I was absolutely amazed that this book had never been reviewed in the seven years since it came out. This is truly a magical book, one that would appeal to a broad audience. It is first and foremost a story of the author's father and the father's 15th Air Force B-24 crew, particularly of the fateful mission during which their plane, the Liberty Belle, is shot down in present-day Yugoslavia. It recounts the adventures of the Merritt crew after their rescue by Partisans, some frightening, some comical, laced with the uncertainty of the tenuous alliances formed by the different ethnic groups and their relationships with the Allies or the Axis, both, or neither. But it is much more than a story of a bomber crew that bails out in unfamiliar territory in wartime. It is also a detective story. J. Merritt decides to seek out the old members of his father's crew, using old telephone directories and contacts, and also to find out more about his father's experiences after being shot down. To do this, he tracks down people in Yugoslavia who in turn help him track down men and women who helped the young airmen after they fell out of the sky that fateful day. He writes of the searches, the meetings, and of his decision to return to the site of his father's adventures of forty-plus years ago. And this brings up the third story in this intricately-woven book. It is the story of a son's attempt to get to know his father. Together the two decide to make the trip to Yugoslavia together, and it is a journey which, one feels, will bring the two men closer. Like many fathers and sons, the relationship has been frought with reticence on both sides. The generational divide has kept the two men, who obviously love and respect each other, from forming the deeper bond of solid friendship. So 'Goodbye Liberty Belle' is much more than an aviation war story. It is a story of a search for and reconnection with the past, of tracking down young men grown old and breaking bread with them. And it is a story about a son and a father sharing an adventure that one hopes will bring them closer together. Merritt's trade is as a writer of magazine articles, and his prose has the polished, spare utility of a man comfortable with expressing himself in few words and gifted enough to chose those words well. Sections of the book are woven together cleanly--a section on the fateful day of the crash flows seamlessly into a modern-day interview with the tail gunner long assumed dead, followed by a section on the trip to Yugoslavia the father and son take in 1986. This is a triumphal piece of writing. It is all at once a great war story, a detective story, and a story of a father and son. Merritt keeps the reader wanting to know how each of the stories play out, and he does it with grace. You will love this book.

Richard Rieben's Handbook For Liberty: Boundaries For Preserving Your Humanity While Living Amongst Humans is an impressive essay and informative instructional on the differences between true liberty and conventional political rhetoric. Chapters address what Liberty is, where it comes from, why Anarchy is not the answer, and what needs to change in order to embrace true Liberty. Guidelines for building a politically free government in the face of contradicting socio-political realities are presented in this strongly persuasive, inspirational treatise. Handbook For Liberty is strongly recommended for anyone wanting to address contemporary political and cultural assaults on traditional and constitutional personal and political liberties.

Friedrich von Hayek has had perhaps the most profound impact of any political theorist in the last half-century. John Gray's book is a superb analysis of his ideas. Where other studies can be confusing or convoluted, Gray's always maintains its ability to lucidly recreate Hayek's arguments from their intellectual roots upwards.

Understanding the intellectual foundations of Hayek's work, can be a minefield of inaccessible terms and confusing statements. Thanks to John Gray, however, these matters are clearly and intelligently explained. The result is that the reader is provided with a rich insight into how Hayek's political economy functions. More than just a critique of socialism, Hayek's thought is also a profound intellectual statement combining the epistemological insights of Hume with Kant's categorical imperative. An understanding of its philosophical basis allows a fertile gaze into the prism that is Hayek's thought. Only Gray explains these aspects of his writngs clearly.

"Hayek on Liberty" is, moreover, refreshingly objective, despite the controversy which Hayek's ideas generate. Gray seeks to explain rather than to refute or praise. The reader can therefore take the insights Gray offers in a number of directions. Although Gray clearly admires Hayek, he does not feel the need to indulge in the monotonous hero-worship to which we have become accustomed. There is much to be found here for Hayek's critics too. Especially since it is doubtful that Hayek's use of Hume does not undermine many of his more positive political statements.

Gray's work is thus an invaluable guide to one of the Twentieth Century's intellectual icons. One only has to observe the saint-like worship Hayek has received in recent months, surrounding the centenery of his birth, to appreciate that his legacy is an ongoing phenomenon of global proportions. Academic, student, and interested observer will find Gray's study immensely helpful as a platform for approaching more general disussions of Hayek's ideas, of which many fine examples now exist. Anyone attempting a detailed appreciation of Hayek should thus keep Gray beside them at all times.

The reputation of Hegel has been so besmirched in the minds of many by the perils of statism gone awry that it is remarkable to see a book actually rescue him from charges of these evils, and others, and actually make some sense of his political philosophy. I think, however, that getting Hegel right is one thing in theory, and another in practice, and the chaotification of this seven course Hegelian dinner in its Marxist version has been tragic. We cannot simply say that all these people got Hegel wrong and issue a new 'the real Hegel', for such things rarely get second chances. But it behooves any Marxist to consider the scrambled version of this going on unconsciously, in some Feuerbachian pidgin translation. Brought out into the light, the full scope of Hegel's view are eloquent, rich, and powerful, as this book illustrates very easily. That does not mean one should agree. But if anything this formal challenge to the natural rights tradition can illuminate the limits of the mechanized political liberalism of the first stage of the modernist social revolution. After this exceptionally clear, and reasonably short, survey of all the issues, one realizes that the problem was not really Hegel, but the inexorably arising misinterpretations of his decidedly difficult works.
One should note that such a clear exposition as this can actually make one think this is an easy subject and Hegel's views here are the object of many controversies and has many critics, consider Isaiah Berlin's Freedom and Its Betrayal, or Tucker's Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx.
One might also be sure to start at square one and consider the views Hegel reacts against, among them Kant's, cf. Patrick O'Reilly's Kant's Political Philosophy.

"Liberty for All? 1820-1860" is the fifth volume in Joy Hakim's "A History of US," and focuses on the question of how slavery could exist in the land of the free. While this book clearly sets up the next volume, "War, Terrible War 1855-1865," which covers the Civil War, it also has some significant overlap with the previous volume, "The New Nation 1780-1850," which ends with the Compromise of 1850 that put off the coming war for a decade. There is not a neat and simple way of dividing up American history when covering the first half of the 19th-century, so it is not like there is an obvious solution to Hakim's problems of deciding where to end one book and begin the next.

Whereas "The New Nation" looks primarily at the on going political experiment that saw the creation of parties and the peaceful transition from Federalists to Democratic-Republicans, "Liberty for All?" is more about the slavery question in the context of the young nation's expanasion. The volume begins with the story of Westward expansion along the Sante Fe trail and other routes and ends with the story of the Underground Railroad. In between Hakim tells young readers about Mormons moving to Utah, Texas joining the Union, and gold being discovered in California. Opening up Japan to American trade and the Seneca Falls conference on the Rights of Women are also part of this period of American history.

This volume covers a lot of different topics from this time period. "The New Nation" has a much clearer sense of structure because it follows the administrations of the first presidents, but I think you can see four significant units in this book. The first (Chapters 1-20) deals with all the myriad aspects of western expansion, from the Mississippi to the west coast and beyond to Japan. The second (Chapters 21-26) focuses on the conditions faced by women and children during this time. The third (Chapters 27-31) focuses on the impact of the transcendentalists on philosophy and literature, from Thoreau and Melville to Whitman and Dickinson (including some choice poems) as well as Aubudon and Caitlin. The final section (Chatpers 32-38) is rather powerful dealing with the "Amistad" case, the Compromise of 1850, Stephen Douglas's "popular sovereignty" solution, the Dred Scott decision, and the idea that the entire issue of slavery was coming to head.

These books are all richly illustrated, almost exclusively with historic paintings, etching, drawings, cartoons, and the like. The margins are cramed with mini-biographies, definitions, lines of poetry, and suggestions for places where young readers can find more information about a topic. This series has a deserved reputation among parents who are home schooling their children because not only is it very informative, but Hakim makes a concerted effort to engage her young readers. She is constantly asking them to put themselves in the perspective of the people being written about, whether they are pioneers heading over the Rocky Mountains or slaves trying to find their way North to freedom. More importantly, Hakim has an innate ability to anticipate questions from her readers; you can count on her to explain "why" at the point where a student in class would be raising their hand to ask that very question.

I bought this series for my wife so she could better understand the history of the US and improve her English language skills in an area of intense interest for her. In the end, I pored over these books and gave my wife little time with them. Written for kids but fabulous for adults with little time. Buy the index and you can find sources if you're interested in diving a little deeper on a particular topic. I hope to keep these books for out future child(ren?) and am sure they will find them intriguing. The series lets us know how magnificent a country we really live in and how dramatic the history really is. With all the turmoil and all the diversity, how do we manage to keep it together? And, there are plenty who take umbrage at the extensive coverage of race and gender equality but they really are at the root of so many of our societal problems, historically speaking.

Samuel Walker has created a wonderful book on the history of the ACLU, In Defense of American Liberties, that is a must for anyone concerned with the history of freedom of speech and the men and women who fought for them in America. This book shows the development from fringe to mainstream of the ideas shared by a group of people in the 1910's. The book is by no means hagiography as the darker moments of the ACLU are presented with clarity, such as their hounding and forcing out of Communist members simply for their beliefs. It is both very informative and truly entertaining. A wonderful book that demonstrates the importance the ACLU has had in the twentienth century shaping political ideas.

Upon first reading, skepticism looms overhead, fat black rainclouds of doubt shadow the land. The ray of sun is: that no single opinion dominates this book, that it is refreshingly diverse. Anarchists in this volume emerge as political freethinkers, people of a courageous honesty who debate and exchange powerful ideas on the topics concerning social beings. When closing the book, wonder is in the wind...one ponders Mencken's germane analogy of politics to religion and the poplular participation of the masses in the exercise of control.

This is no word for this book. It's touching, but still funny. The story teaches that the world is a better place with you than without you. Read this book when life isn't good, for it's very soothing. You will get a laugh too. This is a five star, two thumbs up book. That's why I highly recommend it!

Italians, including Sardinians and Sicilians, left their homeland by the millions between the French Revolution and the onset of World War II. Roughly 20,000,000 Italian migrants, about 10% of all long-distance migrants during those years, left for newer, more profitable worlds. The vast majority of the Italian migrants were unskilled workers and peasants, street traders, and owners of small parcels of land. Their search for wages prompted temporary migration but scattered them more widely than most other European and Asian migrants of the era. About half of the Italian migrants found work in Europe, approximately a third traveled to North America, and a quarter went to South America, while small, but significant numbers also worked in Australia and in North and South Africa. Once abroad, the largest groups were men who worked in construction, mining, and industry, or in plantation or other forms of large-scale, commercial agriculture.

During the 19th century, the creation of new nations and international mass migrations progressed along with the development of new labor movements. Many of these movements were based on the notion that class transcended national boundaries, "workers of the world unite," where an Italian anarchist proclaimed "there are no frontiers." Whether they were "sent" or "received" migrants, Italian or non-Italian, the nation-state was challenged from below (by the regionalism or ethnic diversity of their populations) and from above (by class-conscious and consciously internationalist labor movements). During and after World War I, nation-states increasingly resolved this tension by pressuring migrants to increase commitment and loyalty to one nation.

This is a fascinating study of the Italian workers of the world and how they saw themselves as Italians, part of the international workers of the world, and as assimilated immigrants in their new countries and what impact that had on the formation of those nation-states and Italy. Eleven experts from various universities and research institutions contributed to this book. Two segments are about Italian nationalism in the age of exile and labor migration, 1789-1880. Five segments look at class, nation, and internationalism in an era of proletarian mass migration, 1870-1920. The last four segments look at antifascism as an international movement.

If you ever wanted to put the Italian-American (United States) immigrant movement in perspective, this book will certainly help.

James Madison on Religious Freedom edited by Robert S. Alley is a remarkable work on James Madison's views about religious freedom and how they should play a part in the overall fabric of our government.

James Madison is one of the foremost thinkers of the founding generation of Americans. Though he wasn't much to look at, Madison commanded a library of thought between his ears. Being well educated, (Princeton), he was an avid reader of polictical thought, a great legislator, and framer of the Constitution of the United States of America. But he also wanted the development of civil liberties, adovcating the idea of republicanism, and had the courage to want a moral society. A society that was religious, but not one that was dominated by a State or Central religion... in essence he wanted people to be free to worship as their devotion dictated... a liberty of conscience or a freedom of religious inquiry.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison along with various others, at that time, worked hard to formulate a Bill of Rights guarenteeing this and other fundamental freedoms. Madison's ideas and actions went far in establishing these freedoms... a fledgling nation needed these freedoms so it would not fall back into the hands of the few and privilaged.

This book works through these aforementioned problems, with prominent historians giving view points of Madison by essays on the various aspects of Madison's thought on religious liberties.
There are selected Madison papers with which we read that gives a better prespective as to how Madison got to where he wanted to be... working the aspect of religious freedom.

We get to look into Madison's mind and find how he thought reading here about Madison's own religion, how he had the courage to doubt in a secular republic, and Madison and the first amendment. I found the book to be fascinating as we get to look inside, through Madison's own writings.

Those wishing to get a better picture of the inner workings of Madison should, without doubt, read this tome and it will clear up a lot about how James Madison worked his way through these times, not unlike what we are dealing with today. More wars, aggravation, and human suffering have come about in the name of religion than anything else mankind has known... the founding fathers knew this... what they came up with is an American tradition, taking these principles and making them work for the good of the people.

This is an excellent and comprehensive work that will fill in blanks, an you'll get a better understanding of Madison.