Books, books and more books

Younghusband at Coming Anarchy has a post about what he is currently reading. I am a sucker for that kind of thing … .

Currently reading Jean Edward Smith’s very good new bio of FDR. I am picking at or stalled on Steven Ambrose’s 2nd volume of his bio of Eisenhower, Andrew Roberts’ A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, Geoffrey Faber’s bio of Benjamin Jowett, Gen. D.K. Palit’s War in High Himalaya: The Indian Army in Crisis, 1962, Jack P. Greene’s Peripheries And Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire And the United States, 1607-1788. Picking at a recent bargain purchase — $4! — of an ancient, two volume biography of Lord Bryce, which provides one of contemporary life’s few great pleasures — time spent in the company of the men of intellect and action of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Recently finished Stanley Jaki’s, dense, erudite and fascinating The Road of Science and the Ways to God. Also recently finished John Robb’s excellent Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (go get it!), Tom Barnett’s review here. (Zenpundit links to an interview with Robb, here.) I also recently devoured G.C. Wynne’s classic from 1940, If Germany Attacks: The Battle in Depth in the West, which is really about the Germans’ defensive tactics on the Western Front in World War I. A “must read” if you are into that sort of thing. Another good recent read was The Definitive Drucker by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim. Drucker’s depiction of business as it ought to be, and sometimes can be, can be a little depressing if you look at your own situation and see most of his wisdom turned on its head. Drucker is the gold standard, but Dilbert is too often the reality.