Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Do You Think They Can Tell I'm Conservative?

Yesterday I went to Barnes and Noble and bought these:



Do you think they can tell I'm conservative?

While I was in there I was looking again at the Laura Hillenbrand book, Unbroken, about Louis Zamperini.  I've been reading Zamperini's own account of his life and have NOT been able to put it down.  As I was looking at the Hillenbrand book, there was an older gentleman looking at it too and he asked me if I knew anything about it.  He'd enjoyed Seabiscuit and thought he might like to read another book by Hillenbrand.  I told him I was reading Zamerini's own account first and then might come back to Hillenbrand's. 

He was unfamiliar with Zamperini and so I told him about Louis getting shot down over the Pacific in 1943, drifting over 40 days in a raft over a distance of 2,000 miles until he and his comrade were captured, then spending two years in a Japanese POW camp, tortured, starved and humiliated.  The book goes on to describe his life after he returns, but I'm not that far yet.

Anyway, I showed the man the book I'm reading and he thanked me and said he was going to do the same thing. 

The book, Devil on My Heels, reminds me a lot of the two books by Eugene Sledge, except Sledge was not a POW.  What I mean is that their writing style is similar: conversational, easy, not filled with technical jargon or acronyms that a non-military person would have trouble deciphering.  If you haven't read these, run post haste to Amazon or your local book store and pick them up:



I'm also just over halfway through with Decision Points.  It's also been very interesting reading.  Right now I'm beginning the chapter on Afghanistan.  I've just finished the chapter where Bush defends his choice of enhanced interrogation.  I've always been on his side on that one.  I was really interested in the chapter entitled Stem Cells because that's not an issue I followed very closely and didn't know a whole lot about.  I'd recommend this one to both sides of the aisle, just as a matter of policy.  I'd also recommend Laura's book, which I'd just finished when I started his.  Read together, they give you a pretty full picture of the Bush presidency:






Seriously.  If Barnes and Noble ever cared to track the politics of their customers, I'd be pretty easy to peg.

2 comments:

Mike Thiac said...

Should finish Obama's Wars tomorrow and then I'll start Decision Points this weekend....my overriding impression of the Obama administration is the disorganization....there is no adult supervision over there. Scary.

The Vegas Art Guy said...

I'm rereading Ike an American legend and can't put that one down either. There is just not enough time to do all the reading I want to do. But I can sure try!