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The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
by Naomi Wolf

The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot Cover

Powells.com Staff Pick

The End of America should be required reading for every American. Rather than giving us a partisan 600-page tome on the crimes of the Bush administration, Naomi Wolf lays out clearly and concisely how we as a people have allowed our government to move perilously close to fascism and points the blame squarely where it belongs: at ourselves. Starting with the premise that it only takes ten changes to move a country from democracy to fascism, she points out the subtle, overlooked ways in which our government is making this happen. Wolf is the new Paul Revere, warning us that only we as citizens can stop the march toward an American fascist state. Anyone who reads this will realize that we are close to the end of real democracy in America, and if we don't stand up and demand real change now, it will soon be far too late.
Recommended by Lynn, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In a stunning indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In 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.

The book cuts across political parties and ideologies and speaks directly to those among us who are concerned about the ever-tightening noose being placed around our liberties.

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.

"Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps. The Founders of this nation were so deeply familiar with tyranny and the habits and practices of tyrants that they set up our checks and balances precisely out of fear of what is unfolding today. We are seeing these same kinds of tactics now closing down freedoms in America, turning our nation into something that in the near future could be quite other than the open society in which we grew up and learned to love liberty," states Wolf.

Wolf is taking her message directly to the American people in the most accessible form and as part of a large national campaign to reach out to ordinary Americans about the dangers we face today. This includes a lecture and speaking tour, and being part of the nascent American Freedom Campaign, a grassroots efforts to ensure that presidential candidates pledge to uphold the constitution and protect our liberties from further erosion.

The End of America will shock, enrage, and motivate — spurring us to act, as the Founders would have counted on us to do in a time such as this, as rebels and patriots — to save our liberty and defend our nation.

Book News Annotation:

Wolf, perhaps best known for her "third wave" feminist work, The Beauty Myth, joins a growing number of other writers in warning that the United States is drifting into despotism and abandoning the "Founder's radical legacy." She lays out ten essential steps for undermining democracy and setting up dictatorship and presents evidence that each one of them has been happening in the United States of 2007. In order to establish a dictatorship, she argues, one has to: invoke an external and internal threat, establish secret prisons, develop a paramilitary force, surveil ordinary citizens, infiltrate citizen's groups, arbitrarily detain and release citizens, target key individuals, restrict the press, cast criticism as "espionage" and dissent as "treason," and subvert the rule of law. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Review:

"Naomi Wolf's End of America is a vivid, urgent, mandatory wake-up call that addresses momentous issues of tyranny, democracy, and survival." Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of the three-volume Eleanor Roosevelt

Review:

"The framers of our Constitution fully understood that it can happen here. Patriots like Madison, Paine, and Franklin would certainly applaud Naomi Wolf and recognize her as a sister in their struggle." Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again

Review:

"Naomi Wolf sounds the alarm for all American patriots. We must come together as a nation and recommit 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

Review:

"You will be shocked and disturbed by this book. Most Americans reject outright any comparison of post 9/11 America with the fascism and totalitarianism of Nazi Germany or Pinochet's Chile. Sadly, the parallels and similarities, what Wolf calls the 'echoes' between those societies and America today, are all too compelling." Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights

Review:

"Readers will appreciate her energy and urgency as she warns we are living through a dangerous fascist shift brought about by the Bush administration....Her book's publication through a small press in Vermont that is committed to the politics and practice of sustainable living rather than through a large trade house is itself a political act. Highly recommended." Library Journal

Synopsis:

The Founding Fathers believed that the proper goal of the State was to make men and women free to develop their faculties and to pursue virtue and wisdom. Our Constitution was built around these principles, protecting civil liberties and developing a careful system of checks and balances which protected our freedom from tyranny. Naomi Wolf's latest work, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot exposes how the escalation of Executive Power has eroded these core values and systems, limiting our Congress to make laws, and our courts to interpret them — a scenario that our Founding Fathers foresaw and warned against. Wolf outlines in this citizen call to action, reminiscent of Thomas Paine's revered Common Sense, the real threats that exist to our civil liberties and explains how working together we can solve the growing threat.

Synopsis:

Wolfs latest work exposes how the escalation of executive power has eroded the core values surrounding personal freedoms. She outlines in this citizen call to action the real threats that exist to Americans civil liberties and explains how to solve the growing threat.
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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, and Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, published in 1997. Misconceptions, released in 2001, is a powerful and passionate critique of pregnancy and birth in America. In 2002, Harper Collins published a 10th anniversary commemorative edition of The Beauty Myth. Ms. Wolf's most recent book, released in May of 2005, is The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from my Father on How to Live, Love and See. Naomi Wolf is co-founder of the Board 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.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
t.magnuson, May 29, 2008 (view all comments by t.magnuson)
With the media striving for more and more shock value, with those in public life more motivated by self-interest than community building, it is good to see Naomi Wolf stepping forward to set the record straight, encouraging readers to think for themselves and take a stand. After all the sacrifices our forebearers made, if they could, I'm sure they would jump out of their graves, and throttle some of the jokers who've put greed above grace. Naomi, you go! Ted Magnuson, author 'Those Self Evident Truths.'
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antidubya, November 15, 2007 (view all comments by antidubya)
I found the synopsis on the staff recommendations display at your Cedar Hills Crossing store to be extremely helpful. It caught my eye and led me to read this excellent book. Thank you to the staff at Powell's!
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AG, September 10, 2007 (view all comments by AG)
This is a sobering, terrifying, and enlightening book...and highly recommended.

Among the first lessons the author drives home is that democracy is NOT a spectator sport. The founders did not envisage a country in which the "professionals -- lawyers, scholars, activists, politicians -- politicians -- [should] worry about understanding the Constitution and protecting our rights." As Wolf says, "... the founders did not mean for powerful men and women faraway from the citizens... to protect freedom. They meant for us to do it."

They also certainly didn't consider democracy to be the natural "God-given" order in which civilization conducted itself by. Rather tyranny and oppression were the status quo and liberty was the exception, something to be fought for and clung to for dear life if obtained.

Mrs. Wolf then lists the calculus that all dictators employ to aggregate power: "Invoke an external and internal threat; develop the paramilitary force; create a secret prison system; surveil ordinary citizens; arbitrarily detain and released them; harass citizens' groups; target writers, entertainers, and other key individuals for dissenting; intimidate the press; recast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage"; and eventually subvert the rule of law."

I give credit to Mrs. Wolf for acknowledging that the United States does not parallel past soon-to-be dictatorships such as Italy in 1922 or Germany in 1933. She correctly acknowledges the dis-similarities. Although critics will likely disagree, she handles the disturbing parallels between the past and present tactfully.

Importantly, the author also acknowledges that the shift to dictatorship does not happened suddenly and starkly. Many times, normal daily life is unaffected for most of the population, we can still watch American idol and go to the mall and order pizza, all while our liberties are crumbling away around us.

A remarkable aspect of this book was the amount of research conducted. Time and time again, the author inserts chilling similarities between past and present i.e. past propaganda mimicking the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier landing.

As a word of warning, those who cannot turn the magnifying lens used to examine those other nations of the past and the present that are so often criticized, upon their own nation, leaders, and actions, this book will come as quite a shock. There's little that can be done about this -- those who subscribe to the, "we" are the forces of good and "they" are never ending evil, Manichaean worldview will not digest this book easily, much to their detriment.

Overall, I think The End of America is a superb and quick read and will recommend it to my friends and family. For further reading, I'd suggest Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis or blogger Arthur Silber.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781933392790
Subtitle:
A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
Author:
Wolf, Naomi
Publisher:
Chelsea Green Publishing Company
Subject:
Civil Rights
Subject:
Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights
Subject:
Political Freedom & Security - General
Subject:
Government - U.S. Government
Subject:
National security
Copyright:
2007
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Publication Date:
September 2007
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
176
Dimensions:
8.5 x 5.5 in
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