21st Century Books - Page 5

Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

Niall Ferguson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Powerful, but wishful thinking 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Another mighty tour de force from Ferguson, aided by some super smart research helpers at Oxford and Harvard. Following on from his earlier 'Empire', which redressed the balance towards the plus side of the British empire after so much liberal bashing, Ferguson argues that imperial power is not necessarily a bad thing. In particular, a powerful hegemonic power might well be better than no hegemon at all, with global disorder.

Trouble is, America is a self-denying Empire. Even when attacking other sovereign states, its leaders are at pains to stress that this is not old
fashioned imperial warmongering, but a new democratic humanitarian aim.

Thickly slathered with literature (Melville, Kipling, Greene and a host of others) and popular culture (Vietnam war movies and even a reference to the Terminator) Ferguson covers a huge swathe of ground. He traces the origins of America's imperial behaviour, from the purchase of Louisiana to the two Iraq wars, the foreign policy failures, times where they succeeded (post WW2 Japan and Germany) and instances where he believes they lost out due to excess caution (Korea, where the bellicose McCarthur was sidelined).

Ferguson wants the USA to flex its muscle more and act as a full manifestation of Truman's global policeman. Trouble is, appetite for US forces fighting in bloody battles in hell holes of the world is at an all time low amongst the US public. As Ferguson admits, bright graduates of Harvard and Yale want to manage hedge funds and MTV, not dusty dirt tracks in the Middle East. In November the US will have a new president, who will find it harder than ever to promote US hard power worldwide against increasing threats from other countries, democratic and non-democratic alike. He warns, like Gibbon's Rome, of imperial decline and decay. Paints a portrait of a slack, obese nation more concerned with petty consumer concerns than defending Enlightenmnent values of humanity.

Ferguson's thesis is well argued and coherent, but modern day Empire runners are few and far between (there is a chap in Afghanistan called Rory Stewart, an Eton educated Scot who is doing well, but he is an exception). Also, American wealth is declining compared with the rest of the world. In the 1970s, it held almost half of the world's GDP, now the figure is under 30%.

Editorial Review:

Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson ranges across the entire history of America’s foreign entanglements and delves into all the dimensions of American power—military, economic, cultural, and political. The result is a book whose conclusions are as convincing, and troubling, as they are original. Ferguson demonstrates that America has always been an empire in denial and shows the fateful consequences of its special brand of imperialism. He examines the challenges to the United States from its principal rivals, the European Union and China, and offers a compelling analysis of the connection between the country’s domestic economic health and its foreign affairs—the bottom line of imperialism, American style. Colossus is a peerless reckoning with American power that should be read by any thinking citizen of this unspoken empire.

Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

Zbigniew Brzezinski

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Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski offers a reasoned but unsparing assessment of the last three presidential administrations’ foreign policy. Though they cover less than two decades, these three administrations span a vitally important turning point in world history: the period in which the United States, having emerged from the Cold War with an unprecedented degree of power and prestige, managed to squander both in a remarkably short time. The tale of these three administrations is a tale of decline: from the competent but conventional thinking of the first Bush administration, to the good intentions hobbled by self-indulgence of the Clinton administration, to the mortgaging of America’s future by the “suicidal statecraft” of the second Bush administration. Brzezinski concludes with a chapter on how America can regain its lost influence, if not its former dominance, in today’s era of global political awakening. This scholarly yet highly opinionated book is both controversial and influential.

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11

Ron Suskind

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 134 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The One Percent Solution 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This is a disappointing book on many levels. I read the book during research for my Ph.D. dissertation but concluded it lacks the academic rigor to be a credible source. The author's documentation of sources consisted of a short paragraph in the back, stating his book was based on substantial interviews and documents, but fails to reveal them. Hence, readers cannot scrutinize his evidence or the basis for his conclusions. One might conclude that the book is based on one percent research.

I was surprised to learn from the book that the United States supplies Israel with tanks, tanks which kill women and children. Had the author bothered to check, he would have discovered that the Merkava tank is Israeli-manufactured. The emotive reference to inadvertent deaths of noncombatants is callow at best. The error may be minor, but if the author is wrong on basic knowledge, how dependable is the rest of the book? One might conclude that the book is based on one percent facts.

The book purports one assertion after another using weak evidence and weaker logic. The author claims that the failure of al Qaeda to launch subsequent attacks on the United States is not due to American vigilance or counter-actions, but because al Qaeda chose not to. The author suggests that Vice President Cheney is running the war effort, not President Bush, and that all national security decisions are based on the slight possibility of a threat materializing, hence the One Percent Doctrine. One might conclude the book is based on one percent logic.

Many of the author's accounts regarding the run up to the Iraq War are simply a regurgitation of Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command, but not as detailed. Perhaps Mr. Hersh was one of the author's sources. One might conclude the book is one percent personal effort.

The reader must endure numerous platitudes of the President not being a reader or the Director of the CIA being a back-slapper, and other attempts by the author to appear clever. Rather than attempt to analyze why certain national security decisions were made or the constraints placed on the Administration regarding the prosecution of the War on Terror, the author chose to sensationalize events using one percent hindsight.

In short, this book was one hundred percent a waste of my valuable research time.

Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Millen (Ret).

Editorial Review:

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind takes you deep inside America's real battles with violent, unrelenting terrorists -- a game of kill-or-be-killed, from the Oval Office to the streets of Karachi.

The Last Fish Tale

Kurlansky, Mark

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A poignant commentary on what is real... 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

As I read the book, and as I sit here writing this review, my windows are open to the sea air and the shouts and cheers of crowds on Pavillion Beach as they watch the Greasy Pole Competition here in Gloucester, the competition that Mark Kurlansky writes about in the opening chapter of "The Last Fish Tale". "Viva San Pietro!" The cry goes up over and over. "Hooray for Saint Peter!" But these days the local fishermen here need more help from St. Peter to keep their way of life alive than to save them from dangers of the sea.

With his usual wit, elegance, and deep intelligence, Kurlansky has crafted a book that is fascinating on many levels. He begins his tale with an early history of Gloucester, including how the town got its name, and moves gracefully through the centuries salting his story with anecdotes about people that may seem like colorful characters to most readers but are friends and neighbors to me. Kurlansky talks about "Gloucester Stories". Those stories abound and flourish --- stories about fishermen and artists and writers and inventors --- each with their own particular perspective on America's Oldest Seaport. I came to Gloucester some 15 years ago because I was writing a book steeped in the maritime history of the Great Lakes (The Old Mermaid's Tale). I fell in love with a Gloucester fisherman and am still here. That is my Gloucester Story. It could be the same for many of the people Kurlansky tells of, the fishermen who came from Sicily in search of a better life, the artists who came because of the beautiful light, the writers who came because of the peace of the sea. For every story Kurlansky tells I can think of a dozen more but the reader will be given a delicious taste --- and no shortage of delicious recipes --- as they read this small, but richly varied book.

The final chapters of the book are the most poignant. What is to become of Gloucester and all that is Gloucester? Using examples of other fishing towns in England and France, Kurlansky offers possibilities and hope that Gloucester can stay Gloucester but one has to wonder for how long? In a nation that is so hungry for authentic experience that we have spawned and entire industry of "reality entertainment" (sounds like an oxymoron to me) Gloucester and its working waterfront seems too precious to be lost but with an economy in decline and a desperate need to broaden the tax base it seems that Gloucester could well turn into a parody of itself --- a working seaport theme park or, worse, just another Boston bedroom community.

"The Last Fish Tale" is an important book and Kurlansky has offered us much to think about. To Gloucesterites it might seem to only scratch the surface but there are other excellent books written by Gloucester fishermen, like Peter Prybot's Lobstering Off Cape Ann: A Lifetime Lobsterman Remembers or Mark S. Williams' F/V Black Sheep, to fill that gap. I hope that Kurlansky's book will find a much wider audience than just here on Cape Ann and that, in reading it, people will realize that, as he says in the final paragraphs of the book, "every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes the possibility of life."

Editorial Review:

From award-winning author Mark Kurlansky comes a look at our earth's disappearing fisheries as seen through the lens of America's oldest fishing port.

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Douglas Brinkley

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Total reviews: 120 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline. Yet those wind-torn hours represented only the first stage of the relentless triple tragedy that Katrina brought to the entire Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama.

First was the hurricane, one of the three strongest ever to make landfall in the United States -- 150 mile per hour winds, with gusts measuring more than 180 miles per hour ripping buildings to pieces. Second, the storm-surge flooding, which submerged a half million homes, creating the largest refugee crisis since the Civil War. Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water, and whole towns in southeastern Louisiana ceased to exist. And third, the human tragedy of government mismanagement, which proved as cruel as the natural disaster itself.

In The Great Deluge, bestselling author Douglas Brinkley, a New Orleans resident and professor of history at Tulane University, rips the story of Katrina apart and relates what the category 3 hurricane was like from every point of view, while recognizing the true heroes.

Throughout the book, Brinkley lets the Katrina survivors tell their own stories, masterfully allowing them to record the nightmare that was Katrina. The Great Deluge investigates the failure of government at each level and breaks important new stories. Packed with interviews and original research, it traces the character flaws, inexperience, and ulterior motives that allowed the Katrina disaster to turn the Gulf Coast into a scene from a war movie or a third-world documentary.

Who's Looking Out for You?

Bill O'Reilly

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the mega-bestselling author of The O'Reilly Factor and The No Spin Zone, a no-holds-barred exposé of the people and institutions who are letting Americans down – and what we should do about it.


Bill O’Reilly is mad as hell – and he’s not going to let you take it anymore. In his most powerful and personal book yet, this media powerhouse and unstoppable truth-teller takes on those individuals and institutions in American life who are failing in their duties – big-time. In his inimitable style, mixing wit, pugnacity, and plain common sense, O’Reilly kicks butt and takes (and also names) names – from crooked corporate weasels to venal politicians to lazy and/or politically correct bureaucrats to sexually predatory priests and the Church hierarchy that protects them to a media establishment rife with political bias and economically hooked on violence and smut. At the same time that he calls the famous and powerful to account, he dares to get personal, questioning just how much our closest friends, families, and lovers do look out for us, and delivering a powerful message about personal responsibility and self-reliance in an uncertain world. He forces us to ask just how much genuine altruism is left in a society that thrives on self-indulgence and ruthless competition.
Who’s Looking Out for You? is a book that boldly confronts our worst fears and biggest problems in a post-9/11, post-corporate-meltdown world. Its sage, candid advice on regaining control and trust in these troubled times will resonate with the millions of readers and viewers who have come to believe in Bill O’Reilly as the man who speaks for them.

The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End

Peter W. Galbraith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

"War remains the decisive human failure." 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The last words in the acknowledgement, written by Peter Galbraith's father, John Kenneth Galbraith, serves as an admirable summation of the central message of this book, and that traditional human failure has been exacerbated in this case by the egregious ignorance and arrogance of the current American administration. Galbraith's book proves to be an excellent confirmation of numerous points made by Thomas Ricks' in his outstanding book on Iraq, entitled "Fiasco."

Ricks made the point that one of the chief concerns of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was to remove those individuals with actual knowledge of the Iraqi situation from the American governing process, and replace them with ideologically pure neocons. Galbraith fleshes out this contention with numerous sad examples: per Ambassador Tim Carney, the State Department's professional Arabist "weren't welcome because they didn't think Iraq could be democratic." (p 95); during a Pentagon planning meeting on Kirkuk, no one knew the ethic composition of the local police (p94); Margaret Tutwiler, a former State Department chief spokesperson had never heard of the Anfal (Hussain's ethnic cleansing of the Kurds), and told her Kurdish hosts this (p115); the hiring of six young people, with no experience to manage a $13 billion budget in Iraq solely because they had placed their resumes on the conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation's, website (p127-128); and how President Bush, in 2003, did not know there were two major sects in Islam, Sunnis and Shiites (p83). Even sadder, the above is just a sample of Galbraith's examples.

Unlike the neocon neophytes, Galbraith has been actively involved in the region for over 25 years, and personally knows many of the key political players in Iraq. Clearly his sympathies are with the Kurds, with whom he has been most deeply involved, and he is an effective advocate for their independence.

"Defer to the peoples of Iraq" (p206) is Galbraith's unsurprising, save to the Washington administration, solution to the Iraq situation. He makes the point on several occasions that trying to force the three disparate former provinces of the Ottoman Empire to function as one country, "Iraq", has been the destabilizing force in the region for 80 years. The people in the area have already established at least two highly autonomous regions, Kurdistan and "Shiastan" in the south, and dissolution of unworkable countries can be a peaceful and optimal solution, citing both Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union as examples. Although it is not a point that Galbraith made, for almost 23 years the United States would not recognize the reality of one billion people in "Red China." The solution to better relations was to recognize this basic fact "on the ground." Similarly, the solution for the United States policy in Iraq is to recognize the reality and the wishes of the people in the area, and forget the ideology, that even included a "flat tax" enacted into law by Viceroy Bremmer.

The book is somewhat marred by redundancy, which could be defended as necessary in order to make the case with the current political leadership. It remains an essential read.

Editorial Review:

The End of Iraq -- definitive, tough-minded, clear-eyed, describes America's failed strategy toward that country.

Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush

Robert Draper

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 51 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Selective insights into Bush but a pleasant book overall 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Bush presidency still has almost a year to go, and already the stream of "definitive" books on his presidency is starting to trickle down.

In "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush" (480 pages), author Robert Draper paints a very closely researched picture of the Bush presidency. It appears that Draper had unprecedented access to the President and those around him. Draper spends very little time on what it is that brought Bush to the presidency, his previous life as governor of Texas and owner of the Texas Rangers are being dealt with in a couple of pages. Even more questionable is why the 2004 general election and its aftermath, leading to the Supreme Court's decision in Gore vs. Bush, is taken care of in 1 paragraph! In contrast to that, the author brings in great details the brutal 2000 Republican primaries, in which McCain unexpectedly won New Hampshire (when the day before the election the Bush entourage found itself with an extra hour or two on its hands, they decide to go bob-sledding on the spur of the moment!). The author doesn't hide his criticism of the war in Iraq. The 4400 Project (which was to restore up to pre-war levels of electricity with 4,400 megawatts of electricity by Oct. 1, 2003) was one of the many failures, and later $18.4 billion emergency funding was requested to get supply up to 6,000 megawatts. The author notes dryly: "The money came. But the 6,000 megawatts never did. Not by June 2004.Or by 2005. Or 2006. Or 2007."

In all, this is a pleasant read. The author has done his home work even if for some reason he is selective in what episodes to cover or not to cover. But the book finishes in an open-ended way, not surprising since this book came out 16 months before the end of Bush's presidency.

Editorial Review:

In this ambitious work of political narrative, Robert Draper takes us inside the Bush White House and delivers an intimate portrait of a tumultuous decade and an embattled administration.Virtually every page of this book crackles with scenes, anecdotes, and dialogue based on access to every principal actor in the Bush administration, including six newsmaking interviews with the president himself.

The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power

Jonathan Mahler

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An inspiring legal thriller set against the backdrop of the war on terror, The Challenge tells the inside story of a historic Supreme Court showdown. At its center are a Navy JAG and a young constitutional law professor who, in the aftermath of 9/11, find themselves defending their nation in the unlikeliest of ways: by suing the president of the United States on behalf of an accused terrorist in order to prevent the American government from breaking the law and violating the Constitution.  

Jonathan Mahler traces the journey of their client, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, from the Yemeni mosque where he was first recruited for jihad in 1998, through his years working as a driver for Osama bin Laden, to his capture in Afghanistan in November 2001 and his subsequent transfer to Guantanamo Bay. It was there that Hamdan was designated by President Bush to be tried before a special military tribunal and assigned a military lawyer to represent him, a thirty-five-year-old graduate student of the Naval Academy, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift.                      

No one expected Swift to mount much of a defense. Not only were the rules of the tribunals, America’s first in more than fifty years, stacked against him, his superiors at the Pentagon were pressuring him to persuade Hamdan to plead guilty. But Swift didn’t believe that the tribunals were either legal or fair, so he enlisted a young Georgetown law professor named Neal Katyal to help him sue the Bush administration over their legality. In the spring of 2006, Katyal, who had almost no trial experience, took the case to the Supreme Court and won. The landmark ruling has been called the Court’s most important decision ever on presidential power and the rule of law. 

Written with the cooperation of Swift and Katyal, The Challenge follows the braided stories of Swift’s intense, precarious relationship with Hamdan and the unprecedented legal case itself. Combining rich character portraits and courtroom drama reminiscent of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action with sophisticated yet accessible legal analysis, The Challenge is a riveting narrative that illuminates some of the most pressing constitutional questions of the post-9/11 era.

Where Valor Rests: Arlington National Cemetery

Rick Atkinson

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Arlington National Cemetery spreads across the rolling hills west of the Potomac, a serene and reverent sanctuary for the presidents, soldiers, and heroes—famous and unsung alike—who lie in eternal rest among its green lawns and quiet glades, a roster dating back to America's birth and including many of the foremost names in our history. A national monument in the truest sense, Arlington's solemn beauty embraces a brave legacy—a heritage remembered and renewed every day as the military buries its own.

Bittersweet, breath-taking, sometimes heart-wrenching, always deeply respectful, this commemorative book guides readers gently over tree-lined slopes to share the ceremonies observed throughout the year, from the traditional wreath-laying on Memorial Day, which enshrines centuries of courage with a formality at once austere and profoundly emotional, to the moving graveside services that honor individual men and women who served our country. Captured in stunning color by a select group of gifted photographers, 220 unforgettable images create a portrait as poignant as it is proud.

Archival photographs also trace the history of the cemetery from the early National Historic Monument, "Arlington House," to the eternal flame at the Kennedy grave to sections for the lost astronauts and victims of the 9/11 Pentagon attack. With an Introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson, this lovely volume is both a fitting tribute and a stirring reminder of the values we Americans hold dear.