After spending literally thousands of hours reading true crime books, I can say that this is the real thing. I was absolutely thrilled to see that it is available because I am going to make it required reading for the students in my Criminal Investigation classes! They may grumble at first about having another book to read, but when they start on "The Evidence Never Lies", they'll not want to put it down!

As the spouse of an award-winning crime reporter, we found "The Evidence Never Lies" to be a compelling, thought-provoking analysis of the incredible career of Herbert MacDonell. For those whose careers focus on crime, crime buffs, and seekers of great reading, this is a must-buy.

I first found this book in 1992...and it changed my life. I am not kidding. Because of this book, I went on to studying serial killers, profiling and forensics...I was a paralegal major before that. The Evidence Never Lies is one of those treasures that should not be lost....never mind out of print!! I searched for it to see if there were a newer edition; I cannot believe it is out of print. Please Mr. MacDonell, write another like it. It is truly great

Tony Blair says that his programme of making New Labour a "party of business" is the modern form of socialism, or, at least, "social-ism". The Chinese Communist Party says that fierce repression of workers' rights, together with fast and furious cutting of deals with capitalist multinationals and the open and avid pursuit of individual profit for the privileged, is socialism in a form suitable to China today. For others, socialism is what used to exist in the USSR and is now - to the sorrow of some, the joy of others - off the agenda. What is socialism? Even 150 years ago, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels marked off their working-class socialism sharply from a wide range of other socialisms, which they called reactionary socialism, bourgeois socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, and utopian socialism. They had already criticised what they called the "crude communism" of levelling-down to equally shared poverty. Early radical socialists in Britain, people like William Morris, argued against anarchists but also saw a huge gulf between their own working-class politics and "state socialism", which they regarded as no better, or worse, than capitalism. Yet the accomplished fact often weighs heavier than a thousand good theories. The fact that state-owned industry gave the Stalinist USSR something approximately socialist in common with the heroic years of the revolutionary Russian workers' state after 1917 convinced many that there must be some real continuity. The USSR must, at the very least, be a distorted version of a system moving towards socialism, if not actually reaching it, and therefore deserved the loyalty of the labour movement. The events of 1989-91 put an end to all such hopes, and compelled many socialists to rethink. This book will be an immensely valuable contribution to that rethinking. It presents, with clear and informative commentary, the key "lost texts of critical Marxism" from a long-dispersed, long-marginalised, but brilliant, group of radical thinkers who demonstrated the fundamental conflict between working-class socialism and bureaucratic statism in the era when the USSR was at the peak of its political influence.

Well I've read this book and quite frankly, I wasn't particulary impressed. But you have to hand it to Mr Matgamna, he sure does know how to write an introduction! In many ways, the intro is more useful, though I would wholeheartedly disagree with many of the points made, than much of the "critical texts" included thereafter.

The fact is, Shachtman went over to the right wing at the end of his life afterleading the SWP for many years. I blame his views on the USSR and one notices how many ex-trots do this. Obviously their views on the USSR have a lot of factual basis to them , but it was the best we had and therefore worth defending to the hilt and fighting for. Stalinism was "actually exisiting socialism" and anyone who denys this, contradicts the actually existing state of play at the time up until the end of the Cold War, and in particular, up to the mid 1960s.

Any socialist who wants to be educated should read this book, and then argue with it!

The Fate of the Russian Revolution Lost Texts of Critical Marxism Vol.1 Edited by Sean Matgamna. Published by Phoenix Press London ISBN 0-9531864-0-7

This book opens with a quotation from Albert Einstein, stating the case for socialism. Einstein, like almost every great mind of the 20th century who concerned himself or herself with the welfare of the working people, wanted common ownership and a democratic planned economy. But Einstein was stumped by the enigma of the USSR. He saw that there "the planned economy" was "accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual" and so was "not yet socialism". It seemed to represent, on the one hand, a step in the right direction, because of the planned economy, but on the other hand, not a step that Einstein wanted to take.

Very few thinkers got anywhere near resolving the paradox. The greatest was Leon Trotsky. But Trotsky got no further than assessments of the USSR which he himself described as provisional and needing review if the system proved to have some solidity and viability, rather than being only a freak concatenation of counter posed forces.

When the Stalinist USSR showed that it did have that viability - by becoming the world's second superpower, in the 1940s - the task of reworking Trotsky's analysis had to be undertaken, not by well-provided professors in famous research institutes, but by tiny groups of Marxists harassed by the exigencies of day-to-day political activity in hostile circumstances. They have not become as famous as Einstein, or Trotsky. Their names - Max Shachtman, Joseph Carter, Hal Draper, C L R James - are largely unknown.

But the "lost texts" of those "critical Marxists" - here unearthed for the first time from dusty archives, and well-presented with a substantial introduction - are a central part of the intellectual history of the 20th century. Every educated person needs to know about them, just as much as he or she needs to know about Einstein's theory of relativity.

This is a wonderful book! I especially like that the Italian translation directly follows the English rather than having two separate sections. Because of this format it is not only a wealth of information but an excellent tool for learning the Italian (or English) language.

My copy arrived last week and I've taken it to work every day. I'm not getting much work done but I'm learning a lot about my culture.

If there is only one book in your Library about Italian Americans, (and I certainly hope not), it should be "Heritage-Italian American Style". Although I use it as a Reference Book, It is also very rewarding to sit and read, since it a sumptuous smorgasbord of tidbits for the mind.

It would make the IDEAL GIFT !!!! for Teens (and Adults) who value their heritage, but are not sure why.

With adjacent Italian Translation, it also enriches your Italian Language skills.

It makes possible a wonderful Family Quiz Game.

THE book for Italians, and those who wish they were!

Well, what can I say, Leon Radomile has done it again, and better! Many more features including the new Italian version, web links, more subjects... If you are looking for a nicely and inventive way to read about the Italian and Italian-American culture in the world, and learn Italian language at the same time, this is the perfect book to start. Buy it!

When I purchased this book, I expected it to have the script of the show. Now, I know that it is a nice biography about Cameron Mackintosh. You can learn about his life. I expected a bit more about the concert of Hey, Mr. Producer. I expected a program or something. I enjoy reading it.

When I first saw this book in a store here in Australia, it hit me that the producers had some style. A very classy coffee table book and spectacular photographs of stunning Mackintosh Productions, Hey!, Mr. Producer is what you have to have. Written in a passionate style toward musical theatre, once you pick it up - you won't put it down.

This is a really great companion book to the popular PBS program celebrating producer (duh!) Cameron Mackintosh and his endless contributions to musical theatre. It has fascinating little tidbits about show after show, including "Les Miserables", "Miss Saigon", "Cats", and "The Phantom of the Opera".

I find this book to be in a class that totally
exemplifies the Father God in all His ways.
Very exciting and surely very strengthening.

The way that this book reads and explains the walk with God
Almighty is superb. It makes you thirsty and hungry to know
all about the Heavenly Father.

I find the book "In the Potter's Image" a very unusual book.
This book has values that we find missing in so many books.
It takes you right into the presence of God and keeps talking
to you all the time---very uplifting and strengthening.

This textbook by Stilman and Harkins is definitely my key resource for learning the Russian language. I have learned far more from this book than I did from the two conversationalist based texts that I used when studying Russian for two years at college. I'm convinced that any native speaker of English needs to learn Russian with a rigorous approach to learning the grammar, because the case differentiation is so crucial and difficult to master. This book is a first year Russian textbook, so it will be good for the introductory student as well as for someone who has some familiarity with the language. The lessons are clearly and logically presented with excellent explanations of Russian grammar, clear and concise declension charts, and extremely useful pattern sentences (in Russian and in English translation) that illustrate the principal grammatical objectives that are emphasized in each chapter. This allows the student to be cognizant of grammar while also developing an internal sensibility to the natural syntax and rhythm of the language. This textbook teaches you not only useful phrases, but also explains why, grammatically, they have to be in a particular form. This is essential for really learning the language. Stilman and Harkins also infuse the chapters with useful vocabulary words that can be learned quickly due to their organized approach to the lesson plans.

Even though this book needs to be revised and updated (this edition, even though it is still in print, is the edition originally published in 1972), this is by far the best textbook for learning the Russian language that exists. I hope instructors begin using this user-friendly text again, because it is ideal for classroom use as well as for students' independent studies. This book is so well planned that students can easily read ahead of their classroom lesson plans and not feel lost, because Stilman and Harkins teach the readers everything they will need to know in order to read and write correctly in Russian.

I find the Stilman book to be the finest college level treatise on the subject. It provides a detailed analysis of the language, the liguistics and rules which are all complex. Stilman et.al. presents the material in an orderly easy to understand but yet leaves out none of the complexities of the language. I recommend this text to all serious students of the russian language. I do not believe you will find a better explanation of the language.

Stillman et al have produced an excellent course book for studying Russian. I have used other books, the best of which emphasizes conversation and is geared toward the college and university classroom ("Russian Stage One"). Russian is a difficult language, especially for English speakers. It is not readily accessible like Spanish or French. The vocabulary is difficult and the declensions of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns make it as difficult as Latin or Greek. For this reason it is refreshing to find a text which attempts to teach the grammar first. This book is complete and comprehensible to anyone studying Russian, particularly if he or she knows English grammar well, or has already studied an inflected language. Other books might be better for those who are learning Russian as their first foreign language.

I will not go on about this book. The two previous revews by Feldmar and Yocum are written with eloquence and erudition. It is extraordinary and is a must for all those interested in existential therapy, history of psychotherapy in Britain,RD Laing, the interface of phlosophy, religion and psychotherapy and a number of other worthy topics. Its candor and fluidity are refreshing.

I've heard rumours of criticism of the openness, transparency of this book as regards the evolution of the Philadelphia Association, post Laing. I am unsympathetic. Analysts/therapists encourage others to explicate the knots and dilemmas of their family histories and relationships, why not those who do the inviting?

But far more than family secrets, it reveals the hidden agenda of being human. Laid out there. In the dialogue. As a therapist and trainer of therapists, I appreciate this immensely. If only all who are paid for their presence had the honesty the openness the candor of Leon Redler and Steve Gans, and the audacity of Bob Mullan--master of the Big Ask.

I look for more books from this quarter and to the forthcoming dialogue on justlistening.com. The recorded dialogue has only begun.

Just Listening: Ethics and Therapy is a sparingly edited record of conversations between two psychotherapists. From its title, the book might be mistaken for a standard treatise on professional behavior. The focus is therapeutic conduct, but the content is far from standard. Gans and Redler propose no legal or theoretical framework, no techniques, no body of knowledge - in short, no pre-defined structure for therapeutic encounters.

People troubled enough to seek a therapist usually want their pain and confusion ended as quickly as possible. They typically assume that there is some knowledge or method that will enable this to happen. They also assume that the therapist possesses the knowledge or knows the techniques, and is skilled in imparting this information. Most psychotherapists share this assumption. The particular knowledge, the specific methods, vary greatly from place to place, time to time, and therapist to therapist. A good-sized library could be filled with the volumes written to describe and promote the wide range of beliefs held by hundreds of schools of therapy.

Although Gans and Redler are familiar with many of these perspectives, they insist that therapy can occur only when the therapist forgoes placing clients in the therapist's conceptual framework. This they call "just listening," which is "more about inviting and welcoming and attending to and finding skilful means than it is about 'doing' something or following theoretical guidelines."

Informal, often very personal, their conversations reflect concerns not burned away in the crucible of several decades of therapeutic experience. What remains is how therapists relate to people experiencing a kind of pain that can't be as easily located and treated as an aching tooth or broken finger. This pain is difficult to describe because it resides in relationships rather than entities that are related. It is not inside their clients, their clients' families, or their clients' friends. The problem is not located in the "who" that is relating, but in the relating itself. Yet relating is not an "it" - not an object that can be seen, weighed, picked up, or put in a box.

Psychotherapy is "the talking cure," but language in general is best suited for discussing objects. Words denoting relationship - respect, dependency, fear, love, hate, evil, harmony - can be nouns. Worse still, European cultural constructs and languages - including our own English - impose a bipolar structure upon phenomena that are not dual in nature: mind-matter, good-evil, love-hate, introvert-extrovert, dominant-submissive, sanity-insanity, and so on. We tend first to attribute false concreteness to non-physical realities, then assign placement inside an imaginary binary structure to non-existent entities. Within these conceptual and linguistic distortions it quickly becomes difficult to think or talk clearly about relationships - troubled or otherwise.

Gans and Redler don't use this terminology, but are aware of the problems. They find congenial idioms in phenomenological and post-phenomenological European thought, notably Levinas. An uncommon use of words, along with the complexly woven phrasings of Levinas, his predecessors, and some of his contemporaries, offer the potential advantage of impeding both misplaced concreteness and the illusion of duality. Redler introduces the Buddhist tradition as another alternative to our familiar Western belief in independently existing entities that can be manipulated to achieve defined ends.

In addition to phenomenology, Levinas, and Buddhism, Gans and Redler acknowledge indebtedness to Freud, as they understand him, and to Hugh Crawford and R.D Laing, psychiatrists with whom they trained and worked extensively. Finally, Redler brings a tenacious, detailed skepticism to the discussions.

Just Listening is uniquely thought provoking, but the conversations are clouded by differences between what the authors say, and what they seem to want to say. The book is full of references to hypothetical entities (mind, soul, self, other, ego, sexuality), and Gans and Redler occasionally display preferences for choices that don't exist.

Gans: "Being human is to be in accord, rather than in discord." Yet neither of these aspects of relationship can be chosen to the exclusion of the other because they are mutually dependent. Being human is to experience both. In the context of the rest of the book, where the authors emphasize their obligation to accept the wholeness and complexity of their own and others' experience, such statements are confusing. Nor is this the only instance in which they appear to want to exclude, or "disengage from," hatred, greed, envy, jealousy, pride, suffering- the "bad" stuff. Yet the premise that life consists of good and bad things that can be included or excluded plays no small part in generating and maintaining the kind of pain and confusion they seek to address.

However, their conversations are not a doctrine, and they don't pretend to clarity or consistency. Their therapy is a relationship about relationships, a meta-relationship in which they endeavor not to provide answers, but to listen to and question, themselves and others, openly and attentively.

This is so at variance with prevailing beliefs about psychotherapy that is seems unlikely many will even understand them.

An anthropologist recounts that sometime before the arrival of Europeans, a storm off the coast of Java washed a strange, half-dead creature onto the shore. Upon examining it, local priests determined that it was a large white monkey belonging to the entourage of the Sea God, and that as punishment for some misdeed, it had been banished from the sea kingdom by the god whose anger also produced the storm. Orders were given for the creature to be chained to a boulder and kept alive. Many years later a Dutch archeologist was shown the boulder. Scratched on it in Dutch, English and Latin were the man's name and a brief description of his shipwreck.

Basic assumptions about what sort of world this is and what sort of creatures we are, unexamined yet largely creating our reality, can result not only in distorted communication or complete misunderstanding, but a lifetime of unnecessary pain.

Just Listening is a reminder, a challenge and an invitation to question such assumptions. The invitation extends to a Just Listening website where their conversation continues.

Tillich raised the ethical question of the nature of courage. I remember in my late teens worrying about the possibility that on my death-bed I will judge myself to have been a coward. It was Laing who asked me what did courage mean to me. "Fearlessness," I replied and he laughed. In his estimation, he told me, he had never met a fearless person, nor could he claim to be fearless. The next best thing, he said, he had achieved, which was not to be afraid to be afraid. He re-framed courage for me to mean doing what I wanted even though I was terrified; not allowing fear to be my advisor. "Practice courage," he exhorted, "and you'll get better and better at it!"

Alphonso Lingis wrote that "Aristotle, who wrote the first treatise in the West on rational ethics, listed courage first of all the virtues. It is not simply first on the list of equivalent virtues; it is the transcendental virtue, the condition for the possibility of all the virtues. For no one can be truthful, or magnanimous, or a friend, or even congenial in conversation, without courage. And every courage is an act done in risk: of one's reputation, of one's job, of one's possessions, of one's life".

Elsewhere, Lingis states that to "enter into conversation with another is to lay down one's arms and one's defenses; to throw open the gates of one's own positions; to expose oneself to the other, the outsider; and to lay oneself open to surprises, contestation, and inculpation. It is to risk what one found or produced in common... One enters into conversation in order to become an other for the other".

Gans and Redler are two courageous psychotherapists who recorded, edited and published their conversations, mostly with each other and at times with Bob Mullan, the editor of Just Listening. Topics range from money to sex and transcendence; from love and intimacy to welcome and hospitality; from know-how versus knowledge to music and re-lease. The tone is convivial, friendly, and often intimate. Mullan represents the naïve, yet at times condescending and obtuse hoi polloi questioning the aristos.

The spirits of R. D. Laing, Hugh Crawford and the original Philadelphia Association are often paid homage to. Crawford's "Only you can do it, but you can't do it alone" weaves through the book like a musical refrain. Laing's "Are you sure?" and "What to do when you don't know what to do?" aren't explicitly quoted, but Redler's steady scepticism consistently questions dogma even when it is his friend Gans who sounds just a bit too certain. "All that philosophy can do is to destroy idols. And that means not creating a new one - for instance as in 'absence of an idol,'" wrote Wittgenstein, and in this sense Gans and Redler are philosophers.

Gans thinks of therapy as an attempt to "shift people out of need" and to "open them up to their desire". "Demands kill desire," he states, illuminating a host of difficulties in relationships. Babies need, toddlers demand, adults desire. No wonder then that when an adult comes across as needy and demanding the therapist's job is to frustrate. To satisfy or comply would turn the therapist into a prostitute and the patient would never wake up to his/her own responsibility.

Redler speaks of "the fundamental perversion being beyond not responding in responsibility to the face of the Other, not only not welcoming the Other, not only not saying 'yes, yes' to the Other, but really kicking in the face of the Other. Psychotherapy has to attend to ways in which this perversion has been rampant in people's lives; it's been done to them, and probably they are doing it to others".

The diamond of psychotherapy has many facets and Gans and Redler illuminate a large number of them. They are informed and inspired by psychoanalysis, Buddhism, R. D. Laing, Emmanuel Levinas, Derrida, music, meditation and martial arts, and many other people, practices and traditions. The authors are more concerned with making sense than knowing, with the acknowledgment of lived experience rather than justification and proof. Wittgenstein's worry that we are the prisoners of the power of language is taken seriously by both authors and words are used by them carefully, often poetically.

More than anything, this is a generous book, filled with treasures for the practitioners of the art of psychotherapy, for patients past, present and future, and for anyone who has interest in what is between us, in the vicissitudes of relationships.

Albert Camus's definition of heroism, "Ordinary people doing extraordinary things out of simple decency," applies to the work Gans and Redler are engaged in. Like Camus, they attack dogma, compliance, and cowardice in all their manifestations, private, public, institutional. Their insight that therapy is fundamentally ethical and political leads them to insist that all truly important questions come down to individual acts of kindness and goodness. Like Camus, they are moralists who have a sure eye for distinguishing good from evil, yet they abstain from condemning human frailty.

My only disappointment, after reading this book, was that I wasn't a part of the conversation. Often I wished I could have joined in. Well, now I can, it so happens, easily, by visiting the "justlistening" website.

So can you. Check it out!

Andrew Feldmár

In 1926 a strike by coal miners in Britain in desperate conditions led to such a wave of solidarity that a general strike resulted. That general strike shut the whole country down and put the workers and farmers in striking distance ( no pun intended) of grabbing the brass ring : taking the whole power over, out of the hands of the Big Boss class ( who are the warlovers-warmakers as well by the way ), and establishing a workers and farmers government , so they could join the world struggle for socialism. They were betrayed by their top bureaucrat union leaders, whose hands trembled at the thought of taking governmental power, and they were betrayed by the party of the most militant , self-sacrificing, solidarity-in-action workers of the U.K. : the Communist Party, or rather its leadership ,obeying the dictates of the soon- to -be -dictator and mass murderer of communists, Joseph Stalin ( who was playing footsie with the union misleaders mentioned above at the expense of the fighting ranks ). In this book by Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution, you can learn what happened and what could have happened in this almost-revolution. What does this have to do with workers here and now? We who do not yet lead our own unions ? We who need to start seriously resist the effects of the Second Great Depression coming in front of our eyes.? We whose own same-type union tops support Bush and the Democrats' wars- (more coming after Iraq ) for Big Oil and Big Business ? We who have no choice but to start building a working class movement to take the power out of the hands of the "civilized hyenas" ( the superrich ) ? Well, the author of this book would say to ask these questions is to answer them. It has to do with taking back control of our unions to make them fighting instruments, and all of us starting to act like the longshore workers of the West Coast; to act like the coal miners, laundry, garment, and meatpacking workers fighting to get the union in or defend the union they have; following the lead of the most recent example-- the NYC transit workers...

It also has to do with understanding that it is Stalinism, shown in this book to be the opposite of communism, that is dead. Not socialism.

When "Where is Britain Going," the central component of this collection was published in 1926, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that this book contained detailed instructions on how to overthrow capitalism in Britain and the US. This book is still pretty good for that.

Trotsky takes apart the bourgeois liberal, imperialist, and "democratic" illusions about Britain, and shows how in a time of crisis, more and more like the economic and political crisis faced in the US, Britain, and other imperialist countries today, only a revolutionary working class solution is correct. I found his criticism of the philosophy of political gradualism offered by British social democrats and Conservative politicians particularly pointed at both reformist and conservative labor bureaucrats today.

The current editions contains contemporary responses this book by British reformist labor party leaders H. N. Brailsford, Ramsey McDonald, and George Lansbury and philosopher Bertrand Russell as well as Trotsky's responses to their criticism. It also contains 20 pages of reviews of Where is Britain going from bourgeois, reformist, and communist newspapers and magazines from Britain, the US, and Germany.
Just as rich, is "After the General Strike," Trotsky's analysis of the great British General strike of 1926 and its betrayal by Britain's trade union and labor party bureaucrats?

This collection of writings by Leon Trotsky, a central leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, provides a vivid and incisive analysis of big events in British politics in the turbulent years 1925-28. This was a time when millions of workers grappled with the lessons of the Russian Revolution, while the deep conflicts in the world capitalist economy left unresolved by World War I were pointing toward the renewed slaughter of World War II. I find these are not just interesting historical questions, but remain at the heart of politics in the 21st century with its new economic crisis and resulting drive towards war.
Trotsky's explanation of the decline of the British Empire and the shifting balance of power among the imperialist powers, especially with the rise of the United States, is a model for analyzing the world today.
So are his writings on working class political strategy. Bosses attacks against workers in Britain provoked a near-revolutionary general strike in 1926. However, the course followed by the new Communist Party in Britain, directed by the conservative Stalinist bureaucracy rising in the Soviet Union, failed to advance the struggle towards a workers seizure of power. Trotsky's writings criticizing the Stalinist course in Britain were an early part of his fight against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution-- and full of rich lessons for today.
Check out other writings by Trotsky such as Leon Trotsky on France, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, Leon Trotsky on the Spanish Revolution, and The Revolution Betrayed. And for current analysis of the world and working class politics, I'd recommend: Capitalism's World Disorder, Their Trotsky and Ours, and Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, all by U.S. revolutionary Jack Barnes.

In Little Brown Brother, Leon Wolff contends that while Jose Rizal was a catalyst for the movement, Emilio Aguinaldo was "Revolution incarnate." Wolf describes Aguinaldo as a stubborn man of limited education who cleverly unified eight million people in the revolution against Spain. He reportedly had a great hatred for the Spanish and sought to prove that the Filipino was mentally and morally above the Europeans. As a result of imperialism, the US took control of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico via the Spanish American War. Although there was still an abundant amount of land throughout the world that applied to the Manifest Destiny ideology, acquiring land on opposite sides of the globe required new methods. It would not be as easy as building roads and displacing a few thousand American Indians. Controlling colonial possession thousands of miles away required a new military commitment. This commitment came by way of a modern Navy. The US steamed into oversees expansion when the Federal Government commissioned the building of several cruisers and battleships between 1883 to 1890. It was clear to the US that those countries who controlled the seas, controlled their own destiny.

Wolff has done some extensive research and has come up with a balanced account of the situation in the Philippines during the Spanish American war. Little is really known of the extent of the atrocities that were the result of the Manifest Destiny and Benevolent Assimilation ideology but Wolf is balanced in his treatment of, on the Militray side: Aguinaldo, Dewey, Otis, and McArthur. On the political side, he is clear to point out that there was opposition to this proclomation for many reasons. His extensive treatment of the debate between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley are also very extensive. An easy book to read and a very extensive and well researched piece. I give it 5 stars.

Miguel Llora

Mr Wolff has compiled a classic account of this savage and mostly forgotten conflict that brough America into a war that would be very similar in the sixties. A brilliant telling of both sides of the war, from the political figures, Filipino field commanders, volunteer soldiers from Oregon and Kansas, the "Buffalo Soldiers", Marines, Moros wielding their razor-edged barongs to generals like Lawton, Merritt, Pershing, Funston and Arthur MacArthur. If you are interested in this story, I recommend this book and Muddy Glory by Russel Roth to name but a few. History as it should be taught in school.

This is the Philippines Centennial Year of celebrating a noble attempt at Independence as a Nation . Incredible that in this day and age, nothing much has changed in the Philippines. Today wears a cloak of sophistication, outward love of all things American by a population that has no idea of the blood that was spilled by America in the process of a rough and dirty attempt at colonization of the Philippines. The Little Brown Brothers were denied their birthright by the American Gatling gun on the pretext of replacing the well known cruel tyranny of Spanish rule with the so called justice of the United States. 100 Years later, - it is just a bit more modern, the action faster. the politics the same, the poor still poor and the rich much, much richer. The Reader is vividly reminded that everything is the same. Powerful authenticated stuff for the modern educated Filipino, far more enlightening than Rizal's "Noli ne Tangere" and should be compulsory reading for all Filipino's. - if it were available

This collection of articles by Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky is an important contribution to the discussion on how to fight against an inhumane and brutal ruling order. It discusses the social roots of terrorism, and argues strongly that it is an obstacle to developing the organized leadership necessary for millions of toilers to take destiny in their own hands and transform society for the good of all humanity. Trotsky bases his observations on the long history of terror in Czarist Russia, and counterposes it to the successful mass revolutionary struggle led by the Bolsheviks that did topple the Czarist regime, established a workers and peasants government and overthrow capitalism.

This pamphlet also includes two articles from the 1930s. One explains why Trotsky and other revolutionary opponents of the Stalinist dictatorship that developed in the Soviet Union did not resort to terror. Another discusses Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish youth who assassinated a Nazi official in Paris in 1938. Trotsky identifies with the emotions that led to Grynzspan's act and calls for workers protests to stop the French government from executing him. But he argues 'to all those capable of self-sacrifice in the struggle against despotism and bestiality: Seek another road! Not the lone revolutionary avenger but only a great revolutionary mass movement can free the oppressed.'

Other valuable writings by Trotsky on this question include: 'How the Workers in Austria Should Fight Hitler,' 'Individual Terror and Mass Terror,' and 'A Revolutionary, not a Terrorist' all from Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1935-36. See also, Their Morals and Ours and History of the Russian Revolution, by Trotsky, and The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, by Jack Barnes.

... This collection of essays by one of the leading revolutionaries of the 20th century provides a much-needed critical perspective on terrorism. Not from a moralizing point of view, but to show that by relying on individual 'heroic' acts of violence like assassinations of government leaders, terrorist tactics ignore and devalue the masses of people as the most important agent of their own liberation. Though his examples are drawn from Hapsburg Austria, Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany, when you read his words, you can easily see the relevance to liberation struggles taking place today from Palestine to Ireland to the Philippines. I especially like the way that Trotsky sympathizes with the hatred of the gross injustice that breeds terrorism, but at the same time explains that individual terrorist tactics are doomed to fail.

In this pamphlet Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky explains that the real sources of terror and violence in the world are the superrich and their governments : the market system and the police and military violence that back it up at home and overseas.When we go on strike or demonstrate for our rights,they [ will ] call the working people and youth "terrorists".Sound like the future? We will need to mobilize in our masses and eventually take action to defend ourselves including against fascist terror.Those who engage in frustrated acts of terror on behalf or workers and farmers or the oppressed anywhere ( NOT !) only give the capitalists an excuse to use more violence (e.g.WTC bombing->war in Mideast).To end all terror and violence requires a revolution to overthrow the system , he contends.Must reading in these days...