Editorial Review

Reviews

Ignore Chomsky's Hopes and Prospects At Your Peril, May 18, 2010
As not only American foreign policy but its domestic economy accelerates its decline to a point that only the blind or obtuse can ignore, people who have dismissed Noam Chomsky in the past as "too radical" may now want to read Hopes and Prospects in order to understand what is really going on. The term "hopes" is an ironic reference to President Obama's "politics of hope", a politics that has disappointed millions who worked for his election and have since dropped out, as the right has openly declared class war. Chomsky's new book includes material on Obama's first year in office, and makes it clear that the powerful corporations and their intellectual apologists, who control both U.S. foreign and domestic policy, remain as powerful as ever in protecting their own interests - at the mounting expense of both the American people and hundreds of millions of others around the world.Chomsky goes far beyond exploding the incredible fact that Tea Partiers and others could remain blind to the fact that it is CORPORATIONS, NOT GOVERNMENT which caused the financial crisis, the oil spill, and a disastrous U.S. foreign policy, and that a government truly representing the American people is the only hope for Tea Partiers and everyone else. Mass media and "manufactured consent" explanations are inadequate to explain America's financial crisis and why it is likely to occur again, why America continues to torture and illegally imprison, despite Obama's promise to end it, why the U.S. empire continues to dramatically weaken, and why today it harms the interests of the vast majority of Americans not to mention those suffering under it abroad, and why the situation in the Middle East - not only Israel/Palestine but Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan - will continue to deteriorate as long as national security planners and corporations are able to continue manipulating public opinion and pursuing their own career and economic interests at the expense of everyone else. You may not agree with everything Chomsky says, but the power of his overall analysis and framework is undeniable. His observations on elite behavior explain far more about the deepening climate, financial, Mideast and domestic social crisis facing America than anything you're likely to read in the mainstream media. You owe it to yourself to read this book, whether or not you agree with it all, if you want to have at least a fighting chance to understand the world around you. By all means, take Chomsky on .Argue with this or that point if you will, explain how he leaves out such and such if you must, but disregard his overall framework at your peril. For if you do you will continue to remain blind about the key issues that will determine not only how, but whether, you, your children and your grandchildren will live.

About Hopes and Prospects, May 22, 2010
This book is a compilation of essays that Chomsky also updated just before its release here in May 2010. Each essay has a topic of focus; Chomsky weaves in and out of different subject material throughout each, highlighting moral principles and hypocrisies of the United States, and the West in general. The issues are grotesque and in need of addressing by us - the public.

Contents:

PREFACE ..... VII

PART I: LATIN AMERICA
01. Year 514: Globalization for Whom? ..... 3
02. Latin America and US Foreign Policy ..... 39
03. Democracy and Development: Their Enemies, Their Hopes ..... 75
04. Latin America and Caribbean Unity ..... 103

PART II: NORTH AMERICA
05. "Good News," Iraq and Beyond ..... 121
06. Free Elections, Good News and Bad ..... 143
07. Century's Challenges ..... 165
08. Turning Point? ..... 177
09. Elections 2008: Hope Confronts the Real World ..... 207
10. Obama on Israel-Palestine ..... 251
11. The Torture Memos ..... 259
12. 1989 and Beyond ..... 269

Notes ..... 281
Index ..... 315

Thought-provoking, measured, and grounded in rationality, June 12, 2010
For forty years, Noam Chomsky's erudite insights into politics and language have proved to be an invaluable contribution to ongoing social reflection. Hopes and Prospects is Chomsky's latest work, warning readers about the latest risks and challenges facing America and humankind during the early twenty-first century. Chapters address the growing divide between America's North and South, American exceptionalism (which still has a strong hold in the era of President Barack Obama), the morass of problems (to put it lightly) with Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S.-Israeli aggression toward Gaza, the controversial governmental bailouts - and suggestions to improve the future, as well as reflections on positive developments such as democratic movements in Latin America and global solidarity efforts. Thought-provoking, measured, and grounded in rationality, Hopes and Prospects is strongly recommended as a vital nexus for social debate over vitally pressing national and global issues.

Chomsky yet again tells us far more about our world than our media ever do, July 20, 2010
Noam Chomsky yet again tells us far more about our world than our media ever do.

He writes, "A well-documented conclusion is that sovereignty, hence ability to control internal economic development and to enter international market systems on one's own terms, is a crucial prerequisite to economic development." 25 years of economic sovereignty, backed by exchange controls and managed currencies, did better than the succeeding 25 years of Thatcherism. Protectionism brings growth; imposed liberalisation harms growth.

In 1985 the World Bank said that in its standard `development' strategy, domestic consumption should be `markedly restrained', support for education `minimized' and `less emphasis should be placed on social objectives'.

The US National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2015 (2000) said globalisation will lead to `a widening economic divide' and `deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation'. In law, predictable consequences are evidence of intent. Amnesty International's Secretary-General says that poverty is the worst of all the world's many human rights abuses.

In Latin America, Obama plays the usual US role. In June 2009, the largely US-controlled IMF at once gave a $150 million loan to the coup regime in Honduras. The IMF had earlier withdrawn loans from the elected government because it opposed that government's policies. In 2002, during the (failed) coup against Venezuela's elected government, the IMF had at once offered aid to the coup regime. France and the USA backed the 2004 coup in Haiti, which overthrew the elected government, causing 8,000 violent deaths in the next two years.

By contrast, Chomsky praises Cuba's `remarkable record of genuine internationalism over many years', especially its Operation Milagro, which has restored sight to more than a million people.

He denounces Israel's vicious and illegal siege of Gaza. Israel, with the USA, is destroying any viable Palestinian state. The USA and the EU voted against the International Atomic Energy Agency resolution calling on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to open its nuclear facilities to inspection.

In the recent US election, the best-funded candidate won 9 out of 10 contests, and Obama was the presidential candidate with most Wall Street funding. This January, the US Supreme Court voted to allow corporations to spend shareholder money directly in future elections.

Chomsky's Best Yet, July 2, 2010
Chomsky's most recent book, Hopes and Prospects, is his best work yet (keep in mind, I've read a lot of Chomsky). He's the only scholar I know of who can take on the daunting and seemingly impossible task of describing the "state of the world," and do it successfully.

The book is broken up into two sections: the first focuses on Latin America and the second North America. He covers key topics such as: the connection between neoliberalism and development and democracy; the Obama phenomenon; the new U.S. administration's policy on the Israel/Palestine conflict; the democracy movements in Latin America; the current state of the nuclear threat; and other topics of crucial importance. As usual, he brings forth a seemingly innumerable amount of historical examples to build his basic arguments, which makes this book an excellent place to search for references on a wide-range of topics (as with all of his works).

In short, if you're interested in understanding the current global context (its most key elements at least), and how it dictates local conditions, then this book is a must read.

Chomsky's latest, July 24, 2010
e book is full of the traditional themes of Chomsky's work, such as US support for terrorism, dictators, war crimes, Islamic fundamentalists, nuclear proliferation, human rights violations,etc. Citing Ahmed Rashid, he notes Reagan's support for the fundamentalist Pakistani dictator Zia Al Haq, whose rule laid the groundwork for the maladies that afflict Pakistan today. He notes that Gullubdin Heckmatyar, the favorite Afghan fundamentalist terrorist of Reagan, is now at the forefront of the political process in Afghanistan. He cites new evidence from the Spanish press about the murder of the 6 Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter by the US trained Altacatl Battalion in November 1989. He quotes Michael Kinsley's and Time Magazine's positive portrayal of the attacks on civilian targets by the Contras in Nicaragua that terrorized the Nicaraguan people into voting out the Sandinistas in 1990. The Contra war was all part of the effort by the Reagan administration, backed by the Vatican, to restore the poor majority of Central Americans to misery and passivity. He notes that Bernard Fall, the right wing military historian described Vietnam in the 1960's being threatened with extinction "as a cultural and historic entity" as the Vietnamese countryside "literally dies" under massive US bombing.

Chomsky has a great deal to say in this book about Israel, Obama's continuation of Bush's policies toward its settlement building, extreme violations of the Geneva Conventions and the context of Israel's attack on Gaza in December 2008 and its economic strangulation of Gaza. Chomsky has always stressed that Israel's main goal is not security but stealing all the best land and resources from the territories. He quotes Moshe Dayan from the early days of the occupation as saying privately that Israel should make Palestinians live "like dogs" and invite them to leave the territories if they didn't like it. He also has a few words about the BDS. He suggests that the boycott movement against South Africa wasn't exactly the rousing success that some BDS advocates assume it was.

There are other subjects discussed in this book. Chomsky notes Obama's continuation of Bush style militarism and the terrible toll on civilians of Obama's drone strikes on Pakistan and air strikes in Afghanistan. He points out the important ways the Obama administration supported the coup in Honduras. He describes the horrendous toll of Haiti's January 2010 earthquake as rooted in the economic policies the US has forced on Haiti. He quotes a number of mainstream strategic analysts, including former weapons inspector David Kay and the neoconservative Reuel Marc Gerecht, that Iran has very rational reasons for building up its nuclear capacity as a deterrent. Chomsky explores the possibility for a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan. He quotes with admiration Malalai Joya, the feminist human rights activist now in hiding from the misogynist fundamentalist Northern Alliance warlord gangsters Rumsfeld re-installed in power. He quotes an observation made by the last British ambassador to the Soviet Union, that from the ambassador's conversations with pro-Western Afghans, these Afghans greatly prefer life under the Soviet backed regime, when women achieved significant gains and the country seemed to be modernizing.

. Chomsky writes that financial industry interests are clearly reflected in the policies of the Obama administration. He notes that the financial industry has taken up a disproportionate share of our economic life. Economic growth during the Bush years relied on an 8 trillion dollar housing bubble whose extreme danger Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and other official geniuses did not fathom. Meanwhile, American manufacturing capacity has declined significantly in recent decades. The real wages of most American workers have declined since the late 70's, except for a spike during the Clinton tech stock boom of the late 90's, Chomsky notes. One of the quotes Chomsky often uses in his works (as he does in this book) is taken from Alan Greenspan's senate testimony from 1997 about the stagnating wages and "greater worker insecurity" fueling American economic growth. Chomsky cites an interesting story from the Wall Street Journal relating to Obama's stimulus and the decline of American manufacturing. On the health care bill, the Obama administration made a deal with the pharmaceutical industry whereby the health care reform bill would contain no mandate for the government to negotiate drug prices downward or demand rebates. Chomsky cites a Business Week article of August 2009 which said the health care industry had "already won" the health care debate. Health care industry lobbyists worked intensively behind the scenes to make sure the bill didn't seriously threaten their interests. Chomsky quotes the chairman of the Business Roundtable as saying that the bill that came out of Max Baucus's committee was closely aligned to his group's own vision for a proper reform bill. The Business Week article predicted that the health care industry would come out of the reform process more profitable than ever.

Chomsky also discusses one of my favorite topics: how the most successful economies in the world, including the United States, have routinely violated free market principles in order to become successful. He points out that Chile's following of the principles of Milton Friedman under Pinochet led to complete disaster by 1982. Since then, he notes, Chile has achieved some economic success by placing controls on capital flow and relying on its copper export industry, the largest company in which is the government run CODELCO.

I do wish Chomsky would go into more depth on health care. In his works, he often likes to cite polls showing that a majority of Americans have views that are often significantly more left wing than the Democrats. In this book, for example, he cites polls on Obama's health care plan, including polling relating to the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. These polls show that many Americans opposed to Obama-care base their opposition not on Republican style arguments but on the feeling that the legislation does not go far enough.

Chomsky is a nice relief from the insanity and imbecility of mainstream political discourse.

Impressive and Convincing, July 20, 2010
I'm not usually a huge fan of Chomsky but his new collection of essays Hopes and Prospects is really good. The first part of the book deals with Latin America. Chomsky outlines the colonial past and present of Latin American countries and their valiant efforts to rid themselves of neo-imperialist domination by the United States. He states correctly that today's struggles of Latin American countries (Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela) to oppose the depredations of the US-inspired version of globalization offer hope for the rest of the world. He is also absolutely right in pointing out that "Latin America is not merely the victim of foreign forces. The region is notorious for the rapacity of its wealthy classes and their freedom from social responsibility." Here, Chomsky echoes Eduardo Galeano's classic work Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continentthat decades ago offered a brilliant analysis of how Latin American power elites sold out their own countries to the predatory forces of the US neo-liberalism. Today, Chomsky points out "Latin America has real choices, for the first time in its history." And this is great news for the entire planet.

In the second part of the book, Chomsky analyzes the influence that the imperialist mentality in the US exercises over the discussions of the US military presence in Iraq. I was particularly pleased to see that Chomsky decided not to follow in the footsteps of most liberal commentators in their refusal to see that Russian imperialism is in no way "better" or more justified than the US imperialism. Chomsky qualifies Putin's actions in Chechnya as "murderous", which they most definitely are. I only wish that more progressive analysts dared to depart from the tendency to praise everybody who opposes the US regardless of the atrocities they perpetrate. It is definitely right that the US imperialism and Russian imperialism should be discussed together since there are glaring similarities between them.

Chomsky then segues into what I consider the weakest part of the book: the discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As usual, Chomsky's analysis of the issue is one-sided and biased. Israelis are all villainous nationalists and religious fanatics, while the Palestinians are without an exception languishing and tolerant victims. While Chomsky is right in suggesting that the Israelis do everything they can to make sure the conflict continues, he forgets to say that so do the Palestinians. When he describes the Israeli "information campaigns to instruct the world on its errors and misunderstanding, arrogant self-righteousness, circling the wagons, defiance . . . and paranoia," he avoids mentioning that this exactly the pattern adopted by every single nation-state with a very weak and diluted national identity (Russia is a great example of precisely this kind of paranoid nation building. Closer to home, so is the US.)

Starting from Chapter 9 of Part II, Chomsky offers a brilliant analysis of the 2008 presidential elections and the job Obama's presidency has done since then. He points out correctly that both Democrats and Republicans are considerably to the right of the American population on many major issues, both international and domestic. Hence, it is not surprising that Obama's tepid efforts to defend his intentions to introduce some kind of change don't convince Americans any longer. Chomsky talks about how the American people have been brilliantly manipulated into being suspicious of public welfare programs that would be of invaluable use to themselves while supporting the "nanny state for the rich."

The fact that the two main candidates in the 2008 Democratic primary were a woman and an African American were a welcome sign, Chomsky acknowledges, that the country has managed to get at least somewhat civilized. Still, we cannot expect the joy from this reality to keep us perennially blind to the numerous ways in which Obama has not been living up to his promise. Chomsky reminds us that "Obama's message of 'hope' and 'change' offered a virtual blank slate on which supporters could write their wishes." And write we did, only to be disappointed in most of our expectations.

The book is composed of a series of essays and as a result is very repetitive in places. It could have done with a lot of editing because many sentences are simply repeated over and over. This lack of editing is the main reason for the four-star rating I give to the book.

A must read, August 7, 2010
I had only a vague idea of Chomsky and a limited knowledge of international affairs so stumbled on this book pretty much by accident. I found it riveting. Chomsky has a great grasp of his subject and portrays very clearly what international relations is really about. Such an authoritative if disconcerting source is sorely needed and one would hope that it is widely read. I bought several copies to pass around.

Classic Chomsky, but the Title's Decieving, December 1, 2010
For the most part the book is another masterpiece to add to the Chomsky collection. His critical analysis takes you from Latin America, to the Middle East, and finishes with a critique of contemporary American politics. His analysis is scathing, truly a "bonfire of myths and lies".

If you have read Failed States or Hegemony or Survival) then this book will feel like an extension of those works. The tone and issues analyzed are quite similar: American aggression in the name of business interests and the its (along with Israel's) well documented crimes in the Middle East comprise the majoity of the book.

Unlike most other works be Chomsky, "Hopes and Prospects" takes a penetrating look inside American domestic issues. The insurance and financial industry's subversion of the health care debate and financial bailout are of particular interest. The Obama myth is also deconstructed to reveal a figure, which in thought and action, that is not too far from his right-wing colleagues.

My only criticism of the book is the deceiving title. Much like "Chomsky on Education" (which notoriously had nothing to do with education) the book has nothing to do with hope and very few prospects are mentioned. One will leave this book feeling enlightened, perhaps even empowered to change the conditions Chomsky writes about. However, the book hardly gives the reader much to be hopeful about. Praise is given to some movements occurring in Latin America (the Morales administration for example), but very few prospects for progress are talked about at length. Overall the book, like many of his others, will be quite depressing to anyone who is not willing to take some sort of action to address the issues discussed. May the apathetic be warned!

However, by picking the book up your probably ruled out of the apathy column. If your like most Chomsky fans you are interested in changing the conditions addressed in the book, and will therefore feel more empowered than anything else. Well worth the read!

Its Dr. Chomsky, how can it not be amazing?, August 4, 2010
As the titles states, Dr. Chomsky is amazing, with his direct truth, it always leaves a sharp pain in the side of those that prefer to be clouded by idiotic propaganda news channels and low class talk radio. If you are interested in a accurate assessment on past and current affairs in terms of U.S. policy, then get this book. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Editorial Review

A spectacular modern-day adventure along the Nile River from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea

With news of tenuous peace in Sudan, foreign correspondent Dan Morrison bought a plank-board boat, summoned a childhood friend who'd never been off American soil and set out from Uganda, paddling the White Nile on a quest to reach Cairo-a trip that tyranny and war had made impossible for decades.

Morrison's chronicle is a mashup of travel narrative and reportage, packed with flights into the frightful and the absurd. Through river mud that engulfs him and burning marshlands that darken the sky, he tracks the snarl of commonalities and conflicts that bleed across the Nile valley, bringing to life the waters that connect the hardscrabble fishing villages of Lake Victoria to the floating Cairo nightclubs where headscarved mothers are entertained by gyrating male dancers. In between are places and lives invisible to cable news and opinion blogs: a hidden oil war that has erased entire towns, secret dams that will flood still more and contested borderlands where acts of compassion and ingenuity defy appalling hardship and waste of life. As Morrison dodges every imaginable hazard, from militia gunfire to squalls of sand, his mishaps unfold in strange harmony with the breathtaking range of individuals he meets along the way. Relaying the voices of Sudanese freedom fighters and escaped Ugandan sex slaves, desert tribesmen and Egyptian tomb raiders, The Black Nile culminates in a visceral understanding of one of the world's most elusive hotspots, where millions strive to claw their way from war and poverty to something better-if only they could agree what that something is, whom to share it with, and how to get there.

With the propulsive force of a thriller, The Black Nile is rife with humor, humanity and fervid insight-an unparalleled portrait of a complex territory in profound transition. ... Read more

Reviews

A remarkable journey through troubled lands, August 15, 2010
While the book's subtitle boasts, "One Man's Amazing Journey...", a cliched line that probably should be forbidden from any future use, it is nonetheless quite accurate. Tracing the waters of the Nile from Uganda to Egypt, Morrison brings us on a journey not only across thousands of miles of Africa but also through a vast diversity of peoples and their rich and often troubled history. Weaving recent and historical events with the story of his own journey he provides an unique window onto a part of the world all too easily and often ignored. Furthermore, he casts light onto the diverse forces at play behind the conflicts that occasionally make headlines in West newspapers. What many often portray in simplistic terms as strife between Christianity and Islam, Morrison exposes as complex and fluid allegiances and schisms. Often these are less about religious differences and more about the dynamics between the wealthy and poor, those in power and those outside, competing tribes and families, and other fault lines.

The book's core however is really a travelogue, and it moves at a swift and compelling pace. The first half of the book focused largely on the interplay between Morrison and a long-time friend who has joined him on the first leg of the journey. Their procession up the Nile in their small boat delves into their personal histories, the author's work as a journalist stringer, his friend's easy life working in a resort in the United States and frequent trips to the bottom of a bottle. Unable to get a visa into Sudan, and burnt-out from the oppressive heat and relentless insects, his friend leaves Morrison midway into the narrative. Once alone, Morrison spends more time examining the people he meets, the history of the places he visits, and on his own reactions to the situations he encounters.

The narration is occasionally gritty, making the rugged, unpredictable, and often sad lives of the people he meets tangible. Sometimes this tangibility is off-putting, reducing people to the mere the functions of their bodies. More often however the gritty realism of the situation stands in contrast to these people's humble perseverance. Simple dichotomies, between good and bad, friends and enemies are turned on their heads when presumed enemies of friends are gracious and welcoming.

"Life in extremity is difficult to explain-things happen and people don't know why they are happening. Some events were fortunate and others were disastrous and that's how it went."

There are no simple answers in the book. The alliances he examines are constantly reshaped and reevaluated. The landscape similarly is in constant flux, changed by logging, droughts, and streams of garbage. Massive dams threaten rich farmland and traditional ways of life while bringing much needed electricity and development to impoverished towns and cities. This book raises questions, answers a few of them, and will leave a lasting impression.

WOW!, August 15, 2010
A nearly perfect book--entertaining from start to finish, well written, nicely edited and full of great scenes and vivid, larger-than-life characters.

Book Review by Hugh Pope of a revelatory, sometimes harrowing journey from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean, August 14, 2010
"Longest River, Wide Adventure: A revelatory, sometimes harrowing journey from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean". Book Review, By Hugh Pope, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, BOOKSHELF, Saturday, AUGUST 14, 2010, page W8.

When Dan Morrison began a 3,600-mile road-and-river journey down the length of the Nile River, he started at Lake Victoria in Uganda. As he reports in "The Black Nile," his account of the grueling trip, he was led to a rooming house on an island and shown a "six-by-seven windowless cell." The ceiling was "a layer cake of plastic, tree branches, more plastic and corrugated metal, all covered by a moss of dusty cobwebs. A red plastic basin of dirty water sat near the door; a foam mattress occupied half the floor." The walls were painted "an optimistic blue," and he was similarly full of hope: "It's perfect," he told his host.

The windowless cell turns out to be one of the nicer places he stays on the trip through Uganda, Sudan and Egypt to the Nile's terminus in the Mediterranean. This is hard-core African travel: trying to sleep on flop-house floors, struggling through thigh-sucking holes in treacherous beds of matted hyacinth and papyrus, enduring the maddening frustrations of broken-down bureaucracies, and coping with the long silences and sudden terrors of bush wars.

Mr. Morrison's trip is more alongside the river than on it. The Nile's beguiling line on the map has not been a through-route for many decades. The collapse of colonial empires, wars and the failings of modern states have made several stretches virtual no-go zones for outsiders except missionaries and a few stubborn Cairo-to-the-Cape adventurers--some of whom pay for their romantic dreams with their lives.

Travel along the river has rarely been easy, except for the post-World War II era of flying boats, and the colonial way-stations are now only marked by the hulks of a few old river steamers, sunk and rusting at their moorings. Sensibly, therefore, Mr. Morrison doesn't pretend that he will float down the Nile like some satellite phone-equipped Huck Finn. His quest, he says, is to bind together and make better sense of a region mostly known for its many dead ends--the ancient land of the Nubians steadily being submerged behind dams, or the vast, mysteriously burning Sudanese swamps of the Sudd. Mr. Morrison is also a writer in search of material: In an early mission statement, he declares himself "tired of struggling for crumbs of piecework from a fast-shrinking roster of newspapers and magazines. The hustle made me feel small. I needed to do something big."

Finishing the trip was certainly an achievement, and "The Black Nile"--a title never explained, perhaps chosen both to sound ominous and to illustrate Mr. Morrison's preference for the river's origins in Black Africa--is a cautionary tale for would-be travelers in rough territory about the need for preparation, patience, humor and friendship. The harder the going for Mr. Morrison, the more expressive his writing. He describes the "visual tinnitus" of flat waters and swamp plants. He starts the day with muscled arms that are "coiled pythons" but after long hours of paddling are turned into "useless sleeves of cement." He rides in a Land Cruiser madly driven on "invisible currents of wet paste." A truck ride in Sudan is intensely comic, recounted by the author with slow-motion precision as the gear-shift breaks off and the resourceful driver puts his foot on the clutch and opens up the under-floor transmission so that he can still change gears--with a screwdriver.

Dangers, amusing road-trip predicaments and well-turned phrases compensate for the book's lack of an over-arching argument. They also temper the exasperation the reader might begin to feel with the repetitive reality of putting up with stifling bus rides, plodding in search of cheap hotels and seeking out the happy hours where international-aid workers seek solace in unhappy lands. Mr. Morrison offers a nod of respect for normal people and settled states in the Nile region--Egypt's Aswan ferry feels like a homecoming to civilization, for instance--but he gives them little space.

The great Nile culture of Egypt is too well-known for his taste; it warrants just one of 10 chapters. A boatman named Fony offers him his felucca to ride a stretch from Aswan to Luxor, but on learning that the only people plying the river are tourists, Mr. Morrison prefers a second-class rail car "to avoid the wordy wake of Gustave Flaubert, Florence Nightingale and William Golding."

His own accounts of Egypt's ancient sites or tense backwaters of the Islamist insurgency are workmanlike but perfunctory. He scorns Luxor's development-minded city fathers as being interested in "emulating the Luxor casino in Las Vegas." A vendor selling pharaonic fakes who describes modernization's crushing of old ways is depicted as work-shy and implicitly mocked for his expensive-looking wristwatch.

Instead, pride of place goes to backwaters like Malakal, Juba or Jinja, which even readers familiar with the region will have to keep turning back to find on the book's maps. We're told in a loving chapter and a half that Malakal, a Nile-side settlement in Sudan, is an earth-tracked tipping point between Africa and Arabia, which both sides of the north-south conflict take turns looting.

Mr. Morrison wears his journalistic experience lightly--he sets out with a tourist map so poor and out of date that, he discovers, it puts towns on the wrong side of national borders. But his reporting background, which includes writing for Newsday and National Geographic News, allows him to step back for some deft backhanded analysis. He notes, for instance, that Egypt's crumbling inertia makes the entire country feel like a "slow-decaying element."

His heart is clearly in the upper reaches of the Nile, in Uganda and Sudan, which he finds "dynamic, changing" and which afford him an opportunity to explain how the "madmen" and "dreadlocked child soldiers" of the insurgent Lord's Resistance Army use calculated mayhem to get their way. Since 1987, these apocalyptic Christian-tribal guerrillas have ranged between Uganda, south Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mr. Morrison gets through territory partly controlled by the group, but not without a heart-in-throat moment when he reads that 40 travelers were murdered on a road he had just driven down.

The book is at its best in Sudan, describing a country torn between the dividing lines of many Nile worlds: Muslim and Christian, desert and jungle, oil wealth and poverty, Arab and African. Mr. Morrison shows how hard it will be after years of war and famine to reintegrate the south with the north, or for the south to govern itself as an inclusive, coherent state. He finds an occasional ray of hope--people seem surprisingly ready to let bygones be bygones, as when he has to hunt hard in Malakal for any physical or political damage caused by street battles a few months before. But a sense of foreboding is more common. He meets a Sudanese aid official who tells him: "A girl child here has a nine times better chance of dying in childbirth than of finishing primary school."

"The Black Nile" is not so much about the river as it is about the lands where it flows. Mr. Morrison travels mostly by minivan, jeep or truck. On the Nile itself, he rides through southern Sudan in a Norwegian aid group's raft, bristling with soldiers and weapons in case of attack from forces opposed to the Sudan's 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. He boards a ferry to voyage down Lake Nasser, the long lake formed in the 1960s by the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's Aswan High Dam. And early in the trip, accompanied for a while by a childhood friend, Schon Bryan, Mr. Morrison paddles a canoe on the river. But the two never open Mr. Bryan's bag of fishing rods.

Even if he wasn't often wet with more than perspiration, Mr. Morrison does pay ample attention to the Nile's troubles as a waterway. The problems begin at its source, where the over-fished Lake Victoria is increasingly clogged with hyacinth, which has to be mechanically hauled out. Three decades ago, the author tells us, fish were abundant and many of them five feet long; Mr. Morrison sees fishermen making do with undersize 15-inchers.

One Ugandan "Nilometer" measuring the river's ever-varying level shows the river below the lowest recordable mark. Demands on the Nile's bounty can only grow as tributary states above Egypt and Sudan-- Uganda and Ethiopia in particular--are making new demands for water as they seek to develop their own agriculture. The author's clear-eyed asides illustrate the conflicts of interest over various countries' needs for power-generating, flood-controlling dams. At the site of Sudan's new Merowe Dam, "cement trucks churned on the tarmac, men walked with hard-work swaggers, and--whatever the serious human rights issues, the forced displacement, the lack of environmental review, the destruction of farmland, the arrest and torture of opponents--I had to admit the thing was a sight, big and impressive and cool."

Above all, Mr. Morrison's peppery anecdotes, his refreshing honesty and his ability to show how Africans view their difficulties save "The Black Nile" from being simply a memoir of an author's self-prescribed endurance test. Instead, the book gives us a compelling portrait of life along the Nile--from lonely fishing communities on Lake Victoria to the cacophonous collisions of Cairo. Mr. Morrison's more discouraging encounters also quietly pay tribute to triumphs of the human spirit. Mr. Bryan, the author's companion and verbal sparring partner for the first third of the account, later writes to him: "It's good to be desperate once in a while. Gives you an appreciation of the looks on people's faces when they're desperate and you're not."

--Mr. Pope is the author, most recently, of "Dining with al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East" (Thomas Dunne).

Bitter Evidence Against The Abstract, September 1, 2010
Coming from a horticultural / naturalist background, and from the position of a man given to more personal reflection than necessary, I approached The Black Nile with a prejudice toward what I might find. Would there be a romantic environmental bent? Would Mr. Morrison be tacking back and forth between the real river and some internal complement? It is often the case for me that a book that does not find early traction or does not know what it is will lose me, after I have attempted unsuccessfully to make it what I want it or expect it to be. I began this book knowing next to nothing about the Nile, only textbook images at its terminus lived in my schoolmind library. But I know what a journey is, and I know what a blank journal is, and how the marriage of the two can give a beautiful birth. Had I the guts and brains to attempt such a journey as Mr. Morrison undertook, I would have looked for particular species of fish and reeds, and if I had to dodge a bullet my concern would have been dodging it, not tracing it to the barrel. Not so for the author. The first couple of pages of Dan Morrison's story came after me, saying 'you aren't where you think you are, perhaps you aren't even who you think you are, and if you know what is good for you you'll listen carefully.' Mr. Morrison took his camera, his green pen and, for a little while, his greener friend, and dove right in, putting his life on the line for a truth far more complex and mysterious than the where and when of flower or fin. I loved this book. I loved the danger of it, I loved the persistence of Mr. Morrison's patience and query. Early on he tells us briefly that this trip is 'something he has to do', but this is more a kiss goodbye than an introduction to a personal memoir, which The Black Nile absolutely is not. The cliche here is to say 'not to give too much away' and consider it said, but there is no danger of that in any case. The sands shift, the river is eternally reborn. Read, learn, and enjoy the trip. You'll never think of this section of the map the same, I promise.

Powerful Writing about an Unforgettable Journey, October 22, 2010
Dan Morrison takes the reader on a gripping, amusing, well-researched and ultimately profound trip on the Nile, from its Ugandan wellsprings to Alexandria. Along the way he encounters both the familiar -- a far cry from the way Westerners often depict Africa - and the dangerous: well-armed crazies, religious radicals, brash exploiters and creepy quick-buck artists. The writing is fresh, honest and novelistic, laced with pertinent history and fast-moving anecdotes. The characters are well-drawn, including that of Morrison's close friend and traveling partner, who is one part adventurer and another part cautionary straight-man. The book is visceral at times, causing me to imagine myself as an explorer. I suggest everyone take this heart-pounding trip. It is truly a great adventure, but be forewarned: It ain't Disneyland, and you're not likely to forget it.

The Black Nile, October 5, 2010
Wow! This guy did hard traveling and lived to tell. Very interesting look into the lesser known parts of the Nile.

Amazing on many levels, September 27, 2010
I have to admit that it took me a few weeks to pick up this book. My husband bought it and I was thinking "boy book" (I tend to read fiction and memoir). But I did pick it up and then I couldn't put it down. Yes, this is a book about a very troubled part of the world. Yes, it introduces some geopolitical and environmental problems that seem intractable. But what I didn't expect was the sense of humor and wide-open Experience with a capital "E." Morrison takes the reader to a part of the world where few will travel and he gives not just a lay of the land or a catalog of woe but a sense of the people -- as individuals. It wasn't until I was reading "The Black Nile" that I realized most of what I know about Africa and Africans is broad, general, removed. Faraway. This book is individual, specific, upclose. Vivid. One of the jacket reviewers uses that word and I can't think of a better one. A truly excellent book. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the war in Rwanda, a vivid history of the tragedy's background, and an unforgettable account of its aftermath. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, this account will endure as a chilling document of our time.
... Read more

Reviews

A required text for the 21st century, January 10, 2000
In early May 1994 I stood on a bridge over the river that forms the border between Rwanda and Tanzania and observed corpses floating down towards Lake Victoria in an unbroken stream. As I write this, two Rwandan women are taking the unprecedented action of suing the United Nations for its failure to intervene in the worst act of genocide since WW2. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, who played a kay role in UN decision-making in 1994, has confessed the UN's "failure" and expressed his own "deep remorse." 800,000 people died, most of them hacked to death with machetes by their neighbours. How this happened, and how the world utterly failed in its self-appointed role to prevent exactly such a holocaust, is the subject of this beautifully written, accessible and compelling book. Gourevitch wants to know WHAT happened, and through interviews with survivors, gives us the clearest and most comprehensive understanding I have yet seen. It is not pretty reading, although Gourevitch's dispassionate and sensitive writing makes it possible to get through material that in coarser hands would be impossible to stomach. He also describes the HOW. For years it was evident to the West - and most particularly to France and Belgium - that Hutu factions were gathering their strength to strike at the Tutsi minority. Every day Hutu radio stations ran violent anti-Tutsi propaganda, in which Tutsis and any moderate Hutus who were not interested in killing them were warned to prepare to die. When the killing began, it was simply the next logical step in a process that had long been underway. The case seems impossible to refute - indeed, the UN's internal investigation which published its report in December 1999 does NOT refute - that the genocide was both broadly predictable, and could have been ameliorated, if not altogether stopped, by effective international intervention. The legal knots the UN allowed to create for itself, so that "blue-helmets" felt they could not act to save a woman being raped and hacked to pieces, because their mandate allowed for only their own self-defence, are just one example of how international law can - sometimes - ENCOURAGE crimes against humanity. The lessons of Rwanda, painfully learnt, will influence the way the so-called "world community" responds to massive ethnic eruptions for a generation to come. To begin to understand this most painful event in recent human history, this book cannot be too highly recommended. If there is one small niggle, it is the lack of an index, something that I hope will be addressed in future editions.

Raw and compelling, the abyss gazes back at you ..., November 17, 2000
In a transcendent tour de force, Philip Gourevitch takes one of the most horrifying events of the late 20th century, and manages to find the elements of hope and meaning that make this book more than the sum of the body parts it describes as scattered around a church in Nyarubuye, Rwanda.

On the surface, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families" is a graphic account of the 1994 genocide in which the "Hutu Power" government led its citizens to slaughter 800,000 of their Tutsi neighbors in only 100 days ... while the international community stood by and watched helplessly. In a greater sense, however, this is a story about how people imagine the world to be, and the terrible consequences that follow when they lose their humanity in trying to create such a world. It is about the nature of evil, and the power of forgiveness and justice to reclaim the future without forgetting the past.

This is a difficult and painful book to read, but not for the obvious reasons. The atrocities committed by the killers are brought to light in considerable detail, however Gourevitch does this in an almost semi-detached and dispassionate way. His real moral outrage seems to be reserved for the so-called "civilized" countries that could have stopped the genocide, but instead did nothing until it was too late ... and then compounded their foreign policy sins by aiding the Hutu murderers in refugee camps.

There is certainly plenty of blame to go around. Gourevitch provides extensive evidence that there were many warning signs of the impending massacres. He outlines the brief history of ethnic antagonisms that led to the crimes, and explains why the Clinton Administration, the United Nations (including current U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan), and the former colonial powers in Africa (such as France) all refused to intervene to halt the butchery. The French even took steps to keep it going. Gourevitch is particularly good at placing the genocide into a context that shows why our political leaders were too paralyzed to get involved and risk doing anything to save lives. Basically, it seems to come down to the fact that Rwanda has no oil, the victims were black, and the timing was all wrong (U.S. Rangers had just been shot to death and dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia only weeks earlier).

Putting aside the official excuses for inaction, though, perhaps the best thing about this book is how Gourevitch tells so much of his tale in the words of the Rwandans themselves--both those accused of condoning or participating in the violence, and those who suffered from it.

From Odette Nyiramilimo, a doctor who had several members of her immediate family killed, to Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who protected 1,000 or more Tutsis from harm by using a mixture of simple bravery and shrewd psychology, the writer has extracted narratives of extraordinary courage under even the most brutal conditions. He struggles not to judge pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the clergyman who ignored his doomed ministers' pleas to be spared the carnage, but cannot conceal his admiration for Rwandese Patriotic Front Major General Paul Kagame, who eloquently said: "People are not inherently bad. But they can be made bad. And they can be taught to be good." Contrasted with the American military intelligence officer who cynically compared the genocide to a cheese sandwich (because nobody cares about either), it is easy to understand why Gourevitch holds Kagame in higher esteem.

"We Wish to Inform You ..." is not a perfect book. As others have noted, it really needs an index (or at least a glossary) to help the reader keep track of the various acronyms of organizations (for example, RPF, FAR, UNAMIR), characters (Major General Romero Dallaire, Rwandan ex-President Habyarimana, and USAID worker Bonaventure Nyibizi) and groups (such as the "interahamwe" Hutu Power militias).

Also, Gourevitch begins to lose his focus on the genocide in the second half of his story. He spends a lot of time and dozens of pages pursuing blind alleys about the misguided humanitarian relief efforts in the nearby Congolese refugee camps, and getting sidetracked with the downfall of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. When the author returns to Rwanda, and explores how the new government there had to struggle to pull the nation together again, he is clearly back on firmer ground. His investigation into the problems faced by survivors of the genocide, being asked to live peacefully alongside their former tormentors, is especially moving.

The mass murder of the Tutsis in Rwanda occurred even more efficiently and ruthlessly than did the Nazi measures to impose a "final solution" on the Jews during the Holocaust in World War II. And yet, for all of the promises that the Western democracies uttered 50 years ago to "never again" permit the attempted extermination of an ethnic group anywhere else, it did ... and very recently, too. The rate at which the Hutus killed the Tutsis was truly sickening, but maybe the way it was allowed to happen should trouble us even more.

As Gourevitch points out in this fine book, which won the coveted George K. Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, the nightmare that gripped Rwanda in April 1994 went largely uncovered by the international press. Americans heard little about it. "We Wish to Inform You ..." may change that. It ranks up there with "Night" by Elie Wiesel and "Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer as one of the most disturbing but inspirational tales of human savagery and individual nobility one is ever likely to read. In a self-absorbed pop culture that too often force feeds the public a steady diet of happy talk, "We Wish to Inform You ..." offers a strong dose of perspective, with a sobering reminder that we share this planet with other people who have real problems.

There is always a danger in taking action. There is always a cost in not taking it. Maybe next time, when faced with such a bloodbath, the world will show some of the same simple human decency as those Hutu girls who, when told to separate themselves from the Tutsis, "could have chosen to live, but chose instead to call themselves Rwandans."

Gourevitch props our eyes open to the decimation of Rwanda., February 1, 1999
WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW WE WILL BE KILLED WITH OUR FAMILIES Stories from Rwanda Philip Gourevitch Farrar Straus, Giroux $25.00 356 pp.

In 1994, the Hutu majority in Rwanda committed genocide upon their minority countrymen, the Tutsi. 800,000 people were killed in 100 days, three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust. In April, while British husbands rushed off with umbrellas to their jobs, Hutu husbands picked up machetes and killed their Tutsi wives. In Germany during May, dancers gyrated to ubiquitous techno-rock, while the leading pop singer in Rwanda urged his Hutu countrymen over the state-sponsored radio to "Kill the cockroaches-"the Tutsis. As the Kiwanis met in Des Moines in June, neighborhood "work groups" of Hutu men and women gathered to go over "hit lists" prepared by the government. During the time it took you to read the above, at least five Tutsis were killed, day by day, week by week, through July.

And not a single foreign government or international agency intervened.

Why bother? After all, isn't this an "age-old animosity between the Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups," as the NEW YORK TIMES stated. Haven't they been committing atrocities against each other for centuries? Aren't those poor refugees in the news from Zaire as much victims as the victims in Rwanda?

No, no, and emphatically no, replies Philip Gourevitch in this book, selected by the NEW YORK TIMES as one of the year's ten best books of 1998. Until the Belgians issued identity cards during their colonial rule, no formal delineation between the two tribes was common, let alone violent. The "superior" Tutsi myth was simply a repetition of the incredibly specious Hamitic myth, that claimed the Tutsi were "nobler," "aristocratic" primarily because they had more refined, i.e., Caucasian-like features. No massacre had ever occurred prior to one incident in 1959. Those "refugees?" If they were in a camp outside Rwanda, they were one of the 2 million Hutu that fled . when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front re-took the country. In other words, they could easily have been killers, not victims. One by one, Gourevitch demolishes those conventional myths with which the rest of the world deflected their responsibility.

But he does more than that. Like Leontius in Plato's REPUBLIC who, upon seeing a pile of bodies, ran to them opening his eyes wide with his fingers, crying "There you are, curse you, have your fill of the lovely spectacle," Gourevitch rushes to unimaginable places. Once there, filled with both desire to see and disgust at the sight, Gourevitch puts down prose which props our eyes wide open to the horror of Rwanda, past and present.

In a bar one evening, he meets an aid worker who speaks of stepping on the dead to help the living. Later in his travels, but earlier in the book, Gourevitch visits the scene of a massacre, a church now kept as a shrine. A member of his group steps on a skull, offending the author-"Then I heard another crunch, and felt a vibration underfoot. I had stepped on one, too." The dead cannot be denied their presence anywhere in Rwandan life, then or now. Time and again Gourevitch's narrative resonates with such revelations.

The author also pursues both perpetrator and persecuted to question them. He travels all the way to Texas to interview the Hutu minister who received the note from which the title was taken. There, in "an expensive-looking new community," he finds the man, indicted by the FBI for presiding over the slaughter of hundreds in his congregation. He denied everything, in terms eerily echoing claims from the Holocaust: "I never saw anything...I never went anywhere. I stayed at my office." Another man, the "Minister of Justice of Rwanda in exile" claims only Tutsis who sympathized with the RPF forces were killed. Did that include "the fetuses ripped from the wombs of Tutsis, after radio announcers had reminded listeners to take special care to disembowel pregnant victims?" asks Gourevitch. "Think about it," replies the minister. Let's say the Germans attack France, so France defends itself against Germany. They understand that all Germans are the enemy. The Germans kill women and children, so you do, too-"an answer that makes genocide the fault of the victims as well as the perpetrators. Once again, Gourevitch pops our eyes wide open.

Gourevitch's extensive interviews lead him straight through the tragedy of the past to the dilemma of the present. In the highlands of central Rwanda, he finds a woman who tells him "A certain Girumuhatse is back, a man who beat me during the war...This man threw me in a ditch after killing off my whole family. He's now at his house again...he asked my pardon." When Gourevitch confronts this admitted killer, the man denies responsibility, and blames his superiors: "The authorities understand that many just followed orders." That reply not only puts the lie to the "Never Again" buttons Gourevitch sees U.S. Holocaust Museum employees wearing, it puts a unique perspective on life in Rwanda: "Never before in modern memory had a people who slaughtered another people...been expected to live with the remainder of the people that was slaughtered...as one cohesive national society."

That mandate for coexistence has been enforced almost single-handedly by one of the most powerful men in Africa, Vice President Kagame. It was he who defeated the Hutu Majority forces, kept his forces from major retaliation, repatriated 600,00 Rwandans from Goma in four days, and ousted President Mobutu from then-Zaire. In a remarkable series of interviews with this remarkable man, Gourevitch throws light on the events listed above, the developing recovery, and the fleeting hope for Rwanda because this one man claims that "people can be made bad, and they can be taught to be good."

Gourevitch found little hope of that, and less reason in the almost-four years he spent forcing himself to look at the Rwandan catastrophe. Although he finds reason to blame France for supporting the Hutus, America for refusing to intervene, and international relief agencies for prolonging warfare by literally feeding the Hutu genocidaires, he fails to exhume the one compelling reason we all desire-why?. Solidarity with neighbors, a government trying to preserve itself, acquiescence by the slaughtered-none of these reasons, alone or together, answer that unfathomable question. Fortunately, his vivid portrait of the Rwandan plight articulates for us that question in ways we dare not ignore, just as Leontius could not ignore that pile of bodies. We do so only at the risk of reducing genocide to the level of a cheese sandwich, like the American officer said in a Rwandan bar: "What does anyone care about a cheese sandwich? Genocide, genocide, genocide. Cheese sandwich, cheese sandwich, cheese sandwich. Who gives a s---? Crimes against humanity. Where's humanity? Who's humanity? You? Me?...Hey, just a million Rwandans..."

800,000 actually, in 100 days, in 1994. But who's counting?

In Defense Of This Excellent Book, October 3, 2002
Several reviewers have lambasted this book for a variety of shortcomings: poorly written, poorly edited, he doesn't interview the right types of people, he talks too much about himself. I hope to briefly explain why I don't agree with ANY of these criticisms and hope that people will read this excellent book.

Poorly written/edited: I'm a writer/editor myself and the pages of this book flew through my fingers. I was totally absorbed. I found it well written, but if you're worried, I have a feeling the subject matter is so important, you wouldn't even notice if stylistically it wasn't your cup of tea.

Sources: He interviews the following types of people: Hutus who killed, Tutsis who were attacked, government officials of many countries, foreign aid workers. Don't believe the people who say he only interviews the power players and leaves out the voice of the common man. The hotel manager's (just a middle class Hutu who did what he thought was right) story is awesome and could make a movie as powerful as Schindler's List.

Too self-centered: Yes, Gourevitch brings in his own observations and experiences. I felt they were insightful and interesting. Part of his quest is to see how people deal with the genocide, how they internalize it and incorporate it into their existence. As an American going to Rwanda from New York to learn about this genocide, Gourevitch has an interesting perspective and I'm glad he didn't choose to bury it.

One more thing: Several reviews crticized a particular passage where he talks about the "postmodern war" of relativism versus right/wrong. These reviewers misunderstood the passage. He's not talking about the genocide itself, but he's talking about THE WAR OVER THE GENOCIDE. In other words, people who think genocide took place versus those who would deny it or call it something else (it was a war, many people were killed on both sides, etc). In my opinion Gourevitch is right on -- to call this event something other than genocide is either a case of denial or a relativistic fantasy -- nothing is wrong, it's all context. Yes the particular sentence was a little over the top, but these reviewers had a knee-jerk reaction to it that obscured their understanding of his prose.

This is not an objective book, but given the subject how could the author NOT be emotionally moved to make a judgment about people who would deny this event its importance in world history? I applaud his efforts.

Africa my Continent Why?, February 3, 2000
IN the province of Kibungo, in eastern Rwanda, near the Tanzanian border, there's a rocky hill called Nyarubuye, with a church where many Tutsis were slaughtered in April 1994. A year after the killing, I flew to Nyarubuye in a United Nations helicopter, low over the hills in the morning mists, with the banana trees like green starbursts dense over the slopes. The uncut grass blew back as we dropped into the centre of a parish schoolyard. A lone soldier materialised, and shook our hands with shy formality. I stepped up into the open doorway of a classroom. At least 50, mostly decomposed cadavers covered the floor, wadded in clothing, their belongings strewn about and smashed. Macheted skulls had rolled here and there. The dead looked like pictures of the dead. They did not smell. They did not buzz with flies. They had been killed 13 months earlier, and they hadn't been moved. Skin stuck here and there over the bones, many of which lay scattered from the bodies, dismembered by the killers, or by scavengers - birds, dogs, bugs. The more complete figures looked a lot like people, which they were once. A woman in a cloth wrap printed with flowers lay near the door. Her fleshless hip bones were high and her legs slightly spread, and a child's skeleton extended between them. Her torso was hollowed out. Her ribs and spinal column poked through the rotting cloth. Her head was tipped back and her mouth was open; a strange image - half agony, half repose. I had never been among the dead before. What to do? Look? Yes. I had come to see them. The dead had been left unburied at Nyarubuye for memorial purposes - and there they were, so intimately exposed. I didn't need to see them. I already knew, and believed, what had happened in Rwanda. Yet looking at the buildings and the bodies, and hearing the silence of the place, with the grand Italianate basilica standing there deserted, and the beds of exquisite, death-fertilised flowers blooming over the corpses, it was still strangely unimaginable. All this is common In Africa. But Why? Please buy this book

A great book about genocide, politics and humanity, March 2, 2005
Henry Kissinger was once asked why he invested so little time on Latin American diplomacy. His response was a sarcastic echo of Hitler's justification for the annexation of Czech Sudetenland: "South America is a dagger aimed at the heart of Antarctica."

And so it is with Rwanda, relegated to the interior of continent that is a geopolitical second-class citizen. At the same time Americans were building a museum to memorialize the Jewish Holocaust in World War II, our government, along with the U.N. bureaucracy and most of the rest of the world, was washing its hands of the blood in Rwanda.

Here is an exceptional piece of both political reporting and literature that brings light to a dark corner of modern history. If you're thinking about reading this book, I urge you to look at the reviews. Listen to what the readers are saying, the unanimity of feeling. It's so rare to see a review site where not one person trashes a book. And yet this book is so moving and powerful, I think it would take cynicism to the point of inhumanity to deny its impact.

I had read Romeo Dallaire's "Shake Hands with the Devil", which is a harrowing first-person account of the events in Rwanda. Dallaire was the commander of the woefully understaffed U.N. "peacekeeping" force, a force that could do little more than bear witness to the genocide that was unfolding around them. But if you have to read one book about Rwanda, it should be Peter Gourevitch's "We wish to inform you..."

It is not only difficult to put down because of its narrative force, but starting from the personal stories of genocide witnesses he is able to zoom out and see the larger picture in which the rest of the world is complicit. As Gourevitch observes, if what happened in Central Africa happened in Europe, it would have been considered a World War. Why were we so oblivious in the West? Are all men created equal?

To say it's a "must read" book really doesn't do it justice. You're denying yourself something important if you don't read it.

WARNING: Not for the faint of heart, February 13, 2005
PRODUCT ADVISORY--Do not read this book (or this review) if any of the following are true:

You have no stomach for descriptions of graphic violence and human cruelty.

You believe and want to keep believing that serious problems in faraway countries should always be handled by the U.N.

You cherish a belief that people are rational.

If any of those statements applies to you, you'll have serious issues with this book. It's not for the faint of heart or queasy of stomach, it forces the reader to come to terms with the ineffectiveness of international institutions, and, most importantly, it shows the full dark potential of man's cruel, brutish, irrational side.

Gourevitch's book is difficult to read but impossible to put down. He writes excellently and knowingly about a difficult topic many people chose to remain ignorant of: the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans over the space of a few short months in 1994.

Few people outside Rwanda realized what was happening until it was too late, and no one of consequence took any meaningful action to stop the massacres--the U.N. and the U.S., stung by their failure in Somalia less than a year before, sat on the sidelines. Meanwhile, mobs of Hutus, whipped into a frenzy by radio broadcasts spewing anti-Tutsi propaganda, hacked hundreds of thousands of people to death with machetes.

To his great credit, Gourevitch gets beyond statistics, facts and figures, telling stories that bring these events to life in horrifying, vivid detail. Readers feel the terror of Tutsis who had their Achilles tendons cut, who were left writhing in pain on the ground while their assailants ate, drank, and came back to kill them after dinner.

While writing this book, Gourevitch traveled extensively in Rwanda and elsewhere, even as the aftershocks of the massacre reverberated through the surrounding nations. This research paid off well, and he paints an indelible picture of a country and a region wracked by a massive human catastrophe. Indeed, "We Wish to Inform You" reads like a travelogue from hell, a visitor's guide to a blood-soaked patch of God's green earth where the perpetrators of genocide now live side by side with the friends and family of their victims.

Other reviewers have criticized this book for meandering too much after the initial descriptions of the massacres. These passages, though, work well to illustrate how the U.N., having sat on its hands during the killings, bungled their aftermath, and how the problems in Rwanda were ultimately best solved by Rwandans and other Africans. And that is perhaps the best and most surprising thing about Gourevitch's book; after all the bloodshed and all the killing and all the cruelty, it ends on a note of peace, optimism--and humanity.

A powerful and prizewinning book, February 10, 2005
This book has been very highly praised. Is it really that good? As far as I'm concerned, yes, it is.

That does not mean that those who want to learn something about the genocide in Rwanda ought to read this book and no others! But this book ought to be one of the ones that you do read.

Gourevitch explains that there really was a carefully planned genocide, in which about 800,000 of Rwanda's 900,000 Tutsis were slaughtered in about 100 days, decimating (reducing by 10%) the population of the country as a whole. He shows that many rather ordinary Rwandans carried out these murders, often with machetes. And there are a number of individual stories that make it all horrifyingly real to us readers. Although I often dislike an anecdotal approach to events, I think Gourevitch does a superb job with it.

There are numerous issues that beg to be discussed, and Gourevitch addresses them. He shows how the genocide was planned, he describes how it was accomplished, and he shows the extent of retaliation for it. Throughout, he manages to keep his moral compass. He properly dismisses excuses by the killers that there was nothing they could do, or that they were merely following orders, or merely giving orders. Nor does he try to make the intentional attempt to get rid of all Tutsis equivalent to incidents in a war to conquer or liberate parts of Rwanda.

Some of the issues Gourevitch raises deal with responsibility of other nations. Where was the UN in all of this? Or France? Or the United States? He points out that there is a Genocide Convention whose premise is "that a moral imperative to prevent efforts to exterminate whole peoples should be the overriding interest animating the action of an international community of autonomous states." Germany was indeed conquered in 1945, its leaders were brought to justice, the country was then reconstructed. Does the international community have the same attitude about similar threats today? Obviously not. In fact, France tended to support and arm the Hutu killers. The United Nations never obtained the authority to try to stop any of the atrocities. And the United States helped delay sending more UN forces, so that even had the UN decided to try to take action, it would have been unable to do so at the height of the massacres.

Rwanda is an overwhelmingly Catholic nation, and I wondered about the role of the Church in the genocide. After all, the killers and victims tended to be of the same religion. It was disappointing to discover how little the church leaders did to speak out against the killings, let alone stop them.

Of course, reading about such terrible inhumanity does make one wonder about our species as a whole. Are we humans really this awful? Well, yes, sometimes we are. But this book also left me with a feeling of hope and a sense that we can do much better. I think the book made me realize that if we were to show just a little more respect for truth and human rights and pay just a little more attention to events, we would be likely to avoid tragedies such as this one.

Modern Atrocities, October 28, 2001
Gourevitch's book is a gut-wrenching account of the 1994 genocide on the part of the Hutu government to kill 800,000 Tutsi neighbors, not because of the graphic nature but because of the complacency and ignorance of the rest of the world while this was happening. Gourevitch seems personally affected by the genocide, particularly when western nations 1) not only could have stopped the genocide but also 2) aided the Hutus in refugee camps.

Gourevitch's blame falls on the Clinton Administration, the UN and General Kofi Annan and France. The fact that massacres were going to take place, he claims, was within the knowledge of all these different powers even before the massacre occurred.

The bulk of Gourevitch's book is interviews with a cross-section of the Rwandan public who displayed courage, as well as those who didn't.

The theme of genocide progresses throughout the book but then becomes subsumed in a narrative of various relief efforts with names that are difficult to keep track of (RPF, FAR, UNAMIR, etc.)

Gourevitch writes as a journalist, and it differs in many ways from scholarly articles such as "Beyond Nuremberg" by David Cohen, which I read previous to We Wish To Inform You. In trying to draw parallel themes, I found that Gourevitch was seeking to expose how the murder of the Tutsis in Rwanda was carried out even more methodically than the Nazis' Final Solution. His point is particularly disconcerting after having read about the complex legalities of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals, only to have another genocide occur 50 years later, largely ignored by the public. Gourevitch's book effectively changes this, and brings the atrocities in Rwanda to the public, where they can no longer be ignored.

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic, May 23, 2002
As Joseph Stalin stated: "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

I picked up Gourvitch's book on my way to Rwanda. I was sent on a humanitarian medical mission to help the government upgrade what was left of a ravaged, dilapidated, central hospital's medical system.

This book was my first read during my two week stay in Rwanda/Kigali. Unnerving, I was reading it while I sumptuously dined at the only five star hotel. I just finished my meal when I got to the part where Gourvitch mentions that it was at this hotel that scores of killing and atrocities occurred. Distressing.

Later, the next weekend, after I finished the book, I went to a hotel disco and the dance floor was full of Hutus and Tutsis dancing together. Very bizarre, for my Western mind to grasp, considering that just eight years ago 99.9% of those on the dance floor witnessed violence, 79.6% experienced death in their family and 57.7% watched the gore of killing or maiming with machetes. Not to mention how many were victims themselves or how many were perpetrators.

In this outstanding book, Philip Gourvitch lays it all out, and it is brutal and gruesome. His writing is forceful and forthright. He directly indites the U.S. and Europe, citing their deliberate indifference to the genocide. He writes, "Rwanda had presented the world with the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews, and the world sent blankets, beans and bandages ... hoping that everyone would behave nicely in the future. Especially damning is France's complicity with the Hutus.

There are a few areas of shortcomings. The lack of an index and noticeable is Philip Gourvitch remiss to lay any blame at the door step of any of the African nations for their disengagement.

Also, if you selected this book, hoping to have a rational and sane answer for how and why this insanity happened, how 1,000,000 people could be hacked to death by friends, family, teachers, physicians and coworkers in 100 days; you will come away empty handed.

But, this is not a shortcoming of Philip Gourvitch book. For there can never be adequate explanation for such demonic decimation. The genocide of Rwanda, the base brutality, the inhumanity, the cries and pleading prayers of the victims and the vacuum of morality and compassion have made these actions uncircumscribible.

Finally, this book should be read in several sittings. The despairing denseness of the inhumane acts are too heavy to be comprehended without breaks, ie "Hutus young and old rose to the task. Neighbors hacked neighbors to death in their home and colleague hacked colleague to death in their work place. Doctors killed their patients, and school teachers killed their pupils.. Highly Recommended. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

A very thorough and enlightening book, April 7, 2000
This book, written by a Pakistani journalist, takes us inside Afghanistan and the Taliban. The author's deep knowledge of the land - its terrain and people - is impressive. I must say the history of Afghanistan is quite interesting, not to mention the wide variety of ethnic groups that I never knew existed. From a land of high art and culture in Buddist times, Afghanistan has devolved to its present state of lawlessness. Far from being a simplistic, organic development, the rise of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement in this country has complex origins, location and history being key factors. I found the pace of writing clear and engaging. Whatever you may think of the Taliban, this is a very informative book. Highly recommended.

A Fascinating Study, September 23, 2001
Ahmed Rashid's book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and the Fundamentalism in Central Asia" is an excellent book for those who would like to understand the Taliban, its background, rise to power as well as US and Pakistan's support of the fundamentalist regime. Published in 2000, it is a very timely book given the tragedy of the World Trade Center plane attacks on September 11th.

The main factor contributing to the strength of the book is Rashid's extensive access to Afghanistan and key players who have shaped the policy of the country. He has spent the better portion of the last 21 years in the country and knows it intimately. Although himself Pakistani, he is very critical of his country's role (and that of the the United States)in nurturing the most radical elements in the Afghan opposition that fought the Soviet Union in the 1980's as well as the Taliban. The most important chapter of the book for our purposes today is Chapter 10 which deals with the rise of Osama bin Laden in the context of the Afghan-Soviet war and US/Pakistani support of the opposition.

Rashid explains in detail American support for the ISI's involvement in drug trafficking as a means to raise money for the anti-Soviet resistance. He laments the American-Pakistani practice of consistent and unwavering support for the most radical elements in the Afghan opposition, virtually ignoring the more moderate opposition. The result: thousands of radical Muslims, armed and trained by The US and Pakistan, sparking "holy wars" against countries deemed anti-Muslim. As I re-read the book after the terrible attack on the US on September 11th, I couldn't help but be disappointed with the lack of foresight the United States policy-makers had in supporting these radicals. Particular blame, in my view, must be meeted out to Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, in his pathological anti-Soviet and anti-Russian passions, went to great lengths in the 80's to push the US to support the Mujahideen radicals. His misguided policies violently bore their fruits in New York and Washington on September 11th.

Rashid also does a great job untangling the web of oil and gas pipelines that lie at the heart of the world's interest in the Central Asian Republics of the former USSR and Afghanistan. The post Cold War American policy of eliminating Russian and Iranian influence in Central Asia has lead to the US Administration to support, without giving formal diplomatic recognition, to the Taliban. The reason for this, Rashid explains, is to circumvent Iranian and Russian territory and lay gas and oil pipelines through Afghanistan and Pakistan for eventual Western consumption. Again Pakistan is a key ally for the US in this venture, along with Turkey.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book are the Stone Age social practices of the Taliban, including their horrific treatment of women. In his appendix he lists most of the decrees the Taliban issued regarding these policies.

In sum, I highly recommend this book to all those interested in a timely, in depth analysis of one of the most repressive regimes in the world and the complex politics of the great powers that make Central Asia the next hot spot of the world.

Journalistic, but thorough, August 14, 2001
Rashid is successful in collating a massive amount of information into a well-organized, readable book. Although at times journalistic, with glib analysis at the end of his quasi-historical recitation, this book gives a thorough accounting of all the players and interests that have brought Afghanistan to where it is today. It is useful as a single volume that recounts the rise of the Taliban that is concise and clear. Rashid is a veteran journalist who has covered Afghanistan for years. His connections and interviews from all aspects of Afghani politics and society give the book a depth that as been hard for other books to accomplish.

Sources and appendices are excellent. The organization of the book is in three main parts: 1) 'History of the Taliban Movement,' which is a useful recounting of the Taliban's rise in a chronological fashion. The five chapters each represent one year; 2) 'Islam and the Taliban' explores the origin and nature of the Taliban in thought and practice in the context of other Muslim movements, how it is organized, how it functions in making decisions, and how it administers policy socially and militarily; 3) 'The New Great Game' treats all of the international actors' behaviors and motivations, and the consequences for Afghanistan.

Although his perspectives of all of the relevant actors -the Taliban, the anti-Taliban factions, the UN, regional countries, Western powers, oil companies, Russia- are undeniably put forth for the reader, they only enhance the educational value of the book. Rashid is highly successful in imparting the motivations and values of all the ethnic and religious tensions in Afghani society, and their interlinkages (and the consequent perspectives and involvement of foreign nations with the various contending forces). The paradox of the Taliban's Pashtuni ethnic primacy and cosmic vision of Islam is treated quite well.

Rashid also gives an almost too thorough treatment of the Unocal/Bridas competition over natural gas fields and pipeline politics in Central Asia. The linkages of international politics and the effects on and of the Afghani civil war is outlined as well. The chapter on Osama bin-Laden is excellent. No actor is spared from Rashid's critique. He is very successful at presenting the motivations and worldview of all the different players. There are some points worth quibbling about, such as an adequate presentation of who makes foreign policy decisions in Iran, but the overall effect is successful.

The "New Great Game" may or may or may not turn out to be as impactful as Rashid puts forth. How relevant power competition may be in the region is something that will be played out over time, depending on the energy resources of the region, and the region's ability to achieve some modicum of political stability. Robert A. Manning's critique of this is useful [see: "The Asian Energy Factor" (2000)]. Rashid does not hesitate to illustrate the linkages between the CIA and the ISI, and the intendant consequences of Pakistani machinations and American involvement and indifference in Afghanistan over the years.

Rashid does not overly dwell on making predictions, but a couple of his points are useful: the backlash of Taleban politics into Pakistan; and the internal fragmentation and implosion of the Taleban will probably be the source of its decline, rather than a civil uprising or sudden military success of the Northern Alliance.

I would hesitate before labelling Rashid as some biased, "anti-Talibaner;" anyone who is literate and concerned with human welfare, Muslim or non-Muslim, has every right to be appalled by the situation in Afghanistan.

The best single book I've found about the Taliban., October 11, 2001
I've read several books about Afghanistan and the Taliban since Sept. 11, and if I had to choose just one to recommend, this would be it. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakastani journalist , so he brings a different perspective to this whole awful situation than a US or British author might. He understands the area in a way that people from other parts of the world probably never will, and brings many years of experience to the subject. However, he appears to be very objective in his descriptions, and shows where the actions of many different countries have led to the situation that Afghanistan finds itself in now. Although the book was written in 2000, it is extremely informative in our present crisis. Several other reviewers here have done a good job of describing the parts of the book, so I won't do that again, but I would like to mention the last chapter of the book which summarizes the events that have led Afghanistan to the situation it is in, points out how difficult it will be to solve its problems and discusses how important it is to achieve peace in Afghanistan. I think that this chapter ought to be required reading for all Americans as we go into war. His prophetic closing sentence is "The stakes are extremely high."

I'd also recommend two other books for those who are interested in learning more: The Taliban: War, Religion and the New Order in Afghanistan, by Peter Marsden, and The New Jackals: Ramsi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism, by Simon Reeve.

Opening eyes in a time of blind hatred, September 29, 2001
Very few, I doubt, will be disappointed with Rashid's latest offering - especially those wanting an in depth look at why bombing Afghanistan is unlikely to be successful in the war against terrorism.

I read Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia (UK version) when it first came out in early 2000 and found it extremely thought provoking. I read it again after the New York bombings and now believe it is the best intro on the market.

His analysis is prefect for the international reader trying to get to grips with an unknown entity. It should be. He's a very well respected South Asia journalist and one of the few who've actually been there since day the Soviet tanks rolled in. His contacts in the region are unparalleled.

To be sure, everyone comes out of this book looking bad - in particular the Saudis, the Pakistani government's of Zia-ul-Haq/Bhutto(s) and the United States. You're left feeling extremely sorry for the ordinary Afghani who has been a pawn in a grotesque game of chess played between the major powers for as long as anyone can remember. But domestic history and tribal rivalries also play a huge part.

As the title suggests, there are three parts to the book. To set the stage, Rashid gives a detailed account of Afghanistan's miserable history since the revolution in 1973. It details bitter infighting between various tribal and religious groups in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal, the civil war that ensued when President Najibullah was deposed and the rise of the Taliban out of religious schools in Pakistan. It's ugly, full of horrifying images and not in the least bit afraid of telling the story as he saw it, right there in front of his eyes.

Rashid then goes on to give the international reader an insight into the inner workings of the Taliban movement from various angles -: its interpretation of the Koran, its social policies, its reliance on revenue from the drugs trade (a Pakistani/CIA invention) and its relationship with international terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. The accounts are factual, not judgemental - ideal for those who want to make up their own mind.

The final seventy pages are a delight for Great Game fans since Rashid dives deep into the dark seedy world of international politics, the oil industry and how Afghanistan was/is a buffer between the competing interests of a vast array of players such as Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United States and many, many others including Argentina ... yes Argentina.

It ends with an almost melancholy plea on behalf of ordinary Afghanis. Leave us alone to run our own country is the message. After reading its 244 pages you'll probably agree.

My own belief is that Peter Hopkirk's book `The Great Game' might actually be a better place to start. Hopkirk's classic is a one-in-a-million trip through the Anglo-Soviet `Cold War' of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the blood-curdling Afghan wars and the race to colonise what are now known as the central Asian republics. Is it any wonder people are full of loathing for interfering foreigners?

The only difference these days is that the British have dropped out of sight - except for the SAS that is.

Excellent, relevant--find it and read it!, October 3, 2001
I bought this on September 11th--barely beating the rush, and read it immediately. Now it is in demand, and maybe hard to get. But persevere, buy it and read it: it is a great book. It explains so much about Central Asian and Middle Eastern politics, NGOs, international competition for oil, the drug industry, smuggling, terrorism, al-Qaeda, and the origins of the Afghan refugee problem that bothers Iran, Pakistan, Thailand and Australia so much. If you know nothing about these things, this book explains them without assuming much prior knowledge; but if you are an expert I suspect you will still learn a few things.

The book covers from the Cold War until the year 2000; it obviously does not talk about the recent death of the opposition's leader or the ramifications of the attack on America. It does explain a little of Afghanistan's ancient and medieval history and culture as well.

People have asked me what the author's slant is; I honestly don't know. Although he does tell about American policies, it is not ... especially anti-American or anti-Western; nor is it anti-Arab, anti-Islam, anti-Iranian, anti-Soviet or -Russian, or anti-Pakistan. Rashid says what everyone did, in pages filled with facts, rather than laying the blame at anyone's feet in particular.

I am not widely read in this area, but I suspect that since it is so recent and especially relevant to recent events, this is the book you're looking for. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A Must Read For Understanding The 911 Devastation, October 4, 2001
Ahmed Rashid spent over 20 years as a reporter in Pakistan/Afghanistan. He has written a 216 page book filled with facts concerning the history, politics and culture of the Taliban, Terroism and American Oil Companies. Mr Rashid reports in a clear and organized style about events between 1978-1999 in this part of the world in the context of the history of the Middle East. His insights and reporting are both surprising and informative. He covers religious and political groups and factions and sects as only someone who has lived in this part of the world could do. It is amazing how he is able to present a straight-forward and intelligble account of so complex a situation. He deals with international intrigue by American Oil Companies, about the treatment of women, about Pakistan's and Saudi Arabia's support of the Taliban. Each and every chapter of this book contains valuable information to anyone interest in understanding how a small, unknown and uneducated group of religious Islamic extremist could assist in the destruction of the WTC on 911 and threathen the financial security of many Western economies. Turn off CNN, put down the Times and sit down to read a book which will provide an important framework for dealing with the problems we face today.

Out of the "information loop" on the Taliban? Read this!, September 24, 2001
If recent events have made you feel that you need to know more, this book will definitely fill the bill and is written in a clear, accessible style. Written by a Pakistani journalist who is familar with Afghanistan and the realities of living in a harsh terrain, the history of the country and culture, the book is both engaging and enlightening. I thought I was "reasonably" informed about people and events in that area of the world until I read this book. Afterwards, I realized that the rise of Islam Fundamentalists depended not only on the social and cultural history I knew about but on smaller details I didn't (but which the author provides) including art, environment, class, economics and more.

Enlightening guide to this mysterious movement, June 28, 2000
Ahmed Rashid writes a seemingly objective analysis of this fascinating movement. Throughout history when looking at the start of a movement it is never a simple result of one man leading a people. Movements and people are thrust to the fore by circumstance. Rashid does an excellent job of explaining these circumstances and the results of Pakistan's and America's approaches to Afghanistan. I wasn't aware of the extent of oil influence in Afghanistan.

I was working in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1991-2 and remember the hope of my Afghan pupils when the Communists were finally defeated in Kabul. A six year old pupil gave me a note one morning with "Afghanistan is free" in Pushtu. A short while later these hopes were dashed as the civil war continued and people in the camps near me were resigned to calling Pakistan home. We started to see new refugees in Peshawar, affluent Kabulis with their left-hand drive cars.

Sadly a beautiful people of a beautiful country have been permanently damaged by the continual selfish interests of various groups. Compromise for the sake of the country and the future has never been considered.

Afghanistan: Sterai mashai

Comprehensive background to recent events, November 24, 2001
Anyone who wades through the detail-laden and sometimes turgid prose that comprises *Taliban* will end up far more knowledgeable about Afghanistan and southern Asian politics generally than could possibly result from mere exposure to the usual, highly filtered news sources upon which we usually depend. What's most interesting about *Taliban* is that it is written from a non-Western, and especially non-American point of view. Consequently, the author makes apparent that although the United States has blundered in its policies toward southern Asia, most of the principal causes of the problems in the region have to do with autonomous dynamics and conflicts with lengthy histories that have little or nothing to do with U.S. actions.

Rashid first covers the history and trajectory of the Taliban movement up through 1999 or so, and then circles back to discuss various particular themes related to the rise and reign of this peculiar and in many ways frightening religious movement. These include their draconian and inhumanly strict social agenda (particularly their horrendous treatment of women), the role of the drug trade and smuggling generally in Afghani (and Pakistani) society, the roles of various religious and ethnic factions within the conflicts afflicting the region, the wider set of geopolitical conflicts involving Afghanistan's neighboring nations plus the larger powers such as Russia and the U.S., and the important (and in the context of the post-September 11 war, suspicious) role of oil and gas-related intrigue in the dynamics of the region.

All of these topics are treated carefully and analytically by Rashid, who offers thoughtful criticism of just about all parties involved in the current mess. Being Pakastini himself, he has perhaps the harshest words for his own government(s), who clearly were responsible for the rise of the Taliban beginning in 1994. Rashid places Pakistani support for the Taliban within a broader campaign to increase Pakistan's influence in the region. Unfortunately, as the author points out, the Taliban has ultimately exerted more influence and control over Pakistan's domestic situation than the Pakistanis have been able to exert over Mullah Omar and the rest of the Taliban.

The United States certainly is shown to share in the blame for the current problems afflicting Afghanistan. It is well-known that the anti-Soviet war that began in 1979 was largely supported by the U.S. in proxy fashion through the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency. After the Soviets left in 1989, however, the Americans simply lost interest in the Afghani situation and when civil war and chaos emerged the Americans did virtually nothing to help ameliorate Afghanistan's woes. When the Taliban emerged in 1994 as a "stabilizing influence" for a war-torn nation, the Americans first considered supporting them, partly because it was believed the Taliban might be amenable to overtures by Unocal to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. Only when the Taliban clearly showed its misogynist, barbaric character did the Clinton administration finally begin to condemn them. By that time these "religious students" were already harboring Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda henchmen, thus setting the stage for the events of September 11 and since.

Overall, *Taliban* is a fascinating but certainly depressing tale
of international and interethnic politics at its real-life worst. What emerges is a picture in which every nation, every religious denomination, every economic faction, and every ethnic group apparently acts purely out of short-term self-interest, with virtually no one exhibiting a willingness to respect the bigger, longer term picture or the "greater good." The American bombing campaign to drive the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan may seem heavy-handed and brutal, but within the context of the broader historical picture as portrayed by Rashid, it's apparently merely the latest version of "business as usual" in south Asian politics. ... Read more

Editorial Review

In a critically acclaimed, well-researched attack on legal regulations and bureaucratic red tape, a corporate lawyer shows how rules interfere with common sense and have taken away citizens' power to make decisions. Reprint. National ad/promo. NYT. ... Read more

Editorial Review

In this brilliant short book, Britain's former senior law lord, and one of the world's most acute legal minds, makes clear that the rule of law is not an arid legal doctrine but is the foundation of a fair and just society, is a guarantee of responsible government, is an important contribution to economic growth and offers the best means yet devised for securing peace and co-operation. He also discusses the strains imposed on the rule of law by the threat and experience of international terrorism. ... Read more

Reviews

A short book that everyone should read - particularly now., March 28, 2010
In this timely and useful book Tom Bingham (Britain's former senior Law Lord) explains in Part 1 the sources of present British law from the Magna Carta onwards, and in Part 2 discusses the key parts of the present day British system also referencing U.S. law.
It's a short and handy book that I keep close by, to check on for example, the legal meaning of, "Equality Before the Law" or "A Fair Trial".
Part 3 is a first rate exposition of the Rule of Law and the Sovereignty of Parliament (parliament takes priority) and Terrorism and the Rule of Law (a "War on Terror" isn't a real war in the WW2 sense). It becomes more than clear that this particular "War" has seriously curtailed basic Human Rights with regard to torture, detention without trial, kidnapping and the right to privacy (phone tapping without judicial order).
I highly recommend this book (BTW Tom Bingham isn't a terrorist).

Fine study of what the rule of law means in practice, November 19, 2010
Tom Bingham, Lord Chief Justice 1996-2008, presents eight parts of the rule of law: The law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable. Questions of legal right and liability should ordinarily be resolved by application of the law and not the exercise of discretion. Laws should apply equally to all, unless objective differences justify differentiation. Ministers and public officers at all levels must exercise the powers conferred on them in good faith, fairly, for the purpose for which the powers were conferred, without exceeding the limits of such powers and not unreasonably. The law must afford adequate protection of fundamental human rights. Means must be provided for resolving, without prohibitive cost or inordinate delay, bona fide civil disputes which the parties themselves are unable to resolve. Adjudicative procedures provided by the state should be fair. The rule of law requires compliance by the state with its obligations in international law as in national law.

The European Convention on Human Rights (1950) was effected here by the Human Rights Act (1998). It says, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." (The US Bill of Rights bans the infliction of `cruel and unusual punishments'.) It bans slavery and forced labour - -even for benefits. It asserts the rights to life, liberty and security, to a fair trial, and to respect for privacy and family life. It upholds freedom of thought, conscience, religion, expression, assembly and association.

Article 1 of its Protocols protects: "Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law. ... The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of the State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties." Article 2 asserts the right to education.

Bingham argues that "The rule of law requires that the law afford adequate protection of fundamental human rights." A Constitution is not enough, nor is a merely rhetorical commitment to the rule of law.

He looks at terrorism's impact on the rule of law and urges that our responses be lawful, not a mimicry of the terrorists' actions. He warns, "it cannot be said that the UK has shown that implacable opposition to torture and its fruits which might have been expected of the state whose courts led the world in rejecting them both. In a sequel to the Belmarsh case ... the Government argued that evidence obtained by torture abroad without the complicity of the British authorities could be considered by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a contention which the House of Lords unanimously and strongly rejected."

Finally, he states, "The invasion of Iraq was `a serious violation of international law and of the rule of law'.

why we are ruled by The Rule of Law, March 29, 2010
Judge Bingham has done a brilliant job of collecting and explaining the sources of The Rule of Law in Britain and America, and how that has led both countries to expect or champion governments of laws, not of men, both at home and abroad.
Judge Dallas Holmes ... Read more

Editorial Review

A distinguished and experienced appellate court judge, Richard A. Posner offers in this new book a unique and, to orthodox legal thinkers, a startling perspective on how judges and justices decide cases. When conventional legal materials enable judges to ascertain the true facts of a case and apply clear pre-existing legal rules to them, Posner argues, they do so straightforwardly; that is the domain of legalist reasoning. However, in non-routine cases, the conventional materials run out and judges are on their own, navigating uncharted seas with equipment consisting of experience, emotions, and often unconscious beliefs. In doing so, they take on a legislative role, though one that is confined by internal and external constraints, such as professional ethics, opinions of respected colleagues, and limitations imposed by other branches of government on freewheeling judicial discretion. Occasional legislators, judges are motivated by political considerations in a broad and sometimes a narrow sense of that term. In that open area, most American judges are legal pragmatists. Legal pragmatism is forward-looking and policy-based. It focuses on the consequences of a decision in both the short and the long term, rather than on its antecedent logic. Legal pragmatism so understood is really just a form of ordinary practical reasoning, rather than some special kind of legal reasoning.

Supreme Court justices are uniquely free from the constraints on ordinary judges and uniquely tempted to engage in legislative forms of adjudication. More than any other court, the Supreme Court is best understood as a political court.

Reviews

Judges Rule: Are American Judges Political or Pragmatic?, April 17, 2008
Richard Posner, one of America's leading Legal Scholars, has breathtaking range: from Aging (Aging and Old Age) and Intelligence (Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society)) to Sex (Sex and Reason) and Terrorism (Countering Terrorism: Blurred Focus, Halting Steps). In this book Posner returns to one of the main themes of his scholarship - the failure of Formalist judging and the possibility of Pragmatism as an alternative. This is a recurring theme for Posner (see my reviews of "Sex and Reason" and Overcoming Law, and especially Posner's The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory) and one on which he can speak from experience: He's a Judge of the US Court of Appeal for the 7th Circuit.

Posner's book is a collection of articles published elsewhere; Its main theme is constructed from Law articles, a survey of the Supreme Court's 2004 term, various book reviews, and even, I think, Blog posts. The end product offers fascinating discussions of many topics, but it feels somewhat disjoint, as if Posner was constantly being sidetracked, albeit in interesting directions.

Posner's main argument, one that would find no disagreement from me, is that American Judges are not Formalists. Formalists argue that legal decisions are (or should be) made in an algorithmic fashion - that there is only one right answer, and that it is independent of the Judge's personality and politics.

That judicial decisions are not Formally determinable, at least in the most interesting cases, has been argued for centuries. Posner demolishes some of the tropes of Formalism old ("reasoning by analogy" pp. 181-190) and new-ish ("Originalism" pp. 343-345) and offers statistical evidence that US judges are not Formalist: the opinions of judges appointed by Democratic administrations differ from those of Republican appointed ones.

But if judges are not Formalist, what are they? Are there only two choices - Formalist(unfeasible in many cases) or political (As Justice Scalia suggests in an article titled "Originalism - the Lesser Evil")? In this and other writing, Posner offers an alternative: Pragmatism.

Pragmatism can help constrain Judges and decide cases in ways that would not seem to be political. A Posnerian Pragmatist should judge cases in which the Formalist apparatus breaks down in three ways:

First, in some fields there exists a "limited... field-specific ideological consensus" (p. 373). In contracts and torts, property law and bankruptcy law - the traditional domains of the Common Law - the basic ideological issues are agreed upon. Therefore judges can use instrumental reasoning as to how best achieve agreed upon goals.

Second, in areas upon which there is little consensus, such as Constitutional Law, the Posnerian Judge would be a minimalist. Subjecting oneself to Oliver Wendell Holmes's " "Puke Test" - a statue is unconstitutional only if it makes you want to throw up... a conviction of error is not enough - there must be revulsion" (p. 288). Judges would be mostly deferential to the "political" branches.

The third, most interesting element of Posner's Jurisprudence is the reliance on Social Science. Posner believes that by immersing oneself in the facts of the case, and in relevant scientific knowledge, one can sometimes transcend the personal dimension of the decision. Essentially, the social sciences can help move an issue from the second category - that of contested moral principles - to the first, thus achieving
an "apolitical" or Pragmatic, ruling.

Pragmatism is not a cure all for legal dilemmas; They can have more than one pragmatic answer. Take the Kelo case (Kelo v. City of New London, pp. 314-320). New London used its power of "eminent domain", forcing landowners to sell land to it at market prices, and then gave the land for public contractors to use in an urban development project. This appropriation of private property was understandably unpopular among owners, who probably estimated the land at a higher value than its market value - otherwise, they would have sold it willingly.

The economic justification for thus appropriating land is the `hold out' problem - sometimes, particular lots are necessary for a project. If they are, the owners, facing no competition, can hold out for a very high price. The power of "eminent domain" is thus an anti-monopoly device.

One pragmatic solution to the case would have been asking whether the situation in Kelo was a `hold out' situation. If so, justification existed for the use of the eminent domain. If not, its use was essentially subsidizing private contractors at the expense of the owners.

Instead of thus resolving the case, the Supreme Court refused to intervene in a political issue. That result, Posner reports, was a pragmatic triumph also. By refusing to defend owners against government action, the Court pushed owners to the public sphere, where they can fight the government's power "The responses of Congress and the states will constitute a series of social experiments from which much will be learned about the proper limits on eminent domain" (p. 319).

Is Posner's prognosis, limited as it is, only normative or also positive? Are US Judges really pragmatic? I think that, unfortunately, they are not. First, the Justices in the Kelo case showed little interest in the Social science behind the use of eminent domain. Application of social sciences in other cases is faulty and undisciplined (pp. 297-299). All the current Justices had been Court of Appeal Judges - did they forget their pragmatism when promoted? The Justices are not a representative sample of US judges, but is there any reason to think they are less empirically inclined?

Indeed, despite Posner's assurance that "Judges are curious about [social reality]... they want the lawyers to help them dig below the semantic surface." (p. 228), I wonder why we can't see that in practice. Law is a highly competitive business. If social science would give lawyers an edge in winning cases, one would think competition would teach lawyers how to use it. Factual, "Brandeis", briefs have been around... well, since Brandeis. Why aren't they making more of an effect?

My guess is that Posner is still an anomaly. Most American judges are not Pragmatists. Maybe we will "overcome law" some day, but we aren't there yet.

Brlliant and fun analysis of how judges actually decide cases, June 12, 2008
This man is *cold*. Fortunately for the reader, it is this icy wit that makes reading Posner's books such a joy. Watch how he rips into inconsistencies:

'In discussing a case that invalidated the exclusion of homosexuals from the military, Beatty approvingly remarks that the court "noted the lack of `concrete' and `actual or significant' evidence that allowing gay men to enlist in the armed forces would prejudice its morale, fighting power, or operational effectiveness in any way." He does not require that there be "concrete" and "actual or significant" evidence that homosexuals are harmed by the exclusion. Nor is he bothered by a lack of concreteness when he says that "laws that establish a broadcasting spectrum [must] guarantee that the full spectrum of opinion in the community will be heard." What is "the full spectrum" of opinion, and who is to decide? Must every lunatic have access to a broadcast studio? Beatty contends that government has a constitutional duty to subsidize religious schools but "may make funding conditional on religious schools agreeing to teach the same curriculum that is used in state-run schools." If the curriculum is identical, in what sense are they religious schools?' (internal footnotes omitted)

The point, here as throughout How Judges Think, is to drive a spear into the side of judicial and scholarly hypocrisy. The particular target here, Beatty, is no more or less hypocritical than the rest of us: judges and legal scholars, as much as anyone, pretend that their opinions are more than just opinions. Judges -- especially Supreme Court Justices -- have a fancy term for this, which we as Americans have come to sanctify as The One True Way Of Judging. The fancy term is `textualism' or `originalism' or (as Posner calls it) `legalism.' Legalism is meant to keep the judges out of judging: they're supposed to read the facts of the case, read the relevant precedents, read the text of any relevant statutes, maybe read the legislative history, then decide the case syllogistically. A judge becomes an automaton lacking independent will. This is supposed to keep politics out of the court, and keep us closer to the ideal of "a nation of laws, not men." The law, after all, shouldn't depend on who's enforcing it. This isn't the way actual judges or actual courts work, says Posner; he spends the next 350 pages crisply and efficiently taking down any number of legalist conceptions of judging. He replaces them with his own description of how judging actually works.

Judges also don't spend much time at all deliberating -- at least not in groups. A judge may be internally conflicted over a case, and at times he may actually change his mind on the basis of what others say. But not normally. Normally -- like poor Mr. Beatty, above -- he's either deliberately or subconsciously deploying judicial reasoning, or the appearance of judicial reasoning, in the service of what he already believes to be true. The ultimate source of judicial opinion is emotion: the race you were born into, the economic class you inhabit, whether you worked as a prosecutor or a defense attorney before you reached the Court.

If judges find sophisticated-sounding justifications for conclusions that they reached at the start, what's to stop them from running totally off the rails? Why can't a judge say whatever he wants? Here Posner walks through the range of `judges' -- from paid arbitrators through Federal appellate-court judges, all the way to the Supreme Court. An arbitrator has certain economic motivations: if he's known as thorough and unbiased, he'll get more business; if he tends to land on compromises that make both sides happy, he'll get still more. District court judges are subject to review by the appellate courts. Federal appellate judges have life tenure, insulating them from public opinion -- but they're subject to review by the Supreme Court. Supreme Court Justices themselves have a cushy job with limited caseloads and no possibility of review. So where do Supreme Court justices get *their* constraints? The public: if the Court veers too far into cloud cuckoo land, it can expect that the people will revolt and clamor for overriding legislation. The Supreme Court still has constraints.

Judges are "constrained pragmatists," in Posner's terminology. They must choose among conflicting interpretations of the common-law and statute history; a pragmatist chooses by considering the consequences of each interpretation in the light of the law's *intent*, if not its wording. A pragmatic judge doesn't get overly bogged down in the words of the law, when those words are an imperfect guide to what the law was supposed to achieve. This sounds similar to objectives-based regulation: specify the outcome and the intent, and focus less on the implementation. The realization behind this is that society changes quickly, and laws that fixate on the present moment's circumstances will quickly become obsolete.

This was the weakest part of Posner's argument: legislation, says Posner, moves more slowly than the courts do, so it's natural to place some of the burden of its interpretation on the courts. The process of amending the Constitution is tortuous, but Posner never makes it clear why this is a bad thing, or whether legislators actually desire to make the judicial branch a second branch of execution. Posner's argument isn't absurd. Even pragmatist judges operate under constraints, after all: if they strike down perfectly constitutional legislation, remedies up to impeachment are theoretically available. And the public has been trained to be on the lookout for `activist judges'. But to base a large part of the argument for pragmatism on a bare assertion that "it works out better that way for everyone" is odd.

His analyses of how a pragmatist would resolve any number of cases are fascinating. Take the Kelo case, for instance, which allowed the city of New London, Connecticut to seize land by eminent domain for private development. A pragmatist assesses a claim of eminent domain by looking at the original intent of the law, and the economic consequences of granting or withholding the seizure right. The original intent, says Posner, was to prevent individual people from holding a big public-works project hostage: if I'm building a several-thousand-mile-long road, everyone in its path knows that their cooperation is vital. They have, in other words, something like monopoly power, and they can demand exorbitant sale prices for their land. If there's no danger of "holdouts," as these are called, there's no reason to grant the state eminent domain. Moreover, a pragmatist would examine the consequences of granting eminent domain in these cases, would realize that the market is better able to assign just compensation to land sales than the state itself is, and would in effect hand the case over to the market for resolution.

A pragmatist judge, it seems to me, is expected to exercise remarkable foresight. Not only must he know enough about the common and statute law to genuflect appropriately at the law's majesty, but now he must also be able to guess the long-term consequences of a particular taking. This means he must be rather thoroughly educated in economics and statistics. Posner might reply here that it's six of one, half-dozen of another: a non-pragmatist judge only has to convert his gut feelings into the language of precedent, but the outcome of this simpler process is decidedly worse than what a pragmatist -- with his wider scope -- comes up with. If I have Posner right, there's little evidence for this claim in How Judges Think. Indeed, Posner repeatedly critiques judges for a lack of interest or skill in the exact sciences. So what's to make us think that an unschooled pragmatist judge would come up with better decisions overall? Maybe "unschooled pragmatist" is a contradiction in terms?

This reliance on economics, statistics, and science makes it all the more jarring when Posner throws down bare assertions -- as, for instance, when he asserts (p. 306) that the "total misery of the wrongly convicted was not lessened" when the Court increased the rights of criminal defendants in the '60's. Total misery decreases if the average wrongly convicted defendant spends less time in jail, or if fewer people are wrongly convicted to begin with. Posner asserts (with evidence) that defendants spent more time in jail after the '60's, in part because of a legislative backlash against the courts. (It could also be because violent crime increased. Posner himself doesn't engage in much convincing heavy-duty statistical analysis, though he cites plenty.) For his claim to hold, he has to show that the probability of wrongful conviction didn't fall enough to compensate for increased jail time. This he does not do. In general, the pretensions of economists invite skepticism during their falls from the empiricist wagon.

One final note from Posner that I found especially interesting: academics, he says, have grown increasingly distant from the actual practice of judging. One consequence is that law students learn the very artificial academic view of how judicial decisions are made. Law students, in a word, are trained to be legalists. They come to expect that judges are the automata they read about in class. Students learn that if they want to convince judges of anything, all they need to do is read a long litany of precedent; the judge will be forced, through logic alone, to accept their conclusions. They import this conceit into the courtroom and get nowhere with it. If legal academia were more in line with how judging actually worked, law students would learn to address judges pragmatically. As it is, even a decorated legal scholar like Larry Lessig -- a man who clerked for Scalia and Posner, in fact -- didn't understand quite how to talk to Supremes:

"Here was a case that pitted all the money in the world against *reasoning*. And here was the last na�ve law professor, scouring the pages, looking for reasoning."

Posner the Judge on How Judges Think, June 7, 2008
I found this to be a very significant volume by Judge Posner, since he is writing on several of his strongest areas--legal philosophy, American judges, and theories of judicial decision-making. As the title indicates, this is an enormous topic and even to cover all of Posner's topics in a brief review is impossible. But this is what he is up to:

First, he wants to review existing explanatory theories of judicial behavior: the attitudinal; sociological; economic; organizational; pragmatic; legalistic; and policy choice. Posner here seeks to demonstrate that no one of these theories can wholly explain judicial behavior, and that some other approach he suggests is better suited to do the job.

Posner is quite a creative fellow, extremely well versed in a variety of literatures in addition to the legal. For example, he discusses judges as workers in the judicial system, quite an innovative approach. Next he focuses on judges as "occasional legislators" and what ideology a legislating judge employs. Unconscious preconceptions and intuitions are major topics in this discussion. Posner then shifts to what external and internal constraints limit judicial freedom of decisional action, including precedent, tenure and salary issues, and internal constraints (what we political scientists refer to as "role theory" and small group analysis). Along the way he takes some effective potshots at folks such as LLoyd Weinreib (who argues analogy as the key to legal analysis), the legal process school, "neutral principles" and the Scalia approach to constitutional interpretation. Interestingly enough, law professors are not a major constraint, because they have segregated themselves out of studying and interacting with judges. This is one of the most perceptive chapters in the book.

By chapter 9, Posner is zeroing in on one of his favorite topics--pragmatic adjudication. He argues that pragmatic policy concerns often are the best device for explaining judicial actions because Posner believes these considerations should guide judges. Of course, Judge Posner has written literally reams on this topic, but I found this one of his best discussions. Finally, Posner targets the Supreme Court, "a political court" as he terms it. The limited impact the Court has in policing the Courts of Appeals constitutes an interesting theme here. Posner follows this up with a fine review of Justice Breyer's "Active Libery" and a fascinating discussion of what he terms "judicial cosmopolitanism," or how much foreign legal concepts should play a role in American judicial decision making. This chapter includes highly critical discussions of Beatty's "Ultimate Rule of Law" and Israeli CJ Aharon Barak's "The Judge in a Democracy." Posner can throw critical right jabs with the best of them.

This is a very long book (at around 377 pages). But is it packed with thought stimulating material and arguments, as well as exceptionally useful bibliographic references in the notes (which are actually at the foot of each page). Anyone interested in American judges and what they do, and why they do it, would consider this volume as essential reading.

Nailed It, July 6, 2009
If you have been inside the world Judge Posner writes about, you will know how extraordinarily practical this book is. This is how judges think - not how they think they think. Legal decisions arise in real contexts and judges almost always react in part to that context. If they did not, then our law would be the same as it was in 1242. Posner illuminates the pragmatic truth clearly while providing ample theoretical background for the budding philosopher.
At a time when the merely thoughtless insist that the "law be applied as written" (how, exactly, does one apply the phrase "equal protection" as written and divorced from context?)this refreshing burst of candor and common sense presented by the greatest legal mind of the past 50 years is critically important reading.

Excellent Analysis But Needs Some Editing!, July 10, 2008
I would agree with many of the reviewers that this is Posner at his finest. Although I tend to be skeptical of his articulation of pragmatism (especially via his selective use of economic theory), I found that this book really destroys the false binary that posits a clear split between activist and legalist judges.

Going beyond that, Posner also takes clear aim at the legal academy for mistaking the stated reasoning in legal opinions as the cause of a particular decision, rather than its effect. He makes it abundantly clear that legal scholars have lost connection with the judiciary and potentially the legal profession as a whole.

However, I can only give the four stars because the book desperately needed a good editor. Because the chapter are mostly previously published material, they are quite repetitive and probably make the book fifty pages longer than it needs to be. It would have been much better if Posner could have made the argument flow more coherently into a single argument instead of a dozen stand alone claims.

Posner and Judges, April 11, 2008
Posner and judges
Crispulo Marmolejo --
Universidad Santo Tomas, Chile

Amazon.com placed in my hands the last book by Richard Posner, called "How Judges Think". Richard Posner is one of the most famous public intellectuals of the United States, who is enjoying years of global reputation as a pioneer of the movement Law and Economics, Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Professor at the University of Chicago, having published more 30 books and hundreds of articles specialized. It's hard to find an author who combines excellence in the categories of lawyer, economist, academic and Judge Posner as those exhibits.

His latest book is a stark analysis of the judicial function and surely will make famous the 9 theories of judicial conduct that suggests there, which include the prospect sociological, psychological, practical, organizational and phenomenological.

A rational approach to judicial functions assigns judges the role of providers judicial allocators of property rights, sanctions and custodians of various freedoms. Judges up - according to Posner- a labor market specific, highly regulated and classified, sensitive to many externalities in which it operates, at least in legal systems in Latin America- an excessive legalistic environment.

They are subjected to the pressure of time to resolve cases, forcing them to decide on multiple subjects and trial and face criticism from civil society, scholars and politicians, which increases a natural propensity to inefficiency in the assignment of rights, eventually corrected by higher Courts.

The economic theory of judicial conduct, according to this famous jurist, analyzes the judges acting as maximizers their benefits, as their own job stability and projecting climb hierarchy. In his peculiar style, Richard Posner argues that the excessive legalism tends to stifle the judicial function, restricting creativity and novel approaches suffocating, allowing lawyers, legislators and non innovators scholars tend to exercise only old arguments, blocking new realities interpretative and denying a complete understanding of technical realities that globalization imposes today with a very different approach to the rigid legalistic.

According to Posner, the incentive to reduce that legalism, is the pragmatic analysis of court decisions, which often reveals how many false conflicts were brought into the procedural state apparatus, imposing a social cost and institutional benefiting.

Finally, Richard Posner did a really good job again, explaining how is the current relationship between pragmatism and the role of judges

A Must Read for Any Trial Lawyer, May 21, 2008
Posner brings his esteemed credentials as a circuit judge and authorative author to tackle the ultimate question: how do judges really make their decisions. Is it based strictly on the law and the facts of the case, or, as we are taught in law school, does it sometimes depend on what mood the judge is in.

Posner enlightens naive lawyers who might be tempted to believe that judges decide cases in a vacuum based on which side has submitted the best brief. He also uses his humor and exceptionally clear writing to show how judges reach decisions based on different types of cases.

In particular, every trial lawyer must answer the question, how will the judge influence my case, or how will he decide it if there is a bench trial (no jury). On appeal, the trial lawyer must also factor in how appellate judges will review his/her case. Posner gives invaluable insight in a very well-written and entertaining book.

Posner style unleashed!, May 15, 2008
Posner's economics background weighs heavy in his analysis of How Judge's Think. His insight makes for a very interesting read which I found helpful in my approach with the various levels of the judicial branches. The comparison of his various theories of judical thought make for lively discussion. I would recommend this to any practitioner or law student.

How Judges Think, May 28, 2008
My god, what a boring book this was. It was written like a law review article and nothing is more boring than a law review article (unless you are doing research). I was hoping for some down to earth conversation about how judges think, something that was an easy read. This was NOT an easy read was just BORING. I didn't even finish it. It was like a lecture on paper. ... Read more

Editorial Review

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Reviews

nice introduction to the criminal justice field, September 2, 2000
i just bought this book at my campus the other day. I can't put it down. This book is very interesting and laid out nicely, definitions are made clear. i feel as if i am there when i look at the pictures in this book and when i am reading about a particular incident.another thing i like about this book is it combines traditional learning with the author wanting the reader to use the internet.

Informative, August 25, 1999
A good book to read if you're studying the subject, even if it isn't required. ... Read more

Editorial Review

The BEST-SELLING introduction to criminal justice text of all time, Criminal Justice Today 11/e, continues to lead the way as the standard of the most current and popular text in the market.� Now fully equipped with a new media option, Criminal Justice Interactive, your students have the opportunity to access the most engaging introduction to the criminal justice system ever created. ... Read more

Reviews

Greased Lightning, September 7, 2010
This book was the first one I received out of four books and it came within three days. Now that's fast and it is in great condition. It was what I needed and I received more than I expected, fantastic all the way around!! ... Read more

Editorial Review

We are all familiar with the image of the immensely clever judge who discerns the best rule of common law for the case at hand. According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a judge like this can maneuver through earlier cases to achieve the desired aim--"distinguishing one prior case on his left, straight-arming another one on his right, high-stepping away from another precedent about to tackle him from the rear, until (bravo!) he reaches the goal--good law." But is this common-law mindset, which is appropriate in its place, suitable also in statutory and constitutional interpretation? In a witty and trenchant essay, Justice Scalia answers this question with a resounding negative.

In exploring the neglected art of statutory interpretation, Scalia urges that judges resist the temptation to use legislative intention and legislative history. In his view, it is incompatible with democratic government to allow the meaning of a statute to be determined by what the judges think the lawgivers meant rather than by what the legislature actually promulgated. Eschewing the judicial lawmaking that is the essence of common law, judges should interpret statutes and regulations by focusing on the text itself. Scalia then extends this principle to constitutional law. He proposes that we abandon the notion of an everchanging Constitution and pay attention to the Constitution's original meaning. Although not subscribing to the "strict constructionism" that would prevent applying the Constitution to modern circumstances, Scalia emphatically rejects the idea that judges can properly "smuggle" in new rights or deny old rights by using the Due Process Clause, for instance. In fact, such judicial discretion might lead to the destruction of the Bill of Rights if a majority of the judges ever wished to reach that most undesirable of goals.

This essay is followed by four commentaries by Professors Gordon Wood, Laurence Tribe, Mary Ann Glendon, and Ronald Dworkin, who engage Justice Scalia's ideas about judicial interpretation from varying standpoints. ... Read more

Reviews

Not your father's judicial interpretation., August 17, 2004
I'd like to mention, first of all, what this book it not. It is not for the casual observer of the American judicial system. Justice Scalia gives a probing examination of various methods used in Constitutional and judicial interpretation. If the reader is not consumed with learning law, or delineating the intent of the Constitution, this book will probably be a major disappointment.

On the other hand, if you have a solid foundation of knowledge on the judiciary and the U.S. Constitution, you will enjoy this book and will learn a great deal of what Justice Scalia has to offer. Scalia offers up a 50 page paper on the various methods of judicial interpretation, each methods strengths and weaknesses, and the how and why of whether or not each method is viable.

Scalia's paper is then cross-examined by Ronald Dworkin, Mary Ann Glendon, Amy Gutmann, Lawrence Tribe and Gordon Wood. Scalia then offers up his rebuttal and I believe, strengthens his theories of judicial interpretation. I am not going to go into my own how's and why's, as I am a fan of Scalia's and would rather allow the reader to reach their own conclusions.

Whether you like this book, or hate it, one thing is for certain, you will come away with a much better knowledge of the U.S. judicial system, how it reaches some of its conclusions, and what the consequences of continuing with current methods of judicial interpretation will be on our country.

Monty Rainey
www.juntosociety.com

Recommended, but with reservations., May 15, 1997
I assume you have seen a description of the book already. The book is good enough to be recommended overall, but there were some disappointments. First, the justice does not stay long on his professed topic, the interpretation of statutes, but goes over into constitutional interpretation. Those who make replies follow gladly, and there is really little on the whole about statutory instead of constitutional interpretation. Moreover, the justice did not make it clear enough to me how his textualist philosophy differs from literalism, which he explicitly disavows. Also dissappointing is that I think the justice could have made a much stronger case for what I do glean to be his philosophy by invoking legal principles already understood when the constitution was written, and especially by invoking Justice Story's brilliant decision in Martin v Hunter's Lessee. In that decision rules of constitutional interpretation are stated clearly and authoritatively, and are much along the lines of what Scalia advocates. Lastly, Justice Scalia's essay does not measure up to the keenness of insight and language he shows in his best dissents, though there are some good moments. Despite these drawbacks, it is a very thought- provoking work and its brevity gives one less of an excuse for not reading it. It is largely free of technical vocabulary and there are no arcane discussions.

A model for all apologetics!, March 28, 2005
I loved the format of the book! Scalia presents his judicial interpretative process, and honestly admits hypocrisy when he occasionally votes ideology rather than using his system. Then, rather than providing a half-hearted attack on his ideological opponents, he invites them to respond to his thesis, each with their own chapter!

You may not agree with Scalia, but you can't doubt his moral courage based on his invitation for criticism in his own book.

I also appreciated the chapter on the structure of Germany's Constitution to help us understand why principle, rather than statue, plays such a big role in American judicial interpretative processes.

Everyone that cares about the Supreme Court should read this book. I have yet to find a better book to learn the motivations and processes utilized by each ideological camp. After reading this book, my ability to understand the logic of the court, for both rulings and the opinions, has been greatly enhanced.

While unintended, Scalia also helped cement my personal belief that a blend of original meaning (aka textualism) and abstract principalism, and not Scalia's textualist approach alone, is by far the optimal method for judicial interpretation based on our Constitution.

A fine critique of modern legal philsophy in the US., December 17, 1997
Antonin Scalia is blessed with a powerful intellect and a persuasive manner of expression. It's about time that a member of the US Supreme Court explained in terms intelligible to the average "newspaper reader" just what is going on in federal appeals courts. If not all of Justice Scalia's recommendations are correct, he certainly, at long last, has been able to ask the right questions. Proponents of judicial activism (and Scalia graciously shares space with two of the most famous, Tribe & Dworkin) will be hard-pressed to keep up the pretense that federal courts today are much more than arenas for elite social engineers to rework society in their own image and likeness. A fine study in modern legal philosophy, I recommend this work with few reservations. My complete review of Justice Scalia's book can be found in "National Catholic Register" 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 1997, p. 6. I have seen the review posted on the Web as well.

A tough read, August 8, 2004
Antonin Scalia might be best described as a conservative American. Conservatism often means not taking the "far-out-there" approach to life.

Although his section of the book is rather short, it is a bit difficult to follow for those of us who are not lawyers. Nevertheless, it is an excellent view into his thinking process. It details the reasons for not siding with contemporary liberal thinking, believing that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted literally (in most cases).

I read the book a few pages at a time, absorbed what I read, and read more the next day. Frequently, during the responses to his writings by other prominent lawyers, I found myself going back and re-reading parts of his writings again. To complete the book and understand it I probably read the entire book several times - back and forth between the writers.

Whatever your political leanings, it is an insight into why one Supreme Court Justice votes the way he does.

I wish all the Justices would write a similar book so we could understand their viewpoints.

Legal tour de force, December 9, 2001
This book is a real treat for anyone who loves legal (constitutional that is) thought. It would also make a great introduction into what several of the greatest thinkers in the Anglo-American legal profession think. The book is mainly a lecture by Scalia where he lays out his theory of 'textualism,' that is closely grounding constitutional interpretation to the original meaning of the words of the constitutional (or statutory) text. It is a spirited explanation of the theory and includes defenses against some of the more common attacks on the theory. But the book gets better. Four legal experts, Laruence Tribe, Ronald Dworkin, a historian and Glendon all give their comments on textualism. Scalia then replies to these comments at the end. A wonderful look into debate between five incredible minds who often diasgree.

An Insightful Discussion, October 30, 2001
In this tidy book, Justice Scalia puts forward his theory of jurisprudence and takes on the subject of judicial philosophy and what he calls the modern movement of judicial activism. He begins by giving an overview of the history of common law and judicial review, in which he contends that judges historically respected stare decisis - that is, previous rulings. Only in modern times, with the rise of democratic activism, has the desire of judges to "make law" become a problem of significant proportions.

Scalia then gets to the heart of his argument - that the role of the judge is not to ascertain the intent of legislators, but rather to ascertain the meaning of the words contained in a particular document. In this sense, he a textual purist compared to activists who will search out the meaning of particular pieces of legislation by evaluating legislative history, popular press, Congressional record, etc. He concedes that language must be interpreted, but he argues that there is a disciplined approach, and a liberal approach. The disciplined approach he supports would evaluate text within the notion of reasonable interpretation, "placed alongside the remainder of the corpus juris."

"Government by unexpressed intent is simply tyranny," Scalia argues. "That seems to me the essence of the famous American ideal set forth in the Massachusetts Constitution. A government of laws, not of men. Men may intend what they will; but it is only the laws that they enact which bind us."

Scalia argues that the fact that some texts bear multiple interpretations does not sink the enterprise of textualism. The divide on constitutional questions is not between what the framers intended and what they wrote, but rather between original meaning and current meaning. Scalia argues it is precisely the threat of abolishing cherished rights that makes original meaning important - it is a protection against those, (say Nazis) who would seek to impose a new order or new interpretation of acceptable governance. He argues that the notion of a "living constitution" has narrowed the straits of American freedom, not expanded them. The prevailing mood may or may not be just in the eyes of history, but leave that to the legislators and the great debates among thinkers and politicians; don't seek to encode today's moods in tomorrow's constitution through judicial activism. The avenues for changing the constitution and expanding its purview are well known -- otherwise, leave legislating to the legislatures.

Tribe and Dworkin offer the most interesting rebuttals. Dworkin seeks to root constitutional interpretation in broad principles of understanding and rights; Tribe concedes he has no theory of jurisprudence, other than he finds it difficult to accept the certitude of either Dworkin or Scalia that they have the right interpretation. His is a strange argument. Scalia never says the Constitution does not bear multiple interpretations, but he does argue for a more disciplined approach, in which rights are not found willy nilly in the minds of judges and then imposed on the original document by which we are governed. One annoying aspect the book: Tribe responds both to Scalia's original essay and his counter rebuttal within the first rebuttal -- before we have even read Scalia's response. This got a tad confusing and did not add much to the overall discussion.

Scalia believes that in a democratic society change should not come from judicial decrees, but from the people's representatives, January 16, 2009
I read this book for a class on the philosophy of law. In his book "A Matter of Interpretation," Associate Justice Antonin Scalia describes his judicial philosophy as that of being a "textualist." For Scalia, textualism means that a judge is bound by interpreting the law without regard for the intent of the lawmakers. "Men may intend what they will; but it is only the laws that they enact which bind us" (17). Justice Scalia is one of the most vociferous opponents of the use of constitutional comparativism by judges to help influence or guide them to a certain interpretation of the law. Scalia, on the spectrum line of judicial philosophy, is a self-described "textualist." His idea of textualism is that, "A text should not be construed strictly, and it should not be construed leniently; it should be construed reasonably, to contain all that it fairly means" (23). Textualism is a constitutional philosophy of original meaning, instead of original intent, as a "strict constructionist" would interpret the text. In addition, Scalia believes that, "It is the law that governs, not the intent of the lawgiver....A government of laws, not of men" (17).

Scalia believes that in a democratic society, change should not come from judicial decrees, but from the people's elected representatives. Thus, one can instantly see that Scalia's views bring him in direct opposition to Justice Ginsburg's "living constitution" philosophy, which at its core embraces constitutional comparativism, and gives judges virtual carte blanche to pen new laws from the bench.

Scalia has vehemently denounced judges who have resorted to constitutional comparativism in their written opinions when adjudicating cases before them. Scalia argues that the only time a judge should refer to foreign law in interpreting a nation's constitution is when she is settling a case dealing with treaty obligations with foreign nations. In every instance where one of his colleagues resorts to the practice of including opinions from foreign court rulings, Scalia has made it a point to take umbrage against this practice in his own written opinions. Most of the instances where Supreme Court Justices have used constitutional comparativism have occurred when they have ruled on cases involving death penalty issues, cases involving the War on Terrorism, and privacy cases dealing with abortion or homosexuality.

Scalia is skeptical of the methodology used by judges who include foreign law in their adjudication process. Specifically, he wonders if judges dabble with constitutional comparativism on a selective basis, only when it fits with their ideas of how the case should be ultimately adjudicated. As an example, Scalia notices that when the court hears arguments about the death penalty or abortion, he observes that his colleagues do not cite decisions or statistics from courts in socially conservative countries in South America, East Asia, or Islamic countries. Thus, he finds that his colleagues are being a bit disingenuous when they "cherry pick" opinions from foreign nations, especially European, and try to use them as examples of how there is a change in the world's social mores that should be considered when adjudicating cases.
Even Justice Breyer agreed that Scalia's point on his and other Justices not citing cases from non-European nations is a fair criticism of their methodology.

Another argument Scalia uses against judges relying on constitutional comparativism, is that the judge is probably not fully conversant on the surrounding history and jurisprudence involved in a particular foreign ruling. An example Scalia uses is the question of whether it is "cruel and unusual" punishment to have a condemned to death prisoner waiting over twelve years, as many American death row inmates do, before her sentence is carried out. The U.S. Supreme Court has not taken up this question; however, Scalia and Breyer see it looming on the court's horizon. Scalia argues that if one looks at foreign case law in Britain before they abolished the death penalty, it would show that the penalty was carried out within two weeks of its pronouncement in court. Many legal professionals in the U.S. point to this and argue that the prolonged period between sentence and execution should be considered "cruel and unusual" punishment. However, Scalia argues that the reason the length of time is prolonged in the U.S. is because of the system of jurisprudence it labors under to ensure a liberal appeals process for condemned prisoners. The reason why the U.S. allows a death row inmate multiple avenues for appeal is as a safeguard against a wrongly condemned prisoner from being put to death. This type of liberal appeals process was not in place in Britain before its courts abolished the death penalty or in other European countries that did the same. Therefore, Scalia makes an important point when he states that judges who want to use constitutional comparativism often times do not take into account the history and judicial background of a particular ruling from foreign courts when using these court's decisions in helping to form their own opinions of a case before them.

Another argument Scalia makes against constitutional comparativism deals more with his own judicial philosophy. As a textualist and a positivist, he does not think that a judge who has the power of judicial review of her nation's laws should be in the business of making moral rulings for her society from the bench, a practice that effectively circumnavigates her nation's legislative branch. In addition, part of what makes Scalia a positivist, is that he believes in the importance of the rule of law. One of the guiding tenants of a nation that adopts the principle that the rule of law is an important foundational precept in their society, is the idea that citizens must not be subjected to ex post facto laws. Essentially, an ex post facto law means that a government body enacts a new law to make an act illegal, and this law is then applied to an agent who committed the "illegal" act before the new law was enacted. Scalia argues that rulings made by judges who are natural law theorist proponents become ex post facto laws for the people before the court, and if judges do this routinely, it would make life for citizens in such a society intolerable.

Finally, like Montesquieu, who was the first person to advocate in his writings for the separation of the judiciary from both the executive and legislative branches of government, Scalia is also a staunch supporter of the separation of powers system of government. Therefore, Scalia does not think it is the prerogative of judges interpreting their nation's constitution or law code to make perceived necessary changes to keep up with changing social values. Scalia believes that in a democratic society, the people are sovereign and thus a nation's constitution and law code should be changed by the people's elected representatives and not by appointed judges. Scalia is not against citizens changing their Constitution or laws, "... the Constitution should keep up to date--but it should keep up to date with the views of the American people." Thus, Scalia argues that judges in a nation who have judicial review powers are only entitled to review the texts of laws enacted by a nation's governing body to ensure their proper application by governmental agencies and its citizens. When it comes to keeping up with societal changes, Scalia believes it is up to the elected representatives to make the necessary changes. "You can have arguments on one side and on the other, but what you have to ask yourself is what does American society think? And the best way, the only way to determine that is certainly not to ask a very thin segment of American society -- judges, lawyers and law students -- what they think but rather to look at the legislation that exists in states, democratically adopted by the American people.

Keep Reading Books by Sitting Supreme Court Justices, May 2, 2006
I think that it is good to read widely and get divergent perspectives. Thus, Christians and Jews should read the Quran and Muslims should read the Torah and the New Testament. Conservatives should read the Nation or the New Republic and visit the DailyKos website and liberals should read the Weekly Standard or National Review and visit RealClearPolitics. The same perspective applies with Breyer's book. Regardless of your perspective, you should read this brief and easily understandable statement of judicial philosophy from a sitting Supreme Court justice. (And, it would also be good to read the counterpoint from Justice Breyer for the same reasons.)

I find this book to be a more interesting and powerful presentation than the recent book by Justice Breyer. In Breyer's book we read just his perspective and much of it is a response to this book by Scalia. In Scalia's book we are given Scalia's approach to judging and then we are given critical responses to that approach by several different authors, not all judges themselves. It is clear that Scalia likes the clash of argument and finds great benefit in that clash.

This book is brief and extremely well written so that even someone untrained in law can still easily follow the arguments and counterarguments. Anyone interested in our Supreme Court would find this book (and Breyer's) to be extremely useful and enlightening.

For myself, I found that reading both books left me believing that while both Justices approach the world in different ways, we are in good hands. Given the incredibly politicization of the Supreme Court, I found these books to be reassuring of the intelligence, character, and skill of these two Justices.

Scalia's Book Review, March 4, 2009
For upcoming student of political science and the interpretation of the constitution, I LOVE this book. Gives an insight into the most unappreciated methods of interpreting the constitution. I recommend it 100% and I am glad that it is a whole section in our philosophy of law class. ... Read more

Editorial Review

In January 2003, Kenya was hailed as a model of democracy after the peaceful election of its new president, Mwai Kibaki. By appointing respected longtime reformer John Githongo as anticorruption czar, the new Kikuyu government signaled its determination to end the corrupt practices that had tainted the previous regime. Yet only two years later, Githongo himself was on the run, having secretly compiled evidence of official malfeasance throughout the new administration. Unable to remain silent, Githongo, at great personal risk, made the painful choice to go public. The result was a Kenyan Watergate.

Michela Wrong's account of how a pillar of the establishment turned whistle-blower—becoming simultaneously one of the most hated and admired men in Kenya—grips like a political thriller while probing the very roots of the continent's predicament.

Editorial Review

Reviews

Wonderful book, July 22, 2004
With all due respect to some of the other reviewers, this book doesn't claim to give "insight" into the Constitution. Rather, it's the Constitution itself, bundled into a nice little hard-cover book. For what it does (and what it claims to do), this book deserves 5 stars - after all, the writing is excellent and I agree with everything in it. :)

I keep one on my desk at work. The Constitution is so important that I want to make it available to everyone. It's small in size, so it doesn't take up unnecessary room. This little book should be required reading in our nation's gradeschools.

The Real Article[s], April 3, 2000
It will take you less than an hour of even very careful reading to go through this entire book -- no commentary, no footnotes, no "constructions." This is the real thing. It sits right on my desk in the office, speaking volumes by its mere presence. Whenever one hears or reads some "pundit" (God, aren't there just way too many of them?)opining about somebody's (or some group's, more likely) CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, it is instructive to see whether a source for such "rights" can be found in the document itself. It won't surprise most that such a search is rarely fruitful. But in any event, this should be a must (re-)read for all Americans. Besides, it is very well written ...

Fantastic, January 4, 2004
this book is perfect for someone who wants a copy of the document that shaped a nation. This book is perfect for a spot in a personal library or reference use in a Constituional Law class. It does not offer additional information, but gives you a beautiful copy of the document.

In order to form a more perfect union..., May 1, 2000
For any American remotely interested in trying to find their origins, this is a must read. To read the foundation of American Government without commentary is simply something that all Americans owe themselves to do.

The Most Hated Book In Washington, February 20, 2007
Yes, it's the most hated book in Washington D.C. today. Any member of the "Powers That Be" would ban it if they had the chance. Anyone found with a copy would immediately be imprisoned, or worse.

By today's political standards, it's controversial, decidedly "un-american", and the simplest knowledge of it will bring you scorn from Democrats, Republicans, and (in the South) even many Veterans (not to mention having your phone tapped and all your mail read by Homeland Security).

Therefore, it's a must-read for every citizen in this country. If it wasn't for the printing cost, I'd say this should be free. This is the American Bible. Why not risk the penalties (real and forecasted) and take a look at it? Or better yet:

Own it. Read it. Live it.

The Constitution of the United States.

Well worth the price, February 27, 2006
This is a must have for all Americans. History nuts this book is for you!

This book is for those who seek to make their own interpretations, December 22, 2005
I just recently purchased this book for the soul fact that it is a very nice copy of the US Constitution and it does not contain any interpretations or author comments. I think what other reviewers have said are both good and bad. Every American should read the Constitution with a open mind, free of the the interpretations of others, So that the reader can form his or her own opinion. However I suggest the reader take the time to read the Declaration of Independence, which can reflect the motives behind the document.

Just a historic note, the Constitution, while overseen by some of the founding fathers, Ben Frankin, was written at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams where both overseas and the people who did sign the constitution where called the Framers (not the "farmers", though it is of political interest, given that the agricultural industry was thriving, that only one framer was a farmer).

So I hope that if you purchase this book you take the time to read the text of one of our nations literary treasures and form your own opinions. In this reviewers opinion, I would recommend the reader pay attention to the system of checks and balances. Enjoy and I hope this helped you.

A must read . . ., February 21, 2006
. . . for everyone. Including you, Mr. President.

Great little copy, April 17, 2010
Nice stiff cover and great pages. Well laid out and easy to find things quickly. Love this handsom little book!

Attractive Gift Book with the Exact Words of our Founding Fathers!, January 4, 2010
I find it truly hard to believe the negative reviews found here on this book. This is a gift book, a treasure, a keepsake, a collectible. It is the exact text of the founding fathers, nothing more and nothing less. It is very attractive in the way it was put together. The book is exactly as described and well worth the money. Quite frankly, I do believe the $9.95 price is quite small for what you get. ... Read more

Editorial Review

What is law? This question has preoccupied philosophers from Plato to Thomas Hobbes to H. L. A. Hart. Yet many others find it perplexing. How could we possibly know how to answer such an abstract question? And what would be the point of doing so? In Legality, Scott Shapiro argues that the question is not only meaningful but vitally important. In fact, many of the most pressing puzzles that lawyers confront—including who has legal authority over us and how we should interpret constitutions, statutes, and cases—will remain elusive until this grand philosophical question is resolved.

Shapiro draws on recent work in the philosophy of action to develop an original and compelling answer to this age-old question. Breaking with a long tradition in jurisprudence, he argues that the law cannot be understood simply in terms of rules. Legal systems are best understood as highly complex and sophisticated tools for creating and applying plans. Shifting the focus of jurisprudence in this way—from rules to plans—not only resolves many of the most vexing puzzles about the nature of law but has profound implications for legal practice as well.

Written in clear, jargon-free language, and presupposing no legal or philosophical background, Legality is both a groundbreaking new theory of law and an excellent introduction to and defense of classical jurisprudence.

Editorial Review

Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has kowtowed to it. But what do most Americans really know about Cuba itself?

In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia Sweig, one of America's leading experts on Cuba and Latin America, presents a concise and remarkably accessible portrait of the small island nation's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years. Yet it is authoritative as well. Following a scene-setting introduction that describes the dynamics unleashed since summer 2006 when Fidel Castro transferred provisional power to his brother Raul, the book looks backward toward Cuba's history since the Spanish American War before shifting to more recent times. Focusing equally on Cuba's role in world affairs and its own social and political transformations, Sweig divides the book chronologically into the pre-Fidel era, the period between the 1959 revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War era, and-finally-the looming post-Fidel era.

Informative, pithy, and lucidly written, it will serve as the best compact reference on Cuba's internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community. ... Read more

Reviews

Terrific guide to rediscovering Cuba, July 4, 2009
If visiting Cuba to see more than vintage American cars is appealing, you can rely on expert Julia Sweig's new, most timely book, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know. Sweig's long established knowledge of Cuba together with her fun, familiar, voice-filled writing style makes this the bible for rediscovery of Cuba as the US gradually opens up the embargo-burdened bogeyman 90 miles to the South.

A Home Run, July 5, 2009
Cuba,What Everyone Needs to Know is just that - what we all need to know about Cuba to be fully educated about the country, its history, its relationship with the US, and why it matters. Julia Sweig's writing is thoroughly accessible, making the subject compelling, alive, and relevant. She's given us an utterly balanced look at history and the issues. Her expertise is of the highest caliber. For anyone interested in Cuba, this book is a must.

This may well be the best book on Cuba I've ever read, July 5, 2009
What an unbelievable book this is. I bought it seen Dr. Sweig all over television over the past year. She comes across as one of the smartest, most charismatic talking heads on foreign policy I've seen in a generation. Her book, Cuba: What Everyone Needs To Know, is every bit as compelling. It manages to be accessible yet erudite, sweeping yet detailed, and conversational yet profound. Whether you are a Cuban history buff or want to give a friend with little knowledge of Cuba the primer of all primers, this is the book to get. I'm blown away.

CUBA. What Everyone Needs to Know by Julia E. Sweig, August 3, 2009
Easily one of the best studies of Cuba and its cultural scene to come out in the last few years. It gives a very well documented historical background that goes back to the nineteenth century tracing the path of Cuban history from its liberation from Spain with United States help, and the poet and activist Jose Marti to the present and the Castro brothers. Rather than defend one side or another of the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, Sweig offers a well balanced analysis of all the factors in what amounts to the most objective study I have yet read. It carefully documents United States involvement and interests in Cuba without prejudice. Readers should come away from this book with a clearer understanding of the complexities of Cuban politics and its relations with the rest of the world, not just Russia and the U.S.

Impressive and Comprehensive, August 1, 2009
In this new book, Julia Sweig draws on her impressive knowledge of Cuba to great effect. The book seamlessly traces Cuba from its early colonial history through the Cuban Revolution, its aftermath, and outlines the contemporary issues now that Fidel has left power. The book can be read in one sitting or used as a reference, and the Q&A format works well because all the right questions get asked. I especially enjoyed the historical section which gives a great synopsis of Cuba's early origins, as well as the current political analysis. The book matches the ambitions of its title and then some---it should be a first resort for the curious and the expert alike!

page turner, July 23, 2009
I just finished this wonderful book (CUBA What Everyone Needs to Know) and I LOVED it. Ms. Sweig is a gifted writer: this book reads like fiction. Really, the book is a page turner. I learned a great deal, but it was painless -- not like an assigned reading at all. I would highly recommend CUBA What Everyone Needs to Know to students who want to learn about Cuba as well as to folks who are just looking for a good read. I read at least one American newspaper a day (usually the Washington Post) and I did not know most of the information in the book. For example, did you know that on 911 the Cuban government "privately offered to open its airfields for American planes to land there and offered medical teams to assist with the disaster and recovery."(see p. 181) I had no idea. Thumbs up for this great book.

Simply the best yet written, August 6, 2009
I have been traveling back and forth to Cuba since 1974 - that's more than 35 years now. I thought I knew a lot about Cuba - that is until I read Julia Sweig's book. So readable and understandable. For anyone who has never visited Cuba or for those who have made such a trip, reading this book will not only increase your knowledge of Cuba but an understanding of why and how things happened. Without hesitation, this is a must read.

Has issues, April 24, 2010
The format of this book, divided as it is into questions, which it then proceeds to answer, makes this hard to read through since some info is repeated for different questions. While it does not softball human rights issues with Castro's regime neither does it "ask" really hard questions concerning Communism and instead keeps "asking" about Cuban arts and culture. Is this really what everyone needs to know about Cuba?

Accessible, well written and comprehensive!, December 15, 2009
I enjoyed reading this book and using it as a background to an international relations grad paper. Thank you Julia Sweig! It is an accessible history that puts Cuba into historic context, and not merely in terms of Cuban-US relations. Another words, it's not jusst about where Uncle Sam fits into the equation. The story ends as Raul Castro takes over and Fidel fades into the background. Sweig's Cuban history and reality is well-written, well organized and explained. I enjoyed it and would have read it even if I didn't have to!

The Art of Hollywoodizing Events, June 23, 2009
The author makes an obvious effort to present her view of recent Cuban events as truthful and undistorted, without giving away her sympathy for the Castro brothers.

Why these two gangsters allowed Sweig to examine records that are not made public to anyone else, leads me to suspect that her book might not be as transparent as it is portrayed to be.

In her biased account, the author ignores the plight of thousands of political prisoners, the violation of human rights, the executions and torturing of dissenters, the discrimination that exists against Cuban citizens by forbidding them to share in the "luxuries" reserved for tourists such as well stocked supermarkets, luxury hotels, restaurants, beaches, and the list goes on.

The author doesn't mention that the reason for the embargo to continue is not because of US unreasonable demands, but to the Castro brothers refusal to open the eyes of an enslaved people to the outside world, especially to the fruits of capitalism and the American free enterprise system. Nothing of this sort is mentioned or even alluded to.

It is a no-brainer that Cuba can do business with the entire planet, more so when distances are unimportant and the world is getting smaller. But in order for a tyrant to remain in power, he needs a common enemy to blame for his failures, and the USA conveniently fits the mold.

I suggest Sweig gets hold of a 2007 Forbes Magazine article in which Fidel Castro comes out as one of the wealthiest heads of state second to Queen Elizabeth II, with a billion dollars worth of foreign investments.

The Cuba depicted by the author is not the real Cuba of the last fifty years: The real Cuba of the last half-century is an alligator-shaped island/farm owned and managed by the Castro brothers for their own enrichment--. Communism--already an accepted failure--is just their excuse to continue ripping the country off.

I survived the revolution by escaping to America as a teenager, and for fifty long years I have carefully followed Cuban affairs. Knowing more about my former country than ever before, I can tell you that the book is full of innacuracies and subterfuges.

Sweig's book brings to mind how Hollywood distorts written history in order to sell movies.

Andrew J. Rodriguez
Award winning author of "Adios, Havana," a Memoir ... Read more

Editorial Review

In Wars, Guns, and Votes, Paul Collier investigates the violence and poverty in the small, remote countries at the lowest level of the global economy and argues that the spread of elections and peace settlements may lead to a brave new democratic world. For now and into the foreseeable future, however, nasty and long civil wars, military coups, and failing economies are the order of the day.

An esteemed economist and a foremost authority on developing countries, Collier gives an eye-opening assessment of the ethnic divisions and insecurities in the developing countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, where corruption is often firmly rooted in the body politic, and persuasively outlines what must be done to bring peace and stability. Groundbreaking and provocative, Wars, Guns, and Votes is a passionate and convincing argument for the peaceful development of the most volatile places on earth.

Editorial Review

Courtroom 302 is the fascinating story of one year in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse, the busiest felony courthouse in the country. Here we see the system through the eyes of the men and women who experience it, not only in the courtroom but in the lockup, the jury room, the judge's chambers, the spectators' gallery. From the daily grind of the court to the highest-profile case of the year, Steve Bogira’s masterful investigation raises fundamental issues of race, civil rights, and justice in America. ... Read more

Reviews

Intense, thoughtful, invaluable look at our court system, April 23, 2005
I was only slightly aware of the courthouse on 26th St. in Chicago from the occasional anecdotes of people called for jury duty there, but now the place has been seared into my consciousness. I'm rooting for this book to become, at least, a regional hit in the Chicago area, but its insights into the flaws of our judicial system earn it a spot on nightstands throughout the U.S.

What a great choice this would be for book clubs. There's so much to discuss: the problems crying out for reform (drug laws, grand juries, racism, retention system, etc.), as well as the stories Bogira tells about the individuals who pass through the system, a few in the glare of intense media scrutiny, most barely noticed even by the system itself. Then there's the Bridgeport case, a hate crime that rocked Chicago and for a time drew the watchful eye of the world. (There are some stunners to this story in the last chapters.)

Ironically, Bogira, the detached journalist, seems to do a better job of getting to the bottom of these cases than the teams of dozens of police detectives, lawyers and judges--probably because he had the luxury of focusing on a few individuals, while the overcrowded conveyer belt of 26th Street strains to keep the crowds moving. He triumphs in humanizing the whole lot, from the penny-ante defendants (mostly addicts) to the savage murderers. His portrait of the presiding judge has the complexity of accomplished fiction. Bogira seems to be everywhere in the courtroom at once: sitting with the defendants and the lawyers, schmoozing with the courtroom deputies who've seen it all, talking with the judge in his chambers and sitting with the accused's mother in the back. The author has a satisfying knack for suggesting what really happened in each case after narrating the court's conclusions, and the contrast between the two is fascinating.

Verdict: Great!, April 28, 2005
Thanks to Court T.V. and T.V. dramas, most Americans think of courtrooms as spacious, well-lit venues where prosecutors and defense attorneys vie for the attention of a thoughtful, attentive jury. But most lawyers aren't Johnnie Cochrans, many jurors are eager to get back to their regular lives, and the vast majority of cases never even go to trial. "Courtroom 302" looks beyond the made-for-T.V. ideal at one of the dingy, cramped, hectic rooms where justice is often imperfectly meted out.

In writing this book, Steve Bogira spent the bulk of 1998 covering this courtroom and its dramatis personae: a firm-but-fair judge, two somewhat jaded deputies, a large ensemble cast of overworked public defenders and diligent prosecutors, and a rotating cast of defendants and jurors. He does an admirable job of reporting on them, of getting them to let their guard down and discuss their thoughts, feelings and motivations honestly and openly. The result is a well-rounded and compelling book that shows the true face of American justice at the turn of the Millennium.

Bogira emphasizes the sheer volume of crime and punishment in the court he covers. Cook County boasts the nation's largest integrated court system, and the number of defendants who pass through the system is staggering: 78,000 defendants per year. (On average, every courtroom handles three per day!) And throughout the book's descriptions of dramatic and memorable trials--a prison shanking, a cabbie shot by someone who might have been a jilted lover, a coke deal gone bad, a vicious race beating--the steady drip-drip-drip of plea bargains and bench trials reminds readers that the courtroom can be as dry and routine as any other workplace.

There are flaws with the book. Like many journalists, Bogira buys many of the standard arguments about the costliness of the war on drugs, and he also perhaps overemphasizes the importance of race and poverty (and underemphasizes the role of alcoholism and drug abuse) in contributing to crime. Also, he spends an inordinate amount of time on a high-profile but atypical race beating, while giving more run-of-the-mill cases relatively short shrift. But his excellent reporting more than makes up for his willingness to buy in to the mantras of his profession. The sheer scale of corruption that has gone on in Cook County cortrooms and police interrogation rooms will boggle the mind of many a reader, as will the less-than-ideal processes by which Cook County selects criminal judges; Bogira lays it all out dispassionately and makes a convincing case for much-needed reforms. By reporting meticulously and honestly, by interviewing as many people as possible for as long as possible, and by paying attention to the details, he's put together a great and definitive book. And that ends up being a colossal irony--in the end, "Courtroom 302"'s version of the truth feels fuller and more complete than that arrived at in many of the trials in Courtroom 302.

Incomparable Look into the American Criminal Justice System, April 15, 2005
This is a must read for anyone interested in how the American system of criminal justice really works (or, more precisely, doesn't work much at all). The author focuses on a particular courtroom in the Cook County Criminal Court building in Chicago, but the insights gained and lessons learned from this close look are applicable to any courtroom in America.

Bogira is insightful into the real workings of the system, and he tries to be fair to all participants. And though he refrains from preaching, the truth cannot be hidden: Our criminal justice system is a bureaucratic machine that grinds the poor (and the colored) into its wheels and churns out prisoners and wasted lives, with little or no sense or reason. And all this despite the best efforts of honest and decent men and women.

Even better -- Bogira's a wonderful writer and a great story teller. The writing is fluid and always insightful. The numerous characters -- the Judge, the assorted prosecutors and defense lawyers, and, of course, the defendants -- are brought to life by his writing. Despite its bulk, the book reads like any well-written story should: Quickly, and hard to put down. I recommend it highly.

A documentary that reads lik a novel., August 21, 2005
The author does a remarkable job of drawing you in to the mechanics of a court in the 'real world'. It is true that the writer has a liberal viewpoint but this does not dampen the impact of the direct quotes he uses. The writing is thoroughly engaging and the 'story' kept me interested. Being from Chicago I understood the racism and corruption inherent in the system so I may have read it with more ease than others. It is an unflinching look at a system that tries to work and would be valuable reading for anyone interested in the field of criminal law.

Courtroom 302 not the television perspective of the courtroom, June 30, 2006
A must read for anyone remotely connected to or interested in the criminal justice system. It is at once informative and depressing. What makes it so valuable is that you get the back story of each participant (judge, DA, PD and defendent). The reality of a system that treats defendents with disdain and offers justice for a price should open a few eyes. I made it required reading this summer for my students doing internships in the court system.

Fascinating!, March 5, 2006
"Courtroom 302" is the story of one year in one courtroom in Chicago's Cook County Criminal Courthouse - the busiest felony courthouse in the country. It provides parallel perspectives from the judge, defendants, prosecutors, public defenders, and support personnel throughout this time period. Cases ranged from failure to complete community service assignments to double murders.

Clearly Bogira has his biases in this book - way too much focus on minor drug crimes (37 of 43 in one night's processing), the system's bias favoring those with private lawyers instead of overburdened public defenders, the system's bias against blacks, the vulnerability of defendants to abusive police, and the hard life of those born with mental/psychological problems and/or home abuse. However, that does not prevent him from being at least reasonably objective throughout. I was also quite impressed with how hard Judge Locallo, assigned to #302, worked, and how vulnerable judges subject to retention votes could be to political pressure when those with political clout are involved.

Interesting statistics were sprinkled throughout the book. For example, about 75% of those brought to the felony court were convicted, and of those just over one half sentenced to prison - the rest mostly received probation. About 80% of the guilty please come from plea-bargains, generally associated with lighter sentences than likely otherwise.

Summarizing, "Courtroom 302" was difficult to put down, and well worth reading.

It's a growth industry..., August 25, 2007
Bogira has his biases and they are imbedded within the narrative, sometimes to the detriment of the story. However, the stories are so compelling (at least to anyone with an interest in the subjecet matter) that the book does not really suffer. Plus, by focusing on at least a dozen different cases, the action moves too quickly to get bogged down in preaching and a fairly accurate picture of the system shines through in technicolor.

Full disclosure...I clerked at 26th and Cal in law school working on the State's Attorney side. I agree that criticism of the office is warranted (an insular culture does exist) and that personal career aspirations motivate more prosecutors to wake up every morning than a true belief that the system works.

The idea of the system as a "growth industry" hits a perfect tragicomic note. As long as drugs are illegal and ghettos exist within the city, the "demand" which creates the industry will keep many of the sons and daughters of Chicago's insular and politically adept south side gainfully employed. Meanwhile the ghetto kids of the south and west sides have a higher wall to climb. The thing about this "industry" is that the public officials who pass our laws are the masters of this "business" in ways they can't master any other market. It won't ever change until the public elects officials who campaign on the issue of rehauling the system. The book seems to suggest this but the tone is much more journalistic instead of solution-oriented.

There are tough questions to deal with here, so I'm not inclined to follow the biases of some people who have posted on this book or perhaps Bogira himself that the system can be written off as an "injustice" or that we should all just up and legalize drugs tommorow and fund a bunch of afterschool programs. This book does not leave the courthouse much, so there isn't a whole lot of reporting from the front lines of these ghettos where the violence and drug markets exist.

Further, the book tends to delight in reporting any racially-charged remarks made by the state's attorneys, the judges and the deputies. Obviously this will cause all the righteous suburbanites in California, New York, the North Shore or wherever to get all worked up about the racist system of whites oppressing blacks. Hopefully, that won't be the only thing people get out of this book. The truth is that the men and women who work there and the men and women who walk the halls as defendants or family members of the defendants are on the frontlines of the American race problem and probably have a much more comprehensive understanding of race in this country than anyone who's going to lament the injustice of all the racists and then move on to the next book their book club will read. Also, what people don't get from this book is that most of the racial joshing that goes on at 26th and Cal is done to people's faces- it's a white guy to a black guy, or a Hispanic guy to a white woman, or sometimes even a judge to a defendant- some people see this as abhorent, personally I see it as realistic and honest. This is America and the race problem is real...at least to those of us who live in a diverse community.

Anyways, I applaud and recommend the book for jumping into the criminal justice system, compiling the stories and presenting a fairly accurate portrayal of life in the system. I'm sorry if my antennae is always up when it comes to racial hypocrisy.

A good read but also depressing., August 20, 2006
I found this book to be a good book to read but it also made me realize more than ever how unjust our justice system can be. The author portrays the people involved in the criminal justice system as being so mechanical at their jobs that justice just doesn't seem to enter the picture very often. Sadly the book is probably an accurate account of the Chicago court system, or any other court system in our country, but reading it made me wonder, if all this injustice is so evident to everyone involved, why is it being allowed to continue. These people who have other peoples futures and freedom in their hands seem to just find it easier to follow their routine than to do the right thing and create a criminal justice system that really does protect us and consider everyone innocent until proven guilty. This book definitely reaffirms the sad state that our court systems have become.

Laughing through the Tears, September 20, 2005
I found this book to be a deeply revealing look at our criminal justice system. Most parts, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry as it became evident that there's very little justice that really goes on in our justice system. All of the hidden agendas uncovered on the part of the judges, attorneys, police officers and even courtroom clerks is very disturbing when we consider that we are at their mercy to administer laws, justice and legal representation fair and impartially. It is depressing to me that I have now become so disillusioned with the quality of our legal system and realize that it is over-wrought with flaws that are so historically embedded, that it seems unrepairable.

both informative and gripping to read, September 25, 2009
If you have interest in the operation of our criminal justice system, in whatever location, this book will plant your feet squarely in reality. It's not polemical in any way. You get to witness the goings on, from the most mundane to the most charged atmospheres.

I began reading with interest but detached. As I progressed through the book I became increasingly involved and awaiting what was to come next. This book is infused with fairness to all and with no agenda of its own. It's a wonderful piece of writing. Also evident is the openness and trusting nature of the author, as shown by the content of the conversations he has with both the accused and the legal professionals.

In addition to the numerous story-lines, the pure information about the court system is very comprehensive. It's not passed along in a teaching manner, just given so as to flesh out the situations that come into play. What a wonderful book. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Bloodshed connected with Mexican drug cartels, how they emerged, and their impact on the United States is the subject of this frightening book. Savage narcotics-related decapitations, castrations, and other murders have destroyed tourism in many Mexican communities and such savagery is now cascading across the border into the United States. Grayson explores how this spiral of violence emerged in Mexico, its impact on the country and its northern neighbor, and the prospects for managing it. Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ruled in Tammany Hall fashion for seventy-nine years before losing the presidency in 2000 to the center-right National Action Party (PAN). Grayson focuses on drug wars, prohibition, corruption, and other antecedents that occurred during the PRI’s hegemony. He illuminates the diaspora of drug cartels and their fragmentation, analyzes the emergence of new gangs, sets forth President Felipe Calderón’s strategy against vicious criminal organizations, and assesses its relative success. Grayson reviews the effect of narcotics-focused issues in U.S.-Mexican relations. He considers the possibility that Mexico may become a failed state, as feared by opinion-leaders, even as it pursues an aggressive but thus far unsuccessful crusade against the importation, processing, and sale of illegal substances. Becoming a "failed state" involves two dimensions of state power: its scope, or the different functions and goals taken on by governments, and its strength, or the government’s ability to plan and execute policies. The Mexican state boasts an extensive scope evidenced by its monopoly over the petroleum industry, its role as the major supplier of electricity, its financing of public education, its numerous retirement and health-care programs, its control of public universities, and its dominance over the armed forces. The state has not yet taken control of drug trafficking, and its strength is steadily diminishing. This explosive book is thus a study of drug cartels, but also state disintegration. ... Read more

Reviews

A definitive reference and excellent read, November 24, 2009
One of the greatest fallacies committed today amongst those who discuss and write about organized crime in Mexico is a limited understanding of Mexico's political history, especially how and why the country's leaders have engaged with criminals actors for decades. George Grayson's review of this history is a crisp, concise explanation that expertly frames Mexico today: a country struggling to confront unprecedented narco-violence. Grayson layers this historical backdrop with a full account of Mexican organized crime; it is one of the most thorough discussions of Mexican organized crime that I have ever seen, in English or Spanish. This book is a must read for anyone interested to know why thousands dies in Mexico every year and what we can expect to see in Mexico for the rest of President Calderon's term and beyond.

drugs and violence in mexico, November 24, 2009
Few American academics writing about Mexico today know more about security, electoral politics, drug-trafficking and criminal violence issues than George Grayson. Mexico, Narco-Violence and a Failed State? addresses the significant consequences of each in a lively and provocative manner, providing revealing, current, and controversial insights into their impact on its political stability, social fabric, and relations with the United States. Anyone hoping to grasp the difficult, multiple, and complex aspects of drug trafficking in our southern neighbor should read this book.

Good material - Some errors, February 4, 2010
This is a very interesting book, with excellent material and lots of valuable information. It definetely shows that the author has done extensive research on the subject, and it provides a good overview of the historical elements that led Mexico to this violent war, and the role the United States has played.
There are, however, several mistakes. Some are simple factual errors, one of them already in the first page, some simply grammatical errors and misspelling of spanish phrases. One upsetting aspect is that chapter 1 has a section missing, probably due to a printing error, so one parapragh cuts off on one page, and the following page begins a whole new section. You may want to wait until a new corrected batch is printed, or a new edition is published.
Other than that, I recommend the book for anyone interested in learning the basics of the Mexican Cartel wars.

Up Past Bedtime Reading This One, November 23, 2010
Fictional thrillers just can't quite compare with George Grayson's real world examination of the narcotics empires of Mexico. His contribution to Mexican history and an understanding of its political culture makes it even more valuable. It really ought to be read by anyone with an interest in Mexico. At my advanced age there are very few books for which I burn the midnight oil while reading. This one is near the top of the list. ... Read more

Editorial Review

The best-selling introduction to criminal justice�book of all time, Criminal Justice Today 10/e, continues to set the standard with its hallmark features of theme, technology, and time.� The strengths of the book rest in the application of theoretical perspectives to current real world activities related to criminal justice issues.� New technology and cases are also incorporated, bringing the�book and�reader together in current issues.� Broken up into five sections, this comprehensive book addresses topics within Crime in America, Policing,� Adjudication, Corrections, and Special Issues such as Drug Crime and Juvenile Justice. ... Read more

Reviews

Had to have for class, September 21, 2008
It was okay. It was a must read for class. A little dry at time, but it was okay. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

Superb, Engrossing, Useful, Relevant, Alarming, March 25, 2008
I ordered this book on the strength of the title, and on receiving it, discovered that the author is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University, and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School (they hate it when we just say "Harvard"--must be a culture thing). So right off I know this is at least as serious a book as I hoped for.

The book is instructive without being tedious, alarming without being hysterical. It is balanced, informed, and most relevant to all of us.

The entire book focuses on the transformation of the Internet from one in which the innovation could be done at the edges, with generative innovation that built on the provided software or hardware, to one in which we are allowed to buy tethered appliances like iPhone or X-Box that are "locked down."

Even PCs are being locked down today, and with this and other examples the author has my total attention.

He suggests that the end point matters, and that the confrontation between flexibility and openness, versus security and perfect reliability (and later, perfect enforcement) is one that requires more creative thinking rather than knee jerk mandates one way or the other.

He notes that historically IBM tried to bundle everything, and they were forced by anti-trust to unbundle, just as AT&T was, as Microsoft was, and as Google will be if the USG Government ever gets either honest or informed--either will do. Look for my book review of "Google 2.0: The Calculating Predator" to understand this suprnational unsupervised threat to multiple sectors, never mind privacy and copyright.

In a nutshell, he frames the challenge as that of modularity within which the end-user can innovate, versus walled gardens that are locked down.

In passing the author vindicates both Morris, and the manner in which justice was applied. Morris intended to count the computers on the Internet, and screwed up the code. The judge intended to punish him but not end his promising career. All good.

The author discusses what Vint Cerf and others have, the degree to which bots have taken over tens of millions of computers, using broadband connections left on at all times to create a subrosa network that does evil.

On page 63, three important principles from the author on generativity:

1. Our information technology ecosystem functions best with generative technology (i.e. NOT with locked down appliances hard-wired to a center)

2. Generativity instigates a pattern both within and beyond the technological layers of the information technology ecosystem (i.e. content collaboration and social collaboration and value-added)

3. Proponents of generative systems ignore the drawbacks attendant to generativity success at their peril.

This is followed by a great discussion of features of a generative system as they would be hoped for by the author:

- Leverage
- Adaptability
- Base of mastery
- Accessibility
- Transferability

He cites benefits of a generative system as including:

- Non-profit social innovation
- Disruptive innovation
- Broad participation
- Generative systems from generative building blocks
- Recursion (of value) to content and then to society

The scary chapter in the book--the author is elegant but one needs little help to imagine the worst--discusses how tethered appliances enable "perfect enforcement" to include GPS devices turned on remotely to serve as audio surveillance on demand, and so on.

Turning to solutions, the author distinguishes between flexibility needed at the content level (he is laudatory about Wikipedia) and the technology layer. He discusses one possible solution, a Green-Red split system in which the Green system is locked down and totally reliable, and the Red system is open to innovation but also treated with caution.

He calls for better easier security tools for group and individual use, but as one who could never ever find a coder willing to document their code, and as one completely fed up with the pig code that comes out of Microsoft and Norton--pig in the sense of way too much crap and way too big a footprint--I fear that only an open source conversion experience will do. I note with interest a chart that shows that Sun Open Systems are the LAST to plug security holes, Not good.

The author suggests a "least harm" protocol.

He calls for a very large conversation among end-users, coders, manufacturers, regulators, and so on, and what I hear him saying is that the "system of systems" is on auto-pilot, the government is out of brakes (or brains, I would add), and if we don't all do a collective "STOP, We Want to Discuss This," we are destined to suffer the same fate as the sheep at Virginia Polytechnic who stood still while a moron killed 20+ of them--stood still while he reloaded. Had the sheep "rushed and crushed," no more than one or at most two would have died. I am harsh here, because information technology can either be our cage or our liberation, and the author is very well qualified to present the case for concern.

I learn for the first time on page 174 of the National Science Foundation's FIND initiative, and that alone is worth the price of the book.

Turning to protections, the author discusses data portability, network neutrality and generativity (I can assure all readers, Google is neither neutral nor generative), Application Program Interface (API) neutrality; privacy, individual liability versus technical mandates, and collective character (digital shunning combined with reputation bankruptcy and a clean sheet fresh start).

He discusses privacy 2.0 and problems such as code, patent, and content thickets. I like very much his reminding us that the Constitution provides for anonymity to encourage unpopular opinions. He naturally discusses data genealogy (what I call data provenance, like an art work), and reputation.

In passing, I love the brutal critique by Gene Spaford of the $100 laptop. He likens its projected impact--exposing millions to the bright side while not fixing their poverty, water, and disease--to subsidizing pet rats for every household just prior to the Black Death plague. My friend Lee Felsenstein is an equally virulent opponent of the $100 laptop, for different reasons. Me personally, I think the cell phone (but not the iPhone) is the only way to educate 5 billion people fast and with day to day relevance to their needs.

I put the book down feeling pensive, and wondering why CISCO CEO John Chambers, who has been asked in writing via Federal Express three times, continues to refuse to create a router-server that is both recyclable (or even better, updatable remotely without having to flip boxes) and that will provide data at rest encryption and Application Oriented Network (AON) features at the point of creation--in other words, every creator can control the privacy, content routing, access, sharing, and so on, and by implementing something like Grub Search on the same box, we can put paid to programmable search engines patented by Google that will only show you what the highest bidder has paid to "allow" you to see, and to the Googleplex, which "confiscates" everything it touches and then claims to "own" it--including your medical records.

This is a great and important book, if you care about the global role of the Internet is creating wealth and consequently peace.

Ten other books that come to mind as equally important:
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Manufacturing Consent
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Managing Privacy: Information Technology and Corporate America
Who Owns Information?
Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway
In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

My bottom line: as we all press toward localized resilience in community, I for one would be happy to shun all tethered appliances and rely solely on collective human intelligence in community. I really like the work of Naomi Klein (No Log, Disaster Capitalism) and Paul Hawken (Blessed Unrest, Natural Capital, Ecology of Commerce). We are all long overdue for a massive boycott of all that is not in our interest, and we can start by evaluating the true costs of fuel, long-distance food and clothing, and perverted uses of water that we are running out of.

Peace.

Wonderful Exposition Poor Persuasion, September 15, 2008
This book should have either been 150 pages shorter and simply an argument or 100 pages longer with fully developed ideas. Zittrain frequently references and discusses the idea of "generativity" and changes the definition at each usage. Sometimes it means "creativity" sometimes it means "openness" and sometimes it means "freedom", while all these ideas are tied to generativity, none are categorical or clear. It seems to be a shorthand for "computer good stuff" in the same way the word "umami" or "freedom" is used with several means and a body of meanings that's poorly defined.
The book also references several seeming contradictions that I felt were poorly addressed. The opening of the book talks about the triumph of the Internet because of its openness over walled garden, then says that it's under thread by tethered services, which the Internet had initially bested.
Hacking isn't referenced for devices like DVRs, iPhones, and other such beasts.
DRM is entirely ignored as well as its failure in the music realm. I think the Sony Rootkit debacle would have served as a nice piece.

Finally, the book's title includes "and how to stop it". I don't recall much in the book that actively tells the read what to do to stop a tethered device dominated network nor what legislation should be avoided or promoted.

The center bits on generativity and how it pops up in everyday life was both informative and interesting. Maybe this book should have been broken into two parts rather than the odd mingling that took place in this text.

A major stake in the ground on the policy implications of the net, June 30, 2008
The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It is a major work of business, legal and policy research that will be less accessible to most people, but important to those looking to understand the future direction of today's ecommerce world. Zittrain is both a technologist and a lawyer and he appears to be writing this book more to influence policy and thinking rather than proposing a specific solution.

This is fine, in my opinion, as Zittrain provides two important frameworks that define new ways of thinking about the net and its impact: the notion of generative technology and the idea that the value of that technology is moving from the network to the endpoints. The book describes these ideas and develops them into a range of policy and technical decisions facing business, political and judicial leaders.

In the Future of the Internet, Jonathan Zittrain provides a detailed analysis of the development of the Internet, the nature of networks, and the evolution of technology. This book concentrates on the central elements of what Zittrain calls "generative" solutions. A generative solution is one that provides a basis for innovation, new products and new sources of value through experimentation and individual innovation (ala Cheesbourgh's open innovation). Zittrain sees the Internet and the PC as generative technologies, which the clearly are. However he sees generative technologies go through a pattern where the openness and high levels of trust that made them generative and attracted new solutions soon fall prey to fraud, abuse and outright criminal activities.

Zittrain argues that this is what the Internet is going through now as SPAM, Malware, Phishing and other forms of cyber crime and mischief are eroding the value of the Internet as a generative platform. The book makes this argument in a very logical way with good examples. This takes up the first part of the book and is perhaps the best part.

Zittrain's idea is that as these generative technologies become compromised, the value potential moves from the network that connects devices to the devices themselves. Here is where he introduces the notion of appliance devices that are purpose build, not readily programmable at the functional level and give the consumer more protection and the provider more control. The notion that the value is moving away from the network is very intriguing; particularly interesting give the recent warm reception of appliances such as the iPhone, Wii, Tivo and others.

Overall this book is not for the faint of heart, nor for the casual reader of business and technology books. The text is well written, loaded with examples and details that will make for good cocktail party stories, but it is more of a policy book and a scholarly work than a business text.

CIOs should read the first half of the book with great interest as it lays out a new way of thinking about the network.

Corporate development officers at technology companies should read the whole book as it describes a possible legal, regulatory and economic framework for the future of technology.

Business leaders should read the first part of the book to understand the true nature and exposure they have in the current generative Internet era.

Compelling and thought-provoking, May 14, 2008
Someone once said, "The plural of anecdote is data." Zittrain's new book is a delightful illustration of this principle, engaging the reader with fascinating observations and stories, then weaving them together to present a powerful narrative. Whether or not you share his vision for the future, you'll gain a new appreciation for how the online world that we take for granted today could easily have been--and still threatens to become--a strikingly different place.

interesting, but flawed, look at the future of cyberspace, February 4, 2009
Contrary to what Zittrain would have us believe, reports of the Internet's death have been greatly exaggerated. Not only is the Net not dying, but there are signs that digital generativity and online openness are thriving as never before.

Essentially, Zittrain creates a false choice regarding the digital future we face. He doesn't seem to believe that a hybrid future is possible or desirable. In reality, however, we can have a world full of some tethered appliances or even semi-closed networks that also includes generative gadgets and open networks. After all, millions of us love our iPhones and TiVos, but we also take full advantage of the countless other open networks and devices at our disposal.

Further, while it's true that the creators of iPhone and TiVo maintain a high degree of control over the guts of the devices or their operating systems, the technologies themselves are hardly sterile or non-generative. In fact, these devices have amazing uses, and they have both recently become more open to third-party add-ons and applications. Geeks who demand still more are also hacking away at these and other digital devices to get them to do everything but wash their dishes.Most of us want networks and digital devices that work.

Zittrain, by contrast, seems to long for the era when we all had to load floppy disks into our PCs each morning to get our operating systems running. But those were hardly the good old days. Device makers realized that only techno-geeks would tolerate such hassles, and so our PCs and phones now come with more software and services built in to make our lives easier. Nothing stands in the way of those who still prefer the rugged individualist approach to conquering cyber-frontiers and digital devices. But what Zittrain does in The Future of the Internet is generalize his personal preferences to the whole of cyber-society. What's good for the ivory-tower digerati may not be what the rest of us want or need. [My complete review of Jonathan's book can be found on the Technology Liberation Front blog.]

Why you should both love and hate your Amazon Kindle e-reader?, November 16, 2008
I read this book on my Amazon Kindle. Ironically this book describes why my Amazon Kindle (and for that matter your iPhone) may represent a problem for the information technology industry (and for all of us as individuals).

Zittrain describes how open devices and software platforms can faciltate innovation and how closed platforms don't. Further, he discusses how these emerging closed device platforms risk converting the internet into a tool for simplified corporate or governmental control of what you see and hear. This book, along with "The Big Switch" by Nicholas Carr, challenge the conventional cyber-utopian assumption that the internet will continue to be a wide open landscape where you independently (and privately) choose when and where you can go. The battle is for control of the end-point device.

Zittrain has certainly spotted the dark side of Web 2.0. He has specifically illuminated those selected design assumptions within and around the internet that can shift the net from a tool by which you manage your life -- to a tool by which others manage your life. This is a serious book that merges the future of technology with public policy (and without ever actually discussing public policy -- he instead wisely focuses on the implications of certain technology architectural choices).

"The Future of the Internet" is one of the first books to directly question the sustainability of cyber-libertarian assumptions about the internet. If you cherish those long standing assumptions, you may want to spend a little time on this book.

Simply Outstanding, May 15, 2008
Kudos to Jonathan Zittrain for producing a book accessible to both a lay audience as well as his technorati crowd. His blending of history, early digital anecdote, and his strong analysis make this an academic book that transcends the blogosphere and onto both main street and wall street. A remarkable accomplishment.

Generation Generators, April 11, 2009
The Internet has indeed evolved and it continues to create myriad social and legal questions far beyond battles over hacking and file sharing. In fact, technological control and government regulation are now the biggest issues, but they've largely escaped the public's notice. This book is a very useful primer on up-to-the-minute issues in cyberlaw, and Zittrain insightfully frames the history of the Internet from multiple social and technical perspectives. The Internet was once totally user-defined but is now in the process of being locked down into proprietary tethered devices under the control of for-profit corporations, with the (supposed) need for security against hackers, viruses, and copyright infringement. But in the process, the Internet is in danger of becoming little more than a mass media outlet, to the peril of public collaboration and cooperative programming.

These are truly worrisome issues, and Zittrain frames the problem very well, but as the book drags along his overall argument becomes more and more directionless. The first problem is that Zittrain expends far too much effort trying to add theoretical support to his concept of "generativity," reaching awkwardly into areas of education policy and social construction of technology that are not his forte. And while Zittrain maps out the potentially unhappy "Future of the Internet," he comes up short on "How to Stop It" - or even why. Surely a certain segment of netizens would wish to avert the coming disaster, but it's a disaster that probably only they can see. Zittrain bemoans, but largely evades, the fact that the overwhelming majority of current Internet users are passive consumers of information on sites like this one.

This book's main deficiency is not in framing the problem, but in making the need for solutions relevant to the huge demographic that really has some kind of say in the near future of the Internet. Besides, technology will still allow truly passionate netizens to abandon the locked-down and corporatized World Wide Web. Figuring out how to make everyone else care is still the 64 gazillion dollar question. [~doomsdayer520~]

Not a Bedtime Story, November 9, 2008
You do not want to crawl into bed with this book. A mind stimulator, it narrates the history of the Internet's making and a possible doomsday scenario in which what started out as a generative platform could become a tightly regulated one that suppresses innovation. Although projections of the future are certainly interesting, the making of the Internet and its early characteristics is a 101 for anyone who doesn't quite understand how the Internet came about. Some sections go into technical depth that can be a bit too much for an average reader to swallow, but then again, this isn't science fiction.

Eh..., August 21, 2010
I saw a video of a talk he gave which seemed to be a prelude to this book. I liked his talk and presentation style, so I read the book. My review is in the middle of the road. The author is brilliant. He has a broad vocabulary, uses impeccable grammar, and offers decent ideas and concepts regarding the subject matter. That said, the delivery is long-winded, sluggish, repetitive, contains many near-run-on sentences, and is at times downright tedious, flowing like a lawyer's contract. There are times when he goes over the same points more than once, but then briefly mentions other concepts which may be foreign to the reader, only to move on leaving them unexplained. I also don't agree with with most of his proposed "solutions"-I believe they would not work, but this does not affect my review either way. ... Read more