Algora Publishing

Darkest Europe and Africa's nightmare; a critical observation of the neighbouring continents.

The author, a Kenyan-born freelance journalist, conducts a wide-ranging critical analysis of the political, cultural, and economic relationship between the West and Africa. She essentially argues that the long history of exploitation of Africa by the West continues today at the hands of American and European governments and their agents in the international monetary institutions and nongovernment organizations. She also aims to expose the racism that serves to obscure this history and current relationship and urge Africans to overcome their own collective inferiority complex in order to resist the exploitation of the West. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Ice age extinction; cause and human consequences.

Now retired, Snook spent 30 years in the oil industry as a petroleum geologist involved in production and exploration geology throughout the western U.S. and western Canada, during which he studied the effects of carbon dioxide and other atmospheric conditions on plant growth and observed glacier activity. He presents an analysis of the cause of the last extinction — and it implications for plants, animals, and humans — in which he theorizes that the extinction was brought about by a drastic reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to the long period of cold. The text also considers mankind's current situation and some of the things that can be expected in the future. Academic but accessible to the general reader. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Max Weber's complete writings on academic and political vocations.

According to editor Dreijmanis (social science, U. Bremen), Weber's Myers-Briggs Type Indicator describes the notes sociologist as an extrovert with a strong inclination toward the intellectual, tendencies that generated these essays on academia, including the famous "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation." Dreijmanis provides other contextual information on Weber, including insights into the illness that kept Weber from much involvement with academic life, and describes the sociologist's intellectual environment. Independent translator Wells captures the essence of Weber in his translations, many of which appear for the first time in English, and includes articles on academic freedom in German universities, pedagogy, professionalism, the effects of social democrats in teaching positions, on the work and thought of contemporary professors, and on the worth of professional and academic organizations. Weber's commentary on the Althoff system is particularly interesting, as is Weber's declaration of withdrawal from the Allemannia Fraternity. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Neutral ground; a political history of espionage fiction.

Woods (history and military studies, American Public U. System) traces the evolution of the spy novel genre from James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground to the contemporary writings of John Le Carré. He describes the genre's evolution against the backdrop of real geopolitical events, highlighting the nature of the spy novel as a blending (or neutral ground perhaps) of fact and fiction. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Notes from the other China; adventures in Asia.

A native of New Brunswick, Canada, Parfitt has lived and worked in Asia for ten years as a teacher of English; he currently teaches at a private high school in Taiwan. The majority of his time abroad has been spent in Taiwan — the "other China" — but he's also worked and/or traveled in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, and Vietnam. He describes his experiences and shares observations of the everyday people, challenges, and rewards encountered in his work and travels. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The path of reason; a philosophy of nonbelief.

Smith, a business analyst at a computer software firm who was once a conservative Christian, seeks to eliminate misconceptions about atheism and skepticism by examining faith and reason, the two means by which we evaluate our world. Writing for those who are confused by media representations and culture wars about philosophy and religion, Smith explains his personal path to atheism and skepticism as he describes the collision of faith and reason, the application of reason to such ideas as the soul, God, and meaning, critical thinking, including its fallacies, and specific precepts of skepticism. He then explains Christianity as he perceives it, analyzing such ideas as heaven and hell, the ten commandments, sex and violence, Jesus in the books of Matthew and John, the end times, prophecy and religious history, and the facts of life of a committed atheist. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Ramessides, Medes, and Persians.

When mainstream historians dismiss Immanuel Velikovsky for making mistakes with his history, says Sweeney (West U., Timisoara, Romania), we clearly have a case of kettles and pots. After years of trying to to verify the maverick writer's theories, he decided that all the accounts of pre-Christian Egypt were so faulty that he needed to start from scratch. Here he completes his four-volume reconstruction of Egyptian history from the beginning of the sixth century BC to the end of the fourth. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)