No comments about The Changing South of Gene Patterson: Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960-1968 (Southern Dissent).

4 comments about On the Road to Kandahar: Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World.

1. I was impressed with a pace that Jason Burke established in reporting his decade or more of travel through Southwest Asia (Pakistan/Afghanistan) and Middle East. His optimism and hope stays alive throughout his various first hand encounters with horrific events. His book provides a very different viewpoint compared to the ones that I was able to follow through the USA based newspapers and magazines reports for the two post 9/11 wars (USA/Aghan War or USA/Iraq War II). He does not pretend to be a scholar and is certainly not biased in his analysis. I would recommend this book for folks who want to get a better insight of the Islamic World and all the precieved and real dangers surrounding it.



2. I read Jason Burke's Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, and found it the most factual book on the events surrounding 9/11. So, I had high expectations and was hopeful for further updates from his previous 2004 publication. As other reviewers have noted, this book is a travelogue and personal memoir of Mr.Burke's travels around the world, rather then an analysis of the Middle East.
   
   Admittedly, I'm impressed with what has kept Mr.Burke busy the last 2 decades. But, there was nothing ground breaking or amazing here. The entire book comes off a bit flat, and shallow. If you're looking for a fun(relatively speaking), walk through the Middle East since 1990, then this book may entertain you. I was looking for more info on the "War on Terror", and didn't find much in here.
   
   A much better travelogue through Afghanistan (albeit, without the political analysis), is Jason Elliot's An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan.



3. ON THE ROAD TO KANDAHAR: TRAVELS THROUGH CONFLICT IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD could have been featured in our Travel Shelf section - but it's so much more, and shouldn't be limited to a leisure travel-reading audience alone. Jason Burke spent a decade among Muslim people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Thailand and other areas: his guide explores their culture and concerns, blending first-person experiences and encounters with interviews with a wide range of people, from Taliban officials and a former torturer for Husseun's intelligence service to a suicide bomber and an American sniper in Iraq. It's these varied encounters from different cultures in the area which offer eye-opening insights and cultural revelations not to be missed. Any collection serious about Middle East issues needs ON THE ROAD TO KANDAHAR.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



4. This is an excellent and informative book that's also a joy to read. Burke reports for Britain's "Observer" and he spent a decade covering stories in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Algeria, and Turkey. He often found himself in the middle of complex acts of violence, and this book is part travel memoir and part intellectual memoir as he struggles to understand what it all means.
   
   I look for a few specific things in a good piece of travel writing. First, it needs to be well written, and Burke crafts strong, clear, concise, fast-flowing writing. He writes like a journalist, which means he trades flowery metaphors for sharp, direct statements. His descriptions of characters and places capture both the details and the mood, which ends up being vital to the points he wants to make. I also want a writer with insight. The author certainly needs to show insight into the cultures he encounters, but if self-exploration is also a goal, he or she also needs to show personal insight. Without insight I'd rather read a Lonely Planet guidebook. I liked Burke's approach. He is honest about his knowledge of other cultures, and he admits what he thinks while also staying aware of his lack of understanding. He describes violent acts and acknowledges that the deeper conflicts often prove to be too old and twisted for him to fully grasp. As for personal insight, Burke goes looking for that only in order to understand the conflicts he experiences. He might explore his own reactions under enemy fire, but it's only to better understand the nature of violence. This isn't a work of "spiritual travel" or a man's search for meaning, but it recognizes that any questions about the nature of violence require an understanding of your own nature. Finally, I have to like the author. Reading a travel book is like sharing a journey, and Burke seems like a cool guy--impressed with his travels without becoming arrogant, tough without going macho on the reader, and knowledgeable without needing to be an expert. He never once annoyed me, which is a bit of a rarity in travel writing (and in real travel).
   
   As for the ideas in "On the Road to Kandahar," I think it's fair to say that Burke ends up with more questions than answers. More accurately, he ends up with the same deep questions and only some preliminary answers, but he also learns how complex and troubling the original questions were. He wants to understand what motivates violence in the parts of the Islamic world he has visited, and what the end result of it all will be. The travel writing helps collect information for the first question. He talks to would-be suicide bombers, Kurdish resistance fighters, and Taliban sympathizers--many of them unlikable and unsavory characters--and tries to get at their motivations. He tries to piece it all together into a coherent understanding. He brings up the stress of change, and how the clash with modernity causes conflict in previously peaceful cultures. He discusses al-Qaeda's philosophies and how satellite television and the internet have allowed these philosophies to modify the grievances of local cultures. He explores how cultures react after they accept violence as an answer, and after they see the results of that violence on other cultures and on their own culture. He realizes that 99% of the world simply wants to get by and live life--to raise children and enjoy friendships and have enough to eat and drink each day.
   
   And, finally, he sort-of comes to an optimistic conclusion--that cultures end up turning against violence. He sees much of the conflict in the Islamic world as a short-term answer (even if "short-term" means one hundred years), a trial attempt to solve problems with suicide bombers and violent revolution, and sees it all fading away once the cultures turn against it. I say "sort-of" because Burke is far from convinced, especially after experiencing the closeness of the London bombings. In the end, it's the best answer he has right now. And, in the end, it's this combination of intellectual honesty and optimism--and its telling in an exciting and engaging way--that helps make this such an outstanding book.

No comments about Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin.

5 comments about How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: (and Found Inner Peace).

1. Harry Stein, 1970s party guy, marries, has kids and finds himself in... the middle of the road. He thinks he's conservative because his social circle consists mainly of Manhattan Silly Lefties (the same species so ably skewered by Tom Wolfe in "Radical Chic" (reprinted in Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers in 1970) but to real conservatives he's still a secular, ambivalent-about-abortion moderate, albeit one with an axe to grind against feminism.
   
   The unspoken factor in the book is its social class context. Stein has clearly spent his life in the High Achievement Zone where opportunity and support can be taken for granted and individuals really can do pretty much whatever they set out to do. (He makes it obvious by dropping names of notables he knows personal stories about - the kinds of stories he'd only hear by traveling in the same circles they do.) In this context he rightly condemns those of his peers who do things like walk out on their underage kids "in search of deeper fulfillment" or "to find myself" or some other fancified way of saying "because parenthood turned out to be less fun and more work than I expected." But he has little to say to the rest of us, those who struggle to get by and have hard choices to make. That's okay. It's not that serious a book. But if you're not at his socioeconomic level, you're not the audience it was written for.



2. Harry Stein, 1970s Party Guy, weds and spawns and accidentally finds himself in...the middle of the road. He thinks he's right-wing because he's surrounded by Manhattan Silly Lefties (the same social set so ably skewered by Tom Wolfe in "Radical Chic" back in the day) among whom he is probably the rightmost individual in any room he's in. However, compared to the real right, he's still a secular, ambivalent-on-abortion moderate, albeit one with an ax to grind against feminism.
   
   The hidden issue here is social class. Stein seems to have lived his whole life in the High Achievement Zone, the level of society where ability and opportunity can be taken for granted, where everybody can do pretty much whatever they set out to do, certainly as far as their personal lives are concerned. He writes from and for that class, rightly taking aim at their failings, e.g., the self-indulgence of those of his peers who walk out on their underage kids out of boredom and then disguise it with fancy language ("need to find myself," "searching for greater fulfillment," etc.) But in the process, he ends up slighting the concerns of the rest of us, the people who get by, muddle through, struggle along and do what we have to do. Frankly, I don't think we're part of his target audience. I think this book was meant to circulate among, and shake up, the elite in a few expensive metropolitan areas. That the rest of us got to see it is just a fluke of the market economy.



3. There are thoughtful, rueful memoirs of sincere political change. This isn't one of them. Stein opens with a typically 70's, upper-class-journalist/boyo recitation of his personal (pre-conversion) sluttishness, including key club swinging, screwing prostitutes, and even, shamefully, exploiting them in the workplace. Funny. Then he puff against others speaking of their past errors, accusing them of a lack of dignity and recommending mature silence. How'd he do that? By hewing to a singular theme: he's different. Special. Not like us. Most of his ire, of course, is reserved for Bill Clinton and feminists. He chides the former for behaving exactly as he did (pre-conversion) and the latter for advocating for stuff like child care, which he opposes, arguing that since he's lucky enough to have a cool job, hip apartment and (rich former entertainment executive) wife who happily abandoned her career to raise their kids, we should all do the same. Larded, of course, with fond memories of his "radical" days, Stein comes across as a braggard, name dropper and opportunist who fails entirely to see the irony in scolding actresses for having children out of wedlock while simultaneously opposing abortion and forgetting to mention, let alone also disapprove of, the rich, producer pals of his who knocked them up in the first place. Nice work, if you can get it.



4. Stein is a very good writer and does himself proud in this book. He was a darling of the Left, until he matured into a responsible adult, and then became their enemy. Like many former leftist elitists, he goes through the trials and tribulations of having life handed to him on a silver platter, looks down on the rubes who are too stupid to understand what he is talking about from his snobbish point of view, but comes to realize that the great divide between the red and blue states is a function of living life instead of reading about it in the New York Times.
   
   While others have made similar transformations, such as Horowitz or Krystol, Stein goes further in exposing the idiocy of the Upper East Side liberals who rail against supposed violations of "free speech" except at the dinner tables they use to suppress it. His observations on the consequences of their liberalism which made NY the murder capital of the world until Giuliani somehow miraculously appeared from the sky as mayor even though they all voted for Dinkins as he presided over the carnage is particularly interesting.
   
   I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at many chapters of this book, but I guess both emotions were appropriate since I have suffered through many of the hypocrisies that makes up the vast majority of the elite liberals today. His observations about "sexgate" as he calls Clinton's great role modeling of corruption for the country's youth of wagging your finger and lying as he performed his magic act with Monica and the disappearing cigars is a good example, but there are many more, such as the disappearing act of "Murphy Brown's" baby when the ratings decided this little Hollywood stunt should be aborted once it was no longer of use in attacking those who viewed intact families as something of value. Of course Brown's role modeling for the millions of unwed women who have babies but have to raise them makes for great observation on Stein's part.
   
   This book was written in 2000, so it is a bit dated, but still relevant to the culture wars of today.



5. The dust-cover copy caries a list of self-help style questions to determine if you might enjoy this book. While they are meant to be light hearted and fanciful, one of them jumps out as a great point of departure in looking at this book. To wit: You sit all the way through "Dead Man Walking" and at the end still want the guy to be executed.
   I remember seeing the film when it first came out. At the end, I was sure Susan Sarandon's character had realized that the job of a nun is saving souls, not protesting political issues. It was no great shock to find over the following days that the rest of the planet viewed the film as a masterful argument against capital punishment. I am used to finding myself on the outskirts of fashionable sentiment and have no plans to move to the center. Works like Stein's reassure me that I am in good company. Intelligent, well informed people can disagree about political issues, spittle-flecked protestations of the left notwithstanding.
   It really is okay to be a social conservative. Advocating reasonable limits on abortion for instance does not mean you hate women; it means you think children are a blessing and that they deserve at least as much protection as we demand for the cockroaches used in filming popular movies (see p. 204.) People like Stein, people who started out as beaded and sandaled hippies and metamorphosed into conservatives are open to accusations of being "wishy-washy," of having sold-out. But Stein makes the excellent point that holding lofty principles while one has no experience and few real responsibilities in life is the truly indefensible position. The things that seemed like such a good idea when you were waving a sign on campus suddenly look different when it is time to pay for them and see how they affect your own children. Most people will become more conservative as they grow older and take on more responsibilities. The question is whether those people will have the courage to lead in the face of the idealistic mob, yammering for ever more government.

5 comments about Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist.

1. The book came in expected condition. They shipped quickly and did a great job.



2. This is Buckley at his acerbic best on subjects as varied as John Lennon, Ted Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor to academia, Gorbachev and The First Gulf War.

   It's always illuminating and stimulating to explore the brain of one of America's foremost conservative thinkers and as these essays drift more into history, his insights and deliberations become astounding in their perspicacity and accuracy.

   These essays cover everything from the fall of communism, the Los Angeles riots, Playboy magazine and lots more. The time spent reading this delightful paperback is time spent in the company of charming brilliance.




3. William F. Buckley is unquestionably one of the most articulate and knowledgeable American debaters of the second half of the twentieth century. Buckley seems to know a little bit--if not a lot--about everything, and he reflects and gives observations about various topics in this collection of essays from the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s.

   As an author, Buckley is unfailingly witty and acerbic, and this book is littered with quips and sapient remarks. Buckley is particularly good at analyzing other peoples' positions, and at poking holes in their poor logic. That is where this book succeeds.

   This book occasionally fails when Buckley attempts to elucidate his own position on an issue. For instance, in one essay Buckley suggests that Beethoven is "a national monument" and should be entitled to governmental protection, so that vacationers can listen to the great composer's symphonies when they are traveling in non-cosmopolitan areas. My suggestion to Buckley would be to rent a car with a tape deck or cd player. It is not necessary for the government to mandate all-Beethoven channels in all cities and towns in order for citizens to listen to Beethoven when they are on vacation.

   In another essay Buckley spells out the case for allowing women to serve in the military, but then says that he takes the opposite position. His explanation for why he is against women serving in the military is vague. He says that allowing women to join the armed forces is repugnant to "human nature," which leads one to wonder how Buckley would respond to someone who believes that what he calls "human nature" is an artificial construct. Maybe he did not provide a response to that question because of spacial constraints, but I think that if he is going to base a policy position on human nature, he should provide readers with some sort of idea of what his theory of human nature is.
   I hope that I have not accentuated the negative too much in this review, because Buckley truly is a wonderful writer and an interesting read. He has opinions about everything, and he is fun to read not only for what he has to say, but also for how he says it. His vocabulary is expansive and his word-choices are colorful. This book should be read by anyone who wants intelligent and fiercely-opinionated commentary on newsworthy events, and the various parties involved, from 1985 to 1992.




4. This is a fine collection of the thoughts and witticisms of William F Buckley. It covers most any area that Mr. Buckley holds an Interest whether it be politics, social affairs, sailing, classical music and spending time with dignitaries and well to do people. It is fantastically written (as can be expected from Buckley) however it seemed to talk just over the head of the common man. With his infatuation with the Ryder Cup and talking about people who are important to him, really have no impact on my life. All in all it is a very well written fast paced collection. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys political and social commentary. And to anyone who just like to read something different than a novel or text of history.
   Thanks For Your Time:
   T



5. As I read this book, I laughed, I cheered, and, most amazingly, I remembered. WFB's resume gives him a wide range of ideas from which to draw, all of which do seem to find their way into his work, and serve to make the most mundane of topics worthwhile. As a conservative commentator, he is without peer, so you who would buy this book will gain insight. But what I found most valuable was that Mr. Buckley's writings don't just remind me of the past, they create memories of the moods, the voices; the hysteria when Reagan said "evil empire", the absolute shock when the Wall fell, the absurdity of Senator Weicker, and so on. I was at West Point in the late Eighties, and so got most of my news, as Mr. Whiting will attest, from the New York Times, and this helps me remember that there are more than just my former service mates and left-wing journalists in the world. And finally, those of you who just can't stand WFB's mannerisms and delivery, it's not an audio book, and you can put whatever soundtrack you want to it, and have full control of the dosage.

3 comments about The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1880-1955.

1. This was an interesting book, but not entirely satisfactory. There is a wealth of material to be found here, but one gets the feeling that the historian did not explore numerous topics in great detail. Many of Robert R. McCormick's relatives are mentioned, but seldom are their lives discussed at length. I was left wanting to know much more than what was provided in the biography. I had the feeling that there was more material that could have been added to the text, but the author or publisher wanted to produce a book of a certain length and did not want to exceed a given number of pages. Still, the book whetted my appetite for further reading on the same topic.
   
   My paternal grandfather listened to the Colonel's broadcasts on WGN Radio each Sunday night and laughed out loud at the publisher's pronouncements according to what I was told by my own father. I have visited McCormick estate at Cantigny and live within walking distance of the North Shore Channel that McCormick built while serving as the President of the Metropolitan Sanitary District, but, even after reading this superb biography, the man's character seems elusive.
   
   The only fault that I found in the text is that Smith likes to move the narrative back and forth too often for my liking. A McCormick family member drops out of the proceedings without a solitary mention for several chapters and just as suddenly reappears and then the reader is informed about all of the significant events that took place in the intervening decade concerning this individual. This becomes tedious.
   
   Smith tells you what the Colonel said and did, but seldom suggests why he acted as he did. For example, McCormick was socially ostracized after his first marriage and forced to relocate from the North Shore to DuPage County, but I still cannot see what possessed him to conduct an affair with a relative's spouse (the couple married after the woman's divorce was granted).
   
   Colonel McCormick was an astute businessman and made wise long term investments in Canadian paper mills that benefitted his publication.
   As influential as McCormick was in terms of national politics, his antagonism towards local Republican party bosses and his friendly relations with Democratic city officials may have caused irreparable injury to the fortunes of the Republican party in Illinois.
   
   Chicago certainly could use a newspaper publisher of his caliber today. At least when McCormick headed "The Chicago Tribune" it stood for something. Today, it is a weak middle of the road journal with a declining number of subscribers. Earlier this week, it was announced that the Tribune printing plants handling regional editions of the paper would be closed.
   
   A digression:
   
   Richard Norton Smith is currently the curator for the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois. He formerly headed the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Former US Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois battled to place Smith in his current position when former Governor George H. Ryan (now serving a prison sentence related to official corruption) was attempting to fill the slot with a political hack.



2. This is a lengthy book full of interesting historical material. But, as for the man himself, I never got the feeling that I was getting more than a sketch of him. Could any author do better? McM had more than his share of quirks and he didn't suffer fools, or anyone else, gladly, so perhaps there is no way anyone will ever get too deep into the mind of the man. The main thing I took away from the book is that Robert R. McCormick was a good businessman and the oddest duck of his time. The book is not a difficult read but, after reading it, the man remains a cipher. After a detailed accounting the war with FDR, the author seemed to rush to get to the end of RRM's life. Far from being a sympathetic character, pathetic more easily comes to mind. RRM had lots of power and plenty of money but he lived in a very cold world of his own that it appears no one during his life, or readers of this book today, can enter.



3. In this book, Richard Norton Smith does a first-rate job of recounting McCormick's life, going far in seperating the man from the public image that we have of him today. Balanced and judicious, it also makes for excellent reading, as Smith presents McCormick's life in an engaging manner. If there is a flaw in the book, it is in Smith's failure to adequately explain how the view of McCormick as a hidebound reactionary came to overshadow many aspects of his life, such as his early career as a progressive in local politics, or his legal campaigns in support of the First Amendment. This is a must-read book for anybody interested in Chicago's past, the evolution of modern journalism, or the history of twentieth century America.

No comments about Always a Rebel.

5 comments about Al Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail.

1. Philip Smucker's account of the Battle at Tora Bora is the culmination of much journalistic and personal bravery. Surprisingly, what happened at the battle itself (when Osama Bin Laden is said to have escaped, navigating through the mountains) is not the most intriguing part of Smucker's story. Rather, it is Smucker's commitment to seeking out the heart of the story, and delivering it in a thought-provoking, purposeful manner. All around, a very good read.



2. This is a journalist account of the eastern quadrant of Afghanistan during the intial operations of the invasion. Included are detailed discussions of Tora Bora and Shah-i-knot (AKA Anaconda). A couple things emerge from this account:
   
   1) Pakistan did nothing to help the US anti-insurgent operations, and it was probably stupid to rely on them to seal their border. This permitted insurgents easy escape routes (an underground railroad) whenever operations soured, and created conditions for a revival of the insurgency (which we're facing now).
   
   2) The chief of special forces and the top military officer on the ground in Afghanistan did not consider capturing OBL to be a top priority. His orders were to overthrow the Taliban and weaken support elements like Al Queda. Getting OBL was a secondary consideration.
   
   3) Tactical operations had small troop formations. Anaconda was the biggest operation and used about 500 American troops, plus 700 Afghans who disappeared after being strafed in a friendly fire incident. Al Queda had about 1,000 men on the mountain. That our forces were not decimated is a testament to their skill and courage.
   
   4) Al Queda was pervasive around Jalalabad, the author never seems to have trouble finding AQ members or sympathizers with whom to start trouble. AQ seemed to move in small units- 2 - 5 men, and could have been controlled by a strong military presence. It's hardly suprising that guerillas move in small units, but why was there no strategy for containment? The US had no option because of their small force (they had maybe two dozen men on the ground at Tora Bora, our best shot at getting OBL). The fact that the US had no such presence backs up Scheuer and his contentions about the overall competence of command.
   
   5) The CIA seems a bit goofy. In an anecdote Smucker talks about how his guide was courted by the CIA to work undercover. The CIA backed off when they realized he worked with a journalist- a fact no one seemed to try to conceal. So the CIA basically made him an offer without doing even a preliminary check on what he was currently doing. The journalists were a huge boon to the economy of that region so basically everyone there was working for the media, a warlord, Al Queda, or some combination of the three. You'd think the CIA might want to know whose side their informer was on?
   
   6) The Tora Bora operations were wasted from the beginning because Tommy Franks and Dick Cheney announced the operations in advance on public TV. Kind of hard to surprise anyone doing that...
   
   Quick read to get nitty gritty on operations most people have already forgotten, but which were in retrospect our best chance to capture Bin Laden.



3. I have to admit being somewhat disappointed by "Al Qaeda's Great Escape." The fundamentals of the book are sound, as Philip Smucker and his translator Lutfullah Mashal trail Afghan tribal leaders and American soldiers through the mountains of Afghanistan, roundly condemning the American aversion to committing ground troops to the conflict and giving a jaundiced view of the members of the media covering the events, including himself.
   
   Unfortunately, the book suffers from numerous obvious mistakes, which have persisted into the paperback edition. Some of these are gramatical or spelling mistakes (one does not "caste" suspicion or blame, as the book does on two separate occasions) and some may simply be typos (the NBC correspondent Mike Taibbi is referred to as "Mike Tiabbi" and there is no F-17 aircraft in the U.S. Air Force arsenal). However, there is at least one factual error as Smucker gets Air Force Pararescue Jumper (PJ) Jason Cunningham's name wrong, referring to him as "P.J. Cunningham" instead. The fact that SrA Cunningham was killed in action during Operation Anaconda makes this error even more upsetting. I can understand how the mistake was made, but that doesn't make it any less sloppy.
   
   By themselves, none of these errors are serious, but there are quite a few of them, and all of them are the sort that should have been caught by a fact check or a decent editor. That so many foolish mistakes made their way into the final draft of the text forces one to wonder what other, less obvious errors slipped through. To me, these errors nearly call the credibility of the entire book into question, even if I happen to agree with many of Smucker's conclusions.
   
   However, the book is quite a page turner and seems to get things right at least on the broad-strokes level. It's not a bad book, but I would be very wary of using it as a single source of information.



4. This book conjures up a litany of incompetencies. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, our commander-in-chief vowed to take down the chief perpetrator "dead or alive." Despite the mild rebuke he received at the time from his wife, the President stuck with his determined sounding language. The fiasco that unfolds for us to see in "Al Qaeda's Great Escape," exposes both hubris and hypocrisy. After vowing to get bin Laden, the White House did not bother to coordinate a military plan that would have concentrated our forces -- conventional and special forces -- on the senior AQ leadership that masterminded 9/11. Mr. Smucker provides convincing evidence that AQ was goading for a major ground confrontation with US troops in Afghanistan. When, instead, we unleashed a massive aeriel campaign, the AQ leadership decided to pack it in, slip over the border into Pakistan and hope to fight another day. Ironically, the expanded Islamist insurgency -- with bin Laden still at the helm -- has found what it was after in the Iraqi theater. The argument put forth by Pentagon officials -- Rumsfeld in particular -- that a major infusion of US forces into Afghanistan risked alienating the Afghan population no longer washes. Afterall, we've now become bogged down in a country that had no dog in that attack. And since several thousand US infantry made it to the 2-mile high battle of Anaconda a few months after Tora Bora, the Pentagon/White House warning of a "logistical nightmare" that would ensue if we sent in thousands to surround the old Soviet redoubt doesn't fly either. The American public is still paying for strategic mistakes at Tora Bora to this day. Beyond that, the Admin's contention that bin Laden might not have ever been there is rendered moot with the testimony of the Green Beret commander, Col.Mulholland, within the text of this book, not to mention the massive amount of circumstantial evidence provided by eyewitness testimony of AQ and Afghans. I noticed that the other day, Pentagon lawyers actually used as "summary evidence" to hold one Gitmo prisoner his complicity in helping bin Laden escape Tora Bora. So apparently the Pentagon is now convinced enough that he was there -- despite vehemently denying it for over 3 years -- to use it as proof to detain the enemy. Given all we've learned -- and with the help of this fascinating and gritty account -- one wonders how the incompetents managed to escape a broader rebuke from the US public for their gross errors of judgement. No wonder that when pressed to express his regrets of his first term, Mr. Bush now lists the statement "dead or alive" as something he might not have said given a second chance.



5. A wonderful rendition of the battle at Tora Bora and our mistakes that allowed Osama bin Laden to escape, from someone who was actually there. A great story teller who weaves the personalities of the terrorists, warlords, correspondents and goverment officials into a book that is almost impossible to put down. A great read!

5 comments about Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife.

1. It's okay to be middle aged, and single, and naked! Thank God! Or there would be millions of folks out there thinking the good days are behind us. Not true! Ganahl writes with such humor, compassion and understanding, it's as though she's talking to me as a best girlfriend. I loved this book. It made me feel that it's not so bad being middle aged, single and (gulp) even naked.



2. I laughed out loud more than once within the first chapter. The author's commentary is so real and insightful with a continued sense of humor. I bought this last weekend and am half-way through, but don't want it to end!



3. It's okay. It's taking me time to read it, it has not sunk in to where I want grab it and read. I see it and oh yeah I'm reading that.



4. An easy read with a feel good ending. It's a chick-book, like a chick-flick.



5. I woke up in the middle of the night and just had to pick up this book and dive in again despite the complaints from my spouse about lights on at 4AM.
   
   Jane Ganahl's writing is refreshingly straightforward. She speaks with humor and clarity about the fears and the joys of being a single woman who has reached midlife with plenty of experiences, accomplishments and relationships to be proud of but who still longs for true romantic love. She doesn't try to downplay the inevitable pain in every life path and yet she always remains hopeful. Every minute of this read was great.
   
   I was left feeling awe over her strong friendships and loving family ties. I hope to have aquired half Jane's wit, grace and panache when my fiftieth rolls around in about 5 years.

5 comments about Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford.

1. Mitford-despisers complain that we fans too easily forgive them their sins on account of their rare wit and charm. Well, in the case of Decca at least, this charge is unfair. She was funny (and cruel): her account of a 1962 house party at Chatsworth is quite delicious; ditto her accounts of what passes for high society on Mull. But she was also brave, in journalism and in life. A deathbed letter to Bob - 'It's so odd to be dying, so I must just jot a few thoughts' - is a model of clarity (though perhaps you would expect this in one who had so much time and energy railing against an industry that so pointlessly prettified corpses); so, too, is a letter to Benjamin in which she urges him to seek help for his illness. The fact remains that as an example of what a woman can do once she has rid herself of, or at least decided to ignore, the expectations of others - family, men, society - Jessica Mitford will always take some beating. That she is also a hoot is merely the icing on the cake.



2. Sussman does a great job of, first, setting the scene and then laying out in a very readable way this enormous collection of Jessica Mitford's letters. She's always been a favorite of mine. This collection is adding greatly to my appreciation.



3. the book itself is well put together and edited. the book's subject is self centered and likes mostly to hear herself talk. i found it to be boring.



4. I got this as a gift for my brother and I was lucky enough to receive it as a Christmas present a few months later. Jessica Mitford Treuhaft was one of the famous Mitford sisters. Her sister Nancy wrote novels of manners such as "Love In A Cold Climate", her sister Unity was a Hitler groupie who shot herself in Munich shortly after WWII was declared and spent the remainder of her life with severe brain damage, her sister Diana divorced Brian Guinness to marry the head of the Union of British Fascists, and her sister Deborah is the current dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Jessica, or Decca as she was called since childhood, ran away from home to elope with a Communist named Esmond Romilly and to fight against fascism in Spain; all of this caused rather a major rift with her family. The couple eventually moved to America; Esmond was killed in action after joing the Royal Canadian Air Force, and Decca ended up in Oakland, CA married to a radical lawyer named Bob Treuhaft. But like many who grew up in her time and class, she wrote wonderful letters - quirky, funny, sometimes about awful serious matters but always with a sense of the absurd. She was committed to the work of the Communist Party in the early civil rights movemement in California and traveled to many parts of the country to demonstrate; she and her husband were targets of Congressional investigations and denied passports for years, and she became an effective community activist. After falling away from the CPUSA, she continued her activism, and her letters describe some of the most important struggles of progressive America in the '40s, '50s and '60s. She really came into public awareness in a bigger way when she wrote a groundbreaking expose of the predatory practices of the funeral industry, "The American Way of Death." She followed that up with exposes of the prison industry and other abuses and was active until shortly before her death in the late 90s.
   The letters are gems - when I finished the book, I thought, "I'd really have loved to have known this woman and to have received some of these wonderful letters." Some made me laugh out loud, others made me recognize anew the courage of those who had the vision and the foresight to combat racism in America at a time when it was simply taken for granted. They show a concern for family that is poignant as well as a sense of honor that is almost rigid - when Winston Churchill, who was her cousin, freed her sister Diana and Diana's husband Oswald Mosley from prison after WWII, she wrote to him in protest, saying that their work on behalf of fascism was a danger to freedom everywhere and that they belonged in prison, and that the fact that Diana was her sister did not alter her opinion about that.
   The only shadow I found over this wonderful collection of letters was the lack of any sense of real recognition of the evil committed in the name of Communism by Stalin, Mao and others. She defended against this criticism by pointing out that no one but the CPUSA was taking serious action on civil rights when she came to this country in the '40s, but she never really acknowledges the darker side of the party's international activity. One gets the impression that she sees it as the lesser of two evils; and as much as one can recognize that at that time and place Fascism was certainly the more immediate and powerful threat, one is still troubled by Decca's lack in this area of the uncompromising commitment to truth that characterizes so many of her activities.
   I cannot imagine anyone who is familiar with this period of history in England and America not being fully engaged by this wonderful book. I can't recommend it highly enough.



5. This book was giant, in size and in scope. I must admit I did not finish it. Jessica "Decca" Mitford was a bitchy, brilliant, fascinating, annoying, funny, sarcastic and altogether mysterious woman. This book of her letters gives us a very tiny keyhole of insight into that enormous personality. I don't mean that it fails to give us enough; I just mean no book is really capable of parsing the enigma of Decca. It would be a good addition to anyone's book collection, especially Anglophiles, Francophiles, and Bibliophiles!