Books about Assuming from Amazon.com

This book is written specifically for those couples who have not faced the issue of affairs--and want to prevent ever having to face it. Peggy Vaughan explains the need to focus on preventing affairs before there is any threat to the marriage Challenging the assumption that couples can assume monogamy just because they intend to be monogamous, this guide reveals: --No one is exempt from having affairs disrupt their lives. --Attitudes and beliefs are not sufficient to prevent affairs. --Actions and behaviors throughout the marriage are essential. --Responsible honesty is the most important factor in prevention. --Everybody has a role to play in supporting couples' efforts to maintain monogamy, including parents and society as a whole. Peggy Vaughan is an internationally recognized expert in the field of extramarital affairs, having spent 30 years helping people through her many books and her two websites: www.dearpeggy.com and www.preventingaffairs.com..
Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Although Assuming the Position is, as Rick Whitaker describes it, "a memoir of hustling," don't expect it to be particularly erotic. Whitaker thoroughly deglamorizes male prostitution, depicting it as banal and emotionally numbing rather than sexy or transgressive. Any potential arousal to be gleaned from his exploits is further dampened by the book's highly mannered tone and the rather ordinary quality of Whitaker's psychological discoveries: "I was always pretending to be somebody's friend when I really only wanted his money," runs one such moment of self-reflection. "Of course this is just an extreme form of something we all do in order to get ahead, but such seeming friendliness is never good or heartfelt and it is always a cause, at least for me, of mental and emotional fatigue." Readers may also find themselves frustrated by the memoir's lack of narrative tension: Whitaker did drugs and had sex with men for money for a while, then he stopped, then he wrote a book about how it made him feel. Unfortunately, being able to write grammatically correct sentences about his unusual experiences isn't enough to make Assuming the Position an interesting book. --Ron Hogan.
Price: $3.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This beautifully crafted and solidly researched book explains why and how the United States made its first commitment to Vietnam in the late 1940s. Mark Atwood Lawrence deftly explores the process by which the Western powers set aside their fierce disagreements over colonialism and extended the Cold War fight into the Third World. Drawing on an unprecedented array of sources from three countries, Lawrence illuminates the background of the U.S. government's decision in 1950 to send military equipment and economic aid to bolster France in its war against revolutionaries. That decision, he argues, marked America's first definitive step toward embroilment in Indochina, the start of a long series of moves that would lead the Johnson administration to commit U.S. combat forces a decade and a half later.
Offering a bold new interpretation, the author contends that the U.S. decision can be understood only as the result of complex transatlantic deliberations about colonialism in Southeast Asia in the years between 1944 and 1950. During this time, the book argues, sharp divisions opened within the U.S., French, and British governments over Vietnam and the issue of colonialism more generally. While many liberals wished to accommodate nationalist demands for self-government, others backed the return of French authority in Vietnam. Only after successfully recasting Vietnam as a Cold War conflict between the democratic West and international communism--a lengthy process involving intense international interplay--could the three governments overcome these divisions and join forces to wage war in Vietnam.
One of the first scholars to mine the diplomatic materials housed in European archives, Lawrence offers a nuanced triangulation of foreign policy as it developed among French, British, and U.S. diplomats and policymakers. He also brings out the calculations of Vietnamese nationalists who fought bitterly first against the Japanese and then against the French as they sought their nation's independence. Assuming the Burden is an eloquent illustration of how elites, operating outside public scrutiny, make decisions with enormous repercussions for decades to come..
Price: $18.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Mississippi is not widely known for being first in anything; in fact, Michael Orey notes in Assuming the Risk, the state ranks last or near last on an embarrassing array of scales. And yet, he writes, it was in the courtrooms of this disparaged Southern state that a pioneering team of lawyers led the way in a politically controversial crusade against the tobacco industry. Mississippi was the first state in the nation to sue cigarette manufacturers to recover smoking-related health care costs incurred by the state's Medicaid program. The fierce legal battle resulted in a multibillion-dollar settlement and eventually led to hundreds of billions of dollars in fines levied against the tobacco industry when other states followed suit.

Though decidedly pro-plaintiff, Assuming the Risk is not another vituperative rant against the Evil Empire of Big Tobacco: Orey does not shout and stomp on his soapbox. Instead, the veteran legal journalist and Wall Street Journal editor coolly focuses on the objective facts, presenting the who, what, where, and when of a complex and contentious litigation. His well-researched and detailed narrative spotlights the key figures in this real-life morality play--the mavericks, lawyers, and whistleblowers--including one particularly revealing chapter on Jeffrey Wigand, a former research scientist for the tobacco firm Brown & Williamson, whose decision to break a confidentiality agreement by speaking with 60 Minutes investigative reporter Mike Wallace became the subject of the 1999 film The Insider. --Tim Hogan.
Price: $11.82 [Notify me when price goes down.]