Books Folder - 2008 onwards!!!

[Lalmohan]

Just read "a case of exploding mangoes" by Moh'd Hanif

a fictional account of a young pak air force officer caught up in an intrigue surrounding Zia's plane crash

very funny and witty - but highly revealing about the mentality of the pak generals (and paks in general) and their paranoia about security, india, power, civilians, etc. paints a very unflattering picture of the venal, corrupt and sadistic nature of pakistan under Zia and continuing to this day. describes quite lucidly how the last vestiges of secularism evaporated under the unquestioning tide of 'more islam must be good'

questions many of the morals and principles of the current pak state, and its sheer callous brutality towards its own citizens

worth a read to understand where these guy's heads are at

[svinayak]

Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire
by Alex Abella (Author)

# Hardcover: 400 pages
# Publisher: Harcourt; 1 edition (May 12, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0151010811
# ISBN-13: 978-0151010813

When President Eisenhower famously warned against the military-industrial complex, he largely meant the Department of Defense–funded programs of the RAND Corporation. Abella (coauthor, Shadow Enemies: Hitler's Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States) presents a sometimes dry but thorough account of this think-tank, which he asserts not only played a key role in the U.S.'s biggest foreign misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq but also, through its development of rational choice theory, has affected every aspect of our lives, not necessarily for the better. Abella, working with the cooperation of the usually secretive organization, details RAND'S history, from analyst Herman Kahn's energetic support of a virtually unrestrained nuclear arms buildup to the organization's role in sparking America's involvement in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq. But even more, Abella says, RAND theorists' notion that self-interest, rather than collective interests like religion, governs human behavior has influenced every aspect of our society, from health care to tax policy. The RAND Corporation continues today—as brilliant, controversial and, in Abella's view, amoral as ever—with the complicity of all Americans. If we look in the mirror, Abella concludes, we will see that RAND is every one of us. The question is, what are we going to do about it? 8 pages of b&w photos. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews
A crisp history of the world's most influential think tank, which the Soviet publication Pravda once called the "academy of science and death."

The Manhattan Project proved to the military during World War II the efficacy of assistance from independent civilian scientists. Seeking to maintain that link and understanding the need to cope with peacetime threats to national security, Air Force hot shots, including the legendary Generals Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold and Curtis LeMay, helped to found RAND (for "research and development"). Throughout the next half-century, RAND's intellectual gunslingers--its researchers and advisors have won 27 Nobel Prizes--expanded their role and helped set large portions of America's military and political agenda. RAND's detractors accuse the corporation of subordinating morality to the achievement of U.S. government policy, of operating wholly without conscience and of practically inventing the Cold War. Los Angeles Times contributor and novelist Abella (Final Acts, 2000, etc.) takes a swipe at the problematic implications for the country of RAND's seeming amorality, but he deals far more successfully with the corporation's history, particularly the early years, and the procession of larger-than-life personalities who passed through RAND's portals and who influenced the nation's thinking far more than any single policy paper the institute produced. RAND's luminaries have included the brilliant mathematician John von Neumann, thermonuclear war expert (and model for Dr. Strangelove) Herman Kahn, national-security expert and Cold War strategist Albert Wohlstetter, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and even the humorist Leo Rosten. Its theorists have contributed to our everyday lexicon such words and phrases as "fail-safe," "doomsday machine," "systems analysis," "futurology," "zero-sum game" and "prisoner's dilemma." How many enemy factories can we destroy with the kind of aircraft we possess? After a nuclear exchange, would the living truly envy the dead? Paid to think the unthinkable, RAND's analysts and their mission come off here as simultaneously marvelous and horrible.

As good a look as we're likely to get about an organization where, Ellsberg notwithstanding, keeping secrets is second nature.
After my late friend Kevin's disturbing RAND conference room memorial service, I simply had to read it cover-to-cover on the flight. It took me until somewhere over Ohio. I really could not put the book down. The desire to reduce all questions to a matter of numbers was one I had come across last week in my late father's 1941 diary. It turned out we had moved into a home of one of the the founders of RAND--J. Richard Goldstein--when we arrived in Santa Monica.

Coincidentally, a high school friend had been the son of RAND researcher Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame. The cousin of someone I know worked for RAND after leaving the CIA. The girlfriend of another cousin of someone I know worked at RAND while on leave from the State Department. When I saw the book in the bookstore, I realized that I had known practically nothing about the "mother of all think-tanks." From the book I found out that the Hudson Institute was a ******** child of RAND, set up after Herman Kahn left the mother ship. The Albert Wohlstetter room at AEI is named after a RAND guru. And almost everyone who is anyone in Washington these days--especially the architects of America's Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires--seem to have some sort of RAND connection. Indians should read it since the entire jihad movement and indoctrination of Pakistan population is the work of brainchild of this institution


Yet so far as I know, there had been no book about RAND, until this. It explained a great deal, and I recommend it highly. It is about the possibilities--and limits--of operations research and systems analysis. Reading "Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire" helped me better understand the sudden and tragic death of my friend...

Must reading for anyone interested in the ways of Washington, or what President Eisenhower (apparently with RAND in mind) called "the military-industrial complex."
Great introduction to Rand history - the author doesn't get bogged down in high theories or boring political history. This book is easy to read and though he saves his punch for the end (basically that Rand's love affair with "rational choice theory" pretty much defined the second half of the 20th century, including cold war policy and doomsday plans, Reaganomics, so yes, the theory is really important, but "rational choice" totally fails to be politically sensible or human, pretty much), it is just plain fascinating to see how many fingers in how many pies the Rand (Research And No Development - hilarious!) octopus has had, and how many contemporary figures in Iraq, including Richard Perle, Donald Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Condi Rice, have had ties to Rand.

First of all, the book is about a lot more than foreign policy, but that's what I find most interesting about RAND and what I think really shines in this compelling history. Yeah, yeah, there's social science that RAND did, too, and that's good to know, but where the writing really comes alive is with the great larger than life characters who were at the center of the Cold War -- people like Albert Wohlstetter, Herman Kahn, Bernard Brodie, Paul Wolfowitz, Daniel Ellsberg, Donald Rumsfeld, and on and on. A lot of the material has been glancingly covered elsewhere, but never has one book presented the whole story. And with the whole story in one place, it becomes shockingly clear what enormous influence RAND's "soldiers of reason" had in every administration for over 60 years.

It's a relief that for most of the book Abella just presents history -- story after story of all the players and their deeds (and more important, their incredibly influential ideas). It's also a relief that at the end Abella sums up the achievements and failings of RAND's systems analysis and approach to problems by stating: "the problem with rational choice theory is that it is not rational. It fails to comprehend the world as it is..." Exactly. One need look no further than Viet Nam (or Iraq!) for proof.

A very good secret history of American foreign policy during and after the Cold War.

Do you remember Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove? Way too crazy to be real, right? Well, in fact, no: the famous Peter Sellers character was based on a real person, and that person, a mad genius by the name of Herman Kahn, is one of the key characters in this fascinating book by Alex Abella. Kahn and a bunch of like-minded people (extremely smart, but somehow missing any kind of ethical dimension to their thinking) formed the core of the RAND Corporation during the Cold War, and the ideas they came up with arguably have shaped the world we live in today more than anybody else's. Failsafe, mutually assured destruction, anybody? This is larger-than-life stuff, so it's not surprising that Abella's history of RAND - from its inception at the end of World War II to its providing of the ideological underpinnings for the invasion of Iraq - is not just informative, but also entertaining and scary in equal measure. Abella convincingly demonstrates that there are two big problems with RAND and, by extension, with America's military and foreign policy: first, even though the think tank wielded huge influence in every administration since 1945, it has never been accountable to an electorate. Second, and more crucially still, RANDites for too long believed that human behavior was basically predictable: faced with a choice, every human would be rational about that choice and pick what was in his/her best interest. Too bad that, outside the ivory tower, things haven't been quite as straightforward...

[svinayak]

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
by Rick Perlstein (Author)


# Hardcover: 896 pages
# Publisher: Scribner; 1st Scribner Hardcover Ed edition (May 13, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0743243021
# ISBN-13: 978-0743243025

How did we go from Lyndon Johnson's landslide Democratic victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon's equally lopsided Republican reelection only eight years later? The years in between were among the most chaotic in American history, with an endless and unpopular war, riots, assassinations, social upheaval, Southern resistance, protests both peaceful and armed, and a "Silent Majority" that twice elected the central figure of the age, a brilliant politician who relished the battles of the day but ended them in disgrace. In Nixonland Rick Perlstein tells a more familiar story than the one he unearthed in his influential previous book, Before the Storm, which argued that the stunning success of modern conservatism was founded in Goldwater's massive 1964 defeat. But he makes it fresh and relentlessly compelling, with obsessive original research and a gleefully slashing style--equal parts Walter Winchell and Hunter S. Thompson--that's true to the times. Perlstein is well known as a writer on the left, but his historian's empathies are intense and unpredictable: he convincingly channels the resentment and rage on both sides of the battle lines and lets neither Nixon's cynicism nor the naivete of liberals like New York mayor John Lindsay off the hook. And while election-year readers will be reminded of how much tamer our times are, they'll also find that the echoes of the era, and its persistent national divisions, still ring loud and clear. --Tom Nissley

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Perlstein, winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, provides a compelling account of Richard Nixon as a masterful harvester of negative energy, turning the turmoil of the 1960s into a ladder to political notoriety. Perlstein's key narrative begins at about the time of the Watts riots, in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson's overwhelming 1964 victory at the polls against Goldwater, which left America's conservative movement broken. Through shrewdly selected anecdotes, Perlstein demonstrates the many ways Nixon used riots, anti–Vietnam War protests, the drug culture and other displays of unrest as an easy relief against which to frame his pitch for his narrow win of 1968 and landslide victory of 1972. Nixon spoke of solid, old-fashioned American values, law and order and respect for the traditional hierarchy. In this way, says Perlstein, Nixon created a new dividing line in the rhetoric of American political life that remains with us today. At the same time, Perlstein illuminates the many demons that haunted Nixon, especially how he came to view his political adversaries as enemies of both himself and the nation and brought about his own downfall.

This is a four-part story of Richard Nixon's reign. Each section is devoted to one of the four elections of 1966, 1968, 1970 and 1972, and thus it is a political history that attempts to capture and make sense of the temper of those turbulent and changing times as seen primarily through Richard Nixon's character. In this sense it parallels Oliver Stone's biopic called "Nixon."

When Nixon prepared to make his second run at the Presidency, Vietnam had ignited a rage in the nation's young. This rage intersected with the cultural cross currents of the quickening pace of the civil rights movement and the rise of leftwing radical groups. Many conservative whites thought the wheels were coming off the nation morally and culturally.

Nixon, seen by many at the time (and since by historians), as a tragic but brilliant figure, wore his deep felt hurt, anger and anxieties on his sleeve for all to see, but despite this he was judged (and proved to be) a smart political tactician. Perlstein's story centers on Nixon's character and how it proved to be a critical factor in shaping both domestic and foreign policy during his reign and in the process being responsible for making fundamental realignments in American domestic politics as well as changing the course of U.S. foreign policy with his ground breaking overture to China.

During the first part (1966), reading the tea leaves left by Reagan who had recently won the California governorship on a new "law and order" platform, and encouraged by a resounding defeat of a host of liberal LBJ legislation -- by essentially the same "law and order coalition" -- Nixon could see where the future was headed and plotted a course that he hope would set the troubled nation on a more even keel and get him elected in the process.

He did indeed win in 1968 (the second part of the book), with a narrow victory ensured only by the reactionary coalition of former Southern Dixicrats and incensed culturally conservative Republicans -- the very coalition he had set his mind on colonizing. Nixon saw that this "new reactionary white power" was going to be the Republican ticket into the future, and the answer to his prayers for a more robust if not a permanent republican congressional majority. So he put his plan into action, and succeeded in effect breaking up the liberal coalition that had existed since FDR's presidency.

Nixon's "so-called" Southern strategy, as immoral and as illegitimate as it may have been (its subtext was clearly to play the race card), lives on even in today's "Red and Blue" political alignments. And although I was not a Nixon lover, Perlstein has given Nixon his just due, and the man, his character flaws and all, reveal that he was indeed a shrewd American politician.

I've read hundreds of books about the 1960's (and the early 1970's, often confused with the 60's) and this is the best. If you fell asleep in 1965 and just woke up and wanted to understand politics and culture today, I'd tell you to read Nixonland before I introduced you to "blogs" or even the 1990's. It takes time to make sense of such a defining era. It's a heck of a page turner too, no one ever said that the period between 1965 & 1973 was boring! Perlstein does a great job of weaving 1960's popular culture into the story but not in a trivializing way.

Even if you are, say, 25, you live in Nixonland too. Like me you grew up with music from Nixonland, TV shows from Nixonland, a culture from Nixonland and, of course, politics shaped and defined by Nixonland. I agree with the author that we are still fighting pretty much the same battles that were first thrust upon the national stage in the form of Richard Nixon and others like RFK, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and George McGovern who make up the characters in this grand story, all the wierder because its all true. I honestly think, however, that the 2008 election might just mark the beginning of a new era. Some of these battles are getting old. I think we are heading out of Nixonland but we are not there yet. If you want to know where we are and how we, as a country, got here, Nixonland is the place to start.

[svinayak]

Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
by Ahmed Rashid (Author)


# Hardcover: 544 pages
# Publisher: Viking Adult (June 3, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0670019704
# ISBN-13: 978-0670019700

Starred Review. Long overshadowed by the Iraq War, the ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan and Central Asia finally receives a searching retrospective as Rashid (Taliban) surveys the region to reveal a thicket of ominous threats and lost opportunities—in Pakistan, a rickety dictatorship colludes with militants, and Afghanistan's weak government is besieged by warlords, an exploding drug economy and a powerful Taliban insurgency. The author blames the unwillingness of American policymakers to shoulder the burden of nation building. According to Rashid, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and subsequently refused to commit the forces and money needed to rebuild it; instead the U.S. government made corrupt alliances with warlords to impose a superficial calm, while continuing to ignore the Pakistani government's support of the Taliban and the other Islamic extremists who have virtually taken over Pakistan's western provinces. With his unparalleled access to sources—I constantly berated [Afghan President] Karzai for his failure to understand the usefulness of political parties—Rashid is an authoritative guide to the region's politics and his is an insightful, at times explosive, indictment of the U.S. government's hand in the region's degeneration. (June)

Indians should read the chapter on India-Pakistan Crisis to get a new version of the 2001-2002 crisis. Paki interpretation of Mush visit in 2001 and Indian GOI actions have different meaning


The #1 New York Times bestselling author provides a shocking analysis of the crisis in Pakistan and the renewed radicalism threatening Afghanistan and the West.

Ahmed Rashid is “Pakistan’s best and bravest reporter” (Christopher Hitchens). His unique knowledge of this vast and complex region allows him a panoramic vision and nuance that no Western writer can emulate.

His book Taliban first introduced American readers to the brutal regime that hijacked Afghanistan and harbored the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Now, Rashid examines the region and the corridors of power in Washington and Europe to see how the promised nation building in these countries has pro-gressed. His conclusions are devastating: An unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan, a renewed al’ Qaeda profiting from a booming opium trade, and a Taliban resurgence and reconquest. While Iraq continues to attract most of American media and military might, Rashid argues that Pakistan and Afghanistan are where the conflict will finally be played out and that these failing states pose a graver threat to global security than the Middle East.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and the crisis in Pakistan are only the beginning. Rashid assesses what her death means for the region and the future. Rashid has unparalleled access to the figures in this global drama, and provides up-to-the-minute analysis better than anyone else. Descent Into Chaos will do for Central Asia what Thomas Rick’s Fiasco did for Iraq — offer a blistering critique of the Bush administration and an impassioned call to correct our failed strategy in the region.


The author of this book is based in Pakistan and is one of the leading journalists in the world covering Pakistan and Afghanistan. You may not agree with everything he says but you should pay close attention because he has sources throughout the region. One of his main points is that America has failed miserably at becoming informed about local realities and is trying to impose a vague concept of a "war on terror" on long term regional political realities that are far more complex. For example, how many Americans understand that the "border" between Pakistan and Afghanistan is the "Durand Line" an absurd creation of British imperialism. This left a good part of the Pashtuns living in Pakistan instead of Afghanistan. You might also want to read Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, the author's excellent history of the Taliban. Another good book is Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan

America needs a greater sense of humility in dealing with Central Asia. Afghanistan is one of the oldest places in the world. Alexander the Great campaigned in Afghanistan. There is good military history of the place called Afghanistan: A Military History From Alexander The Great To The Fall Of The Taliban I have more books in my Listmania list on Central Asia for those who are interested.


This timely and critical book gives and experts overview of the current situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan and should serve as a wake uo call for policy makers interested in the region and people interested in the threat that instability and renewed Islamism pose. Here we are walked through the current unending war in Afghanistan and given a tour of the history of the American relationship with Pakistan before the author plunges into the nitty gritty of what is taking place. The book examines both the opium crop in Afghanistan and the renewel of the Taliban and their offensives against coalition and government troops. We are given an account of the rise of Islamism and the endurance of Al Quiada in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan and the coming apart of the Musharreff consensus in the wake of the death of Bhutto.

As a last vignette we are taken to Uzbekistan where the author asks 'who lost this country?' In fact this last part is where 'central asia' comes into play but it should have been beefed up. Instead of one chapter detaling the problems in Uzbekistan the book should have included discussions of the rest of 'Central Asia' which appears in the subtitle. What of Kyrgizistan and Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and the threats that might emerge from them?

The other subtitle is the question of 'nation-building' and here we are asked to consider the 'failure' of American arms, diplomacy and money. In Pakistan it is not a question so much of failure but rather of the inability of the U.S to invade the parts of that country which have been taken over by Al Quaida. In fact Pakistan is failing not only in the NWFP tribal areas but also in Baluchistan. Afghanistan, once a success, is being overun and the opium crop is funding the thugs turned drug barons turned Islamists. A short chapter on the nuclear issue also details some of the threats from increased instability or the fall of Pakistan.

An important and well written work.


Rashid tells us that in the first few years after the U.S. went into Afghanistan, 905 of the population welcomed foreign troops and aid workers. We failed to take advantage of it, however. Meanwhile, in Pakistan a major political crisis has arisen along with a spread of Islamic fundamentalism, dictatorships rule the five independent states of Central Asia (the "stans") since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, and an Islamic extremism thrives underground in those nations. Anti-Americanism (created by our 2007 support of Musharraf) is undermining Pakistani's reaction to democracy, modernization, and the struggle against extremism, and the U.S. attack on Iraq helped convince Musharraf that the U.S. was not serious about stabilizing the area - hence it was safer for Pakistan to clandestinely give refuge to the Taliban.

Rashid asserts that the U.S. made the same mistakes in Iraq that it had in Afghanistan - not enough troops, no postwar planning to resuscitate the areas, and no coherent strategy (reviving the warlords in Afghanistan, dismantling the army and bureaucracy in Iraq). Most experts believed rebuilding Afghanistan would cost $4-5 billion/year for ten years - cheap, compared to Iraq.

Part of the U.S. problem is that we don't work well with others. We have never taken part in U.N. peacekeeping operations (though have funded and otherwise supported many) - out of 15 in 2007 involving over 100,000, only ten U.S. soldiers were involved. (Pakistan provided 10,000.) Another part is that we're spread too thin - over 250,000 troops on 725 bases in 38 countries BEFORE 9/11.

[ramana]

Christoph Luxenberg (ps.) Die syro-aramaeische Lesart des Koran; Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Qur’ānsprache.
A German study of origins of Quran.

Not in the history of commentary on the Qur’ān has a work like this been produced. Similar works can only be found in the body of text-critical scholarship on the Bible. From its method to its conclusions on the language and content of the Qur’ān, Luxenberg’s study has freed scholars from the problematic tradition of the Islamic commentators. Whether or not Luxenberg is correct in every detail, with one book he has brought exegetical scholarship of the Qur’ān to the “critical turn” that biblical commentators took more than a century ago. This work demonstrates to all exegetes of the Qur'an the power of the scientific method of philology and its value in producing a clearer text of the Qur'an. Scholars of the first rank will now be forced to question the assumption that, from a philological perspective, the Islamic tradition is mostly reliable, as though it were immune to the human error that pervades the transmission of every written artifact. If biblical scholarship is any indication, the future of Qur’ānic studies is more or less decided by this work.

[2] The book presents the thesis, sources, method, and examples of its application in eighteen sections. Sections one through ten cover the background, method, and the application of that method to unlocking the etymology and meaning of the word Qur’ān,1 which Luxenberg argues is the key to understanding the text as a whole. Sections eleven through eighteen follow the conclusions set out in the first half by arguing solutions to several problematic expressions throughout the text. These include lexical, morphological and syntactic problems that illustrate the basic principles underlying the many errors in the transmission of the Qur’ān (11-14) and the extension of the method to examine problems that create misunderstandings of thematic material throughout the text (15-16). Luxenberg then applies his conclusions to an exegesis of suras 108 and 96. A synopsis of the work follows in section 18.

[3] Luxenberg aims to make available a selection of findings from an ongoing investigation into the language of the Qur’ān so that a preliminary discussion about methods of text linguistics as well as about the implications of the findings of such methods on the content of the Qur’ān might begin without waiting for the complete work. This work is only a sketch, developed with a heuristic and supported by extensive evidence. Luxenberg is aware that many features of a standard philological presentation are missing. These he promises in the final study.

[4] In the Foreword, Luxenberg summarizes the cultural and linguistic importance of written Syriac for the Arabs and for the Qur’ān. At the time of Muhammad, Arabic was not a written language. Syro-Aramaic or Syriac was the language of written communication in the Near East from the second to the seventh centuries A.D. Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, was the language of Edessa, a city-state in upper Mesopotamia. While Edessa ceased to be a political entity, its language became the vehicle of Christianity and culture, spreading throughout Asia as far as Malabar and eastern China. Until the rise of the Qur’ān, Syriac was the medium of wider communication and cultural dissemination for Arameans, Arabs, and to a lesser extent Persians. It produced the richest literary expression in the Near East from the fourth century (Aphrahat and Ephraem) until it was replaced by Arabic in the seventh and eighth centuries. Of importance is that the Syriac – Aramaic literature and the cultural matrix in which that literature existed was almost exclusively Christian. Part of Luxenberg’s study shows that Syriac influence on those who created written Arabic was transmitted through a Christian medium, the influence of which was fundamental.

[5] Luxenberg then gives an etymology of the word “Syriac,” and notes that the language is mentioned with importance in the earliest hadīth literature which reports that Muhammad instructed his followers to know Syriac (as well as Hebrew). This can only be the case because these were the literary forerunners of written Arabic. Luxenberg conceived his study to test the following hypothesis: since written Syriac was the written language of the Arabs, and since it informed the cultural matrix of the Near East, much the same way that Akkadian did before it and Arabic after it, then it is very likely that Syriac exerted some influence on those who developed written Arabic. Luxenberg further proposes, that these Arabs were Christianized, and were participants in the Syriac Christian liturgy.

[6] Western scholars have since the nineteenth century been aware of the influence of foreign languages, particularly of the dialect of Aramaic called Syriac, on the vocabulary of the Qur’ān. Luxenberg assembles all of the pieces of this line of research into a systematic examination of the Arabic of the Qur’ān in order to provide a general solution to its many textual difficulties. The conclusions drawn about the source of the Qur’ān, its transmission history from Muhammad to cUthmān, and its thematic content rest on arguments drawn from evidence collected and examined through the tools of philological and text-critical methods. No part of the method rests on a blind acceptance of religious or traditional assumptions of any kind, especially with respect to the Arabian commentators. Until now, Western critical commentators of the first rank have not been critical enough in this regard and Luxenberg directly and indirectly through his conclusions proves that their trust was betrayed. Hence any argument that seeks to prove Luxenberg’s findings incorrect cannot assume that the earliest Arabian commentators understood correctly the grammar and lexicon of the Arabic of the Qur’ān. This is an important contribution of the study.

[7] Luxenberg then presents the Islamic tradition about the early transmission history of the Qur’ān. According to that tradition, khalifa cUthmān ibn cAffan (A.D. 644-656) first assembled into a single book the written record of the utterances of Muhammad (A.D. 570-632). The Qur’ān is the first book of the Arabic language of which scholars are aware. It is important because it is the basis for written Arabic, the language of a sophisticated Medieval civilization, and because for Muslims it is the source of all religious expression, theology, and law, and is held to be God’s revelation to Muhammad. For non-Muslims, it is an important literary artifact, and deserves to be studied from a historical as well as a philological perspective.

[8] It is the latter prespective that Luxenberg follows. Western commentators have followed Islamic tradition rather than used the reference tools and techniques of philological investigation. Luxenberg gives a brief description of the findings from important works on Qur’ānic philology in the West. Scholars have been increasingly aware of the presence in the Qur’ān of foreign terms and references to foreign historical events and that Aramaic dialects contributed most of these. However, because Western scholars maintained the technically outdated and unscientific approach of Islamic exegesis, the significance of these findings has had to wait until the present study.

[9] Section two is little more than a statement that Luxenberg’s study is independent of both Arabian as well as Western research precisely because his method does not rely on the explanations of the Arabian commentators, but rather on Arabic and Syriac lexical tools as well as comparative Semitic linguistics. His chief source among the Arabian commentators is the earliest commentary on the Qur’ān, that of Tabarī.2 Tabarī had no Arabic dictionary that he could consult, and so he had to rely on oral tradition and on commentators closer to the time of Muhammad whose lost works his citations in part preserve. The Lisān, the most extensive lexicon of the Arabic language,3 the Western translations and commentaries of Bell,4 Blachère,5 and Paret,6 the Syriac dictionaries of Payne Smith7 and Brockelmann,8 and the Vocabulaire Chaldéen – Arabique of Mannā9 are the other primary reference works.

[10] The use of these materials is placed in the service of the method in section three. Luxenberg states that the primary goal of the study was to clarify expressions that were unclear to the three Western commentators. The discovery of many Aramaisms led Luxenberg to check these in passages that were supposedly not contentious according to the Western exegetes. The examination of these passages was all the more justified when the explanations of the Arabian commentators (which the Western scholars largely followed) did not at all fit the context. For example, Tabarī did not have any lexicographical tools and only occasionally cites a verse from pre-Qur’ānic Arabic poetry as support for his interpretation of a given expression. In such cases the margin of error is wide because the context for these pre-Islamic poems is often difficult to ascertain. Even so, in many instances the Western commentators accept these explanations uncritically.

[11] Using his philological method Luxenberg attempts to establish the historical context for the Qur’ān in order to provide a systematic approach to solving text-critical problems. His base text is the canonical edition of the Qur’ān published in Cairo in 1923-24, taken without the vowel marks. The advantage of this edition over earlier ones is that it sought to base its readings on a comparison of earlier Arabic commentators. The most important feature of this work is that the redactors attempted to fix the diacritical points that distinguish between possible readings of a single letter. Luxenberg does in many cases emend these points, but does so following a clear and detailed method. When he has a clear choice between two variant readings, lectio difficilior prevails. Only when the context of an expression is manifestly unclear, and the Arabian commentators have no plausible explanation, does Luxenberg explore a solution that involves changing one or more diacritical points in the Cairene edition.

[12] Luxenberg clearly outlines the heuristic. Starting from those passages that are unclear to the Western commentators, the method runs as follows. First check if there is a plausible explanation in Tabarī that the Western commentators overlooked. If not, then check whether the Lisān records a meaning unknown to Tabarī and his earlier sources. If this turns up nothing, check if the Arabic expression has a homonymous root in Syriac with a different meaning which fits the context. In many cases, Luxenberg found that the Syriac word with its meaning makes more sense. It is to be noted, that these first steps of the heuristic do not emend the consonantal text of the Cairene edition of the Qur’ān.

[13] If these steps do not avail, then see if changing one or more diacritical marks results in an Arabic expression that makes more sense. Luxenberg found that many cases are shown to be misreadings of one consonant for another. If not, then change the diacritical point(s) and then check if there is a homonymous Syriac root with a plausible meaning.

[14] If there is still no solution, check if the Arabic is a calque of a Syriac expression. Calques are of two kinds: morphological and semantic. A morphological calque is a borrowing that preserves the structure of the source word but uses the morphemes of the target language. For example, German Fernsehen is just the morphemes tele and visio of English “television” translated into their German equivalents. A semantic calque assigns the borrowed meaning to a word that did not have the meaning previously, but which is otherwise synonymous with the source word.

[15] In section four, Luxenberg presents the development of the Arabic script and its central importance to the transmission history of the Qur’ān. He demonstrates that there were originally only six letters to distinguish some twenty-six sounds. The letters were gradually distinguished by points written above or below each letter. The Arabic alphabet used in the Qur’ān began as a shorthand, a mnemonic device not intended as a complete key to the sounds of the language. Luxenberg concludes that the transmission of the text from Muhammad was not likely an oral transmission by memory, contrary to one dominant claim of Islamic tradition.

[16] That tradition preserves different stories about the oral transmission of the Qur’ān and Luxenberg assembles these in section five. According to Islamic tradition, the Qur’ān was transmitted in part by an uninterrupted chain of "readers," Arabic qurrā’, contemporaries of Muhammad such as ibn cAbbas (d. 692) and maintained by such early authorities as Anas ibn Mālik (d. 709). Contradicting this is another tradition, that cUthmān obtained the "leaves" of the Qur’ān from Muhammad's widow Hafsa, and assembled them into a codex. The Islamic tradition is unable to pinpoint when the diacritical points were finally "fixed," a process that unfolded over three hundred years, according to Blachère. The reason for the difficulty in tracing the development of the Qur’ān before cUthmān is, as Tabarī points out, that cUthmān destroyed all manuscripts with variant readings of the consonantal text which disagreed with his final recension.

[17] In section six Luxenberg presents the Islamic tradition derived from Muhammad himself concerning the indeterminate nature of the Qur’ān's consonantal text, of which two stories are recorded by Tabarī. The gist of these is that Muhammad sanctioned any reading of the text that did not blatantly change a curse into a blessing or vice-versa. Luxenberg argues that these obviously later stories reflect what must be a faint recollection of the indeterminacy of the Arabic alphabet.

[18] In section seven, Luxenberg outlines how Islamic tradition resolved the doubts due to Muhammad's “flexibility” concerning the text that arose among the first commentators. In this section, Luxenberg applies his heuristic method on the Qur’ān to show that the Qur’ān itself gives evidence that the tradition of the seven readings, Arabic sabcat ahruf, which were permitted to Muhammad out of recognition of the many dialects of Arabic, is closely connected with the seven vowel signs of Estrangeli, the writing system developed by speakers of East Syriac. This system uses dots above and below the letters, similar to the dots used in Arabic to distinguish consonants. Tabarī also knows of the tradition that there were five readings, which he suggests correspond to the five vowel signs of West Syriac. The vowel signs of the West Syriac system are the source of the three vowel signs used in Classical Arabic.

[19] The rest of the section draws on personal names of Biblical origin in the Qur’ān to demonstrate that the so-called Arabic matres lectionis, 'alif, wāw, and yā, must also be polyvalent. Luxenberg points out that Islamic tradition admits a reading of the mater for long /ā/ in certain instances as /ē/ because this pronunciation was a peculiarity of the Arabic of Mecca. Luxenberg shows that the term harf, “sign” must also carry a meaning synonymous to qirā’at, "(way of) reading" and that this is not only supplying the vowels in an unvocalized text, but also supplying the diacritical points that distinguish consonants. It is only gradually that these diacritical points became fixed so that consonants came to have just one reading. This process of determining the value of each letter of the Qur’ān unfolded over some three hundred years. This is known from the oldest manuscripts of the Qur’ān which do not have the diacritical points distinguishing readings of a single consonant. By the time these became commonly used, Arabian commentators were no longer aware that many words were either straight Aramaic or were calques peculiar to Meccan Arabic. From this resulted the difficulties that the Qur’ān posed to even the earliest Arabian commentators.

[20] Section eight briefly outlines the difficulties facing a critical translator. Luxenberg agrees with Paret's general assessment of the difficulties, which include many unclear words and expressions, contradictory explanations in the Arabian tradition, and lack of a textus receptus with fixed diacritical points, such as for the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, even the earliest Islamic commentators are divided over many passages and offer sometimes over a dozen possible interpretations, many mutually exclusive and equally plausible.

[21] Section nine discusses the proposition, which the Qur’ān itself asserts and which is a basic element of Islam, that the Qur’ān was revealed in Arabic. In particular, the proposition that the origin of the Qur’ān, the umm kitāb (lit. “mother of [the] book”), is in heaven or with God and is the direct and immediate pre-image of the Arabic text presents the strongest dogmatic challenge to Luxenberg’s assertion that the Arabic of the Qur’ān is in large measure not Arabic at all, at least not in the sense the Arabian commentators understood it. The language of the Qur’ān is the Arabic dialect of the tribe of Muhammad, the Quraysh, who were located in Mecca. This does not rule out the possibility that this dialect was heavily influenced by Aramaic, and Syriac in particular. Luxenberg maintains that the Islamic tradition alludes to such an influence. Tabarī follows the tradition attributed to Muhammad that a scholar must seek wisdom "be it in China" and exhorts the philologists of the Qur’ān, the ahl al-lisān, to seek sound philological evidence from wherever it may come in order that the Qur’ān be clearly explained to all. Luxenberg undertakes in the subsequent chapters to mine the wisdom of this advice.

[22] Luxenberg proceeds in section ten to the heart of the matter: an analysis of the word “Qur’ān.” He sets out the argument that qur’ān derives from the Syriac qeryānā, a technical term from the Christian liturgy that means "lectionary," the fixed biblical readings used at the Divine Liturgy throughout the year. His claim rests on variations in the spelling of the word attested in early manuscripts. The word qeryānā had been written without hamza by Muhammad, according to one early witness and Luxenberg argues that this reflects a Syriac influence. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad's dialect pronounced the hamza, the glottal stop, "weak." Indeed, the arabophone Aramaic Christians of Syria and Mesopotamia pronounce the hamza in the same way, approximately /y/. Furthermore, the Arabic-Syriac lexica which preserve several pre-Islamic variant readings of Arabic words, give for the Syriac word qeryānā both qur’ān as well as quryān. Luxenberg posits the development of the spelling of this word as follows: qeryān > qurān, written without 'alif, then qurān written with 'alif, and finally qur’ān, with an intrusive hamza. The commentators were no longer aware that yā' could represent /ā/, a use extensively attested in the writing of third-weak verbs. The rest of the section presents clarifications of other unclear passages where the obscurity arose from the same phenomenon, sometimes directly, and sometimes in conjunction with other ambiguities in the writing system, such as mispointing tā' for yā' and then applying the same derivation.

[23] The section concludes by demonstrating that the technical meaning of "lectionary" is preserved in the word qur’ān. Most striking is the conclusion that the term umm kitāb, an aramaism, must be a written source and that the Qur’ān was never intended to replace this written source. One might complain that the details of the argument for the reading of suras 12:1-2 and 3:7 are squeezed into footnotes, but nevertheless the argument is clear. Luxenberg proves that the term qur’ān itself is the key to unlocking the passages that have given commentators in and outside of the tradition frustration. If quryān means “lectionary,” and if the text itself claims to be a clarification of an earlier text, then that earlier text must be written in another language. The only candidate is the Old and New Testament in Syriac, the Peshitta. Hence the influence of Aramaic on the Arabic of Muhammad has an identifiable, textual origin. At the very end of the work, Luxenberg makes a compelling argument that sura 108 is a close allusion to the Peshitta of 1 Peter 5:8-9. Indeed this sura, which is only three lines long, is one of the most difficult passages for the Arabian as well as the Western commentators. Luxenberg shows why: it is composed of transcriptions into Arabic writing of the Syriac New Testament text, i.e., there is almost no “Arabic” in the sura. These are “revealed” texts, and insofar as the Qur’ān contains quotations or paraphrases of them, the Qur’ān is also “revealed.”

[24] Many dialects of Arabic existed at the time of Muhammad. In the ten places where the Qur’ān claims to have been written in Arabic, Luxenberg shows first that these passages have grammatical forms which are difficult for the commentators and have varying interpretations among the translators. He notes that in sura 41:44, the Arabic fassala means “to divide,” but the context here requires "make distinct" or better "interpret." Nowhere else does the Arabic word have this meaning, and the Syriac-Arabic lexica do not give the one as a translation for the other; tarjama (a direct borrowing from Syriac) is the usual Arabic word for "interpret." However, the Syriac praš / parreš can mean both "divide" as well as "interpret" (like Hebrew hibdīl; also this is an example of a “semantic calque” mentioned above). Tabarī too understands fassala to be a synonym for bayyana (sura 44:3), which also has the meaning "interpret." Sura 41:44 also clearly attests to a source for the Qur’ān that is written in a foreign language. Luxenberg, following Tabarī, notes a corruption in the text of this verse that clearly shows that part of the Qur’ān has a non-Arabic source. His argument here is somewhat weak if not for the further evidence deduced from eleven other locations in the Qur’ān where Luxenberg consistently applies these and similar arguments to difficulties all of which center on the terms related to the revelation and language of the Qur’ān. These arguments leave little doubt, that Luxenberg has uncovered a key misunderstanding of these terms throughout the Qur’ān.

[25] In section twelve Luxenberg demonstrates that not only the origin and language of the Qur’ān are different from what the commentators who wrote two hundred years after its inception claim it to be, but that several key passages contain words or idioms that were borrowed from Syriac into Arabic. From his analysis of sura 19:24 (in the so-called “Marian Sura”): "Then he called to her from beneath her: ‘Grieve not; thy Lord hath placed beneath thee a streamlet,’" he concludes that it should be read "He called to her immediately after her laying-down (to give birth ‘Grieve not; thy Lord has made your laying-down legitimate.’" Luxenberg’s lengthy discussion of the complexities of this passage resolve grammatical difficulties in the Arabic in a way that fits the context: Jesus gives Mary the courage to face her relatives even with a child born out of wedlock. The section then presents lengthy arguments dealing with various lexical, morphological, syntactic and versification problems in sura 11:116-117.

[26] Section thirteen uncovers evidence of Aramaic morphology in the grammar of the Qur’ān. Instances of ungrammatical gender agreement (feminine subject or noun with a masculine verb or modifier) arose because Syriac feminine forms were misread as an Arabic masculine singular accusative predicate adjective or participle where the governing noun is a feminine subject. In Syriac, predicate adjectives and participles are in the absolute form (predicate form). A feminine singular Syriac form transcribed into Arabic is identical to a genuine Arabic masculine singular accusative form. This phenomenon is quite pervasive in the Qur’ān (e.g. sura 19:20, 23, 28). The argument that many commentators put forward to explain these anomalies is that grammar was sacrificed to preserve the rhyme of a verse. Luxenberg shows the weakness of this argument by demonstrating that in many cases the rhyme is sacrificed to render a grammatical expression (e.g. suras 33:63 and 42:17). Moreover, in at least one case of anomalous syntax in sura 19:23, the grammatically correct word order would have fit the rhyme. In places where a masculine form corresponds to a feminine one, Luxenberg realized that the copyist had deleted the “masculine accusative singular” ending on the predicate adjective, not realizing that the adjective was a Syriac feminine predicate adjective transcribed into Arabic. These Syriac predicative/absolute forms in the Qur’ān are supported by the fact that Arabic always borrowed Syriac nouns and adjectives in their absolute form and not the emphatic (“unbound” or “dictionary”) form; e.g. allah < alāhā: absolute state alāh; qarīb, ”near” < qarībā: absolute state qarīb. Luxenberg then demonstrates that the loss of the feminine ending in Qur’ānic Arabic derives from the same phenomenon. Many Arabic grammatical rules which the earliest Arabian grammarians first posed to explain these anomalies are shown to have been ad hoc, written by those who no longer understood the language in which it had been written. A similar fate befell the so-called accusative of specification, which required the noun in the sequence number + noun to be in the accusative singular. Luxenberg demonstrates that the noun in every case is really a Syriac masculine plural noun; singular and plural masculine nouns in Syriac have the same consonantal spelling.

[27] In that same section, one also finds a study of how Syriac roots were misread and altered by later commentators. In one case, the word jaw (sura 16:79) misread “air, atmosphere” is from Syriac gaw, which means both “insides, inner part” and can also be used as a preposition meaning “inside.” In sura 16:79 Luxenberg demonstrates that the prepositional use makes more sense than the solution posed by the commentators. Classical Arabic grammar, which was created three hundred years after the Qur’ān, does not recall the prepositional meaning of the word. However, dialects of Arabic preserve the original Syriac prepositional use. So where sura 16:79 reads fī jaw as-samā’ “in(side) heaven” referring to birds held aloft and kept from falling down by God, the dialects agree: fī jawwāt al-bet “inside the house” is perfectly good Arabic. The misreading of Qur’ānic Arabic jaw as “air” has become part of the technical vocabulary of modern standard Arabic: “air mail,” “air force,” “airline,” and “weather report” all use jaw. The imaginary meaning of the grammarians lives on.

[28] Finally, Luxenberg shows that there are verb forms in Arabic that are conflations from two distinct Syriac roots. The argument is detailed and here it suffices to mention that the confusion is based on a pronunciation of East Syriac provenance. The meaning of the Arabic verb saxxara at times corresponds to Syriac šaxxar “to blame, use up” and at times to šawxar “to keep back, hinder.” The confusion arose because Syriac šawxar was pronounced in East Syriac and Mandaic as either šāxar or šaxxar.

[29] Section fourteen briefly argues for misunderstood Arabic idioms, which are calques of Aramaic expressions. Luxenberg looks at sura 17:64 which Paret translates as “And rouse with your voice all those you can, and assemble against them with all of your hosts, with your cavalry and your infantry, share with them (as a partner) wealth and children and make them promises – but Satan promises them only deceitful promises” (p. 217). The strange combination of rousing and besieging indicates a misreading. In this case it is Arabic that is misread, Arabic that literally translates Syriac expressions. According to Luxenberg’s analysis this verse should read “Thus seduce with your voice whomsoever from among them you can, outsmart them with your trick and your lying and deception, and tempt them with possessions and children and make promises to them – indeed Satan promises them nothing but vain things!” (p. 220).

[30] Harmonization of passages that are united by theme is another feature of the textual difficulty of the Qur’ān. Sections fifteen and sixteen examine how a misreading in one verse triggered sympathetic misreadings throughout the text based not on grammatical or lexical similarity but because the scattered verses alluded to a single concept. In section fifteen, Luxenberg treats the virgins of paradise and in section sixteen the youths of paradise. Sura 44:54 is the starting point for the discussion. Bell translates this as “We will join to them dark, wide-eyed (maidens).” The verb “join as in marriage” or “pair as in animals for copulation” is a classic misreading of zāy for rā and jīm for hā' (both pairs distinguished only by a single dot), instead of zawwaj it is rawwah “give rest, refresh,” the object of the verb being the blessed in paradise. The major conclusion of section fifteen is that the expression hūr cīn means “white (grapes), jewels (of crystal)” and not “dark, wide-eyed (maidens)” (suras 44:54 and 52:20). Luxenberg first examines carefully each component of sura 44:54 and of sura 52:20. The Qur’ān mentions other kinds of fruits in paradise, namely, dates and pomegranates (sura 55:68) as well as grapes (sura 78:32). Grapes are also mentioned in the context of “earthy” gardens ten times. Since earlier scholarship knows that the Qur’ān uses the Syriac word for garden gantā > janna for paradise, the grape then must be the fruit of paradise par excellence (p. 234). Why, if that is so, is the grape only mentioned in connection with the “heavenly” garden once?

[31] To answer this, Luxenberg presents earlier scholarship, notably that of Tor Andrae and Edmund Beck, showing a connection between the images of the garden of paradise in the Qur’ān and in the hymns of Ephraem the Syrian entitled On Paradise. Andrae remarked that hūr was likely from the Syriac word for “white,” but his solution was to say that the Qur’ānic usage was somehow metaphorical. Neither he nor Beck considered that the Arabic “virgin” was a later misunderstanding on the part of the commentators.

[32] Ephraem uses the term gupnā, “vine,” grammatically feminine, with which hūr agrees and from this Andrae concluded that it was a metaphor for “the virgins of paradise” in the Qur’ān. In suras 44:54 and 52:20, Luxenberg argues that instead of the singular cīn the plural cuyun should be read, referring to the grapes on the vine. Elsewhere the Qur’ān compares the grapes to “pearls,” and so they must be white grapes, which is not apparent from the text at first glance. Luxenberg then offers two variants of this expression. The first reading renders the phrase “white, crystal (clear grapes),” the second, and the one Luxenberg adopts, is “white (grapes), (like) jewels (of crystal).” The restored verse then reads “We will let them (the blessed in Paradise) be refreshed with white (grapes), (like) jewels (of crystal).”

[33] Of the several related examples in sections 15.2 – 15.9, Luxenberg follows the virgins of paradise through the Qur’ān. In section 15.2, Luxenberg observes that azwaj, “spouses,” also can mean “species, kinds” (suras 2:25, 3:15, and 4:57). The latter reading makes more sense “therein also are all kinds of pure (fruits).” Luxenberg links to the misunderstanding of sura 44:54 zawwaj, “join, marry.” The misinterpretation of one verse spills over into the related thematic content of another. The other sections are also well-argued. Of special interest are the discussions in sections 15.5 – 15.6 of suras 55:56 and 55:70, 72, 74, respectively, which state, referring to the virgins of paradise “whom deflowered before them has neither man nor jinn.” Instead, these are the grapes of paradise “that neither man nor jinn have defiled.” Luxenberg points out that sura 55:72 evidences another Qur’ānic parallel to Ephraem, who writes that the vines of paradise abound in “hanging grapes.”10

[34] Section sixteen follows this investigation as it points to a similar misreading of paradise’s grapes as youths, Arabic wildun. Sura 76:19 “Round amongst them go boys of perpetual youth, whom when one see, he thinks them pearls unstrung” (sura 16.1, citing Bell’s translation). Wildun is a genuinely Arabic word, but it is used in a sense which is borrowed from Syriac yaldā. Youths like pearls is somewhat suspicious, especially given that “pearls” are a metaphor for the grapes of paradise from the previous section. Luxenberg uncovered that Syriac has the expression yaldā dagpettā, “child of the vine,” appearing in the Peshitta: Matthew 26:29, Mark 14:25, and Luke 22:18, in which Christ foreshadows his death and resurrection: “I will not drink of this child of the vine (yaldā dagpettā) until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of my Father.” Here it is the juice of the grape that is the “child.” Entries in the Arabic-Syriac lexica for each of yaldā and gpettā give in addition to “child” and “vine” “fruit” and “wine,” respectively. Luxenberg gives further evidence from suras 37:45, 43:71, and 76:15 that Ephraem the Syrian’s depiction of the grapes of paradise is behind the original Qur’ānic text.

[35] Section seventeen synthesizes the techniques and findings of the foregoing study and analyzes two complete suras: 108 and 96. Luxenberg provides for each a complete commentary and translation. The thrust of sura 108 has already been presented above. The analysis of all nineteen verses of sura 96 spans twenty-two pages. Among the many solutions provided in this section is that the particle ’a which has stumped the commentators and the grammarians is really two different words: the Syriac word ’aw “or” and the Syriac ’ēn “if, when.” Omitting here the details of the argument, this sura is to be read as a call to participate in liturgical prayer and has the “character of a Christian-Syriac prooemium, which in the later tradition was replaced by the fatiha (from Syriac ptāxā, ’opening’).” This is not just any liturgy, but the Divine Liturgy, the eucharistic commemoration, as Luxenberg reconstructs verses 17-19: “Should he [i.e., the Slanderer] wish to call his idols, he will (thereby) call a [god who] passes away! You should not at all listen to him, (rather) perform (your) liturgy and receive the Eucharist (wa-isjid wa iqtabar)” (p. 296). This is noteworthy, as this is the oldest sura according to Islamic tradition, and reveals its Christian-Syriac roots. In sura 5 “The Repast” Luxenberg indicates that closely related eucharistic terminology as in sura 96 (the proof for which is omitted in this review) suggests that the verses in sura 5:114-115 refer to the Eucharistic liturgy (and not just the Last Supper). Further evidence for this reading comes from a piece of pre-Islamic poetry by the Christian Arab poet ‘Adi ibn Zayd which the Kitāb al-aghānī of Abū l-Faraj al-Isfahānī (d. 967) preserved. Section eighteen, a brief, comprehensive summary, concludes the study.

[36] The production of the book is overall of good quality. There are certain proofreading errors, including the mis-numbering of sections (e.g., pp. 237 and 239), and very few grammatical mistakes. The page layout is at times difficult to read. This is partly due to the nature of the study, which requires Arabic, Syriac, Mandaic, and Latin alphabets to share space with footnotes and inline quotations from the sources.

[37] A work of this scope presented piece-meal necessarily lacks the cohesion and elegance of a full study. The implications of this method are nevertheless clear. Any future scientific study of the Qur’ān will necessarily have to take this method into consideration. Even if scholars disagree with the conclusions, the philological method is robust. It has established a discipline that is substantially different from the exegetical traditions of the Arabian and Western commentators. Luxenberg has called into question the view of the Qur’ān as a “pure” text, one free of the theological and philological difficulties that plague the transmission histories of other texts, e.g., the Hebrew Bible and its versions.

[38] A central question that this investigation raises is the motivation of cUthmān in preparing his redaction of the Qur’ān. Luxenberg presents the two hadīth traditions recounting how cUthmān came to possess the first manuscript. If Luxenberg’s analysis is even in broad outline correct, the content of the Qur’ān was substantially different at the time of Muhammad and cUthmān’s redaction played a part in the misreading of key passages. Were these misreadings intentional or not? The misreadings in general alter the Qur’ān from a book that is more or less harmonious with the New Testament and Syriac Christian liturgy and literature to one that is distinct, of independent origin.

[39] It is hoped that an English translation of this work will soon appear. Despite the sober revolution this book will no doubt create, one should not be naïve to think that all Islamicists in the West will immediately take up and respond to the scholarly challenges posed by any work of this kind. However, just as Christianity faced the challenges of nineteenth and twentieth century biblical and liturgical scholarship, so too will serious scholars of Islam, both East and West, benefit from the discipline Luxenberg has launched.

[ramana]

From The Telegraph, 29 June 2008

WHEN THE OX DIED


The Bin Ladens: The Story of a Family And Its Fortune By Steve Coll, Allen Lane, Rs 695

In the post 9/11 world, global terrorism has come to be identified with the face of Osama bin Laden. But the man himself represents a number of paradoxes and has helped to reveal many more. He has shown that globalization is no threat to jingoism. On the contrary, it can be used as a potent weapon to reinvigorate parochial nationalistic sentiments. Osama’s appearance, which disguises an excess of brutality under a calm, benign exterior, exemplifies another paradox.

Steve Coll follows up his Pulitzer winning bestseller, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, with this extensively researched family history of the bin Ladens. It will be an understatement to describe it as just another rags-to-riches tale. It is a breathtaking saga of the fluctuating fortunes of a Yemen-based family that emerged from obscurity to become one of the richest and the most influential groups of people, not only in south Asia, but also in the world.

Coll’s chronicle becomes an accumulation of narratives within a narrative in the way it cobbles together divergent accounts of individual members of the family. Very often, these accounts carry dramatic charge. The first chapter, “In exile”, opens with a startling, short and cryptic statement, “The trouble started when an ox died.” Coll is here referring to Awadh Abond bin Laden, the great grandfather of Osama, who borrowed a plow-ox from an Obeid tribesman in the desert village of Gharn Bashireih in modern Yemen. When the ox died accidentally, Abond had no means to pay back the loan and hence was forced to migrate to evade his “extortionist” creditor.

Coll describes in great detail the numerous migrations of the family, which belongs to the Kenda tribe having its origins in pre-Islamic Arabia. The tribe, known to be a belligerent community of rulers and sheikhs, formed a powerful federation in the 17th century in a place called Hadhramawt, meaning ‘death is among us’. The name of the place indicates the lifestyle once followed by this community. The tribe migrated all over south Asia until, in the early 19th century, “the bin Ladens had become merely a family clan of perhaps four to five hundred people, clustered defensively in an ancestral fortress village, struggling for survival”.

Coll’s narrative celebrates this survival instinct as it zeroes in on Mohammed bin Laden, a young Yemeni who began as a bricklayer like his forefathers but then made it to the oil-rich land of Saudi Arabia. He ingratiated himself with the Saudi royal family and thus put his family’s fortunes on an upward curve. It was this bin Laden who first started scripting the myth that was to take the world by surprise in the next generation.

Coll takes great pains to describe the formative years of the most illustrious, and also the most notorious, member of the family, Osama bin Laden. Readers would be interested in the chapter, “Young Osama”, which describes a shy teenager, who in the Sixties was admitted to Al-Thaghr, a “modernizing” school in Jeddah funded by the Saudi government. Osama felt bored there until a Syrian gym teacher, with his “mesmerizing” stories of violent Islamic activism stimulated him.

Coll devotes considerable space to the jihad of Osama, without which his narrative would remain incomplete. The sweeping range of his research can easily make this book another bestseller.

ARNAB BHATTACHARYA

[svinayak]

WPost review is better of the above book

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

Reviewed by Milton Viorst

Change the names and locations, and Steve Coll's marvelous book about the bin Laden family would begin like a familiar American saga. An illiterate youth arrives in a land of opportunity from his impoverished homeland and, by dint of ambition, talent and hard work, becomes immensely rich and powerful. He collects properties, airplanes, luxury cars and women -- tastes he passes on to his sons. He earns a niche in the pantheon of great builders of his adopted country.

The youth is Mohamed bin Laden, justly venerated in Saudi Arabia. But collective memory plays funny tricks, and in the West he will be permanently remembered as the father of Osama. The bin Ladens, though their Horatio Alger story overlaps Western experience, emerge as unmistakably Middle Eastern -- to the point of being torn asunder by today's religious struggles. Coll, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Washington Post managing editor, leaves the psychology to his readers. He prefers writing on economics and politics, leavening them with anecdotes and gossip; the result is a fascinating panorama of a great family, presented within the context of the 9/11 drama.

Blind in one eye, not quite 30, Mohamed bin Laden emigrated from Yemen between the world wars, just as the Saudi oil boom was getting underway, and found a job as a bricklayer with Aramco, the Arabian American oil company. More than a good worker, he was an organizer, with an innate sense of business and engineering, and in 1935 he was helped by his employer to set up his own firm. Successful in building homes for princes, he won the notice of the king and erected one of the first royal residences. From there he advanced to the luxury palaces for which the ruling House of Saud is known, then to creation of the country's road network. He renovated the holy shrines in Mecca and Medina, and went off to restore Jerusalem's Mosque of Omar. He also built military installations to assure the Saud dynasty's security.

Like the Saudi royals, Mohamed bin Laden was rigorous in prayer but liberal in interpreting the Koran's sexual strictures. He married countless times, occasionally for business reasons, often out of whimsy, sometimes to women he kept with him, usually to women he legally divorced. In 1958 alone, his wives gave birth to seven children, among them Osama, whose mother was a 15-year-old Syrian from whom Mohamed quickly split. He fathered at least 54 offspring before he died in 1967, in a plane crash during the inspection of a construction site in the desert.

Although he acquired his children casually, Mohamed took his responsibility to them seriously. It was impossible to calculate his net worth, Coll writes, given the indifference to financial management in Saudi Arabia; the royal family alone may have owed him $100 million, which it would pay at its pleasure. But, following Islamic law, he willed each of his 25 sons 2.7 percent of his company's assets, while each daughter received 1 percent. These bequests assured them the means to finish their education and live comfortably, with a small surplus to help out their divorced mothers, who under Islamic law received nothing.

Still, contrary to popular notions, the bin Laden heirs were not born hugely rich. Most of the males went to work in the family company, where they gradually built fortunes. Osama, Coll writes, was an exception in dedicating much of his money to Islamic political causes. But even his personal wealth, Coll says, fell far short of paying for the terrorist network he later founded. For that, he had to raise funds among true believers within the wider Islamic world.

Though never estranged from his family, Osama grew up in a separate household in Jeddah, with a stepfather whom Mohamed chose. From time to time, he journeyed to Syria for visits with his mother's kin. Coll's interviews with family members and classmates paint him as an unusually timid boy, but otherwise quite average. After Mohamed's death, he was enrolled in a good private school -- English in academics, Saudi in religious orientation. In his teens, he supplemented his studies with religious instruction and gravitated to membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that was then spreading through Arab society, promoting fundamentalist values. At 17, he married a 14-year-old cousin, who quickly bore him a son; he kept her in strict Islamic seclusion. Though increasingly religious, he had done well at school in commerce and technology, and after graduation he joined his half-brothers in the family construction firm.

The year 1979, when he was 21, marked a turning point for Osama and for Saudi Arabia. It was the year of the Iranian revolution, which ignited widespread religious militancy. Islamic radicals struck at royal power in a wild attack on the Holy Mosque in Mecca, and, though suppressed in bloody battle, the assault left the state badly shaken. The Sauds solicited help from the United States to preserve their status, and authorized construction of a major American base on Saudi soil. Osama made clear his disapproval of the infidel presence, generating tensions within the bin Laden family, which stood to profit handsomely from the project. The next year, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The bin Ladens rallied to make major contributions to the Afghan resistance, preponderantly Islamic, and sent Osama to Pakistan to oversee the distribution of funds. His work, being anti-communist, pasted over the family rift and delayed his own break with the Sauds and their American allies.

By the mid-'80s, bin Laden moved beyond money matters to supplying arms to the Afghan irregulars, the mujaheddin, then to recruiting and training Arab militants to fight alongside them. Arms were now cheap. The United States was flooding the market, chiefly with Stingers, the anti-aircraft missiles that assured the Russians' defeat. Coll found no record of CIA meetings with bin Laden. The agency knew who he was but showed no special interest in him or awareness of the danger his militancy represented.

Osama founded al-Qaeda soon after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988. He then returned to Saudi Arabia, leaving behind his followers to support the fundamentalist Taliban in the post-war struggle among Afghan factions. But he never reconciled with the Sauds, and he broke with them openly when they invited U.S. troops onto their soil for the looming war against Iraq. His offer to send al-Qaeda to fight Iraq if the invitation was revoked brought only laughter. The confrontation created a dilemma for the bin Laden family: Much as it loved the profits of building for the Americans, it had no stomach for fraternal schism. Finally, the king put his foot down, and the family cut off the wayward brother from his company stipends. Osama, with three wives (a fourth had recently left him), 11 sons and an unrecorded number of daughters, chose exile in Sudan, then was informed he could not stay. In 1996, he flew back to a warm reception among his sympathizers in Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan, where he presumably remains to this day.

Coll dwells only in passing on the violence later attributed to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. He charts Osama's rising anger at the Sauds and at America. He leaves no doubt that Osama's organizational and fund-raising talents remained sharp; he even credits Osama's engineering with making the caves of Tora Bora, where he took refuge, impregnable to U.S. forces. As for bin Laden's kin, Coll suggests that, though most retain warm feelings for him, after 9/11 necessity forced them to distance themselves from his actions. Taken together, they seem more bewildered than angered by the course he has chosen. Responsible for what is now a global company, the brothers have been particularly stringent; the sisters appear to be more sympathetic. Whether any of them secretly sends him money remains uncertain. As for the 9/11 conspiracy, Coll repeats little of what we already know. Instead, he has chosen to write about a man and his family, enriching our understanding of the powerful impact they have made on our times.


Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national bestseller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family’s rise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show how American influences changed the family and how one member’s rebellion changed America

The Bin Ladens rose from poverty to privilege; they loyally served the Saudi royal family for generations—and then one of their number changed history on September 11, 2001. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll tells the epic story of the rise of the Bin Laden family and of the wildly diverse lifestyles of the generation to which Osama bin Laden belongs, and against whom he rebelled. Starting with the family’s escape from famine at the beginning of the twentieth century through its jet-set era in America after the 1970s oil boom, and finally to the family’s attempts to recover from September 11, The Bin Ladens unearths extensive new material about the family and its relationship with the United States, and provides a richly revealing and emblematic narrative of our globally interconnected times.

To a much greater extent than has been previously understood, the Bin Laden family owned an impressive share of the America upon which Osama ultimately declared war—shopping centers, apartment complexes, luxury estates, privatized prisons in Massachusetts, corporate stocks, an airport, and much more. They financed Hollywood movies and negotiated over real estate with Donald Trump. They came to regard George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Prince Charles as friends of their family. And yet, as was true of the larger relationship between the Saudi and American governments, when tested by Osama’s violence, the family’s involvement in the United States proved to be narrow and brittle.

Among the many memorable figures that cross these pages is Osama’s older brother, Salem—a free-living, chainsmoking, guitar-strumming pilot, adventurer, and businessman who cavorted across America and Europe and once proposed marriage to four American and European girlfriends simultaneously, attempting to win a bet with the king of Saudi Arabia. Osama and Salem’s father, Mohamed bin Laden, is another force in the narrative—an illiterate bricklayer who created the family fortune through perspicacity and wit, until his sudden death in an airplane crash in 1967, an accident caused by an error by his American pilot.

At the story’s heart lies an immigrant family’s attempt to adapt simultaneously to Saudi Arabia’s puritanism and America’s myriad temptations. The family generation to which Osama belonged—twenty-five brothers and twenty-nine sisters—had to cope with intense change. Most of them were born into a poor society where religion dominated public life. Yet by the time they became young adults, these Bin Ladens found themselves bombarded by Western-influenced ideas about individual choice, by gleaming new shopping malls and international fashion brands, by Hollywood movies and changing sexual mores—a dizzying world that was theirs for the taking, because they each received annual dividends that started in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. How they navigated these demands is an authentic, humanizing story of Saudi Arabia, America, and the sources of attraction and repulsion still present in the countries’ awkward embrace.

[ramana]

Syria periodically plays a key role in Arab history whether by chance or by purpose!

[paramu]

Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
by Ahmed Rashid (Author)


# Hardcover: 544 pages
# Publisher: Viking Adult (June 3, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0670019704
# ISBN-13: 978-0670019700

Indians should read the chapter on India-Pakistan Crisis to get a new version of the 2001-2002 crisis. Paki interpretation of Mush visit in 2001 and Indian GOI actions have different meaning

Can somebody read this book and describe that chapter about India Pakistan

[svinayak]

Terror and Consent : The Wars for the Twenty-First Century
by Philip Bobbitt (Author)

# Hardcover: 688 pages
# Publisher: Knopf (April 1, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1400042437
# ISBN-13: 978-1400042432

Starred Review. Bobbitt follows his magisterial Shield of Achilles with an equally complex and provocative analysis of the West's ongoing struggle against terrorism. According to Bobbitt, the primary driver of terrorism is not Islam but the emergence of the market state. Market states (such as the U.S.) are characterized by their emphasis on deregulation, privatization (of prisons, pensions, armies), abdication of typical nation-state duties (providing welfare or health care) and adoption of corporate models of operational effectiveness. While market states are too militarily formidable to be challenged conventionally, they have allowed for the sale of weapons on the international market, thereby losing their monopoly on mass destruction; furthermore they are disproportionately vulnerable to destabilizing, delegitimating, demoralizing terror. Bobbitt asserts that this situation requires a shift from a strategy of deterrence and containment to one of preclusion. States must recast concepts of sovereignty and legitimacy to define what levels of force they may deploy in seeking and suppressing terrorists. Domestically, the shift involves accepting that in order to protect citizens, the state must strengthen its powers in sensitive areas like surveillance. International alliances can be a major advantage in a war waged not against terrorists, but terror itself. Terror and Consent, the first work to interpret terrorism in the context of political theory, merits wide circulation and serious consideration. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

Reviewed by Daniel Byman

Philip Bobbitt thinks big. His latest book, Terror and Consent, even gently criticizes Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations and Francis Fukuyama's End of History as "not big enough." Bobbitt contends that the world is in transition from nation states to "market states" whose strategic reason for being "is the protection of civilians, not simply territory or national wealth or any particular dynasty, class, religion or ideology." This shift, he argues, has huge implications for counterterrorism, because future terrorists -- particularly if they possess nuclear or biological weapons -- may threaten the legitimacy of the market state. "Almost every widely held idea we currently entertain about twenty-first century terrorism and its relationship to the Wars against Terror," he says, "is wrong."

Bobbitt, a professor at Columbia University who previously wrote The Shield of Achilles, a monumental history of warfare, has held senior positions in several Democratic administrations. Despite his establishment pedigree, he is a thoroughgoing contrarian. Defying the nearly universal criticism among academics of the term "war on terror," Bobbitt embraces it, making a strong case -- better than the Bush administration has -- that the challenge can best be thought of as a series of wars.

His list of erroneous assumptions about terror goes on for two pages, beginning with the idea "that terrorism has always been with us, and though its weapons may change, it will remain fundamentally the same." In reality, he argues, al-Qaeda represents a new form of terrorism that seeks mass casualties, is highly decentralized and, like its market-state enemy, even uses outsourcing. Should Osama bin Laden be defeated tomorrow, Bobbitt says, the kind of terrorism he pioneered is here to stay.

In using the term "war" to describe its counterterrorist activities, the Bush administration has seemed at times to disdain legal constraints on the use of torture and electronic surveillance. But Bobbitt doesn't plead for a return to the status quo of the 1990s. Rather, he calls for public recognition of the need for new tools to fight terrorism and, at the same time, for ensuring their conformity to law. While readers may at first see this as another Democratic critique of Bush, in many ways it is just the opposite: an intelligent embrace of the Bush administration's strategic worldview but not its methods.

Yet some of Bobbitt's arguments fall flat. The very scope of the book detracts from its content, a stark contrast to Fukuyama and Huntington, who each presented one big thesis, tightly constructed and defended. In Terror and Consent, so many arguments are moving at any one time that it is easy to lose the logical thread through 600-plus pages. To liven things up, Bobbitt draws in examples from the Bible, ancient Greek city states, the French Resistance, the Habsburg-Valois wars and (perhaps it goes without saying) homosexual pirates. These historical parallels sometimes amuse and inform; too often they simply distract.

In his effort to show a world transformed, Bobbitt seems at times to contend that everything is new under the sun. He declares Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon to be "unique," despite many historical parallels, including past Israeli operations there. He claims that terrorism in the era of the market state is more theatrical than in the past. Yet one of the pioneering scholars of terrorism, Brian Jenkins, noted in 1975 that "terrorism is theatre." Who can forget the Black September organization's dramatic kidnapping of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics? History may not always repeat itself, but, as Mark Twain observed, it often rhymes.

Most interesting, and most arguable, is Bobbitt's assertion that "it hardly matters whether the forces of destruction arise from militant Islam, North Korean communism, or Caribbean hurricanes." He is correct, of course, that natural disasters, like catastrophic terrorist attacks, can kill thousands of people and undermine confidence in governments unless they respond effectively. But lumping together such disparate incidents risks making counterterrorism so broad a term as to be meaningless. Hurricanes are invariable natural disasters; terrorism varies in reaction to the response, and U.S. policy affects the incidence of attacks as well as their severity.

To his credit, Bobbitt offers many policy recommendations. One is for the United States to build an alliance of democracies ready to undertake humanitarian and strategic interventions -- essentially, NATO on steroids. He contends that this intervention doesn't always have to be military. But his book leans heavily on the "hard" side of power, and it isn't clear why his rationale for intervention in Rwanda and Darfur wouldn't apply equally to Afghanistan (pre-Taliban), Algeria, Angola, Congo, Nepal, Somalia, Tajikistan and Yemen, among other places. His doctrine does not tell us when not to intervene or when military action, rather than economic and diplomatic pressure, is necessary. These are the hardest questions.

Readers might also ask whether the Iraq misadventure should make us cautious about interventions elsewhere. Bobbitt dismisses the question, saying it is "too soon to conclude that the removal of Saddam Hussein . . . will prove to be a mistake." But that is not a satisfying argument, given that even if the United States succeeds in Iraq in years to come, the human and financial cost already has been staggering. His dismissal is disappointing in a book that is otherwise quite fair to counterarguments.

My advice is that readers should approach Terror and Consent with a mixture of caution and open-mindedness. Not all of Bobbitt's pronouncements may be convincing. But his book constantly prods us to reexamine our preconceptions about terrorism, which is by itself some preparation for what may lie ahead.



The premise of the book is that we are in the midst of a transition to a market-based global order. This means that the nation-state (and even the entire notion of public governance) will be replaced by corporate surrogates (via outsourcing) operating on a global level. The basis for the legitimacy of this new order will be that it offers individuals more choices than ever before (the political parallel to a fully stocked supermarket). However, its emergence will be at the expense of minimal safety nets and communitarian efforts.

The enemy of this newly emerging market-based system, and the main focus of this book, are (naturally) terrorists. Terrorists, Bobbitt claims, fight us because they hate the choices provided to us by this emerging market-world.

The way they fight us is by limiting our choices through terror. Terror, in this context, is essentially theater. In this theater, disgruntled people (Islamic terrorists and beyond) will use the threat of flamboyant attacks to limit the choices offered by the market-world. Since the market-state will continue to produce ever greater levels of choice to an ever greater number of people, this clash is inevitable. Therefore, our societal objective is to harden ourselves (through smart legal maneuvers and investments in infrastructure) to limit the the levels of terror that can be produced by our opponents. By doing this, we can buy time as the market-world continues to expand to ever greater numbers of people.

_________________________

I was hopeful that Bobbitt would approach terrorism in a more nuanced way than merely through the lens of the prevailing narrative fallacy (for example: "The Looming Tower"). Unfortunately, he didn't and his depiction of terrorism is merely as a means for disgruntled groups to negate choice (a variant of Bush's "they hate us for our freedoms").

A more complex and realistic view of terrorism is to approach it as illegal warfare directed against civilians. This warfare also has more complex objectives that merely limiting choices through the production of terror. In many cases, it advances the groups that conduct it economically, socially, etc. (usually at the expense of state competitors). For example: Nigeria's MEND, Brazil's PCC, Mexico's Cartels/Zetas, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Colombia's FARC, Peru's Sendero Luminoso and most of the groups in Iraq/Afghanistan (who advance through smuggling/corruption/etc.). Unfortunately, Bobbitt didn't deviate from the simplistic view of terrorism and his book suffers mightily from the result.

I also have a problem with the market-state and market-world construct. First, it's vague. Second, it is potentially ruinous. While choices may be available, it says nothing of your ability (your means) to exercise those choices. Who cares if the supermarket offers unlimited choice if you can't afford anything but the generics? It's very likely a market-state would reduce human worth to a mere economic value at the cost of the bonds that hold us together as a community. Perversely, this would serve to create the very violent groups that use terrorism to advance their own economic/social level, since no other values have any power to mitigate/dissuade an impulse to violence. In short, Bobbitt's market-state, a society legitimized by "choice" alone, is insufficiently credible as something we should a) help emerge and b) defend.


The study of terrorism as both a reality and as a philosophy has generated a voluminous literature in the past decade, most of this no doubt because of the terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001. Whenever a country like the United States is victim to an attack, whether it is classified as terrorism or not, it is safe to say that a lot of grandiose rhetoric, patriotic fervor, and an excess of moralizing will result. Such activities may serve as a catharsis, but in the long run one needs an intelligent, rational discussion of terrorism, so as to discover which institutional and individual changes must be made in order to deal with it effectively. And when entering into this discussion, one must be prepared to examine the evidence and arguments carefully, and be willing to put aside to the best of one's ability, the extreme biases that can arise in legal and political dialog. Lastly, whatever methodology one agrees upon for dealing with terrorism, one must be willing to get actively involved in the realization of this methodology. This means that one must not assume this burden will be taken on by someone else, and excuse oneself from military conflict if such does arise.

In this lengthy book, which must be studied in-depth in order to give it a fair analysis, the author indulges the reader in such a rational discussion. It is perhaps better appreciated if the reader is familiar with the author's earlier works, but he does give enough background so that the book can be studied independently of these. Many of the author's recommendations and analysis will no doubt provoke many readers to anger , but if such readers can work through their emotions they may find that the author has a great deal to offer when it comes to dealing with one of the most important issues in the twenty-first century. But although the discussions are keen on rationality, the author fails to confront the personal obligations that everyone faces when confronting the "war on terror", for he does not address the question as to who is to be involved in actual combat. Nowhere in this book does he discuss the reasons as to why he excuses himself from participating in the fighting.

For this reviewer, one of the most mistaken and dangerous perceptions of government is that it is responsible for protecting the populace from crime rather than merely being responsible for the apprehension of criminals and their punishment. In order to protect a citizen from criminal or violent acts the state must have knowledge that such acts are going to occur. Since such foreknowledge is impossible, the state must rely on intelligence estimates and probabilistic assessments, forcing it to become a surveillance state with all its attending dangers and threats to privacy and civil liberties.

But the author argues throughout the book that this kind of activity is just what is necessary to fight the "war on terror". But most importantly, he believes that this activity will be tolerated by the general populace since we are entering a world of the "market states." The market state is to be distinguished from the "nation state" of the twentieth century by its emphasis on insuring that its citizens have the empowerment they need to pursue their economic and personal interests. On the surface this sounds good, but it makes the implicit assumption that citizens will be willing to be servile to a degree that they will enjoy living under the protectionist umbrella of what could accurately be called a "nanny state." But there seems to be strong libertarian undercurrents in the political situation at the present time, and these trends may prohibit the "market state" of the author from being realized as he describes it.

From a study of the book, particularly the discussions on American constitutional and international law, it is fair to say that the author is advocating a new world order. Since change is what the twenty-first century is all about, one must not be frightened at the prospect of changes in domestic and governmental institutions. But any changes that are going to be made must be measured against the degree of the threat they are designed to deal with. The author underestimates the resilience and fortitude of the general citizen, and overestimates the ability of terrorism to bring this same populace to its knees. In addition, he undervalues the importance of technology in negating the terrorist threat. Yes, terrorist use of biotechnology is something of great concern, but any bio-weapons the terrorist might use could be made ineffective by bio-countermeasures. Developing these bio-countermeasures should be part of the "war on terror" as well as countermeasures to other types of weapons of mass destruction.

The author also does not emphasize the power of education in assisting the general citizen in dealing with perceived and actual terrorism. A populace that is "terrorist-aware" and cognizant of the terrorist exploitation of psychological impact will be able to deal effectively with a realized terrorist attack, remain relatively calm, and not allow terrorists to dictate their attitudes and emotions. The same could be said for the media, which are the targets of a lot of criticism from the author in this book, some of this justified. A responsible media, trained according to sound journalistic ethics, would not deliberately or inadvertently hype up a terrorist event, satisfying the terrorist craving for attention--just think of the ramifications if the press and all governmental representatives would have been completely silent after 9/11. The supporters of the 9/11 attacks would no doubt have felt cheated and extremely disturbed as to what the next move the American government was going to be. Such silence could be an effective use of psychological warfare against the terrorists.

But along with articulating ideas that could be highly effective in fighting the war on terror, the author also makes some statements that are definitely outlandish. For instance, he refers to the doctrine of deterrence during the cold war as a "brilliant intellectual achievement", forgetting that it does not take the decisions of people to trigger a catastrophic nuclear war; technology mishaps such as false alarms can do the same. He also refers to the immoral American participation in World War I as the "most selfless international intervention by a major power", forgetting the horror it brought to soldiers and their families. Wilson and the American government were definitely wrong in getting involved in that war, and Wilson's pronouncement that Americans needed a "serious moral adventure" has to rank as one of the most outlandish in all of American history, even if compared to the many statements one hears from the current American regime.

But the author has many interesting ideas, and this work deserves serious consideration from those who are concerned with the evolution of the legal structures, both domestic and international, that need to be put in place to fight a successful war on terror. The author's outlines new conceptions of state sovereignty and takes on the topic of torture without reservation. And such legal structures are part of a classical optimization game, in that the privacies and rights of every world citizen must be respected while at the same time still being successful militarily. But when the citizens of the world decide to make changes in legal frameworks to fight the war on terror, they need to remember that inkblots on paper do not fight such a war. People do. And participation from everyone in this war must follow immediately once the decision has been made as to its necessity.

[svinayak]

The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
by PHILIP BOBBITT (Author)

# Hardcover: 960 pages
# Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (May 14, 2002)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0375412921
# ASIN: B0006BD89S

The scope of Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles is breathtaking: the interplay, over the last six centuries, among war, jurisprudence, and the reshaping of countries ("states," in Bobbitt's vocabulary). Bobbitt posits that certain wars should be deemed epochal--that is, seen as composed of many "smaller" wars. For example, according to Bobbitt the epochal war of the 20th century began in 1914 and ended with the collapse of communism in 1990. These military affairs--and their subsequent "ultimate" peace agreements--have caused, each in their own way, revolutionary reconstructions of the idea and actuality of statehood and, following, of relationships between these various new entities. Of these reconstructions (including the princely state, the kingly state, and the nation-state), Bobbitt is most interested in the current incarnation, which he calls the market-state: one whose borders are scuffed and hazy at best (certainly compared to earlier territorial markers) and whose strengths, weaknesses, citizens, and enemies roam across cyberspace rather than plains and valleys. The Shield of Achilles is massive, erudite, and demanding--at once highly abstract and extremely detailed. There is about it an air of detached erudition, one noticeably free of the easy "decline and fall" hysteria too often present in contemporary historical analyses. --H. O'Billovich --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
The world is at a pivotal point, argues Bobbitt, as the nation-state, developed over six centuries as the optimal institution for waging war and organizing peace, gives way to the market-state. Nation-states derive legitimacy from promising to improve the material welfare of their citizens, specifically by providing security and order. Market-states offer to maximize the opportunity of their people. Nation-states use force and law to bring about desired results. Market-states use various forms of market relationships. Bobbitt, who has an endowed chair at the University of Texas and has written five previous books on constitutional law and on nuclear strategy, argues in sprawling fashion that this paradigm shift is essentially a consequence of the "Long War" of 1914-1990, a struggle among communism, fascism and parliamentarism that, through innovation and mimicry, generated a fundamentally new constitutional and strategic dynamic that in turn generated a fundamentally new "society of states." Central to Bobbitt's thesis is the postulate that international order is a consequence of domestic order. In the work's most stimulating section, Bobbitt discusses three possible ways of reorganizing the latter. The "Meadow," essentially an extrapolation of socio-political patterns currently dominant in the U.S., features high levels of individualism around the world at the expense of collective behavior at any level. The "Park," based on a European alternate, emphasizes regionalism. The "Garden" predicates successful market states disengaging from international affairs and emphasizing renewed internal community. None of these systems will eliminate war, but the nation-state is declining, Bobbitt argues, essentially because nonstate actors confront the nation-state with threats it cannot effectively respond to. This big book is provocative and richly textured, but too often Bobbitt's arguments are obscured by his historically digressive presentation.

To call this a seminal work is an understatement. I believe Bobbitt began work on this book around 1993 and finished a few weeks after 9-11. Careful and deliberate scholarship...how often do you hear that today?

It is a brilliant on a number of levels: political theory, history, law, economics, and a touch of sociology. As the title suggests, it does, indeed, chart the course of history....describing the context for today's emerging global society.

This work has immensely practical implications for those interested in transnational threats. The first three goals of good science are exquisitely accomplished - those of description, explanation, and prediction. As to the final goal - prescription - that is accomplished through various scenarios. And, I believe, done in a more than satisfactory manner.

I do, however, have an issue. And it's not with Bobbitt. I have consistently seen Bobbitt's ideas and theories elsewhere, emerging several years after the release of Achilles in works dealing with globalization, "the next stage of terrorism" etc. If Bobbitt is mentioned, it is in passing; and he is never given full intellectual credit as his work is expropriated in a shameless manner.

Read Achilles. It is stimulating and provocative. It has longevity. You will revisit it on an ongoing basis.

[svinayak]

America: The Last Best Hope (Volume I): From the Age of Discovery to a World at War
by William J. Bennett (Author)


# Hardcover: 592 pages
# Publisher: Thomas Nelson (May 23, 2006)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1595550550
# ISBN-13: 978-1595550552

Bennett, a secretary of education under President Reagan and author of The Book of Virtues, offers a new, improved history of America, one, he says, that will respark hope and a "conviction about American greatness and purpose" in readers. He believes current offerings do not "give Americans an opportunity to enjoy the story of their country, to take pleasure and pride in what we have done and become." To this end, Bennett methodically hits the expected patriotic high points (Lewis & Clark, the Gettysburg Address) and even, to its credit, a few low ones (Woodrow Wilson's racism, Teddy Roosevelt's unjust dismissal of black soldiers in the Brownsville judgment). America is best suited for a high school or home-schooled audience searching for a general, conservative-minded textbook. More discerning adult readers will find that the lack of originality and the overreliance on a restricted number of dated sources (Samuel Eliot Morison, Daniel Boorstin, Henry Steele Commager) make the book a retread of previous popular histories (such as Boorstin's The Americans). This is history put to use as inspiration rather than serving to enlighten or explain, but Bennett does succeed in shaping the material into a coherent, readable narrative. (May 23)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–This exhaustive political and military history is well organized, with an excellent table of contents, 13 chapter titles that include dates, and each chapter divided into sections with headings for easy scanning. The chronological narrative covers familiar content, and Bennett writes in a conversational tone. In each chapter he sets the stage, relates events in detail, sprinkles in quotes from personages or literature of the time, and then shifts into editorial mode on such issues as slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and child-labor practices. He humanizes the main characters with physical descriptions and anecdotes. This lively book acknowledges mistakes and shortcomings, yet patriotically asserts that the American experiment in democracy is still a success story.–Sondra VanderPloeg, Tracy Memorial Library, New London, NH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Being a history student in a department with many prominent historians, most notably Leonard Richard who has become particularly famous for his original analysis of John Quincy Adam's anti-slavery rhetoric as a congressman, I am extremely fond of new history books.

Mr. Bennett's book is truly a masterpiece. The very fact that I have already read about half of it in the past day it has been released should attest to how difficult it is to put this book down. Despite the fact that Mr. Bennett clearly has a political past, this book is highly non-partisan as he praises both politicl aides. The only bias that Mr. Bennett holds is that he (as do I ) think America is the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. This is not blind patriotism or nationalism. Instead it is patriotism based on fact more than pure emotion. He admits that our nation has had MAJOR problems, especially in terms of racial history. However, as he states, no nation is perfect and every other nation has similar disturbing facets of their past. Keeping that in mind, America has been and still is the beakon of freedom and hope around the world. Mr. Bennett's research is extremely thorough (first thing I do when I check a history book are check the sources.... he derives his information from historians ranging from Shelby Foote to Harry Jaffa to Douglas Brinkley to Henry Steele Commager to David McCullough; really some of the greatest in their field). Furthermore, he is an exquisite writer as he does things such as refer to men such as Ronald Reagan (in his only reference to the former president) as "the old man who dreamed dreams and lived to see those dreams become reality".


William Bennett has long established himself as an author of sorts, not so much by what he has written, but in what he has compiled. He has given us such great compilations of writings from an array of sources in monumental books such as the Book of Virtues, The Moral Compass and Our Sacred Honor, but in his latest venture, AMERICA: THE LAST BEST HOPE, Bennett varies from the role of editor, into the full blown role of writer and does so in superb fashion.

Bennett's personal indiscretions will cause the shallow minded reviewer who chooses to "kill the messenger" to delight in denigrating this fine work, but do not let that discourage you from exposure to this magnificent book. This is not just another dogged approach to American history. This is the story of America presented in a flowing narrative that is concise, insightful, accurate and teeming with adoration for the country that is, in fact, the world's last best hope for the future. Concurrently, Bennett is not averse to exposing the faults of our history in such areas as slavery and Jim Crow laws.

The truly defining moments of our rich history have inclusion here. Of course, even with it's rather hefty 544 pages, it is impossible to do little more than scratch the surface, but for an overview of history, Bennett has meticulously chosen the essential events necessary to impart the desired outcome.

Throughout the years, many have sought to duplicate this effort as volumes covering the matter here are abundant, but with the passage of time, I believe this work will stand the test and emerge as one of the best sources available in this venue. Not because it simply presents the history, but because it instills pride in the reader. It reaffirms all that we love about America and reminds us of how great she truly is, and how great a role those who came before us have been to building her.

If you already love America, your love will be deepened here. If you are less than 50 years old, this book will perhaps shed light as to why we of older generations hold such a profound admiration for our country. These are the things that used to be openly taught in our schools. These are the stories of American history previous generations grew up with. This is the history of America that is so overlooked and even rewritten by those today who loathe our history. This book belongs in every American home.

[SSridhar]

Crossed Swords: Pakistan its Army and Wars within
By By Shuja Nawaz
Oxford University Press 2008
Pp655; Price Rs 695

A review by Khaled Ahmed

Here is finally a definitive book on the Pakistan army. It is from a former IMF officer whose credentials are reflected in his dedication: ‘born in the warlike Janjua clan, brought up by Brigadier Mohammad Zaman Khan, his uncle, married to the daughter of Lt Col ID Malik, and brother of General Asif Nawaz,{whose death in office is still a mystery} army chief from 1991 to 1993’. The book has the advantage of primary sources and a vast array of interviews with the dramatis personae of a very controversial army. His hand is steady, his judgement moderate, on a theme of excesses.

The Pakistan army, a well organised entity, has tried to fit into an underdeveloped political system. While responding to the unequal challenge of nextdoor India, it has ended up cannibalising the state it is supposed to defend. Its acts of trespass and usurpation have sapped its professional function and habituated it to reinterpreting its defeats as victories. Author Nawaz compares it tentatively with the Kemalist army of Turkey that often clashes with the democratic aspirations of the Turks — with roles reversed as far as religion is concerned — and, more relevantly, with the Indonesian army with its tentacles deep inside the national economy and its system of privileges.

Throughout the book, the special relationship between the army and the United States appears most striking, not least because of the nature of the task the nation placed on the shoulders of its soldiers: that of defeating a many times larger enemy in a just war and of keeping the state itself geared to this military undertaking. Lack of realism in the subcontinental challenge was offset by this oceanic axis during the Cold War, which in turn converted the army into a rightwing organisation wary of all brands of socialist politics. From there, ideology framed for the state by politicians facilitated its mutation into an Islamic army that sat back and let jihad undermine the state itself in the 1980s.

Therefore, there is more that should be laid at the door of the civilian mind than the book allows, keeping strictly within what soon appears as a fascinating framework of inquiry. Is the Pakistani civilian mind militarised by the dominance of the army or by the history of the people who formed Pakistan? Does Pakistani nationalism postpone the civilianising of the Pakistani mind or is it the army that pulls Pakistan towards the collective dream of a winnable ‘just war’ with India? Out of this theorem emerges the phenomenon of the Islamic soldier — anywhere from the COAS to the mid-ranking officers — who heroically questions the legitimacy of Pakistan’s clinch with the US, thus enlarging the challenge of the army’s mission statement and making it potentially adventurist and dangerous.

The first clash with the prime minister the book describes culminated in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. It was the army’s only leftwing defiance of Liaquat Ali Khan’s method of handling what they thought was India’s annexation of Kashmir. The account is riveting because the book updates the information we so far have on a war — barring Kargil in 1999 — conducted under a civilian government that, unlike Kargil, ironically ended in triumph if you take into account the strategic blunder by Nehru of going to the UN Security Council to get the Pakistan army out of Kashmir. The ignored blunder on the Pakistani side was the use of the ‘tribals’ which the army repeated again and again till the ancillary replaced the actual in the 20-year ‘deniable’ jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

General Ayub thereafter found it easy to sweep aside the civil servants ruling a fractious Pakistan to inaugurate his own era. A non compos mentis governor general Ghulam Muhammad was succeeded by first president Iskander Mirza who didn’t survive his own martial law. Cold War was the matrix and the ‘pacts’ with the US — signed by civilian leaders — were the mainstay. But error still lurked in the inability of the military mind to strategise itself out of predictable losing wars with India. The author covers the decade of Ayub with great deftness. What Pakistanis condemn as a period of military usurpation ultimately reappears as Pakistan’s best years in the histories now increasingly dominated by a concern for the national economy. Tragically, this promises to happen to General Musharraf’s ‘liberal’ years too.

The democratic purple patch in our lives was the Bhutto Era, but today it serves as selective inspiration, better ignored in detail. Civilian leaders soon took regularly to pleading with the GHQ to relieve the country of its recurring democratic stomach pains. General Zia arose on the burning pyre of a polarised society, Islamised to exorcise Bhuttoism, and died at the hands of — the book vacillates between the US and the army itself, taking in stride the assertion of the inconclusive Justice Shafiur Rehman Inquiry Commission Report that its work was hampered by the army. It handles General Aslam Beg carefully, stopping short of examining the mind of the stereotypical anti-American officer. He could have discovered there new pathological deposits to turn over.

The book has ISI chief General Javed Nasir telling us, around 1992, how he tried, unsuccessfully, to bring the self-enrichment (as opposed to uranium enrichment!) of Dr AQ Khan — 23 properties in Islamabad by then — to the notice of prime minister Nawaz Sharif as Khan proceeded to gift Pakistan its nuclear bomb. An effort to prevent him from selling ‘documents’ abroad, probably during trips to Iran, Syria and Algeria, came to nothing when Dr Khan refused to deposit them at the GHQ (p.475).

Army chief General Waheed Kakar too put the tabs on Dr Khan: ‘ISI had gathered information about the Dubai activities of AQ Khan and his attempts at forming a network of agents. When confronted about these activities, Khan said he needed a clandestine network to bypass the US’s controls on access to nuclear technology’ (p.475). The book doesn’t explore the ‘Dubai opening’, where AQ Khan made his first sale to Iran, most likely because it could have spilled out if the scope of this large volume. Later disclosures in the West have dated the dangerous cleavage between pro-Arab General Zia and pro-Iran General Beg from this Dubai opening.

A glimpse into the ISI’s chaotic Islamic heroics all over the world under General Javed Nasir is on offer. So is the nugget about prime minister Nawaz Sharif giving his assent to the Kargil Operation: ‘This is a military operation. All I can say is that...there should be no withdrawal, no surrender of any post because that will greatly embarrass us’ (p.517). And the book quotes General Ziauddin on it, the man Mr Sharif was to appoint in place of General Musharraf after firing him as army chief in 1999.

This is a standard textbook. Author Nawaz gets us into the inner working of the army, at times making us marvel how wrong we have been about certain officers — one was army chief General Kakar — simply because we didn’t know what was happening within. And Kakar was not given to shooting off his mouth like General Beg who called it, unoriginally, his ‘glasnost’. Kakar acted with non-intervening wisdom in a national environment completely divorced from rationality and helplessly inviting trespass. We get to know that army chief General Asif Nawaz was dubbed an enemy of prime minister Nawaz Sharif on the basis of a tsunami of rumours concocted from within the civilian enclave, finally exposing the general’s professionalism as his only disadvantage.

Today an army built to face India is being asked to retrieve territory lost to the terrorists. Trying to reclaim lost terrain is like invading your own people, but the additional handicap imposed on the army is that it is being sent in without political support. Meanwhile, the anarchists have discovered that when they kill non-Muslims in the West they inspire fear and loathing, but when they kill Muslims in Pakistan it leads to conversion. The army has the impossible task of saving a country of converts to the cause of the enemy.

[ramana]

Book Review, Pioneer, 7 July 2008

Revisiting Islam

It's a monumental study that throws light on the scriptural basis of intolerance and its manifestations in history, says NS Rajaram

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History
Author: Andrew Bostom
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Price: $39.95

Islam, we are constantly told, is a religion of peace and brotherhood. According to this view, terrorists taking innocent lives in its name are either ignorant of the true teachings of Islam or are driven to violence as a last resort because of injustices suffered at the hands of the victims -- Hindus, Jews and Christians. This claim of scriptural innocence and the historical reality are examined in detail in the monumental work, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, by Andrew Bostom, the compiler of the equally monumental The Legacy of Jihad.

But first we must ask: Can we accept teachings and conduct in the name of religion that would be unacceptable on humanistic grounds? Quranic passages -- "When the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God (Allah) wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them with every kind of ambush..."; and, "Gather against them all your armies and your horses so you may strike terror in the hearts of the enemies of Allah and your enemies..." -- need to be reinterpreted.

The scope of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism is broader than what the title suggests. It is better seen as a study of the theology and practice of intolerance than as a study limited to the persecution of Jews under Islamic rule. Unlike Hindus who encountered the full fury of Islam five centuries after its founding, Jews have had to deal with it right from the start in countries stretching from Spain to Iran. We thus have not only the authentic scripture of Islam but also abundant historical records by Jews, Christians and Muslims. These are presented in a systematic manner, allowing us to get a vivid picture of the treatment of non-Muslims.

These records make it clear that there is no middle ground in Islam, of a spirit of live and let live. In the words of the philosopher KD Prithipaul of the University of Alberta (conveyed to this reviewer), Muslims can live only "as an oppressive majority or a turbulent minority". Even the Indian Sufi Shayk-Ahmad Sirhindi wrote: "Whenever a Jew is killed it is for the benefit of Islam." This was long before the creation of Israel.

In spite of this vast and unambiguous record spanning over a thousand years, there is no shortage of 'liberal' intellectuals who extol the tolerance shown by Islam. Economist Amartya Sen wrote that when the "Jewish philosopher Maimonides was forced to emigrate from an intolerant Europe in the 12th century, he found a tolerant refuge in the Arab (Muslim) world". The truth is that the 'intolerant' Europe Maimonides had to flee happened to be Spain then under Berber Muslim rule, which, according to Foujad Ajami, "made the life of Spanish Jews... utter hell".

The depth of hatred for Jews that permeates the Islamic scriptures is truly staggering, but Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) noted also a parallel tendency for denial: "Never did a nation molest, degrade, debate and hate us as much as they (Muslims)... Although we were dishonoured by them beyond human endurance,... we have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation." This could well have been written about Hindus, especially their modern prophets of 'secularism.'

As part of this denial, Jews themselves joined hands with some apologist scholars to create the myth of a 'Golden Age' of Spain under Islamic rule. Jane Gerber explodes this myth: "The aristocratic bearing of a select class of courtiers and poets, however, should not blind us to the reality that this tightly knit circle of leaders was neither the whole of the Jewish history nor of Spanish Jewish society." This applies equally to the myth of India's 'Golden Age' under the Mughals with its 'synthetic culture' propagated by secularist historians.

Academic whitewashers of the Islamic record like Amartya Sen have now been joined by a brand of 'moderate' Muslims who claim that the extreme Wahaabi brand of Islam in force in countries like Saudi Arabia is a deviation from the true teachings. A prime example of these is Ed Husain, a reformed British radical Muslim and author of The Islamist. These 'moderates' are lionised by the establishment, especially in Britain. The same establishment, on the other hand, shuns serious critics like Ibn Warraq and the late Anwar Shaikh who raise uncomfortable questions.

A curious thing about these so-called moderates is that they live in open non-Islamic societies like the UK, the US and India where they enjoy the protection of democratic Governments. Their message of moderation is for public consumption and never taken to those who really need it -- the fundamentalists who rule Saudi Arabia, the Taliban, Al Qaeda and their ilk. In effect, they are little more than apologists.

The message to these 'moderates' is -- lip service is not enough. They must take a forthright stand and play an active role in reforming the Islam. All other religions -- Hinduism included -- have reformed themselves and continue to do so.

In summary, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism leaves little doubt that intolerance and violence are not a recent phenomenon due to Israel or Ayodhya or anything else, but only the latest phase in a theology and history that goes back 1,400 years. It is an indispensable source for every serious student of religion, especially of Islam and its history.

[venkat_r]

Really did not know where to post this. Probably belongs here.

This is a book that I have read - Its about the chicago gangs and its working with the locals and beating/supporting them and converting them to their cause - Found good similariteis to how a Lashkar is being formed and worked in Pakistan especially in the NWFP and afghanistan. With so many of these religious gangs mushrooming, this might be a good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Off-Books-Undergr ... 30&sr=11-1

[ramana]

I am reading a book called "inner Fish" by Neil Shubin. Its awesome in showing the progressive links that humnas have with fish and other land animals in between.

[svinayak]

Alpha Dogs: The Americans Who Turned Political Spin into a Global Business
by James Harding (Author)

# Hardcover: 272 pages
# Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 13, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0374103674
# ISBN-13: 978-0374103675

The rise and fall of the Sawyer Miller Group, a political consultancy firm, makes for a whirlwind look at international electioneering in this thoroughly engrossing book. The firm grew out of a partnership among the political neophytes who essentially invented the American-style of campaigning and served as backroom strategists in every presidential contest from Nixon to George W. Bush. Editor at TheTimes in London, Harding draws on over 200 interviews to reconstruct the behind-the-scenes history of the Sawyer Miller Group's meteoric rise to power and influence, offering an intimate look at the firm's involvement in global politics—its hand in steering Corazon Aquino to power in the Philippines, its clients' successful campaigns in South America and its machinations in Chile and Israel. The author closes the main part of his narrative in the early 1990s, with the firm's crushing defeat in Peru, a company shift toward corporate clients (e.g., Coca-Cola) and an acrimonious buyout. Though Harding spends little time on domestic politics or his protagonists' personal lives, this fascinating book vividly renders political history with clear insight and rich detail. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Dennis W. Johnson, George Washington University, author of No Place for Amateurs: How Political Consultants are Reshaping American Democracy
"A terrific read. Long before Karl Rove and James Carville became household names, Scott Miller and David Sawyer were peddling the techniques and political snake oil of modern American campaigns to dictators and scoundrels, and earnest and courageous reformers throughout the world. James Harding gives us an eye-opening, sobering account of the rise and fall of one of America's premier political consulting firms, and the saints and sinners it helped get elected to office. It's the rough and tumble of modern politics and the Alpha Dogs who made it that way."

In the early 1980's, I remember walking into the Manhattan offices of Sawyer Miller on East 60th Street, and wondering what went on beyond its reception desk's wall of television monitors. Were they part Madison Avenue, part CIA and NSC? Who were these green beret alpha dogs who parachuted into campaigns to save the day? How did a Mayflower descendant/son of a shoe company exec (Sawyer) team up with the son of a shoe salesperson (Miller)? How did Miller, the man credited with "Coke is it," "Have a Coke and a Smile," and "Great Taste, Less Filling" end up selling candidates to American and international voters? Now I know. James Harding explains the history of modern political consulting, and gives detailed accounts of the growth of the self confident Sawyer Miller Group, its tactics, clients, successes, speeches, ads, and failures, and its growth around the world and effects on international elections. It is a fascinating read. At times their negative ads turned off voters, but engaged others; some were informative, others were created to "relate" to the voter, and sometimes their clients political and corporate clients lost, proving that ads are not always magic potions. As for going negative: the author tells us that even Thomas Jefferson went negative against George Washington in 1796, and Cicero, in 63 BCE, wrote about how it is delicious to go negative against your opponent when running for political office.

The author writes on how Sawyer Miller's clients ranged from the Dali Lama and Vaclav Havel to Lech Walesa, Shimon Peres, Puerto Rico's Colon, Chile's Valdes, Ecuador's Borja, Bolivia's "Goni,"and Corey Aquino, and from Chris Dodd, Jane Byrne, and Scoop Jackson to Bruce Babbitt, as well as saintly domestic clients and international rogues known for alleged torture tactics. They worked for Amex, Drexel, BAT, Goldman, Resorts Intnl and more. The consultant who penned Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, also penned documents for Tony Blair, Boris Yeltsin, and Silvio Berlusconi. The author explains how politics became tactics instead of ideologies, and candidates were packaged like consumer products. In Harding's hands, we learn about the machinations of Black, Manafort ,Stone; Squier, Napolitan, Garth, Schwartz, Wirthlin, McCleary, Grunwald, Carville, Sawyer, Miller, and more.

Chapter 1 tells the story of the birth and growth of consulting by framing it within an exciting fly on the wall account of consultant Ned Kennan's (aka Nadav Katznelson) meeting with Boston's multi term mayor, Kevin White. Kennan, who focused on the driver's of voter behavior, loved to give bad news to the powerful, which he did to White, who was 20 points behind in the latest polls. In Chapter 2, we watch as Sawyer learns the limits of consulting, polls, personalities when he heads to Venezuela and tries to turn a pussycat of a candidate into a tiger. Chapter 3 relates the story of New Coke, its political-like battle with Pepsi, and the lesson it has for understanding polling results. By far my most favorite chapters were Chapters 4 and 5, which tell the stories of American political consulting in Israel and the Philippines. The account of Mrs. Aquino, the downfall of Marcos, and the roles of Cardinal Sin, Reagan, the U.S. media, certain Senators, and "American" consultants were so enlightening and suspenseful that I read that chapter a second time.


It's about the political spinmeisters who brought behind-the-scenes image consulting into its modern form. James Harding bores in on one particular political consultancy, Sawyer Miller. It's an excellent choice. The opening story about Sawyer Miller's counseling of Kevin White, the Irish mayor of Boston, is equal parts funny and insightful. ("Voters don't like you!" the consultant tells the candidate, while devising a strategy that helps him win anyway.) The consultants go around the world -- helping Cory Aquino oust Marcos in the Philippines, another riveting story -- and in and out of countless elections and boardrooms to find ways for candidates to get out the right message. It is not always pretty, what goes on out of view of the camera. From bare-knuckled fighting to seat-of-the-pants improvising, the tactics of a campaign invariably tell a memorable tale.

Harding is a knowing, graceful guide. He has a sensible grasp of politics and the unpredictable dynamics that rule virtually every campaign. His writing weaves subtle observation and sharp insight into the narrative with seeming effortlessness. He always offers just the right amount of historical background to any episode. He never gets bogged down in more policy than you want. Yet I really appreciated his smart, illuminating explanation of the politics in any situation his protagonists wandered into, and they did wander far and wide.

[svinayak]

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization
by Nicholson Baker (Author)

# Hardcover: 576 pages
# Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd (6 May 2008)
# Language English
# ISBN-10: 1847372740
# ISBN-13: 978-1847372741

At a time when the West seems ever more eager to call on military aggression as a means of securing international peace, Nicholson Baker's provocative narrative exploring the political misjudgements and personal biases that gave birth to the terrifying consequences of the Second World War could not be more pertinent.

With original and controversial insights brought about by meticulous research, Human Smoke re-evaluates the political turning points that led up to war and in so doing challenges some of the treasured myths we hold about how war came about and how atrocities like the Holocaust were able to happen. Baker reminds us, for instance, not to forget that it was thanks in great part to Churchill and England that Mussolini ascended to power so quickly, and that, before leading the United States against Nazi Germany, a young FDR spent much of his time lobbying for a restriction in the number of Jews admitted to Harvard. Conversely, Human Smoke also reminds us of those who had the foresight to anticipate the coming bloodshed and the courage to oppose the tide of history, as Gandhi demonstrated when he made his symbolic walk to the ocean -- for which he was immediately imprisoned by the British.

Praised by critics and readers alike for his gifted writing and exquisitely observant eye, Baker offers a combination of sweeping narrative history and a series of finely delineated vignettes of the individuals and moments that shaped history that is guaranteed to spark new dialogue on the subject.



I was surprised to discover, first of all, that Baker seems to be basically in agreement with many of the pacifists of the period, in particular those who believed that bad as the Third Reich was, it was immoral and wrong to put up any kind of fight against it. I find this position difficult to sympathise with or even to comprehend, but what's worse is that some demon in Baker's psyche has prevented him from offering any sort of sustained argument in its favour.

This book doesn't present any argument at all. Nor is it a 'sweeping narrative history'. It's in fact a highly selective annal of the period, in which Baker has chosen incidents that reflect what he seems to think was something very close to a moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis. He reinforces this impression by using weasel words - for example, when he presents a historical figure whom he finds sympathetic, he records their words without comment, but when it's someone he dislikes or despises he throws in a few eptithets to make them seem more malevolent. So Churchill's scientific advisor Frederick Lindemann is gratuitously described as 'dour and querulous', whereas Victor Klemperer - who on the evidence of his diary was equally dour and querulous, albeit with more reason to be so - is not described as anything. With Churchill himself, we are informed that he owned thousands of toy soldiers and was a physically reckless little boy. Big deal. There is also a rather disingenuous attempt to portray Churchill as an anti-Semite; even if Churchill shared the casual, low-level anti-Semitism of many people of his class and era, it was nothing compared to Hitler's. There seems to be no overall shape to the book, other than mere chronological order of event.

[Umrao Das]

Ramana Please read this book also.

The Descent of Woman Morgan, Elaine (1972)

I read this book with a mistaken notion of finding something a teenager would becurious, but the book was entirely about Human evolution fromaquatic spicies! Once I started the book I forgot why I selected it to read in the first place!

[svinayak]

Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters
by Richard A. Clarke (Author)

# Hardcover: 416 pages
# Publisher: Ecco; 1 edition (May 27, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0061474622
# ISBN-13: 978-0061474620
# Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches

America's government spends $1 trillion/year on national security, yet fails to provide security for its citizens. Clarke's latest book reviews several key areas and identifies both problems and potential improvements.

The Iraq War is the first topic reviewed. Clarke believes that the war was a major mistake, is not likely to achieve its purpose, and represents a failure in leadership. Examples of the latter include having insufficient troops, a lack of direction after taking Baghdad, poorly equipped and protected forces, loose control of prisoners, and poor treatment of our wounded after arriving back in the U.S. Clarke believes U.S. generals failed to stand up to poor decision-making by civilians, though also contends that top generals were chose for their compliability and admits that speaking out was a career-limiting move.

The end of the Cold War came as a surprise to American leadership, and is widely viewed as a devastating indictment of U.S. intelligence. Other failures include the CIA telling Truman in 1950 that China would not invade Korea to fight U.S. forces (that assessment was made after advance Chinese units had already entered North Korea), the CIA asserting that Iraq would not invade Kuwait (did so within hours of that forecast), concluding that Iraq did not have significant nuclear weapons development prior to Gulf War I, stating that Russia had not violated the Biological Weapons Convention (later was proved, and they admitted otherwise), mislocating the location of Russian nuclear warheads in East Germany, concluding that Iraq had WMD prior to Gulf War II and was also training al Qaeda, downplaying the likelihood of North Korea invading the South, India's developing nuclear weapons, failing to detect both the Tet Offensive and the fall of the Shah, etc. Hardly the expected performance for sixteen agencies with tens of thousands and $50 billion/year believed employed in intelligence activities.

Clarke is particularly upset at our failure to pursue Khalid al-Midhar (one of the 9/11 crew) in the U.S. even though he had been linked to the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in E. Africa, followed to Malaysia to a terrorist meeting in 1999 (secret photographing of his passport at the time showed he had a visa for U.S. travel, even though he had been identified as al Qaeda both by U.S. and Saudi Arabian sources, and entered the U.S. twice after that and lived in California prior to 9/11. A CIA Inspector General investigation post 9/11 concluded that 60 agents knew of al-Midhar's presence in the U.S., along with an associate.

The Afghanistan campaign is a long way from success, also due to inadequate force commitment, compounded by Frank's failure to send U.S. Rangers to cut off bin Laden's escape into Pakistan and others failing to provide enough economic aid. Clarke recommends we stop the heroin growing in Afghanistan (funds the Taliban) by paying farmers to plant something else.

As for Homeland Security, Clarke states that it presided over the most obvious domestic failure of the national government in generations, and is now laced with political hacks and private contractors. Unresolved problems to-date include fake IDs, failure to screen airplane cargo, little security effort involving trains and ships, illegal immigration, and non-functional software. Meanwhile, we have damaged our credibility and trust through torture, hyping arrests and plots, and wiretaps.

Worse yet are the related problems of oil funding terrorists and adding to global warming. Little has been done, despite the seriousness of both.

"Your Government Failed You" ends the topics examined with cybersecurity. We have problems with outsiders getting inside vital databases, overloading systems to render them inoperative, etc. Progress has been made, but it needs to become a higher priority.

Clarke's overall recommendations include reducing the size of government, and ending the privatization of vital functions, staffing them with political hacks, and rotating individuals in/out of these vital security functions.

There is NOTHING is this book that has not been known to all of us who actually cared about intelligence reform and who did as much as humanly possible, especially in 1992, to get a National Security Act of 1992 passed, an Act that was destroyed by Senator John Warner (R-VA) and Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense.

I find this book especially annoying--to the point of anger--because both Senator Obama and Senator McCain are surrounded by very old dogs long overdue for total exile, and young to middle age staff pukes that are part of the "don't make waves, go along with institutionalized insanity." The next Administration, regardless of who wins, is going to have no one with a radical iconoclastic brain or an open mind. Voters should take great care in understanding with precision the money and the minds (I use the term loosely) that are "behind" the front running for President.

The idiocy and myopia of Clarke's self-congratulatory and sanctimonious pontification can be readily discerned if one takes a moment to digest a few facts:

1) The world is unconquerable. Get over it.

2) The US is best friends with 42 of 44 dictators, ostensibly because they support the war on terror (a tactic, not an enemy) while sucking our treasury dry in getting arms and training for looting their own commonwealths and repressing their indigenous peoples.

3) There are ten high-level threats to humanity, as identified by LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret) and other members of the international panel, and I list them here to place the narrow, inflammatory, deceitfully presented Clarke book in perspective--note that terrorism is next to last in this list, and only because of the potential for catastrophic consequences:

-- Poverty
-- Infectious Disease
-- Environmental Degradation
-- Inter-State Conflict
-- Civil War
-- Genocide
-- Other Atrocities
-- Proliferation
-- Terrorism
-- Transnational Crime

I won't bother to list the twelve core policies from Agriculture to Water, or the eight demographic challengers that must be wooed with an EarthGame that demonstrates how we can create a prosperous world at peace without repeating the mistakes of the West. Clarke has no clue how to manage a government, balance a budget, articulate reality to We the People, or stand up to those who wear their rank on their foreheads with little else in their brain housing group.

This is the last book I am going to buy by anyone who has served in this or any recent Administration. These are the losers that got us into today's mess--losers who valued their jobs more than the truth, their perks more than our lives.

One cannot have a government that functions when Congress has abdicated its Article 1 authorities; the media is owned by those who would happily consent to 935 lies and 25 documented impeachable offenses by Dick Cheney, and a public that is oblivious to the perils, perils that escape them because the USA is no longer a smart industrious nation.

ENOUGH. It is time to take the 27 secessionist movements seriously, to have a Citizens' Summit (Chicago, on Lincoln's Birthday 2009) and to demand both an Electoral Reform Act and a Smart Nation-Multinational Information Sharing Act. Senators Hagel and Feingold, with their recent call for a commission to draw a new map of the world, are on the right track. Sadly, they are most likely to draw on all these self-congratulating peons who have been happy to be lions to the public, and ants in the White House.

Vastly better more relevant books include:
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Web of Deceit: The History of Western complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State

On a positive note, see:
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

[Paul]

Peter John Brobst. The Future of the Great Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, India's Independence, and the Defense of Asia . Series on International, Political and Economic History. Akron: University of Akron Press, 2005. xx + 199 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, index. $39.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-931968-10-2.
Reviewed by: Michael Silvestri, History Department, Clemson University.
Published by: H-Albion (April, 2006)
When Everyone is Dead the Great Game is Finished
The "Great Game," Britain's struggle with Russia for imperial supremacy in central Asia, seems at first glance to belong to the age of the "New Imperialism" of the late nineteenth century. First and foremost, it evokes the romantic--and fictional--exploits of Colonel Creighton, Mahbub Ali and, of course, the title character of Rudyard Kipling's Kim on India's Northwest frontier. In reality, the Great Game continued into the era of decolonization and the Cold War. In the closing years of the British Raj, the Government of India wrestled with the question of how Britain could continue to project influence in the region following a transfer of power in South Asia. How one important imperial servant conceptualized the ways in which Britain might continue to play the Great Game following Indian independence is the subject of Peter John Brobst's The Future of the Great Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, India's Independence, and the Defense of Asia. As Brobst observes, "The Great Game did not end with British rule in August 1947. Nor did officials of the late Raj expect that it would" (p. xiii).

Sir Olaf Caroe, "British India's leading geopolitical thinker during the final years of the Raj" (p. xiv), came from a background that epitomized the "official mind" of the British Empire. The son of a prominent architect, he was educated at Winchester and Oxford (where he read classics) and saw action on the Afghan frontier during the First World War. Caroe enjoyed a distinguished career in the Indian Political Service, and served in the North-West Frontier (acquiring fluency in Pashto), Baluchistan and the Persian Gulf. In 1939 he took charge of the External Affairs Department as foreign secretary to the Government of India. In this role, Caroe became "Britain's point man for questions arising along India's three thousand-mile international frontier" (p. xvii). In 1942, Caroe convened a group of high-level imperial servants known as the "Viceroy's Study Group," whose secret deliberations on the future of the Great Game following a transfer of power in South Asia form the core of Brobst's study. In March 1946, Caroe became governor of the North-West Frontier Province, the office to which he had aspired since the beginning of his career in the service of the British Raj. After his retirement, Caroe became an influential member of the Round Table group and the author of several books and numerous articles on topics related to the Great Game.

Brobst's clear, cogent and concise study demonstrates why the ideas of this late imperial proconsul merit our attention today. "No authority saw the transcendence of the Great Game more clearly than Sir Olaf Caroe. He believed that its rules, that the imperatives of Asian defense, reflected the permanence of geography versus the vicissitudes of empire and ideology" (pp. xiii-xiv). Brobst aptly characterizes Caroe's geopolitical outlook as a "combination of anachronism and prescience" (p. 143). On the one hand, Caroe's views reflected "a certain amount of romanticism and a more definite paternalism typical among British administrators in South Asia" (p. xix). Throughout his time as foreign secretary, Caroe presumed that Indian independence meant Dominion status, in which Britain maintained a measure of control of foreign policy and defense issues (pp. 78-79). He anticipated, for example, that Britain would have no difficulty in maintaining military bases in independent India for the purposes of imperial defense. As Brobst observes, "The fatal flaw in Caroe's idea was the presumption that the coming transfer of power would entail something less than a complete break between Britain and India" (p. 96). Yet on the whole, Caroe's conception of an ongoing Great Game was remarkably forward-looking. Although his first and foremost concern was to ensure the continued projection of British power in Asia, his outlook was not as Eurocentric as other colonial officials who "broke Asia and the Indian Ocean into separate regions attached only to the margins of the world's principal strategic areas" (p. 13). In contrast, Caroe viewed the Indian Ocean as a unified political and economic region, and considered the defense of Asia to be a "single, interlocked question." Caroe was a staunch anticommunist, but at a time when many predicted the inexorable advance of Soviet communism, "Caroe recognized the Soviet Union's ultimate difficulty in holding its multiethnic empire forcibly together" (p. 146). In particular, he noted the vulnerability of the Soviet Union's empire in central Asia. Caroe was also one of the first official analysts to prophecy the resurgence of China as a Great Power, at a time when British authorities tended to think that, in Winston Churchill's words, "China as a great power was rather a fraud" (pp. 60, 138). Lastly, Caroe anticipated "the resilience of Islam in the face of communism and secularizing ideologies more generally in an era when fashions were disposed to dismiss religious motivation as a spent force" (p. xx).

India comprised the core of Caroe's conception of the Great Game, and he envisioned independent India as a key element in Asian defense. As Brobst writes, "He imagined that through an Indian Dominion--independent but linked to Britain through the Commonwealth--Britain could continue to exercise influence along the Asian rim sufficient to hold the global balance against power based in the heartland" (p. 15). The views of Caroe and other members of the Viceroy's Study Group often accorded with those of contemporary Indian analysts such as K. M. Panikkar, who, for example, advocated a strong naval policy for India in close collaboration with Britain (p. 29). Brobst also points out how modern Indian strategic initiatives, such as the "containment" of China through the acquisition of nuclear weapons and the projection of Indian naval power into the South China Sea, echo the wartime deliberations of Caroe and other members of his study group (pp. 149-150).

In spite of its prescience, Caroe's vision of the Great Game did not, however, always find favor with policymakers in London and Delhi. Although secretary of state for India Leo Amery was deeply interested in Caroe's study group, plans for the publication of articles in American journals such as Foreign Affairs during the Second World War came to naught. Amery hoped that such articles would bolster U.S. support for British interests in India, but India Office officials objected to what they regarded as the "blunt defeatism" of some of the study group's papers (pp. 10-13). Lord Wavell considered Caroe "too narrow, theoretical and pedantic" to be an effective Governor of the Northwest Frontier Province (p. 105), and Caroe's appointment as Governor there ended in his sacking by Lord Mountbatten in June, 1947, after he quarreled with Nehru. Caroe's plan to resolve tensions between the Pathans of the Northwest Frontier and the Congress, an approach dictated by the concerns of Great Game strategy, appeared to authorities in London and New Delhi to be politically inexpedient and "hopelessly anachronistic" and was shelved (p. 110). As Brobst observes, "Caroe's Great Game perspective on the postcolonial world contributes substantially to the lasting interest of his thought, but according to some British officials at the time, it was also the basic weakness" (p. 13).

Brobst's study is concise, well oganized and clearly argued, and he has thoroughly mined sources in the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library, and the National Archives in London to trace the contours of Caroe's thought. Considering the importance of the Great Game as an organizing principle for his book, Brobst says surprisingly little about the wider history of the Great Game, either in strategic or cultural terms. The latter dimension clearly engaged Caroe, and his lifelong interest in the Indian frontier was in part sparked by reading Rudyard Kiping (p. xvi). In his history of The Pathans: 550 B.C.--A.D. 1957 (1958), for example, Caroe devoted a chapter to a stirring account of the British "Paladins" of the Northwest Frontier, Victorian heroes such as John Nicholson and Herbert Edwardes. Brobst's book thus will be of the most interest to specialists in the modern British Empire.

Caroe also clearly recognized, however, as he said in a 1949 speech, that the Great Game extended far beyond "the old romance of the North-West Frontier with its forts, its Khyber Pass, its militia, its 'King of the Khyber Rifles' and so on" (p. 99). The Future of the Great Game demonstrates how the issues that motivated one colonial official on this subject continue to resonate today.

[svinayak]

A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
by Kenneth Pollack (Author)


# Hardcover: 592 pages
# Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (July 15, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1400065488
# ISBN-13: 978-1400065486

“A persuasive but painful solution for dealing with the mess in the Middle East.” –Kirkus

The greatest danger to America’s peace and prosperity, notes leading Middle East policy analyst Kenneth M. Pollack, lies in the political repression, economic stagnation, and cultural conflict running rampant in Arab and Muslim nations. By inflaming political unrest and empowering terrorists, these forces pose a direct threat to America’s economy and national security. The impulse for America might be to turn its back on the Middle East in frustration over the George W. Bush administration’s mishandling of the Iraq War and other engagements with Arab and Muslim countries. But such a move, Pollack asserts, will only exacerbate problems. He counters with the idea that we must continue to make the Middle East a priority in our policy, but in a humbler, more humane, more realistic, and more cohesive way.

Pollack argues that Washington’s greatest sin in its relations with the Middle East has been its persistent unwillingness to make the sustained and patient effort needed to help the people of the Middle East overcome the crippling societal problems facing their governments and societies. As a result, the United States has never had a workable comprehensive policy in the region, just a skein of half-measures intended either to avoid entanglement or to contain the influence of the Soviet Union.

Beyond identifying the stagnation of civic life in Arab and Muslim states and the cumulative effect of our misguided policies, Pollack offers a long-term strategy to ameliorate the political, economic, and social problems that underlie the region’s many crises. Through his suggested policies, America can engage directly with the governments of the Middle East and indirectly with its people by means of cultural exchange, commerce, and other “soft” approaches. He carefully examines each of the region’s most contested areas, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and explains how the United States can address each through mutually reinforcing policies.

At a time when the nation will be facing critical decisions about our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, A Path Out of the Desert is guaranteed to stimulate debate about America’s humanitarian, diplomatic, and military involvement in the Middle East.

About the Author
Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. From 1995 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2001, he served as director for Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, where he was the principal working-level official responsible for implementation of U.S. policy toward Iraq, Iran, and the states of the Arabian Peninsula. Prior to his time in the Clinton administration, he spent seven years in the CIA as a Persian Gulf military analyst. He is the author of The Threatening Storm, The Persian Puzzle, Arabs at War, and Things Fall Apart. He lives in Washington, D.C.

[svinayak]

The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America
by Kenneth Pollack (Author)



# Paperback: 576 pages
# Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (August 9, 2005)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0812973364
# ISBN-13: 978-0812973365

When Pollack, formerly director for Gulf affairs at the National Security Council and a military analyst for the CIA, wrote The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq in September 2002, he both shaped the debate over the imminent invasion and helped persuade many reluctant Democratic policy makers to support the war. This time around, he is much more cautious, concluding that although "Iran is on the wrong path and marching down it quickly," invasion would be a serious mistake. Part history lesson, part current affairs primer and part party policy memo, Pollack's new book about the second Axis of Evil member revolves around an extremely pressing question: would the acquisition of nuclear capabilities prompt the Iranians to disregard the threat of American intervention and pursue a more aggressive, destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy? Pollack cautions that there are two ticking clocks: the first is internal regime change in Iran and the second is how long it will take Iran to go nuclear. Ultimately, and with many codicils, Pollack decides that the U.S. can live with a nuclear Iran, postulating that through strong multilateral engagement we can effectively deter Iran, if not yet welcome the country into the world community. Analyzing the assumptions behind both American and Iranian foreign policy, Pollack reminds us that behind Iran's tendency to blame "everything but the weather on foreign subversion" lies a kernel of truth. The CIA did, in fact, overthrow Mossaddeq in 1953, although Americans, conveniently, "are serial amnesiacs; as a nation, we forget what we have done almost immediately after doing it." For anyone wanting to understand the stark choices the U.S. faces concerning Iran, and how to respond to them, this is the place to start.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Rarely has a policy wonk made such a splash as Kenneth M. Pollack did two winters ago. His 2002 bestseller The Threatening Storm convinced hundreds of otherwise liberal opinion leaders -- and, in turn, thousands and possibly millions of their readers and viewers -- that invading Iraq was a good thing to do. Few read the book's final section, which laid out the steps Pollack insisted the United States take before roaring toward Baghdad (smashing al Qaeda and tamping down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among others). But Pollack too brushed aside his caveats, appearing on innumerable TV news shows to argue eloquently for war -- a campaign for which he has since apologized, claiming that he, too, had been snookered by bad intelligence.

Now the specter of Iran, whose nuclear ambitions and resources seem very real, looms before us. Another debate rages over what is to be done. And here comes Pollack with another all-too-pertinent book, The Persian Puzzle.

Many will be relieved, and others dismayed, that Pollack opposes war this time out. (In a clear reference to his earlier book, which was subtitled The Case for Invading Iraq, he labels one section of this new work "The Case Against Invading Iran.") An invasion, he notes, is impractical. Iran is four times as large as Iraq and three times as populous, and its terrain is forbiddingly mountainous; besides, as long as the United States is stuck in Iraq, there aren't enough troops. As for launching a coup, the CIA lacks assets; Iran's security apparatus is impenetrable; and, bitterly as most Iranians detest their regime, they hate interlopers even more.

The most tempting option is to bomb Iran's nuclear reactors, as the Israelis did with Iraq's Osiraq facility in 1981. But, Pollack laments, the Iranians -- precisely to avoid a repetition -- have dispersed their facilities in underground sites whose locations are unknown.

So what should we do? Alas, Pollack is as uncertain as everyone else. "There are no easy answers," he cautions in the book's introduction. It's "a problem from Hell. There simply is no school solution," he sighs on the penultimate page.

The Persian Puzzle is mainly a history, and Pollack -- a former Persian Gulf analyst for the CIA and the National Security Council -- grippingly narrates the last 50 years of U.S.-Iranian relations, a loopy psychodrama of mutual suspicion and tragic stumblings. Iran's behavior has been marked by deep paranoia. But Pollack recites an old saw: " 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that someone's not out to get you.' And we were out to get them."

The dynamic was set in 1953, when the CIA helped overthrow Iran's president, Mohammad Mossadeq, and install Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pollack recounts this episode in absorbing detail, blaming both sides for the ensuing tensions. Mossadeq, "a true eccentric," rejected generous offers on oil profits that might have kept him in power for the sake of martyrdom. President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles played into this weird complex and elevated Iranians' traditional xenophobia to an all-consuming passion.

Over the next half-century, Mossadeq's ghost has haunted the Iranian landscape, animating every crisis, not least the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 and the subsequent seizure of the U.S. embassy, a trauma that, in turn, molded our own attitude toward Tehran.

Pollack heaps particular scorn on two presidents: Jimmy Carter, whose ill-timed embrace of the shah enraged and radicalized Iranian students; and George W. Bush, who muffed a serious opportunity for a breakthrough after 9/11. Both countries saw the Taliban as a threat and cooperated to oust it from Afghanistan. For the first time, U.S. and Iranian officials met face-to-face at conferences in Geneva. But the Americans were low-level; Bush seemed unaware of the meetings, much less of their significance. In early 2002, just as things "were starting to really get interesting," as an inside source put it to Pollack, Bush delivered his State of the Union address branding Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil." The Geneva talks ended, and Iran's nuclear program accelerated.

Yet Pollack holds the Iranians -- with their "impractical ideology" and "dysfunctional government" -- most responsible for the continued deadlock. Bush's father and Bill Clinton both made genuine overtures, but they were repeatedly dashed by the mullahs, whose control has only tightened over the years.

Pollack argues that the Iranians want the bomb in order to deter an American attack, which they genuinely fear. Still, the prospect of nuclear-armed Islamic fundamentalists is a prima facie threat, even if their motives are defensive. The United States "must address Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons," Pollack acknowledges, at the expense of other concerns.

If his analysis is correct, the current talks between Iran and the European Union are probably a snare and a delusion. Iran does fear sanctions, which the U.N. Security Council is scheduled to consider and may impose if diplomacy seems hopeless. Once that threat passes, Iran will probably return to its intransigence. (If the talks do produce results, Pollack will need to rewrite whole chapters for the paperback edition.)

In the last chapter, Pollack proposes a true "carrot-and-stick approach," in which the United States and its Western allies offer Iran rewards if it backs away from its nuclear-arms program, and penalties -- mainly sanctions -- if it persists. But he doubts that U.S. allies, whose "paramount desire" is "to make money off Iran regardless of its actions," would really enforce sanctions. So he proposes broadening the approach to cover not just Iran but all nuclear aspirants. He calls for a conference to revise the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to forbid signatories to revoke it and to impose harsh sanctions on any country that violates it. In many countries that resist, their populations "could be mobilized to compel their governments . . . to join the effort."

How is all this supposed to happen? And how quickly? Pollack correctly notes that a clock is ticking; Iran will soon have a self-contained program to build nuclear weapons. Any preventive measures would have to take hold before that threshold is crossed. Yet Pollack's vision of a new international order, assuming the best intentions, would take many years to hammer out.

If diplomacy fails, Pollack gloomily grasps at two opposing poles. One is to take "a much harder look" at a preemptive air strike on Iran's facilities. If we had "very solid intelligence" on where they are (which Pollack thinks unlikely), "the costs might well be worth the payoff." The other is to figure out a way of "living with a nuclear Iran." He adds, "Iran's behavior over the past fifteen years suggests that it can probably be deterred from taking the most harmful offensive actions even after it has acquired nuclear weapons." Yet his phrasing here is far from reassuring, and he barely tries to back up the sentiment.

The final chapter, then, only dramatizes the lesson spelled out in the preceding chapters: that this "Persian puzzle" is a tough nut, and one that may simply be uncrackable. If an analyst as expert as Pollack can't figure a way out, we may have no choice but to live with -- and contain -- a nuclear Iran. If somebody has a better idea, write it fast.

Reviewed by Fred Kaplan
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Kenneth Pollack worked for 7 years as a Persian Gulf military analyst at the CIA and for 3 years as Director for Gulf affairs at the National Security Council official.

As the reader may know, Pollack's previous work was "The Threatening Storm". In it, he provided a historical perspective to the relations between Iraq and the U.S., and thoroughly analyzed alternatives for engagement based on the information available.

With "The Persian Puzzle", Pollack sets again the standard in foreign policy books. He offers a technical and non-partisan perspective to the history of Iran, its relation with other countries (especially the UK, the USSR/Russia, the US and its Middle Eastern neighbors) and its internal political struggles and infighting. This takes almost 90% of the text. The remaining 10% (around 50 pages) is invested to detailing alternatives for future engagement with Iran. Different than with Iraq, Pollack suggest a combination of approaches might be the the best option to deal with Iran from an American standpoint.

I have found this a truly top-notch work. Here is why:
- Historical perspective: Pollack provides a historical background to Iran, starting with the Elamites (the first people to civilize what is Iran today, more than 1000 BC), and including the chaos brought by Gengis Khan, the ascendence of Shi'ism, the difficult relation with Russia and Great Britain in the first half of the XX century, Reza Khan and his son the Shah, the involvement of the US (positive and negative) starting mainly from World War II, Khomeini's revolution and the Embassy incident, the Rafsanjani, Khatami administrations and how they interacted with the US (and viceversa).
- Non-biased, non-partisan view: Pollack acknowledges what now in hindsight were mistakes of US policy regarding Iraq, but does not seem to put the blame on a party, administration or person in particular. He also provides a context and tries to come with a rational explanation for them. In addition, he does not try either to put Iran or its government (or its people) as culprits or bad-intentioned. He goes the extra mile to understand their world view.
- Structure: this is a well thought book. It was not written in a rush. And the author has a clearly structured mind. The flow is very easy. There is a good sense of purpose for everything. The story is built in such a way that makes sense. The history of Iran comes first, with more intensity and details as the text brings us to the present.
- Rationality: it does not seem that Pollack wants to "prove us a point" and has written a book to "sell us his plan". He thoroughly analyzes the issue and presents all its details, complexities and paradoxes. Yes, he comes with a proposed solution, but it is not the main point of the book; it just comes as a final chapter and as his personal tack on how to solve a very difficult problem.

Notwithstanding the above, my only concern with this work is the content of Pollack's suggested proposal. Its somehow convoluted and has many "ifs". I realize this is not completely his fault. Actually, it reflects the complexity of the Iranian situation and how difficult it is in this case to find a clear-cut solution. This concern of mine does not, however, affects in any way my conclusion that this book is truly a most for anybody interested in learning more about the true facts of Iran.

In short, if the reader has a strong view about Iran and its relation with the world and wants to find a "confirmation" to his/her opinions, this book probably is not for him/her. However, if the reader is open to learning more about the topic and is willing to see the issue with all of its complexity and gray zones, this book is definitively for him/her.

[svinayak]

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
by Stephen Kinzer (Author)

# Paperback: 416 pages
# Publisher: Times Books (February 6, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0805082409
# ISBN-13: 978-0805082401

This is a timely review, although the facts are well known to those who follow international affairs.

In this second (as if new) reading, the following quote stayed with me from page 317: "Most American sponsored 'regime change' operations have, in the end, weakened rather than strengthened, American security."

I list the countries covered by this book: Hawaii, Cuba, Nicarague, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Guatemala, Iran, Viet-Nam, Chile, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq.

I focus more on Hawaii, in 1893, the first of a new range of intrusive overthrows (beyond the land expansion actions the author chooses not to cover). I am struck--moved--by the duplicitious immoral actions of both the white landowners and the white US government representatives against the people of Hawaii.

The author discusses how Hawaiians were at the time bound by obligations, ritual, and a reverence for nature. I am reminded of how we and the Spanish genocided the native Americans, north and south, individuals who had decades if not centuries of refined knowledge on how to shape and nurture the Earth in harmony with their needs.

This time around, the author's emphasis on how the legal right to buy land led to the loss of local indigenous control and rights. I now firmly believe that foreign and absentee landlords should be eliminated.

This time around, I note the author's emphasis on how corporations are a form of national army, capturing wealth in different ways from an armed force.

This time around, I think of how Dick Cheney has raped the American dream, in so violent and so public a fashion, that America's "lost innocence" can not longer be denied.

This time around, I discover and reflect (being at the beach) on the superb bibliography.

For a broader and perhaps more disturbing overview of the costs to America of corporate-driven foreign policy, see
The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
Why We Fight
The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption


Stephen Kinzer's latest book, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq," is, I think, a necessary and valuable contribution to the study of American history. It's one of those few books that I begin reading and find difficult to put aside. While not exactly a "thriller" in the ordinary sense of a James Bond novel, I found myself continuing to turn page after page, reluctant to take a break, hesitant to stop reading lest I miss something important by forgetting where I left off and, all in all, curious about what was coming next. This was strange; after all, I taught American history for over ten years and have continued to study it ever since I left teaching. But not much of the "stuff" Kinzer is relating. No, the whole idea of so-called "regime change" was never a topic discussed in a history class I taught. For that matter, it was not a topic in any American history course I took in college.

Now, this does not mean that those of my generation were ignorant of the things of which Kinzer writes. I grew up and lived in the era when many of the "regime changes" discussed by the author were taking place. Neither I nor my contemporaries, however, used the term "regime change" or looked at those incidents through the conceptual lens that many of us do today. As close as I remember getting to this sort of political reality was when I spent ten days in Hawaii way back in the 1960s and was introduced to a few native Hawaiians who did not have very good things to say about the American missionaries and businessmen who stepped afoot on their island and simply took control, changing (or "destroying"?) a culture that had been around for hundreds of years and successfully so. A "regime change"? Well, I don't think any of us looked at it quite that way back then.

This book definitely reminds us of some uncomfortable incidents in American history. The United States, as Kinzer points out, has overthrown at least fourteen sovereign foreign governments. Furthermore, the United States seems to have adopted a policy of interfering in foreign governments long ago, possibly as long as a hundred years or so. So our recent invasion of Iraq, for instance, in the name of "regime change," should come as no surprise to the informed. Actually, many of the "intrusions" the United States has made into other countries -- whether by supporting friendly coups, by fomenting internal revolutions, or by just plain military invasions -- have occurred during my lifetime. These include Cuba, Iran, Viet Nam, Chile, Grenada, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, and most recently, Iraq. I might relate that I was in Central America during the time of the hostilities in Nicaragua and Guatemala and did experience firsthand some of the problems there.

There is no doubt in my mind that the United States has aggressively interfered in the internal affairs of other nations. That is a matter of record. And I submit that it is difficult to justify most of this interference since it was either promoted by or in the personal interests of American alien-residents or large corporations who simply wanted to exploit the local populace and their natural resources. Kinzer provides many examples of both cases and he does it objectively and dispassionately. Historical facts are historical facts. The United States does have many things to be ashamed of regarding its foreign policies and practices.

Let's be fair, however, and look at the excursions which are narrated by Kinzer with some historical perspective. While it is true that the United States government has involved itself in many questionable and possibly condemnable practices in foreign affairs, it has certainly not been alone. It has had no monopoly on international intrigue and exploitation. England, France, China, Holland, Spain, Japan, Germany, Turkey, Russia -- need I go on? -- are also guilty of building empires of their own, invading foreign nations, exploiting human beings, and involving themselves in, to say the least, despicable practices.

This is not an excuse for the behavior of the United States regarding its past or present international "sins," but it is necessary to place these matters in some perspective. If the United States is to be considered the "Great Satan" out there, it has lots and lots of company. Many other countries need to realize that they may be part of the "international problem" too. That being said, the United States has to do much better on the international stage. America needs to be an exemplar of democratic reform and human rights and it can't do that by trying to impose such through the force of arms. As I have said elsewhere: The United States may currently be the "big man" on the international campus, but it ought not be the "big bully" in the international school yard.

I think that Kinzer ends his book with an observation that all of us need to take to heart. He says: "The United States rose to world power more quickly than almost any nation or empire ever has. Filled with the exuberance and self-confidence of youth, it developed a sense of unlimited possibility. Many Americans came to believe that since they had been so successful in building their country, they not only duplicate that success abroad but were called by Providence to do so. Responding to this call, and to their belief that they are entitled to a large share of the world's resources, they set out to overthrow foreign governments. Most of these adventures have brought them, and the nations whose histories they sought to change, far more pain than liberation." I'll second that.

Lest readers think that Kinzer in his book or I in my review are being "unpatriotic" at this critical time, let me remind them that "patriotism" means "love of one's country," not "love of one's current government." This book is a must read for all true "patriots."


Even though Saddam Hussein distinguished himself as one of history's most ruthless dictators, many Americans expressed surprise that the United States preemptively invaded a sovereign nation to depose a head of state. I know that I did. But there was nothing unusual about American regime change, according to Stephen Kinzer. Only historical ignorance, amnesia, or patriotic naivete could allow someone like me to enjoy such a pleasant myth. Kinzer has reported from more than fifty countries as a foreign correspondent, and in this book he examines the fourteen times in the last century that the United States has toppled foreign governments:

* Hawaii (1893)
* Cuba (1898)
* Puerto Rico (1898)
* Philippines (1902)
* Nicaragua (1910)
* Honduras (1911)
* Iran (1953)
* Guatemala (1954)
* Vietnam (1963)
* Chile (1973)
* Grenada (1983)
* Panama (1989)
* Afghanistan (2001)
* Iraq (2003)

Specialists will debate the complex nuances of outright coups, covert activities, mixed motives, and historical consequences, but by giving us the "big picture" Kinzer reminds us that America's geopolitics is hardly benign or altruistic. "No nation in modern history," he writes, "has done this so often, in so many places so far from its own shores."

America has deposed foreign governments for many reasons. We have claimed to civilize others, Christianize them, protect them, and liberate them. We have also ousted presidents and prime ministers to guard economic interests (including those of corporations like United Fruit and ITT), control another country's natural resources (especially when they had the audacity to try to nationalize them for their own citizens), maintain and spread our power, and combat enemy ideologies. We have employed Machiavellian means to accomplish regime change, including bold lies, doing the exact opposite of what we promised, ignoring international law, media censorship, terror, torture, rape, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to rebel causes, and propaganda. Some of what we have done feels good and right, like ridding Panama of Noriega. But a major theme of Kinzer's book is the law of unintended consequences. Invading other countries has almost always radicalized extreme groups, fanned the flames of nationalism, and fomented anti-Americanism that has destabilized countries rather than strengthened them. Invading others, in fact, has more often than not weakened our own country. Since no country can resist our will to power, we have thus often been the victim of our own "catastrophic success."

Many of us will be made uncomfortable by what this book has to say but our alternative is to continue to hide our heads in the sand. Since at least 1893 this country has engineered the overthrow of governments in many countries of the world and this has not happened without consequences. When we wonder why "they" hate us we simply must become aware of what American governments and American corporations have done to "them" over the years and this will help us to understand why they hate us. If Americans refuse to educate themselves about this and deny this reality we will go the way of previous empires that were eventually toppled in part by the hatred their prior actions had engendered.

Most of the evidence seems to me to support the conclusion that we will go the way of prior empires but reading this book could help reverse this process. Unfortunately the demise of the American empire could well be far worse and more destructive than any before because now there is the spread of nuclear weapons. Who can doubt, if those who hate us could set off a nuclear device in one of our population centers, that they would do this. There is also a lot of sabre-rattling coming from some in the Bush administration, like Sec. Rumsfeld, toward China. If an American administration gets us into a war with China, a nuclear power, the results could be the holocaust that so many feared more consciously in the 1950s and 60s.

[SSridhar]

Descent into Chaos

Descent into Chaos
By Ahmed Rashid
Penguin Books, India
ISBN 978-1-846-14175-1
484pp. Rs1,195

SOME authors have opinion, no facts; some have facts, no opinion. Ahmad Rashid has both, and that is why his views carry weight. His thesis, borne out of decades of first-hand knowledge of ‘the region’, is shocking but true: the region was ‘lost’ the day America chose to abandon Afghanistan and invade Iraq. By ‘the region’ he means the turbulent but energy-rich area extending from Pakistan through Afghanistan to Kazakhstan. Rashid is a mine of information coupled with a deep insight into the subject and personalities he writes about. His new book is about the issue of the day — terrorism — and about the personalities involved in the 21st century version of the Great Game. The Game this time is far more deadly than it was in the 19th century.

Fata occupies centre-stage in this drama. Waves go out from Fata to as far as Kazakhstan only to return, reinforced, each wave more deadly and ferocious than its predecessor. In theory there are sovereign states with governments, borders, passport controls, and customs posts. But in reality, the region between Fata and the fringes of Kazakhstan is one big theatre of operation in which guerillas, mercenaries, armies with or without uniform, drug barons, double agents, profiteers, warlords, and cut-throats in power or out of it move about freely. The cheapest commodity is, of course, blood — of innocent men, women and children, mostly Afghan, caught in crossfire, killed, maimed or made homeless. Save Vietnam, says Rashid, no country has, since World War II, been ‘so comprehensively destroyed’ as Afghanistan.

Rashid’s knowledge isn’t bookish, for he has traversed the area as possibly no other journalists has. He mixes and talks with people ranging from truck drivers to spy chiefs, mullahs — pious and impious, some of them rapists and looters — generals groping in the dark, and foreign and defence ministers and prime ministers, often in the same government, working at cross purposes. Donald Rumsfeld once declared that American homeland security is not possible without a strong military presence in the Middle East. He then went on to announce a 20 per cent cut in American troops in Afghanistan, while sending more troops to Iraq. Colin Powell was understandably stunned.

But no organisation receives as much mention in Rashid’s narrative as Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. From the day the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas eve in 1979 till this day, the ISI has been in the picture, sometimes openly, sometimes behind the scenes, to influence personalities and manipulate events in a way that in the end have hurt Pakistan’s long-term interests.

Taliban’s ferocity is unbelievable, and the facts and figures documented by Rashid are shocking. In 2006, the Taliban murdered 85 teachers and students and burned down 187 schools. Another 350 more schools were shut down because of the Taliban threat.

The differences between America and Nato governments and among Nato’s European officials themselves are shocking. There is no Nato fund for Afghanistan, and every government manages its own role in the war. The governments win parliamentary approval by saying they would undertake ‘risk-free operations’, many Nato commanders do not send their soldiers on night patrols, while others insist their job is to maintain security and not fight. Once, for six months, Nato could not find three helicopters to go to Kabul. The only point on which Nato generals agree is to hide their own reluctance to fight behind a barrage of allegations against Pakistan.

One man is ubiquitous in the book — Musharraf. If you dislike him you can call him clever, unreliable, wily and duplicitous; if you are his admirer Musharraf emerges as a remarkably intelligent man who followed Mao’s dictum — ‘win over the neutrals, and neutralise the enemy’. He ate humble pie where necessary, was stubborn when required, courted danger, showed flexibility and often kept both the US and the Taliban guessing as to his true intentions. In the end he got what he wanted — Bush support for his rule and massive doses of aid, which since 9/11 comes to $20 million.

The conclusion to which Rashid comes constitutes a harsh commentary on the managers of American foreign policy. The US, he says, has failed to consolidate South and Central Asia — ‘the homeland of global terrorism’ — and chose instead to invade Iraq.

The idea in Chapter 16, ‘Who Lost Uzbekistan?’, holds good for the entire region. Islam Karimov is a tyrant cast in the Stalinist mould, except that the Georgian never lowered his dissidents into boiling water. Karimov has played off America against Russia and China and in the end has remained a victor.

He has received plentiful doses of economic and military aid from the three sides, especially America, and has in turn been given a free hand to tyrannise his own people. The world was made to forget the terrible massacre at Andijan on May 13, 2005, when Karimov’s police murdered a minimum of 850 people. Said an eyewitness: ‘From the sky there was a storm of rain, from the streets a storm of bullets’.

On the whole in the region, says Rashid, ‘the regimes won’ and the United States lost public sympathy’. International aid, UN help and troops did not stop East Timor from becoming a failed state, and he makes the chilling prediction that Afghanistan too could go the same way. The book gives the reader Rashid’s penetrative analysis of the torrent of cataclysmic events, and motives of the bewildering number of forces involved in conflict in a region that is the biggest source of threat to peace, not only regional but international.

The book is, no doubt, crammed with facts and figure but needs more attention on the analytical side. Also, Rashid tends to share the tendency only too common among western analysts and journalists to view Kashmir and Indo-Pakistan rivalry as the Pakistani military’s stunt. The rivalry between the two countries, and their contention over Kashmir, in fact stems from a long history.

[svinayak]

The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (Borzoi Books)
by Steven Greenhouse (Author)

# Hardcover: 384 pages
# Publisher: Knopf (April 15, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1400044898
# ISBN-13: 978-1400044894

The Big Squeeze takes a fresh, probing, and often shocking look at the stresses and strains faced by tens of millions of American workers as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled.

Going behind the scenes, Steven Greenhouse tells the stories of software engineers in Seattle, hotel housekeepers in Chicago, call center workers in New York, and janitors in Houston, as he explores why, in the world’s most affluent nation, so many corporations are intent on squeezing their workers dry. We meet all kinds of workers: white collar and blue collar, high tech and low tech, middle income and low income; employees who stock shelves during a hurricane while locked inside their store, get fired after suffering debilitating injuries on the job, face egregious sexual harassment, and get laid off when their companies move high-tech operations abroad. We also meet young workers having a hard time starting out and seventy-year-old workers with too little money saved up to retire.

The book explains how economic, business, political, and social trends—among them globalization, the influx of immigrants, and the Wal-Mart effect—have fueled the squeeze. We see how the social contract between employers and employees, guaranteeing steady work and good pensions, has eroded over the last three decades, damaged by massive layoffs of factory and office workers and Wall Street’s demands for ever-higher profits. In short, the post–World War II social contract that helped build the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class has been replaced by a startling contradiction: corporate profits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly while worker pay has languished and Americans face ever-greater pressures to work harder and longer.

Greenhouse also examines companies that are generous to their workers and can serve as models for all of corporate America: Costco, Patagonia, and the casino-hotels of Las Vegas among them. Finally, he presents a series of pragmatic, ready-to-be-implemented suggestions on what government, business, and labor should do to alleviate the squeeze.

A balanced, consistently revealing exploration of a major American crisis.
The book is both an overview of the deteriorated state of affairs for American workers as well as a few up close and personal looks at some of those so affected. For one brief generation after WWII, American workers empowered through union contracts, achieved a somewhat harmonious status with their employers, which included good wages and benefits and expectations of job security. And the government provided support as well, especially for veterans. But that's not the way things are now.

As the author so well examines, employees are now viewed as mere factors of production and can be subjected to egregious capriciousness. They now can be fired arbitrarily, forced to work off the clock, have their time sheets altered, forced to work as so-called independent contractors or part-time, etc. Employee wages have been flat for over thirty years, despite increasing productivity over those years, while CEO pay has skyrocketed. The labor movement is a mere shell of its former self with private sector union membership being at the same density as one hundred years ago. Advances in computers and telecommunications have facilitated shipping even high tech jobs overseas; trade agreements have enabled establishing production off shore for intra-corporate trade; and immigration is having profound impacts on jobs and wages domestically. Those left behind after downsizing have to redouble their efforts with apparently little appreciation by many employers. The traditional way to advancement, education, is increasingly becoming out of reach for many because of the costs. American workers have truly become an afterthought or invisible.

There really is nothing in this book that has not been discussed repeatedly in the electronic media, books, and newspapers over the last several years. The Wal-Mart model has become pervasive. Occasionally an organization will come along like Costco that demonstrates that workers can be treated well despite the demands of the retail world, but they are an exception.

US corporations are ascendant; they have a great deal of control over media content, they dominate the political process, and they hide behind the mantra of competitiveness to squeeze American workers for higher and higher profits. The author, more hopefully than convincingly, calls for a return to kinder times. But there will be no voluntary relinquishment of power. There has to be a realization on the part of American workers on the realities of excessive corporate power and a willingness to assert political power to transform the process in favor of workers. This book clearly shows that American workers are now being squeezed almost beyond imagination with no end in sight.

This book add to the growing number of titles lifting the shroud corporate media have wrapped around the economic realities of our time: ripping out 'labor' from the economic legs of 'land, labor and capital.' Think of it as the Gilded Age 2.0,complete with neo-robber barrons, thanks to laissez-faire corporate globalization.

As Matt Taibi wrote in "The Low Post," "One of the biggest purveyors of this dreck is arch-capitalist spokesmodel Thomas Friedman, who has spent the last ten years trying to talk himself into the position that having to compete with Chinese and Indian industrial slaves is somehow a good thing for America. Nothing makes Friedman happier than being able to appear before a bunch of old ladies in some cobweb-strewn Midwestern library or Jaycees hall and deliver his favorite faux-homespun platitude about the new global economy, a clunky tale about advice he often gives to his daughters. "Girls," his story goes, "when I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, 'Tom, finish your dinner. People in China . . . are starving.' My advice to you now: 'Girls, finish your homework, people in China . . . are starving for your jobs.' "

"Well, that makes sense. According to The New York Times, what we need to do to compete with China economically is adopt commensurate "homegrown business practices" that will enhance our performance.

"What do they have in mind? Eliminating the freedom of speech? Outlawing free trade associations? Legalizing child labor? Eliminating all environmental regulations and letting workers roll around in hazardous chemicals for fifteen hours a day for ten cents an hour? Ending all forms of corporate transparency? Come to think of it, we could solve our juvenile delinquency program and our trade competitiveness problem at the same time -- let's just lock up our high school dropouts in toy factories, get those little bas*#!*s making radioactive Lego sets six days a week for a buck a shift. Imagine the profits!"

It's going to be tough breaking through corporate media's stranglehold on information. But there's hope for light on this subject thanks to this book and Aronica and Ramdoo's The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman Wake up America! [...]

[svinayak]

With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America
by William Martin (Author)


# Hardcover: 432 pages
# Publisher: Broadway; 1st edition (October 2, 1996)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0553067451
# ISBN-13: 978-0553067453

The confluence of politics and religion in American life is explored with insight and style in this important new book from Martin (A Prophet With Honor), a professor of sociology at Rice University. Focusing on the modern era, the author analyzes the significance of church and clergy in the tradition of social action, from the civil rights movement through the growth of the Christian Coalition. In a blend of fast-paced journalism and in-depth scholarship, the text incorporates numerous interviews with, and personal accounts by, key figures, weaving together many frayed threads of meaning in contemporary American political life. Scrupulously fair, pointing out what he sees as the media's biases and double standards, Martin details the events and personalities that have infused our politics with religious fervor. From JFK's Catholicism to Billy Graham's flirtation and subsequent disillusionment with politicians; from Jimmy Carter's born-again candidacy to the rise of evangelical political action groups; from Ronald Reagan's courtship of the Moral Majority to the current configuration of the surprisingly diverse religious right, Martin deftly guides the grand tour, putting the fiery social issues of our times?abortion, homosexuality, public education, AIDS and gun control?in the context of the conservative Christian agenda. Martin concludes with a masterful essay on the subtle interpretation of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison regarding separation of church and state, affirming their non-ironic proposition that the health of America's religious communities derives from being apart from the corrupting power of politics. Photos. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Martin (Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story, LJ 11/1/91), an authority on the history and sociology of religion, is well-qualified to examine the phenomenon of the religious right. Starting with an excellent summary of American religious history, he goes on to devote the bulk of his book to developments in the last 50 years. Martin puts his emphasis on the political and social influence of such groups as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. He explains the importance of such famous figures as Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed. Martin also examines the "culture wars" that fuel the struggle. There is a wealth of information and thoughtful analysis here that brings the reader's understanding down to the immediate present. Martin clearly understands the political danger of a powerful religious Right, which seeks to stifle all dissent. He fails, however, to acknowledge the equally heavy-handed agenda of the humanist Left, which, in part, has given rise to the problem. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?C. Robert Nixon, M.L.S., Lafayette, Ind.

This book is pretty solid in documenting the history of the religious right in America. Although much of the focus is on the last half of the 20th century, the introduction and the epilogue give some background on the interaction between Christianity and government in the previous period.

I haven't seen the PBS television series that this book accompanies, so some things in the book probably impact a little differently than seeing video or audio accounts, especially so in a movement that makes so much use of oral speeches and broadcasts. But at least in the written account, the balance is kept between fair treatment and criticism of the different elements of the movement. This is no easy feat, given the sometimes inflammatory rhetoric both by the Christian right and against it.

The chapters of the book appear to reflect an episode format, with varying types of focal points telling the story in a roughly chronological order. One chapter profiles a person (--Billy Graham) while other chapters highlight in depth a local conflict (such as the battle over sex education in Anaheim and the school book battle in West Virginia), while others talk primarily about the formation of the major activist groups (Moral Majority, and then later the Christian Coalition). One trend appears to be that as the Judeo-Christian culture lost its monopoly in the political process, the struggle has been for the Christian right (in whatever form it took at the time) to keep its place at the table while keeping to its core values. Even at the end of the book (which ends with mid-1996), this conflict was not resolved.

The book also focuses on personal profiles of the individuals in the involvement, which also provides some more depth about what many people might lump together as monolithic. The differences between Jerry Falwell's background (the rural son of an alcoholic father) and Pat Robertson (the son of a U.S. senator) are pointed out in light of the interaction (or lack thereof) at certain points when they would be considered natural allies on the surface. And at a time in the 1980s when most Christian preachers and conservative commentators were considering the possibility of quarantining or tatooing AIDS patients, one televangelist said:

"How sad that we as Christians, who ought to be the salt of the earth, and we, who are supposed to be able to love everyone, are afraid so of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them and tell them that we care."

The televangelist? Tammy Faye Bakker.

For those seeking to learn about the movement without the whitewash or the ridicule that accompanies most assessments of the Christian right, this book is the best place to start.

[svinayak]

The Democratization of American Christianity
by Nathan O. Hatch (Author)

# Paperback: 312 pages
# Publisher: Yale University Press (January 23, 1991)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0300050607
# ISBN-13: 978-0300050608

"This book is about the cultural and religious history of the early American republic and the enduring structures of American Christianity. It argues both that the theme of democratization is central to the understanding the development of American Christianity and that the years of the early republic are the most crucial in revealing the that process." (p. 3)

But the clear thesis statement is not the only reason why I enjoyed reading "The Democratization of American Christianity." In presenting his argument, Hatch tells a highly entertaining story about a fascinating time in the history of the American Protestantism. It was a time filled with such colorful characters as Barton Stone, Francis Asbury, Lorenzo Dow, and Charles Grandison Finney. It was a time during which developed such famous -- or perhaps infamous -- American Church institutions as the circuit rider, the camp meeting, and "the anxious bench." And, most importantly -- as Professor Hatch points out -- it was the time during which the spirit of independence and democratic idealism that had propelled the Americans successfully through the Revolutionary War seeped into the American churches, giving shape to the distinctive form of Christianity in present-day America.

In this 312-page book, Hatch examines five separate religious traditions, or "mass movements," as he terms them, that played upon the American stage during the early 19th Century: the Christian movement, the Methodists, the Baptists, the black churches, and the Mormons. Despite the wide-ranging theological opinions represented among these distinct bodies, "they all offered common people, especially the poor, compelling visions of individual self-respect and collective self-confidence." (p. 4) Moreover, these movements "took shape around magnetic leaders who were highly skilled in communication and group mobility." (p. 4) Hatch studies these men and others who rose to distinction on the American religious scene from the 1780s to the 1830s. He finds that "the fundamental religious debates in the early republic were not merely a clash of intellectual and theological differences but also a passionate social struggle with power and authority." (p. 14) Hence, the story of American religion within this time frame mirrors the story of American politics; both tell "how ordinary folk came to distrust leaders of genius and talent and to defend the right of common people to shape their own faith and submit to leaders of their own choosing." (Ibid.)

Such a profound change within the religious realm implies a fundamental shift in theology. Indeed, the rise of popular religious leaders unschooled in theology did result in theological competition, with the popular theology eventually winning out. This is due, in large measure, to the transfer of authority regarding religious matters from the Bible to the sovereign mind of man:

"The study of religious convictions of self-taught Americans in the early years of the republic reveals how much weight was placed on private judgment and how little on the roles of history, theology, and the collective will of the Church. . . . This shift occurred gradually and without fanfare because innovators could exploit arguments as old and as trusted as Protestantism itself. Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and Backus had all argued for the principle of sola scriptura; unschooled Americans merely argued that they were fulfilling that same mandate. Yet, in the assertion that private judgment should be the ultimate tribunal in religious matters, common people started a revolution." (p. 182)

Also significant were the means by which the new dogma was spread, and Hatch provides a penetrating analysis of these factors as well. The rise of the untrained preachers points to the fact that the ordained clergy "had lost their unrivaled position as authoritative sources of information." (p. 125) Preaching became "increasingly folk- rather than clergy-dominated." (p. 133) Moreover, popular religious newspapers provided a new forum for dissemination of ideas, "the grand engine of a burgeoning religious culture, the primary means of promotion for, and bond of union within, competing religious groups." (p. 126) The medium of music was employed as well, as new folk hymnody was

developed. Consequently, "y systematically employing lay preachers, by exploiting a golden age of local publishing, and by spreading new forms of religious folk music, they ensured the forceful delivery of their message." (p. 127)

Religious populism even today "has remained a creative, if unsettling force at the fringes of major Protestant denominations. . . . American clergy have remained subject to democratic forces." (p. 16) "[T]he people continue to serve as custodians for their own beliefs, communicating them in understandable terms." (p. 218) This democratic ideal, penetrating more deeply into the soul of the American church than any theological dogma, has resulted in a polarization in American Christianity, as the two camps are drawn in opposing directions. The leaders of the mainline Protestants are oriented toward the norms of "high culture" and are "irresistibly pulled toward values and attitudes prevalent in the modern academic world." (Ibid.) The opposite side is populated by the Fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who "share all the virtues and vices of popular culture" and -- most significantly -- have embraced social institutions and subcultures that "are still populist through and through, reflecting the deepest convictions of their own constituencies and anointing new leaders by virtue of their popular appeal. . . . They will not surrender to learned experts the right to think for themselves." (p. 219) As Hatch concludes: "For two centuries Americans have refused to defer sensitive matters of conscience to the staid graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. They have taken faith into their own hands and molded it according to the aspirations of everyday life. American Christianity continues to be powered by ordinary people and by the contagious spirit of their efforts to storm heaven by the back door." (Ibid)

If you want to understand why the twenty-first century American Evengelical Church is rife with heretical teachings and outright apostasy, read this book. In The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan Hatch demonstrates how the American Revolution spawned the so-called Second Great Awakening, a religious rebellion, which led to an abandonment of Orthodox Christianity in favor of a pluralism that plagues American Protestantism to this very day. The egalitarian values of the Enlightenment that dominated the American conscience of the early nineteenth century allowed a host of false teachers to lead a revolt of the laity against a clergy that, while Biblically Orthodox in their doctrine, had allowed affluance and intellectualism to overcome their sense of Christian charity. Spicing their sermons with coarse language, emotional appeals, Jeffersonian quotations, quaint stories and rabald humor, these populists taught that every individual must interpret the scriptures according to their own conscience. These "teachings" led to an "anything goes Christianity" that included the embracing of such heresies as Arminianism, Mormanism, Perfectionism and Universalism, the apostasy of Unitarianism and even Transcendentalism: anything other than Biblical Orthodoxy. One hundred and fifty years later, this pluralism continues to permeate American Protestanism, currently manifesting itself in the Emerging Church movement, which is a blending of Christianity with New Age spiriualism that denies the authority of scripture itself. Though Hatch does not set out to do so, he demonstrates the great truth that heresy always leads to apostasy.

Hatch's approach to the religion of the early republic is to define the principal conflict along class lines--the educated, eastern, Reformed, Federalist establishment versus the unschooled, western, anti-creedal, Jeffersonian populists. Judging from the prizes this book has won, numerous historians have considered it a landmark perspective on the early republic and subsequent American epochs, which must be taken into account in any future study.

Hatch marshals a copious amount of testimonial evidence as to the methods and convictions of both the religious populists and the clerical aristocrats against whom they rebelled. Unquestionably, Hatch is on to an integral part of early 19th-century religious life. Unfortunately, though, we are left to take Hatch's word for exactly how much this class warfare dominated the religious landscape. Hatch provides little statistical evidence to back up the populists' claims of a vast gulf between rich and poor, and one is left wondering about an excluded middle. Imagine writing an account of the religious history of our time purely from the quotes of Jerry Falwell and Ted Turner, and you see the problem--a vast, silent middle ground of religious opinion is neglected amid the rhetorical blasts of the polarized belligerents.

He never clearly locates the middle class (such as the mercantile bourgeoisie of New York City) on his socio-religious spectrum, only mentioning them in his penultimate chapter, which addresses the years 1830-1860. Similarly, though Hatch mentions a few counter-cultural educated Jeffersonians like Francis Asbury and Jefferson himself, he does not explore their unique fit into this era. Likewise, he implies that the entire under-class rejected clerical authority, never explicitly commenting on whether or not any of the illiterate laity remained faithful to their religious betters during this time.

Despite these silences, Hatch's exciting work provides the basis for a new paradigm in the study of American religious history. After tracing the theme of religious democratization up to the Civil War, he briefly sketches the theme through the 20th century in an epilogue. Anyone who has lived and moved in contemporary evangelical circles plainly sees the cyclical legacy of the early republic: a determined populist insurgency rebels against moribund, worldly religious institutions, but in the following generation, the insurgency itself becomes institutionalized and establishes rapport with higher culture, providing the ground for a new populist insurgency to arise. With an evangelical in the White House and upper-middle-class evangelical churches and institutions entrenched in the suburbs, it would seem the dialectic may be about to turn again, especially if current evangelical materialism becomes full-blown apostasy in the succeeding generation.

[svinayak]

Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism
by George M. Marsden (Author)

# Paperback: 218 pages
# Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (January 1991)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0802805396
# ISBN-13: 978-0802805393

Marsden (American church history, Duke Univ.), who is considered an expert on fundamentalism, here looks at the interrelated movements of fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Part 1 gives a readable and informative overview of the rise of fundamentalism from 1870 on. It then examines evangelicalism as a separate phenomenon. Part 2 deals primarily with the views held by these groups on politics and science with a special analysis of why creation science is so important to them. This section also includes a close look at the career of J. Gresham Machen, a controversial fundamentalist scholar of the early 20th century. The author is especially good at showing the development of the conservative versus liberal controversy and the surprising appeal of modern fundamentalism for our technological age. Anyone who is interested in understanding this rapidly growing element in today's society will want to read this excellent analysis. Recommended for academic and public libraries.

There are cultural divisions in American society which mark nearly every modern political issue. For those of us who were born in the 1950's and later, and even for some older folks, these divisions may seem confusing, even incomprehensible. How did we get here? What is all the fuss about? Where did all these "conservative wackos" come from? Just who do they think they are?

We may recognize that we are divided, but many Americans don't actually understand just how deeply divided, as a nation, we really are. Nor do we understand the underlying issues that divide us, the issues which are finally at the core of many of our debates.

This book provides one way of understanding these important issues, from the inside out.

Marsden argues that the political and social conflicts we all see today were born out of certain features of the American religious life. He proves his case admirably, and succeeds in providing his readers with a deeper understanding of contemporary conflicts than they will ever receive from contemporary newspapers and magazines, or even from their high-school and college American history classes. All of these other sources tend to ignore religion as a factor in political and social life. For Marsden, it is central.

Marsden is able to show that our conflicts have their roots in the historical encounter of American Christians with the emerging "modern world." When American Christianity began to encounter "Modernity" -in all its many forms: developments in science, politics, academic scholarship, industry, economics, and city life- its own internal conflicts formed the patterns for the larger social and cultural divisions which are now so familiar to us all all. Because he brings alive the religious dimension of American history, not just as a conflict of the religious with the secular, but of the relgious with the religious, his treatment has the feel of something which makes the incomprehensible finally comprehensible. His scheme for understanding our history and our conflicts comes as nothing short of a revelation.

This book documents, issue by issue,movement by movement, and personality by pesonality, what happened, where, and when. It covers developments in the Christian religion in America from the end of the 19th century to the latter half of the 20th century, clearly illuminating how, in America, Christianity became divided between "mainline" and "evangelical" branches, in the process, dividing American society as a whole.

Marsden writes elegantly and clearly, and he has the special ability to make history come to life as an exciting story. He writes for the layperson, so any college-educated and mildly curious reader can profit from this book. A respected Evangelical Christian himself, Marsden is also a historian of superior academic credentials. _Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism_ thus acheives something special because of who its author is: it is a book both sympathetic to its subject, and a piece of very responsible and balanced scholarship.
The book is unusual in the mix of tone and levels of sophistication between the chapters. It stems from the fact that this small volume is primarily a collection of essays from the author's much larger multiple volume work(_fundamentalism and the american culture) on the same topic. As a collection of essays, not particularly held together by design they are certainly representative of his thought, and probably the best of his work on the topic. But the chapters are not sequential or connected in a discernible way, other than the general chronological. In this case however this is not a criticism, the book flows fine anyhow. But what it does do is to make it possible to read chapters that you are primarily interested in, out-of-order, a nice feature.

What is the history of fundamentalism in america and why should i care? It's a big movement 25-45% of the population by most measurements. But more importantly it represents a criticism of modernism that is hard to miss. With abortion, evolution in the public schools, gay rights etc being just tip of a huge iceberg where the movement hits the political sphere, inescapable for any one with current issues interest.

The book is well written, the chapters are concise and gently lead you to see what the author sees in the movement. You know from the beginning that the author is sympathetic with the fundamentalist's but at the same time you don't feel that his religion is interfering with his studies. You can see places he is saddened by events, disappointed at roads not taken but at the same time he comes across as a feeling competent historian. So much so was i impressed at his abilities as a historian that i ordered his larger work despite it's 1980 copyright date.

The real strength to me is the 5th chapter on the "evangelical love affair with enlightment science". He presents two men, bb. warfield and abraham kuyer as evangelicals with very different ideas of the relationship of science to religion. Warfield's position is classic science yields truth in its researches of the real world and ought to be seen as the study of the general revelation in nature. Kuyer is far more sophisticated and sees Kuhian themes 75 years before, in his analysis that different types of people have very different presuppositions and these necessarily led to a different science.

This insight as well as an extended discussion about the origin of the science and religion at war metaphor is worth the time to read this book. If you have any interest in the field this is a good introduction plus a reference to point further down the road of study. Oftentimes scholarly apparatus detracts from the overall readability of books like this one, but in his case your eyes and mind are often drawn to the footnotes, i several times yellowed book titles which he interested me in reading to learn more about his arguments. This is a great asset and indicative of a very well argued book.

[svinayak]

U.S. Versus Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security
by J. Peter Scoblic (Author)

# Hardcover: 368 pages
# Publisher: Viking Adult (April 17, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0670018821
# ISBN-13: 978-0670018826

Starred Review. This cogent first book from the executive editor of the New Republic forcefully argues that 50 years of American conservatism have undermined U.S. security and pushed the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. Scoblic charts the course of American conservatism, from its development by William F. Buckley Jr. through the disastrous Cold War to Bush's failure to safeguard the United States after 9/11: in stark, often frightening detail, Scoblic examines how Bush embraced regime change as a means of fighting evil and neglected to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, failed to prevent North Korea from reprocessing plutonium, rebuffed requests for negotiations from an Iranian regime that was, in 2003, willing to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency, repeatedly ignored U.S. intelligence and pursued the war in Iraq. Scoblic illustrates how and why conservatism shaped the current administration and explains how it guided Bush's good vs. evil morality. This is an important book, well researched and well reasoned in its assessment of conservatism and mandatory reading for anyone concerned with America's security and future. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

Reviewed by Fred Kaplan

The shelves are already bulging with books about George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy -- where it went wrong, how to steer things right. Yet space should be made for J. Peter Scoblic's U.S. vs. Them, if only because it points out that there's nothing "neo" about the neoconservatives.

The neocons' military unilateralism, shunning of diplomacy as "appeasement," scorn of international institutions as "unwelcome checks on American power" -- all these notions, Scoblic argues, are rooted in un-prefixed American conservatism, a movement founded by William F. Buckley in the 1950s, which fused the once separate strands of libertarianism and religious traditionalism into a crusade against Roosevelt's New Deal at home and Truman's containment abroad.

Bush, Scoblic writes, "is the direct descendant -- indeed, the ultimate product -- of this movement" because, unlike other postwar Republican presidents, he has taken conservatives' foreign policy ideas seriously and brought their dreams to deadly life.

Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, talked of "rolling back" the Soviet empire, but Ike and Dulles abided by the realism of their Democratic predecessors, Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, who, as Scoblic puts it, valued nuclear deterrence over "moral clarity." Nixon, whom Scoblic treats as an arms-control hero, did much the same, at least in superpower politics.

Conservatives credit Reagan's ideological purity with winning the Cold War. But Scoblic notes that the Soviets folded only because, in his second term, Reagan turned liberal. It's often forgotten that many on the right lambasted their idol for sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev and still more for the accords he negotiated, especially the one eliminating medium-range missiles in Europe.

Reagan's crucial role, Scoblic says, was that "he recognized Gorbachev as a reformer and adapted quickly . . . ratcheting down the nuclear tension that he himself had helped create." Had Reagan persisted in his earlier rhetoric, as several aides and columnists urged, "Gorbachev would have lost his room to maneuver" within the Politburo; his attempts at reform, which required outreach to the West, would have wilted; and the Cold War might have rumbled on, ending at some point but perhaps not so cordially.

Scoblic, executive editor of the New Republic, isn't out to puncture GOP myths but to frame them in a historical context. He traces the conservative worldview ("us versus them," "good versus evil") to the nation's beginnings, when the colonists were "in fact surrounded by enemies" -- Native Americans on one side, European imperialists on the other -- a condition that bred a sense of moral and nationalistic exceptionalism.

By the mid-20th century, the rise of the Axis powers, the vital role that we played in winning World War II and the nuclear arms race that followed all rendered this lofty apartness untenable. "International security required reaching some sort of modus vivendi with the enemy so that the world did not suddenly end in nuclear holocaust," Scoblic writes. "Conservatives were not only ill-suited to meeting this task; they rejected its very premise."

Conservatives staged a revival under George W. Bush, in part because it seemed they could. With the Soviet Union gone, they thought the United States could flex its muscles without limit or risk. And so the "us-versus-them worldview" revived, with democratization serving as the "ideological successor to anticommunism." The goal was the same -- "to make victory permanent so that there would never again be a question of engaging with evil." Yet as Acheson noted in 1949, "good and evil have existed in this world since Adam and Eve went out of the garden of Eden."

Scoblic is among a growing number of liberals who, repulsed by Bush's kind of "moral clarity," have embraced a return to realism in foreign policy -- not quite Nixon-Kissinger realpolitik but at least a modest view of the world as it really works. He writes, for instance, that presidents should be elected for their "empiricism, pragmatism, and leadership." (He stays mum on which of the present candidates best fits the bill.)

Yet Scoblic sometimes falls prey to his own us-versus-them thinking. In drawing contrasts with Bush, he gives the impression that Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Brent Scowcroft are of the same ilk -- which brushes over significant differences. He waves away Truman's conservative tendencies as politically expedient rhetoric, when Truman probably believed in them. He sees John F. Kennedy as confused, but the confusion is partly Scoblic's; JFK doesn't neatly fit into his liberal/conservative matrix.

Scoblic doesn't address the age-old, now-vital question of whether and how moral factors should enter into foreign policy. He draws a distinction between policies that are "moral" (good) and "moralist" (bad), but he never clearly defines the terms. Instead, he devotes his final chapter to the danger of nuclear proliferation -- an issue both narrower and broader than the rest of the book's scope -- and then fails to offer a solution, except to say that negotiating to prevent nuclear war should take precedence over violent regime change. I closed this otherwise satisfying book, thinking, "OK, but then what?"

Peter Scoblic, foreign policy expert, historian, journalist and editor, reveals the mystery of the thinking that has driven U.S. foreign policy. This book is at once highly intellectual and thoroughly entertaining, regardless of where, if anywhere, one falls along the spectrum of liberal to conservative leanings.

Scoblic shows us how human nature causes even the political elite to gravitate to a state of moral clarity. Everything is easier once you achieve moral clarity and it provides a very saleable message, getting results in elections. It divides the world into "us" and "them", which would be fine if we didn't have to deal with "them".

The problem is that more than ever, the U.S. has to deal with other countries all over the world, especially because of economic interdependence and the fact that some of them have weapons of mass destruction. In this sense, the human nature to define what is not well understood into clear issues of good and evil is a liability. Thus, there is a need for professional diplomacy and politicians that work well with this function.

Scoblic traces American diplomacy's tug of war between the intellect and the hardwired brain from the beginning of what he calls the conservative movement to what he calls it's culmination in the Bush administration. What is so amazing about Scoblic is his ability to understand America as both an insider and also as an observer. And this is the gift that he gives us in U.S. vs THEM.

After reading Scoblic, you will be able to understand why apolitical intelligence has been distrusted at the highest levels of U.S. government. This is one of the biggest mysteries of our time.

More than that, I think readers will be able to apply some of these principles to our own lives. That is what great scholars can do for us, and I count Scoblic as one of the best. Hopefully, he will one day come out with a documentary.

[svinayak]

The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith
by Irshad Manji (Author)

# Paperback: 240 pages
# Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (February 10, 2005)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0312327005
# ISBN-13: 978-0312327002

This "call for reform" reads like an open letter to the Muslim world. Irshad Manji, a Toronto-based television journalist, was born to Muslim parents in South Africa. Her family eventually fled to Canada when she was two years old. Manji shares her life experiences growing up in a Western Muslim household and ask some compelling questions from her feminist-lesbian-journalist perspective. It is interesting to note that Manji has been lambasted for being too personal and not scholarly enough to have a worthwhile opinion. Yet her lack of pretense and her intimate narrative are the strengths of this book. For Muslims to dismiss her opinions as not worthy to bring to the table is not only elitist; it underscores why she feels compelled to speak out critically. Intolerance for dissent, especially women's dissent, is one of her main complaints about Islam. Clearly, her goal was not to write a scholarly critique, but rather to speak from her heartfelt concern about Islam. To her fellow Muslims she writes:

I hear from a Saudi friend that his country's religious police arrest women for wearing red on Valentines Day, and I think, Since when does a merciful God outlaw joy—or fun? I read about victims of rape being stoned for "adultery" and I wonder how a critical mass of us can stay stone silent.

She asks tough questions: "What's with the stubborn streak of anti-Semitism in Islam? Who is the real colonizer of the Muslims—-America or Arabia? Why are we squandering the talents of women, fully half of God's creation?" This is not an anti-Muslim rant. Manji also speaks with passionate love and hope for Islam, believing that democracy is compatible with its purest doctrine. Sure, she's biased and opinionated. But all religions, from Christianity to Buddhism to Islam should be accountable for how their leadership and national allegiances personally affect their followers. One would hope that this honest voice be met with a little more self-scrutiny and a little less anti-personal, anti-feminine, and anti-Western rhetoric. --Gail Hudson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Islam is "on very thin ice" with one follower, Canadian broadcaster Manji. Her book will be an unsettling read for most of her fellow Muslims, although they may find themselves agreeing with many points. She describes how childhood days spent at her local mosque left her perplexed and irritated; she complains that the Middle East conflict has consumed Muslim minds. She highlights several grievances many Muslims probably share: what she casts as Saudi Arabia's disproportional and destructive influence on Islam, how the hijab, or veil, has become a litmus test for a Muslim woman's faithfulness, and the need to question the accuracy of hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad). The exclusion of women from Muslim leadership is criticized as well. However, Manji's arguments would be better taken-and easier to follow-if not accompanied by an unceasing list of Islam's misdeeds. Manji often chooses the most controversial Koranic passages (rarely providing current scholarship for a more accurate reading of key verses), and her treatment of Islamic history is selective. She mistakes the negative fan mail she receives from Muslims who have seen her on television for the views of all Muslims, and lambastes those who present a sympathetic view of Islam, including the late scholar Edward Said. The writing, though energetic, is unfocused, with personal stories that are sometimes confusing. Although the book raises important points, Manji's angry tone and disjointed writing may obscure some of the valid questions she asks of Islam and Muslims.

Organized religion has a tendency to invite disaster due to the inherent flaws of the human condition that predicate judgment, mistrust, hatred, and disdain for those who adhere to a faith and dogma different from our own. In particular, the monotheistic Semitic religions over the course of history have proven to be the most rigid and intolerant of other faiths; this 'my way or the highway' approach has resulted in warfare, conquests, and carnage that--unfortunately--carries through to today.

In the post-9/11 world, Islam has occupied center stage of our global lexicon. In the name of this religion, international networks of terrorism have been spawned to attack, kill, and terrify. And Islam, like any other faith, has its problems--the totalitarian intolerance of dissent being one of its ugliest thorns. Under such a foreboding environment, Canadian TV journalist Irshad Manji dares to speak out via an open letter to all Muslims in her compelling and riveting book, THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM.

Granted, the author openly admits she is grappling with her faith; one day, she laments, she may leave Islam for good. Yet Manji has the courage and fortitude to shed light on the myriad of problems inflicting her faith: the oppression of women in the Arab and Muslim world; the unwavering intolerance of other religions in Arab and Muslim nations; the rampant anti-Semitism festering and infecting mosques around the world. The author presents a convincing case that Islam has been captured by zealots who espouse a malignant, narrow interpretation of the Koran: an interpretation that portrays Islam as an antiquated relic looking backward--instead of a peaceful vehicle for adaptation and change in an ever-changing world. This rigid adherence to the past, according to Manji, is defined as 'foundamentalism,' or 'desert Islam.' And the author calls for the 'silent majority' of moderate Muslims to come together to reject such fundamentalism, beginning with Muslims in the West--Muslims who have the freedom to speak their minds.

THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM is a remarkable, engrossing page-turner. Manji presents her arguments, evidence, and observations in a delightfully conversational--often witty--style. Based on the dozens and dozens of one-star reviews of this book, the author and other Muslims calling for sweeping reform have their work cut out for them; on the other hand, each critique represents the opportunity for dialogue--dialogue inherently welcomes discussion. And a frank, open, and honest discussion of Islam is absolutely in order.
--D. Mikels

Manji addresses her fellow Muslims thus: "I have to be honest with you. Islam is on pretty thin ice with me. I'm hanging on by my fingernails . . . ." What sounds like a nifty, snappy, wise-ass opener is, it soon becomes clear, really an expression of pain. Spirituality is important to Manji, and she feels her religion has betrayed her--from childhood onward--and she makes a number of important points.

First, she rejects the notion, popular since 9/11, that the problem isn't Islam but that Islam has been 'highjacked' by murderous psychopaths. No, she says: Mainstream Islam IS the culprit; it is cruel and even brutal toward women, toward Jews, toward Christians, toward all other infidels--even toward other Muslims. Dissident Muslims can be and have been beaten, imprisoned, killed. Muslims who aren't religious enough (e.g., those impious, kite-flying Afghanis) have been crushed. (Indeed, they were the Taliban's first victims: There's nothing fundamentalists hate more than apostates.)

As for the simplistic idea that "you mustn't confuse Islam with culture," she's all too well aware that Islam and such cultural horrors as Sharia law go hand in hand, each supporting the other. Sharia law, you may recall, means honor killings, punishing homosexuals by toppling walls on them, punishing adulteresses by stoning them to death, and defining rape victims as adulteresses.

She is clear on Islam's hermetic nature: Ask a question and get no answer, especially if you're a woman. Propose interpretation and be told the Koran is the literal word of God--and that the 'hadiths' or secondary sources are likewise not to be questioned, analyzed, interpreted. The source of this closed view is, she says, "desert Islam"--the narrow, harsh Wahabist Islam of Saudi Arabia. Its hermeticism is only increasing. The Koran, according to fundamentalists, can't be translated but must be read in Arabic (some also believe that only Arabs are "real Muslims"), and the Wahabist madressas (religious schools) don't want many people to read it even in Arabic. They don't teach reading but foster illiteracy; their students must learn to recite Koranic verses by rote.

Very interesting: What you can't read, you can't question or analyze or parse. You can't even know there are contradictory Koranic passages of compassion and tolerance toward non-believers and other beliefs. Can they be literally God's words? "The Koran is so profoundly at war with itself," says Manji, "that Muslims who 'live by the book' have no choice but to choose what to emphasize and what to downplay." Unless, of course, they're madressa-trained illiterates who will never know the contradictions exist. Imagine that: a religion with a vested interest in illiteracy. Is that a recipe for backwardness, or what?

Manji says most "moderate Mulims" allow these and other abuses to continue without protest. They remain silent--silent except, Manji says, for "screaming self-pity." Indeed, Muslims are frequently quoted in the New York Times on being maginalized, discriminated against and harmed by "backlash" and Islamophobia. Really? Such reports conspicuously lack anything but accusations and charges; there are never any facts. If Muslims in America in particular and the West in general were being victimized, do you not think you'd have heard about it by now? Manji's view and mine is that Western Muslims either support the abuses of desert Islam--or they are crippled by fear of retirbution.

In 217 pages Manji cannot be a scholar nor a historian. She goes a little too easily on the West and Isrtael at times. But she is successful at raising important questions, contradictions and challenges. She is not the best of writers--her tone is urgent, insistent and unmoldulated (to the point of being tedious at times). But her flaws are few and her courage cannot be questioned.--Bill Marsano is a professional writer and editor.

http://www.irshadmanji.com/

The New York Times describes Irshad Manji as "Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare." Oprah's magazine has given Irshad the first annual Chutzpah Award for "audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction." She takes both as compliments.


Irshad is Director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University. It aims to develop leaders who will challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship. In the best spirit of liberal education, the Moral Courage Project teaches that rights come with responsibilities, that we are citizens rather than members of mere tribes, and that meaningful diversity embraces different ideas and not just identities.
Above: launching the Moral Courage Project at NYU's School of Public Service
Through her commitment to Muslim reform, Irshad is putting these principles into practice. She is the internationally best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. Her book has been published in almost 30 countries, including Pakistan, India, Lebanon and Indonesia - the world's largest Muslim nation.


In those countries that have censored The Trouble with Islam Today, Irshad is reaching readers by posting free translations on this website. So far, the Arabic, Urdu and Farsi editions have been downloaded more than 500,000 times. And the Indonesian edition has become the most popular download on this website since its launch in April of 2008.

As a scholar beyond NYU, Irshad is Senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. She has served as a Visiting Fellow at Yale University and Journalist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto, where she wrote The Trouble with Islam Today.

Irshad is creator of the acclaimed PBS documentary, "Faith Without Fear," which chronicles her journey to reconcile Islam with human rights and freedom. Faith Without Fear is now being screened across Europe and South Asia. It's also being circulated in the Muslim underground via digital technologies. To view clips of Faith Without Fear, visit her official YouTube channel, IrshadManjiTV.

[svinayak]

The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain
by George Lakoff (Author)

# Hardcover: 304 pages
# Publisher: Viking Adult (May 29, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0670019275
# ISBN-13: 978-0670019274

Lakoff (Don't Think of an Elephant) harnesses cognitive science to rally progressive politicians and voters by positing that conservatives have framed the debate on vital issues more effectively than liberals. According to his research, conservatives comprehend that most brain functioning is grounded not in logical reasoning but in emotionalism—as a result, huge portions of the citizenry accept the Republican framing of the war in Iraq and supporting the troops rather than liberal appeals and phrasing of the occupation in Iraq and squandering tax money. George W. Bush won the presidency by concocting a redemption narrative, persuading tens of millions of voters that his past moral and business shortcomings should be viewed as a prelude to pulling himself up, rather than as disqualifying behavior. While sections of the book employ technical scientific terminology, the author masterfully makes his research comprehensible to nonspecialists. His conclusion—that if citizens and policy-makers better understand brain functioning, hope exists to ameliorate global warming and other societal disasters in the making—will be of vital importance and interest to all readers. (June)

In What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why.

As it turns out, human beings are not the rational creatures we’ve so long imagined ourselves to be. Ideas, morals, and values do not exist somewhere outside the body, ready to be examined and put to use. Instead, they exist quite literally inside the brain—and they take physical shape there. For example, we form particular kinds of narratives in our minds just like we form specific muscle memories such as typing or dancing, and then we fit new information into those narratives. Getting that information out of one narrative type and into another—or building a whole new narrative altogether—can be as hard as learning to play the banjo. Changing your mind isn’t like changing your body—it’s the same thing.

But as long as progressive politicians and activists persist in believing that people use an objective system of reasoning to decide on their politics, the Democrats will continue to lose elections. They must wrest control of the terms of the debate from their opponents rather than accepting their frame and trying to argue within it.

This passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book will appeal to readers of Steven Pinker and Thomas Frank. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.

George Lakoff, cognitive scientist and political commentator, returns in The Political Mind to themes already made familiar in earlier books such as Moral Politics (2002), Don't Think of an Elephant (2004) and Whose Freedom? (2007). He argues that political discourse arises from a process of conceptual and metaphorical framing which ultimately is grounded in the way the brain works, and that an understanding of this process is essential for successful political campaigns.

I don't know that there's really anything in The Political Mind that Lakoff hasn't already said in one form or another elsewhere (the primary reason for the three-star rating). But he does stress here what he sees as the errors of the theory of mind he argues was formed by the Enlightenment and which political progressives still assume today. Lakoff characterizes that theory as stressing the transparency of mind, drawing a sharp division between reason and emotion, and assuming that reason is a universal human capacity that accurately describes the world. But nothing in this model, asserts Lakoff, is correct. Much of what we call the mind is unconscious; what we think, because of our tendency to operate through largely unconscious metaphorical frames, is largely constitutive rather than straightforwardly conceptual; and reason is rarely dispassionately reflective.

So what's the connection between all this and politics? Simply, claims Lakoff, that progressive politicians still buy into the Enlightenment model of mind, and operate accordingly in trying to influence voters and win elections. "Rational" arguments in the Enlightenment mode are ineffective because they rest on a false understanding of how the mind works--the assumption that our decisions are made consciously, abstractly, and dispassionately. What grabs attention is the effective use of metaphors and stories that tap into unconscious frame networks. Progressives need to reframe the conversation to get across their values more effectively--and it just so happens that those values (for example, empathy rather than the Enlightenment ideal of self-interest) are hardwired in the brain.

Lakoff's book is interesting, and certainly deserves its day in court. But ultimately I find his argument here (as in his previous books) problematic. First, his characterization of the Enlightenment understanding of mind runs the risk of being a caricature. Enlightenment philosophers weren't monolithic in their thinking. Anyone who's read Rousseau or Hume appreciates that the Enlightenment understanding of reason is much more complex than the way in which Lakoff describes it. Ditto with self interest, which Lakoff claims is the key to Enlightenment values. Adam Smith and other Enlightenment ethicists stressed the fundamental moral importance of "sympathy" (closely akin to what Lakoff calls "empathy") just as much as self-interest. Second, it's not clear to me why Lakoff thinks that brain science clinches his political advice. Can't similar conclusions be arrived at through psychological analysis? How does neurological reductionism make his arguments any stronger? Third, and more importantly, one sometimes gets the impression that Lakoff is innocent of the last 150 years of philosophy. That humans think in frames, that reason is constitutive rather than merely descriptive, that mind isn't transparently conscious, and that there isn't a hard-and-fast divide between cognition and emotions, has been defended by (for example) Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and most postmodern thinkers. Does anyone, except the few hardcore positivists left around, think otherwise today? How is it, then, that the cognitive sciences have suddenly made this discovery? Finally, it's not entirely clear to me what Lakoff thinks the advantage of adopting a 21st century theory of mind when it comes to politics is other than its effectiveness in influencing people and winning elections. Ought progressives to do so because it will make them better manipulators of public opinion? Or ought progressives to do so because it's more promotive of truth? And is it really the case that the brain is hardwired for all the values that Lakoff associates with progressivism? Which, of course, invites the question of what the status of truth itself is in a model of mind which reduces ideas to brain processes and reason to enframing.

This book continues the author's argument that politics is best understood in terms of family dynamics: the strict father family where obedience and punishment are emphasized or the empathetic actions of a nurturant parent family. Based on family morality, conservatives want limited government and the discipline of the marketplace that supposedly rewards the meritorious, whereas progressives emphasize the protection and empowerment role of government, which implies intervention in the economy to combat structural problems and provide assistance where needed. In addition, conservatives are disinclined to question leaders (strict fathers), either in gov or in business, while progressives believe in equal participation in all institutions.

In this book, the emphasis is on the unconscious nature of thought, which according to the author, occurs 98 percent of the time and has tremendous influence. People respond automatically to neural pathways that have been formed in accordance with frames or metaphors. According to the author, enlightenment thinkers, including the founding fathers, were simply wrong to hold that thinking is logical, universal, value-free, and literal. Apparently, conservatives, well aware of the unconscious, have, through think tanks, talk radio, and the like, over the last thirty years made huge efforts to inculcate simplistic themes, like "war on terror" or "tax and spend liberals," to affect, or limit, political debate. Rational thinkers, on the other hand, still mistakenly rely on facts.

There is a smattering of details concerning brain functioning in the book, but it is clear that we are very far from understanding the mind, the brain, the formation of ideas, etc. Obviously, eighteenth century thinkers did not have the benefit of the scientific discoveries of the last two hundred years. But it is a huge stretch to hold that the founding fathers, and others, were not subtle thinkers. Intelligent people have always organized their speech and arguments through the use of framing and metaphors. It is extremely doubtful that conservatives have a hold on such subtleties. It may be true that "spin" and propaganda are far more prevalent in the modern era. They do impose a huge burden on the average person to find the truth.

The progress of mankind will always depend of words, ideas, willingness to stare realities in the face, etc. Furthermore, it will depend on the education and sophistication of those engaged in debates. It may well be that the author's recognition of a divide in family dynamics is most important. Perhaps strict father morality inhibits open-mindedness, the questioning of ideas, as well as commands. Those unaccustomed to challenging beliefs are undoubtedly more susceptible to simplistic arguments.

It's hard to see much benefit in launching off on a nebulous argument of the conscious versus the unconscious to explain modern politics. In a way, it justifies irresponsibility: "I vote the way I do because I'm being led around by my nose due to framing." If I'm not mistaken, energy and gas prices are out of sight, foreclosures are way up, the stock market is a speculators paradise, lives are being lost in Iraq for what purpose - the list of dysfunctionalities is long. I assume that's what people want - that's how they voted. They have another chance coming up. Stay tuned.

The author almost seems to be calling for manipulation to counter manipulation. Progressives need to counter spin and lay out the most reasoned arguments that they can. Then let the chips fall where they will.

[hnair]

Ramana-jee,
Dont know where to post this, but I got hold of this most excellent book of Ravi Varma paintings. Costs 5K Indian Rs, but totally worth it. I remembered you were an aficionado of his paintings. do not know if you already have it, but I would strongly recommend it to anyone. It is sold by TempleTrees. I got mine from this photo-lab/studio in Trivandrum, after being highly recommended by my father. This studio in the older part of Trivandrum(they were the royal photographers of yore) also provides poster sized, fully framed works of Ravi Varma for about 4.5k (the prints are of excellent quality) and smaller ones start from 400Rs etc. A good buy if you want an Indian classical theme for a room.

Also visited that great institution of Bangalore recently(after a long time), the one and only Mr Murthy's Select Book stall at Brigade Road. Picked up dog-eared and arcane first edition prints of Indian Army calisthenics of 1920s etc for a huge Rs 50 The great man was not there to chat up with, as he is traveling to some bookfair. But nevertheless I love to spend time amongst that priceless pile of knowledge that he assimilates from all over India. Had a BRFite for company during that visit, which was right after that "mini-meet" in Blr

[SSridhar]

The politics of anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought - by Khaled Ahmed

The following caught my attention

Anti-Western modernism in the Islamic world died when Nasserism and Arab nationalism were defeated to give way to Islamism of the Saudi and salafi brand in the 20th century. Far from being modern, the Islamic scientists who midwifed the nuclear device of Pakistan thought they could extract energy from jinns. The book at times calls Afghani and his friend Muhammad Abduh as modernists, which they were not. They looked back longingly at early Islam which was not yet in taqleed but were not in favour of changing the dogma of the nas of the Quran, as Sir Syed and Iqbal were. A reformer in Islam wants to go back rather than forward. Jadeed (modern) in Arabic comes from the root jdd meaning grandfather.

[svinayak]

The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage
by Alexandra Harney (Author)

# Hardcover: 352 pages
# Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (March 27, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1594201579
# ISBN-13: 978-1594201578

FOR TWO WEEKS twice a year, trains and planes to the Chinese city of Guangzhou swell to capacity with crowds of foreign men and women where the world buyers sit with the factory owners to talk about one thing. - CHINA PRICE

In "The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage" (336 pages), former Finantical Times journalist Alexandra Harney delves into the ramifications, primarily for the Chinese, of the ever-growing demand for cheaper products. Harney focuses her research primarily on Shenshen (a city that has grown from half a million to about 12 million in a matter of 2 decades) and the surrounding Guangdong province. Harney demonstrates how a lot of Chinese companies escape the "social audits" many American companies nowadays insist on simply by keeping parallel/fake records on hours worked by/wages paid to Chinese employees. Indeed, the plight of many Chinese workers is deplorable, and not helped by the weak (if that) enforcement of Chinese labor laws by the Chinese government, and the absence of a strong labor union in China. How ironic is that, China being a (so-called) Communist country. Harney spices the book with lots and lots of personal stories of Chinese individuals she interviewed for the book, and that makes it for even more interesting reading.

Harney ends her book with this great observation: "In the end, as much as the responsability seems to lie with Beijing, it also lies with the global consumer. Our appetite for the $30 DVD player and the $3 T-shirt helps keep jewelry factories filled with dust, illegal mines open and 16-year olds working past midnight." How true! And doesn't it strike you that the people who shop at, say, Wal-Mart every day are the very same people who tend to lament the fact that US manufacturing jobs are off-shored to China every day. We all make a choice, every single day.


China's share of the world's manufacturing output by value-added was 2.4% in 1990, and 12.1% in 2006. In 2006 its biggest exports to the U.S. were electronic machines and equipment; that year the U.S. imported $288 billion from China, vs. $55 billion exported. The Economic Policy Institute estimates a loss of 1.8 million job opportunities since 1981 as a result of this trade deficit with China. Meanwhile, direct foreign investment in China from 2002-2005 totaled almost another $250 billion that didn't go to the U.S. either.

In 1980, American manufacturers produced 70% of apparel purchased in the U.S.; by 1990 it was down to 50%, and only 9% by 2006. America now only produces 1% of its citizens shoes; etc. for numerous other products.

"The China Price" points out that there is intense competition within China - its coastal export regions have over 1,000 clusters producing specific products such as ties, socks, microwaves, etc., and within those clusters manufacturers have hundreds of direct competitors. This is due to ease of entry - available start-up funds and assistance from Chinese officials eager to increase employment.

Chinese law limits overtime hours, requires a number of worker protections. Unfortunately, inspectors are typically overloaded, often corrupt, and frequently deceived by managers hiding factories that don't adhere to the rules. (These managers have also learned to deceive inspectors from American companies seeking to verify compliance with humane employment conditions.) At the same time, many workers will not stay if they don't get enough overtime to make the incomes they desire ("I didn't come here to sit!"), and fear of investing in government-mandated pension plans due to restrictions on their coverage.

And then there is the obvious pollution, especially from coal (producing a greater proportion of electricity than in the U.S.), and liquid effluents.

China's government is under enormous pressure from its citizens to provide jobs, particularly after the state-supplied sinecures have largely been eliminated. This, combined with even lower costs available in other nations (eg. Vietnam, India) do not bode well for America's "China problem" going away easily. (Common sens, plus Economic 101 tell us that it will continue until wage costs in China etc. roughly equal those in the U.S. In turn, that means we can look forward to eg. workers sleeping 12 to a room in factory-provided housing, and much reduced access to pensions and health-care - unless trade restrictions are imposed.)

The "bad news" about "The China Price" is that it often offers questionable or impossible statistics - eg. ". . . saved 80% to 100% . . ." (impossible to cut costs 100% - unless the product is delivered scot-free), "nearly one-third of the air over L.A. and S.F. can be linked to Asia" (what does that mean?) that damage the credibility of the book.

Bottom Line: "The China Price" explains why they are so price-conscious, and warns us that they're next move is likely to be into R&D, branding, and U.S. marketing (the "soft three" dollars of every four dollars spent in the U.S. for Chinese-manufactured products).


Dreaded by competitors, the China price has become the lowest price possible, the hallmark of China's incredibly cheap, ubiquitous manufacturers. Financial Times editor Harney explores the hidden price tag for China's economic juggernaut. It's a familiar but engrossing tale of Dickensian industrialization. Chinese factory hands work endless hours for miserable wages in dusty, sweltering workshops, slowly succumbing to occupational ailments or suddenly losing a limb to a machine. Coal-fired power plants spew pollutants into nearly unbreathable air. Migrants from the countryside, harassed by China's hukou system of internal passports, form a readily exploitable labor pool with few legal protections. The system is fueled by Western investment and, Harney observes, hypocrisy. Retailers like Wal-Mart impose social responsibility codes on their Chinese suppliers, but refuse to pay the costs of raising labor standards; the result is a pervasive system of cheating through fake employment records and secret uninspected factories, to which Western companies turn a blind eye. But Harney also finds stirrings of change; aided by regional labor shortages, rising wages and intrepid activists. Chinese workers are demanding—and gradually winning—more rights. Packed with facts, figures and sympathetic portraits of Chinese workers and managers, Harney's is a perceptive take on the world's workshop. (Mar. 31)

Review
"This gripping, beautifully reported book lays bare the tumult of hope, fear and skullduggery that exists behind the ubiquitous "Made in China" label. It should spur manufacturers, investors and consumers to worry a lot more about where everyday products come from."
-James Kynge, author of China Shakes the World

"Harney has given us an almost forensic field guide to the strikingly low cost of labor intensive goods manufacturing in China. By systematically sifting through the factors that cheapen the production process, she has denied us the luxury of uncertainty. Some may find the ethics and inevitability of Chinese production conditions debatable, but no business person involved in global sourcing will be credible claiming ignorance of the basic facts in light of Harney's work."
-Daniel Rosen, Principal, China Strategic Advisory, and Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics

"The gritty, corrupt reality of the Chinese economic miracle is the great business story of our time and Alexandra Harney has got it. She has explored the factories, dormitories and urban slums to reveal the devastating cost-to the planet, to American workers, and to Chinese citizens-of the China Price."
-Karl Taro Greenfeld, author of China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic "With unusual insight and reportorial perseverance Alexandra Harney presents the inconvenient truths about China and globalization that flat worlders have overlooked. This book is very important and is a must read for those who want to understand how today's world really works."
--Clyde Prestowitz, President of the Economic Strategy Institute and the author of Three Billion New Capitalists.

[svinayak]

Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East
by Karl E. Meyer (Author)


# Hardcover: 480 pages
# Publisher: W. W. Norton (June 9, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 039306199X
# ISBN-13: 978-0393061994

Eminent Imperialists might be a better title for this sprightly episodic history of Anglo-American meddling in the Middle East, from the 1882 British invasion of Egypt to the current Iraq War, told through profiles of the officials who spearheaded those policies. Journalists Meyer and Brysac (Tournament of Shadows) spotlight well-known, flamboyant figures like T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and British Arabist Gertrude Bell. But they focus on unsung toilers in the trenches of imperial rule like A.T. Wilson, the British colonial administrator whose idea it was to cobble Iraq together out of three fractious Ottoman provinces, and Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent who choreographed the 1953 ouster of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq. Policy continuities—securing the approaches to India and access to oil—sometimes get overshadowed by the authors' biographical approach, but in a sense that's the point. Their imperialism is marked by idiosyncrasy, improvisation, unforeseen circumstances and unintended—usually tragic—consequences. Policy was very much driven by the personalities who constructed it: their Orientalist enthusiasms, knee-jerk assumptions of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, arcane Straussian precepts and stubborn maverick streaks loom as large as cold geostrategic calculations. The result is a colorful study of empire as a very human endeavor. 30 illus., 2 maps. (June)
A brilliant narrative history tracing today's troubles back to grandiose imperial overreach of Great Britain and the United States.

Kingmakers is the story of how the modern Middle East came to be, told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it. Some are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell); others infamous (Harry St. John Philby, father of Kim); some forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes, Israel's godfather, and A. T. Wilson, the territorial creator of Iraq); some controversial (the CIA's Miles Copeland and the Pentagon's Paul Wolfowitz). All helped enthrone rulers in a region whose very name is an Anglo-American invention. As a bonus, we meet the British Empire's power couple, Lord and Lady Lugard (Flora Shaw): she named Nigeria, he ruled it; she used the power of the Times of London to attempt a regime change in the gold-rich Transvaal. The narrative is character-driven, and the aim is to restore to life the colorful figures who for good or ill gave us the Middle East in which Americans are enmeshed today. 30 illustrations; 2 maps.

Although Meyer and Brysac don't tell why Americans learn so disastrously little from history, they've made some of the history itself wonderfully accessible. Now they do that for the modern history of the Middle East, whose "three universal faiths" extol "brotherhood and peace, compassion and humility" but whose "mortal disciples through the ages have engaged in reciprocal butchery. The very landscape of the Holy Land forms an outdoor museum of warfare." That's a sample of writing in this elegant, instructive book, the kind whose vividness thrusts readers through the otherwise baffling story of a region where the United States is again bogged down in confusion and loss, thanks to hubris grounded in ignorance.
What importance! How, forgive me, entertaining the authors make it! "Modern history" here means from roughly 1880, when the rapacious British invaded and occupied Egypt, largely to ensure control of the new Suez Canal. It ends with now, the last kingmaker - the predominantly greedy, short-sighted, full-of-themselves imperialists through whom Meyer and Brysac dramatically story-tell - being Paul Wolfowitz of very recent ill fame. I happened to have known two of the intruders: Kim Roosevelt and Miles Copeland, who bragged about their leading CIA roles in deposing Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq of Iran in 1953. Simplifying hard, the Land of the Free that has little compunction about using the dirtiest tricks while preaching democracy to the world has paid and will continue to pay hugely for that folly, whose current expressions draw heavily on the older ones.
However, Kingmakers doesn't simplify, nor pull punches either. Weary as everyone is of "this is a book every literate citizen should read," I find myself saying it to friends.

[svinayak]

The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
by Ron Suskind (Author)

# Hardcover: 432 pages
# Publisher: Harper (August 5, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0061430625
# ISBN-13: 978-0061430626

From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation’s struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today’s shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world. In a sweeping, propulsive, and multilayered narrative, The Way of the World investigates how America relinquished the moral leadership it now desperately needs to fight the real threat of our era: a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of "The Armageddon Test" —a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world’s nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons-grade uranium. In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency. While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate—and often daring—brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani émigré, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan teenager, a Holocaust survivor’s son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she’s been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need. They are all testing American values at a time of peril, and discovering solutions—human solutions—to so much that has gone wrong. For anyone hoping to exercise truly informed consent and begin the process of restoring the values and hope—along with the moral clarity and earned optimism—at the heart of the American tradition, The Way of the World is a must-read.

Product Description
From Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation s struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today s shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.

In a sweeping, propulsive, and multilayered narrative, The Way of the World investigates how America relinquished the moral leadership it now desperately needs to fight the real threat of our era: a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of The Armageddon Test a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world s nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons-grade uranium. In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency.

While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate and often daring brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani émigré, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan teenager, a Holocaust survivor s son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she s been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need. They are all testing American values at a time of peril, and discovering solutions human solutions to so much that has gone wrong.

For anyone hoping to exercise truly informed consent and begin the process of restoring the values and hope along with the moral clarity and earned optimism at the heart of the American tradition, The Way of the World is a must-read.

[svinayak]

The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj
by David Gilmour (Author)

# Hardcover: 416 pages
# Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (February 7, 2006)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0374283540
# ISBN-13: 978-0374283544

How much do we really know about the lives of the British in imperial India? Gilmour's deftly organized, encyclopedic account of the day-to-day existence of the members of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) upends the view of the British rulers as tyrannical, racist philistines, an image born out of such works as E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and advanced strenuously since postcolonial studies emerged in the 1970s. Gilmour, author of highly regarded biographies of Rudyard Kipling and Lord Curzon, assembles a wealth of light, amusing anecdotes on an astounding range of topics concerning the members of the ICS, including their college days, bad habits, job duties, gripes about the weather and courtship practices. Though lacking in analysis, the sympathetic general portrait gives a good insider's view of how these men fared in an unfamiliar and sometimes dangerous region. A firm understanding of the British mindset and playful characterizations of its idiosyncrasies provide entertainment and insight, but, lacking a central thread or thesis, the book often feels inessential. The flatness of its prose may make reading wearisome, though the breadth and care of the scholarship merit esteem. Maps, b&w photos. (Feb.)

From Booklist
Biographer of Lord Curzon and Rudyard Kipling, Gilmour deepens his study of British imperialists with this tour of lives and careers in the Indian Civil Service (ICS), the bureaucratic bulwark of British rule of India. Within the chronological brackets of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, Gilmour tours topics such as recruitment into the ICS, the experience of adjusting to India, and advancement up the ICS ladder. An intriguing theme is the way a civil servant was both an exile from England and a benevolent despot in India. The career of one Alfred Lyall, who arrived in 1855 and retired to England 32 years later, illustrates every topic Gilmour takes up, whether social life, methods of rule (Lyall topped out as a lieutenant governor, one tier beneath viceroy), or attitudes about the propriety of empire. Administrative history aside, social history readers have more to savor here, as Gilmour richly recovers the workaday aspects of an imperial career, from finding a wife to managing servants to seeking distractions in lonely postings. Gilbert Taylor

"The Ruling Caste" by David Gilmour gives an excellent and evocative account of how British civilian officials lived their lives in the Raj (ie not the military, business people or missionaries). He covers how they were trained, their working routines, how they found wives, entertainment, sports and much else.

Many books on the history of British India focus on the big picture and the comings and goings of the senior officials in the Government and Military. Gilmour's book describes how the majority of officials lived and worked at the grassroots level of villages and districts: what exactly they did each day, how a magistrate did his job and so on.

Kipling's stories describe many of the same types of people, but of course they are fictionalised accounts which may be overly sympathetic or exaggerated in other ways. However, contemporaries in India frequently commented on their generally accurate portrayals.

Colonialism is often criticised because of our understandable repugnance of one country imposing its rule over the population of another. In principle this is fair, but criticism by historians is often taken to the extreme of refusing to accept that anything good ever came out of colonialism. This is especially unfair to the British, who did not behave with the rapacity and cruelty of other colonial powers of the day.

Gilmour's book and others like it redress the balance somewhat by describing lives of duty, sacrifice and affection for the people they ruled. Others became internationally respected for their work as historians, linguists and protectors of Indian cultural heritage. Another paid for the construction of a canal out of his own pocket - one of many similar, if less spectacular, examples of personal largesse.

Reading this book one cannot escape the feeling that there was a certain nobility and decency about the work of many officials of the Indian Civil Service, especially those working in Districts where they were in intimate contact with villagers.

District Officers were mostly young men in their twenties in charge of a District of up to a million people, with perhaps only a few other British officials - or even none at all. The opportunities for corruption, oppression or debauchery are obvious, but by and large these young men were incorruptible and behaved with great honour.

These decent lives deserve to be better known and Gilmour's book does them justice. Today, mere "celebrity" is often applauded as heroism and talent, so it is good to read about true heroes and genuinely talented people who did not court publicity but just went about their unsung work in India, often for a lifetime.

Of course they were not all hard-working saints and Gilmour gives sufficient examples to make this clear. India had its share of "bad bargains", eccentrics and mavericks and Gilmour describes their exploits with sympathy and dry humour. Some of these tales are gems.

Readers interested in how the Raj was run and the people who ran it will love this book.

I also recommend it as an antidote to contemporary celebrity worship, so we may compare the enduring, worthwhile qualities of the best of those who served the Raj, with the ephemeral appeal of many celebrities, whose fleeting reputations depend on media attention to create and sustain them.

David Gilmour has written an extremely well-researched history of the Indian Civil Service, that is of the British civil servants who administered India, the crown jewel of the British Empire, which then encompassed India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Anyone who has any doubts that it was not, on the whole, extremely capable and incorruptible, and, all in all, a huge force for the good will not harbor them at the end of the book.

This book is written in a sort of dry, plodding and scholarly style that makes it a dream come true for anyone who needs to write a paper or otherwise consult Gilmour's research for their own work. But the same matter-of-factness and lack of narrative mean that only very few will enjoy reading this book for pleasure.

[svinayak]

The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company
by John Keay (Author)

# Paperback: 496 pages
# Publisher: HarperCollins UK (October 1, 1993)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0006380727
# ISBN-13: 978-0006380726

During 200 years the East India Company grew from a loose association of Elizabethan tradesmen into "the grandest society of merchants in the universe". As a commercial enterprise it came to control half the world's trade and as a political entity it administered an embryonic empire. Without it there would have been no British India and no British Empire. In a tapestry ranging from Southern Africa to north-west America, and from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of Victoria, bizarre locations and roguish personality abound. From Bombay to Singapore and Hong Kong the political geography of today is, in some respects, the result of the Company. This book looks at the history of the East India Company.

Recording 200+ years of East India Company history is no small feat for, in such a work, this far-flung commercial enterprise produces a litany of ships, ports, merchandise, employees, currencies, costs, indigenous rulers, company directors, parliamentarians, military men, privateers, and scalawags. That John Keay kept it straight is admirable. That the reader can is even more so.

The Honourable Company is a witty, insightful and, at times, painstakingly detailed account of the East India Company's cyclical expansion, retraction, retrenchment, and re-expansion over the course of three centuries. From the island of St. Helena to Canton, China, Keay patiently plots the monopoly's course. Ever eager to highlight the irony, inanity, and ignominy characteristic of such an enterprise, Keay provides several humorous asides in addition to those moments when the reader can't but shake his head at these haughty, ill-informed, greedy and grasping monopolists.

Well-researched, well-written, and a delight to consume, The Honourable Company suffers only when the blander details of global trade begin to inhibit it's otherwise excellent pace. The sheer volume of material required to catalog an endeavor of this magnitude makes it difficult to entice the reader page after page. Yet, John Keay pulls it off smartly and for this The Honourable Company merits a rating of 4+ stars.

The East India Company, which described itself as "the Grandest Society of Merchants in the Universe," controlled half the world's trade at its height. This grand book, obviously the subject of many years of research, often reads more like an adventure yarn than a book about a business, even the grandest in the universe. The Company, which received its Royal Charter on the last day of 1600, moved through a series of fits and starts, disasters and triumphs, as it moved through a turbulent 220 years of history. From its initial fumbling start on the obscure nutmeg island of Run, it eventually turned into a quasi-government ruling vast parts of India and the most important enterprise in the China trade. It outlasted absolute monarchy in Britain, and saw the rise of the modern corporation.

John Keay has done a masterful job of telling this story, but look at the material he has had to work with! The Honourable Company often seems to have been pretty dishonourable, characterized by ferocious infighting, both in the headquarters in London and overseas. The characters who set up trading operations in far-flung corners of the world appear to have been either indolent drunks or superhumans burning with ambition. There are enough pirates and battles and exotic names to please any reader. And the leitmotiv of British salesmen anxiously trying to unload tweed cloth to unidentifiable buyers in the tropics.

The East India Company, although a monopoly, had competition. It came from many sources, including the Dutch, the French and particularly from "interlopers," traders working on their own account. The Company also had to compete with its own employees who, paid a pittance, conducted business on their own accounts as well. The strength of this book is that it gives the impression of boundless activity, even when things went badly. Given the different locations the company operated in, and different local conditions, it is remarkable that the narrative flows as smoothly as it does.

The writing is often superb. No Imperial apologist, Mr. Keay often makes the point that historians have tended to look to the Company as a harbinger, almost the organizing idea, for the British Empire. This foreshadowing is strained. The Company men, to judge from those described in the book, were motivated primarily by greed and self-interest. Some, such as Warren Hastings, who became Governor-General in India and held the position for thirteen years, were genuinely fond of India. Hastings is a fascinating character and Keay's writing does him, and his colleagues, honour:

""The Great Moghul," as Hastings was called in Calcutta's first newspaper, stood alone, a sad and self-righteous Caesar, embattled but unbowed, solicitous but ruthless, fastidious but careless, lofty yet devious-a man, in short, crying out to be misunderstood. Contemporaries duly obliged; so has posterity."

[svinayak]

Curzon: Imperial Statesman
by David Gilmour (Author)

# Hardcover: 728 pages
# Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (June 11, 2003)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0374133565
# ISBN-13: 978-0374133566

Gilmour-who learned much about Lord Curzon from writing a recent biography of Curzon's cousin, Rudyard Kipling-has produced an absorbing life, 200 pages longer than Kenneth Rose's stylish but misshapen Superior Person. Curzon had a distinguished career as viceroy of India, Edwardian politician and post-WWI foreign minister. Born in 1859, George Curzon was the ambitious eldest of a blue-blooded but unambitious brood of 11. His impatience, intolerance and arrogance were exacerbated by the stress of wearing a steel brace for a painful curvature of the spine. Still, he set himself a tremendous pace, from ascending perilous peaks in central Asia to climbing the risky political and social ladders.

He also bedded a plethora of eager society ladies. To their dismay, in his mid-30s he married the daughter of a Chicago millionaire, then took her to India. When the unselfishly devoted Mary Leiter Curzon died 11 years later, in 1906, he had no intention of remarrying, yet at 58, he succumbed to the voluptuous widow Grace Duggan, a socialite 19 years younger. By then, Curzon was on the verge of his major achievements. As foreign minister, his legacy became the remaking of national borders in the east, most crucially enabling Turkey to emerge as a modern state. Disappointed at not succeeding as prime minister, he left office in 1924 and died a year later. Though Gilmour fails to make the association, readers will savor the striking parallels with another ambitious, libidinous politician who lived with pain yet made it to the top-an American surnamed Kennedy.

In our enlightened age, to label someone as an imperialist "empire man" is usually a pejorative designation. So it is useful to be reminded that many of the men who administered the British Empire were men of immense intellect, creativity, and curiosity. In Gilmour's previous biography of the supposed arch-imperialist Kipling (The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, 2002), he revealed the complexities of his subject while displaying a wonderful grasp of the spirit of the Victorian age. Here he chronicles the life of one of the true giants of the latter stages of the empire. Lord Curzon was born into a family of relatively impoverished aristocrats. He saw public service as both a duty and a means to personal advancement. As viceroy of India, he instituted vital and progressive reforms in taxation and showed a devotion to preserving India's historical monuments. Yet he remained a staunch devotee of British stewardship of the subcontinent, and his attitudes toward Indians can, charitably, be described as patronizing. Although he later served admirably as foreign secretary, his arrogance and knack for offending people probably prevented his selection as prime minister. Despite his undeniable accomplishments, Curzon died a lonely, embittered man. This is a superbly written account of a proud, talented, but rather tragic figure.
David Gilmour has written an excellent biography of George Curzon, who, although little known to most Americans, was an important figure in English politics and government from the 1890s until the 1920s. The virtues of Gilmour's biography far outweigh its minor faults: the book is well-written and takes a balanced and comprehensive look at its subject.

That balance is important: Curzon was by all accounts a brilliant but highly difficult man who was often haughty with subordinates and quarrelsome with his peers. Gilmour makes no excuses for Curzon's often indefensible behavior, nor does he gloss over Curzon's regrettable tendencies in this regard.

Gilmour does a very good job overall reviewing Curzon's long life in English public affairs, starting with his career in the House of Commons, moving on to his years as Viceroy in India, then to his years in the House of Lords and then in Cabinet. Nor is Curzon's private life neglected. My sole criticism is that at times Gilmour assumes a relatively high level of background knowledge of English history and politics of the era. For example, many of the references to the passage or defeat of individual bills before Parliament were simply beyond my knowledge. For my part, that level of detail could have been omitted without interrupting the narrative flow. But although those sections were inherently less interesting to me, I still give high marks overall to this work.

Biography of George Curzon (born 11 Jan 1859, Viceroy in India from 1899 to 1905, in Lloyd George's War Cabinet from 1916 to 1919, Foreign Secretary from 1919 to 1924, died 20 March 1925)and I am glad I decided to read it. He was a fantastic and brilliant if difficult person. The book is solidly researched, with ample footnoting, and an interesting bibliography.

David Gilmour renders a balanced portrait of George Curzon, a complex imperial statesman. Curzon was born and raised as an aristocrat at a time that the British Empire was at its apex in the decades before WWI. Unlike the rest of his family, Curzon was very ambitious and determined to leave his mark in history. Gilmour makes a judicious use of Curson's writings to show us how extraordinarily well-traveled Curzon was for a man of his time. Curzon had a first-hand knowledge of many foreign issues, his undeniable specialty, unlike such luminaries as Lloyd George, A. J. Balfour, to name a few. Curzon was a work alcoholic, self-centered person who sounded condescending at times and was unable to delegate much because of his very exacting standards. Furthermore, Curzon often did not display much emotional intelligence in his relationship with others, including his own family.
Unsurprisingly, Curzon's peers and superiors in politics found him regularly unbearable in Parliament, during his viceroyalty in India and as a member of different cabinets in the last decade of his life. Chirol summarized it very well when he told Hardinge that Curzon had the knack of saying the wrong thing, or even, when he says the right thing, of saying it in the wrong way, is quite extraordinary. I can recall no instance of a man whose personal unpopularity has to the same extent neutralized his immense abilities and his power of rendering great services. Gilmour shows very clearly how Curzon could be well ahead of his time in fields such as foreign policy and protection of old monuments and at the same time be so backward in such areas as women's rights and his attitude to nationalism. Overworked for most of his life, Curzon died prematurely at the age of 66.
However, Curzon left some built-to-last monuments to posterity: think for instance about the impressive restoration of at one time decrepit Taj Mahal in India, the negotiation of the Lausanne Treaty that formalized the existence of Modern Turkey or Remembrance Day, a fitting tribute to the Fallen Heroes.