A break from blogging - recommended reading

I suspect I’m going to miss posting every day until after the holidays. My law and mediation practice is keeping me busier than usual, I’m spending 2+ days a week with my youngest grandchildren, and I like to remember my family and friends during the holidays with cards, gifts, and homemade pumpkin bread. I’m wondering if I can make time to help two of my grandchildren make a gingerbread house again this year. If you have a "blog quota" you like to fill, I recommend the following:

1. The Democratic Activist: Chris Borland is doing a wonderful job keeping people informed and inspired regarding impeachment. Go there if you are committed to supporting House Resolution 799, the impeach Cheney resolution, currently before the House Judiciary Committee.

2. Scott Horton’s No Comment. Horton is the most prolific blogger I’ve come across, and he’s amazingly eclectic. For instance, today he posted Rumi's 'The Snake-Catcher's Tale' and about the scapegoating going on in the CIA tape destruction debacle on December 8th.

3. If you, like I, need someone who blogs every single day on important issues, go to Juan Cole's Informed Comment. I describe Juan as "my Middle Eastern expert," but I'm happy to share him.

If you only have time for an article or two a week, I recommend signing up for e-mail alerts at TomDispatch.com. If I had to give up all but once source of commentary on the news, this is the one I'd keep.

Looking for a book to read during those stolen moments from holiday preparations? I highly recommend Tim Weiner’s National Book Award winner, Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA, which I posted about here, here, and here. If you read this book, you’ll no longer be surprised by anything the CIA does, such as destroying hundreds of hours of videotaped interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives. Or buy it for someone as a holiday gift, then borrow it.

(photo – 2006 gingerbread house baking crew: Grandma Gail and two grandchildren)

"Legacy of Ashes" - Tim Weiner wins National Book award for best non-fiction

I knew it! I posted about Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA on July 26 and October 17. I’m slowly working my way through it because it’s dense. It’s also fascinating.

This book surely deserves the best non-fiction National Book award. In the Washington Post article this morning, “Weiner expressed deep gratitude to Yaddo, the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., artists colony where he spent eight weeks writing with no Internet, no telephone and ‘12 bankers' boxes of documents.’ Two thousand words a day were the result." Smart guy.

(photo of book: Random House; photo of Weiner – The New York Times)

Recommended reading - Legacy of Ashes

On July 26, 2007, the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) I briefly posted about it and linked to an excellent review of Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner (photo) a reporter for The New York Times and Pulitzer Price winner for his work on secret national security programs.
The review, posted on July 24th at TomDispatch.com (my favorite blogger), is by Chalmers Johnson, (one of my favorite authors) who was an outside consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973.

I read the review. I bought the book. It’s a page-turner.

Here’s an item that interested me: On page 60, Weiner describes an ill-fated mission (as virtually all covert CIA missions were), which dropped a four-man Chinese guerrilla team into Manchuria in 1952. They were captured and four months later radioed for help. Two young CIA officers and a pilot were sent to rescue them. The plane was shot down, the pilot killed, and the officers, Dick Fecteau and Jack Downey spent 19 and 20 years, respectively, in prison in China. “Beijing later broadcast a scorecard for Manchuria: the CIA dropped 212 foreign agents in; 101 were killed and 111 were captured.” This was typical of the CIA’s covert operations in the first few years.

I Googled “Dick Fecteau,” and came up with a report on him at the Prisoners of War Network, also interesting reading.

I urge you to read Johnson’s review. I’m convinced that if you do, you, too, will want to read Legacy of Ashes

(photo of book: Random House; photo of Weiner – The New York Times)