MysteriousFaith

April 2005 Bookshelf

April’s list includes a very lengthy biography of Pol-Pot and another compelling book on the role agnostics, deists and freethinkers have played in the preservation of the most noble of America’s ideals.

April 2005 Bookshelf

Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Philip Short

This book is one of, if not the, most comprehensive biographies of Pol-Pot (his real name was Saloth Sar) and how the Khmer Rouge came to power. The book is incredibly thorough and I have little doubt it will become the standard by which all other books on Pol-Pot and Cambodia in the 1970’s will be measured. I did feel, however, that in this thoroughness the book lost some of its readability. The author is a superb historian, avoiding the trivial arguments for how the genocide in Cambodia came into being. By taking into account all the factors that were in play during the time of the Khmer Rouge coming into power he is able to properly place what did contribute to Khmer rule without succumbing to politicking.

A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America by Stacy Schiff (abridged book on CD)

This book covers the roughly eight years Benjamin Franklin spent in France working to ensure funding and treaty alignments between the French monarchy and the newly formed American republic. Franklin’s struggle to get along with Adams is an insight into the easy-going self-made man of Franklin versus the more earnest Adams who worked harder and yet struggled to be as welcomed as Franklin was by the French. The book has a tedious element as the book spent a lot of time working through the politics and exchanges between American, French and other diplomats. I found parts of it difficult to wade through not because they were overly wordy, but because they were not particularly compelling. That having been said, the book was and no doubt will remain of significant historical value for the detail it goes into.

The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War by Robert D. Kaplan

This book shattered my idealism at a time when my life is going to change to encompass a pursuit more in line with said beliefs. That made it a frustrating but absolutely captivating and necessary read. Kaplan, a foreign policy expert who has built his expertise as much in the field in areas of supreme upheaval at times of those upheavals as he has in the classroom. He is a realist, a proportionalist, both for profoundly good reasons. I have written a more comprehensive review of his book here.

Love in the Driest Season by Neely Tucker

This book is a wonderful story of an American couple in Zimbabwe who adopted a daughter from an AIDS clinic. There is more couched within the story than the events of running through a Third World beuracracy suspicious of a mixed-race American couple wanting to adopt a black child; Neely lets us in further into his story, what his daughter’s adoption meant to his soul, a soul damaged after years of reporting on the worst the world has to offer: “The stream of violence had worn away my natural sense of compassion to the point where I could cover almost any horror but felt very little about anything at all. Sleep was either a blessed blank space or a disturbing hallway of nightmares. I woke up one morning to discover I had lost my religious faith, as if it were a suitcase left behind in a distant airport. (page 4) A wonderful book worth reading and sharing.

Hope In Hell: Inside the World of Doctors Without Borders by Dan Bortolotti

This is a simple book that avoids attempting to make any grand point other than articulating the story of those who founded and who perpetuate Doctors Without Borders. A very special book that shows how individuals who believe in something and are willing to sacrifice can accomplish things governments either can not, or choose not to.

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby

Freethinkers is a history of American secularists ranging from those within our Founding Fathers who viewed organized religion with suspicion but would not dispose themselves of their belief in God to those who threw away the idea of God entirely (Thomas Paine being one such example). I thoroughly enjoyed Jacoby’s treatment of Robert Ingersoll and look forward to reading more of his work.

The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman

I highly recommend this book for its emphasis on the means by which the organized church developed orthodoxy, and the role the shaping philosophical traditions of the day played in this development. Freeman’s analysis is very fair - to my eyes - but he forces again the question of how to come to know what is of man and what is Divine within what tradition says is both Holy Scripture and Holy Practice. Two reviews of the book can be found on MysteriousFaith here and here.

Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life by Adrian House

You read your whole life to find a book like this. This will become a new part of books I give to others. This book, read while on a long drive in Korea, touched me profoundly. Coupled with a charge a good friend gave me before I left for this trip that I not forget the simple things of the Gospel, this book and his comment came together to draw me to Francis of Assisi like few other figures. He is a true inspiration, a man who took seriously the charge of Christ.

Crimes Against Nature: How George Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering Our Country and Hijacking our Democracy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

This book has been in my to-read pile for quite some time. It is an insight into how the Bush Administration has introduced and incorporated environmentally regulated businesses into the realms of government that is supposed to hold them accontable. Bush is guilty of this and has a record on the environment that is awful; however, it is all-too-common for this type of corrupption to exist in America when the media culture requires a type of campaign fund raising schedule that accomodates, accelerates, and necessitates an operation whose only answer is a 9-figure political war chest.

Is It a Choice? - 2nd edition : Answers to 300 of the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Gays and Lesbian People by Eric Marcus

This is a very simple book that can help a lot of people if they will let it. The book is arranged around topics like gender identity, sex, relationships. Nothing in it is profound, but the opportunity to get to this type of information does not come often in a charged dialogue over homosexuality.

Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos by Robert D. Kaplan

The most profound book I have read since the last Kaplan book (The Coming Anarchy). Kaplan argues that if we are to do what is the best for disadvantaged people, we may have to make use of despots in recognition that despots exist for a reason: that they reflect the attitudes and cultures that allowed the despot to come to power. Fix the underlying things that allow this type of man to come to power, and then you can change the leadership.

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• April 25, 2005

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