first! finally!

I haven't read a lot this year except on-line news and blogs. But Deans Conservatives Without Conscience was a good read. And Greenwalds How Would a Patriot Act too. Or maybe that was last year I read that, still good though.

As this is an open thread I wanted to take the opportunity to point out a story that hasn't been given much attention. It will be interesting to see how the Bush Administration intends to deal with this:

Lakota Secede from United States of America

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said."

http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/elgrito/2007/12/lakota_secede_from...

I have to agree with you. Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine was a real eye-opener when I read it. It was literally like peaking behind the curtain to see why our politicians do the things they do. It's not just a simple case of simple corruption. I know now that it's much more than that. There's a method behind our so-called leaders' madness.

But as she said in the end, knowledge is power. And the more of us know what the hell's going on behind the curtain, the better this country will be.

I would ask you try to remember the brain police will use your selection of books against you. I only mention this due to their admission they spy on every american's, every move, every day. I would advise you avoid giving them information that will follow you forever.
this doesn't sound like america? george likes his pet goat, and look what it got him?

I just got Broken Government and The Assault on Reason for Christmas, and hope to get inside-out of them by the time the Nevada caucuses roll around.

[deleted--you think it's fun disrespecting the site owner? Knock it off]

Fiasco, Plame's book, The Porn Testament (Flynt's version of the bible), I Suck (Bush's autobiography, Eat Me (an unauthorized biography of Cheney), I Suck the Sucker (Mier's 'Tell All' expose), Christians is Stupid (Musings by Bush and Rove), Nyah, Nyah, Nyah (Osama's gloat), Who Am I? (Lieberman's apologia), Que Pasa? (Gonzo's valedictory), If I Was Smarter? (Thompson's query), If I Were Younger? (McCain's regret), Can I Get a Do-Over? (Rudy's pleading), What if I Quit Eating Meat On Friday? (Mitt's prayer)........

There are just too many good one's to praise, my anti-Bush shelf runneth over.

13 Big John Says: [deleted–you think it’s fun disrespecting the site owner? Knock it off]

[deleted--smart off again and you're on the banned list. No more warnings. The site owner has repeatedly asked that posters refrain from discussing 9/11 alternative theories on this site.]

"Holy Crap!" -- an in-depth examination of the un-redacted, classified papers pertaining to 9/11, Iran-Contra, Watergate, and November 22, 1963

Sorry, this one never made it to the bookshelves.

'My Job', subtitle: Texans are Great at Shoveling Sh*t (Karen Hughes' praise)

Big John at 20

tsk, tsk

Site Monitor/ owner

Maybe I could just list the author? Is that OK?

I really hope I am not offending you or disrespecting anyone, I just really like books.

thx!

Site Monitor: No, thanks. Our experience has been that it opens up the threads to hijackings and flame wars over competing theories. There have to be other books you can recommend.

Gosh, it's fun living so close to the US.

I used to read so much back in Canada: I had a cozy reading corner all set up nicely. In Korea, I live on the floor, in a shoebox in Seoul, and have no good reading spot. I also had so much reading to do for my yoga courses, and I teach. I read the newspaper every day, and the internet. And I always do the crosswords!!!!

Some good books I can recommend, "The Kite Runner", is the last fiction I read. "The Little World of Don Camillo" is a fun read (light comedy, vignettes, about life in a small Italian village).

For non-fiction, try "Crowds and Power", by Canetti; and "Travel Guide to Europe 1492", Lorenzo Camusso (interesting-- a travel guide); and "Tastes of Paradise", Wolfgang Schivelbusch (history of spices, coffee and drugs), "A Brief History of Time" and "The Theory of Everything", Stephen Hawking (very readable and AMAZING), and "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves", Lynne Truss-- believe it or not, a very funny book about... punctuation.

I know these aren't 2007, but I know what it's like looking for a good read. These are all excellent, or at least very good.

Who has the book and movie rights to the Turkey/Iraq War?

If there are any Walt Whitman's and Herman Hesse's out there these days they don't book deals.

The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf, 10 easy steps towards a fascist state. Can you say engineering of consent?

Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision by Thom Hartmann is worthy of your bookshelf

Rise of American Democracy, The - Jefferson to Lincoln
by Sean Wilentz
W. W. Norton and Company

Imperial Life in the Emerald City
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Alfred A. Knopf

Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency
by Charlie Savage
Little, Brown and Company

Coldest Winter, The
by David Halberstam
Hyperion

Assault on Reason, The
by Al Gore
The Penguin Press

Books written by Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner are informative and enlightening.

I think I'll have to go with The Assault on Reason as it tied most of my reasons for frustration together.

For fiction, I had the pleasure of reading the Jeeves and Wooster collection of novels by P.G. Wodehouse. Fabulous. I also discovered and read a lot of Carl Hiassen, a great chronicler of Florida-weird and Patricia Highsmith's stories. I always loved Roald Dahl as a child, and his story compilation for adults was great too.

For nonfiction, I really enjoyed Christopher Hitchens' polemic, "God Is Not Great". I also really enjoyed re-reading David Sedaris's "Naked" (fiction?/nonfiction?/a bit of both?). "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" was also great, as is "Brainwash: the Secret History of Mind Control" by Dominic Streatfeild, which I'm reading now.

Books I didn't like/couldn't get into: Martin Amis' "The Information", Greg Palast's "Armed Madhouse" (I know I'll get crucified for this but I think it was too much info at once), and a book by Heinrich Boell. Maybe I should try it in English instead of German.

The biggest shock of Naomi Klein's book was seeing just how large a role the President of A Neo-Con Liberal Arts Classics College, (that has a 4 year curriculum like this), Dr. John Agresto, played in the utter destruction of Iraq's higher education system, once one of the best in the entire Middle East.

Gave me chills, her description of the evil Dr. Agresto perpetrated on the Iraqi's school is documented in this excerpt from her book here.

These really are bad, bad people we have running the country now.

And I have no doubt in my mind that what they did to the schools in Iraq is the blueprint and is a dry run for what they're going to do here to our schools, a process that is already well underway from what I can tell when I speak to anyone in the USA that's below a certain age.

For myself, while I've read most of the above books, and Dr. Altemeyer's The Authoritarians, (a surprisingly light and breezy read for something so academic), which John Dean used for his research for his "Conservatives Without Conscience" book, so I strongly recommend it to any and all sundry.

~Nyc

Dennis Kucinich’s autobio about his early years, The Courage to Survive. Although I had heard him reference various things from his early life (watching his parents count change to pay the utility bill, constantly moving, etc) , is wasn’t until I read his bio that I realized how those experiences and his decisions as a boy about how not only to deal with them but to shape them into a proto world view that has guided him ever since. He is occasionally eloquent, often humorous and always very honest. The book is full of surprises. Did you know his father was a Marine, wounded in WWII, and he and all his brothers always expected to follow in his footsteps? A heart murmur, that also made him drop basketball (yes, he played basketball as well as football) and made him 4F. One thing is clear, his understanding of the necessity of active peace agenda didn’t stem from any hippy/new age revelation. His understanding was rooted in the very personal domestic and neighborhood violence that was common in his youth. And maybe more than anything, I was impressed by what a fine writer he is. Most political bio’s are just so much fluff, everybody seems to think they have to do one to be taken seriously, so they trot out a few anecdotes that will, one the one hand seem very confessional, and on the other show how they wisely, if ruefully, learned from their mistakes. Not so with Kucinich. There is no “aw, shucks” in his tale. Through all the insecurity, random hitting, unpredictable behavior of his family life, he never wavered in his love for them all and his sense, as the oldest child, of responsibility for them (he washed floors to keep himself and his siblings in the neighborhood Catholic school). This is not, however, some kind of inspirational tome, but just one of the most honest memoirs I have ever read. I hope more people will pick it up, as it will give a real understanding of the integrity and motives of the most progressive democrat on the national scene .

Without a doubt the single best book I've read this year is Walter Tevis's Mockingbird that was published in 1980.

You may know him from his prior works, The Man Who Fell to Earth, or The Hustler, but neither of those prepared me for this shot out of left-field.

The book opens up on 5th Avenue in NYC, 500 years from now, and we learn right away that The Empire State Building is the tallest building in the world, which immediately got my attention, because, wow, like how did he know that over 25 years ago?

That's just for starters.

What the book describes is what a Post-Literate society looks like, everyone has forgotten how to read books, and for my money you can keep Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World and Ridley Scott's Bladerunner movie.

This slim volume covers all that territory in a manner that's so scary that I'm sure that it kept Stephen King up at night when he first read it.

It's that good.

What really got me was just how close the world we're living in with our YouTube and DVRs and VOD is getting to the 25th Century one he describes where nobody reads anymore.

Joe Bob Briggs says check it out....

~Nyc

Best Selling Author Naomi Wolf Talks With Alex Jones
(mp3 clip - will launch your default media player . . . hopefully!)

More MP3 Audio Clips >

john in california @ 49:

Dennis Kucinich’s autobio about his early years, The Courage to Survive. Although I had heard him reference various things from his early life (watching his parents count change to pay the utility bill, constantly moving, etc) , is wasn’t until I read his bio that I realized how those experiences and his decisions as a boy about how not only to deal with them but to shape them into a proto world view that has guided him ever since. He is occasionally eloquent, often humorous and always very honest. The book is full of surprises. Did you know his father was a Marine, wounded in WWII, and he and all his brothers always expected to follow in his footsteps? A heart murmur, that also made him drop basketball (yes, he played basketball as well as football) and made him 4F. One thing is clear, his understanding of the necessity of active peace agenda didn’t stem from any hippy/new age revelation. His understanding was rooted in the very personal domestic and neighborhood violence that was common in his youth. And maybe more than anything, I was impressed by what a fine writer he is. Most political bio’s are just so much fluff, everybody seems to think they have to do one to be taken seriously, so they trot out a few anecdotes that will, one the one hand seem very confessional, and on the other show how they wisely, if ruefully, learned from their mistakes. Not so with Kucinich. There is no “aw, shucks” in his tale. Through all the insecurity, random hitting, unpredictable behavior of his family life, he never wavered in his love for them all and his sense, as the oldest child, of responsibility for them (he washed floors to keep himself and his siblings in the neighborhood Catholic school). This is not, however, some kind of inspirational tome, but just one of the most honest memoirs I have ever read. I hope more people will pick it up, as it will give a real understanding of the integrity and motives of the most progressive democrat on the national scene .

Thank you for posting this! Kucinich is the most progressive democrat in the running right now and it irks me that the ROM (republican owned media) refuses to give him air time. I know they won't because Kucinich is the exact opposite of the republic contenders and if Americans were able to hear him speak everyday, Americans would instantly support him...hands down.

I always try to read books whenever I can...

However, I always seem to buy books faster than I can read them...

That being said... I would like to recommend "Horizons" by SF author Mary Rosenblum.

You can find out a little more about it here...

http://www.theflyingparty.com/maryrosenblum/horizon.blurb.html

The best new book I read was Chris Albani's The Virgin of Flames a book that made me fall in love with LA (once more.) But Out by Natsuo Kirino was my fave discovery of the year, an excellent feminist noir. I also really like rereading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, but I always love rereading Hemingway. And for non-fiction, my best read was from the last century ('91) The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy by Albert O. Hirschman, great book on how nefarious types use twisted logic to perpetuate the Hell they are trying to make America into. Oh, and that Harry Pothead book...

questions for hrc:

given that you introduced a bill outlawing flag-burning, yet have served as one of america's preeminent neocon enablers during bush's entire time in office, is it safe to say you place the value of the symbol above the republic, for which it stands?

also, what would you say to americans wary of another term of clintonian drama? should we accept that you are, in fact, owed the presidency for putting up with bubba & his shenanigans, and trust you're judgment will no longer be clouded once you assume your proper place as executor of our estate?

i read many of the books mentioned but i thought "the looming tower" was a cut above.

So far I've found the shock doctrine extremely interesting....or should i say scary

My favorite book this year was, "The End of America", by Naomi Wolf. When I finished it, I realized I had read it years earlier. It was called, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich".

It didn't turn out to be the barn-burner the publishing company kept advertising it as, but Tempting Faith is a great look inside the Bush Administration's lack of concern for the Evangelical Christian movement that it likes to say elected it.

What's really mind boggling to me is that certain books can't even be mentioned in 21st Century America because too many people freak out. No wonder the country is falling apart. Shed another tear Frank Zappa.

Valerie Martin's novel "Trespass" - dark, funny, disturbing, politically astute, and filled with uncomfortable truths - was the best fiction I read in 2007.

Still struggling through the Federalist Papers as edited by Mary E. Webster. It would seem that the people are responsible for correcting the government. Now there's an interesting idea.
Flatus The Elder