not intended to be a guideline to modern government...
355129
I once read a statement about our current (2014) government - "The book 1984 was not intended to be a guideline to modern government".

There was some truth to that statement,  many of the concerns expressed in 1984 about the then "future" government - have come to pass in our current government.  examples: NSA monitoring everyone at all times (big brother is watching),  thinking and speaking being controlled (Political correctness vs 'thinkspeach').  1984 was scary accurate in some of it's predictions.

In similarity, I wonder if future generations will look back at Goodwins book as much the same as his contemporary George Orwell.
Will we find that future generations look back and wonder... "all the signs where there, heck Mark Goodwin wrote a book predicting it"... .

Goodwins book is about the an upcoming US economic collapse that is the result of poor choices (the people and government), many of which the American people have made recently or will need to make in the near future.  While this is not by any means a guaranteed progression of our economy,  it is a reasonably acceptable possibility.
1399834
Wilson's book goes beyond the surface of a lot of the talk about the state of the family today.  Unlike some other publications geared toward the religous community, this is purely a secular work, even if it does confirm many of the problems pointed out by pro-family Catholic and evangelical groups.

The thesis is this:  in the wake of society's overall material wealth and the advancement of individual rights, both good things in general, the state of marriage as a societal good has declined considerably.  In too many cases, the cohesive unit that functioned as a means of protection, support, and guidance for children has lost its glue, and the government has come to step in and perform some of these functions in certain situations, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

The chapter-by-chapter layout takes a look at the problem from different angles (single motherhood, divorce, African-American slavery, etc.) and compares the trends not with a romanticized ideal, but with what other cultures have done historically, to determine whether this trend is an anomaly or something to be expected, and where it might lead.

Among the more interesting tidbits is the fact that for whatever problem no-fault divorce has had today, it was not the result of a nefarious plan by feminists or others whose goal is to take down the family structure.  Rather it was the unintended consequences of a plan to make technical corrections to the law to comply with what had become practice.  The drafters of the no-fault laws were working under the naive assumption that these changes to remove the threat of a judical order finding fault would be complemented with government incentives to enter therapy and reconcile before the order be given.  When this didn't happen, the no-fault divorce provisions made it easier to dissolve the marriage without any restrictions.

This detail was to highlight that you're not getting a political or cultural polemnic in this book, but rather a systematic discourse on the problem with angles not normally seen in this debate.
1046333
Good info, but not what I was expecting. It seems a bit too hard to live with on an everyday basis
3171431
This is a cynical view of Hamilton's drive to create a central overlay of the governments of the 13 states. Reading his and other Founding Father's attempts at a "more perfect union" by creating a Constitution which specified a central body with some power over the individual States, you won't find any desire to create the bloateated, bureaucratic, monarchical monststrosity we have today. Even Hamilton who argued that there were some matters in which individual rights should be subordinated would be appalled at how far the federal state has intruded into the lives of its citizens. Far more so than ever the British Monarchy which they had just defeated. That said, it is a good read of how the intentions of the Founding Fathers, including Hamilton, have been twisted by the lawyerly assertions of succeeding generations of politicians.
3886128
I wanted to read this to see exactly how they work, and wasn't suprise to see many of the programs in America, especially from the Democrats, are in our government. I have been watching "America Heritage" in church, and have learned that what our founding fathers meant is what our government is saying. One passage from this book, really stuck me. It said that they are for the downfall of the family and listening to the Democrats, that is what they have been doing since the 1960's and started in the 40's with FDR.
  If you want to see what, and how they work, and their mindset, read this book.
3591268
A little more political than I care for but the point is made very well.
4193741
A nice, funny way of approaching a truth that isn't very funny at all, namely the raping of Americans by companies like GM, who have now exported their jobs to other countries where laws against "rape" haven't been enacted yet . . .
A basic question to those who might happen to read this review - our country was founded on the myth of one person, one vote.  Does the admixture of boatloads of cash into the political process make our republic a plutocracy?  Is freedom, in the political sense, illusory as long as money is allowed to buy votes, congress, and whole administrations?  When the very "enemy" who directed aircraft into buildings are in business with the leader of the country?  Where the vice-President's company breaks the law in dealing with the verbotten Iraqi govenment before he was elected, and yet still gets elected?
Finally, notice how towns in which the big three car makers set up shop, are dying?  Ford Heights, in Chicagoland, is a nice example . . . one of the poorest cities in the land of freedom, named after the old anti-Semite himself . . .
3042461
If you use these reviews to decide whether to read a book, it is critical that you notice which reviews actually "review" the book and which just call names and offer amateur commentary. It's not hard to tell.

This book is readable and presents a well argued point of view. It's about the erosion of self government and the institution which has become the oponent of citizen rule and traditional values. It is about those who have found a tool to circumvent the democratic process to get and keep power, and the social alliances that make that tool a virtual juggernaut. One need not, as one reviewer suggests, suffer the indoctrination of college civics to grasp the constitutional foundation of our republican democracy, nor to see the twisting of our founding document to mean, in some cases, the polar opposite of the original intent. Another reviewer wants to remind us that this is the 21st century. No longer, we may suppose, is it necessary to change the constitution by the provided means. We now have our societal elites who are more than happy to adjust it by interpretation and thus update it to their insightful understanding of how we should be governed. Will American citizens continue to be self governing, or will we allow certain elites who have taken a college civics course intimidate us into accepting the rule of rogue courts because we believe they are more educated than we are, they know better than we do, and perhaps because it require less effort that way. This book is about the peril of rule by judiciary, and it is worth reading.
1153521
Zinn's book is not intended to be a complete picture of American History.  He clearly states that the attention is to illuminate a view of our history that has been for too long left out.  Having said that I wouldn't use this book to teach 8th grade American history but I do believe it should be required reading for any adult attempting to understand the complete picture of American history.
People that only read American high school textbooks get a broad, sanitized version of American history.  I have substitute taught for several years and seen history books that deal with slave revolts in a single paragraph.  And usually through the use of ancedotal celebrity-type driven stories that do not give the reader a clear understanding of the lives of the majority of people.  Most Americans, as today, were not presidents or celebrity types - the over study of these people may be interesting to some but it does not help one develop a clear understanding of history to be able to name all the presidents - a computer can do that.
Simply put martin luther king did not encompass the entire civil rights movement, nor was rachel carson the soul impetus for the environmental movement.  It was everyday people like you and me.  To teach kids that only the extrodinary have a place in history is to disconnect them from the history they live now.  In doing so, we teach them that they are powerless.  A nation of citizens that learn powerlessness, a sense that they are as likely to change the world as play for the NBA, or the idea that they shouldn't challenge the system (or as conservatives call it patriotism) drains the spirit and vitality of democracy.
4867766
Levin has wrtten a book about a governing ideology -- promoted, enabled, and/or toleratd by BOTH major political parties for over a century -- that promises utopia to the masses through the agency of an increasingly powerful central government that expects in return only that We, the People, give up our liberty and individual sovereignty in direct contravention of the nation's founding principles. He thoroughly documents the historical and philosophical underpinnings of this ideology and relates it to our current politics. At 248 pages, it's not an easily digestible thesis by today's media hit-job standards ... particularly for those who prefer to feast on Newt's ex-wives and Mitt's money enroute to the voting booth.
4626500
Not overwhelmingly dense, but also not a quick read.
4967572
Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff by Matt Kibbe

 Matt Kibbe of Freedom Works presents both the need for a libertarian restoration of rationality in American and a collection of reforms that will go a long ways toward that restoration.  Liberty of course will be at the crux of any reforms.
 The first part of the lively text contains a familiar recitation of the horrors of an over reaching government in the current administration and horrors that have been long in the making.  You know what they are.  At the heart of all of them is a government out of control even of its own advocates who sit in the offices of power in Washington D.C.  How do I know the government is out of control of even those who are putatively in control of it?  Because when ever some enormity comes to public light the agency head always has the same answer.  Gee I didn't know my subordinates were selling guns to narko-terriorists.  or Gee I didn't know my subordinates were using the IRS to go after the political opponents of the President.
 Mr. Kibbe does give us a list of 12 reforms that will go a long way to  helping the current desperate situation.  I regret that he does not give more concrete advise on how to accomplish his goal.
 His six principals however do give one hope to continue the struggle.  Don't Hurt People.  Don't take people's stuff.  Take responsibility.  Work for it. Mind your own business.  And best of all Fight the Power.
 Libertarians, libertarians and those who want to understand that point of view will find Matt Kibbe a gleeful and informed guide.
2982339
This book is adequate in a sense.

The title would be more appropriate if it was about "thinking differently" than imagination.  I thought this book would have been about teaching you through various methods, to unleash the imagination that lies within you.  Instead, it really is all about thinking just "differently".  Differently not in the sense that different is good, but just for the sake of doing so.

The book also appears to have a somewhat political slant to it, left vs right or liberalism vs conservatism.  It seems to suggest that if you have a conservative way of thinking, that you are lacking in imagination.  Anyone who has a much more political nature to themselves and are on the "right" may find many of the things in this book inappropriate, unhelpful, and perhaps even sometimes offensive.  I am politically on the right, but luckily that part of me is only on in regards to politics.

Often, what is mundane to some is considered "imaginative" in this book, which I find amusing.  This book delivers its messages by way of examples from other people and how they do things.  It provides to actual routines to "unlock the power of possibility".

I found it at least informative in that it illustrated how a different set of the human population thinks, and in that sense it's ok.
3601175
I've had the opportunity to read portions of this book, and I agree with the ideas expressed throughout, except for the use of the word "Democracy."

The United States of America is NOT A DEMOCRACY. IT IS A REPUBLIC! There's a significant difference between the two words which the founders of the US were well aware of. A Democracy is nothing but the tyranny of the majority, while a (Constitutional) Republic, like the USA, provides a buffer between the will of the people and action/policy/law. I encourage those who have a love of freedom, as I do, to recognize the drastic difference between the two terms. Do not celebrate "Democratic Government," but rather be grateful for "Republican Government." (I don't necessarily mean that in terms of the modern American political parties... I'm referring to governmental structure.)
2100500
This book is a good read, well crafted and thought provoking as intended.  I recommend it as a balanced statement of current Foreign Policy choices. My criticism is more of a hope for a sequel. The book really doesn't anticipate the alternatives in the presence of what some have called an eroding for better or worse  of the Judeo-Christian values on which this country was founded and which characterized it until the "modern (60s and beyond)" evolution of our population and governmental function.  It touches on it, but more depth would be welcome.
762077
The Giver presents the reader to a dystopian  society that has forayed the people's right to CHOICE in an odious fashion; but nonetheless, it can at times be furtively appealing in an hypnotic way. To analyze this society initially it is quite inscrutable to identify how a people could so ardently support such an articulated "guidance." While this book is merely fiction, it indeed sheds light on an ideology that either is intrinsically intelligent, or it is quite eloquently repugnant to the nebulous of human desire, freedom to endeavor.  Being a Constitutionalist I prefer the latter rather than the former. To have one's perspective sculpted and wrought by a fashion of governmental control by means of familial degradation and division from a biological existence, sexual drive altered by compulsory pharmaceuticals, intricate scheduling of one's day, standards and virtues that are ubiquitous, one all encompassing day of "birth", population control, genetic manipulation, and procuring children and spouses by application and approval only, is quite destitute of any CHOICE. Is this inane? Is this madness? Or, if freedom was not known in the context that of which is lain before us in the U.S. Constitution-which both Republicrats and Demopublicans are obscuring-would this dystopia be so divisive? The society in this book is something one could indeed marvel by pretext to the actual context due to the lack of tyrannical behavior. We must not be disillusioned. We must not allow the propagators' evidence and statistical datum to dissuade us from having the penchant to pursue freedom as a virtue over security. For such a society in essence, no matter success, does indeed revoke the core and foundations of an inalienable right that our predecessors have fought eons for-FREEDOM! Articulating political structure  is arduous and elicits much dissension along the way; however, do not let that make one despondent or draw forth consternation or political apathy. For if political structure, by and for the people, becomes a derelict, then for our children FREEDOM will be merely a vestige. Or, perhaps a more formidable coin, an antiquated myth.

 Lowry has definitely deserved to be upon the list of writer's that has hit a symphonic political note. While not as fecundated as George Orwell's (Eric Blair) writing, she has a latent exhortation for us, or at least for me. The book also has a rendition upon perspective of reality and that will certainly shift the tides of what constitutes this book's yield. I would suggest everyone to read this book, along with other dystopian and utopian classics. Each of those titles have their own way of exorcising the demons from both forms of society.

 The end did irritate me slightly, I wanted a more pronounced and clarified ending. Nonetheless, following with the book's thesis, THE MATTER OF CHOICE, Lowry leaves it to the reader to bestow your interpretation; which is elating for some and exacerbating for others. My ending was grim which was evoked by random forethought rather than by intention.
4852878
I found this interview to be a refreshing change from the usual politics of 'bashing the opposition' which seem to have prevailed more and more in Washington these past fifteen years or so. The President gives a good understanding of how we got into some of the dilemmas we are in, and what the road forward might look like. Interestingly, he gives examples of several Republicans, including President Reagan, who understood that while less government may be better, no government and no help for those struggling to succeed, is not the answer either. In this, the present ultra conservative strand of the Republican Party is at issue not only with its current political opponents in Washington, but also with the traditions of the Republican Party. Essential reading, in my view, if one wants to get beyond the 'sound byte' nanosecond superficial understanding of what is happening in our world today....