Recent Reading

With the restoration of reasonably fast internet, and video/audio entertainment coming into Das Hause Skippy-I’ve had a chance to catch up a bit. Its been quite a ride since September and returning from Romania. What with getting Whooping Cough, losing one job, getting another, putting a move together in under a month, moving, starting a new job, finding a house, traveling to DC and Israel, buying a used car I probably should not have bought-it has been a pretty full time.

Nonetheless, that did also entail a lot of traveling and time cooped up with nothing to do but read. Thanks to the joy that is my I-Pad, I am able to not have to haul around a bunch of books in my back pack-when I look at my book shelves and realize that my whole library could be stored on the I-Pad, I marvel at how far we have come technologically. Think of the weight I could have saved! The S.O. keeps telling me to get rid of all my books since I don’t read them. Silly fujin, doesn’t she understand that some books are just worth having and perusing in bits and pieces when the mood strikes. Women!

Anyway-I did do some pretty good reading focused on a couple of themes and I thought I would share the book titles with you.

While I was in Romania, I decided to use my time by the pool and in the bar(s)-when not ogling the gorgeous specimens of Romanian tuna-to dig a little on the financial crisis. It still astounds me that we could be so affected by the malevolence of so few. My reading convinced me though that it has been coming for quite a while. We simply repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

I had read Barbarians at the Gate back in the 90’s when it came out-and I liked the HBO movie they did by the same name. I especially thought the movie was interesting and entertaining, particularly in its clever visuals that contrasted the life of the very rich with the steadily increasing poor-a trend that started during the Reagan years and accelerated during the Bush years twenty years later. The greed and unwillingness to see the facts-come through clearly in both books. If you have not read Too Big To Fail – but have seen the HBO movie, you owe it to yourself to read the book. It fills in the blank spaces and more effectively damns Hank Paulson. Deservedly so IMHO.

On the plane over to Stuttgart-and subsequently while in the hotel, I turned my attentions to Iraq-especially as it became apparent that the Iraqis were finally going to save us from our own stupidity and not cave in and allow us to stay in the country. The (mis) adventure in Iraq has been an abomination from the word go-and this book by Peter Van Buren called “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose The Battle For Hearts And Minds of the  Iraqi People”. Van Buren is a Foreign Service Officer, who was caught by the Department of States need to prove that it was doing something too ( egged on by the criticisms of the military and the “friendly folks at DOD”)-he among many was drafted to do a tour in Iraq if he wanted to maintain any upward mobility in the Foreign Service. ( And thus we have one of the largest embassies in the world in a country that is of no use to use except as a seller of oil). He was a part of a PRT-Provincial Reconstruction Team-and his adventures therein provide an interesting insight into the inability of our senior policy makers to understand the morass we had thrust ourselves into in that wretched country. His writing style is breezy and entertaining. Well worth a read-and at the end of said read you will find yourself shaking your head. The foreign service is still forcing people to go to Iraq by the bushel load I might add.

As it became apparent I was going to be involved in Israel-for at least the early part of this year-I decided to go read a book I had never gotten back to-to provide me some insight on how Israel became the way it did. A good primer remains Amy Dockser Marcus’ book: Jersualem 1913:

Many Western historians locate the birth of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the British Mandate, which governed Palestine from 1920 to 1948. Marcus pushes the date back to 1913, when the Zionist movement had established itself in Palestine and begun to enlist European settlers, mostly from Russia. It is an interesting perspective-especially for me, because I am fascinated by the cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. ( I would love to have the time and money to be able to live in Jerusalem for a about six months and experience the city the way the Israelis do-rather than just as an oafish tourist). She carefully documents how the situation of relative peace between Arabs and Jews went downhill as it became apparent the Ottomans were leaving due to the First World War, and she also documents how some Zionist leaders made decisions with far reaching consequences. She dug through land records and showed how a lot of property changed hands in an effort to concentrate it in the hands of Jewish Settlers. “It wasn’t clear yet what the archive would reveal,” she writes, “but the shadow cast by 1913 seemed to loom ever larger over the city’s future.”

And finally-just for sheer entertainment value-I read Chelsea Handler’s book, My Horizontal Life. I like Chelsea Handler (yes, I’d do her) and I liked her comedy. The book is pure fluff-but put the book down sighing and wishing you were getting laid as much as she purports to be. 😉