Rating: 
Summary: Oh no, looks like I'm a RACIST!
Review: That's right, just listen to the 1 star reviews: if you say anything bad about Jesse or Al, you are a racist. Hmmm. I guess some people can't be critisized. After all, 300 years of slavery. Oooooh, I feel sooooo guilty.I have never owned any slaves, sorry. Welfare has paid plenty of restitution, more than enough to repay whatever work was not compensated. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are both con men and liars. If you don't like the truth, go ahead and shout "racism" but nobody can hear you over the facts.
Rating:
Summary: Doin' the crime without doin' the time
Review: Having heard about Jesse Jackson over the years, whether I wanted to or not, I had some suspicions that he could be a slick character (not unlike our former philanderer in chief). I had no idea how thoroughly corrupt he is. This book is a disturbing but fascinating read. It is well written, well documented, and sorely needed at a time when the media provide less than the truth. It is also an excellent study of how someone possessing only deceit and greed can rise to the top. The fact that Jackson still has supporters is a sad commentary on the intellectual and moral state of the black subculture. I salute those few blacks that have had the courage to speak the truth about him.
Rating:
Summary: Remember Africa!
Review: Others here have spoken to Timmerman's masterful job of documenting Jesse Jackson's corrupt business dealings in the U.S., and this alone would be worth the price of the book, but there was another series of events detailed by the author that I thought even more significant. The story of Jesse Jackson's foreign policy bungling in West Africa is particularly noteworthy for two reasons. First and foremost are the number of lives lost because of this man's personal relationship with the brutal dictator, Charles Taylor of Liberia, and the Sierra Leonean rebel leader, Foday Sankoh. Jackson's insistence that Sankoh be placed in government to oversee the diamond mines was like putting the fox in the henhouse, and the results were devastating for the ordinary Africans who paid the price with lost lives, limbs and dignity. Secondly, this part of the story, as important as it is, was virtually ignored by the American press. The victims deserve to have their story told - not just the brutality, but how it was made possible by the meddling of an incompetent, self-consumed, egotist who ignored the sufferings of the powerless for the sake of making a little money.
Rating:
Summary: Hustle, Jesse, Hustle!!!
Review: Author Kenneth Timmerman in Shakedown declares that Jesse Jackson is a race hustler from the beginning and shows the 1001 ways that he is for the rest of the book...And it is very funny to read about in a way, but then again, it's not so funny when you think of all the people that Jackson has taken advantage of; all of us really, since he has lived off the public trough especially when the Democrats are in power. It's been a little lean for Jesse during Republican times, but he has survived, he just has to hustle a little smarter and harder. Anyway, all I can say is here is your taxpayer dollars at work. Jackson uses supposed civil rights abuses as a ploy to get more money for himself and his friends. He has rarely helped out the black man on the street. You have to pay him a lot of money just for him to show up to give a speech. His ties to Chicago street gangs is covered. His half-brother was also involved with them and he went to prison for paying someone to murder an enemy. Jackson's proclivity to lie about his past is covered in which he touches down in Africa and declares that he has lived in mud huts just like the natives. Or that he was discriminated against as a football player and could not become a quarterback. Jesse Jackson maximized his worldwide scamming during the Clinton years as a envoy to Africa. He tried to make business deals to benefit his friends and himself while he was in Africa. And, oh yeah, he was over there to rectify the deplorable sitituation with human rights there too. Well, sort of. He made friends with some of the dictators there for his own benefit, but he was just acting under US foreign policy, Jesse declares. The Texaco shakedown was also covered and I found it interesting that the tape in which the employees allegedly said the N word was so quiet and unclear that it may be that they did not say such a thing. But no matter, Jackson helped himself to the situation there also, while, of course, "diversifying" the company through new policy programs. One company actually stood up to Jesse and dug up some dirt on his background and then Jesse laid off. One redeeming thing can be said about Jackson; white politicians are often unethical too. The most amusing part of the book is when he gets out-slicked by Bill Clinton during the Sister Souljah episode in which she declares it's okay to kill white people. (Bill probably doesn't care if white people get killed just as long as it's not him, I might add.) Anyway, didn't someone declare Bill the first black president? This further confuses my analysis. One detractor of Jackson's scolding for him for living up to the stereotype that blacks are morally inferior to whites, which was an insightful observation. I think the book shows well the devolution of our constitutional republic, in which the law rules, to a mob democracy in which men and the mob's power politics rule. Jackson shares some traits with MLK in which both were had illicit sexual adventures, had close ties to communists, did not fill the educational requirements to become Reverends, and misused funds for their cause. They were very slick speechmakers and could gather and convince a crowd. Anyway, I can't wait for the Real MLK book to come out, but some of his records have been locked up by the government "to preserve his good name".
Rating:
Summary: A necessary book
Review: Before reading this book I regarded Jesse Jackson as a respectable, if a bit sneaky, politician. After reading I know the truth, that Jackson is nothing but a criminal on the highest level who exploits his supporters for his own personal gain. A must read. For those reading the other reviews of this book, keep in mind that none of them really respond to the claims presented in Timmerman's account- that Jackson acted as a paid lobbyist for foreign despots, that he defrauded the federal government out of grants, all while supporting his extravagant lifestyle. Instead, critics of this book choose to condemn the author as a racist, without even discussing the facts.
Rating:
Summary: Is there a bigger crook or bag of hot air in politics?
Review: One would be hard pressed to find one with the resume of "Reverend" Jesse Jackson. A brief synopsis of this book includes; the small lies (the Reverend Martin Luther King "dying in his lap" and him being the last person he spoke to), the big lies (his repeated shakedown of businesses for money to benefit minorities, when in actuality, the money is lining only his and his friends pockets), the ridiculous (he claims to be a Reverend yet he quit seminary school after a couple of months), the unbelievable (that no one has been able to call him on having anti-American, pro-Communist members on his PUSH delegation much less as close associates, who have helped form the rhetoric he espouses), the absurd (his relationships and public backing of Arafat and Castro during times of heightened sensitivity due to their actions and views against the US and its allies), the gut-wrentching (at a rally of his 4 days after 9-11 in a big auditorium, he could not find any room for a single American flag but room for an oversized portrait of himself, adding that America's response so far is just "scapegoating").
Mr. Timmerman has done everyone a service by exposing probably the biggest con-man in politics. This book made me laugh and it made me mad, mad that someone like him can get so far on complete BS. By fanning the flames of usually non-existant racism in busines, he has been able to stay afloat. This book proves over and over that Jesse not just needs racism, but creates and promotes it because without it, there would be no place else to go. There are too many details in this book to cover in a review (his half-brother and business partner serving multiple life terms in prison, his backing of a military dictatorship in Sierra Leone and Nigeria that butchers its children - yes its true, even his own infidelities), but it is definitely worth the read. Mr. Timmerman should be commended for the job he has done.
You may ask yourself why would you want to spend your time reading about someone like this as I did when I first started the book. Because we need to educate ourselves on our enemies and after reading this book, you will find out the "Reverend" Jesse Jackson is an enemy of everything American.
Rating: 
Summary: How to fly 1st class with no job?
Review: I've lived in Jesse's declared hometown, Chicago, for 10 years now. Even with local news coverage ad nauseum about this "pastor" I've learned much more about the man-inside-the-man called Jesse. I've given the book 4 out of 5 stars only because Timmerman was at times overly protective of facts that it sometimes became overdone. It is unfortunate that the facts are needed to offset the usual cry of "Racism" surely to be assigned this book. I can assure you it is not racists in its more fundamental definition. What I cannot assure you is the racist motives behind EVERYTHING this man does.
Rating:
Summary: An
Review: I found this book to be well researched, well cited and documented, and its presentation is quite logical. Jackson is shown to have become what other machiavellians, criminal-"politicians" throughout history only dreamed of becoming. It is as if he himself could have written "The 48 Laws of Power". Great in-depth reporting on a man that history will eventually mark as a criminal mastermind. I knew Jesse was shady at best but from this book's perspective he now reminds me of the type of villain the antagonists of the novel "Atlas Shrugged" would aspire to become. "The Illuminati Manifesto" by Solomon Tulbure is an indespensible weapon against JE$$E types.
Rating:
Summary: Shakedown puts it all in perspective-now I know
Review: I have always wondered how a guy like Jesse Jackson makes a living. Now I know. A follow-up would be why the media and politicians let him get away with these tactics. Great reading, well documented facts, and is detailed enough to make the point and leave it to the reader to deal with the facts as he/she wishes.
It has been said that politics is legalized crime. Shakedown shows the politics of Jesse Jackson.
Rating:
Summary: Now I Know for Sure
Review: It seems some people have made a deal with the devil. After reading this book, I'm sure Jessie Jackson has. How this man can call himself a Reverend is beyond me. The book is excellent. Very thouroughly detailed and fun reading. I couldn't wait to settle down with it every night.
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