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Newest Blog Entries:
NYT Books in Review: “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” “Tell Me How This Ends,” “Lion of Jordan,” “King Hussein of Jordan”
Thomas Friedman's clarion call for a "green revolution"; a look at the real Gen. Petraeus; and two books on the life of King Hussein.Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, October 5, 2008
Trafford Publishing: Tamara Hunney
"Tamara Hunney" by Kendrew Lascelles is a great read. I must disclose that he is a great friend who has written plays for broadway, screenplays and video. A horseman and bike rider I have know and worked with for years. MBPosted by Michael Butler, Thursday, October 2, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “The War Within,” “Zen and Now,” “The King and the Cowboy,” “Capitol Men,” “The Predator State,” “Icon of Evil”
Woodward on Bush's "Secret White House"; retracing Robert Pirsig's famous journey; an "odd political allegiance that helped shape the 20th century" (Teddy Roosevelt and Edward VII); "Reconstruction" and the first Black congressmen; "How conservatives abandoned the free market and why liberals should too"; and Hitler's role in the "rise of radical Islam."Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, September 28, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “America and the World,” “The Limits of Power”
Brzezinski and Snowcroft offer "Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy," and Andrew Bacevich discusses "The End of American Exceptionalism."Posted by Ian Alterman, Tuesday, September 23, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “Left in Dark Times,” “The Angel of Grozny,” “Bumping Into Geniuses,” “Hitler’s Empire,” “Soldiers of Reason”
Bernard-Henri Levy "confronts French leftists"; an update on children orphaned by the Chechnyan war; an insider's look at the music biz; how inability to govern helped sink Hitler; and the political influence of the RAND Corporation.Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, September 21, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “The Forever War,” “The Way of the World,” “The Limits of Power,” “Is There A Right to Remain Silent?”
A war correspondent's journal; the reality of nuclear terrorism; the end of "American exceptionalism"; and Dershowitz takes on "coercive interrogation" and the Fifth Amendment.Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, September 14, 2008
NYT Book in Review: “Hot, Flat and Crowded”
"A call to arms for an American-led 'green' revolution."Posted by Ian Alterman, Wednesday, September 10, 2008
New Book Examines sodomy Laws in America
go to storyMargot Canaday reviews/disusses "Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003" by William N. Eskridge Jr. in The Nation ... we were a lot more [sigh] tolerant in the 1600s - mab
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, September 10, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “A Freewheelin’ Time,” “Farm Friends,” “Hot, Flat and Crowded”
Dylan's old girlfriend reminisces; a former commune member checks in on his old mates; and Tom Friedman's newest is a clarion call for renewable energy.Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, September 7, 2008
NYT Book in Review: “Waiting For an Ordinary Day”
“The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes, and it can’t be put back into a bottle.” Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi reports.Posted by Ian Alterman, Tuesday, September 2, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “The Same Man,” “Freedom’s Battle,” “The Way We’ll Be,” “Sex in Crisis,” “Blue Dixie”
A look at George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh; a history of humanitarian intervention; Zogby predicts the future; sex, religion and politics; a very different "Southern strategy"; and an essay on how censorship may have helped shape Solzhenitsyn's prose.Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, August 31, 2008
NYT Book in Review: “The Way of the World”
"Weapons of mass destruction and other imaginative acts."Posted by Ian Alterman, Wednesday, August 27, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “A Path Out of the Desert,” “Falun Gong and the Future of China,” “Invisible Nation,” “Spaced Out”
"A grand strategy for America in the Middle East"; why the Chinese reacted so violently to an "exercise society"; the history - and future - of the Kurds; and "a trippy, nostalgic homage to the counterculture era."Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, August 24, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “The Wrecking Crew,” “Snow Falling in Spring,” “The Terminal Spy”
"Greedy" conservatives; a memoir of growing up under Mao; and the first case of nuclear terrorism.Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, August 17, 2008
AlterNet: Unfit for Publication: Swiftboater Book ‘The Obama Nation’ Filled with Falsehoods
Posted by Michael Butler, Friday, August 15, 2008NYT Book in Review: “Pharmakon”
"One pill makes you happy, and one pill makes you mad." The story of psychopharmacologist J.R. Wittenborn and the early use of psychotropics in research.Posted by Ian Alterman, Thursday, August 14, 2008
NYT Book in Review: “The Liberal Hour”
"Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s."Posted by Ian Alterman, Wednesday, August 13, 2008
NYT Book in Review: “The Terminal Spy”
"The First Act of Nuclear Terrorism and the New Cold War." The Litvinenko case, in which a Russian spy was poisoned with nuclear material.Posted by Ian Alterman, Tuesday, August 12, 2008
NYT Book in Review: “The Way We’ll Be”
"The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream...a pollster sees tectonic shifts in American attitudes."Posted by Ian Alterman, Monday, August 11, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “This Land Is Their Land,” “The Challenge,” “Descent Into Chaos,” “Kingmakers,” “My Guantanamo Diary”
Ehrenreich on "economic casualties"; how a "nobody" "forced the administration to try accused terrorists"; U.S. failure in nation-building in Central Asia; Western imperialism in Arab lands; and some of the Guantanamo detainees speak out through an interpreter.Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, August 10, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “The Dark Side,” “Iron Fists,” “Bad Money,” “America Between the Wars”
"How the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals"; the propaganda machines of Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin and Mao; the "global crisis of American capitalism"; and "the misunderstood years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the start of the War on Terror."Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, August 3, 2008
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
I am beholden to Annette and Richard Caleel for sending me this book. They know how concerned I have been over this problem. Since 1958, that is 50 years ago, I reported to Sen. John F. Kennedy on the Middle East. I advised Jack that the Israel / Palestine problem was the ground for WWIII. MBPosted by Michael Butler, Wednesday, July 30, 2008
NYT Books in Review: “Buying In,” “Moral Clarity,” “Say You’re One of Them,” “The End of Food”
Think you're impervious to advertising? Think again; a book for "grown-up idealists"; African miseries and why they continue; and the author of "The End of Oil" takes on the food crisis.Posted by Ian Alterman, Sunday, July 27, 2008
NYT Book in Review: “This Land Is Their Land” (Ehrenreich)
"The best of the pieces in this book about unequal opportunity in America are something quite different from journalism. They are small absurdist gems."Posted by Ian Alterman, Friday, July 25, 2008
NYT Book in Review: “The Dark Side”
"The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals." From everything I've heard, this is the must-read book of the season.Posted by Ian Alterman, Tuesday, July 22, 2008
