Inventing the Axis of Evil

Inventing the Axis of Evil
Author: Bruce Cumings
Publisher:
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781595580382

Argues that the "axis of evil" label applied by Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address is illusory, challenging current beliefs and fear-mongering practices with historical and political information about each targeted nation. Reprint.

North Korea

North Korea
Author: Bruce Cumings
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2011-05-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 159558739X

Depicted as an insular and forbidding police state with an "insane" dictator at its helm, North Korea—charter member of Bush's "Axis of Evil"—is a country the U.S. loves to hate. Now the CIA says it possesses nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as long-range missiles capable of delivering them to America's West Coast. But, as Bruce Cumings demonstrates in this provocative, lively read, the story of the U.S.-Korea conflict is more complex than our leaders or our news media would have us believe. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Korea, and on declassified government reports, Cumings traces that story, from the brutal Korean War to the present crisis. Harboring no illusions regarding the totalitarian Kim Jong Il regime, Cumings nonetheless insists on a more nuanced approach. The result is both a counter-narrative to the official U.S. and North Korean versions and a fascinating portrayal of North Korea, a country that suffers through foreign invasions, natural disasters, and its own internal contradictions, yet somehow continues to survive.

The Coup

The Coup
Author: Ervand Abrahamian
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1595588620

An “absorbing” account of the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran—essential reading for anyone concerned about Iran’s role in the world today (Harper’s Magazine). In August 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the swift overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader and installed Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in his place. When the 1979 Iranian Revolution deposed the shah and replaced his puppet government with a radical Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the shift reverberated throughout the Middle East and the world, casting a long, dark shadow over United States-Iran relations that extends to the present day. In this authoritative new history of the coup and its aftermath, noted Iran scholar Ervand Abrahamian uncovers little-known documents that challenge conventional interpretations and sheds new light on how the American role in the coup influenced diplomatic relations between the two countries, past and present. Drawing from the hitherto closed archives of British Petroleum, the Foreign Office, and the US State Department, as well as from Iranian memoirs and published interviews, Abrahamian’s riveting account of this key historical event will change America’s understanding of a crucial turning point in modern United States-Iranian relations. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title “Not only is this book important because of its presentation of history. It is also important because it might be predicting the future.” —Counterpunch “Subtle, lucid, and well-proportioned.” —The Spectator “A valuable corrective to previous work and an important contribution to Iranian history.” —American Historical Review

Plan of Attack

Plan of Attack
Author: Bob Woodward
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 605
Release: 2012-12-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1471104672

Award-winning journalist Bob Woodward has spent over thirty years in Washington's corridors of power. In All the President's Men it was he, together with Carl Bernstein, who exposed the Watergate scandal and he has been giving us a privileged front-row seat to White-House intrigue and decision-making ever since. With PLAN OF ATTACK he brings his investigative skills to bear on the administration of George W. Bush, and the build-up to war in Iraq. What emerges is a fascinating and intimate portrait of the leading powers in Bush's war council and their allies overseas as they prepare their pre-emptive attack and change the course of history.

Orientalism

Orientalism
Author: Edward W. Said
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2014-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804153868

A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is—three decades after its first publication—one of the most important books written about our divided world. "Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." —The New York Times In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding.

Constructing the Monolith

Constructing the Monolith
Author: Marc J. Selverstone
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674031791

As the cold war took shape during the late 1940s, policymakers in the United States and Great Britain displayed a marked tendency to regard international communism as a "monolithic" conspiratorial movement. The image of a "communist monolith" distilled the messy realities of international relations into a neat, comprehensible formula. Its lesson was that all communists, regardless of their native land or political program, were essentially tools of the Kremlin. Marc Selverstone recreates the manner in which the "monolith" emerged as a perpetual framework on both sides of the Atlantic. Though more pervasive and millennial in its American guise, this understanding also informed conceptions of international communism in its close ally Great Britain, casting the Kremlin's challenge as but one more in a long line of threats to freedom. This illuminating and important book not only explains the cold war mindset that determined global policy for much of the twentieth century, but reveals how the search to define a foreign threat can shape the ways in which that threat is actually met.

A New Map for Relationships

A New Map for Relationships
Author: Martin E. . Hellman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2016-08-20
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780997492316

Dorothie and Martin Hellman reveal the secrets that allowed them to transform an almost failed marriage into one where they reclaimed the true love that they felt when they first met fifty years ago. Surprisingly, they found that working on interpersonal and international challenges at the same time accelerated progress on both.

The Real Axis of Evil

The Real Axis of Evil
Author: Stephen Kaposi
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2004-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0595328954

In The Real Axis of Evil, author Stephen Kaposi has utilised extensive research to provide a tough and uncompromising indictment of the US invasion of Iraq, Western imperialism, globalisation, the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and the Police State being created in the name of "security". He reveals clearly how the mainstream media has provided a pro-establishment coverage to convince people of the need for war and increased security measures that are intended to control their populations. He demolishes the facades of George W. Bush and Tony Blair to reveal dangerous war makers intent on controlling the world and destroying opposition to their new Empires. He shows why Iraq has descended into chaos by revealing the extraordinary level of opposition to America, not just in Iraq, but around the world. The Real Axis of Evil is the necessary perspective to the sanitised, pro-American image the mainstream media has built to deceive people of the real world situation. The Real Axis of Evil provides the truths that the government and their media allies don't want you to know, and do their best to cover up.

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
Author: Rashid Khalidi
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-01-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1627798544

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.