Algora Publishing

Democrats and Republicans — rhetoric and reality; comparing the voters in statistics and anecdotes.

In this somewhat idiosyncratic work, Fried, a practicing CPA, collects and presents poll data that concerns differences between Americans who identify as Democrats and those who identify as Republicans. Where possible, Fried says, he has used data from the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies, but surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the Gallup Organization, the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, Harris Interactive, and other organizations have been utilized as well. The data is organized into chapters on lifestyle differences; who is more intelligent, knowledgeable, and educated; who is the "better working man"; who gives more to charity; who pays more taxes; who is the better citizen; who gets more from Social Security and Medicare; who gets more welfare; who is happier, who is more miserable, and why; who grows up to be a Democrat and who a Republican; and whether deviants grow up to be Republicans. Curiously, Republicans largely come off more positively, at least if one is assessing by stereotypical Republican value standards; but according to Fried, this is merely an accident of the objective data. Complementing the presentation of data are quips and anecdotes connected to the particular topic at hand. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

A dimly burning wick; memoir from the ruins of Hiroshima.

As she searched for her niece and nephew in the wake of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Sadako Okuda kept a daily diary in which she wrote down her own experiences and the stories of the children she encountered. Her memoir presented here is reconstructed from that diary and offers one of the few first-hand accounts of the horrors of that event. Supplementing the memoir are additional materials providing historical, psychological, and medical context for understanding the Hiroshima bombing. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Minimum wage policy in Great Britain and the United States.

According to some, reducing or eliminating the minimum wage creates more jobs. According to Waltman (political science, Baylor U.) and his research, such measures actually reduce the number of jobs. This is only one of the startling revelations here. Waltman examines the movements for a living wage in the US and the UK, the state of the largely deceased US federal minimum wage effort, the different approach to the notion of a minimum wage in the UK, and the relationship amongst both nations, the concept of the minimum wage, and the possible rebuilding of the welfare state. He carefully analyzes policies in both nations and the implications for the ongoing social experiment that is the minimum wage as well as the evolution of both policy and concept in both nations through their histories. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Occupation and insurgency; a selective examination of the Hague and Geneva Conventions on the Eastern Front, 1939-1945.

Heaton (history, military history, and sociology; American Military U.) describes the military and political failure of the German government under Hitler to introduce an effective and competent counter-insurgency doctrine after it invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. He also examines the legality of German military and political actions in light of the international accords that were in effect at the time. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Red states, blue states, and the coming sharecropper society.

Democratic Party activist Cummings expands on the argument he made in The Dixification of America: The American Odyssey into the Conservative Economic Trap, contending that the United States has long been characterized by two economic models that translated into different political paradigms. As a model, the conservative economy of the slave-holding south has been nationalized in the wake of Richard Nixon's Southern strategy and its dominance is leading the United States into becoming a sharecropper society. This danger can be avoided, suggests Cummings, if the Democratic Party embraces and actively pushes the more successful model that originated in the liberal Northeast. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)