Political Books - Page 5

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Mohammed Hanif

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: On August 17, 1988, Pak One, the airplane carrying Pakistani dictator General Zia and several top generals, crashed, killing all on board --and despite continued investigation, a smoking gun--mechanical or conspiratorial--has yet to be found. Mohammed Hanif's outrageous debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, tracks at least two (and as many as a half-dozen) assassination vectors to their convergence in the plane crash, incorporating elements as diverse as venom-tipped sabers, poison gas, the curses of a scorned First Lady, and a crow impaired by an overindulgence of ripe mangoes. The book has been aptly compared to Catch-22 for its hilarious (though not quite as madcap) skewering of the Pakistani military and intelligence infrastructure, but it also can trace its lineage to Don DeLillo, doing for Pakistan what Libra did for JFK conspiracy theory, and Kafka's The Trial, with its paranoid-but-true take on pathological bureaucracy. Recent events pushing Pakistan into the worst kind of headlines make A Case of Exploding Mangoes a timely and entertaining read, and when a mysterious bearded man called "OBL" makes an appearance at a Fourth of July party for U.S. military brass, we're coolly reminded of the fickleness of opportunistic policy in unpredictable lands. --Jon Foro

Mohammed Hanif on his experience in the Pakistan Air Force Academy

Once upon a time, when I was eighteen, I found myself locked up in Pakistan Air Force Academy's cell along with my friend and partner-in-crime, Khalid Saifullah. We had thought we were doing charity work but the Academy officers obviously didn't share our ideals. We had been caught trying to help another classmate pass his chemistry exam, something he had failed to do twice already and this was his last chance to save himself from being expelled. The logistics of our rescue effort involved a wireless set improvised in the Sunday Hobbies Club, a microphone concealed in a crap bandage around the left elbow of our academically challenged friend, and a Sanyo FM radio receiver. We were running our operation from the roof top of a building next to the examination hall. We were caught red-handed whispering reversible chemical equation into the transistor.

We were in breach of every single standard operating procedure in the Academy rule book, and faced certain expulsion. We had just started our glorious careers and now we faced the prospect of being sent home and having to explain to our parents how, instead of training to become gentlemen-officers, we were running an exam-cheating-mafia from the rooftop of the most well-disciplined training institute in the country.

For two days, while we waited in that cell to find out about our fate, we planned our future. Khalid, always the world-wise in this outfit, immediately decided that he was going to join the merchant navy and travel the world. I tried hard to think what I would do. I came from a farming family where even the most adventurous members of our clan had only managed to branch out into planting sugarcane instead of potatoes. Education, jobs, careers were absolutely alien concepts. The Academy was supposed to be my escape from a lifetime that revolved around wildly fluctuating potato crop cycles. And here I was, already a prisoner of sorts, facing a journey back to a life I thought I had left behind.

"Maybe I’ll become a teacher," I said vaguely. The farmers in my village used to show some vague respect to teachers in the primary school I attended. "Or a mechanic." I was a member of the car-maintenance club in the hobbies club after all. It was considered an elite club since there was no car to maintain. It was basically a hobbies club for people who hated hobbies.

"You can’t even change a bloody tire," Khalid reminded me.

We managed to stave off the impending expulsion through a combination of confession and denial: we lied (we were listening to cricket commentary on the transistor radio), we grovelled (we were ashamed, ashamed, ashamed of our unofficer like behaviour) and we pleaded our undying passion for defending the borders of our motherland. They looked at our relatively clean record, our sterling academic achievements and let us off the hook and awarded us a punishment considered just short of expulsion. We were barred from entering the Academy’s TV room--and from walking. For forty-one days. During the punishment period, we had to stay in uniform from dawn till dusk and when ever we were required to go from point a to b we had to run. Khalid went on to become a fairly good marathon runner (before, years later, dying in an air crash, while trying to pull a spectacular but impossible manoeuvre in Mirage fighter plane). I discovered Academy's library. I had barely noticed that the college had a very well-stocked library. We knew it was there, we occasionally used it as a quiet corner to hatch conspiracies but I had never noticed that the long rambling hall was lined with cupboards full of books. All the cupboards were locked, but you could see pristine untouchable books behind their glass doors. The librarian, an eagle-nosed old civilian, walked around with a large bunch of jangling keys although his wares were not in any danger of being stolen. I was to find out later that he was quite a professional. The library was immaculately catalogued. You could of course go to him, fill out a form and request a book. But I never actually saw anybody fill out a form. I spent some afternoons staring at the books from behind the glass doors as my classmates watched videos in the TV room (including the fellow who had scraped through his chemistry exam and survived but would die years later in our current president's General Pervez Musharraf’s moronic military adventure in Kargil on India-Pakistan border).

How do you ask for a book when you are eighteen and have been brought up in a household where the only book was the Quran and the only reading material an occasional old newspaper left behind by a visitor from the city? "I want that book," I asked the librarian pointing tentatively towards a cupboard which contained a thick volume of something called The Great Escapes. The librarian, relieved at having found a customer, took out his bunch of keys, removed a key and asked me to go get it myself. I took my time and browsed for a long time before filling out the form and borrowing the book. So grateful was I for getting that book that I brought him a samosa and cup of tea next day. That turned out to be a very good investment as the librarian handed me the bunch of his keys as soon as I entered. I browsed randomly, recklessly, reading first paragraphs and author bios, and made naïve judgments. The Cross of Iron wasn’t a religious thriller but a war novel. Crime and Punishment had very little crime in it. Was Rushdie related to the famous pop singer Ahmed Rushdie? Mario Puzo and Mario Vargas Llosa. The strange covers of Borges. Abdullah Hussain, I had heard of. A whole shelf devoted to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Chronicle. Was that little book about the wrecked ship really a true story? I didn’t know which one was a thriller and which one was literary. As I Lay Dying--sounds like a nice title so let’s read it. So does Valley of the Dolls. It is probably not the right way to read. Discovering books was like a discovering a second adolescence. I discovered new sensations in my body. It was even better. It was guilt-free and I could show off. Not that anyone except my librarian friend was impressed.

Outside the library, the world revolved around parade square, hockey fields and series of punishments and rewards that didn’t seem very different from each other. The vocabulary used to run the Academy life comprised of about fifty words, half of which were variations on the word 'balls.' Every order began or ended with balls, it was used as verb, adjective, qualifier or just simply a howl. Balls to you. Balls to mother, my balls, I'll cut your balls.... Every order, every threat, every compliment was a variation on the same testicular theme. Now that I look back at, it is quite obvious that this place was drowning in its own testosterone.

From outside, life could seem orderly. Uniforms were starched, rifles were oiled and sessions on the parade square hard and long. I yearned for that jangling of the keys in the library corridors. Once I was caught in my Navigation class reading Notes from the Underground hidden under a map that I was supposed to be studying. After our second year in the Academy, there were sudden attempts to turn us into good Muslims. Compulsory prayers. Quran lectures. Islamic Studies classes. In the third year we were caught stealing oranges from a neighbourhood orchard and as a punishment we were sent out to a mosque outside the Academy where Muslim cousins of Jehovah's Witnesses taught us how to knock on random doors and preach Islam.

"But they are all Muslims," I had protested.

"So are you," came the reply. "And look at yourself."

At that time I didn’t realise that we were an experiment in Islamisation of the whole society. General Zia was a distant presence. He was our commander-in-chief and the permanent president of Pakistan. He thought he was never going to die. So did we.

Years later, sitting in the officers' mess of a Karachi air base, we heard about the plane crash that killed him and several other generals. We were sad about the pilots and the crew of the plane. To drown our sorrows we pooled our meagre savings, ordered a bottle of Black Label whiskey, and instead of hiding in our bachelor quarters as we normally did, we opened the bottle in the officers' mess TV room and discussed our future. I left the air force a month later.

--Mohammed Hanif

Guernica: A Novel

Dave Boling

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An extraordinary epic of love, family and war set in the Basque town of Guernica before, during, and after its destruction by the German Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War.

Calling to mind such timeless war-and-love classics as Corelli's Mandolin and The English Patient, Guernica is a transporting novel that thrums with the power of storytelling and is peopled with characters driven by grit and heart.

In 1935, Miguel Navarro finds himself in conflict with the Spanish Civil Guard, and flees the Basque fishing village of Lekeitio to make a new start in Guernica, the center of Basque culture and tradition. In the midst of this isolated bastion of democratic values, Miguel finds more than a new life—he finds someone to live for. Miren Ansotegui is a charismatic and graceful dancer who has her pick of the bachelors in Guernica, but focuses only on the charming and mysterious Miguel. The two discover a love that war and tragedy can not destroy.

History and fiction merge seamlessly in this beautiful novel about the resilience of family, love, and tradition in the face of hardship. The bombing of Guernica was a devastating experiment in total warfare by the German Luftwaffe in the run-up to World War II. For the Basques, it was an attack on the soul of their ancient nation; for the world, it was an unprecedented crime against humanity. In his first novel, Boling reintroduces the event and paints his own picture of a people so strong, vibrant, and proud that they are willing to do whatever it takes to protect their values, their country, and their loved ones.

The Divine Appointment

Jerome Teel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Engrossing and Inspiring 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

A young woman is talking to her married lover about the impending birth of their unplanned child. Neither one of them is happy, to say the least. The ripples from the single instance of indiscretion that led to her situation threaten to deluge the entire country with problems that could erode the very foundation of our Constitution. When the young woman, attorney Jessica Caldwell, is found murdered, it appears that her killer is Dr. Todd Grissom, and he is quickly arrested. However, his wife Anne cannot accept the notion that her husband is a murderer and hires Elijah Faulkner to defend him against the charges he faces.

As the investigation to prove Grissom's innocence proceeds, details of the deals and deceits that are going on behind the scenes prior to the selection of a new Justice for the Supreme Court begin to be revealed. Opposing President Wallace's nominee is Senator Lance Proctor. As Senate majority leader, he wants to retain his powerful position at any cost. Proctor enjoys his position of leadership, in which he is a master of maneuvers, negotiations and outright blackmail. Yet, just has he has "the goods" on many of his colleagues, there are those unelected power brokers who have the goods on him.

Written in the same pithy style as Robert B. Parker's successful Spencer series, with short chapters and economical phrasing, Jerome Teel has created a novel as timely as Fox News with themes that raise moral and ethical questions as old as time. And all but the most severely addicted mystery fans will be kept guessing until the author reveals the outcomes.

Teel's well-defined characters include Simon, the mysterious mercenary who keeps his shadow troops at the ready to help the cause of freedom when reason and justice are rendered ineffectual by the deceit and manipulation of those entrusted with great power, and Holland Fletcher, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post who has yet to uncover a story big enough to propel him into the elite circle of journalists and media imagemakers. There are also those like Anne Grissom, who are willing to put everything on the line for their beliefs. THE DIVINE APPOINTMENT is a story with many heroes, each with his or her own particular role to play in the sundry mysteries of this multifaceted thriller.

It's always a pleasure to discover a new author who jumps right into the ranks of favorites like Craig Parshall and James Scott Bell --- men of faith who are not afraid to share their faith in a unique and effective manner, creating stories that are both engrossing and inspiring.

--- Reviewed by Maggie Harding

Editorial Review:

"They aren't hiding just one something, but a bunch of somethings..."

Jessica Caldwell hates the day she met him, and she hates him even more. But now the two of them will be connected forever...

Eli Faulkner is one of the best trial lawyers in Tennessee. It's what he lives for -- righting injustices. When he's called upon to defend Tag Grissom, an arrogant cardiologist accused of murder, he fi nds himself wondering, could this be more than just a case?

Holland Fletcher has always wanted to be a true investigative journalist, but he's never really stepped up to the plate. That is, until he receives an anonymous tip and is plunged into a dangerous realm of intrigue and murder that involves not only the Supreme Court, but the entire nation.

In the Lake of the Woods

Tim O'Brien

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Total reviews: 189 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Tim O'Brien has been writing about Vietnam in one way or another ever since he served there as an infantryman in the late 1960s. His earliest work on the subject, If I Die in a Combat Zone, was an intensely personal memoir of his own tour of duty; his books since then have featured many of the same elements of fear, boredom, and moral ambiguity but in a fictional setting. In 1994 O'Brien wrote In the Lake of the Woods, a novel that, while imbued with the troubled spirit of Vietnam, takes place entirely after the war and in the United States. The main character, John Wade, is a man in crisis: after spending years building a successful political career, he finds his future derailed during a bid for the U.S. Senate by revelations about his past as a soldier in Vietnam. The election lost by a landslide, John and his wife, Kathy, retreat to a small cabin on the shores of a Minnesota lake--from which Kathy mysteriously disappears.

Was she murdered? Did she run away? Instead of answering these questions, O'Brien raises even more as he slowly reveals past lives and long-hidden secrets. Included in this third-person narrative are "interviews" with the couple's friends and family as well as footnoted excerpts from a mix of fictionalized newspaper reports on the case and real reports pertaining to historical events--a mélange that lends the novel an eerie sense of verisimilitude. If Kathy's disappearance is at the heart of this work, then John's involvement in a My Lai-type massacre in Vietnam is its core, and O'Brien uses it to demonstrate how wars don't necessarily end when governments say they do. In the Lake of the Woods may not be true, but it feels true--and for Tim O'Brien, that's true enough. --Alix Wilber

Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics)

Graham Greene

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

a pleasure 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Nice to see this classic in print again. Hitchen's insightful forward adds to the pleasure of reading Greene's wonderful "entertainment" again. If you haven't read it yet, do so now!

An Entertaining Footnote to History 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Graham Greene, a major, well-known 20th century British author, had a very long life, most of the century, and a very long and prolific writing career. He may be best known for "The Third Man," "The End of the Affair," and "The Power and the Glory," but his books were greatly honored, highly-praised by the critics, generally best sellers, and often made into movies. As was "Our Man in Havana," a later work of his, initially published on October 6, 1958, and just re-released. Greene famously divided his books into 'novels,' such as the "Power and the Glory," and 'entertainments,' such as "Our Man in Havana." While working on the book at hand, he wrote to the Indian writer R.K. Narayan, a friend, that he was at work on "a rather hack job, an entertainment called 'Our Man in Havana.' I am getting too old to boil the pot." However, he also wrote to his mistress Catherine Walston in 1956 that "Our Man" was potentially a "very funny plot which if it comes off will make a footnote to history."

The book is set in Havana, Cuba, during the last days of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and reproduces time and place very accurately on the page. The plot's reasonably gripping, and resonant. Like his later follower, John LeCarre, Greene had first-hand experience of the British Secret Service. On the recommendation of his lifelong friend Kim Philby, who turned out to be England's most notorious postwar spy/traitor, Greene had served in Africa's Sierra Leone during World War II, and this is a spy story. The lead character is Jim Wormold, an English seller of vacuum cleaners based in Havana. (Everyone can take a moment here to remember Alec Guinness as this character in the excellent movie based on the book.) Wormold is poor and desperate: his wife has left him, and he hasn't enough money to pay his hefty bar bills, let alone keep his beautiful teenaged daughter Milly in her preferred lifestyle. So, without realizing what he's doing, or where it will take him and those he loves, he agrees to become a British spy; "Old Blighty's" man in Havana.

This may be an entertaining entertainment, but not to worry: there's plenty more serious Greene here. His instinctive anti-Americanism, left-wing viewpoints; and jaded cynicism as to the spy's life. His remarkable ability to create characters, even those who don't get many pages, such as Captain Segura, a local policeman/torture enthusiast, with a cigarette case made from human skin. Segura strongly resembles Batista's dread 'enforcer' Captain Ventura, and in his dark glasses and unmarked car, he will turn up again, and again, creating terror in various Latin American countries, most notably in Haitian dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier's feared "toutons macoute."

Greene traveled widely, as a journalist, and to research his novels. He had great serendipity in his visits: many of them occurred at highly interesting times. "Our Man" was published in October, 1956; on New Years Day 1959 the revolutionary Fidel Castro came down from the mountains. The author set his Vietnamese war novel, "The Quiet American" just before the critical battle of Dien Bien Phu. He set "The Comedians" in the last days of Duvalier's Haiti. He had another stroke of luck: the long American blockade of Cuba has resulted in the country, and the city of Havana, staying much the same as the writer described them nearly fifty years ago.

All in all, think I'd have to go with "a very funny plot which if it comes off will make a footnote to history."

Editorial Review:

Graham Greene’s classic Cuban spy story, now with a new package and a new introduction

First published in 1959, Our Man in Havana is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire that still resonates today. Conceived as one of Graham Greene’s “entertainments,” it tells of MI6’s man in Havana, Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true.

Molon Labe!

Boston T. Party, Kenneth W. Royce

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Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

After a decade of retaking their stolen freedoms, the people of Wyoming (many of them newcomers) are forced to finally confront their jealous masters in the U.S. Government. Can a lone, courageous state successfully resist federal tyranny, or has the Bill of Rights been reduced to a myth? Can an allegedly free people act free, or is our liberty just a 4th of July farce?

These issues weigh heavily on the shoulders of Governor James Wayne Preston, a decorated Desert Storm Marine helo pilot. Elected in 2014 on the Laissez-Faire Party ticket, he enjoys nearly full support of the legislature to return Wyoming to a long-lost era of liberty. But how far can he and the people of his state go before Washington, D.C. feels compelled to act? Will Wyoming's free and independent course reach actual secession? Will President Melvin Connor suppress the maverick Western state with federal troops? Will anybody come to Wyoming's aid?

Molon Labe! is a fictional account of a real-world blueprint for a free state initiative focused on Wyoming. If enough freedom-loving individuals will relocate there under a useful pattern, they can "liberate" the Cowboy State on many levels. In Wyoming we could truly enjoy our rights of gun ownership, privacy, schooling, health and diet, unrestricted travel, and property. Boston shows us how it actually can be done!

The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition

Upton Sinclair

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Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The reason I pay my union dues 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Living in a right-to-work state, you forget why we have unions. As a teenager, I read this book for school and fell in love with it. My parents and family were all union backers (teachers, firefighters, etc.), but I did not understand why we had unions. Then I read this book and ever since I have paid my union dues. Sinclair is an outstanding writer and I think everyone should read this book to understand where we have been and where we are now in labor. So read this book and cherish the life we have today.

Editorial Review:

For nearly a century, the original version of Upton Sinclair's classic novel has remained almost entirely unknown. When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary. The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905. It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition. A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition.

Strike Force

Dale Brown

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Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A new era appears to be dawning in the Middle East. But the free world must be wary of old enemies . . .

Rebel Iranian General Hesarak al-Kan Buzhazi is launching a coup that could destroy Iran's theocratic regime, and must turn to his old nemesis, U.S. Air Force Lieutenant-General Patrick McLanahan, for help. On presidential authority, McLanahan sends a new, top-secret fleet of XR-A9 Black Stallion spaceplanes into the fray. The strike force, capable of virtually instantaneous global reach—led by test pilot and astronaut Captain Hunter Noble—could change the course of history in the Middle East for generations to come.

But the reactivation of America's first military space station has rekindled fears of a space arms race. And with McLanahan caught in a furious political battle with those secretly working to undermine his military initiative, it falls to Noble and his dedicated space engineers to halt a growing insurgency in Iran that threatens to erupt into a devastating worldwide jihad.

Eclipse

Richard North Patterson

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The spellbinding story of an American lawyer who takes on a nearly impossible case—the defense of an African freedom fighter against his corrupt government’s charge of murder

Damon Pierce’s life has just reached a defining moment: a gifted California lawyer, he’s being divorced by his wife and his work often seems soulless. Then he receives a frantic e-mail from Marissa Brand Okari—a woman he loved years ago—and decides to risk everything to respond to her plea for help.

Marissa’s husband, Bobby Okari, is the charismatic leader of a freedom movement in the volatile west African nation of Luandia, which is being torn apart by the world’s craving for its vast supply of oil. Bobby’s outspoken opposition to the exploitation of his homeland by PetroGlobal—a giant American oil company with close ties to Luandia’s brutal government—has enraged General Savior Karama, the country’s autocratic ruler. After Bobby leads a protest rally during a full eclipse of the sun, everyone in his home village is massacred by government troops. And now Bobby has been arrested and charged with the murder of three PetroGlobal workers. Still drawn to Marissa, Pierce agrees to defend Bobby, hoping to save both Bobby and Marissa from almost certain death. But the lethal politics of Luandia may cost Pierce his life instead.

Culminating in a dramatic show trial and a desperate race against time, Eclipse combines a thrilling narrative with a vivid look at the human cost of the global lust for oil. Here is Richard North Patterson at his compelling best, confirming his place as our most provocative author of popular fiction.

American Savior: A Novel of Divine Politics

Roland Merullo

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Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

What if Jesus suddenly appeared and announced that he planned to run for President of the United States? Yes, that Jesus. And what if a well-meaning but utterly inexperienced band of disciples not only helped him mount a seat-of-the-pants campaign but also ran it well, getting millions of people to support him and in the process throwing the other two major party candidates—as well as the world's news media—into a frenzy as they scramble to discredit him?

Roland Merullo's bitingly clever satirical novel about the state of American politics follows one man's campaign to bring back goodness and kindness (real goodness and kindness this time) in a country that has fallen into a divisive state of fear and hatred. Merullo takes us into the heart of "a nation in grave spiritual danger" as the Son of man sets out to make everyone realize that "politics as usual" is no longer an acceptable alternative.

American Savior is a remarkably innovative novel that challenges our perceptions and beliefs while it wags a finger at the folly of our self-righteousness. It is sure to cause controversy among those for whom politics itself has become a kind of religion.