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America & The World, Neocons, Sugar Beach, Bin Ladens, Angler & More Make Washington Post Best Books of 2008
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This has been a good year for policy books -- particularly ones that I think have moved the policy needle in better directions than they have been going.
The Washington Post has just published its roster of "Best Books of 2008."
Many of the books that the Post has highlighted are on the best book lists of the New York Times -- scoring big time Northeast corridor support. I haven't seen a Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, or Chicago Tribune list yet -- but it would be great if my book project with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and David Ignatius scored in other parts of the country as well.
Of particular note to me from this new Washington Post roster are:
Foreign Policy
America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, and David Ignatius. (This book was a joint project of the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program which I direct and Basic Books.) (Here is a program I moderated with Brezinski and Scowcroft.)The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew J. Bacevich (Here is a set of excerpted Bacevich comments at an excellent book salon hosted by Fire Dog Lake with Bacevich.)
Politics
Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman (see my conversation with the author -- one hour program including Gellman and Steve Coll and alternatively 5-minute clip)They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons by Jacob Heilbrunn (here is a transcript of a session I moderated with the author at Fire Dog Lake)
The World
The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper (This is a five minute interview I did with Helene Cooper -- and this is a great one hour program she did at the New America Foundation)
Terrorist-Related
The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century by Steve Coll (Steve Coll is my colleague and President of the New America Foundation. Here is a video of Coll, Peter Bergen and myself talking about this book.)The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer (Here is a video file of my interview with Jane Mayer)
Business and Economics
High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families by Peter Gosselin (Here is a video of a program I did with Peter Gosselin at the New America Foundation.)
All of these are eye-opening treatments of important political and policy issues. Any (or all) of these would make great holiday gifts.
-- Steve Clemons
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Reader Comments (3) - post a comment
Well, one hopes that a few authors and researchers have the gonads to chronicle the truth, as it is obvious the lying scum in the White House isn't going to....
White House altered, deleted press releases on 'coalition of the willing'John Byrne
Published: Friday December 5, 2008
The White House altered documents regarding the nations involved in the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" that aided the US invasion of Iraq.
A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign political science professor says he found that the White House had modified elements of its website dealing with the coalition and in some cases deleted key documents in the public record.
At the onset of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the White House released a list of the nations participating in the coalition, an important part of Bush Administration PR efforts, as the war was not UN-endorsed. Over a period of years, however, the original releases were modified to account for the diminishing number of nations.
Two releases were deleted from the White House website entirely, the professor says.
"I think that it raises the question of whether or not we can trust the government to maintain public records of things that were said or done that later prove embarrassing," Illinois political science professor Scott Althaus said.
continues at...
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/White_House_altered_documents_on_coalition_1205.html
Foreign policy, politics and terrorism are fun to talk about, I enjoy it myself. But there are 47 MILLION Americans without health insurance. Any one of them, or many of them, can die and nobody cares. What about them? The threat of illness to the average American is much greater than any threat of terrorism, by far.
The US Department of Health and Human Services has a goal that every American has access to affordable insurance. What happened? Nothing happened. Somebody needs to write a book about it. Somebody with a good education in American civilization, with exposure to many other cultures, as well as an understanding about what exactly goes on (or doesn't go on) in the largest US government department (HHS).
I'm still just a guy trying to make it through the day and with so many challenges facing us today, I'm finding I have little ability to enjoy the depressing books I've been reading the last five years or so. Though I will be buying many of the books above, I will be giving President Obama's books on tape where he reads his own words.
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