Jason Mattera is an up-and-comer. Only in his twenties, he has already been featured by some of the biggest Conservative names in talk radio, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Roger Hedgecock, and Mike Gallagher. I suppose that list tells you all you need to know about his political leanings. Obama Zombies is his first book and it screams Malkin, Beck, Coulter as he seeks to tell “How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation.”

If you have read a book by any of those people or listened to any of their radio shows, you’ll know roughly what Mattera is going to say. There is a sense in which this is two books–one that rehashes the same old conservative arguments and one that puts them into this new context of Obamamania. Now I don’t mean to use the word rehash in a pejorative sense–many of those arguments conservatives make are good ones and ones I agree with wholeheartedly. Global warming is a lot of nonsense, but a perfect opportunity to impose all kinds of laws and regulations while gaining political points; socialized health care really could become a nightmare; capitalism offers the nation far greater hope than the Democratic ideal of wealth redistribution; seeking to put to rest the threat of Islam through around-the-campfire dialog is a dead-end. And so on. You know the planks of that platform by now.

What Mattera does that is different, and what he does well, is showing how Obama’s Presidential campaign packaged and sold all of this to a whole generation of impressionable young people, many of whom have far more enthusiasm than wisdom. He shows how the campaign turned this young generation into a group of zombies, powerful but unthinking.

Three themes stood out above the rest. The first is the power of celebrity. Obama’s campaign understood that if they were to win the election they would need to mobilize this generation and they understood in turn that in order to do so, they would need celebrities on their side. And so they enlisted the Hollywood elite to laud Obama and pour contempt upon McCain and Palin. They were very effective in this, using every available means to show that the nation’s idols were firmly on the side of Obama. Millions of young people were swept up in the momentum, falling in lockstep behind the ultimate celebrity.

The second theme that stands out is the power of the media. We already know this of course, but it is interesting to see how the media impacted youth, especially through celebrity “news” personalities like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. These men were little more than shills for Obama and yet their shows are, for many young people, their only access to the news. They believe what they hear from such men and allow them to shape and mold their opinions. When Stewart and Colbert showed themselves firmly in the Democratic camp, millions of youth followed along.

And the third theme is the power of youth. What Obama’s campaign realized that McCain’s did not, is that in many ways authority structures are shifting in this digital world. Many people have written today about the wisdom of crowds and the power of crowds. When they discuss such things, they are generally discussing crowds of the young and technologically-adept. These are the people who are so easily mobilized today and who are so eager to be mobilized for what they perceive as a good cause. Obama’s campaign understood this and they roused that crowd. McCain’s campaign missed badly; their attempts to communicate with that generation fell completely and pathetically short.

All of this makes Obama Zombies an interesting book and one worth reading. It explains the recent past but also helps us project ourselves into the future a little bit. We can see a glimpse of how the 2012 campaign will come together and how the Democrats will have the immediate upper hand in reaching that same generation. I really hope the Republicans are reading it so they can learn a few lessons and at least make it interesting in 2012.

Verdict: Read it for its interpretation of the past and its importance to the future

My family used to watch that old show Unsolved Mysteries. I always hated it. Though I couldn’t deny there was a bit of an attraction in learning about these strange mysteries no one has ever been able to solve, I was always frustrated by that very reality–that we couldn’t solve them. There were no answers in the show, only questions. Big questions, interesting questions, questions I really wanted answers to, but questions that remained a mystery. This is one reason I dislike conspiracy theories. Sure it is interesting to speculate on what realities hide behind what we assume is true, but in most cases we will never know otherwise. And I find that supremely frustrating.

Not so Jesse Ventura. Former professional wrestler, former Governor of Minnesota, and now professional conspiracy theorist (for TruTV’s Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura), he loves them. And he sees them everywhere. American Conspiracies is his attempt to bring to light some of the most prominent conspiracies in American political history.

Now it’s a strange truism that when you go looking for conspiracies, you tend to find them. After all, life is rarely entirely free from gray areas. Always there are strange shades of gray between what is evident and what is hidden. And it is alluring to think about that space between, to wonder what might have happened in them. I have heard of the term pareidolia in this context. It refers to “a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct.” Go looking for those conspiracies and before long you will inevitably find evidence to back them up. And this is exactly what we see in American Conspiracies.

Ventura begins with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, saying that it is likely that there were more people involved in the plot than just the few who were rounded up. He points to conspiracy as well in the fact that most children learn only about John Wilkes Booth and not the other conspirators. This is quite a stretch for a conspiracy; some history books may simplify by pointing only to Booth but I don’t know of anyone who would suggest that the few people punished for the crime were the only ones involved.

After rather a weak start with Lincoln, Ventura turns to FDR (an attempted coup to overthrow him and establish a fascist nation), JFK (the CIA did it), Malcolm X (the CIA and the mob did it), Martin Luther King, Jr. (the mob, the military and some crazy right wingers did it), RFK (CIA again), Watergate (the CIA set him up–they’ve been busy), the Jonestown Massacre (you guessed it–the CIA again). You get the idea. The CIA is also running drugs, shipping them to the US in the bodies of dead soldiers. The Republicans stole the elections in 2000 and 2004 and came exceedingly close to doing so again in 2008. And, of course, 9/11 was either an inside job or a massive cover-up in which the Bush Administration either knew about the plan or allowed it to proceed to further their own ends. The buildings were dropped not by the planes but by carefully-placed and precision-timed explosions. You’ve heard it all before.

As is always the case with such theories, Ventura offers evidence that often seems compelling. But of course evidence is always compelling when it is presented in isolation. He makes his case for each of these and often the evidence seems to be there. But walk away for a few minutes, think it through, and you’ll quickly see that the conspiracies are often more muddled than the truth.

I’m not so naive as to think that the world as we see it through the mouth of the government and through the lens of the media is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Clearly there is a lot that we, the ordinary, unremarkable people who comprise 99.99% of the population, don’t know and never will know. I know that Satan rules this world and that there are power structures and power struggles that happen far beyond what we see and experience. There is no doubt in my mind that the world is not always what it appears to be. And yet neither am I convinced that reality according to Ventura is any closer to the truth.

Ventura has always been an entertainer. In his heyday he traveled the world tearing the town apart and entertaining millions. His job was to create a story that was pseudo-believable but entirely entertaining. He was good at it then and he is good at it still. Here he rehashes conspiracies that have been debated for years or decades. He introduces little that is new; little that has any measure of credibility. It’s conspiratorial, it’s hard to believe, but at least it’s plenty entertaining.

Verdict: Read it if you love yourself a conspiracy theory.

I don’t know of too many ethical quandaries more difficult than that of torture. For many people, torture is so distasteful, so abhorrent, that there is nothing to consider. But often the real world does not allow us to think in perfectly clear categories of black and white. Of course we would never use torture lightly or recommend it widely, but I think any of us can dream up situations where it may be advisable or even necessary. The United States has often found itself in situations where torture could protect the country and save lives. Can we then say that it would be objectively evil?

Marc Thiessen’s Courting Disaster gives away its bias in the subtitle: “How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.” The CIA kept America safe, he says, by their willingness to use Enhanced Interrogation Techniques to pry information from captured terrorists. Despite the benefit brought about by such measures, Barack Obama immediately banned them when he became President. Thus Courting Disaster is “the story  of how dedicated men and women at the Central Intelligence Agency went head-to-head with the world’s most dangerous terrorists, got them to tell us their plans, and kept America safe for eight years; this is the story of how Barack Obama has exposed their  secrets to the enemy, unilaterally disarmed us in the face of terror, and invited the next attack.”

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) is more than mere semantics; it is a useful way of drawing a distinction between these techniques and what we think of when we use the word torture. Thiessen is very careful to be up-front about what forms “torture” takes when used by the United States military or by the CIA and FBI. It is never a case of a brutal interrogator prying off finger nails or tearing out teeth with a rusty pair of pliers. Instead, each subject is evaluated individually and subjected to a set of techniques specifically chosen for him. The purpose of EIT is not to extract information during the act, but to convince a prisoner to give up information during a later process of debriefing. While we may be accustomed to the Jack Bauers of the world torturing people and immediately gaining information, this is not a realistic picture. Interrogation and the gaining of information are two distinct steps. And both are carried on in a deliberate, measured way that cause no significant or long-term physical harm.

The media has had much to say about waterboarding. The misinformation they have communicated is startling. In reality waterboarding is only ever the final step in EIT, the measure used if all else fails. It is not used lightly and is applied only within very specific contexts and under very clear guidelines. In fact, of the thousands of combatants captured in America’s recent conflicts, only three have been subjected to it. If you have never seen what is involved with waterboarding, be sure to head to YouTube to give it a look. There you’ll find videos of Christopher Hitchens undergoing it. And there you’ll see that, though it is obviously terrifying, it is also apparently harmless in the long term. No physical damage is done.

Thiessen carefully documents the vast amounts of critical information extracted from people who were subjected to EIT. And truly there seems to be a clear link between the use of EIT and the fact that there has not been a major terrorist strike on US soil since 9/11. Many planned attacks were disrupted by information gained by those who were subjected to enhanced interrogation. And yet President Obama has banned such techniques and, further, has freely released information that will allow terrorists to prepare themselves should such measures been allowed again in the future. Even worse, they now know that all they need to do is demand a lawyer and they will have extended to them the rights of U.S. citizens. It is near insanity.

What Courting Disaster offers is primarily a pragmatic defense of EIT. Though one chapter is given to ethical considerations, I suspect this defense will do little to convince naysayers. For such defense we must look elsewhere. And here I recommend Al Mohler’s book Culture Shift where Dr. Mohler dedicates a chapter to this thorny issue. He summarizes well my take on this: there are times in which torture, though distasteful, may be necessary; it may be the lesser of two evils, an unfortunate necessity in a sinful world. Such decisions must not be made lightly and such actions must be done in a measured fashion. But the Bible does not absolutely forbid such things.

The Bush administration’s dedication to EIT was important in that it emphasized capturing terrorists alive. Ironically, President Obama’s distaste of EIT has led to terrorists being killed rather than captured; he would prefer to kill them on the ground than to capture them alive and extract information from them. It takes tortured ethics to suggest that death is the better option.

As I read this book I was impressed by the care the CIA takes when it applies EIT to captives. And I was surprised to see how wrong the media has been in their descriptions of what they call torture–how they have slandered those who had been given task of using such techniques. The book gave me an understanding of EIT that was far more valuable than what I had before. And it has given me confidence that torture (at least defined in this way) sometimes can be ethical when used with care. I am increasingly confident that a Christian worldview can account for Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Read the book and I suspect you’ll feel the same.

Verdict: Read it to better understand this thorny ethical issue.

Note: I’ve made a couple of minor edits to the post to better phrase my position

For a long time now I’ve been meaning to read more of Thomas Sowell. His Basic Economics has long been on my list of things to do, as has Economic Fallacies. As it stands, Intellectuals and Societies is only the second of his books I’ve read (after The Housing Boom and Bust). This book is really a broadside against the people who influence our society with their ideas. It is a book that takes aim at intellectuals, and especially those who deliberately avoid accountability for what they believe and what they teach. The “places to which intellectuals tend to gravitate tend to be places where sheer intellect counts for much and where wisdom is by no means necessary, since there are few consequences to face or prices to be paid for promoting ideas that turn out to be disastrous for society at large.”

Of course a book dealing with intellectuals will need to provide a useful definition for this class of person. Here Sowell says simply that an intellectual is a person whose end product is ideas and whose validation process involves only peers. Accountable only to their peers (which is no real accountability at all), intellectuals are free to create outrageous ideas and to influence society with them. And yet they are almost never called to account for these ideas. It is obviously very dangerous to separate ideas from consequences, to allow people to propose and demand whatever they wish but without ever calling those people to account for their influence. And yet this is precisely what happens with intellectuals. Says Sowell, “the ultimate test of a deconstructionist’s ideas is whether other deconstructionists find those ideas interesting, original, persuasive, elegant, or ingenious. There is no external test.”

Through the book, Sowell looks to several areas of society and shows where and how intellectuals have had their influence. He looks to economics, social vision, media, academia, law and war. In each case he shows how intellectuals have influenced society, how their ideas have become part of the cultural engagement and how, almost inevitably, the effects have been negative. He shows that ultimately what intellectuals crave is power and authority, especially moral authority. “In many ways, on a whole range of issues, the revealed preference of intellectuals is to gain moral authority—or, vicariously, political power—or both, over the rest of society. The desires or interests of none of the ostensible beneficiaries of that authority or power—whether the poor, minorities, or criminals in prison—are allowed to outweigh the more fundamental issue of gaining and maintaining the moral hegemony of the anointed.” Those who are unaccountable point to their own intellectual superiority as grounds to express and maintain power over others.

Sowell’s view toward intellectuals in general is exasperation and, at times, ridicule. This ridicule is particularly entertaining in a book that, by virtue of the subject matter and the never-ending examples, is extremely frustrating. Sowell breaks up the frustration with the occasional penetrating and scornful comment: “Intellectuals who have never run any business have been remarkably confident that they know when businesses have been run wrongly or when their owners or managers are overpaid.” Or again, “It is hard to think of any decade within the past century when the intelligentsia were not embarked on some urgent crusade to save the world from some great danger to which ordinary folk were considered to be oblivious.” Or in case any doubt remains as to his position, “While virtually anyone can name a list of medical, scientific, or technological things that have made the lives of today’s generation better in some way than that of people in the past, including people just one generation ago, it would be a challenge for even a highly informed person to name three ways in which our lives today are better as a result of the ideas of sociologists or deconstructionists.”

I guess the irony in all of this is that Sowell himself is an intellectual. Yet he proves himself to be an intellectual with that rarest of all virtues–common sense. He does not allow ideology to cloud his judgment, permitting him to propose the outrageous and the destructive. His conservatism stands him in good stead. Meanwhile, his ability to communicate complex ideas to simple minds, allows him to write a book that though written about intellectuals, is not a book only for intellectuals. Anyone can read this book and benefit from it. And hopefully many will.

As the National Review writes, “Sowell takes aim at the class of people who influence our public debate, institutions, and policy. Few of Sowell’s targets are left standing at the end, and those who are stagger back to their corner, bloody and bruised.” In almost every case they deserve the beating they’ve received.

What strikes me as I read Sowell is the profound difference between intellect and wisdom. A man may be utterly brilliant, well-spoken and highly-regarded, the holder of endless academic credentials and acclaim from his peers. And yet he may be a complete fool. And doesn’t the Bible tell us just this? The book of Proverbs tells us with stark clarity that many who consider themselves wise are, in reality, foolish. The book of James ties wisdom to humility. There is little humility in today’s intellectuals and, sadly, very little wisdom. Sowell expends some effort in differentiating between intelligence and wisdom. “Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect. Wisdom is the rarest quality of all—the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding.” The harsh reality is that many intellectuals are bankrupt when it comes to wisdom. Too many intellectuals have never learned to be wise. They are foolish at heart and, inevitably, the ideas that define them are just as foolish. And in this book Sowell illustrates this time and time again. It is, I think, the enduring lesson of Intellectuals and Society.

Verdict: Read it to better understand how intellectuals shape society.

Politicians come and go, rise and fall. Few fall as quickly and with as little grace as John Edwards. Once a front-runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Edwards was undone by the news that while his wife of thirty years was battling cancer, he had been carrying on an affair and had even fathered a child with his lover. He rose far and fast and found that he could fall just as quickly. Voters are willing to put up with some scandals, but not this one. Edwards fell from grace and will never recover. His days as Presidential hopeful are long gone.

The story of Edwards’ meteoric rise and fall is told by Andrew Young in the book The Politician. Young first volunteered for Edwards in his 1998 campaign for the U.S. Senate. He remained in Edwards’ employ constantly after that point. He graduated from driving Edwards from event-to-event around his home state, to managing his schedule from his Senate office. Along the way he also became the guy who was tasked with cleaning up behind Edwards, hiding or erasing evidence of his boss’ indiscretions. He became like family, or perhaps like a domestic slave, seeing the Edwards’ at their best and their worst. Eventually this led him, at his boss’ bequest, to claim to be the father of Edwards’ unborn child.

“How, I asked, was I supposed to explain to my wife that I should confess an affair I never had, claim an unborn child that was not mine, and then bring her along with our family as we attempted to vanish into thin air?” Can you imagine having this conversation with your wife? And yet somehow Young did it and managed to convince his wife to play along; or, more likely, to convince her that at this point she had to play along. Thus began a bizarre couple of months of being on the run from the paparazzi, attempting to hide a truth that was only too apparent. Not surprisingly, no one was fooled.

Young’s account of his many years of unparalleled access to the Edwards family makes for fascinating reading that will serve to confirm the accounts of John and Elizabeth. Those who read it will be glad that Edwards never had the opportunity to become President. If his opinion of himself was so great as a “mere” Senator, we can only imagine what would have happened had he attained the highest office in the land. Presented as brilliant, astute and yet so self-absorbed that he was unable to see the cost of his poor decisions, Edwards is portrayed in a decidedly negative light. His wife Elizabeth suffers as well, shown to be angry, spiteful and power-hungry, willing to show public hypocrisy toward her husband in order to have the chance to become First Lady. Both accounts accord with what is widely known about the two.

What is more interesting, perhaps, is Young’s portrayal of himself. Having made a long series of monumentally bad decisions, and having spent years as little more than a gopher for his boss, constantly asked to do the most menial of tasks, Young is probably a little easier on himself than the outside observer would be. Though he does not refuse to put any blame on himself, neither does he really refuse to paint a picture of himself as the victim of a particularly charismatic and persuasive individual. In the end he borrows the pseudo-Christian spirituality of his father, the preacher Bob Young, and says that he should have just learned to love himself; this would have kept him from doing all he did. “If I had truly loved myself, I would have been ashamed of my own mistakes and lived in fear of being found out. If I had loved myself, I would not have felt the need to devote myself to a hero and his cause. If I had loved myself, I would have understood how much Cheri and the kids valued the time I spent with them and I would have said no to John and Elizabeth Edwards.” But I disagree with this fundamentally self-centered worldview. So does the Bible. What would have made the difference is if he would have loved himself less. Had he loved himself less and his wife and family more, he would have seen Edwards for who he was and would have walked away, to live life for and with his family. It was his own self-absorption that led to his enslavement to John Edwards. Only the blindest mind would refuse to see this in the pages of the book.

I find that the major lesson of The Politician has less to do with John Edwards and more to do with the author himself. What strikes me is how a man can hang his star on another person, trusting that the ascendancy of the other person will bring about his own ascendancy. This desire to become somebody on the coattails of someone else led Young to do things that cross from ill-advised to just plain dumb–epically dumb. Even when asked to do things that were immoral or illegal, Young was so bound to Edwards that to refuse his will would be to leave himself destitute and friendless. Of course eventually he ended up both destitute and friendless anyway. It was inevitable, really. The book of Proverbs seems to have all kind of wisdom that would have informed Young, if only he had taken its lessons to heart. These lessons are to be taught to young men. A guy of Young’s age should have known better.

Here we see a man who thought so highly of himself that he was willing to do anything, even at the expense of his own dignity and conscience, to satisfy the increasingly self-centered demands of another person. Yet it was in this other man that he hoped to find life. Edwards was an idol, not in the sense of someone he aspired to become, but someone in whom he sought to find life. And like any idol, Edwards proved cruel and remorseless and petty. He demanded much but offered only deferred and ultimately impossible joy. Young bound his life to this idol and suffered the inevitable consequences.

Verdict: Read it to see how the heart longs to find life in all the wrong places.

Game Change was in the news before it was even released. Several shocking revelations (or perhaps “shocking” revelations) reverberated around Washington. John Heilemann and Mark Halperin broke the news of Harry Reid’s use of the word “negro” in relation to Obama and Reid was immediately forced to issue an apology. Bill Clinton muttered that a guy like Obama would have been serving him coffee had he been around just a few years earlier. I don’t think he apologized. But this book, telling the story of “Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime” had already made its mark and was headed to the top of the bestseller list.

Though the book deals with historical events–the 2008 Presidential elections–I have a difficult time considering it history. History is an accounting of past events and as such, relies on proof. Proof is a tricky thing, though. We tend to see proof as footnotes and citations. In some contexts proof may also be a quote attributed to a person. In either case, the value of such references is that they can be verified and validated. I can turn to the source cited and see immediately that a quote is accurate or inaccurate either in wording or sense. Or I can simply ask the person whether he did, indeed, say what was attributed to him. The history is only as good as its credibility and credibility comes through proof.

The historical accounts in the New Testament are an example of eyewitness evidence. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:6 that over 500 people had been witness to the resurrected Jesus with the implication that anyone could simply go and ask them if Jesus had, indeed, risen from the dead. He knew people would look for proof and he was glad to offer it.

Game Change offers no proof for any of the facts it presents. “The majority of the material in these pages was taken from more than three hundred interviews with more than two hundred people conducted between July 2008 and September 2009.” No problem, so far. Interviews provide excellent historical research. “All of our interviews–from those with junior staffers to those with the candidate themselves–were conducted on a ‘deep background’ basis, which means we agreed not to identify the subjects as sources in any way.” But here we come to a complication. The authors say that this anonymity was necessary in order to preserve a high level of candour. But a skeptic may well see it as suspiciously convenient. A historian will demand more proof. The authors say, “just trust us.” But if this is to be credible history, we are within our rights to demand more.

The book’s content itself is interesting, even if it lacks credibility. The authors are equally-opportunity offenders, I think. If I had to guess, I’d say that their sympathies lie more with the Democrats than the Republicans but it may be just that my sympathies tend to lie the other way (as much as it matters to me as a Canadian) and so I am more easily offended when they write of the people I prefer. On the whole what they say serves to further the stereotypes. Hillary Clinton is an angry and controlling ego-centrist. Obama is a man of the hour, thrust upon the world stage and eager to embrace fame. McCain is an old, foul-mouthed grouch who is fighting for a last chance for his day in the spotlight. Sarah Palin is naive, emotional and pseudo-competent at best. There are few surprises here. Of course it is not all negative, but those are certainly the impressions that will last the longest. It is the negative that will prevail.

But really, because the authors offer no proof, I found myself reading without wanting to retain. I did not want to have my opinions of these people shaped by a book that is gossip as much as it is history. I want to believe the best of people (even Hillary Clinton!) and do not want to allow biased, anonymous sources to shape my perceptions. And so I read enough to understand the book, but almost with a view to forgetting it. I was probably more successful in the former than the latter. But isn’t that just the way gossip works? Once we hear it, we cannot unhear it.

Game Change was a disappointment in just about every way. While it claims to be an “ultimately definitive” account of the 2008 presidential campaign, its absolute lack of credibility ensures that this is not the case. A definitive account will need to do better than this. For now, this is little more than a National Enquirer level of history.

Verdict: Read it if you get your news from the gossip mags.

It is difficult to think about the abuses faced by women around the world and to still believe, as do so many, that human beings are somehow, somewhere, innately good. The evidence would so clearly seem to point in the other direction–that there is something very seriously wrong with mankind. This pessimistic but realistic viewpoint was confirmed as I read Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn travel the world heaping up evidence of the abuses against women and proposing ways forward. The authors focus on three particular abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence such as honor killings and systemic mass rape; and maternal mortality. This takes them across the globe, but primarily to Africa and to East Asia. They pause briefly elsewhere (such as in Sweden and Holland to compare the effectiveness of legislation outlawing versus legalizing prostitution) but primarily focus on women in the developing world.

The format of the book is remarkably effective. The authors first discuss an issue, often by relating the stories of a couple of women they have met in their travels, and then provide a lengthy account or case study on that same topic. This combination nicely mixes the theoretical with the practical. It is one thing to hear about the mass rapes in Rwanda but another entirely to come face-to-face with a survivor and to hear how she has sought to live life in the aftermath. The stories are always poignant, touching and, more often than not, horrifying.

One thing that impressed me about this book was that, while it was written about women, it did not ever fall into outright feminism. There were a few times where I had flashbacks to my college days and expected the authors to provide some old feminist argument or rationale, but always they allowed reason to prevail. So, for example, when showing how women around the world are subjugated by men, they point out, rightly, that women also subjugate women. After all, it is often the madams who imprison young girls and force them into prostitution. So we see that the oppression of women is not a problem with men, but a problem with all humans. The authors’ prove in this that their interest truly is for the welfare of women, not for the downfall of men (a rather important distinction, I think).

Time and time again the authors return to the importance of education as a solution to the oppression of women. Education is key. Educate women and they become useful to society in more ways than simply birthing children and satisfying the sexual needs of men. And certainly I would not wish to downplay the importance of education. Some may (and undoubtedly will) scoff at me for this, but I truly believe that the Christian faith offers women their greatest hope and freedom–even more so than education. I can say this with confidence because I believe what the Bible says–that God created the world, including both men and women, and that he has told us there how men and women are to relate to one another. When the Christian faith is lived out in accordance to Scripture, women find tremendous freedom to be who God has created them to be.

Only the Christian faith affirms the value and equality of women. When the Christian faith is ignored in favor of some kind of legalistic morality only loosely based on the Bible, women inevitably suffer. And this is the case with any other religion I can think of: it is always the women who suffer first and who suffer worst. Just look to Islam or Hinduism or any other faith and you will see how women are subjugated. The authors here do dedicate a chapter to Islam and seek to answer the question, Is Islam Misogynistic? They fight hard to say “no, not according to the Koran” but it is difficult to really believe their conclusion with so much evidence stacked against them. It is God, through the Bible, who offers women their greatest hope.

It almost seems wrong to say that I enjoyed reading this book. Full as it is of stories of the suffering of women, it is painful and often infuriating. Many of the stories are brutal and hard to read–stories of rape and trafficking and forced prostitution and every other form of utter, abject humiliation and degradation. Yet these accounts simply represent the harsh reality of so many of the world’s girls and women. Hard though they are to read, the alternative, ignoring them, is surely no better.

My concern with Half the Sky is that many of the organizations the authors recommend would undoubtedly be ones towards which Christians would want to be very cautious. While they may be doing lots of good work, they may also be involving themselves in activities that Christians would not want to support. Therefore it is wise to be cautious and to seek out organizations that are truly worth supporting. The authors are clear that Christian organizations are doing a world of good in developing nations so there are many to choose from. Let us hope that these organizations can prove to the world that it is only God who offers true hope to overcome oppression.

Verdict: Buy it

I can’t deny it–I kind of like Glenn Beck. Sure you can argue that he’s just another outrageous radio windbag who will do nearly anything to fight his way to the top of the charts. That’s probably true. Yes he is annoying and occasionally obnoxious and, for all appearances, ridiculously self-assured. All true. But this does not necessarily mean that he is not correct about a lot of things. Through all the bluster I hear a lot that sounds to me like just plain common sense–the kind of sense that seems a rare commodity today. Maybe it is a sign of the times that common sense can sound radical and can be labeled as such.

In Arguing with Idiots Beck takes on small minds and big governments. In a question and answer format he answers the objections of “idiots” on a series of hot-button issues: capitalism, the second amendment, education, energy, unions, illegal immigration, the nanny state, home ownership, and economics. He also looks to the long history of progressive Presidents (focusing on Wilson and Roosevelt and showing how contemporary Presidents are little different) and offers a refresher course on the U.S. Constitution. You probably know exactly the kinds of things he stands for and the kinds of things he hates, so I will not recount them all for you. If you don’t know, just imagine what Rush Limbaugh would say and you’re on the right track.

The book is assembled in a kind of scrapbook format that features endless sidebars and callouts and cartoons and other visual distractions. There are even bits of colored text labeled “ADD Moments” woven almost right into the main body of the book. It makes for a rather distracting read and perhaps adds just a bit too much levity to what is really a series of very serious topics. Or maybe I just prefer the straight dope. Regardless, Beck does a very good job of taking a wrecking ball to countless idiotic objections to common sense solutions. From beginning to end he relies on his trademark sarcastic humor and offers plenty of moments when the reader will laugh or roll his eyes or, more likely, both.

Strangely, the book has a very, very abrupt ending. One moment you’re reading through the flow of text. The next moment you flip the page and are surprised to see that the book is over and that you are into the end notes. Just like that. Call this one of my pet peeves. Couldn’t Beck have tacked on at least a couple of pages just to wrap things up? You and I both know that he certainly didn’t run out of words.

It has often been noted that the New York Times, though honest in compiling their list of bestsellers, rarely reviews books that, like this one, come from the far right. Michelle Malkin’s book Culture of Corruption is a recent example. While it sold hundreds of thousands of copies and dominated the bestseller lists for a short while, the Times gave it no review and made no mention of it beyond placing it on the list. The same is true of Arguing with Idiots. It is there on the list, but it has not been reviewed; neither do I expect that the Times will do so before it falls back off. Over the course of the year I will be tracking this phenomenon, seeing whether books of this nature merit reviews or whether they are mostly just ignored by the editors.

Verdict: Buy it.