Official Poll - March & April 2009 Non-Fiction Book

This poll starts on Friday, February 20, 2009 and ends on Saturday the 28th of 2009. This gives us over 10 days to vote.

RULES:

You must have at least 25 total posts on our forums to vote so please don't cast a vote if you're not yet qualified. It doesn't take much time or energy to get up to 25 total posts.

Everyone is entitled to cast a total of 3 votes and these 3 votes can be distributed however the voter deems appropriate. Assign all 3 votes to just one of the book choices or break up the 3 votes based on your interest level in each book. If you don't assign all 3 votes we will assume you meant to assign all 3 of your votes to whatever book you picked. Actually, I will assume you didn't read these instructions. Hmm

There are 3 total choices on this poll. All were suggested by members. Your choices are as follows:

Drum roll please...

BOOK 1:
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
by Christopher Hitchens

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/044657 ... 0446579807

From Publishers Weekly
Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists, delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the dock. And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents." Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring practice with believers. Yet few believers will recognize themselves as Hitchens associates all of them for all time with the worst of history's theocratic and inquisitional moments. All the same, this is salutary reading as a means of culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are better (nope). The book's real strength is Hitchens's on-the-ground glimpses of religion's worst face in various war zones and isolated despotic regimes. But its weakness is its almost fanatical insistence that religion poisons "everything," which tips over into barely disguised misanthropy.

BOOK 2:
We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/143914 ... 1439140634

Product Description
In this urgent, balanced, and passionate book, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President Jimmy Carter argues that the present moment is a unique time for achieving peace in the Middle East -- and he offers a bold and comprehensive plan to do just that.

President Carter has been a student of the biblical Holy Land all his life. For the last three decades, as president of the United States and as founder of The Carter Center, he has studied the complex and interrelated issues of the region's conflicts and has been actively involved in reconciling them. He knows the leaders of all factions in the region who will need to play key roles, and he sees encouraging signs among them.

Carter describes the history of previous peace efforts and why they fell short. He argues persuasively that the road to a peace agreement is now open and that it has broad international and regional support. Most of all, since there will be no progress without courageous and sustained U.S. leadership, he says the time for progress is now. President Barack Obama is committed to a personal effort to exert that leadership, starting early in his administration.

This is President Carter's call for action, and he lays out a practical and doable path to peace.

BOOK 3:
Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
by Vandana Shiva

http://www.amazon.com/Biopiracy-Plunder ... 0896085554

Product Description
In this intelligently argued and ethically principled book, internationally renowned Third World environmentalist Vandana Shiva exposes the latest frontier of the North's ongoing assault against the South's biological and other resources. Since the land, the forests, the oceans, and the atmosphere have already been colonized, eroded, and polluted, she argues, Northern capital is now carving out new colonies to exploit for gain: the interior spaces of the bodies of women, plants, and animals. Under agreements such as GATT, she argues, the North claims a need to be "protected" from the South so it can continue its uninterrupted theft of the Third World's genetic diversity. This theft, Shiva shows, has profoundly disturbing consequences for women, the Third World, and the environment. With specific considerations of gene-patenting, genetic engineering, and biotechnology, Biopiracy is essential reading for anyone concerned with technology, imperialism, feminism or the environment

3 votes for book 3 - Biopiracy

They all sound like great suggestions.

1 vote God is Not Great
1 vote We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land
1 Vote Biopiracy

1.5 votes We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work
1.5 votes Biopiracy

No half votes please.
Chris

3 for biopiracy

3 passionate votes for "We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land."

I hope that our members realize that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the most important conflict in the world right now. This conflict is what sets agendas in the entire middle east. Especially with regards to the growing xenophobia of Islam and the rise of radical Islam, ignoring this conflict will only lead to outbreak of war. We MUST, as american citizens, find a way to succesfully lobby our government to find a solution to this problem because it will directly affect us here at home. I assure you that WW3 and its roots will be this conflict, so lets learn about it more and try to find ways to solve it and lobby our government to do so quickly, or our young boys will find themselves fighting in a war without end...

Ok. Sorry about the half votes. I will change it.

2 We can have peace in the Holy Land
1 Biopiracy