Getting a Life: America's Challenge to Grow Up

Customer Reviews:

Life Is for Living.......2001-11-22

What is life but creating and contributing to our community's life force. When should one start? Leslie Dreyfous not only tell us when, but how. This is a poetically beautiful journey by a very gifted writer showing us the way.

Great--a insightful, readable look at important issues faci.......1998-03-15

This book examines the provocative idea of our nation's need to "grow up" by examining portraits of important community-builders and activists as well as the significant stories of "regular" people. Dreyfous's focus on the stages of growing up--through awkward adolescence into responsibility and maturity--is both perceptive and sensitive without being preachy or dry, and her use of real people's individual stories makes this book worthwhile not only for its social criticism but for its humanity and inspiration.

Book Description

An unprecedented chronicle of America's bitter war against Japanese imperialism a half-century ago that interweaves poignant first-person memories with unique color photography of the major battle sites paired with evocative archival images.

This fascinating, richly illustrated survey of all aspects of the Pacific war, from Pearl Harbor to Japan's surrender in Tokyo Bay, presents something unique among World War II histories: an extensive color portfolio of dramatic wartime relics surviving decades on most of the Pacific island battlefields. Rusting American landing craft and tanks still can be found on treacherous reefs and beaches where they were tragically stopped by enemy fire so long ago, aircraft of both sides lie hidden in the jungles where they crashed, battle-scarred Japanese pillboxes and artillery emplacements still stand sentinel, and packed-coral landing strips remain as good as new. All such evocative memento mori have been beautifully captured by Jerry Meehl, probably the only photographer to have sought out all these far-flung battle sites, many of them still dangerous underfoot and now off limits to travelers. The authors also searched official archives for pictures that really show the terrors of combat, and often these display the very tanks and amtracs now decomposing on distant invasion beaches. They also found captured prewar photos of Japanese pillboxes and gun emplacements as newly built, and contrast them with their current, war-torn condition.

But this is far from just a "then" and "now" picture book. Each of the more than twenty photo essays of particular battles features a lively narrative that relies heavily on the firsthand accounts of men who were there, archival pictures shot during the actual fighting, and color photographs of the remaining Japanese bunkers and gun emplacements all of which help the reader visualize what hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific war was really like.

Other details: 500 illustrations, 250 in full color

Customer Reviews:

Pacific Legacy.......2007-10-07

I normally don't write reviews but for this book I had to make an exception. Of the hundreds of books on the Pacific war I've read over the years, this stands head and shoulders above any I've read. The photos are spectacular and are well laid out. If you have any interest in the personal part of that war, this is an absolute must. Just as an aside, I recommended to a WWII Seabee friend, he bought it, and found his photo.

Fascinating Book.......2003-01-16

I've read a lot of books about the Pacific war, but this one is definitely my favorite.

Rex Alan Smith served 36 months as an Army Engineer in the Pacific. Since then, he has traveled extensively, visiting and talking with other veterans of the Pacific war. Gerald Meehl has spent years combing the Pacific and photographing the places which played important roles in WWII in the Pacific: places such as Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, Bataan, Corregidor, Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Munda, Tarawa, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa; along with lesser-known, but exotic outposts, such as Bora Bora and Pago Pago.

What emerges from their work is a series of more than 20 essays on individual battles, in the order in which they occurred, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the final surrender at Tokyo Bay. The essays begin with explanations of why the battles were fought, and what strategies were employed. Aerial photographs give you an overall view of the operation. First-hand accounts by the men who fought there give you a chilling sense of what it was like to charge up the beach in the face of withering enemy fire. There are hundreds of photographs - about half in black and white, which were taken during the actual fighting; and half in color, taken by Mr. Meehl some years later, often of the same scenes. The color photographs are beautiful and haunting. You'll see the rusting hulk of an abandoned tank, or the crumbling rubble of a bombed-out pillbox, surrounded by sparkling white beaches with swaying palms, crystal clear ocean waters, and blue skies with fluffy white clouds.

In his introduction to the book, Joe Foss, Medal of Honor winner at Guadalcanal, says, "We could not cover every campaign in detail, nor was it our purpose to present a comprehensive history of the Pacific war. Rather, we tried to create for the reader, while the veterans themselves can recall it, what that war was like--how it looked and felt and smelled--and to examine the legacy today of a war so fiercely fought on faraway Pacific Islands."

Book Description

Many environmental problems cross national boundaries and can be addressed only through international cooperation. In this book Robert Darst examines transnational efforts to promote environmental protection in the USSR and in five of its successor states--Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--from the late 1960s to the present. The core of the book is a comparative study of three key issues: nuclear power safety, transboundary air pollution, and Baltic Sea pollution.

Although expectations were high that the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union would lead to increased East-West environmental cooperation, the opposite has been true. Russia and the other successor states have generally agreed to address such problems only when paid to do so. Darst finds that post-Cold War environmental cooperation has been most successful when there is an overlap between the environmental and economic interests of the successor states and those of their Western neighbors, and when the foundation for cooperation was laid during the Cold War period.

The book is based on extensive original field research, including interviews with diplomats, government officials, scientists, and environmental activists in the successor states and Western Europe. Its findings underscore the importance of the domestic and international political context in which international environmental policy making occurs. It also deepens our understanding of the opportunities and dangers of positive inducements as a tool of international environmental policy.

Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973-1996 (BCSIA Studies in International Security)

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Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973-1996 (BCSIA Studies in International Security)
Andrew Bennett
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

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Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (BCSIA Studies in International Security)
The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times
On War (Oxford World's Classics)
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

ASIN: 0262522578

Book Description

Why did the Soviet Union use less force to preserve the Soviet empire from 1989 to 1991 than it had used in distant and impoverished Angola in 1975? This book fills a key gap in international relations theories by examining how actors' preferences and causal conceptions change as they learn from their experiences.

Andrew Bennett draws on interviews and declassified Politburo documents as well as numerous public statements to establish the views of Soviet and Russian officials. He argues that Soviet leaders drew lessons from their apparent successes in Vietnam and elsewhere in the 1970s that made them more interventionist. Then, as casualties in Afghanistan mounted in the 1980s, Soviet leaders learned different lessons that led them to withdraw from regional conflicts and even to abstain from the use of force as the Soviet empire dissolved. The loss of this empire led to exaggerated fears of "domino effects" within Russia and a resurgence of interventionist views, culminating in the Russian invasion of Chechnya in 1994. Throughout this process, Soviet and Russian leaders and policy experts were divided into competing schools of thought as much by the information to which they were exposed as by their apparent material interests. This helps explain how Gorbachev and other new thinkers were able to prevail over the powerful military-party-industrial complex that had dominated Soviet politics since Stalin's time.

Soviet Strategic Thought, 1917-91 (BCSIA Studies in International Security)

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Must read for the serious Cold War student

Soviet Strategic Thought, 1917-91 (BCSIA Studies in International Security)
Andrei A. Kokoshin
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Russia | History | Subjects | Books

Military Science | History | Subjects | Books

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History & Theory | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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Similar Items:

Collapse of the Soviet Military
Russian Military Reform, 1992-2002 (Soviet (Russian) Military Experience)
The Russian Military: Power and Policy (American Academy Studies in Global Security)
The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy (The New Cold War History)
The Military History of the Soviet Union

ASIN: 0262611384

Book Description

During the Cold War, Westerners were obsessed with the military policies of the Soviet Union. Until the demise of the Soviet Union, however, few details of Moscow's thinking on military matters were available. In this book, Andrei Kokoshin reveals how Soviet military theorists developed and debated the concepts that provided the basis for the Kremlin's defense policies. Drawing on Soviet-era archives and unpublished materials, he sheds light on this important chapter in the history of Russia and the world.

The book covers three main themes: the relationship between politics and military strategy in the Soviet Union; how the Soviet political and military leadership assessed threats to Soviet security, the nature of future wars, and methods of warfare; and the relationship between offense and defense in Soviet military strategy. Kokoshin places the strategic concepts behind Moscow's military policies in the context of internal and international struggles for power, and assesses the future role of military power in Russia's national security strategy.

Customer Reviews:

Must read for the serious Cold War student.......2005-10-13

This comparatively brief (a little over 200 pp) overview is cogent, focused, and indispensable. It was written by a senior officer who spent his journeyman years under Soviet premiers from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, but filled prominent positions in the senior defense councils of de-imperialized Russia in the 1990s. It reflects both his intimate knowledge of accepted strategic-military theory in the old Soviet Union, and his ability to step outside that tradition for a critical look.

Kokoshin tells his intended story well, and in that simple sense conveys a useful message. But a Western reader learns much more from a contextual analysis of his information. Possibly the most poignant passage is found on pp 186-7 of the 1999 MIT Press paperback edition, where Kokoshin paints a picture of Soviet military theorists in the 1980s focusing all their energies on the lessons of WWII and the Battle of Kursk.

The powerful counterpoint of that image with the reality of American theoretical efforts at the same time is not what Kokoshin intends to evoke -- but that in itself is another telling fact. The overall impression one compiles from reading this book is that while the United States was, decade after decade, improving its ability to "project power" globally and wage expeditionary warfare on a large scale (e.g., Desert Storm), the Soviet Union was busy fitting all the new technology, new weapons, and new logistic potential into the land warfare mold of WWII.

The book reinforces this impression from start to finish. Acclaimed Soviet theorist Mikhail Tukhachevsky wrote what essentially became the Warsaw Pact strategy vs NATO in an issue of the Journal of Military History in 1934, under the perennial Soviet belief that the capitalist powers would seek to invade Russia in force -- and that strategy changed only in its employment of weapons and tactics over the next 50 years. Kokoshin confirms the conclusion of many Western analysts that in the 1960s-70s the Soviet military saw nuclear weapons as adjuncts to a campaign strategy, rather than as agents for transforming war into a cosmic Gotterdammerung. It was in the 1980s that Soviet thinking began to reject nuclear use as unrealistic, in the way American thinking had begun to more than a decade earlier.

Kokoshin presents his history without once indicating that the Soviets found the concept of mutual assured destruction philosophically compelling, and I find no reason to disbelieve him. It is just possible that American and Soviet Russian modes of strategic thinking were out of sync through much of the Cold War. Kokoshin provides another argument for this assessment in conveying the Soviet perception of the USSR's overall strategic situation, throughout its life: i.e., surrounded, by wealthy maritime powers.

Contrast this with the governing perception of most Western thinkers, that the key geopolitical factor in the global situation was Soviet landpower versus Europe. Halford Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman did their work well in this regard, giving us the World Island/Heartland vs Rimland construct, and reflecting the Western European/American Rimland as peripheral and importunate against a great land power (Soviet Russia) with a continent at its back.

Few in the West saw the situation as the Soviets did, even while the West gradually accumulated both the technology and doctrine to "project" land power over the sea in a way the continental Soviet Union could not. Kokoshin's history doesn't lead me to think the Soviets saw this discrepancy clearly either; they just represented one side of it. Perhaps the West's rapidly improving ability to project power through expeditionary warfare increased the Soviet sense of surroundedness, but apparently it did not persuade the Soviets to rethink their own core military strategy, which remained boresighted on armor and deep battle in central Europe.

An additional lesson from Kokoshin's book is the difference in the evolution of military-strategic thought when it is not subject to public political criticism, as opposed to when it is. Western military theorists are never insulated from political trends and second-guessing, as Soviet thinkers once were. Possibly a little more outside review might have provoked greater foresight and less geopolitical atrophy in Soviet strategic thought. One must admit, however, that vigorous dispute and political oversight in the West, while they drove a forward-leaning development of global expeditionary capability, didn't perform very well at pinpointing or exploiting the self-perception of the Soviet opponent. All systems have their limitations.

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Russia First: Breaking with the West
Peter Truscott
Manufacturer: I. B. Tauris
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

Russia | History | Subjects | Books

Eastern Europe | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

For 200 years Russia has had a love-hate relationship with the West. Anxious on the one hand to emulate Western institutions, ideas and lifestyles, while on the other, strongly nationalistic and suspicious of Western political and cultural encroachment.

All signs show, argues the author, that Russia is leading back towards more comfortable and familiar territory away from the West. With most shades of Russian political opinion now firmly set on a "Russia First" policy following the West's failure to accommodate Russia's post-Communist economic and diplomatic needs, coupled with the pain associated with Western economic models, he concludes that Russia is developing its own "Tsarist" solutions with profound effects on domestic and foreign policy.

Assuring Peace in a Changing World: Critical Choices for the West's Strategic and Arms Control Policies

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Assuring Peace in a Changing World: Critical Choices for the West's Strategic and Arms Control Policies
Lynn E. Davis
Manufacturer: Not Avail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

International Law | Law | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0941700631

Between Russia And The West: Foreign And Security Policy Of Independent Ukraine (Studien Zu Zeitgeschichte Und Sicherheitspolitik, V. 2.)

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Between Russia And The West: Foreign And Security Policy Of Independent Ukraine (Studien Zu Zeitgeschichte Und Sicherheitspolitik, V. 2.)

Manufacturer: Peter Lang Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Japan | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

Ukraine | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Russia | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Book Description

The book addresses achievements, challenges and problems of Ukraine's foreign and security policy since 1990/91. Emphasis is put on the often problematic, but presently stable, bilateral relations with Russia as well as Ukraine's policies aimed at enhancing its position in the Central Eastern European region and integration into Western and Euro-Atlantic structures. The book contains contributions by well-known Ukrainian, Russian and Western foreign and security policy analysts such as Olga Alexandrova, Hermann Clement, Anatolii Grytsenko, Taras Kuzio, Arkadiy Moshes, Hryhorii Nemyria, Oleksandr Pavliuk, Oleksandr Potekhin, James Sherr, and others, as well as concluding remarks by the editors. A foreword is dedicated by H.E. Borys Tarasyuk, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

Change and Stability in Foreign Policy: The Problems and Possibilities of Detente

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Change and Stability in Foreign Policy: The Problems and Possibilities of Detente
Kjell Goldmann
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0691077789

Book Description

Assume that a nation is pursuing a given foreign policy and that we are concerned with the way in which it will act in the future. We may want to make a forecast--but then to what extent is the present policy of a nation a valid guide to its future behavior? Or we may want to influence the nation to change its course--can we succeed? In other words, will the policy change or persist in the face of new conditions or negative feedback? Kjell Goldmann identifies the factors that may have an impact on whether a specific foreign policy is likely to endure or to change and develops them into a theory of foreign policy stability. He then uses this theory to explore the reasons why West German-Soviet detente during the 1970s proved to be more enduring than the improvement in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Finally, he outlines a hypothetical scenario for a fully successful process of detente stabilization and examines the extent to which this scenario is realistic. The book ends with some thought about how to conduct a policy aimed at stable detente with an adversary.

Conventional Arms Control and East-West Security (Duke Press Policy Studies)

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Conventional Arms Control and East-West Security (Duke Press Policy Studies)
Robert D. Blackwill
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This important and timely work, prepared by the leading researchers, planners, and policymakers from both Eastern and Western alliances, analyzes the major issues in the Vienna talks on conventional forces in Europe involving NATO and Warsaw Pact nations. It is likely to have a significant influence on the course of these negotiations and on emerging debate on conventional arms control. The contributors met in Moscow prior to the Vienna conference to review and compare their analyses and revised them thereafter for publication in this work.

Defense Policy Making: A Comparative Analysis

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Defense Policy Making: A Comparative Analysis

Manufacturer: Leicester Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Military Science | History | Subjects | Books

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East West Trade and the Atlantic Alliance

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East West Trade and the Atlantic Alliance
David A. Baldwin
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Exports & Imports | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | International | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0312042329

Birds of Lake, Pond and Marsh: Water and Wetland Birds of Eastern North America
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Takes up where the field guides leave off

Birds of Lake, Pond and Marsh: Water and Wetland Birds of Eastern North America
John Eastman
Manufacturer: Stackpole Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Lakes & Ponds | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books
Ornithology | Zoology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
General | Birdwatching | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
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Similar Items:

Birds of Forest, Yard, and Thicket

Birds of Field and Shore: Grassland and Shoreline Birds of Eastern North America

The Book of Swamp and Bog: Trees, Shrubs, and Wildflowers of the Eastern Freshwater Wetlands

The Book of Field and Roadside: Open-Country Weeds, Trees, and Wildflowers of Eastern North America

The Book of Forest and Thicket: Trees, Shrubs, and Wildflowers of Eastern North America

ASIN: 0811726819

Book Description

72 drawings *
5 x 8 *
* Unique ecologically-based field guide
* Waterfowl, rails, hawks, herons, finches, and more

Praise for Eastman's Birds of Forest, Yard, and Thicket:

"Presented in a readable, easy to follow narrative...a well-researched look at the birds and their lives."--Eirik Blom, Bird Watcher's Digest

Birds of Lake, Pond and Marsh describes how 39 common water and wetland birds nest, mate, and rear their broods in spring; how they feed in summer; whether, how, and where they migrate in fall; and how they survive in winter. This seasonal approach, together with an emphasis on ecological niches, distinguishes Eastman's book from other field guides. Precise illustration complements informative text, making "Birds of Lake, Pond and Marsh" an appealing and educational guide for birders of any skill level. Entries are arranged in the new taxonomic order based on DNA testing; selected bibliography and index are included.

John Eastman is author of The Book of Forest and Thicket, The Book of Swamp and Bog, and Birds of Forest, Yard, and Thicket. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Illustrator Amelia Hansen lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Customer Reviews:

Takes up where the field guides leave off.......2000-10-31

Field guides are great for helping you identify the bird you just scoped, but once you want to learn more about the birds you've been seeing the field guides aren't of much use. This book covers a limited number of birds, but the information provided is excellent. He covers the life history of the birds, including a season by season account of the typical year in the bird's life. Mating habits, habitat preferences, and threats to their enviroment are some of the topics covered. In general, there are 3-5 pages devoted to each species. The illustrations are black and white, but are well done.

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