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We present only products that well-selected by Amazon's Top 100 Reviewers.120Revelations That Won't Be Televised: In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars(Books)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061228753/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/
In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars(Books)
Kevin Sites, Release date:2007/10/01 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: Revelations That Won't Be Televised April 16, 2009
By doomsdayer520
#154 REVIEWER
The short attention span and corporate management of mainstream media has pushed serious investigative journalists to the fringes, with good ones like Kevin Sites forced to work independently or in unsustainable online operations. The subject of this book is Sites' year-long project for Yahoo! News in which he visited 20 war zones in a single year. The project led to some unexpected results. With so much traveling Sites did not have the time to report from each combat zone with a great amount of in-depth investigation, but on the other hand the project is a sobering illustration of how much senseless violence is taking place in the world at any given time. The rapid schedule also led Sites to dispense with standard action news coverage and to concentrate on the innocent civilians and overworked soldiers who have to take the brunt of bad decisions by politicians and demagogues. In the process, Sites comes up with incredible insights on war and politics that are as compelling as they are low-key, and his skills as an investigative journalist are complemented by a writer's gift for reaching powerful insights in few words.
America is full of pundits who think they can make big statements about wars and humanitarian crises that they have not seen in person and about which they've only heard propaganda. Kevin Sites and other courageous old-school journalists like him have really been on the front lines. Too bad the mass media is too yellow to give them the airtime that they, and their subjects, deserve. [~doomsdayer520~]
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]]>April 16, 2009-00-00T00:00:00+09:00An important new study: The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War(Books)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0670020540/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/
The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War(Books)
James Mann, Release date:2009/03/05 13 of 14 people found the following review helpful: An important new study March 7, 2009
By Seth J. Frantzman
#87 REVIEWER
The importance of Ronald Reagan is often being debated with books on both his greatness, sort of hagiographies, and those opposing places to much credit in him (Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future). This book attepts to examine Reagan from he standpoint of his 'rebellion' against the consensus on the right and left that the Soviet Union was a fact of life. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and other powerful voices in the Republican and Democratic parties believed the USSR was part of the status quo of the world, something that would always exist.
This book posits that Reagan and those around him imagined a world without the USSR and they sought to bring it about. This 'revolutionary' ideology meant that the State Department's current policies had to be pushed aside and instead of accomidating the USSR the U.S had to push against it, rather thanc containing, it had to be done away with.
Suprisingly Reagan found a sort of soul mate in Michael Gorbachev, who also sought radical reform in the USSR. In a freindship forged in ideological combat they together helped tear down the myth of Soviet invincibility. This book examines such famous incidents as the 'tear down this wall' speech. It shows that Reagan had a very real ideology that he pursued with vigor.
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]]>March 7, 2009-00-00T00:00:00+09:00The most important work on 19th century U.S thought: Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism(Books)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465004954/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/
Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism(Books)
William H. Goetzmann, Release date:2009/02/23 5 of 6 people found the following review helpful: The most important work on 19th century U.S thought March 7, 2009
By Seth J. Frantzman
#87 REVIEWER
In this brilliant study the great minds of the American 19th century are finally brought to light in a readable text that places them in the context of America. This book traces the story of America's thinkers in the post-reovlutionary era and the world they struggled with. Of particular importance were individual rights, slavery, the raod to disunion, the uniqueness of America, the American West, the Republic as ideal, women and rights for slaves, utopia, religion's role in the New World and Empire.
This beautifully written book weaves together the personalities and thoughts of the period with the fabric of history, from the Jeffersonian times to the era of Jackson, the rise of Capitalism and the Civil War. Beggining with Paine and, as the title suggests, ending with Pragmatism, this is more than a history of thought, it is also a history of America and the dreams of its people. This book shows how European influence on American thought and the roots of some of the ideas of the thinkers and shows how they imagined a New World, a New history in America that would be uniquely American.
A wonderful history and exploration of an important theme,
Seth J. Frantzman
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]]>March 7, 2009-00-00T00:00:00+09:00Important but doesn't give Arabs enough agency: Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East(Books)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807003107/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/
Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East(Books)
Rashid Khalidi, Release date:2009/02/15 16 of 19 people found the following review helpful: Important but doesn't give Arabs enough agency March 7, 2009
By Seth J. Frantzman
#87 REVIEWER
This is an important book from the well known scholar Rashid Khalidi whose previosu writings have usually focused on the Arab-Israei conflict.(The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood). However he has, of late, expanded his interests to examine the entire Middle East and particularly the 'western' influence and meddling in the region.
In this work he seeks to examine the role of the Cold War in the Middle East. For a long time scholars have spoken of what is called an 'Arab Cold War', the internal struggle between Arab regimes who were allied with the U.S and Russia. Egypt was a lynchpin in this for the Egyptian Nationalist government of Nasser and Sadat flirted with he Soviets for some twenty years. Nasserism also influenced revolutions in Yemen and attempted coups in Jordan and Lebanon, as well as Baghdad. Syria under the Ba'ath and the Asad family was a close ally of the Soviets. So was Iraq under the Ba'ath. On the other side were the Saudis, the Gulf States, Egypt after 1980, Jordan's King Hussein, the Yemenite royalists, Baghdad before 1968 and Turkey. Lebanon was always problematic, torn by chaos after 1976 it had numerous influences. The Palestinians too curried favor with the Soviets, especially the PFLP and George Habash.
Islamism and its rise among the Brotherhood, Hamas, and particularly in Iran in 1979 placed a third counterbalance to this Cold War reivalry in the region. Herein lies the problem with the Khalidi analysis. Khalidi wants to show that the U.S and Soviet Union 'sowed crises' in the Middle East. This follows in the footsteps of the older idea that the carving up of the region in 1918 by Europeans also 'sowed' the problems of today. But both of these views neglect Arab agency. What of Mumar Qadafi of Libya, Nasser and the Saudis? What of the Shah and the Ayatollah. All of these men used the West and operated within the contexts they needed to and each in their own way also stood up to the West. This is not to mention Saddam Hussein whose 1991 Gulf War actually pitted him against the U.S and the Russians along with others.
Ibn Saud and the rise of Saudi predates both the 1918 carving up of the Ottoman empire and the Cold War. Hardly a tool of U.S policy the Saudis have worked with the U.S and extended their influence. The revolutionary regimes, such as Nasser, also played the West, sometimes using Western money to build the Aswan Dam and inviting Soviet advisors to help them fight the Israelis. Israel too, now seen as a close aly of the U.S, once coveted close relations with the Soviets.
To ascribe all that has happaned in the Middle East to 'the west' and blame it on the Cold War ignored the agency of the Arab, Persian, Turkish, Jewish and other peoples in the region. Far from always being puppets they had great agecny, their own reolutions and movements and they choose when and where to fight their wars, wars that forced the West into the region in many cases. The U.S in fact long ignored the Middle East between 1948 and 1956 until the Suez crises for Ike to take the side of Egypt against the UK, hardly an example of Cold War 'sowing crises'.
This book is important but places too much emphasis on the importance of the West and fails to see the important role that local rulers played in decision making. While the fad is to blame others for the problems of the Middle East this book doesn't give local people credit where credit is due for their innovations and political experiments.
Seth J. Frantzman
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]]>March 7, 2009-00-00T00:00:00+09:00The most important book on Israel this year: Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End(Books)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471789623/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/
Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End(Books)
Daniel Gordis, Release date:2009/03/03 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful: The most important book on Israel this year March 6, 2009
By Seth J. Frantzman
#87 REVIEWER
But Gordis goes one step further, blending analysis of the country's intellectual enemies, such as Tony Judt and Avraham Burg, and its internal and external threats. But the diagnosis that is most important is the explanation for national renewal in Israel and among Jews in the mission of Israel. The problem is that Israeli's are forgetting the dream of Zionism, not realizing that the danger to Israel is not 'merely' the loss of the West Bank, which many Israelis rarely visit anyway, but the loss of the country entirely. The threat is not just Iran but is psychological and emotion, both internal and external.
Gordis' starting point is the Six Day War and the seeming might of Israel at the time. Gordis traces the decline of that might, although Israel's military remained powerful, the threat of the Civil Rights turned Terrorism movement of the Palestinians and especially Hamas and its allies such as Hizbullah have undermined Israel little by little. Gordis tackles the important question of how Israel can be both a Jewish and a Democratic state, acknowledging that "understandably trouble's Israel's Arabs." Gordis correctly notes the fallacy in arguing that a country cannot have ethnic and national-religious overtones. He could have gone further and noted other celebrated countries that do, such as Malaysia and Japan and how many European countries even enshrine and give special rights to national churches. Gordis concludes that "there is no alternative" and that Israel is not the U.S, it is not a secular polyglot nation, it is a Jewish state.
There are several small flaws. The name of Burg's work which has now been published in English (The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes) is written in Hebrew translation rather than its English name, there are two chapters on Israeli Arabs which are oddly non-consecutive and the author over-estimates the possibility that there might have been Civil War over Disengagement from Gaza. But these are tiny compared to the overall weight and importance of the text. Anyone interested in modern Israel and the future of Israel and the Jewish people should read this important work.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Revelations That Won't Be Televised April 16, 2009
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Important but doesn't give Arabs enough agency March 7, 2009