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Hat tip to fellow SWC member Bourbon for the following four star additions to the blogroll:

In Moscow’s Shadow ( Dr. Mark Galeotti)

Think Tank ( Steve Coll)

Steve Coll, is of course, the author of the critically acclaimed and justly praised Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

Of all the book reviews I have done at Zenpundit, this one will be the shortest.

Prodded to read War Nerd by co-blogger Lexington Green, I found Gary Brecher’s writing is a weird fusion of Robert Young Pelton crossbred with Dave Barry, yielding some sort of one-man, Mad Magazine of modern warfare but without the cartoons by Don Martin and Sergio Aragones. Beneath Brecher’s crafted shtick, however, lies a genuine grasp of military history and an analytical shrewdness with which I found myself nodding in agreement all too frequently.

Buy this book.

My Chicago Boyz colleague James Bennett has a great op-ed piece on Gov. Sarah Palin in the UK Telegraph (hat tip Lexington Green). It’s one of the best concise pieces on Palin’s strengths – which most of the American press is desperately trying to ignore, either to help the Obama campaign with their scattergun negative personal attacks or in dumbing down their political coverage of Palin with warm-fuzzy topics to an intellectual level somewhere below that of People Magazine:

Sarah Palin is not such a Small Town Girl After All

…The first myth to slay is that she is a political neophyte who has come from nowhere. In fact, she and her husband have, for decades, run a company in the highly politicised commercial fishing industry, where holding on to a licence requires considerable nous and networking skills.

….Palin quickly realised that Alaska had the potential to become a much bigger player in global energy politics, a conviction that grew as the price of oil rose. Alaska had been in hock to oil companies since major production began in the mid-1970s.

As with most poor, distant places that suddenly receive great natural-resource wealth, the first generation of politicians were mesmerised by the magnificence of the crumbs falling from the table. Palin was the first of the next generation to realise that Alaska should have a place at that table. Her first target was an absurd bureaucratic tangle that for 30 years had kept the state from exporting its gas to the other 48 states. She set an agenda that centred on three mutually supportive objectives: cleaning up state politics, building a new gas pipeline, and increasing the state’s share of energy revenues.

This agenda, pursued throughout Palin’s commission tenure, culminated in her run for governor in 2006. By this time, she had already begun rooting out corruption and making enemies, but also establishing her bona fides as a reformer.

With this base, she surprised many by steamrollering first the Republican incumbent governor, and second, the Democratic former governor, in the election.Far from being a reprise of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin was a clear-eyed politician who, from the day she took office, knew exactly what she had to do and whose toes she would step on to do it.

Read the rest here.

Better late than never. Overwhelmed with papers and projects.

Top Billing! The New Atlanticist Policy and Analysis Blog has been rolled out by The Atlantic Council and features James Joyner as managing editor and Nick Gvosdev of the Naval War College as a contributor. With such talent and strong institutional backing, New Atlanticist could become a force to be reckoned with in the blogosopheric marketplace of ideas.

Hat tip to Dave Schuler.

Global Guerillas – RESILIENT COMMUNITY: Fabrication Networks

Threatswatch.org – Al-Qaeda’s Progression On Pakistan’s Demise

William Lind – On War #273: Defending the Baltics

CTLab Review – Insurgency and Counterinsurgency Franchisees

Interact – Chrome Review

Attention futurists, geeks and gamers: A Superstruct Bonnanza Follows…..

Open The Future – Heads Down, Thumbs Up

Discover – Forecasting the Future May Be a Matter of Fun and Games

Kent’s Imperative – Forecasting through games

Smartmobs – Superstruct: Alternate Reality Gaming Meets Future Forecasting

That’s it!

Sometime this weekend, Zenpundit topped 300,000 visits and last week we went over the 500,000 page views mark.

I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of the readers, commenters, blogfriends and lurkers who email interesting things. Any success here is a collaborative endeavor and a result of the intellectual feedback loop we have built. Without you I’m just a dude howling into the wind of  “the internets”.

More to come later today after I get some items for school and for work out of the way.