John Buchanan understands the true spirit of our nation and puts his finger smack on all the ways we've strayed away from that spirit. This is the first social studies volume every high school kid should read. This book is so right on it hurts. Get this book; read it; then go out there and save your nation — these United States — from those greedy insiders who have high jacked it for their own evil gains.
Phi Beta Iota: The Occupy movement in the USA that has emerged in Sep-Oct 2011 is a manifestation of the ideas in this book, and the urgent needs identified but not assimilated in 2005 and earlier.
5.0 out of 5 stars Being Twittered, a Helpful Contribution,September 27, 2011
I was going to use the existing review as a guest review at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (all point back to their Amazon pages), but on further investigation have found that this book is being Twittered, and the Executive Director of the Earth Intelligence Network thinks very highly of it (he read it, he does not do reviews, this is my way of sharing his views and my links as well as flagging the book for the global readers of Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog). So in part to give the author a break, in part to urge used of the Look Inside feature that Amazon enables and the publisher utilized, and in part to point to the below books, I give this book five stars and suggest that it deserves a bit more praise than it has received.
Amazon sucks in some ways. The following two relevant non-fiction titles are “not allowed” by their rules against “self-promotion,” never mind that they are the only two books on their respective topics and highly relevant to the domain that this book addresses.
5.0 out of 5 stars Long Needed Treatise, But Too Expensive,September 21, 2011
EDIT of 11 December 2011: Gene Poteat, President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) has an excellent review of this book in the Summer/Fall 2011 issue of Intelligencer. The following quote is from his review, it captures the essence with perfection:
“The weakness and deteriorating standing of America in the world today is the failure to take into account the role of information, disinformation, ideas, values, culture, and religion plays in the influence and conduct of foreign and national security policy.”
While the above glosses over the corporate capture and abject corruption of all three branches of the Federal government, it certainly summarizes and recommends the book in question. See also my graphic, “Information Pathologies,” loaded above next to cover.
End Edit
In the midst of an economic depression, it is a real shame to see a book that is so very relevant to unscrewing the Republic, and also see the same book terribly over-priced. At 230 pages this book should be offered at 24.95, and a donor should be found to permit the author to speak to the Department of State via the Secretary's Open Forum, with a free copy of the book to every person attending.
Click on Image to Enlarge
The author is the founder of the Institute of World Politics, a rather unique institution that offers three Masters programs and that strives to do what no other university can claim: to teach a mastery of all of the instruments of national power, and to teach how culture, ethics, strategy, and philosophy can come together to drive Whole of Government planning, programming, budgeting, and execution so as to advance both the prosperity and the protection of the Republic.
This book came to my attention after I found and truly enjoyed another book out of the Institute of World Policy, by Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace by Juliana Geran Pilon. Everything I read about the Institute, or by those associated with it, offers a very strong, coherent, culturally-compelling vision of how to advance positive values inherent in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.
5.0 out of 5 stars Six Star Nuanced, Brilliant, the Stuff of Nobel Laureates,September 15, 2011
This is a nuanced book. It is not possible to “review” it without having actually read it, read it carefully, and then read it again. It was easily a five as I got into it, and then became a six as I appreciated just how magnificently the author has reframed all future discussion of this topic, and set the gold standard for data-driven discussion–not something they do in Bonn, London, Paris, or Washington.
This is not a book for data geeks. The author excells from the first page in emphasizing the importance of perception and understanding (however wrong they might be_, and the tangible relevance of convictions, history, and philosophy….these MATTER to business, and in this book I believe the author takes the intellectual and ethical level of any business discussion about globalization and about regulation up a notch.
5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond 5 Stars, Epic, Poetic, Startling, Reasoned,September 9, 2011
I am the one who urged the author to get his book into Amazon's excellent CreateSpace. As much as I personally hate electronic books, I absorbed this book in electronic form and can only say that in print it has got to become a collector's item. This is hard truth, straight up. It should certainly be translated into Arabic, Chinese, and other languages. This book goes into my top ten percent “6 Stars and Beyond.” See the others at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, under Reviews (middle column).
Right up front, let me give the author and this book my highest praise: both have INTEGRITY. Integrity is not just about honor, it's about doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing righter, it's about being holistic, open-minded, appreciating diversity, respecting the “other.” There is more integrity in this book than in the last thousand top secret intelligence reports on Afghanistan, all full of lies and misrepresentations.
2.0 out of 5 stars Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It), February 12, 2008
The book is extremely well-written, and a joy to read. It would be highly recommended, except for two fatal flaws discussed below.
Poundstone's latest book deals with an issue that is fundamental to democracy, yet almost totally ignored in the U.S. While many books focus on the role of money in elections, or voter registration, or voting machine integrity, relatively few popularly written books have tackled the more fundamental question of how votes get translated into representation. This is not a question of voting machine technology, but of logic. Most Americans are remarkably unaware of the variety of voting methods available, nor of the fact that the plurality voting method that predominates in the U.S. is not the norm among modern democracies, and, in fact, is probably the most problematic of all voting methods.
5.0 out of 5 stars In the Ada Bozeman Tradition–a Vital Stepping Stone,August 16, 2011
EDIT of 10 Sep 2011 to add more specifics and a concluding judgment.
I am delighted to see that Look Inside the Book has been activated and urge one and all to look over the table of contents and then buy the book. This is a preliminary review, mostly because it causes me pain to see no review at all on this important work. A copy of the book is on the way to me from the publisher. I will insert my substantive additional comments in a few days.
The book is in the Ada Bozeman tradition, and brings back to mind my continuing recommendation that no one be allowed to graduate from any serious international studies or international security course without reading at least the 25-page introduction, but ideally the full work:
She is to intelligence and statecraft what Will and Ariel Durant are to the study of history.
It distresses me to observe that we have not come far since this book was published, with many failures across the fifteen slices of human intelligence (HUMINT) among which are included the Human Terrain Teams (HTT) that I believe should be absorbed into the new active duty Civil Affairs Brigade with regional battalions. This would be an excellent time to hold a conference and do a follow-on book, this time integrating both the full spectrum of HUMINT capabilities, and the new meme, Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2).
Within this book, several of the chapters stand out for me:
“Hybrid Wars” by Col John J. mccuen, USA (Ret)
QUOTE (75): “Hybrid war appears new in that it requires simultaneous rather than sequential success in these diverse but related ‘population battlegrounds.'”
“Avoiding the Cookie Cutter Approach to Culture: Lessons Learned from Operations in East Africa,” by Maj Christopher H. Varhola USAR and LtCol Laura R. Varhola, USA
QUOTE (156): Inadequate preparation and planning (today) “Despite the lessons learned in Iraq, operations like those ongoing in Kenya and Tanzania are marked by high personnel turnover. Moverow, most of the personnel desployed there have received little or no training on the region, have no Swahili language ability, and do not have a chain of command insisting that they learn the indigneous language in situ [which would not matter since they rotate out so quickly.”
Key lessons not learned in Africa Command (AFRICOM):
01 Mistaking the power of tribal identity
02 Overlooking cultural complexity
03 Dubious public affairs efforts
04 Misunderstanding religious influence
05 Ignoring economic and power relations
I am stunned–stunned beyond belief–that military commanders desperate for a culture belly-button have tended to appoint the predominantly Christian chaplains to that position. Talk about the blind leading the deaf.
“Fourth Generation Warfare evolves, Fifth Emerges,” by Col T. X. Hammes, USMC (Ret).
QUOTE (312): Fifth-generation warfare will result from the continued shift of political and social loyalties to causes rather than nations.”
Col Hammes provides a very tight opening on how most of the US Government refused to take 4th Generation warfare seriously (even after Al Qaeda stated that this was their focus), and does a nice job of showing how all generations of warfare continue to be present while fifth generation emerges in which the emphasis is on a global strategic narrative (information operations) with supporting violent actions.
The book ends with an all too short piece from Antulio Echevarria II, one of the top scholars at the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), on “Wars of Ideas and the War of Ideas, and that is perhaps the irony of this superb work brouight together by editor Juliana Geran Pilon: despite the excellence of this specific book, and the coherence of the contributions from all of the authors, the US Government generally, including the Department of State, and the Department of Defense more specficially, are in the toilet when it comes to recognizing the cultural nuances of confrontation in the 21st Century.
I am reminded of Tony Zinni's brilliant distinction among the six different wars that were waged in Viet-Nam all at the same time depending the geographic and demographic terrain, this author takes the concept a step further to posit something that does not exist but should: Whole of Government Multinational Multifunctional War-Peace Spectrum Operations–full court press on all fronts, not just the military front.
Here are a tiny handful of books that I respect along with this one, on this topic. The US Government is massively ignorant about reality and especially about cultural nuances, so all of these books are vital to anyone who has aspirations of public or private service in the international arena, who wishes to display integrity in all respects. Any fool can lecture the “other,” understanding them is quite another matter.
Gets to the very crux of our nation's ills.,September 27, 2009
