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Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 8:02 pm
by Chris OConnor
The quantity of books suggested thus far leaves much to be desired. I'm inclined to think we might want to just declare "Walden" as the next non-fiction book, seeing as just about everyone made a positive comment about it. What are your thoughts?
Since we have so few suggestions I'm going to research what is currently hot in non-fiction. Do me the courtesy of commenting on the books I suggest, please. We can stick with Walden if that is the decision of the community, but I'm going to make a few additional suggestions so that we get this process started with at least a handful of books to consider.
Please consider the following suggestions too....
Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 8:04 pm
by Chris OConnor
Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
http://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Innocence- ... M752WQ3F6F
Product Description
In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths to which Jeffs went in order to control the sect's women.
Now, in this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall tells the incredible and inspirational story of how she emerged from the confines of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and helped bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice. Offering a child's perspective on life in the FLDS, Wall discusses her tumultuous youth, explaining how her family's turbulent past intersected with her strong will and identified her as a girl who needed to be controlled through marriage. Detailing how Warren Jeffs's influence over the church twisted its already rigid beliefs in dangerous new directions, Wall portrays the inescapable mind-set and unrelenting pressure that forced her to wed despite her repeated protests that she was too young.
Once she was married, Wall's childhood shattered as she was obligated to follow Jeffs's directives and submit to her husband in "mind, body, and soul." With little money and no knowledge of the outside world, she was trapped and forced to endure the pain and abuse of her loveless relationship, which eventually pushed her to spend nights sleeping in her truck rather than face the tormentor in her bed.
Yet even in those bleak times, she retained a sliver of hope that one day she would find a way out, and one snowy night that came in the form of a rugged stranger named Lamont Barlow. Their chance encounter set in motion a friendship and eventual romance that gave her the strength she needed to break free from her past and sever the chains of the church.
But though she was out of the FLDS, Wall would still have to face Jeffs
Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 8:18 pm
by Chris OConnor
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
http://www.amazon.com/Post-American-Wor ... F8&s=books
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
After the Iraq war, Fareed Zakaria argued in his Newsweek column that the world's new organizing principle was pro- or anti-Americanism. But as the Iraq muddle drags on and China rises, the larger story of the post-Cold War era has come into sharp relief: We are not the center of the universe. It matters less that particular countries are pro- or anti-American than that the world is increasingly non-American. We need to get over ourselves.
Zakaria's The Post-American World is about the "rise of the rest," a catchy phrase from one of the most widely cited writers on foreign affairs. His prism is correct: We should focus more on the "rest," even if America is still the premier superpower. But within this broad approach, Zakaria leaves policy-makers to figure out how to rank challenges and restore U.S. legitimacy.
Zakaria zooms in on Asia, especially India and China, which he uses as proxies for "the rest." The first third of the book sets out his thesis -- "For the first time ever, we are witnessing genuinely global growth" -- and the next third describes how China's economy has doubled every eight years and how India may have the world's third largest economy by 2040.
This year has brought a flood of books on Asia's rise, including Bill Emmott's Rivals and Kishore Mahbubani's The New Asian Hemisphere. For the most part, they embody the "world is flat" thesis -- lots of economic statistics, little geography. But geopolitics is about more than growth rates. It matters that China borders a dozen more countries than India does, isn't hemmed in by a vast ocean and the world's tallest mountains, has a loyal diaspora twice the size of India's and enjoys a head start in Asian and African marketplaces. Zakaria's chapters on China and India, though of equal length, should not connote equivalency, and all "the rest" cannot be happily lumped together. Does China's example tell us what has gone wrong in Venezuela and Pakistan, and could go wrong in Egypt and Indonesia?
Ironically, the final third of The Post-American World, which focuses on us rather than on "the rest," is the strongest. Zakaria argues that America's world-beating economic vibrancy co-exists with a dysfunctional political system. "A 'can-do' country is now saddled with a 'do-nothing' political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving," he writes. That makes it hard to devise a grand strategy, and Zakaria offers just a few "simple guidelines" on the need to set priorities, build global rules and be flexible. But in this non-American world, it may be too late to restore U.S. leadership. "The rest" is moving on.
Product Description
One of our most distinguished thinkers argues that the "rise of the rest" is the great story of our time.
"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"
Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 8:26 pm
by Chris OConnor
America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation
http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Hidden-H ... F8&s=books
Product Description
Kenneth C. Davis, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller Don't Know Much About History, presents a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Davis's dramatic narratives set the record straight, busting myths and bringing to light little-known but fascinating facts from a time when the nation's fate hung in the balance.
Spanning a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington's inauguration in 1789, America's Hidden History details these episodes, among others:
- The story of the first real Pilgrims in America, who were wine-making French Huguenots, not dour English Separatists
- The coming-of-age story of Queen Isabella, who suggested that Columbus pack the moving mess hall of pigs that may have spread disease to many Native Americans
- The long, bloody relationship between the Pilgrims and Indians that runs counter to the idyllic scene of the Thanksgiving feast
- The little-known story of George Washington as a headstrong young soldier who committed a war crime, signed a confession, and started a war!
Full of color, intrigue, and human interest, America's Hidden History is an iconoclastic look at America's past, connecting some of the dots between history and today's headlines, proving why Davis is truly America's Teacher.
About the Author
Kenneth C. Davis is the best-selling author of Don't Know Much About History, which spent 35 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold nearly 1.5 million copies, and gave rise to his phenomenal Don't Know Much About
Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 6:58 am
by Ophelia
Here is another suggestion:
The Return of History and the End of Dreams by Robert Kagan .
I'll quote a review by an amazon reader:
Liberal Democracy vs Autocracy, May 15, 2008
By Izaak VanGaalen (San Francisco, CA USA) -
During the 1990s, after the fall of communism, it appeared that democratic capitalism had triumphed with no serious ideological challengers on the horizon. It was famously designated by Francis Fukuyama as "the end of history." Enlightenment had reached its final stage, there was no longer any beyond toward which progress marched. Most of the pundit class believed that China and Russia were well on their way to becoming liberal democracies. The theory was that once their respective middle classes reached a certain level of wealth they would be demanding the legal and political rights that are required of constitutional liberalism.
Robert Kagan does not believe this will happen. Autocracies such as China and Russia will not make the transition to liberal democracy on their own, nor will they change if they are safely embedded in the international liberal order. Kagan argues that the Chinese and the Russians do not view democracy as competitive elections, rather elections are something that asserts the popular will, which becomes the will of the ruling class. The ruling classes are not so much concerned with human rights as they are with satisfying public needs. In both countries a relatively small ruling class controls all the levers of power. Even though they line their own pockets, they have served their populations rather well, compared to the kleptocrats of smaller autocracies. The majorities of their populations actually seem content with this "style" of democracy.
Fareed Zakaria has argued in The Post-American World that autocracies do not hold beliefs other than becoming part of the global economy. They are simply pragmatists who will eventually become stakeholders in the system. Kagan begs to differ: He writes that autocrats believe in autocracy and will continue to reject the demands of meddlesome Western governments and NGOs. The higher cause they believe in is that they are providing economic success for their people and by extension getting international respect.
Autocracies seek to make the world safe for other autocracies as well. Their so-called respect for other nations' sovereignty and policy of noninterference sits well with lesser dictatorships such as Myanmar and North Korea. Autocrats prefer to do business with each other. After the successes of democracy in the 1990s, Russia and China would like to roll back those advances by promoting thier own successes. Kagan thinks that only dreamers would believe that China and Russia could become part of the liberal international order.
Interestingly enough, one of the most provocative and consequential foreign policy statements made by John McCain was in Kagan's neoconservative mold. McCain proposed that international organizations should only allow democracies as its members, as in a league of democracies, setting themselves against such countries as China and Russia. This would be the end of dreams and possibly the beginning of a nightmare. Although Kagan's point is well argued, I am more inclined the agree with Zakaria in that greater efforts should be made to make these important players part of the system rather than enemies of the system. The ideology of autocracy is inherently weak because power is too concentrated. Better to weaken it from within.
http://www.amazon.com/Return-History-En ... 030726923X
I find all the books in this thread to be worthy of attention.
My favourite for the moment is
Return of History, followed by
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
and
America's Hidden History.
I like the first two because I enjoy reading about different civilizations and how they interact.
The book that appeals least to me in Thoreau's
Walden.
Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 11:53 pm
by yodha
I'm interested in reading Walden too. It is one of those classics which everyone recommends, but I'm afraid I won't enjoy completely unless I read with a group. I guess it's a perfect book for long discussions and philosophy.
If not Walden then The Post-American World looks interesting.
Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 9:10 am
by Whit
Bluegrass Is My Second Language
This is a wonderful non-fiction book by first time author John Santa detailing his journey into the unique people and unbelievable places where this slice of Americana is still played by musicians who tend crops or work in factories during the day and play music at night.
More info can be found at
www.bluegrassbook.com
Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 3:15 pm
by DWill
I heard Stuart Kauffman on NPR and read the intro chapter to his book (Saffron was kind enough to let it go for a while). My impression is different from Lawrence's in that I hear him saying he doesn't believe in God, but he does think there are objective reasons to see meaning and purpose in the biosphere and in human life and economy. We do not have to follow the existentialists in seeing value only in the choices we make. There is an essence that does precede existence. Scientific reductionism leads us to a view of existence as reduced to physics. But Kauffman believes the arrows don't just do down, but up, outward.
Kauffman is now connected with the Unviersity of Calgary and was formerly with the Santa Fe Institute. Here's the brief review from Publisher's Weekly:
Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion Stuart A. Kauffman. Basic, $27 (336p) ISBN 978-0-465-00300-6
Kauffman, a complexity theorist at the University of Calgary, sets a huge task for himself in this provocative but difficult book: to find common ground between religion and science by redefining God as not a "supernatural Creator" but as "the natural creativity in the universe." That creativity, says Kauffman, defies scientific assumptions that the biosphere's evolution and human activity can be reduced to physics and are fully governed by natural laws. Kauffman (At Home in the Universe) espouses emergence, the theory of how complex systems self-organize into entities that are far more than the sum of their parts. To bolster the idea of this "ceaselessly creative" and unpredictable nature, Kauffman draws examples from the biosphere, neurobiology and economics. His definition of God as "the fully natural, awesome, creativity that surrounds us" is unlikely to convince those with a more traditional take on religion. Similarly, Kauffman's detailed discussions of quantum mechanics to explain emergence are apt to lose all but the most technically inclined readers. Nonetheless, Kauffman raises important questions about the self-organizing potential of natural systems that deserve serious consideration. (May)
I think it might be a worthy book. I'm a little concerned that every review I've seen mentions that it gets pretty abstruse. Maybe one of us can read it and then give an opinion. We might need to consider it for a later round.
Another book of his, At Home in the Universe, is said to be a less imposing read.
I also think Walden would be a good choice. It's a favorite of mine, but beyond that I think parts of it would generate good discussion.
DWill[/i]
Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 2:44 am
by gskg
First post here! (I am usually passive in groups, but this drew me in.)
Sometime back, I was thinking about how similar/different we humans are, to each other. A broader question to me then, was - What can one infer about oneself from others' experiences? How much can one extrapolate? What should one choose and reject?
This looks a good book to start. Any other book suggestions for this topic?
Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 9:45 am
by Chris OConnor
gskg
Those are all great questions worthy of consideration and discussion. You seem like a great fit for BookTalk.org. I sure hope to see you become actively involved here.
