2014: What are you reading at the moment?

[Neoma]

College textbooks for me...

[gollygee]

1. The Empire of Necessity

http://www.amazon.com/The-Empire-Necessity-Slavery-Deception/dp/0805094539

Really fascinating.

[msedano]

2. Chicana Erotic Novel

Reading again in prep for her swing through SoCal to sign it, Ana Castillo's sure-to-be-a-hit Give It To Me.

http://labloga.blogspot.com/2014/01/review-give-it-to-me-la-palabra-quest.html

Castillo practices eroticism not for its own sake but as part of her ongoing investigation of mujerismo, independent womanhood that might be translated.

[YankeyMCC]

3. Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

[Little_Wing]

4. Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

Fink writes in compelling detail about the horrible unfolding of events at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. I've wanted to read this since it was published, but it took a while to work myself up to the experience. Even so I'm digesting it in small doses, as the whole nightmare of what happened to that city still fills me with despair.

Fink is an excellent writer, btw.

[closeupready]

5. Summer Cooking, by Elizabeth David.

This isn't a normal cookbook - not much of a cookbook at all. More of a sort of good eating guide from an Englishwoman who was well-known in the mid-20th Century, and wrote about food conventions, as a critic. Kind of a Beat Generation character, really, but preached of revolution in domestic living.

And she wrote with such erudition that it's just fun reading what she wrote.

[TomClash]

6. Thomas Piketty

Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century.

[LoisB]

7. Children of the Atomic Bomb by James N. Yamazaki and Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

[dem in texas]

8. The Graves are Walking, The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People

I am only four chapters into this book, but it is a great read. What is fascinating is the attitude that the British had toward the poor Irish of the 1940's is the same as how the Republicans view the poor now, especially the blacks. Don't want to give them any assistance for fear they will come to depend on it. Lots of sad stuff in the book. I also learned a new word, immiseration.

[onager]

9. "Embers of War" by Fredrik Logevall

Full title: "Embers of War - The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam"

Fascinating history of events concerning Vietnam from 1946-1954. I've read many books about how the US got involved in Vietnam, and this is one of the best and most detailed. Logevall had access to recently declassified material from American, British, French, Chinese, Russian and Vietnamese archives.

At times the book reads like a John LeCarre thriller about low dealing in high places. With some of the lowest dealing coming from America's High Priest of the Domino Theory in the 1950s, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

It's amazing how very close the USA came to sending American combat troops to Vietnam in the early 1950s. Aside from Dulles, two people constantly pushing for that were Vice-President Richard Nixon and Admiral Arthur Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Nixon and Radford even seriously floated the idea of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam, to save the French from defeat.

Saner people noted that China might react rather...strongly to nukes being used right next door. To which Radford suggested hitting China with a few nukes as well.

No wonder British diplomats, in their back-channel messages, called Radford a "belligerent dim-bulb," among other things.

And that's part of what makes the book so fascinating - the wealth of detail about the political haggling behind the scenes. Haggling that was going on between the Eastern as well as the Western powers, with Ho Chi Minh and Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap constantly having to fend off "suggestions" from their Chinese advisors.

A good absorbing read. Highly recommended.

[nilesobek]

10. "God's Middle Finger,"

and "Fatal Shore," by Robert Hughes.

[womanofthehills]

11. Robert Oppenheimer - a Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk

Actually, I'm listening to it as it's way too long to read. I live 50 miles from the Trinity site so I'm pretty fascinated by Manhattan Project books.

[fortintype]

12. The Reagan Casualties by Jacob Klezaras

http://www.amazon.com/Reagan-Casualties-Overseas-Atrocities-Communicator/dp/0692233911/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402255563&sr=1-1

I've only been reading it for like two days, but so far it's a really interesting read. It's all about Reagan's foreign policy and his involvement in different genocides and insurgencies. When I saw the title I was thinking it would just be all about Iran-Contra and all the stuff I normally associate with the Reagan administration's foreign policy, but it actually goes into way more than that. It isn't a very long read, you could probably finish it in an afternoon if you wanted to. It's definitely reinforced my view of what a terrible president Ronald Reagan was.

[closeupready]

13. Skeletons of the Zahara - nonfiction account of early 19th Century slavery

in Saharan Africa. Eye-opening, and riveting.

[closeupready]

14. I'm reading "House of Morgan" by Ron Chernow -

at about 725 pages, I figure it will take me (at my comfortable reading rate) about a month to finish.

[Jean4CountyClerk]

15. No time to read this summer

Campaigning.

[dorrismay]

16. mr. music man by mervyn conn, fiction or non fiction...

Just been reading an 'autobiography' by mervyn conn where he says he was found innocent of attacking a 19 year old.

Mervyn Conn's conviction for attacking his 19 year old receptionist Margaret Malloy in 1989 was UPHELD ON APPEAL.

Mervyn Conn attacked her just 4 days after she started working for him.

The Front Page Headline of the Sun Newspaper dated Thursday 7th December 1989 says,
'GROPING MUSIC TYCOON GETS JAIL'.

Judge Robin Laurie says of Mervyn Conn, 'Without the victim's consent you embraced her and fondled her genital area'. The judge imposed an eight week prison sentence and 1000 pounds compensation.

The Judge concludes, 'A custodial sentence is the only way this Court can properly deal with the circumstances'.

Mervyn Conn pleaded guilty, admitting indecent assault at London's Southwark Crown Court. Yet he appealed the sentence imposed; that prison was too harsh. The Appeal Court maintained the eight week sentence, but suspended it for two years. This is unambiguous. Guilty, with an eight week suspended sentence and 1000 pounds compensation. After all, he pleaded guilty, and said it was a 'moment of madness'. (Royal Courts of Justice, Friday 12th January 1990. Case Number 89/6677/Z2. File name: CONN/896677Z2. File number 019900112. Before Lord Justice Lloyd, Mr. Justice Tudor Evans and Mr Justice Owen. Regina v. Mervyn Harold Conn)

Yet when we read Mervyn Conn's book Mr Music Man, he says on Page 179 last paragraph,
'...I needed support after an employee made false allegations about me, which ended up all over the front pages of the papers'.

Mervin Conn continues, 'I was up for a knighthood and all that disappeared because mud sticks, even if you have been found innocent by the Courts. Tainted by this false accusation I found I was out of the Hurlingham Club'.

Let us make no mistake, despite what Mervin Conn writes in his book, the Sun correctly states 'his lawyers appealed the jail sentence'. NOT HIS CONVICTION.

[peter anders]

32. mervyn conn now charged

mervyn conn was formally charged at Sutton Police Station on 2nd February 2016 at 4pm.

The charged carry a maximum of life imprisonment,

[YOHABLO]

17. Now reading "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap" by Matt Taibbi

Just finished "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan

[Chemisse]

18. I just finished "The Hot Zone", about Ebola

I really enjoyed it.

[Skarbrowe]

19. "This Changes Everything" by Naomi Klein

Very depressing. Sadly, I'm not as optimistic as Ms. Klein. The book throws a lot at you and it is definitely worth reading. Just keep thinking happy thoughts.

[SheilaT]

20. Just finished "Flight 232" about the crash

of United Airlines flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa on July 19, 1989. Excellent.

Now I'm reading "The Teacher Wars" by Dana Goldstein, a history of the teaching profession in America.

[closeupready]

21. Diane Von Furstenberg's "The Woman I Wanted To Be" -

I'll be honest that I'm a little disappointed - on the one hand, she knows how to write, and how to engage the reader. On the other, it's a memoir that is thin on details and long on embellishment. I'm not that far in, so I'll reserve judgment until I've gotten further in.

[Tom Ripley]

22. Billy Idol's autobiography (really), The Tinkerers, The Best of Early Vanity Fair

[womanofthehills]

24. Just finished "Chasing the Scream:"

"The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs" by Jonann Hari.

There were a lot of discussions on DU about this book which made me want to read it.

[Zorro]

25. Just finished Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

Extraordinary stories of the astounding extravagance of the Gilded Age and the dissipation of an enormous family fortune.

[Zorro]

26. No Easy Day

Very interesting description of Navy SEAL life -- and the mission to "capture" Bin Laden -- by someone who grew up in a missionary family in Alaska.

Has a couple of gratuitous swipes at Obama.

[Zorro]

27. Finished reading Herb Block's Here and Now

Herb Block (Herblock) was for decades the preeminent WaPo editorial cartoonist and the one who coined the term "McCarthyism". This book contains dozens of his cartoons from the early 1950s, with an accompanying commentary on the times and events.

What is striking is how familiar it all seems -- rapacious big business interests, influence peddling, political paranoia, spying on citizens, political cowardliness, falling education system, etc. Seems as if some things never change.

[Tikki]

28. PACIFIC

author Simon Winchester.

Tikki

[Zorro]

29. Just wrapped up "Witness to a Century" by George Seldes

He was the European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in the WW1 and post-WW1 era, and met a number of famous artists and notorious figures from that era -- Picasso, Hemingway, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, and many others. His insights and personal anecdotes reveal unreported quirks of dozens of personalities of that and later eras, including key figures in American politics.

It's a highly recommended read.

[Zorro]

30. "I Didn't Do It For You" by Michela Wrong

Very well-written summary of key historical events in Eritrea over the past two centuries, and its tenacious struggle to achieve independence from European colonialism and from Ethiopia.

One interesting anecdote answers the mystery of what happened to Haile Selassie's body after being deposed by the DERG. Apparently the DERG's leader Mengistu Haile Mariam had his body buried face down under a latrine in the garden outside Mengistu's office.

[eissa]

31. "In the Time of the Butterflies"

I know this is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, but I included it here because the Mirabal sisters did exist and this book is largely focused on their lives as heroic revolutionaries in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo.

I'm about 20 years late reading this, but I absolutely loved it. I had no idea that the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women was inspired by their murders. The book itself is so wonderfully written, interweaving the perspective of each sister. You knew what the ending would be, and dread it as it nears, but just can't put the book down. Now I want to watch the movie!

[Abe we need you]

33. the two latest reads that I found worthwhile....

The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot (about Allen Dulles and the CIA):
https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Chessboard-Dulles-Americas-Government/dp/0062276166

The Battle (about Waterloo) by Alessandro Barbero:
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-New-History-Waterloo-ebook/dp/B00A25NN5C/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8#nav-subnav

If anyone has come across any books on the Civil War (published in the last five years or so) that they recommend, any suggestions would be appreciated.