Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 295 – Public Intelligence Blog

“Must Read” Superb Collection, But Not Transformative,

October 3, 2005

Jennifer E Sims

This is a valuable book and merits careful study by policymakers, practitioners, and students who may be future intelligence professionals. The book is not, however, transformative, nor is it particularly innovative, and for that, I must with reluctance limit it to four stars, but with the caveat that it is a “must read.”

Some of the best contributions are those of Jennifer Sims, and the deeper that I read into the works of others, the more I wished that she had had the time to make the entire book her own, casting a broader net for iconoclastic thinkers, foreign intelligence practitioners, non-governmental experts in open source intelligence, religious and labor experts on foreign threats from foreign religions, whose thoughts do not appear in this book.

The book's major premise is that it was not the institutions that failed, but rather leadership–that all that is needed is a change in priorities, perspective, and methods. This is typical of books written by those who, by their own admission, were “part of the problem.”

The section on new requirements is more than adequate if one wishes to continue to focus on unilateral secret intelligence about major state threats but fails to acknowledge that we earned a D, at best, on everything else, to include terrorism, proliferation, environmental scarcity, ethnic conflict, and dictatorial corruption (our friends) as a long-term threat to our vision of participatory democracy and moral capitalism. The requirements section suffers from a rather staid focus on states and “actor” threats, with little mention of history, geography, culture, religion, or demographics, all forces vastly more potent than your average failed state or single transnational group.

The middle third of the book, on capabilities, is the strongest part of the book. It opens with a chapter on open sources by Amy Sands that I would say is now the best available short summary of that discipline's potential. I especially applaud the focus on the need for analysts (who are NOT under cover) to have professional networks that transcend borders and cultures, and to be comfortable with local as well as global information. Where this important chapter falls short, however, is in failing to recognize that 90% of what we need to know from open sources will never be shared with U.S. “intelligence” and we therefore need an Open Source Agency under diplomatic sponsorship; and that we will never unilaterally collect and process all that we need to know, hence we need a global network of regional information-sharing centers, initially doing open sources, eventually doing all sources. These latter two ideas are transformative, the chapter itself, while very solid, is not.

Clandestine intelligence is well covered from a traditional perspective, but stops short by contenting itself with asking for more authority, tighter lanes in the road, and “staying the course.” It does have gems of insight on both possibilities and obstacles, and is a good read. It does not, however, make the transformative leap toward a much larger non-official cover cadre hired at mid-career; toward regional multinational clandestine stations with mature officers on rotation from other nations; toward a much larger career principal agent network; and toward the excellent idea of one recently retired ADDO, that of one-time “it's just business” contracts for specific operations.

Digital dimension is very fine but could have benefited from a much stronger appreciation of what can be done in addressing the contributions that can be made now by man-machine translation networks with automated online dictionaries, and advanced geospatially-based analytics including predictive analysis.

I have no quarrel with the substance of either the analysis or denial sections, other than to observe that they completely eschew multinational, multiagency analysis.

The management section is strong in terms of understanding what insiders think the problems and solutions are, but for one who has read most books in this field, it is so deeply tied to the past and to past biases and perceptions as to forego any claim to being transformative.

The section on homeland defense is well-meaning, but incorrect in its assertion that the FBI has done well with a good model for joint terrorism task forces (JTTF). First off, the FBI remains a completely dysfunctional organization when it comes to either counterintelligence or sharing with state and local organizations. Secondly, as more than one expert has noted, it is the height of ignorance, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane KATRINA and the imminent bird-flu pandemic, to obsess on terrorism as the sole area where national to state and local sharing will take place. 50% of the “dots” that will help prevent the next 9/11 are bottom up dots observed by citizens and cops on the beat, and those dots have no place to go. We need 50 state intelligence centers and networks.

Britt Snider is unique in America-one of two people, the other being Loch Johnson-who have served on both the Church Committee staff and the Aspin-Brown Commission staff. He is one of America's foremost observers of national intelligence, and his chapter on Congressional oversight is one of the best pieces in the book. Having said that, I would note that it lacks two transformative thoughts, both being explored at this time: first, the time has come for every Congressional committee to have its own Sub-Committee on Intelligence and Information Operations (I2O), and for the ranking members of those sub-committees to form a new Special Committee on I2O with concurrent jurisdiction over both secret and open source information expenditures and capabilities across the entire U.S. Government; secondly, and enabled by this new committee, it is time for a new form of hybrid agency, an Open Source Agency that integrates the Library of Congress and is equally responsive to Congress, the Governors, and the Executive as well as the public, with its Director appointed for life, as are Supreme Court justices, and a fixed percentage of the disposable budget (1%) for complete independence from the White House.

“Must read,” but not transformative.

2005/09/292009/12/04

Review: Democracy Matters–Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (Hardcover)

6 Star Top 10%, Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy

Nobel Prize Material–Extraordinarily Thoughtful and Articulate,

September 29, 2005

Cornel West

I found this gem in the Tampa Airport bookstore and bought it for the title, not realizing that the author was the world-class professor that Larry Summers disrespected.

This is, easily, Nobel Prize material. The reflections of Professor West are extraordinary, and they are well-presented with a wealth of both names and carefully selected quotations from the works of others that make this book both a tour of the horizon, and a bright shining light on the topic of democracy and how to save the American democracy.

As I absorbed this superb material over the course of flying from Tampa to DC and into the evening, I felt that on the one hand, Professor West was truly gifted at singling out and embracing the best literary, religious, and musical talents, and that I was receiving, in the course of a single book, a course on thoughts of others that mattered to democracy. My other thought, once reminded of his dust-up with Larry Summers, was how extraordinarily courteous this author is, in identifying the very destructive tendencies of extremist Christianity, extremist Judaism, and extremist Islam. This is a man who is both innovative and polite.

A few notes from the margins of this heavily under-lined and annotated work….

1) There is marvelous deliberate aliteration throughout the book, with many pages having the resonance of poetry. This is gifted articulation and reflection, hand-crafted communication of the highest order. “Superb artistry of words” is my note on page 27.

2) Professor West is absolute correct to highlight the fact that America is built on genocide against the Native Americans, and slavery of the Africans, and remains in denial of these core realities. Then fast forward to America's support of 44 dictators, its virtual colonialism, its immoral capitalism, it schism between rich and all others–I am reminded by Professor West of Nelson Mandela, and write in the margins: America needs two “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions”–one for what we have done to our own Native Americans, Americans of African descent, and to the working poor, another for what we have done to the rest of the world.

3) Thoughout this book run the themes of prophetic or embracive Christianity, love versus materialism, nurturing versus imperialism. Most interesting to me is the consistency of thought between Professor West and that icon of the leadership literature, Margarent Wheatley. Both understand the extraordinary importance of dialog and openness and the need to share information and perspective, in sharp contrast to the ideologues in the White House that call General Anthony Zinni a traitor for questioning the false facts that led us into an unjust and prohibitively expensive war in Iraq. Dialog, not force, is the way to spread democracy.

4) On page 104 I have the annotation “THIS IS THE MESSAGE!” and “WOW!!!! If Karen Hughes wants to succeed as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, she has only to read this book and memorize page 104. Professor West is stunningly brilliant in both his assessment of America's vulnerabilities from its inherent hipocrasy, and in his evaluation of the faith-based democratic message that has real possibilties in the Middle East and elsewhere. Page 137 is also essential to Karen Hughes–Professor West is incisive in understanding that Western democracy has no chance in the Islamic world; that we must undermine the repressive autocratic clerics; and that we must help Islam modernize on its own terms–Islamic democracy will not look like Western democracy, but it can be democratic.

5) The author is just down-right superb in evaluating the Jewish condition, and the insanities of America's wasteful and counter-productive generosity toward extremist Jews who receive 33% of all our foreign aid, $500 per Israeli (against 10 cents a year for Africans). He is brilliantly coherent when he suggests that we should continue to spend these sums in the Middle East (Egypt gets 20% of our foreign aid) but put our money on the side of indigenous democratic movements, not the autocratic extremists on both the Arab and Israeli fronts.

6) Professor West gently slams Salman Rushdie and V. S. Naipaul while introducing the reader to the wealth of insight and passion in the literature from the African Islamic world.

7) The entire book, in its brilliance, coherence, and insightfulness, is a spanking of Larry Summers, one of Harvard's least qualified Presidents, but on page 189 ff the author addresses Summers directly, and his account of the encounters has the ring of truth. Tenured at Yale and Princeton as well as Harvard, with more publications to his credit than most of his peers, one puts down the book with appreciation for the author's condemnation of the sell-out of universities to greed and corporate grants, and one can easily choose to respect the author over his antagonist.

There are numerous other books I have reviewed here at Amazon that bear witness to Professor West's thoughtful and balanced critique of American imperialism and the loss of our democratic ideals here at home. Princeton is fortunate to have this great mind return to its busom, and one can only pity Harvard for violating its motto and allowing a white supremacist (who does not respect women either) to eviscerate their prophetic Christian and Black Studies faculty.

This is an absolutely grand piece of reflection, ably presented, with enormous respect for the views of others and very delicate manners in the discourse of disagreement. Very few books have aroused in me a passion such as this one has–Bonhoffer would say it is the passon of the black Church. I would say that this one man truly represents all that could “be” in the American democratic tradition. He merits our affectionate respect, embodiying as he does the thought that struck me early on in the book: life as religion, religion as life. In God We Trust, and damnation to those lawyers that seek to remove God from our Republic's identity. One can separate the church from the state, but one cannot separate religious faith from the foundation of democracy–it is as water is to cement, an essential ingredient for a lasting construct.

2005/09/282009/12/04

Review: The World Was Going Our Way–The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (v. 2) (Hardcover)

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Extraordinary largely for showing contractors as the weak link ,

September 28, 2005

Christopher Andrew

This is, like the first book, an extraordinary piece of scholarship. While it can be tedious in both its detail and in the drollness of the “accomplishments” that enjoyed so much Politburo attention and funding, it joins books such as Derek Leebaert's The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World in documenting the insanity and waste that characterized much of the so-called “secret wars” between the US Intelligence Community (within which the CIA is a $3 billion a year runt against the larger defense budget approaching $50 billion a year) and the KGB and GRU.

For those who have the patience or speed to get through this entire book, the single most important revelation and documentation concerns the ease with which the Russians were able to recruit traitors within the US defense community contractors. Ralph Peters has written about this in New Glory : Expanding America's Global Supremacy but speaks mostly of legal treason–corruption and waste. This book carefully addresses the sad reality that DoD is totally penetrated by foreign spies (one would add, Third World and allied spies including France, Germany, and Israel, never mind China and Iran) via the contracting community.

One day someone will do a careful calibration of both the good and the bad of secret intelligence. When that day comes, this book will be as good a place as any with which to start.

Best General Couonterintelligence Books:
Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher's World
Merchants of Treason America's Secrets for Sale from the Pueblo to the Present

2005/09/282009/12/04

Review: Burn Before Reading–Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence (Hardcover)

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Useful to Congress, a President, or a Future DCI,

September 28, 2005

Stansfield Turner

This is a useful retrospective by Admiral Stansfield Turner, Director of Central Intelligence under President Jimmy Carter, but it is most useful if you are a Member of Congress, a sitting or future President, or perhaps being considered as a future DCI. For the general public, and even for intelligence professionals, this is an interesting personal recollection and evaluation that reflects a limited appreciation for the broader literature on intelligence reform and is less likely to be exciting to those seeking to understand the minutia of intelligence.

It could be very useful to the public under one condition or rather one hope: that the public react to this book as I did, to wit, the author may not have intended this, but his superb tour of the relations between Presidents and Directors of Central (or in today's terms, National) Intelligence has persuaded me that our national intelligence community must be removed from the Executive Branch. We need a new hybrid national intelligence community in which the Director is simultaneously responsive to the President, to Governors, to Congress, and to the public. It's budget must be set as a fraction of the total disposable budget of the federal government, on the order of 1%. This agency must be completely impervious to Executive or Congressional abuse, and must act as a national objective source of truth upon which to discuss policy and acqusition and liaison options. A national board of overseers could be comprised of former Presidents, former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Leaders of the House and Senate, as well as selected representatives of the public. Intelligence is now too important to be subject to the whims of politics. Intelligence is the revolutionary source of wealth as well as conflict resolution, and this author has made it clear that most Presidents simply cannot be trusted to either manage it or listen to it with wisdom. I would go so far as to suggest that national science and education also require a similar form of hybrid oversight and management. This is not to say that each Executive agency should not have its own intelligence and information operations (I2O) capabilities and functions, only that intelligence and science, like justice, need a court of last resort that cannot be undermined by ideology and personality.

This suggestion is probably too radical, BUT there is one opening for a first step: the DNI should recommend to the President and to Congress that the new planned Open Source Agency integrate the Library of Congress and be the first new hybrid organization, with the Director appointed for life, as are Supreme Court Justices.

The author has done an excellent job, albeit with some obvious gaps and a few errors, in focusing on the relationships between Presidents and Directors of Central Intelligence. However, the book suffers from the author's understandable but incorrect assumption that national intelligence should remain focused on secrets by, of, and for the President. In fact, not only is most intelligence today from open sources of information, but finished intelligence is a small fraction of Information Operations (IO), that larger matrix of all operational, logistics, geospatial, and other information (including information from non-governmental organizations, universities, and corporations as well as religions and labor unions), and thus the author's perspective and recommendations, while valuable, are relevant only to 10% of the challenge facing DNI John Negroponte and DDNI Mike Hayden.

A few notes from the margins:

The author's largely cursory review of past reform efforts completely ignores the earnest efforts of Senator Boren and Congressman McCurdy with the National Security Act of 1992. That Act was undone by Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, and Senator John Warner, then ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The author does correctly note that all of the recommendations of the Aspin-Brown Commission, a device used by Senator Warner to delay and stop reform, have not yet been implemented.

The author is incorrect when he credits Tenet with focusing on the operational side of the CIA, and for focusing on global coverage. In fact, Tenet appointed a White House mess buddy to be DDO, James Pavitt screwed up for seven years, and then Tenet has the temerity to tell the 9-11 Commission that he needed seven more years to get it right. Tenet also commissioned and then refused to follow the recommendations of a report called “The Challenge of Global Coverage,” where Keith Hall, then Director of the National Reconnaissance Agency, among others, told Tenet directly that with the secret world's obession on seven hard targets, it desperately needed an insurance policy on the order of $10M a year for each of 150 countries or topics including terrorism and disease. Tenet is reported by one present to have said “we are in the business of secrets, speak no more of this report.”

The author is politically correct but wrong to give the recent intelligence reform legislation a qualified “yes” when asking it makes us safer. It does not. The lead article in the Fall issue of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, by Michael Turner, is absolutely on target when it calls the legislation a loss for the American people and the widows and orphans of 9-11, and a victory for entrenched interests including Congressional pork rolling in Virginia.

The author is completely correct to suggest that “CIA” is an acronym ready for retirement. As I suggested in my first book, ON INTELLIGENCE (with a Foreword by Senator David Boren), CIA needs to be come the National Analysis Agency, and be stripped of its S&T and clandestine functions. [NSA needs to become the National Processing Agency–Washington is operating on 2% of the relevant information, and most of it is not online.]

There are two important recurring themes across the book that the author is extraordinarily qualified to address. The first is the long-term political, social, economic, and cultural costs of “covert actions” including assassinations, coups, and other nefarious interventions in foreign affairs. The second is the extremely negative impact on national intelligence of military ownership of three “national” agencies. He points out that we missed the Indian nuclear developments in part because the Department of Defense was demanding that all the satellite capabilities be focused on Iraq, and through ownership, was able to enforce its demands and neglect national priorities.

The author praises George Bush the First as a model President and director, and seems to hint that the son would do well to follow his father's active engagement. The author is brutal about Casey, suggesting (to this reader) that not until Karl Rove has there been a more negative employment of government assets for political advantage. The author is subtly critical of Henry Kissinger, calls Woolsey's tenure a lost opportunity to redirect CIA, and has many other insights that can only come from a DCI, about other DCIs. Overall this is a good read for anyone who cares deeply about the health and nuances of U.S. intelligence.

The book loses one star for gaps here and there. The sources used are very limited–in the critical Viet-Nam era, for example, the author does not cite George Allen's “NONE SO BLIND,” and he does not mention at least 15 other retrospective books on intelligence that would have added substantially to his endeavor, which seeks to end with recommendations for the DNI and future reform legislation that remains needed.

2005/09/262009/12/04

Review: Why the Rest Hates the West–Understanding the Roots of Global Rage (Paperback)

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback

Sane, Calm, Reasoned, Useful,

September 26, 2005

Meic Pearse

It takes a great deal of education, experience, and faith to write a book such as this. Originally a series of lectures, the author has developed some useful, and calmly articulated, thoughts on both why there is a disconnect between the “West” and “the Rest,” and why the West is on a downward spiral to oblivion in practical terms, with the triple whammy of declining birth rates (non-replenishment), increased longevity (generally among those who are not necessarily productive in their older years), and substantial apathy among the self-absorbed, self-righteous, and largely clueless teen-agers and 20-30 “me me me” generation.

There are many books that I have reviewed here for Amazon that support this author's personal reflections, and his citations of those books that did stimulate him are more than adequate. A few themes made by the author strike me as worthy of emphasis, for they provide a road-map for any Western society that wishes to survive into the 22nd century:

1) Morality matters. It is a historical force. Will and Ariel Durant emphasized this in their “Lessons of History,” and many strategic confrontations have borne out the point. Tribes and nations that become amoral ultimately decline and fall.

2) Western myopia cannot be understated. The ignorance of the West regarding global realities and the relationship between Western behavior (inclusive of US support for 44 dictators, immoral and predatory capitalism, virtual colonialism, and the general view of others that the West is “barbaric” in sexual and other matters of fidelity and integrity) and how others view is simply unrealistic.

3) The West fails to understand that the rest of the world, where faith and integrity and loyalty to the family and tribe are often all that keeps the entire society from disintegrating in the face of more primitive environments that we ourselves experience, wants to be modern but not Western–modern with cultural cohesion, not modern with the commoditization of the individual, which both the author of Lionel Tiger (“The Manufacture of Evil”) credit with destroying family, community, tribe, and nation.

4) The author excels at discussion how Western individuals today have lost the context of history, the reverence for tradition, the utility of specified morality. Westerners are “out of touch” with the lessons of history, out of touch with the implications of our selfish decisions in the present that have implications for the future generations.

5) The author discusses competing concepts of legitimacy, and here he goes into nuances all too often lacking in “objective” Western analysis of competing social models. He sees the value of personal versus impersonal authority in the context of societies where bureaucracy is not yet developed and kinship remains the foundation for trust.

6) The author, educated at Oxford, would agree with Philip Alcott, brilliant Cambridge scholar and author of “Health of Nations,” in dismissing most nations as false constructs inconsistent with their tribal and religious networks and beliefs. This is as true of the “Nine Nations of North America” (Joel Garreau) as it is of most of Africa, where colonialism heritage is that of inevitable genocide.

The author concludes, as one would expect of a Christian moralist, that “Nothing less than a massive cultural reversal is necessary. We need to rejoin the rest of the human race.” He focuses on the renewed relevance of religious and moral vision, and here he would find common cause with David Johnson, distinguished author of books on “Faith-Based Diplomacy” and the vital role of religion in fostering reasoned dialog between West and East.

Apart from restoring the role of morality within our over-all culture, the author concludes that we must become informed–like it or not, our lives are bound up with those of everyone else all over the world. Here he is in tight agreement with both President David Boren (former Senator) of the University of Oklahoma, and David Gergen, advisor to multiple Presidents of the United States (most of whom did not listen too well). We must internationalize and modernize our educational system, restore the importance of history and international studies, and give life to the finding of E. O. Wilson from “Consilience,” to wit, that the sciences demand the humanities if they are to be in the service of humanity.

This is a most thoughtful book, reverent in its arguments, one that reminds us all of the value that can be had from listening to or reading the careful reflections of a man of the cloth, born in Wales, educated in England, and now speaking to all of us.

2005/09/252009/12/04

Review: A Simpler Way (Paperback)

5 Star, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Leadership

Simpler way to absorb ideas from Leadership and the New Science,

September 25, 2005

Margaret J Wheatley

Margaret Wheatley is addictive. After reading “Leadership and the New Science” I have bought the rest of her books, and also those that she recommends by contributing a foreword.

This book has a great deal of white space, lots of photos, is double-spaced, but by no means is it simplistic. To play on the title, it is a “simpler way” to absorb the large deep ideas that are documented in “Leadership and the New Science.” If her primary writing were a trilogy, this is the entry-level book, “Finding Our Way” is the intermediate volume, and “Leadership” is the graduate course. However, I recommend they be read in reverse order, because the simpler books are more clearly appreciated if one has the deeper background.

What I find most compelling about this book is the manner in which it captures core ideas from a wide variety of works that have been bubbling into human consciousness in the past 20 years. The bibliography is quite good although by no means all-inclusive (missing Kurzweil, E. O. Wilson, and Stephen Wolfham, as well as Tom Atlee and Bill Moyers, among others).

Among the core ideas in this book that are presented with elegance are the absurdity of thinking that life can have a boss–or that rigid ideas and identities will lead to anything other than rigid non-adjustable organizations. The author stresses the value of diversity, passion, connectedness, humanity and humanness, and tieing it all together, the role of information and of ethics as facilitators for “being.”

There is a very useful discussion of bacteria and the manner in which human attempts to impose machine and medical solutions are ultimately defeated by bacteria. Although Howard Bloom's “Global Brain” is not in the bibliography, everything the authors discuss here is consistent with his concerns about bacteria winning the inter-species war with humanity.

Taking this a step further, I would contrast this book, and the varied books on collective intelligence, wisdom of the crowd, ecological economics (Herman Daly) and so on, with a book I recently reviewed about the National Security Council, aptly titled “Running the World.” The stupidity and arrogance of that title reveals all that we need to know about why U.S. foreign policy is failing, and how desperately we need to take the ideas from this book and apply them to how we manage ourselves and our relationships with other nations, other tribes, other religions, other communities.

2005/09/252009/12/04

Review: The World Cafe–Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter (Paperback)

5 Star, Future, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum)

Bridges the Gap From Atlee to Wheatley,

September 25, 2005

Juanita Brown

This remarkable book has a foreword from Margaret Wheatley, genius guru and author of Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World who inspired Robert Buckman's tremendous work on Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization and it has a review from Tom Atlee, author of The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All and founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute.

As I finished this book and dealt with my teen-ager who at 16 is quite certain that even the great schools of Fairfax County are largely boring and dysfunctional, still teaching by rote and testing memory rather than the ability to discover, it occurred to me that this book is in fact a handbook for both educating the world, and for reforming education. Instead of the current didactic form of instruction (one-way lectures) we should be teaching, at every level, interactive discovery. It's not what you can remember from the past, but what what you can discover in tandem with others, and apply constructively!

EDIT of 12 Dec 07: Lots has happened since I reviewed this book, and it was a delight to discover that this long buried insight actually found itself manifested in the new non-profit, the Earth Intelligence Network, whose 24 co-founders recognize that we need an EarthGame where we all play ourselves, and that to save the planet, we must educate the five billion poor “one cell call (or conversation) at a time,” something we can do by giving out free cell phones and recruiting 100 million volunteers with Internet access who among them cover the 183 languages we do not speak–that will create infinite wealth (see books at bottom of this review).

As someone who has been trained to be dysfunctional, overly reliant on “command and control” and predictability, I can certainly see how this book would cause discomfort and inspire disbelief among the mandarins of industry and government, but I can also see this book sensibly defines the only path likely to lead to collective intelligence and collective consensus solutions.

Context, hospitable spaces, questions that matter, encouraging everyone's contribution, cross-pollination of diverse perspectives, listening for patterns, cultivating collective intelligence and insight through dialog instead of debate–this book has it all.

My last annotation in the book is “Wiki!” As smart people like Jock Gill and Howard Rheingold start to think about how to create a global Wiki that enables a World Cafe with a space for every topic, every challenge, every zip code, every neighborhood, I have a strong feeling that “bottom up people power” may at last be in the offing.

Alvin and Heidi Toffler are publishing a new book in April called Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives Knowing their past work, I suspect it will be an epic statement that carries the work of Tom Stewart The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization and Barry Carter Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era to new heights, and that is where I will end this review: the world cafe is about creating wealth and peace through dialog. Done right, there are no limits to our ability to engage one another in conversation, and no limits to the wealth that we might create, the peace we might foster, by so doing.

EDIT of 12 Dec 07: two additional books have had a deep impact on me since this was first written:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

This book is very serious, very valuable. It is worth reading and it is worth sharing with others. It is part of our “Collective Intelligence” and leads straight to Peace Intelligence and Commercial Intellligence. In the next ten years I plan nothing less than the reduction of the secret budget of $60 billion a year, to $12 billion, with the savings redirected toward national education and connection the five billion poor to knowledge so they can create infinite stabilizing wealth.

Category: Reviews (Books & DVD)

Review: Transforming U.S. Intelligence (Paperback)