World Politics: Trend and Transformation

Book Description

Charles W. Kegley

WORLD POLITICS: TREND AND TRANSFORMATION is the best selling text in International Relations, because of its trusted balance in coverage and approach, unmatched by any other text for the course. By analyzing both historical and contemporary trends and developments, utilizing theoretical concepts, and weaving in the interactions of global actors, WORLD POLITICS: TREND AND TRANSFORMATION resists the temptation to overly simplify world politics, presenting the material in a thought-provoking yet accessible manner while preparing students to assess the possibilities for the global future and its potential impact on their lives.

The major theories scholars use to explain the dynamics underlying international relations?realism, liberalism, and their variants?frame the text. At the same time, this book incorporates the reconstructed theories newly advanced to interpret contemporary developments (such as constructivism and feminist theory) and resists the temptation to oversimplify world politics with a superficial treatment that would mask complexities and distort realities. In addition, major actors and current issues such as global welfare, international economics, ecology, and the environment are covered, as well as issues of global conflict, including the changing face of terrorism, national security, warfare, and approaches to peace.

Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing; 11 edition (March 8, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0495187062

The Cost of Competence: Why Inequality Causes Depression, Eating Disorders, and Illness in Women

Book Description:

Since the advent of the women's movement, women have made unprecedented gains in almost every field, from politics to the professions. Paradoxically, doctors and mental health professionals have also seen a staggering increase in the numbers of young women suffering from an epidemic of depression, eating disorders, and other physical and psychological problems.

In Dying to Win, authors Brett Silverstein and Deborah Perlick argue that rather than simply labeling individual women as, say, anorexic or depressed, it is time to look harder at the widespread prejudices within our society and child-rearing practices that lead thousands of young women to equate thinness with competence and success, and feminity with failure. They argue that it is wrong to continue to treat depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia as separate disorders in young women when they are really part of a single syndrome. Furthermore, their fascinating research into the lives of forty prominent women from Elizabeth I to Eleanor Roosevelt show that these symptoms have been disrupting the lives of bright, ambitious women not for decades, but for centuries. Drawing on all the latest findings, rare historical research, cross-cultural comparisons, and their own study of over 2,000 contemporary women attending high schools and colleges, the authors present powerful new evidence to support the existence of a syndrome they call anxious somatic depression.

Their investigation shows that the first symptoms usually surface in adolescence, most often in young women who aspire to excel academically and professionally. Many of the affected women grew up feeling that their parents valued sons over daughters. They identified intellectually with their successful fathers, not with their traditional homemaker mothers. Disordered eating is one way of rejecting the feminine bodies they perceive as barriers to achievement and recognition. Silverstein and Perlick uncover medical descriptions matching their diagnosis in Hippocratic texts from the fourth century B.C., in anthropological studies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and in case studies of many noted psychologists and psychiatrists, including the "hysteric" patients Freud used to develop his theories on psychoanalysis.

They have also discovered that statistics on disordered eating, depression, and a host of other symptoms soared in eras in which women's opportunites grew--particularly the 1920s, when record numbers of women entered college and the workforce, the boyish silhouette of the flapper became the feminine ideal, and anorexia became epidemic, and again from the 1970s to the present day. The authors show that identifying this devastating syndrome is a first step toward its prevention and cure. Dying to Win presents an urgent message to parents, educators, policymakers, and the medical community on the crucial importance of providing young women with equal opportunity, and equal respect.

About the Authors:

Brett Silverstein is Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, City College of New York, and the author of Fed Up. Deborah Perlick is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College.

The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many. Noam Chomsky

Book Description:

This book was compiled from three interviews I conducted with Noam Chomsky in the Boston area on December 16, 1992 and January 14 and 21, 1993, which were then edited and revised. (A few lines were added in November, 1993.)
My questions appear in boldface. We've tried to define terms or names that may be unfamiliar the first time they occur.These explanations appear [in square brackets].
Tapes and transcripts of hundreds of Chomsky's interviews and talks -- and those of many other interesting speakers -- are also available. For a free catalog, call 303-444-8788 or write to me at 2129 Mapleton, Boulder CO 80304.
David Barsamian


Excerpts from the book.
Divide and conquer


To continue with India: talk about the divide-and-rule policy of the British Raj, playing off Hindus against Muslims. You see the results of that today.

Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another. For example, I think about 90% of the forces that the British used to control India were Indians.

There's that astonishing statistic that at the height of British power in India, they never had more than 150,000 people there.

That was true everywhere. It was true when the American forces conquered the Philippines, killing a couple hundred thousand people. They were being helped by Philippine tribes, exploiting conflicts among local groups. There were plenty who were going to side with the conquerors.

But forget the Third World -- just take a look at the Nazi conquest of nice, civilized Western Europe, places like Belgium and Holland and France. Who was rounding up the Jews? Local people, often. In France they were rounding them up faster than the Nazis could handle them. The Nazis also used Jews to control Jews.

If the United States was conquered by the Russians, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Elliott Abrams and the rest of them would probably be working for the invaders, sending people off to concentration camps. They're the right personality types.

That's the traditional pattern. Invaders quite typically use collaborators to run things for them. They very naturally play upon any existing rivalries and hostilities to get one group to work for them against others.

It's happening right now with the Kurds. The West is trying to mobilize Iraqi Kurds to destroy Turkish Kurds, who are by far the largest group and historically the most oppressed. Apart from what we might think of those guerrillas, there's no doubt that they had substantial popular support in southeastern Turkey.

(Turkey's atrocities against the Kurds haven't been covered much in the West, because Turkey is our ally. But right into the Gulf War they were bombing in Kurdish areas, and tens of thousands of people were were bombing in Kurdish areas, and tens of thousands of people were driven out.)

Now the Western goal is to use the Iraqi Kurds as a weapon to try and restore what's called "stability" -- meaning their own kind of system -- in Iraq. The West is using the Iraqi Kurds to destroy the Turkish Kurds, since that will extend Turkey's power in the region, and the Iraqi Kurds are cooperating.

In October 1992, there was a very ugly incident in which there was a kind of pincers movement between the Turkish army and the Iraqi Kurdish forces to expel and destroy Kurdish guerrillas from Turkey.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders and some sectors of the population cooperated because they thought they could gain something by it. You could understand their position -- not necessarily approve of it, that's another question -- but you could certainly understand it.

These are people who are being crushed and destroyed from every direction. If they grasp at some straw for survival, it's not surprising -- even if grasping at that straw means helping to kill people like their cousins across the border.

That's the way conquerors work. They've always worked that way. They worked that way in India.

Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy

Review by: John J. Casper


ANATOMY OF DECEIT is an extremely accessible 150-page introduction to Traitor gate. The chapter titles provide a window into the mastery that Marcy Wheeler brings to this material: 16 Words [September 2002 - March 2003]; Deconstructing Judy [March - July 2003]; Truth and Consequences [July 2003]; The Beltway Insider [July - October 2003]; Beat the Press [January 2004 - July 2005]; The Spin Doctor [September 2003 - August 2006]; The Fall Guy [September 2005 - December 2006].

Written in flawlessly clear prose, the novice needs no prior experience with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Valerie Plame, and the invasion of Iraq to understand the story or its importance. A time line is provided that all readers will find invaluable. Readers, who are familiar with the story, will relish the rich detail provided by the excellent endnotes. The end notes are consecutively numbered from start to finish, so the reader does not have to remember the chapter number, to find it in the notes. Perhaps a second edition will include a bibliography and even more importantly, an index, but these concerns are small against such a worthwhile and timely book. ANATOMY OF DECEIT will receive very strong consideration for a Pulitzer.

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate

Author: Gary Chapman
ISBN-10: 1881273156

Comments By: Al-Hasan

The five love languages is one of those books that help you to understand the people you love in your life. The author attempts to show the reader how to understand and speak the language of love. Not in the way you understand it, but in the way the other person understands it.

The five languages Chapman refers to are "Words of Affirmation", "Quality Time", "Receiving Gifts", "Acts of Service", and "Physical Touch". These are the primary languages (principles) your spouse speaks. The idea is to figure out which of those you need to do more of to make your significant other happy and fall back in love with you

The author relates insightful examples from his and other people’s realities in each principle to explain his premise which makes the book easy and friendly to follow. The book primarily focuses on the husband-wife relationship, but the 5 principles Chapman mentions could be applied in understanding relationships with parents, friends, co-workers, children and anyone who you come in contact with.

It is an insightful book, but it does go on a bit. The author could have mentioned the principles and explained what they are and how to apply them and end it, but I feel it was not going to end.

The are many beneficial points that the author expresses, however there are some flaws; near the end of the book he stipulates that even if the husband hates his wife she should approach him for intimate relationship because the husband might fall in the category of ‘’Physical Touch’’. This is an erroneous, unrealistic and flawed assertion. He even tries to ‘holify’ it by quoting Jesus. Apart from that, it’s a good read.

Eight Theories of Religion

Daniel L. Pals
ISBN-10: 0195165705

Book Description

Why do human beings believe in divinities? Why do some seek eternal life, while others seek escape from recurring lives? Why do the beliefs and behaviors we typically call "religious" so deeply affect the human personality and so subtly weave their way through human society? Revised and updated in this second edition, Eight Theories of Religion considers how these fundamental questions have engaged the most important thinkers of the modern era. Accessible, systematic, and succinct, the text examines the classic interpretations of religion advanced by theorists who have left a major imprint on the intellectual culture of the twentieth century.


The second edition features a new chapter on Max Weber, a revised introduction, and a revised, expanded conclusion that traces the paths of further inquiry and interpretation traveled by theorists in the most recent decades. Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, begins with Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer--two Victorian pioneers in anthropology and the comparative study of religion. It then considers the great "reductionist" approaches of Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, all of whom have exercised wide influence up to the present day. The discussion goes on to examine the leading challenges to reductionism as articulated by sociologist Max Weber (new to this edition) and Romanian-American comparativist Mircea Eliade.


Finally, it explores the newer methods and ideas arising from the African field studies of ethnographer E. E. Evans-Pritchard and the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. Each chapter offers biographical background, theoretical exposition, conceptual analysis, and critical assessment. This common format allows for close comparison and careful evaluation throughout. Ideal for use as a supplementary text in introductory religion courses or as the central text in sociology of religion and courses centered on the explanation and interpretation of religion, Eight Theories of Religion, Second Edition, offers an illuminating treatment of this controversial and fascinating subject.

About the Author

Daniel L. Pals is at University of Miami.

The Language of God

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

Francis S. Collins

Review by: D. Rigas

The latest popularity of the evangelical fundamentalist position on one hand and the growing response of the scientific atheist faction on the other, have recently brought forth an increasing number of books written by believing scientists. This one is the contribution of Dr. Collins, the head of the Genome Project that mapped the human DNA.


As with other similar authors, Dr Collins first establishes his unquestionable scientific authority, and then uses his detailed knowledge of his field (genetics) to prove that Darwin was right and the literal 6000-year creationists wrong. Part of his proof is based on the existence of so-called "junk DNA" segments of purposeless chance-generated code located between genes, and on their similar location in the DNA of other animals along the evolution scale. The average reader, like me, has to accept all that on blind faith, just as he accepts the explanation of gravity and other scientific Truths.


The author's justification for God's existence, on the other hand, is based on a somewhat less sturdy foundation. It depends almost entirely on what he calls "The Moral Law," the selfless altruism that he finds existing in the entire human race and to nobody else in the animal world. He discusses how the "Golden Rule" is found in all societies and ages and then concludes that the knowledge of right and wrong is inherent in all humankind. He maintains that it is a God-ordained plan, somehow planned from the very beginning of the universe fourteen billion years ago. Personally, I am not convinced that all humans have the same sense of what is right and wrong, and I am even less convinced that altruism is missing among animals. How else can you explain the dog who gives up his life protecting his master or the animals he shepherds? Or the numerous stories of dolphins saving drowning people, often fighting off sharks to do it?


When a scientist discusses God he is forced to specify who that God is, something not required of the Catholic priest or the Baptist minister whose religions define him. The God of Dr. Collins is the creator of a universe specifically designed to evolve mankind. For according to the "Anthropic Principle," if any one of half a dozen universal constants did not have the exact value it does the universe would not have lasted long enough or have been capable of supporting human life. But the author also believes that from the instant of its creation God almost never interfered in the progress of stellar and earthly evolution. And how then does he account for the fact that this evolution has been affected by numerous chance events of defining importance, like the meteor impact on earth 65 million years ago which resulted in the death of the dinosaurs and gave mammals and eventually man an opportunity to develop?


According to Dr. Collins "If God is outside of nature, then He is outside of space and time. In that context, God could in the moment of creation of the universe also know every detail of the future....In that context evolution could appear to us to be driven by chance, but from God's perspective the outcome would be entirely specified." Does that mean that after God created the universe and saw that a meteor did not chance to impact earth at the proper time to enable human evolution, he immediately destroyed that particular universe and started all over again until chance events cooperated with his intent?


The writings of C. S. Lewis have apparently helped resolve many of Dr. Collins's theological puzzlements, and he includes numerous quotations from them. Although these are highly emotional and spiritual I find them to be more philosophically than scientifically inspired. I have the same opinion of most of the author's own arguments in this book.
(The writer is the author of "Christianity without Fairy Tales: When Science and Religion Merge," and of the forthcoming "The Way of the Butterfly: A Scientific Speculation on God and the Hereafter.")

UNDERSTANDING POWER: The Indispensable Chomsky

Discussions of Noam Chomsky
Edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel.


Noam Chomsky is universally accepted as one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the modern era. Over the past thirty years, broadly diverse audiences have gathered to attend his sold-out lectures. Now, in Understanding Power, Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel have assembled the best of Chomsky's talks on the past, present, and future of the politics of power.

In a series of enlightening and wide-ranging discussions--published here for the first time--Chomsky radically reinterprets the events of the past three decades, covering topics from foreign policy during the Vietnam War to the decline of welfare under the Clinton administration. And as he elucidates the connection between America's imperialistic foreign policy and social inequalities at home, Chomsky also discerns the necessary steps to take toward social change. With an eye to political activism and the media's role in popular struggle, as well as U.S. foreign and domestic policy, Understanding Power is definitive Chomsky.

Characterized by Chomsky's accessible and informative style, Understanding Power is the ideal book for those new to his work as well as for those who have been listening for years.

Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel are public defenders in New York City.

Islam and the Destiny of Man By GAI EATON

Islam and the Destiny of Man

CHARLES LE GAI EATONPAPERBACK 262 pages size: 234 x 156mmPublished: 1994 by The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge UKISBN: 0 946621 47 0


Islam and the Destiny of Man is a wide-ranging study of the religion of Islam from a unique point of view. The author was brought up as an agnostic and embraced Islam at an early age after writing a book (commissioned by T.S.Eliot) on Eastern religions and their influence upon Western thinkers. The aim of this book is to explain what it means to be a Muslim, a member of a community which embraces a quarter of the world's population and to describe the forces which have shaped their hearts and minds. Throughout the book the author is concerned not simply with Islam in isolation, but with the very nature of religious faith, its spiritual and intellectual foundations and the light it casts upon the mysteries and paradoxes of the human condition. 'Considered essential by [those] seeking to understand Islam.' Sunday Telegraph


Charles Le Gai Eaton was born in Switzerland and educated at Charterhouse and King’s College, Cambridge. He worked for many years as a teacher and journalist in Jamaica and Egypt (where he embraced Islam in 1951) before joining the British Diplomatic Service. He is now consultant to the Islamic Cultural Centre in London .

IBN ASHUR: TREATISE ON MAQASID AL-SHARIAH

Goals, Objectives, Higher Objectives, principles, Intent, Purpose..

Paperback 489 Pages
Published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought IIIT, London, Washington
ISBN: 1-56564-422-0

Ibn Ashur’s famous and pioneering study of the Shariah’s higher objectives and goals. To restore the intimate contact between Muslims and the Qur’an scholars developed the study of the objectives of Islam. The Shariah is marked by a universal wisdom whereby every legal ruling has a function which it performs, an aim which it realises, an intention which it seeks to fulfill and all of this in order to realise benefit to human beings or to ward off harm or corruption.
Muhammad al-Tahir ibn ‘Ashur (1879 -1973~)was an eminent figure in the institution of the Tunisian scholars for most of the twentieth century. He is also highly regarded as a Muslim reformist and his Qur’anic tafsir al-Tahrir wa’l-tanwir, is among the influential tafsirs produced in the modern era.

Since he lived during the colonial period, as well as the early period of Tunisian independence, Ibn ‘Ashur’s intellectual output reflects different forces and stands witness to the dilemma experienced by the ‘ulama’ in a time of unprecedented change.


Influenced by Muhammad ‘Abduh, and responding to modern challenges to Islamic traditions, Ibn ‘Ashur called for substantive reforms in Islamic education. His work on the ultimate purposes of the Shari‘a represents not only an attempt to revive the maqasid theory of Shatibi, but also a significant addition to modern efforts to renew Islamic legal theory. Ibn ‘Ashur, however, seems to have become disappointed with the independent state’s drive for modernisation and radical secularisation.