Politics Government Books

This book examines a simple and important puzzle: why do African governments choose such terrible economic policies? These policies are especially bad for agriculture, even though most Africans are farmers.

The answer is simple: African governments systematically favor urban interests. That means that they provide cheap food for urban workers, which means cheap labor for urban businesses (capital). These groups are outnumbered, but they live in the cities. This means that labor and capital can mobilize politically against the government in the capital city, while farmers - - who are scattered all over a large countryside with poor transportation links - - find it very difficult to pressure the government.

Bates' basic claim has much to recommend it. It is simple, yet it served as a productive research agenda for other studies - - such as Michael Lofchie's comparison of Kenya and Tanzania, among others. It is no wonder that this book made Bates' reputation, and was a seminal contribution to political economy in its day.

Its simplicity also makes the argument incomplete. Though he does discuss colonial legacies, Bates doesn't consider the wider international context. African countries would find it difficult to pursue pro-farmer policies because the rich world, especially in Europe and Japan, closes its markets to many African food products. Certainly this fact deserves to play an important role when we consider the poor choices that African governments make.

In this work, Bates moves away from dependency theory in explaining the financial discrepancies between the Center and Periphery. Rather than concentrating on external catalysts to stalled development, Bates rational-actor model concentrates on the internal problems facing African development, particularly the pursuit of interests on the part of political and urban elites.

Much of Africa is facing an agricultural crisis. Although generally populated by small farmers, many nations in Africa face food shortages. Bates argues that these crises are the result of inefficient policies (which intervene in, and distort markets) implemented by political and economic elites. The question becomes, why are these policies being pursued? Bates explains the implementation of these inefficient agricultural policies through a rational choice model. Bates suggests that these policies are developed and implemented by rational political and economic elites seeking to maximize their own utility - particularly in regards to garnering political support - rather than pursing the collective good. This often occurs at the expense of many small farmers. He writes, "Policies are designed to secure the advantages of particular interests, to appease powerful political forces, and to enhance the capacity of political regimes to remain in power" (5-6).

The political and urban elites work in tandem to harvest economic resources garnered from the agricultural sector to promote industrialization. This is often done through the manipulation of market forces, particularly in keeping food prices low for urban interests. Doing so keeps the urban masses content, and allows industrialists to maintain low wages. In turn, the policy making elites garner political support. Bates spells out the beneficiaries of such policies clearly. "Owners and workers in industrial firms, economic and political elites, privileged farmers and the mangers of public bureaucracies - these constitute the development coalition in contemporary Africa" and hence benefit from the inefficient policies.

In regards to production, such policies skew the incentive structure of smaller agricultural producers. When receiving below world market prices, farmers will lower production, in turn limiting food supply. Or farmers may pursue a policy of "out-migration" and moved to the urban areas in pursuit of jobs. In this regard, the peasants are too acting rationally according to Bates model. Bates also discusses the problems of mass organization in order to oppose these policies. The small farmers are so dispersed and politically weak that the collective action problems ensue. The government expands on these collective action problems by offering preferential disbursements of subsidies, etc. to those who tow the party line. This divide and conquer technique has limited the power of the rural masses to organize a coherent oppostion.

The decolonization of Africa was espoused by two ideals of the African people: political independence and economic development. The African nationalists attributed their economic backwardness to their colonial heritage and believed that `independence' would pave the way to prosperity. Yet facing the dilemmas of economic development and the limitations of the international system, they eventually ended up with inefficient industrial firms, impoverished peasantry, and increased economic inequality.

Robert Bates' Markets and States in Tropical Africa analyzes the reasons for and the mechanism of state intervention in market in African states. Like every other country who has attempted to develop so far, independent African countries too faced the dilemmas of economic development, namely capital accumulation and market creation. The economies of Africa have been overwhelmingly rural in nature and the governing elites in Africa aimed to change this situation by through industrialization. The scarcity of capital led national elites to extract resources from agriculture and channel them into manufacture and industry. What is important here, as Bates emphasize, is that all nations seeking to industrialize have done this: "The African policies are thus notable not as exceptions but as examples of a larger class," (p. 119). The forms of economic manipulation were compatible with the prevailing economic doctrines: industry is the engine of growth, savings come from the profits of industry, rural sector should be squeezed for development, etc. (p. 97).

The African governments had both economic and political incentives to channel resources from the rural agricultural sector to the urban industrial enterprises. On the one side they regarded this as necessary for the industrialization and economic development of their countries; on the other side, "the politicization of the electorate" in the nationalist era pushed the governing elite to follow clientalist policies to maintain their political status. As Bates put is, the resources allocated through governmental programs have been channeled to those "whose support is politically useful or economically rewarding to the state - that is, to members of the elite," (p. 56).

As for the instruments of state intervention in the market, African governments mostly exploited taxes, tariffs, and subsidies to transfer resources from rural areas to urban ones. Government in Africa subsidized fertilizers, seeds, mechanical equipments, land, and credit for commercial farming (p. 50). The taxes collected from the rural areas constituted the bulk of these subsidies given to the urban and rural elites. Also, to promote industrial development, African governments constructed protective barriers between the world and domestic markets which sheltered local industries from foreign competition (p. 66). Apparently, the peasantry has been the victim of both policies.

The history of African economic development in the post-independence era in general and Robert Bates' book in particular demonstrate the inevitability of the sacrifices and burden that at least one class should undertake. Historically speaking, these classes have usually been peasantry and workers. A capitalist economic development necessitates the accumulation of capital in the hands of a capitalist entrepreneur class, which forces the state to intervene in the market and to channel resources from the lower strata to the upper ones. Neither the developed Western countries nor the East Asian NICs escaped this necessity of economic development. Yet what made these countries `overcome' the aforementioned dilemma and eventually become a `success story' were the availability of `external resources and market' at their disposal. While in the Western case the cheap labor, food, and market of what is now called the Third World made possible the redemption of the agonies of the peasantry and the eventual establishment of `welfare states', in the `Asian miracle' case, their privileged access to the Western markets provided the `fuel' to keep their economic growth and to gradually relieve the burden of the peasantry and working class in these countries. It was not the intervention of the state in the market that differed the African case from the `success' stories, rather it was the unavailability of external means that determined the eventual fates of African countries.

This book nicely presents the way that African governments influence markets, why they do so, and the effect of their involvement on citizens, especially the poor. I found it helpful in explaining why some states make the decisions they do, despite the fact that they might not always be the most economically efficient.

In this landmark study, Robert Bates offered an interpretation of African economic policies toward the agriculture sector that set the terms of the debate for the years to come. Why do African governments pursue policies that create market distortions, skewed incentives and misallocation of resources, despite their obvious costs for social welfare and long-term development? The core of Robert Bates' argument is that bad economics often makes good politics: governments choose to pursue policies that are clearly irrational from an economic viewpoint because their economic and social costs are more than offset by the political benefits that accrue to them and to the social forces that maintain them in power.

Things did not have to turn that way. Political elites who took power at the time of the independences sincerely believed that they could put their countries on a path to economic modernization and social well-being. What trapped Africa into a low equilibrium of narrow clientelism and entrenched self-interests was a mix of bad institutions, bad advice and bad luck.

African governments inherited from their colonizers institutions that were set to extract rents from the agriculture sector rather than to maximize the welfare of farmers. They chose a mix of development policies that emphasized the role of the state and the importance of a nascent manufacturing sector. And they benefited from a period of high commodity prices that led them to consider cash crops and natural resources as an inexhaustible source of foreign exchange revenue.

The institution that came to symbolize the rent-extracting nature of African agriculture policies is the marketing board, which purchased cash crops from farmers at administratively determined prices and then sold them for a higher price on the world market, thereby accumulating funds that could be used for state-sponsored industrial projects or for social subsidies, if not for outright plundering. Another instrument of redistribution away from the agriculture sector was the local industrial firm that processed raw agricultural products acquired at artificially low prices, or the importation of foreign crops at prices below domestic ones in order to feed urban workers and lower the cost of living.

This complex web of policies and institutions should not be seen solely as a way to transfer resources away from agriculture into the modern urban economy, thereby achieving the "primitive accumulation" that Marxist economists saw as a condition to industrial development. Some policies, such as large irrigation projects, the subsidization of inputs, the channeling of credit or the extension of public services to rural areas, benefit large landowners at the expense of small-scale farmers. Likewise, industrial development projects under protective trade policies give rise to large, capital intensive public enterprises which often operate below capacity and at high costs.

Robert Bates makes heavy use of interest group theory to explain how policies are designed to secure advantage for particular interests, to appease powerful political forces, and to enhance the capacity of political regimes to remain in power. More ground-breaking is his analysis of the market as the setting for the struggle between the peasant and the state, the political arena in which social forces collide or avoid each other. Through intervention in the market, the state seeks to levy resources from the countryside, to appease social unrest in urban areas and to serve the private interests of those in power. For their part, rural producers use the market as a means of defense against the state, thereby evading some of the adverse consequences of government policies. They do so in part by reducing output, shifting crops, migrating out of the countryside, returning to subsistence lifestyles or joining the informal sector. Consequently, policy aberrations on the part of the government are more likely to result in exit patterns than in attempts at reforms.

This book has been vilified in some quarters because it was said to have provided the intellectual blueprint to the policies of structural adjustment that swept African countries soon after its publication. The denunciation of the urban bias and the abolition of the marketing boards certainly provided a rallying cry that was easily picked up by market reformers working from development agencies, with little consideration to the social forces that would be put in motion by such prescriptions. And it is true that Bates is almost entirely silent on the organizational characteristics of his interest group coalitions that underpin policy choices and institutional settings. But this classic work still provides many insights on Africa's internal and external structural problems.

When the title of a book has an embarrassing grammatical mistake, you know you shouldn't even buy it. Really lame mistake.

As much as I appreciate the intent of their book, social workers have no place in the political process -- and, other than as citizens, they shouldn't. Social work is not a profession. Social workers have sold their souls to becomes second-rate psychotherapists. Their advocacy days are long over. Schools of social work pay lip service to social justice issues (in fact, social work organizations have not been able to define the word "justice," much to their collective embarrassment. Social workers should just get back to case management and leave the other work they attempt to lawyers, policy analysts, and well-educated psychologists. (Of course, I'm a Columbia U. Schl. of Social Wk. grad, the most unjust school imaginable, so I'm knowledgeable and bitter)

I want to hear others' opinions . . . e-mail at "thankavet@angelfire.com"

Professor Richard L. Rubenstein introduced me to this book.

Documented meticulously.

Substantiated understanding of the process of mass murder.

Definitely one of those must read books.

I was reading a work by Christopher Browning recently and he stated how just as many historians were starting to realize the functionalist understanding of the Shoah, Hilberg refined it to a even more nuanced level. Always dilligent, deeper and a step ahead. I had read many books on the subject prior to this one, and frankly had put of buying it because of the price, yet don't regret the purchase one bit. Too many historians use the prhase "magnum opus" when refering to this work and frankly I agree 100%

Hilberg's brilliant and dispassionate treatment of attempts throughout history to destroy the Jews sets a new standard for scholarship and for the historical analysis of emotionally charge subjects. Through his own efficient analytic framework of precedents, antecedents, and scope of organization, Hilberg gives us a lucid formula for both understanding and explaining the subtext, context, and pretext of the 1500-year old continuously running saga of anti-Semitism. The effect is to place the reader in the cockpit of the planners of one of the worst disasters known to man, the holocaust of World War-II. But more importantly, he also provides us with all the necessary facts that go with, and that load his framework.

The context of the holocaust is 1500 years of progressive improvements in ways of addressing the so-called "Jewish problem (or threat)," and corresponding Jewish cultural adaptations to these improved attempts to annihilate them. The improvements have ranged from failed attempts by Catholics to convert Jews into Christians, to expelling them from Europe, to Hitler's creation of a bureaucracy of industrialized death to implement his "final solution." (The author summarizes this progression as conversion, expulsion, and annihilation.)

The subtext of anti-Semitism ostensibly has always been about the "predatory Jewish character" but in fact has been about fears, fears of cultural, religious and ethnic differences and about independence from ordinary orthodoxy. It is precisely these fears that are the most easily serviceable, and most easily ignited into action during times of stress. They are best facilitated through hatred -- especially when guided by a catalyst of evil, ignorance, demagoguery, or demented and corrupt leaders. Inexorably they pass through a process of condoned and sanctioned violence to collective murder. (Fear of Jewish independence and failure to accept the Christian Jesus as their religious messiah and savior have throughout history served as one of the key subtexts of anti-Semitism).

Just as the pattern that serves as the subtext for anti-Semitism is generalizable to other forms of chauvinism, racism and hatred, so too is the pretext: The target is first demonized, dehumanized and vilified; and then disenfranchised, hounded and spatially as well socially segregated. This process of dehumanization then leads logically to, and serves as justification and collective psychological cover for, committing criminal acts against the targeted groups -- including mass industrialized murder. (Jewish religious idolatry, and ethnic character flaws, i.e. their predatory business acumen and slipperiness, their fear of honest work, etc. has throughout history served as the pretext for justifying criminal acts against Jews).

This book puts to rest the popular "magic bullet theory" of the holocaust: that explaining Hitler explains everything anyone would ever need to know about the holocaust. It does not. The anti-Semitic pressures along fault lines leading up to the holocaust had been building up for more than 1500 years. It was these pressures and not Hitler that bear the primary responsibility for the holocaust. Hitler just happened to be the demented catalyst that sparked an anti-Semitic eruption at a time when a demoralized German people needed a tonic for restoring their national pride.

Five Stars.

One of the best books I have ever read about the holocaust. A serious research and it is indeed a great contribution for the studies on this horrible moment of the history of mankind!

The text I read (three volume hard cover) is the definitive work on the Holocaust. It profiles all aspects of a demonic criminal conspiracy, as well as the practical planning and ultimate consequences.

I urge all to read Hilberg. It is the standard work.

This is an amazing work that documents a decades-long effort to undercut a facts-based, reality-based, science respecting approach to public policy decisions.

What is sad is that, at the end of the day, despite the title, I would find it hard to believe that the majority of Republicans truly endorse the implications of this war ...

Mooney's excellent work truly opened my eyes ... sadly, the title will probably keep too many from even opening its cover.

I found this book quite dense with information and reports (even with updates in the second, paperback edition) from the embattled grounds of science policy and decision-making in the United States... It's very well written and in particular I'd say the author has done an excellent job to also line up all his references and sources, both on paper and in person, which is fundamental in a sweeping work of social journalism like this. It reads fluently, but due to the amount of ideas and specific cases reported it takes quite some attention...
What I liked most is that, from the countless specific examples of science abuse and trampling by the present political leadership in America, Mooney is able to let a broader picture emerge.. He doesn't spare any details about his trees, but leaves a wide clearing open to never lose sight of the forest. And the forest is a worrying one to say the least!
The Republican party ruling the country right now has dangerously mingled with political conservatives on one hand and religious moralists/fundamentalists on the other over the last decades. In trying to push forward their economic and moralistic agendas, these people have adopted a seriously undemocratic, immoral, and I'd say in general just plain reckless stance to ignore scientific advisory panels and experts who might help to formulate informed policies about several issues, from environmental management to public health to education... If you want a good example of the blinding ideologies they follow in their crusades, nothing better than giving a look at the idiotic rant (should I call it a review?) by one FC Robertson below. Stands as large as a monument to tell the whole story!
It's dangerous for the future of a country that its government willfully choose to ignore technical and factual data on many important issues and simply persevere in its partisan policies. And it's important that the public be informed in an exhaustive way of what has been going on for many years now... Mooney failed to observe, in his last and brilliant chapter on possible countermeasures, that public education not only in science, but more generally in basic thinking, is just as important as winning political wars to stop this trend. The media flood us daily with the latest inanities about Britney Spears, but they're easily duped into misreporting actual scientific controversies! They often fail big time in informing citizens correctly... And citizens don't have the slightest chance to recognize information biases or just plain absurdities, since they don't even know where to start to think independently. An ignorant public opinion (when there's any opinion at all!) in the hands of dishonest politicians means that a society cannot be called democratic. And how this is happening in the US today, but most likely not just there (we have our own European examples!), is masterfully explained in this little, important book.

This is absolutely essential reading for any citizen. It is tragic what is being done to science and civilization by rightwing, narrowminded extremists. The war on science, and culture, and reason, and education, etc., is mindboggling. These people are in an incessant race towards a new Dark Ages. This book is a harsh indictment of their anti-intellectualism and their detrimental policies.

This book may ignite a rage to storm the very gates of heaven. (Except that if you like it you probably don't believe in heaven, being a pinko liberal.) I exaggerate, perhaps, but there is sufficient material to disturb anyone who cares about America and the broader English-speaking world's position as leading scientific societies. Mooney documents an outrageous and systematic campaign to discredit, in effect, science itself wherever it delivers politically or religiously inconvenient findings. For anyone who cares about science's place in society this is required reading. Mooney's findings have been amply echoed elsewhere in popular and professional journals in recent years, so the phenomenon can reasonably be said to be real, but the sheer unshamefacedness of the campaign requires this popularising approach to really bring across.

The phenomenon is not entirely new, of course, and Mooney documents some of the history. However, the intensity and scope of persecution of science is rather unprecedented. Mooney documents the creationist campaign, which is nothing new except in the degree of political support accorded, together with further religiously-motivated interference in stem-cell research and contraception/prophylaxis in respect of AIDS. Further, there are chapters on environmental science documenting interference in assessments of the impact of fishing, logging, mining and especially of the impact and reality of anthropogenic warming. The origins and use of politically-loaded terms such as "junk science" merit careful attention.

In 1995, Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich fired the first political salvo in the war on science by abolishing the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). This was an impartial scientific committee that provided scientific consensus on issues brought to them from the political arena. Many of their findings conflicted with the interests of tobacco, energy, pharmaceutical, anti-environmnental, coal and oil lobbies, lobbies that contributed heavily to republican campaigns. With the dissolution of this organization, our lawmakers began to politicize science. The Gingrich campaign reached a new level of low by demanding "sound science" in making public policy. This was doublespeak for allowing every maverick scientist who was friendly to polluting industries or on their payroll, to dispute respected scientific consensus. Now, real science was denigrated as "being PC."

James Inhofe, republican senator from Oklahoma and anti-environmentalist carried on the tradition of the Gingrich revolution and the war on science. His formula is to 1) emphasize a commitment to "sound science;" 2) seize the remaining window of opportunity to challenge and dispute the scientific consensus; and 3) find experts "sympathetic to your view and make them "part of your message." This three-step approach is designed to convince the ignorant that he is for sound science when he is only interested in preventing scientific inquiry or conclusions interfering with his biggest campaign contributors--oil, gas and electric companies.

Through these pretensions of sound science, verbal legerdemain, and the passage of the Data Quality Act, the republican-led Congress has essentially been able to mire any environmental, climate or pollution control or public health bill in years of research and legal wrangling to prevent laws that will stymie the needs of their biggest contributors.

The White House has also made its contribution in many ways to misinform and mislead the public. This occurred early in 2001 when Bush lied about the number of viable stem cells for research. Official reports on global warming, for instance, have been redacted, changes ordered to make decisive conclusions equivocal ones, and even have environmental studies on the impact of carbon emissions written by a former oil executive. The White House also barred scientists from the Department of Health and Human Services from consulting with the World Health Organization without prior political approval.

The White House had been drifting in this direction for years with Ronald Reagan insisting on Star Wars even though shooting down missiles in space with other missiles was as likely as a man in Boston shooting the cigarette out of the mouth of a man in New York. Bush Sr. continued his "evolution" to the right with a pro-life stance, and his belief in a thousand points of light.

Under a republican banner, the Christian right having lost two landmark cases where they failed to keep evolution out of the classroom, and failed to get creationism in the classroom, created a marketing miracle with restyling the latter in a new package of intelligent design. Attempting to influence a scientifically ignorant public with fallacious claims of unexplained missing links, and evolution's lack of certainty, they have made inroads with the more intellectually gullible and naïve. To bolster their cause, they have enlisted a few "contrarian" scientists who have carried their guidon, but have failed to publish their stance in any peer-reviewed journal.

The Christian right has also promoted very flawed studies that supposedly revealed that adult stem cells are as viable as embryonic ones for research, that abortion was linked to breast cancer and psychosis, that condom use was ineffective against sexually-transmitted disease, and that abstinence-centered programs were the most successful sex education programs. They have even gone so far as to lobby against over-the-counter sale of the "day after" pill even though the drug works by blocking ovulation rather than interfering with implantation.

The author's counter-offensive on the republican war on science is devastating. His writing is lucid and well organized. He interviewed scores of people in preparation for writing this book. His facts are verifiable, and he has answers to every obfuscating argument the republicans, the White House, and the Christian Right can hurl. He is able to make dry topics interesting, and this book is a cornerstone for those looking for scientific answers to misleading "science."

Mooney concludes that science must be elevated to what it once was. OTA or an organization just like it should be reinstituted and reinvigorated. The presidential science advisor, relegated to insignificance, as a toady for the Bush administration, should be also elevated to its former level of prestige. A press should be more concerned with getting a scientific story right than worrying if they are giving equal time or space to those who would advocate the world is flat. An enlightened public should send the science imposters and their legislators packing back to private life.

This is rousing and informative. It tells us how to avoid an American Scientific Dark Age.

Reading through the other reviews here it struck me that they seemed to share a lack of prior knowledge about the subject. Had anyone read more widely they would have discovered that 'Children at War' is a piece of pseudo-scholarship. This book is based upon a completely misguided assumption - that the involvement of children in warfare is a new phenomenon. In making such an assertion the author reveals either lack of any proper engagement with the literature or simply bad faith. The sad fact is that children have been involved as solidiers in many, if not most, of the wars recorded in history. In spite of Singer's erroneous claims to the contrary, the US Civil War involved large numbers of boy soldiers. Similarly the First World War. Children fought and died with the partisans in Nazi-occupied Europe, and so on. Towards the end of the book, Singer reveals a disturbing political agenda. It seems that his real concern is less with child soldiers and more with the challenges for US troops faced with children in places like Afghanistan and Iraq where killing them is bad for morale and also looks so bad to the folks back home watching CNN.
In terms of sources, Singer relies overwhelmingly on journalistic accounts that are simply intended to offer shock value to their readers and, like his own book, lack any deeper engagement with the history and context within which child recruitment takes place. Aside from one quote, none of the copious quotes from child soldiers seems to have come from Singer's one fieldwork. Indeed, the reader is left wondering if Singer has ever actually visited a setting where child recruitment takes place.
This is a work of truly poor scholarship. It is a mystery how it ever got published and why so many people have been apparently taken in by it. Perhaps it is a case of telling people what they want to hear?
If anyone is looking for a proper discussion of this subject they would do far better to read David Rosen's 'Armies of the Young'.

Being an International Relations student about to embark on a years study on this subject I was looking for a solid grounding on which to begin my study and this provided a perfect answer. Singer uses simple dialogue and logical progression in his publication to provide information on the recruting of child soldiers, what they are subjected to in the field, the difficulty of soldiers facing children, the worst culprits, reintegration of soldiers and proposed methods of ending this aspect of modern warfare.

An important aspect of this book that isn't mentioned so much is its discussions on how military forces should approach fighting child soldiers. As a potential officer of the future I felt this was particularly important, Singer mentions that the US Army supplied early drafts of this book to its officers as guidelines for potential situations so clearly they believe his suggestions hold merit also.

It should be noted that any reader should of course expect some horrific details from this book, I had expected these but was sickened by some of the stories. There are particularly brutal aspects that you could not imagine, just a word of warning as one of the accounts has left me particularly troubled by hummanity.

In conclusion I believe this book to be a perfect introductory reading to anyone studying, or simply interested, in the subject. I would also state that those more advanced in the topic should look at this book as, if the information and proposals are not new to you, the research is excellent and so the references can provide you with more resources that you may potentially have not yet accessed.

Altogether a superb book, ideal for anyone wishing to gain further knowledge in the subject area.

Back in the mid-1990s I spent many months reporting on child soldiers in places including Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I wrote from the immediacy of a journalist's perspective, but was unable to examine the cause-and-effect realities of this disturbing phenomenon. In "Children at War" P. W. Singer has produced a truly important study of the socio-cultural, economic and historic causes behind the militarization of children in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Singer's work is an incredibly valuable contribution to further the study and understanding of armed conflict in the post Cold War-era. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the welfare of children and the state of our world in often-neglected locations such as sub-Saharan Africa. It is also an insightful look at how "warlordism" and the greed driving so-called commodity wars is changing the face of modern armed conflict.

No one should think themselves well-informed about contemporary international conflict unless they are aware of the child soldier problem. I commend Singer for Children at War; it seems to cover most of the material that one might hope it would, and it does so with clarity and precision. The book is not marred by opinion or bias (I believe some decry this approach, but this is a work of academic non-fiction); it simply presents the facts on topics that range from recruitment of child soldiers to strategies that should be utilized by conventional militaries when they must engage belligerent groups that incorporate child soldiers.

Despite my three-star rating, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an informed and well-rounded look at child warfare. Singer's writing style is easy to read in that it uses simple language and is clearly meant to be accessible; however, (and this is the reason for the three stars) he can be quite repetitive. Although one could argue that the information in this book should be drilled into everyone's heads, reading the same sentence many times over, only with slightly different wording, can be cumbersome.

As one might expect, some of the visualizations that Singer inspires can be terribly gruesome (if you can think of a description that carries more force than "terribly gruesome," then consider yours to be a more accurate one). Assuming that the reader is both a human being and of sound mind, they will undoubtedly find that this book will leave them at times speechless, pained, or simply unable to read on.

As far as I know, Singer is the first to point out that child warriors are making possible a new kind of war, a war without ideology or purpose other than taking something someone else has. Adults fight better with a cause and a purpose--children are more easily drugged, brainwashed, and cut off from other support. They can also be far crueler in battle and harder to rehabilitate. Singer points to responses to lessen the problem, but she is far from optimistic.

This is a nice personal interest read about a well to do Armenian family living in northern New Jersey. What makes it different is the undertone of a family tragedy suffered in faraway Armenia during 1915. During that time, the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire sought to kill or dispossess 1.5 million Armenians of their lives and property. The author's grandparents suffered enormously and their parents and siblings died through the most brutal methods. When the Balakian was growing up, there was always something under the surface of their family. The author's parents did not educate how their family suffered during this time. When the author does a term paper on Turkey for his high school class and gets an A, his father is angered on the subject he selected.

The one thing that stands out in this memoir is that the Turks still deny they did anything wrong. A recent amendment in the U.S. Senate was defeated due to Turkish pressure to label this a genocide. This despite the fact that this happened over 90 years ago. Somehow the Turkish people and nation chooses to not assume guilt on one of the first mass murders in the world's history.

The book gets off to a slow start with several chapters on Balakian's grandmother. Some of the writings suggest mystical happenings like the black dog and blue lady. After that the author focuses in on his family and the tragedy of Armenia. One thing that I think the author got wrong is when the Young Turks assumed command of the Ottoman government. Two Sultans ruled from 1908 till 1920. They were figureheads to the Young Turk government. Other than that, an interesting read.

A very good, well written story of the author's discovery of his own Armenian roots and the genocide of 1915 of which his grandmother was a survivor. It also is about one half of an autobiography, detailing the author's upbringing in suburban New Jersey.

The first three parts of the book are subtitled Grandmother, Mother, Farther. I feel the book should have jumped into the Armenian part of the story much faster. A better course might have been to make the leap from Grandmother to the old country and then fill in the backstory of the author's upbrining in New Jersey.

According to the dusk jacket, the author was born in 1951, as was I, so I can testify to the veracity of his account of those times.

Much of sections set in Turkey during the time of the Armenian genocide are given over the official documents about the event, as if the author were uncertain his own word would be enough to convince the audience. Given the Turkish government's commitment to denial on this issue, I suppose that is understandable.

I just finished reading this book. It tells the story of a boy growing up in the 1950s who along with his Armenian grandmother who shared a love of the NY Yankees growing up in New Jersey. It also tells the trauma of the past telling the story about some of his family members killed by the Turkish government in 1915. It is well written and I loved the story. It's a really good book if you want a good read. It was both happy and sad. It also brought back a lot of memories of a bygone era. I liked it a lot.

The story of the author's grandmother is the same as the story my grandmother told me. Yes, her entire family was killed by the Turks. As a small child, I attended the Armenain school where all of us would compare stories as to how our grandparents survived the death marches. It is a very nice story that tells about history, a history that is kept hidden for many political reasons. Until the world fully ackhowledges what happened to the Armenians, and punishes the Turks, many more genocides and attorcities will take place. After all, if the Turks can get away with the torture, killing, rapes, and genocide (while countries such as the United States let them get away with it), then other similar regimes will committ similar attorcities.
I storngly recommend this book.

Peter Balakian's book, "Black Dog of Fate," tries to be too many things
and sadly fails at many of them. In essence, it is an attempt to tell a
sort of Armenian-American story which I find not overly interesting or
compelling. I wish the author had done a bit more in-depth work to learn
about his people and their rich heritage before embarking to represent it
or explain it or share it with non-Armenians, for he has much more to absorb
and understand himself first. I find the Armenianness in this book to be
tentative, unengaged and unconvincing. Pity, since the author seems to
have a lot of passion in his pursuit of other aspects of his life such as
football, the Yankees, modern poetry, and exposing Turkish attempts to
buy (among others) Princeton professors to act as mouthpieces giving
legitimacy to their vile historical revisionism, practiced by the
"modern" Turkish state and its organs.

It seems to be all the rage these days to elevate personal histories and
family testimonials into the realm of fiction and novels. The "I" and "we"
and "us" occupy center stage and the reader is invited to enjoy the
intimacy that must surely be in place via this artifice. But is it realy?
Since in order to make this legitimate, the writer must distance himself,
at least initially, from all this old world exotica, and like the reader,
question their validity or relevance in present day North American
society. What are all these old world, old fashioned ghosts and traditions?,
is the first cry of writer and reader alike, only, ofcourse, to be followed
by a sharp bank turn where the writer steers the satisfied and in-place
reader towards the opposite viewpoint wherein *this* culture and *this*
lifestyle become suspect in light of some tentative spotting of cultural
wealth that has been traded in or abandoned in order to swim swiftly towards
materialistic, memory-free, self-redefining, "comfort" seeking and buying
mores.

In the Balakian tale, one encounters suburbia instead of substance,
worldly goods acquisition instead of deep roots that steady the soul,
immediate family and relatives running away from their true identities either
towards surrealism, the abstract and unemotional, or else towards medicine,
respectability and detachment. Young Balakian observes but never
understands "the grandmother" for she is shielded culturally from being
able to reach him by her very offsprings who can not and will not instill
the Armenian identity he will eventually seek but never quite find. Their
crime is self-denial and a march to the tune of America's mixmaster
piper. "Be unlike your past and your future will be brighter," seems to be
what America promises, at the very least. The intermediate generation listens
and adopts this credo and Peter is left to find out but never quite
understand just what cost his ancestors have paid to remain Armenian and
to preserve our culture before the final denials on New Jersey pateos while
enjoying, as if to serve sweet irony, full course Armenian meals and the
mixing aromas of delicacies from the old country every Sunday.

Peter is lost alright, but as the book sadly shows, he remains lost.
Paraphrasing or quoting Ambassador Morgenthau does not an Armenian genocide
expert make. Personal family testimonials of the Turkish atrocities does
not a genocide history make (For that, read Vahakn Dadrian's "The History
of the Armenian Genocide" Berghahn Books, 1995). Episodic accounts can be
dismissed by the Turks as hear-say and as mere isolated incidents, leading
to more harm than good (for if better evidence existed, the arguement
goes, why would anyone resort to such flimsy fare?). For the story to have
worked, for the story to have *really* worked, as I would have liked it to,
Balakian's life and lifestyle would have had to have changed
significantly and his child rearing practices would have had to reflect
it, and his relationship with his wife who, like him, is not leading a strongly
Armenian existence, would have had to have changed, solidifying his roots,
celebrating his new found identity, and nurturing the metamorphosis by
sustained community involvment and grass roots movement participation
which, alas, never appear on the pages of this book. How else to explain
the lack of a turning around of the tide of assimilation to which Balakian
is a grand personal witness, except that the transition has not occured?
The ship of Armenianness sails by Balakian. He is finally aware enough to
be able to identify the ship and wave it goodbye and write about it, but
not resolved enough to climb aboard. That is how the book fails and that is
how his story fails. This is a story of assimilation and loss with a bit of
mid stream self awareness thrown in. For a real story of an Armenian
finding his roots and letting them take root in his own life and future,
read Mark Arax's book, "In my Father's Name (Simon & Schuster, 1996),"
where the transition is real and the early youth of disaffection is
replaced by a profound adoption of our essence revealed in exquisite
frankness and power by Mark Arax. One can only hope that Balakian's
partial reorientation towards our culture and traditions and essence will
somehow continue and that some day he will wish to live with a more meaningful
attachment to our cause and needs than merely as an able observer (not
withstanding his laudible actions as an April 24th -- Armenian genocide
commemoration speaker and an exposer of Turkish infiltration in the US
academic arena by buying spokesmen turned professors who mascarade as
unbiased researchers). This criticism I direct to the predecessor of this
genre of American Armenian writing first and to Balakian second. I speak
here of "passage to Ararat" by Michael Arlen (Hungry Mind republication,
1996) where a disinterested soit-disant Armenian goes to Armenia in the
70's and by the end of the short trip is somewhat more closely touched by
this strange people's woes and dreams. Too little, too late, and always
detached, is all I can say to these meagre displays of ethnic or cultural
reorientation. Much more needs to be absorbed before the essence is
transmitted to future generations to take and behold.

However, I remain hopeful that future transformatory stories and ethnic
identity survival stories *will be* written which will show that the tide
of assimilation and cultural abandonment are not the only outcome of this
experiment of transplanting peoples and cultures to this continent we
proudly call our home.

Human rights are rights considered to be held by individuals simply because they are part of the human species. They are rights, in essence, shared equally by everyone regardless of sex, race, nationality, or ethnic background. They are universal in content. Despite this fairly straight forward definition, the recognition of human rights by individuals, groups, societies, states, and nations has been a constant battle across both space and time. Throughout the centuries groups or societies have failed to recognize certain human rights of individuals, groups, and cultures while at the same time recognizing those of others. Likewise, conflicting political traditions have elaborated different components of human rights or differed over which elements had priority. Today, the manifold meanings of human rights embodied in this definition reflects this process of history and change.

Presenting this long and conflicted history in one of the more accessible and comprehensive editions to date, The History of Human Rights by Micheline R. Ishay is the authoritative text on the subject. Using the main points developed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the book chronicles the clashes of ideas, social movements, and armies that comprise the history of human rights. This history, although largely told from a Western perspective does encompass the perspective of those who have struggled to obtain them. Framing the history of human rights development through six core arguments, The History of Human Rights offers not only a comprehensive history and analysis, but also the basis for a discussion of where human rights needs to progress. This last component is what gives this book particular importance for indigenous peoples. As lucidly covered through six in-depth chapters, one of the final battles in the history of human rights will be over the rights of cultures, and particularly the inherent rights of indigenous peoples and their cultural lifeways in relation to state, national, and international rights.

Beginning with the controversy of human rights and religion, Ishay argues that each great religion contains important humanistic elements which have contributed to our modern conceptions of rights. For example, in the West, the impact of Judeo-Christian morality and ethics has been central to the development of human rights. As Ishay notes Judeo-Christian morality was secularized, separated from politics, and strengthened in influence by the advent of capitalism and colonialism in Europe, largely at the expense of other notions of ethics. Because of the development of capitalism in Europe, Judeo-Christian ethics became secularized with the progress of the Reformation (16th century) and the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century, finally being transformed into a liberal discourse that dominates our current conception of human rights.

This leads to Ishay's second major argument in The History of Human Rights: that our modern conception of rights, wherever in the world they may be currently voiced, are predominantly European in origin. Not only are they largely founded on a secularized version of Judeo-Christian ethics, but that their current definition largely originated out of this European beginning. As Ishay correctly argues, this does not imply that Western rights are reducible to contemporary free-market liberalism, but rather that the human rights vision currently depicted as liberal is in fact indelibly molded by the socialist ideals that grew out of nineteenth-century European industrialization and secularized Judeo-Christian ethics.

As Ishay clearly articulates, the two documents most responsible for modern legal formulations of human rights are the American Bill of Rights and the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Both of these documents were the result of various social movements in the pre-industrial era. When industrialization took over in Europe and America, becoming an all consuming process, these documents coupled with the previously secularized Judeo-Christian ethical thought became the guiding ideologies in human rights definitions.

As such, our modern liberal take on human rights is also indebted to the social thought of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Ishay's third argument). Current attempts at asserting universal human rights, as The History of Human Rights argues, are defensive mechanisms against either liberal or socialist ideologies, since these ideologies presumably represent the oppressive legacy of Western imperial and colonial domination of the world.

The fourth argument in The History of Human Rights builds on the previous three, as the progress of human rights moved from individual to social, and finally cultural in scope. As such, Ishay contends that cultural rights must always be informed by, and checked against, a universalist perspective of human rights.

Like religious rights, the notion of cultural rights, so strongly advocated by liberal nationalists in nineteenth-century Europe (and later championed during the twentieth-century post-colonial struggle) was largely rejected by socialists because it caused a disjunction between group solidarity and universal human rights (p. 131). Challenging liberal ambiguities, many socialists pointed out that the primary beneficiaries of cultural rights were more often particular groups or individuals within the culture, and not the culture as a cohesive whole.

If we cannot trace the history and development of human rights in a linear fashion of progression from the individual to the social to the cultural, how can we say there has been any progress made in their development? This is Ishay's fifth argument: has there been any progress through history towards a universal set of human rights. Her contention is that there has been, although not necessarily through the recognized mechanisms. This in spite of President Roosevelt's 1945 proclamation that the United Nations would "spell the end of the system of unilateral action, ... the balances of power, and all the expedients that have been tried for centuries - and have always failed" (Roosevelt 1950: 570).

In short, universal human rights are always potentially endangered by particularist and vague conceptions of rights framed in terms of the "national interest," "national security," the right to "individual self-determination," or "cultural rights." Therefore, we must constantly keep vigilance on those who are in power and those who define human rights and their scope. This last point leads to The History of Human Rights' final point; a question rather then an argument.

Is globalization a boon or a threat from a human rights perspective. This is an especially important question when looking at the human rights progress in terms of indigenous peoples. As Ishay argues, and I would agree, the answer is that globalization has the potential to be a boon for human rights, but that we are not there yet. With the development of global information technology, Human Rights Peacenet, Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources, Amnesty International, and a multitude of other websites human rights advocates now have unprecedented possibilities for fighting. One cannot overlook the success of the human rights community's "infopressure" on the Mexican government during the Chiapas rebellion or the human rights "infoactivity" during the turbulent events in Tiananmen Square or against Indonesia's repression in East Timor.

However, we have not reached a nadir, we are still fighting an uphill battle. Not only has globalization opened new networks and avenues, but it has also allowed unprecedented human rights violations to occur. The illegal war in Iraq, China's occupation of Tibet, and the taking of land and natural resources from indigenous peoples are just a few. Human rights are still not universal. The best way to fight for their universal application is to know their history. The History of Human Rights is the best place to start. By knowing where we have come from, and how we got here, we can positively move forward. The History of Human Rights should be on everyone's reading list.

Make a difference. Know the history. Change the future.

[...]

What I really liked about this book was its emphasis on human rights and how previous and current laws help or hurt human rights. This book is very useful if you want to know where some of the laws we have today came from. It also compares the religious traditions and their laws. Overall, I liked this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in human rights history.

This book is a great overall history of human rights. I really liked how it talked about the origin of ideas and then wove those ideas throughout the book. It's a very well-researched and complete work. One thing that does is make several assertions that are extremely contentious among human rights scholars; for example it contends that human rights is a concept that is western in origin.

Ishay's introduction outlines an ambitious book, tracing human rights' origins and evolution over an immense historical period. However, what the introduction promises the body fails to deliver. Ishay spends most of her time simply recounting European history, and even that is done in such a maddeningly tangential way as to render it essentially useless. The book is a collection of facts, utterly lacking a cohesive argument or understanding. And some attempts are simply laughable - her attempt to explain the hegemony of the Western conception of rights is bland paraphrasing of Jared Diamond and leaves a question that could occupy the entire volume to be answered in mere pages. Please save your time and buy something else!

Although much of the book provides a good background for much of Western history though the goggles of Human Rights, it at time seems to skip and distort aspects of it. How did benevolent religions sanction large scale war? Robespierre was not a champion of human rights by killing 20,000 people. Why are human rights still so in danger today? Don't get me wrong though, if you are looking for a historical read and do not have a lot of knowledge about European History, pick this up.

Minus the cost, of course, the book was a good purchase. I found it easy to read and helpful when it came time to write papers and site examples. This is definitely a good reference book to have around.

This is a text book for use in undergraduate courses on international political economy. Currently, it is the top choice of many instructors because it provides a thorough but readable historical account of how the world economy has been managed since the end of World War II. The book is organized in chapters about the international monetary system, foreign direct investment, and trade in both the developed and developing countries. In addition, it contains chapters about world oil politics, theories of economic development, and economic transitions in the formerly communist countries.

As the last reviewer, who appears to be the author, said, this is a good book for undergraduate courses on international political economy. It does a great job of explaining the basic concepts and is a very readable book. It was an assigned reading for a course I took on international political economy and it provided an excellent structure and basis for the course.

The only downsides are a few bad examples and minor factual details. It is nothing that seriously affects or hurts the book as a whole. Also, the book has a slight slant to the neo-liberal perspective on political economy. Marxism, as a serious alternative theory, is short-changed a bit in the text, although most other texts have an even larger bias in this area. Overall, it is a good text.

Fans of Callas, Onassis, & Kennedy(s) should embrace this book a.s.a.p. Peter Evans does a wonderful job. What an extraordinary story that is told. I couldn't put this book down for several weeks. Even after I've finished it, it inspires re-reading. Highly recommended!!

I thought that this book would be interesting to me because I like the Kennedy family and am interested in conspiracy theories, but I was wrong. This book is pretty good, but it is really confusing with so many people involved that sometimes it is hard to keep straight who this person is and what they did.

Those who find a conspiracy in every world event will be satisfied with the well-researched and well-written account of the possible involvement of Aristotle Onassis in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. As to the oft-asked question as to why Jacqueline Kennedy would want to marry the Greek tycoon, it is answered with a new understanding of the greed and lust that drove these compelling personalities. The narrative fairly jumps from the pages of this very fast read. Even the footnotes are fascinating.

Except for the garish cover jacket, this is a devilishly well-written and well-presented book. True enough it is "conspiracy fare," but with a flair: a la British style, where the conspiratorial plot is insinuated rather than unceremoniously stuffed down the reader's throat as uncontestable media-driven and "state sanctioned" fact.

The strength of the book however is not the conspiratorial plot, which in my view is mostly a sideshow to the main event. Its power lies in the excellent writing that exposes the utter shallowness of the pseudo-royal and nuevo-monied jet-setters, as they go about their desperately empty lives, trying to pump meaning into them by way of extra-marital sex, alcohol and drugs, gaudiness, world-class treachery, lavish globe-trotting cruises and parties, and mindless spending for spending sake, in short, the worse sort of debauchery. There was a time when such decadent hubris, and money-based royalty was to be envied as the "good life," but Peter Evan brings them and their phoniness back down to earth and it is not a pretty picture. When he finishes with them, using mostly their own words (as he very carefully mines most of his material from a host of their own memoirs), there is certainly very little left to envy about them.

At the epicenter of the story are the two "uber-egos" of RFK and Ari Onassis, locked into battle for over a generation, and who, despite all their power and wealth retained the social minds of a couple of juvenile delinquents. Their respective struggles and feuds bordered on the psychopathic, more befitting a couple of teenage gang leaders than respected world-class "prime movers." But this seemed not to have bothered either of them one iota, as they both continued obsessively committed to the utter destruction of the other.

According to the author, the seminal event triggering the feud was Onassis' paranoid suspicions that it was RFK's hidden hand responsible for scuttling his carefully laid plans to corner the oil tanker shipping market, first in Saudi Arabia, then in Haiti. Likewise, Bobby was equally worried and paranoid that Onassis, would use his tight-knit social connections (within the Kennedy clan via Jackie's sister and eventually via Jackie herself) to find out and use what dirt he could uncover, against the Kennedys, thereby scuttling first JFK's chances of being re-elected, and then RFK's chances of becoming President after his brother's assassination. These mutual suspicions eventually spilled over into "all out" psychological warfare and reached a crescendo in the run up to Onassis determined efforts to marry Jackie, which he eventually did. But not before RFK first forbid it, then to avoid a scandal (since the whole world already knew Onassis was screwing Jackie), insisted on it.

If you believe the author's version of the way events unfolded, RFK got the worse of this multi-decade series of vendettas that coalesced around JFK's widow's "shotgun marriage" to Onassis. What is insinuated (if only ever so lightly) is that Onassis, after marrying Jackie, used his Palestinian connections to pay for (though not set up) the hit that ended in RFK's assassination.

A la British style, one is of course expected to read between the lines and connect the dots for himself, which is fine if you are a non-American: this version then makes perfectly good sense. But if you live within U.S. borders, you can almost feel the other anti-RFK wheels grinding as they pre-position themselves (with Ari's 1.5-3.5 million dollars) to take advantage of the RFK-Onassis feud: And here we mean, LBJ/Hoover/Mob/Texas oil/CIA machinery, for instance.

Just as Evan-Prichard's "The Secret World of Bill Clinton," exposed the corruption surrounding Bill and Hilary Clinton, this book, written by another Englishman, attempts to tie up the loose ends surrounding the primal feud between Onassis and Bobby Kennedy. One does not need to be a conspiracy nut to enjoy a well-documented, well-told story, and this is it. Five stars

What a fascinating, very well written book! It seemed every page had a juicy morsel or two and really opened my eyes into what was really going on during the last months of John Kennedy's life and why Jackie married Aristotle Onassis. As a teenager, I was shocked she'd married someone who obviously wasn't a friend of the United States. But Peter Evans portrays Onassis as someone so fascinating, even desirable in his "bulldog" approach to women, maybe money wasn't the only reason. Then again, once you read this book your whole image of "Camelot" and the "Holy Widow" will never be the same.