Books of 2008

Last year, as I have annually since 2005, I posted a complete list of books I read in the preceding year. This is now a blog tradition worth preserving.

As usual, I will not list books that I reviewed, unless those reviews were published. In my academic job, I chair a committee that awards $200,000 annually to the best "ideas for improving world order." Most of our nominees have written books and I read my share of the nominations.

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?

Non-fiction

Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy by Jules Tygiel (RIP).

Songbook, by Nick Hornby.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer.

The Bill James Gold Mine 2008 by Bill James.

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut.

On the Campaign Trail by journalist Mark Shields.

My Life in Baseball by Ty Cobb.

I also read just about every word in Baseball Prospectus 2008, but not in cover-to-cover fashion. It was edited by Steven Goldman.

Of these, most were worth reading. Hornby's book is about his favorite 31 song recordings. It's an eclectic mix and he's certainly a talented and entertaining writer. James and Vonnegut are also skilled writers that I have long enjoyed, though these books include uneven collections of short essays.

I've owned Tygiel's book for years and should have read it long ago. I pulled it off my shelf the weekend I read of the historian's death. Sarjane's work is a graphic novel, but it is very well done. My university adopted it as a "book-in-common" for this academic year, though I'm not teaching it.

The Shields book is about the 1984 election, much of it documenting the failed insurgent Democratic presidential candidacy of Colorado Senator Gary Hart. I read it during the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Foer's individual chapters about the global game of soccer (football) are interesting, but I'm pretty sure they do not add up to a real theory of globalization. A couple of years ago, a student recommended the book and I too would suggest it for soccer fans with an eye on the global game.

Cobb's book may more appropriately be placed in the fiction listing.

Fiction

The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley.

White Noise by Don DeLillo.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon.

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh.

The Galton Case and The Doomsters by Ross Macdonald.

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M . Cain.

Last Stand at Saber River by Elmore Leonard

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Neuromancer by William Gibson.

Miami Blues by Charles R. Willeford.

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin.

Darker Than Amber by John D. Macdonald.

Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler and Robert Parker.

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon.

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming.

Greenwich Killing Time by Kinky Friedman.

Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen.

Of these, I placed the best literature at the top of the list, then the remaining genre fiction with the least entertaining listed last. I really like Greene and Waugh, generally, and these books provide valuable insights into the bottom and top of Britain's social hierarchy. I read Greene's novel while visiting Brighton this past August.

I recently blogged about DeLillo's award-winning book, but I also found both Updike's classic novel and Chabon's recent work to be very enjoyable reads. In 2009, I'll likely be reading more about Harry Angstrom, Updike's boy wonder.

Thanks mostly to Bookmooch, I diversified my reading list quite a bit this year. I added some acclaimed sci-fi books to my reading list, along with books my a diverse group of crime writers. James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss is an exceptional contribution to the hard-boiled detective genre. I'll also be reading additional books by Willeford, Dibdin and Fleming (again, thanks to Bookmooch, I already have them piled high).

As I've noted previously, John D. Macdonald's Travis McGee stories provide a pleasant diversion, but Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer books have a much harder edge. Both offer up a good measure of amateur philosophy too. The coauthored crime novel on the list was completed by Parker from an uncompleted manuscript by a true master, Raymond Chandler.

I don't like Leonard's westerns as much as I like his crime books, but he is definitely worth reading in either genre. Hiaasen and Friedman trail because their characters and books have a patterned predictability. If I wait long enough, they are still fun to read. Look for those authors to appear on these lists again.


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Christmas past

My Dad and I are shown playing a friendly poker game with some friends and family, at Christmas-time, 2006. It looks like I had a short stack, but a good beer.


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Keynesian Economics in 2009

The most recent Nobel laureate in Economics, Paul Krugman, spoke at the National Press Club last Friday. The Dow Jones Newswire covered his Keynesian message:

Despite the Fed's recent slashing of interest rates, more action is needed from the government, he said.

"They have achieved something with the policies ... but it is clearly not enough," Krugman said.

Infrastructure spending is "clearly the best thing" to do right now, but timing is key, he said.

"We are bleeding jobs," Krugman said. "The immediate problem is: 'How do we get enough stuff going to stop this economy's nosedive?' "

A stimulus package of $850 billion -- a price tag that the incoming Obama administration is reportedly considering -- is inadequate, he said. Krugman cited estimates of roughly $150 billion of infrastructure programs that are "shovel ready," projects that can be operational within six months.

It's not a direct quote, but journalist Ruth Mantell writes that Krugman says "massive government spending is necessary to stop the ongoing hemorrhage of jobs and shore up the economy."

Apparently, the old quote attributed to FDR New Dealer Harry Hopkins is not authentic: "tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect."

However, that doesn't mean Barack Obama and others in Washington won't be trying to use this playbook in 2009. Is $1 Trillion too much government spending given the current economy? Is it enough? We're likely to find out.


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Hot Stove Yankee Hating

Apparently, the New York Yankees have signed free agent first baseman Mark Teixeira. Already this off-season, they've signed pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.

The Yanks have reportedly committed about $400 million to these three players! In about three or four years, I suspect, the team will not want to be paying at least one of these contracts.

However, M.C. Teixeira is an excellent hitter in his prime. He'll be 28 in April.

Sabathia is a former Cy Young winner who will turn 28 in July. He does have quite a bit of mileage on his arm.

Burnett will be 32 in a couple of weeks and he has an injury history, but he should have a couple of good seasons in him.

The Yankees also traded for Nick Swisher (losing only Wilson Betemit), who could be a terrific acquisition if he bounces back from a bad season.

These transactions would seem to make the Yankees a pretty good team again, even with the decline of Derek Jeter (and others), the retirement of Mike Mussina, and the failed development of Melky Cabrera.

It looks like Yankee haters can return to form in 2009. It's harder to care when the team finishes third, with only 87 wins as calculated by the pythagorean method.


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Saturday dog blogging: Christmas 2008 edition

Merry Christmas!

That's Paddy (Paddington), looking less-than-pleased.

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White Noise

I never posted anything about the Mumbai attacks, but was struck when I recently read the following exchange in Don DeLillo's White Noise.

The first speaker is Alfonse Stompanato, chair of the department of American environments at the College-on-the-Hill:

"Japan is pretty good for disaster footage," Alfonse said. "India remains largely untapped. They have tremendous potential with their famines, monsoons, religious strife, train wrecks, boat sinkings, et cetera. But their disasters tend to go unrecorded. Three lines in the newspaper. No film footage, no satellite hookup. This is why California is so important. We not only enjoy seeing them punished for their relaxed life-style and progressive social ideas but we know we're not missing anything. The cameras are right there. They're standing by. Nothing terrible escapes their scrutiny."

"You're saying it's more or less universal, to be fascinated by TV disasters."

"For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is."

"I don't know whether to feel good or bad about learning that my experience is widely shared."

"Feel bad," he said.

When White Noise was published in 1985, it was considered prescient for discussing an "airborne toxic event" that anticipated India's Bhopal tragedy.

And, of course, the critique of television and popular culture is clear.

In an age of globalization, cell phones, and digital video, India is no longer an untapped source of world news.

Another interesting passage has been noted by other bloggers and scholars since the 9/11 attacks:

“Members of an air-crash cult will hijack a jumbo jet and crash it into the White House in an act of blind devotion to their mysterious and reclusive leader, known only as Uncle Bob”

Those words appear in a supermarket tabloid, which a main character reads aloud to a group of blind people.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say by quoting these passages, but Ed Cone's reaction to the book seems fair:

Kept checking to make sure it was really published 22 years ago, because (but for the absence of details like the internet and mobile phones and "reality" television) it felt like it was written yesterday, which is pretty remarkable for a book keyed to popular culture.

DeLillo's book won the National Book Award for fiction in 1985.

Soon, I'll be posting a list of all the books I read during 2008.


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Ducking the shoe, etc.

Today, at Duck of Minerva, I posted "The Duck of Bush," which includes video of President Bush, er, dodging a shoe thrown at him today by a Middle Eastern journalist. Bush was making a secret and surprise visit to Iraq.

The post also includes a link to a new administration report on Iraq reconstruction efforts.

Friday, December 5, I posted "Obama and Coal" about the prospect of an Obama administration bankrupting the coal industry because of its climate policies.


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DVD pick of the week

I wholeheartedly recommend "Idiocracy," which is a very funny satire of American culture.

The flick should become a cult favorite, particularly for anyone who likes "Office Space," "Beavis and Butt-Head" and/or "King of the Hill."

Mike Judge is the talent behind all of them.


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UK: No longer willing

For years, I've been documenting the collapse of the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. Soon, Britain will no longer have troops in Iraq. The BBC reports:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has indicated that almost all British troops should leave Iraq by the middle of next year, with a few hundred possibly remaining to train Iraqi security forces.

Previously it had been suggested that troops could start leaving in January.

However, the BBC has learned that the process is likely to begin in March - six years after the US-led invasion.

Of course, Britain's withdrawal is different from earlier defections in the coalition. Conditions on the ground in Iraq are apparently much-improved and the UK is mulling over the diversion of its troops to Afghanistan. Thus, the UK can claim "mission accomplished" and demonstrate its willingness to help the US in the war on terror.

Note also that in 2007 PM Gordon Brown announced the withdrawal of half of British troops.


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Hot Rod Blagojevich

I think the best blog post about the Blagojevich case was written by Benjamin Sarlin. Check it out: "Who (Allegedly) Said It?" The post includes a list of 10 quotes and readers have to figure out whether each was from the Rod Blagojevich tapes or the mouth of Tony Soprano.

Some on the right are bound to try to link President-Elect Barack Obama to this scandal. After all, Hot Rod was apparently trying to auction Obama's vacant Senate seat and the indictment claims that Obama had a favorite for that post. However, there's good news for Obama in the indictment. Jeffrey Toobin:

It is Obama’s good fortune that the Governor seems to be pretty irritated with Obama’s lack of attention to Blagojevich’s needs. In a soon-to-be famous observation on the tapes, the Governor on Obama’s team: “They’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F*** them.”

Yes, I cleaned up the Governor's speech and Toobin's quote.

John Dickerson at Slate found a similar quote in the indictment:

The person who looks great in this sordid affair, in fact, is Barack Obama, whom Blagojevich refers to by another name. According to the charges:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants ... are telling him that he has to "suck it up" for two years and do nothing and give this "motherf***er [the President-elect] his senator. F*** him. For nothing? F*** him."

Yes, I cleaned up that one too.

Are high profile cases of political corruption as interesting as elections? If the evidence is of this quality, then I think they can be.


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Dallas

Apparently, George W. Bush plans to move to Dallas when his term expires.

Bush should perhaps heed Jimmie Dale Gilmore's warnings about the city before he arrives "with the bright lights" on his mind:

While "Dallas is a jewel" and "a beautiful sight," it is also "a jungle."

Most importantly,
"Dallas ain't a woman to help you get your feet on the ground.
Yes Dallas is a woman who will walk on you when you're down."

Actually, maybe Bush knows what he's doing:

"Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eye.
A rich man who tends to believe in his own lies."


Note: I personally prefer Joe Ely's cover of this song.

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Duck

Today, at the Duck of Minerva blog, I posted "2009 Grawemeyer winner." Click that link to read about Professor Michael Johnston of Colgate University and his award-winning work on corruption.

November 30, I posted "Next Nostradamus" about a History Channel TV program highlighting the computer modeling and predictions of political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of NYU. Other international relations scholars are interviewed for the program, including John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. If you want to see it, the program will run again this Saturday.


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You've seen this movie

My take on "Rachel Getting Married" -- a talented African American man from Hawaii swoops in to save a dysfunctional white family. Though it is too early to see how the story ends, it seems safe to say that some healing has occurred. Everybody agrees that US soldiers should come home from Iraq.

At a critical moment in the story, observers come to understand that a lot of people have been blaming a victim for a tragic event, when in fact a good part of the blame should be placed on a selfish winger.

Oh, note also that the story includes an attractive character named Paylin, but in the end she really didn't figure into the outcome.

As for Anne Hathaway's celebrated performance? Did you see Angelina Jolie in "Girl, Interrupted"? If so, you can skip this one.


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Duck dropping

On Tuesday, November 18, I posted "Obama's exit strategy?" at the Duck of Minerva group blog.

The piece speculates that the President-elect might be able to put an end to the so-called "war on terrorism" by withdrawing from Iraq and turning US attention back to Afghanistan (and Pakistan).

Last night, at a couple of gatherings with family and friends, some people were speculating that Afghanistan could become Obama's Vietnam -- or Iraq. This blogger at the Monthly Review made this precise charge last summer.

Since I posted that piece 10 days ago, Iraq's Parliament has approved a Status of Forces Agreement with the US establishing a formal timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. American troops must be out of Iraq by December 2011. To win Sunni support for the SOFA, the Iraq government promised to hold a public referendum on the deal no later than July.

President Bush used to dismiss the idea of a timetable, but has now negotiated one! As Spencer Ackerman explains, if Iraq rejects the SOFA in the public referendum, the US would have to withdraw from Iraq even sooner -- potentially by May 2010 (roughly 16 months after Barack Obama is inaugurated as US President).

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has called for a timetable for international troops withdrawal. Failing to achieve that, Karzai dropped another hint that conflict could end via negotiation:

"If there is no deadline, we have the right to find another solution for peace and security, which is negotiations," Karzai was quoted as saying in a statement from his office.

Some prominent American analysts are also calling for negotiated settlement -- and the Obama team is reportedly NOT planning to borrow from the Bush Iraq strategy:

The incoming Obama administration plans to explore a more regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan -- including possible talks with Iran -- and looks favorably on the nascent dialogue between the Afghan government and "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban, according to Obama national security advisers.

Finally, I'm expecting to be pleased this week when Obama announces key members of his foreign policy team.


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Food insecurity

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving today.

Last week, the Department of Agriculture released its annual report on "food security" and in the face of a recession, the news wasn't good. From the CNN report, November 25:

Almost 700,000 U.S. children lived in households that struggled to put food on the table at some point in 2007, the highest number since 1998, according to a federal report.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual report on food security showed that those 691,000 children lived in homes where families had to eat non-balanced meals and low-cost food, or even skip meals because of a lack of money. The number of children struggling to feed themselves adequately rose 50 percent from 430,000 children in 2006.

Nearly 36.2 million children and adults struggled to put proper food on the table in 2007, according to the report, up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006.

Of the 36.2 million, nearly a third were not able to eat what was deemed a proper meal.

The story has additional detail, noting for example that the worst crisis is faced by people living in Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas.

Note: I was also a Thanksgiving scold in 2005 -- and 2003. Those stories, however, were primarily about global hunger.


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Obama's foreign policy team

Next week, apparently, President-elect Barack Obama will be announcing his foreign policy team. Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to be named Secretary of State and other so-called "liberal hawks" (and Clinton loyalists) are expected to win positions throughout the State Department, National Security Council, and Department of Defense.

Spencer Ackerman explains the implications:

Some Obama loyalists pointed to a 2007 memo written by Harvard’s Samantha Power — a former leading Obama adviser who resigned from the campaign after making an untoward remark about Clinton — that summarized the Obama campaign’s ideological meta-critique of many of the people who might staff a Clinton-run State Dept. Titled “Conventional Wisdom vs. the Change We Need,” the campaign released Power’s memo to the press after the Clinton campaign labeled Obama naive for proposing negotiations with dictators without preconditions; for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons on terrorist training camps; and for proposing highly-conditioned military strikes in Pakistan against senior Al Qaeda operatives.

“It was Washington’s conventional wisdom that led us into the worst strategic blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy,” writes Power, who declined to speak for this story. “The rush to invade Iraq was a position advocated by not only the Bush Administration, but also by editorial pages, the foreign policy establishment of both parties, and majorities in both houses of Congress. Those who opposed the war were often labeled weak, inexperienced and even naïve.”

Some in the Obama camp are left wondering whether picking Clinton as secretary of state represents an acquiescence to such conventional wisdom. “That memo was emblematic in many ways of the difference between the two groups,” said a Democratic foreign-policy expert and Obama loyalist.

Count me as someone who thinks that "some in the Obama camp" have this upside down.

Obama's foreign policy plans are going to be America's foreign policy. Sure, every President rejects some campaign rhetoric. Bill Clinton, for example, famously reversed his pre-election position on China. However, Obama promised to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months, end the mindset that got the U.S. into that war in the first place, and behave as a foreign policy pragmatist. He was by no stretch a liberal hawk and nearly all of his foreign policy advisors in the campaign opposed the Iraq war. He has not backed down from any of these positions since the election and there's no reason to think that he will.

Thus, liberal hawks like Hillary Clinton embedded in prominent foreign policy positions in an Obama administration will be expected to administer the President-elect's planned transformation of US foreign policy.

While Obama supporters (dare I call them doves?) worry that their man has abandoned them, I think this is potentially a brilliant strategy. The Democratic party was split nearly 50-50 in the primary season and some of the divide reflected foreign policy differences (though probably not all that much). To the extent that Obama was less hawkish -- and I think that he was -- then what better way to reorient the party than to include the most prominent political opponent as a key policy figure?

Hillary Clinton's career success as Secretary of State will be tied to the career success of Barack Obama as President. Clinton and her loyalists will not likely dissent publicly (at least not too loudly) if they are part of the team. All of them will have a personal stake in making sure that US (i.e. Obama) foreign policy succeeds on their watch. None will want to seem like a backstabber or troublemaker. Plus, they must realize that Obama's approach was popular with the American electorate. And those who are insufficiently enthused should rightly fear that they will be tossed aside.

In sum, I don't fear a new team of rivals, at least not on foreign policy. Rather, I see these likely Clinton-team appointments as a reflection of a unified Democratic party, about to take office, ready to implement a brand new set of policies.

In two months, I predict that the chattering classes will be talking about how new U.S. foreign policymakers are effectively tossing aside many of the policies of George W. Bush. With that unified project in mind, this Clinton-Obama "divide" can be set aside.


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Anbar Awakening for Afghanistan?

Tara McKelvey has a good piece in the November American Prospect on what some are calling "The Petraeus Doctrine." Lots of security-types are now interested in counterinsurgency, but Petraeus's strategy has been confounded with "the surge," the Anbar Awakening and other elements of the Iraq war.

Indeed, the incoming Obama administration might want to think carefully before attempting to export "the surge" to Afghanistan. As McKelvey notes, when explaining the reduction in violence in Iraq:

"Nearly everyone gives credit to the Anbar Awakening...and to a pullback by the militia led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. These disparate elements, some coordinated by the military and some coincidental, have come together and tamped down the bloodshed."

Want to know what I left out with those ellipses? Here's a key point to keep in mind. There's a huge payoff tied to US counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq:

the U.S. is paying approximately 100,000 individuals known as the Sons of Iraq about $300 a month to keep the peace, and Sunni tribal sheikhs make millions more through U.S. contracts

That $30 million monthly to the Sons of Iraq apparently buys a lot of order.

It's not at all clear that similar payoffs could be effective in Afghanistan.

Consider what columnist Eric Margolis wrote in 2002, "Karzai's `election' has cost Washington $5 billion in bribes and payoffs to Afghan warlords." How has that turned out?


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Energy pledge

The University of Louisville spends about $1 million per month on energy. Since spring, I've been part of a campus team of faculty and staff attempting to figure out behavioral changes that might save energy -- and money. The slow economy has forced budget cuts, though energy conservation is a good idea for a variety of non-economic reasons.

The campus has its own coal-fired electrical plant, so reducing energy usage means reducing harmful pollutants and greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Anyone affiliated with the University is strongly encouraged to complete the Energy Reduction Pledge.


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