To Build as Well as Destroy

To Build as Well as Destroy
Author: Andrew J. Gawthorpe
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2018-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501712098

For years, the so-called better-war school of thought has argued that the United States built a legitimate and viable non-Communist state in South Vietnam in the latter years of the Vietnam War and that it was only the military abandonment of this state that brought down the Republic of Vietnam. But Andrew J. Gawthorpe, through a detailed and incisive analysis, shows that, in fact, the United States failed in its efforts at nation building and had not established a durable state in South Vietnam. Drawing on newly opened archival collections and previously unexamined oral histories with dozens of U.S. military officers and government officials, To Build as Well as Destroy demonstrates that the United States never came close to achieving victory in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Gawthorpe tells a story of policy aspirations and practical failures that stretches from Washington, D.C., to the Vietnamese villages in which the United States implemented its nationbuilding strategy through the Office of Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support known as CORDS. Structural factors that could not have been overcome by the further application of military power thwarted U.S. efforts to build a viable set of non-Communist political, economic, and social institutions in South Vietnam. To Build as Well as Destroy provides the most comprehensive account yet of the largest and best-resourced nation-building program in U.S. history. Gawthorpe's analysis helps contemporary policy makers, diplomats, and military officers understand the reasons for this failure. At a moment in time when American strategists are grappling with military and political challenges in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, revisiting the historical lessons of Vietnam is a worthy endeavor.

Destroy, Build, Secure

Destroy, Build, Secure
Author: Will Jackson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2017-03-25
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781926958347

Destroy, Build, Secure argues that pacification has been essential to the survival of capitalism and that we need to take the concept seriously.

Raw

Raw
Author: Lamont "U-God" Hawkins
Publisher: Picador
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2018-03-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250191181

A PERFECT COMPANION READ TO THE SHOWTIME DOCUMENTARY, WU-TANG CLAN: OF MICS AND MEN Selected as a Best Book of the Year by Esquire "Couldn't put it down." – Charlamagne Tha God "Mesmerizing." – Raekwon da Chef "Insightful, moving, necessary." – Shea Serrano "Cathartic." –The New Yorker "A classic." –The Washington Post The explosive, never-before-told story behind the historicrise of the Wu-Tang Clan, as told by one of its founding members, Lamont "U-God" Hawkins. “It’s time to write down not only my legacy, but the story of nine dirt-bomb street thugs who took our everyday life—scrappin’ and hustlin’and tryin’ to survive in the urban jungle of New York City—and turned that into something bigger than we could possibly imagine, something that took us out of the projects for good, which was the only thing we all wanted in the first place.” —Lamont "U-God" Hawkins The Wu-Tang Clan are considered hip-hop royalty. Remarkably, none of the founding members have told their story—until now. Here, for the first time, the quiet one speaks. Lamont “U-God” Hawkins was born in Brownsville, New York, in 1970. Raised by a single mother and forced to reckon with the hostile conditions of project life, U-God learned from an early age how to survive. And surviving in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s was no easy task—especially as a young black boy living in some of the city’s most ignored and destitute districts. But, along the way, he met and befriended those who would eventually form the Clan’s core: RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, and Masta Killa. Brought up by the streets, and bonding over their love of hip-hop, they sought to pursue the impossible: music as their ticket out of the ghetto. U-God’s unforgettable first-person account of his journey,from the streets of Brooklyn to some of the biggest stages around the world, is not only thoroughly affecting, unfiltered, and explosive but also captures, invivid detail, the making of one of the greatest acts in American music history.

55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal

55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal
Author: Elizabeth White
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-01-28
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1501196839

A practical plan for the millions of people in their fifties and sixties who find themselves out of work, unable to find a job, and financially incapable of retiring, Elizabeth White shows how to get past any blame or shame, overcome denial, and find a path to a new normal. Elizabeth White has an impressive resume, which includes advanced degrees from Harvard and Johns Hopkins and a distinguished employment history. She started a business that failed and then tried to reenter the work force in her mid-fifties, only to learn that there is little demand for workers her age. For a while Elizabeth lived in denial, but then had to adjust to her new reality, shedding the gym membership, getting a roommate, forgoing restaurant meals, and so on. She soon learned she wasn’t alone: there are millions of Americans in her predicament and worse, exhausted from trying to survive and overcome every day. In 55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal, Elizabeth invites you to look beyond your immediate circumstances to what is possible in the new normal of financial insecurity. You’re in your fifties and sixties, and may have saved nothing or not nearly enough to retire. It’s too late for blame or shame—and it wouldn’t help anyway. What you want to know is what you can do now to have a shot at a decent retirement. “This relevant and well-researched book will appeal not only to those 55 plus, but to the generation coming right behind them who may face similar issues” (Booklist, starred review). 55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal is a must-have for anyone whose income has suddenly diminished or even disappeared. “Providing practical solutions with a focus on retirement and maximizing savings, White maintains authority with a realistic, empathetic tone throughout. This deeply useful work will resonate with aging readers of all income levels and situations” (Publishers Weekly). If you’re ready to get serious about feeling good again, this book is for you.

How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps
Author: Ben Shapiro
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-07-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0063001896

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! A growing number of Americans want to tear down what it’s taken us 250 years to build—and they’ll start by canceling our shared history, ideals, and culture. Traditional areas of civic agreement are vanishing. We can’t agree on what makes America special. We can’t even agree that America is special. We’re coming to the point that we can’t even agree what the word America itself means. “Disintegrationists” say we’re stronger together, but their assault on America’s history, philosophy, and culture will only tear us apart. Who are the disintegrationists? From Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States to the New York Times’ 1619 project, many modern analyses view American history through the lens of competing oppressions, a racist and corrupt experiment from the very beginning. They see American philosophy as a lie – beautiful words pasted over a thoroughly rotted system. They see America’s culture of rights as a façade that merely reinforces traditional hierarchies of power, instead of being the only culture that guarantees freedom for individuals. Disintegrationist attacks on the values that built our nation are insidious because they replace each foundational belief, from the rights to free speech and self-defense to the importance of marriage and faith communities, with nothing more than an increased reliance on the government. This twisted disintegrationist vision replaces the traditional “unionist” understanding that all Americans are united in a shared striving toward the perfection of universal ideals. How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps shows that to be a cohesive nation we have to uphold foundational truths about ourselves, our history, and reality itself—to be unionists instead of disintegrationists. Shapiro offers a vital warning that if we don’t recover these shared truths, our future—our union—as a great country is threatened with destruction.

Message from the Shadows

Message from the Shadows
Author: Antonio Tabucchi
Publisher: Archipelago
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1939810167

This new, expanded collection of Antonio Tabucchi's stories collects the best short fiction from the Italian author recognized as one of the masters of the form. Message From the Shadows is a new collection featuring Antonio Tabucchi's finest short stories, spanning the breadth of his career. These playful tales explore Tabucchi's signature themes, from his inventive, lyrical meditations on language, art, and philosophy, to his fascination with the passage of time, and the mystery of storytelling.

Crosslights

Crosslights
Author: Helen M. Ewuoso
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2012-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1469746441

This book will open your eyes to the different colors of Gods Love: in it you will fi nd instruction, guidance, encouragement, rebuke, correction and comfort for daily living. In addition, this book will enlighten, uplift and inspire you to be the best that you can be Spiritually, Physically, Academically, Martially, Psychologically and in all spheres of your life.

Rumi

Rumi
Author: Rumi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2013-04-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1611459206

Championed by the likes of Madonna, Donna Karan, and Deepak Chopra, Rumi has won such a following in this country that a few years ago he was proclaimed our bestselling poet. But translations that have popularized the work of this thirteenth-century Sufi mystic have also strayed from its essence. In this new translation, Farrukh Dhondy seeks to recover both the lyrical beauty and the spiritual essence of the original verse. In poems of love and devotion, rapture and suffering, loss and yearning for oneness, Dhondy has rediscovered the Islamic mystic of spiritual awakening whose quest is the key to his universal appeal. Here is at once a great poet of love, both human and divine, and the authentic voice of a moderate Islam—a voice that can resonate in today’s turbulent, fundamentalist times.

Time Ages in a Hurry

Time Ages in a Hurry
Author: Antonio Tabucchi
Publisher: Archipelago
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2015-04-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0914671065

As the collection's title suggests, time's passage is the fil rouge of these stories. All of Tabucchi's characters struggle to find routes of escape from a present that is hard to bear, and from places in which political events have had deeply personal ramifications for their own lives. Each of the nine stories in Time Ages in a Hurry is an imaginative inquiry into something hidden or disguised, which can be uncovered not by reason but only by feeling and intuition, by what isn't said. Disquieted and disoriented yet utterly human in their loves and fears, the characters in these vibrant and often playful stories suffer from what Tabucchi once referred to as a "corrupted relationship with history." Each protagonist must confront phantoms from the past, misguided or false beliefs, and the deepest puzzles of identity--and each in his or her own way ends up experiencing "an infinite sense of liberation, as when finally we understand something we'd known all along and didn't want to know."