Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 283 – Public Intelligence Blog

2006/04/042009/12/04

Review: An Army of Davids–How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths (Hardcover)

4 Star, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

5 for Horizontal Knowledge, 3 for the Rest, 4 on Balance,

April 4, 2006

Glenn Reynolds

There are two “five star” ideas in this book:

1) That horizontal knowledge, peer to peer and distributed network knowledge, is quickly burying bureaucratic “top down” or vertical knowledge.

2) That “technological capitalism,” the author's term, enables the information works to control the means of production, finally achieving what I call “communal capitalism.”

3) Against bureaucracies, terrorists have the learning curve advantage. Against civilians, they did not.” The author is referring to the fact that the entire US intelligence and defense apparatus failed to stop the first two 9-11 planes whose attack was two years in the making, but citizens armed with a cell phone figured it out in 109 minutes and stopped the third plane.

4) Further to this, the author provides a riveting discussion of a story overlooked by the mass media on 9-11, the “improvised Navy” that helped evacuate lower Manhattan in what some call an American Dunkirk.

5) The author discusses the explosion in consumer creation and sharing, and makes a compelling case of suggesting that traditional aggregators of information are dead. Google is likely to die in the next five years, but something after Google will help structure, filter, link, and monetize. We are in a transition period and need to reach a place where all historical information, all current scholarship, and all future online publications, both formal and informal, can be leveraged through semantic web and synthetic information architectures.

Now to bring this full circle, I want to mention just a couple of other books, because what is happening in the USA today, ahead of the rest of the world, are three things:

1) The public was sparked by Howard Dean, and now is becoming empowered and mobilized. Citizen advocacy groups are integrating localized observation, information sharing technologies, and collective brainpower to the point that they are more competent and quicker than the government or corporate or media bureaucracies.

2) This Collective Intelligence or Army of Davids is becoming enraged over the end of the cheap oil (which the government knew about in 1974-1979 and concealed in order to keep the bribes from oil companies coming), the end of free water, the rise of pandemic disease, the decline in education and morality and responsible foreign policy.

3) Intelligent observations are being made by stellar thinkers just as Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time and C. K. Prahalad The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks) with the result that this Collective Intelligence, now mobilized and incited by the Bush Administration, sees a better way–a path into the future where we spend on peace and ending poverty, instead of war and invading other countries on a web of lies.

Bottom line: this is a useful book that provides a fragment of the total mosaic. I am very glad I got it, and hope that this review will not only lead you to buy the book, but to read my other reviews, which in the aggregate, provide a free graduate education on global issues in about two hours.

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: See also, with reviews:
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
The Wisdom of Crowds
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

2006/04/042009/12/04

Review: A Farewell to Justice–Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History (Hardcover)

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Censorship & Denial of Access, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Sufficient to Impeach the Warren Commission; CIA Now Proven Complicit,

April 4, 2006

Joan Mellen

Edit of 11 Dec 07: Since I wrote this review, another book has come out, Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History and it conclusively documents two points:

1) JFK was assassinated by a Cuban exile team trained by CIA to assassinate Castro, that used their training against JFK, ostensibly for the Bay of Pigs mess. CIA then covered this up.

2) JFK was warned by Bobby that there were strong indications of a plot to kill him, and JFK himself blew it off, entrusting his safety to a Secret Service with no idea a professional CIA hit team was coming in.

As a former clandestine case officer for the CIA who served in Latin America and also lived in Viet-Nam during the ten coups, one of which killed Ngo Dinh Diem, I picked this book up with some trepidation.

It is an exhausting review, a truly incredible accomplishment for a single human being without any visible corporate resources for doing machine processing or visualization of all of the information.

Here's my bottom line as a 54-year old with over 30 years government service:

1) The Warren Commission, like the 9-11 Commission, blew it and mis-served the nation. They are retrospectively impeachable for dereliction of duty.

2) The Central Intelligence Agency, and Ted Shackley in particular, have a lot to answer for, and continue to lie and withhold key documents from the American people. We need the moral equivalent of a truth & reconciliation commission on covert action–I thought the Church Commission had done some of that, but clearly there is more to be done.

3) We clearly do not have a government that is capable of being consistently honest, at the same time that we have thousands of dedicated government employees who have no idea what the “cowboys” are doing. The recent outrage over CIA renditions and torture are all too familiar for those who have studied the Phoenix assassination program in Viet-Nam, or the JMWAVE efforts against Castro that blew back against John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy.

4) The time has come for the people to arm themselves with open source intelligence. I want to cut the spines off all these books that are creating new revelations and new detail, put it all in a machine, and makes some sense out of it. We are a few years away from that point, but the day is coming, and when that day comes, we need to hand down some public indictments, including posthumous indictments, and begin to set the stage for honorable governance and ethical intelligence.

This book may not be completely accurate–it tends to assume the worst of CIA at all points–but it is assuredly enough to persuade me that US intelligence has much to answer for, and the Warren Commission *should* be retrospectively impeached.

For those who under-estimate the value of history, see Robert Parry on Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'(Ted Shackley played a big role there as well, allegedly running guns to Central America, drugs back through America to Europe, and cash from Europe home), and also the complaints of the official Department of State historians, who are outraged that the CIA will still not release documents from the 1960's without which we cannot properly evaluate our foreign policy misadventures in retrospect.

2006/04/042009/12/04

Review: The End of Poverty–Economic Possibilities for Our Time (Hardcover)

5 Star, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Silver Bullet for John Edwards? Solid Thinking for the Rest of Us,

April 4, 2006

Jeffrey D. Sachs

Now that everyone knows Senator John Edwards has focused on poverty as the underpinning for his revisitation of the “two Americas” divide (see also Barbara Ehrenreich “Nickel and Dimed” and David Shipler's “Working Poor,” this book should receive even more attention.

The author is extraordinary, and I take issue with some of the quibbling pot shots (when you are in fact so central to something that both the UN Secretary General and the President of Columbia University want you in the top position, perhaps you just might *be* central).

The most important thing I can say about this book is that the timing is perfect–there is a “correlation of forces” emerging that combines “An Army of Davids” (see my review of that book), “The Left Hand of God (ditto), Collective Intelligence (see my review of Tom Atlee, “The Tao of Democracy,”) and a massive public awareness that both the Republican and Democratic parties are corrupt and dysfunctional (see Peter Peterson's “Running on Empty” and Tom Coburn “Breach of Trust”), and that the rampant unilateral evangelical militarism and immoral capitalism that the Bush dynasty has imposed on the earth is in fact a stake in the heart of the American Republic.

It may not be an exaggeration to say that this book represents the pinnacle of “new thinking” in which the public is energized into realizing three great precepts:

1) Republics belong to the people–the government of a Republic can be dissolved by the people when it becomes pathologically dysfunctional.

2) Sovereignty as defined by the Treaty of Westphalia is passé, in that it supports 44 dictators and massive corruption, censorship, genocide, state crime, and so on. There is a place for sovereignty, but only when certain standards of legitimacy, morality, transparency, and sustainability are present.

3) Poverty is the fulcrum issue for the world, just as democracy is the fulcrum issue for America. If one reads this book in combination with C. K. Prahalad's “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” it is crystal clear that a shift of money from militarism to education, health, wireless access, and micro-cash economics will unleash the entrepreneurial innovation of five billion people, and literally save the world.

There are a number of stellar aspects to this book.

The author warms my heart when he slams the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank for being ignorant and having the wrong economic model. His articulations of the need for “differential diagnosis,” and for the development of “clinical economics” are Nobel Prize material. He is right on target when he lambastes the IMF for overlooking “poverty traps, agronomy, climate, disease, transport, gender, and a host of other pathologies.” A different take on the IMF and World Bank is provided by John Perkins in “Confessional of an Economic Hit Man” while the contributing delinquency of immoral multinational corporations is addressed by William Grieder in “The Soul of Capitalism” and US insanities are addressed by Clyde Prestowitz in “Rogue Nation.”

The author has clearly been influenced by Paul Farmer and his book “The Pathologies of Power,” and uses the emergency medicine model to discuss how clinical economics varies from developmental economics. One could say that some nations need to learn to read and feed themselves first, and only after doing so, are they capable of moving up the rung. Lest anyone think the author is over-reaching, he is quite clear on limiting his objective to the elimination of EXTREME poverty, not all poverty.

The bottom line is quite clear: for just 1% of the US GDP, or a 5% surcharge on families making over $200,000 a year, extreme poverty can be eliminated by the year 2025. Anyone familiar with Hans Morgenthau and the “sources of national power” will understand that people rather than geography or resources or military power are the fundamental unit. People can think and share information and innovate. The author clearly discusses how disease destroys labor–including the entire male working class in Africa, and how disease, poverty, and education interact. The checklist for “medical triage” of a country, on page 84, is superb. The “big five” interventions are Agricultural, Health, Education, power-transport-communications, and safe drinking water-sanitation.

The author takes special care to dispel a number of myths, chief among them the myth that African corruption makes foreign aid irrelevant. While there is a great deal to be said for aid mis-management leading to black markets and such (see William Shawcross, “Deliver Us From Evil,”) the bottom line is clear: the US Government is both well behind other more enlightened governments in its rate of giving, and downright incompetent at “doing” aid. Indeed, the author can be noted for his general critique of all “official advice” as being generally ignorant.

This is not an ivory tower idealist. He discusses ten examples of global scale success stories from the Green Revolution to cell phones in Bangladesh, and settles on Stabilization, Liberalization, Privatization, Social Safety Net, and Institutional Harmonization as the steps needed to migrate from failed state to stabilized state.

Interestingly, he disassociates himself from the Harvard professors that helped the Russian oligarchs loot the Russian state through predatory privatization, and deliberately slams Professor Andrew Shleifer's role on page 144.

The author appears to be the first person to write a fifteen page plan for migrating a country (Poland) from a socialist economy to a market economy, writing from midnight to dawn due to local time pressures. This book is nothing short of riveting. It will stand the test of time as a prescription that can be explained to the voters, understood by politicians, and enforced by democratic elections.

2006/04/042009/12/04

Review: The Covenant with Black America (Paperback)

Economics, Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Many Excellent Reviews, Some Additional Related Reading,

April 4, 2006

Tavis Smiley

There are some really excellent reviews of this book, and I recommend they all be read as the authors are better qualified than I to comment on the book's weaknesses.

I want to focus on its strengths. This is a five-star piece of work that is extremely well developed and well-presented. The ten covenants merit listing because all Americans need these covenants, and if the Latinos and the Americans of color can form their own parties and demand equality, then these ten covenants work for all of us:

I. Securing the right to healthcare and well-being. See my review of Paul Farmer's Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology, 4) and Andrew Price Smith's The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, and Their Effects on National Security and Development

II. Establishing a System of Public Education… See my varied reviews of the work of the university. Thomas Jefferson said “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.” We've been blowing it since Viet-Nam.

III. Correcting the System of Unequal Justice. Not only do people of color get cheated, but so do white people that are not part of the corporate white collar crime world. See my reviews of both books by Kurt Eichenwald (The Informant: A True Story and also Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story)–U.S. law enforcement is joke in strategic terms, not just with illegal immigration.

IV. Fostering Accountable Community-Centered Policing. Makes sense, with an emphasis on community-building. More recently I have been promoting the need for a “bottom-up” community warning network with 119 and 114 numbers that help National Guard watchstanders “see” patterns that can be used for preventive policing.

V. Ensuring Broad Access to Affordable Neighborhood that Connect to Opportunity. This one really grabbed me, the author pointing out that the Department of Transportation spends 60% of its budget on roads for cars driven mostly by white people, and a fraction on mass transit of greater value to those who cannot afford a car.

VI. Claiming Our Democracy. This short section could have benefited from some mention of the reforms proposed by Ralph Nader (voting on week-ends, instant run-offs, end to gerrymandering), but it is right on target in pointing out that we have a corrupt democracy that does NOT deliver representative accountable representation. Since this is a Republic, we have the authority to dissolve the government and start over–now wouldn't that be something?

VII. Strengthening Our Rural Roots. There is a growing understanding that the centralized models of agriculture and energy are not only bad models from an oil-demand point of view, but they also destroy communities. “Localized” communities spread out and doing their own agriculture, energy production, and moral networking, are the way to go.

VIII. Accessing Good Jobs, Wealth, and Economic Prosperity. All well and good, but it starts with education. We have to give everyone a good education, and that is not happening in the inner cities or the rural areas, in part because we still have an education system built to train docile factory workers, not creative free spirits suited for the age of networked information.

IX. Assuring Environmental Justice for All. See my review of Max Manwaring (editor), “Environmental Security,” and Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

X. Closing the Racial Digital Divide. Every church needs to become a Collective Intelligence Center where the members can come together to strategic on lowering their mortgage rates, sharing cars, increasing their income with online second jobs, etcetera.

Each section concludes with a Facts sheet, and then sections on what the community, the individual, and leaders can do, as well as short sections on what works.

Over-all this is an elegant collection of very educated views that should yield a very fine “summit” between John Edwards and Al Sharpton.

I completely agree with the reviewer that is disdainful of any attempt to shop this covenant to the Democratic or Republican parties. Both are completely corrupt and out of touch with America. A separate party is exactly the way to go, co-equal to the Greens, Libertarians, and others, but ideally, also helping to bring together the various minority parties, including a Latino party, under a federated American Independence Party. Peter Peterson in Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It has it right: BOTH the Democratic and Republican parties need to be closed down (conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans can form their own minority parties and come together with those listed above as well as the Deaniacs).

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: as I write this We the People appear to be stirring. There is now clear evidence that Dick Cheney is a proven liar and a nakely amoral person, and that Congress betrayed us all, the Republicans by being foot-solders for the White House, the Democrats for being their door-mats. 100 million “opt out” voters could come back into politics in November 2008, and help us take back our government. I for one am absolutely committed to reducing the size of the federal government while at the same time assuring free public health care just as we get “free” police and fire safety, and the same quality education for everyone through high school and thereafter as needed.

2006/03/312009/12/04

Review: Crashing the Gate–Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics (Hardcover)

4 Star, Civil Society, Culture, Research, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Politics

Great on Internet Saving Democracy, Lose It Assuming Democratic Party Will Be There,

March 31, 2006

Jerome Armstrong

This is an absolutely superb book, one of the finest reviews, in a readable form, of all that ails this Nation. The authors are like fighter pilots, performing incredible feats of daring-do, right up to the point where they crash and burn by suggesting that the Democratic Party can win anything at all.

I read a lot–almost exclusively non-fiction about information, intelligence, emerging threats, anti-Americanism, the lack of strategic culture, white collar crime, and the negative impact of US domestic political machinations on our national security and prosperity. This book is one of the single most extraordinary overviews I have ever seen, and if you buy and read only one book this year, this is the book.

I bought the book on faith, but for those who wish that the publisher had done a proper job of posting the table of contents, let me just post that information.

American Reality covers corporate cons, theocons, neocons, and other losers

This Ain't No Party starts with Divided We Fail and then discusses how each of the major movements (labor, environment, women) failed.

The Gravy Train is about white-collar crime–the beltway mafia, the commission mafia, the media, propaganda against our own.

Laying the Groundwork is best summed up by the quote from Mahatma Gandhi on the first flyleaf: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” We WILL win–there are not enough guns on the planet, or enough places for white collar crooks and crooked politicians to hide, to keep us down or avoid our justice.

Civil War discusses the Dean machine and the path to “Netroots.”

The book concludes with Inside the Gate, which I have mixed feelings about–the authors have some thoughtful ideas on challenging every Republican, but they miss the boat completely in failing to understand that the Democratic political leadership is just as corrupt, slightly more stupid, and much less ruthless and effective.

That leads to my two critiques that take away one star, but I certainly do consider this book a must read and the authors to be geniuses and thought leaders:

1) Peter Peterson, in Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It does a much better job of laying out the prevailing mood across America, which is essentially, “a pox on both parties.” They have both main-lined bribery, they both lack ethics, vision, strategy, and a commitment to the public interest, and neither party is suited for managing America. What the authors forget, perhaps because of their focus on the Dean revolution (which failed–as did the more electable Edwards). John Kerry was the epitaph of the Democratic Party, and Hillary Clinton will be its gravestone.

2) The authors make the mistake, from the above starting point, of thinking this is about mobilizing a bigger Democratic base against the Republicans. That will not work. Base on base, the Republicans will win every time in this era; in part because the Democrats have given up faith (see my review of the utterly brilliant The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right by Rabbi Michael Lerner). As I tried to tell Dean and then Edwards and then Kerry, you do not beat a bigger dog with another dog, you beat them with a dog-catcher. There is only ONE dog-catcher issue in this country, and it is this: does EVERYONE's vote count? The answer is no. Hence, I see the author's well-intentioned guidance going down the drain UNLESS they write a second book, which I eagerly encourage, that does two things this book does not do:

a) Show how an American Independence Party, to be launched on the 4th of July, can have a federalist organization that includes conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, and Couch Potatoes all as self-organized units that come together with one goal, and one goal only: crushing the extremist religious-corporate right, and restoring the concept of moral representative democracy to America. Any Congressman who fails to leave either the Republican or Democratic Party, who fails to join the new party, should be defeated in 2008.

b) The authors could write a handbook for organizing the people through a national budget simulation that brings out the issues and demonstrates what Paul Ray has known all along (see my review of “Cultural Creatives” and Google for “New Political Compass”): every issue can attract a mix of ideological views where consensus can be achieved. The problem with our two main parties today is that their corruption eliminates honest representations (see my review of “Breach of Trust” in which the author discusses how forcing Members to vote on the “party line” dishonors their obligation to represent their District). I am prepared to contribute financially if these two authors will establish a web site where we can create a virtual coalition government, with all “wings” of the American Independence Party represented, and where we can use a national budget simulation (it's not policy until its in the budget”) to sort out our spending priorities inclusive of elimination of the double-deficit and a shift of $100B a year toward waging peace. Ralph Nader's book “Crashing the Party” has some good ideas-why can't we do this under the author's guidance, and also pick a coalition cabinet that challenges both Republican and Democratic candidates to do the same and participate in cabinet-level debates under the League of Women Voters?

This is a super book, but the authors repeat the mistake Joe Trippi made early on (see my review of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything: the Internet will not save the Democratic Party. Using the Internet to create a new umbrella party will, however, save democracy. The two should not be confused. The Democratic Party today is Republican Lite, and not worth saving. Bring on book two-I'll buy the first 100 copies!

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: Lou Dobbs on CNN is calling for all Americans disenchanted with the two party system to register as independents. This seems to be catching on. Reuniting America is hot (Unity08 is not–last gasp of the two-party spoils system). If 100 million voters come back to vote after dropping out these past eight years, it is game over on corruption, and a new day for democracy.

2006/03/312009/12/04

Review: Turmoil and Triumph My Years As Secretary of State (Hardcover)

5 Star, Diplomacy

His views on intelligence (secret bad, open good)–Of Lasting Value,

March 31, 2006

George P. Shultz

This is one of those rare memoirs that combine ease of reading, common sense, and substantive greatness. Much much easier to absorb that Henry's Kissinger's turgid prose.

Although no longer in print, there are a number of copies floating around, and as long as I was using the book for a new article on strategic intelligence, I thought I would offer up my notes from the flyleaf for the Amazon community. My page numbers are from the 1993 hard cover edition.

Secretary Shultz is a former Marine and says early on in the book that his wife is part of a “package deal.”

Some extremely thoughtful views on competition in the information age, and very strong explicit angry statements against the “cult of secrecy.” Clearly understands the revolution in communications and information technology. p 18

Has some real issues with flaws in raw open source information loaded with unfiltered bias. p. 26

First director of OMB, p. 29, does not evince concerns over the disappearance of the Management function over the years.

Crisis management still not making proper use of open sources of information including commercial imagery, p. 44

CIA under Bill Casey too independent and unreliable. p. 50

Diplomatic “gardening” consists of SecState visiting counterparts on their home turf. p. 128

Vatican intelligence, p. 150

Emphasis throughout on values, integrating cultural policy, cultural strategy, cultural warfare

Firehose of information, nothing offered by intelligence or by information technology managers helped deal with it. p. 272

CIA “wild plan” for Surinam, p. 297

CIA “out of control” in mining Nicaraguan harbors, p. 307

Faulty intelligence to the President, p. 312

Intelligence pattern over time: first alarming and then vague, -. 425

On Strategic Defense Initiative, going to a briefing only to be asked, “Is the Secretary cleared?” Dumbfounded by this. p. 492

“So much for our intelligence” faulty biography on Soviet Premier Tikhonov, p. 493

State/Schultz versus Defense/Weinberger “poison” sapped government cohesion, p. 498

Security reviews, ridiculous impositions, p. 544

CIA botches Yurchenko, p. 595

Intelligence cooking the books, p. 619

Bottom line: Intelligence let this Secretary of State down, and does not appear to have gotten any more competent since then despite a doubling of its budget from $25M to $50M or more (some estimates suggest $70B total).

If you are interested in grand strategy, unified national security (using ALL of the instruments of national power wisely), and the vagaries of a really rotten Presidential inter-agency management process, this book is well worth buying used.

2006/03/292009/12/04

Review: America at the Crossroads–Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (Hardcover)

Democracy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

A few gems, generally light-weight and shallow,

March 29, 2006

Francis Fukuyama

This book has several gems that keep it from dropping to a two, but it also has a number of rather severe warts that prevent it from going to a four.

The gems first:

1) Although we have seen all too many history of the neo-cons, who seem to adopt policies of convenient (failing on the left, they move to the right, where nuttiness is an easier sell), I liked the concise summary of key concepts (preemption, regime change, unilateralism, and benevolent hegemony) and the distinction between the neocon theory and the Bush practice. To this I would have added a penchant by both to substitute ideological fantasy for real-world intelligence, and a predilection to lie to the public (and Congress) to achieve short term ends regardless of the long-term consequences.

2) I also liked his brief description of the concentric circles around terrorists, including radical religious terrorists (some would equate the extreme right evangelicals in the USA with the extreme left evangelicals led by Bin Laden), naming as the author does the sympathizers, fellow-travelers, the indifferent, the apolitical, and those sympathetic in varying degrees to the West. It is helpful for the author to address, at least in passing, that extremism flourishes when the middle drops out–when the mass of people are indifferent or apolitical, they give the extremists on the left and right a free ride to lunacy at public expense.

3) The author focuses two chapters on the need to reform American soft-power institutions, while also reforming international institutions helpful to applying power on behalf of legitimacy. He is appropriately critical of the many members of the United Nations whose power is illegitimate, 44 of them being dictators.

4) Finally, on page 164, he has a moderately interesting graphic that illustrates Legitimacy versus Effectiveness among internationally active institutions, and also lists the relative merits of formal versus informal mechanisms, clearly implying that legitimacy comes at a cost of flexibility and non-accountability.

Now for the warts:

1) This is a lightweight series of undergraduate lectures. A graduate level person can skim this double-spaced pint-sized book in an hour.

2) The author has been publicly castigated by Charles Krauthammer, in an Op-Ed “Fukuyama's Fantasy,” for fabricating a specific quote for which there is a television and audio record to support Krauthammer's accusation. While I am no fan of Krauthammer's ideological view, I do agree that this fabrication lends support to those who suggest that the author is loose with the truth and in a revisionist/self-apologist mode.

3) Intellectually, from a multi-disciplinary perspective, this work is at best a C+ for a graduate level personality. The author leaves out too many important references. On the subject of whether sovereignty should be respected or displaced, anyone who fails to integrate the brilliant work of Philip Allott, The Health of Nations: Society and Law Beyond the State (see my review of this work for a concise summary), is simply not serious about deep discussion of the need to restructure international affairs and the increasingly integrated globe where local threats impact on global stability, and global illegalities impact on local stability. It is time to overturn the Treaty of Westphalia and revisit some of the pioneering work from the 1970's (e.g. Richard Falk), in order to develop new political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, and techno-demographic constructs for sharing our wisdom (The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All) and sharing our planet, humanity, and rule book (High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them).

Having read and reviewed over 600 books and a few seminal DVDs relevant to the themes this author has reviewed, I put the book down with two thoughts:

1) Premature fame of an author is a burden on the uninformed reader. Like Tom Clancy, who had exactly one great book in him, and then had to rely on a series of ghost writers and co-authors, this author could benefit from making better use of industrious graduate students able to give him more “due diligence” to broaden the value of his mature reflections.

2) In consequence, this book misses so much relevant information that I am at a complete loss as to how to summarize the gaps concisely but will take a stab at it, consistent with my “lists” here on Amazon:

a) The author focuses on the neoconservative legacy and its relation to power and democracy, but in so doing, completely misses the larger discussion of virtual colonialism, predatory immoral capitalism, the costs of the Cold War, the treasonous decisions by Wall Street to rely on laundered drug money for liquidity and of US politicians to rely on cheap oil to win elections and keep the bribes coming, and other major issues. While the author does single out the Millennium Report of the United Nations, he does so in the context of the ideological debate over whether one should use power to address symptoms or root causes. He ignores completely the possibility that immoral and irrational US policies, spending (double deficit) and behavior may have something to do with our impending demise.

b) Strategy is not a word that appears in this book, at least not to where I could see it (it is not in the index either). While the author talks about soft power with a bow toward Joe Nye, e.g. The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone and he talks about alliances versus freedom of action, this book is devoid of the kind of strategic thinking that Colin Gray, author of Modern Strategy, would look for in a work such as this purports to be.

c) Democracy in America is not discussed.

d) The book is antiseptic. The author starts with a fabricated quote from Krauthammer and ends with a quote from Madeline Albright (the one that repressed alarming reports on terrorism) about how Americans should lead because they can “see further” than other nations.

I recommend Clyde Prestowitz's Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions Peter Peterson's Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People and Tom Coburn, Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders as well as all books by Max Manwaring, Ralph Peters, and myself.