Discovering America As It Is

By Valdas Anelauskas

Book Overview

America's Extreme Capitalism Wreaked Havoc on the American People -- Even Before the Bubble Burst DISCOVERING AMERICA AS IT IS, is a monumental study of the devastating effect American-style... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0932863299
• ISBN13: 9780932863294
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Clarity Press, Inc.
• Length: 584 Pages
• Weight: 1.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Some Books Just Have To Be Read

And this is one. It doesn't matter what your political persuasion is, this book will open your eyes and make you think. Sometimes you need to see another point of view to help you understand your own.This book was out of print until civil rights lawyer Michael O'Neill underwrote the second printing. Until then, it was impossible to find a used copy of this book anywhere. This is an important book, and I recommend you buy it now before it goes out of print again.

A new de Toqueville

Sometimes it takes an outsider to cut through the wishful thinking, and outright lies, and make you see your country as it truly is. That is why history departments still quote Alexis de Toqueville as an unbiased outside observer after all these years. I suspect that future historians may refer to this book in the same manner.The author, a former anti-Soviet dissident, once saw the American political and corporate power structure as an ally and role model. Then, upon actually seeing the reality of the American capitalist system, first hand, and on it's own turf, he began to realise that it was just the "other end of the same stick" when compared to Soviet state capitalism. He saw it was the same old story, a small elite at the top benefitting from everything while spinning an illusion of lies. This massive volume shows the facts of the corporate/government/military monolith that has usurped the true Ameican Democracy.Read this, sometimes it takes an intelligent outsider to show you how badly you have been fooled.

Must Reading for Anyone Who Cares About this Nation

Anelauskas does the American people a huge favor in writing this book. Had it been written by someone born in the U.S., the author would have been denounced as a subversive communist traitor and invited to move to Russia. But Anelauskas was born in Lithuania and grew up under Soviet imperialism. He knows the system well. Until coming to the U.S., he had few kind words for it, which earned him repeated arrest and, ultimately, exile to the U.S., where he took up with the likes of Newt Gingrinch and Phil Gramm. Being an intelligent and educated person, it did not take him long to see through the lies of the American right. In retrospect, he now sees there were some positive qualities to the USSR. The irony is not lost on him, and it is somewhat discomforting to me--having no love lost for the Soviet model--as he says some things were better, and certainly more humane, in the USSR than in the U.S. Yet, it is hard to argue he is not correct.Discovering America As It Is systematically exposes the lies of the American right, Republicans AND Democrats alike. Some of Anelauskas' most scathing comments are reserved for Republican in Democrat drag, Bill Clinton, whom Anelauskas clearly demonstrates waged an even more merciless and devastating war against the least affluent 40% of the American population than did Reagan. Anyone who thinks a (Daddy George) Bush or Dole presidency would have been more harmful to the poor, or who thinks, somehow, Al Gore would be the "lesser of the evils" will have to reexamine their logic after reading Discovering America.Anelauskas' work is meticulously documented from a myriad of sources--academic scholarship, poll data, census data, think tanks, studies by agencies of international organizations such as the United Nations, non-governmental organizaitons, government data from the U.S. and other nations, particularly other capitalist nations. The sheer volume of information, of sources, and the consistency of the data, truly, is astounding. During the recent presidential election, George Dubya raised the spectre of "class warfare" in response to (another Republican in Democrat drag) Al Gore's so-called "populist" nomination acceptance speech. The data Anelauskas presents makes it crystal clear there is a long running class war in the U.S.--a war of the most affluent 10% of the population against the other 90%. And the 10% are winning!, primarily because they control all of the major institutions of soceity; in partiuclar the political institutions, schools, media and churches.Anyone who reads this book should recognize Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm, Milton Friedman, and David Horowitz for the lying charlatans they are. Anyone who reads this book should realize the Democrat party is as much the party of the propertied class as the Republican party. And anyone who thinks the there is any worthiness to capitalism as an economic system, or who believes the propertied class is not waging unremitting class war against

Best of the Best

Anelauskas' book is a tour de force which could only have been written by a person brutally disillusioned with the candy-coated image of America as an ideal democracy. It is a must read for all seeking a serious critical examination of the fundamental institutions of American capitalism. Impassioned, yet dispassionately objective in its recounting of facts, it injects the reader with moral imperative to rethink the most basic assumptions of our political order. Not since Tocqeville has such an insightful outsider's inside view of America been written. I will use it in my courses and am recommending it to my friends.

I had the pleasure of reading some of Valdas' other writings

I must say that the man is indeed a controversial mind compared to other brilliant writers. His vieuw on the social systems worldwide is so profound & his ideas very well documented that this work will most certainly shake up the all American concience. Even as a Western European I often feel the blood boil in my vains, but at the end of each essay I mostly had to admit: "My goodness, he was right after all". The abstracts of his latest book - I found on his website- give you an impression of his talents. Thou his style reads easily, it does grabs you by the nuts & pulls you with both your feet back on the ground. Certainly not a book for socially anorexic citizens. His writings give a deep vieuw into the American heart & rip off the mask of a society in distress!