Adamant Aggressors


Book Description

ADAMANT AGGRESSORS is a practical guide to help scholars, political scientists, policy-makers and laymen understand and apply specific lessons that history has for the present time. It takes a business-case look at five adamant aggressors - Mehmed the Conqueror, James K. Polk, Adolph Hitler, Chaim Weizmann/David Ben-Gurion, Joseph Stalin - and what they teach about recognizing and dealing with adamant aggressors who may be threatening America today. While these lessons may not ensure that the best choices will be made today, understanding them will help readers to reject demonstrated bad choices and, thus, more likely arrive at better choices. This unique approach allows readers to quickly peruse a 2-3 page Executive Summary at the beginning of each case study, or to examine a thoroughly researched and documented narrative of the aggressor ́s action and the reactions of his targets. Analysis then details how each aggressor is identified as adamant (and might have been while there was time to react effectively), and how targets violated or sometimes conformed to guidelines for dealing with adamant aggressors. The final chapter draws from the five cases to validate the lessons for how to recognize and deal with adamant aggressors, and urges application by America´s leaders. USA "Best Books 2011" awards - Finalist in the "Current Events: Political/Social" category.




Rise & Decline


Book Description

Rise & Decline is a political science work that examines the history of six republics to identify common elements in their rise, decline and extinction. Ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Third Republic of France have all passed from the world scene. The United Kingdom and the United States of America still exist, but are in decline. While many things can cause the end of a nation, these studies show that the normal life cycle of a nation - its birth, rise, maturity, decline, expiration - is determined by the degree to which its citizens accept the principles upon which it was founded - its raison d'être. Nations in ascendance are characterized by a critical mass of citizens attuned to their founding principle. As they decline, nations are characterized by growing numbers of citizens who are indifferent to or disdainful of founding principles. History is clear: All nations end. The existential question for Americans is not whether we can prevent it.




Too Big?: How To Tell and How To Get More Accountability


Book Description

Too Big? identifies accountability standards. It examines five high-profile historical and current cases where accountability was/is flawed or missing: Robert Clive of the British East India Company, John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil, Ralph Cordiner of General Electric, J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook/Meta. It shows how such people are not subjected to effective accountability. And it suggests remedies to improve accountability of those at the top of business, governmental and other organizations.




Grassroots Activism of Ancient China


Book Description

This book examines Mohism as a movement in early China, focusing on the Mohists’ pursuit of power. Fashioning themselves as grassroots activists, the Mohists hoped to impact the elite by gaining entry in its community and influencing it from within. To create a less violent world, they deployed strategies of persuasion and negotiation but did not discard counterviolence in their dealings with the ruling class. In executing their activism, the Mohists produced knowledge that allowed them to hone their nonviolent strategies as well as to mount armed resistance to aggression. In addition, the Mohists paid significant attention to the issue of personhood, constructing a self-cultivation tradition unsparing in its demands for overcoming human conditions that would impede their performance as activists. This book situates Mohism in the history of nonviolent activism, and in that of negotiation and conflict resolution.










The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960


Book Description

This book, first published in 1961, is an analysis of the great struggle of the twentieth century, the Cold War. It carefully examines the conflict’s origins in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and follows the thread of antagonism between west and east all the way up to 1960. These were the key years of the Cold War, when it seemed that the prospect of nuclear confrontation was a real one, and this book offers a close reading of the main events of those years. This volume concentrates on the European theatre, and Volume Two focuses on the Cold War in the East.




Aggressor


Book Description

Former covert operator Nick Stone seems to be living his dream in book eight of the best-selling series - not a care in the world as he steers his camper van around the surfing and parachuting paradise of Australia. But when he sees a news report of the massacre of women and children in a terrorist outrage on the other side of the world, long-suppressed memories are triggered, and Nick knows he must risk everything to repay a longstanding debt of friendship. As events unfold in the teeming streets of modern Istanbul and the bleak, medieval villages of Georgia, Nick finds himself catapulted once more into the murky, clandestine world he thought he’d left behind – a world in the grip of nameless enemies who linger in the shadows, and stalk the corridors of power...




Besieged Adept


Book Description

In a world where hostile nations wield magic in combat, twin sorceresses separated at birth and brought up on opposing sides of the war find each other. Together, they face persecution for using wild magic, fight against traitors and assassins, explore family secrets, and discover the hidden origins of magic itself. Above all, to protect their world, they must deal with ancient, powerful dragons that most people don't even believe exist. While learning to control her wild sorcery, Adept Aetria has defeated a pair of traitors trying to kill her, found a long-lost twin, and uncovered secrets of the source and nature of magic. Now she continues her research while battling the remnants of the Neo-Aggressor rebellion and integrating raw, untrained talent into the Sorcerer Corps. Meanwhile, she discovers deeper secrets of her own family background, along with a surprising new foe and a destiny she never dreamed of. Furthermore, she learns that her "imaginary" dragon friend Rajii actually exists...but so do less friendly dragons. What does their agenda mean for the future of humanity and magic in Aetria's world?




Letters to Power


Book Description

Although the scarcity of public intellectuals among today’s academic professionals is certainly a cause for concern, it also serves as a challenge to explore alternative, more subtle forms of political intelligence. Letters to Power accepts this challenge, guiding readers through ancient, medieval, and modern traditions of learned advocacy in search of persuasive techniques, resistant practices, and ethical sensibilities for use in contemporary democratic public culture. At the center of this book are the political epistles of four renowned scholars: the Roman Stoic Seneca the Younger, the late-medieval feminist Christine de Pizan, the key Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant, and the Christian anti-philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Anticipating much of today’s online advocacy, their letter-writing helps would-be intellectuals understand the economy of personal and public address at work in contemporary relations of power, suggesting that the art of lettered protest, like letter-writing itself, involves appealing to diverse, and often strictly virtual, audiences. In this sense, Letters to Power is not only a nuanced historical study but also a book in search of a usable past.