new discoveries

November will be remembered by me as the time I discovered the joys of the New Yorker. It is sophistication incarnate! Other great magazine that delivers the goods is the Atlantic Monthly. So out goes Spiegel, which no longer holds my interest. but now I have a new monster to conquer, the Wall Street Journal!

emerald city

'Imperial Life in the Emerald City' is Washington Post journalist Rajeev Chandrasekaran's first hand account of US civilian authority workings beginning from before the invasion in March 2003 and leading upto the transfer of power to Iraqi in June 2004. Emerald City refers to the Green Zone in Baghdad, the fortified area with palatial villas that became headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The author maintains an almost dry, unemotional tone and leaves the outrage to the reader as he recites the blunders of the CPA. At times, the book reads like the absurdist masterpiece Catch 22. The emerging picture of the US bureaucracy in Iraq is one that is usually associated with dysfunctional Third world countries. Similar to other books (like Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq) which claim that US managed to exacerbate a nascent insurgency, the book provides relevant examples to support the case. Recommended reading as a primer on how democracy building can go awry, and how not to plan an occupation.

current musings

its been some time since i typed a few words here. life has been a bit topsy turvy these days, what with school and work at school filling up my time. i have not been most productive, but thats a discussion for some other time.
so i finished Prize, it seems like a distant memory now. but what a great book! i wish Yergin revisits the book and adds an additional chapter to it. Iraq war and the current surge of oil towards $100/ barrel would provide a great framework.
moving on, i read 'Future of Freedom' by Fareed Zakaria, currently the editor of Newsweek, and in my opinion, the smartest and most pragmatic American foreign policy expert. The work focuses on how the modern world is barreling towards 'more democracy, less liberty'. Constitutional democracy is getting a short shrift, while Alexis Tocqueville's 'tyranny of the majority' increasingly becomes the norm. The book is relatively brief, but Fareed cuts a broad swath. He begins with the establishment of the Byzantine empire, the tussles between church and state, king and local barons (which lead to the Magna Carta), Catholics and Protestants, and rise of a business minded 'gentry' in England - all of which had the effect of empowering the individual, while curtailing the power of the state. Then came universal suffrage in the 19th century, which inspite of being a worthwhile achievement, had the unintended consequence in Europe of unleashing nationalistic tendencies. The state was back, and with a vengeance. The result - two world wars, one setting the stage for the other. He then discusses the middle east and its inability at institution building, which has given popularity to hardline Islamic groups like the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood. Being Indian-born he understands India better than most Western intellectuals, and where the West sees a shining example of Third world democracy he rightly sees a semi-liberal democracy, which ironically is democratic probably due to its multiculturalism. India definitely compares favorably to its neighbors, but there is no doubt that it has degenerated into a cesspool of caste based and criminal politics. Along the way he touches upon Russia and its absence of any legislative functioning. Also, informative are the economic criteria that he puts forth as requisites for incubation of constitutional rule.
Finally, he moves to America - the proud home of democracy and details convincingly how the 1960s era changes have wrought damage to the societal fabric by reducing the role of the privileged class in public life. This has had the counter-intuitive effect of increasing the ability of special interest groups to influence the political process. The result, as James Madison foretold, has been 'mischief of the faction' and a sickening atrophy of legislative function. His example of California going from a world leader to one of the worst states in US in terms of the public system is worrisome. Particularly interesting is his discussion of the mutation of religion in US into a form that deemphasizes doctrinal purity, and rather than demanding restraint, tells Americans what they want to hear. The growth of megachurches, popularity of tele-evangelists and the rapid rise of more Evangelical forms like Southern Baptists at the cost of much older, and arguably more intellectual, groups like the Episcopals are all evidence of this trend. In short, consumerism has consumed Christianity. Nothing could be a more powerful testament to the strength of the beast that is American culture and its seductive way of life.
Fareed lays out solutions, which are obvious, but will be harder to implement. They are not novel solutions per se, but a call to adhere to constitutional principles (Madison, where art thou?) , spend time in institution building and facilitate a return to public life of the elite class. Two things do stick out in my mind. First, knowing the challenges in establishing constitutional rule, how could Fareed have supported the war in Iraq? I agree that Saddam was, to put it mildly, a huge roadblock, but he wasn't the only one. Arguably Fareed's implementation of the war would have been different. His mantra is not elections, but constructing a civic life based on free press and free bodies like universities and an independent judiciary. Still, in hindsight, for a person of his knowledge to lend support to the war seems like utterly wishful thinking on his part. But then, he wasn't alone - he had the majority of the country for company. and as he himself beautifully shows in this book, the majority was wrong. Second, if his thesis of American churches reflecting the peoples' whims is true, then this gives lie to the widely held notion of Americans being a religious lot. True, they may still be more religious than the Europeans, but that is not reflective of their true religious spirit. In short, Americans claim and honestly think they are more religious, but it may just be because they have defined and cast religion in their own image, and not vice versa. After all, among the conservatives the greatest scorn is reserved not for the irreligious, but for the ones who do not adhere to their free market principles and strong security concerns. Just ask Jimmy Carter and Hilary Clinton. As more evidence, consider the current popularity of the much married and pro-abortion Rudy Guiliani among Republicans. 'Focus on Family' is currently worried, but my guess is they will once again realize that the way to stave irrelevance is to adapt themselves to what Americans desire. Of course, this would not be a positive sign either, since the latest target of Americans seems to be shifting from protecting unborn life to declawing the 'creative destruction' wreaked by globalization.

third book done!!

this is so dorky, but I am done with my third book of the summer, which is Freakonomics. and I have already started reading 'Kite Runner'. meanwhile 'The Prize' trudges along - more than 250 pages to go.
I am finding Facebook's new iRead application quite nifty in terms of organizing and arranging books (in the virtual world anyway). plus there are quite a few book clubs, though many are devoted to the Pottermania and pop culture books. still I think I should be able to find something good.

summer reading 2007

I will remember Summer'07 as the time when I regained (or maybe even discovered) my love for reading. To be sure, its not a de novo phenomena since I was always a voracious reader of news and analysis articles, keeping myself abreast of all news almost obsessively. But this summer I discovered books! I do not know what was so different this summer, but I think its due to my repeated visits to the university library which like most US universities of any reputation holds an impressive selection of books. Ironically, I started visiting this particular library, among the several others on campus, due to its availability of DVDs, of which also it holds a good collection. In addition to helping me save money at Blockbuster, it also gave me access to precious Criterion DVDs of classic movies. Indeed I watched for the first time two of Ingmar Bergman's movies - 'Wild Strawberris' and 'Seventh Seal'. Hence when he died at the end of July, I could profess some knowledge of his films and his style of film-making, and not just an abstract understanding based on reading glowing reviews. But soon the books came calling.
Initially, I began with Collapse by Jared Diamond, a book that I had bought months ago but never bothered to go beyond the first section. It is finely written account of past and previous societal collapses, and lessons which we can derive from them. The book is deeply informative, and is in similar vein to his previous Pulitzer prize winning work 'Guns, germs and steel', where he brings into sharp relief the role of environment in giving shape to the modern world. The chapters on modern businesses and their supply chains are particularly illuminating, as are some of the explanations he forwards on the failure of groups, and by extension societies, to anticipate, perceive, and ultimately solve environmental problems that prime the ground for turmoil.
My next stop was Robert Kagan's Dangerous Nation, a historical account that negates the popular view of US isolationism. Kagan guides us through foreign policy of the country spanning the initial days of settlement of US, the Revolutionary war, an inexorable Western expansion, the Civil war and finally wraps up this volume of his planned two volume account with the Spanish American war at the turn of the 20th century, when US declared its arrival as a bona fide world power. The underlying theme is the idea of a foreign policy that consistently reflected domestic issues and crises. He also gives domestic context to such famous exhortations like Washington's Farewell address and the Monroe doctrine.
and currently, I am on page 162 of the refreshingly innovative Freakonomics and have finished close to 400 pages on The Prize - which is a complete history of oil.
In total, that gives me up to this date an output in the excess of 1500 pages, over a span of less that 3 months. Not bad, eh! even in my regular reading of news, I have expanded to add Spiegel, a German weekly, in addition to NYtimes and Economist. and of course, every once in a while I dabble in Washpost, BBC, and FT. my head's gonna burst any day now, thanks to the Internet!

The Prize

In this age of frantic appeals against environmental degradation and alarm about radical terrorism, no other product evokes strong opinions and emotions like oil. Coca Cola or McDonalds maybe much reviled across the globe - not least due to their association with globalization - but they don't come close to oil when it comes to influence that rings all across the globe and the insecurity it breeds in governments. Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer Prize winning work 'The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power', published in 1990, is an magisterial ode to the centrality of King Oil and the Hydrocarbon age. This 800 page effort, that I am currently reading, is historical storytelling at its finest. When I first started reading it (I am on page 170 now), I didnt know what to expect. Wikipedia and NY times book review informed me the book is considered the standard text about the history of petroleum, and that was hint enough of the encyclopedic amount of research that must have gone into its preparation. So I expected tons of information, what I didn't expect was the way Yergin recreated this history, giving life to the varied characters that played a role in the incubation of this giant of an industry. I was hooked right from chapter one by his narrative style. It introduced me to George Bissell who came up with the idea of using 'rock oil' for making kerosene, Prof. Silliman of Yale who prepared the first report endorsing the use of this product as an illuminant, Colonel Drake who drilled the first well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and of course the great industrialist John D Rockefeller. Rockefeller, who by some accounts is the richest man to have ever lived, created the the oil industry and indeed may have laid the foundations of the modern corporation by his 'plan' to bring order to the chaos of a nascent industry. This involved vertical integration on a mammoth scale and achieving monopoly on all aspects ranging from production, refining, transportation and marketing. Of course, questionable means were employed - the opponents of his company Standard Oil were given a 'good sweating' by a relentless campaign of price cutting till they caved in. Standard Oil's rise, its battles with rising foreign competitors like Nobel brothers (Ludwig Nobel who was a brother of Alfred Nobel) in Russia, Shell corporation of UK and later with Royal Dutch Shell (so named after Shell's merger with Royal Dutch), and Standard's break-up by the US supreme court are all etched out in great and absorbing detail. I have just finished the first section of the book dealing with oil's rise beginning in the latter half of the 19th century, and its entrance into political policy making under the civilian head of British Navy, Winston Churchill, at the beginning of the 20th century in anticipation of war with Germany. Also, oil's chief market has shifted from illumination to fuel for an increasingly mechanized world order. The cornucopia of connections with events of historic importance that is presented is impressive, as if all events were played out under the ever expanding shadow of this product. Of course, as reviewers of the book have pointed out 'The Prize' doesnt analyze as much as it recites, albeit effectively and with a great eye for detail.
I can't wait to indulge myself more with this superb book. Certainly goes to the top of my Thicket list, by virtue of its research and lucid style.