Dictators vs. Democrats

OK, so my picks are not doing very well in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. It is what I deserve for putting Missouri in the Final Four. Oy!

So far, however, I'm 8-for-8 in the first round of Foreign Policy's Dictators vs. Democrats Challenge. This is my bracket.

A lot of people must be perfect since I'm not even included on the current leaderboard. But just wait and see what happens when Christine Lagarde starts kicking butt implements her game plan.


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Elsewhere

I wrote two posts this week for the Duck of Minerva:

"Friday Nerd Blogging: Baseball Edition" is about Duck contributor Bill Petti's growing (televised) influence as a baseball analyst.

March 14, I posted "The Selling of the Iraq War: Case Study of Presidential Persuasion?" I contributed to a debate among journalists and bloggers.

Oh, on February 22, I posted a short note about the so-called "Abusers' Peace," which is the hypothesis that human rights abusing states do not make war with one another.


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NCAA Hoops

Like much of America, I spend too much time this month paying attention to "March Madness." With various friends, I partake in a couple of NCAA tournament pools. Hint: if Kansas wins the tournament, I win the pool.

This year, I've created a private group for my Twitter followers and blog readers. Here's the link to this password-protected group.

The password is simple: minerva.

Update: Yahoo closes the competition at 9:15 am PDT Thursday, March 15.


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Music of Vietnam Vets

Saturday March 3, my family attended a talk at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame delivered by Wisconsin Professor Craig Werner: "'Chain of Fools': A Vietnam Veteran's Top 20."

Craig Werner will discuss the story of music and the Vietnam experience. His talk draws from his current project, a book entitled We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Music, Memory and the Vietnam War, co-authored with Doug Bradley. The book tells the story of music and the Vietnam experience through the music-based memories of scores of veterans.

The authors have been working on the project for some time, as demonstrated by this Chicago Tribute story from 2006:

They've even come up with a top 10 list of songs that resonate with Vietnam vets, led by "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," by the Animals; "Chain of Fools," by Aretha Franklin; and "Fortunate Son," by Credence Clearwater Revival.

The list has expanded and the ordering has changed a bit -- plus, "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" is now near the top if I recall correctly.

Werner and Bradley interviewed 200 veterans and are compiling their words into an oral history.

Update: my spouse had a copy of the handout, which included a list of the top 20 and "Honorable Mentions."


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Atomic Bombers

The evening of February 29, I very much enjoyed attending a University of Louisville Theatre Department production of "Atomic Bombers," written and directed by my colleague Russ Vandenbroucke:

The play, dramatizing the lives of the extraordinary team of international physicists racing to make an atomic bomb during World War II, will be performed Feb. 29-March 4 at 8 p.m. nightly plus a matinee at 3 p.m., March 4. All performances are at the Thrust Theatre, 2314 S. Floyd St.

Directed by Vandenbroucke, a theater professor, the play will be the third stage production of the play originating from an earlier short play by Vandenbroucke that was performed on stage and for public radio.

Before writing and producing the play, Vandenbroucke had to obtain permission from Richard Feynman, the eccentric American scientist and Nobel Prize winner whose essay in a science journal was his inspiration. Vandenbroucke even went as far as to engage the president of the California Institute of Technology, where Feynman taught, to aid his request.

Feynman agreed to Vandenbroucke’s proposal and the first play was based on the atomic bomb tests at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Vandenbroucke later expanded the play to include the initial work at the University of Chicago which was broadcast on public radio during the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.

“It is a funny play about a very serious subject,” Vandenbroucke said. “This was the greatest gathering of scientific geniuses at one time and place for a single purpose. Only later did they realize the full extent of the horrible devastation that resulted.”

Those interested in the material should note that Russ has cooperated in producing a CD.

Anyone interested in how comedy can be employed for critique should check out this play.


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Mearsheimer Profile

Back in 1990, in the Atlantic Monthly, prominent neorealist IR theorist John Mearsheimer published a popular version of one of his best-known academic arguments: "Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War."

The next forty-five years in Europe are not likely to be so violent as the forty-five years before the Cold War, but they are likely to be substantially more violent than the past forty-five years, the era that we may someday look back upon not as the Cold War but as the Long Peace, in John Lewis Gaddis's phrase.

This pessimistic conclusion rests on the general argument that the distribution and character of military power among states are the root causes of war and peace.

His argument was based on the difficulty of assuring stability among a larger number of great powers -- and the higher chance that states would have different amounts of military power. Of course, Mearsheimer was also quite skeptical about the role democracy and economic interdependence might play in assuring peace, though he was also pessimistic that realist prescriptions could avoid war.

In short, the essay reflected most of the important ideas associated with Mearsheimer -- a pessimistic (if not tragic) realist emphasis on great power competition and the enduring prospects for war.

In the January/February 2012 issue of The Atlantic, Mearsheimer is profiled by the magazine's frequent contributor Robert Kaplan: "Why John J. Mearsheimer Is Right (About Some Things)." Kaplan highlights the University of Chicago scholar's ongoing interest in the threat of major power war. The essay gives a great deal of attention to the potential rising threat from China, a point Mearsheimer has been emphasizing for over a decade.

If you follow IR theory, none of the political science discussed by Kaplan is new. The piece does include several photos.

Because of my interests in political communication and deliberation, I'm including this quote from one of Mearsheimer's ex- students:

As Ashley J. Tellis, Mearsheimer’s former student and now, after a stint in the Bush administration, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, later tells me: “Realism is alien to the American tradition. It is consciously amoral, focused as it is on interests rather than on values in a debased world. But realism never dies, because it accurately reflects how states actually behave, behind the façade of their values-based rhetoric.”

Here, Tellis is echoing a point Mearsheimer has frequently made.

Again, for scholars, the article is filled with redundancies like that. If you've read several pieces by Mearsheimer, chances are you did not learn anything from this article.

Yet, it is kind of interesting that a national magazine profiled Mearsheimer at this time. If the U.S. soon enters into a long cold war with China, he'll be credited (or blamed) with framing the logic behind the competition. Alternatively, if the U.S. or Israel launches war against Iran out of concerns about nuclear proliferation, then Mearsheimer will likely emerge as a vocal critic (as he was in the Iraq war case) and so this article helps to establish his credentials to a wider audience outside the academy.

In short, the article is (mostly) an effort to rehabilitate Mearsheimer after he and Steve Walt published their article and book about the role of the Israeli lobby in American foreign policy. Kaplan says that work is polemical and not objective, so the piece does not serve as a complete rehabilitation. Indeed, within the media Kaplan says that The Israeli Lobby has "delegitimized" Mearsheimer.

Kaplan is occasionally described as a neocon and apparently served in the Israeli armed forces, so he may not be the most objective observer of Mearsheimer. Notably, neocons have long shared Mearsheimer's worries about China.

In short, the subtext makes for an interesting read.


Note: I updated the post March 1 to provide a real conclusion.

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Meanwhile...

I have made a couple of blog posts elsewhere that may interest you:

On February 20 at the e-IR Climate Politics blog, I posted, "To Santorum et al: What would Reagan do?" I examine the climate comments of the remaining Republican candidates for President and compare then to Ronald Reagan's environmental record.

On February 9 at the Duck of Minerva, I posted "Walmart Still Isn't Green."


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China & Cars

Photo credit = kalevkevad via Flickr.

In 2006, the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers reported  that "China became the world’s third-largest car market." That was thanks to a nearly 40% increase in sales over the prior year. By 2009, Chinese sources noted that China was the #1 car buyer -- a status partly based on 44% growth in China's market and a 21% plunge in US sales that same year.

China's passenger vehicle market ended last year with a 59 percent year-on-year sales increase to surpass the United States as the world's largest auto market for the first year, thanks to the central government's stimulus package.

Journalist Richard McGregor noted at the end of 2010 that China's auto market had exploded from 1 million domestic vehicles sold in 2002 to about 10 million in 2010. McGregor quoted consultant Michael Dunne to simplify the numbers with a comparison: "China has added the equivalent of two Japan markets in less than a decade." One-half million of those 10 million new vehicles are luxury cars like Porsches.

In any event, the implications of this change are profound. World oil demand will continue to increase as the Chinese buy more cars. In coming decades, Chinese petroleum demand will apparently match US demand. CIA data currently reveal that American oil imports are nearly double China's -- meaning that new demand for millions of barrels of oil per day will put huge pressure on international oil markets. Obviously, increased competition for oil, a potentially scarce resource, could have profound implications for geopolitical rivalry -- and energy prices. Michael Klare reports that "the conservative National Defense Council Foundation" found that "the 'protection' of Persian Gulf oil alone costs the U.S. Treasury $138 billion per year." 

The climate implications are also potentially disastrous. In the US, more greenhouse gases are emitted from cars than from burning coal. China is now on a dangerous pathway:

The vehicle boom is also pushing up China’s greenhouse gas emissions. Transport emissions of carbon dioxide, the major warming gas, have at least quadrupled since 1990, to more than 350 million tons per year.

This means the transport sector is now about 5% of China's greenhouse gas emissions.

Some analysts suggest that China's rising demand for oil could make the state more likely to cooperate with the international community:

"China is learning that owning equity oil in risky regions may not be as effective an energy security strategy as it had previously imagined," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an author of the study and the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies at the Baker Institute. "China is now finding itself mired in more energy-related foreign diplomacy than it bargained for.

"But this could be good news for the United States," Jaffe said. "It may mean China will be more inclined to act in concert with other members of the international community in conflict-prone regions."

Can the world really count on that happening?

Unfortunately, at least from an environmental perspective, recent growth in Chinese car sales is likely just the tip of the iceberg. China's vehicle ownership rates now stand at US levels from 1916. In 2008, people in China owned 37 cars per 1000 people. Some scholars predict that the rate will surge to 269 per 1000 by 2030, an eight-fold increase.

The US rate is about 825 vehicles per 1000 people.

Incidentally, here's more cause for concern in new markets -- India's car ownership rate is about 6 per 1000 people...



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Media bias

Does mass media have a liberal bias? Conservatives, of course, frequently claim that it does have such a bias.

However, as I've taught my students in American Foreign Policy for many years, talk-radio is dominated by the right, newspapers and television are increasingly corporate, Fox News is obviously right-leaning, and "regular" liberal reporters embrace norms of fairness that cause them to report balanced information even when there's no justification -- such as on climate change.

I previously meant to blog this Paul Waldman item, which speaks to media quoting of conservative or liberal think tanks. From The American Prospect, October 2010:

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a progressive group that opposes media bias and censorship, reports that progressive groups have seen their proportion of media citations steadily rise in recent years.

But the left is still chasing the right. The Center for American Progress is probably the signature success of recent liberal institution building; its 2008 budget was $26.3 million. But the Heritage Foundation, its closest competitor on the right, spent $64.6 million that year. The left's think tanks get quoted more than they used to, reports FAIR, but the right's think tanks still get quoted more than the left's. In 2008, conservative think tanks made up 31 percent of all think-tank citations, while progressive think tanks made up 21 percent. The gap has narrowed but not disappeared.

Waldman actually provides a good deal of interesting information about progressive attempts to build a media network to counter the conservative successes. However, as Waldman notes, Air America's failure demonstrates one huge hurdle faced by those making the effort to build liberal counterparts to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Progressives

seek out outlets like National Public Radio that are less combative and more factual. It shouldn't be surprising that a substantial body of social-psychological research has found that conservatives tend to be less tolerant of ambiguity than liberals.

In one of my college Communications classes, the professor gave students a test that determined one's degree of dogmatism. It turned out that I was the least dogmatic person in the class.

My debate colleague at the time, incidentally, was the most dogmatic person in the class -- though he wasn't a conservative so far as I know.


Note: This item was pulled at random from my huge stack of "to-be-blogged" material. Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. I've been fairly active on Twitter, which makes me a better reader, but I just have not been in the mood to blog. I'm going to try to reduce the stack of items pulled from magazines and newspapers because it would be nice to have someplace to find these items when I try to recall where I put something.




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IR in Fast Five

I watched "Fast Five" on DVD last night, though I haven't seen any of the prior "Fast" films. The movie received decent reviews and is a heist film, a genre that I enjoy, so I gave it a try. It's a bit long and has some stupid dialogue, but the film is generally entertaining. I'd have cut much of the long fight sequence between Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

About 25 minutes into the movie, the affluent Brazilian crime boss Hernan Reyes gives a speech that sounds like an out-take from Empire-Building 101:

Reyes: Let me tell you a true story.

Five hundred years ago, the Portuguese and the Spanish came here, each trying to get the country from their natives. The Spaniards arrived, guns blazing, determined to prove who was boss. The natives killed every single Spaniard.

Personally, I prefer the methods of the Portuguese. They came bearing gifts. Mirrors, scissors, trinkets. Things that the natives couldn’t get on their own, but to continue receiving them, they had to work for the Portuguese.

And that’s why all Brazilians speak Portuguese today.

Now, if you dominate the people with violence, they will eventually fight back because they have nothing to lose. And that’s the key.

I go into the favelas and give them something to lose. Electricity, running water, school rooms for their kids. And for that taste of a better life, I own them.

I put the key passage in bold.


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I read it in a magazine...

The internet has helped foster many changes in modern life, but not all of them are desirable.

In a December 2011 review of The Fall of the House of Forbes: The Inside Story of the Collapse of a Media Empire by Stewart Pinkerton, Jamie Malanowski identifies some harsh numbers for the publishing industry:

Facing dramatically declining advertising revenue (in the year 2000, Forbes had more than 6,000 pages of advertising—this was during the high-on-your-own-supply years of the dot.com bubble)—and was charging about $75,000 per page; in 2010, it had 1,640 pages of advertising, and was charging between $23,000 and $25,000 per page. The numbers from magazine to magazine no doubt differ, but throughout the industry the basic story is surely the same. Revenue declined, and the Internet, with all its power to deliver information quickly and cheaply, and all its nifty gadgets, pushed magazines into yesterday.

By my calculations, Malanowski is identifying a revenue drop from $450 million in 2000 to $41 million in 2010 -- and those figures assume the highest charges were always collected in the more recent year.

So Forbes, at least, lost over 90% of its advertising revenues during the decade, before accounting for inflation.

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Socialism is more popular than Rick Perry

Today, in a New Hampshire debate, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, borrowed some rhetoric from Sarah Palin:

“We have a president who is a socialist,” Perry said in response to a question at the early-morning eye-opener GOP debate in Concord, N.H.

“I reject the premise that Obama reflects our founding fathers,” Perry said. “He doesn’t.”

I've dealt with this kind of labeling many times in the past, so there's no need to address the substance of the charge.

Instead, let me make a different point. Socialism is more popular in the United States than is Rick Perry. A Gallup poll from 2010 found that 36% of Americans had a favorable view of socialism. Granted, few Republicans share this view and Perry is first trying to win their nomination for President.

A Pew Research Center Poll from a bit later in 2010 found that 29% of Americans had a positive response to "socialism." Among people aged 30 and younger, both socialism and capitalism scored 43% positive. A Rasmussen survey from 2009 likewise reflected ambiguous results when comparing socialism to capitalism.

The latest Pew Research results from late December 2011 show socialism with a 31% positive response.

Among all Americans, in a number generated by averaging his poll results, Rick Perry has a favorability rating of just under 25%. He's getting drubbed by socialism.


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Films of 2011

As I annually note, I watch a lot of movies, though most are viewed on DVD (or from DVR recordings) on my television. Because I do not see that many new films in the theater, I cannot at year's end write a credible post on the best movies of 2011. After all, I have not yet seen many of the highly touted films released in late December. But I will. Eventually.

In fact, many of the best films I saw this past year were older films on DVD/DVR that I originally missed in the theaters -- or were 2010 films I saw in the theaters during early 2011.

To make this abbreviated 2011 list, I scanned the top grossing movies of the year, as well as IMDB's most popular titles for 2011 and Movie Review Intelligence. In rank order of my preference, these were the best 2011 films I saw this year, so far as I can tell:

Moneyball **
Margin Call **
Midnight in Paris **
Bridesmaids **
The Trip
The Company Men
Beginners
Win-Win

I think almost any film lover would enjoy these 8 films. The list is topped by two films with the same theme -- employing somewhat obscure information to gain a market advantage over rivals in business. In Moneyball, a small-market baseball team excels despite the odds. In Margin Call, greedy Wall Street traders take down the global economy. The Company Men shows the implications for everyone, as does Win-Win. Midnight in Paris, Bridesmaids and The Trip are comedies, but they are very well done. And quite different from one another. Beginners sounds like a sappy movie-of-the-week, but it is well-executed.

The rest of the 2011 films I saw aren't ranked with much care, though the films near the top of this list are better than the ones near the bottom:

Super 8 **
Crazy Stupid Love **
Lincoln Lawyer
Friends with Benefits
Horrible Bosses **
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol **
Captain America **
Everything Must Go
Adjustment Bureau
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (part 2) **
Take Me Home Tonight
Cedar Rapids
Hanna
Paul
Source Code
Limitless
The Beaver
Our Idiot Brother
30 Minutes or Less
X-Men: First Class
No Strings Attached

** I saw these films in the theater.

Obviously, I saw more current-year movies in 2011 than I have in recent years. This is because of a Redbox located in a grocery store just over 2 blocks from my house.

Here's the annual list of movies I intend to see in the future (hopefully in 2012): 50/50, The Adventures of Tintin, Another Earth, The Artist, Attack the Block, Barney's Version, Bellflower, A Better Life, Certified Copy, Contagion, Cowboys & Aliens, A Dangerous Method, The Dept, The Descendants, Drive, Fast Five, The Future, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Go Go Tales, The Guard, Higher Ground, Hugo, The Ides of March, In Time, The Interrupters, The Iron Lady, J. Edgar, Jane Eyre, Le Havre, Like Crazy, Lovers of Hate, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Meek's Cutoff, Melancholia, Mysteries of Lisbon, Myth of the American Sleepover, My Week with Marilyn, Of Gods and Men, Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times, Point Blank, Rango, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Robber, A Separation, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, The Skin I Live In, Small Town Murder Songs, Submarine, Tabloid, Take Shelter, Terri, Thor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tower Heist, Tree of Life, War Horse, The Way Back, We Bought a Zoo, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Weekend, and Young Adult.

Metacritic helped me form that list.

Keep in mind that I didn't get around to seeing many 2010 movies from last year's wishlist:Another Year, Blue Valentine, The Book of Eli, Buried, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Get Him to the Greek, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Green Zone, Greenberg, It's Kind of a Funny Story, Kick-Ass, Let Me In, Machete, Megamind, A Prophet, Rabbit Hole, Restrepo, Shutter Island, Unstoppable, and Unthinkable.


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Books of 2011

As I have annually since 2005, I am posting a nearly complete list of books I read in the preceding year.

Allow me to repeat the groundrules: I will not list books that I reviewed, unless those reviews were published. In my academic job, I served until July as chair of a committee that will award $100,000 to a work that exhibited the best "ideas for improving world order." Most of the nominees submitted books and I read my share of the nominations. But those books are not listed here.

Of course, since I'm an academic, I read multiple chapters and large sections of many books pertinent to my research and teaching. However, I'm not going to list those here unless I read them cover-to-cover. Save for the books I use in class or read for review, I often skim over some portions even of outstanding books. It's a time/efficiency issue.

So, what did I read this year, mostly for pleasure? (Some of the recommended books include a link to Powell's books; the blog receives a 7.5% commission on sales that begin via these links).

Non-fiction

Theories of International Politics and Zombies by Daniel W. Drezner

Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics by John J. Mearsheimer.

Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo by George H. Quester

Washington Rules: How America's Quest for Dominance Has Undermined National Security by Andrew Bacevich.


The Godfather Doctrine: A Foreign Policy Parable by John C. Hulsman & A. Wess Mitchell

Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play by Ed Miller, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth.

Cowboys Full; The Story of Poker by James McManus.

The Education of a Poker Player by Herbert O. Yardley

The Bill James Gold Mine 2009 by Bill James.

The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom M. Tango, Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin.

Stone Me: The Wit and Wisdom of Keith Richards by Mark Blake

I also read just about every word in Baseball Prospectus 2011, but not in cover-to-cover fashion. It was edited by Steven Goldman.

Of these non-fiction books, most were worth reading. I read several of the relatively short international relations books to see if any of them would be appropriate for my various classes. In the right circumstances, I would not hesitate to use the Drezner book. Additionally, the passport-sized Hulsman and Mitchell volume might be useful for my film class.

I enjoyed the Quester and Mearsheimer books, but these are not the best works by these prolific authors. Both are readable and full of interesting examples, but they are not must-read works. Likewise, I found this Bacevich work (assigned in a spring class) a bit more polemical than his prior books. Plus, the historical sections and analysis were not up too his typical standard.

Yardley's Education of a Poker Player is considered a gambling classic, but I did not find it indispensable. By contrast, if you play small-stakes poker, the Miller, Sklansky and Malmuth volume is first-rate. The 500-page McManus tome is certainly very informative, but it is an odd book and not as compelling as Positively Fifth Street. The work covers poker history, includes many anecdotes about famous poker games and players, and surveys the rise of the World Series of Poker. The author has interesting personal experiences in the WSOP, but those are covered extensively in the older work.

Bill James is a seminal sabermetric-minded baseball writer. However, the Gold Mine books are not exactly packed with riveting information. Still, the book was worth my time if only for a few key short essays included in the volume. The Book is a somewhat difficult-to-read baseball book, but it is densely packed with tactically (and sometimes strategically) useful baseball information. Too bad The Book's authors didn't work with James on one magnificent book.

Keith Richards can be hilarious, but this book of quips is too short.

Fiction

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh

A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

The Wrong Case by James Crumley

B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton.

Blaze by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman).

The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake

The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block

The Godwulf Manuscript (Spenser, Bk 1) by Robert B. Parker

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson.

The Hunter: A Parker Novel by Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)

The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich

Dress Her in Indigo by John D. Macdonald

April Evil by John D. MacDonald

The Barbarous Coast by Ross Macdonald

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley

Perchance to Dream by Robert B. Parker

Grift Sense by James Swain

A Case of Lone Star by Kinky Friedman

The Greatest Slump of All-Time by David Carkeet.

The King's Game by John Nemo.

Of these, I placed the best works of literature at the top of the list, then the remaining genre fiction. The least entertaining are listed last in each section.

The novels by Roth, Updike, Hornby and O'Neill are all excellent. Roth and O'Neill were overtly influenced by 9/11, though Roth's book is actually a counterfactual history about events prior to World War II. What if Charles Lindbergh (sympathetic to Hitler) had been elected President over FDR? As I've written previously, Hornby is one of my favorite authors and this is an entertaining read about personal relationships and popular music. Yes, those were also the themes of the terrific High Fidelity.

I pick up Evelyn Waugh and Cormac McCarthy novels with the understanding that I may already have read their best books. Their other work reflects their great talent, but there's bound to be some disappointment. Gary Shteyngart is likewise a skilled writer, but I hope Absurdistan is not his masterpiece.

Thanks mostly to Bookmooch and PaperBack Swap, I continue to read books by a diverse group of crime writers. Eric Ambler was recommended highly by someone on Journolist. I'm grateful to that person, though I cannot recall his or her identity.

I much-enjoyed Michael Connelly's first Harry Bosch book and will continue with the series. Likewise, James Crumley's Milo Milodragovitch is an interesting character and I look forward to reading additional stories about him. Robert Parker's Spencer books are entertaining, so I decided to start at the beginning of his series as well -- though I've previously read at least one of the later books. The second volume in the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson is not as good as the first book, but I still intend to read the third one in the near future.

Cornell Woolrich was very talented at generating creepy atmosphere and I've already acquired a couple of his other works. That is traditionally Stephen King's domain, but Blaze is a strange crime novel published as his Richard Bachman alias. I think the book's smart writing suffers by featuring a mentally-challenged lead character.

Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block have written dozens of crime-themed novels over the decades. I enjoyed Westlake's more humorous burglary story about a stolen diamond than the first book in his brutal Parker series. I'll read the next volume in each line, however. Likewise, I'll be reading more cases featuring Block's dedicated, thoughtful, and drunken detective Matt Scudder.

As I've noted previously, John D. Macdonald's Travis McGee stories provide a pleasant diversion, but Ross Macdonald's books tend to have a harder edge. Both offer up a good measure of amateur philosophy as well. April Evil is a stand-alone noir fiction -- and it has a harder edge. Grafton says Ross Macdonald is an influence and I enjoyed her second alphabet mystery story. I read her A is for Alibi back in the mid-1990s, but won't wait very long to start C is for Corpse.

I cannot recommend the Swain book about a casino detective and I have tired of Kinky Friedman's redundant prose. Christopher Buckley has written some entertaining books, but The Supreme Courtship is far down his list of accomplishments.

If you are looking for baseball fiction, I enjoyed Carkeet's psychological approach to the game's players, but was less taken with the religious-themed novel by Nemo.


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Favorites of 2011: technocracy edition

Henry Farrell wrote a great line in his review of David Marquand's The End of the West; The Once and Future Europe (Princeton, 2011) for The Nation (pdf), December 12, 2011:

It is tempting to see the procedures of the EU as a long-term conspiracy to bore the public into submission.

In the next sentences, Farrell retreats a bit from this statement. The institution churns out regulations that Farrell notes are boring and hard to understand, but this result was not produced as a result of top-level secret planning: "The truth is more mundane. Europe’s leaders fell into technocracy by accident rather than design."

One consequence of this reality is the so-called institutional "deficit of democracy" that was met this year by protesters claiming to represent the bottom 99% of us. We'll see in 2012 and beyond if the EU is influenced by their frustration. This EU statement does not seem promising.

Photo credit: Justine (juznie)


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Merry Christmas 2011

Do not confuse this man for the real Santa Claus:

That photo is from 2010, when we spent the holiday at home.

This year, we've hit the road:

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Baseball Prospectus

A few days ago, the good folks at Baseball Prospectus announced that they are soon releasing a 2-volume Best of Baseball Prospectus: 1996-2011. I think it is going to include a mix of web articles and book pieces, as well as some new essays. It would likely make an excellent Christmas gift.

So far as I know, unfortunately, it will not include my two old pieces written for BP many years ago. One of those articles is still available on-line at the BP website: "Do Top Prospects Get Traded?" It was posted April 8, 1999.

However, the other one is apparently not to be found anywhere. It was a defense of then-KC Royals manager Bob Boone, written in response to a piece by Rany Jazayerli. On the Wayback Machine, I found Rany's critique of Bob Boone posted March 3, 1997: "Is There a 12-Step Program for Overmanagement?"

Rany and I are both KC fans and we co-authored the Royals team comments for the Davenport Translations published exclusively on the web (in the group rec.sports.baseball.analysis) during the 1994-1995 winter. Unfortunately, I cannot find those team comments on the web either -- though I did find them for nearly 20 other teams. And I have the February 1995 files on my hard drive.




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Sorry for the silence lately. We traveled for Thanksgiving and I'm really making a push on the book project since the current sabbatical ends in four weeks.

Meanwhile, over at Duck of Minerva, you can read my post from November 30 on "Comprehending Gingrich." Does he have a Belgian pro-colonial worldview?

November 7 on the Duck, I posted "Hans Beinholtz: Europe For Sale." That post is basically a funny Stephen Colbert video about the Euro-crisis.

At the e-IR Climate Politics: IR and the Environment blog, I posted "The US is Not a Climate Outlaw?" on November 21. It is part 2 about my October talk at Cardiff University in Wales.


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