Politics Government Books

This is a well-presented, comprehensive account of California government. I use the latest edition of the book in my American Politics class. This book has a wealth of details that are relevant in our politics and society, as well as easy to find and understand. Have you ever wanted to know exactly how many state-wide officials are elected in California and who they are? You will find the answer in this book. What is the structure of the judiciary and how has it been reformed since 1998, when the voters passed the initiative that streamlined the system? The answer is here. I like this book and recommend it to undergraduate students who study California politics and professors who teach the subject on the undegraduate level. By the way, I mean "students" in the most general sense. Even if you are not in college but want to really know more about California politics rather than read a bombastic, sensationalist account of current events, pick up this book.

I was happy to see that it was just as described. I could not be happier with the purchase I made.

GLOBAL ISSUES, LOCAL ARGUMENTS
Readings for Writing
By June Johnson
Seattle University

582 Pages with index
Paperback
Copyright 2007 by Pearson Educations, Inc.
Pearson / Longman
ISBN 0-321-24423-0

Global Issues, Local Arguments features high-interest arguments on significant global issues and emphasizes their connection to students' lives while developing critical thinking,
analysis,
synthesis,
argumentation,
and research skills.

What Your Colleagues Are Saying About This New Text!

"Shelley Aley,
James Madison University

"What I find appealing about the book is how it proposes to awaken us to unfamiliar topics that have a tremendous impact on our lives,
and it aims to show us how our own choices impact others.
It takes a great deal of mystery out of the issues and illustrates just how they matter to us. [...]
What I'm seeing here will connect with my students at a time in their lives when they may be most willing/needing to connect.
Johnson's writing is fresh and readable.
The book is simply a good read."

"Farrah Cato
University of Central Florida

"I currently use a global reader in my Comp I course and found it lacking in the topics covered (most deal with the idea of globalization, with few specifics); Global Issues, Local Arguments is precisely what I have hoped to find in a global reader."

"James D'Agostino
Southeast Missouri State University

"I'm immediately impressed with how the text guides students through the readings,
prompting students to focus their analysis on both how an essay's constructed as an argument,
and how it influences a reader's views;
implicit in this line of questioning is the expectation that each argument a student reads deepens and reshapes his or her understanding of an issue.
The discussion questions do that so well throughout."

"Collin Hutchison
San Jacinto College South

"The overall, interdiscuplinary approach to teaching rhetoric and composition will offer students a chance to see arguments in the context of current issues and gives them the opportunity to sense how intimately language shapes thought,
public policy and personal lives,
a form of education that will resonate with them long after the last assignment has been submitted."
[from the book of backcover]

"Why should writing instructors bring global issues into the writing classroom?
Global issues belong in writing courses because we are bumping into these issues more frequently and because global issues spark students' interest in learning and lead them to produce good writing.

Daily,
the media bombard us with stories and images that remind us that our states,
regions,
and country are part of the larger world.
Controversies over free trade,
outsourcing,
immigration,
climate change,
and bird flu increasingly demand our attention.
In my writing classes,
I have found that students welcome the opportunity to study these controversies,
to discuss and write about them.
Some of these issues are new and intriguing to students:
How does our shopping at the local mall affect workers in clothing factories in China?
How does lack of safe water in Africa threaten global security?
Some are immediately relevant:
How will sending businesses and jobs to Mexico and India affect the number of jobs available to young adults in the United States and Canada?
Some have urgency:
Should each country create an emergency plan for containing outbreaks of diseases such as bird flu that can spread in hours around the world and can kill millions?

From working with global issues in my writing and argument classes,
I have discovered that these issues,
connecting "over there" with "home here,"
appeal to today's students,
whose generation has been shaped by media images from around the world.

Global Issues, Local Arguments is based on two main ideas:
first,
seeing how global issues touch us and how our decisions as consumers and voters have far-reaching consequences is very important in today's world,
and
second,
studying the public arguments on these issues in the writing classroom has great value.

Unlike multicultural texts that have for years featured readings about the world,
this text is an argument reader that introduces students to

GLOBAL CONTROVERSIES AND THEIR LOCAL CONNECTIONS.

It helps students think their way through these issues and enter into them in their writing...."
[from the book preface]

Mr.McCarthy skillfully shows why we had{and continue}to have the problems
we do concerning our handle on terrorism.A MUST READ!!!!!

`Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad' by Andrew McCarthy

In `Willful Blindness', Andrew McCarthy weaves the narrative of, not only his experience investigating and subsequently prosecuting Islamic jihad in the US, but a solid, albeit brief, history of the resurgence of jihad (as a means of terror rather than ideals) in Islam, itself. His rude introduction to the jihad came courtesy of the `The Blind Sheikh' - Omar Abdel Rahman:

Bungled bureaucracy, pathetically weak coordination of government agencies and enormously frustrating and embarrassing law enforcement failures allowed The Blind Sheikh to enter and flourish in America. This well known Egyptian rabble-rouser (well known I say to Egyptian, but also U.S. authorities), member of the U.S. `Terror Watch List', and brilliant Islamic scholar was nevertheless allowed to set up shop in NYC and New Jersey. From his new base, the Blind Sheikh preached hatred, incited violence and ultimately terrorism, culminating in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Fortunately, for the United States we had a team led by Andrew McCarthy who assembled and successfully prosecuted The Blind Sheikh and his terrorist cabal. The story of the daring, and often hair-splitting, Egyptian informant embedded inside the Sheikh's inner ring is worth the price of this book alone! By educating themselves on the roots of Islamic terror and piecing together the connections of the Blind Sheikh's organization, McCarthy and his team were able to wrap up this terror outfit just before another, more ghastly strike, occurred in NYC. The reader is taken behind the scenes to the offices of Janet Reno, the US Attorney General, FBI & CIA headquarters and most important, inside the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern (Sovereign) District of New York where the plots were investigated, debated, thwarted, and this stunning, fair and honorable prosecution was crafted.

`Willful Blindness' tells a gripping tale, while simultaneously making a strong case for why national security matters should be prosecuted outside the realm of the criminal justice system. McCarthy explains why we expose ourselves to terror groups worldwide in continuing to pursue jihadists and other terror fronts in the criminal court and presents the ideas behind a `national security court' or some mix of military tribunal and criminal proceeding. America has the best system of justice in the world, however, this fact has not been overlooked by those trying to destroy us from within. This is a gripping narrative which is thought provoking, smart and timely. I encourage anyone interested in the important matters of our time to invest in this book and read with great interest.

- Johnny

A masterful expose' of the democrat's 9/10 viewpoint that has taken over the 2008 campaign

In McCarthy's world, Arab militants apparently come out of a vacuum, or out of some passage from the Koran. What he and his admirers are willfully blind to is the brutality of U.S. foreign policy. Osama mentioned part of a long list of injustices - sanctions on Iraq that killed 500,000 children Iraq Under Siege, Updated Edition: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War, U.S. support of Israel's aggression against Palestine Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project). There is barely a word of any of this, and so much more, in the countless books like McCarthy's that seek to demonize our victims. Keep in mind, these allegedly evil people are the same people we were arming, training and applauding when they were killing Russians Terrorism: Theirs and Ours. Authoritarian Islamic fundamentalists are the same people that the U.S. is happy to work with in countries like Saudi Arabia The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, or in Indonesia The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1965-1989.
The sort of denial that McCarthy perpetuates is not only dishonest, it is dangerous. Most people are more civilized than us, and they don't seek vengence for all the suffering we heap upon them (i.e. - Vietnamese, Guatemalans, Haitians, El Salvadorans, Iranians, etc.), but we may someday receive another attack of blowback and it may be worse than the horror of 9/11. By the way, there is another 9/11 that we are willfully blind to; that is the September 11th that the corporate jihadists Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger inflicted upon Chile Chile: The Other September 11: An Anthology of Reflections on the 1973 Coup (Radical History).

For those who choose to see inconvenient truths about U.S. militarism:
Our Own Private Bin Laden
Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians
Why We Fight

Everyone who doesn't want to learn Arabic and wants to keep their Bibles should read this book and think about what it says.

Keep a dictionary handy, however. He uses a few Bill Buckley quality words.

not only did i receive this item very quickly but the book was in excellent condition. thanks!

This book gives great info but is very dry. It is hard not to fall asleep reading this. I have read other government text books that were very interesting that I enjoyed reading, so I don't think it was the subject that was boring. If you want to learn Texas Government then this is a good book but check to see if there are any that are more interesting.

This book came to me in the condition listed, but what I didn't realize was that the book was much more wordy then I had hoped. I will pass it onto my daughter who teaches 2nd grade because for my PreK students it won't work.

was in the condition it was stated it would be in. appears to be a very good book and worth the money to purchase

I had to read this book for a graduate class and I found it very helpful and informative as a human rights "beginner." It is not so dense that it is difficult to read but it's also not a watered-down text.

In a sense, this book is so good it doesn't need a review. Almost everyone knows that the Donnelly book is the standard and most readable text on human rights theory. It is a good starter book for the beginner. You'll learn something new on every page. My copy is full of irresistable, self-made underlines, markings, and comments in the margins. It's also a good reference book, one that you'll return to time and time again. Donnelly's method of abbreviation, for example, is standard for the main UN proclamation and two binding covenants (treaties): (U for UDHR; E for CESCR; and C for CCPR). The book differentiates between regimes that exist for declaratory or promotional purposes and those which are involved in implementation of policy or monitoring and enforcement, and Donnelly pulls no punches when pointing out that some state reports in response to Protocol complaints are nothing more than farces. It is found, for example, that there is little reason why the Arab League and various Third Way movements should even be considered human rights organizations. Here are some of the international human rights discussed in this book: Nondiscrimination, Life, Liberty, security of person, Protection against slavery,Protection against torture, Legal personality, Equal protection of the law, Legal remedy, Protection against arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile, Access to independent and impartial tribunal, Presumption of innocence, Protection against ex post facto law, Privacy, Freedom of Movement, Nationality, Marry and found a family, Protection and assistance of families, Marriage only with free consent, Equal rights in marriage, Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, Freedom of opinion and expression, Freedom of assembly, Freedom of association, Participation in government, Social security, Work, Just and favorable conditions of work, Trade unions, Rest and leisure, Adequate standard of living, Education, Participation in cultural life, Self-determination, Protection of and assistance to children, Freedom from hunger, Health, Asylum, Property, Compulsory primary education, Humane treatment when deprived of liberty, Protection against imprisonment for debt, Expulsion of aliens only by law, Prohibition of war propaganda, Minority culture.