TWIB-II 30: 4/28-5/4
May. 10th, 2008 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanAnd I am caught up in time for tomorrow's post! Anyway, the three books I read during the above week are here:
1) The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy - John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt
I first read The Israel Lobby when it was still "The Israel Lobby," an article published by the London Review of Books, and found it generally convincing, although I am not a realist, and Walt and Mearsheimer most certainly are.
The paper was very well written, the book more so, and more extensively documented to boot. It is this documentation that contributes so much to my ability to credit Mearsheimer and Walt's argument; I spent half as much time reading the footnotes as I did the book.
While the critical (and often shrill) firestorm that erupted after the book was published only served to bolster the authors' thesis, I did not find their argument flawless. Like most realists, Mearsheimer and Walt have a tendency to reduce the world to black-or-white, on-or-off dichotomies. While conservative and center-right Jewish organizations undoubtedly pressure politicians to support policies they otherwise would not, and are often successful at doing so, these groups alone cannot entirely account for America's actions in the Middle East.
For instance, big oil surely has just as great an influence--but one that the authors explicitly deny. There is no evidence, they aver, that big oil has any interest in provoking conflict in the Middle East, as it can hardly wish to keep oil off the market. Yet the oil companies only made record profits after America had invaded Iraq and saber-rattled at other oil producing countries (think Iran and Venezuela). Even if this were not an original factor, Saddam Hussein's desire to further open Iraq's oil fields--and on a Euro standard--was certainly of huge concern. Where's the proof? ask Mearsheimer and Walt, disingenuously ignoring the fact that one of Cheney's first actions upon taking office was to hold closed-door meetings with the same energy conglomerates to which he, Rice, and Bush have ties, and which have profitted so handsomely during the last seven years.
Similarly, I found the authors' decision to group fundamentalist Christian organizations and individuals into the Jewish lobby questionable. After all, Israel's survival has no inherent value to many of these people--it is a means to an end in the quest to bring about the end times; I don't see how one can classify them as zionist organizations when their aims are so utterly different.
These caveats aside, Mearsheimer and Walt make a compelling argument (albeit one which is somewhat myopic in focus), and I recommend this book to those interested in the region, the realist school, and especially to the many people who have criticized it without having actually read it.
2) Questions of Heaven - Gretel Ehrlich
Judging by the subtitle The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist, Ehrlich's book purports to be a Buddhist adherent's travelogue to the nation's sacred mountains and monasteries. Unfortunately, Buddhism, and indeed, China are in short supply in this particular book.
Ehrlich makes a few vague references to studying with Tibetan monks, although these are so vague one wonders whether she is a serious student of any particular school of Buddhism or the prototypical "American Buddhist" who's read a few introductory books and thinks she has the philosophy down without needing to actively practice it. Her prose certainly doesn't leave one with the impression that she realizes there are distinctions between Chan and Tibetan Buddhism.
Judging by her prose, she doesn't realize quite a few other things as well. It's clear by the book's indiscriminate mishmash of transliterations that Ehrlich doesn't speak Chinese, and from her accounts of her experiences and translator-facilitated conversations, that this has seriously impeded her ability to grasp what is occurring around her. Worse still, she spends a great deal of time complaining about the hardships of travel and lack of modern amenities, but then spends the rest of the time complaining that China's modernization has ruined it. Indeed, this is one of the book's main flaws, as Ehrlich throws repeated low-level tantrums every time she (re)discovers that the country has not obliged her by freezing itself in time during its golden age in the Tang Dynasty. Or perhaps Ehrlich's thinking of the Song, or Ming, or Qing Dynasty; in fact, it feels as though she was expecting the China of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon instead of the historical China of any age. To get an idea of how ridiculous this is, imagine how you'd react to a Chinese tourist in Boston complaining that America is ruined--ruined!--because he has yet to see anyone wearing a tri-cornered hat, spinning wool or traveling somewhere by covered wagon.
The book's most worthy passages come towards the end, when Ehrlich travels to Greater Tibet and falls with a group of some traditional musicians, although once again, she doesn't seem to realize that there's a difference between the traditional Confucian music the musicians play and the area's traditional non-Han folk music (think of this as listening to a symphony in Belfast and thus assuming it's "the music of the ancient Celts"). Nevertheless, her accounts of the musicians' experiences during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution make for compelling reading; it's too bad the rest of the book is such a muck-up. This one is definitely worth skipping unless it's in your public library's collection and you've nothing better waiting to be read.
3) Pride of Baghdad - Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon
This title is loosely based on the true story of pride of lions that escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the initial 'shock and awe' bombing campaign. Henrichon's art is colorful, dynamic, and compelling. Unfortunately Vaughan's story is somewhat less so. This is mostly due to space constraints; Pride of Lions is a miniseries, and so instead of taking the time to develop his characters, Vaughan makes do with slapping some ethnic-sounding names on them and giving each a set of stereotypical characteristics: the steady male leader, long-suffering in his tolerance of the bickering females in the group; the prickly, world-weary older woman; the spunky, sexual younger woman; and the precocious boy who must learn to be a man one day. One also comes away wondering why, if these are Middle Eastern lions with Middle Eastern names, they talk, think, and act like Americans. That said, the title is still quite readable due to its beautiful art and creative concept, and worth checking out if you're a fan of comics or looking for a quick but decent read.
That will be all.
1) The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy - John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt
I first read The Israel Lobby when it was still "The Israel Lobby," an article published by the London Review of Books, and found it generally convincing, although I am not a realist, and Walt and Mearsheimer most certainly are.
The paper was very well written, the book more so, and more extensively documented to boot. It is this documentation that contributes so much to my ability to credit Mearsheimer and Walt's argument; I spent half as much time reading the footnotes as I did the book.
While the critical (and often shrill) firestorm that erupted after the book was published only served to bolster the authors' thesis, I did not find their argument flawless. Like most realists, Mearsheimer and Walt have a tendency to reduce the world to black-or-white, on-or-off dichotomies. While conservative and center-right Jewish organizations undoubtedly pressure politicians to support policies they otherwise would not, and are often successful at doing so, these groups alone cannot entirely account for America's actions in the Middle East.
For instance, big oil surely has just as great an influence--but one that the authors explicitly deny. There is no evidence, they aver, that big oil has any interest in provoking conflict in the Middle East, as it can hardly wish to keep oil off the market. Yet the oil companies only made record profits after America had invaded Iraq and saber-rattled at other oil producing countries (think Iran and Venezuela). Even if this were not an original factor, Saddam Hussein's desire to further open Iraq's oil fields--and on a Euro standard--was certainly of huge concern. Where's the proof? ask Mearsheimer and Walt, disingenuously ignoring the fact that one of Cheney's first actions upon taking office was to hold closed-door meetings with the same energy conglomerates to which he, Rice, and Bush have ties, and which have profitted so handsomely during the last seven years.
Similarly, I found the authors' decision to group fundamentalist Christian organizations and individuals into the Jewish lobby questionable. After all, Israel's survival has no inherent value to many of these people--it is a means to an end in the quest to bring about the end times; I don't see how one can classify them as zionist organizations when their aims are so utterly different.
These caveats aside, Mearsheimer and Walt make a compelling argument (albeit one which is somewhat myopic in focus), and I recommend this book to those interested in the region, the realist school, and especially to the many people who have criticized it without having actually read it.
2) Questions of Heaven - Gretel Ehrlich
Judging by the subtitle The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist, Ehrlich's book purports to be a Buddhist adherent's travelogue to the nation's sacred mountains and monasteries. Unfortunately, Buddhism, and indeed, China are in short supply in this particular book.
Ehrlich makes a few vague references to studying with Tibetan monks, although these are so vague one wonders whether she is a serious student of any particular school of Buddhism or the prototypical "American Buddhist" who's read a few introductory books and thinks she has the philosophy down without needing to actively practice it. Her prose certainly doesn't leave one with the impression that she realizes there are distinctions between Chan and Tibetan Buddhism.
Judging by her prose, she doesn't realize quite a few other things as well. It's clear by the book's indiscriminate mishmash of transliterations that Ehrlich doesn't speak Chinese, and from her accounts of her experiences and translator-facilitated conversations, that this has seriously impeded her ability to grasp what is occurring around her. Worse still, she spends a great deal of time complaining about the hardships of travel and lack of modern amenities, but then spends the rest of the time complaining that China's modernization has ruined it. Indeed, this is one of the book's main flaws, as Ehrlich throws repeated low-level tantrums every time she (re)discovers that the country has not obliged her by freezing itself in time during its golden age in the Tang Dynasty. Or perhaps Ehrlich's thinking of the Song, or Ming, or Qing Dynasty; in fact, it feels as though she was expecting the China of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon instead of the historical China of any age. To get an idea of how ridiculous this is, imagine how you'd react to a Chinese tourist in Boston complaining that America is ruined--ruined!--because he has yet to see anyone wearing a tri-cornered hat, spinning wool or traveling somewhere by covered wagon.
The book's most worthy passages come towards the end, when Ehrlich travels to Greater Tibet and falls with a group of some traditional musicians, although once again, she doesn't seem to realize that there's a difference between the traditional Confucian music the musicians play and the area's traditional non-Han folk music (think of this as listening to a symphony in Belfast and thus assuming it's "the music of the ancient Celts"). Nevertheless, her accounts of the musicians' experiences during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution make for compelling reading; it's too bad the rest of the book is such a muck-up. This one is definitely worth skipping unless it's in your public library's collection and you've nothing better waiting to be read.
3) Pride of Baghdad - Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon
This title is loosely based on the true story of pride of lions that escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the initial 'shock and awe' bombing campaign. Henrichon's art is colorful, dynamic, and compelling. Unfortunately Vaughan's story is somewhat less so. This is mostly due to space constraints; Pride of Lions is a miniseries, and so instead of taking the time to develop his characters, Vaughan makes do with slapping some ethnic-sounding names on them and giving each a set of stereotypical characteristics: the steady male leader, long-suffering in his tolerance of the bickering females in the group; the prickly, world-weary older woman; the spunky, sexual younger woman; and the precocious boy who must learn to be a man one day. One also comes away wondering why, if these are Middle Eastern lions with Middle Eastern names, they talk, think, and act like Americans. That said, the title is still quite readable due to its beautiful art and creative concept, and worth checking out if you're a fan of comics or looking for a quick but decent read.
That will be all.