Modern Cronies traces how various industrialists, thrown together by the effects of the southern gold rush, shaped the development of the southeastern United States. Existing historical scholarship treats the gold rush as a self-contained blip that—aside from the horrors of Cherokee Removal (admittedly no small thing) and a supply of miners to California in 1849—had no other widespread effects. In fact, the southern gold rush was a significant force in regional and national history. The pressure brought by the gold rush for Cherokee Removal opened the path of the Western & Atlantic Railroad, the catalyst for the development of both Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Iron makers, attracted by the gold rush, built the most elaborate iron-making operations in the Deep South near this railroad, in Georgia’s Etowah Valley; some of these iron makers became the industrial talent in the fledgling postbellum city of Birmingham, Alabama. This book explicates the networks of associations and interconnections across these varied industries in a way that newly interprets the development of the southeastern United States. Modern Cronies also reconsiders the meaning of Joseph E. Brown, Georgia’s influential Civil War governor, political heavyweight, and wealthy industrialist. Brown was nurtured in the Etowah Valley by people who celebrated mining, industrialization, banking, land speculation, and railroading as a path to a prosperous future. Kenneth H. Wheeler explains Brown’s familial, religious, and social ties to these people; clarifies the origins of Brown’s interest in convict labor; and illustrates how he used knowledge and connections acquired in the gold rush to enrich himself. After the Civil War Brown, aided by his sons, dominated and modeled a vigorous crony capitalism with far-reaching implications.

Ararat -- A Railroad and Rowland Springs -- Iron -- The Education of Joseph E. Brown -- The Republic of Georgia -- Destruction -- Anew.

It all began at a cocktail party for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies and embarked on a rollicking, rambunctious adventure that lasted almost half a century. This burlesque is their tale. They are the Merry Band of Pranksters. From their early days in La Honda, to their cross-country trip with Neal Cassady at the wheel of the psychedelic-painted bus Further, and back for the Acid Tests on the West Coast with the house band later to be known as the Grateful Dead, this is their real story. The large cast of characters, in addition to the Pranksters, Cassady, and the Dead, include the Hell's Angels, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, Larry McMurtry, Wendell Berry, and a pickup-length sturgeon. We're along for the ride on the famous bus trip to Manhattan and the subsequent visit with Leary at Millbrook. Whether it's a Hell's Angels party at Kesey's house, the Berkeley Vietnam anti-war rally, Kesey's pot bust, the six months on the lam in Mexico, or further adventures with Garcia and the Dead, Cronies is a bullet train of a book, fast-paced and rich with action. With the ultimate move to Oregon and many of the Pranksters following close behind, Babbs and Kesey enjoyed a magical friendship and collaborations until Kesey passed away in 2001. Irreverent, unencumbered by social norms, yet literary and poetic, this is a view of the sixties and beyond from someone who was there and remembers it. Kind of...

With poetry and commentary, From the Bottom: Anti-Japanese Verses offers a much-needed challenge to the culture elite and policy wonks of a sun-marked country, where its red and white colors still fly as if they were an emblem of squeezing blood from bone. Unearthing what is buried beneath the seemly topography of the island nation, the book renders Japan's postwar history as an enormous inanity that has just come full circle, from nuclear to nuclear, from Hiroshima to Fukushima. Often with scathing mockery and derision, the work gives expression to the tension between tribal elite politics and underclass perspectives. This book of poetry opens with the introduction providing a necessary context in the form of historical accounts of Japanese poetry, from its ancient peninsular origin to its post-war transformation, and more recent singsong babbling after the 9/11 tragedy and the 3/11 disasters. Taneo Ishikawa, Ph.D. (2000) in humanities, Florida State University, fights with a ghostly development of Japanese humanities. He calls for the de-Japanification of much re-Japanized Japanese studies, in particular, in culture and history, including religion and archeology. The author insists that Japan's legacy of heliocentric self-identification is a culture of farmer-fighters, with a settler's history from peninsular to insular, unfolding on the unsustainable logic of self-sacrifice and self-aggrandizement. The major three malefactors were Buddha, Samurai, and Emperor, who together played on the legacy of stealing, cheating, and lying. This past history, the author believes, should be denounced by all means and with much rancor. He lives in Osaka, Japan. Publisher's website: http: //sbpra.com/TaneoIshikawa

A penetrating look into the extreme plutocracy Vladimir Putin has created and its implications for Russia’s future This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism. Much of this wealth has been hidden in offshore havens in the United States and the United Kingdom, where companies with anonymous owners and black money transfers are allowed to thrive. Though beneficial to a select few, this system has left Russia’s economy in untenable stagnation, which Putin has tried to mask through military might.

This volume provides new perspectives on crony capitalism in the Middle East. It draws on rich empirical information on the activities of political connected firms in the economy and their impact on private sector development in the region.