I have meant to blog on music again, and continue my journey of music, but just haven't had the energy. Teaching, summer heat, and allergies have sapped me.
I do have some money to spend on books, though, and am wondering if there are some suggestions out there for historical or public policy books? What is the best (non fiction) book you have read recently and why?
3 comments:
I just finished up Greg Palast's new one, Armed Madhouse, which is well worth your time, but pretty damn depressing. It's a collection of Palast's reporting, much of which appears on BBC television and in British newspapers. I also recently read Michael Standaert's Skipping Towards Armageddon, which explores impact of the Left Behind books and their propaganda. Not bad, but I'd say there are better books about premillennial dispensationalists and the way they impact U.S. public policy. Still, it's a good overview.
One of the best books I read this year (and topical) is Stephen Pitti's The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans. It is, as I said above, a topical issue, but Pitti writes with a passion and clarity that I enjoyed.
Among the many forgettable things I've been reading, one is worth noting: Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science. At first glance it is a memoir of a woman's relationship with her JPL-engineer father, but craftily woven into the personal story is a larger look at Cold War politics. Most intriguing is the portrait of a JPL founder who was run out of the country because of a brief youthful flirtation with Communism, even as the United States bent over backwards to make excuses for Wernher von Braun and other Nazis. In other words, moral relativism wasn't invented by sixties hippies.
Good book. Recommended.
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