Great Books lately ?

[billcoe]

Ok, who's read some great books lately?

 

I have 3/4 I'll toss out to all which I really enjoyed.

 

The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936 - 1945 (Hardcover) by John Toland

http://www.amazon.com/Rising-Sun-Decline-Japanese-Empire/dp/B000GKVNSM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250175481&sr=1-1

It's a 2 book set, you can get both hardcovers for a pittance, but make sure you get both. World War 2 from a Japanese Perspective. If you thought that The Guns of August was a great book, this is the ww2 equivalent.

 

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Hardcover)

http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/B001RNI20E/ref=pd_sim_b_1

 

I loved this book until the very end. Its an in depth look of how America projects (or doesn't project) our power into the far corners of the world and the multitude of players and how they play in Afghanistan. It ends much like a car hitting a brick wall though....suddenly and predictably, basically this great work just hits the end of the timeline and the author stops talking....

 

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power

by Daniel Yergin

The oil bonanza and Americas economic rise are detailed.

 

Starting on Lenin's Tomb - The Last Days of the Soviet Empire and it looks to be as good as these.

http://www.amazon.com/Lenins-Tomb-Last-Soviet-Empire/dp/0670852368/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250176127&sr=1-3 The NKVD/KGB files got popped open when Gorbachav took office and the world was flipped upside down for the old Soviet Union. The true version of Orwells 1984...the horror was real and deep. If you've read One Live in the Day of Ivan Denisovitch by Solzhenitsyn, this is the companion work of how that actually occurred. I'm 2 chapters in and it's very very well written.

 

[pigchampion]

The Bible

[billcoe]

The Bible

 

Which part Andrew?

[tvashtarkatena]

Shooter's Bible.

 

Along the lines of one of your titles, "Japan at War: an Oral History". Amazing.

 

Along one of your other threads: "Taliban" and "Jihad: The rise of militant islam in central asia"

[Hugh Conway]

Highways to a War

The year of living dangerously

The Piano Tuner

[Pete_H]

The Bible

 

I'm not really into science fiction.

[G-spotter]

[builder206]

Terzaghi, Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice

 

it might be dirt to you but it's money to me

[jordansahls]

I don't think this is all that recent, but I just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, which was amazing.

[prole]

I don't think this is all that recent, but I just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, which was amazing.

 

 

 

Super Cannes, J.G. Ballard

[Gary_Yngve]

not a new book, but i've really enjoyed Tim Egan's "Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West"

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

(Ivan should appreciate this)

 

Then his fell soul a thought of vengeance bred;

(Unworthy of himself, and of the dead;)

The nervous ancles bored, his feet he bound

With thongs inserted through the double wound;

These fix’d up high behind the rolling wain,

His graceful head was trail’d along the plain.

Proud on his car the insulting victor stood,

And bore aloft his arms, distilling blood.

He smites the steeds; the rapid chariot flies;

The sudden clouds of circling dust arise.

Now lost is all that formidable air;

The face divine, and long-descending hair,

Purple the ground, and streak the sable sand;

Deform’d, dishonour’d, in his native land,

Given to the rage of an insulting throng,

And, in his parents’ sight, now dragg’d along!

 

The mother first beheld with sad survey;

She rent her tresses, venerable grey,

And cast, far off, the regal veils away.

With piercing shrieks his bitter fate she moans,

While the sad father answers groans with groans

Tears after tears his mournful cheeks o’erflow,

And the whole city wears one face of woe:

No less than if the rage of hostile fires.

From her foundations curling to her spires,

O’er the proud citadel at length should rise,

And the last blaze send Ilion to the skies.

The wretched monarch of the falling state,

Distracted, presses to the Dardan gate.

Scarce the whole people stop his desperate course,

While strong affliction gives the feeble force:

Grief tears his heart, and drives him to and fro,

In all the raging impotence of woe.

At length he roll’d in dust, and thus begun,

Imploring all, and naming one by one:

“Ah! let me, let me go where sorrow calls;

I, only I, will issue from your walls

(Guide or companion, friends! I ask ye none),

And bow before the murderer of my son.

My grief perhaps his pity may engage;

Perhaps at least he may respect my age.

He has a father too; a man like me;

One, not exempt from age and misery

(Vigorous no more, as when his young embrace

Begot this pest of me, and all my race).

How many valiant sons, in early bloom,

Has that cursed hand send headlong to the tomb!

[tvashtarkatena]

The Bible

 

I'm not really into science fiction.

 

That's in the Fantasy genre. Get with it, dood.

[Pete_H]

Right. I was thinking of the Book of Mormon. There's aliens and shit in that one.

[mkporwit]

George R. R. Martin's "Fevre Dream"

[tvashtarkatena]

Right. I was thinking of the Book of Mormon. There's aliens and shit in that one.

 

You fucking moroni

[tvashtarkatena]

The Book of Mormon's more realistic...it's got Mexicans in it.

[JayB]

"Flyboys" was a pretty good read.

 

Covers the rise of Japanese millitarism, the war in the Pacific in general, and what happened to a handful of naval aviators that the Japanese captured late in the war, and the considerations and key characters involved in the decision to use fire-and-nuclear bombing on Japanese population centers. The author clearly made an effort to be impartial in his treatment of Japanese/American conduct and motives, and whether you find this treatment laudable or objectionable will probably be conditioned by the perspective that you bring to the book.

 

Plus you'll probably always be able to blurt out "Curtis LeMay" whenever certain questions come up in trivia games.

[sobo]

Echoing Tvash:

Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, ... by Ahmed Rashid

 

Others I enjoyed:

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

 

Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden

(the same guy who wrote Killing Pablo and Black Hawk Down)

 

Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose

(my uncle is in this book)

 

Just finished these three in the past month:

Lone Survivor by LPO Marcus Luttrell, USN SEAL

 

Total Money Makeover by David Ramsey

 

The Last Juror by John Grisham

 

Your reading list seems to parallel mine a little. I went through Ancient Rome, the Crusades, and WWII many years back. Then I focused on Vietnam and the Cold War, then Gulf War I. Now I'm in to the era of 9/11-Gulf War II and Middle Eastern politics and military stuff. I got scads more suggestions if you want 'em, Bill.

 

Although not in my usual genre for reading material, this one really creeped me out:

Tweak by Nic Sheff

 

Both of this guy's books were fantastic: Robert Kurson

Shadow Divers

Crashing Through

[Ponderosa]

Neither of these two are new, but they're both solid...well, if you like the types.

 

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter - I found this very entertaining and provocative, mentally. The Wiki page describes it well:

 

"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter, described by the author as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll".

 

On its surface, GEB examines logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, discussing common themes in their work and lives. At a deeper level, the book is a detailed and subtle exposition of concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence.

 

Through illustration and analysis, the book discusses how self-reference and formal rules allow systems to acquire meaning despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself.

 

In response to confusion over the book's theme, Hofstadter has emphasized that GEB is not about mathematics, art, and music but rather about how cognition and thinking emerge from well-hidden neurological mechanisms. In the book, he presents an analogy about how the individual neurons of the brain coordinate to create a unified sense of a coherent mind by comparing it to the social organization displayed in a colony of ants."

 

 

The Great Game - The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk - fascinating historical account of the first go-round of the West's attempt(s) to subjugate this region of the globe. Analogous to great mountaineering epics in the many stories of men enduring the nearly unimaginable in pain and endurance combined with the requisite subterfuge whenever two countries (here, England and Russia) vie for dominion over new territory.

 

The Khanates are still operating, centuries later, the way Ghengis installed them - never before contacted or witnessed by Westerners. After reading this, it was easy to see why Kipling placed his "Kafiristan" in The Man Who Would Be King in remote northern Afghanistan.

 

Of course, it includes a detailed account of the infamous British retreat from Kabul to India. Nearly 20,000 British and Hindu troops (and support staff) of the British Army started the retreat. Only ONE man made returned alive over the Khyber Pass to India. Presumably, he was allowed to live that he might give the British in India his account.

 

 

 

[billcoe]

I just finished The Great Game - The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, definatly worth the time to read it. As well as what you mentions, it gave me some insights to the USSR/Russian and Iranian mentality that I had no solid awareness of.

[sobo]

From the looks of it, it seems I'll have to set aside the time to read The Great Game. Sounds quite interesting...

[billcoe]

My business partner tried to read it and couldn't get into it. The 3 I mention above are better.

[sobo]

I've already read two of them. Will have to get The Prize.

[Fairweather]

Couldn't put it down:

 

 

But I dropped it a few times.