Social Sciences Books

I read this book in graduate school and thought that it gave the best start to finish depiction of the war. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the Vietnam war.

is the network of bicyclists -- children, women and men -- who expertly navigated the region during the American campaigns. A foot bridge blown up was instantly restored. Supplies were expertly moved about. It was their whole backyard.

Vietnam is one of the most critical and debated subjects In the History of the United States during the twentieth century. Numerous books have been written detailing the only war `lost' by the American military in its brief two hundred year existence. Herring does a good job of explaining the role of the American soldier without bashing them for mistakes made by a few. Good introduction.

Like many people here, I read this book for a college class concerned with providing an explanation of the numerous questions that arise whenever one ponders America in Vietnam, like why it was there, and why it lost. Any student or curious reader should find this work a great tool for this task.

The book is fairly short, numbering less than 400 pages. By that restraint alone, no reader should expect a thorough, voluminous exposition on every aspect of the war akin to Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, or a textbook for that matter. It's a piece on political history with a general thesis, numerous recurring themes, and plenty of information to back everything up.

The thesis is that the containment strategy America adopted around the Korean War, and its perceiving Vietnam as a strategic door to all of Southeast Asia, prevented each successive president from leaving Vietnam to the wolves and forced each one to progressively raise American stakes n the region. Numerous other variables--some consistent to all presidencies, like fear of facing the same political bloodletting as Truman got over "losing" China in 1949; some specific to the president, like JFK's need to take a stand somewhere after negotiating on Laos, and after the Berlin wall was erected--accompanied this grand one, but the central theme of this book draws a vivid picture of proud Cold Warriors refusing to back down and unwilling to commit entirely, hoping to bluff out an enemy who had already gone all in.

Of course, because it is a work with a point to prove rather than a huge collection of unfiltered facts, the reader must be wary of buying into Herring's perspective without private review of his logic. That's true for every book of this sort, however, and for what it's worth, Herring makes a very convincing case.

On the technical side of things, this book could have done more to centralize its presentation of thematic events. Since the author shifts between historical narrative and analysis, the latter could have summaries and reminders of recurring concepts on the margins. As it is, the reader has to discover themes like "US arrogance" or "governmental deception" by himself and note their recurrence without any assistance from Herring. Doing this isn't the standard for most books, though (the only one I can think off that does this is Landmark Thucydides), I can't criticize the book for not following up on these suggestions.

This is a concise but systematic overview and narrative of the Vietnam war. Evenhanded and drawing on a remarkably rich secondary literature, America's Longest War covers American involvement in Vietnam from the immediate post-WWII period up to the Clinton administration. This is mainly the story of American policy making and the American experience. While Herring does deal with the South Vietnamese experience, there is relatively little analysis of North Vietnamese experience and decision making. This is unavoidable due to the lack of material from North Vietnam.
Herring presents our involvment in Vietnam as the logical, though not inevitable, result of the basic containment strategy of the Cold War. He describes very well the gradual entanglement in Vietnam across multiple Presidential administrations, culminating in Johnson's decision to commit major numbers of American ground troops. Herring does very well also in describing the diplomatic history and its interaction with domestic American politics. He does quite well at the basic political history of South Vietnam and provides a nice overview of the basic military history.
Herring's basic point is that the containment logic formed the lens through information about Vietnam was seen. The containment logic was essentially universally accepted in the USA and even became a crucial part of domestic politics. There were very few efforts, made usually by a small number of people and generally rebuffed, to critically examine the idea that deterring a Communist takeover in South Vietnam was really essential to American security. In Herring's presentation, our involvement in Vietnam takes on a tragic dimension.
Its impossible to read this book today and avoid comparisons with the Iraq morass. Indeed, its striking how often the Vietnam experience resonates with our contemporary problems. For example, here is Herring discussing American efforts at pacification in the mid-1960s, "The fundamental problem was the absence of security.' Or how about, "Members of Congress found it impossible to vote against fund for American forces in the field and hesitated to challenge the President directly, but many who has firmly backed him at first came out openly against him." I was surprised at how often aspects of the Vietnam experience have emerged in Iraq.

This textbook is well written. It catches your attention with case studies and then in a way that makes sense, teaches the concepts.

I used this text in a MSW program HBSE class. It was easy to read and a good informative source on basic human development. Each chapter has questions and intensive vocabulary which was helpful.

This nation owes a debt of gratitude to Gary Webb. The same people responsible for Iran Contra are still among us.

I did not purchase this product for myself, but my boyfriend really likes the book.

The book is packed with information on an intriguing and eye-opening subject matter. Gary Webb cites what appears to be legitimate references adding credibility to the story's claims. The abundance of information did become overwhelming at times. Although after completing the book I found myself thinking "Right, wrong or indifferent...It all makes perfect sense. There's nothing not to believe about it."

Mr Webb's book here ties in with Rodney
Stich's Flying the Unfriendly Skies and
Bo Gritz troika of bokks during this era!

Every time the news reports a homicide even remotely connected to crack (and this would include most gang related murders, even to this day..), they should mention the international crack trade and its role. This will never happen, obviously, which is why we need people like the late Gary Webb in this country.

My only problem with the book, it goes into detail a bit too extensive for my attention span. But there's an obvious reason for this; the book is primarily written to back up his news story in which the mainstream press vilified him for, accusing him of unsubstantiated claims. The full circle detail is necessary. Fortunately, Webb is a good enough writer where even someone with no more than a high school education, like myself, can hang in there and read the entire book without resorting to skimming over paragraphs. Just when I start to say to myself, "alright, got it, we know these guys are contras, we know they're dope runners...what now?", the question is seemingly answered in the following paragraph. I don't know if a writer could have done a better job balancing the act of exhausting resources and laying all of them into full detail and making the book understandable to a lay person like me.

One of the most important books ever written on government corruption and its effect on it's citizenry. As you're reading this review, crack cocaine is still eating American inner cities alive. Rest in Peace, Gary Webb. And may your courageous reporting echo through this country as long as poor American communities suffer from this pandemic.

The book was originally purchased for a college course in Political Science. After having read through several chapters already it has been made known very clearly what the authors opinions of the American systems of democracy. It starts with the basic concepts of describing to you the different types of democracy (popular and eltist) and how they both shaped the form of democracy we know today. Through out the entire book you are presented with information and facts on the government regarding its elitism. Not the traditional government in the sense that it doesn't describe in great detail how our government works, the different branches of government etc. The 3rd chapter presents some information, not seen in most other books, that I found relatively interesting. I won't go into to great detail on the chapter and spoil it for you, but if you're interested in learning about the darker side of Wal-Mart this books contains a whole chapter on it. Would I recommend it for just regular reading material? Probably not unless you're extremely interested in government and politics it's not set up in the story book manner. But is it a good textbook? Well that depends if you're looking for information on the government presented in a new light but with little to no description of how the government actually works, then sure. But if you're looking for the simple high school textbook seen in you're government class then this is definately not a book for you. If you take an interest in what might be considered a conspiracy theory or "the darker side" of the American government then this might be the book you're looking for. The last question to be answered would probably be is it an easy read? I would have to say ys it is because it's not the most difficult read I have ever had (textbook wise of course) but it is no where near the easiest. There's not a huge usage of difficult words and things are laid out relatively well so that the information you want or need isn't hidden somewhere within gobs of text. I hope that I have done a good job of answering any or all questions you may have of this book, if not feel free to contact me.

This text provides a unique and important introduction to American politics. Its central theme--that the anti-federalist discontent with the U.S. Constitution established conflict patterns that occur even in the present day--offers a unique way to analyse American politics. This approach easily connects students with on-going political events. E.g. Arguments today about the Iraq War are reflected in Anti-Federalist concerns about a large military establishment. The authors create a paradigm to carry out their analysis--popular democracy, which reflects fundamentally the anti-federalist view, and elite democracy for the federalist perspective. Popular democrats are more trusting of mass input while elite democrats a skeptical of the fitness of masses to govern themsleves, placing more faith in experts to filter views from the public. While the authors' bias tends in the popular democratic direction, that bias creates a balancing effect, because conventional interpretations of American conflict, whether in the media or in academe, fundamentally come from an elite democratic perspective. The authors do, however, establish the point that both perspectives are important because they form the grist of American political conflict. Examples in the book will stimulate discussion--the Wall-Mart example from Chapter 3 is always a grabber--as do the numerous cartoons sprinkled throughout the text. The charts and graphs clearly link to ideas in the text and offer numerous opportunities for "teaching moments" which allow students to develop skill at reading and interpretting displays of quantitative data. I have used this book since in came out in a first edition and find it works exceptionally well with a suplemental text (e.g. Morris Fiorina, CULTURE WAR?), which can can allow for deeper investigation of the ideas presented in the book. It's a wonderful teaching text.

This is a very good book for perhaps a 200 or 300 university level course but not at all a 100 level course. I'm using this text for PSC 101, and it's not helpful at all! For someone who is willing to spend more than average time trying to get the idea the authors are trying to send through their ridiculously poor language skills, bad topic coordination and excessively biased tone, the book can prove to be a good resource. If however, like most normal students, you want a rich and yet simple text that gets right to the point this is not the way to go.

It's a good book, as far as statistics textbooks go. It makes a tough subject very easy to understand, using many accessible examples and simple terms. Most of the other students in my class had trouble with this course. I was one of the only ones who actually read the assigned chapters, and I was the only one who got a 98 in the class. So, I think that says something!

Good book, pretty interesting, but wish it had more graphics and examples. Not bone dry like most STATS books.

This is a pretty decent statistics book. It has few, if any, examples for each chapter. The questions at the end of each chapter, however, are written well and help you to understand the material a little better. I think it would be difficult if you were relying solely on this book and not an instructor to learn the material. But overall, it is a decently written school book.

I liked the explanations given about every step while learning the steps of analysis. The book explains 'how and why' in simple language. Also, the print outs of the computerized format of the analysis helped me! Definitely recommend this book for a beginner like me!

Howell writes well and provides multiple examples but there is no justifiable reason for (a) multiple editions within a short time span (this is the THIRD in the course of my PhD), and (b) blatant errors (e.g. he states, this is the same result we saw in Table x and it isn't). At this price I expect a product to be near perfect. I still have the 4th edition (published by Duxbury) and it would have served fine for my current course of advanced inferential stats. Fortunately the binding fell apart in the 5th edition and I was able to get my money back, saving me $100 on three purchases in five years of essentially the same book. As I said: Good, but no reason for new edition.

The author does a good job going through each presidency. What brilliance! He started in the past and led up to the present (I'm making fun of the first editorial review which lauded the author for the "time-sequence" structure of the outline. That was for another edition (but I've got this edition).

My only gripe about it is that the author finds no redeeming qualities in conservative presidents, and paints liberal presidents as tormented angels...even LBJ.

I was assigned this book for a course I took on social welfare policy (I'm studying for my masters in social work) and actually LOVED reading it. Jansson's writing style is very fluid and engaging, and the material covers issues that I'd wanted to study since I was a freshman in high school but never got to study until now. This was actually a cool read (although, granted, if you're politically conservative, you probably won't be into it like I was), and I recommend it to anyone-- even just for the sake of reading, not just for school.

If you ever wondered about why liberals behave the way they do, or advocate big government, then this book is a must read. The book describes history in light of "social justice". Social justice is defined as redistribution of wealth and political power from those that have it to those that do not. History is defined by deviding it into those periods in which progress was made in redistributing the wealth and power, and those periods when progress in those areas were not made. Anything towards that end is described as good, and vise versa. In my humble opinion, this book is scary and should be a must read by everyone who plans on going into a voting booth. The book gives you a clear idea of why liberals want bigger and bigger government and ever increasing taxes, but directly from their game plan/text book.

I am reading this text for a graduate social policies course, and while I am impresed with the depth of treatment Jansson gives to his area, this book is shaky as a lone text in any course.

Chronicling the long, strange, and twisted involvement of the American government in the provision of what is commonly defined as "social welfare" the author takes a strictly chronological approach strongly resembling introductory American history survey courses. While disclosing previously unreleased information on Revolutionary America, the depth and complexity of the New Deal----unarguably American government's most revolutionary and profound social policy involvement in any century, is not given it's proportional treatment.

Granted, the premise of his particular book is not exactly a regular part of discussion in most social science courses (including 'liberal' college offerings) neccesitating a start at the begining, but I was left wanting much more.

Recognizing the provision of social services has been and will continue to be an inherently politcal concept, something in Jansson's style of writing sounds guarded, as if he is not willing to share all with the reading audience. Considering the critical nature of the subject mater being presented, this is a disappointment because a more substantial and pointed work could accomplish more.

America's ambivalent social welfare record makes the history depressing, but we need to understand where we have been in order to accurately chart where the country needs to go. That 1996's intensely punnitative welfare reform legislation was eagerly embraced by leading officials from all parties was only the most reccent mainifestation of the afforementioned love/hate duality.

Aid to Families with Dependent Children itself was ironically developed in the 1930's so widowed or single white women COULD stay at home with their children like all 'good' women of the day. Uncoincidentally, politicians began their assault on the program around the time of racial intergration even as enrollment remained predominantely white, the biggest federal expenditures were the armed forces and 'welfare mothers' as a whole were just as hardworking as the general population. Because payments never kept up with cost of living adjustments since the 1960's, the women by very definition had to be hard working in order to survive.

This book can be used in a course, but only in conjunction with a work such as Dinitto, emphasizing the inherently political activist underpinings and responsibilities of social policy.