Popular Bookstore

Featured Book - Sisa's Vengeance: Jose Rizal & the "Woman Question" by E. San Juan, Jr.

2011-10-28T12:30:00.001+08:00

Excerpt from the beginning of the book:

“More than his persona as the astute and circumspect dissident, Jose Rizal as lover, romantic protagonist, and simpatico confidant of women of various nationalities, has preoccupied many scholars to the point of suspecting that there was something anomalous somewhere. Was Rizal manic-depressive, or simply neurotic? Few would accuse him of being an unscrupulous and promiscuous Don Juan. In fact, Rizal was courtly, thoughtful, even fearful and wary towards the opposite sex — except for his mother. . . The inamorata Leonor Rivera exposed the Rizal phallus as a “semblance” (to use the Lacanian rubric) while Josephine Bracken restored it to its decorous size. Only one other woman challenged him: Nelly Boustead, while the Japanese Seiko Usui/O-Sei-San confirmed his virility, sacrificing herself (in his judgment) without demanding any reciprocity nor due recognition of her gift/service.

Entangled in this seductive chronicle of amorous affairs, we take a moment to interpose mindful distance and ask: what is Rizal’s ultimate assessment of women’s actual virtue and potential? None of his biographers has contributed anything substantial on this, perhaps intimidated that if they venture to engage with “the woman question” they would provoke a Pandora’s Box of adversarial criticism that might expose vulnerable biases and unconscionable presumptions.”

The Mozart Effect: Tappling the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit

2011-10-24T07:52:00.000+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

Anyone who has ever seen a two-year-old start bouncing to a beat knows that music speaks to us on a very deep level. But it took celebrated teacher and music visionary Don Campbell to show us just how deep, with his landmark book The Mozart Effect.

Stimulating, authoritative, and often lyrical, The Mozart Effect has a simple but life-changing message: music is medicine for the body, the mind, and the soul. Campbell shows how modern science has begun to confirm this ancient wisdom, finding evidence that listening to certain types of music can improve the quality of life in almost every respect. Here are dramatic accounts of how music is used to deal with everything from anxiety to cancer, high blood pressure, chronic pain, dyslexia, and even mental illness.

Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age

2011-10-24T07:36:00.001+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

Tom Peters is back with a call to arms and a passionate wake-up call for the business world, educators, and society as a whole. In Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, America’s most influential business thinker profiles seven distinct and very different companies that exemplify Peters’ new business ground rules where screwing up, destroying, and “thinking weird” rule the day. Each of the companies profiled faced revolutionary business challenges and responded by inventing entirely new opportunities. Each had to re-imagine the nature of work itself—and did so by soliciting the energy and engagement of each and every one of their people.

Re-imagine is part of the Tom Peters Combo Package( $1499). The combo includes:

In Search of Excellence

Passion for Excellence Short Cut

Passion for Customers

Re-Imagine Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age

The complete package is not available at this time.

The Forest for the Trees: An Editors' Advice to Writers

2011-10-24T07:25:00.000+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

To writers, particularly unpublished ones, editors can seem imposing figures determined to thwart their success. They won't take calls, they don't offer feedback--sometimes they don't respond to queries at all. Guess what: Editors don't lug home hundreds of pounds of manuscripts to read each year because they aren't looking for good writing. "An editor gets off," says Lerner, "on the thrill of discovering a new writer." Editors crave "succinct, well-written cover letters," inspiration that comes from within (as opposed to from the bestseller list), and "catchy, clearly targeted title[s]." They detest unsolicited phone calls, "query letters that sound as if they were penned by Crazy Eddie," and writers who offer to "write it however I want it" (it's "like saying I'll be straight or gay; you tell me, I have no preference"). Lerner is aware of how excruciating it is for a writer to wait for feedback on his or her work. But she also lets writers in on a little secret of her own. "I'm always anxious about the author's response," she confides. "Will he or she take to my editing?

Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende

2011-10-24T07:19:00.000+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

Internationally celebrated novelist Isabel Allende has written a magnificent historical novel set at the end of the nineteenth century in Chile, a marvelous family saga that takes up and continues the story begun in her highly acclaimed Daughter of Fortune.

Recounted in the voice of a young woman in search of her roots, Portrait in Sepia is a novel about memory and family secrets. Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that shapes her character and erases from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, she grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she decides to explore the mystery of her past.

Portrait in Sepia is an extraordinary achievement: richly detailed, epic in scope, intimate in its probing of human character, and thrilling in the way it illuminates the complexity of family ties.

Revolutionary Wealth

2011-10-24T07:14:00.000+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

Starting with the publication of their seminal best-seller, Future Shock, Alvin and Heidi Toffler have given millions of readers new ways to think about personal life in today's high-speed world with its constantly changing, seemingly random impacts on our businesses, governments, families and daily lives. Now, writing with the same rare grasp and clarity that made their earlier books classics, the Tofflers turn their attention to the revolution in wealth now sweeping the planet. And once again, they provide a startling, penetrating, coherent way to make sense of the seemingly senseless.

Revolutionary Wealth is about how tomorrow's wealth will be created, who will get it and how. But 21st Century wealth, according to the Tofflers, is not just about money, and cannot be understood in terms of industrial-age economics. Thus they write here about everything from education and childrearing to Hollywood and China, from everyday truth and lies to what they call our "Third Job" --- the unnoticed work we do without pay for some of the biggest corporations in our country.

Blazing with fresh ideas, Revolutionary Wealth provides readers with powerful new tools for thinking about -- and preparing for -- their future.

Modern Criticism & Theory

2011-10-24T07:09:00.000+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

This work contains a selection of important and representative work from all the major theoretical schools or tendencies in contemporary criticism and looks at them from an historical and thematic point of view. It also takes into account the impact of structuralist and post-structuralist theory and the disciplines from which it has drawn many of its terms and concepts of linguistics, psychoanalysis, philosophy and Marxism.

Modern Criticism and Theory has long been regarded as a necessary collection. Now revised for the twenty first century it goes further and provides students and the general reader with a wide-ranging survey of the complex landscape of modern theory and a critical assessment of the way we think – and live – in the world today.

David Lodge is Emeritus Professor of English Literatureat the University of Birmingham, where he taught from 1960 until 1987. He is well-known as one of the most significant British novelists and critics of recent times. His work, fiction and non-fiction, has been translated into some twenty-five languages.

Nigel Wood is Professor of Literature at Loughborough University. Widely published as an editor and critic, Nigel is currently working on the Longman Annotated Edition of the poems of Alexander Pope.

Wedding Blessings by June Cotner

2011-10-24T00:52:00.000+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

Wedding Blessings: Prayers and Poems... A beautiful collection of poems, prayers, and toasts for all marriage celebrations. Finding the right words about love for a wedding or anniversary can be difficult. In Wedding Blessings, June Cotner has collected perfect selections for the bride, groom, members of the wedding party, and other family and friends to share. From verses and vows to prayers and toasts, the sentiments of Wedding Blessings will help make any marriage celebration more memorable. With selections devoted to "anniversaries" and "Reflections", Wedding Blessings also serves as a tribute to and affirmation of marriage.Filled with inspiration and timeless words by renowned authors such as Robert Browning, Rainer Maria Rilke, the Persian poet Rumi, as well as many contemporary writers, this spiritual, multi-faith anthology offers true gems suitable for all aspects of weddings, anniversaries, and vow-renewal ceremonies. Wedding Blessings is a wonderful gift for the bride-to-be and others celebrating the union of marriage.

June Cotner is the author of more than a dozen anthologies, including the bestselling Graces; see more June Cotner Anthologies. She lives in Poulsbo, Washington.

Principle-Centered Leadership by Stephen R. Covey

2011-10-24T00:42:00.000+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

How do we as individuals and organizations survive and thrive amid tremendous change? Why are efforts to improve falling so short in real results despite the millions of dollars in time, capital, and human effort being spent on them? How do we unleash the creativity, talent, and energy within ourselves and others in the midst of pressure? Is it realistic to believe that balance among personal, family, and professional life is possible? Stephen R. Covey demonstrates that the answer to these and other dilemmas is Principle-Centered Leadership, a long-term, inside-out approach to developing people and organizations. The key to dealing with the challenges that face us today is the recognition of a principle-centered core within both ourselves and our organizations. Dr. Covey offers insights and guidelines that can help you apply these principles both at work and at home - leading not just to a new understanding of how to increase quality and productivity, but also to a new appreciation of the importance of building personal and professional relationships in order to enjoy a more balanced, more rewarding, more effective life.

The Case for Make-Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World

2011-10-24T00:32:00.001+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

In the critically acclaimed Consuming Kids (The New Press, 2004), Susan Linn, the nation's leading advocate for protecting children from corporate marketers, provided an unsparing look at modern childhood molded by commercialism. In her new book, THE CASE FOR MAKE BELIEVE, Dr. Linn argues that while play is crucial to human development and children are born with an innate capacity for make believe, the convergence of ubiquitous technology and unfettered commercialism actually prevents them from playing. In modern day America, nurturing creative play is not only countercultural—it threatens corporate profits.

At the heart of the book are gripping stories of children at home, at school, and in a therapist’s office using make believe to grapple with real-life issues from entering kindergarten to the death of a sibling. In an age when toys come from TV shows, dress-up means wearing Disney costumes, and parents believe Baby Einstein is educational, Dr. Linn lays out the inextricable links between play, creativity, and health, showing us why we need to protect our children from corporations that aim to limit their imaginations.

Living in the Shade of Islam

2011-10-24T00:11:00.001+08:00

Islam, which literally means peace, submission, and obedience, is the religion of the whole universe. The universe is orderly, a cosmos whose parts are linked together and work together for the same purpose
and goal. This book seeks to present Islam's true face and make it known in a summarized form with most of its aspects: Islam's essentials of faith, principles and ways of worshipping God, morality, and rules ordering human life and relations between people.

COMING SOON !!!

On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

2011-10-23T10:48:00.001+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

From the inventor of the PalmPilot comes a new and compelling theory of intelligence, brain function, and the future of intelligent machines.
Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.

Hawkins develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent and how, based on this new theory, we can finally build intelligent machines.

The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness.

In an engaging style that will captivate audiences from the merely curious to the professional scientist, Hawkins shows how a clear understanding of how the brain works will make it possible for us to build intelligent machines, in silicon, that will exceed our human ability in surprising ways.

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

2011-10-23T10:41:00.001+08:00

COMING SOON !!

Scholar Bart Ehrman's new book explores how scribes — through both omission and intention — changed the Bible. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why is the result of years of reading the texts in their original languages.

Ehrman says the modern Bible was shaped by mistakes and intentional alterations that were made by early scribes who copied the texts. In the introduction to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman writes that when he came to understand this process 30 years ago, it shifted his way of thinking about the Bible. He had been raised as an Evangelical Christian.

Ehrman is also the author of Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which chronicles the period before Christianity as we know it, when conflicting ideas about the religion were fighting for prominence in the second and third centuries.

The chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Ehrman also edited a collection of the early non-canonical texts from the first centuries after Christ, called Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament.

Writing Changes Everything: The 627 Best Things Anyone Ever Said About Writing

2011-10-23T10:24:00.001+08:00

COMING SOON !

Deborah Brodie is a book editor who has made a sideline occupation of collecting quotes about writing and creativity. The 627 "best" appear in this pretty little volume, Writing Changes Everything, accompanied by charming illustrations. At turns witty and pensive and contradictory, these literary nuggets come from unlikely sources such as Rudolf Nureyev, Morrissey, Albert Einstein, and Satchel Paige. The quotes that sing the clearest come from expected authorities; among them are Mark Twain ("The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning-bug."), Samuel Johnson ("Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."), Iris Murdoch ("Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."), and Erica Jong ("We make up the ocean--then fall in. But we also write the life raft.").

This inspiring and lively book brings together novelists, short-story writers, biographers, playwrights, and poets, along with literary agents, editors and publishers, all sounding off on writing and the creative life. Witty, cranky, wise, jubilant, and eminently repeatable, these quotations will surprise and delight anyone who loves books and writing.

Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change

2011-10-22T09:26:00.002+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

William H. Calvin
Published April 2008

Every decade since 1950 has seen more floods and more wildfires on every continent. Deserts are expanding, coral reefs are dying, fisheries are declining, hurricanes are strengthening. The debate about climate change is over: there’s no question that global warming has made the Earth sick, and the outlook for the future calls for ever-warmer temperatures and deadlier results. Something must be done—but how quickly?

With Global Fever, William H. Calvin delivers both a clear-eyed diagnosis and a strongly worded prescription. In striking, straightforward language, he first clearly sets out the current state of the Earth’s warming climate and the disastrous possibilities ahead should we continue on our current path. Increasing temperatures will kill off vegetation and dry up water resources, and their loss will lead, in an increasingly destructive feedback loop, to even more warming. Resource depletion, drought, and disease will follow, leading to socioeconomic upheaval—and accompanying violence—on a scale barely conceivable.

It is still possible, Calvin argues, to avoid such a dire fate. But we must act now, aggressively funneling resources into jump-starting what would amount to a third industrial revolution, this one of clean technologies—while simultaneously expanding our use of existing low-emission technologies, from nuclear power to plug-in hybrid vehicles, until we achieve the necessary scientific breakthroughs.

Passionately written, yet thoroughly grounded in the latest climate science, Global Fever delivers both a stark warning and an ambitious blueprint for saving the future of our planet.

At the Hand of Man: Peril & Hope for Africa's Wildlife

2011-10-22T09:20:00.002+08:00

COMING SOON !!!

At the hand of man: peril and hope for Africa's wildlife

Knopf, 1993 - Business & Economics - 322 pages

In a book often shocking, always passionate and inevitably controversial, Raymond Bonner brings desperately needed illumination to one of the most important and emotional issues of our time: the threat to Africa's wildlife, and especially to the elephant. In cutting through prevailing misinformation to documented truth, he makes abundantly clear that unless we address the needs of Africans in their poverty and despair - instead of attempting to impose culturally biased Western solutions - the people will out of necessity destroy the wildlife, no matter how much Westerners protest. For Westerners, elephants are the stuff of exotic safaris and television nature shows. But it is the Africans whose land has been taken to create the parks, whose children are killed and whose subsistence farms are destroyed by elephants run amok, whose ecosystems are ruined by oversized elephant herds in countries like Kenya that can't support them (something we've heard little about). Bonner reveals and documents for the first time the ways in which some wildlife organizations suppress facts and ignore opinions of forward-thinking conservationists - opinions that might get in the way of good public relations. Examining these organizations as no one has done before, he has obtained internal documents that contain cautionary revelations: in one wildlife group, for example, a scientific consensus to oppose an ivory ban fell victim to expediency - the ban was supported with a campaign that played to the emotions for fear that otherwise fund-raising would suffer. Bonner finds hope in Africans who are practicing "sustainable utilization", whereby they profit from the animals and therefore want to protect them. InZimbabwe, for instance, impala herds have been culled and the meat given to farmers and their families. However, imposed solutions from Westerners, whose record of preserving their own wildlife has been atrocious and whose knowledge of Africa is mostly inaccurate or nonexistent, threaten to scuttle whatever modest success has been achieved. Not saving the wildlife is too horrible to contemplate, but saving it will require us to accept harsh realities and abandon romantic notions. That is the hope for Africans, both man and beast, and that is the courageous purpose of this book.More »

Beyond Light Bulbs: Lighting the Way to Smarter Energy Management

2011-10-22T02:15:00.006+08:00

COMING SOON !!!
Deborah Brodie is a book editor who has made a sideline occupation of collecting quotes about writing and creativity. The 627 "best" appear in this pretty little volume, Writing Changes Everything, accompanied by charming illustrations. At turns witty and pensive and contradictory, these literary nuggets come from unlikely sources such as Rudolf Nureyev, Morrissey, Albert Einstein, and Satchel Paige. The quotes that sing the clearest come from expected authorities; among them are Mark Twain ("The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning-bug."), Samuel Johnson ("Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."), Iris Murdoch ("Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."), and Erica Jong ("We make up the ocean--then fall in. But we also write the life raft.").

This inspiring and lively book brings together novelists, short-story writers, biographers, playwrights, and poets, along with literary agents, editors and publishers, all sounding off on writing and the creative life. Witty, cranky, wise, jubilant, and eminently repeatable, these quotations will surprise and delight anyone who loves books and writing.

Finalist of 2010 Indie Book Awards

Honorable Mention of 2010 Green Book Festival

Recommended Reading in the Spring 2011 issue of University of Texas McCombs School of Business Magazine

New Book Entries This Week

2011-10-19T17:14:00.001+08:00

Our Rights, Our Victories: Landmark Cases in the Supreme Court by Marites Dañguilan Vitug and Criselda Yab

The Enemy Within by Glenda M. Gloria, Aries Rufo & Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza (NEWSBREAK)

MINDANAO Into the 21st Century: A Photographic Journey by MindaNews

Three Centuries of Binondo Architecture: 1594-1898: A Socio-Historical Perspective by Lorelei D.C. De Viana

Troubled Odyssey by Patricio P. Diaz

[Click Title to See Book Entry]

ANG PROPETA, Katha ni KAHLIL GIBRAN. Isinalin sa Pilipino ni JOVEN R. SAN PEDRO

2011-05-05T10:20:00.000+08:00

Mula sa Paunang Salita. Una kong nabasa ang “The Prophet” maraming taon na ang nakalilipas. Natatandaan kong kaagad akong humanga sa kagandahan ng mga mensahe ni Kahlil Gibran at sa lalim ng kanyang pagkaunawa sa buhay. Sa hindi ko maipaliwanag na dahilan, gumitaw sa aking isip ang larawan ng isang batang nasa kandungan ng kanyang lolo na masayang nagkukuwento ng kanyang mga karanasan at natutunan tungkol sa buhay. Hindi ko na nakagisnan ang aking mga lolo at lola. Hindi ko naranasan ang makalong at makapakinig sa kanilang mga kuwento at pangaral. Marahil dito nagmula ang aking hangad na pangahasang isa-Pilipino ang obra maestra ni Kahlil Gibran.

Bertrand Russel to the Rescue by Poch Suzara

2010-08-26T10:54:00.000+08:00

A compilation of newspaper clippings used as visual aid to assist readers in understanding and appreciating the works of Bertrand Russell, one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers. This in the dark and tragic background of the only Christian country in Asia – the Philippines, a leading example of a faith-damaged culture mired in predominantly pre-scientific ways of thinking. It graphically illustrates what Russell opposed and logically argued against throughout his long life. The clippings also show that even at this late date of the rapid import of technology into the world, the Philippines, unlike its successful Asian neighbors, has not qualified as a scientific nation. Its educational system fails to instill the ethics of independent critical thinking and ignores what Russell stood for and championed: the conquest of fear, ignorance, superstition, criminality, poverty, and, indeed, thoughtless procreation as inspired by blind faith in divinity.

Ako ay Pilipino

2010-03-12T17:17:00.000+08:00

Note from the Ako ay Pilipino Creative Team:

The stories found in this book are stories of a quest for peace, of passion for freedom, of love for our country. They are the adventures of our forefathers and their courage to give us the freedom we were now enjoying. They are a collection of turning points in our history since the cross was planted on our shores nearly 490 years ago. They are stories of victories and defeats, and powerful discoveries from of old. These amazing accounts will open your eyes to the richness of the Philippines and the uniqueness of Filipinos. They will reveal the beauty of this great nation and highlight a shortlist of Filipino traits and values that make us extraordinary. This collection of powerful stories plays a huge part in revealing the identity and destiny of our generation.

More Hispanic Than We Admit: Insights into Philippine Cultural History by Isaac Donoso, ed.

2010-01-14T16:25:00.000+08:00

More Hispanic Than We Admit is a compilation of scholarly essays on Philippine culture and history. The book provokes discussion on the fascinating and sometimes uneasy hybridity that is the Philippines. Presenting significant work by Philippine and international scholars spanning an eclectic range of disciplines, including anthropology, religion, sociology, philology, literary criticism, historiography, film and art studies, political science, and economics, the compilation traces the manifestations and paradoxes of hybridity by exploring the processes of cultural interaction and transformation.

Leading Organizational Change by Ricardo Gonzalez

2009-10-31T14:31:00.000+08:00

Leading Organizational Change

by Ricardo Gonzalez

Edited by Stephen J. Banta

2009. 512pp. ISBN 978-971-8558-53-9

How can leaders of an organization better utilize the creativity of their team members? How can the collective energy of an organization be better focused to achieve shared goals? When does a leader let go so that the wisdom of the organization can manifest itself and thereby be fully applied?

Author Ricardo Gonzalez, presents that a lot of the answers to organizational management and culture change issues can be found in the observation and understanding of how natural systems operate.

Leading Organizational Change: Lessons From Nature integrates the author’s 30 years of experience as an Organization Development (OD) consultant in the Asia Pacific region with a number of current theories like The Complexity Theory that studies systems in the physical and life sciences and The Swarm Theory that takes observations of insect and mammalian group behavior in their natural habitat, and applies it to organizational management and change processes.

The author questions the usefulness of currently employed organizational culture change approaches like Behavior Modification and the Organization Development Process. He advocates the nudging of organizations towards a point where transformational change is more spontaneous, employing the principles of The Complexity Theory and Eight Change Levers.

The book is an invaluable tool for leaders at all levels of an organization looking to re-examine certain fundamental management practices, and to transform prevailing assumptions about organizational culture change.

THROUGH THE EYE OF THE STORM by Danilo P. Vizmanos

2009-10-19T14:33:00.000+08:00

THROUGH THE EYE OF THE STORM by Danilo P. Vizmanos. FOREWORD by Antonio Zumel. The year was 1970. The Communist Party of the Philippines had been reestablished more than a year before, and within a few months the CPP had founded the New People's Army. Students and workers were marching in protest on the streets in ever-increasing numbers, and people's organizations were sprouting. The reactionary state was responding with its truncheons, its water cannons, its tear gas, its guns, its jails. The air was filled with shouted fighting slogans and explosions. The First Quarter Storm of 1970!

It was also later in that year that certain people in the Armed Forces of the Philippines were making a different kind of news. Before the year was out, 1st Lieutenant Victor Corpus had defected to the NPA. Navy Captain Danilo P. Vizmanos had written his college thesis seeking the recognition of the People's Republic of China. And another colleague of theirs, 2nd Lieutenant Crispin Tagamolila, was also preparing to defect to the NPA. And so did a host of the AFP's paramilitary forces, the so-called Barrio Self-Defense Units (BSDUs) in Central Luzon.

Corpus' defection provided the newspapers with headline material, it having been accompanied by a raid on the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio City, with the NPA raiders running off with 43 Browning automatic rifles, a high-caliber machinegun, and various other high-powered weapons. Vizmanos' thesis created a sensation but did not draw as much public attention as did Corpus' defection. And Tagamolila just slipped out of his camp and next turned up in the hills of Isabela with his newfound NPA comrades.

But I dare say that Dan Vizmanos' conversion to the national-democratic line was gradual and, in retrospect, much more vital and more important to the national-democratic mass movement than Corpus' defection in 1970. It was a good time for political awakening--like the years before 1896. Dan and I and tens of thousands of others were heeding the urgent call to struggle against U.S. imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. I'd like to think that in the process our politicalization, Dan Vizmanos and I did help one another.

In "Through the Eye of the Storm," Dan Vizmanos gives a compelling account of his life, times, the people and circumstances that helped develop his thinking. The reader is given glimpses into facets of Vizmanos' life that led to his conversion from a ranking AFP officer with the rank of naval captain (equivalent of full colonel) to a progressive individual alongside the Filipino masses in their struggles for social and national emancipation. Dan rightly dedicates his book to the young Lieutenant Tagamolila, who died as a revolutionary martyr in 1971, followed a few years later by the martyrdom of his only brother, Tony Tagamolila.

Vizmanos' riveting narration starts with his life as a young boy in Cavite. As a boy, he listened intently as his grandfather, a veteran of the 1896 Philippine Revolution, recounted one battle after another where he fought in the armed revolution that eventually put an end to more than 300 years of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines.

Later, Vizmanos' interest in a military career was honed by an uncle who was one of the early Filipino graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point. By the way, it was from this same uncle that Vizmanos first learned about how a white racist in the United States regards a Filipino as a "brown monkey" even if the Filipino American proclaimed his American citizenship. This image somehow collided--but would not stifle--the "American boy", or "Amboy," mentality that was developing in Vizmanos. To Vizmanos at this point in his life, General Douglas MacArthur was awe-inspiring and stood "at the same level as Jesus Christ"!
At 15 years of age during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II, Dan served as an intelligence officer of the pro-American Hunters' guerrillas, even as he helped his family earn a living in those days of deprivation, hunger and misery. At the end of the war, he prepared for admission, first to the PMA, but eventually to the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point in New York. But first, for the entrance examination, he had to reckon with the fact that he had finished four years of high school in only 18 months. How did he do it? I leave it to the reader to discover in the book how this came about.

It was at King Point that Dan Vizmanos and his fellow Filipino cadets were exposed to the humiliation of racial discrimination, about which his uncle--the West Point alumnus--had forewarned him.

Upon graduation from Kings Point, Dan and some of his Filipino classmates joined the Philippine Navy as ensigns (equivalent of second lieutenant). It was while serving in the navy that he participated in "counter-insurgency" operations against the old people's army, the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB, People's Liberation Army). His early years in the navy gave him time to indulge his gung-ho spirit even as he patrolled the coastal waters against smuggling activities. But he was deeply disappointed when some of his superiors in the AFP, whom he names, tended to play footsie with the smugglers or acted in a boorish manner. It was in the service that he came to see or meet political personalities of the time.

In the years that followed, the nationalist feelings in Dan Vizmanos, as were other young people at that time, were kindled and set ablaze by Senator Claro M. Recto. Slowly, Dan's maverick being revolted against the semicolonial status of the Philippines in its lopsided relations with the United States. Progressive ideas fast developed in his mind. Where his colleagues in the AFP thought that the Vietnamese freedom fighters would be mincemeat for the US armed forces, Vizmanos believed that the Vietnamese people's army would eventually beat the US as they had done the French colonialists. Had not the Chinese people's liberation army similarly win against almost unsurmountable odds?

It was this theme--the invincibility of a people's army with the wholehearted support of the people, as in the Chinese revolutionary experience--that he developed into a thesis at the National Defense College of the Philippines in 1970, at a time when he was a naval captain. In his thesis, Dan Vizmanos proposed that the Philippines recognize Mao Zedong's People's Republic of China, accept its entry into the United Nations, and abrogate all uneven treaties with the United States. What unorthodoxy! What apostasy! What subversion to the established order in the land!

Dan Vizmanos stood his ground even as his superiors--first by the NDCP authorities, then the PN's flag-officer-in-command (FOIC, PN), and finally the AFP chief of staff, General Manuel Yan--remonstrated and even shouted at him. He shouted back. He refused to change a word in his thesis, even as he also felt that his 26-year career in the AFP was about to come to an end.

Soon after Marcos imposed fascist martial law in 1972, Dan applied for retirement, but his request was held pending in Malacanang. It was eventually accepted. It was now just a matter of time before he was to be arrested. This happened in May 1974. On the phone, he protested to his provincemate from Cavite, Lt. Col. Miguel Aure, about the abusive conduct of his men in the 5th Constabulary Security Unit--yes, the notorious 5th CSU. Aure told him he'd be held for only a few while for "a brief interview". It was not all that brief. After the physical and psychological torture that went with tactical interrogation, he was jailed for more than two years. Aure thus unwittingly helped in Vizmanos' further politicalization by confining him in Bicutan with the cream of political prisoners. His political commitment thus became more firm than ever. Throughout those years, from the underground I and other comrades managed to be in touch with Dan.

Since his release in 1976, Dan Vizmanos was an indefatigable participant in the national-democratic mass movement--politicizing other people, sitting down to his typewriter to write letters to the editor, distributing protest handbills, speaking at public forums, and forever marching, marching, marching. At 71 years of age going on 72, Dan Vizmanos is still in the struggles under the banner of the national-democratic movement whose history of struggle continues to be written to this very day.

For those officers and men of the Armed Forces of the Philippines who truly wish to serve our country and people, I hope they get to read Dan Vizmanos' book and learn from his positive example.

Utrecht, The Netherlands
June 24, 2000

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