Recent Book Arrivals

Publishers often send me books for potential reviewing at EPJ. I don't review them all, but I will announce any books I receive.  Later, I will review some of them, but not all.

Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security. From the blurb: "Todd Miller's book Border Patrol Nation has some eye opening reporting, especially for those of us who live along the border and think we know the facts of the expanding police state. Well, I didn't know the Border Patrol provided security for the Superbowl. And I was ignorant of their youth groups and the scale of such propaganda work. I don't think anyone can read this book without being alarmed by the growing presence of surveillance, the expense and the apparent acceptance by our fellow citizens of this new national police force. He illustrates how the border increasingly is running right through our living rooms regardless of where we live as the claims of the security state crush any ideas of personal freedom. And like any good book, the reader will argue with some pages and think about others. Miller also captures how the universities are become satanic mills for the growing industry of spying on us for our own good. Who knows, maybe the academy will stop accepting grants from the people who want to build more cages and instead become centers of critical thinking."--Charles Bowden, author of Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields.


Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy From the blurb: This book provides a comprehensive defense of third-world sweatshops. It explains how these sweatshops provide the best available opportunity to workers and how they play an important role in the process of development that eventually leads to better wages and working conditions. Using economic theory, the author argues that much of what the anti-sweatshop movement has agitated for would actually harm the very workers they intend to help by creating less desirable alternatives and undermining the process of development. Nowhere does this book put "profits" or "economic efficiency" above people. Improving the welfare of poorer citizens of third world countries is the goal, and the book explores which methods best achieve that goal. Out of Poverty will help readers understand how activists and policy makers can help third world workers.