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[
Making the Golden Years Golden ] [
The Persian Night ] [ American
National Security ] [ The Suicide of Reason ]
[ Page Turners: Tempest in the Temple, The Composer Is
Dead, Key Words in Islam, Atlas of the Middle East, The Murmuring Deep
] |
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![Making The Golden Years Golden](../../images/books/boo_0906-01.gif) Prepare For Your
Future
ABY
BOOMERS, born between 1946-64, are entering the golden age of life,
and find they’re facing elder shock. Many are not prepared for life on
Social Security. In fact, they’ll have to overcome obstacle as they
apply for such aid.
"We did not maintain the system which
now has to absorb increasing numbers of the elderly," says Eva Mor,
and epidemiologist and specialist in gerontology and health care
management.
In an interview at her home on Fifth
Avenue, Mor explained how the system has not improved. People today
have to wait longer to have their cases established than they did 10
years ago. Government cost cutting measures have resulted in computers
not being upgraded, staff downsized and offices closed.
What’s more, there aren’t enough
professionals to provide services for the elderly. And it will only
get worse as the numbers continue to increase. "Within 10 years there
will be 77 million people over age 50," she said.
Don’t wait. Guide yourself with
Eva Mor’s
Making The Golden Years Golden
($19.95
Amazon.com
Price: $17.95).
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To Reconstruct The
World
URING
the era of the shah Iran was a strong nation in a region of newly
created states. For the succeeding mullahs Iran has become an Islamic
powerhouse with messianic ambitions to conquer the world in the name
of Allah. All that stands in Iran’s way to replace the revolution-bred
Soviet Union, now dead and buried, and export its Islamist revolution
to the world is—the American Great Satan.
How this plays out is the theme
of Amir Taheri’s
The Persian Night: Iran
under the
Khomeinist Revolution,
a fascinating study of this vibrant modern nation-state. The author,
Amir Taheri, was the executive editor of
Kayhan, Iran’s largest newspaper, before
the mullahs seized power. He has since been writing for the
Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times,
Commentary and other publications.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Taheri
says, believes that the world is heading for "a clash of
civilizations" in the Middle East, with Iran leading the Muslim world
against the "Crusader-Zionist camp" led by America.
Iran is a cause, not a country. The
vision of the Khomeinist revolution is to conquer the world for Islam
much as Hitler aimed in the name of the Aryan master race and Stalin
dreamt in the name of communism.
So the issue comes down to this: who
will shape the future of the Middle East and the world beyond—Iran or
the U.S.? (Encounter, 413 pages,
$25.95,
Amazon.com
Price: $17.13)
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Keeping Up With
National Security
OR
one with an interest in national security strategy—which should
include every one of us—there is one text that is essential to study.
That book is the sixth edition of
American
National Security.
This exhaustive tome made its debut in 1980 as a
textbook conceived at the United States Military Academy’s department
of social sciences. It has since been updated several times, and the
new sixth edition serves as a very important source of knowledge on
national and international security issues.
Although the Chinese have made significant inroads in
economic power on the global panorama, its military stance poses no
threat in the near term. As China has no aircraft battle groups or
long range bombers, few destroyers on the open ocean, and no military
bases abroad, according to the four authors, it poses no challenge to
U.S. global leadership in the near term.
As for facing the al-Qa’ida threat, the authors urge
the U.S. leadership to make "difficult—yet necessary—policy changes"
in the Middle East. Progress will be measured in decades, not years.
The eminent authors are Amos A. Jordan, a former
Deputy Undersecretary of State; William J. Taylor, Jr., former
director of national security studies at the U.S. Military Academy,
West Point; Michael J. Meese, deputy head of the department of social
sciences at the U.S. Military Academy, and Suzanne C. Nielsen,
director of the international relations and national security studies
program at the U.S. Military Academy. (Johns Hopkins University Press,
softcover, 663 pages, $30.00,
Amazon.com
Price: $27.31)
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The Enemy Is Us
ESTERN
liberalism is not guaranteed to survive into the future. It’s a
dangerous illusion to believe that its triumph is inevitable. In
The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West we
learn, "Modernity, for us, is the cure for Islamic ‘backwardness’; for
many Muslims, modernity is the disease to be wiped out," says author
Lee Harris.
Actually the threat to our future in
the West emanates from two sources. One is from within. We live in a
carpe diem society in which the highest good is to follow your bliss.
It stresses "the individual over the community, rights over duties,
the present over the future, feeling good about yourself over trying
to improve."
However, "the liberal West may be more
threatened today by its own ethos than it is by the very different
threat emanating from a culture like Islam, in which individuals,
instead of following their own bliss, are willing to die—and, alas,
kill—in order to impose their cultural traditions on those who have
lost all sense of the precious value of their own."
It is up to the liberals in the West
and the East to defend their basic rights. As Harris states, "In order
for fanaticism to get the upper hand in a culture or society, he
fanatics need not be the majority—all that is necessary is for the
majority to stand aside and let the fanatics take charge." (Basic
Books/Perseus, softcover, 290 pages,
$16.95,
Amazon.com
Price: $11.53)
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Page
Turners
Tempest
in the Temple is a disturbing account
of child sex abuse in the Jewish community. Eleven rabbis, lawyers,
sociologists and scholars contribute nine chapters to bring this issue
out of the closet by exposing religious leaders who violate sexual
boundaries in the synagogue and the yeshiva. Rabbis who betray their
trust through active pedophilia has become a shanda among
embarrassed Jews. Who are they and how can that happen? (Brandeis
University Press/University Press of New England, 272 pages, $35.00,
Amazon.com
Price: $26.60)
The
Composer Is Dead and the inspector
sets out to uncover the culprit. The book is an adaptation of a
musical whodunit for narrator and orchestra that was commissioned by
the San Francisco Symphony in 2006. Written by Lemony Snicket (aka
Daniel Handler), with music by Nathaniel Stookey, the musical has
become a family favorite of orchestras everywhere. The picture book,
with an accompanying CD, will amuse readers 5 and up to no end. Enjoy
the video interview with Snicket and Stookey at
www.youtube.com/sfsymphony.
(HarperCollins Children’s Books,
$17.99,
Amazon.com
Price: $12.23)
![Key Words in Islam](../../images/books/boo_0906-05.jpg) Key
Words in Islam is a little book with lots of definitions. Ron
Geaves, professor of religious studies at the University of Chester,
has produced a Key Words series of religious terminology, glossaries,
of Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and general religious
studies. In each of these pocket-size guides are some 400 essential
concepts you need to know when reading about the world’s great
religions. (Georgetown University Press, paperback, 130 pages,
Amazon.com
Price: $13.96)
![Atlas of the Middle East](../../images/books/boo_0906-06.jpg) Atlas
of the Middle East, 2d ed., is an excellent resource to
understanding this volatile region. Published by the National
Geographic, you are assured of accurate and capacious data, including
maps and profiles of all the countries, plus special pages devoted to
regional conflicts in Iraq, Darfur, and Israel/Palestine, and graphs
and maps on the languages and religions of the area. (National
Geographic, softcover, 128 pages, 75 color photographs, 15 black and
white photographs, 100 maps plus graphics and charts,
$421.95,
Amazon.com
Price: $14.93)
The
Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious brings
us profound biblical interpretations from the Jewish sages of the
Talmud, Midrash and the mystical Zohar. Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, a
teacher in Jerusalem who lectures in the U.S. and U.K., probes the
ancient narrative from a psychoanalyst’s perspective. Her analyses are
so enthralling, you navigate from Adam and Eve, to Noah’s flood and
Abraham’s journey to the saga of Ruth the Moabite, an alien from Moab
destined to become the ancestor of King David and the messiah. (Shocken,
441 pages,
$27.95,
Amazon.com
Price: $18.45)
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