TWIB #51--It's Been A Year!
Oct. 3rd, 2007 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanIn which I read 214 English-language books, or about one every two days. That's pretty awesome. These were the last two of the year:
1) Holy War, Inc. - Peter L. Bergen
A very good, if outdated, look at Osama bin Laden and the Muslim terrorist groups that surround him. Bergen's analysis is clear and refreshingly free of political bias as it traces bin Laden's family origins, sojourns in various countries, and the various terrorist activities in which he's been involved. But bin Laden is only part of the wider narrative Bergen's telling: his book focuses just as much on other terrorist groups, and the roles that U.S. and other international organizations had in funding them and increasing their respective levels of global influence. It is in this respect that Holy War, Inc. benefits from having been written before the 9/11 attacks; Bergen is really using bin Laden as a lynch pin from which to explore the problem of Muslim terrorism on the whole, not to flag wave for American "patriotism" or the free world (although he does, unfortunately, offer a rather rosy picture of Bush's ability to handle terrorism which has since been proven false by history in just about every respect). Still, this book would be well worth the read for anyone interested in the development of Muslim terror prior to September, 2001.
2) Red Rogue - Bruce E. Bechtol, Jr.
Red Rogue takes a look at Korea in the post-9/11 era: its military capabilities, its illicit economy, its internal instabilities, and its influence on the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Bechtol, its author, is a former marine with no small amount of Korean experience and a good overall grasp of the issues. Honestly, I wish he’d gone into even greater depth on most of the above subjects (although this might not have been possible, given the secrecy surrounding the Kim regime!); at any rate, his arguments are clearly defined and presented. Bechtol’s ideological bents are sometimes uncomfortably self-evident, as when he takes Roh to task for assembling about himself an impenetrable inner circle of personally loyal retainers who share and magnify his political views while severely restricting access to those who don’t share them (you mean, like the Bush administration!?), and his belief that U.S. maintenance of its current military posture on the peninsula is crucial (although I personally agree with this, not all readers might). The book’s biggest flaw (and it is a big one), is the utter—and inexcusable--inattention given to editing. I counted 40 typos and other errors throughout the book’s mere 206 pages; an average of one every five pages, and most of them frighteningly elementary (the possessive apostrophe is frequently omitted; subject-verb agreement is another massive problem). Furthermore, the majority of Red Rogue’s content was previously published in various journals, and precious little effort was made to standardize stylistic variations as it was being assembled into book form (is it “the global war on terror” or the “Global War on Terror;” is someone a “Lt. Gen.” or a “Lieutenant General;” etc?). Still, if one has an interest in the subject (and can tolerate the typographic flaws), this is probably the most succinct and exhaustive volume available on the subject.
SBS: I currently have 21 unread English language books in the アパート here in Homeland Central. This should be doable.
That will be all.
1) Holy War, Inc. - Peter L. Bergen
A very good, if outdated, look at Osama bin Laden and the Muslim terrorist groups that surround him. Bergen's analysis is clear and refreshingly free of political bias as it traces bin Laden's family origins, sojourns in various countries, and the various terrorist activities in which he's been involved. But bin Laden is only part of the wider narrative Bergen's telling: his book focuses just as much on other terrorist groups, and the roles that U.S. and other international organizations had in funding them and increasing their respective levels of global influence. It is in this respect that Holy War, Inc. benefits from having been written before the 9/11 attacks; Bergen is really using bin Laden as a lynch pin from which to explore the problem of Muslim terrorism on the whole, not to flag wave for American "patriotism" or the free world (although he does, unfortunately, offer a rather rosy picture of Bush's ability to handle terrorism which has since been proven false by history in just about every respect). Still, this book would be well worth the read for anyone interested in the development of Muslim terror prior to September, 2001.
2) Red Rogue - Bruce E. Bechtol, Jr.
Red Rogue takes a look at Korea in the post-9/11 era: its military capabilities, its illicit economy, its internal instabilities, and its influence on the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Bechtol, its author, is a former marine with no small amount of Korean experience and a good overall grasp of the issues. Honestly, I wish he’d gone into even greater depth on most of the above subjects (although this might not have been possible, given the secrecy surrounding the Kim regime!); at any rate, his arguments are clearly defined and presented. Bechtol’s ideological bents are sometimes uncomfortably self-evident, as when he takes Roh to task for assembling about himself an impenetrable inner circle of personally loyal retainers who share and magnify his political views while severely restricting access to those who don’t share them (you mean, like the Bush administration!?), and his belief that U.S. maintenance of its current military posture on the peninsula is crucial (although I personally agree with this, not all readers might). The book’s biggest flaw (and it is a big one), is the utter—and inexcusable--inattention given to editing. I counted 40 typos and other errors throughout the book’s mere 206 pages; an average of one every five pages, and most of them frighteningly elementary (the possessive apostrophe is frequently omitted; subject-verb agreement is another massive problem). Furthermore, the majority of Red Rogue’s content was previously published in various journals, and precious little effort was made to standardize stylistic variations as it was being assembled into book form (is it “the global war on terror” or the “Global War on Terror;” is someone a “Lt. Gen.” or a “Lieutenant General;” etc?). Still, if one has an interest in the subject (and can tolerate the typographic flaws), this is probably the most succinct and exhaustive volume available on the subject.
SBS: I currently have 21 unread English language books in the アパート here in Homeland Central. This should be doable.
That will be all.