{"id":48196,"date":"2015-12-28T23:14:33","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T23:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=48196"},"modified":"2015-12-29T02:36:07","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T02:36:07","slug":"book-bonanza-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=48196","title":{"rendered":"Book Bonanza"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

My usual yuletide haul of books received and purchased….<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

The Last of the President’s Men<\/a><\/strong> by Bob Woodward<\/strong><\/a>
\nBeing Nixon: A Man Divided<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>by Evan Thomas<\/strong><\/a>
\nIron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956<\/a><\/strong> by Anne Applebaum<\/strong><\/a>
\nAvoiding Armageddon: From the Great War to the Fall of France 1918-1940<\/a><\/strong> by Jeremy Black<\/strong><\/a>
\nRoots of Strategy Book 3<\/strong><\/a>
\nRule of the Clan<\/strong><\/a> by Mark Weiner<\/strong><\/a>
\nTwilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy<\/strong> <\/a>by Christopher Hayes<\/strong><\/a>
\nDemocracy in Retreat<\/strong> <\/a>by Joshua Kurlantzick<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion<\/a><\/strong> by Jonathan Haidt<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe Middle-East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years<\/strong> <\/a>by Bernard Lewis<\/strong><\/a>
\nPatton: A Genius for War<\/a><\/strong> by Carlo D’Este<\/strong><\/a>
\nBeetle: The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith<\/a><\/strong> by D.K.R. Crosswell<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe Libertarian Mind<\/strong> <\/a>by David Boaz<\/strong><\/a>
\nA Short History of Nearly Everything<\/strong> <\/a>by Bill Bryson<\/strong><\/a>
\nStarship Troopers<\/a><\/strong> by Robert Heinlein<\/strong><\/a>
\nA Dance of Dragons<\/strong><\/a> by George R.R. Martin<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

If anyone has read these titles and wishes to fire away about them, or their authors in the comment section, feel free. Not sure how many will be featured in future reviews.<\/p>\n

The Nixon books were first\u00a0brought to my attention\u00a0on, if I recall, the Facebook page of historian\u00a0Maarja Krusten<\/strong> of NixonNARA<\/a><\/strong>, the expert’s expert in matters relating to the presidential records, documents, court cases\u00a0and tapes\u00a0of Richard Nixon<\/strong>. When Maarja opines on Nixon topics, I listen with care. I look forward to reading these, even though my opinion of\u00a0 Bob Woodward is that he often has to be treated cautiously, Alexander Butterfield’s<\/strong> cooperation and contribution was obviously central to the book\u00a0(not unlike the far longer cooperation between George Kennan<\/strong> and his biographer, \u00a0historian John Lewis Gaddis<\/strong>). Evan Thomas’ theme just offhand strongly reminds me of Richard Reeves’ excellent\u00a0President<\/strong> Nixon: Alone in the White House<\/strong>;<\/a> I’m curious if this will be a rehashing or if Thomas can bring something new to the table about America’s 37th President.<\/p>\n

I am also excited about Rule of the Clan<\/strong>, which should be of interest to anyone thinking about insurgency, irregular warfare, unconventional warfare and terrorism intersecting with tribal or quasi-tribal societies. My friends Michael Lotus<\/strong><\/a> and James Bennett<\/strong> who wrote the excellent America 3.0<\/strong><\/a> and drew on the family structure ideas of British\u00a0anthropologist Alan Macfarlane<\/a> and French\u00a0scholar Emanuel Todd<\/a>, would also be interested.<\/p>\n

The fiction was picked up for a simpler reason. I need a change of pace and never read the last, most recent book in the Game of Thrones series.<\/p>\n

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

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“] My usual yuletide haul of books received and purchased…. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The Last of the President’s Men by Bob Woodward Being Nixon: A Man Divided\u00a0by Evan Thomas Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum Avoiding Armageddon: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[920,420,321,133,444,165,294,51,78,176,49,367,145,187,247,343,445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america-3-0","category-authors","category-blogosphere","category-book","category-fiction","category-historians","category-historiography","category-history","category-ideas","category-krusten","category-lexington-green","category-military-history","category-nixon","category-politics","category-reader-response","category-readers","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48196","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=48196"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48213,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48196\/revisions\/48213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}