2 Minute Book Reviews.

Deep Economy (A)
The main premise of this book is that the local economy is the deeper economy. Thus the healthier and wealthier community. Bill McKibben hardly ever deals in the abstract, rather he is constantly giving examples and providing illustrations of how this type of economy gets practiced locally. He describes the little experiments of living locally . . . such as one winter how he canned all of his food ahead of time and only ate things within a local radius. His goal is to make a connection between the local community and the economy. He spends a good portion of his time sharing about the relationships he has formed in his quest to shop and consume on a local scale. Consequently, the value of relationships in driving and sustaining a healthy economy are focused on a lot. It’s not some over-romanticized look back into the past and the way things used to be. Rather it’s an imaginative redreaming of how one can exist both in urban and suburban settings at a local level, valuing relationships and health over fast and easy. The book is extremely insightful and a moderately easy read. And well worth it.

Hubris (A)
I figured since I bash Cheney, Rove, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz so much, I should probably at least be informed about the decisions made leading up to the Iraq War. Especially, if I want to have any intellectual and informed legs to stand on as I resist it now. To be honest, I picked up the book hoping it would solidify my preconceived views on this administration. And I was honestly expecting something biased. It was anything from it. One of the authors (Michael Isikoff) wrote a scathing book on the Clinton administration calling Clinton an “idiot” and the other (David Corn) was a Fox News contributor . So the authors definitely were liberal partisans. They then lay out all of the evidence (or lack of evidence) that we had going into the war in Iraq. It shows how certain members in the Vice-President’s office intentionally manipulated evidence. The information used is not just here-say. Or anonymous tips. People go on record. Evidence is quoted that is pre-dated to before the time of invasion. So it’s all legit stuff. And it’s extremely, extremely eye-opening. I would encourage every conservative to read it so that they know what exactly goes on behind the scenes. And every liberal to read it so that next time they grow a set and stand up instead of worrying about election year politics. My only complaint is that the book is well over 400 pages and the last 100 feel extremely heavy. Almost burdensome. I’m not sure it was the content in the last 100 pages or that after 300 pages of lies and deceit I was just so tired of it at that point. Either way, it’s a long, heavily citated read.

Consumed (A++)
This is the best non-McLaren book I’ve ever read. And it is the most challenging thing I’ve ever read. Throughout almost every sitting with the book, I would have to walk away and just sit to let it soak in. It was extremely cutting and exposing to me. And I dare say convicting. It’s helped me to realize what a hyper-consumer I am and how childish I am in my tastes and entertainment. Even how childish I am in my spending. I never thought there would be a day when I felt like I needed to grow up and be a man, but this book helped me to entertain the possibility. The basic idea of the book focuses on the infantilization (dumbing down) of our society via the means of marketing and advertising. And the hyper-consumerism capitalism that we live with today. I couldn’t recommend this book more highly. But I will give one disclaimer. It’s 300+ pages of really small type. What makes it worse is that the author writes it like an academic paper. For example the first chapter which is only 35 pages long has 98 footnotes. It’s just a really difficult read where reading 20 pages takes you an hour. So you’ll either love the book or hate it. If you’re a nerd, you might dig it. If you’re not a nerd, you won’t.

Death By Suburb (C+)
This is the most “fluff” of them all. It’s one of those books that doesn’t really have any content. It’s more or less a series of quotes and stories that don’t always make sense in the flow of the writing . . . but are at least meant to hook to the previous quote. Basically that’s my nice way of saying that this guy is a poor writer and has something to say but just doesn’t know how to so he instead writes a few sentences, quotes somebody, writes a few sentences, then tells a story. And when I mean he writes a few sentences of his own content, I mean that. I don’t think there is even a paragraph of original content. It’s like he got one of those pastor’s illustration books and just put them back to back to back hoping that they would make sense. They don’t really. It’s not that the material is bad. It’s actually really good. But it’s more of a John Maxwell-like guide to surviving the suburbs than a thought-provoking challenging read. It’s not bad. It’s just not good. Overall I think it would be helpful for suburban soccer moms and work-zealous dads who live in megachurch world. But not much of a challenge to anyone outside of that.

[tags]Deep Economy, Hubris, Consumed, Death by Suburb, Bill McKibben, Michael Isikoff, David Corn, Benjamin Barber, Dave Goetz[/tags]