My Ten Favorite Books that I read in 2008

[Time for change]

In choosing books for this list I considered the importance of the information contained in them, the quality of the evidence the authors use to make their case, and how easy they were for me to read and understand and enjoy. I feel that my understanding of today’s world was improved a great deal as a result of reading each of the books that I describe in this post. They are discussed here in alphabetical order.


Chasing the Flame – Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World – by Samantha Power

This book describes the life and career of the Brazilian native, Sergio Vieira de Mello, whose career at the United Nations spanned 34 years, from 1969 until his untimely death in Iraq in 2003. Through much of his UN career, Vieira de Mello was considered to be a potential future Secretary-General. He might have eventually attained that post had he not died in a suicide bomber attack on his barely fortified UN Headquarters building in Baghdad in 2003.

Throughout his whole career, Vieira de Mello was steadfastly dedicated to the cause of peace, achieved through the application of international law, and much of that career was spent in peacekeeping missions. Some of his most important missions included: Senior political advisor to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (1981-1983); United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees’ special envoy for Cambodia (1991-1993); top UN official in Bosnia as part of the United Nations Protection Force (1993-1994); UN humanitarian coordinator for the Great Lakes region of Africa, in which he dealt with the Rwandan Hutu refugee problem (1996); Interim Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Kosovo (1999); Special Representative of the Secretary-General and UN transitional administrator in East Timor (1999-2002); Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Iraq (2003).

It should be clear from this resume that Vieira de Mello had as much or more first hand experience in dealing with genocidal killers as anyone on earth. In 1974 he earned a doctorate degree in philosophy, and he spent much of his career thinking about the philosophical and practical issues involved in attempting to attain peace. It became evident to him while on his Cambodia assignment that the values of peace and human rights often clashed with each other. The Khmer Rouge had been guilty of genocide on a large scale. Giving them a “seat at the table” sent the wrong message with respect to the issue of human rights. Yet, in the interest of peace, Vieira de Mello had to work with them intimately in order to solve the refugee problem.

But unlike various national leaders who have cozied up to repressive or genocidal regimes, Vieira de Mello’s work with them was not based on self-interest. In fact, he put his life in severe jeopardy by going to meet with them in person, unarmed and undefended, in circumstances that few national leaders would ever have considered exposing themselves to.

In Iraq, Vieira de Mello was outspoken about his opposition to the U.S. occupation. His death was quite unnecessary. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) under L. Paul Bremer failed to provide anything but minimal security for UN Headquarters in Baghdad. On August 19, 2003, when Vieira de Mello was trapped in the rubble of the destroyed building, bleeding to death, the CPA rescue effort was virtually non-existent. They were much more interested in keeping people, including potential rescuers, away from the scene of the bombing than they were in rescuing the victims of the attack. It was just like everything else the Bush administration has done in Iraq.


The Dark Side -- The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals – by Jane Mayer

Of the many crimes of the Bush administration, none terrifies me more than how it treats its prisoners – Kidnapping them all over the world, throwing them into dungeons and labeling them as “illegal enemy combatants” with almost no concern for determining their guilt or innocence, keeping them there indefinitely with no opportunity to challenge their detention, stripping them of all human rights, and repeatedly torturing them. Hitler and Stalin come to mind.

I have often asked myself why the Bush administration feels the need to do this. Mayer’s book answers many questions surrounding that issue. Here are just two examples:

Why strip our prisoners of all legal and human rights?
The case of John Walker Lindh answers this question. Lindh was an American citizen who converted to Islam as a young man. As a Muslim, he felt it his duty to go to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban – at a time when the Taliban was considered an ally of our country. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Lindh turned himself in to the U.S. Army.

He was the first prosecution of our “War on Terror”. While in U.S. custody awaiting trial, Lindh was denied access to an attorney and consistently treated inhumanely, bordering or crossing the line into torture. Because of all the procedural misconduct, the Bush administration was unable to pursue the most serious charge against him, and it was embarrassed when his treatment became public. Mayer describes the lesson that the Bush administration learned from its first prosecution of its “War on Terror”:

What John Walker Lindh taught the Bush Administration was that open criminal trials under the strict rules of the American legal system were not worth the risk (of embarrassment to the Bush administration that is). In the future, enemy prisoners would have to be held safely outside the reach of U.S. law, where they could by questioned without legal interference and tried under rules more favorable to the prosecution – if they were tried at all.

Why all the torture?
One major clue to the purpose of the Bush detention and torture program is its use of a program called SERE, an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. The theoretical purpose of the program was that by subjecting U.S. soldiers to near torture-like conditions, they could be programmed to resist breaking under torture by the enemy and revealing national security secrets. But in actual practice, the program was “reverse-engineered” to become a blueprint for torture of our prisoners. Mayer explains the significance of that:

The SERE program was a strange choice for the government to pick if it was seeking to learn how to get the truth from detainees. It was founded during the Cold War in an effort to re-create, and therefore understand, the mistreatment that had led thirty-six captured U.S. airmen to give stunningly FALSE CONFESSIONS during the Korean War.

In other words, the major purpose of Bush administration systematic torture of its prisoners was to obtain false confessions – as it did with Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who confessed to the non-existent close ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.


Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War – by Richard J. Walton

I bought this book for one penny (not including shipping and handling), through Amazon – which shows how much the seller wanted other people to read this book.

Henry Wallace was FDR’s Vice President before Truman, from January 1941 to January 1945. FDR kind of dumped him for Truman in 1944 (He actually told the convention to vote their conscience, but he put his weight behind Truman) because Wallace was too far left for the taste of a lot of Democrats.

Wallace’s biggest beef with Truman was his militancy towards Communism, which eventually led to the Cold War. Wallace felt strongly that we should take a much less militant stance towards Communism and Stalin’s USSR. He strongly believed that we could influence Communist tyrants more through diplomatic processes than through threatening them. And he warned our nation of the Military Industrial Complex long before President Eisenhower’s much more famous farewell address.

He was Truman’s Secretary of Commerce for about a year and a half. During his time in Truman’s cabinet he repeatedly tried to influence Truman towards a less militant stance towards Communism. Partly for that reason, he is still branded today as a Communist or a “fellow traveler”. He was neither.

He was fired from his cabinet position in 1946, due to irreconcilable differences of opinion with Truman. He then thought long and hard about forming his own party. Unable to sway Truman’s cold warrior attitudes, Wallace founded the Progressive Party to run against Truman in the 1948 Presidential election. My father voted for him.

Today’s political figure who most resembles him in my opinion is Dennis Kucinich. Like Kucinich, Wallace’s words were much more swayed by what he believed than by political considerations. As a contender for the Presidency, the forces of the status quo were arrayed against him, and he was barely more successful than Kucinich was.

With the onset of the Cold War, our war against socialism, which I’ve described in this post, hit full steam. Using the Soviet Union as an excuse, our CIA and military intervened in dozens of nations anywhere and everywhere in the world to overthrow the legally elected governments of other countries or to prevent them from being elected in the first place. This gave rise to repressive right wing governments all over the world and resulted in untold misery widely distributed throughout the world. Walton’s book describes the situation:

Various right wing dictators… were quick to perceive that the United States was supporting them not out of a genuine concern for their people but because they were allies in an anti-Communist crusade that took precedence over all other considerations… It is difficult to think of a single instance where the United States took effective measures to end repressive, undemocratic practices of a regime it claimed to be supporting in the defense of democracy…

Much of Walton’s book describes how Henry Wallace unsuccessfully tried to prevent that from happening.


Moyers on Democracy – by Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers has long been one of my very favorite journalists – in a time when our nation is in great need of good journalists with integrity. His career in journalism spans more than four decades, following stints in government as Deputy Director of the Peace Corps in the Kennedy administration, and Special Assistant to the President and White House Press Secretary in the Johnson administration. This book is a collection of some of Bill Moyers’ best speeches. Here are some examples:

On the need for grass roots activism
Moyers gave this speech at a eulogy. It is so applicable to what we face today:

I once heard Lyndon Johnson urge Martin Luther King to hold off on his marching in the South to give the president time to neutralize the old guard in Congress and create a consensus for finally ending institutionalized racism in America. Martin Luther King listened, and the he answered (Moyers paraphrases): “Mr. President, the gods of the South will never be appeased. They will never have a change of heart. They will never repent of their sins… The time has passed for consensus, the time has come to break the grip of history and change the course of America.”

When the discussion was over Dr. King had carried the day. The president said, “Dr. King, you go on out there now and make it possible for me to do the right thing.” Lyndon Johnson had seen the light. For him to do the right thing someone had to subpoena America’s conscience and send it marching from the ground up against the citadels of power and privilege.

One the need for economic and social justice

Take one fork and the road leads to an America where military power serves empire rather than freedom; where we lose from within what we are trying to defend from without… where true believers in the gods of the market turn the law of the jungle into the law of the land; where in the name of patriotism we keep our hand over our heart pledging allegiance to the flag while our leaders pick our pockets and plunder our trust; where elites insulate themselves from the consequences of their own actions. Take the other fork and the road leads to the America whose promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” includes everyone.

On the need to hold our leaders accountable

If George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this Administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any President has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined…. Whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools.

The book is chock full of invaluable lessons for democracy. Moyers talks about how a de-regulated press, co-opted by money and a corrupt government brings us fascism. He talks of how money is choking our democracy to death. In “9/11 and the Sport of God”, he talks of the danger a phony type of Christianity (Moyers is a former Baptist minister), allied with the wealthy and the powerful, threaten our democracy. He even gave a speech to the U.S. Military Academy, emphasizing the need to disobey unlawful orders, while being careful to note “Before you assume that I’m calling for an insurrection…”


Pillars of the Earth – by Ken Follett

This is the only novel I’m including in this post. I don’t usually read novels, but I like to do so every once in a while. I’m including this book in my list because I have to admit that it was the book that I most enjoyed reading in 2008.

It takes place mostly in England during the so-called Medieval Period, from 1123 to 1174. Though the characters are mostly fictional, the background is historically based, and as far as I can tell, accurate.

The story begins with a 15 year old woman witnessing the public execution of her husband by hanging, for allegedly stealing some small item from one of the town’s elites. Much of the rest of the story dealers with her future encounters with her deceased husband’s accusers and her battles against them.

Many of the novel’s themes deals with the most important political problems that we face today: How justice systems are so heavily tilted in favor of the wealthy and the powerful; blatant religious and political hypocrisy in the cause of self-interest; and bombastic greed, arrogance and militarism, disguised as virtue.


Political Ponerology – A Science on the Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes - by Andrew Lobaczewski

For all of my life, one of my greatest interests has been to understand the nature of human evil. And I have always believed that it is one of the most important subjects that mankind needs to understand. This book was recommended to me by fellow DUer Larry Ogg.

Laura Knight-Jadczyk, in her Editor’s Preface to “Political Ponerology”, puts today’s world in perspective:

Many people believe that man is evolving; society is evolving; and that we now have control over the arbitrary evil of our environment; or at least we will have it after George Bush and his Neocons have about 25 years to fight the endless War against Terror…

At the social level, hatred, envy, greed and strife multiply exponentially. Crime increases faster than the population. Combined with wars, insurrections and political purges, multiplied millions across the globe are without adequate food or shelter due to political actions… The totality of human suffering is a dreadful thing…

The woeful status of today’s world, as depicted in that brief but cogent summary, is due to human evil more than it is due to any other factor. Furthermore, humanity’s historical record in dealing with human evil has been abysmal.

So we need to do much better on that score. And that is the main reason for Lobaczewski’s book. For, as Knight-Jadczyk says in her Editor’s Preface, there is a lot that can be done to combat evil, and “the very first thing we can do is learn about it”.


The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder – by Vincent Bugliosi

Vincent Bugliosi is a very interesting character. Most important, he is the most high profile and reputable person in our country to call for the prosecution of George W. Bush for murder.

Alan Dershowitz has called him “as good a prosecutor as there ever was”. In his career at the LA County District Attorney’s office, he successfully prosecuted 105 of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions, including that of mass murderer Charles Manson. So, if Bugliosi thinks that there exists a good case for murder against a sitting U.S. President, it would behoove people to listen to him.

Yet, his new book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder”, has received woefully little attention in this country. No wonder. Our status quo loving corporate news media doesn’t want to rock the boat. And what could cause Americans to feel more nervous about the status of their country than the prosecution for murder of a sitting President – or even a convincing argument that a sitting President ought to be prosecuted for murder?

Vincent Bugliosi is no flaming liberal. Referring to the crimes for which the U.S. House Judiciary Committee drew up articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon in 1974, Bugliosi calls those acts “infinitely less serious crimes than what George Bush has done”.

In chapter 1 of his book, Bugliosi explains simply that most people fail to see what is directly in front of them and staring them in the face, simply because they either don’t expect to see it or because they don’t want to see it. What would the American people expect and want to see less than the case for murder against their sitting President?

In chapter 2, Bugliosi makes a superficial case (expanded upon in great detail later in the book) that George Bush took his country to war solely for reasons other than those he claimed before his country and Congress.

In chapter 3, Bugliosi explains his motivations for writing the book. He begins that chapter by describing the personal details of several Americans and Iraqis who died in George Bush’s war. He also discusses a good deal of evidence to the effect that George Bush does not take seriously the tremendous amount of death and destruction caused by the war that he dishonestly led us into. To the contrary, he doesn’t seem to be the least bit affected by it.

Bugliosi doesn’t pull any punches when he gets onto a subject that he feels emotional about. If George Bush ever does get prosecuted for his crimes, there’s a reasonable chance that Bugliosi may head the prosecution. He’s one person who wouldn’t shy away from that.


The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism – by Naomi Klein

This is the only book on my 2008 list that I wrote about in my last year’s post, “My Ten Favorite Books I read in 2007. I rationalize doing that because I finished reading the book in 2008 and because it’s possibly the most important book I’ve ever read.

I believe that this book goes a very long way towards explaining why so much of the world’s population is impoverished today. It is no accident. Third World nations have to a very large extent been kept down by external human forces who seek to profit from the labors of the poor. To a very large extent today, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which are both very much under the control of the United States, are instruments which facilitate this process. They loan money to impoverished nations that are desperate for it, imposing conditions on those nations which work to keep the great majority of its inhabitants impoverished indefinitely. The process is something akin to loan sharking or indentured servitude. Since the governing elites of those nations usually profit from the deal, they have some motivation to play along with it.

The underpinning for the whole system is right wing economic ideology of the type first put forth by Milton Friedman. Since the rules of the game are so painful to the vast majority of a country’s inhabitants, various methods have had to be developed to keep the population in line. Sometimes that involves martial law and widespread kidnappings, executions, disappearances and torture, as under Pinochet in Chile. But many other methods have been developed as well, and often financial pressures or threats are enough to do the job. Taken as a whole, Klein terms these methods “shock therapy” – a therapy that is brutal enough to make a person or a population docile enough to go along with what they’re told to do. This is how she describes the beginnings of it in the introduction to her book:

Friedman first learned how to exploit a large-scale shock or crisis in the mid-seventies, when he acted as adviser to the Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Not only were Chileans in a state of shock following Pinochet’s violent coup, but the country was also traumatized by severe hyperinflation. Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy – tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation… It was the most extreme capitalist make-over ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a “Chicago School” revolution… Friedman predicted that the speed, suddenness and scope of the economic shifts would provoke psychological reactions in the public that “facilitate the adjustment”. He coined a phrase for this painful tactic: economic “shock treatment.” In the decades since, whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment, or “shock therapy,” has been the method of choice. Pinochet also facilitated the adjustment with his own shock treatments…

It is also important to note here that Klein’s book exhibits an interesting parallel with two books written by John Perkins – “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” and “The Secret History of the American Empire – Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption”. Klein and Perkins write about very much the same phenomenon and reach very similar conclusions. The difference is that while Perkins bases his account mainly on his personal experiences and observations, Klein takes a wider view of the situation and bases her conclusions on extensive research and investigation.


The Third Chimpanzee – The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal – by Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond is a professor of geography, evolutionary biologist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He notes in the prologue to The Third Chimpanzee that our two unique qualities that now jeopardize our existence are our propensity to destroy each other and our environment. He also notes that the solutions to our predicament are clear in broad outline. They include:

halting population growth, limiting or eliminating nuclear weapons, developing peaceful means for solving international disputes, reducing our impact on the environment, and preserving species and natural habitats.

Diamond notes that we already have the technical knowledge to solve these problems, but that we lack only the political will. He notes his reasons for writing his book:

Through this book I seek to foster that political will, by tracing our history as a species. Our problems have deep roots tracing back to our animal ancestry… We can convince ourselves of the inevitable outcome of our current shortsighted practices just by examining the many past societies that destroyed themselves by destroying their own resource base, despite having less potent means of self-destruction than ours.

Diamond describes the five parts of his book in the prologue:

In the first part I’ll follow us from several million years ago until just before agriculture’s appearance ten thousand years ago… We’re still 98% chimps in our genes (which is where the book’s title comes from)…

The second part deals with changes in the human life cycle, which were as essential to the development of language and art as were the skeletal changes discussed in Part One… They constitute major changes from our ancestral condition, though they don’t fossilize and so we don’t know when they arose. For that reason they receive much briefer treatment in books on human paleontology … But they were crucial to our uniquely human cultural development…

Part Three proceeds to consider the cultural traits that we consider as distinguishing us from animals… language, art, technology, and agriculture… Yet our distinguishing cultural traits also include black marks on our record…

Part Four considers the first of these: our propensity for xenophobic killing of other human groups. This trait has direct animal precursors… We’ll consider the xenophobia and extreme isolation that marked the human condition before the rise of political states began to make us more homogeneous culturally… We’ll then survey the world –wide recorded history of xenophobic mass murder… Here above all is an example of how our refusal to face up to our history condemns us to repeat past mistakes on a more dangerous scale. The other black trait that now threatens our survival is our accelerating assault on our environment. This behavior too has its direct animal precursors…

In part Five, the emphasis is on recognizing that our present situation is not novel, except in degree…

Diamond concludes his book by noting that an environmental holocaust is already well underway and accelerating, and that “The only uncertainties are whether the resulting disaster would strike our children or our grandchildren, and whether we choose to adopt now the many obvious countermeasures”.


Torture Team – Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values – by Philippe Sands

This book overlaps Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side”, described above, to some degree. But the emphasis is very different. Sands’ book describes his meticulous investigation into the origins of the Bush administration’s torture program and plans for stripping our prisoners of all human rights. That investigation proves that these things originated and were driven by the very top levels of the Bush administration – specifically, Bush and Cheney.

There was much attempt by the top levels of the Bush administration to obscure the origins of their crimes by requiring lower level attorneys to write “legal opinions”. But the efforts of Bush administration attorneys to write legal opinions on these issues were driven and constrained above all by one salient fact: George Bush had already determined and made clear that the Geneva Conventions DO NOT APPLY to “illegal enemy combatants”. And who were “illegal enemy combatants”? Anyone who George W. Bush said is an “illegal enemy combatant”.

It really all boils down to that. Many Bush administration attorneys were flummoxed in trying to develop “legal opinions” with the constraint that the primary international and U.S. law pertaining to our foreign prisoners did not apply. Some, such as Alberto Gonzales, accepted that constraint eagerly. Others were frustrated with the constraints, but went ahead anyhow to develop “legal opinions” that accepted them. Still others rebelled, arguing that no proper legal opinion could leave out the applicability of the Geneva Conventions. Those attorneys tended not to last very long. In any event, Bush and Cheney elicited plenty of cover from enough of their attorneys to make the claim that their torture program was based upon the advice of legal experts. Sands also considers the legal culpability of those attorneys under the rules of the Nuremberg trials, under which, in 1946 we sentenced 12 Nazi war criminals to death and another 7 to long prison sentences.

If anyone ever gets to try Bush and Cheney (and others) for war crimes, all the evidence is right there in Sands’ meticulously documented book. Establishing the case shouldn’t take very long from there.

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. FDR also opined publicly that if he were a delegate....

>>>>>Henry Wallace was FDR’s Vice President before Truman, from January 1941 to January 1945. FDR kind of dumped him for Truman in 1944 (He actually told the convention to vote their conscience, but he put his weight behind Truman) because Wallace was too far left for the ta>>>>

... he would vote for Wallace at the convention. That's as close to an endorsement as you can get without actually endorsing. FDR preferred Wallace... as did his wife, most of labor, progressives and New Dealers. Big city bosses and Dixiecrats hated and feared him... with good reason... and pushed for Truman. As it was... Wallace came pretty close to being renominated on his own without FDR's help.... and thus becoming the presumptive President ( FDR was widely assumed to be so frail that it was unlikely he'd finish the fourth term.)

How can I get the book? Wallace is fascinating and an overlooked phenomenon in American history. There are no biographies of Wallace available thru the nyc public library although I'll bet you can find stuff there by Bess Truman's hairdresser's cousin.

I was able to find American Dreamer by John Culver ( 2000) on the net ( which may be a more balanced account than the above ) this year but nothing in the book stores.

[Time for change]

2. Walton argues that FDR didn't want him

This is what he says about it:

Roosevelt tried obliquely to get Wallace to withdraw, saying he did not want him to have to face public rejection. This of course was nonsense. Wallace would not be rejected by the party if Roosevelt wanted him...

The President had written, "The easiest way of putting it is this: ... I like him and I respect him and he is my personal friend. For these reasons I personally would vote for his renomination if I were a delegate to the convention."

Some might see that as a rather lukewarm endorsement, but whatever positive effect it might have had was quickly undercut by the next and final paragraph: "At the same time I do not wish to appear in any way as dictating to the convention. Obviously the convention must do the deciding. And it should -- and I am sure it will -- give great consideration to the pros and cons of its choice."

This was an invitation to pick someone else.

You can get the book through Amazon.com.

[Ernesto]

3. my error!

[Captain Hilts]

23. FDR said Wallace was a bad politician. You folks might find "Mostly Morgenthaus" interesting. nt

[RufusTFirefly]

9. I loved "American Dreamer"

Read it back in 2000 when it came out.

Great list, by the way. Unlike so many corporatized, Oprah-fied lists, this one actually contains books I've read or want to read. Thanks for the list, Time for change!

[Time for change]

19. Thank you -- I certainly learned a great deal from reading those books

[Captain Hilts]

24. I'm a Harold Ickes fan, actually. The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes is great. nt

[roguevalley]

15. Henry Wallace is one unsung hero of America. What a great man he was.

[Time for change]

25. I agree

If he had stayed on as FDR's VP, there's a good possibility we never would have had a Cold War. It could be a very different world today.

[roguevalley]

38. PBS had a great show on him.

[bertman]

4. Thanks for the list, Time for change. Two down, seven to go since I no longer read

fiction.

Now here's a recommendation for some viewing: zeitgeistmovie.com

There are two movies and both are very interesting and controversial. The second--the Addendum--is the simplest and best explanation I have ever seen of our monetary system. In addition, it goes into great detail as to how the corporatocracy has been carrying out it's planned domination of the world. And finally, it offers a positive alternative to our current way of doing business/living life.

Happy New Year!

[Time for change]

10. Thank you for the movies bertman

And Happy New Year to you

[pnorman]

5. "Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War"

Thanks for the lead. It's now at Amazon for ~$3 (+p&h), so I put it in the cart. It got a pretty unfavorable review there, but the reviewer said very littler of substance (aside from revealing his own FIXED preconceptions).

I have the Shock Doctrine, and the Prosecution of George Bush in Audible.com format, and The Dark Side in eReader format. (All are now on my cellphone). Since we seem to think alike in many ways, I'll take careful note of your other recommendations.

pnorman

[pnorman]

7. What looks to be a balanced review of that book:

http://worldview.cceia.org/archive/worldview/1977/09/29...

I just now finalized the order of it at Amazon.

pnorman

[Time for change]

11. That's great

I think that some negative reviews about the Henry Wallace book are a result of right wing or other negative views on Henry Wallace. He was called a Communist or a fellow traveler so often that a lot of people believe it. He was the heir to FDR, and the right wing wanted no part of him. They essentially marginalized him out of existence. Our history may have been a lot different had Wallace been FDR's VP rather than Truman -- which would have meant that Wallace would have become President in 1945.

[alfredo]

6. Thank you for this list. I've read a couple on the list Torture Team is next.

[Time for change]

18. Torture team

I believe that the information in that book poses a key to convicting many in the Bush administration of war crimes -- including Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. I hope that Sands' book will be put to very good use.

[alfredo]

30. I've passed on Shock Doctrine, and The Dark Side.

[amyrose2712]

8. Thanks for posting this list. I am always...

looking for good book recommendations for books. I am a fews of these already. I am reading the Shock Doctrine now. Thanks again.

[Time for change]

26. You're welcome -- I hope that you enjoy them

[antimatter98]

12. Thanks for this list--"Shock Doctrine" was a title that opened my eyes.

Also, I suggest this book:

"Planet of Slums," by Mike Davis. It is analytical and cites studies
and on the ground conditions to paint a rather grim picture. You will
note that the elite do quite well, living in the same cities that
are home to millions of destitute individuals and families.

Book synopsis:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/cdef/d-titles/davis_m_p...

[Time for change]

27. That sounds interesting -- Thank you

[eridani]

13. If you liked the Diamond, be sure to read also

Guns, Germs and Steel, and Collapse.

Thanks for doing the detailed reviews. I think that Klein's book is really important, and I liked it that her final chapter was some success stories about shock resistance.

[Time for change]

28. Yes, I read that

Also "Collapse", which was a study of how many past societies have self-destructed. All his books are excellent.

[Joanne98]

14. Thank you so much for your posts!

[Time for change]

22. You're quite welcome

I learn a lot from doing them.

[Tashca]

16. First off

I would like to thank you for such a great list and your analysis. It appears to me that we have similar tastes in reading material. I hope to read some of these books in the future.

What I would like to talk about is the book on Henry Agard Wallace. Just a few days ago someone was asking about Wallace. From there I started to do some research on him and ordered the book, American Dreamer by John Culver and John Hyde, last Wednesday I am somewhat familiar with his extensive agricultural background mostly from work I had done with Pioneer Hybrid International a few years ago. He was the founder of this company.....and am still in awe at some of his accomplishments in genetics and other scientific endeavors.

During the last few days I have been reading about his political accomplishments and am again in awe. It's like I have found a kindred spirit in some ways. I found it interesting he was raised a Republican and was one of only two to serve in the Roosevelt administration. But reading about him leads me to believe he was definitely a Progressive. Your statement about him being similar to Dennis Kucinich I believe is spot on. I find it somewhat difficult to understand how he was a Republican.....but I know the parties have changed over the years.

Growing up here in Iowa I rarely if ever heard about him.....makes me wonder why. All I ever heard about was Hoover....not someone I feel proud about as a native son.

When I finish American Dreamer I believe I will obtain a copy of Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War – by Richard J. Walton.......Again thank you for this information!!

[Time for change]

17. In the political environment in which Wallace grew up

the Republican Party was almost as liberal as Democratic Party, maybe even moreso, especially when you consider the southern Democrats. I don't think that the Democratic Party became definitely more liberal than the Republican Party until FDR -- and even then we had a very conservative wing of the Democratic Party in the South.

I think that the reason we hear so little about Wallace is that he has been marginalized. He presented a grave threat to the status quo. He would have challenged the military industrial complex. They knew they couldn't buy him off. It's the same reason that, even when John Edwards was leading the whole Democratic field in 1 to 1 polling against Republicans in 2008, the news media gave him almost no attention, and what attention they did give him was very negative. Same thing with Kucinich and McKinney.

Walton's book is very good, especially because he goes into meticulous detail to debunk the myths that are used to marginalize Wallace and make him out to be some sort of stooge for Communist tyranny.

[Clear Blue Sky]

20. Pillars of the Earth was great.

I am a big Ken Follett fan. I think this particular book has a sequel that recently came out.

[Time for change]

29. Really? I haven't heard of that.

That would probably be well worth reading.

[Clear Blue Sky]

35. This is it.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-End-Ken-Follett/dp/...

[XOKCowboy]

21. I went totally escapist this year and immersed myself in Travis McGee's world

I must have read a dozen of his books on flights and in my off time this year. I started when I found one in a bookstore in Belize and I've spent a lot of time in Travis's late 60s south Florida.

I decided that my bookshelf needed something more than political books.

[Swagman]

31. I've read 2 out of your 10..."talking" books are my new thing..great

while you are driving. You get in extra book every new and then (so many good books too little time!)

[B Calm]

33. I drive a truck for a living. I listen to around 70 audio books a year. I

get all my audio books from the library. SCREWED the undeclared war against the middle class by Thom Hartmann had to be my best political book of the past year.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

32. Well I can't say that I read 10 (political) books this past year

but I did listen to Obama's "Audacity of Hope" around the time that he clinched the nomination, which I thought was interesting and gave me some more background on his political philosophy and what we might expect from his impending presidency. As an added bonus, the audiobook version was READ by Obama himself, which made it even more special IMHO.

I also listened to Mike's Election Guide 2008 read by Michael Moore himself, which was interesting and hilarious. Say what you will about MM but he is really smart and has a great sense of humor and I appreciate his political activism for which is frequently reviled (even inexplicably among some people on the left). The first part of the book, the Q & A section, is worth the price of admission alone, particularly his diatribe about WMD and how we should always assume that government is trying to lie us into war unless and until proven otherwise. He also had some good suggestions about reforming our crazy election system. The only disappointing thing about the book (besides not being quite long enough) is that it was written prior to McCain's choice of Palin for VP. I'd have loved to hear what he had to say about HER in a book. Did he ever write anything about her anywhere?

I also read (most) of Thomas Rick's "Fiasco" and listened to Rajiv Chandresekaran's book about Iraq's "Green Zone" both of which solidify my long-standing opinion that the Iraq war, aside from being totally unnecessary in the first place, was HORRIBLY (I would use a much harsher word if I could think of one) mis-managed both before AND after the invasion. The Coalition Provisional Authority seemed to be more of a conservative criminal enterprise taking advantage of the spoils of occupation in the same kind of manner as described by Naomi Klein's "disaster capitalism" phenonmenon.

I read a couple of books about McCain, Cliff Schecter's "The Real McCain" and started to read Begala's book about McCain but there didn't seem to be a lot of new information in his book that I hadn't heard in Schecter's book. Not that I really needed much convincing NOT to vote for McCain. The one significant thing that I came away with both books about McCain is that he doesn't seem to have any clearly consistent position on just about anything and that he tends to adopt whatever policy position (he thinks) will benefit him the most at any given time and circumstance. I'm eternally thankful that we're not getting him (and Mooselini) for President. *whew*

Beyond these non-fiction books I read/listened to some good escapist fiction, specifically the first 4 Star Wars Novels from the "Legacy of the Force" series, I finished the "Thrawn Trilogy", as well as the first novel in the "New Jedi Order" series, all of which were good reads in their own right.

[amyrose2712]

39. I love the Thrawn Trilogy and the Han Solo Trilogy...

My bf told me today that he has download 107 Star Wars novels. My guilty pleasure.

[Alcibiades]

34. Who cares what you think?

If you read ten books (or even more!) in the last year, you're clearly a member of the liberal intellectual elite, and therefore don't matter. You clearly don't spend enough time listening to talk radio and watching television.

[MasonJar]

36. Wow! Why do you all NOTread fiction? I like a little Bugliosi thrown in

but fiction is where the pleasure derives. I too just read Follett's 1998 Pillars of the Earth this year. It is a blockbuster for sure. There was never a break in the action for the characters to get a moment of respite from a series of dangerous encounters with the powers of church and government. I am getting ready to take on his new novel of the same cathedral setting, World Without End. For Arthur fans, one might try the delightful and easy to read Jack Whyte Camulod series, now up to 8 books. Also this year I read several highly entertaining books purporting to give the Darcy side of Pride and Prejudice, including a trilogy by Pamela Aidan (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman) There was an intriguing novel about Frank LLoyd Wright and his years' long love affair called Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. For an animal lover and environmentalist like me, Martha Grimes' (I love her mysteries with a passion) Dakota was a torture I needed to endure, speaking as it did to the cruelty suffered by animals at slaughter houses. In addition, a new Elizabeth George mystery, Careless in Red, made my fall. I just love Tommy Lynley. I slip in non-fiction too occasionally as with the grueling and magnificent couldn't skip-a-word-or-you're lost Pulitzer prize winning history of Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri, The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. The writing and the research are beyond magnificent. If you haven't read it, there is also an interesti9ng look at John O'Neill. In the case of the Bugliosi Prosecution of George book, I already knew most of the details from being a DUer, but consider the book monumentally significant for its simplicity of proof for the masses who do not get the benefit of our cadre of investigative reporters. I shed tears unashamedly in the first part as he described the soldiers who have died and their loved ones. Another fiction that I read this year was Pulitzer winning, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, about a world I hope we do not see, i.e. post-apocalyptic. Come on, y'all. Lighten up; read some fiction....death and destruction in 12th century England; death and destruction in 4th century England; love in 19th century England; mystery in 20th/21st century England; saving animals in the Dakotas; surviving affairs in 20th century America; a father and son striving to survive a world destroyed. What more can you want? How about a rerun of Bill Moyers last night, with John Lithgow reading his favorite poetry (remember Shakespeare, a fiction writer) and describing his role in Arthur Miller's All My Sons, a fictional drama.

[MasonJar]

37. I am sorry, y'all. I should have paragraphed. I believe that you saw

my long response and signed off. Just for clarity, I recommend for nonfiction the Pulitzer Prize winning, Looming Tower, and the semi-nonfictional story of Frank Lloyd Wright, Loving Frank.
For fiction any number of books are amazingly worth the visit, including several delightful Mr. Darcy editions. If you like GWTW, I enjoyed Rhett Butler's People, which like the Darcy creations, gives the story from Rhett's side and continues it after his famous "I don't give a damn" exit. Certainly The Road is an excruciating read of Pulitzer Prize proportions.
For just plain fun the Jack Whyte Camulod series, leading to and after King Arthur, and of course the above-recommended Pillars of the Earth should not be missed.
I understand there is a new P.D. James out and there is a new Elizabeth George mystery, Careless in Red. Enjoy!!!!!!!!!

[MisterP]

40. a supplement to "Third Chimpanzee": Douglas Fry's "Beyond War"

he finds outright war--let alone genocide--to be caused by political leadership rather than Homini genes or Hobbesian "nature." Rather than perpetual "endemic war" between 20-100-person bands of cathartic, xenophobic happy warriors, Fry finds most non-chiefly hunter-gatherers to have had patterns of inter-band person exchange and conflict resolution
war is thus artificial and social--which also explains its appearance in chimpanzees, as their societies are no less societies than human ones, and share some continuities with ours (I mean, unless everything was created in 4004 bc)