FrogenYozurt.Com - Literature & Entertainment » Politics

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 by Charles Murray

Wilfried F. Voss — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:40:47 +0000

From the bestselling author of Losing Ground and The Bell Curve, this startling long-lens view shows how America is coming apart at the seams that historically have joined our classes.

In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.

Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad.

The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.

The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Charles Murray

CHARLES MURRAY is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He first came to national attention in 1984 with Losing Ground. His subsequent books include In Pursuit, The Bell Curve (with Richard J. Herrnstein), What It Means to Be a Libertarian, Human Accomplishment, In Our Hands, and Real Education. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives with his wife in Burkittsville, Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

“a timely investigation into a worsening class divide no one can afford to ignore.”
–Publisher’s Weekly

“[Charles Murray] argues for the need to focus on what has made the U.S. exceptional beyond its wealth and military power…religion, marriage, industriousness, and morality.”
–Booklist (Starred Review)

“Charles Murray … has written an incisive, alarming, and hugely frustrating book about the state of American society.”
–Roger Lowenstein, Bloomberg Businessweek

A Lightning Rod in the Storm Over America’s Class Divide

The New York Times Book Review – February 5, 2012 (Excerpt)

WASHINGTON — When Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein’s book “The Bell Curve” appeared in 1994, it was denounced by social scientists, liberal pundits and a little-known Chicago civil-rights lawyer named Barack Obama, who in a commentary on NPR accused the authors of calculating that “white America is ready for a return to good old-fashioned racism as long as it’s artfully packaged.”

Anyone who remembers the firestorm over that 845-page doorstop’s dense arguments about race, class, genetics and I.Q. might be tempted to look at the cover of Mr. Murray’s latest book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” and think, “Here we go again.”

But “Coming Apart,” which depicts members of white elites as hypocrites living in a bubble and the white working class as succumbing to moral decay, is hardly a flattering portrait of white people, let alone, Mr. Murray insists, a partisan barnburner.

“It’s not a brief for the right,” Mr. Murray said in a recent interview at the American Enterprise Institute here, where he has been a scholar since 1990. “The problem I describe isn’t a conservative-versus-liberal problem. It’s a cultural problem the whole country has.”

“Coming Apart,” which shot to No. 5 at Amazon.com immediately upon publication last week, has certainly prompted much conversation, if little in the way of consensus. David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, pre-emptively declared it the most important book of the year, saying, “I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.” [Read the full article...]

Is White, Working Class America ‘Coming Apart’?

NPR Book Review – February 6, 2012 (Excerpt)

According to the libertarian social scientist Charles Murray, America is “coming apart at the seams.” Class strain has cleaved society into two groups, he argues in his new bookComing Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010: an upper class, defined by educational attainment, and a new lower class, characterized by the lack of it. Murray also posits that the new “lower class” is less industrious, less likely to marry and raise children in a two-parent household, and more politically and socially disengaged

By focusing solely on whites, Murray says, he is trying to correct the assumption that these are markers of the American racial divide. The class divisions transcend race.

By Murray’s calculations, the upper class is 20 percent of the white population. The working class is 30 percent. Over the past 50 years the two groups have branched away from each other culturally and geographically. The “educated class,” Murray tells NPR’s Robert Siegel, has developed distinctive tastes and preferences in a way that is new in America, evinced in everything from the alcohol they drink and the cars they buy to how they raise their children and take care of themselves physically.

Added to that, spatial segregation has resulted in “ZIP codes that have levels of affluence and education that are so much higher than the rest of the population that they constitute a different kind of world,” he says. [Read the full article...]

Thinking the Twentieth Century – Essays by Tony Judt and Timothy Snyder

Wilfried F. Voss — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:30:23 +0000

The final book of the brilliant historian and indomitable public critic Tony Judt, Thinking the Twentieth Century maps the issues and concerns of a turbulent age on to a life of intellectual conflict and engagement.

The twentieth century comes to life as an age of ideas–a time when, for good and for ill, the thoughts of the few reigned over the lives of the many. Judt presents the triumphs and the failures of prominent intellectuals, adeptly explaining both their ideas and the risks of their political commitments. Spanning an era with unprecedented clarity and insight, Thinking the Twentieth Century is a tour-de-force, a classic engagement of modern thought by one of the century’s most incisive thinkers.

The exceptional nature of this work is evident in its very structure–a series of intimate conversations between Judt and his friend and fellow historian Timothy Snyder, grounded in the texts of the time and focused by the intensity of their vision. Judt’s astounding eloquence and range are here on display as never before. Traversing the complexities of modern life with ease, he and Snyder revive both thoughts and thinkers, guiding us through the debates that made our world. As forgotten ideas are revisited and fashionable trends scrutinized, the shape of a century emerges. Judt and Snyder draw us deep into their analysis, making us feel that we too are part of the conversation. We become aware of the obligations of the present to the past, and the force of historical perspective and moral considerations in the critique and reform of society, then and now.

In restoring and indeed exemplifying the best of intellectual life in the twentieth century, Thinking the Twentieth Century opens pathways to a moral life for the twenty-first. This is a book about the past, but it is also an argument for the kind of future we should strive for: Thinking the Twentieth Century is about the life of the mind–and the mindful life.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Tony Judt

Tony Judt was educated at King’s College, Cambridge and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Berkeley. He was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies at New York University, in addition to being the Director of the Remarque Institute, which is dedicated to the study of Europe and which he founded in 1995.

The author or editor of fourteen books, Professor Judt was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The New York Times and many other journals in Europe and the United States. Professor Judt is the author of Ill Fares the Land, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, and Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, which was one of The New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2005, winner of the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He died in August 2010 at the age of sixty-two.

Editorial Review

That could be a dry task, but for the quiet passion of Judt (The Memory Chalet, 2010, etc.) and Snyder (History/Yale Univ.; Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, 2010, etc.), who spent most of 2009 talking about, in Snyder’s summary, “the limitations (and capacity for renewal) of political ideas, and the moral failures (and duties) of intellectuals in politics.” The authors consider these questions within the framework of 20th-century history and the biography of Judt, who died in 2010. Born in London in 1948, the son of immigrant Jews, Judt grew up with the modern welfare state, benefiting from its meritocratic educational system to attend Cambridge and pursue academic studies focused first on French history, then Eastern Europe after World War II. He was an ardent youthful Zionist who later severely criticized Israeli policies, creating a furor in 2003 with an essay arguing for a one-state solution to the Palestinian problem. Judt reluctantly took on the role of public intellectual because of a sense—clearly shared by Snyder, their conversations reveal—that the problems currently plaguing America in particular and the advanced industrial economies in general cannot be meaningfully addressed without understanding their deep roots in a history that stretches back to World War I. This history includes the ravages inflicted by unrestrained capitalism, the appeal and very similar failings of communism and fascism, the misguided uses to which the Holocaust has been put and the post-WWII social bargain that unraveled in the ’70s. Judt and Snyder analyze these and many other historical issues with lofty erudition matched by unabashed polemicism—Judt skewers David Brooks as a know-nothing and characterizes Thomas Friedman’s support of the Iraq war as “contemptible”). Social democracy has rarely had better-informed, more ethically rigorous advocates than these two distinguished men. – Kirkus Reviews

Things Fell Apart: Tony Judt’s ‘Twentieth Century’

NPR Book Review – February 2, 2012 (Excerpt)

“Without history, memory is open to abuse,” writes Tony Judt in Thinking the Twentieth Century. Perhaps more than anything else the late British-American historian wrote, that could have been his credo — his work, especially toward the end of his career, was marked by an almost activist concern for morality, what he called an “explicit ethical engagement.”

That approach made Judt, author of the critically acclaimedPostwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, one of the world’s most controversial historians — but also one of its most admired. After he died in 2010 of Lou Gehrig’s disease, his obituaries made note of both his intellect and his unflagging advocacy. Historians, he wrote, are “also participants in our own time and place and cannot retreat from it,” and he never did.

Thinking the Twentieth Century is Judt’s final work, and it’s fitting that it is just as complex as the historian himself. The book — essentially an edited transcription of conversations between Judt and Yale history professor Timothy Snyder — combines elements of memoir, history and philosophy. Each chapter begins with an autobiographical passage by Judt, tracing his life from his childhood in London, the son of Jewish immigrants, to the months before his death in New York. Following these are discussions with Snyder about European history and political philosophy, covering everything from Marxism and Zionism (both of which Judt once embraced) to the social democracy he advocated in his final years. [Read the full article...]

One Man’s History - Tony Judt Reviews His Life’s Journey

The New York Times Book Review – February 3, 2012 (Excerpt)

Tony Judt was known to many people as the public intellectual who aroused a firestorm of criticism for an article he wrote in The New York Review of Books in 2003, calling for Israel to become a binational state and to lose its specifically Jewish character. That essay, as well as biting critiques of the Iraq war and the Israel lobby, earned him considerable enmity in some quarters, mitigated perhaps by the subsequent news that he had developed Lou Gehrig’s disease, to which he succumbed in August 2010.

This public persona is unfortunate because it obscures a much more interesting figure. As a historian of 20th-century Europe, Judt both chronicled and himself represented the huge ideological transformations that occurred between the beginning and end of that century. This life has now been documented in the quasi-autobiographical “Thinking the Twentieth Century.” Conceived after Judt’s illness had already been diagnosed, the book consists of transcriptions of his conversations with Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian who is the distinguished author of a number of well-regarded books on Eastern and Central Europe. Snyder, highly erudite and opinionated himself, is not your typical journalistic interviewer; the book is more a dialogue than an autobiography. [Read the full article...]

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity by Katherine Boo

Wilfried F. Voss — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:18:48 +0000

From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities.

In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”

But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Katherine Boo

Katherine Boo is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Her reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. For the last decade, she has divided her time between the United States and India. This is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

“A riveting, fearlessly reported portrait of a poverty so obliterating that it amounts to a slow-motion genocide. Right now the book is sitting on my shelf making all the other books feel stupid. … Beautiful Forevers will be one of the year’s big books — a conversation starter, an award winner. … The book plays out like a swift, richly plotted novel. That’s partly because Boo writes so damn well. But it’s also because over the course of three years in India she got extraordinary access to the lives and minds of the Annawadi slum, a settlement nestled jarringly close to a shiny international airport and a row of luxury hotels. Grade: A.”—Entertainment Weekly

“A jaw-dropping achievement, an instant classic of narrative nonfiction … narrative with a cinematic intensity … Boo transcends and subverts every cliché, cynical or earnest, that we harbor about Indian destitution and gazes directly into the hearts, hopes, and human promise of vibrant people whom you’ll not soon forget.”—Elle

“A shocking—and riveting—portrait of life in modern India. … This is one stunning piece of narrative nonfiction … Boo’s prose is electric.”—O Magazine

All They Hope for Is Survival

The New York Times Book Review – January 30, 2012 (Excerpt)

“Zehrunisa Husain was a tear-factory even on good days; it was one of her chief ways of starting conversations,” Katherine Boo writes in “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” her exquisitely accomplished first book. Novelists dream of defining characters this swiftly and beautifully, but Ms. Boo is not a novelist. She is one of those rare, deep-digging journalists who can make truth surpass fiction, a documentarian with a superb sense of human drama. She makes it very easy to forget that this book is the work of a reporter.

Half an acre. 335 huts. 3,000 people. And a concrete wall that is supposed to hide them from view: this is Annawadi, the Mumbai slum that comes vibrantly to life in this book’s pages. Ms. Boo says that she chose Annawadi because the scale of this “sumpy plug of slum” bordering a lake of sewage was small, and its location was fraught with possibilities. Annawadi sits beside the road to the Mumbai airport, on “a stretch where new India and old India collided and made new India late.” In 2008, at the time the events in the book unfolded, scavenging and trash sorting were the children of Annawadi’s most promising career choices.

Much of the focus is on Zehrunisa and her oldest son, Abdul. One of Abdul’s brothers dreams of having a “clean job” at one of the nearby hotels. (“He’d heard of waiters who spent all day putting toothpicks into pieces of cheese, or aligning knives and forks on tables.”) But Abdul is more of a pragmatist and has made himself an expert at trading in refuse. [Read the full article...]

Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power by Zbigniew Brzezinski

Wilfried F. Voss — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:46:07 +0000

By 1991, following the disintegration first of the Soviet bloc and then of the Soviet Union itself, the United States was left standing tall as the only global super-power. Not only the 20th but even the 21st century seemed destined to be the American centuries. But that super-optimism did not last long. During the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, the stock market bubble and the costly foreign unilateralism of the younger Bush presidency, as well as the financial catastrophe of 2008 jolted America – and much of the West – into a sudden recognition of its systemic vulnerability to unregulated greed. Moreover, the East was demonstrating a surprising capacity for economic growth and technological innovation. That prompted new anxiety about the future, including even about America’s status as the leading world power. This book is a response to a challenge. It argues that without an America that is economically vital, socially appealing, responsibly powerful, and capable of sustaining an intelligent foreign engagement, the geopolitical prospects for the West could become increasingly grave. The ongoing changes in the distribution of global power and mounting global strife make it all the more essential that America does not retreat into an ignorant garrison-state mentality or wallow in cultural hedonism but rather becomes more strategically deliberate and historically enlightened in its global engagement with the new East. This book seeks to answer four major questions:

1. What are the implications of the changing distribution of global power from West to East, and how is it being affected by the new reality of a politically awakened humanity?
2. Why is America’s global appeal waning, how ominous are the symptoms of America’s domestic and international decline, and how did America waste the unique global opportunity offered by the peaceful end of the Cold War?
3. What would be the likely geopolitical consequences if America did decline by 2025, and could China then assume America’s central role in world affairs?
4. What ought to be a resurgent America’s major long-term geopolitical goals in order to shape a more vital and larger West and to engage cooperatively the emerging and dynamic new East?

America, Brzezinski argues, must define and pursue a comprehensive and long-term a geopolitical vision, a vision that is responsive to the challenges of the changing historical context. This book seeks to provide the strategic blueprint for that vision.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski, formerly President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, is a counselor and trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor of American foreign policy at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His many books include the New York Times bestseller Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower; The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership; and The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Editorial Reviews

Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States of America
“Brzezinski’s latest book reflects his talent for unraveling complex historical issues and his strength in advocating long-term solutions for them.”

Senator John Kerry
“Strategic Vision is a clear, vivid look at America’s place in the world today. Rather than surrender to defeatist speculation about the perceived end to the American Century, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s reality-based insights explore how the United States can move forward over the next two decades. This is a must-read for a straightforward assessment of the challenges of today and tomorrow and the unique strengths America brings to the global stage.”

Senator Richard G. Lugar, State of Indiana; Ranking Member of and Former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
“Informed by a lifetime of comprehensive scholarship and many years of responsibility on the front lines of our diplomacy and national security, Zbigniew Brzezinski provides in Strategic Vision a comprehensive blueprint for successful planning and action. His challenge to the U.S. to be a sophisticated leader of a vital democratic-enlarged zone in the West and a promoter of stability in the East is timely and persuasive.”

Surveying a Global Power Shift

The New York Times Book Review – January 29, 2012 (Excerpt)

The 2008 crash and America and Europe’s continuing economic woes; the rise of China and worries about the decline of the West; and technology-fueled uprisings around the world from the Arab Spring protests to anti-Putin demonstrations in Russia — such developments underscore just how prescient Zbigniew Brzezinski has been in his earlier writings.

In the early 1990s, when some scholars were arguing that the end of the cold war and the implosion of the Soviet Union signified the advent of a new era in which liberal democracy would triumph around the planet, Mr. Brzezinski was warning about the forces of upheaval rumbling through the developing world and the weaknesses of the West that could undermine its global clout.

In his 1993 book “Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century” Mr. Brzezinski argued that the acceleration of communication made possible by technology set contemporary history apart from the past, that China was more likely than Russia to assume a leadership role on the world stage, and that America’s emphasis on “material wealth, on consumption and on the propagation of self-indulgence as the definition of the good life” could endanger its pre-eminence as a global power.

Now, in his provocative new book, “Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power,” Mr. Brzezinski — the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter — surveys the current state of world affairs. He provides a clear-eyed, sharp-tongued assessment of this hinge moment in time, when the world’s center of gravity is shifting “from the West to the East.” [Read the full article...]

Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation by Richard Sennett

Wilfried F. Voss — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 11:50:49 +0000

Living with people who differ—racially, ethnically, religiously, or economically—is the most urgent challenge facing civil society today. We tend socially to avoid engaging with people unlike ourselves, and modern politics encourages the politics of the tribe rather than of the city. In this thought-provoking book, Richard Sennett discusses why this has happened and what might be done about it.

Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skillful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss rather than debate. In Together he explores how people can cooperate online, on street corners, in schools, at work, and in local politics. He traces the evolution of cooperative rituals from medieval times to today, and in situations as diverse as slave communities, socialist groups in Paris, and workers on Wall Street. Divided into three parts, the book addresses the nature of cooperation, why it has become weak, and how it could be strengthened. The author warns that we must learn the craft of cooperation if we are to make our complex society prosper, yet he reassures us that we can do this, for the capacity for cooperation is embedded in human nature.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett‘s works include The Craftsman and The Culture of the New Capitalism, both published by Yale University Press. He founded and served as first director of the New York Institute of the Humanities and is now a professor of sociology at both New York University and the London School of Economics.

“Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation,” by Richard Sennett

The Washington Post Book Review – January 27, 2012 (Excerpt)

Sociologist Richard Sennett begins his new book by describing a day at his young grandson’s school in London when kids commandeered the public address system to blast song lyrics rife with the F-word. “We hate what you do, and we hate your whole crew!” singer Lily Allen wailed over the loudspeakers. A 6-year-old girl punctuated the ensuing chaos by grinding her non-existent hips to the music, which never helps when school officials are already hyperventilating.

The school community was in an uproar, of course. Sennett was troubled, too, but not because he feared for the school’s reputation. He worried that the incident could have triggered a violent conflict in London’s combustible mix of race, class and religion. After recounting this incident, he immediately segues to a similar us-vs.-them dynamic in America, where right-wing talk radio broadcasts relentless rants that sing out a virtual “F you” to “Nazi-feminists, liberals, secular humanists and married homosexuals, as well as, of course, to socialists.”

Three pages later, Sennett warns that the most direct cause of weakened cooperation is economic inequality and bemoans the loss of high-skilled manufacturing jobs in America. Four pages after that, he extols the virtues of parents who talk constantly to their babies, creating sociable toddlers.

Thus begins the galloping romp of Sennett’s small but ambitious “Together.” Sennett wants to alter the course of rising tribalism, which he defines as coupling “solidarity with others like yourself to aggression against those who differ.” A mammoth undertaking, to be sure, but he is a worthy warrior, armed with abundant evidence of our better natures. [Read the full article...]

Borrow: The American Way of Debt by Economic Historian Louis Hyman

Wilfried F. Voss — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:28:40 +0000

In this lively history of consumer debt in America, economic historian Louis Hyman demonstrates that today’s problems are not as new as we think.

Borrow examines how the rise of consumer borrowing—virtually unknown before the twentieth century—has altered our culture and economy. Starting in the years before the Great Depression, increased access to money raised living standards but also introduced unforeseen risks. As lending grew more and more profitable, it displaced funds available for business borrowing, setting our economy on an unsustainable course. Told through the vivid stories of individuals and institutions affected by these changes, Borrow charts the collision of commerce and culture in twentieth-century America, giving an historical perspective on what is new—and what is not—in today’s economic turmoil.

About Louis Hyman

Louis Hyman attended Columbia University, where he received a BA in history and mathematics. A former Fulbright scholar and a consultant at McKinsey & Co., he received his PhD in American history in 2007 from Harvard University. He is currently an assistant professor in Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, where he teaches history.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Reviews

“The story of how Americans learned to love debt—and became dangerously addicted to it. Anyone who has ever wondered how we got into the mess we are now in must read this powerful book.”
—Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers’ Republic

“The author traces consumer debt beginning in the 1910s and through the 1920s, when personal loans became legal and mortgages were in demand. After WWII, consumption continued to be financed by debt, particularly television sets. . . . As the century progressed, we learn about the rise of discount stores over department stores, loans financed by issuing corporate debt, securitization, and credit cards. Hyman indicates that although policymakers declare the worst of our current financial crisis ended in mid-2009, important causes continue, and he concludes, ‘Debt, along with every other aspect of capitalism, is something that we have created and have the capacity to master.’ This is an excellent book.”
—Booklist

“Stocked with colorful personalities and trenchant insights, Hyman’s lucid, entertaining, and timely treatise illuminates the murky processes by which debt became the troubled center of economic life.”
—Publishers Weekly

“An evenhanded account aimed at the general reader baffled by today’s economic crisis. From Model-Ts to TVs to McMansions, Hyman uncovers the credit story behind all the glittering prizes and offers a prescription to prevent the American Dream from turning into the American Nightmare.”
—Kirkus Reviews

First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring America’s Prosperity by John B. Taylor

Wilfried F. Voss — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:19:27 +0000

Leading economist John B. Taylor’s straightforward plan to rebuild America’s economic future by returning to its founding principles.

America’s economic future is uncertain. Mired in a long crippling economic slump and hamstrung by bitter partisan debate over the growing debt and the role of government, the nation faces substantial challenges, exacerbated by a dearth of vision and common sense among its leaders. Prominent Stanford economist John B. Taylor brings his steady voice of reason to the discussion with a natural solution: start with the country’s founding principles of economic and political freedom—limited government, rule of law, strong incentives, reliance on markets, a predictable policy framework—and reconstruct its economic foundation from these proven principles.

Channeling his high-level experience as both a policymaker and researcher, Taylor then zeroes in on current policy issues—the budget, monetary policy, government regulation, tax reform—and lays out in simple terms bold strategies designed to place the country on sound footing in each of these areas.

About John B. Taylor

John B. Taylor is the Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Shultz Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He was Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs from 2001 to 2005.

Editorial Review

Former treasury undersecretary Taylor (Economics/Stanford Univ.;Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis, 2009, etc.) looks to get back to the good old days “of economic freedom upon which the country was founded.”

These “first principles” are merely the ones of unrestricted free trade, meaning without pesky regulation and without government intervention or interference. Wave a wand and return to that, and voilà: “we can restore America’s prosperity and our confidence in the future.” It’s up to the worker who wants to be competitive to secure the skills and education necessary to the task, all a matter of incentives and rewards. But what if such a worker finds his or her job outsourced to Asia? To do anything in the way of protecting a job would be “interventionism,” while efforts to even out some of the turbulence of the so-called free market constitute dreaded and despised “short-term Keynesian discretionary” remedies. Taylor fair-mindedly notes that Republican and Democratic presidents alike have been more interventionist than less; readers who do not remember Richard Nixon’s experiments in wage-and-price freezes, for instance, may be surprised to realize how, well, socialistic they seem in today’s context. And the author is surely right to point out that the flaws in the banking system were far deeper than a mere bailout could fix, adding, “The extraordinary bailout measures that began with Bear Stearns before the panic were the most harmful interventions.” Yet Taylor’s neolibertarian prescriptions seem more dogmatic than helpful, his attacks on health-care reform a species of I’ve-got-mine privilege. His befuddlement at the thought that the Chinese government might jail vendors for selling nonorganic pork as organic (“there was no safety issue”) hints at a failure to connect with the world outside the pages of Ayn Rand, to say nothing of grasping the concept of truth in advertising. – Kirkus Reviews

Hillary Bush-Limburg: Gingrich Lures Tea Party In Florida

Wilfried F. Voss — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:24:49 +0000

A Post by Hillary Bush-Limburg - Follow Hillary and her posts. And, please, leave comments.

Newt Gingrich has moved to consolidate the conservative base. He would like to draw on the Tea Party movement. He likes their activism and passion. Tea Party voters in New Hampshire backed Mitt Romney. He won in New Hampshire. In South Carolina Gingrich won among Tea Party supporters. It took him en route to his victory on Saturday.

That momentum may go on for him in Florida. It’s a state less conservative than South Carolina. But the Tea Party claimed an important role here. They supported Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. Rick Scott is the governor.

Tea Party leaders said they have been courted. By all of the campaigns. The withdrawal of Michele Bachmann was bad. It puts her votes into the play.

When Cain dropped out, there was a vacuum. It’s being filled right now very quickly. By Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Romney was not involved with the Tea Party. Not like the others.

There is a reason why people like Newt. It’s because of the things we’re all thinking. He’s saying it.

Mr. Gingrich had an aggressive debate last week. In South Carolina. He directed fire at elites in Washington. And the news media. People now know he’s got courage. We don’t want to be milquetoast.

It was also an important day for Gingrich. And the campaign. The “super PAC” announced it would spend $6 million. On ads for Newt in Florida. They will continue the attacks on Mr. Romney. He had a career as corporate buyout specialist.

Mr. Gingrich drew the largest crowd here . More than 2,500 people a sheriff estimated. They were organized by the county Republican Party. And several Tea Party groups. And Glenn Beck-inspired 9/12 groups.

Hillary Bush-Limburg: Romney and Gingrich Clash In Florida

Hillary Bush-Limburg — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:49:31 +0000

A Post by Hillary Bush-Limburg - Follow Hillary and her posts. And, please, leave comments.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich clashed sharply. And repeatedly. That was in a Republican presidential debate. Monday night. The former Massachusetts governor attacked. Called the former House speaker a failed leader. A K Street influence peddler. A candidate who would put the party at risk. In the general election, that is.

Romney is seeking to regain the offensive. He lost in the South Carolina primary. That was on Saturday. It broke the GOP race open. He adopted a far different demeanor. It was different during two lackluster debates last week. On Monday he kept the pressure on Gingrich. Particularly in the early stages. He tried to raise doubts about Gingrich. About his ability to lead the party.

Gingirch spent 15 years in Washington on K Street. Romney said so about the former speaker. That was years after he left Congress. This is a real problem. We cannot nominate someone like him. Someone who had a record of great distress. And he has worked for 15 years lobbying.

Gingrich won in South Carolina. He was far more subdued. He responded to Romney’s attacks. He accused Romney of getting facts wrong. He’s making distorted charges. Voters will reject such politics.

Gingrich protested. Romney said, Gingrich had lobbied members of Congress. Over legislation to add a prescription drug benefit. Romney wanted to be very clear. Because he understands Gingrich’s technique. It’s not going to work very well. Because the American people see through it.

The debate came at a critical time. Romney’s candidacy is suddenly at risk. Gingrich is unexpectedly in strong contention. For the party nomination.

Two other candidates were on the stage. There was former senator Rick Santorum. He won the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. And there was Rep. Ron Paul. But the focus now is on Romney and Gingrich. The debate reflected that political reality. Far more than in some past forums. The two front-runners spent time challenging each other. Rather than making a case against President Obama. Or describing their plan to turn around the economy.

The exchanges between Romney and Gingrich were pointed. But the debate lacked the carnival atmosphere. It was not like in South Carolina. There audiences cheered loudly. And egged on the candidates.

The debate came as Romney bowed to pressure. He released his 2010 tax returns. And estimates for 2011. He acknowledged that his campaign had erred. He did not take action.

Romney demanded that Gingrich release his contract. With the housing giant Freddie Mac. They paid the former speaker’s firm about $1.6 million. Over a period of years. Gingrich posted one of those contracts. That was on his campaign Web site. It showed an annual payment of $300,000.

The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics by Thomas Byrne Edsall

Wilfried F. Voss — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:34:07 +0000

One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles.

In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislation—and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachers—have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choices—or worse, choices with no winners.

Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few years—long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvement—suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.

About Thomas Byrne Edsall

Thomas Edsall is an American journalist and academic, best known for his 25 years covering politics for the Washington Post. He holds the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professorship in Public Affairs Journalism at Columbia University, and writes an online 2012 election column for the New York Times. In addition, he is a correspondent for The New Republic, and the author of Chain Reaction, a Pulitzer Prize finalist (1992), The New Politics of Equality (1984), and Building Red America (2006), among other works. Edsall is also the winner of the Carey McWilliams Award of the American Political Science Association. Mr. Edsall lives in New York and Washington, D.C. with his wife, Mary.

Editorial Reviews

“In this erudite primer on the conditions that have brought us to this moment of economic crisis, journalist and Columbia University professor Edsall argues that the U.S. faces a future of diminished resources, and, as a result of partisan intractability, the possibility that we won’t overcome current challenges to long-term prosperity…. Providing ample sociological and economic evidence via descriptive graphs and in-depth analysis, Edsall…illuminates hard but necessary truths.”—Publishers Weekly

“As economists handicap the odds of a new recession and speculate about a lost decade for the U.S. economy, Tom Edsall offers a troubling vision of American political and social conflict in circumstances of low growth and intense polarization. To avoid what he dubs a “brutish future,” our divided leaders will have to come together around a plan for renewed growth that is bound to offend the core constituencies of both political parties. If Edsall is right, the outlook for such an agreement is dim at best, and the alternative is the decline of the United States.” — William Galston, Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution and former policy advisor to President Clinton

“The Age of Scarcity greatly clarifies the current frightening crisis in our politics. Thomas Edsall, one of our major political commentators, sees Republicans and Democrats as competing coalitions of haves and have-nots, locked in brutal battles over the fundamentals of modern American government at a time of severe economic duress. The stakes for America’s future are economic and moral as well as political, and they are as large as they have been since the Great Depression. Edsall’s analysis—at once calm and insistent, upsetting and enlightening—is a singularly valuable account of these ugly times.” — Sean Wilentz, Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of the American Revolutionary Era at Princeton University, author of The Rise of American Democracy and The Age of Reagan

The Political Price of Austerity

The New York Times Book Review – January 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

Most books about contemporary politics are designed for quick obsolescence. A notable exception to the rule is the work of Thomas Byrne Edsall, whose five careful books, starting with “The New Politics of Inequality” in 1984, are still found on the shelves and in the footnotes of everyone who writes about politics — left and right, academics and journalists alike. Edsall’s distinctive method combines his own reporting with rigorous use of data from across the social sciences, including psychology and anthropology. Though his previous book, “Building Red America,” seemed poorly timed when it appeared in 2006 just as Karl Rove’s quest for permanent Republican dominance collapsed, its insights into conservative attitudes about authority and autonomy remain as useful as anything written more recently about the Tea Party and the right-wing resurgence.

The great topic of Edsall’s life’s work is the breakdown of the New Deal-era liberal coalition at the intersection of race, resentment and inequality. While analysts often sharply distinguish economic from social issues, Edsall sees a “chain reaction,” to use the title of his 1991 book, in which race, economics and highly emotional topics like immigration interact to crush any real hope of a new progressive coalition. When minorities acquire new rights or benefits, it comes at a cost, real or perceived, for established white voters. [Read the full article...]

“The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,” by Thomas Byrne Edsall

The Washington Post Book Review – January 27, 2012 (Excerpt)

America’s fiscal situation appears grim. The “supercommittee” was unwilling to make tough decisions, mostly because voters won’t support the necessary mix of tax increases and spending cuts. Few politicians want to acknowledge that somebody’s standard of living will have to fall. It’s hard not to look at the current crisis in Europe and wonder if the United States might someday find itself in the position of Italy, even if we will be spared the fate of poorer Greece.

For all the economic predictions, few commentators have taken a serious look at the politics of this new era. Will Occupy Wall Street shape the debate, will the tea party grab the mainstream, or will we get something else altogether? To address these questions, enter Thomas Byrne Edsall, a journalism professor at Columbia University and previously a longtime writer for The Washington Post.

As the subtitle of the book suggests, current and forthcoming fiscal pressures will reshape American politics into a zero-sum battle of who gets what, and how much is taken from whom. It promises to be ugly.

In Edsall’s portrait, fear is on the rise. It will lead to a self-destructive, polarized national politics based on paranoia, brutality and coarseness, whether the issue is cracking down on immigration, neglecting the long-term unemployed or failing to impose higher taxes on the wealthy. His view of American politics suggests that Republicans will hold firm to their ideology while Democrats sell out their side with weak compromises. [Read the full article...]

Breaking and Entering: A Novel Exploring Issues Of Family, Religion And Politics by Eileen Pollack

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:47:10 +0000

Set against the tragic events of the Oklahoma City bombings, Breaking and Entering follows Christian/Jewish couple Louise and Richard Shapiro as they move from California to rural Michigan with their daughter Molly in an attempt to save their marriage. They find their core beliefs about life and love tested as school counselor Louise’s students blame Satan for their homosexuality while Richard’s new buddies gather arms to defend themselves against enemies at home and abroad. Pollack’s America is divided and splintered, yet she writes with hope and humor…Breaking and Entering challenges the stereotypes we hold about our fellow Americans, reminding us of the unexpected bonds that can form across the divide between so-called Red and Blue states.

About Eileen Pollack

Award-winning novelist EILEEN POLLACK is the Zell Director of the University of Michigan’s MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Editorial Reviews

Eileen Pollack’s new novel, “Breaking and Entering,” takes place in rural Michigan in 1995 — the epicenter and high point of the militia movement, before increased scrutiny and revulsion at the Oklahoma City bombing put some militia groups out of business and sent others underground. (Though not a militiaman, the bomber Timothy McVeigh attended their meetings and spent time on a Michigan farm with his fellow conspirator Terry Nichols.) The Oklahoma City attack comes about a third of the way through Pollack’s book, a real-world event that informs and shadows the fictional ones. …Quite a lot of bad things happen in “Breaking and Entering.” Pollack is an engaging writer with a first-rate eye for the telling sociological detail…. Since the author’s intent is to explore intolerance, hatred and evil, it is not enough that these forces merely simmer and self-perpetuate. The stakes are raised, and escalating consequences play out. …–Jean Thompson, The New York Times Book Review

A compassionate, humorous new novel about the ambiguities of modern life. After his patient commits suicide, a shattered Richard Shapiro and his wife, Louise, both therapists, move from upscale, liberal Marin County, California, to a rural Michigan village in 1995. But so much for the great escape: Louise takes up with a magnetic married minister, and Richard befriends members of the local militia, which has ties to the Oklahoma City bomber. Set against the backdrop of a divided America, Breaking and Entering by Eileen Pollack is a novel laced with compassion, humor and wisdom about the ambiguities of modern life. –Lynn Schnurnberger, More Magazine

Louise Shapiro is thoroughly beset in this thorny, lucid novel. Her bad luck begins in California, where her husband abandons his psychology practice and takes a job in a rural Michigan prison. Louise struggles to adjust to the heartland, which seems overpopulated with religious nuts and militia members. Her husband drifts away into a rebellious, gun-toting fugue, and the lover she takes becomes remote in his own way. … Her increasingly nuanced view of the sociopolitical divide is reflected in Pollack’s sensitive portrayals of both liberal Louise and her ilk, and their conservative counterparts. Weaving the personal with the political, Pollack… creates an encompassing haze of dissatisfaction and misdirected passion. Despite the unrelenting misfortune, though, the tone is more solemn than dark; there’s a beautiful contemplativeness, and a believable sense of redemption in the end. –Publisher’s Weekly

Thoughts on “The Iron Lady”

Ariel Ceylan — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:14:10 +0000

The Iron Lady is a film that just came out on the political carreer of Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s first femal Prime Minister. This story, on the surface, is about a woman who breaks into a man’s world and turns an economic downturn into growth. There’s more to the story than that. It evokes questions of moral responsibility. To whom shall one be loyal to? Shall one be loyal to one’s family or shall one be loyal to one’s dream. Margaret’s impetus is to her dream. As she so aptly puts, “One’s life must matter”. It’s easy to say when one is full of ambition, has a degree from Oxford, and has a wealth of self-confidence. I wonder how easy it is to do what she has done. It is easy to marry and have children, but to put them aside and say that one’s duty to one’s country is greater than family, is quite a task.

To whom shall I be loyal first?

Ariel Ceylan

The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era by Timothy S. Goeglein

Wilfried F. Voss — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:54:18 +0000

Timothy Goeglein spent nearly eight years in the White House as President George W. Bush’s key point of contact to American conservatives and the faith-based world and was often profiled in the national news media. But when a plagiarism scandal prompted his resignation, Goeglein chose not to dodge it but confront it, and was shown remarkable grace by the president. In fact, Bush showed more concern for Goeglein and his family than any personal political standing.

The Man in the Middle is Goeglein’s unique insider account of why he believes most of the 43rd president’s in-office decisions were made for the greater good, and how many of those decisions could serve as a blueprint for the emergence of a thoughtful, confident conservatism. From a fresh perspective, Goeglein gives behind-the-scenes accounts of key events during that historic two-term administration, reflecting on what was right and best about the Bush years. He was in Florida for the 2000 election recount, at the White House on 9/11, and watched Bush become an effective, confident wartime president.

Goeglein, now a vice president with Focus on the Family, also looks back at how Bush handled matters like stem cell research, faith-based initiatives, the emergence of the Values Voters, the nominations of both Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito—in which Goeglein had a direct role—and debates over the definition of marriage.

In all, The Man in the Middle supports historians who view the legacy of President George W. Bush in a favorable light, recognizing his conservative ideas as worth upholding in order to better shape our nation and change the world. Goeglein concludes the book on a hopeful note, showing how a thoughtful, prudent infusion of faith in American culture and public life can contribute to an American Renaissance in this new century.

About Timothy S. Goeglein

Timothy S. Goeglein is vice president of External Relations for Focus on the Family. He served as deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison under President George W. Bush for nearly eight years. Goeglein and his wife have two sons.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

‘Man In The Middle’: Between Faith And Politics

NPR Book Review – January 7, 2012 (Excerpt)

Tim Goeglein worked in the George W. Bush White House for eight years, and it was in the Oval Office that the president forgave him.

While working as an aide to Bush, Goeglein repeatedly plagiarized columns he sent to his hometown newspaper under his byline. When his actions were discovered, he went to Bush to apologize, fully expecting to be fired.

“Before I could get barely a few words out,” he says, “he looked at me, and he said, ‘Tim, grace and mercy are real. I have known grace and mercy in my life, and I’m extending it to you. You’re forgiven.’ ”

Today, Goeglein works for the Focus on the Family Christian ministry. In his new book, The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era, he writes about his experiences in the Bush administration. He tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that religion has a vital place in American politics — and has ever since the country was born.

“In the founding discussions and debates, men as elementally different as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson — I mean, these people didn’t agree on whether we should have a national bank, a national currency and, at one remove, whether we ought to have a constitution,” he says, “but they all agreed, categorically, that freedom and liberty came from God, not from government.” [Read the full article...]

Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel by Nicholas Blanford

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:01:59 +0000

Hezbollah is the most powerful Islamist group operating in the Middle East today, and no other Western journalist has penetrated as deeply inside this secretive organization as Nicholas Blanford. Now Blanford has written the first comprehensive inside account of Hezbollah and its enduring struggle against Israel. Based on more than a decade and a half of reporting in Lebanon and conversations with Hezbollah’s determined fighters, Blanford reveals their ideology, motivations, and training, as well as new information on military tactics, weapons, and sophisticated electronic warfare and communications systems.

Using exclusive sources and his own dogged investigative skills, Blanford traces Hezbollah’s extraordinary evolution—from a zealous group of raw fighters motivated by Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution into the most formidable non-state military organization in the world, whose charismatic leader vows to hasten Israel’s destruction. With dramatic eyewitness accounts, including Blanford’s own experiences of the battles, massacres, triumphs, and tragedies that have marked the conflict, the story follows the increasingly successful campaign of resistance that led to Israel’s historic withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.

Warriors of God shows how Hezbollah won hearts and minds with exhaustive social welfare programs and sophisticated propaganda skills. Blanford traces the group’s secret military build-up since 2000 and reveals the stunning scope of its underground network of tunnels and bunkers, becoming the only journalist to independently discover and explore them. With the Middle East fearful of another, even more destructive war between Lebanon and Israel, Blanford tenaciously pursues Hezbollah’s post-2006 battle plans in the Lebanese mountains, earning him newspaper scoops as well as a terrifying interrogation and a night in jail.

Featuring sixteen years of probing interviews with Hezbollah’s leaders and fighters, Warriors of God is essential to understanding a key player in a region rocked by change and uncertainty.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Nicholas Blanford

Nicholas Blanford, the Beirut correspondent for The Times of London and The Christian Science Monitor, has lived in Lebanon since 1994. He is a regular contributor to Time magazine and Jane’s Information Group publications. An acknowledged authority on Hezbollah, he has acted as a consultant on Lebanese and Syrian affairs for private firms and government institutions. He has made numerous television and radio appearances, including on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar channel, CBS’s 60 Minutes, CNN and CNN International, Fox, ABC, Irish television, the BBC, National Public Radio, and other American and Canadian radio and television stations. Blanford is the author of Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and Its Impact on the Middle East.

Editorial Review

Christian Science Monitor Beirut correspondent Blanford (Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and its Impact on the Middle East, 2006, etc.) provides a detailed account of the origins and development of the irregular military force called Hezbollah, which calls itself Lebanon’s “national resistance,” but is under at least partial strategic direction of Iran and its Revolutionary Guard. Documenting a different kind of capability than that usually associated with terrorist groups, Blanford argues that Iran has spent billions on Hezbollah to expand its own deterrence posture and retaliatory options. It is a capability Ariel Sharon’s former security advisor Giora Eiland says “we cannot defeat” without defining Lebanon as Israel’s enemy. In the area south of Beirut, different generations of weapons systems have been developed and tested since the 1980s, and elicited counter efforts by Israel as a proxy for Western technology. After each round of open war, Hezbollah has been re-equipped after drawing the technological and military lessons from what preceded. Blanford argues that present capabilities, maintained in violation of UN disarmament resolutions, are more advanced than ever. New types of missiles and anti-aircraft systems have been deployed since 2006, made possible by treaties with Syria and Iran from 2005. There is also Hezbollah’s increasing political involvement in Lebanon, especially now that the organization has been implicated in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. – Kirkus Reviews

“Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel,” by Nicholas Blanford

The Washington Post Book Review – December 30, 2011 (Excerpt)

As the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria violently struggles for its life, observers of the region are wondering about the future of Iran’s alliances in the eastern Mediterranean. In particular, questions abound about what lies ahead for Iran’s primary regional proxy, the Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, which for decades had relied on the Assad regime for arms supplies and political and military backing.

With the regional balance of power undergoing a potentially dramatic shift, the publication of “Warriors of God,” by journalist Nicholas Blanford, comes at a rather opportune moment. Blanford, the Beirut correspondent for the Times of London and the Christian Science Monitor, has been following Hezbollah in Lebanon since the 1990s. As a longtime resident of Lebanon, he has developed an intimate knowledge of the country. He has also built personal relations and acquired access to Hezbollah officials and soldiers.

“Warriors of God” doesn’t set out to dissect Hezbollah’s ideology or organizational structure as other books have done. Instead, Blanford provides a loose chronological account of Hezbollah’s war with Israel since the early 1980s and all the way to the present.

The book’s primary interest is in the group’s military evolution over the decades, including its adjustments and preparations for further conflict following the most recent war with Israel in the summer of 2006. For this task, Blanford relies on his familiarity with the terrain and a wealth of anecdotes (if often bordering on the hagiographic), as well as quotes gleaned from his interviews with various Hezbollah officials, field commanders and fighters. He also sprinkles in the personal stories of the Shi’ite residents of south Lebanon. [Read the full article...]

Black and White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene “Bull” Connor by Larry Dane Brimner

Wilfried F. Voss — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:45:43 +0000

Bombed, beaten, banned, and imprisoned, the Reverend Fred J. Shuttlesworth led the civil rights struggle for equality in Birmingham, Alabama, using nonviolent actions to protest segregation in schools, stores, buses, and the hiring of police officers. He pressed his congregation to register to vote and to cast their ballots for civil rights supports. Eugene “Bull” Conner, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, became a symbol of racist hatred and violence as he organized the Southern segregationists to rally against Shuttlesworth. With a spacious design that includes archival pictures and primary source documents on almost every page, this accessible photo-essay recounts the events in three sections that focus first on the Preacher (“Fred”), then on the Commissioner (“Bull”), and finally, on their confrontation. For readers new to the subject, the biographies will be a vivid, informative introduction, but even those who have some familiarity with the landmark events will learn much more here. Thorough source notes document the sometimes harrowing details and provide opportunities for further research, as does a list of suggested readings. Never simplistic, Brimner shows the viewpoints from all sources: some middle-class blacks resented “Fred’s” heavy-handed style – fiery, confrontational, dictatorial – even if they agreed with the goals; some whites in Birmingham did not wish to see an end to segregation, though their voices were drowned out. A penetrating look at elemental national history. –Booklist

A fascinating look at one of the most crucial places ad periods in the civil rights movements through two polar opposites. . . . A clean, graphically interesting design abets a well-researched, engaging narrative that contributes a more nuanced view of the period that is often seen. (author’s note, further reading, source notes, index) –Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

The relative fame of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks tends to obscure other primary, important players in the Civil Rights Movement. One of these was the Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a Baptist minister who served churches in Alabama from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Committed to his belief in the equality of all people before God, he was the driving force in bringing about the integration of Birmingham; and in this endeavor, he had help from a most unexpected source. Eugene “Bull” Conner was the Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety and strong proponent of the city’s segregation ordinances. His enforcement techniques were legendary: dogs, fire hoses, brutality. Klan supported and driven by a set of beliefs as strong as, but counter to, Shuttleworth’s, Conner was a in large part responsible for turning the tide of public opinion in favor of civil-rights progress. In this highly pictorial book, Brimner limns the characters of both men and the ways in which their belief systems and personalities interacted to eliminate the segregation from the Birmingham statutes. Black-and-White pages and red sidebars containing supporting information on topics such as the murder of Emmet Till and Autherine Lucy’s attempt to integrate the University of Alabama make this a visually arresting book. The writing style is lively and informative. A brief bibliography, excellent source notes, and a sound index round out this volume, which can stand alongside Russell Freedman’s Freedom Walkers (Holiday House, 2006) and Brimner’s own Birmingham Sunday (Calkins Creek, 2010) as fine examples of both civil-rights history and photo-biographies. –School Library Journal

Larry Dane Brimner’s ‘Black & White’: Nonviolent confrontation and civil rights

The Washington Post Book Review – January 3, 2012

The nonviolence credo adopted by the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and ’60s did not, of course, mean a lack of action or agitation. Leaders used the courts, demonstrations, public opinion and economic power to chip away at the South’s segregationist policies. A handsome introduction to an ugly time, “Black & White” tells how the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth cannily utilized an unabashed racist, Eugene “Bull” Connor, to advance equality in Birmingham, Ala., and beyond. Larry Dane Brimner presents these two men as stubborn personalities on a collision course. One felt guided and protected by God to push for civil rights, to the point that he was considered by many to be dictatorial. The other was just as determined to maintain the racial status quo. Aided by a wealth of pertinent photographs, Brimner chronicles their interactions through the years, culminating in the events of May 1963. While the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. weighed whether young people should participate in protests, Shuttlesworth and hundreds of Birmingham’s youth went on ahead. With Connor voted out of office but still in charge of the police, Shuttlesworth, who died in October, knew the timing was crucial. The resulting footage of children and teenagers being blasted by water cannons helped persuade the nation to pass crucial civil rights legislation.

Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror by Matthew M. Aid

Wilfried F. Voss — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:28:11 +0000

The shock of the 9/11 attacks sent the American intelligence community into hyperactive growth. Five hundred billion dollars of spending in the Bush-Cheney years turned the U.S. spy network into a monster: 200,000-plus employees, stations in 170 countries, and an annual budget of more than $75 billion. Armed with cutting-edge surveillance gear, high-tech weapons, and fleets of armed and unarmed drone aircraft, America deploys the most advanced intel force in history.

But even after the celebrated strike against Osama Bin Laden, America’s spies are still struggling to beat a host of ragtag enemies around the world.

In Intel Wars, preeminent secrecy and intelligence historian Matthew Aid (“our reigning expert on the NSA”-Seymour M. Hersh) delivers the inside stories of how and why our shadow war against extremism has floundered. Spendthrift, schizophrenic policies leave next-generation spy networks drowning in raw data, resource-starved, and choked on paperwork. Overlapping jurisdictions stall CIA operatives, who wait seventy-two hours for clearance to attack fast-moving Taliban IE D teams. U.S. military computers-their classified hard drives still in place-turn up for sale at Afghan bazaars. Swift, tightly focused operations like the Bin Laden strike are the exception rather than the rule.

Intel Wars-based on extensive, on-the-ground interviews, and revelations from Wikileaks cables and other newly declassified documents-shows how our soldier-spies are still fighting to catch up with the enemy. Matthew Aid captures the lumbering behemoth that is the U.S. military-intelligence complex in one comprehensive narrative, and distills the unprecedented challenges to our security into a compelling- and sobering-read.

About Matthew M. Aid

Matthew Aid is a leading intelligence historian and expert on the NSA, and a regular commentator on intelligence matters for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the National Journal, the Associated Press, CBS News, National Public Radio (NPR) and many others.

Editorial Review

Less secret than the title implies, this richly detailed overview of U.S. intelligence since President Obama’s election reveals only spotty progress.

Intelligence historian Aid (The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency, 2009) asserts that the avalanche of money following 9/11 vastly expanded U.S. security agencies while leaving many deficiencies intact. Duplication, turf wars, refusal to share information and bureaucratic inertia contributed to the attacks. In response, Congress created a Department of Homeland Security to oversee American intelligence, but it has failed. Bush administration leaders opposed reform; the FBI and Defense Department demanded exemption. Congress agreed, so the Director of Homeland Security, like the Surgeon General, possesses an impressive title but little authority. Reviewing efforts around the world, Aid concludes that Iraq may escape anarchy when America withdraws, but Afghanistan remains in doubt. A troop surge and unmanned drones are wreaking havoc among the Taliban, but most Afghans detest the central government. After a decade of self-delusion, America understands that Pakistan has always supported the Taliban, but the only result is a paralysis in cooperation between the two nations. In the Middle East, Syria and Iran no longer aggressively encourage terrorism, but matters are deteriorating in Yemen and Somalia. Drug wars in Mexico have also become a major preoccupation. Aid concludes by warning that we cannot prevent future terrorist attacks at home because perpetrators will likely be disaffected individuals acting alone.

An expert update on American security that turns up more problems than solutions. – Kirkus Reviews

Book review: A fascinating look at ‘Intel Wars’ by Matthew M. Aid

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – January 2, 2012 (Excerpt)

In June 2008, major news organizations that cover the U.S. intelligence community, including the Los Angeles Times, reported on a secret trip to Pakistan by the CIA’s then-deputy director, Stephen Kappes.

Kappes, the stories said, confronted Pakistani officials about ties between their country’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, and tribal militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda, including a notorious group called the Haqqani network that had attacked American troops.

What the stories didn’t say, and what historian Matthew M. Aid tells us in his fascinating book, “Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror,” is that earlier that month, the Haqqanis had been tipped by Pakistani officials that the CIA intended to launch drone strikes against a Haqqani compound in Pakistan’s North Waziristan.

After the CIA notified the government of Pakistan of the impending strikes, the ISI “worked feverishly to delay the drone attack until they could get their clients out of the way,” Aid writes. Pakistani air force officers cited “technical difficulties” in delaying the drones from taking off at Shamsi Air Base, a remote facility 200 miles southwest of Quetta in western Pakistan that had been used by the U.S. until recently, when all Americans were ordered out amid worsening relations between the two countries. By the time the drones reached their target, the Haqqani officials had fled. Cellphone intercepts revealed that the terrorists had been warned, Aid’s sources tell him.

Aid’s book is full of these sorts of revelatory anecdotes. It’s one thing to say that the ISI has helped America’s enemies; it’s another thing to show precisely how. [Read the full article...]

Why America’s Spies Struggle To Keep Up

NPR Book Review – January 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

Before Sept. 11, 2011, there were 16 intelligence agencies in the United States. But after the attacks, the 9/11 Commission recommended creating a 17th intelligence agency — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) — to coordinate intelligence operations.

The 16 already existing agencies didn’t react well, says historian and former intelligence analyst Matthew Aid.

“They hated the idea of a [so-called] ‘intelligence czar,’ ” he tells Fresh Air‘s Dave Davies. “Each of the 16 intelligence agencies that existed before the creation of the ODNI [are] bureaucracies. They have a bureaucratic identity … and they love their independence.”

After much debate, the ODNI was created — but given almost no authority over the 100,000 or so spies who work for the Pentagon. The result? Essentially two separate spy networks within the intelligence community: the civilians who work for the 16 agencies reporting to the ODNI, and the 100,000 spies at the Pentagon who report to the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

“They have separate budgets, they report to separate committees, and it is a structural nightmare,” says Aid.

In his book Intel Wars, Aid details how overlapping jurisdictions, bureaucratic policies and a glut of data have crippled the intelligence community in its war against would-be terrorists. [Read the full article...]

A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America by Tom Zoellner

Wilfried F. Voss — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 13:36:43 +0000

A riveting account of the state of Arizona, seen through the lens of the Tucson shootings

On January 8, 2011, twenty-two-year-old Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a Tucson meet-and-greet held by U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The incident left six people dead and eighteen injured, including Giffords, whom he shot in the head.

Award-winning author and fifth generation Arizonan Tom Zoellner, a longtime friend of Giffords’s and a field organizer on her Congressional campaign, uses the tragedy as a jumping-off point to expose the fault lines in Arizona’s political and socioeconomic landscape that allowed this to happen: the harmful political rhetoric, the inept state government, the lingering effects of the housing market’s boom and bust, the proliferation and accessibility of guns, the lack of established communities, and the hysteria surrounding issues of race and immigration.

Zoellner offers a revealing portrait of the Southwestern state at a critical moment in history- and as a symbol of the nation’s discontents and uncertainties. Ultimately, it is his rallying cry for a saner, more civil way of life.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Tom Zoellner

Tom Zoellner is the author of Uranium:War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World, winner of the 2010 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit and Desire, and co-author of An Ordinary Man. He has worked as a reporter for The Arizona Republic and San Francisco Chronicle.

Editorial Review

Investigative journalist and native Arizonian Zoellner (Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World, 2009, etc.) combines memoir, history and reportage in an attempt to understand mass murder and the attempted assassination of a friend in Tucson.

The author notes he has truly loved few people in his life, but “Gabrielle had quietly come to be one of them.” In January 2011, U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head outside a Safeway supermarket by Jared Lee Loughner. Six people died, and 18 were injured. Loughner alone was responsible for this carnage, but what was it about Arizona, and perhaps America, that facilitated his schizophrenic rampage? Zoellner finds this context in the fear and hatred that has engulfed Arizona. Always a place for self-reinvention, this was accompanied by a rootlessness culminating in endless tracks of suburban housing where neighbors isolated themselves in air-conditioned solitude. When economic hard times hit the state, isolation turned to unremitting anger. Latinos—though soon to be the majority population of the state—were suspect, and laws were passed to root out the illegals among them. Big government became a chimerical enemy, and hatred of it was fueled by politicians who found that extreme positions brought votes, and by talk radio with its “constant generation of low-grade outrage.” When fellow citizens were viewed as potential predators, carrying a gun became a must, and one could buy guns and ammo as easily as a quart of milk—which is precisely what Loughner did. The gunman wandered alone, ignored or purposefully avoided, until he acted, taking from his environment shards of reality that led to mayhem. Zoellner brilliantly evokes the past and present of Arizona, the outsized personalities that have shaped the state and the paranoia lurking at the edge of society.

A sure-to-be-controversial, troubling tale of the wages of fear on the body politic. – Kirkus Reviews

Book review: ‘A Safeway in Arizona’

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – January 1, 2012 (Excerpt)

The best material in Tom Zoellner’s “A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America” comes at the beginning: a moment-by-moment breakdown of the events of Jan. 8, 2011, when, during a Congress on Your Corner event at a Safeway store in Tucson, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner opened fire with a 9-millimeter Glock, wounding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and killing six others in a rampage that took “approximately fifteen seconds from start to finish.” These are the facts, and Zoellner, a former reporter at the Arizona Republic and the San Francisco Chronicle, does a good job of setting them out for us, breaking down the chaos and giving it an order, telling us something of the victims, who they were and where they were standing, as well as the small, essential acts of bravery that prevented Loughner, in all likelihood, from causing further harm.

Once this opening is finished, “A Safeway in Arizona” faces some irresolvable problems — problems of construction and,even more, of interpretation and form. In writing about the Giffords shooting, Zoellner has taken on a story that is, for now anyway, open-ended, full of unanswered questions about the congresswoman’s recovery and the fate of her assailant, who has yet to go on trial. How, then, do we get to the center of it, when the center has yet to be determined? What gives this the coherence of a book? As it turns out, such issues ultimately derail Zoellner’s efforts, which, of necessity perhaps, quickly turn outward, considering the culture of Arizona and asking whether the state’s “peculiar oxygen [was] in some way responsible for the decision of a twenty-two-year-old man to go down to the grocery to assassinate his congresswoman?” Zoellner’s answer? Yes and no, which makes for another set of problems, since it leaves us never completely sure of where he stands. [Read the full article...]

Locked On – Tom Clancy On Top Of His Game

Wilfried F. Voss — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 13:09:06 +0000

Tom Clancy’s All-Star lineup is back. Jack Ryan, his son, Jack Jr., John Clark Ding Chavez and the rest of the Campus team are facing their greatest challenge ever.

Jack Ryan, Sr. has made a momentous choice. He’s running for President of the United States again and thus giving up a peaceful retirement to help his country in its darkest hour. But he doesn’t anticipate the treachery of his opponent, who uses trumped up charges to attack one of Ryan’s closest comrades, John Clark.

Now, Clark is in a race against time and must travel the world, staying one step ahead of his adversaries, including a shadowy organization tasked to bring him in, all while trying to find who is behind this.

Meanwhile, Jack Ryan, Jr., Ding Chavez, Dominick Caruso and other members of the Campus-the top secret off-the-books intelligence agency founded by Jack Ryan during his first term in the White House-deal with a question of their own: Why is a Pakistani military officer meeting with Dagestani terrorists? The answer will ultimately lead to a desperate struggle, with nothing short of the fate of the world at stake.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney

Tom Clancy is the world’s favorite international thriller author. Starting with The Hunt For Red October, all of Mr. Clancy’s books have hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Mr. Clancy lives in Maryland and owns an interest in the Baltimore Orioles.

Mark Greaney is the national bestselling author of The Gray Man series of books, the most recent of which, Ballistic was just released. Mr. Greaney lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Locked On” by Tom Clancy

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – December 28, 2011 (Excerpt)

“Locked On” comes to us as the latest production out of the Tom Clancy studio of researchers and assistants. He wrote this one with an intelligence studies wonk (or so Mark Greaney’s bio on the book flap would attest) with firearms and combat training from around the world. The novel picks up the Jack Ryan family saga without missing a beat from “Dead or Alive”: Ryan Sr. is trying for a return to the White House while son Jack has become deeply enmeshed in the anti-terror forays of The Campus, the off-the-books covert intelligence unit staffed by alums of various other Clancy novels.

If you recall, Richard Nixon’s memoir was called “Six Crises.” Clancy’s Jack Ryan books might be called The Endless Series of Crises. In this novel there’s a plot by a rogue Pakistani general to destabilize the Pakistani civilian government so he can take control; there’s a plot to destroy Moscow with a nuclear weapon; and there’s a plot by a weakened Democratic president named Kealty to undermine Jack Sr.’s campaign in the last weeks before the election.

There’s even a romance plotline that portrays Jack Ryan Jr. becoming putty in the hands of a beautiful CIA operative from Texas who has ulterior motives when it comes to young Jack, an aspiring black ops expert. [Read the full article...]

The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb by Philip Taubman

Wilfried F. Voss — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:03:04 +0000

A terrorist attack with nuclear weapons is the most dangerous security issue America faces today—and we are far more vulnerable than we realize. Driven by this knowledge, five men—all members of the Cold War brain trust behind the U.S. nuclear arsenal—have come together to combat this threat, leading a movement that is shaking the nuclear establishment and challenging the United States and other nations to reconsider their strategic policies.

Illuminating and thought-provoking, The Partnership tells the little-known story of their campaign to reduce the threat of a nuclear attack and, ultimately, eliminate nuclear weapons altogether. It is an intimate look at these men—Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and the renowned Stanford physicist Sidney Drell—the origins of their unlikely joint effort, and their dealings with President Obama and other world leaders. Award-winning journalist Philip Taubman explores the motivations, past conflicts, and current debates that drive, and sometimes strain, their bipartisan partnership. Through their stories, he examines the political and technological currents that shaped nuclear strategy during the Cold War—including the 1986 Reykjavik summit, at which Reagan and Gorbachev narrowly missed a landmark agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons—and illuminates how the end of that conflict gave rise to the dangerous realities of today. He reveals the heated discussions taking place in Washington and in nuclear-weapons laboratories, and spotlights current threats and the frantic efforts of America and its allies to prevent the spread of fissile materials.

Meticulously researched and compellingly told, The Partnership demands that we turn our attention to an issue that has the potential to alter our world order. Philip Taubman has provided an important and timely story of science, history, and friendship—of five men who have decided the time has come to dismantle the nuclear kingdom they worked to build.

About Philip Taubman

Philip Taubman worked for The New York Times for thirty years as a reporter and editor, including stints as chief of both the Washington and Moscow bureaus. He has also worked at Esquire and Time magazines. He was twice awarded the George Polk Award—for National Reporting in 1981 and for Foreign Affairs Reporting in 1983. Since retiring from the Times in 2008, he has been a consulting professor at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. He lives in the San Francisco bay Area.

Editorial Review

Timely portrait of an alliance, seemingly unlikely, of former Cold War mavens now committed to nuclear disarmament.

Only last month did the news come that China’s nuclear arsenal is likely much more extensive than anyone had guessed. Russia is a constant worry, not least because its conventional forces are so reduced that the temptation is ever greater to rely on nuclear solutions in the event of an attack, real or perceived. But the heroes of former New York Times reporter and editor Taubman’s (Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage, 2003, etc.) tale are less worried about these major players on the world stage than about the disaffected, shadowy figures from the margins—al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps even the narcotraficantes. At the center of the group is nuclear strategist Sidney Drell; around him are Sam Nunn, at one time “the Senate’s leading authority on Cold War military matters”; George Shultz and William Perry. Closing up the five—and this may give Christopher Hitchens fits—is Henry Kissinger, that dark master of realpolitik, who more than any of the other figures maneuvered and positioned himself for best advantage when, early in 2011, the quintet signed off on a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece calling for the effective abolition of nuclear arms. Kissinger’s position, it seems, is still nuanced—read: subject to revocation—but the mere fact that these five quite different players, whose names show up in the indexes of every history of the Cold War, came together on the point was significant enough. However, as Taubman continues, there’s more to the story. The great value of his book is twofold. First, the author gives a lucid summary of the long, shifting struggle between East and West and the contributions each of the five made to it, for better or worse. (See Robert De Niro’s film The Good Shepherd for worse.) Second, Taubman shows how influential these old Cold Warriors have been in shaping the policy of the present administration and its “ambitious nuclear agenda,” providing a useful look at the way in which such decisions are made and shaped.

Will the partnership prevail? Stay tuned, but hope for the best—for, they warn, “[i]f urgent steps are not taken to rein in nuclear weapons . . . a catastrophic attack is virtually inevitable.” – Kirkus Reviews

How They Learned to Hate the Bomb

The New York Times Book Review – December 30, 2011 (Excerpt)

On the day after a nuclear bomb annihilates Washington, New Delhi, Islamabad, Seoul, Tel Aviv or Moscow, vaporizing and burning to death hundreds of thousands of people, our present complacency about nuclear proliferation will look like daylight madness. Even the chilliest of realists have shuddered at our capability for radioactive massacre. In 1977, the strategist George F. Kennan declared, “No one is good enough, wise enough, steady enough, to have control over the volume of explosives that now rest in the hands of this country.” Nuclear arms, he concluded, “shouldn’t exist at all.”

Philip Taubman’s fascinating, haunting book, “The Partnership,” is about the drive to abolish nuclear weapons — and, implicitly, about why it will probably fail. Taubman, a former reporter and editor for The New York Times, tells the stories of five American national security mandarins who, in the twilight of their illustrious careers, stunned their peers by campaigning to scrap all nuclear arms. They are not exactly pacifist hippies: Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz, Republican secretaries of state; William J. Perry, a Democratic secretary of defense; Sam Nunn, a Democrat who had been chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Sidney D. Drell, an influential Stanford physicist. Their continuing activism, Taubman writes, “has induced sitting presidents and foreign ministers to embrace ideas not long ago ridiculed as radical and reckless,” and has “powerfully influenced Obama,” who advocates a world without nuclear weapons.

These five men had done much to foster a nuclearized world, and had prospered for their contributions to its infernal machinery. Much of “The Partnership” consists of eerie tales of the atomic cold war, charting the upward progress of these grandees. When they broke ranks, Taubman writes, “it was roughly equivalent to John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan and Jay Gould calling for the demise of capitalism.” [Read the full article...]

‘The Partnership’ review: Cold warriors discuss nuclear disarmament

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – January 15, 2012 (Excerpt)

The op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal caught the nuclear world by surprise. Not for the argument it made but for who was making it.

The piece ran five years ago this month, under the headline “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” and was written by a remarkable bipartisan quartet of political figures: former secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger (Nixon) and George Shultz (Reagan), defense expert and former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and former Defense Secretary William Perry (Clinton).

Cold War veterans all, they argued that the world’s future security hung on whether the U.S., Russia and other nuclear powers could reduce their nuclear weapons stockpiles to zero. And they offered a road map for achieving that remarkable goal. But having a map and making a journey are two very different things — especially given the wild cards of North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions.

In his new book, “The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb,” former New York Times journalist Philip Taubman traces the evolution of five former Cold War hawks into relative doves and follows their efforts to spur U.S. and Russian political leaders to dismantle stockpiles of nuclear weapons that make the Hiroshima bomb, despite its horrific power, seem like a minor explosion. [Read the full article...]

Philanthropy in America: A History (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) by Olivier Zunz

Wilfried F. Voss — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:42:19 +0000

American philanthropy today expands knowledge, champions social movements, defines active citizenship, influences policymaking, and addresses humanitarian crises. How did philanthropy become such a powerful and integral force in American society? Philanthropy in America is the first book to explore in depth the twentieth-century growth of this unique phenomenon. Ranging from the influential large-scale foundations established by tycoons such as John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and the mass mobilization of small donors by the Red Cross and March of Dimes, to the recent social advocacy of individuals like Bill Gates and George Soros, respected historian Olivier Zunz chronicles the tight connections between private giving and public affairs, and shows how this union has enlarged democracy and shaped history.

Zunz looks at the ways in which American philanthropy emerged not as charity work, but as an open and sometimes controversial means to foster independent investigation, problem solving, and the greater good. Andrew Carnegie supported science research and higher education, catapulting these fields to a prominent position on the world stage. In the 1950s, Howard Pew deliberately funded the young Billy Graham to counter liberal philanthropies, prefiguring the culture wars and increased philanthropic support for religious causes. And in the 1960s, the Ford Foundation supported civil rights through education, voter registration drives, and community action programs. Zunz argues that American giving allowed the country to export its ideals abroad after World War II, and he examines the federal tax policies that unified the diverse nonprofit sector.

About Olivier Zunz

Olivier Zunz is the Commonwealth Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of “Why the American Century?”, “Making America Corporate”, and “The Changing Face of Inequality”.

Editorial Review

A readable account of how philanthropy caught on in the United States more pervasively than any other nation.

Zunz (History/Univ. of Virginia; The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880–1920, 2000, etc.) mixes case studies, mini-biography and academic theory to demonstrate that both the superwealthy and common folks have invested in giving to the needy as part of an effort to make America a better place. Wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller Sr. might have started a trend that has found its way into the lives of Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, but the author relates how the growth of charitable giving across the 50 states has transcended economic standing. Red Cross and United Way drives are just a couple of thousands of examples. Such giving seems to have become imbued across American society soon after independence from England. Visitors from other nations noticed it and remarked upon it during the early 19th century, and state laws, federal statutes, court decisions and favorable tax rulings built the generosity into the economic and political fabrics of American governance. Even segregationists did not object to philanthropists hoping to upgrade the quality of classroom education specifically and the quality of life generally among former slaves and their descendants. When devout philanthropists decided to affect public policy by working through religious organizations, American philanthropy policy expanded to allow complicated arrangements within a society that supposedly kept church and state separate. Zunz explains why numerous donors and the tax-exempt groups they form bypass helping fellow Americans in favor of helping citizens of other parts of the world. Part of the book’s fascination is how the author works through the conundrum of impure motives emanating from generous givers.

A sterling example of how an academic author can combine high-level theory with interesting, important real-world examples. – Kirkus Reviews

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig

Wilfried F. Voss — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:00:28 +0000

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission-trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.

With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness.

While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear-he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig is the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Previously, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School (where he founded Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society) and the University of Chicago Law School. Lessig clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lessig is the author of five books on the law and technology, including Remix, Code 2.0, Free Culture, The Future of Ideas, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, and has served as lead counsel in a number of important cases marking the boundaries of copyright law in a digital age, including Eldred v. Ashcroft and Golan v. Holder.

Editorial Reviews

“Once dubbed a ‘philosopher king of Internet law,’ he writes with a unique mix of legal expertise, historic facts and cultural curiosity, citing everything from turn-of-the-century Congressional testimony to Wikipedia to contemporary best-sellers like Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. The result is a wealth of interesting examples and theories on how and why digital technology and copyright law can promote professional and amateur art.”
(M.J. Stephey, Time Magazine )

“As an initial matter, Lessigian thought is deeply critical in nature… Perhaps it is the luxury of academia, or his nature generally, but Lessig is not afraid to say (loudly) at times: This doesn’t work! We need to change. He says it often, and people are listening.”
(Russ Taylor, Federal Communications Law Journal )

Putting Political Reform Right Into the Pockets of the Nation’s Voters

The New York Times Book Review – December 14, 2011 (Excerpt)

In “Republic, Lost” Lawrence Lessig — a Harvard Law School professor and a leading advocate of applying the principles of open Web access to less technical forms of creative expression, like music, writing, and the visual arts — makes an extraordinary leap of faith.

There is, in his view, one thing holding back America, a legal but corrupt system of campaign finance. “Practically every important issue in American politics today is tied to this ‘one issue,’ ” he writes. Mr. Lessig’s agenda (invoking Thoreau) is to attack “the root, the thing that feeds the other ills, and the thing that we must kill first.”

Existing campaign finance reforms, particularly donor disclosure and contribution limits, have done as much harm as good, leading to “a corruption practiced by decent people” and legitimizing what Mr. Lessig calls “a gift economy.” Disclosure of the identities of contributors has made the venal routine. The system “normalizes dependence,” Mr. Lessig writes. “There’s is no shame in the dance.”

Mr. Lessig’s vision is at once profoundly pessimistic — the integrity of the nation is collapsing under the best of intentions — and deeply optimistic. Simple legislative surgery, he says, can put the nation back on the path to greatness.

His solution is to create an alternative campaign-finance system; alternative because Supreme Court rulings, most especially the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, make it difficult to regulate the current system, which permits unlimited corporate and independent expenditures in support of candidates for federal office. [Read the full article...]

Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism by Carl T. Bogus

Wilfried F. Voss — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:42:54 +0000

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

William F. Buckley Jr., was the foremost architect of the conservative movement that swept the American political landscape from the 1960s to the early 2000s. When Buckley launched National Review in 1955, conservatism was a beleaguered, fringe segment of the Republican Party. Three decades later Ronald Reagan-who credited National Review with shaping his beliefs-was in the White House. Buckley and his allies devised a new-model conservatism that replaced traditional ideals with a passionate belief in the free market, religious faith, and an aggressive stance on foreign policy.

Buckley was an eloquent writer and brilliant polemicist whose works are still required texts for conservatives. His TV show Firing Line and his campaign for mayor of New York City made him a celebrity; his wit and zest for combat made conservatism fun. But Buckley was far more than a controversialist. Deploying his uncommon charm, shrewdly building alliances, and refusing to compromise on core principles, he almost single-handedly transformed conservatism from a set of retrograde attitudes into a revolutionary force. Scholar Carl T. Bogus gives us the most authoritative biography ever published of this vital, larger-than-life figure.

About Carl T. Bogus

Carl T. Bogus is professor of law at Roger Williams University and a nationally recognized expert on politics, law, and the Constitution. His previous books include Why Lawsuits are Good for America and The Second Amendment in Law and History (co-editor).

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

“Carl T. Bogus has given us a very fine biography of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder and central figure of the American conservative movement. Without Buckley we might not have had the Reagan presidency. As editor of National Review, columnist, author of many books, and host of the TV show Firing Line, Buckley seemed to be everywhere. Nothing like this had happened in American history.”—Jeffrey Hart, Professor of English Emeritus, Dartmouth College; former senior editor, National Review; author, The Making of the Conservative Mind; National Review and its Times

“I found this book to be well-written,well-informed, and fair minded. Carl Bogus is very solid on the various forms of conservatism in the 50s and 60s and Buckley’s role in defining his version. He also includes terrific, lengthy passages on Vietnam, civil rights, Reagan, Mayor Lindsay, Ayn Rand, and Russell Kirk.”—James Patterson, Brown University, Bancroft Prize-winning author of Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974

“Carl Bogus has given us a terrific new book on William F. Buckley that is neither hagiography nor ideological axe-grinding. Buckley is a serious and thoughtful discussion of the nature of modern American conservatism and Buckley’s role in shaping it. Liberals and conservatives will both gain immensely from this readable and entertaining work of scholarship.”—Vincent J. Cannato, author of The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his Struggle to Save New York

William F. Buckley Jr.: Right Man, Right Time

The New York Times Book Review – December 9, 2011 (Excerpt)

William F. Buckley Jr. was an immodest man with much to be immodest about. Not only was he the high priest of the modern American conservative movement and the founding editor in chief of its leading intellectual publication, National Review; he was also a gifted polemicist, best-selling novelist, sesquipedalian speaker, television star, political candidate, yachtsman, harpsichordist, wit and bon vivant. Small wonder that I once saw him nod approvingly when a tongue-tied freshman referred to his 1951 autobiographical best seller as “God as Man at Yale.” He performed his many roles with such panache, and such obvious enjoyment of being William F. Buckley Jr., that he captivated people who otherwise would have despised someone who did much to move the United States politically to the right from the early 1950s until his death in 2008. But even liberals had to laugh when Buckley, asked whether he slouched in his chair as host of the TV program “Firing Line” because he couldn’t think on his feet, drawled, “It is hard . . . to stand up . . . under the weight . . . of all that I know.”

Perhaps the most notable distinction of Carl T. Bogus’s generally admiring biography, “Buckley,” is that the author, a law professor at Roger Williams University, is a self-professed liberal. At a time when liberals and conservatives agree on almost nothing, both sides can unite in their esteem for Buckley. What this unlikely convergence suggests, however, is that neither side has an accurate view of his real significance. The left misconceives his role as the founder of the conservative movement, and the right ignores how far the movement has diverged from Buckley’s example. [Read the full article...]

William F. Buckley, Father Of American Conservatism

NPR Book Review – December 17, 2011 (Excerpt)

When William F. Buckley burst onto the national scene in 1955, conservatism was a dead letter in American politics.

“Lots of people thought that it was outdated, anachronistic, prehistoric, foolish, not very intelligent,” Carl Bogus tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

Bogus is the author of a new biography, Buckley: William F. Buckley and the Rise of American Conservatism. He says that back in the 1950s and ’60s, there really was an established liberal elite in America, which controlled both political parties.

Buckley set out to change that. As a recent Yale graduate, he published a book called God and Man at Yale, which took the university to task for failing to promote Christianity and free market economics.

“He collapsed in that book religion, economics and political ideology,” Bogus says, producing the mix of ideas we recognize today as conservatism: free-market capitalism, support for American military actions, libertarianism and social conservatism.

“It was Buckley who made that coalition. He held within him all … of those beliefs. He was what we call today a neoconservative, a social conservative and a libertarian.”

Buckley founded the magazine National Review to popularize those beliefs and create a kind of conservative intelligentsia that could bring renewed attention and respectability to the movement. [Read the full article...]

Book review: ‘Buckley,’ a biography by Carl T. Bogus

The Washington Post Book Review – December 30, 2011 (Excerpt)

Half a century ago, when he was only 35 — already one of the country’s foremost debaters and brimming with elan, but long before he started his syndicated column, mounted his (presciently virtual) campaign for mayor of New York City, began hosting “Firing Line,” threatened to sock Gore Vidal in the face, sailed across the Atlantic or published a dozen spy thrillers — William F. Buckley Jr. could not have imagined that he, or his ideas, would actually prevail.

So deeply ingrained in the America of his formative years was the philosophy of liberalism that Buckley, as a conservative, was resigned to an eternity of frustration in the minority. Of this despair he made no secret. On the fifth anniversary of his upstart right-wing journal, National Review, Buckley congratulated the ballroom audience in New York’s Plaza Hotel, in November 1960, for not succumbing to the era’s “modish” intellectual fashions. Most notable among them, in Buckley’s eyes, was “the notion that all points of view are equally valid, except perhaps that point of view which says they are not.” [Read the full article...]

The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass by Bill Maher

Wilfried F. Voss — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:14:50 +0000

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

From bestselling author and host of HBO’s Real Time, Bill Maher’s new book of political riffs serves up a savagely funny set of rules for preserving sanity in an insane world

A follow-up to the New York Times bestselling The New Rules, The New New Rules delivers a series of hilarious, intelligent rants on everything from same-sex marriage to healthcare, from Republican agendas to celebrity meltdowns, with all the razor-sharp insight that has made Bill Maher one of the most influential comedic voices shaping the political debate today. With another presidential campaign on the horizon and a stellar set of real- life characters to have fun with-”New Rule: If Charlie Sheen’s home life means he can’t have a TV show, then I say Newt Gingrich can’t be president”-this enlightening and important book may be the best thing you pretend to read all year.

About Bill Maher

Bill Maher is the host of HBO’s Real Time and hosted Comedy Central’s Politically Incorrect for ten years. He has created nine stand-up comedy specials, and garnered twenty-six Emmy nominations thus far. In 2008, Maher produced Religulous, the seventh highest grossing documentary in history.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

“Of all the comic commentators, Maher is the gutsiest, boldest, and least inhibited.”
-The Washington Post

Reader Review

I’m usually disappointed by books written by those known as comedians. Not so with Bill Maher. His “The New New Rules” is funny from the Foreword, in which he begins by insulting readers by declaring that those who read the Foreward of such a book are ‘anal.’ (‘It’s joke book.’) Continuing he then goes into detail on why his latest book is really needed, despite the likelihood of Christians considering his writings and musings to be a plague.

So, ‘Why is this book need?’ Per Maher, it provides a funny diversion while the earth slowly fries and confronts us with other side-effects of Global Warming, such as droughts, flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. He also points out that since his last epistle, we have new fads to make fun of – like the masses walking around seemingly talking to themselves via Bluetooth. Then he off and punning, from page 1 – actually its page 7 by the time he gets going, pointing fun at those who tweet supposedly important stuff about themselves over ten times/day, refrigerators with Internet service that allow you to email while it orders more milk from Amazon.

An important side benefit of this book is that the material is organized alphabetically, providing readers with a free review of that topic as well. Get this on your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Bluetooth, whatever, now! Or, if you’re technically challenged like me, buy the book. Or, if you both technically challenged and cheap, read it for free at Barnes and Noble, like me. – Loyd E. Eskildson, Amazon.Com Customer Review

Bill Maher Lays Down The (Mostly Silly) Law

NPR Book Review – November 20, 2011 (Excerpt)

Comedian Bill Maher wraps up every installment of his TV show, Real Time, with a segment called “New Rules.” That’s where he takes potshots at whatever’s bothering him — from wrappers on ice cream cones, to red light cameras, to more serious subjects like war and economic ruin.

His new book, The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass, sports a title we can’t say on the radio and a mix of rules both lighthearted and serious, some of which never appeared on television.

“I would say, for people who have been following what I do for a long time, this is one of the more silly things,” Maher tells weekends on All Things Considered host Laura Sullivan.

For example, the book kicks off with this new rule: “If you tweet neat stuff about your life for your friends to read more than 10 times a day, I can tell you a neat fact about your friends. They hate you.”

But it’s not all fluff. The book also contains longer, more heartfelt editorial essays. “The editorial is something I hope people take away with and go, ‘Oh, you know what, that’s something I was thinking, and he really crystallized it,’” Maher says. [Read the full article...]

‘The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass’ by Bill Maher

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – December 13, 2011 (Excerpt)

Chances are if you’re watching HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” or reading one of his books, you’re aware there’s a good chance the political talk show host Bill Maher is going to offend you. He’s an equal opportunity offender, but he’s also a comedian and that’s why his newest book, “The New New Rules,” works.

If you’re a Democrat, you may laugh at most of the Republican jokes, although he’s a little brutal when discussing Governor Chris Christie’s weight. If you’re a Republican, you may feel vindicated to hear him talk about President Barack H. Obama. If you’re African-American, he definitely has plenty of jokes about the WASP population, but he also marinates in stereotypes about black people.

If you’re a woman, you’ll probably cheer him on for calling out male arrogance when it comes to dating and text messages. If you’re a single man — especially a man who doesn’t care for Sarah Palin — there are plenty of jokes about women and relationships. One of his best quips was that men should be able to watch a movie called “Football Jerk Off Nap” if they were forced to sit through “Eat Pray Love.” I really enjoyed his gripe with food orgasm commercials, and his warning to women that it’s humiliating to accidentally call your man Willy Wonka in bed. [Read the full article...]

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard

Wilfried F. Voss — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:04:09 +0000

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

North America was settled by people with distinct religious, political, and ethnographic characteristics, creating regional cultures that have been at odds with one another ever since. Subsequent immigrants didn’t confront or assimilate into an “American” or “Canadian” culture, but rather into one of the eleven distinct regional ones that spread over the continent each staking out mutually exclusive territory.

In American Nations, Colin Woodard leads us on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, and the rivalries and alliances between its component nations, which conform to neither state nor international boundaries. He illustrates and explains why “American” values vary sharply from one region to another. Woodard reveals how intranational differences have played a pivotal role at every point in the continent’s history, from the American Revolution and the Civil War to the tumultuous sixties and the “blue county/red county” maps of recent presidential elections. American Nations is a revolutionary and revelatory take on America’s myriad identities and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and are molding our future.

About Colin Woodard

Colin Woodard is a writer, historian, and journalist who has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents. He is a foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and his work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Economist, Smithsonian, The Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, and Newsweek.com. He is the author of The Republic of Pirates, The Lobster Coast and Ocean’s End. He lives in Portland, Maine.

Editorial Reviews

“Woodard offers a fascinating way to parse American (writ large) politics and history in this excellent book.” ―Kirkus

“Woodard explains away partisanship in American Nations… which makes the provocative claim that our culture wars are inevitable. North America was settled by groups with distinct political and religious value–and we haven’t had a moment’s peace since.” – Publishers Weekly

“A smart read that feels particularly timely now, when so many would claim a mythically unified “Founding Fathers” as their political ancestors.” – Boston Globe

‘American Nations’ by Colin Woodard, a study of our ‘rival regional cultures’

The Washington Post Nook Review – November 18, 2011 (Excerpt)

The day after the 2008 election, a remarkable map began making the rounds online. It showed the counties where John McCain had won more of the vote than George W. Bush had in his victory four years earlier. It was a nearly contiguous swath of the country, stretching from southwestern Pennsylvania through Appalachia, west across the upland South and into Oklahoma and north-central Texas.

Presumably, something other than a singular affection for the latest Republican presidential candidate had allowed McCain to outperform Bush in this neck of the woods. But still, why this exact outline of the anti-Obama vote? What was behind it?

These sorts of questions may be easier to answer after reading Colin Woodard’s “American Nations,” a compelling and informative attempt to make sense of the regional divides in North America in general and this country in particular. This may seem like well-marked territory — Joel Garreau’s “The Nine Nations of North America” (1981) is only one of many studies of what came to be simplified as the country’s red-blue split. But Woodard sets his political geography apart by delving deep into history, building on the insights of David Hackett Fischer’s “Albion’s Seed,” a 1989 analysis of the four “British folkways” in America, to demonstrate that trends in contemporary political behavior can be traced back to well before the country’s founding. Woodard provides a bracing corrective to an accepted national narrative that too often overlooks regional variations to tell a simpler and more reassuring story. [Read the full article...]

The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World by Derek Chollet and Samantha Power

Wilfried F. Voss — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 11:34:35 +0000

Click on image to buy from Amazon.Com

Richard Holbrooke, who died in December 2010, was a pivotal player in U.S. diplomacy for more than forty years. Most recently special envoy for Iraq and Afghanistan under President Obama, Holbrooke also served as assistant secretary of state for both Asia and Europe, and as ambassador to both Germany and the United Nations. He had a key role in brokering a peace agreement among warring factions in Bosnia that led to the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995.

Widely regarded to possess one of the most penetrating minds of any modern diplomat of any nation, Holbrooke was also well known for his outsized personality, and his capacity to charm and offend in equally colossal measures. In this book, the friends and colleagues who knew him best survey his accomplishments as a diplomat, activist, and author. Excerpts from Holbrooke’s own writings further illuminate each significant period of his career.

The Unquiet American is both a tribute to an exceptional public servant and a backstage history of the last half-century of American foreign policy.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

“The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World”

The Washington Post Book Review – November 11, 2011 (Excerpt)

One year after Richard Holbrooke’s death, a new book explores the diplomat’s battles, triumphs and missed opportunities. Review by Michael Getler.

Last month marked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Nobody knows when it will end or when America’s role there will be finished.

This month marks the publication of a new book, “The Unquiet American,” a remembrance of Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke. He was a one-of-a-kind diplomat whose almost 50-year career spanned modern U.S. history and wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, and who died suddenly nearly one year ago while at work on his last assignment as President Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Holbrooke was “special” and he was an “envoy,” and, mostly through the force of his own determination and resourcefulness, combined with the steady backing of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, he achieved important milestones in the seemingly intractable effort to bring stability to Pakistan and peace to Afghanistan.

But his title — special envoy — never seemed to fit exactly right. As his longtime friend and former State Department colleague Strobe Talbott writes in one of the book’s essays: “It was the worst-kept secret in Washington that [Obama] never acquired a taste for Richard’s operating style. That wasn’t surprising, given Obama’s signature preference for ‘no drama.’ Life with Richard was nothing if not dramatic.”

Talbott reports what also became well known at the time: that in 2010, the president’s then-national security adviser, retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Jones, tried to get Holbrooke fired. But Clinton intervened. Seven months later, it was Jones who was gone. [Read the full article...]

Remembering Richard Holbrooke

The New York Times Book Review – December 30, 2011 (Excerpt)

In the spring of 1991 Strobe Talbott, who would become deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration, visited Richard Holbrooke at his weekend home in Connecticut. After playing tennis and going for a swim, they had brunch at a neighbor’s house. But when Holbrooke saw a trampoline on the far side of a manicured lawn, he excused himself, hopped onto the canvas and insisted that Talbott join him. “The result,” Talbott recalls, “was an exceedingly amateurish blend of gymnastic duet and duel — sometimes semicoordinated, sometimes dangerously competitive and constantly accompanied by talk, most of it coming from Richard. The subject, naturally, was world affairs.”

It was vintage Holbrooke. He could never stop talking about what was wrong in the world and how it could be fixed, preferably by himself. Holbrooke, who died in 2010 while serving as President Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, wasn’t interested in foreign policy; he was consumed by it. Though his seemingly inexhaustible energy and fervor brought him service under each Democratic president since John F. Kennedy, his desire for power was so brazen that it impeded him from attaining the job he coveted most. Holbrooke, who had apprenticed under doughty establishment figures like Henry Cabot Lodge, W. Averell Harriman and Dean Rusk, never became secretary of state. But like Harriman, whom Kennedy admiringly referred to as a “separate sovereignty,” he had a knack for maneuvering himself from the sidelines into the center of the diplomatic fray, all on his own terms. [Read the full article...]