Bloodless Coup

Book Lists

In an attempt to provide content around here while Binky and armand are away, I'll do a book related post. I've done book reviews here in the past, but this will be a list of the books I've got stacked up around the house waiting to be read (this is another word for "filler").

Just thought some of you out there might be interested (and, for the record, these are in the random order I've found them, so don't read anything into the sequence):

N.A.M. Rodger, "The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660 - 1649." The first of three volumes of a complete naval history of the (eventually) Royal Navy. Supposedly Rodgers knows more about the Royal Navy than anyone alive, and his career has been building up to this epic (the first volume is like 700 pages long).

T. Christian Miller, "Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq." The Washington Post recommended this (in their "best of 2006 book review a few weeks back). If Tom Ricks ("Fiasco") explained the military fuckups in Iraq, and Woodward ("State of Denial") explained the political fuckups, this book (supposedly) explains the reconstruction fuckups. I sorta knew about the military and political fuckups, so this book promises to inform me more than usual.

Eldon Thompson, "The Crimson Sword." Random mind-candy fantasy. I'm about 80 pages into this (first, of course, of a trilogy), and nothing surprising has happened yet. I might give it up.

Stephen Biddle, "Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle." Recommendation off of Lawyers, Guns, and Money (the blog, not the song). An academic attempts to analyze who wins modern battles. It's gotten very good reviews, so I'm hopeful.

Anthony Beevor, "The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936 - 1939." This is the second edition; some new Spanish archives have allowed Beevor to revist a classic, and correct a few errors. Given that the Spanish Civil War is a lead in to World War II (and some have claimed that there is a parallel to the US in Iraq; that if we don't stand up, the next fight will be WWIII), I'm really looking forward to this.

Sarah Ash, "Lord of Snow and Shadows." More fantasy mind-candy. First of a trilogy. Has better reviews than Thompson, so is (hopefully) better.

Taylor Branch, "At Caanan's Edge: America In the King Years, Volume 3." If you haven't read the first two of these, you really don't know what you are missing. A magesterial trilogy that uses ML King as the anchor for an exhaustive description of the entire civil rights movement, and the people that drove it. Stunning.

I've probably got a few more stashed behind the couch, but those are all I can reach. I supposedly have a job, but I really wish someone would just pay me to sit around and read these.