Obscenity Rules


Book Description

An examination of the landmark 1957 Supreme Court case Roth v. United States, which for the first time attempted to define what constitutes obscenity in American life and law. Explores this problematic ruling within the broad sweep of American social and legal history.




American Homicide


Book Description

In American Homicide, Randolph Roth charts changes in the character and incidence of homicide in the U.S. from colonial times to the present. Roth argues that the United States is distinctive in its level of violence among unrelated adults—friends, acquaintances, and strangers. America was extraordinarily homicidal in the mid-seventeenth century, but it became relatively non-homicidal by the mid-eighteenth century, even in the slave South; and by the early nineteenth century, rates in the North and the mountain South were extremely low. But the homicide rate rose substantially among unrelated adults in the slave South after the American Revolution; and it skyrocketed across the United States from the late 1840s through the mid-1870s, while rates in most other Western nations held steady or fell. That surge—and all subsequent increases in the homicide rate—correlated closely with four distinct phenomena: political instability; a loss of government legitimacy; a loss of fellow-feeling among members of society caused by racial, religious, or political antagonism; and a loss of faith in the social hierarchy. Those four factors, Roth argues, best explain why homicide rates have gone up and down in the United States and in other Western nations over the past four centuries, and why the United States is today the most homicidal affluent nation.




The Plot Against America


Book Description

Philip Roth's bestselling alternate history—the chilling story of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president—is soon to be an HBO limited series. In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother. "A terrific political novel . . . Sinister, vivid, dreamlike . . . creepily plausible. . . You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” — The New York Times Book Review







Roth Unbound


Book Description

A critical evaluation of Philip Roth—the first of its kind—that takes on the man, the myth, and the work Philip Roth is one of the most renowned writers of our time. From his debut, Goodbye, Columbus, which won the National Book Award in 1960, and the explosion of Portnoy's Complaint in 1969 to his haunting reimagining of Anne Frank's story in The Ghost Writer ten years later and the series of masterworks starting in the mid-eighties—The Counterlife, Patrimony, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, The HumanStain—Roth has produced some of the great American literature of the modern era. And yet there has been no major critical work about him until now. Here, at last, is the story of Roth's creative life. Roth Unbound is not a biography—though it contains a wealth of previously undisclosed biographical details and unpublished material—but something ultimately more rewarding: the exploration of a great writer through his art. Claudia Roth Pierpont, a staff writer for The New Yorker, has known Roth for nearly a decade. Her carefully researched and gracefully written account is filled with remarks from Roth himself, drawn from their ongoing conversations. Here are insights and anecdotes that will change the way many readers perceive this most controversial and galvanizing writer: a young and unhappily married Roth struggling to write; a wildly successful Roth, after the uproar over Portnoy, working to help writers from Eastern Europe and to get their books known in the West; Roth responding to the early, Jewish—and the later, feminist—attacks on his work. Here are Roth's family, his inspirations, his critics, the full range of his fiction, and his friendships with such figures as Saul Bellow and John Updike. Here is Roth at work and at play. Roth Unbound is a major achievement—a highly readable story that helps us make sense of one of the most vital literary careers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.







Roth Ira Answer Book


Book Description

Roth IRA Answer Book provides in-depth coverage of the administration and operation of Roth IRAs. A team of practicing experts analyzes the most recent developments in practice, as well as legislation, regulation, and law. It is the one resource that takes pension professionals step by step through all aspects of plan administration and compliance. Roth IRA Answer Book, Seventh Edition has been updated to include: How plan failures involving designated Roth accounts are corrected under Revenue Procedure 2013-12, the revised EPCRS--Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System Why the DOL seeks to replace the five-part test under the 1975 fiduciary investment advice regulation with a new definition that makes more investment service providers accountable as ERISA fiduciaries Substantially revised chapter on beneficiary designations Why the Supreme Court will rule on the exemption for inherited IRAs in bankruptcy and the new three-year bankruptcy exemption limit The extension of the qualified charitable contribution provisions under the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 A discussion of the Obama Administration's automatic workplace pension proposal requiring employers that do not sponsor a retirement plan to enroll their employees in a direct-deposit payroll deduction Roth IRA How the 2013 budget proposal would prohibit individuals from accumulating over $3 million in tax-preferred retirement accounts How the final regulations determine the oldest trust beneficiary when a beneficiary dies after the account owner but before the beneficiary determination date without disclaiming How a state law may supplement a non-ERISA plan's provisions concerning the manner of making a beneficiary designation and when ERISA preempts state law Discussion of the broadening of the airline payment rules under the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 that allows for the rollover of an "airline payment" to a traditional IRA, as well as, the recharacterization of an airline payment from a Roth IRA to a traditional IRA Discussion of the forthcoming guidance addressing eligible rollover distributions under Code Section 402(c) and Roth distributions under Code Section 402A that are "disbursed to multiple destinations" Explanation of the procedures for applying to the IRS for an opinion letter And more!




Roth IRA Book


Book Description

Quick start overview that can be read in 15 minutes; all rules explained in simple, non-jargon English; easy 5-step retirement planning method clarifies goals; simple tables eliminate complex calculations; anaysis of 11 profiles (ages 25 to 85) using state-of-the-art software; comparison with 401(k) savings/capital gains funds; strategies for fianancing Roth Conversion taxes; new technology shows how parital Roth conversions can maximize assets; enhancing estate plans with the Roth IRA; reference forms, TCA 98 section 408, IRS Regs and Q & A's; includes current legislation: Technical Corrections Act (July) 1998.




The Power to Destroy


Book Description

Examines the history and operations of the IRS and discusses reform efforts




Regulating to Disaster


Book Description

Debunks the sentiment that the creation of green jobs can save the American economy, claiming, for instance, that pursuing solar and wind technologies actually creates manufacturing jobs in China and South Korea rather than at home.