A Path With Heart: Jack Kornfield
Sort of memoir about Jack Kornfield’s time as a monk in Burma and Thailand, sort of just a basic book about contemporary Buddhism and practicing mindfulness. If you have any interest in this sort of stuff, I highly recommend this book, or anything by Jack Kornfield for that matter.
Pimp: Iceberg Slim
Man would I have thought this book was the coolest back in high school! Still, glad I read it, though it was a bit incongruous to read on chicken buses in El Salvador. It really is a modern classic, though highly disturbing. The account of a genius (literally) pimp working the Midwest in the 1940’s. Pulls absolutely no punches, frequently nauseating but at the same time offers an extraordinary glimpse into inter and intra-racial politics and sexual politics of the time, as well as a striking portrait of street and prison life in African American America. The redemption ending felt a bit abrupt, but still worked. Also was amazed at how influential this book was in terms of culture, pieces of it reflected in literature, film and music even today. Recommended if you are in high school, or find exploitation books and movies interesting.
Platform: Michel Houlebecq
A great satire of western decadence and repression, and the exploitation and offers of the developing world. A somewhat repressed man becomes more sexually liberated following his vacation to Thailand, and he and his new girlfriend work to set up essentially a neocolonial system in which the raw materials of the non-western world are essentially sex. Funny and thought provoking, as well as prescient about the reactions of these cultures to our attitudes. Also had some great sex scenes, in spite of the fact that it was ostensibly mocking them at the same time, a la Bret Easton Ellis. A very good novel, recommended.
Guests of the Ayatollah – Mark Bowden
More blow by blow action than a geopolitical analysis of an international political crisis (the Iranian hostage crisis). Bowden gives a decent amount of context to the situation, but not as much as I would have liked. Still, I learned a lot about the history of Iranian-US relations, the Iranian revolution and their nation’s culture and government. Overall an entertaining and informative read about the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis from 1979-81. I did take issue with the last chapter that felt like an attempt to varnish the whole thing with a weirdly patriotic bent. If youre really interested in the topic, there is probably a better book, but this kept my interest up.
Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Rajiv Chandrasekaran
We hear all the time about the problems in Iraq, but this book really explains how the stage was set for the specific problems that Iraqi and Americans now face there. Analyzing attitudes and policies, the book lays out the failures of planning not just in a military sense. The economic policy that attempted to privatize a socialist economy in 30 days (cf: soviet bloc), institutions like education and health care that were given no funding and inept leadership. De-Baathification policies that dismantled an imperfect municipal and ministerial beurocracies but replaced them with nothing. Idiotic decisions like paying people with debit cards in a country with no ATMS and blackouts half the day. Halliburton serving friend chicken for black history month while making Muslim workers carry boxes of bacon into the cafeteria. Contractors using weapons banned by Geneva conventions. Politically terrifying was the pentagon’s installation of loyalists in key CPA jobs over experts, literally conducting background checks and asking potential workers their political preferences, voting histories and party donations. Nicely complements Babylon By Bus with some more depth than that book provides. Read if youre interested in the topic, one of the best ooks on Iraq yet.
Inside The Jihad: Omar Nasiri
The memoir of a Moroccan who worked as a spy for French and British intelligence in the Algerian and later global jihadist movements. Tracing his time with radicals in Belgium and Algeria to the camps of Afghanistan, the books was certainly gripping, but also showed through narrative what a lot of the movement is like from the inside. Some disturbing revelations also- that links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were intentionally falsely confessed to drag the US into an unwinnable war, and other revelations about the extremely high level of organization and sophistication of many of the movements leaders. At the same time, enormous levels of factionalism within the movement, slowing it down and also accurately presaging contemporary Sunni/Shiite conflicts as well as civil conflicts within the Palestinian territories and Lebanon just this month. Read if youre interested and have the time.
Reluctant Fundamentalist: Mohsin Hamid
There was something very enjoyable about this little novel, in spite of the sometimes overwritten language. I don’t know why I found it so hard to put down, the plot wasn’t particularly exciting or unique, but the character and world was just so vividly painted and the Edgar Allen Poe- like mysterious other character so compelling that I couldn’t help but like it. It also managed to be a bit self-serious without ever slipping into silliness, which if you described the plot would be hard to avoid. Essentially the story of a Pakistani who graduates at the top of his class from Princeton, works for a high powered consulting firm, and becomes disenchanted with America, his adopted home, following the responses to September 11th. Definitely recommended.
