Official Poll - 1st Quarter 2006 NONFICTION book selection!

Chris OConnor

Official Book Selection Poll

1st Quarter 2006 NONFICTION book selection!

Please read these directions BEFORE you vote!

How many nonfiction books will we be reading?

We will only be reading 1 nonfiction book in 1st quarter of 2006. In time, as our membership grows, we will tackle several nonfiction books concurrently.

How long will the poll stay open?

This poll is opening on Tuesday, December 6 and will be closing on Thursday, December 15th. This is a total of 10 full days.

Who can vote?

All active members are invited and encouraged to vote and participate in our book selection process, but please follow the following simple rules:

Only cast a vote if you have 10 or more posts on our forums. If you don't have at least 10 you should have no problem jumping into some discussion threads and meeting this rather relaxed criterion.

Don't vote if you don't plan on reading and discussing the winning book. And please understand that only one nonfiction book can win, but we are counting on you to actively participate independent of which book wins the poll. You matter and we need every member to participate.

How do I vote?

If you are an active member with 10 or more total posts AND you plan on participating in the Q1, 2006 discussion THEN you are permitted to cast a total of 3 votes. You can use your three votes however you see fit, which could mean assigning all three votes to just one of the book choices, or distributing the three points over the book choices according to your own interest level for each book. You should make a brief post to this thread telling everyone how you wish to distribute your three votes. Nothing further needs to be said, but you're welcome to be as verbose as you like. Just make it crystal clear how you are voting.

It is inevitable that some people will either forget to cast all three votes or will not have read this entire post. They will simply vote on one book. If this happens I will be assigning all three of their votes to the one book they selected.

You are permitted to change your vote during the voting period, but not after I close the poll. The poll is closed on the last day of the polling period as stated above.

This thread can be used as an open discussion of the books on the poll. You're welcome to try to sell people on a particular book, or dissuade them from another.

NOTE:

As always, we will need a discussion leader that is willing to be very active in the reading and discussion of the winning book. If you are up to the task please let us all know in this forum by making a post and stating your interest in the position.

Please don't nominate yourself if you will not be active. Being active means checking the forum just about every day and making posts regularly. Regularly means a few times each week at the minimum.

Being a discussion leader does not entail being an authority on the subject matter or defending the author's position. You simply need to attempt to stimulate discussion.

And here are our book choices for 1st Quarter 2006. Please read about all four before casting your votes. Think hard about which book will be the most educational, entertaining, and worthy of discussion. May the best book win!

Drum roll please...

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Best-selling author Gladwell (The Tipping Point) has a dazzling ability to find commonality in disparate fields of study. As he displays again in this entertaining and illuminating look at how we make snap judgments—about people's intentions, the authenticity of a work of art, even military strategy—he can parse for general readers the intricacies of fascinating but little-known fields like professional food tasting (why does Coke taste different from Pepsi?). Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts—and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more. Perhaps the most stunning example he gives of this counterintuitive truth is the most expensive war game ever conducted by the Pentagon, in which a wily marine officer, playing "a rogue military commander" in the Persian Gulf and unencumbered by hierarchy, bureaucracy and too much technology, humiliated American forces whose chiefs were bogged down in matrixes, systems for decision making and information overload. But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge. If doctors are given an algorithm, or formula, in which only four facts are needed to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, is that really educating the doctor's decision-making ability—or is it taking the decision out of the doctor's hands altogether and handing it over to the algorithm? Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth.

Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe by Erik J. Wielenberg

Book Description
Suppose there is no God. This supposition implies that human life is meaningless, that there are no moral obligations and hence people can do whatever they want, and that the notions of virtue and vice, right and wrong, and good and evil have no place in the universe. Erik J. Wielenberg believes this view to be utterly erroneous and, in this thought-provoking book, he explains the reasons why. He argues that, even if God does not exist, human life can still have meaning, humans do have moral obligations, and human virtue is still possible. Wielenberg offers readers a cognent explanation of the ethical implications of naturalism--a view that denies the existence of the supernatural in human life. In his view virtue exists in a godless universe but it is significantly different from virtue in a Christian universe, and he develops naturalistic accounts of humility, charity, and hope. The overarching theme of Virtue and Value in a Godless Universe is what ethics might look like without God. Erik Wielenberg takes readers on an extraordinary tour of some of the central landmarks of this under-explored territory.

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch

From Publishers Weekly
What courage must it have required to research and write this book? And who will read such a ghastly chronicle? Gourevitch, who reported from Rwanda for the New Yorker, faces these questions up front: "The best reason I have come up with for looking more closely into Rwanda's stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it." The stories are unrelentingly horrifying and filled with "the idiocy, the waste, the sheer wrongness" of one group of Rwandans (Hutus) methodically exterminating another (Tutsis). With 800,000 people killed in 100 days, Gourevitch found many numbed Rwandans who had lost whole families to the machete. He discovered a few admirable characters, including hotelier Paul Rusesabagina, who, "armed with nothing but a liquor cabinet, a phone line, an internationally famous address, and his spirit of resistance," managed to save refugees in his Hotel des Milles Collines in Kigali. General Paul Kagame, one of Gourevitch's main sources in the new government, offers another bleak and consistent voice of truth. But failure is everywhere. Gourevitch excoriates the French for supporting the Hutus for essentially racist reasons; the international relief agencies, which he characterizes as largely devoid of moral courage; and the surrounding countries that preyed on the millions of refugees?many fleeing the consequences of their part in the killings. As the Rwandans try to rebuild their lives while awaiting the slow-moving justice system, the careful yet passionate advocacy of reporters like Gourevitch serves to remind both Rwandans and others that genocide occurred in this decade while the world looked on.

The Next Attack by Daniel Benjamin, Steven Simon

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The chilling first words, "We are losing," capture the tone of this scathing evaluation of the Bush administration's responses to the September 11 attacks. Benjamin, a Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow, and Simon, an instructor at Georgetown University, authors of the award-winning Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam's War Against America, do not mince words; America's foreign policy vis-a-vis the Muslim world is bankrupt and has "cleared the way for the next attack-and those that will come after." By invading Iraq, the authors argue, the U.S. demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of the scope of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, and has turned Iraq into a "country-sized training ground" for terrorists. The authors also explore terror's philosophical roots, analyzing how salafism, a strain of Islamic fundamentalism, dominates jihadist beliefs, as well as how the Internet helps facilitate global dissemination of its tenets, strategies and tactics. The authors' remedies for this baleful state of affairs include fostering an understanding that independent cell-based terrorist units, not state sponsors, are the backbone of the movement; dispensing with reflexive use of military solutions; improving links with foreign intelligence and law enforcement agencies; and recognizing the limitations of democracy in solving developing nations' problems. Not a book that'll appeal to readers whose politics are right of center, it's nevertheless a sobering analysis of compromised American security.

Edited by: Chris OConnor at: 12/6/05 12:39 am

Jeremy1952

Two votes for BLINK
One vote for VIRTUE AND VALUE

I've already read BLINK but found it to be a marvelous work. If we select it I will probably read it again, certainly engage in the discussion. VIRTUE sounds interesting but I'm afraid it will be the sameold/sameold material that was covered in "WHAT IS GOOD" and "THE EVOLOUTION OF COOPERATION", which is, in my opinion, the seminal "must read" book in this field.

RWANDA... Diamond discusses it at some length, in context, in COLLAPSE. Studying it buy itself seems like pointless self abuse to me.

I already know US foreign policy is a messy disaster. What good will it do me to know it in greater detail?

If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

MadArchitect

Two votes for "We Wish to Inform You..."
One for "Value and Virtue..."

Personally, I'm interested in reading "We Wish to Inform You..." not for anything it may have to say about American foreign policy but because I'm interested in Rwanda itself and its current political and cultural situation. Knowing more about the world never hurt much.

As for "Value and Virtue...", I'm interested in morality and the changes it may have to undergo once it's divorced from religion. I don't know that I would have chosen that book for myself, but it may be worth reading. My one big concern is that this is one of those topics that is likely to make for unseemly conduct on the boards.

Jeremy1952

The "Foreign Plolicy" remark referred to THE NEXT ATTACK.

MadArchitect

Ah. My mistake.

ldkrn

Two for "The Next Attack."
One for "We Wish to Inform You."

Chris OConnor

misterpessimistic

Hey! You're supposed to be keeping count for us. ::44

Chris

ginof

whoo hoo! a real choice this time! ::171

I usually find one book and give it all three votes, but find myself unable to do so this time.

Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe gets 2 votes from me. I'm of this ilk and am always looking for more ideas on why this view is true.

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families get 1 vote from me. I don't usually like to read/view things this horrible (especially if true!) but think I need to own up to it....

riverc0il

One vote for BLINK
Two votes for VIRTUE AND VALUE

finally have 10 posts and am looking forward to joining in on the next non-fiction reading and discussion.

blink looks interesting though some reviews seem to indicate the premise is less well put together than the prose and storytelling, so it gets one vote.

two votes for virtue and value as the subject seems very interesting in a country that's climate seems to trend towards indications that many people think value and morality are deeply tied to religeon. i suspect this book might drum up the most discourse, for better or for worse.

after watching hotel rowanda, i do not have much interest in delving into the details of that brutal period of recent history. while a movie could never provide all the details, it provided enough that i got the picture and don't feel much inclided to further study of the subject.

and no vote for the other book as i can't stomach any more information about the current state of affairs in middle east. i have done enough reading and research to have formed an opinion and have come to the conclusion that unless the subject matter is truly new and fresh information, further research and reading just makes me mad. regardless, i am on board which ever book gets the most votes! ::80

Edited by: riverc0il at: 12/7/05 8:04 pm

MadArchitect

Until Mr. P gets back around to it, here's your update on the vote so far:

Blink: 3 votes
We Wish to Infom You: 4 votes
Value and Virtue: 6 votes
The Next Attack: 2 votes

That represents the votes of Jeremy, ldkrn, ginof, riverc0il, and myself.

-----------------<br>"Ain't got a name, just a current address."

Mr. Pessimistic

Blink - 1

Value and Virtue - 2

To use Mad's tally:

Blink: 4 votes
We Wish to Infom You: 4 votes
Value and Virtue: 8 votes
The Next Attack: 2 votes

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Chris OConnor

Shauna/Disabled doesn't log in enough to see our message to her prior to this poll closing. Part of the rules state that all 3 of her votes would go to Value & Virtue, since this is her only vote.

And then Rolf comments that he would vote for Value & Virtue, even though his comment doesn't constitute an actual vote. Even without Shauna and Rolf Value & Virtue wins clearly.

Chris OConnor

Dr. Erik J. Wielenberg will be joining us for a live chat session on Thursday, March 23, 2006! I just spoke with him on the phone and he actually knew about his book being on our poll.

Please order your copy of Value & Virtue in a Godless Universe from the links found throughout the BookTalk site. And order today! We have two weeks before this reading period even begins, so enough time to order and receive your books.

Order here now!

Chris


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