Posted on 12/30/2009 5:51:26 PM PST by Captain Kirk
The end of a year or a decade tempts many of us to make up lists of the best or the worst of things—events, movies, songs, books—during the interval that is coming to a close. Having consumed many such lists, I now undertake to produce one of my own, with a twist.
The twist is that I cannot in good conscience represent my list as one that contains the best books of the past decade. My reading is much too limited for me to make up such a list, and I have no doubt that many excellent books were published that I did not read. However, I have read some excellent books that were published between 2000 and 2008, and I list them here with brief notations in order to bring them to the attention of readers who may not have read them. I present them not with an endorsement of everything they assume, affirm, or argue, but as the works of intelligent, thoughtful, and careful authors. Most of these books are works of exceptionally deep scholarship.
I list them chronologically, but I do not order or rank them here in any other way.
1. Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York: Free Press, 2000). Stinnett carried out an extraordinarily dogged search, involving many interviews with people directly involved and many years of digging in archives, formerly classified documents, and other sources, for answers to the two great questions: who knew what, and when did they know? Members of the Establishment will not like his answers, but they cannot accuse Stinnett of bias against Roosevelt: even after finding compelling evidence that U.S. leaders knew the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, was coming, he continues to believe that the president
(Excerpt) Read more at hnn.us ...
13 this decade? I’m trying to think of ONE outstanding book written in my lifetime.
Good list. I’ll have to add them to my queue.
save
That book proves FDR allowed the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor simply to get us into WW II, but the author says that was the “right thing to do?”
This is one of the best books ever written.
“Liberty & Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto”
http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Tyranny-Conservative-Mark-Levin/dp/1416562850
If you haven’t read it, you should.
It’s not the end of the decade.
Oh, I read it. And I like Levin, but the book was disappointing.
Snarkiness aside....a few do sound interesting enough to give them a look.
"13 this decade? I’m trying to think of ONE outstanding book written in my lifetime."Certainly no Principia, Republic, or "Origin of Species" written if that's what you mean.
Then again, major ideas tend not to be disseminated in book form to any great degree, but rather in forgettable soundbites and meaningless slogans.
As if having a permanent record of today's insanity would just be to embarrassing.
Given the sort of reasoning it would take to conclude that 2010 starts a new decade you’d also have to believe that this is the 20th century and not the 21st.
Did we expect a war with Japan? Yes, various war warnings were going out to British and American bases in the Pacific and the naval war college exercises for many years before had been planning for a war against Japan. Did we expect an attack on Pearl Harbor? No, I don't think so. Ambushing the Japanese fleet and attacking aircraft would have just as effectively gotten us into the war without losing nearly as many men, ships or aircraft. Also, everyone except for a few crackpots like Billy Mitchell "knew" that battleships were what won wars. They would have been out to sea and the carriers would have been in port if we expected an attack.
“13 this decade? I’m trying to think of ONE outstanding book written in my lifetime.”
To each his own, but I would put F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom on my list of great books written during my lifetime. George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 is also very good, as is W.W. Rostow’s How It All Began: Origins of the Modern Economy.
You really find none of those books to be outstanding?
They were all written before my lifetime! :D
Then you are not thinking too hard. Mark Levin's books, for starters.
I haven’t read this book but it’s not the first to cast Roosevelt as deliberately encouraging war with Japan, which really is revisionist history. No doubt FDR considered the Philippines as a likely strike point if there was to be an attack. And there is considerable evidence that shows the president expected a war with only Germany.
I read L&T.
To each his own.
Interesting. Do you also refer to the 1950 as a year in the 1940s “decade.” If not, you are not very consistent in this theory.
I’m sure these are good books, but the reviewer seems fixated on politics and war in the first half of the 20th century. There is more to the world than this era, important as it may be.
It’s not a theory. It’s a fact. It’s very simple. We didn’t start numbering with the year 0. We started with the year 1. The completion of that decade was the year 10. The decade begins with the year that ends in 1, not 0.
And, yes, I would call the year 1950 part of the 1940s decade because that is exactly what it was.
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