Political
In The World is Curved, David Smick responds to Thomas Friedman's assertion that the world is now flat. Smick asserts that globalization has so changed the macroeconomic game that the world is more curved now than ever. Events that once had predictable outcomes now seem to have consequences just beyond the horizon of what we can see. Smick interprets the world through the dual lens of capital flow and the entrepreneurial spirit.
In Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Fatih of America's Founding Fathers, Gary Kowalski explores the spiritual background of a number of our founding fathers, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison. Kowalski has a rather plain bias, labeling our founding fathers at one point as "progressives". He painfully tries to make the argument that our founding fathers, contrary to popular belief, were not really all that religious.
How can you predict what is going to happen 20, 50 or 100 years from now? Imagine writing a book in 1909 and trying to predict the events of the last 100 years. That is the feat that George Friedman, founder of Stratfor, tries to accomplish in this fascinating book called "The Next 100 Years: A Forecase For The 21st Century". Friedman freely admits that the task is daunting and fraught with pitfalls, however he brings and incredible breadth and depth of understanding to the task. Rather than
Lt. General Romeo Dallaire was the UN commander in Rwanda during the genocide debacle in 1994. In this intense accounting of the UN actions (and inactions) during the 100 day civil war, Dallaire doesn't pull any punches. He places blame squarely where blame is due, even pointing the finger at his own blunders and short comings. He pointedly deals with his own mental health degradation towards the end of the conflict and makes no excuses for himself or anyone else. In his final conclusions he
In Nothing to Fear: Lessons in Leadership from FDR, Alan Axelrod presents us with the intersection of modern day business leadership and the historical evidence of this great leader. I am certainly not in line with many of the political stances of President Roosevelt, nor do I agree with some of my more liberal friends who believe he was the greatest President in history. I do however believe that he may qualify as one of, if not the greatest leader to hold the position. Axelrod's book is in
In the Affluent Society, Galbraith offers up his view of the world, or rather how he feels the rest of the world views it wrong! He points out that when much of the early economic literature was written, there had begun a fundamental shift in world economics. Up until that time, poverty was the norm... bare sustenance was the primary economic problem to be solved. About the time Adam Smith began observing the pin factory, the world was changing to become what Galbraith calls, an "Affluent Soc
This is a fascinating look at the Supreme Court that is unfortunately marred by the incredible bias of the author. I enjoy reading a diversity of opinions, however Toobin so blatantly injects his political beliefs into this story that it leaves one to wonder about the factual nature of his accounts. As I recently explained to my son, an 8th grader, sometimes what an author doesn't tell you is as important as what he does tell you. While all of the anecotes are fascinating and the book itself
This book is supposed to be about former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'neil, however the auther, Ron Suskind, doesn't do a very good job of hiding his true intentions of writing a disparaging commentary on the Bush Administration. The author goes to great lengths to point out the accuracy of the book from a factual perspective, however as is often the case with a biased author, the accuracy of the reported facts is often out-weighed by the obviously missing facts. Critics of the Bush Administra