Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
Author: Theodore Dalrympl
A searing account of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does, written by a British psychiatrist.
New York Post - Thomas Sowell
Searing...this is not dry theory, but living reality...a classic for our times.
Arts and Letters Daily
Lucid, unsentimental, and profoundly honest.
Publishers Weekly
Filled with poignant stories of women and men trapped in destructive behaviors and environments, this volume puts forth a vision of the modern world and of intellectualized modernism as hell but offers few concrete or theoretical solutions. Dalrymple, a noted conservative columnist in London's the Spectator, collects pieces he wrote for the conservative City Journal, using his own work as a physician in British slums and prisons as fodder for an analysis of the underclass: "not poor... by the standards of human history" but trapped in "a special wretchedness" from which it cannot emerge. Most of his patients put their violence in the passive: the murderer who says "the knife went in" as though he had no control; the man who beat his girlfriend and then exclaimed, " `I totally regret everything that happen' [sic] as if... [it] were a typhoon in the East Indies." The fault, Dalrymple asserts, is not bad environments, but a pervasive liberal view and agenda that creates "passive, helpless victims," encourages the idea that the acceptance of "unconscious motivations for one's acts" obviates personal responsibility, and the "widespread acceptance of social determinism." Dalrymple makes many astute observations on British social attitudes about wealth, the tattooing of white youths and urban redevelopment, and his writing is graceful and often witty. But his main points get hammered home too quickly and too often. His critique of liberalism and the welfare state, while sometimes provocative, is spelled out in the introduction and repeated again and again. While Dalrymple is preaching to the converted, his vivid writing and often heartbreaking stories rise above his deeply felt but repetitivesocial analysis. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
What People Are Saying
Bruce Ramsey
"Once in a long while a writer comes along with a vision so powerful that it shakes you."
—Liberty
NEW YORK SUN
Mr. Daniels's best essays cast a spell almost from the opening line.
Hilton Kramer
Brilliant social analysis .....a master chronicle of life at the bottom.
Peggy Noonan
Theodore Dalrymple is the best doctor-writer since William Carlos Williams.
George F. Will
It is a truism that ideas have consequences, but a truism is rarely illustrated as implacably as in this book..
Norman Podhoretz
Truthful-therefore morally courageous and intellectually rigorous.
New interesting textbook: Crazy in the Kitchen or Making Maple Syrup
The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation
Author: Marwan Muasher
Marwan Muasher, a prominent Jordanian diplomat, has been instrumental in shaping Middle East peace efforts for nearly twenty years. He served as Jordan’s first ambassador to Israel and was also ambassador to the United States, spokesperson at peace talks in Madrid and Washington, minister of foreign affairs, and deputy prime minister in charge of reform. Here he recounts the behind-the-scenes details of diplomatic ventures over the past two decades, including such recent undertakings as the Arab Peace Initiative and the Middle East Road Map.
Muasher’s insights into internal Arab politics and the successes and failures of the Arab Center are uniquely informed and deeply felt. He assesses how the middle road approach to reform is faring and explains why current tactics used by the West to deal with Islamic groups are doomed to failure. He examines why the Arab Center has made so little progress and which Arab, Israeli, and American policies need rethinking. Part memoir and part analysis, this book reveals the human side of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is essential reading for all who share the hope that moderate, pragmatic Arab voices will be heard in today’s vitriolic debates over how to achieve an enduring peace in the Middle East.
Table of Contents:
1 Jordan's Changing Role and the Evolution of the Two-State Solution Concept 10
2 First Ambassador to Israel 33
3 The Last Six Months of King Hussein's Life 72
4 The Arab Initiative 102
5 The Middle East Road Map 134
6 Launching the Road Map and the Aqaba Summit 176
7 Bush's Letters to Prime Minister Sharon and King Abdullah II 199
8 The Israeli Separation Wall: An End to the Two-State Solution? 217
9 Arab Reform 230
10 Is There Hope for the Arab Center? 259
Appendix 1 King Hussein's Letter to Prime Minister Rabin Regarding the Jerusalem Land Expropriation Issue 271
Appendix 2 Note Verbale to the Israeli Foreign Ministry on Absentee Property 274
Appendix 3 The Clinton Parameters 276
Appendix 4 The Arab Peace Initiative Adopted at the Beirut Arab Summit, March 2002 281
Appendix 5 A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 283
Notes 291
Index 299
Illustrations follow page 198
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