Citizen Reader

Not so funny after all.

I'll admit it. I checked out Going Rogue (Sarah Palin's autobiography) from the library because I thought it might be kind of a hoot. I don't know why, really. Something about her bright smiling face on the surreal cover just gives me the giggles. (And, on the inside cover, it notes that the book design is by "Got Moxie Design." This also strikes me as funny.)

But then I got to all of page 2, when she is sharing how her daughter Piper was shown in a poster used by the organization Alaska Right to Life, and I just got sad. Primarily because I started wondering why so many pro-life people are also so pro-war. It was too depressing a thought for words, and it was really a deeper philosophical question than I wanted dredged up during the reading of what I thought might be a pretty ridiculous political autobiography.

I did persevere for about forty more pages, but I don't have much to report other than a) it's standard political autobiographical fare, with, one can only guess, massive whitewashing of Palin's idyllic Alaskan childhood, and b) it's actually not the worst-written thing I've ever read, which was a bit surprising.

I'm going to return it now, so the next person in line can get it in a timely fashion. I hope they are a member of the Tea Party, otherwise paragraphs like this are just going to make them chuckle:

"One part of athletics I really appreciated was our local chapter of Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which I co-captained under the leadership of the Wasilla Warriors' wrestling coach, Mr. Foreman. At least sixty of us met in public school classrooms for Bible study and inspirational exchanges that motivated us to focus on hard work and excellence.* In those days, ACLU activists had not yet convinced young people that they were supposed to feel offended by other people's free exercise of religion." (p. 28.)

In other Palin news, Bookninja posted a link the other day to a story about her PAC purchasing numerous copies of this book (however many copies $63,000 gets you), and paying for her photography and book tour travels.

*Because Jesus was all about the "excellence." 

You go, Jane Jacobs.

The book which has held me captive since Sunday night is titled Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Too On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City, by Anthony Flint.

The reasons I love this slim history are legion. I had never read anything about Jane Jacobs (a longtime New York City resident and activist, and author of the architecutral and urban planning classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities), but she is a fascinating woman. Through the 1950s and 1960s she fought against City Hall (and "master planner" Robert Moses, who was responsible for building numerous bridges, highways, parks, and residential buildings across the city for decades through the middle of the twentieth century), primarily to save Washington Square Park from having a highway built through it, and against the construction of an elevated ten-lane highway across the tip of Manhattan.

I also loved this book because it is a great slice of history. In a succinct 195 pages, it provides information about the history and planning of New York City, controversies about urban renewal and development, the remarkable career of Robert Moses, and the even more remarkable career and personality of Jane Jacobs. Of course I loved this book because it is about New York City, and I wish I had a cool author name like "Anthony Flint." But the front and center attraction of this book is Jacobs herself. Consider her conduct at a sham city hall meeting to gather community feedback about the proposed elevated highway:

"Though the ostensible purpose of the meeting was to collect opinions about the project, it had been hurriedly scheduled--to make sure testimony was gathered before legislation passed that required an even more extensive public approval process...The manner in which the meeting was being conducted--the microphone faced toward the audience, not the officials the residents were nominally addressing--suggested that state officials were just going through the motions...

From the seat she'd taken near the front of the auditorium, Jane Jacobs made her way up the stairs and onton the stage. 'It's interesting, the way the mike is set up,' she observed tartly as she reached the microphone. She was calm, and her expression was matter-of-fact. 'At a public hearing, you are supposed to address the officials, not the audience.'

The chairman of the hearing, John Toth of the New York Department of Transportation, bounded down from the statge and turned the microphone around. But Jacobs turned it right back.

'Thank you, sir, but I'd rather speak to my friends,' Jacobs said. 'We've been talking to ourselves all evening as it is.' The crowd roared with laughter." (pp. xii-xiii.)

From there she went on to call for a silent protest march across the stage, during which the stenographer's rolls of tape documenting the meeting were destroyed (which meant there was no public record, and the meeting couldn't be counted), called it a "fink meeting," and was arrested.

It's a great book, and it has spurred me to consider, again, reading Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I always used to shelve it at the used bookstore, and wonder if I should read it, and then for years I would shelve it at the public library and give it some more thought (it went in and out quite regularly); but it was so thick I never got around to it. Maybe now is the time.

Men I Love: Second in a Series.

I have always had a little thing for Jimmy Carter.

Which, let's face it, is pretty much the only reason I picked up Kevin Mattson's new book "What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr President?" Jimmy Carter, America's "Malaise," and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country. For one thing, I'm not a big history reader (unless it's about British history, or labor history, or the holy grail of my history nonfiction reading, British labor history); for another, that's not really a title that inspires a whole lot of "wow, I've got to read this one!"*

But I do find it interesting that there's actually a growing little subgenre of nonfiction books in which authors look at history and presidents through specific speeches**; I'm somewhat interested in speeches and rhetoric (as only the nerdy author of a public speaking handbook for librarians can be); and what the heck, it was only 217 pages long. 

The book takes as its subject the summer of 1979, primarily its gas shortages and cultural ennui, and examines how President Carter sought to address the energy crisis and what he described as America's crisis of confidence. One of the most interesting things (to me) about the story is how Carter sought to hear a variety of viewpoints, and duly invited groups of people (people other than politicians and lobbyists, note) to the White House to talk these issues over. When he was done, he charged his speechwriters with creating (with his input) the speech he would give on July 15, 1979. The entire text of the speech is also provided as an appendix, so you can read it for yourself, and I would do so:

"In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God,*** too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose...

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate...We believed that our nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil.

These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed." (p. 212-213.)

I won't lie to you; although it's not obnoxious, this is not an author who is being very critical of Carter, although he does point out his many and obvious missteps. But he's also an author who has managed to weave a compelling slice of history out of a speech that has been largely misremembered by an entire nation. If nothing else, he also does a good job of placing the speech and Carter's presidency in historical perspective as the one that paved the way for Reagan (and the Cult of Reagan and all that went with it), as evidenced in this quote:

"I remember the exact moment I knew Ronald Reagan could beat Jimmy Carter. The date was July 15, 1979." (Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan's pollster.)

It's an interesting book. If you're up for a historical stroll through the late 1970s, this might be a good place to start. Now off with you, and have a good weekend.

*Or is it? I think it's kind of a clunky title, myself. I might have chosen How to Lose the White House: Endeavor to be Decent and Intelligent.

**David Maraniss's The Clinton Enigma is also a fabulous little book.

***I would guess that most atheists are probably not Carter fans.

Well, I'm with you in theory, but that's about it.

I was amused by the jacket copy on Charles Pierce's Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free:

"The culture wars are over. The idiots have won. This pisses Pierce off immensely. Like all cynics, he's secretly a romantic at heart, and his disbelieving anger is fueled by the knowledge that America doesn't have to be this way. Like an Old Testament prophet (albeit an agnostic, funny one), Pierce lets loose on the foibles of society in the secret hope that, somehow, being smart will stop being a stigma and idiots will once again be pitied and not celebrated. But don't get your hopes up."

Pierce is a journalist and appears regularly on NPR; he can write and his prose is reasonably entertaining. But I'll admit I never got past the first chapter, in which his chief evidence that idiots are taking over is a line from a New York Times article about intelligent design, in which the reporter wrote that the ID movement "have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."*

Really. That's the sentence he holds up as the shining example of the ridiculousness of the idiocy in our society.

Nothing against Pierce, but if that's the best he can do, I'm not impressed. I might suggest that a greater break with reality is evident in the phrase "keep government out of my Medicare," which I actually saw people say on the news last week. I think a bigger problem is that very few people could probably tell you what the theory of evolution actually is, or how it differs from intelligent design; and that another large chunk of the population simply hates the New York Times on principle because they think it is elitist or too smart. But that's just me.

In all, don't bother with this book. Pick up Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War instead--it's a million times more interesting and provides a nice mix of empathy and frustration, which Pierce's book totally misses.

*Authors always lose me when they start pointing out that only idiots would ever have any questions about evolution. I find the entire debate deeply uninteresting (I've never really understood why it's even a debate, frankly, since one of the major religious tenets seems to be that if you believe in God, you believe God can do anything, so why couldn't God set evolution in motion?), but I always think it's hilarious when anybody holds up a belief in evolution as the gold standard of intelligence. Richard Dawkins falls firmly into that camp too, and you know what? He's boring too. Maybe boringness and the tendency to sound like an asshole evolved along with the need to make everyone accept evolution as gospel** truth in writers of this sort.

**Pun intended.

World enough and time.

Is it wrong that I waste prayers* on the subject of keeping my eyesight until I die, so someday when I'm really old and retired and my children don't visit me, I can at least spend all my time reading? Because I actually have a list of authors whose entire lists I'd love to read, but who I just don't have the proper time for right now?

Susan Sontag is one of those authors. I've always found her really interesting, even though I've only read snippets of her work. I tried to read On Photography once, but it was a bit over my head. Whenever I see her novels in used bookstores, I think about trying one of those, too, but I never do. I am also fascinated by her relationship with Annie Leibovitz, which was at least partially chronicled in Leibovitz's photography collection A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005 (Leibovitz's photographs of Sontag after her death from cancer in 2004--she was 71 years old--are some of the most simultaneously beautiful and saddest I've ever seen). The two also collaborated on a work published in 2000 and titled simply Women.

The book I had home this week, and which I won't get enough time to read (add it to the "retirement list") was Regarding the Pain of Others. I'm not sure where I got the idea to check it out; recently I indexed a book about World War I posters and war photography, which led me to look into broader issues of the pictorial depictions of wars, and I must have stumbed across it sometime during that (I'm guessing). This is how it begins:

"In June 1938 Virginia Woolf published Three Guineas, her brave, unwelcomed reflections on the roots of war. Written during the preceding two years, while she and most of her intimates and fellow writers were rapt by the advancing fascist insurrection in Spain, the book was couched as the very tardy reply to a letter from an eminent lawyer in London who had asked, 'How in your opinion are we to prevent war?' Woolf begins by observing tartly that a truthful dialogue between them may not be possible. For though they belong to the same class, 'the educated class,' a vast gulf separates them: the lawyer is a man and she is a woman. Men make war. Men (most men) like war, since for men there is 'some glory, some necessity, some satisfaction in fighting' that women (most women) do not feel or enjoy." (p. 4.)

That, to me, is an opening that promises a very interesting book. And I love Sontag's prose; it's crisp. She's got a way with description (I love the image of Woolf observing "tartly"), and even when her sentences require a bit of deciphering on my part**, she's expressing complex thoughts as succinctly as really is possible.

*I know it's wrong. I try to throw a few prayers at the problem of world peace at the same time to make up for my selfish personal needs.

**Think on this one a while: "The destructiveness of war--short of total destruction, which is not war but suicide--is not in itself an argument against waging war unless one thinks (as few people actually do think) that violence is always unjustifiable, that force is always and in all circumstances wrong--wrong because, as Simone Weil affirms in her sublime essay on war, 'The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,' violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing." (p. 12.) That's a sentence I need a few days with.

Ah, serendipity.

Remember how, a while back, I was looking to find the portrait of Helene Hanff (she of 84, Charing Cross Road fame) that Elena Gaussen painted? (The artist and the painting are described in Hanff's sequel to 84, CCR, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.)

Well, Google had turned up nothing, except for a bit more information on the artist, Elena Gaussen Marks, and her husband, Leo Marks (whose father originally owned the bookshop to which Hanff wrote about in 84 CCR). So I was resigned to never seeing the portrait. However, as I read more about Leo Marks and his career as a codemaker during World War II (and as the author of lovely cipher poems), I became more interested in reading his book, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945.

So I checked the book out at the library, brought it home, and looked at it for a few weeks, longingly, as I didn't have time to start it right away. Finally I decided I would just have to get it back some other time, but before I returned it, I opened it up to check out the pictures in the middle. I don't know how you feel about this, but I am fundamentally unable to put a nonfiction book down before I have looked at its pictures (if any are available). Even if I don't get them read, I always look at ALL of the pictures in whatever nonfiction books I drag home. I don't know why. They're usually the first thing I look at when looking at new nonfiction books in bookstores, too. So before I returned Between Silk and Cyanide, I went to look through the pictures, and guess what I found?

"Helen Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road, by Elena Gaussen Marks." A picture of the portrait! Or at least I'm guessing it's the portrait. (As my sister says, how many can there be?) It's not at all what I expected, but it's beautiful in its own way. So there it is, and if you want to see it, all you have to do is check out Leo Marks's book. All I can say is, suck that, Google.

You're preaching to the choir, dude.

So, here's my question about political books. How do people stand to read books that only share and provide facts about their own personal points of view? I'm talking about the Ann Coulter and Al Franken political readers of the world. For the most part, the only people reading those books are the hardcore disciples who completely agree with everything they already think. To me, that sometimes seems like nothing more than a big waste of reading time.

Take a book like William Kleinknecht's The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America. Now, I am of the opinion that Ronald Reagan was a total shithead. So you'd think, wouldn't you, that this book would be right up my alley? And I guess it could be. But after reading the Introduction, I just couldn't get myself to read any further. For the most part, I was completely in agreement with everything the author said. If I had any sort of memory (I don't, sadly, except for book titles and the names of BBC actors and the literary adaptations in which they appear, you know, the really important stuff) this would be a great book from which to learn facts and interesting tidbits about the many and exact ways in which Ronald Reagan was a total shithead. Consider:

"But therein lies the great myth of Reaganism, for his betrayal of the working people of America could not have been more complete. Thanks in large part to Reagan's policies, the two periods of economic expansion that followed his election did little for Americans in the middle and lower income brackets...Expressed in constant 1998 dollars, households whose wealth placed them in the bottom 40 percent of the country had seen none of the benefits of two decades of economic growth. Between 1962 and 1983, the average household net worth of that group had grown from $800 to $4,700. But by the time Reagan was out of office in 1989, that group had a negative net worth of $4,100; that is, they were in debt for that amount...

The real winners in that economic growth were the wealthy. The top 1 percento fhouseholds saw its average net worth grown from $7.2 million to $9.1 million between 1983 and 1989, a 26.9 percent increase that far surpassed the 6 percent growth for the middle 20 percent." (pp. xiv-xv.)

Now, that's interesting stuff. But the problem* is, a. I know numbers can be largely manufactured or construed to say pretty much whatever you need them to say, so it's hard for me to get too passionate about them, and b. I'm never going to remember them anyway, so I can have them ready for when someone asks me why my gut feeling is that Ronald Reagan was a total shithead. So yeah, this would probably be an interesting book (there are also chapters on Reagan's mastery of the media, deregulation, his big-business friendly policies, his campaign against Jimmy Carter, crime and punishment, tax, and his relentless pummeling of liberals and the New Deal). I just don't have the time or the heart or the inclination to read it right now. On the other hand, I do now have a title I can remember for the next time someone tells me how great Ronald Reagan was. They won't listen to me or read it or anything, but I'll at least have tried.

*My second problem with the book is this line, from the introduction: "This book is borne of annoyance: a great bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan." I agree with that in spirit. But shouldn't it be "This book is BORN of annoyance"? Help me out, grammar experts, because if it should be BORN I'm going to be totally annoyed with this book.

What is the appeal of Curtis Sittenfeld?

I really don't understand why Curtis Sittenfeld is such a popular author.*

Amazon.com named her latest novel, American Wife, as one of its best of 2008, and it made the New York Times Notable list** (although I was pleased to note that reviewers at both Publishers' Weekly and Bookmarks magazine called it "uneven" and providing a "pat, unsatisfactory" answer to some of its key questions). You know this novel; Sittenfeld herself describes it thus:

"American Wife is a work of fiction loosely inspired by the life of an American first lady. Her husband, his parents, and certain prominent members of his adminstration are recognizable. All other characters in the novel are products of the author's imagination, as are the incidents concerning them."

The first lady in question is Laura Bush; Sittenfeld got a lot of her information from the biography The Perfect Wife by Ann Gerhart. (Her characters are named Alice Lindgren and Charlie Blackwell, and they're from Wisconsin, not Texas.) I don't have a problem, really, with Sittenfeld's writing; she's a competent, if not graceful, prose stylist, and you can actually get through the first 100 pages of this novel pretty easily and quickly. But here's the problem: Laura Bush is boring. So any book you base on her is going to be boring too. And even if you don't think she's boring, she's a woman who clearly and literally beds down with evil every night.*** Either way, is that a character you want to read about?

Give this one a pass. Sittenfeld does not need to be rewarded for her average prose and her "ripped from the headlines" plot device, which smacks ickily of a Jodi Picoult-like move to capitalize on news headlines and current affairs.

*Full disclosure: I've not been fond of Sittenfeld ever since her catty review of Melissa Bank's novel The Wonder Spot. Which, by the way, is about ten times the novel that American Wife is.

**Why am I still bothering to read New York Times Notable books? And I find it hilarious that Publishers' Weekly provided a much more astute review of this book than did the Times.

***Literally. Do you want to read and think about Laura and George having sex? I didn't.

Too good not to post.

I wasn't going to post today, but Andrew Bacevich is blowing me away with his book The Limits of Power. As my brother would say, this guy is a super-talent. Consider this timely nugget, from the conclusion:

"At four-year intervals, ceremonies conducted to install a president reaffirm this inclination. Once again, at the anointed hour, on the steps of the Capitol, it becomes 'morning in America.' The slate is wiped clean. The newly inaugurated president takes office, buoyed by expectations that history will soon be restored to its proper trajectory and the nation put back on track. There is something touching about these expectations, but also something pathetic, like the battered wife who expects that this time her husband will actually keep his oft-violated vow never again to raise his hand against her." (p. 173.)

Holy cow, Andrew, say what you mean, why don't you. I LOVE people who say what they mean. I love Andrew Bacevich.

All is not doom and gloom today: I'm doing some work and listening to Teddy Thompson, who is also a super-talent. Thanks for another great year of reading and talking about reading, and I hope your new year rocks at least as hard as this Thompson song.

 

The year's must-read.

I'm not calling Andrew Bacevich's The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism* a best book of 2008. I'm not saying it's a book you have to read. What I am saying is that you should buy it and give it to anyone who thought Ronald Reagan was a good president and a decent man:

"Reagan reiterated an oft-made promise 'to check and reverse the growth of government.'

He would do none of these things. In each case, in fact, he did just the reverse. During the Carter years, the federal deficit had averaged $54.5 billion annually. During the Reagan era, deficits skyrocketed, averaging $210.6 billion over the course of Reagan's two terms in office. Overall federal spending nearly doubled, from $590.9 billion over the course of Reagan's two terms in office." (p. 39.)

In all fairness, Bacevich has some shocking things to say about all the presidents since Kennedy; his thumbnail history of America in the 20th century in the first fifty pages alone makes this book a worthwhile purchase. He is also a succinct writer,** with what seems to me a keen grasp of the obvious:

"Long accustomed to thinking of the United States as a superpower, Americans have yet to realize that they have forfeited command of their own destiny. The reciprocal relationship between expansionism, abundance, and freedom--each reinforcing the other--no longer exists. If anything, the reverse is true: Expansionism squanders American wealth and power, while putting freedom at risk...Rather than confronting this reality head-on, American grand strategy since the era of Ronald Reagan, and especially throughout the era of George W. Bush, has been characterized by attempts to wish reality away." (p. 66.)

Oh, boy. Happy new year, everyone.

*I couldn't quite make it through 2008 without reading another political book.

**Bacevich is also a retired army colonel, and has had a son killed in the Iraq War. So any Republicans who don't think he knows what he's talking about as far as the military is concerned can just shove it.

Surprisingly interesting.

Even though I wasn't expecting to, and even though I hate its blah cover, I found myself really interested by Gregory Levey's memoir Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I learned in the Israeli Government. Levey, bored by law school and looking around for something new to do, applied to be an intern at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations. Eventually they contacted him and told him they didn't hire interns, but they might have a speechwriting job for him. Wham, bam, and some scarily comprehensive security checks later, Levey was employed as a speechwriter, working with the Israeli ambassador and other political and United Nations dignitaries.

There's a couple of funny things about that: 1. Levey was all of 25 at the time; 2. He had no experience in speechwriting, and 3. Although Jewish, Levey is not an Israeli citizen--he's Canadian.

On the bright side, this is a fascinating story, told in an appealing way. Levey would eventually end up moving to Israel for a time to work as a speechwriter for Ariel Sharon, so you learn a lot about the UN, politics, and the Middle East. On the down side, any illusions that you have about decisions being made and statements being drafted by the UN or any governing bodies being made by well-informed people with tons of time and resources on their hands will be shattered. It's amazing what all goes on in this world, and who's out there doing what. (In one memorable chapter, Levey even found himself at a UN meeting when he was supposed to vote on a resolution--which was awkward since he had no idea what the resolution was about! The solution? He found out how the US was voting, and voted the same--although theirs were the only two dissenting votes.) Fascinating if alarming stuff.

Last Two Political Books of 2008: Part two.

I hereby pledge to you that I will be reading and posting about no more political books for the rest of the year. Yes, I will continue to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report online, because you have to reward a show that reports from the Larry Craig bathroom at the Republican National Convention:

But before I ignore political books, turn off the TV news, and generally stick my head in the sand, I'd like to share a paragraph from Scott McClellan's completely pointless and largely very boring book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception:

"One of the most memorable images that stands out to me took place during one of the president's visits to Walter Reed. He would go from room to room, visiting with the wounded soldiers and their loved ones. I entered a room just ahead of him and stood by the doorway. The room was dimly lit. A young mom from Texas and her seven-year-old son were seated next to their husband and father. He sat upright in a wheelchair, motionless. His head was covered in white gauze and bandage from the top down to his eyes. He was clearly not aware of his surroundings; the brain injury was severe.

The president entered just after me. He walked over to the mom and hugged her. He put his hand on the son's shoulder and told him, 'Your dad is a very brave man.' After visiting briefly, Bush turned back to the soldier, placed his hand gently on the wheelchair, bent down, and softly kissed the top of his head before whispering in his ear, 'God bless you.'...

These visits had a way of reinforcing the president's resolve to successfully complete the mission--to press ahead. The momentary doubt became, in the end, another reason for his unshakable determination.

Still another motive for Bush to avoid acknowledging mistakes was his determination to win the political game at virtually any cost." (pp. 208-209.)

That just makes me sick on so many levels I don't know where to start. I can talk about one level, though: throughout the book McClellan points out how he was just repeating what he was told, and had NO IDEA everyone in the administration was a lying sack of shit. You know what I say? Methinks McClellan doth protest too much. I'm pretty sure he knew everyone was lying. And anyone who can watch the scene above without wanting to punch the hypocritical God-blessin' president in the gut* is a bad man.

We're done here. I promise.

*I know, violence isn't the answer. But he sure does bring it out in me.

Last two political books of 2008: Part One.*

The other day I was on the phone with Mom and she wanted to get into it about Barack Obama (not that she's a fan of John McCain either, thank God). We've always been a family that could chat this stuff over so it wasn't surprising that this topic would come up. I think my response did surprise her though:

"Mom, I can't talk about this with you. I am done with politics."

Can you believe I once wanted to major in Political Science, and when Dad suggested that that was perhaps the most bankrupt subject on earth (I'm guessing he meant morally as well as financially) I actually cried and told him I wanted to change the world? Hoo boy. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and kindly pat that young girl on the head, lovingly.

I'm having much the same problem with Joseph Stiglitz's and Linda Bilmes's book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. I just can't do it. I tried. But when you can pretty much feel in your bones what a book is going to say, and all you're going to learn from it is some more numbers that you'll forget in a day, and you're too much of a coward to tell your few remaining pro-war friends any of the things you've learned anyway, it's time to give up the ghost and move on to something that will be a better use of your time.

What I can do is give you a flava of the book. I may print it out and make a bookmark out of the following passage; it pretty much says it all. Maybe I'll take it to my conservative in-laws' extended family this Thanksgiving and pass it out.** If nothing else, I'd never have to go to another extended family Thanksgiving.

"By now it is clear that the US invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake. Nearly 4,000 US troops have been killed [Editor's note: the number is currently 4155], and more than 58,000 have been wounded, injured, or fallen seriously ill. A further 7,300 troops have been wounded or injured or fallen seriously ill in Afghanistan. One hundred thousand US soldiers have returned from the war suffering from serious mental health disorders, a significant fraction of which will be chronic afflictions. Miserable though Saddam Hussein's regime was, life is actually worse for the Iraqi people now. The country's roads, schools, hospitals, homes, and museums have been destroyed and its citizens have less access to electricity and water than before the war. Sectarian violence is rife." (p. ix.)

Also of supreme interest is the appendix showing how the Department of Defense web sites listing Afghanistan and Iraq casualties and injuries have evolved over time to be more confusing in language, more cluttered to look at, and which require the person consulting the site to add their own numbers together rather than providing totals. Close enough for government work!

*I have been reading too many political books this year, as there are too many available. Today's and tomorrow's posts will be my last two about political books in 2008, is my solemn pledge to you.

**I won't, though. See earlier coward assertion.

Good old Thomas Frank.

God, am I sick of political books.

I am also sick of politics, but that's a whole other story. (Nothing encourages turning off the TV like national political conventions, particularly when you don't have cable.) So why do I keep picking these political books up? Well, because there's so many of them right now. And I don't have all that many areas of expertise other than nonfiction books, so I try to keep that knowledge up when I can. And, because, I rather enjoy Thomas Frank. So I had to at least look at The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule.

It's pretty standard stuff, with Frank looking at the rise of the conservative faction of the Republican Party over the last fifty years or so, paying special attention to their genius at a) indulging in huge amounts of government spending while b) pretending to their voters that government is the problem and they want to make it smaller. As always, Frank is a skilled writer, and not reliably partisan; he has just as many harsh words for corrupt Democrats as Republicans. Particularly interesting is his opening chapter on how Washington D.C. itself has changed, from a town of low-level bureaucrats who were pleased with their nearby not-overlarge brick homes (which didn't even have garages), to a town of corporate high-rises, surrounded at length by gated wealthy suburbs with huge McMansions. Interesting point, that.

What's frustrating is that progressives or populists or liberals or whatever you want to call them are the only ones who will read books like this, and then, what's the point? I myself can't read the whole thing because, although I am not all that smart, I can get the point of what he's saying in the first 50 pages, and I agree. Although I couldn't help looking at the last chapter, and I was not disappointed. It's lengthy, but stick with me, there's a payoff at the end:

"At least we know where to begin: understanding conservatism's cynicism for what it is, and for what it has done to our world...We can now say of that philosophy which regards good government as a laughable impossibility, which elevates bullies and gangsters and CEOs above other humans, which tells us to get wise and stop expecting anything good from Washington--we can now say with finality that it has had its chance. Whenever there was a choice to be made between markets and free people--between money and the common good--the conservatives chose money. It's time to make them answer for it."

I think that sums it up pretty succinctly. However, if you're looking for a great Thomas Frank to read, skip this one and his popular What's the Matter with Kansas, and head right for One Market Under God. There's much more there about the economic and political ramifications of our growing income gap, with less in the way of partisan argument. It's an unbelievable book.

One just for me.

Lots of times I can't wait to bore you with every little thought I have about every little thing I read, nonfiction and fiction. Partly I do this to keep track of what I'm reading, and partly I do it because the conversations we invariably end up having have really added something to my enjoyment of my reading. (And I already enjoyed my reading, so that's saying a lot.)

But you should also know that sometimes I read things that I end up wanting to keep to myself. Often these books have to do with personal topics that, well, are just too personal. Sometimes these secret books get me thinking about people I know, and our interconnected lives, and then I keep quiet because other people's secrets are not really mine to blog about. But a lot of times it's just because I figure too much about me, not enough about the books is just a boring mix.

But then again I come across a book that I want to keep for myself, and yet I feel there are certain readers who might enjoy it, and then I feel a conflicted need to babble about it. So before I talk about today's secret book, there are some things you should know about me: I am Catholic. I like being Catholic. This does not mean I think everyone has to be Catholic (I didn't even think Mr. CR had to be Catholic so I'm not about to start in on y'all). I know, boy do I know, the Catholic church has many many problems, and has much to apologize for and fix. So, frankly, do the federal government and most large corporations, and yet we keep them around.

So today's book is A Nation for All: How the Catholic Vision of the Common Good Can Save America from the Politics of Division, by Chris Korzen and Alexia Kelley. I'm really only mentioning it because I strongly feel that if there are any Catholics out there, or people who are interested in (or, okay, repelled by) Catholicism, this is a great book to read, as it hammers home the point that we are all meant to care about and for each other, for the common good. It's got interesting things to say about politics and voting, which has been a real bitch for Catholics since Roe v. Wade was passed and abortion took over as the issue most likely to be used by the Conservative Right to obtain the Catholic vote. But most of all? I loved its whole chapter on the Catholic social tradition, including the tenet of "the dignity of work and the rights of workers":

"Because each human person has inherent dignity independent of his or her economic value, work is designed to benefit the person, not the other way around...In this era of economic globalization, it is all the more important to remember that people should always take priority over profit. Workers, in the Catholic social tradition, have essential human rights: to a just and living wage that will support workers' families, to organize and bargain collectively through trade unions, to safe and to humane working conditions, and to leisure time to spend with their friends and families. Employees have a responsibility to hold up their end of the bargain, but so too must employers take an active role in protecting these essential rights." (p. 27.)

Isn't that beautiful? Frankly, I think we should make THAT a prayer and start reciting it. You hear me, Catholic Church?

Okay, I've said too much. Sorry for boring you with my secrets.

Damn it, he got me!

I am so tired of politics, political ads, and political books, that the thought of reading yet another political book, this time Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, & Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire, made me very sad.

But, Taibbi gave a great interview on the Jon Stewart show, so I determined to give it a try. And, damn him, I couldn't stop until I read the whole thing.

It's deeply disturbing, I'm not going to lie to you. Tired of political reporting himself, Taibbi heads off to Texas to join Pastor Hagee's infamous (and huge) Cornerstone Church to see what the whole Religious Right has going on. As an atheist, he finds that it's quite the scene, but also a lot easier to fit in than the originally thought it might be (you can never throw too many "Gods" in your sentences, he finds, even though it might feel like you are). After a weekend church retreat, where he and the others spend at least part of the time vomiting their demons into paper bags, this is what Taibbi concludes:

"By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to 'be rational' or 'set aside your religion' about such things as the Iraq war or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this--once you've gone this far--you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons." (p. 87.)

Wow. That's quite a statement. And it's not the only one. Taibbi's got lots of scary stories about government, the press, the 9/11 Truth Movement, and much more.

So no, I didn't enjoy it. But I enjoyed Taibbi's voice. I don't think the guy's got a dissembling bone in his body. I haven't read something I simultaneously didn't enjoy but loved all the same since John Bowe's Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy.

Right on, Vincent Bugliosi.

I LOVE Vincent Bugliosi. If you don't know him, he's the attorney who not only successfully prosecuted Charles Manson for his many crimes, but also wrote a page-turning and bestselling true crime classic about the case titled Helter Skelter. He's written other books too, including another true crime/legal thriller And the Sea Will Tell, as well as last year's massive Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I don't know how the guy gets it all done, frankly. He must have a long-suffering spouse who doesn't care that he's a workaholic.

But his recent title has cemented my affection. Check out this shot across the bow: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. You can see why he wins all his jury cases, can't you? The guy doesn't pussyfoot around, I'll say that.

I flipped through the book but will not read the whole thing because, frankly, Bugliosi's preaching to the choir here. He doesn't need to lay out logical, numbered, and legally argued points to convince me that W. is a liar and a murderer. I can tell you what I think reviewers who don't like it (I have to make this up, since few have had the cojones to review it at all)might say:

There's a bit too, well, too much "Vincent Bugliosi" in the front of it (and there is a lot of talk about his own career, which I think he's offering as some sort of explanation for why he's written this book). Some of it can be very legalistic, and dry. (Much of it appears in the form of numbered points which Bugliosi is trying to make as though he were standing before a jury.) It's blatant political writing (well, it's not really, but try convincing any Republican of that). The illustrations included are meant outright to outrage and manipulate: There are several pictures of military cemeteries, crying families, Iraqi mothers holding dead babies, followed by a two-page spread of pictures of W. smirking, laughing, smiling, and leaning on the podium.) Okay, that's pretty blatant. But let's not forget Bugliosi is, first and foremost, a trial lawyer dedicated to putting on a show. Also, he meets the�charge that the picture montage might be a bit over the top preemptively, by adding this note:

"As for the photos of Bush himself, the prologue proves beyond all reasonable doubt that throughout the sea of blood and the screams and cries of men, women, and children, even babies, coming out of the hell on earth he created in Iraq, unbelievably, he laughed and joked, had fun, and enjoyed every day of his presidency. I mean, he told us this. I'm going to have a 'perfect day,' he said. Laura and I had a 'fabulous year' and we're 'having the time of our life.' Bush, in addition to his transcendent criminality, has added a snapshot view of extreme grossness and vulgarian audacity to this otherwise sacred selection of photos."

The whole book's pretty much like that, with Bugliosi quoting the president and the vice-president at every turn, and using those statements to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

So, you go, Vincent. I wish I could be on the jury of the case you want to bring.

Why don't I love her?

I don't know why, but I've never been a huge Barbara Ehrenreich fan. This is awkward, since I agree with her on most (not all) issues of political policy. I always check her books out when they come out. A lot of times I even chuckle at a lot of her writing. But for some reason, I never get her book and say, "At last! My new Ehrenreich is in!" At most, I give a little shrug of "hm, I should probably read this, I guess," and then leave it until right before it's due to read it.

Her latest, This Land is Their Land, has not done much to endear her to me. Again, there's nothing I disagree with here. It's basically a book of essays about the growing gap between the rich and the poor and the increasing classism in our society. Parts of it are very amusing; she's always had a nice ability to turn a phrase. Consider:

"Twenty years ago it was risky to point out the growing inequality in America. I did it in a New York Times essay and was quickly denounced, in the Washington Times, as a 'Marxist.' If only. I've never been able to get through more than a couple of pages of Das Kapital, even in English." (p. 23.)

Now, that's amusing. I also enjoyed her chapter outlining a connection between modern calorie-counting and high carb diets and modern fat-deprived executives therefore never feeling sated by food or money. With that she contrasts her own diet when growing up:

"We ate eggs every morning, meat for lunch, and meat again for dinner, invariably accompanied by gravy or at least pan drippings. We buttered everything from broccoli to brownies and would have buttered butter itself if it were not for the problems of traction presented by the butter-butter interface." (p. 30.)

She's also very, very sharp. This is a powerful statement: "According to Wal-Mart defenders, those low prices hinge not only on improvements in productivity but on the low wages and benefits offered to Wal-Mart's workers. In other words, you've got to squeeze one part of the working class--the 1.3 million Wal-Mart employees--to fill the shopping carts of the others." (p. 137.)

So there's nothing wrong with the writing.* But part of the problem, at least with this book, is my uneasy feeling that she's just as big a slave to the market economy as the rest of us: this collection feels hastily stapled together, in my opinion. The essays are just kind of jammed in here, from minimum wages to illegal immigrants to Wal-Mart to health care. I think part of the problem may be that publishers and readers are expecting everyone, even nonfiction authors, to crank out one or two books a year, a la James Patterson (although he exceeds expectations by farming his writing out and offering three to four craptacular money-making wastes of paper and ink annually, the greedy fucker).

So yeah, it was all right. But I just don't need a book a year from Ehrenreich.**

*For the record, Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus is a very similar, and much better, book about polarized American society.

**My favorite Ehrenreich Anecdote is when my mother shocked the hell out of me by telling me, out of nowhere, that "that Nickel and Dimed book was pretty good." This from the woman who, when I once quoted something from Harper's Magazine, asked me if I was reading "THAT Communist rag!" now. Hmm.

Midsummer gift-giving idea.

Do you know someone who thought the Iraq War was a good idea? Then I would heartily recommend buying them a copy of Rob Simpson's very interesting and somewhat depressing new book What We Could Have Done with the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq.

Sure, you may not want to send it to friends, if you want to keep them as friends. But maybe there's someone you dislike already who might enjoy it? I'm going to send a copy to John McCain! (And, frankly, Barack Obama could take a look at it too.)

My favorite thing about this book, other than the fifty alternatives that range from the serious to the silly ("rebuild New Orleans" vs. "Let's all go to the movies!") and all of which seem like better ideas than war? This paragraph, in the very begininng:

"A portion of the royalties from this book are being donated to Homes for Our Troops, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that assists severely injured servicemen and -women and their families by building homes or adapting existing homes for handicapped accessibility."

That's what it should say in the front of Scott McClellan's What Happened, but it doesn't. Buy this book instead.

Still in love with Lloyd Dobler.

Has everyone out there seen the 1989 Cameron Crowe movie Say Anything, starring John Cusack?  I remembered it this weekend when my brother alerted me to Cusack's appearance on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (about his new movie, War, Inc.).

 

A quick aside: I can now add videos to the blog!  Super cool.

Anyway, the interview's interesting, although I worry about John's voice.  Is he still smoking, I wonder?  It sounds like he may be--which is fine, I like smokers--but I am a bit concerned about his health.  But I digress.  A couple of weeks ago at the library somebody asked for the movie Say Anything, which put me in the mood to watch it again (which I did, in video form, using a video I bought in, and have packed through every move since, high school).

Say Anything and Lloyd Dobler do lead, tangentially at least, back to reading.  Consider Chuck Klosterman's book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, and his first chapter about how Lloyd Dobler ruined girls of his generation for real boys ("It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack.  I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box-office star in America, because every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker"); Hank Stuever also wrote about the Lloyd Dobler Phenomenon for The Washington Post.

So here's to you, Lloyd.  And you too, John.  Even though Chuck Klosterman doesn't think I know the difference, I DO know you're not actually Lloyd (and vice versa), but anyone who can form a sentence like "if the Democrats say impeachment's off the table I think that's very troubling" on a news interview program is worth my continuing devotion.