The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis - Book Review

Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton, October 2018, 221 pg., $26.95, $10.58) shows in example after example how willfully ignorant Trump employees in Federal agencies were and are, as well as how much hard work and knowledgeability are required to do a good job within the federal bureaucracy. Lewis introduces the reader to a cast of dedicated professionals who provide necessary information and services to keep America running chosen from three million governments employs and with whom President Donald J. Trump has been at war since his inauguration.

Lewis is a story-teller who takes on interesting topics, spinning stories around them as his highly readable, informative narrative style draws the reader in, eventually capturing completely. He begins by showing us how unprepared and incurious the Trump minions were before introducing us to John MacWilliams, the first risk assessment officer of the Department of Energy. MacWilliams had prepared notebooks full of explanatory data and information about the job of DOE and the risks it oversaw, only to spend a few minutes with, of all people, the clueless Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, who inhabits the position.

Throughout the vast and dedicated bureaucracy, government civil service employees, upon learning that Donald J. Trump had somehow been elected President,  swung into action. They prepared voluminous briefing books to prepare members of the new administration to understand and continue doing the jobs that provided crucial information and services to the American people. They expected to be swarmed with these appointees the day after the election….And no one came! When a few new agency heads showed up, they demonstrated a remarkable lack of curiosity about what their jobs entailed. Eighty-nine year old Wilbur Ross thought the Department of Commerce was devoted to business and could never grasp the breadth of services and information it provided. Curiosity and skill were absent. And so information essential to meeting the needs of every day Americans, particulalarly in the rural areas that won the election for Mr. Trump, were hollowed out...neutered and made totally ineffective by a President not interested in governing.

The advantage of Lewis’ style of story-telling lies in his ability to take a general principle of which we’re all aware, in this case the two facts that Trump is sending unqualified hacks to lead the major divisions of the government and that the agencies are being hollowed out, denied money and qualified staff becomes real in his hand. We see directly through the eyes of dedicated employees the importance of many functions we’re not aware exist protect and inform, as well as how cutting off the top and denying funding hollow out the agencies, denying the recipients of their services essential protections and advice that agencies provide. By focusing on the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy, Lewis shows the breadth of their portfolio and the importance of the high quality people working for them. Replacing what Trump has so successfully destroyed, with the canny help of one of America’s most underrated disablers, Mick Mulvaney, will take a generation or more to rebuild once we rid ourselves of their depredations.

The replacement of food scientist Dr. Cathie Wotecki with right wing political hack and talk show host Sam Clovis represents another example of removing expertise from important, but often quietly effective low-profile specialists with political people seeking to achieve political goals. The achievements of Wotecki during her time with FDA at the Department of Agriculture were monumental, and life saving. Clovis job was to shut down programs and eliminate the words “climate change” from government lexicon.

The role of government in rural America hidden, by being administered through small banks, brings expertise and money into places where neither exists, while being hidden by local interests and their antipathy to what they see as “the government.” Lillian Salerno eventually ran for Congress as a Democrat as she became increasingly aware of the Trump strategy of replacing professionals with political appointees who had no expertise or interest in the areas where her specialization had helped strengthen rural areas. Simply a small example of the larger problem. She lost!

Instead of re-visiting the depredations committed daily on the American people, the Tweeting, whining, self-promoting course of the Trump train wreck, Lewis takes the time to burrow into the inner workings of the crucial agencies and programs operated by the lower level political appointees and civil servants who make the wheels turn. Often, the recipients of government services don’t even know these services are sponsored and paid for by the government. Lewis shows how commitment, expertise, hard work, and dedication have built a system that actually delivers necessary services, improves the national health, protects the environment, and places needed checks on the damage often perpetrated by big money and large corporate interests. The results are a hollowing out of the inner workings of the government, hidden by bluster and mis-direction from the top. There’s no little irony in Lewis’s ending the book with the story of a tornado chaser, who has learned to follow behind storms to avoid being killed by the object of his studies.

Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is the author of a series of best-selling books mostly having, at least superficially, to do with sports and/or business (Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, Blindside, The Big Short) which have all been best sellers as illuminating changing aspects of our culture through his wonderful storytelling. Originally from New Orleans, and educated at Princeton and The London School of Economics, Lewis’ is 58 years old, and with Fifth Risk at the top of his game.

In the beginning of Fith Risk by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton, October 2018, 221 pg., $26.95, $10.58), Lewis chats at length with John Macwilliams, who has identified the five risks facing the government as the Trump administration sets and achieves its chaotic agenda. MacWilliams has identified four risks for Lewis, who finally asks him what the fifth risk is, to which MacWilliams responds, perhaps in a toneless, hopeless voice, “Project management.” This book is highly entertaining as well as “Must Reading!”

Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic by David Frum - Book Review

David Frum has written an erudite, scholarly, entertaining, coruscating, and, ultimately, both deeply scary and hopeful book called Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (HarperCollins, 2018, 320 pages, $25.99/12.99). Using elegant, nuanced writing and thoughtful analysis based on deep, and wide research, fully thirty percent of the text is taken up by footnotes, Frum carefully builds his argument using well-recognized sources from across the political, historical, and media spectrum. He presents a clear-eyed vision of Trump world from a Republican intellectual who wants him to do well and achieve the conservative goals his party has long felt powerless to achieve. Frum carefully uses what Trump says about his goals both as a candidate and as President, as well as a wide array of his allies, the media from Fox & Friends to Meet the Press, from Hugh Hewitt to Mark Levin. He’s careful, judicious, and, ultimately... damning.

David Frum

David Frum, born in Canada, has degrees from the University of Toronto, Yale University, and Harvard Law School. As he said in Newsweek, “I'm a conservative Republican, have been all my adult life. I volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1980. I've attended every Republican convention since 1988. I was president of the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush—not the "Read My Lips" Bush, the "Axis of Evil" Bush. I served on the Giuliani campaign in 2008 and voted for John McCain in November. I supported the Iraq War and (although I feel kind of silly about it in retrospect) the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I could go on, but you get the idea.” He has been an American citizen since 2007, while having been active in American politics for most of his adult life.

Frum, who appears to be no admirer of Trump, nevertheless paints what seems to me to be an accurate and un-frenzied picture of how Trump uses real and imagined power along with blunt bullying and lying to force people not his natural allies to line up with him and do his bidding, while many of them have taken positions in the government which will allow them to create no end of un-doing a generations long pattern of increasing governmental oversight of their enterprises. Meanwhile, useful regulations and protections are thrown out with the bureaucratic overburden and there’s so much self-dealing the public becomes inured to it. He demonstrates how the use of language in the Trump administration masks the goals of those he’s appointed to make America a more dangerous, dirty, and divided country.

The structure of Trumpocracy lays out the ways in which Donald Trump behaves to bring maximum attention to himself while having limited interest in the history, laws, traditions, and structure of our country. He consistently acts in such a way as to increase his own power while not seeking advice or counsel from those who truly understand how the government works, especially with reference to our hallowed separation of powers and reliance upon them to come to reasonable governance for all. Frum writes that under Trump, “The government of the United States seems to have made common cause with the planet’s thugs, crooks, and dictators against its own ideals—and in fact to have imported the spirit of thuggery, crookedness, and dictatorship into the very core of the American state, into the most solemn symbolic oval center of its law and liberty.” He continues, “Trump’s hope was that an unconstrained America could grab more power for itself (and thereby for him). He never understood that America’s power arose not only from its own wealth and its own military force, but from its centrality to a network of friends and allies.” For Trump there is no win-win, he can only win if someone else loses, and he will never share his wins with anyone.

The author treats extensively the web of associations, betrayals, and the apparent idea that America itself must not only be first, but alone at the top. “Trump throws everyone under the bus in his eager embrace of...Himself! He seems totally unaware of the intensely interwoven mutual dependency that exists between the President and members of Congress in seeking to enact his agenda. As a man with no knowledge of how government works or the place of the Presidency in it, he continues to show no interest in policy, the rule of law, or political realities. Frum emphasizes his treatment of Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, and Senator Jeff Flake, from Arizona, as examples of people whose support he needed who he gleefully destroyed in his own interest. His cruel decision not to allow Sean Spicer to meet the Pope stands as a testimony to his willful nastiness. Trump’s insistence on flattery and abject adherence to his neediness is stomach turning. Frum details a televised cabinet meeting during which a round-table of cabinet secretaries vomited out flattering lies about the fine job Trump was doing. He contrasts that to George W. Bush’s deep skepticism to anything that smacked of flattery.

A major advantage of a book from a person like David Frum is that it steps back a little way from the day-to-day cascade of cable news, or even from the weekend talk shows to take a wider and more comprehensive portrait of Trump and the Trump administration. As such, it can be both nuanced and comprehensive. By battling against everything the press says that could be mildly seen as critical, Trump actively works to reduce the influence of the press at home and abroad. His and his surrogates, particularly at Fox News, encourage discrediting even the most reliable and honest reporters. Furthermore, he actively supported authoritarian leaders in other countries when abroad in their efforts to muzzle their own press.

 Frum argues that Trump’s negligence and laziness actually strengthens him through eliminating all normal checks and balances. He shows how Trump relience on outmoded and failed Republican ideology has replaced conservative thinking. However, Frum despairs at the ability of the incumbent to see or understand what that might be. Nevertheless, he concludes his very fine book on a note of hope generated from reactions to the negative affects of the Trump administration. David Frum’s Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (HarperCollins, 2018, 320 pages, $25.99/12.99) stands as a sober, yet often frightening, at least to me, assessment of the Trump campaign and most of his first year. The book has earned the highest of recommendations I can give it. I received a free copy of Trumpocracy from the publisher as an electronic pre-publication through Edelweiss and read it on my Kindle App

Ordinarily, I wait until publication date to post my reviews, however Amazon has a very attractive pre-publication price up, which will only last a couple of more days. Please remember, that if you order a book through a product link in my reviews or anything else through the Amazon portal near the top on the left, I receive a small comission, which helps keep this blog on the road. Thanks!

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance - Book Review

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance (Harper Collins, 2016, $12.59/15.99) has been on the NY Times Best Seller List for forty-nine weeks, and at the time of this writing, stands at number two. This touching, revealing, warm, sad, and inspiring memoir, written by a Yale Law School graduate whose childhood was spent in the hills of eastern Kentucky and the migrated community of Middletown, OH, opens many sores while explaining in the most human and personal terms possible the pain and misunderstanding that harms working class and poor white Americans in the Hheartlands. Throughout this tale Vance sometimes mentions findings of academic studies and other research, using them to support or introduce his own poignant experiences, but, most of all, this is the story of one man's ability to persevere in an environment where success such as he has experienced is rare, and , according to him psychically costly as well as economically expensive.

Living within a home with serial father figures coming and going and an alcoholic, drug addicted mother, he attributes the source of his core values to life in rural Jackson, Kentucky in the hills and hollers of Appalachia with his Mamaw and any number of uncles and cousins. He describes on academic paper in which the authors suggest that “hillbillies learn from an early age to deal with uncomfortable truths by avoiding them, or by pretending better truths exist, a characteristic of bluegrass music, too. Vance refuses to look the others way.

Vance tracks the two major migrations from Appalachia to the industrial mid-west, particularly Middletown, OH, which were mirrored in the South, mid-South and New England, the depression era migrations and the post-WWII migration of returning veterans. He examines how the regions prospered and then died off with the decline of America industrial might, leaving abandoned neighborhoods, unemployment, and drug dependency behind, attributing this to both bad government policies and globalism.

Vance consistently refers to himself and his family as being poor and then at other times being “working class.” Joan C. Williams, in White Working Class seems to make a clear distinction between the two while Vance vacillates. He talks about “his people,” Kentucky migrants to southern Ohio, as often living off the dole, not working, and being plagued by drugs and violence, yet also talks about an uncle who escapes to the middle class, and his mother who, despite being an addict, was a nurse who was able to work a good deal of the time. He glories, however, in his extended family, his many uncles who provide him with male role models in both positive and negative ways. At times he seems remarkably judgmental, while at others, forgiving.

As Vance matures through adolescence, he begins to see the disjointures between both liberal and conservative points of view. He sees many of the government programs as well meaning but ineffective while the conservative solutions were disciplinary and draconian. In his reading of sociology, while in high school, he began to realize that the situation of black people described in his readings about black America contained the same dilemmas as did the lives and existence of the white working poor from Appalachia. “Our Elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith.” (144) He's writing about religion, work, and family when he observes the deep “cognitive dissonance between the world we see and the values we preach.” (147)

As Vance prepares to attend Yale Law School he explains in touching, no-holds-barred language why a person like him, growing up in poverty, bedeviled by the rigors of having a drug addicted mother living with multiple husbands, and seemingly inured to violence and loss could reject the attractions of both the left and the right. These chapters, presented within the context of an actual life lived in poverty and difficulty, if not despair, bring so many working class and poor white men, especially, to accept so much patently untrue or misleading material in seeking to understand who they are, why they got that way, and how difficult it is to extricate oneself. In short, Vance asserts, it's easier for many to blame “the other” than it is to do the hard analysis of one's own choices, accept the verdict, and get to work to change things. What sets J.D. Vance apart is his ongoing optimism, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Interestingly, Hillbilly Elegy can also stand as a “How To” book for those seeking to find their own way to a different place in both the workplace and in society. For instance, the non-verbal behavioral cues of social class are significantly different than the behaviors that pass for progressing in working class employment and social environments. Vance shows himself always to be exceptionally alert to what's going on around him. As he gains in self confidence, his ability to ask questions of those he trusts increases. He's also a very fast learner. Nevertheless he owns to deep feelings of abandoning the culture from which he comes while yearning to become part of that with which he's not, yet, thoroughly familiar. However, the struggle is neither easy nor always successful.

J.D. Vance

Throughout Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, Vance scatters data and information from relevant sociological and psychological writing to illuminate the points he makes, to give them a solid theoretical context. Such use of accurate research information never seems intrusive or fault-finding. Rather, it seeks to help a reader generalize from the highly personal revelation of the pain and confusion of Vance's childhood. It helps the reader gain understanding and perspective without ever excusing either those who raised him or his own mis-understandings, missed paths, and possibly botched relationships. He bravely opens the scars on his psyche, examines them, faces their consequences, and comes out the other side a stronger and better person. His painstaking honesty with the reader and his courage are never in doubt. This is not a book for the reader to quarrel with. Rather, it requires being good listeners, seeking to find the truths as they apply to them. Some would prescribe better, more effective programs. Others view the problems of poverty and drug addiction as the fault of the victim. While, ultimately, Vance looks towards personal responsibility for life, he fully understands the necessity for a compassionate government and individual acceptance of responsibility working together to make progress possible for all. I bought the book and read it on my Kindle app.  

The White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America by Joan C. Williams - Book Review

In White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017, 192 pages, $15.31/13.49) Joan C. Williams has written a challenging, persuasive book helping to answer questions often asked by people seeking to understand why and how Donald Trump won election as President of the United States by gaining the votes of people who seemed to have been voting against their own interests. In presenting her argument, Williams details how to coalition of liberal intellectuals, workers, and minorities has been broken because of their emphasis on identity issues and their loss of touch with the values and lives of the struggling people in the white working class. More important, she delineates how the Professional Managerial Elite (which she calls PME) has lost touch with the lives of those who do the work, blue collar Americans. Furthermore, she argues, that by dismissing this group as uneducated, fundamentalist, and racist, liberals and progressives have lost their loyalty and denigrated the values and beliefs that once formed the core of our society.

The chapters of this cogently argued lively presentation, carefully supported by numerous citations, and garnished with sufficient anecdotes, personal experiences, and quotations, asks a number of questions that people comfortably ensconced in middle class, professional positions often ask about those whose family values, work ethic, and religious beliefs appear to be cutting them off from the success that the professional elite is enjoying. Chapter headings include:

Who Is the Working Class?

Why Does the Working Class Resent the Poor

Why Doesn't the Working Class Just Move to Where The Jobs Are?

Why Doesn't the Working Class Just Get with It and Go to College?

Thse chapters ask whether the working class is just racist and sexist, explaining that while racism and sexism surely exist, the answers to these questions are much more nuanced and difficult than common argument has suggested. By forming chapters as questions, Williams encourages developing deeper understanding and more wide ranging discussion of how these questions may be answered. She always cites solid research leading to alternative approaches to solving the problems suggested.

While arguing that racism and sexism still exist and are powerful factors in our society, Williams says that Americans are deeply uncomfortable with the concept and discussion of social class - its meaning, economic sources, and effects on our attitude and behaviors. She argues that not until liberals are able to re-connect with white, working class voters will they be able to consistently win presidential elections again. She holds that identity politics strike right where working class people are uncomfortable and afraid. Thus gender, race, sexual identity, and religious conviction stand as difficult touching points. She strongly acknowledges these differences while suggesting strategies for discussing the issues in ways that make crossing of difficult barriers more easy.

She points out that many social and political postures of white working class voters and others are not racism, but fear. Fear of the unknown creates misunderstandings and confusing disjunctions in contemporary society. Especially poignant is Williams' demonstration that racism exists in all of us, but manifests itself differently through the application of class-based stereotypes. Her examples hit home to any thoughtful reader with the genuine power of recognition.

White working class families are more generally associated with more closely knit families, often for economic and convenience reasons growing out of providing mutual support in a difficult and demanding living and working world. Elites, however, place their self concepts and advancement on mobility, college educations, and self-satisfied sophistication setting them apart and above. Basic questions like “Why don't they move to where the jobs are” or “Why don't they go to college, get educated, and move up?” are answered by understanding the values concerning family, religion, and work maintained by those in the white working class. The dilemmas created for those Williams calls “class migrants,” people who move from working class into professional and technical ranks, are heart rending in the descriptions of how people learn social and economic cues that mark them as different from their background, and then must deal with the dis-jointures they discover in being separated from their background and heritage. The term “fly over country,” which passes as sophisticated wit among the elite is deeply insulting to those who see that country as “Home.” By dismissing large parts of the country, and the values and hard-working lives of those who live and seek to work there, the sophisticated coastal elites are simply insulting and alienating those they need to understand most.

Williams examines the kind of educational approaches, short of obtaining a college education, which would lead to appropriate employment in manufacturing for today's working class. She explores several approaches which would involve labor unions, schools and community colleges, and local manufacturers in training and empowering workers to become gainfully employed, while recognizing that older forms of heavy industry dependent on large employee populations are unlikely to return. Williams couples this with the family values and work ethic which would be reinforced by such arrangements. When placing racism, sexism, and fear of both Muslims and Latinos beside the greater fear of the inability to meet family obligations in the face of ongoing layoffs, she argues that its little wonder that white working class Americans were attracted by the promises of Donald Trump, no matter how blue sky they may turn out to be.

Joan C. Williams

Professor Joan C. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Hastings Foundation Chair, and the Founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, earned a Master's Degree in City Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her completed her undergraduate degree in history at Yale University. She has written over seventy law review articles, including one listed in 1996 as one of the most cited law review articles ever written. Her work has been excerpted in casebooks on six different topics. She has been described as having "something approaching rock star status” by The New York Times.

Joan C. Williams in White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017, 192 pages, $15.31/13.49) has written a readable, scholarly book about class, race, and gender. Some might consider that feat to be an oxymoron, but this volume performs a great service for anyone wishing to understand the phenomenon of Donald Trump's election and appeal to the range of voters he attracted. Williams manages this feat with a style that is both thoroughly analytical and warmly human, sprinkling her text with personal anecdotes and well-chosen examples taken from thoughtful people crossing many of the fault lines separating Americans from achieving mutual understanding. Both in the amount of information this book provides and the tone in which it is written, this book provides a service for scholars, policy-makers, and general readers. It make a genuine contribution to the discussion.I received the book as an digital download from the publisher through NetGalley. I read it on my Kindle App.

Hoover in the White House by Charles Rappleye - Book Review

Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency by Charles Rappleye (Simon and Schuster, 2016, 576 pages, $32.50/16.99) details the period (1928 – 1932) during which Herbert Hoover was running for the Presidency or serving in the White House as America journeyed from the prosperity developing in the aftermath of the first world war to the Great Depression, which Hoover fought vainly to overcome, and which ushered in the liberalism that emerged under Franklin D. Roosevelt to dominate the country for a half century. He casts what can only be seen as the disaster of the Hoover presidency as an outgrowth of his personality, forged in childhood poverty and abandonment. As a child of second half of the twentieth century, raised as a New Deal Liberal, I had long dismissed the story of the president who seemingly destroyed our economy which was saved by FDR. I knew, however, that this wasn't the whole story, which had to be more nuanced and complex. My reading of this detailed, extensively sourced, biography helped turn a cardboard cutout into a real, troubled human being, while confirming lots of conventional wisdom that had influenced by own development. Hoover's life and the course of his development, also mirrored in some eerie ways, elements we see today in our current politics.

Herbert Hoover, the thirty-first president of the United States, was born in 1874 in rural Iowa to a Quaker family. His father died when he was young followed several years later by his mother. He was shuffled between relatives for most of his early years, eventually landing in Oregon, where he lived with an uncle. He early learned values of hard work, dealing with privation, along with Quaker practices and values. He grew up in a frugal environment, but not deeply deprived. Rappleye claims that his early trauma and loneliness were key developmental factors in the ways he later conducted himself as president. After graduating from Stanford University, in its first class, Hoover undertook a career as a mining engineer, leading to establishing sufficient financial means to enter government service, first overseeing wartime efforts for relief in Europe and then assuming the role of Secretary of Commerce under two presidents. By the time the 1928 election rolled around, he was popular choice as the Republican candidate, winning handily without campaigning.

During his campaign and after his election, Hoover had demonstrated a marked reluctance to work closely with Congress or to be forthcoming with the press. Soon after his election, a prickly level of resistance began to emerge in his unwillingness to work, even with members of his own party, or to discuss publicly matters of policy with members of the press. Both of these propensities began quickly to erode both his effectiveness and his popularity. When, within months of his inauguration, the economy began to collapse and banks to fail, Hoover reacted slowly to support the banks or, as the depression deepened, to provide financial and food relief to failing farmers and unemployed factory workers.. Often, when presented with evidence of the hardship that first farmers and later urban people suffered, he often de-emphasized or belittled the complaints. In other words, his relations with Congress, with the Press, and with the public became increasingly embattled as his term progressed. He responded by relying upon an increasingly small and homogeneous group of advisers. Hoover responded by working harder, seeking some approach that would work, while relying on an increasingly small coterie of advisers. Once having reached a decision, he would become stubbornly attached to the outcomes.

After Herbert Hoover was resoundingly defeated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he left public office for a period of recuperation from years of stress. Later he returned to the public eye as an opposition critic of Democratic policy. After WW II, President Truman appointed him to a commission tasked with re-organizing the Executive. He was a lifelong anti-communist. He died in 1964, deeply respected despite his failure as president. This deeply researched biography, which concentrates on Hoover's conducting of himself, his legislative program, his hard work, and futile political efforts explores new ground and throws light on an important era in which America responded slowly and with little early effect when facing the biggest economic crisis in our history up to that time. It is a thorough, readable piece of work.

Charles Rappleye

Charles Rappleye is an award-winning investigative journalist and editor. He has written extensively on media, law enforcement, and organized crime. The author of Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution; Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution; and Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency, he lives in Los Angeles.

Charles Rappleye has written a thoughtful and intriguing portrait Herbert Hoover, a much maligned, but little known beyond his record regarding seeking vainly to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. The book is comprehensive within the limits defined by the author. The four years Herbert Hoover spent in the White House are exhaustively detailed and carefully balanced, often relying on heretofore unavailable materials. Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency by Charles Rappleye (Simon and Schuster, 2016, 576 pages, $32l50/16.99) is well worth reading as it describes with great care efforts Hoover made and his inability to grasp the reins of government with enough vigor to have a positive effect. I read Hoover in the White House as an electronic galley provided me by the publisher through Edelweiss Above the Tree Line on my Kindle app.

88 Days to Kandahar by Robert L. Grenier - Book Review

Robert L. Grenier's 88 Days to Kandahar (Simon & Schuster, 2015, 465 pages, $28.00/14.99) reads like two different books. When he's writing about the internal politics of the CIA, its relationships, internal rivalries, and policy debates within the vast U.S. Governmental establishment, the book reads like a political thriller, an exciting and engaging novel. However, he seems to delight in going deep into the mind numbing weeds of unpronounceable and unmemorable names of people and places that just won't stay in place in my mind. While both elements are important, it would appear that Grenier has two audiences in mind. The first is a general reader seeking to understand more fully the intricacies and ongoing importance of our engagement in Afghanistan during the late Clinton, Bush, and early Obama administrations. The second book seems to be more aimed at either a middle-east specialist or the kind of political junky who delights in finding error, or even hidden plots, in the minutia of the cloud of war. As a single volume, while at times terrifically engaging, the book is too long by at least a third for the general reader.

As a career CIA officer in the clandestine service, as Station Chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, and as director of Counter Terrorism Center, Grenier's perspective is one of recognizing the seams and stresses within an essentially tribal society and understanding the culture in such a way as to provide support for moving toward rational and effective self government. I've never read anything else that places Afghanistan and Pakistan in such a clear picture of the forces effecting the decisions and actions they take. This is particularly true in the rugged border territories called the Tribal Areas. The Taliban, particularly, is placed within a rational context of providing a counterweight for the unbridled greed and graft of the war lords in the tribal areas. As such, from their narrow, fundamentalist perspective, the Taliban often emerge as a force for good government and rationality, as men who operate out of a religiously motivated self-interest. They can be dealt with, but only within the context of subtle pressure to move in a more useful direction. Thus the cultural sensitivity and low profile are posited as moving in positively for the area. And then came September 11, 2001 turning the United States into a country driven my panicked populace and government seeking rapid, blunt hammer responses.

Much of the remainder of the book describes the internecine struggles between the political, military, and intelligence branches to achieve a victory which would include the elimination of Osama bin Laden and the destruction of Al Qaeda within a context of efforts to place politician/warlord Hamid Karzai in power, despite his all-to-obvious problems, because he appeared to be a pro-western alternative. During an 88 day period, Karzai moves towards Kandahar, Afghanistan's capital, with strong U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic support where he becomes the president of a still badly fractured Afghanistan, whose fortunes have vastly improved as American resources are focused on rooting out bin Laden hiding in the tribal areas. Grenier's posture is that if the US government would only leave matters to the pros, ire. the CIA, matters could be worked out. However, the bureaucratic infighting between branches of government and elements within the CIA itself make this impossible, creating chaos and the ultimate destruction of Afghan society as well as the radicalization of Pakistan's government, caught between American aggression to their west and Indian opposition to their east. When Grenier is writing about ther power struggles and clandestine operations, he is at his best, writing taught, driving prose that reads like a novel. Sadly, he sometimes gets lost in the weeds of too many names and places. I found that an occasional look at Google maps was helpful in getting a clearer picture of the geography involved.

Robert L. Grenier

Robert L. Grenier had a much decorated, twenty-seven-year career in the CIA’s clandestine service. A renowned Middle East expert, he has been deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia. He organized the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division and headed the CIA’s basic training facility, “The Farm.” From 1999 to 2002, he was CIA station chief in Islamabad. Subsequently, he was director of the CIA’s Counter terrorism Center, responsible for all CIA counter terrorism operations around the globe. Currently, Grenier is chairman of ERG Partners, a consulting firm to businesses in the intelligence and security sector. (Publisher's Author Profile)

In 88 Days to Kandahar (Simon & Schuster, 2015, 465 pages, $28.00/14.99) has contributed a very useful addition to the literature of the middle east, serving to increase the understanding of the reader to the complexities of social, religious, and political nuances and forces in the region. He engages in a good deal of score settling with members of the George W. Bush administration, with particular ire aimed at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and CIA Director Porter Goss, viewing military intervention as most useful when it is limited and focused. Grenier neglects to write about his eventual firing by CIA Director Porter Goss after his testimony in the CIA leak case and the Scooter Libby leaking trial. This flaw compromises some of the excellent observations he makes throughout the book. Whether it fully compromises the book I leave to the reader to decide. On balance, I found the book both interesting and informative, but needing to be read in context to obtain a fuller understanding. I read 88 Days to Kandahar in an electronic galley provided to me by the publisher through Edelweiss on my Kindle app.