Yogadad Unmoored

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Hedges, Chris. War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. Public Affairs, 2002, bibliography, index, 211 p. This book was recommended to me by a friend at the recent American Library Association conference in Toronto. And it is terrific. It is a heartfelt and devastating portrait of war, penned by a New York Times journalist who has been in many of the world's hot spots over the last 20 years. Hedges has seen some horrific scenes and talked to victims and victors from El Salvador, to Israel, to the former Yugoslavia. It is this latter conflict that provides Hedges with the fuel for his antiwar fire. What Hedges wants to do is strip war of its romance and justifications, which he does by closely looking at the language used by soldiers, generals, and politicians. And he succeeds brilliantly. In seven chapters, Hedges looks at battlefield action, the addiction many develop to battle, the language of nationalism, and the close relationship of fear and death to love and sex. It is his e...

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Scholastic Books, 2003, 870 p. Holy cow, what a big book! Rowling takes what is essentially a young adult book and turns it into a major novel. And to her credit, she almost pulls it off. Rowling has let Harry, Hermione, the Weasley's, Malfoy, and the other students grow up through the series and in the latest installment, Harry is a petulant 16 year old. His nearly incessant whining and self-pity can wear on the reader. Until, that is, he remembers what it was like to be 16 and that Rowling's Potter is a pretty fair depiction of the self-absorption and desire for independence, while simultaneously wanting to be spoiled like, that most teenagers to through in our modern society. Rowling is much less successful with the adults in her book. Sirius acts like an overgrown teenager most of the time, not at all like the caring god-father type we met in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." It is with Dumbledore...

Right now, I'm in the middle of two books: Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett and War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. Pratchett is the popular author of the Discworld series and this is one of those. I've read the first three in the series and this one is number 11 or something. I got it for free as a give-away at the recent American Library Association annual conference in Toronto. Watch for a review when I'm done. Hedges book is something completely different. I got it on the recommendation of a friend who reads a lot of history. I'm only a short ways into the book but it's totally engrossing. Hedges is a reporter who has written from many of the world's hot spots over the past couple of decades. He's vehemently anti-war and his book is a tightly argued, well-written meditation on the meaning of war and why is fascinates us. More on that one, too, when I'm finished.

National Geographic Guide to Civil War Battlefield Parks. National Geographic Society, 1992, 160 p. Civil War Sites: The Official Guide to Battlefields, Monuments, and More. The Globe Pequot Press, 2003, 306 p. These two guides function best if used as companions. The National Geographic Guide gives very brief synopses of each battle, arranged by state. If you're looking for Spotsylvania, for example, you look up Virginia, then find the battlefield. You get some facts about the battle then the brief narrative of the battle's highpoints. The other quide, prepared by the Civil War Preservation Trust , is more of travel guide to the battlefields. Each battlefield has an entry that gives a description, hours, admission fees, and directions. The arrangement is not strictly by state. Rather it is by region, then by state within the region. Thus Virginia is near the front of the book in the "Middle Atlantic" section and Illinois is near the end in the "Midwest" s...

Barnes, John. The Sky So Big and Black. Tor, 2002, 315 p. Morgan, Richard K. Altered Carbon, Del Rey, 2002, 375 p. The only thing these two books have in common is that they are both science fiction. One is by a well-known, highly published author. The other is a first novel by a former school teacher. Guess which one is better, more compelling, and much more enjoyable? Easy question. I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't a trick question. Hands down, Altered Carbon , Morgan's first novel, is the better of the two. Barnes has written a number of books, many of which have been well-reviewed. This is the first of his that I've read and based on it, I have to wonder why he gets published. This book is dull, boring, without many redeeming values. It is derivitive of Robert Heinlein - unfortunately of the later Heinlein, not the Heinlein of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress , Stranger In a Strange Land , or The Puppet Masters but the Heinlein of such dreck as Time Enough for Love ...

Roy, Arundhati. War Talk. South End Press, 2003, index, glossary, end notes, 142 p. India is a country of many faces and many complexities, many of which are never made explicit to Westerners, and perhaps especially Americans. Roy's slim volume is a blast of angry rhetoric, taking on Indian politicians and religious leaders of all stripes. Her strident and dogmatic tone often takes away from the topics about which she writes. When attacking the Indian government for ignoring the atrocies committed by Hindu rioters in Gugarat in 2002, she lumps them together with the IMF, World Bank, globalization, and US imperialism. This first essay sets the tone for the rest of the book. The six essays collected here were all previously published. The best of the lot is Come September . Here, Roy dissects US policy since September 11, 2001. She recounts the many times the US intervened in other countries to pursue its own interests and links this intervention to the Iraq crisis. But here too s...