Amazon.com
Cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and was sent to the Siberian Gulag along with other captive Poles, Finns, Ukranians, Czechs, Greeks, and even a few English, French, and American unfortunates who had been caught up in the fighting. A year later, he and six comrades from various countries escaped from a labor camp in Yakutsk and made their way, on foot, thousands of miles south to British India, where Rawicz reenlisted in the Polish army and fought against the Germans. The Long Walk recounts that adventure, which is surely one of the most curious treks in history.
Book Description
"I hope
The Long Walk will remain as a memorial to all those who live and die for freedom, and for all those who for many reasons could not speak for themselves."--Slavomir Rawicz
In 1941, the author and six other fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp in Yakutsk--a camp where enduring hunger, cold, untended wounds, untreated illnesses, and avoiding daily executions were everyday feats. Their march--over thousands of miles by foot--out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India is a remarkable statement about man's desire to be free.
While the original book sold hundreds of thousands of copies, this updated paperback version includes a new Afterword by the author, as well as the author's Foreword to the Polish book. Written in a hauntingly detailed, no holds barred way, the new edition of
The Long Walk is destined to outrank its classic status and guaranteed to forever stay in the reader's mind.
Customer Reviews:
The Long Walk-Rawicz.......2007-10-12
How much of this adventure is indisputable fact? And how much is recalled in the mind of a man mostly crazed by thirst and hunger and thus distorted by the nigtmares suffered on the journey? I give literary license to the author and say it was a fantastic adventure. Shame on the doubters!
The Long Walk.......2007-10-11
I am an avid reader, and this is by far one of the most fascinating books I have read. It shows the strength and willpower of a human's will to survive in the most horrific condtions. A must read.
Thrilling adventure, lousy history.......2007-09-26
I would have admired this book without reservation if it were represented as a work of fiction, but since its supposed to be a true story, I can't be as positive. Even without the information about the author uncovered by the BBC, which pretty much ends the debate regarding the veracity of this account, I would have questioned the authenticity of this story anyway.
I can believe most of the horrible things described about the author's arrest, interrogation, transport, and incarceration in a work camp (though the forced march seems less plausible, but we should never underestimate the cruelty of the gulag camp system). If anything, the way he describes the work camps sounds too tame in light of what we know about the gulag. He describes a work camp without criminals (most gulag inmates were classed as criminals, not politicals) and with very relaxed boundaries between the commandant and the inmates. This sounds more like Hogan's Stalag 13 than a real gulag. (read Anne Applebaum's remarkable book on the gulag.)
What seems most implausible to me is the novelistic quality of the book. First, there are the supporting characters - in true hollywood fashion, each of whom has a characteristic that distinguishes him or her from the others - toothless guy, the gentle giant, the wisecracker, and most implausibly, a beautiful young escapee who miraculously crosses their path amid the vast wastes of Siberia. Next, there's the dialogue (always recalled by the author verbatim), which reads more like a hollywood script than actual conversation between people (e.g., each of the wisecracker's quips is recalled verbatim). Finally, there's level of detail that no memory could recall, such as who found what kind of snake on which day.
Read this book side by side with real stories of survival, accounts of undisputed veracity (omit those written by journalists or authors who kept a notebook during their travels). Next to a book like Herzog's Annapurna or Worsley's book on the Endurance, the Long Walk reads like a very good novel, but not a true account of survival.
Frankly, I'm surprised that so many people have accepted its authenticity over the last several decades. Credit should go to the journalist who wrote the book with the help of the "author." The true story I would like to read is how a journalist and a Polish camp survivor cooked up this tale and sold it to the public. The author's tells us that he donated his time to good causes. I have to wonder if he was trying to ease his sense of guilt or rationalize his long involvement in this hoax.
A Maze Ing.......2007-09-11
What an amazing life. I was expecting another "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or "Gulag Archipelago." But this story is different -- there is very little bitterness, very little savoring-of-the-details. Instead, it is cleanly told and incredibly true. It is a simple book, not much complexity, just human nature laid bare. Amazing.
Escape from the Soviet Union.......2007-09-05
There is some debate as to whether or not this story is true, but it is not at all improbable. Sentenced to 25 years in the Soviet gulag system, Polish cavalry-officer Rawicz was determined to escape from the remote Siberian labor-camp, somewhere north of Lake Baikal. The brutality Rawicz experienced at the hands of the communist government is typical of such accounts from this era. It reminds one of the memoirs of Alexander Solzhenitzyn.
Rawicz assembled a group of six other prisoners: two more Polish soldiers, a Latvian, a Lithuanian, a Yugoslavian, and ...an American! They made their break in early 1941, during a winter storm. Along the way, a teenage Polish girl also joined the party. The resulting narrative (if it is all true) is a harsh tale of survival as they trekked across some of the most rugged and dangerous terrain on Earth: frozen pine-forests, open plains, the Gobi Desert, and the mountains of Tibet.
Sadly, only half the party made it to the objective, which was India. Had they been less hasty in their trek once free of Soviet territory, the entire party could have survived. Had they planned more, traveled with caravans, and learned some basic survival skills, they could have brought everyone out.
The crossed Siberia, Mongolia, north China, and Tibet, cut off from all civilization and news of events abroad. They passed through lands where life was largely unchanged in a thousand years, and oblivious to the titanic events of World War II. Had Rawicz's party stopped in Lhasa, they surely would have met the famed mountaineers Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschneider (read "Seven Years In Tibet").
The most sceptical account, is a sighting of the "Yeti", while in the Himalayas. Did they really see some as yet unclassified primate? Who is to say?
Regardless, the story is profoundly fascinating...I hope its all true! The only improvement to the tale: what happened to the survivors after they left India? Unfortunately, thats where the story ends.
Average customer rating:
- rebuttal to charles ziembo
- Good, but not the whole story
- A Good Case Study in Interservice Malrelations
- THE TRUTH AT LAST
- The Dismissal at Saipan Revisited.
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Howlin' Mad Vs. the Army : Conflict in Command, Saipan 1944
Harry A. Gailey
Manufacturer: Presidio Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0891412425 |
Customer Reviews:
rebuttal to charles ziembo.......2005-08-20
Charles ziembo misses the point of why Professor Gailley wrote this book. Prior to "Howlin' Mad Versus the Army", people who wrote about Saipan accepted HM Smith's version of Saipan as the one true version of Saipan. No one ever cited any Army source, such as Edmund Love's history of the 27th Infantry Division or tried to talk to any Army officer involved in the incident.
As Professor Gailey points out, HM Smith had never commanded troops in battle prior to Saipan, made a number of errors on Saipan, and blamed the Army Division and its Commander for everything that went wrong on Saipan.
Good, but not the whole story.......2005-03-25
I read this book right after I had read "A Fighting General" by Norman Cooper, a bio of General Holland Smith. Mr. Gailey's book is a fine description of both Generals Smith and the problems and bad feelings between the army, navy and marines in the pacific during the war. However, I found Mr. Gailey tended to favor army general Ralph Smith's side over that of general Holland Smith. Perhaps this was due to the author's having had the chance to personally interview Ralph Smith but not Holland Smith. Gailey's admiration for Ralph Smith is apparent throughout the book. If you wish to get both sides of this story and learn the real reason Holland Smith relieved the army general I recommend Dr. Cooper's bio of Holland Smith. He devotes many pages to the controversy and presents both sides of the argument. Both books are well-worth the read. And, if you're really into this, by all means read Holland Smith's "Coral and Brass."
A Good Case Study in Interservice Malrelations.......2004-11-21
I first learned of this book as a History Book Club selection almost 20 years ago, although I didn't purchase it at the time. Oddly enough, the subject of the dispute over the relief of Army General Smith on Saipan by Marine General Smith is discussed of all places in David Hackett Fischer's excellent book on American cultural patterns, Albion's Seed, which I recently read. My interest was heightened when I checked the short treatment of the episode in Forrest Pogue's authoritative biography of General Marshall. As a result, I obtained Gailey's book in used form and I wasn't disappointed.
More than the extensive treatment of the tactical issues involved in the relief, I was fascinated by the author's fine discussion of the interservice differences and problems of command and coordination. In the Smith-Smith conflict, these were much exacerbated by the choleric temperment of Marine Gen. Smith as contrasted with the more phlegmatic disposition of his Army subordinate. Gailey is quite clearly a partisan of Army General Ralph Smith, but always states his case fairly and with abundant evidence and documentation. Importantly, Gailey never allows his arguments to degenerate into an attack on the Marine Corps, although he decidedly sees Gen. Holland Smith's overidentification with his own branch of service as a marked handicap in his ability to credibly handle large units from both services optimally.
Two individuals who receive notable secondary praise are General Marshall and Admiral Nimitz, each of whom approached the dispute reasonably and temperately in an effort to contain its explosive adverse potential and prevent future recurrences to the detriment of the war effort. This is contrasted with the author's view of Admirals King, Spruance and Kelly Turner (and perhaps General Richardson), each of whom is portrayed as engaging in partisan turf protection, although in Richardson's case, justifiably so. Reading Howlin' Mad vs. the Army led me to appreciate how much better interservice relations have been managed since 1944 by MacArthur (in both the latter part of the Pacific War and Korea) and Gen. Schwartzkopf in the First Gulf War. There is a fundamental difference of philosophy and many attitudes among the Army and Marine Corps, but cooperation is as possible as it is necessary. Harry Gailey's book demonstrates what can happen when that necessity falls victim to other considerations, particularly service chauvinism.
THE TRUTH AT LAST.......2003-05-10
Harry Gailey has authored an articulate expose, really, which peels away the years of distrotion and myth that have grown out of this unfortunate incident (the Smith vs Smith controversy, in which Marine Lt General Holland Smith relieved his subordinate, Major General Ralph Smith, USA, of command at Saipan). Orignially Gailey had heard from Edmund Love, the 27th Infantry Division historian, that it was common knowledge amongst those of the 27th that MG Ralph Smith was unjustly relieved (the 27th ID was Ralph Smith's division). Without going into detail about the how's and why's of the book, suffice it to say that this book gives a revealing critique of the marine General, the events leading up to Saipan which shaped his opinions, and a systematic demolition of the rumor that the 27th troops were cowardly and inept. It also provides the day-to-day history of the fighting, the heaviest of which fell on the 27th. This is a true story of interservice hatreds and should be back in print.
The Dismissal at Saipan Revisited........2001-08-11
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. H.M. "Howlin' Mad" Smith, Commander of V Amphibious Corps on June 15, 1944 lead the assault against Saipan in the Marianas. Ashore was the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions, who suffered sufficiently heavy initial casualties to commit the Army 27th Division. The three divisions advanced eastward across the waist of the island. Leaving only two battalions of the 27th (one said to be under strength) to destroy the enemy in the southeastern part of the island, H.M. Smith pivoted the two Marine Divisions and the bulk of the 27th in a line advancing north. The 27th was now assigned the center of the line facing the central highlands. By the eighth day of the battle for Saipan, the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions had advanced rapidly on each side of the island. The 27th lagged far behind, creating a "U" shaped front and the threat of open flanks for both Marine Divisions. The elements of the 27th left in the southeast were likewise making little progress. Whether these developments were due to the Army facing the enemy on far more difficult terrain and defended by greater numbers, is the subject matter of Gailey's book. On June 24, H.M. Smith, without any reconnaissance by members of Corps staff, relieved his subordinate, Maj. Gen. Ralph Smith. The resulting furor in the media caused a firestorm and increased the inter-services resentment.
Tracing H.M. Smith's bitterness to his earlier experience with the 27th on Makin, Gailey skillfully builds a case against Howlin Mad. In fairness, this book should be read together with H.M. Smith's "Coral and Brass". That autobiographical work was written largely as an explanation of the dismissal. It is beyond the scope of this review to compare the two divergent views but, by and large, one is left with the conviction that the accepted historical view is based more upon the preconceptions of the Hearst Newspapers and Time Magazine and not fact. Like MacArthur, it would appear that Howlin' enjoyed the favor of the press.
H.M. Smith was a genius at training, tactics and logistics. His service to his country and the Corps can not be overstated. His ability as a field commander is not as clear. Gailey has done much to restore the name of Ralph Smith and the men of the 27th Division who subsequently had to carry the stigma of cowards when they later fought on Okinawa.
Amazon.com
The scope of Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles is breathtaking: the interplay, over the last six centuries, among war, jurisprudence, and the reshaping of countries ("states," in Bobbitt's vocabulary). Bobbitt posits that certain wars should be deemed epochal--that is, seen as composed of many "smaller" wars. For example, according to Bobbitt the epochal war of the 20th century began in 1914 and ended with the collapse of communism in 1990. These military affairs--and their subsequent "ultimate" peace agreements--have caused, each in their own way, revolutionary reconstructions of the idea and actuality of statehood and, following, of relationships between these various new entities. Of these reconstructions (including the princely state, the kingly state, and the nation-state), Bobbitt is most interested in the current incarnation, which he calls the market-state: one whose borders are scuffed and hazy at best (certainly compared to earlier territorial markers) and whose strengths, weaknesses, citizens, and enemies roam across cyberspace rather than plains and valleys. The Shield of Achilles is massive, erudite, and demanding--at once highly abstract and extremely detailed. There is about it an air of detached erudition, one noticeably free of the easy "decline and fall" hysteria too often present in contemporary historical analyses. --H. O'Billovich
Book Description
"We are at a moment in world affairs when the essential ideas that govern statecraft must change. For five centuries it has taken the resources of a state to destroy another state . . . This is no longer true, owing to advances in international telecommunications, rapid computation, and weapons of mass destruction. The change in statecraft that will accompany these developments will be as profound as any that the State has thus far undergone."
—from the Prologue
The Shield of Achilles is a classic inquiry into the nature of the State, its origin in war, and its drive for peace and legitimacy. Philip Bobbitt, a professor of constitutional law and a historian of nuclear strategy, has served in the White House, the Senate, the State Department, and the National Security Council in both Democratic and Republican administrations, and here he brings his formidable experience and analytical gifts to bear on our changing world. Many have observed that the nation-state is dying, yet others have noted that the power of the State has never been greater. Bobbitt reconciles this paradox and introduces the idea of the market-state, which is already replacing its predecessor. Along the way he treats such themes as the Long War (which began in 1914 and ended in 1990). He explains the relation of violence to legitimacy, and the role of key individuals in fates that are partially—but only partially—determined.
This book anticipates the coalitional war against terrorism and lays out alternative futures for the world. Bobbitt shows how nations might avoid the great power confrontations that have a potential for limitless destruction, and he traces the origin and evolution of the State to such wars and the peace conferences that forged their outcomes into law, from Augsburg to Westphalia to Utrecht to Vienna to Versailles.
The author paints a powerful portrait of the ever-changing interrelatedness of our world, and he uses his expertise in law and strategy to discern the paths that statehood will follow in the coming years and decades. Timely and perceptive, The Shield of Achilles will change the way we think about the world.
Customer Reviews:
A frighteningly insightful explanation of a frighteningly complex topic.......2007-10-15
Philip Bobbitt is a constitutional law professor. Having gone to law school and a few dozen legal textbooks along the way, I felt right at "home" trudging through this beast of a book. It's a difficult read, there is no doubt.
For the person considering reading this book: be warned. This is not lowest common denominator drivel or faddish revisionist history. It is not sensationally written, nor is it even pleasant at times. But this book is way too cerebral to simply be called pedantic. It is crafted like a contract is carefully crafted. It is precise, thorough, and, if you can get going with the scholarly vocab and prose, riveting.
What this book is is a masterwork on the nature of the state -- what is is, how it functions and thrives, and how it dies. Bobbitt takes you through the history of the modern state since its beginnings in the Renaissance in Italy with the "princely state," how its bases of legitimacy have changed, and how law, history, and strategy have, and do mutually influence and shape each other, and the successfully innovative state along with them. The end is a look at "possible futures," three hypothetical approaches (most, there are no absolutes) states will take in their metamorphoses into market-states, mirroring the three approaches that fascism, parliamentarianism, and communism were to the nation-state. It pretty much predicts a lot of things becoming relevant to us only as mere glimmers on the horizon, such as whether we will choose to integrate the economies of Canada, the US, and Mexico, with a common currency, and also strategic issues, such as positing that the market-state, with its ostensible abandonment of society-wide total wars where entire populations fight other entire populations such as with the end of the "Long War" (basically the name of the wars of 1914-1990 as one continuous conflict of what form of nation-state would be triumphant, a central theme of the book), will find its elite states in those that most quickly eschew giant military infrastructure of tanks and aircraft carriers for resistance against, for example, information system and biological weapons attacks.
In a nutshell, this is a book that tells you how the world works, at least through one very qualified lens. The book leads up to, as Bobbitt maintains, the present, where we are transitioning to a new form of the state, the "market-state" (the US began as a "state-nation," was transformed into one of the earliest "nation-states" by the Civil War and the resulting 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution), with, as each state form before it, though they are contiguous and continuous, radically different bases of legitimacy, threats, and advantages.
Along the way, I got a giant dose of actual, factual history, like about the wars of the Balkans, which I didn't know much about, the real reason we entered World War I, which I always wondered about, and, interestingly, even cutting-edge political prognostication, foretelling stuff like the North American Union the US is in the process of entering right now. There was even the "Kitty Genovese Incident" that is a law school staple in criminal law classes being used as an incredibly apt metaphor for the paralysis of action leading to the slaughters in the former Yugoslav states. And it's all in there specifically to show you how the state functions and how it and history, law, and strategy transform each other.
If you don't want to be a know-nothing about history, you'd better read this book. Also, if you don't like it, please don't write a review that looks like you stopped to look in a thesaurus every five seconds. Philip Bobbitt will always be smarter than you, sorry. I'm not sure I like what he either predicts by his genius, or perhaps simply repeats from his inside view of the State Department and Council on Foreign Relations (I guess it's both), but the simple fact is this is one of the most scholarly, and easily the most insightful, book I have ever read. A banal description of evil? Perhaps. Indispensable? Also yes. It's right up there with "The Prince," though obviously not as uh, "concise," since, you know, "The Prince" is about 90 pages and this is about 820 pages.
The mountains heave in childbirth ...........2006-05-20
.... and a little mouse is born. A flaccid bladder of utter banality inflated by the hot air of middle-brow legalism and obscurantist prose. No exploration of any depth or detail is carried out of the disruption wrought by a market-dependent way of life on the ecological, anthropological, cultural, social, political and psychological fibres that hold together the world's various societies, or on the fragility and volatility of the global market itself, which, of course, is portrayed as a fait accompli. Thus there is simply no contextual platform for the author's analysis, and, despite the standard air of portent, no clear picture of what law and militarism can or might actually do in the near future, and we are left non the wiser about what the course of history might actually BE. This work is fairly indicative of the mainstream American understanding of history; my advice is that they take a break from making it, or we are all in big trouble.
A Unique New Analysis of International Relations.......2006-04-12
Phillip Bobbitt has created something very rare in the realm of International Relations: an entirely unique new idea. For those students of history and current events who have grown accustomed to the accepted world views: Realism, Idealism - internationalism vs. isolationism; this new entry will provide a welcome and refreshing perspective.
Rather than defining international politics in the typical framework of the "balance of power", or that of a "bipolar" or "mulitpolar" world, Bobbitt has completely redefined the course of history with his thesis. He states the modern state has evolved through the course of history and taken many different forms, based on the demands and interplay (or history) of Strategy and Constitutional development.
These various forms of the state have had differing expectations demanded from their populaces, and differing relationships amongst themselves at the international level. Based on a field relationship between Strategy and Constitutionalism, different forms of the state have proven dominant at different periods of time. Developments in one arena will create new trends in another- and the interplay is constant. Currently Bobbitt makes the case that the current incarnation of the modern state, the Nation-State, is giving way to a new form which he has named the Market-State.
Bobbitt backs up his arguments well with an historical analysis of the modern state ranging from the Machiavellian Princely-State to the wars of the Nation-States and beyond. The entire book is very well documented with Primary and Secondary sources, which are indexed and included in a comprehensive bibliography.
There is also a very interesting section written on the "Possible Worlds" of tomorrow based on the ground rules laid down throughout the book. So Bobbitt not only comments on our past and present, but continues with speculation and predictions on the near term future. This gives the "Shield" very well rounded experience for its contemporary reader. What will be interesting is if this section stands the test of time. I also hope that Mr. Bobbitt comments on his theses in future editions and expands this particular section as history progresses.
The book is Mammoth, and would require a mammoth review to do it justice. So at the expense of thoroughness, and to save you a few minutes I will say this: "The Shield of Achilles" is a long read well worth your time and its arguments should be considered by any students or participants in the field of International Relations.
Complex Interaction of War and Peace in Modeling States.......2005-05-16
In "The Shield of Achilles," Philip Bobbitt has realized an impressive tour de force in studying in great detail the intimate interaction of law, strategy and history between 1494 and the contemporary era. Bobbitt correctly points out that there is no state without law, strategy and history because they complement and influence one another (p. 6). There can be a state only when the governing institutions of a society have an acknowledged monopoly on the legitimate use of violence at home (law) and abroad (strategy). History relates the account of the stewardship of a society over time that in turns influences law and strategy. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Bobbitt convincingly shows that the history of the Modern State did not begin at Westphalia in 1648, but in the North of Modern Italy in 1494 (p. 805).
Bobbitt clearly demonstrates that the Modern State was put together when it proved necessary to create a constitutional order that could wage war more efficiently than the feudal and mercantile orders it replaced (p. xxv). Bobbitt spends most of his time covering the pattern of epochal wars and state formation, of peace congresses and international constitutions in Europe. The Modern State was indeed born and went through successive mutations in Europe before spreading to the rest of the world. Bobbitt gives his readers a nice pictorial representation of the six constitutional conventions of the international society of states at the end of Book I dedicated to the State of War (pp. 346-347). Book II focuses on the States of Peace.
To his credit, Bobbitt does not reduce war to a pathology that could one day be eradicated totally. War is as inevitable as death because the Modern State aims to be as efficient as possible to wage war when the opportunity arises to maximize its chance of survival and prosperity (pp. xxvii, 819). Contrary to the popular wisdom, Bobbitt rightly construes war not as the result of a decision made by an aggressor, but as the reaction of a state which cannot acquiesce to the legal and strategic demands of the aggressor (p. 8). Operation Iraqi Freedom is one of the most recent applications of this recurring observation.
Bobbitt also makes an interesting comparison between the assassination of Kitty Genovese occurring in New York in 1964 in the presence of multiple passive witnesses and the wide indifference of the international community to the plight of Bosnia for years in the early 1990s (pp. 411-467). The international community will find in this chapter a well-articulated argumentation for doing little or nothing in the naïve or vain hope that such problems as the on-going genocide against certain groups of population in Darfur, Sudan will disappear as if by magic.
Furthermore, Bobbitt rightly draws the attention of his audience to the importance of the Peace of Paris of 1990 that ended what he called the Long War starting in 1914 (pp. 24-64, 609-663). The Peace of Paris celebrated the triumph of the parliamentary democracy as the winning nation-state model at the successive expense of fascism and communism. Bobbitt is probably at his weakest when he launches himself in scenario analysis about the future of the three competing constitutional forms of the market-state that is taking the place of the nation-state (pp. 717, 728). The international society of states has indeed the choice among the entrepreneurial market-state (e.g., the U.S.), the mercantile market-state (e.g., Japan and China) and the managerial market-state (e.g., the European Union) (pp. 670-676). Each incarnation of the market-state has its pros and cons.
As Bobbitt points out elsewhere in his book, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could be considered a fourth, malevolent version of the market-state that is a common threat to the other three versions (p. 820). For the first time since the birth of the Modern State, a state structure is no longer necessary to constitute a lethal threat to a society (p. 806). The market-states will have to cooperate with one another for example to contain WMD proliferation, cyber-terrorism against their critical infrastructure, which is increasingly privatized and internationalized, or environmental threats to the planet (pp. 785-797, 800, 806).
Bobbitt states that there is no certainty that the first three constitutional forms of the market-state can coexist peacefully (p. 781). Bobbitt enumerates the ten constitutional conditions that will facilitate the peaceful coexistence of market states (p. 802). Unlike the three constitutional forms of the Nation-State, i.e., parliamentary democracy, communism and fascism, the three constitutional forms of the Market-State could coexist peacefully in the long run. The members of the European Union will probably stick to their managerial model of the market-state because Europe was the theater of the bloody development of a highly competitive society of states for centuries. As the leading entrepreneurial market-state, the United States will remain the champion of globalization and push for the further opening of regional trading blocks and mercantile market states in the foreseeable future.
The greatest source of instability besides terrorism and rogue nations could eventually come from some mercantile market-states such as China and Russia. These two states have not yet fully embraced the tenets of Liberalism and are not satisfied with their military position in the world as Michael Mandelbaum correctly points out in "The Ideas that Conquered the World." In all scenarios, the United States will have to bear a disproportionate burden towards the maintenance of the society of market-states as long as it has the willingness and capability to assume its leadership role (p. 803).
To summarize, "The Shield of Achilles" clearly does not target readers who have a short attention span, do not acknowledge the importance of the past to peruse the future, lack persistence, or are interested in simplistic answers to complex issues.
7 Habits of Highly Effective Nations.......2005-01-06
This book blends all of the tediousness of a middle-management PowerPoint presentation with the slipshod history of Oswald Spengler. Too long. No synthesis. And chock-a-block with sexy corporate jargon.
Customer Reviews:
Not what I expected.......2002-06-16
I was VERY disappointed in this book. I did not expect a book that had plans for a whopping FOUR birdhouses. Yes, they are quite beautiful, but a bit on the difficult side to make (this is not a book for the novice). The designs are beautiful, but be prepared to spend LOTS of time attempting to make these -some of these have numerous pieces and difficult cuts (especially the wagon wheel bird house). The instructions are good with lots of photographs. I wish there had been plans for more than four birdhouses.
The Birdhouse builders manual.......2002-01-18
I Found this to be an outstanding book, with complete, easy to follow directions. I have built several of the birdhouses in the book with much success. The photos of Mr Grodskis other birdhouse works of art are inspiring as well. Someday I hope to go see his Birdhouses on Long Island in person. I Highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in wookdworking,from beginner to advanced.
Easy to use birdhouse plans.......2000-05-10
I checked this book out of the library and built several of the birdhouses. I particularly wanted to build the log house on the cover. Could not believe how detailed and exact the directions were. I still haven't put that birdhouse outside because it turned out so great, we want to look at it. If you follow their directions, you won't go wrong due to the fine pictures that illustrate each step. I'm now buying the book for myself.
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- The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier
- The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less
- The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (P.S.)
- The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian
- The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
- The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
- The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
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