{"id":46476,"date":"2015-09-07T03:44:35","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T03:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=46476"},"modified":"2015-09-07T03:44:35","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T03:44:35","slug":"new-books-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=46476","title":{"rendered":"New Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski<\/strong>, a.k.a. “zen<\/strong>“]<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\"\"\u00a0\"\"\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip Hop and the Gods of New York<\/strong><\/a> by Michael Muhammed Knight<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Ideal<\/strong><\/a> by Ayn Rand<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Good Politics<\/strong><\/a> by Bruce<\/a> Bueno <\/a>de Mesquita<\/a><\/strong> and Alastair Smith<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Public Schools<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by Diane Ravitch<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

An eclectic combination, to be sure.<\/p>\n

I am mostly finished with Reign of Error<\/strong> and The Five Percenters<\/strong>. The former is a devastating and methodically documented critique by historian and former Bush I administration official Diane Ravitch<\/strong> of a crony capitalist network’s effort to hijack public education and its revenues under the guise of reform. The latter is a friendly\u00a0journalistic history of the often feared and widely misunderstood Five Percent Nation<\/a><\/strong>, which split away, at times violently,\u00a0from the better known Nation of Islam<\/strong><\/a> of Elijah Muhammed<\/a><\/strong> and Louis Farrakhan<\/strong><\/a>. Knight’s objectivity is somewhat suspect here\u00a0as he himself became a rare white Muslim Five Percenter (a.k.a. “Azrael Wisdom<\/strong>“)\u00a0and apologist,\u00a0but his closeness to the group’s insiders cannot be denied.<\/p>\n

What are you reading?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip Hop and the Gods of New York by Michael Muhammed Knight Ideal by Ayn Rand The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Good Politics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[420,133,445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-book","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46476"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46518,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46476\/revisions\/46518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}