ON SOME COOL SUNDAY READING

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Every once in a while, the Sunday New York Times hits a home run in it's list of books they choose to review.  I mean a home run in that every one of the reviews is written in a way to compel this reader anyway, to run out and get a copy of each book, or better still, one-click my way to immediate literary gratification via Amazon.

Today is such a day for the Sunday New York Times Book Section.  Let me highlight just four of the ten primary books reviewed today for your reading pleasure.

1.  First up is "The Looming Tower:  Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11", by Lawrence Wright.  Here's how the Times summarizes it:

"Lawrence Wright offers a detailed, heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11, carried along by villains and heroes that only a crime novelist could dream up."

The reviewer  Dexter Filkins does a great job reeling the reader into the review with revelations most of us haven't seen yet despite the heartbreakingly familiarity of the overall story.  Here's one of my favorite sections:

"“The Looming Tower” is full of...surprising detail.

Al Qaeda’s leaders had all but shelved the 9/11 plot when they realized they lacked foot soldiers who could pass convincingly as westernized Muslims in the United States. At just the right moment Atta appeared in Afghanistan, along with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ziad al-Jarrah and Marwan al-Shehhi, all Western-educated transplants, offering themselves up for slaughter. The game was on."

You can review the first chapter here.

2.  Next up, I'd highlight "Spoiling for a fight:  The Rise of Eliott Spitzer", by Brooke A. Masters, reviewed by Joe Conason.  Here's my favorite section:

"A financial reporter for The Washington Post, Masters has covered Spitzer’s investigations of Wall Street conflicts of interest, the mutual fund business and the insurance industry, and she strives to treat his critics and adversaries fairly. But she implicitly answers their most common complaint — that Spitzer is nothing more than a publicity-crazed partisan demagogue — by situating him within a tradition that can be traced back a hundred years to Theodore Roosevelt and Louis D. Brandeis.

It is a tradition emphasizing the values of fairness and opportunity, and an effective government that intervenes, as Spitzer says, “when the market needs to be tamed.”

Again, there's a first chapter one can review.

3.  My third favorite review is also a biography, titled "The Sack of Rome" by Alexandre Stille, penned by Rachel Donadio:

"How Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s richest man, changed the face of his country’s politics."

Here's a paragraph that got my attention:

"Berlusconi understood early on that Italy is a patchwork of localities united nationally by television and soccer, and when he entered politics in the early 90’s, he ingeniously named his party Forza Italia (“Go, Italy!”) after the soccer cheer. When he walked into the neo-realist scene of Italian party politics, it was as if everything suddenly turned to Technicolor."

No first chapter here, but the review is as appetizing as it comes.

4.  Finally, I'll highlight "Chinese Lessons" By John Pomfret, reviewed by Orville Schell:

"John Pomfret explores recent changes in China through the lives of five former classmates from Nanjing University."

That doesn't sound too interesting at first glance, but the review definitely has a hook:

"What makes this book particularly rewarding is that Pomfret not only describes China today, he also reminds us what came before, thereby posing the important question: Is it possible for China to avoid reckoning with its past and still become a responsible, possibly great, nation?

“If my parents had been murdered by the state, I would have devoted my life to vengeance, to political activity or at least to unearthing the evidence,” Pomfret reflects, as he hears endless tales of abuse. “Why did so many stories in China always seem to end with the bad guys getting away, literally, with murder?”

His answer is simple: Party leaders have prohibited ways of redressing grievances and controlled honest historical research, discussion and reflection. Memory has been punished, repression rewarded. In few countries is there more unfinished business than in China. “Survival was the key,” one pragmatic acquaintance observes."

"...Indeed, if the watchword in Germany is now “Never forget,” in China it is “Never remember.”

And there's a first chapter to read to boot.

The other six reviews are just as entertaining and enticing.  But I thought I'd whet your appetite with the ones I liked best.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Comments

[Noah]

No first chapter here, but the review is as appetizing as it comes.
Good post!!

[fdsafe]

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[fdsafe]

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