Tweet Bob Woodward set out to write about George W. Bush’s first year as President, covering his tax cuts and domestic agenda, but when September 11th happened it changed the focus of his book. Instead Woodward covered the Administration after 9/11 occurred and their implementation of the War on Terror, specifically on the Afghanistan front. […]
Tweet Realize: When George W. Bush was elected as President he had no prior foreign policy experience and frequently bumbled on naming other foreign leaders. Not only did Bush have no experience, he also did not have a basic rudimentary conception about America’s role in the world or specific foreign policy other than his campaign […]
Tweet What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan is the second book that we are reviewing in an informal exploration of the Bush Presidency and contemporary history. As opposed to the previous review of Frum’s account of the White House, which was pro-Bush, McClellan’s account is, at […]
Tweet It’s always fascinating to look at history and events by examining what was being said at the time. So often, most of the historical accounts and research is written with hindsight but without balancing out what the general thoughts, regardless of how varied they may be, at the moment were. My decision, in 2010, […]
Tweet The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen is Kwame Anthony Appiah’s most recent work. The Professor of Philosophy takes on Honor and it’s role in history and more specifically, moral revolutions. Appiah takes great care in explaining that honor is a key to living well and a fundamental human need with its close ties […]
Tweet I was extremely happy to finish this, it was a major letdown for as acclaimed as it was and for having won a Pulitzer Prize. Diamond’s whole book could have been boiled down to about 20 pages and not have lost any real merit because his theories are so broad sweeping anyway. Essentially he […]
Tweet This was a slight let down because I thought it would be more revelatory. If you followed the campaigns relatively closely, like we all did, then most of this was not mind blowing. It does give a little behind the scenes perspective which reveals the true personalities of the candidates and their staff. The […]
Tweet The subtitle to Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine is “Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court”. Having read The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court by Bob Woodward and Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court by Edward Lazarus, I was excited about Toobin documenting the court in more recent […]
Tweet Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed may very well be the best book I have or will read this year. That seemed to be the reaction of most critics since the book’s publication last year. The book debuted during the midst of the 2008 Financial tsunami that threatened […]
Tweet This review was orginally written by me on January 2nd, 2009 for another website. I’ve decided to repost it since the next review will deal heavily with the Federal Reserve and Banking as I plan to finish and review Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (Hardcover) shortly. This is another enlightening […]