BOOK REVIEWS

Topice Area: Supreme Court; Separation of Church and State

The First Liberty: America's Foundation In Religious Freedom (revised)

by: William Lee Miller
Author Info: now Scholar in Ethics and Institutions at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia; retired Commonwealth Professor and the Thomas C. Sorensen Professor, of Political and Social Thought. He has taught also at Yale University, Smith College, Indiana University, and other institutions, often teaching courses in church and state and religious liberty, subjects on which he has often written.
Description: With new material on recent Supreme Court cases involving church-state relations and a new concluding chapter on America's religious and political landscape, this volume is an eloquent and thorough interpretation of how religious faith and political freedom have blended and fused to form part of our collective history—and most importantly, how each concept must respect the boundaries of the other. See a Baptist E-Zine's review of this book: Baptist Studies Bulletin

Topic Area: Taxes

Wealth and Our Common Wealth
by: William H Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins
Author Info: Successful large Seattle law firm founder and father of Microsoft Billionaire Bill Gates Jr.
Description: Book about how wealthy individuals denied access to the US media thus preventing presentation of the history, relevance and truth about the need for the Inheritance Tax

Topic Area: Taxes

The Great Tax Wars
by: Steven R. Weisman
Author Info: Editor and 30 year reporter for The New York Times on politics, economics and international affairs.
Description: Provides a history of the development of tax structure of the US and the conflict between competing social interests that underly this contentious battle of more than 150 years.

Topic Area: Political Language & Framing

Don't Think Of An Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, The Essential Guide for Progressives
by: George Lakoff
Author Info: Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, U. of California, Berkeley
Description: Lakoff explains how conservatives think, and how to counter their arguments. He outlines in detail the traditional American values that progressives hold, but are often unable to articulate. Lakoff also breaks down the ways conservatives have framed the issues, and provides examples of how progressives can reframe the debate." Lakoff's years of research and work with environmental and political leaders have been distilled into this essential guide, which shows progressives how to think in terms of values instead of programs, and why people vote their values and identities, often against their best interests.

Topic Area: Political Language & Framing

Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think
by: George Lakoff
Author Info: Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, U. of California, Berkeley
Description: In this classic text, the first full-scale application of cognitive science to politics, Lakoff analyzes the unconscious and rhetorical worldviews of liberals and conservatives, discovering radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. For this new edition, Lakoff adds a preface and an afterword extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the impeachment of Bill Clinton to the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath. This is the foundation work undergirding Don't Think Of An Elephant.

Topic Area: Judges and Their Ideas

The People Rising: The Campaign Against the Bork Nomination
by: Michael Pertschuk and Wendy Schaetzel
Author Info: former Chief of Staff to Senator Warren Magnuson
Description: On October 23, 1987, the Senate voted not to confirm Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Only eleven Supreme Court nominations have been rejected by the Senate, and no nominee has ever been defeated by as large a margin as Bork. Yet no one accused Bork of private vices, or challenged his intellectual competence. The campaign against him attacked his ideas about the Constitution, and his attitude toward those—judges, academics, politicians, and citizens—who held different views from his. The battle was fought not in the back halls of Congress but in public: Bork's opponents conducted an elaborate and effective national campaign in the press and television, and the televised hearings on his confirmation concentrated national attention on the Constitution and on constitutional theory to a degree that has seldom if ever been equaled in our history.

ISBN:093841089X This book is not in print and not available at Barnes and Noble. Get it from the library, or from a used book source such as http://www.abebooks.com/