Politiek

Begin dit jaar verscheen "Bloemen van het kwaad", een door Paul Damen verzorgde, meer dan 500 pagina's tellende bundeling van gedichten door 33 dictators, met telkens een toelichting en een korte biografie. Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, allemaal schreven ze gedichten. Te vaak vroegen lezers: moet Geert Wilders er niet bij, als dictator in de dop? Als definitief antwoord daarop nu, van dezelfde auteur, de bijlage "Gedachten over de Grote Geert", waarom Wilders wel of niet een dichtende dictator is.

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making-from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy.

'Gorgeously written, humorous, compelling, life affirming' Justin Webb, Mail on Sunday

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office.

Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune's Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.

A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective-the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of "hope and change," and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.

This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

'What is unexpected in A Promised Land is the former president's candour' David Olusoga, Observer

*One of Goodreads Most Popular Books of the Past Decade*

Over de opkomst en heerschappij van Vladimir Poetin

Argo by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio - the declassified CIA story behind the Oscar-winning film

WINNER OF BEST PICTURE AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS, THE BAFTAS AND THE GOLDEN GLOBES

Tehran, November 1979. Militant students stormed the American embassy and held sixty Americans captive for a gruelling 444 days. But until now the CIA has never revealed the twist to the Iran Hostage Crisis: six Americans escaped.

The escape plot was run by Antonio Mendez, head of the CIA's extraction team and a master of disguise. Mendez came up with an idea so daring and potentially foolish that it seemed destined for Hollywood... and indeed it was. He invented a fake sci-fi film called 'Argo' (from the actual name of the CIA mission, a reference to Jason and the Argonauts). After announcing the production to the movie industry, Mendez put together a team of real 1970s Hollywood actors, directors and producers - along with covert CIA officers. They would travel to revolutionary Iran under a foreign film visa, and while 'scouting locations' throughout the country they would track down the six Americans who were hiding out. After giving them false identities as part of the film crew, they would spirit them back across the border.

One part 'Ocean's 11' and another part 'Black Hawk Down', Mendez's mind-bogglingly complicated and risky gamble paid off: each escapee was extracted without a shot being fired. Mendez is considered one of the greatest officers in CIA history. The story of this, his greatest mission, has never been told.

Now an acclaimed film directed by and starring Ben Affleck, with Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin and John Goodman'

Antonio Mendez was cited by Richard Clarke as one of the top two or three CIA agents in history. He received the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit, the Trailblazer Medallion and the Intelligence Star - for his rescue of six Americans from revolutionary Iran. He and his wife, also a famed agent, were technical consultants on the television series 'The Agency' and founding board members of the International Spy Museum in Washington.

Matt Baglio is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist. His writing appears regularly in the Daily Mail and the Associated Press.

Based on Nixon s overlooked recordings, New York Times bestselling author John W. Dean connects the dots between what we ve come to believe about Watergate and what actually happened
Watergate forever changed American politics, and in light of the revelations about the NSA s widespread surveillance program, the scandal has taken on new significance. Yet remarkably, four decades after Nixon was forced to resign, no one has told the full story of his involvement in Watergate.
In The Nixon Defense, former White House Counsel John W. Dean, one of the last major surviving figures of Watergate, draws on his own transcripts of almost a thousand conversations, a wealth of Nixon s secretly recorded information, and more than 150,000 pages of documents in the National Archives and the Nixon Library to provide the definitive answer to the question: What did President
Nixon know and when did he know it?
Through narrative and contemporaneous dialogue, Dean connects dots that have never been connected, including revealing how and why the Watergate break-in occurred, what was on the mysterious 18 1/2 minute gap in Nixon s recorded conversations, and more.
In what will stand as the most authoritative account of one of America s worst political scandals, The Nixon Defense shows how the disastrous mistakes of Watergate could have been avoided and offers a cautionary tale for our own time."

The only book to tell the full story of how and why Britain voted to leave the EU. Based on unrivalled access to all the key politicians and their advisors - including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, George Osborne, Nigel Farage and Dominic Cummings, the mastermind of Vote Leave - Tim Shipman has written a political history that reads like a thriller, and offers a gripping, day-by-day account of what really happened behind-the-scenes in Downing Street, both Leave campaigns, the Labour Party, Ukip and Britain Stronger in Europe. Shipman gives his readers a ringside seat on how decisions were made, mistakes justified and betrayals perpetrated. Filled with stories, anecdotes and juicy leaks the book does not seek to address the rights and wrongs of Brexit but to explore how and why David Cameron chose to take the biggest political gamble of his life and explain why he lost. This is a story of calculation, attempted coups, individuals torn between principles and loyalty. All the events are here - from David Cameron's pledge to hold a referendum, through to the campaign itself, his resignation as prime minister, the betrayals and rivalries that occurred during the race to find his successor to the arrival of Theresa May in Downing Street as Britain's second female prime minister. All Out War is a book about leaders and their closest aides, the decisions they make and how and why they make them, as well as how they feel when they turn out to be wrong. It is about men who make decisions that are intellectually consistent and - by their own measure - morally sound that are simultaneously disastrous for themselves and those closest to them. It is about how doing what you know has worked before doesn't always work again. Most of all it is about asking the question: how far are you prepared to go to win?

A former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and an eminent economist tackle the biggest social issue of our time.

Of all the issues swirling around the 2008 election, the staggering projected costs for the upkeep of America's largest entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—loom with gathering intensity. Government revenues alone cannot solve the problem, but a solution must be found. In this book George P. Shultz and John B. Shoven take a practical—and optimistic—look at the issues at hand, offering an agenda for reform that will make these essential programs solvent. Drawing on a trove of original research, they take stock of the current situation, consider plans on offer from major thinkers in the field, and chart a course toward a system that provides income for the elderly and universal access to health care in ways that are fiscally sound. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to make an informed decision about the country's future.

Journalistieke analyse van de opkomst en ondergang van Pim Fortuyn en zijn partij LPF.

Vanuit het perspectief van een 13-jarige jongen, die met zijn vrienden een verhaal rondom de berichten over de Rote Armee Fraktion fantaseert, wordt het leven in de jaren zestig en zeventig in Duitsland beschreven.

C. Vann Woodward, who died in 1999 at the age of 91, was America's most eminent Southern historian, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Mary Chestnut's Civil War and a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. Now, to honor his long and truly distinguished career, Oxford is pleased to publish this special commemorative edition of Woodward's most influential work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. Indeed, the book actually helped shape that history. Published in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ordered schools desegregated, Strange Career was cited so often to counter arguments for segregation that Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the historical Bible of the civil rights movement." The book offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws, presenting evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1890s. Woodward convincingly shows that, even under slavery, the two races had not been divided as they were under the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s. In fact, during Reconstruction, there was considerable economic and political mixing of the races. The segregating of the races was a relative newcomer to the region.

Hailed as one of the top 100 nonfiction works of the twentieth century, The Strange Career of Jim Crow has sold almost a million copies and remains, in the words of David Herbert Donald, "a landmark in the history of American race relations."

Essay over godsdienstvrijheid, waarin ervoor wordt gepleit om deze drastisch uit te breiden, zowel in Nederland als elders in de wereld.

"Marcus Tullius Cicero (pron.: /ssro/; Classical Latin: [marks tul.ljs kkro?]; 3 January 106 BC? 7 December 43 BC; sometimes anglicized as Tully was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists."--Wikipedia.

Tweehonderd jaar eerste kamer. De laatste 25 jaar in het vizier. (1990-2015)

"House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House. It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump's inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin's long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that began more than thirty years ago, when the Russian Mafia first targeted Trump properties to launder money, and led to Putin's oligarchs and Mafia kingpins rescuing Trump from a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino bankruptcies in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence. To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991--that it merely evolved, with Trump's apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump's sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to the highest office in the land. He traces Russia's phoenixlike rise from the ashes of the post-Cold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower. Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential book is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today's world."--Jacket

The new book from Larry Siedentop, acclaimed author of Democracy in Europe, Inventing the Individual is a highly original rethinking of how our moral beliefs were formed and their impact on western society today 'Magisterial, timeless, beautifully written ... Siedentop has achieved something quite extraordinary. He has explained us to ourselves' Spectator This ambitious and stimulating book describes how a moral revolution in the first centuries AD - the discovery of human freedom and its universal potential - led to a social revolution in the west. The invention of a new, equal social role, the individual, gradually displaced the claims of family, tribe and caste as the basis of social organisation. Larry Siedentop asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern societies and government are built, and argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs emerged much earlier than we think. The roots of liberalism - belief in individual liberty, in the fundamental moral equality of individuals, that equality should be the basis of a legal system and that only a representative form of government is fitting for such a society - all these, Siedentop argues, were pioneered by Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, who drew on the moral revolution carried out by the early church. It was the arguments of canon lawyers, theologians and philosophers from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, rather than the Renaissance, that laid the foundation for liberal democracy. There are large parts of the world where other beliefs flourish - fundamentalist Islam, which denies the equality of women and is often ambiguous about individual rights and representative institutions; quasi-capitalist China, where a form of utilitarianism enshrines state interests even at the expense of justice and liberty. Such beliefs may foster populist forms of democracy. But they are not liberal. In the face of these challenges, Siedentop urges that understanding the origins of our own liberal ideas is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are. LARRY SIEDENTOP was appointed to the first post in intellectual history ever established in Britain, at Sussex University in the 1970's. From there he moved to Oxford, becoming Faculty Lecturer in Political Thought and a Fellow of Keble College. His writings include a study of Tocqueville, an edition of Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe, and Democracy in Europe, which has been translated into a dozen languages. Siedentop was made CBE in 2004. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK 'One of the most stimulating books of political theory to have appeared in many years ... a refreshingly unorthodox account of the roots of modern liberalism in medieval Christian thinking' John Gray, Literary Review 'A brave, brilliant and beautifully written defence of the western tradition' Paul Lay, History Today 'An engrossing book of ideas ... illuminating, beautifully written and rigorously argued' Kenan Malik, Independent 'A most impressive work of philosophical history' Robert Skidelsky

Kinderen van ouders die bij de Oost-Duitse geheime dienst Stasi werkten, vertellen wat voor impact dit op hun jeugd had.

Analyse van de internationale politiek vanuit de stelling dat democratie (het vrije Westen) steeds meer tegenover autocratie (nationalistische en fundamentalistische regimes) komt te staan.

Wij, Europeanen, leven met het gevoel dat de toekomst aan ons voorbijgaat. De crisis woedt als een storm over het continent en zet alle zekerheden op losse schroeven. Maar hebben we echt de boot gemist? En begrijpen we wel goed wat er aan de hand is? Jonathan Holslag beschrijft in dit boek op overrompelende wijze de naoorlogse economische geschiedenis van Europa. Het is een episch verhaal over onze drang naar welvaart en de manier waarop we het noorden zijn kwijtgeraakt. Als chroniqueur van zijn tijd kent Holslag zijn gelijke niet. Tegenover het haarscherpe, ontstellende portret van een continent met een kapseizende economie, plaatst Holslag de mogelijkheid van een nieuwe renaissance. Diep in Europa zit nog steeds de kracht van het paradijs. 0.

Maakt de beeldcultuur ons apathisch? Schuilt er waarheid in de onderbuik? Waarom zie je nooit échte gesprekken op televisie? Hoe kunnen we het succes van de PVV verklaren? Kan keuzevrijheid ongelukkig maken? Wat is het doel van het onderwijs? Hoe komt het dat Europa als idee niet leeft? Wat maakt een boerka eigenlijk "religieus"? Zijn klimaatsceptici wel echt sceptisch? Bestaat het multiculturalisme nog wel? Waarom zijn terroristen bijna altijd jonge mannen? Heeft de evolutie een doel? Hoe ver kun je gaan met een baby op maat? Waarom zijn voorspellingen, ook economische, praktisch waardeloos? In zijn nieuwe boek geeft Rob Wijnberg, als altijd fris en opgewekt, zijn visie op het hedendaagse leven.

Oriana Fallaci is back with her much-anticipated follow up to The Rage and the Pride, her powerful post-September 11 manifesto. The genesis for The Force of Reason was a postscript entitled Due Anni Dopo (Two Years Later), which was intended as a brief appendix to the thirtieth edition of The Rage and the Pride (2002). Once Ms. Fallaci completed the postscript, she chose to expand it into a book, a continuation of her ideas set in motion in The Rage and the Pride.In The Force of Reason Fallaci takes aim at the many attacks and death threats she received after the publication of The Rage and the Pride. Ms. Fallaci begins by identifying herself with one Master Cecco, the author of a heretical book who was burnt at the stake during the Inquisition seven centuries ago on account of his beliefs, and proceeds with a rigorous analysis of the burning of Troy and the creation of a Europe that, to her judgment, is no longer her familiar homeland but rather a place best called Eurabia, a soon-to-be colony of Islam (with Italy as its stronghold). Ms. Fallaci explores her ideas in historical, philosophical, moral, and political terms, courageously addressing taboo topics with sharp logic.

A spirited and insightful examination of the need for American tax reform—arguably the most overdue political debate facing the nation—from one of the most legendary political thinkers, advisers, and writers of our time.

A thoughtful and surprising argument for American tax reform, arguably the most overdue political debate facing the nation, from one of the most respected political and economic thinkers, advisers, and writers of our time.

The United States Tax Code has undergone no serious reform since 1986. Since then, loopholes, exemptions, credits, and deductions have distorted its clarity, increased its inequity, and frustrated our ability to govern ourselves.

At its core, any tax system is in place to raise the revenue needed to pay the government’s bills. But where that revenue should come from raises crucial questions: Should our tax code be progressive, with the wealthier paying more than the poor, and if so, to what extent? Should we tax income or consumption or both? Of the various ideas proposed by economists and politicians—from tax increases to tax cuts, from a VAT to a Fair Tax—what will work and won’t? By tracing the history of our own tax system and by assessing the way other countries have solved similar problems, Bartlett explores the surprising answers to all of these questions, giving a sense of the tax code’s many benefits—and its inevitable burdens.

Tax reform will be a major issue debated in the years ahead. Growing budget deficits and the expiration of various tax cuts loom. Reform, once a philosophical dilemma, is turning into a practical crisis. By framing the various tax philosophies that dominate the debate, Bartlett explores the distributional, technical, and political advantages and costs of the various proposals and ideas that will come to dominate America’s political conversation in the years to come.

Ineens kende de hele wereld die twee letters: IS, een terreurgroep die midden in de chaos van Irak en Syrië de Islamitische Staat uitriep. Het Westen was overdonderd en greep in, maar IS laat zich niet makkelijk verslaan. Wie zijn deze mensen precies, wat willen ze en waar komen ze vandaan? 0In dit boek neemt de ervaren oorlogsverslaggever Hans Jaap Melissen de lezer mee op reis; naar het New York van net na 9/11 en de oorlogen in Irak en Syrië. Als een van de weinige journalisten gaat Melissen nog naar plekken waar een aantal van zijn collega's is ontvoerd en later onthoofd. 0Melissen laat zien hoe een vruchtbare voedingsbodem kon ontstaan van waaruit een onbeduidend groepje rebellen uitgroeide tot een van de rijkste en meest meedogenloze terreurbewegingen ooit. Een beweging die handig gebruik maakt van sociale media en een grote aantrekkingskracht uitoefent op buitenlandse jihadisten, ook uit Nederland. Inmiddels probeert een internationale coalitie onder leiding van de Verenigde Staten IS te verslaan. Maar gaat dat lukken? Of zal IS altijd weer van zich laten horen met aanslagen, waar ook ter wereld?

Persoonlijke verhalen en portretten van dak- en thuislozen, die vertellen waarom ze op straat zijn beland.

Triest verslag uit Soedan over hoe het regeringsleger met mensen omspringt, gevangenschap, marteling

Increasing oil prices . . . America struggling with a recession . . . European nations at risk of defaulting on their loans . . . A possible global financial crisis. It happened before, in the 1970s.

Oil Kings is the story of how oil came to dominate U.S. domestic and international affairs. As Richard Nixon fought off Watergate inquiries in 1973, the U.S. economy reacted to an oil shortage initiated by Arab nations in retaliation for American support of Israel in the Arab- Israeli war. The price of oil skyrocketed, causing serious inflation. One man the U.S. could rely on in the Middle East was the Shah of Iran, a loyal ally whose grand ambitions had made him a leading customer for American weapons. Iran sold the U.S. oil; the U.S. sold Iran missiles and fighter jets. But the Shah’s economy depended almost entirely on oil, and the U.S. economy could not tolerate annual double-digit increases in the price of this essential commodity. European economies were hit even harder by the soaring oil prices, and several NATO allies were at risk of default on their debt.

In 1976, with the U.S. economy in peril, President Gerald Ford, locked in a tight election race, decided he had to find a country that would sell oil to the U.S. more cheaply and break the OPEC monopoly, which the Shah refused to do. On the advice of Treasury Secretary William Simon and against the advice of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Ford made a deal to sell advanced weaponry to the Saudis in exchange for a modest price hike on oil.

Ford lost the election, but the deal had lasting consequences. The Shah’s economy was destabilized, and disaffected elements in Iran mobilized to overthrow him. The U.S. had embarked on a long relationship with the autocratic Saudi kingdom that continues to this day.

Andrew Scott Cooper draws on newly declassified documents and interviews with some key figures of the time to show how Nixon, Ford, Kissinger, the CIA, and the State and Treasury departments—as well as the Shah and the Saudi royal family— maneuvered to control events in the Middle East. He details the secret U.S.-Saudi plan to circumvent OPEC that destabilized the Shah. He reveals how close the U.S. came to sending troops into the Persian Gulf to break the Arab oil embargo. The Oil Kings provides solid evidence that U.S. officials ignored warning signs of a potential hostage crisis in Iran. It discloses that U.S. officials offered to sell nuclear power and nuclear fuel to the Shah. And it shows how the Ford Administration barely averted a European debt crisis that could have triggered a financial catastrophe in the U.S. Brilliantly reported and filled with astonishing details about some of the key figures of the time, The Oil Kings is the history of an era that we thought we knew, an era whose momentous reverberations still influence events at home and abroad today.

This volume, simultaneously published in Russian and English, demonstrates that an American and a Russian of different views can engage in civil and informative discussion of their different and common problems. In the summer of 1987, Galbraith and Menshikov, of World Marxist Review met for 10 days in Vermont. This volume records their discussions, which cover the history and development of the socialist economy and of capitalism, the economic problems of the two systems, the impact of technological revolution on them, and glasnost and Reaganomics. Other topics include: the military spinoffs of space research, arms sales to the Third World, Keynesian follies, cultural and diplomatic cooperation, human rights, and the dangers of a nuclear holocaust. These discussions point the way toward more peaceful and enlightened relations between the two countries. ISBN 0-395-47316-0: $17.95.

This collection of essays by some of the world's leading authorities on Islamic social history focuses on the juridical and cultural oppression of non-Muslims in Islamic societies. 

From the Publisher: Thomas L. Friedman's No. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world, and globalization, in a new way. With his latest book, Friedman brings a fresh and provocative outlook to another pressing issue: the interlinked crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy-both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to the 2008 presidential election-and to all of us who are concerned about the state of America and its role in the global future. "Green is the new red, white, and blue," Friedman declares, and proposes that an ambitious national strategy-which he calls geo-greenism-is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating, it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure in the coming E C E-the Energy-Climate Era. Green-oriented practices and technologies, established at scale everywhere from Washington to Wal-Mart, are both the only way to mitigate climate change and the best way for America to "get its groove back"-to "reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad, retool America for the new century, and restore America to its natural place in the global order." As in The World Is Flat and his previous bestseller The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he explains the future we are facing through an illuminating account of recent events. He explains how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet, which has brought three billion new consumers onto the world stage, have combined to bring the climate and energy issues to main street. But they have not really gone down main street yet. Indeed, it is Friedman's view that we are not really having the green revolution that the press keeps touting, or, if we are, "it is the only revolution in history," he says, "where no one got hurt." No, to the contrary, argues Friedman, we're actually having a "green party." We have not even begun to be serious yet about the speed and scale of change that is required. With all that in mind, Friedman lays out his argument that if we are going to avoid the worst disruptions looming before us as we enter the Energy-Climate Era, we are going to need several disruptive breakthroughs in the clean-technology sphere-disruptive in the transformational sense. He explores what enabled the disruptive breakthroughs that created the IT (Information Technology) revolution that flattened the world in information terms and then shows how a similar set of disruptive breakthroughs could spark the ET-Energy Technology-revolution. Time and again, though, Friedman shows why it is both necessary and desirous for America to lead this revolution-with the first green president, a green New Deal, and spurred by the Greenest Generation-and why meeting the green challenge of the twenty-first century could transform America every bit as meeting the Red challenge, that of Communism, did in the twentieth century. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L Friedman-fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.

The End of Iraq, definitive, tough-minded, clear-eyed, describes America's failed strategy toward that country and what must be done now. The United States invaded Iraq with grand ambitions to bring it democracy and thereby transform the Middle East. Instead, Iraq has disintegrated into three constituent components: a pro-western Kurdistan in the north, an Iran-dominated Shiite entity in the south, and a chaotic Sunni Arab region in the center. The country is plagued by insurgency and is in the opening phases of a potentially catastrophic civil war. George W. Bush broke up Iraq when he ordered its invasion in 2003. The United States not only removed Saddam Hussein, it also smashed and later dissolved the institutions by which Iraq's Sunni Arab minority ruled the country: its army, its security services, and the Baath Party. With these institutions gone and irreplaceable, the basis of an Iraqi state has disappeared. The End of Iraq describes the administration's strategic miscalculations behind the war as well as the blunders of the American occupation. There was the failure to understand the intensity of the ethnic and religious divisions in Iraq. This was followed by incoherent and inconsistent strategies for governing, the failure to spend money for reconstruction, the misguided effort to create a national army and police, and then the turning over of the country's management to Republican political loyalists rather than qualified professionals. As a matter of morality, Galbraith writes, the Kurds of Iraq are no less entitled to independence than are Lithuanians, Croatians, orPalestinians. And if the country's majority Shiites want to run their own affairs, or even have their own state, on what democratic principle should they be denied? If the price of a unified Iraq is another dictatorship, Galbraith writes in The End of Iraq, it is too high a price to pay. The United States must focus now, not on preserving or forging a unified Iraq, but on avoiding a spreading and increasingly dangerous and deadly civil war. It must accept the reality of Iraq's breakup and work with Iraq's Shiites, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs to strengthen the already semi-independent regions. If they are properly constituted, these regions can provide security, though not all will be democratic. There is no easy exit from Iraq for America. We have to relinquish our present strategy -- trying to build national institutions when there is in fact no nation. That effort is doomed, Galbraith argues, and it will only leave the United States with an open-ended commitment in circumstances of uncontrollable turmoil. Peter Galbraith has been in Iraq many times over the last twenty-one years during historic turning points for the country: the Iran-Iraq War, the Kurdish genocide, the 1991 uprising, the immediate aftermath of the 2003 war, and the writing of Iraq's constitutions. In The End of Iraq, he offers many firsthand observations of the men who are now Iraq's leaders. He draws on his nearly two decades of involvement in Iraq policy working for the U.S. government to appraise what has occurred and what will happen. The End of Iraq is the definitive account of this war and itsramifications.