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.Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda

by: Michael Burleigh

October 01, 2007
Gave up on this book after a few chapters. Found the author to be a narrow minded arse quite frankly. I had to laugh at many of his opinions that were not backed by any facts but only his right wing bias. I skipped a few chapters to see if it would get any better but it just got more ridiculous. I am glad I didnt buy this book I only borrowed it from the local library and I couldnt take it back soon enough.
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.Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century

by: Philip Bobbitt

May 29, 2008
Gave up on this book after a few chapters. Found the author to be a narrow minded arse quite frankly. I had to laugh at many of his opinions that were not backed by any facts but only his right wing bias. I skipped a few chapters to see if it would get any better but it just got more ridiculous. I am glad I didnt buy this book I only borrowed it from the local library and I couldnt take it back soon enough.
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.Earthly Powers: The Conflict Between Religion & Politics from the French Revolution to the Great War

by: Michael Burleigh

October 02, 2006
Michael Burleig is a historian of some re-known and brings his undoubted abilities in the creation of this book. His central theses
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.Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe

by: Adam Zamoyski

February 04, 2008
Warsaw 1920 is an easily available book on an important topic. As an introductory narrative it's OK. There's little exploration of major themes, the presumptions behind what analysis there is are unexplored. Quite why (other than a 'miracle') the Poles reversed their early defeats remains unexplained. The wider context of the Russian Civil War isn't really integrated. The pro-Polish bias grates after a while.

Much richer, if you can still get it, is Norman Davies' 'White Eagle, Red Star'. Plenty wrong with that as well, but it provides a deeper exploration that makes it useful even if you don't share Davies' viewpoint.
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.Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (Allen Lane History)

by: Mark Mazower

June 05, 2008
This is a first class book which allows a comparative reading of the Nazi occupation of different countries of Europe. What it really shows is the difficulty of trying to see Nazi occupation as a monolith. In reality the practice pursued in the different occupied countries varied enormously- according to which German administration was dominant in the occupied country, according to Nazi stereotypes of each country and what they hoped to achieved from occupying it, according to how the population of each country responded, not forgetting that Nazi occupations generally became more severe with time. A complex history but well worth reading about.
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.The Second Plane: September 11, 2001-2007

by: Martin Amis

January 31, 2008
THE SECOND PLANE is made up of 12 essays and two short stories, all exploring the issue of Islamism. To paraphrase Wikipedia, this is the belief that "...Islam is not only a religion but a political system. Its proponents believe that western military, economic, political, social, and cultural influences in the Muslim world are un-Islamic and should be replaced by purely Islamic influences." For Amis, Islamism has these features. But its primary characteristic is violent extremism.

The subtitle for this book, September 11: 2001-2007, explains what Amis is up to. In his own words, he is presenting a "narrative of misery, and also of desperate fascination" on the currents flowing into and out of 9/11. What was surprising to me is that his essays don't ... Read More:
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.McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers

by: Misha Glenny

April 03, 2008
This a frightening but fascinating book, which brings together the keen-eyed journalism Glenny displayed in the 1990s, with a tale of the kind of organised crime that touches us all, whether we know it or not.

Glenny tours the world, and wisely does not try his hand at thriller-writing as he does so. The stories, and their contexts, are fascinating enough to be simply laid out before us. In each case, the most compelling parts are the history and analysis of how that kind of crime took off, in that place and that time. While there are undercurrents that are common throughout, what stands out starkly are the location and era-specific details of the conditions that allow major crime to flourish. I would have liked to have seen something more about how these ... Read More:
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.Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media

by: Nick Davies

February 07, 2008
I'd always had a feeling that I was being misled by the mainstream media, but never really knew how it came about. This book went a long way to answering that question, and I now understand how the media is manipulated by a variety of sources so that what gets presented is very rarely the news as it happened.

My only criticism of the book is its coverage of the propaganda war in Iraq. It's undoubtedly all true, and relevant to the book, but I found that the middle of the book onwards was almost totally devoted to it, and it just turned me off a bit. It felt at times like the real message of the book was a criticism of Blair and Bush and that the stuff about the press was merely to illustrate that point, rather than the other way round.
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.Worlds at War: The 2,500 - Year Struggle Between East and West

by: Anthony Pagden

March 13, 2008
I'd always had a feeling that I was being misled by the mainstream media, but never really knew how it came about. This book went a long way to answering that question, and I now understand how the media is manipulated by a variety of sources so that what gets presented is very rarely the news as it happened.

My only criticism of the book is its coverage of the propaganda war in Iraq. It's undoubtedly all true, and relevant to the book, but I found that the middle of the book onwards was almost totally devoted to it, and it just turned me off a bit. It felt at times like the real message of the book was a criticism of Blair and Bush and that the stuff about the press was merely to illustrate that point, rather than the other way round.
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.The Return of History and the End of Dreams

by: Robert Kagan

May 01, 2008


The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union led to many optimistic pronouncements on global politics: we had the peace dividend, the new world order and, in the title of Francis Fukuyama's book alluded to here, the end of history.

Maybe the big wake-up call from this reverie came on 11 September 2001, when the world realised that history red in tooth and claw still prowled the earth, but the asymmetric struggles those events represented are not the only ingredients of the dangerous geopolitical brew now cooking, and in this work Robert Kagan sounds a wake up call to the "democracies", summarising the potential perils of, amongst other things, the new-found power of Russia under Putin, of the growing economic clout of China, ... Read More:
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