May's Books.

May was a busy reading month for me. Here's the list.

-1776, David McCullough. ( A description of the first full year of the Revolutionary War. I was stuck by the youth of many of the key figures involved: General Nathaniel Greene- age 33, Colonel Henry Knox- age 25. I was also struck by how low the casualty figures of most battles were compared with the Civil War.)

-The Rage and the Pride, Oriana Fallaci. (This critique of Islam and the decline of Europe got her charged with a "hate crime" in France. She was one tough lady.)

-The Force of Reason, Oriana Fallaci. (She wrote this one shortly before she died of cancer and takes on the same subject again.)

-Why We Want to Kill You, Walid Shoebat. (He says he's a former Palestinian terrorist and that all of them want to kill all of us. I'm not sure I buy his story. I also found this book to be a little over the top. He seems to present all Muslims as though they are mindless followers of the most radical elements within their religion. I think a larger number are willing to follow those elements than we would like to admit, but not to the degree he describes.)

-A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn.

-No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy. (Murphy was the most decorated soldier of WWII, winning every award for valor his country could bestow. The book follows him through his career in Hollywood and details how he was never really able to escape the way the war haunted him. He fought through the entire American campaign in Europe (no troop rotations back in those days), personally killing some 300 people. Some of the things he did couldn't be included in the movie (To Hell and Back: the Audie Murphy Story, starring Audie Murphy as Audie Murphy.) because they would seem to far-fetched for the viewing audience.)

-Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How Holy Rollers and Neo-cons destroyed the GOP. ( Not as good as I'd hoped. It was a very broad overview of the same failures that have been outlined in like 15,000 other books.)

-The Anti-Chomsky Reader, David Horowitz. (Pretty much what the title implies)

-The ProFessors, David Horowitz. (A look at how far out on the lunatic fringe a lot of college professors are)

-America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Mark Steyn. (This was a good book. Steyn is currently on trial in Canada for the book being a "hate crime".)

-A Brief History of Crime, Peter Hitchens. (He details the slow painful death of law and order in Great Britain, and of Great Britain in general.)

-A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, Christopher Hitchens. (One of the few "liberal hawks" who has stuck to his guns for the past 7 years, Hitchens (here and in his writings since) lays out the best case in favor of the war I've come across so far.)

-Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription, William F. Buckley. (Some of the more interesting letters National Review has received over the years, with responses by the always pithy Buckley.)

-The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric, George Will. (A collection of his columns from 1994-1997.)

-With a Happy Eye But..., George Will. (A collection of his columns from 1998-2002.)

-South Park Conservatives. (South Park "anti-liberals" might have been a more appropriate title.)

There could have been a few more, but A People's History really slowed me down.