Books and Movies

This weekend being the traditional kick-off of summer, I thought I’d take a moment to suggest some books and movies you might enjoy.

If you have the time and the inclination, you might want to add these titles to your summer reading list:

Murder City – Charles Bowden’s account of the drug war-fueled carnage in Ciudad Juárez, where rape, corruption, and murder have become the rule rather than the exception. Fighting an unwinnable drug war can’t possibly be worth this much death.

Give Me Liberty – Naomi Wolf is an interesting writer, and an excellent civil libertarian. She comes from the progressive tradition, and her latest book Give Me Liberty is her call to “take back the country.” The book does show her strong leftist streak, however, and her notion of taking the country back seems to be limited to direct democracy and standard inside-the-box political action. Still, her book is worth the read and she’s not wrong about the state of civil liberties in this country – and to her great credit, she recognizes that the attack on those liberties is a bipartisan effort.

Constitutional Chaos – Andrew Napolitano could be a libertarian Limbaugh. He has a presence that is well-suited to mass media, a résumé that shows he knows what he’s talking about, and an “in” with the Fox News crowd. He may be the only person in America who can speak of civil liberties in a way that will resonate with the red states. Constitutional Chaos is a collection of anecdotes illustrating the various ways in which the government routinely places itself above the law.

A Path to Freedom – After watching the movie Michael Collins, I decided to read more about the Irish revolutionary. A Path to Freedom is a collection of essays he wrote in defense of the treaty he had recently signed with the British, which led to the establishment of the Irish Republic and sparked the Irish Civil War.

Crash Proof 2.0 – Peter Schiff’s analysis of the global economy is a lot more sensible than anything we’re likely to hear from Washington. These days I can’t even look at my stock portfolio’s performance without taking a Dramamine first. I’m starting to think that the question before us now is not how to change the political culture, but rather how best to protect ourselves and our loved ones in the face of the oncoming economic storm. Crash Proof provides some suggestions.

Lincoln Unmasked – Thomas DiLorenzo takes another whack at the Lincoln piñata. It’s a good book, but doesn’t really seem to go much beyond what he had already covered in The Real Lincoln.

The Imperial Cruise – Finally someone has decided to tell the real story of Teddy Roosevelt and the legacy of his bloodthirsty imperialist rampage across the Pacific. In The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley explains how US imperialism set Japan on its own militarist course and created a formidable enemy to fight years later.

And here are some movies and documentaries I’ve watched lately, all of which are available for instant viewing on Netflix:

Cocaine Cowboys – Former Miami drug dealers reminisce about the bad old days.

The Union: The Business Behind Getting High – This is a really good Canadian documentary on the marijuana trade north of the border. Again, the only way to win the drug war is to stop fighting it.

Gallipoli – This Australian movie starring Mel Gibson is an oldie but a goodie, and it poignantly illustrates the absolute folly of war. What possible threat did the Turks pose to Australia? An important question to ask whenever one’s government starts rattling the saber.

Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train – This documentary, narrated by Matt Damon, was my first introduction to Howard Zinn. An interesting guy, Zinn. Great on war and civil rights, but completely clueless on economics.

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers – Halliburton, KBR, CACI, Titan, Blackwater. Another reason to support the separation of business and state.

War Made Easy – Narrated by Sean Penn, War Made Easy provides an overview of the pro-war propaganda campaigns used by the US government over the years. As one might expect, it’s heavy on Bush’s build-up to the Iraq war. They’re not wrong, but I would have liked to see them go farther back in time. Government pro-war propaganda is hardly a new development, after all.

The End of America – This is a video discussion of Naomi Wolf’s earlier book by the same title. Her thesis is that there are ten steps needed to turn an open, free society into a closed, totalitarian society. The game plan was implemented by the Nazis in the 30s, and she draws parallels to the Bush years.

Michael Collins – Liam Neeson plays the title character in this biopic of the Irish revolutionary. It’s a fascinating story, and one I’m interesting in learning more about.

Frontline: Ten Trillion and Counting – This PBS show is worth watching if only for its comic relief value. Watching Forrest Sawyer stumble around economic concepts he clearly doesn’t understand is amusing enough, but the show’s internal contradictions are what is truly fascinating. After spending most of the program lambasting George Bush for spending too much and running up too much debt, they then turn around and praise Obama for doing the exact same thing. True to the Keynesian tradition, the show argues that Bush’s deficit spending was bad, but that Obama’s even greater deficit spending is exactly what we need to correct the problems caused by too much deficit spending.