Genre
Title
Purchase Date Bookseller B&N Net Rank
The Book
(Reading Status)
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Taxation
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Declared Unreadable April 18th, 2009
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Perfectly Legal
The Covert Campaign to Rig
our Tax System to Benefit
the Super Rich and Cheat
Everybody Else
David Cay Johnston
ISBN: 1591840694
ISBN-13: 9781591840695
Copyright © 2003
Mr. Wonderful Comments:
On the soon-to-be-banned talk radio waves, author David Cay Johnston sounds like such a reasonable man, but that sounding is simply to sell his books. This man is a socialist and must be in hog heaven this April 18th, 2009 with a socialist in the White House who, instead of having his appointees go through the highly visible congressional vetting and approval process, simply appoints "Czars" to go about destroying the evil capitalism that has made things so unfair for so many for so long in this country.
His book has all the graphs and statistics explained so that even Mr.Wonderful can understand them, however I must admit some of his numbers did not make sense to me.
And I do truly understand that there are tens of thousands of incredibly wealthy U.S. taxpayers not sending their fair share to the I.R.S.
Hell, even some not so incredibly wealthy Americans, such as the current Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, don't pay their personal income taxes until it is widely exposed that they did not.
However in Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else I see author Johnston failing to include the dollar value of the 'poor's' welfare, free social services and health care in their income. For after all, if someone else, i.e., the taxpayers, (those of us who actually pay our taxes), are paying for items and services the 'poor' receive, it should be counted as their imputed income just as the personal use of military jetliners should be included in Nancy Pelosi's income.
But what really torqued me off was the constant, never-ending, drum beat that the 'poor' are poor because other American's make so much more money than the 'poor' do. And Mr. Johnston's whining about the fast foods we buy and the other people we hire to do things for us simply exposed him as someone who wants our choices determined by, say, a Czar.
If I labored my 2,080 hours per year alone, even after almost a decade with the same employer, I would still only be grossing about $22,000 annually. But, instead, I work hundreds of hours of overtime each year.
I am what I term 'poor', having at one time earned far more than that $22,000 on one single payday. But I am not poor because of the people I typically work for are worth many millions of dollars, I am poor because I don't go out and get a decent job.
I am also certain there are 'poor' people who are in that economic situation through no direct fault of their own, but I highly doubt they are in the 'poor' predicament because of the fact that other people have more money than they do.
Begun: 04/16/2009
Stopped Reading: pg 48
Declared Unreadable 4/18/09
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March 2008
barnesandnoble.com
USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
12,710
Hardcover: 338pp
Cover: $25.95
Used: $2.99
Font: Bembo
Erin Benach
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From the Publisher:
"The rapidly widening gulf between the super rich and everyone else is an American tragedy. Pundits have raged about it, but until now, no one has explained exactly how it happened, why it's not a normal part of capitalism, or how much damage it's really causing -- not just to the poor, but to 99 percent of all Americans. Whether your family makes $30,000 or $300,000 a year, you are being robbed because the IRS and other institutions have been systematically corrupted -- under both Republican and Democratic administrations -- to serve the needs of people who make millions."
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Novel
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The Agony and the Ecstasy
Irving Stone
ISBN: 0451171357
ISBN-13: 9780451171351
Copyright © 1961
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August 2008
Half-Price Books
12,613
Paperback: 774pp
Cover: $8.99
Used: $1.00
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From the Publisher:
"A masterpiece in its own right, this novel offers a compelling portrait of Michelangelo's dangerous, impassioned loves, and the God-driven fury from which he wrested the greatest art the world has ever known."
(On Shelf)
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Anthologies
Fiction
Poetry
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Spoon River Anthology
Edgar Lee Masters
ISBN: 0451530586
ISBN-13: 9780451530585
Copyright © 1915
Spoon River Anthology
1970 Printing
Jeff Goldblum studies Spoon River Anthology in the documentary Pittsburgh
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August 2008
Half-Price Books
13,749
Paperback: 319pp
Cover: $5.95
Used: $1.00
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From the Publisher:
"A landmark of 20th-century American literature: a series of over 200 compelling free-verse monologues in which former citizens of a mythical Midwestern town speak touchingly from the grave of the thwarted hopes and dreams of their lives. Reprinted from the authoritative 1915 edition."
(On Shelf)
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Science Fiction
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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Robert Heinlein
ISBN: 0312863551
ISBN-13: 9780312863555
Copyright © 1966
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August 2008
Half-Price Books
17,759
Paperback: 302pp
Cover: $14.95
'66 Cover: 95¢
Used: $1.00
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From the Publisher:
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels, and it is widely considered his finest work. It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people--a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic--who become the rebel movement's leaders ..."
(On Shelf)
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History: Military
Nuclear Warfare
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Hiroshima
John Hersey
ISBN: 0679721037
ISBN-13: 9780679721031
Copyright © 1946
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August 2008
Half-Price Books
884
Paperback: 116pp
Cover: $7.50
'66 Cover: 50¢
Used: $1.00
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From the Publisher:
"Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose through the ranks to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War. The clandestine operations ..."
(On Shelf)
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History: Military
Intelligence - Espionage
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The Main Enemy
The Inside Story of the CIA's
Final Showdown with the KGB
Milt Bearden &
James Risen
ISBN: 0345472500
ISBN-13: 9780345472502
Copyright © 2003
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August 2008
Half-Price Books
50,031
Paperback: 561pp
Cover: $7.99
'03 Cover: $6.99
Used: $1.00
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From the Publisher:
"Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose through the ranks to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War. The clandestine operations ..."
(On Shelf)
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Classic Novel
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Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
translated by
Constance Garnett
ISBN: 1593080816
ISBN-13: 9781593080815
Copyright © 1987
First Published 1866
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August 2008
Half-Price Books
1,262
Paperback: 472pp
Cover: $8.95
'87 Cover: $2.95
Used: $1.48
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From the Publisher:
"Crime and Punishment—the novel that heralded the author’s period of masterworks—tells the story of the poor and talented student Raskolnikov, a character of unparalleled psychologicaldepth and complexity. Raskolnikov reasons that men like himself, by virtue of their intellectual superiority, can and must transcend societal law. To test his theory..."
(On Shelf)
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United States
19th Century/Old West
Natural Disasters
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The Children's Blizzard
David Laskin
ISBN: 0060520760
ISBN-13: 9780060520762
Copyright © 2005
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August 2008
barnesandnoble.com
USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
44,371
Trade: 307pp
Cover: $13.95
New: $2.69
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From the Publisher:
"Thousands of impoverished Northern European immigrants were promised that the prairie offered "land, freedom, and hope." The disastrous blizzard of 1888 revealed that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled, and America's heartland would never be the same."
(On Shelf)
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Fiction
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The Last Templar
Raymond Khoury
ISBN: 0641921802
ISBN-13: 9780641921803
Copyright © 2005
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July 2008
Half-Price Books
35,883
Paperback: 406pp
Cover: $9.99
Used: $1.00
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From the Publisher:
"In a hail of fire and flashing sword, as the burning city of Acre falls from the hands of the West in 1291, The Last Templar opens with a young Templar knight, his mentor, and a handful of others escaping to the sea carrying a mysterious chest entrusted to them by the Order's dying Grand Master. The ship vanishes without a trace."
(On Shelf)
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