Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

I borrowed Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA at the urging of friends, but I decided to return it without reading.

It is a National Book Award Winner and many friends have recommended this book so maybe I will borrow it again later.

It didn't feel like a book I wanted to read right now, if that makes sense. Just wasn't in the mood for it.

But if you're interested, click here to read an excerpt, here to read the CIA's statement on this book, or here to read a New York Times review by Michael Beschloss titled "The C.I.A.’s Missteps, From Past to Present" published July 12, 2007.

Books from Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze

Here is a list of books mentioned by Greenhouse in The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, in case you want to learn more:

• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
• The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream by Jacob S. Hacker
• Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit by Nelson Lichtenstein
• The Other America: Poverty in the United States by Michael Harrington
• The Organization Man by William H. Whyte
• In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies by Thomas J. Peters & Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
• Mean Business: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies Great by Al Dunlap
• Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution by Michael Hammer and James Champy
• Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy by Bill Gates
• The New Deal at Work: Managing the Market-Driven Workforce by Peter Cappelli
• Lean and Mean: Why Large Corporations Will Continue to Dominate the Global Economy by Bennett Harrison
• The New Ruthless Economy: Work and Power in the Digital Age by Simon Head
• White Collar Sweatshop: The Deterioration of Work and Its Reward in Corporate America by Jill Andresky Fraser
• The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences by Louis Uctitelle
• War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back by Lou Dobbs
• Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company by Andy Grove
• Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself by Daniel Pink
• Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price by Greg Spotts
• Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard
• The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work by Arlie Russell Hochschild
• The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman (click here to read my posts about this book)
• Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz
• The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez by Jimmy Breslin
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (click here to read my posts about this book)
• Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, NoBenefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers--And How to Fight Back by Anya Kamenetz
• Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead by Tamara Draut
• Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation by William Strauss

Not sure if I will actually read any of these.

I feel quite certain that labor relations must change if the United States is to remain competitive and the envy of the world, but reading about how poorly fellow Americans are treated just makes me sad.

Not sure how that change will be created but I do feel like the companies in Bo Burlingham's Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big (one of my favorite books) are good examples of how companies should be run -- for best profitability, happiness (click here to read a bit about this book) and likelihood for creating the "City on the Hill in which prosperity and fairness reigned" (as Greenhouse said on page 78).

Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker

Finally finished reading Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (click here to view all my posts about this book).

While this book was educational, it was also a bit too depressing for my taste. It was quite smart of Greenhouse to put his chapter about the companies that treat their workers well (chapter nine, Taking the High Road) where he did; if it had been any later I was considering not finishing this book.

And I pretty much always finish a book I start.

I was relieved when I finally got to chapter sixteen, Lifting All Boats, with Greenhouse's recommendations categorized as follows:

• fighting wage stagnation
• cracking down on wage theft
• safeguarding the safety net
• curing an unhealthy health care system
• increasing retirement security
• putting some movement back into the labor movement
• grappling with globalization
• easing the climb upward
• respect as a remedy

So my final thoughts....this book is good. I'm glad I read it. But if you aren't used to hearing about terrible working conditions and wages, be prepared to be sad.

Wal-Mart & Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze

I read several more chapters of Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker last night (click here to view all my posts about this book). It is a good book. But it is so sad to read about how average working class Americans are treated, particularly those working at Wal-Mart.

The first half of chapter six, Leaner and Meaner, focuses on the yelling, screaming, cursing, bullying tactics used by managers at Wal-Mart and other companies to decrease costs and thus increase net profits. But the most interesting part of this chapter was learning how computers, which increase productivity by allowing routine tasks to get completed more quickly, decrease costs because of the ease in which they allow for monitoring of employees, cheating workers on payroll, and other shrewd tactics.

Chapter seven, Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, discusses corporations' increasing reliance on temporary workers, consultants / independent contractors, and permatemps (click here to read about Jean Capobianco's story as a FedEx driver, or here to read my previous post about that NYTimes article) while chapter eight, Wal-Mart, the Low-Wage Colossus, is all about the evil ways of the world's largest retailer and the world's largest company:

It is three times as large as the world's second-largest retailer, Carrefour of France. Its sales are greater than the combined sales of Target, Sears, JCPenny, Kohl's Safeway, Albertsons, and Kroger. ... It is the nation's largest grocer, and will have 35 percent of the nation's food market and 25 percent of the pharmacy market by the end of this decade, according to Retail Forward, a consulting firm. Wal-Mart already sells one-third of the nation's disposable dipers, toothpaste, shampoo, laundry detergent, paper towels, and nonprescription drugs, and some say it could soon caputre a 50 percent share for those products. It is the biggest customer of Walt Disney and Procter & Gamble and accounts for 28 percent of Dial's sales, 24 percent of Del Monte's, and 23 percent of Revlon's. Wal-Mart also accounts for 15 percent of the nation's single-copy magazine sales and nearly 20 percent of all sales of CDs, videos, and DVDs.

The tactics listed by Greenhouse include: end-of-shift lock-in, internal banishment, child labor, slashing schedules, overnight lock-ins, missed breaks, shaving time, hiring illegal immigrants, and sex discrimination (read David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) to learn more about how Wal-Mart uses tax-financing and other tactics to increase profits).

Thankfully, it looks like the next chapter of this book, Taking the High Road, is about Costco and how it treats its workers better than Wal-Mart. More on this depressing and eye-opening book later...

The Big Squeeze by Steven Greenhouse

Just got through chapter five, The Rise and Fall of the Social Contract, from Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (click here to view all my posts about this book).

The background about the post-war business atmosphere in America and Walter Reuther's (president of General Motors division of the United Auto Workers) negotiations with Charles E. Wilson (president of General Motors) that helped to create the social contract that started to collapse for blue-collar workers in the 1980s and for white-collar workers in the 1990s provided an educational break from the heart-wrenching from the first few chapters.

Stories of Jefferson, Wiscosin's Chuck Moehling (a Tyson Foods pepperoni plant worker); of Birmingham, Alabama-native and former worker at North Miami Sam's Club Farris Cobb; of Bartlesville, Oklahoma-native Drew Pooters, a career retail worker and manager; and Dominican Republic immigrant Julia Ortiz fighting for wages at least equal to the federal minimum wage.

Expect to read more about this book...

The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker

I've read just a few chapters of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by New York Times labor and workplace correspondent Steven Greenhouse (click here to view all my posts about this book).

So far, much of the data is the same as from David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) and Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else.

And the chapters of this book, like Johnston's book, each read like separate articles/essays with a common theme. But what is different from Johnston's books is the human aspect -- Johnston tells the stories of hard-working men and women (and their families) and their struggle as employees of mostly big corporations to join the middle class.

In that sense, this book is a lot like what I would expect of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), which I wrote a short paragraph about here.

Looking forward to reading more of The Big Squeeze, particularly once I get to where Greenhouse discusses examples of employers who treat their employees well.

Click here to view the table of contents or click here to to download a PDF excerpt.

White House Ghosts by Robert Schlesinger

I've finally finished Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters (click here to view all my posts about this book); once I made some time for reading it was a breeze to get through.

And my final verdict: this book is a winner!

As a young person born after most of these president's governed, I enjoyed learning more about our nation's presidents. I also liked learning about the roles of Chris Matthews, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Peggy Noonan, James Fallows, and other familiar figures through different administrations.

I especially appreciated reading about Eric Liu (who thoughtfully expressed the confusion anguish many Asian American's feel about their heritage and cultural identity in his memoir The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, which I read in 2002) and Rahm Emmanuel and their roles in the Clinton administration.

Schlesinger convinced me of the importance of presidential speechwriters; as he tells it, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush failed to win second terms (and Bill Clinton contributed to the Republicans winning control of the House and Senate and George W. Bush's election to governor of Texas in 1994) largely because they did not view presidential speeches as serious business.

And serious business it is. An effective leader must have excellent communication skills or will fail to effect change. So while some have derided Barack Obama for his eloquent prose, I believe it will make him a better president.

Click here to visit the official website for the White House Ghosts, here to read an excerpt on the publisher’s website, or here to view the table of contents.

Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts

Just an update on White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger (which I first heard about in May and have been slowly reading since August; click here to view all my posts about this book).

I am enjoying the book; Schlesinger is a great storyteller and with each chapter I am more and more impressed by his abilities.

It's just that with all of the excitement surrounding the Presidential election and the drama of the financial crisis, I found myself watching news on tv and reading news online during every spare moment.

So I confess I haven't been reading as much as I'd like to these past few months.

Click here to visit the official website for the book, here to read an excerpt of White House Ghosts on the publisher’s website, or here to view the table of contents.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

I don't know much about the High Plains Dust Bowl of the 1930s, so I'm interested in reading Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, a National Book Award winner in 2006 (also in 2006 it won the Washington State Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award) - click here to read Elizabeth Royte's December 2005 review titled "The Anti-Joads."

Timothy Egan is a reporter for the New York Times and I seem to gravitate towards books written by the Times staff.

The Table of Contents looks promising...

Introduction: Live Through This 1

I • PROMISE: The Great Plowup, 1901–1930
1. The Wanderer 13
2. No Man’s Land 32
3. Creating Dalhart 52
4. High Plains Deutsch 59
5. Last of the Great Plowup 73

II • BETRAYAL, 1931–1933
6. First Wave 91
7. A Darkening 103
8. In a Dry Land 115
9. New Leader, New Deal 128
10. Big Blows 136

III • BLOWUP, 1934–1939
11. Triage 145
12. The Long Darkness 155
13. The Struggle for Air 171
14. Showdown in Dalhart 176
15. Duster’s Eve 193
16. Black Sunday 198
17. A Call to Arms 222
18. Goings 236
19. Witnesses 242
20. The Saddest Land 254
21. Verdict 265
22. Cornhusker II 273
23. The Last Men 279
24. Cornhusker III 293
25. Rain 303

Epilogue 309
Notes and Sources 315
Acknowledgments 328
Index 331

Click here to read an excerpt of the first chapter.

Barack Obama '79

Punahou has this statement on it's website regarding Obama's historic victory:

Barack Obama ’79 Elected President of the United States

Punahou alumnus Barack Obama was elected the 44^th president of the United States in an historic election. As a first-term senator from Illinois, Obama's candidacy has brought significant attention to Hawai‘i and to Punahou School.

In his acceptance speech, Senator Obama said, "It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America."

Punahou School President James K. Scott today said, "This is a historic moment for America and the world, and for Hawai‘i. We are thrilled and honored that a Punahou School alumnus - and son of Hawai‘i - has been elected to serve as the next President of the United States. At Punahou School, our calling is to foster each student's potential to reach his or her promise and effect meaningful change in society. President-elect Obama is an inspirational embodiment of that vision."

Barack Obama was born in Hawai‘i and attended Punahou School beginning in the 5^th grade, graduating in 1979.

Yippeee!

Obama!

Yay for Obama!

As an alumnus of Punahou School and as an American, I am ecstatic and proud about Obama's victory tonight!

If you haven't read either of his books -- Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream -- I highly recommend them.

I've listened to the audio version of Dreams from My Father and it is fantastic! Every bit as wonderful as you'd except from a Grammy winner -- Obama's ability to do voices (including those of his Kenyan relatives) is unbelievable.

I haven't finished The Audacity of Hope yet but will try to do so before Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009!

Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie

I just read Natalie Angier's October 27, 2008 New York Times article "The Unappreciated, Holding Our Lives in Balance" which made me think of Scott McCredie's Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense. (Which, of course, I read after I heard about it in the New York Times; click here to read Daniel Smith's New York Times review titled "Without a Net" and published August 19, 2007.)

While I don't have any notes on this book (I read Balance before I started this blog), I remember finding this book thoughtful and well-written. While I wouldn't go so far as to agree with McCredie that Balance should be considered the sixth sense, McCredie did convincingly argue balance's importance on normal human function.

The book managed to be both educational and entertaining. The stories of Karl Wallenda were sweet while stories of pilot's disorientation (and how balance was a contributing factor in the death of John F. Kennedy Jr) were tragic.

I've always had a poor sense of balance despite my love of yoga. So I appreciated McCredie's appendix of exercises. The New York Times (of course) published a great article by Jane Brody in January titled "Preserving a Fundamental Sense: Balance" with simple balance exercises:

To increase stability and strengthen the legs, stand with feet shoulder-width apart and arms straight out in front. Lift one foot behind, bending the knee at 45 degrees. Hold that position for five seconds or longer, if possible.

Repeat this exercise five times. Then switch legs. As you improve, try one-leg stands with your eyes closed.

...

Sit-to-stand exercises once or twice a day increase ankle, leg and hip strength and help the body adjust to changes in position without becoming dizzy after being sedentary for a long time. Sit straight in a firm chair (do not lean against the back) with arms crossed. Stand up straight and sit down again as quickly as you can without using your arms. Repeat the exercise three times and build to 10 repetitions.

Heel-to-toe tandem walking is another anytime exercise, resembling plank walking popular with young children. It is best done on a firm, uncarpeted floor. With stomach muscles tight and chin tucked in, place one foot in front of the other such that the heel of the front foot nearly touches the toe of the back foot. Walk 10 or more feet and repeat the exercise once or twice a day.

Also try walking on your toes and then walking on your heels to strengthen your ankles.

Another helpful exercise is sidestepping. Facing a wall, step sideways with one leg (bring the other foot to it) 10 times in each direction. After mastering that, try a dancelike maneuver that starts with sidestepping once to the right. Then cross the left leg behind, sidestep to the right again and cross the left leg in front. Repeat this 10 times. Then do it in the other direction.

So in addition to your normal workout, make sure you aren't neglecting your vestibular system! Perform this test to assess your current balance:

1. Stand straight, wearing flat, closed shoes, with your arms folded across your chest. Raise one leg, bending the knee about 45 degrees, start a stopwatch and close your eyes.
2. Remain on one leg, stopping the watch immediately if you uncross your arms, tilt sideways more than 45 degrees, move the leg you are standing on or touch the raised leg to the floor.
3. Repeat this test with the other leg.
4. Now, compare your performance to the norms for various ages:
   
   • 20 to 49 years old: 24 to 28 seconds.
   • 50 to 59 years: 21 seconds.
   • 60 to 69 years: 10 seconds.
   • 70 to 79 years: 4 seconds.
   • 80 and older: most cannot do it at all.
   
   

Click here to view the table of contents and download an excerpt from the author's website or here to view the author's FAQ.

Plan B 3.0 by Lester R Brown

A friend recently recommended Lester R. Brown's Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Brown is the author of more than 40 books -- including Outgrowing The Earth, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth, Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge, and The Earth from the Air -- and is a well known environmentalist thinker. Click here to read his biography.

I haven't read it but my understanding is that this is the third edition of Brown's classic Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. My friend says "the first half tells how we got in this situation and the second half has solutions; It gives you hope and makes you realize it is possible to solve the environmental problems if we realize the need and get busy."

Sounds interesting and since I've cut back on my book budget I'm happy to hear that while it's available for sale in hardcover and paperback it is also available as a free PDF format book on the Earth Policy Institute website here.

Click here to view the table of contents and download the entire book or specific chapters in PDF format (and the data from various chapters are also available in excel spreadsheet format).

The Big Necessity by Rose George

Just heard about a new book by Rose George -- author of A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World -- about poop (feces, crap, doodoo, dookie, doody, shit, poo, turds, kaka, excrement, you get the gist)!

In this book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, George teaches us that 2.6 billion people have no access to clean food or water and lead lives surrounded by human poop, either in the bushes outside their villages or in their city streets, leading to more than 2 million deaths per year.

And she also teaches us about our "modern" sewer systems that are now overloaded and outdated.

Makes me think a bit about Liquid Assets.

Click here to read an excerpt or here to read more about this book on the author's website.

More Library Books

As usual, I went to the library with the intent to leave without picking up any books and failed.

I borrowed Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics and Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

I hadn't heard of The Mind of the Market but with the economics crisis I've been drawn to learn more about economics and the psychology of financial market.

This book focuses on the new field of neuroeconomics, investigating how psychology and biology affect the way we think about money. I had a friend in college who did some undergraduate research in this field so I'm looking forward to seeing if his work is featured in this book.

Click here to read an excerpt or here to visit Shermer's website.



Friends have been recommending Legacy of Ashes for months.

I don't know if I believe that this book, based on 50,000 documents (including CIA archives), will be everything folks say it is but I expect it will be full of drama and intrigue. It's been highly praised by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many others -- it even won the National Book Award.

Interestingly, the CIA has condemned this book as incorrect and deceptive . . . I wonder what my friends who work in government think of this book. Hmm . . .

Click here to read an excerpt or here to read a New York Times review by Michael Beschloss titled "The C.I.A.’s Missteps, From Past to Present" published July 12, 2007.

Financial Crisis Books

As the stock market continues its massive decline, I find myself wanting to read more books about economics and financial history.

I've read The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (which I highly recommend) and The Power of Gold: the History of an Obsession; I'd like to read the recently published books about Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs and there are some other books that seem relevant.

• Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz (1971)
• Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises by Charles Kindleberger (1975) -- click here to read an excerpt and click here to view the table of contents.
• The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson (2008) -- to be published in November 2008
• Essays on the Great Depression by Ben Bernanke (2004) - click here to read an excerpt and click here to view the table of contents;
• The Return of Depression Economics by Paul Krugman (2000) -- click here to read an excerpt and click here to view the table of contents
• Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing by Roger Lowenstein (2004) -- click here to read an excerpt and click here to view the table of contents
• A Short History of Financial Euphoria by John Kenneth Galbraith (1990) -- click here to view the table of contents
• Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein (1998) -- click here to view the table of contents
• The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It by Robert J Schiller (2008) -- click here to view the table of contents
• The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith (1997) -- click here to view the table of contents.
• Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1938 by John Brooks (1981) -- click here to view the table of contents.
• Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis -- click here to view the table of contents
• When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein (2000) -- click here to read an excerpt and click here to view the table of contents
• The Go-Go Years: The Drama and Crashing Finale of Wall Street's Bullish 60s by John Brooks (1998) -- click here to view the table of contents
• Risk and Business Cycles: New And Old Austrian Perspectives by Tyler Cowen (1998) -- click here to view the table of contents

White House Ghosts by Robert Schlesinger

I've just started reading Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters.

I found out about this book through the New York Times, checked it out from the library after the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and finally got motivated to start reading this lengthy book as I've been eagerly watching the presidential and vice presidential debates and the candidates speeches about the bailout bill.

So far, this book seems very well-researched. Schelsinger is a natural storyteller and expertly weaves the facts into a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of presidents and their speechwriters.

This book is required reading for students of the American presidency.

Click here to read an excerpt of White House Ghosts on the publisher’s website or click here to view the table of contents.

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter

I haven't been interested in reading any of former President Jimmy Carter's books.

And this Nobel Peace Prize winner has written a lot of books:

• A Remarkable Mother
• Always a Reckoning, and Other Poems
• America on My Mind
• An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood
• An Outdoor Journal : Adventures and Reflections
• Atlanta: The Right Kind of Courage
• Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope
• Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East
• Bringing Peace to a Changing World: Sunday Mornings in Plains: Bible Study with Jimmy Carter
• Christmas in Plains: Memories
• Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life
• Faith and Freedom : The Christian Challenge for the World
• Government as Good as Its People
• Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President
• Leading a Worthy Life
• Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer
• Living Faith
• Measuring Our Success: Sunday Mornings in Plains: Bible Study with Jimmy Carter Vol. 2
• Negotiation: The Alternative to Hostility
  
• Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
• Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
• Sharing Good Times
• Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith
• Talking Peace: A Vision for the Next Generation
• The Hornet's Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War
• The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture 2002
• The Personal Beliefs of Jimmy Carter
• The Virtues of Aging
• Turning Point: A Candidate, A State, and A Nation Come of Age
• Why Not the Best?: The First Fifty Years

I didn't know that he wrote not just non-fiction but also a book of poetry and a children's book. And that doesn't even include the books that he's written prefaces, forewords or introductions for!

But the one I'm considering reading now is Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. I remember reading a less than glowing New York Times review of this book in January 2007 not long after this book came out.

Obviously the publisher thinks much more highly of this book; here's what the publisher has to say about this book:

President Carter, who was able to negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, has remained deeply involved in Middle East affairs since leaving the White House. He has stayed in touch with the major players from all sides in the conflict and has made numerous trips to the Holy Land, most recently as an observer in the Palestinian elections of 2005 and 2006.

In this book President Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences with the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many American officials avoid. Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism.

The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy, and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal of a just agreement that both sides can honor.

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is a challenging, provocative, and courageous book.

Having read Queen Noor's Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life, I'd like to learn more about Israeli-Palestinian history and politics and I'm interested in reading Carter's Palestine because I suspect that it tells a different side of the story than we normally hear in the United States.

That this book has sparked much uproar makes me think that this is an important book to read -- whether or not it is accurate.

Click here to view the table of contents or click here to read an excerpt.

Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome?

Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America is definitely worth reading, particularly if your knowledge of Roman history is lacking (click here to view all my posts about this book).

I don't know enough about Roman history to properly evaluate the points Murphy makes but I still found it interesting. Murphy writes for the average person and not the highly educated scholar.

Murphy is clearly well-read and appears to have done substantial research for this book. I was surprised by how often he mentioned other books. Some of the books he mentioned are:

• Colossus by Niall Ferguson - "I believe the world needs an effective liberal empire and that the United States is the best candidate for the job" and America's best and brightest "aspire not to govern Mesopotamia but to manage MTV; not to rule the Hejaz but to run a hedge fund."
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs - "The collapse of one sustaining cultural institution enfeebles others . . . . With each collapse, still further ruin becomes more likely."
• City of God by Augustine
• Satyricon by Petronius
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
• Cato: A Tragedy in Five Acts by Joseph Addison
• The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• Life of Washington by Parson Weems
• Democracy: An American Novel by Henry Adams
• Caesar & Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw
• Political Arithmetick by William Petty
• Roman History by Ammianus Marcellinus
• The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire by Edward Luttwak
• The Soldier and the State by Samuel Huntington
• This Kind of War by Colonel T. R. Fehrenbach - "You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life -- but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud."
• Corruption and the Decline of Rome by Ramsay MacMullen - "the privatization of power" or "the deflection of public purpose by private interests."
• Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jerome Carcopino
  
• The Shadow Government by Daniel Guttman and Barry Willner
• Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling
• Blow the House Down by Robert Baer
• The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus
• The Quiet American by Graham Greene
• The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
• My Year in Iraq by L. Paul Bremer - I'd really like to read this
• The Old Social Classes & The Revolutionary Movement of Iraq by Hanna Batatu
• Roman History by Cassius Dio
• Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling
• Mexifornia by Victor Davis Hanson
• Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee
• Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron
• Why Most Things Fail by Paul Ormerod

The breadth of Murphy's sources is astonishing. He even quoted video games such as Rome: Total War and several movies -- including Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Gladiator, and Spartacus.

I found that I enjoyed this book immensely at the start but found my interest wavering as I got further into the book. But Murphy concludes this book rather succinctly with what he calls the "Titus Livius 100-year Workout Plan":

1. Instill an appreciation of the wider world, including creation of immigration-friendly policies and an increase in the number of Americans who are fluent in another language.
2. Stop treating government as a necessary evil and instead rely on it proudly for the big things it can do well.  Examples include nurturing business, reducing poverty, Social Security, and guaranteed student loans.
3. Fortify the institutions that promote assimilation (public services for illegal immigrants).
4. Take some weight off the military and national service.

I wonder what Murphy thinks of the current financial crisis....hmm....

Click here to read an excerpt from Are We Rome? or click here to view the table of contents.

The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings

I just read about The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English by Henry Hitchings in this article from The Economist and I've got to get a copy!

Hitchings is also the author of Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary, which I also want to read after I first heard about it in Charles McGrath's New York Times Book Review "A Man of Many Words" published December 4, 2005. William Grimes also reviewed it in the New York Times here; click here to read the first chapter of Defining the World.

Though I don't know much about it, I've always been fascinated by the history of language -- one thing I liked about Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? was learning how we use words derived from words the Romans used).

And as the review from The Economist mentions, the history of words is the history of culture:

All this is another way of writing history. The Arab etymologies of “saffron”, “crimson” and “sugar” speak of England’s medieval trade with the Arab world. We have “cheque” and “tariff” from this source too, plus “arithmetic” and “algorithm”—just as we have “etch” and “sketch” from the Dutch, musical terms from the Italians and philosophical ones from the Germans. French nuance and finesse are everywhere. At every stage, the book is about people and ideas on the move, about invasion, refugees, immigrants, traders, colonists and explorers.

I hope my local library has a copy!