Politics Government Books

this book is a very good book to read and i enjoyed it from start to end. i mainly used it for the little handbook on making explosives which do work. The only thing i don't like is that some of the tricks and ways of getting money there are in the book are written to be used in the 70s and not in modern times. it is still a good book and every anarchist should have this one in their library

I checked this book out of the library instead of stealing it. Because of the provacative title, it was kept behind the library front desk!


I read the book for laughs then because in the late 70's, the book already was tremendously out of date. I does give you a good idea what the Yippies (not the hippies, they were non-violent)were about.

As far as Hoffman's preaching of violence against the system, well I side with John Lennon's sentiment, "You can count me out".

This book is even more relevant today than it was in the time of Nixon when it was written. The fact that too few people read it explains how this country was able to be suckered by con-servative artists like Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, along with their cronies in Saudi Arabia, Capitalist China, Silverado, Enron, Halliburton, etc.

Steal This Book is a nice, interesting book to read. There are some interesting items in the book that if followed today, would easily land you in jail. Whether or not the author got away with the majority of these items to steal is questionable. The book was written decades ago and some of the items mentioned will not mean anything to todays generations. But for those of us who came of age in the 1960's, it will bring a laugh or two and good memories. I would not spend the money on a new or a hard copy, but if you come across it in paperback and used, go for it.

Most people might not realize, but from the perspective of a new immigrant student, "Steal This Book" was a major catalyst for the downward trend evolution of what I saw as a honest, decent society to an ever growing corrupt society.

I came as a student from Europe in 1960 and was enthralled with the honesty, decency and total trust in other people's honesty and decency by the vast majority of Americans. It was amazing to see that people could leave their purses, wallets, cameras and other valuables on picnic tables while off to swim or hike, unlocked doors, keys in cars etc. Then, in the mid 60s, about the time Abbie Hoffman taught and published this book in which he encourages the hippy generation to start ripping off not only corporations and the government (which really is the people)but also take from regular citizens. And oh boy, did the hippy types take to that invitation. Suddenly campers and others found their trust stolen along with their valuables. It truly was the end of an era.

And today his followers are our politicians, teachers, professors, lawyers and corporate leaders.
Should we be surprised of the downhill trend that has been accelerating at dizzying speeds?

As I got ready to post this review I checked on what Amazon meant by "TAG" and with a chuckle I discovered their objection to "Tags which promote illegal or immoral conduct". I'd say Hoffman's book falls neatly into that category.

"Yes We Can".....thats the punch line I used to hear everyday when my toddler use to watch "Bob the Builder".

I bought this book for one of my child therapy clients at work and we read it together. We couldn't put it down. I am speaking for the both of us when I say that the book "Yes We Can" was enlightening and inspiring. Not only did it do a great job of explaining the American political system to young readers, but it also detailed Barack Obama's life in a way that offers youth the inspiration to achieve great things in life.

Is there a limit to the hagiography surrounding Barack Obama? According to Garen Thomas, apparently not. By all means, let's get children involved in the propaganda offensive. And certainly, let's not help them to think critically and objectively by providing a well rounded and balanced protrait. Soon to be found in the Blind Idolatry section of your child's school library.

This is definitely a book for adults, too.
It gives you an interesting insight of B. Obama's life as a politician but it doesn't forget his role as a son and father.
I couldn't put the book down.
5stars!!

Garen Thomas provides a thought-provoking and honest look at race and politics.
The perfect addition to any middle or high school student's summer reading list.

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.

First rate logic. The author has wrapped a very keen mind around a very difficult subject area and produced a highly readable book that is nothing less than a public service.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that occasionally, a creature is born with a face that only a mother could love. If we extend this premise to the world of books, it is quite easy to understand and accept that occasionally, a book is published - a book which only a lawyer could adore. Written mostly in legalese, in prose stripped of elegance and charm and the innate splendor of the English language, reading this book was for me an experience akin to having a literary nightmare.

I know that several professional reviewers have written glowing reviews of this book; and the fact that the author is a lawyer has prompted me to write with utmost care and use a great deal of caution, and to think clearly before putting words on paper and, above all, to be fair.

Even though the publisher of this book states emphatically that "Benjamin Wittes offers the first nonpartisan critique of a crucial front in America's war on terror," and several reviewers have praised the author's "refreshingly nonpartisan perspective", it is possible, never the less, to see through the thicket of verbiage and to discern and understand where the author's sympathy lies, and where exactly he stands in the matter of the reprehensible torture and unspeakable horrors that the detainees have endured in Guantanamo Bay prisons: in Dick Chaney's yard, fist-bumping with the Vice President. I was quite shocked to read also that the author believes that many of the administration's nefarious deeds were far more defensible than its critics believed, and that he thinks the unconscionable deeds of the Bush administration, the deeds that shocked even our allies in the UK, France and Germany, actually warranted congressional support!

Mr. Wittes states that terrorism is fundamentally different from all other crimes, since it "involves horrors on an altogether different scale." And he believes that we owe dramatically less judicial protection to nonresident aliens than to U.S. citizens, even if the aliens are held incommunicado, in long-term military detention, without any charges against them. "No society can afford inviolable principles and inflexible rules concerning those steps on which its ultimate fate or interests depend," he states.

This is what he has written regarding his opinion on torture: "The stark reality is that absent an interrogation tactic that "shocks the conscience," Hoess--like his colleague Josef Mengele--might well have escaped justice, Nuremberg lost an important witness, and history denied his crucial accounts of the factory where more than a million people died. If the tactic--and the absence of any judicial review of its use--does not suddenly seem more defensible, you have proven yourself both a principled opponent of abusive interrogation and truly committed to judicial oversight of legally dicey wartime practices."

In his review of this book, Professor CURTIS A. BRADLEY, Professor of Law and Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University, has written(Foreign Affairs, July/Aug 2008):"Yet when it comes to the issue of torture, Wittes appears to waver in his approach. He makes clear that he supports the interrogation tactic that the British used in 1946 with the wife of Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, in which they threatened to send her sons to a country where they would likely be killed."

I felt a deep sense of revulsion as I read this book, and then I was quite shocked. Read "Law and The Long War", if you wish, but only after you anaesthetize your conscience.

Benjamin Wittes, a former editorial writer for the Washington Post, has written the indispensable book on reforming US policy on detainees at Guantanamo. His exhaustive reading of everything that has been said, by the government, by the detainees themselves uncoerced in open hearings, so to give the best available portrait of the men at Guantanamo today - not those who were there in the first years, but those who are there now - is worth the price of the book. His policy prescriptions are well thought out, moderate, temperate, and are a special call to Congress to stop sniping from the sidelines and actually decide what to do. I do not think that anyone can have a serious opinion about what to do about detainee policy without reading this book.

Following up on his superb "1920: The Year of the Six Presidents", author David Pietrusza produces another political page-turner, this time dealing with the characters and machinations of a presidential race which marked the beginning of the modern era of campaigning.

Another reviewer complains there is nothing new here (I suppose if you've read 200 books on the Kennedy assassination you might very well feel overly familiar with the material!). Even if true (it's not), the story has never been better or more completely told.

Pietrusza comes into this with no particular hero and no pony in the race, a fact which makes his analyses far more objective than most any review of the topic. He shows his characters warts and all, while at the same time not descending to the level of a hit piece on any of them. They are what they are: Johnson, Kennedy, Nixon, Humphrey, Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt and scores of extras.

While interesting and engaging throughout, where Pietrusza really shines is in his analysis of the strategy and tactics of the four debates that nudged the election to Kennedy and changed modern politics forever.

The release of this book is perfect timing, especially for those who think the art of campaigning was invented yesterday. Pietrusza adds to his ever-more-outstanding body of work and has placed himself in the first tier of writers of popular history. Well done.

This book is a good read for readers who previously had little or no knowledge of the 1960 campaign. For people with even a moderate familiarity with that era, the book offers no new information or insight.
The book also would have benefited from some more careful editing. In at least two places some person is identified as a candidate's principle adviser,when the correct English is principal adviser.

This detailed and enlightening overview of the U.S. power and hegemony in the modern world is supported by strong historical analysis and a list of the key problems facing the nation today. Professor Steven W. Hook outlines three major threats to U.S. Primacy, the first being cycles in the balance of power, concerns over economic globalization and the immediate threat of international terrorism (asymmetric warfare). Beginning with a historical overview, the American notion of "isolationism" is challenged by the westward expansion and influence in the Americas. Furthermore, we are given a fresh perspective on the Cold War and theories of International Relations. Professor Hook approaches this study largely from a liberalist perspective and stresses the importance of understanding the multiple facets within the "black box" of foreign policymaking. The complexity of this process is illustrated by the numerous actors involved in webs of issues networks and organizations representing a myriad of interests. Steven Hook's writing is consistently interesting from topic to topic and the issues well developed and strategically organized, which discourages fragmented or selective reading of just one chapter. I would encourage this for a collegiate or AP audience with knowledge of basic American Government and political process. Reading, however, is not excessively jargonistic and is presented logically with the terminology explained. I would recommend this to anybody inquisitive who wishes to learn more about America's important place in the world today.

This book is disappointing. While it may help a college student or other really new person grasp some of the concepts of organizing it is not useful to practioners.

The Midwest Academy used to have a very good training manual covering many issues. As the book got slicker looking the information got worse.

Get Shel Trapp's old Basics of Organizing instead - much more useful, and free on the internet.

This manual takes you through waht you need to know about organizing. From strategy development to research to implementation, this book shows you how to do it. Well written and simple to understand. Outstanding reference for novice to experienced organizer.

The best purchase you can make and you won't need to buy others.

Ella Baker must be the most underrated figure in U.S. history. There are plenty of Presidents who have done less to shape their own times than Ella Baker. She decisively shaped two of the most important national civil rights organizations--the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--and was the single most decisive figure in a third--the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Only Martin Luther King Jr. can be considered a rival in importance to the African American freedom movement, and yet most Americans have never even heard of Ella Baker. This exhaustively researched and well written biography should go a long way toward filling that gap.

This is a thoughful, analytical, and well-told story about a uniquely important American political life. It is a work of central importance in United States history and especially the history of the African American freedom movement. It is a cutting edge work of black women's history, too. I plan to buy a stack of them for Christmas presents, and to assign this book to my students for many years to come.

This was a great book. Ella Baker was ahead of het time.This is a great read if you like the history of the civil right movement.Ms. Baker I hope to meet you in heaven.

Dr. Ransby provides a well-structured and insightful biography of one of the most important, yet least well-known, leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States. This book is strongly recommended for any student of modern U.S. history.

Re-Saturday Review of Literature
Oscar Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974, not 1971 (the year of his trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Thompson).

This is the most realistic book I have ever seen about Mexican American hippies in Aztlan, the Chicanos of the 1960's neo-freedom movements. It will surely become a collector's item worth saving in this era of gung-ho Americanism which does not know the kind of objectivity Acosta displays with regard to how we think and why we believe as we do. Hunter S. Thompson described the author better than I can in his introduction to the book, highlighting his uniqueness while lamenting his untimely passing. I will write more after I give the book a more thorough second reading.

I read this book after finding out that Oscar Zeta Acosta was the fat Samoan lawyer from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Acosta's style is similar, with a lot of drugs and sex with minors. The differences are that Acosta isn't tripping the whole time and he has time to incite political rallies. I love when they protest the Catholic church, or when he pleasures himself with some nubile young high schoolers under a blanket during a sit-in.... For those interested in the turbulent times that was the 60s, this is a must-read.

After reading this book, and actually living through those turbulent times of the 60's and 70' s , it was refreshing to read and feel the burning frustration and love that this man was experiencing and the way he expressed his anger against the machine. This type of awareness has been lost , due to us the forefathers of the Chicano Movement, to teach our own and other's children of how important those actions were, so that we may emphasize education, political power and family values. We have implemented a course in Chicano Studies in schools, we now have political representation in our governments, and many more success stories that are due to the work of such people as Cesar Chavez, Ruben Salazar and Corky Gonzales. Oscar Zeta was a man amongst his own that was afraid of nothing and no one.My thanks to him for fighting the powers that be and for creating an example for all of us, regardless of race. You have to stand up for what you believe and Acosta is atrue testament to that.

Re-Saturday Review of Literature
Oscar Acosta disappeared in Mexico in 1974, not 1971 (the year of his trip to Las Vegas with Dr. Thompson).