In this behind-the-scenes account of a bill’s inhospitable journey through the maze of government, a national correspondent for Newsweek provides in vivid detail an eye-opening portrait of how Washington really works. Essential reading for all those interested in the ways and means of government..
Tag: History
Black Resistance, White Law : A History of Constitutional Racism in America
Unavailable for a decade and now completely updated for the 1990s, this landmark book shows how the American government has used the Constitution to maintain a racist status quo. Berry analyzes the reasons why African Americans whose lives have improved both socially and economically are still at risk of police abuse and largely unprotected from bias crimes..
The Monks of War The Military Religious Orders
The military religious orders emerged during the Crusades as Christendom’s stormtroopers in the savage conflict with Islam. Some of them still exist today, devoted to charitable works. The Monks of War is the first general history of these orders to have appeared since the eighteenth century. The Templars, the Hospitallers (later Knights of Malta), the Teutonic Knights, and the Knights of the Spanish and Portuguese orders were ‘noblemen vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience, living a monastic life in convents which were at the same time barracks, waging war on the enemies of the Cross’. The first properly disciplined Western troops since Roman times, they played a major role in defending the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, in the ‘Baltic Crusades’ which created Prussia, in the long reconquest of Spain from the Moors, and in fighting the ‘Infidel’ right up to Napoleonic times. This celebrated book tells the whole enthralling story, recreating such epics as the sieges of Rhodes and Malta and the destruction of the Templars by the Inquisition. Acclaimed on publication, it has now been revised and updated, with a concluding chapter to take events into the 1990s..
The Economic Consequences of the Peace
Ten Days That Shook the World
The State and Revolution
In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, The October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed master work on The State and Revolution … This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the, dictatorship of the proletariat. The result, as Robert Service suggests in his stimulating Introduction, is ‘a choral ode to action, intolerance, combat and collectivism, the anthem of Bolshevism in its revolutionary era’. Immediately established as a standard text, it was selectively cited by leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev in support of programmes which differed in important ways. As both historical document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated..
Price of Glory : Verdun 1916
Four Hours in My Lai
On March 16, 1968, a battle-scarred U.S. fighting unit entered the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. There, a group of soldiers murdered 500 unarmed women, children and old men. Simply and courageously, Four Hours in My Lai tells the truth about what happened–a story that should never be forgotten. Companion to the Emmy Award-winning documentary Four Hours to My Lai..
Daughters of Isis Women of Ancient Egypt
During the dynastic period (3000 BC – 332 BC), as the Greek historian Herodotus was intrigued to observe, Egyptian women enjoyed a legal, social and sexual independence unrivalled by their Greek or Roman sisters, unrivalled, indeed, by women in Europe until the late nineteenth century. They could own and trade in property, work outside the home, marry foreigners and even live alone without the protection of a male guardian. Furthermore, women fortunate enough to be members of the royal harem were vastly influential, as were those rare women who rose to rule Egypt as ‘female kings’. Joyce Tyldesley draws upon archaeological, historical and ethnographical evidence to piece together a vivid picture of daily life in Egypt – marriage and the home, work and play, grooming, religion – all viewed from a female perspective. She has an engaging eye for incidental detail and draws fascinating parallels and contrasts between the ancient and our modern world..
Love in the Time of Victoria
There has been a great deal written on the secret longings and sexual hypocrisy of the Victorian era’s upper crust, but almost nothing has chronicled the erotic desires and sexuality of London’s working class. Now, in this painstakingly researched book, their touching and emotional stories can be told..