Praise for The Assassination of Julius Caesar:

“Parenti . . . re-creates the struggle of the late Republic with scintillating storytelling and deeply examined historical insight.”—Publishers Weekly

One of America’s most astute and engaging political analysts, Michael Parenti shows us that culture is a changing process and the product of a dynamic interplay between a wide range of social and political interests. It is not enough to study the prevailing political realm; we also must grasp developments throughout the entire civil society. In short, to understand a society we need to understand the problem of culture as well as that of power.

Drawing from cultures around the world, Parenti shows that beliefs and practices are readily subjected to political manipulation, and that many parts of culture are being commodified, separated from their group or communal origins, and packaged and sold to those who can pay for them. Folk culture is giving way to a corporate market culture. Art, science, medicine, and psychiatry can be used as instruments of cultural control, and even marriage, the “foundation of society,” has been misused by heterosexuals across the centuries.

Using vivid examples and riveting arguments throughout, The Culture Struggle ranges from the everyday to the esoteric. Richly informed, penned with eloquence and irony, The Culture Struggle presents a collection of snapshots of our time that help us understand the world we live in.

Michael Parenti is a critically acclaimed author and an extraordinary public speaker. He received his PhD in political science from Yale University and has taught at a number of colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. He is the author of 18 books, including Superpariotism, The Assassination of Julius Caesar, and Inventing Reality.

Superpatriots, writes Michael Parenti, are those people who place national pride and American supremacy above every other public consideration, those who follow leaders uncritically, especially in their war policies abroad. Superpatriotism is the nationalistic hype propagated by officialdom, the media, and various flag-waving groups.

Parenti demonstrates how superpatriotism attaches itself to religion, sports, the military, the schools and big business. He questions whether its top politico-economic propagators are themselves really patriotic, given how they evade taxes, export our jobs, pollute our land and plunder the public treasury.

With incisive probing and a humorous touch, Parenti addresses such urgent questions as: What does it mean to love one's country? Why is it so important to be Number One? What determines America's “greatness?” He examines how US leaders and the corporate media fan the flames of fear to win support for huge arms budgets, global aggrandizement, and the suppression of political dissent at home and abroad.

Finally, he poses an alternative to superpatriotism, arguing that the real patriots are those who care enough to educate themselves about our country's history and its present plight. He reminds us that it is not “anti-American” to criticize unjust social conditions at home or oppose global policies pursued by our rulers. Rather it is our democratic right and patriotic duty to do so.

Michael Parenti is one of the nation's leading progressive political analysts. An internationally known writer and speaker, he is the author of 17 books, including Democracy for the Few (seventh ed.) and The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome. He has also published over 250 articles in scholarly journals, political periodicals, popular magazines, and nationally known newspapers. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

A penetrating analysis of the hidden political, economic, and religious agendas behind the September 11 attacks and the war, with an emphasis on Afghanistan's history and the U.S.-led globalization process that has impoverished and angered much of the world.

The Terrorism Trap is a richly informed, powerfully argued, well-written analysis of the deeper causes and meaning of September 11. Michael Parenti dissects the religious, political, and economic forces behind the attacks, putting them in proper historical perspective, which includes an understanding of Afghanistan's hidden history. He answers such questions as: Why did September 11 happen? Who is to be blamed? Who is taking advantage of the crisis? Who is hurt by all the ensuing events? And why do they hate us? He sees the religious terrorism of today as related to a longstanding religious tradition of violence as well as being a reaction to a U.S.-led globalization process that has impoverished and angered much of the world. This book helps us understand what is to be done to save democracy from terrorism and reactionism.

Michael Parenti is one of the nation's most astute political analysts. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1962 and has taught at a number of colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. He frequently appears on radio and television talk shows and lectures on college campuses and before community, church, and public interest groups to discuss current issues and ideas. His books are read by both lay readers and scholars, and are used extensively in college courses.

He is the author of many books including To Kill a Nation (Verso, 2001), History as Mystery (City Lights Books, 1999), Democracy for the Few (St. Martin's; seventh edition 2001), America Besieged (City Lights Books, 1998), Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (City Lights Books, 1997), Dirty Truths (City Lights Books, 1996), Against Empire (City Lights Books, 1995), Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America (St. Martin's, 1994), Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media (St. Martin's; 2nd ed. 1993), Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment (St. Martin's, 1992), The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race (St. Martin's, 1989), Power and the Powerless (St. Martin's, 1978. )

His work has been published in CovertAction Quarterly; Monthly Review; New Political Science; Nature; Z Magazine; Dollars and Sense; The Humanist; The Nation; Journal of Politics; American Political Science Review; The New York Times; Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.

Essays on how history's victors distort and suppress the documentary record in order to perpetuate their power and privilege, and how historians are influenced by the professional and class environment in which they work.

'Michael Parenti, always provocative and eloquent, gives us a lively as well as valuable critique of orthodoxy posing as 'history.''—Howard Zinn

'Solid if surely controversial stuff.'—Kirkus

Table of Contents

Prologue: Against the Mainstream
History as Miseducation
Mainstream Orthodoxy
The Hunt for Real History
Textbooks: America the Beautiful
For Business, Against Labor
The School as a Tool
Priests and Pagans, Saints and Slaves
Triumph of the One True Faith
Silencing the Pagans
Accepting the Powers that Be
Affluent Believers
Saints For Slavery
Bishops and Barbarians, Jezebels and Jews
The Myth of the Devout Peasant
The Curse of Eve
The Burning of Books
Preparing the Holocaust
History in the Faking
Suppression at the Point of Origin
Cold War in the Archives
Classified History, USA
Listening to the Muted Masses
In Ranke's Footsteps
His Majesty's Servant
An Aristocratic Profession'
Purging the Reds
Publishing and Privishing'
Marketing the Right Stuff
The Strange Death of President Zachary
Taylor, a Study in the Manufacture of
Mainstream History
Examining the Examination
Confrontation with the Slavocracy
A lethal Dose of Cherries and Milk?
Honorable Men and Official History
Against Psychopolitics
Depoliticizing the Political
Dubious Clinical Data
Lenin as Oedipus
The Compulsive Hoover
The Political Hoover
When the Political Becomes Personal
Afterword

America Besieged deals with the underlying forces within U.S. society that deeply affect our lives. Showing how we are being misled and harmed by those who profess to have our interests at heart, Michael Parenti writes: “We are indeed a nation besieged, not from without but from within, not subverted from below but from above; the moneyed power exercises a near monopoly influence over our political life, over the economy, the state, and the media. Some Americans are astonished to hear of it. Others have had their suspicions, although they may not be quite sure how it all adds up. This book invites the reader to stop blaming the powerless and poor and, in that good old American phrase, start 'following the money.' That is the first and most important step toward lifting the siege and bringing democracy back to life.'

Michael Parenti, one of America's most astute and entertaining political analysts, is the author of Against Empire, Dirty Truths, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, Democracy for the Few, Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, and many other books.

Blackshirts & Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology—terms often bandied about but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark.

Parenti shows how “rational fascism” renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege. He also maps out the external and internal forces that destroyed communism, and the disastrous impact of the “free-market” victory on eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He affirms the relevance of taboo ideologies like Marxism, demonstrating the importance of class analysis in understanding political realities and dealing with the ongoing collision between ecology and global corporatism.

Written with lucid and compelling style, this book goes beyond truncated modes of thought, inviting us to entertain iconoclastic views, and to ask why things are as they are. It is a bold and entertaining exploration of the epic struggles of yesterday and today.
Michael Parenti is one of the nation's leading progressive thinkers. He lectures widely around the country and is the author of Dirty Truths, Against Empire, Democracy for the Few, Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, and many other books. He lives in Berkeley, California.

This eye-opening and entertaining collection of essays investigates media and culture, conspiracy and state power, ideology and political consciousness. Parenti ranges over such crucial issues as free speech, the rise of neofascism, the relationship between wealth and poverty, the “terrorism” hype, the continuing mystifications about the Kennedy assassination, and the deceptions and injustices of U.S. corporate global domination.

Moving from the political to the personal, Parenti shows the links between seemingly disparate social and political forces. Dirty Truths also contains three poems and moving accounts of his own ethnic family life and the political intolerance he encountered in academia.

This book is a rich buffet, an enlightening and provocative feast for the mind and heart.

Author of Against Empire, Democracy for the Few, Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, and many other books, Michael Parenti is one of the country's most astute and engaging political analysts. He has taught at a number of universities and now lives in Berkeley, California.

Richly informed and written in an engaging style, Against Empire exposes the ruthless agenda and hidden costs of the U.S. empire today. Documenting the pretexts and lies used to justify violent intervention and maldevelopment abroad, Parenti shows how the conversion to a global economy is a victory of finance capital over democracy.

As much of the world suffers unspeakable misery and the Third-Worldization of the United States accelerates, civil society is impoverished by policies that benefit rich and powerful transnational corporations and the national security state. Hard-won gains made by ordinary people are swept away.