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.

My Reading List.

Mainly for my own reference (so that I don't accidently check a book out from the library only to realize that I've already read it) I'm posting a list of all the books that I can remember reading since I started my reading binge about Easter of last year along with my short takes on some of the books.

Non-Fiction:

The Theocons, Damon Linker (a who's who of the religious right)
God's Politics, Jim Wallis (God's Politics are a lot like Wallis' politics)
The Jesus I Never Knew, Phillip Yancey
The Jesus Machine, Dan Gilgoff (a lot more balanced than the title suggests)
James Dobson's War On America, Gil Alexander Meagerle (very disappointing)
Tempting Faith, David Kuo (an inside look at the Bush White House)
Fiasco, Thomas Ricks
America Against the World, Kohut and Stokes (a lot of dry polling data as I recall)
The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Frank Rich (deception in the run up to Iraq)
State of Denial, Bob Woodward ( a very in-depth look at the failures made in Iraq)
My Fundamentalist Education, Christine Rosen (a familiar story to me)
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter ( he mentions "Camp David" 9,000 times)
Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, Bruce
Bartlett
The Great Deluge, Douglas Brinkley ( an analysis of Hurricane Katrina)
Utter Incompetents: Ego and Ideology in the Age of Bush, Thomas Oliphant (exactly what the title suggests)
Flim-Flam, James Randi (a look at ESP, Bermuda Triangle and other hoaxes)
The Assault on Reason, AlGore ( a pretty good read)
Disaster, Christopher Cooper ( a look at how the federal government failed during Katrina)
The Iraq Study Group Report; Baker, Hamilton, et al. ( the one always mentioned by politicians, whether they have read it or not)
The Starfish and the Spider, Brafman & Beckstrom (another good one)
The J-Curve: A new way to understand why societies rise and fall, Ian Bremmer ( a good study of societies in transition)
The World is Flat, Thomas Friedmann
The Basic Writings of Nietzsche (He was one of the few philosophers who was not a boring writer)
The Writings of Keirkegaard
American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips ( a VERY good book, I highly recommend it. I read it twice)
The Silence of the Rational Center: Why U.S. foreign policy is failing, Halper & Clarke ( another one I recommend, reviewed in earlier post, I read it twice)
How Would a Patriot Act?, Glenn Greenwald
The One Percent Doctrine, Ron Suskind
A Tragic Legacy, Glenn Greenwald (reviewed in an earlier post)
The Price of Loyalty: The education of Paul O'neill, Ron Suskind ( An insider's look at the way the Bush White House is run)
It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian peril in the age of Bush, Joe Conason
Will They Ever Trust Us Again?, Michael Moore (that's right, I read a Michael Moore book)
Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (this was very entertaining, especially her stints working as a maid and at Wal-Mart)
Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich (this was even more depressing as she infiltrates the white-collar job-seeker world)
Adventures in Missing the Point, Tony Campolo & Brian McLaren
Speaking My Mind, Tony Campolo
Evil and God's Justice, N.T. Wright (there may have been another word in the title. Good book)
Why the Religious Right is Wrong, Robin Meyers (conversely, the religious left is a-ok!)
Conservatives Without Conscience, John W. Dean (He basically says conservatives are just nazis without any balls)
Religion Gone Bad, Mel White (he's here, he's queer, he's a preacher, get used to it!)
Debunking 9/11 Myths, Popular Mechanics Magazine (It won't convince the moonbats, but it destroys most of their fantasies about the gov. being behind 9/11)
American Fascists, Christopher Hedges ( at some point all these religious right books started running together in my mind)
Sex God, Rob Bell (not as racy as it sounds, it's about sexuality and Christianity)
They Like Jesus, But Not the Church, Dan Kimball ( a pretty good read)
The Apocalypse Code, Hank Haanegraaf (sp?) ( a good look at "exegetical eschatology")
Kingdom Coming, Michelle Goldberg (another religious right expose')
F*U*B*A*R: America's Right Wing Nightmare, Seder & Sherill ( this was a poorly written hatchet piece, I only like well-written hatchet pieces)
Confronting Iran, Ali Ansari (the title speaks for itself)
Blinded by the Right, David Brock (He was a right-wing hatchet man, now he's a left-wing whiner)
When the Press Fails, Bennett, et al (how the press failed in the run-up to Iraq and since)
The Republican Noise Machine, David Brock
The Gulag Archipelago, Solshenytsen (sp?)
The Federalist, Jay, Hamilton and Madison
Faith of My Fathers, John McCain (some of the prison-camp stuff is indescribable)
The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama (would have been a better read if I wasn't familiar with his voting record, still not bad. Very much aimed at post-moderns)
Writings, Thomas Jefferson
Writings, James Madison
The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture, Hipps (a look at post-modern culture)
While Europe Slept, Bruce Bawer
Londonistan, Melanie Phillips (not as good as Bawer)
How Democracies Perish, Jean-Francois Revel (another good book)
Anti-Americanism, Jean-Francois Revel (currently reading)
several books critical of pre-millenial dispensationalism whose titles I can't remember.
61 that I can remember.

Fiction:

1984, George Orwell (the best love story I've ever read, seriously)
It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis (the hell it can't)
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut (This was another damn good book)
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky ( "Beauty will conquer the world." This was the book that turned me on to Russian literature)
2 books of short stories by Chekhov
Demons, Dostoevsky ( everybody dies)
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (this one should count as 2 books)
The Death of Ivan Illyich and other short stories, Leo Tolstoy (he was the master of the parable)
Notes From Underground and other stories, Dostoevsky
Dante's Inferno
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky (Dostoevsky's magnum opus)
The Stranger, Albert Camus
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche
Candide, Voltaire (some monkey-lovin' going on in this one)
17 total