Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Rise and Decline of the State by Martin van Creveld ISBN: 0-521-65629-X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 26 August, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Intresting, but is it reliable?
Comment: Lots of good thoughts here, and an interesting historical account of the rise of various types of governance. Unfortunately, when van Creveld talks about things I know about already, he gets a lot of them wrong -- for instance, p222, where he asserts that by 1939, 'every American' was 'issued his or her social security card', and that 'the Dept. of Health and Human Services had been created.' HHS was created in the 1970s, under Carter, and to this day not every citizen has a Soc. Sec. card.
So if so many details are wrong where I know the facts, what about the places where I don't? And if the details are wrong, how good is the big picture?
This book makes you think, and has a lot of good references, but I don't trust its conclusions.
Rating: 5
Summary: the coming new world disorder
Comment: This work illustrates that Martin van Creveld is more than one of our premier military historians and theorists. It demonstrates a grasp of political theory that escapes most of the learned professors that infest the upper strata of our current pundits and political science intelligensia.
Rating: 5
Summary: Historical Pessimism Absent Recommendations for Change
Comment:
Anything Martin van Crevald writes is a five, and this book, although over-priced (...), is as as good as history can get. His notes are world-class, including a highly relevant note in the final chapter, to wit, that according to Soviet General Lebed's 1997 public statement that, "out of 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs manufactured for the Soviet Union's special forces, two-thirds could no longer be accounted for."
To begin with, Van Crevald damns the state for its consistent increase of taxes and its decrease in public services. The state has become, in a word, incompetent and archaic--its grossly over-funded militaries are increasingly helpless in the face of covert and guerrilla violence, at the same time that states are spending more and more on police forces and less and less on a rapidly growing politically deprived disenfranchised underclass.
He ends, as a historical purist, without making recommendations for change. Indeed, he quotes Mao Tse Tung, "The sun will keep rising, trees with keep growing, and women will keep having children."
In many ways Van Crevald's book serves as a capstone to the fifty or so books I have reviewed in the past year, most of them about strategy, threat, intelligence, and the so-called revolution in military affairs, for what I take from this work is that the state does have an extremely important role to play in assuring the common security and prosperity of the people, and we abandon the state at our own peril.
Every nation, but especially the most prosperous nations that have allowed virtually out of control immigration and set no real standards for citizenship, must very carefully examine its policies and premises, both with regard to what constitutes citizenship and loyalty, and what services it must offer to preserve and protect the commonwealth.
I am told that the FBI was prevented from searching the homes of several of the suspects in the weeks prior to the 11 September attacks, because we have granted to our visitors--illegal as well as legal--all those rights that might better be reserved for proven citizens. Van Crevald's work is not, as some might take it, the death knell for the state, but rather the bath of cold water for the statesmen--and for those citizens who care to instruct their politicians on our demand for renewed focus on resurrecting the connection between citizenship, taxation, representation, and security.
 |
Title: TRANSFORMATION OF WAR by Martin Van Creveld ISBN: 0029331552 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 31 March, 1991 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
 |
Title: The Coming Anarchy : Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War by Robert D. Kaplan ISBN: 037570759X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century by William Bonner, Addison Wiggin ISBN: 0471449733 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 12 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
 |
Title: Enforcing Restraint: Collective Intervention in Internal Conflicts by Lori Fisler Damrosch, Jeffrey Clark, James B. Steinberg ISBN: 0876091559 Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations Press Pub. Date: December, 1993 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
 |
Title: Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945 by Martin van Creveld ISBN: 0313233330 Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group Pub. Date: 28 October, 1982 List Price(USD): $85.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
