This book details the blood-drenched history of the Soviet regime, an evil empire founded on slavery and mass murder. Calculating the death toll at nearly 62 million, it exposes the practical results of Lenin's dictum that those who are against cruelty do not understand the most basic Marxism.

Rummel shows that the Bolsheviks created a police state from the very beginning, provoking hundreds of popular rebellions from the first moment of their coup. By the end of the Civil War, Lenin and Trotsky had massacred perhaps half a million innocent people - between 50,000 and 150,000 were butchered in the Crimea alone - while establishing over 300 concentration camps. But their worst crime was the man-made famine which killed some 5 million men, women and children - a catastrophe caused by Soviet plunder and prolonged by the deliberate export of vital food supplies.

Most of the book, however, is devoted to the seemingly endless catalogue of bloodbaths and genocides inflicted by Stalin, starting with the slaughter of the kulaks and the forced famine in the Ukraine, and proceeding through the Great Terror and the climax of the Gulag during and after the Second World War. While millions were being brutally worked to death in subzero temperatures - the Kolyma camps alone killed 3 million people, more than twice the death toll at Auschwitz - the Soviets were deporting millions more from the newly subjugated colonies of Eastern Europe. As Rummel demonstrates, the communists targeted not only so-called class enemies but also entire national, ethnic and religious minorities as well as ordinary people who were murdered simply in order to meet state killing quotas.

The book concludes with the little-known post-Stalin death toll. During this period several million people quietly disappeared in the Gulag, and the Red Army committed genocide against the people of Afghanistan.

Readers may also wish to consult Rummel's book China's Bloody Century (which addresses the strikingly similar crimes of Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-Tung), as well as his Death by Government (which discusses Marxist bloodbaths in Yugoslavia, North Korea, Cambodia and Vietnam). Rummel's book is also an excellent companion to Stephane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism.

This is the best book ever written about the Soviet Union - in fact, it is one of the very few which are even honest. The author, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii, demonstrates that the Soviet Union committed terrible crimes against humanity, including huge massacres, forced famines and slave labour. The atrocities began with the October Revolution in 1917 and continued with Stalin's genocides against national, religious & socio-economic groups, the mass purges in Eastern Europe and the silent deaths of millions in the Gulag during the '50s, '60s, & '70s. The book concludes with the genocidal invasion of Afghanistan.

If you only want to read one book on the Soviet regime, this is it. It shows that every Soviet dictator - from Lenin to Gorbachev - committed terrible atrocities against entire populations, including large-scale massacres, man-made terror-famines, and the destruction of millions in concentration camps. After discussing the historical record, the author collects and analyses thousands of estimates of the Soviet death toll, which he calculates at nearly 62 million. This book should be compulsory reading for anyone who cares about human rights.

Similar to the book, "Life of Johnny Reb", Bell Irvin Wiley has put together the life of being a soldier in the Union army. From muster to homecoming this books covers many subjects. Subjects such as northern soldier views on visiting the South for the first time, civilians, slavery, camp life and more. There was a chapter which covered Union perspective about going into battle and fighting which I found especially interesting. Chapter content is backed by letters from actual soldiers that add important weight to the quality of information in this book. I simply hated to put the book down when I read it as it had some funny situations of soldier life mixed with the hard drama of warfare. This book is a must have for those seeking to understand the Union soldier from many perspectives. It doesn't get into boring battle detail or mention officers at length which I found refreshing for a change. It simply covers just about every aspect of being a Union soldier during the Civil War and should be in everyones' Civil War library! 5 STARS!!

Bell Wiley's book is a wonderful way to understand what the common soldier was like in the Civil War. So many books deal strictly with officers or battles that this is quite the refreshing and novel read.

There are no detailed descriptions of battles, only of the men who fought them, their emotions, and ways of life. It is a great reference for anyone who has read other Civil War books and been confused by 150 year old terms that aren't always defined in other books.

Wiley cautions the reader in the introduction that he tried to remain impartial, despite being a Southerner. I feel he did a great job reporting the facts from the thousands of letters and diaries without prideful opinion.

Bell I.Wiley changed the course of Civil War study in the late 1940's when he wrote Johnny Reb. This work was the first to consider the experience of the average Confederate soldier. Wiley provides a nice overview of the soldier's experience by addressing why did men fight, how did they experience war, how was camp life, etc. A must read for anyone with an interest in the Civil War. Billy Yank is Wiley's follow up to Johnny Reb. It poses the same type of questions for the average union soldier.

After getting stationed in Georgia back in 1997, I became interested in the cause of the Southern Unionists. As a CivWar reenactor I found this subject to be on one hand totally verbotten for polite fireside conversation. On the other, some interest but little information. Thank God over the last few years several books have come out to help fill that info gap. The South vs The South(poorest of the group), Lincoln's Loyalists, and Guerillas, Unionists,& Violence On the Confederate Homefront(very good!) have done alot for these forgotten souls. The best remains Lincoln's Loyalists, my orginal was permantly borrowed by a "rebel" buddy and passed about throughout the greyback community. Finally I've found another copy! Even for hardcore seesch, this book is a must read for anyone studying this sad chapter of our nations history.

Most readers will probably be astonished to learn how extensive support for the Union was among white southerners during the Civil War. The author provides a detailed, state-by-state description of organized military units from the southern states that fought for the Union. A final chapter summarizes the statistics -- something that I found particularly helpful. I hope that many southerners will read this book and be inspired to seek out their own Loyal ancestors. This chapter of southern history desperately needs to be better known.

White Southerners who fought for the Union are the neglected heroes of the Civil War. Their Northern comrades could return home to a heroes' welcome. Their Confederate foes went home to lick their wounds and glorify their "Lost Cause." Soldiers of the "Colored" regiments are getting their due. But most people have bought the lie that the South and the Confederacy were synonymous.

The South has countless Confederate memorials. Where are the memorials for the brave men who fought for their country instead of being seduced by the lies of the Slave Power?

This is the most complete book on what love is and isn't that I have read or even imagined. This book is way more than about romantic love, it's about life.

Ms. Schaeffer's insights are simple and wise. And new. I often shook my head in amazement while reading. Her knowledge is extensive and could be a bit too meaty and in depth, but her writing is lyrical and easy. But make no mistake, this is not a fluf self-help book.

I have known for a long time that love is all there is and all that is important, and therefore I have been searching as to what it is exactly. This book was my answer.

I know Brenda..as well as anyone who has worked intimately with a therapiest. Actually a healer of the hightest order. Love's Way is more than important book, it is an essential field guide for those wishing to lead a more healthy whole life. In a time when many of us know the "time is now" to be authentic to our live's calling, love is the way. Brenda is a rare guide who has the gifts, heart and wisdom to live what she writes about. Buy this book now and give it to others!!!!

Brenda Schaeffer's book is very personal since it reveals not only true case history but also candidly share a practicing therapist reflections. She reveals to her readers how love is available to all and to understand what it really is in the union of the body, ego, soul and spirit.

It is a small book packed full of common sense advices and spirit awakening exercises that are just gems! Her creativity and fresh approach to therapy offers rituals and life affirming recipes to design your own love life, to overcome the bad hand that was dealt, to give each one of us winning cards and the will to discard the jokers in the deck.

I will always keep this book as a travel guide to navigate the rest of my life’s journey. Let's hope that Mrs. Schaeffer will soon offer a companion workbook to allow her readers and students to chart their progress.

As a beginning wiccan I think this book is really powerful. I picked it up after I read another book by the same author called A Witch Like Me. That was a good book too. I've tried a lot of the techniques in Love, Sex, and Magick and they are incredibly powerful. It's sort of an West mated with East kind of sex magic that really works.

first of all if all you are interested in is how to "score" then dont buy this book, its for the serious practioners of magick and who want to learn about sex magick, its not for people who want to know how to get a guy or gal into bed, and its for adults not teenagers either, and some cases preteens, okay i am only 18, but i am not gonna practice any sex magick for a few years, but i have a great interest in it, this book has an excellent appendix too, its very excellent for anyone wanting to practice sex magick or like me :) just learn about it

If you are interested in Sex Magick, this is probably what you are looking for. The author blends East and Western magickal traditions with love and sex to create one of the BEST approaches I have ever experimented with. NOT the dry guarbage created by perverts in the 12th century under Church oppression.

If you are interested in Sex Magick, this is probably what you are looking for. If you are looking for an excuse to masturbate or degrade your partner, look elsewhere!

During the Cold War, everyone in the West, or at least most everyone, was led to believe that all of the millions of citizens in the Soviet Union were obedient workers and loyal to the principals and dogma of the Communist party. RUSSIAN PUNK is a delight in that it shows the seedy, off-beat side of Soviet life that Soviet leaders either didn't know or didn't want to know about and certainly didn't want to reveal to the West.The central character is Eddie-baby. As a teenager growing up in the seemingly invincible Communist sphere of 1950's Soviet Union, he has two options for his life. The first is to become a respectable, hard-working citizen and member of the Party. The second is to become a hood. In the rapidly maturing Eddie, the life of a hood holds far more appeal than the life of a member of the goat herd, his scathing term for the respectable working class.Trapped within the working-class district of Saltovka in Kharkov, a city in the Ukraine, Eddie-baby pursues the life of a hood with the slackers, derelicts, thieves, and murderers of the town. To him it's all a lark: When he and friends aren't getting into mischief, they're greasing back their hair and singing Elvis Presley songs. All these street punks are to him much more stimulating than the respectable working-class citizens of Saltovka. Though Eddie-baby is a very gifted poet and can climb higher than the riffraff with whom he associates, he nevertheless remains enmeshed in their dark world.He has an epiphany of sorts toward the end of the book after assuming a role in a violent street crime, and we all cheer for him as he as last finds the fortitude to move on and reach higher.This is a side of Soviet life you probably never knew existed, and Eddie-baby's story vibrantly displays it.

This is an account of Limonov's adolescence in Kharkov, a provincial Soviet city, in the years after Stalin's death. But Limonov's hero Eddie-Baby is nothing at all like the Russian heroes English-speaking readers have come to expect and his Kharkov is nothing at all like the tightly-policed USSR we usually encounte in emigre novels. In Eddie Baby's Kharkov, there is no law. Police are goons, and the quickest way to become a legend in the housing projects of Saltovka is to beat up a cop. Eddie-Baby is a nearsighted brain who decides, at the age of eleven, to become a hooligan--and does so with the same quiet, scary determination which once led him to fill notebooks with data on the fauna of the tropics. He devotes himself to learning the rules of his punk/proletarian world with a slightly crazed pedantry, and takes the reader along with him through one holiday weekend in this astounding, completely unknown habitat: the steel jungles of the Soviet nine-floor housing projects.

But the book is by no means gritty or grimy, or any of those silly words reviewers use to describe urban descriptions. In Eddie-Baby's mind, his world is a forest, full of ogres and prey--and all of it is worthy of caressing, precise description. He makes you love this world. There are paragraphs in this book I've read something like ten thousand times, they are so perfect. A middleaged lecher pouring a glass of vodka; a gang beating a pedestrian to death; a precise account of the sort of glue and paper you need to break a window quietly for a burglary; Limonov invests every one of these moments from a vanished, outlandish world with a calm and uncanny beauty. Get this book at any cost. There is nothing like it in the world.

This is a classic piece of Russian fiction that shows a darker side of Kruschev's Russia than is generally available. This is a definitive timepiece; what's most striking in it's depiction of Russian life are the parrallels with society in modern America.

This work by Peter Kropotkin's is, I say this without reservations, a work of genius and an amazing reflection on the life of an amazing man. Kropotkin's stories of his childhood and his relations with his servants and other lower-calss individuals (he was born a prince) are very interesting, as are his tales of exploration. His version of anarcho-socialism is very intriguing, largely because he bears no hate or grudge towards anyone and he is a very gentle man. In his book, it becomes clear (without him saying it, of course) that he did not recognize just how unique of a man he was. This book is filled with marvelous anecdotes, from cutting political commentary to fascinating stories of journeys down the Amur River to a splendid little collection of stupid Russian Spy stories. This book is fantastic.

Prince Piotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin, 1842-1921, was a Russian geographer and anarchist. He came from a wealthy princely family and as a boy was a page to the czar. Repelled by court life, he obtained permission to serve as an army officer in Siberia, where his explorations and scientific observations established his reputation as a geographer. After returning to European Russia, he became an adherent of the Bakuninist faction of the narodniki and engaged in clandestine propaganda activities until arrested in 1874. Two years later he escaped to Western Europe, where he worked with various anarchist groups until his imprisonment in France (1883). Pardoned in 1886, partly as the result of the popular clamor for his release, he moved to England and spent the next 30 years mainly as a scholar and writer developing a coherent anarchist theory. In his most famous book, Mutual Aid (1902), he attacked T. H. Huxley and the Social Darwinists for their picture of nature and human society as essentially competitive. He insisted that cooperation and mutual aid were the norms in both the natural and social worlds. From this perspective he developed a theory of social organizationin Fields, Factories and Workshops (1898) and elsewherethat was based upon communes of producers linked with each other through common custom and free contract. Returning to Russia following the February Revolution of 1917, he attempted to engender support for a continued Russian effort in World War I and to combat the rising influence of Bolshevism. Following the Bolshevik triumph in the October Revolution (1917), he retired from active politics. Consistently nonviolent in his anarchist beliefs, Kropotkin,as both thinker and man, was admired and acclaimed by many far removed from anarchist circles.

This intelligent and kind man all too often falls through the cracks of history. People forget that there was a completely different school of socialist thought that existed concurrently with the ideas of Marx. Kropotkin, like many others who believed in the ability of people to make their own economic relations, had the distinction of being persecuted by people on both sides of the political spectrum. Yet his book is remarkable for its lack of self-pity or resentment. The book is dense and full of the musings of a highly educated man of the late 19th century who indulged many other interests besides politics. His journey is remarkable, and we can only hope that he will become better known.

This book is a witty gem with great relevance for today. Trotsky points out that the military practice that defended the Russian Revolution against imperialist invasion was based on a political orientation-one that we can understand and fight for today, the workers and farmers alliance. He brilliantly defends this alliance against the ultralefts who unknowingly threatened it with their foolishness. He also debunks the so-called science of the reactionary stuffed shirts-like those military figures we see briefing the press today with their talk about smart bombs and surgically precise warfare. Read it, as a worker who wants to clarify your thinking about war.

This book is a selection of the best of Trotsky's many writings, speeches, and debates on the military strategy that won the Russian civil war and defeated not only the Russian counterrevolutionaries, but 21 different capitalist nations including the USA that sent troops to aid them. Some of these writings come from the public debates in the leaders of the Soviet Government with other political parties or within the leadership of the Communist Party. All of them illustrate the triumphant strategy of advancing politics, the politics of the liberation and empowerment of working people, oppressed nationalities, and peasants as the key to military victory. This should be read for the battles of the future.

This is a fascinating collection of articles and speeches by Leon Trotsky, one of the central leaders of the 1917 Russian revolution. Trotsky was assigned to organize and lead the new Red Army that defended revolutionary Russia (later the Soviet Union) from foreign capitalist intervention and counterrevolutionary civil war from 1918-1923.

Here, Trotsky takes up questions about political and military strategy and tactics posed in wide-ranging debates that went on in the Bolshevik Party and Red Army at that time. He provides though-provoking analysis of the shifting relations among the major world powers in the early 1900s, especially under the impact of WWI and the Russian Revolution, and the necessary decisions made at different points by the leaders of the Soviet workers and peasants.

Best of all, this is a detailed example of the Marxist method of orienting oneself in face of changing circumstances and figuring out what to do next, the art of politics as well as war. Trotsky stresses that this cannot be done by hasty generalizations or simplifications, or by finding and just applying a few general principles. It takes hard work, careful attention to facts and details, and accurate assessment of the relations between different social classes, starting on a world scale.

Workers today can learn a lot from this rich experience!

When the "founding fathers" wrote the constitution, it brought about great change. Today great change is needed...so what else ought we do but change the constitution? Jackson makes that notion convincingly clear. As i read this book, I kept thinking "I wish I had this book in college." In college, the dynamics of social and political thought were always about programs and policies....it was the bandaid solution. This book lays out the treatment and, most importantly, the diagnosis! Where have we been as a nation? The answer to that question is the real diagnosis....it is the diagnosis no one wants to hear, that Jackson has exposed. But we must acknowledge the diagnosis so we can identify the proper treatment and know how to apply it. How do we heal? The answer to that question is the treatment -- changing the constitution is so fundamental that it is largely ignored by politicos and scholars. Perhaps it is ignored because the constitution has been held as an immovable object. But, as Jackson explains, the constitution can be changed, and any changes (or amendments) become as rock solid as the constitution itself. Jackson has laid out a strategy that has rarely (in part and never in toto) been suggested for our nation -- a new idea -- that fact alone makes this book a MUST HAVE. Jackson has also laid out a strategy that will yield a prognosis for the nation that is desireable to all -- that fact makes this book a MUST DO!

This book is must reading for anyone who desires to understand how politicial idealogy has developed in the US. Additionally, the book offers a clear agenda for moving the United States towards a more perfect union. I predict that we will see the issues raised in this book edvident in the next presidential election.

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.in his newest book " A More Perfect Union" has proven that he is so much more than the beneficiary of great civil, social, political and theolological pedigree. In this his, chef doeuvre, along with contributor Frank Watkins, he provides the reader with a sweeping commentary of not merely race but racism in all of its legislative origin.

Imagine not stumbling upon the word racism until 1936 and finding no rise of the African American experience. Preposterous. Is it not? But truth. Congressman Jackson not only reveals why we must be outraged, not in the riotous form, but further demonstrates, in this important piece how we must engage our outrage by "economic reform."

Reader do not be discouraged by the book's smallprint or numerous pages. This plethora of information only lends itself to the extensive research and detail the author and his contributor insisted upon. Welcome these pages as they are wealthy. FINALLY there exists an "inclusive textbook" which it resembles and rally for it soon to be.

The reader will delight in a discovery of previously undocumented
yet factual pieces of African-American history "as American as apple pie." Congressman Jackson Jackson exhibits how African-Americans significantly shaped America and its politics. Furthermore, he examines how each American President, past and present viewed(s)and dealt(s) with the race problem and provides the reader with deriviations of words such as Jim Crow, locates and defines for his reader new political buzz words and delves into how "A More Perfect Union" can be achieved through Equal Opportunity, Human Rights,Full Employment, Universal and Comprehensive Health Care, Affordable Housing, Quality Public Education, Fair Taxes, Foreign Policy, Politics, and Moral Responsibility. Congressman Jackson actually dissects each of the above-mentioned and provides VIABLE solutions to their achievement.

Congressman Jackson and his contributor Frank Watkins must be applauded for preaching more than just "high sounding benevolent social rhetoric" as some of his counterparts. A section of the book is semi-autobiograhical and gives the reader perspective into his personal experiences and his subsequent growth. In it he reveals his humanity and there is substantial evidence that he has not taken his political responsibility lightly.

Readers add this book to your shelf only after reading and re-reading. It must "court" your dictionary and your other reference material. This book will invite you to consult it time and time again. It is indeed reference-WORTHY. Although it is a lofty, thought-provoking, brave and maybe even an unpopular undertaking, it is brillantly and perfectly executed. As Lincoln stated "the hen is the wisest of all animal creation because she never cacles until the egg is laid". Congressman Jackson is no hen but an egg he has laid-and "A More Perfect Union" is clearly Faberge'. We recognize if we never did before, Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. as one of our most heady, intellectual statesmen of the 21st century. A must Read!!! BRAVO!!!!

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Mohr's book showcases a leading gay philosopher bringing his intellectual tools to bear on how society should think about issues like prejudice, sexual privacy, same-sex marriage, AIDS, and gays in the military. Mohr was inspired to write the book as a guide to how lesbians and gays can talk about these issues with their friends and public servants. But the quality of Mohr's writing and thought allow the individual essays to stand on their own as valuable commentaries, and make the book as a whole an important and accessible treatise on the range of issues where gays as citizens confront a polity often lacking not in empathy but in information.

I first read this book in my university's library so I would be an effective member of my University's gay straight alliance.

Although I had grown up in a tolerant household, there was never any political theory, but somehow I'm convinvced my parents had a psycic connection to this book. Every thing they had taught me about justice and fairness to people in general was supported by this book.

GLBT rights is not gay vs. straight or non-religious vs religion. It is equality vs. misinformation and intolerance. The world would be a much safer place for my friends if everybody read this book and took it's important moral lessons to hear

I first picked up this book to use as a research source for a University class project. However, I've read it several times since, for personal research as well as enjoyment! Richard D. Mohr obviously spent a lot of time writing a book that anyone, regardless of prior conceptions of homosexuals, or sexual orientation, can read, enjoy, and gain new insight to these important ideas and issues. I definitely rate A More Perfect Union as a five-star book. I've certainly enjoyed it time, and time again - and would recomend it to anyone for it's wit, intellectualism, and vast knowledge. Definitely a book that can be enjoyed over and over.