Keyword: bookreview

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  • Rick Warren Biography Uncovers Rocky Marriage, Depression (Unauthorized Biography)

    12/06/2009 9:02:04 AM PST · by SeekAndFind · 38 replies · 593+ views
    Christian Post ^ | 12/4/2009 | Michelle Vu
    A new unauthorized biography of "America's pastor" Rick Warren uncovers a marriage with an unconventional beginning and a time of depression that later gave Warren the strength to become who he is today. Jeffery L. Sheler, religion correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, delves into the world of Warren in his latest book, Prophet of Purpose: The Life of Rick Warren. The book portrays the affable yet confident megachurch pastor who calls presidents and billionaires his friends in a much more vulnerable light. In a live Web discussion with Christianity Today editor-in-chief David Neff on Wednesday, Sheler talked about...
  • My State Fair Lady; Lemons to lemonaid, malaise to marmalade: Sarah

    12/05/2009 2:45:35 PM PST · by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus · 13 replies · 713+ views
    Renew America ^ | 2 Dec 2009 | Curtis Dahlgren
    "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink." — George Orwell LIBERALS ARE BLOWN AWAY BY FOOTNOTES AND BIG WORDS (even though they don't actually read the footnotes). One "reviewer" of Sarah Palin's book, who admittedly hadn't read the book, joked that he "bet" that it doesn't contain any footnotes, "but the pictures are probably nice." HO HO HO. WELL, when I brought the book home from K-MART, I let...
  • Heart of the Assassin

    09/14/2009 11:11:44 AM PDT · by mrmystery · 18 replies · 635+ views
    Frontpage Mag ^ | 9-14-2009 | Dave Forsmark
    Perhaps the most anticipated popular fiction offering of the year for readers of this column is Heart of the Assassin, (Scribner, $25.95) Robert Ferrigno's final volume in his trilogy about a future America split by civil war and dominated by Islamic rule. http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36278#disqus_thread
  • Tiger Woods drives sales of physics book sky-high ("Get a Grip on Physics")

    12/04/2009 5:59:26 AM PST · by SonOfDarkSkies · 14 replies · 922+ views
    guardian.co.uk ^ | 12/4/2009 | Richard Lea
    It's been a terrible week for Tiger Woods, but the golf star's moment of madness at the steering wheel has brought a surge in sales for a book written by a science writer teaching at Sussex University. A series of pictures released by Florida police of Woods's wrecked SUV includes a shot of the back seat, complete with waterbottle, towel and furled umbrella. But there among the shards of tinted glass in the footwell sits a well-thumbed copy of a paperback with the golf-appropriate title clearly visible: Get a Grip on Physics. This incidental role in Woods's domestic drama has...
  • Safe Schools Czar Reading List Unveiled

    12/04/2009 11:39:33 AM PST · by bs9021 · 5 replies · 365+ views
    AIA-FL Blog ^ | December 4, 2009 | Bethany Stotts
    Safe Schools Czar Reading List Unveiled Bethany Stotts, December 4, 2009 Accuracy in Academia has long reported on the types of smut promoted in America’s public schools. Now, according to Scott Baker of Breitbart-TV.com and ‘The B-Cast,’ a “team of independent researchers” has prepared a report on the Gay Straight and Lesbian Education Network (GLSEN) reading list for students K-12. (The researchers focus on 11 of the books GLSEN suggested for 7th through 12th graders). Gateway Pundit has the whole story. (Warning: extremely explicit material.) I’m not sure what parents would want their kids reading these books: We were unprepared...
  • Textbook Hope & Change

    12/04/2009 7:19:53 AM PST · by bs9021 · 1 replies · 104+ views
    Accuracy in Academia ^ | December 4, 2009 | Malcolm A. Kline
    Textbook Hope & Change Malcolm A. Kline, December 4, 2009 A new political science textbook, American Democracy Now, actually makes a stab at balance and, to a surprising degree, can claim some success. The attempt to level the academic playing field is particularly noteworthy since the publisher is McGraw-Hill, which has been scored for inaccuracies in its textbooks by reviewers in Texas and California—the two largest markets for texts. Moreover, the publisher promoted it as the first textbook written by an all-woman team, a politically correct distinction that suggests a similar treatment of civics. Even the title is reminiscent of...
  • Did Somebody Say Sarah Palin?

    12/02/2009 8:34:23 AM PST · by GonzoII · 13 replies · 741+ views
    HeadlineBistro.Com ^ | Dec 3rd 2009 | Brian Caulfield
    Whatever you think about Sarah Palin, one thing is for sure: if you have a TV show, she is guaranteed to send your ratings soaring (hello, Oprah), and if you have a Web-based column, slipping in her name will drive hits to your site (hello, reader). But that is not the reason I am writing about Sarah Palin and mentioning her name in every sentence. I actually read her book, Going Rogue, and have a few things to say about it that have not already been said. Honest. I should warn you, however, that since most readers will judge my...
  • Sarah Palin heroine in new children’s book

    11/30/2009 10:05:48 AM PST · by euram · 12 replies · 515+ views
    PolishNews ^ | 11-30-09 | administrator
    Cameo appearance teaches kids dangers of rumors and gossip, indicts media While the former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate has achieved success with record book sales and support for a 2012 presidential election bid, she has also achieved something else few public figures ever have: heroine status in a children’s book. In a cameo appearance, “Governor Sarah,” a Palin lookalike character, attempts to help two boys with a struggling swingset business hang onto the American Dream despite high taxes, burdensome regulations and 246 czars in the recently released children’s book Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country
  • "GOING ROGUE, AN AMERICAN LIFE" IS AN AMERICAN TREASURE

    11/30/2009 10:28:25 AM PST · by Patriot1259 · 4 replies · 269+ views
    TheCypressTimes.com ^ | 11/30/2009 | Gary P.
    If you are not one of the nearly one million people who have purchased and read Sarah Palin’s new book, "Going Rogue, An American Life", then you are missing out on one of the really great treats and treasures of our time. One doesn’t actually read "Going Rogue", they experience it. You experience Sarah Palin’s life as she takes you from a young girl growing in the rugged Alaska wilderness through her days as a championship basketball player, a city councilwoman, mayor, oil and gas regulator, reformer, Governor, and vice presidential candidate. All told in Sarah’s wonderfully enjoyable way.
  • The Top 8 Winners Of Obamanomics

    11/30/2009 8:39:42 AM PST · by FromLori · 10 replies · 587+ views
    The Business Insider ^ | 11/30/09 | John Carney
    “Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.” That’s the starting point of my brother Tim Carney's new book released today, titled Obamanomics, How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses. Whether he likes it or not, President Barack Obama’s policies on finance, the economy, technology, the environment, and even health care are turning out to be boons to the most entrenched special interests. Meanwhile, smaller businesses, taxpayers, and some disfavored industries are bearing the burden. Our President believes in a “mixed economy” in which private enterprise and the profit motive...
  • The Changing Faces of Feminism

    11/27/2009 6:26:31 AM PST · by GonzoII · 9 replies · 391+ views
    CERC ^ | DAVID REARDON
    The Changing Faces of FeminismDAVID REARDONMany people assume that feminism and the movement to legalize abortion are virtually synonymous. Susan B. Anthony 1820-1906 Some equate feminism with a virulent leftist political philosophy that advocates abortion, lesbianism, pornography, witchcraft, and goddess worship. In fact, however, this "neofeminism" is far removed from the ideals and goals of the 19th-century feminists, who were strongly rooted in the Judeo-Christian concepts of morality and justice. For most early feminists, Christian idealism was the motivating force behind their demands for the reform of attitudes and laws that allowed the suppression of the weak. Besides pleading...
  • CNN Promotes Militant Atheist Richard Dawkins and His New Book

    11/25/2009 1:26:24 PM PST · by Pyro7480 · 20 replies · 493+ views
    NewsBusters.org ^ | 11/25/2009 | Matthew Balan
    CNN correspondent Max Foster’s short report about Richard Dawkins on Tuesday’s Situation Room played more like a commercial which promoted the militant atheist’s new book. Despite Dawkins’s past inflammatory statements about Christianity, Foster only labeled him “an outspoken critic of creationism....[whose] atheist views have put him at the center of controversy” [audio clip available here]. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux’s introduction for the correspondent’s report highlighted the 150th anniversary of the printing of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and how Dawkins was a “controversial successor [to Darwin] carrying the torch for evolution.” Foster gave a very basic description of Dawkins’s...
  • Kiddie Lit: Setting a Partisan Tome ( “Help! Mom! Radicals are Ruining My Country!” )

    11/25/2009 8:38:53 AM PST · by markomalley · 15 replies · 582+ views
    CQ Politics ^ | 11/25/2009 | Emily Cadei
    When President Obama announced plans to give a speech to the nation’s schoolchildren in September, it set off a frenzy among conservative commentators who deemed it, in the words of Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, an attempt to “indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.” Now, with the release of Katharine DeBrecht’s latest children’s book, “Help! Mom! Radicals are Ruining My Country!” — which lampoons senior Democratic members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts — it is liberals’ turn to cry foul about the partisan poisoning of impressionable...
  • ReGaining Regean

    11/23/2009 9:11:32 AM PST · by bs9021 · 2 replies · 175+ views
    American Journalism Center ^ | November 23, 2009 | Sarah Carlsruh
    ReGaining Reagan Sarah Carlsruh, November 23, 2009 Today, there are “far too many people saying ‘let’s move beyond Reagan,’” lamented Steve Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan and keynote speaker at Accuracy in Academia’s November 5th Author’s Night. Reagan stuck to an unwavering and enduring set of ideals. Yet, liberals are trying to present a distorted picture of Reagan and make him into a proto-liberal, said Hayward. Some liberals embrace the 2nd Term Reagan as a man of peace, call his foreign policy “pretty good” while condemning the Reagan of domestic policy. In contrast, Hayward insisted that “it was...
  • Daily Gut: Sarah Palin’s Books Sales Prove We’re All Racists (Again)

    11/22/2009 8:08:08 AM PST · by fight_truth_decay · 12 replies · 408+ views
    Breitbart ^ | 11.20.09 | Greg Gutfeld
    So apparently Sarah Palin sold over three hundred thousand copies of her book in one day – and as you can guess – they were all purchased by racists. At least, that’s what the sociology professors over at MSNBC Community College believe. Check out Hardball guest Norah O’Donnell, impersonating a talking puffin…
  • Conservative Children’s Books: Keeping Young Minds Open to New Ideas

    11/22/2009 10:54:54 AM PST · by AJKauf · 12 replies · 520+ views
    Pajamas Media ^ | Nov. 22 | Sarah Durand
    Like so many parents, I have agonized over the changing political climate, the degradation of morals, and the loss of liberty that the nation has been experiencing for quite some time. I’ve watched as our children have become more violent, while our educational standards plummet. And I can’t seem to shake the creepy echoing in my head of children singing Obama praises to the tunes of “Jesus Loves Me” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Look at some grade school literature like Heather Has Two Mommies, a story about Heather, a child of artificial insemination being raised by lesbian...
  • Why 'Rogue' is a better book than 'Dreams'

    11/20/2009 11:49:11 AM PST · by SeekAndFind · 25 replies · 901+ views
    WorldnetDaily ^ | 11/20/2009 | Jack Cashill
    A few weeks back, the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, said of Barack Obama, "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln." Landesman was not alone in his praise. This month's GQ has a faux-exhaustive article on "the untold story of the first man since Teddy Roosevelt to serve as author in chief." In truth, however, if Teddy Roosevelt came back to life today, he would find that he would have much more in common with Sarah...
  • 'Going Rogue' review: Sarah Palin is complainer in chief in new book

    11/17/2009 10:14:56 AM PST · by presidio9 · 37 replies · 1,562+ views
    New York Daily News ^ | Tuesday, November 17th 2009 | Sherryl Connelly
    The "You betcha" lady is no more. In her $1.25 million memoir "Going Rogue" (Harper, $28.99), Sarah Palin introduces a new voice, and it’s that of a chronic complainer. So much so you want to shout at the pages, "Man up, woman!" The news from the book has already spilled, and it is essentially this: John McCain’s senior aides were mean to her. Katie Couric was mean to her. Her critics, who are by definition supposed to be mean, were mean to her. But rather than come back swinging, she comes back whining. They done her wrong, she tells us...
  • Similar book jackets on competing Palin tomes cause cover confusion

    11/17/2009 2:14:33 PM PST · by Berlin_Freeper · 31 replies · 1,163+ views
    CP/Google News ^ | Nov 17, 2009 | CP
    Call it the case of the Sarah Palin book-alikes. The competing covers of a pair of high-profile hardcovers about Sarah Palin are already proving difficult to distinguish. "Going Rogue: An American Life," the long-awaited memoir from the former Republican vice-presidential nominee, arrived on bookstore shelves today. So did "Going Rouge: Sarah Palin An American Nightmare," which features similar book-jacket graphics and a nearly identical cover photo of the controversial former Alaska governor. An online version of a Canadian Press story about Palin's book carried the wrong cover image for about three hours early Tuesday; the cover of "Going Rouge" was...
  • 'Going Rogue: An American Life' by Sarah Palin

    11/17/2009 1:42:53 PM PST · by steve-b · 22 replies · 917+ views
    LA Times ^ | 11/17/09 | Tim Rutten
    A particularly shrewd political analyst once remarked that Ronald Reagan's great strength as a candidate was that he was "a sincere phony." In the world of electoral realpolitik, that's a compliment. What the analyst meant was that Reagan had the ability to convince himself that he actually held expedient views he'd never previously entertained and that belief, in turn, allowed him to speak of them with utter conviction. Thus, the governor who'd signed the nation's most permissive abortion-rights statute became the resolutely pro-life president. Sarah Palin's autobiography -- "Going Rogue: An American Life" -- suggests that while she may be...
  • Intelligent Design Book Cracks Bestseller List at Amazon.com

    11/17/2009 8:18:52 AM PST · by GodGunsGuts · 72 replies · 1,282+ views
    Evolution News & Views ^ | November 16, 2009 | Robert Crowther
    Signature in the Cell makes 2009 list of top ten bestselling science books Today Amazon.com announced their bestselling books of 2009 and Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer made the top ten in the science category. According to Amazon.com, books on its 2009 list of best sellers are “[r]anked according to customer orders through October. Only books published for the first time in 2009 are eligible.” The book's publisher, HarperOne, reports that the book is entering its fifth printing in as many months, and continues to sell strongly both...
  • Making Senses Out of Scripture (Book Review - Excerpt - And Editorial & Reader Reviews

    11/15/2009 5:20:39 AM PST · by GonzoII · 5 replies · 267+ views
    Mark Shea .com ^ | Mark P. Shea
    The Allegorical Sense of Scripture (excerpted from Chapter 7 of Making Senses Out of Scripture) This means something. This is important. - Roy Neary, contemplating his sculpted pile of mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As we mentioned in the last chapter, one of the standing temptations of the biblical student is to oversimplify by seizing on one truth and using it to discount other, equally important truths. One such oversimplification consists of the habit some modern people have of exalting the primacy of the literal sense of Scripture into a flat denial of the possibility of...
  • Memoir Is Palin’s Payback to McCain Campaign (NYT slams Palin as "erratic" and "ungrateful") (BARF!)

    11/14/2009 1:15:00 PM PST · by rabscuttle385 · 24 replies · 1,152+ views
    The New York Times ^ | 2009-11-15 | Michiko Kakutani
    “Going Rogue,” the title of Sarah Palin’s erratic new memoir, comes from a phrase used by a disgruntled McCain aide to describe her going off-message during the campaign: among other things, for breaking with the campaign over its media strategy, its decision to pull out of Michigan and for speaking out about reports that the Republican Party had spent more than $150,000 on fancy designer duds for her and her family. In fact, the most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign...
  • HuffPo Ponders Separate NY Times Bestsellers List for 'Conservative Blockbusters'

    11/10/2009 11:52:13 AM PST · by Rufus2007 · 45 replies · 1,116+ views
    NewsBusters ^ | November 10, 2009 | Jeff Poor
    According to The Huffington Post, Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and other right-of-center stars that regularly dominate the New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Bestsellers List are - or should be - in a league of their own. No, that isn't Arianna Huffington's blog heaping praise on conservative authors. It's a literal suggestion. With right-leaning books and authors holding so many spots on the list, and more to come - former Sarah Palin, former Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush all have books due out -Huffington Post suggests conservatives should have their own category to differentiate from other works...
  • 50 years later: Kansas town remembers 'In Cold Blood' deaths, still angry about Capote's book

    11/09/2009 10:35:07 AM PST · by JoeProBono · 25 replies · 1,700+ views
    fox40 ^ | November 9, 2009 | ROXANA HEGEMAN
    It's one of America's most haunting crime stories: four members of a Kansas family brutally murdered on Nov. 15, 1959, at their rural farmhouse. The slayings of the Clutters — chronicled in Truman Capote's book, "In Cold Blood" — have overshadowed the town of Holcomb for the past half century and the trial and execution of the culprits has brought little, if any, closure. For many townsfolk, the wounds have been slow to heal partly because of Capote's critically acclaimed, nonfiction novel that spawned a new literary genre. The book has been reviled in its birthplace by residents because of...
  • Grand Old Partisan

    11/09/2009 8:22:35 AM PST · by bs9021 · 2 replies · 183+ views
    Accuracy in Academia ^ | November 9, 2009 | Malcolm A. Kline
    Grand Old Partisan Malcolm A. Kline, November 9, 2009 In his acceptance speech, Virginia’s governor-elect, Bob McDonnell, may have quoted the founding fathers more extensively than the last four U. S. presidents combined have in their entire political careers. But then, he also may have made more such references than many teachers do in their working lifetimes. Among pedagogues, a notable exception to this trend is Colleen A. Sheehan, author of James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government. “Our core of self –government has been on the wane for a century and grows weaker every day,” Sheehan told an...
  • A Nazi at Harvard

    11/07/2009 11:14:49 AM PST · by Ravnagora · 9 replies · 457+ views
    New York Review of Books ^ | November 2, 2009 | Anthony Grafton
    In 1934, the Harvard class of 1909 held its 25th reunion—then as now an occasion for members of the American elite to parade in public and celebrate their achievements. But this year the star attraction was a German: Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, the son of a Munich art dealer and publisher who had joined the Nazi movement and enjoyed personal access to Hitler (Hitler liked hearing him play the piano, as had his Harvard classmates, for whom he composed football fight songs). In the early 1930s he served as foreign press chief for the Nazi party. Ernst Hanfstaengl (center, with raised...
  • Priest’s new book challenges men to learn ‘true manhood’ by following Christ

    11/06/2009 5:03:43 AM PST · by GonzoII · 6 replies · 360+ views
    CNA ^ | San Francisco, Calif., Nov 6, 2009
    www.catholicnewsagency.com Priest’s new book challenges men to learn ‘true manhood’ by following Christ Fr. Larry Richards San Francisco, Calif., Nov 6, 2009 / 06:17 am (CNA).- Pennsylvania Catholic priest Fr. Larry Richards, aiming to clear up “gender confusion” and to challenge men to pursue holiness, has released a new book titled “Be A Man: Become the Man God Created You to Be.”In the book, Fr. Richards recounts his own efforts to learn “true manhood” and shares inspiring stories from men he has counseled and served in his decades as a priest, a press release from Ignatius Press says.He encourages...
  • Taxation: Compulsive Failure

    11/02/2009 11:17:35 AM PST · by bs9021 · 161+ views
    Accuracy in Academia ^ | November 2, 2009 | Sarah Carlsruh
    Taxation: Compulsive Failure Sarah Carlsruh, November 2, 2009 Leslie Carbone spoke on October 15th at Accuracy in Academia’s Author’s Night on her book Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform. Her book, she began, discusses “how the federal government is uncritically, if not compulsively, making things worse through its wealth-spreading fiscal policies.” Referring to the Constitution, Carbone stated that the main purpose of a government is to ensure peoples’ rights and that progressive taxation—taking a person’s money “simply because they have acquired more than another”—violates those rights. Such policy, she said, is an “affront to justice.” Her book outlined...
  • How Wall Street Collapsed--The Last Time

    11/01/2009 9:46:34 PM PST · by bruinbirdman · 20 replies · 792+ views
    Forbes ^ | 10/30/2009 | Charles Gasparino
    [Excerpt] "Sometimes our technology, in creating these securities, outpaces our ability to cope with them." That's what Larry Fink told the New York Times in May 1987 when asked about Howie Rubin's trading disaster. In the past, Fink would have made that statement to a reporter and then celebrated with his team the fact that one of his competitors, particularly one like Merrill Lynch, which he saw as a pesky upstart in the field he aimed to dominate, was now being nailed with massive losses. But Fink wasn't celebrating, because, much like Howie Rubin, he had just gotten his first...
  • Ayn Rand’s Revenge (Rand, Republicans, Tea Parties, Etc. Per the New York Times)

    10/31/2009 10:28:46 AM PDT · by nickcarraway · 147 replies · 2,826+ views
    New York Times ^ | November 1, 2009 | ADAM KIRSCH
    AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE By Anne C. Heller Illustrated. 567 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $35A specter is haunting the Republican Party — the specter of John Galt. In Ayn Rand’s libertarian epic “Atlas Shrugged,” Galt, an inventor disgusted by creeping American collectivism, leads the country’s capitalists on a retributive strike. “We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it,” Galt lectures the “looters” and “moochers” who make up the populace. “We have no demands to present you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise...
  • Before Dreams, There Was Roots (Both Are Fiction)

    11/01/2009 1:48:33 AM PST · by bogusname · 20 replies · 1,044+ views
    American Thinker ^ | Share | Jack Cashill
    "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln," gushed Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Landesman was referring, of course, to Barack Obama, specifically for Obama's presumed role as author of the acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. As evidence that Obama did not exactly write Dreams mounts, Landesman gives us a good indication of how America's cultural honchos will react. For a century, in fact, they have been heaping uncritical praise on undeserving artists of...
  • Launching An American Knight in Washington

    10/31/2009 2:23:00 AM PDT · by GonzoII · 4 replies · 526+ views
    Tradition Family and Property ^ | Thursday, October 29, 2009 | John Horvat
    Launching An American Knight in Washington Written by John Horvat    Thursday, October 29, 2009 On October 27, the TFP Washington Bureau was filled with friends and supporters to hear a presentation on the book, An American Knight The Life of Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC just authored by TFP member Norman Fulkerson. The author presented the book to a full and lively auditorium of some 50 people and later personally signed copies. As a special guest, Duke Paul of Oldenburg from the German TFP, gave the opening remarks commenting on the meaning of chivalry today. Also attending was...
  • Fulkerson profiles 'An American Knight' (Biography of Hero Marine Col. John Ripley)

    10/21/2009 9:56:01 AM PDT · by Pyro7480 · 1 replies · 326+ views
    DailyMe ^ | 09/30/2009 | Suzi Bartholomy
    Norman Fulkerson, who has been voicing his conservative opinions on the Messenger-Inquirer editorial page for 11 years, has written a book about another conservative, Col. John W. Ripley USMC.... There was much to admire about Ripley, Fulkerson said, during a recent phone interview. Ripley's military career has been documented in other writings, Fulkerson said, but what he was most interested in was telling the other side of the war hero who in 1972 during the Easter Offensive in Dong Ha, Vietnam, blew up a bridge that "virtually halted the largest North Vietnamese offensive of the entire war." "An American Knight,...
  • An addiction that only motherhood could cure (Memoir of a woman who had 15 abortions)

    10/30/2009 2:22:22 PM PDT · by Hawk720 · 10 replies · 511+ views
    Washington Post ^ | October 30, 2009 | Manuel Roig-Franzia
    The two little impossibilities want Mami's attention. Loretta, a self-assured and quietly focused 5-year-old, hides squiggly line drawings under the furniture at a relative's home in Alexandria. Lolita, a high-spirited 3-year-old, sways to Beethoven's "Für Elise." Mami scoops up both daughters. They tumble into the soft embrace of the couch, all squeals and nuzzles and squirmy delight. The girls start wriggling loose, and Mami pulls them back. One more hug. For an instant, it's as if releasing them would somehow make them disappear, would confirm their utter impossibility. That Irene Vilar embraces the role of motherhood is a grand incongruity,...
  • (15 Abortions): An addiction that only motherhood could cure

    10/30/2009 7:08:01 AM PDT · by Publius804 · 21 replies · 824+ views
    Washington Post ^ | October 30, 2009 | Manuel Roig-Franzia
    An addiction that only motherhood could cure Irene Vilar tries to explain the pathology that led her to abort 15 pregnancies The two little impossibilities want Mami's attention. Loretta, a self-assured and quietly focused 5-year-old, hides squiggly line drawings under the furniture at a relative's home in Alexandria. Lolita, a high-spirited 3-year-old, sways to Beethoven's "Für Elise." Mami scoops up both daughters. They tumble into the soft embrace of the couch, all squeals and nuzzles and squirmy delight. The girls start wriggling loose, and Mami pulls them back. One more hug. For an instant, it's as if releasing them would...
  • PJM Book Club: Blogging Rules for Radicals

    10/28/2009 11:10:06 AM PDT · by AJKauf · 219+ views
    Pajamas Media ^ | Oct. 27 | Barbara Curtis
    Thus Saul Alinsky begins Rules for Radicals, his impassioned 1971 missive to the political counterculture which had been galvanized into protest mode during the Vietnam War. I was one of the radicals for whom the book was written, though now I am a conservative mom and grateful American. I began blogging of the Obama-Alinsky connection during the 2008 presidential campaign, and given Obama’s history and his surrounding himself with characters from that Chicago/community organizing/dirty politics nexus, it was difficult for someone with my roots to think anything but the worst about the subtext of his message and his methodology. And...
  • Take AIM: Cliff May and Leslie Carbone

    10/28/2009 11:37:14 AM PDT · by AIM Freeper · 1 replies · 133+ views
    Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, discusses his recent trip to Pakistan, as well as the situations in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Leslie Carbone talks about her new book, "Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform" (Potomac Books, 2009). For more information visit defenddemocracy.org and lesliecarbone.blogspot.com.
  • New Novel: Mister

    10/24/2009 11:01:32 AM PDT · by prd20091 · 3 replies · 331+ views
    Alex Kurtagic’s dystopian novel, Mister attempts to illustrate the everyday consequences of living in a world in which current social, cultural, political, economic, and demographic trends have been allowed to continue. It treats the result of the liberal utopians’ efforts with sarcasm and derision, but its main target is the so-called “respectable conservative,” that has the right instincts and is fully aware of the destructive forces at work in Western societies, but is too preoccuped with maintaining social status and professional prestige to risk voicing politically incorrect opinions. He silently opts for a reactive strategy of avoidance and adaptation, rather...
  • Review: 2009 documentary "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Buckle up

    10/23/2009 6:30:29 PM PDT · by ibbetsonusa · 3 replies · 519+ views
    Renew America ^ | 10-22-09 | Paul A. Ibbetson
    I am afraid to report that when I compared Thomas Frank's book, which I believe was a cheap hatchet job on the majority of the people of Kansas, and the 2009 Cohen/Winston documentary of the same name, I found that the apple does not fall very far from the tree. A few fundamental themes ran through the film. The first theme is that when Christians and their values are mixed with politics it is the recipe for political doom. The liberal crowd on viewing night seemed quite joyful as the pro-lifer, Phill Kline, is defeated by Paul Morrison for Kansas...
  • Robert Heinlein's future may be past ["His legacy polarizes today's readers"]

    12/10/2007 3:55:30 PM PST · by TFFKAMM · 138 replies · 231+ views
    Los Angeles Times ^ | 12/09/07 | Scott Timberg
    He was a onetime utopian socialist who became an assertive right-winger, a libertarian nudist with a military-hardware fetish, a cold warrior who penned an Age of Aquarius sensation with a hero who preached free love. He won admiration from Ronald Reagan, who enlisted his ideas in his "Star Wars" missile shield, and Charles Manson, who was captured with the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" in his backpack. He predicted the European Union and invented the water bed. But Robert A. Heinlein, the California-based science-fiction writer who stood over the midcentury decades like a colossus, casts a different kind of...
  • Attention, Sarah Palin bashers: Lookalike book 'Going Rouge' is coming!

    10/21/2009 11:09:58 AM PDT · by VideoDoctor · 89 replies · 2,589+ views
    Entertainment Weekly ^ | October 21st, 2009 | Thom Geier
    We know that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin can hunt, and even field-dress a moose, but how will she take to poachers on her book sales? Start-up publisher OR Books has announced plans to publish Going Rouge: Sarah Palin An American Nightmare, a collection of essays about the maverick Republican with a title — and cover design — remarkably similar to Palin’s upcoming memoir. What’s more, OR’s paperback tome will be released on Nov. 17, the same day that Palin’s own Going Rogue: An American Life hits shelves — and one day after Palin’s just-announced, first-ever appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s...
  • The Race to Save Lehman Brothers ("Too Big to Fail")

    10/21/2009 12:31:38 AM PDT · by CutePuppy · 3 replies · 339+ views
    CNBC / NYTimes ^ | October 20, 2009 | Andrew Ross Sorkin
    In the summer of 2008, two months before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Richard S. Fuld Jr., the firm's chairman, was continuing his desperate efforts to find a lifeline. They had begun in March, shortly after the demise of Bear Stearns, when Mr. Fuld called the legendary investor Warren E. Buffett seeking a capital infusion, to no avail. Lehman had raised money elsewhere, but that didn't help for long, and its condition again was worsening.Adapted from "Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — And Themselves." The book, being published Tuesday by...
  • Are you a man? If so, you are the sorriest, weakest specimen in the history of the human species

    10/19/2009 9:57:39 PM PDT · by Lorianne · 23 replies · 863+ views
    Daily Mail UK ^ | 20 October 2009 | Michael Hanlon
    As a scientist claims modern athletes are weaklings, evidence has been forward that our male ancestors were not only faster, stronger and fitter, even their womenfolk would have wiped the floor with today's emasculated men. That's the central claim of Manthropology, a new book by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister. In the book, subtitled The Science Of The Inadequate Modern Male, McAllister presents evidence that pre-historic Australian Aborigines could easily have outsprinted even Usain Bolt, today's fastest man on Earth. The basis of his findings? A set of 20,000-year-old preserved human footprints discovered in the Outback. They belonged to a party...
  • Demolition Derbyshire: We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

    10/19/2009 6:57:13 PM PDT · by Bob017 · 1 replies · 441+ views
    The American Conservative ^ | October 2009 | Patrick Allitt
    Imagine a cheerful, observant, talkative man who, as he advances into late middle age, becomes impatient with much of the world around him and starts complaining. Yes, he’s an immigrant from Britain, but that doesn’t mean he approves of open immigration policy. Sure, he has a Chinese wife, but that doesn’t mean he favors diversity as a social goal. Certainly, he thinks America draws its strength from religion, but that doesn’t make him a believer in God. He is definitely a conservative, but much of what passes for conservatism these days fills him with dismay. Imagine further that, during a...
  • "UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES" BY JOHN ROSS

    05/10/2005 11:28:04 AM PDT · by Jerrybob · 33 replies · 4,699+ views
    BOOK REVIEW | 5-10-05 | JOHN ROSS
    I kept bumping into people referencing “Unintended Consequences” by John Ross. It sounded impressive so I decided I should read it. It is impressive – and massive – 860 pages, and a novel. The main character is Henry Bowman and the book follows him from youngster to present day. The theme of the book is the gun culture in America. It outlines the US Government’s relentless and irrational war against the gun culture in general – and the private ownership of firearms in particular – in this country, for most of the 20th century. It was impossible to read this...
  • Book: 'You are the worst man in history'

    10/17/2009 3:42:14 AM PDT · by Daffynition · 63 replies · 1,529+ views
    LONDON -- Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100- and 200-meter record-holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions. Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in which they had to jump at least their own height to progress to manhood. Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle. These and other eye-catching claims are detailed in a book by Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister entitled "Manthropology" and provocatively sub-titled "The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male". "If you're reading...
  • Germany’s Catholics: neither cowed nor craven - The Cross and the Third Reich: Book Review

    10/17/2009 3:09:11 AM PDT · by GonzoII · 4 replies · 590+ views
    catholicherald.co.uk ^ | 16 October 2009
    Francis Phillips hails a stunning study of Catholic resistance to National Socialism 16 October 2009 John Frain subtitles this book, Catholic Resistance in the Nazi Era and at first glance it might seem a well-trodden path, adding little to what is already known. For instance, negative publicity given to the alleged "silence" of Pope Pius XII during the War has led to a succession of scholarly studies of his attitude and behaviour towards Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. But Frain's terms of reference are wider than this; he examines every level of Catholic opposition to Hitler, particularly in Germany: the...
  • Living With Osama bin Laden: First Wife Tells of Husband's Bid To Train His Sons As Suicide Bombers

    10/12/2009 10:00:13 AM PDT · by Steelfish · 16 replies · 1,169+ views
    Daily Mail (UK) ^ | October 12, 2009
    Living With Osama bin Laden: First Wife Tells of Husband's Bid To Train His Sons As Suicide Bombers Daily Mail Reporter 12th October 2009 Osama bin Laden was a tyrant who trained his own children to be suicide bombers and murdered their pets, his first wife has revealed. In a new book about her time living with bin Laden, Najwa Ghanem has told how she gave birth to 11 of his 14 children because bin Laden said that Islam needed many warriors. And millionaire bin Laden would not allow any modern appliances in his home, even refusing his son medicine...
  • A Different Sarah Palin Book Gets a Boost

    10/15/2009 12:03:41 PM PDT · by euram · 5 replies · 727+ views
    The Wall Street Journal ^ | 10-15-09 | Jeffrey A.Trachtenberg
    As retailers count their robust preorders for Sarah Palin’s upcoming memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” a small publisher out West says his decision to issue “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down” by Kaylene Johnson, was one of his best. The book, an unauthorized look at Palin’s life that begins with her early years in Alaska and ends with her winning the governorship, was published originally in May 2008, by Epicenter Press, based in Kenmore, Wash. Kent Sturgis, president, says that the biography sold 13,000 hardcovers and 80,000 paperback copies. Demand was so great that...