In a public place, with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat I whispered the prayer " Father I am sobered by this reality. Please help me grow in my management calling. I promise to be a better manager from this day forward".

The Burden Of Freedom explains that too many people use past oppression to remain mired in hatred and irresponsibility today. The spirit of oppression has specific telltale effects on individuals, communities, and nations. These are identified by Myles Munroe as a hatred for work, laziness, fear, low self-esteem, selfishness, lack of creativity, low initiative, and distrust of those in authority. To break free from these self-replicating cycles of oppression there must be a mental transformation. Paradoxically, freedom requires the need to impose control on self, require more responsibility than slavery, and the decision to accept a destiny of freedom, recognizing the process and discipline that personal and political freedom require. Simply put, The Burden Of Freedom should be available to every citizen and on the shelves of every high-school, college, and community library in the country.

As a gay man, I attempted to marry my man last year. I was met with ignorance, prejudice, and hatred! The issue was further complicated because of the fact that I was white and my love black! The local newspaper actually carried a banner headline reading "Local Man Marries Man!" This book illistrates that same sex marriage can and must work in America!

The book makes an excellent case. It not only asks why not? it also explains why. I feel like sending this book out to all of my friends as an amazing resource during one of the most important civil rights struggles of recent times. It is hard to characterize gay couples struggling to be married as promiscuous opponents of civilized society.

John Stands in Timber is my daughter's great-grandfather on her father's side. I am purchasing this book to let her know the history she shares as a Northern Cheyenne and to show her how much her great-grandfather cared about his people. I have read the book previously and appreciated the sense of cultural awareness John portrayed through his words. It is a lesson for us all to remember where we came from and appreciate how we got where we are now. I would recommend reading this book, to learn the history of the people and to appreciate that he wasn't just a historian, but a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather and also a good person.

The Cheyenne was undoubtably one of the most remarkable tribes of the Great Plains. Now you can have a very convenient one volume tribal history of them by John Stands In Timber with the help of anthropologist Margot Liberty. Stands In Timber,an old time Cheyenne, in his whole life collected the memories of his elders about the history of their Nation and he succeeded in editing it to a narrative from the creation to the reservation times. The effort of the author is of a rare kind and the result is also a rare one: you can learn the history of a native nation from the inside.

Dark Revenge is a horror vampire novel filled with tension. The same as in real life, the characters don't suspect a vampire is in the works as, the same as in real life, who would suspect such a thing. If someone told them, they would probably laugh, but before this novel is over, no one is laughing.

The vampire has it in for one of the main characters and the vampire does everything he can to destroy this man mentally before attacking him physically.

Worth a read.

I bought and read this book and really enjoyed it. It was smooth read that kept my interest from beginning to end. I found myself actually afraid of this vampire. Worth a read, no doubt about it!

This book brings history so close to home. It really tells us that ordinary people play an important part in the making of headlines. It is a beautiful and exciting tale, yet utterly simple.

The illustrations are remarkable. In this age of up-front color their textures, shades of grey, and perspectives are refreshing. Appropriate also to the period portrayed.

A definite must for all young people. With real possibilities as well, because of its high interest level, for teaching English as a Second Language to older students.

I am the author of this book and here are my comments: Daughter of Liberty portrays an incident in the life of my great, great, great, great Aunt Wyntje (Wyn) Quackenbosch (Quackenbush) Mabie who served as a messenger for General Washington during the Revolutionary War. In November 1776 she rode from her farm in Tappan, New York to Fort Lee, New Jersey, and rowed across the Hudson River by rowboat to retrieve papers from Washington's former headquarters at the Roger Morris House, now called the Morris-Jumel Mansion. Then she rowed back across the Hudson River and delivered the papers to Washington at his new headquarters in Hackensack, New Jersey. The papers contained names of suppliers and volunteer troop replacements so that Washington could quickly restore his shattered defenses. His Army had been reduced to 6,000 troops in just a few short months after the British invasion of New York city in August 1776. The papers were an aid to his first major victory at Trenton on December 26, 1776. I took certain liberties to write Wyn Mabie's story so that young readers could comprehend the complex events of the times. This included the addition of Jan and Janneke, ten-year-old twin cousins of Wyn's husband, Abraham, who were being cared for by Wyn and her Aunt Susanna. The twins actually represented Wyn's and Abraham's own children, a boy Abraham, age two months, and a girl Elizabeth, age 2, who would be too young at the time to talk about their feelings when Wyn undertook her mission. This type of writing - fact meeting fiction - is a process of harvesting things one accidentally knows and merging them with facts. Often it means bending the facts in order to arrive at the truth. For me, writing Wyn Mabie's story meant verifying through research a story that had been passed down in my family since the Revolutionary War. Then I linked the details of her mission with precise events and the time they occurred. This research took nearly twenty years to complete before I wrote and illustrated the finished book, which took one year. My purpose for creating Daughter of Liberty was to confirm a life that had become a legend, by restoring Wyn Mabie and her heroism to the book of life. For this reason I begin her story with this 184l quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson: There is probably no history, only biography.

A RESPONSE TO "Liberation from the Affluent Society"

My first impression of Herbert Marcuse' speech was the title. Upon reading it I thought why would anyone want to be liberated from an affluent society? It seemed rather odd to me that anyone would want to be freed from prosperity. However, upon further and deeper reading I soon learned exactly what the author meant by his title. Marcuse sees western society as an enslaving system which crushes its members into a life of bondage towards gain. Marcuse sees a need to fight against the society and to not be a normal citizen while society dictates so much in its members' lives. I believe that although Marcuse has a place in awakening the reader against the drudgery of life, overall Marcuse is a man who is too revolutionary to ever be content in the modern state of mass society.
I realized how much in common Marcuse had with the great Nineteenth Century Transcendentalist Henry Thoreau. Both men are radicals of their time. On that basis both unhesitatingly confronted the contemporary world, however shocking or bizarre their claims might seem to the conformist consensus of the establishment. Just as Thoreau challenged the government's moral decision in the Mexican War and his opposition to social conformity due the drudgery of life, Marcuse also pitted himself against the War in Vietnam and his opposition to mass society due to his position of seeing the great limitations of capitalism. Both men have basically the same struggle and that struggle is against the enslavement of society. However, they differ in the sense that Thoreau does not advocate a new social order just a method of passive resistance, whereas Marcuse in another essay advocates a Utopian alternative to the restraints of capitalism.
The central question of Marcuse's thought appears clearly in this short speech. The question being from what standpoint can society be judged now that it has succeeded in feeding its members? Recognizing the arbitrariness of mere moral outrage, Marx measured capitalism by reference to an immanent criterion, the unsatisfied needs of the population. But that approach collapses as soon as capitalism proves itself capable of delivering the goods. Then the fulfilled needs of the individuals legitimate the established system. However, Marcuse' radicalism means opposition, not just to the failures and deficiencies of that system, but to its very successes. Marcuse sees that this affluent society has ruined its members by the very nature of gain in capitalism. In his discussion of the divisions of the hippies he commends the sector that goes beyond the norm to radically oppose capitalism for its inability to bring true fulfilled in life.
It is viewed that the conflict between rationalism and irrationalism was a major division in the main thinkers of the modern era. However, Marcuse wants to go beyond that to redefine rationalism. He believes that collectively in society we have become irrational-rationales who define rationalism only as efficiency. The same efficiency was used by the Nazis to slaughter millions of Jews, but would we define that as rational? I think not. Marcuse' only real solution to this irrationality is education.
I believe overall men such as Marcuse and Thoreau have an important place because in a sense these men are like mirrors. They help the reader to step back from the chaos of life rethink our motives as to why we behave the way we do and whether or not this behavior is for our benefit.

Well, the book is about 30 years old but so far it is probably one of the best observations of the forces behind the scenes which are running the western culture. It does not offer any clear conclusion but it definitely raises the level of consciousness and what is also funnier it makes visible to many social mechanisms around in the present time. Definitely a good reading, written in a good normal language which is easy to understand... Enjoy.

I have had this book as part of my library for a number of years and while I have sorted through and disposed of many books due to lack of shelf space, this is one book that will always have a permanent place among favorites. It clearly helped me to understand the need to recognize and find my own identity and to then encourage others in their own process of finding wholeness, learning how to develope healthy and productive relationships in the process. Ken clearly expresses the freedom we can find as we develop a relationship with God through His Spirit as He leads us through our earthly relationships, teaching us what true love really means--freedom to be REAL people. Accepting and encouraging each other through the process of living the life we have, growing and maturing and becoming more genuine in the process.

Ken Schmidt is a marriage and family counselor in Ventura, California who has written an inspired book about where we fit into the scheme of things. Instead of blaming our parents or blaming society or blaming some other person or factor in our lives, Ken enables the reader to see that God can bring us into a right relationship with the people in our lives as well as Himself if we see Him and ourselves as He designed those relationships to be. I have purchased copies for troubled friends and was hoping to buy another copy from Amazon. I definately recommend it.

Forget those boring civics classes, forget those classes where American history's most important events were relegated to footnotes skipped over by the teacher. If Howard Zinn had not written "A People's History of the United States" Michael Linfield has written it for him.

Linfield's compelling revealations of the US government's record of civil liberties violations throughout our relatively short, bloody, aggressive and imperialistic history documents how every real and contrived wartime scenario has been used by the rulers to eliminate civil liberties and impose a true Pax Americana domestically.

Beginning with the American "Revolution" which appears to me to be less and less like a revolution and more and more like a contrived power and land grab by the greedy, not the needy. I believe that one could make a case for the fact that after their ascension to power, that American "revolutionaries" were as reactionary and oppressive as the power from whoom they had wrested control.

Each wartime scenario shattters any illusion of goodness or democracy with one holds certain rulers. As Jim Morrison wrote, "No One Here gets Out Alive." So, too, with the author. One comes swiftly to the conclusion that not one U.S. leader, either in declared wartime or between conflicts has really done anything to insure the civil liberties for which Americans fought and died on a myriad of foreign battlefields.

Linfield has written American history as it is, not as, Rush Limbaugh might ask, "The Way Things Ought to Be." This is indeed Mr. Wells' history, Howard Zin''s history, but not 10th grade American high schol history.

I highly recommend reading Linfield's book, checking out the footnotes and the primary source documents. Keep the book handy next time some...patriot resembling a beached whale drenches those around him with his version of American history. Linfield's book will rock their world.

Linfield's work provides a handy overview of extent to which Constitutional safeguards have been compromised over the years, particularly during wartime. Beginning with the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of the Revolutionary war period, through the Civil War, W.W.I, and Vietnam eras, the author compiles a steady pattern of government assault on Constitutional restrictions whenever those restrictions become politically or militarily inconvenient. Of particular note in this regard, are the McCarran - Walter Act of the cold war era, aimed at resricting free flow of information and travel, and the notorious Palmer raids following W.W.I, aimed at curbing the rise of a socialist movement. Whether your politics are left, right or center, this historical record should be of interest. It shows pretty clearly how slender are these parchment-bound safeguards whenever established wealth and power feels threatened.

Over the last decade Graeme Snooks has
written an impressive number of books which renewed the
field of comparative analysis.
"The Global Crisis Makers" provides a very readable
synthesis of his former work and applies it to the
issues that mankind is facing at the beginning of the
21th century.
There is an insightful view on almost every page of this book, ranging from world strategy to a lucid assessment of
political develpments in Australia.
An incredibly candid and insightful read.
Highly recommended.

This book comes to sensible conclusions by an unusual, though fascinating, route. Professor Snook's theme is that neoliberal economics, with its routine prescription of zero inflation, privatisation, free trade, flexible labour markets, and reduced wages, is bad for us. This capitalist monetarism dominates the international institutions, the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD and the EU, and also almost all current national governments: in effect, the monetarists impose the notorious Structural Adjustment Programs on all economies. Snooks observes that national governments have generally abandoned strategic leadership of their national societies and economies, and that this threatens both economic growth and political freedom. He notes that neoliberals "insist that central banks controlled by their fellow neoliberals be totally independent of political - that is, democratic - control." He warns us, "to grant central banks - organizations not responsible to society's strategists - the independence to suppress inflation at any cost is an invitation to disrupt the dynamic process." He points out that neoliberals constantly warn us about future economic crises if we do not obey their dictates, but their proposed cure actually produces these crises. Neoliberalism destroys wealth, by destroying the necessary conditions of economic growth. He warns that neo-liberalism's failures will lead to economic collapse, the destruction of democracy, and wars of conquest. He maintains that there is no Third Way; there is only the neoliberal way and the strategic way, the wrong way and the right way. So what is this strategic way? "Strategic leadership ... involves investing in strategic infrastructure (including science, research, education, transport and communication facilities) where the social return is expected to exceed the private return; encouraging domestic innovations and their marketing; promoting strategic ideas; spearheading the penetration of new markets by negotiating external trade and technology deals." Countries need "a protectionist strategy aimed at developing an innovative industrial base." We all need to focus on strategic ideas, without neglecting technological ideas. In sum, each country needs a government which actually governs, that works to rebuilding the national economy.