Review of Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out (Hardcover)

Maybe this book got buried in the rising slag-heap mountain of titles exposing the bald-faced lies of George Bush and his puppeteers. Or perhaps somebody thought that Patriots Act was just some un-ironic, dry policy look at the crazy, paranoid post-9/11 government policy that started ripping out the Constitution like so much stained green shag carpet in a North Las Vegas motel.Not at all!This collection of personal stories -- an oral history in the mode of the legendary Studs Terkel, where the interviewer gets the key subjects talking straight from the soul -- is like a heat-seeking missile, right on target with the issues tearing our nation and the world apart.

Don't be fooled by the quiet decency of the book's subjects, some of them famous, some of them unknown, but all of them willing to stick their necks out for principle. It's bracing to read the words of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who risked all to leak the Pentagon Papers to stop the Vietnam War; or of triple amputee, Vietnam war vet and former Veterans Administration director and U.S. Senator from Georgia Max Cleland who talks about how our power-mad leaders led our young soldiers into Iraq and toward the same misguided charnel house that consumed his generation in Vietnam. Or why former FBI agent Colleen Rowley risked her long career to reveal how internecine federal agency warfare and career caution at the FBI made the U.S. vulnerable to the tragic Al Qaeda attacks of 2001.

More subtle in the book are the gray men and women, loyal to government service and principle, like Rand Beers, who took over from Richard Clarke as White House counter-terror advisor. Beers later resigned in protest five days before the nation went to war in Iraq on false pretenses. More moving yet in the book are the smallest and most vulnerable of our residents and citizens, like the Syrian-American teenager who was thrown into INS prison with her mother for nine months in a mass sweep of our Arabic populace in the wake of 9/11. Convince methat she is not a more patriotic adherent of democracy than most of us.

But tucked away in the book's center of these portraits of high character in low times is a shocker right in synch with today's headlines.And I mean today!-- when the British MI-5 and other security agencies stopped a plot by suicidal jihadis aiming to blow up a dozen airliners traveling from Great Britain to the America.Smack in the middle of Patriots Act is an incendiary interview with former FAA counter-terrorist Red Team member Bogdan Dzakovic. As part of the Red Team, Dzakovic zealously tested airport and airplane security measures. He and team members simulated terrorist attacks. They posed as hijackers. They snuck bombs and weapons onto aircraft. Dzakovic 's Red Team succeeded and found aviation security lacking nearly nine times out of ten, but the politically compromised FAA reacted not with proper alarm and concern, but with apathy, embarrassment and cover-ups. When Dkakovic went public with his findings as a whistleblower, theFAA punished him.It buried him and his career in a bureaucratic closet. Read his chapter and you will be horrified to know that America is not safer today even though billions have been wasted by Homeland Security. But, airline passengers are much more miserable. I wish there were more patriots in this country like this Red Team member. Or like Ellsberg, Cleland, Rowley....





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Review of Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out (Hardcover)

Maybe this book got buried in the rising slag-heap mountain of titles exposing the bald-faced lies of George Bush and his puppeteers. Or perhaps somebody thought that Patriots Act was just some un-ironic, dry policy look at the crazy, paranoid post-9/11 government policy that started ripping out the Constitution like so much stained green shag carpet in a North Las Vegas motel.Not at all!This collection of personal stories -- an oral history in the mode of the legendary Studs Terkel, where the interviewer gets the key subjects talking straight from the soul -- is like a heat-seeking missile, right on target with the issues tearing our nation and the world apart.

Don't be fooled by the quiet decency of the book's subjects, some of them famous, some of them unknown, but all of them willing to stick their necks out for principle. It's bracing to read the words of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who risked all to leak the Pentagon Papers to stop the Vietnam War; or of triple amputee, Vietnam war vet and former Veterans Administration director and U.S. Senator from Georgia Max Cleland who talks about how our power-mad leaders led our young soldiers into Iraq and toward the same misguided charnel house that consumed his generation in Vietnam. Or why former FBI agent Colleen Rowley risked her long career to reveal how internecine federal agency warfare and career caution at the FBI made the U.S. vulnerable to the tragic Al Qaeda attacks of 2001.

More subtle in the book are the gray men and women, loyal to government service and principle, like Rand Beers, who took over from Richard Clarke as White House counter-terror advisor. Beers later resigned in protest five days before the nation went to war in Iraq on false pretenses. More moving yet in the book are the smallest and most vulnerable of our residents and citizens, like the Syrian-American teenager who was thrown into INS prison with her mother for nine months in a mass sweep of our Arabic populace in the wake of 9/11. Convince methat she is not a more patriotic adherent of democracy than most of us.

But tucked away in the book's center of these portraits of high character in low times is a shocker right in synch with today's headlines.And I mean today!-- when the British MI-5 and other security agencies stopped a plot by suicidal jihadis aiming to blow up a dozen airliners traveling from Great Britain to the America.Smack in the middle of Patriots Act is an incendiary interview with former FAA counter-terrorist Red Team member Bogdan Dzakovic. As part of the Red Team, Dzakovic zealously tested airport and airplane security measures. He and team members simulated terrorist attacks. They posed as hijackers. They snuck bombs and weapons onto aircraft. Dzakovic 's Red Team succeeded and found aviation security lacking nearly nine times out of ten, but the politically compromised FAA reacted not with proper alarm and concern, but with apathy, embarrassment and cover-ups. When Dkakovic went public with his findings as a whistleblower, theFAA punished him.It buried him and his career in a bureaucratic closet. Read his chapter and you will be horrified to know that America is not safer today even though billions have been wasted by Homeland Security. But, airline passengers are much more miserable. I wish there were more patriots in this country like this Red Team member. Or like Ellsberg, Cleland, Rowley....





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Review of American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (Hardcover)

Author, advisor, and academic Kevin Phillips is a man of considerable intellect. In the late 1960s he penned a signal work ("The Emerging Republican Majority") that successfully prophesized the ways in which massive socioeconomic and demographic shifts in American society from a northern and industrial one to one more centered in what he euphemistically referred to as the "Sunbelt". In detailing this momentous transformation, Phillips made some then-startling prognostications how such a shift in population and potential electoral votes would presage the long-term shift to a more conservative and Republican-oriented political majority for generations to come. Of course, being a conservative Republican himself, he assumed that this development meant greater fiscal responsibility, more rationally-based international savoir-faire, and much greater social stability. Yet, as he admits in his latest volume, "American Theocracy", that is hardly what the record reflects having transpired in the intervening thirty five years.

Instead, in this calm, clear, and well articulated tour of the social, economic, and political territory with which he is so familiar, Phillips describes the contemporary topography of conservative republican rule as being an inhospitable and ungovernable landscape pocked by craters of ideological fervor, fiscal insanity, and unspeakable personal greed. In many ways, his well-articulated broadside against the political right is all the more damning because it is not only from a true believer, but also from an outstanding academic with a persuasive resume, a man who carefully documents and substantiates everything he cites, especially in this scathing look at exactly where it is that the 21st century's form of rabid Republican conservatism is leading us. Yet one does not find here so much a prosaic attack on the present Bush administration as it is a penetrating historical analysis of how we got to this point in terms of three frightening enduring social and political trends, phenomena neither invented nor originated by the present administration.

Phillips sees three interlocking tendencies as now reaching a critical point in defining and even threatening the future of the polity. First is the rise of the corruptive influence of oil on both domestic and foreign policy; second is the rise of an intolerant form of radical Christian doctrine into key areas of public life; and third, the incredibly irresponsible increase in the level of both public and private debt. Each of these trends threatens to undermine both the short-term and long term stability of the nation, and each in its own way is a key factor in the way that describes how it is that both the Executive branch and the Congress are becoming increasingly beholden to special interests and are increasingly undemocratic. In particular, the fashion in which President Bush and the Congress have used permanent tax cuts for the wealthy as a device to transfer responsibility for future debt away from the wealthy and toward those with less means and less political voice, while at the same time insanely increasing that public debt, defies both morality and logic. Moreover, Phillips finds that the ways in which these trends are unfolding makes us as individual citizens and as members of the larger collectivity substantially less likely and immensely less able to determine our own future in anything resembling a rational and progressive fashion.

In many ways, this book represents a kind of sequel to Phillips original tome in the sense that herein he once again provides for the reader the sort ofbroad structural perspective illustrating the ways in which social, economic, and political change profoundly impact the future for both society at large and individuals in private, personal existence. In so detailing the powerful fashion in which these three powerful trends relate to each other and how they combine to impact the nature of American society itself, how they tend to push the nation toward ever more limited and ever weaker versions of its former substantial self, he also offers the reader an opportunity to understand the true nature of forces around us that demand public action now. This is an unnerving snapshot of America at a fateful crossroad, at a point that even the dullest among us must begin to recognize the palpable dangers. With the publication of this thoughtful and thought-provoking book, we can no longer say no one has warned us. Enjoy!




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Review of The Almanac of the Unelected 2008: Staff of the U.S. Congress (Hardcover)

Now in an up-to-date 21st edition for 2008, The Almanac of the Unelected Staff of the U.S. Congress 2008 remains the ultimate reference of in-depth profiles of more than 600 senior Congressional committee staff members, as well as new members from law firms, government agencies, and the private sector. Unelected staff of the U.S. Senate are also discussed at length. All have been appointed, hired, or otherwise chosen for their task without invoking the popular vote. Each one-page entry lists a black-and-white photograph of the individual, a quick summary of their educational and professional background, and several paragraphs describing the individual's current duties, projects, and philosophies at length, including direct quotes from the person where possible. The entries are organized by committee, with a name index available for quick and easy look up. An absolute must-have for politically involved corporations, lobbyists, or any American citizen who keeps close track of their government, The Almanac of the Unelected Staff of the U.S. Congress 2008 is highly recommended as a superb, easy-to-use resource.




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Review of Toward Liberty: The Idea That Is Changing the World (Hardcover)

Boaz has assembled a very fine collection of essays regarding liberty and the failings of modern societies to create a world in which we can live as free men. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in libertarian (or for that matter free market or conservative) political thought.

Just to tone down my entheusiasm a bit, though, I would add that many of the essays may seem a little elementary to someone who has been reading libertarian publications for a long time. But on the whole, this is a solid, highly readable work full of ammunition for your libertarian debating arsenal.



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Review of The Eurosceptical Reader 2 (Hardcover)

This excellent collection of essays on the EU looks at the economics and the politics of the European Union; it finds the EU to be failing on both counts.
Tony Thirlwall explains why the euro would not bring a stable interest rate to aid our industry, nor would it curb the speculators: a single currency may end speculation within euroland, but it increases capital flows between euroland and everywhere else, threatening the euro's stability and therefore interest rate stability.
Mark Baimbridge, Brian Burkitt and Philip Whyman provide a characteristically sharp study of the European Central Bank. They note that the OECD says that for the industrialised economies, the natural rate of unemployment, below which inflation will accelerate, is 11%. So for the Bank, "the focus of monetary policy becomes to ensure, in practice, that unemployment is sufficiently high to reduce price and wage increases." The present level of unemployment across euroland is 11%, so this must be an EU success story: why aren't we applauding?
They show that Britain is not meeting the five tests. The EU's economies are diverging, as Wim Duisenberg has admitted. We have more economic flexibility than euroland does; investment into Britain is rising, the City of London is flourishing, and unemployment is lower than in euroland.
On the political side, many of the essays prove that the EU wants the euro to lock members forever into the planned EU state. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said, "The introduction of the euro was not only the crowning-point of economic integration, it was also a profoundly political act, because a currency is not just another economic factor but also symbolises the power of the sovereign who guarantees it."
And it would be a most undemocratic state, as even the Euro-fanatic Michael Heseltine admits: "The ... notable characteristic of present political arrangements is that they are about as ineffective and unaccountable as they could be ... the institutions themselves are totally incapable of adjusting to that change. We have federalism by stealth ..." Unaccountable, incorrigible, deceitful - he could be describing himself! No wonder he loves the EU.



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Review of Bringing the Jobs Home: How the Left Created the Outsourcing Crisis--and How We Can Fix It (Hardcover)

When I picked up this book I thought it would offer me two things.I thought it would be about outsourcing and it would provide solutions to the problems.Sadly, Buchholz's book did neither.Instead, it provided many critiques from an American capitalist's point of view about society.In that regard it did a satisfactory job, although there are many popular books that did a far better job of doing it (Sowell's Basic Economics and even Stossel's Give me a Break).

The first 20 pages of the book offered hope that it'd stay on the topic of outsourcing; however even they were disappointing.There were few facts supporting free trade or details about why outsourcing can help an economy.After the first chapter Buchholz quickly veers off outsourcing and into taxes, education, tort reform and many other faults within our society.In doing this though he rarely talks about how they relate to outsourcing.This book is especially lacking in any quantitative analysis.Many of these facts are seen as given and therefore don't require support.Finally, his last chapter on our cultural exports seemed to be a socially conservative polemic that was out of place in an otherwise economically focused book.If you are looking for a book about outsourcing or an above introductory look at economic problems in the United States, I'd look elsewhere.Buchholz's book is strictly for those who haven't read alot about modern American politics and are looking for a partisan introduction to them.

The main positive about this book is it's an easy and quick read.At 179 pages you won't waste too much time on it.The author does a very good job at making the book flow.He adds many pop culture references, although they seem forced at times.Because of the very fluid writing style and his obvious intelligence, I might give his other books a chance.But hopefully they'll be a little better content wise than this one.



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Review of The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

Thomas Barnett is a remarkable and very admirable fellow who has written a book that should certainly be read by more Americans.The book is well-written and Barnett comes across as someone who sincerely wants to improve the security of the United States and the world.Barnett has a powerful and inspiring (some may say intoxicating) vision of the role of the US in the 21st century.The only problem is that his approach is not workable.

Those who've read the likes of Martin Van Creveld and Thomas Friedman will find some familiar thinking in this book.The author's main contention is that "disconnected" countries, those that aren't connected via information and economic networks to the rest of the world, are a huge source of danger.Such countries are usually run by a nasty elite who essentially tyrannize their populations who are left poor and angry.Having been left poor and angry, these disconnected people are ripe for becoming terrorists and their nations ripe for the location of terrorist networks, crime syndicates, and so forth. Hence, we need to use military force to go in, defeat the nasty people running things, and enforce a new order that will give the oppressed people of these societies hope so they won't need to bomb us.In the process, we'll give them new law enforcement agencies that will crack down on criminal syndicates.

Reactionary types will accuse Mr. Barnett of being some kind of neo-imperialist or perhaps a global fascist.Nevertheless, I personally think that Barnett sincerely believes that what he is proposing would be a "good thing" and that it would improve the lives of the people he seeks to liberate.I'll leave the name-calling to someone else, as there are unquestionably lots of people running around who are willing to do just that.While the moral dimension to Mr. Barnett's proposal is fascinating and worthy of serious discussion (far different from the name-calling and character assassination I've heard up until now) my primary concern is whether or not the proposals in this book are cost-effective or even feasible.

I'm afraid that what Mr. Barnett is proposing is far more complicated, sophisticated, and expensive than what he leads the reader to believe.Barnett frames the issue in either doing something (what he proposes) or doing nothing.He points out that in light of September 11, 2001, we can't do nothing.And then he implies we're only left with his proposal.But he doesn't fully entertain the consequences of failure.Those consequences would be lots of dead young Americans, even higher levels of anti-American sentiment around the globe, and billions of dollars wasted.And due to the complexity of what Mr. Barnett is proposing, failure is more likely than success.

The essential problem here is one of complexity.Mr. Barnett's strategy focuses on the US spending extreme amounts of resources to bring order to troubled lands to harmonize them with current global economic realities.But the universe naturally tends towards disorder.As Mr. Spock pointed out, "Logic suggests that it's easier to destroy than to create."Chaos and disorder come naturally; order takes a significant input of resources.In attempting to create order in disordered places, the United States would be left extremely vulnerable to potential rivals and enemies who would simply try to create or enhance disorder in those places.This process would cost potential rivals very little but could have extremely high costs on the US on a sustained basis.An example would be Iraq, where we are hoping a mere $100 billion will bring about some kind of order.Anyone who wanted to harm us could spend far less money just to destroy that delicate order we've struggled to create.And in looking at Iraq right now, there's no guarantee that we are anywhere close to creating an orderly society.

As Mr. Barnett makes a big point about "disconnectedness defines danger" he doesn't really adequately bring the importance of this back to the home-front of American society.In an increasingly interconnected world, the US benefits not just from additional connectedness to others but to additional connectedness to ourselves.Improvements in infrastructure, a better business climate, improved efficiency, and so forth all serve to make the US a more competitive place on the international level and also serve to make the US a more attractive place for international capital and human resources.Barnett wants to put off making the US more connected in a highly dicey proposition to makedysfunctional societies more safe for international capital and human resources.Considering how intractable so many of our own various social problems have been it's rather presumptuous to assume we can go about fixing other places.And the cost/benefit analysis is lacking and, at least on the surface, not all that appealing.

For all my criticisms of Mr. Barnett's proposals I need to stress that I don't necessarily think his approach will lead to catastrophe on a nationwide scale.I just fear it will be exceptionally costly and put tremendous strain on our society, our military, and our economy.All for results that are highly improbable and quite unlikely to be successfully obtained.In short, it's a prescription for a gigantic waste of resources that even if it were successful would be possibly not worth the price. There are arguably more cost-effective and sure-fire ways of achieving a more secure future for the United States.

Americans who are interested in the future of US strategy need to be familiar with this book.While I strongly disagree with Mr. Barnett's proposals I also very well realize that they are and will continue to be highly influential.If you don't know what Barnett's talking about you can't even begin to understand the future debates about the US's role in the world.If you want to be a part of the discussion, get your hands on this book and become familiar with one of the most highly influential proposals available for the future of the United States and the world.



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Review of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

This is a brilliant piece of work, indeed so compelling that after glancing at it over morning coffee I set aside a work day and simply read the book.I take away one star because there is no index, no bibliography, and the author is very poor about crediting his sources.On page 163, for example, his observations about 300 Chinese cities being water-stressed, and about the Aral Sea disappearing, appear to have come directly from Marq de Villier's superb book on Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource but without attribution.This should have been footnoted.

Having said that, I consider the book itself, despite its run-on Op-Ed character, to be a tour de force that is very logically put forward.Indeed, although I have seen allusions elsewhere, this is the first place that I have seen such a thorough denunciation of how cheap oil underlies everything else including suburbia and Wal-Mart cf. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.I am also quite impressed by the author's logical discourse on how communities have sacrificed their future coherence and sustainability for the sake of a few dollars savings on Wal-Mart products.

There is a great deal in the book that is covered more ably and in more detail by the other 600+ books I have reviewed at Amazon, and indeed, replicates much of what I write about in The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption but, I have to say, with a different twist that I admire very much.

I find the author's exploration of how cheap fuel led to wasted water, helping create cities and mega-agricultural endeavors that reduced our water at the same time that we consumed centuries worth of unrenewable fossil fuel, quite alarming.

I sum the book up on page 180 by writing in the bottom margin: "Fuel Drop + Climate Change + Disease + Water Drop = Great Depression."

I disagree with those that consider the book excessively alarmist, and agree with those that find fault with the author's documentation.An index and an annotated bibliography would have doubled the value of this book.The author is clearly well read, logical, and articulate--an unkind person would say that he has also been lazy in not substantiating his arguments with what intelligence readers value most: an index and a good bibliography that respects the contributions of others to the argument.

The author in passing makes a good argument against our current educational system, and I for one believe that we need to get back to a system of life-long education accompanied by early apprenticeship and real-world employment and grounding for our young people.What passes for education today is actually child care, and the smartest young people, like my teen-ager, consider it to be nothing more than a prison.

On balance, a solid 4, a solid buy, and worth its weight in gold if you act on his advice and begin planning an exit strategy from those places likely to run out of water, fuel, and transport options in the next 20 years.



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Review of Reckless!: How Debt, Deregulation, and Dark Money Nearly Bankrupted America (And How We Can Fix It!) (Hardcover)

Dorgan argues that leaving the free market unchecked is like driving a car without brakes, and asks "if these companies (banks, auto firms, AIG, etc.) are too big to be allowed to fail, why weren't they big enough to be regulated?" Now with the latest takeovers, the U.S. has four banks controlling one-third of all our bank deposits.

By January, 2009, over $8 trillion of taxpayer money had been used to help big financial institutions. During that period some of the same institutions were paying big bonuses - overall, they're year-end results totaled $35 billion of losses, and $18 billion in bonuses.

One of the worst decisions that contributed to today's reckless finance was the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act that repealed the ban on banks investing in securities and real estate. (Earlier legislation that allowed S&Ls to invest in higher risk real estate brought the 1987 S&L Crisis.) Senator Phil Gramm was the major Congressional force behind the change, but it also was supported by President Clinton (signed it), and made worse by President Bush II's choice of willfully blind regulators and a Federal Reserve Chairman (Alan Greenspan) blinded by the ideal of a self-regulating market. Then in 2004, Henry Paulson, Chairman of Goldman Sachs, helped convince the SEC to allow banks to use greater leverage.

Other problems include "no-doc" and teaser (no payments for up to a year, ARMs, interest-only) loans, brain-dead rating firms, low Federal Reserve interest rates (partly to counteract an earlier recession and the inflationary effect of both an Iraq War and major tax cuts), and remarketing of sub-prime loans that appeared to spin gold out of chaff.

Home-equity helped fuel personal consumption in the middle of the new millennium's first decade - $310 billion/year from 2004-2006. Government borrowing exceeded $2 trillion in 2008, and it's expected to be higher in 2009. Meanwhile, we continue with $700-800 billion in trade deficits as well. Dorgan contends this cannot continue.

Government regulators in the last ten years sat by while Enron, Madoff, Tyco, and the MCI WorldCom scandals blew up. Commodities trading is another scandal waiting to explode - Brian Hunter controlled 70% of natural gas on the NYMEX in 2006, without CFTC awareness. Dorgan also attributes last-year's $147/barrel oil to speculators running amok, but offers no substantiation.

The top 1% of households own 38% of the nation's wealth; the bottom 60% own 4%. Warren Buffett pays 17.7% of his annual income in payroll and income taxes, vs. 32.9% as the average of others in his office. The rich should pay more - per both Buffett and Dorgan.

Corporations, until 2004, bought and leased back municipal assets (eg. sewer systems) to allow them to depreciate the assets and lower their taxes. Corporations now only pay about 10% of federal taxes.

Dorgan says he's thinking about a VAT - the advantage is that it can be eliminated for exported products and would make U.S. companies more competitive. (The bad news is that a VAT is VERY regressive in its impact.)

Dorgan realizes we're in a bit of bind regarding the millions of illegals already in the U.S. Before solving that problem, he believes we need to secure our borders and go after companies that hire illegals. Dorgan has nothing to say about curing our job outsourcing problem - that was covered in his prior book, "Take This Job and Shove It."

My one criticism of "Reckless" is Dorgan's treatment of health care. Dorgan does recognized the need for reform, and suggests greater emphasis on prevention, improved personal responsibility (don't smoke, better diets), lower drug prices (aka other nations), less drug advertising, etc. Dorgan, however, doesn't seem to realize that normal workforce-turnover, coupled with a multi-payer system, undermines financial incentives for prevention. In addition, he doesn't come out for a single-payer system - others claim it would reduce expenditures by about 10% (less overheads), nor does he bring up the enormous regional variation in health care practice that, if reduced, could save billions and billions more.



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Review of Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise (Hardcover)

This book is apparently the third in a series. The first two, Covenant with Black America and The Covenant in Action were aimed at the African-American community (of which I am not a member). This third--and final?--in the series is aimed at a larger audience, I'm assuming because we now have an African-American president who is accountable to all of us. The book tells real-life stories in areas of concern like health care, education, the economy, etc.; sets out various possible solutions; then provides a checklist for how each player--including we individuals--can be held accountable.

I didn't take much away from this book, but to be fair, it had a lot to do with the timing of my reading. First, in the midst of this severe economic downturn, tragic tales like people losing their medical insurance elicited not my usual empathy, but a panicking fear about my own situation. Second, I didn't see any of the authors' solutions being particularly workable, and third, the list of things individuals could do were pretty much the same as they've always been--call your Congressman, vote, get involved. Nice when you are talking about saving the park down the street from development, but paltry in light of the issues we face today.

At another time I may well have appreciated this book. Reading it now I simply found it depressing.Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise



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Review of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989 (Hardcover)

The Age of Reagan: 1980-1989 is a fascinating account of the Reagan era and the Reagan presidency--a great read. Here are not only the policies (both domestic and foreign) but the politics, the insider debates and the conflicts.

Many people--including some committed liberal scholars Hayward quotes--think more highly of Reagan now than they did when he left office, for two reasons the author notes:

1) The "dramatic and unexpected end of the Cold War, and the demise of the Soviet Union, for which even Reagan's critics allow him a substantial role in the outcome" and

2) "the revelation of Reagan's extensive writings--radio addresses, letters, speeches, and finally his personal diary--which displayed a lively and informed mind and a greater depth of character than hitherto imagined. . .At long last we had found the rest of him."

Hayward makes good use of Reagan's own writings, which became available between 2001 and 2007, integrating them into the narrative of the broad sweep of the history of these years and giving us the flavor of Reagan's own thinking, decision-making, and sometimes frustrations with the foreign and domestic personalities with whom he was dealing.

Since Hayward wrote, even more of "the rest of him" has become available through recently declassified minutes of many of the National Security Council meetings Reagan chaired.

Hayward acknowledges that he's always been sympathetic to Reagan, but notes that he doesn't shrink from reporting weaknesses or criticizing errors or mistakes.I've found this claim fulfilled as I read the text.Hayward also gives us considerable insights into the political philosophies and debates that continue to this day.The best book yet about the Reagan era.




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