BOOKS THREAD

Thanks, LJB. I've been intrigued but afraid that I'd be disappointed by Oprah-esque mollycoddle. It's on my list.

 

HC --

It's the real thing. No Oprah-ization. He might be doing those tours, but it's because his message is spellbinding, bound to be snapped up by the larger media at some point.

I'm as cynical about these kinds of books as anybody, but when he was on Diane Sawyer a month ago, my girlfriend and I didn't move for an hour. Then we bought the book and mowed through it in a weekend. Very readable and poundable, 206 pages and undersized.

I should say that none of these "teachings" are faith-oriented. The professor is Presbyterian but the one thing he keeps deeply nestled is his religious interpretation of this. And I respect that.

 

Thanks for the review and recommendation. I saw the book on Amazon and considered it but had the same fears as HC.

 

It's worth it, it's all about activating a power of positive thinking and using that to navigate through anything.

No sermonizing, no bullshit.

 

Awesome. I ordered my first six summer reading books on Amazon a few days back and I'll make this part of my second order.

I'm about finished with Confederates in the Attic and I've loved it. I am really intrigued by the idea of the Lost Cause and that the South lost the war, but has won the battle for the way history views the South and its leaders, specifically Lee and Jackson. I read a book a few months ago called The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History. It lays out the idea of the Lost Cause and how it came about.

My next book depends on when they arrive, but if it arrives within the next few days then it will be The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

 

Confederates in the Attic is in my top 10, the kind of book you envy and wish you wrote, and reread and review as one would a favorite movie afterbars. I've recommended it and lent it to people -- women, foreigners, students -- with ground zero to negative interest in the Civil War and they consumed it. Horwitz pulls people in.

If you like Horwitz, he's just put out a similar book on the "Lost Century" of American history, roughly 1492-1607. Similar format. Part travelogue, part quest, a desire to answer his own burning questions. He's standing at a sickly-looking Plymouth Rock and is not sufficiently moved. Is THIS how it all started? There has to be more than this? And he answers his questions and doubts, turn by turn, investigating Eiric the Red's Greenland and Verrazzano and Columbus' Ocean Blue and Jamestown and Roanoke, in search of each of the keys to unlock America's earliest and deepest mysteries.

 

I was planning on checking that out. If you like books that are travelogue and part historical study, check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Antique-Land-History-Guise-Travelers/dp/0679727833/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212291025&sr=8-2

In an Antique Land is well-written and really interesting. Even though it's set in the 80s, it is still relevant today. I highly recommend it.

 

Anybody read "The Post-American World" yet?

 

I was thinking about this the other day: I would probably put The Road in my all-time Top 10.

 

I read Zakaria's excerpt in Newsweek, and it definitely was intriguing. Even if I don't always agree with him, he always makes even handed, cogent points. I'm thinking about picking it up sometime.

 

Ouch.

 

This looks intriguing, thank you. I'll be spending a lot of time in one of the great libraries of the world this summer and it's on the list.