971-1973 have led to the turmoil we see today in legislation, politics, and public health. The first half of the book looks at the mistakes made by the Justices, based on the case files, the oral arguments, and the Justices’ papers. The second half of the book critically examines the unintended consequences of the abortion decisions in law, politics, and women’s health.Why do the abortion decisions remain so controversial after almost 40 years, despite more than 50,000,000 abortions, numerous presidential elections, and a complete turnover in the Justices? Why did such a sweeping decision—with such important consequences for public health, producing such prolonged political turmoil—come from the Supreme Court in 1973? Answering those questions is the aim of this book. The controversy over the abortion decisions has hardly subsided, and the reasons why are to be found in the Justices’ deliberations in 1971-1972 that resulted in the unprecedented decision they issued.Discuss Abuse of Discretion on Twitter using hashtag #AbuseOfDiscretion.
Camelot and the Cultural Revolution
James Piereson examines the bizarre aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination: Why in the years after the assassination did the American Left become preoccupied with conspiratorial thinking? How and why was Kennedy transformed in death into a liberal icon and a martyr for civil rights? In what way was the assassination linked to the collapse of mid-century liberalism, a doctrine which until 1963 was the reigning philosophy of the nation?
The Longest Romance
Fidel Castro jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin during the Great Terror. He murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six. Alone among world leaders, Castro came to within inches of igniting a global nuclear holocaust.But you would never guess any of that from reading the mainstream American media. Instead we hear fawning accounts of Castro liberating Cuba from the clutches of U.S. robber-barons and bestowing world-class healthcare and education on his downtrodden citizens. “Propaganda is vital—the heart of our struggle,” Castro wrote in 1955. Today, the concept is as valid to the Cuban regime as ever.History records few propaganda campaigns as phenomenally successful or enduring as Castro and Che’s. The Longest Romance exposes the full scope of this deception; it documents the complicity of major U.S. media players in spreading Castro’s propaganda and in coloring the world’s view of his totalitarian regime. Castro’s cachet as a celebrity icon of anti-Americanism has always overshadowed his record as a warmonger, racist, sexist, Stalinist, and godfather of modern terrorism. The Longest Romance uncovers this shameful history and names its major accomplices.
The Jihadist Plot
“How could this happen in a country we helped liberate?” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pondered in the aftermath of the September 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi that left American ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. The Jihadist Plot: The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion shows how it could have happened and why it did happen. It happened because in supporting the Libyan rebellion against Muammar al-Qaddafi, America and its allies, in effect, changed sides in the war on terror, securing the victory of some of the very Islamic extremist forces that they had been fighting for the previous decade.The result is a Libya that is today under the sway of heavily-armed jihadist brigades that make no secret of their allegiance to al-Qaeda, proudly flying the al-Qaeda flag in broad daylight in Benghazi and other Libyan cities. Moreover, as the September 11 Benghazi attacks make clear, if America reversed course in Libya in order to join forces with jihadists, the jihadists remain exactly as they ever were, with the same ideology and the same hatred of America.Exploding the myth of NATO’s “humanitarian intervention,” The Jihadist Plot tells the real story of the Libyan rebellion. It traces the itineraries of some of the notorious veterans of international jihad who served as the rebellion’s leading commanders and strategists and shows how NATO helped to create a new jihadist hero at the siege of Sirte. And it reveals that long before the onset of the so-called Arab Spring, Libya’s own al-Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, had devised a plan to bring down the Qaddafi regime using some of the classic methods of jihadist terror: a plan that would be put into practice in the rebellion of February 2011.
Spring Fever
The first fundamental truth about the «Arab Spring» is that there never was one. The salient fact of the Middle East, the only one, is Islam. The Islam that shapes the Middle East inculcates in Muslims the self-perception that they are members of a civilization implacably hostile to the West. The United States is a competitor to be overcome, not the herald of a culture to be embraced.Is this self-perception based on objective truth? Does it reflect an accurate construction of Islam? It is over these questions that American officials and Western intellectuals obsess. Yet the questions are irrelevant. This is not a matter of right or wrong, of some posture or policy whose subtle tweaking or outright reversal would change the facts on the ground. This is simply, starkly, the way it is.Every human heart does not yearn for freedom. In the Islam of the Middle East, «freedom» means something very nearly the opposite of what the concept connotes to Westerners – it is the freedom that lies in total submission to Allah and His law. That law, sharia, is diametrically opposed to core components of freedom as understood in the West – beginning with the very idea that man is free to make law for himself, irrespective of what Allah has ordained. It is thus delusional to believe, as the West's Arab Spring fable insists, that the region teems with Jamal al-Madisons holding aloft the lamp of liberty. Do such revolutionary reformers exist? Of course they do . . . but in numbers barely enough to weave a fictional cover story. When push came to shove – and worse – the reformers were overwhelmed, swept away by a tide of Islamic supremacism, the dynamic, consequential mass movement that beckons endless winter.That is the real story of the Arab Spring – that, and the Pandora's Box that opens when an American administration aligns with that movement, whose stated goal is to destroy America.
America 3.0
America’s greatest days are yet to come. We are in a painful transition period. Our government is crushingly expensive, failing at its basic functions, and unable to keep its promises. It does not work and it cannot continue as it is. But the inevitable end of big government does not mean the end of America. It only means the end of one phase of American life. America is poised to enter a new era of freedom and prosperity. The cultural roots of the American people go back at least fifteen centuries, and make us individualistic, enterprising, and liberty-loving. The Founding generation of the United States lived in a world of family farms and small businesses, America 1.0. This world faded away and was replaced by an industrialized world of big cities, big business, big labor unions and big government, America 2.0. Now America 2.0 is outdated and crumbling, while America 3.0 is struggling to be born. This new world will bring immense productivity, rapid technological progress, greater scope for individual and family-scale autonomy, and a leaner and strictly limited government. America has made one major transition already, and industrial America became an economic colossus. We are now making a new transition, which will surprise many Americans, and astonish the world.
The Persian Night
Who really rules Iran today? Are the men in official positions merely puppets activated by hidden hands? How are decisions made in a system that appears so chaotic at first glance? Is the current political structure doomed to conflict? These are some of the questions that Amir Taheri addresses in this riveting and timely book.An anatomy of one of the most secretive regimes in the contemporary world, The Persian Night traces the historical, religious, cultural, and political roots of the Khomeinist revolution and analyzes the way it has grown into a pseudo-religious ideology over the past three decades. Taheri dissects a regime that has hijacked a nation of seventy million people and mobilized its resources for global “holy war” against the United States and its allies. From Khomeini’s “divine mission” to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s messianic campaign in the name of the “Hidden Imam,” Iran is on a trajectory towards war.The Persian Night looks into the actual links between the Islamic Republic and terrorist networks including al-Qaeda and Hezballah; the reality of the Iranian nuclear program; the Islamic Republic’s war-making capabilities and strategies; and the origins of the three Khomeinist phobias—women, Jews, and the United States.But as Taheri demonstrates, Khomeinism is not Iran. Today there are two competing Irans: the one manifested in the negative Khomeinist energies that have dragged the nation into its dark night; the other drawing from the long and celebrated history of Persian culture while extending a friendly hand to the West.Successive U.S. administrations, along with most European governments, have failed to understand the reality of the Khomeinist regime and at times have even aided its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear arsenal. Taheri provides a set of imaginative suggestions for more effective ways of dealing with Iran.
Present Dangers
This original collection of essays offers hope to those who believe that the cause of world peace requires a new American foreign policy and repairing our depleted military. The twelve contributors to this book show why America must take another look at our possible adversaries and real strategic partners. Present Dangers offers practical strategies for policymakers eager to disarm adversaries like North Korea and Iraq and head off the terrorist threat. Intellectuals, historians and policy-makers such as James Ceasar, Ross Munro, Peter Rodman, Richard Perle, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Nicholas Eberstadt, Jeffrey Gedmin, Aaron Friedberg, Elliott Abrams, Frederick Kagan, Willliam Schneider, William Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Kagan all challenge America to make sure that foreign affairs, a sleeping issue for the last eight years, gets a wake-up call in election year 2000. Table of contents, notes, bibliographic essay.