Content tagged with "politics"

This book is a rebuttal to a prior book called The Benedict Option. I haven’t read that book yet. Apparently, The Benedict Option claimed that the world was so fundamentally broken that Christians should just retreat to our own spaces and wait for the end of the world . This book rejects that. It…

I enjoyed this book, which is more of a rebuke of President Trump than anything else. I agreed with most everything in it, and Flake makes his case well, though I don’t know what other purpose the book serves. I didn’t really learn anything new, except that there are Republicans who explicitly…

I’m not really a Conservative, but I do a fair amount of conservative reading. With that perspective, this is a well-written and thoughtful book. Its basic premise is this: Liberal policies have hurt people, especially the poor. Disadvantaged Americans are no better off than when LBJ’s “War on…

I’m giving this five stars just because it’s so comprehensive, and I applaud the detail of the work. But…it’s a lot. Perhaps read this blog post from Kirk Center: Ten Conservative Principles This is the crux of Kirk’s argument. This book is simply a long historical survey of the basis and background…

I am a Democrat. I like to think of myself as liberal, but sometimes I think I just say this to be contrarian. Sure enough, this book has me thinking I’m much more conservative than I say I am. I read this because I’ve been looking for years for a clear elucidation of conservative values. I have…

I decided to try something new with this book: I decided to give it one hour of my time, and see how much I could get out of it. If you search for “how to read like a graduate student,” you’ll learn an important point: grad students don’t read every word of all the books they’re assigned. They just…

This is a…polemic. The author is mad. He thinks that “the liberal class” has capitulated to the interests of The Right, corporations, and the military. He never clearly defines “the liberal class.” Or maybe he did and I missed it? I think he just means The Left. If that’s the case, then it’s pretty…

I’m giving this five stars for what it should be – it’s the most expansive, authoritative history of diplomacy and foreign relations that may have ever been written. The amount that Kissinger knows is just mind-boggling. There is just so much detail… …and therein lies its weakness. This is a long,…

This is the inside story of The Plame Affair – the revelation that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative, allegedly initiated by the Bush White House because Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson, had been critical of the administration’s reasoning for starting the Iraq War. The most obvious part of this book is…

I had trouble connecting with this book. It describes Grand Prix and rally racing of the 1930s – the “Golden Age of Auto Racing,” this era is called. Racing, especially then, is, by nature, visceral and sensory, and I felt disconnected from it. The central theme is that Hitler and the Nazis used…

This is a perfect example of “be careful what you wish for…” I wanted a detailed examination of the federal budget. This book is that thing. I did not like it. The book goes deep into the process of the federal budget – how the different parties argue about it, and the tricks they use to disguise…

Kind of an odd book, but really interesting and entertaining, far beyond the original point. The book starts out as a condemnation of the Trump administration, on a specific point – they didn’t bother to staff important agencies. Lewis paints a portrait of a man who honestly didn’t think he’d win…

I bailed out on this book about a third of the way in because it doesn’t really have a point. The only point is that the author is pissed off and wants to rant about stuff. The author is kind of an Internet personality. He was an editor for Rolling Stone, he has a podcast and a Substack, and last…

Fantastic book about the history of American colonialism, from the Philippines to Puerto Rico , to dozens of islands . There are untold stories here about how the US never quite figured out what to do with some countries , and by the time they had been taken, colonialism in general was nearing its…

Amy Klobuchar is a Democratic senator from Minnesota. I’ve heard good things about her. She’s pretty conservative for a Democrat , and several people have told me that she and John Thune are actually good friends, despite being on opposite sides of the aisle. This is a political memoir of the last…

This is the second of Mark Levin’s books that I’ve read, after liberty-tyranny. Levin, of course, is the firebrand right-wing radio show host. He’s considered one of the most aggressive, according to Wikipedia. Like his other book, Levin uses the word “Statist” to describe someone who he believes is…

This is not a sophisticated book. The author rambles. He tells stories. It jumps back and forth between time and scope. Subjects come and go and you never know what he’s going to talk about next. But this is a fun book. Boehner tells a great story. He swears a lot. He’s a good old boy. He’s met a…

This is a book about the start of the pandemic and how public health officers and departments responded to it. It’s sort of a sequel to The Fifth Risk, which was about how the Trump administration failed to staff critical government departments. I didn’t love it, largely because of Lewis’s writing…

About halfway through this book, I theorized that it might have been better as a video course. Geography is, by nature, visual, and there’s just so much information in this it gets harder to figure out where it’s all happening. Also, the author ventures away from his geographic premise in some…

You read memoirs for two things: a play-by-play re-telling of history, and some higher truth to it all; some “gestalt” that makes you look at things differently. This book has #1, for sure. Not so much of #2. The book starts with Obama’s childhood , and it ends with the killing of Osama Bin Laden in…

Very short book about the problem of the US federal budget. It’s not balanced, the deficit keeps growing, and so does the debt. The book details the two basic theories of balancing the budget , and a growing number of people who want to do both. It also lays out some of the systemic, intractable…

I bought this because I’m a Jen Psaki fanboy. I was looking for memoir of her time as Joe Biden’s press secretary, but that’s not quite what I got. This is really a self-help title about communicating. Each chapter covers a different theme of how to communicate between people and audiences. Things…

Much is made of the title and implied angle of this book, but – to be clear – this is a solid, comprehensive biography of Abraham Lincoln. The purported angle is this: once elected president, Abraham Lincoln appointed his main rivals for the office to important positions in his administration. Thus,…

Wonderful book that just confirmed what I already knew – political polarization is out of control, and the only way to fix it is from the bottom up. Sasse is a Republican senator from Nebraska. He’s also an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. He wrote this book in 2018, right in the middle of the…

Before he was a news show host, Chris Matthews was chief of staff to Tip O’Neill in the 1980s. During that period, Tip was the most prominent Democrat in the country as Speaker of the House, and he was the constant adversary to President Ronald Reagan. This book chronicles the six years from 1980 to…

This is a sort of snarky book, but still very well-written. The author is tired of clichés that he believes the political Left has “captured,” but which he believes are simply not true. He spends the book deconstructing them. Some of the clichés the author is upset about : And so on. There’s…

So, this is a tough book to evaluate. It’s a…polemic? …manifesto? written by George McGovern toward the end of his life. Each chapter discusses an area of national concern , and McGovern explains his position . I just don’t understand who is the audience for this. I suppose I read it, but what is…

Tedious book. Seemed a bit scattered. The gist appears to be that the biggest reason nations fail is because of unfair, “extractive” institutions, like dictatorships, that give people little incentive to work and are designed to enrich a few. The book goes on about this for 460+ pages, with example…