Product Description

In a stunning indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. With authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century s worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile. In this timely call to arms, Naomi Wolf compels us to face the way our free America is under assault. She warns us with the straight-to-fellow-citizens urgency of one of Thomas Paine s revolutionary pamphlets that we have little time to lose if our children are to live in real freedom.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #186186 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
One of the most important books that's been written, certainly in the last decade or two, and perhaps in my lifetime. --Thom Hartmann, best-selling author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

Naomi Wolf sounds the alarm for all American patriots. We must come together as a nation and reconnect ourselves to the fundamental American idea that no president, whether Democrat or Republican, will ever be given unchecked power. --Wes Boyd, co-founder, MoveOn.org

Naomi Wolf sounds the alarm for all American patriots. We must come together as a nation and reconnect ourselves to the fundamental American idea that no president, whether Democrat or Republican, will ever be given unchecked power. --Wes Boyd, co-founder, MoveOn.org

About the Author
Naomi Wolf was born in San Francisco in 1962. She was an undergraduate at Yale University and did her graduate work at New College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Her essays have appeared in various publications including: The New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Glamour, Ms., Esquire, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She also speaks widely to groups across the country. The Beauty Myth, her first book, was an international bestseller. She followed that with Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change The 21st Century, published by Random House in 1993, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, published in 1997 and Misconceptions, released in 2001. In 2002, Harper Collins published a 10th anniversary commemorative edition of The Beauty Myth. Wolf is co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization devoted to training young women in ethical leadership for the 21st century. The institute teaches professional development in the arts and media, politics and law, business and entrepreneurship as well as ethical decision making. She lives with her family in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Enlightening and accessible
One of the classic findings of contemporary Psychology is the `hopelessness/helplessness' syndrome. The idea is that once a person has become conditioned to believe that no matter what they do, the outcome will be the same, they become overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, hopelessness, helplessness and apathy. Living in North America in the twenty first century is a study of this phenomenon. I experience this sense of helpless dread and its accompanying apathy every time I turn on the TV, listen to the radio or read the newspaper to hear yet again about our continuing loss of liberties and the tragedies that ensue as a result.

It was thus all the more refreshing to read Wolf's book "The End of America" and feel, much to my pleasant surprise, a rare sense of optimism at its conclusion. Using the same accessible and passionate voice that has made "The Beauty Myth" and "Misconceptions" bestsellers, Wolf eloquently argues that Americans are rapidly losing their liberties under the Bush regime and that the political tactics being used to implant these policies have historical parallels in other fascist dictatorships including Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Using example after example spanning from personal accounts of young jailed young bloggers and peace activists to the very public crackdowns on dissidents like the Dixie chicks, to curtailing academic freedom in universities across the country, Wolf illustrates how our open, democratic society is being systemically shut down by the Bush administration.

The beauty of this book, however, lies not so much in its thoroughly researched and clearly articulated thesis, but in its ability to offer an optimistic alternative to the apathy that is plaguing the young patriots that this book addresses. Reading "The End of America", although seemingly depressing at first, is enlightening in its ability to offer its own thesis as an antidote to the trajectory America is on. It is only awareness of our own history and a clear sense of what is currently happening around us that can dismantle the governmental authority that is so threatening to us now. As Wolf writes, "..the founders did not mean for powerful men and women far away from the citizens or people with their own agendas or for a class of professionals to perform the patriots' tasks, or to protect freedom. They meant for us to do it: you, me, the American who delivers your mail, the one who teaches your kids" (p.5).

Wolf could not be more accurate in her statement. Psychology has taught us that the only way out of the helplessness/hopelessness cycle is by asserting control and recognizing that we have the power to change and shape our environment. In an era where nihilism and despair predominate, "The End of America" is a refreshing, accessible, passionate, timely and engaging guidebook to help us on our way.

Amazing
Easy to read and easy to follow.

How the press are restricted, how surveillance of ordinary citizens is needed, how key individuals are targeted in order to create fear.
How to subvert the rule of law - within a working democracy.
How you need to arbitrarily detain and release citizens and infiltrate cizitens's groups.

These "how to's" are taken from Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, and then applied to today's state surveillance and database state.

For anyone interested in ID cards, Police State tactics, civil rights, Secret Courts, this book is the "Blueprint" for how government and secret agencies work.

Ten steps from democracy to fascism (French review)
L'auteur définit dix étapes symptomatiques menant de la démocratie bourgeoise au fascisme. Elle s'appuie sur un grand nombres de points formels communs apparus en Italie après 1922, en Allemagne après 1933, mais également en Union Soviétique dans les années trente, en Allemagne de l'Est, en Tchécoslovaquie après le coup de Prague et dans le Chili de Pinochet. Ces points sont tout aussi bien des mécanismes politiques, juridiques et administratifs que de simples effets de langage martelés par le discours de propagande dont le nombre et la similarité renforcent le caractère inquiétant du processus en cours. N. Wolf montre bien la façon furtive et graduée selon laquelle la dictature se met en place et comment les gens finissent par supporter l'insupportable et ne plus se scandaliser du scandaleux. La contrainte est toujours destinée d'abord aux autres. Puis, ce qui définit "les autres" s'étend ... et lorsque nous nous retrouvons à notre tour inclus dans cet ensemble-là, il est trop tard. Il y a un effet d'accoutumance.
Je porte une critique à cet ouvrage : le 11 septembre, clé de voûte de l'installation de la dictature est le grand absent de l'analyse.