Saturday, February 7, 2009

Synthetic Fuels Handbook or Bringing the War Home

Synthetic Fuels Handbook

Author: James G Speight

With costly oil prices, here is a timely guide on synthetic fuels

Synthetic Fuels Handbook educates you in the different properties, processes, and performance characteristics of synthetic energy sources. This comprehensive guide provides a thorough description and discussion of the concepts, systems, and technology involved in the production of these fuels on both an industrial and individual scale.



Interesting book: Avid Xpress Pro Editing Workshop or Civic Life Online

Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies

Author: Jeremy Varon

In this first comprehensive comparison of left-wing violence in the United States and West Germany, Jeremy Varon focuses on America's Weather Underground and Germany's Red Army Faction to consider how and why young, middle-class radicals in prosperous democratic societies turned to armed struggle in efforts to overthrow their states. Based on a wealth of primary material, ranging from interviews to FBI reports, this book reconstructs the motivation and ideology of violent organizations active during the 1960s and 1970s. Varon conveys the intense passions of the era--the heat of moral purpose, the depth of Utopian longing, the sense of danger and despair, and the exhilaration over temporary triumphs. Varon's compelling interpretation of the logic and limits of dissent in democratic societies provides striking insights into the role of militancy in contemporary protest movements and has wide implications for the United States' current "war on terrorism."
Varon explores Weatherman and RAF's strong similarities and the reasons why radicals in different settings developed a shared set of values, languages, and strategies. Addressing the relationship of historical memory to political action, Varon demonstrates how Germany's fascist past influenced the brutal and escalating nature of the West German conflict in the 60s and 70s, as well as the reasons why left-wing violence dropped sharply in the United States during the 1970s. Bringing the War Home is a fascinating account of why violence develops within social movements, how states can respond to radical dissent and forms of terror, how the rational and irrational can combine in political movements, and finally how moral outrage andmilitancy can play both constructive and destructive roles in efforts at social change.



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
List of Key Acronyms
Introduction1
1"Agents of Necessity": Weatherman, the Red Army Faction, and the Turn to Violence20
2The Importance of Being Militant: The Days of Rage and Their Critics74
3"Hearts and Minds": The Antiwar Movement, Violence, and the Critical Mass113
4The Excesses and Limits of Revolutionary Violence151
5Deadly Abstraction: The Red Army Faction and the Politics of Murder196
6"Democratic Intolerance": The Red Army Faction and the West German State254
Conclusion290
Notes313
Select Bibliography361
Index375

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