Category: Reading

Books: How the Corporations Pwned Us All

After listening to Everything Incorporated | WBUR and NPR – On Point with Tom Ashbrook, i really want to read “Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back” (Douglas Rushkoff), which sounds like a good companion read to “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (Naomi Klein) and her earlier book, “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies” (Klein Naomi).

The Castle in the Forest

Norman Mailer’s last book, The Castle in the Forest, released before his death this year, is a portrait of the young Adolf Hitler and his family, told from a most unusual perspective: the demon who is assigned to cultivate Hitler as a “client.” Lots to think about in this book: the battle of good and evil, religion, and the scary parallels between modern events and the horrible conflicts of the last century.

The Savage Wars of Peace

In the book The Savage Wars Of Peace: Small Wars And The Rise Of American Power , Max Boot traces the US use of small expiditionary forces to influence foreign policy, starting from the Barbary Pirate wars to current activities in the middle east. Although he is an unabashed champion of the application of American imperial power, he does note the many ways that we’ve forgotten the value of small-unit counterinsurgency warfare — and this was written before Iraq turned into a quagmire. Of interest to Cpt. JM, perhaps.

Posted on December 14, 2007 1:03 AM