Conservative Victory; Defeating Obama's Radical Agenda

By Sean Hannity

" Argues that President Obama's policies may lead to a permanent and disasterous change in the American way of life, and outlines how to reorganize the Republican Party to fight against them using examples from Reagan's presidency."  (Publisher Description)
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The Enemy In Our Hands; America's Treatment Of Enemy Prisoners Of War From the Revolution To The War On Terror

By Robert C. Doyle
How has America handled the problem of captured enemies? Doyle (history, Franciscan Univ.; Voices from Captivity) unravels the various complex strains of enemy prisoners of war (EPWs) treatment, covering the U.S. military experience from the American Revolution to the present. He relies heavily on the moral high ground, a concept that sounds simple but involves difficult tradeoffs among morality, pragmatism, and situationalism. The moral and historical issues here will be of interest to military students, historians, political scientists, ethicists, and similar scholars. Heavily annotated, with a lengthy bibliography, this strongly recommended title should be read along with Paul Springer's America's Captives. (LJ Reviews)
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The Big Short; Inside the Doomsday Machine

By Michael Lewis
"Versatile best-selling author Lewis (Panic) gives a different take on the 2007-08 credit crisis as he chronicles how a handful of investment managers detected early on the growing bubble in the mortgage bond market and made fortunes betting against it. Lewis is a storyteller, and he weaves the personal stories of these renegades against the inner workings of Wall Street's mortgage-backed securities money machine. He explains in plain language how the industry obscured credit risk by packaging and repackaging low-quality subprime mortgages into complicated securities that could receive high credit ratings in a process he calls the financial alchemy equivalent of turning lead into gold. He says investors then looked at little more than the ratings as they bought billions of dollars' worth of these supposedly safe bonds. Lewis turns the crisis into a true financial thriller that screams of Wall Street's greed, recklessness, deceit, incompetence, and hubris. VERDICT Readers from generalists through specialists will find this fast-paced, engaging account both illuminating and disturbing."
(LJ Reviews)
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Paradise Beneath Her Feet; How Women Are Transforming The Middle East

By Isobel Coleman
"Coleman reaches across the Middle East and into Asia in her wide-ranging discussion of feminism and Islam. She profiles women in fields ranging from education to politics who live across the Muslim world and individually exhibit great courage in their struggle to create greater opportunities for girls. The foundation of many of their arguments is Islam itself, and the ways in which they refute sexist interpretations of the Koran and Islamic law will be eye-opening to Western readers who have sadly grown jaded on the topic of feminism. The rapid-fire manner in which Coleman travels from one hot spot to another, tracking political struggles both large and small, makes it clear that while the Western world grapples with how to meet the cacophony of voices from the East, so also the women of Iran, Afghanistan, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia are finding a new and assertive way to communicate. Deeply religious, profoundly determined and modern in every way, these are twenty-first-century women bent on change. Hear them roar and see a future being born before our eyes."
(Booklist Reviews)
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Rough Justice; The Rise And Fall Of Eliot Spitzer

By Peter Elkind
"Traces the career and downfall of the former New York governor, describing how he transitioned from Princeton and Harvard Law to dramatic successes as a prosecutor and attorney general and was predicted to be the country's first Jewish president before the scandal that ended his gubernatorial career."  (Publisher Description)
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2010 - Take Back America; A Battle Plan

By Dick Morris

Two hard-hitting political commentators galvanize Americans for the political battle to take back the country from the Democrat-controlled Congress in the midterm elections of 2010.   ( Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

Kaboom; Embracing The Suck In A Savage Little War

By Matt Gallagher
"Lt. Gallagher arrived in Iraq in 2007 and promptly started to blog about it; his site became widely read by soldiers. It was ordered shut down in 2008 but was part of the cultural shift that by the next year embraced blogging by soldiers. Here, his exceptional narrative technique makes the soldier in-group cant both believable and coherent; his relentless pursuit of sanity in the midst of a chaotic storm of IEDs, policy changes, sheiks, civilians, and baffling missions makes this blog-based memoir an exciting read reminiscent of Anthony Swofford's Jarhead."
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Eaarth; Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

By Bill McKibben
"For 20 years McKibben has been writing with clarity and zeal about global warming, initially in the hope of staving it off and now in an effort to lessen its dire impact. With climate change under way, we now live on a far less hospitable planet than the one on which our civilizations coalesced for 10,000 years amidst resplendent biological diversity. McKibben postulates that because today's planet is so much hotter, stormier, and more chaotic with droughts, vanishing ice, dying forests, encroaching deserts, acid oceans, increased wildfires, and diminishing food crops, it merits a new name: "Eaarth." Although his meticulous chronicling of the current "cascading effects" of climate change is truly alarming, it isn't utterly devastating. That's because McKibben, reasonable and compassionate, reports with equal thoroughness on the innovations of proactive individuals and groups and explicates the benefits of ending our dependence on fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, and the unbalanced, unjust global economy. What distinguishes McKibben as an environmental writer beyond his literary finesse and firm grasp of the complexities of science and society is his generous pragmatism, informed vision of small-scale solutions to our food and energy needs, and belief that Eaarth will remain a nurturing planet if we face facts, jettison destructive habits, and pursue new ways of living with creativity and conscience."  (Booklist Reviews)
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We've Got Issues; Children and Parents in the Age of Medication

By Judith Warner
In this manifesto for change, New York Times blogger Warner ... examines the argument that Americans are overmedicating their children.The author wanted to write a condemnation of American parents for hysterically spotting mental disorders where there are none. When she began interviewing parents and mental-health professionals, however, she reversed her position. Only five percent of American children take psychotropic drugs, she writes, yet that many suffer from extreme mental illness, while another 15 percent endure at least minimal illness. Not only has Warner never met a parent who lunged for the medicine cabinet to dope up their kids, but some fought the medication route as long as they could, to the detriment of their child. It's true that antidepressant prescriptions for children have skyrocketed, but that's because primitive understanding of the brain left many sick children undiagnosed in the past; we now have more effective drugs for some illnesses; and the stigma of mental illness is blessedly diminished. Warner cites research that girls, minority children and those with less-educated parents are undertreated for ADHD. Careful reporter that she is, the author acknowledges that some experts might dispute parts of her thesis. Other signs of childhood trauma—teen pregnancy, school violence, crime, substance abuse and suicide—have declined, and Warner reports special professional skepticism about exploding rates of bipolar diagnoses in children. Meanwhile, too many laypeople are spooked by drug companies' ads plugging their latest products, which doctors might not recommend. Curtailing those ads and more insurance coverage for pediatric mental-health screenings are among the author's welcome common-sense proposals.Parents of mentally ill children will find this tonic reassuring, while all parents will find it a valuable reminder that it's not poor parenting to seek medical help for your children."  (Kirkus Reviews)
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Courting Disaster; How The CIA Kept America Safe And How Barack Obama Is Inviting The Next Attack

By Marc A. Thiessen
"White House speechwriter Marc Thiessen was locked in a secure room and given access to the most sensitive intelligence when he was tasked to write President George W. Bush’s 2006 speech explaining the CIA’s interrogation program and why Congress should authorize it. Few know more about these CIA operations than Thiessen, and in his new book, Courting Disaster, he documents just how effective the CIA’s interrogations were in foiling attacks on America, penetrating al-Qaeda’s high command, and providing our military with actionable intelligence. Thiessen also shows just how reckless President Obama has been in shutting down the CIA’s program and releasing secret documents that have aided our enemies. "  (Publisher Content)
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