The recession that started in 2007 and nearly melted down into a major depression in 2008 is quickly becoming one of the most written about events in recent history -- the run-up and Bremer Year of the Iraq War is the closest competition I can think of. The pace if anything is picking up, such that my Book Note queue has become swamped with such books. Rather than dump out one of my usual mixed bags, I thought I should group as many as possible into one post. And rather than just offer a time slice, I've gone back into the old files to give a broad picture of what's available.

The Top Tier: These are the books that strike me as the most important ones on the broad subject.

John Cassidy: How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Another book on the financial collapse of 2008, focusing mostly on the shortcomings of conventional economic theory -- all that stuff about robust, rational, reliable, all-seeing and benificent markets. What he calls Utopian Economics.

James K Galbraith: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too (2008; paperback, 2009, Free Press): Give corporations the keys to the state and they'll turn it into a system for preying on people, the exact opposite of what a democratic state should do. One of the better political books to appear in the last couple of years. I need to go back and pick up my quotes. [link]

Peter S Goodman: Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy (2009, Times Books): More concerned with Main Street than with Wall Street, perhaps figuring that ultimately the real economy matters more than the casino and its cronies. Looks like more reporting than theorizing, and looks like he's done an impressive job of it.

Simon Johnson/James Kwak: 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (2010, Pantheon): Johnson has been on target throughout the crisis, and is likely to pull together one of the best big picture summaries of what happened and why. The six too-big-to-fail megabanks and their oligarchs are at the heart of the problem. That they start to talk abouta "next financial meltdown" suggests that they don't think Obama et al. are up to reigning these bankers in. [Mar. 30]

John Lanchester: IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay (2010, Simon & Schuster): I don't see the word in any of the review notes, but my impression is that this is about leverage. Politically convenient cheap credit has led to a mountain of highly leveraged investments that don't seem to be based on much of anything. Getting that money back is going to be difficult. Author started researching this for a novel, then decided truth is stranger, or maybe just more powerful, than fiction. [link]

Michael Lewis: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (2010, WW Norton): Wrote a famous book about the 1980s scandals on Wall Street, Liar's Poker, based on his days working for Salomon Brothers -- an experience that at the time he described as "America, when a great nation lost its financial mind." Now, he looks back on the old book and wonders: "How quaint. How innocent." The new book tries to cover the new crisis by focusing on traders who sold short -- as good an angle as any, and no doubt a lot more fun to write about. [Mar. 15]

Charles R Morris: The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash (2008; revised, paperback, 2009, Public Affairs): One of the first really useful books out on the subprime mortgage crisis and how the contagion was likely to spread. And as such, instantly out of date. Hence the revision, which includes bumping the title up -- originally The Trillion Dollar Meltdown. [link.

Nomi Prins: It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street (2009, Wiley): Former Goldman Sachs managing director turned muckraking journalist, argues that the pillage had less to do with subprime mortgages than "a financial system that rewards people who move money instead of people who make things, operates outside of the media's gaze, is sheltered from governmental supervision, and uses leverage to turn risky deals into insanely risky deals." Seems about right. Previously wrote Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and Jacked: How "Conservatives" Are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not) [link]

Barry Ritholtz: Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy (2009, Wiley): Broad history of the bubble and its bust, especially looking at the bailout, which he describes as "history's biggest transfer of wealth -- from the taxpayer to the Banksters." [paperback June 28]

Yves Smith: Econned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism (2010, Palgrave Macmillan): "Naked Capitalism" blogger, explains: "why the measures taken by the Obama Administration are mere palliatives and are unlikely to pave the way for a solid recovery; how economists have come to play a profoundly anti-democratic role in policy; how financial models and concepts that were discredited more than thirty years ago are still widely used by banks, regulators, and investors; how management and employees of major financial firms looted them, enriching themselves and leaving the mess to taxpayers; how financial regulation enabled predatory behavior by Wall Street towards investors; how economics has no theory of financial systems, yet economists fearlessly prescribe how to manage them." That about sums it up.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves (2009, Viking): Most likely one of the more important histories of the financial debacle of 2008, focusing on the politics of Washington basically in thrall to Wall Street.

Joseph E Stiglitz: Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (2010, WW Norton): Been waiting for him to weigh in on the global meltdown, and this is it. Reading a long review at Amazon it looks to me like he caught just about everything. [link]

The second list is what I figure to be the second tier (or maybe lower), a big stack of books more/less directly tied to subprime mortgages, the bank meltdown, and the recession:

Viral V Acharya/Matthew Richardson, eds: Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System (2009, Wiley): Some kind of group project from New York University Stern School of Business, which Amazon attributes as the author, with analysis and lots of recommendations.

JS Aikman: When Prime Brokers Fail: The Unheeded Risk to Hedge Funds, Banks, and the Financial Industry (2010, Bloomberg Press): E.g., Lehman Brothers, whose failure set off a chain of repercussions that ultimately convinced many skeptics that it was indeed "too big to fail." Not sure I can handle all this weeping over the poor hedge funds. [Apr. 21]

Erin Arvedlund: Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff (2009, Portfolio): Author reportedly wrote the first critical article on Madoff.

Robert D Auerbach: Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan's Bank (2008, University of Texas Press): Gonzalez is a D-TX congressman who chaired the House Financial Services Committee, one of the few politicians who ever tried to exert any oversight on the Fed.

John Authers: The Fearful Rise of Markets: Global Bubbles, Synchronized Meltdowns, and What Must Be Done to Prevent Them in the Future (2010, FT Press): Focus on global linkages which allow bubbles to have effects propagated throughout the financial system. [June 7]

Joel Bakan: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (paperback, 2005, Free Press): Not specifically about banks, but the author could write a sequel that is. For starters, the custom of treating fines for illegal activities to cost-benefit analysis is sociopathic.

Dean Baker: Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (paperback, 2009, Polipoint Press): Short (170 pp) essay on the financial debacle, from one of the few critics who clearly saw it coming.

Dean Baker: False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy (paperback, 2010, Polipoint Press): Cover photos of Bernanke, Greenspan, and Paulson, although I doubt that it ends there. Baker was one of the first to understand the bubble and what its collapse would mean. This looks to be a little more developed than his slim Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.

Bill Bamber/Andrew Spencer: Bear Trap: The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008 (2008, Brick Tower): First book out on the subject, well before the crisis had played out, so they tend to view Bear Stearns as the exception rather than the rule -- a martyr for Wall Street's sins.

Robert J Barbera: The Cost of Capitalism: Understanding Market Mayhem and Stabilizing our Economic Future (2009, McGraw-Hill): Seems like a fairly establishment guy to go around badmouthing capitalism like that. Hyman Minsky follower, learning lessons from one bubble/panic to the next. Evidently a good deal more readable than Minsky's own recently reprinted Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.

Bruce Bartlett: The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a Way Forward (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Still a self-styled conservative, but whereas his 2006 book still clung to Reagan's legacy (title: Impostor: How George W Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy) and his 2008 book was dishonest (title: Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past) he finally has some doubts about Saint Ronald. Now he's pitching Keynes and the Welfare State to his conservative brethren, but it's probably too high and hard for them to touch.

Anna Bernasek: The Economics of Integrity: From Dairy Farmers to Toyota, How Wealth Is Built on Trust and What That Means for Our Future (2010, Harper Studio): It's hard to overstate how important trust is for any sort of functioning economy. Not sure how much of this concerns itself with finance reform, but clearly there is a need for restoring integrity and trust there.

Matthew Bishop/Michael Green: The Road from Ruin: How to Revive Capitalism and Put America Back on Top (2010, Crown Business): Of course, you first have to explain the road to ruin before moving on. Not sure where they're going, but seems to be a realistic analysis of how we got here.

Richard Bitner: Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance (paperback, 2008, Wiley): I suppose there's a need for books by scum about how they screwed ordinary people out of their savings and homes and fed a profiteering ring that ultimately wrecked the whole economy.

William K Black: The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry (paperback, 2005, University of Texas Press): A couple years old and looking back on several scandals ago, but the title is as true as ever, and the lessons evidently still haven't been learned.

Richard Bookstaber: A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation (2007; paperback, 2008, Wiley): Too early to catch the whole blow-up, but the author was a pioneer in some of the innovations he now warns of, which gives the book a sense both of expertise and prophecy.

Charles Brownell: Subprime Meltdown: From US Liquidity Crisis to Global Recession (paperback, 2008, Create Space): Short (116 pp) summary, starting at the house market end, which seems is the author's bailiwick.

Robert F Bruner/Sean D Carr: The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm (2008; paperback, 2009, Wiley): One of those depressions from back in the good old days when the federal government was powerless as well as uninterested in doing anything about it. Fortunately, the bankers could appeal to a higher authority: J Pierpont Morgan.

Jonathan Chait: The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics (2007, Houghton Mifflin): The story of "supply side economics," a/k/a "voodoo economics," a theory I thought was long dead. It was originally cooked up to justify tax cuts on the rich, but nowadays the Republicans don't even need theories to do that -- it's burned into their DNA, isn't it? [link]

Giles Chance: China and the Credit Crisis: The Emergence of a New World Order (paperback, 2010, Wiley): Some allusions here about China's role in precipitating the credit crisis, whatever that means. From what I know, China mostly put its surplus into US treasury bonds. They did take a hit as the credit crisis crippled world trade, and they responded with a huge stimulus program that put them on a faster recovery track than anyone else did. Obviously, how the whole thing sloshed through countries like China (and India) should be of interest. How to blame them is less clear.

Ron Chernow: The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990; paperback, 2010, Grove Press): Ancient history, dusted off for another round. Author has a long history of writing about the moneyed, including Alexander Hamilton and John D. Rockefeller.

William D Cohan: House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street (2009, Doubleday; paperback, 2010, Anchor): Focuses on ten days around the collapse of Bear Stearns, the beginning of the 2008 financial meltdown. Book has been described as novelistic, which I don't find very reassuring or entertaining -- maybe if more bankers flung themselves out of windows? Big issues like why and what it all means get lost in immediate details.

George Cooper: The Origin of Financial Crises: Central Banks, Credit Bubbles, and the Efficient Market Fallacy (paperback, 2008, Vintage): Seems to lay much of the blame on central bankers. He is certainly right that the present crisis was made much worse (if not necessarily caused) by the expansion of credit the Fed used to prop up the post-9/11 economy in its desperate attempt to prop up Bush's election prospects -- not that he puts it that way.

Patricia Crisafulli: The House of Dimon: How JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon Rose to the Top of the Financial World (2009, Wiley): Possibly even more obsequious than Duff McDonald's Dimon bio. Wall Street Journal calls this a "fiduciary love letter." Wonder if Dimon's quite the stud Midge Decter found Donald Rumsfeld to be.

Paul Davidson: The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Economic Prosperity (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): A short book of economic policy prescription, based on the immemorial question, what would John Maynard Keynes say now?

Charles D Ellis: The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs (2008; revised ed, paperback, 2009, Penguin): One of the key investment banks, which survived the meltdown partly because its traders had bet heavily against its own toxic CDOs, and partly because its ex-chairman, Hank Paulson, was running the Treasury at the crucial moment (e.g., when AIG, which held Goldman Sachs' CDSs, was going down). Paperback has an extra chapter, which hopefully explains all this.

David Faber: And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees (2009, Wiley): CNBC business analyst, keeps it short (208 pp) and vivid, but probably not very deep.

Roger EA Farmer: How the Economy Works: Confidence, Crashes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies (2010, Oxford University Press): Short overview of economics in light of the meltdown. Strikes me as on the conservative side -- likes quantitative easing as a means to target asset price inflation but doesn't like stimulus spending to grow employment -- but isn't dumb or inflexible about it. [Apr. 7]

William A Fleckenstein: Greenspan's Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve (2008, McGraw-Hill): Pretty harsh on Greenspan, but probably more accurate than Woodward's book -- what was it called, Maestro? Note that Peter Hartcher has a similar book, Bubble Man.

Steve Forbes/Elizabeth Ames: How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today's Economy (2009, Crown Business): Forbes started writing this before the crisis, but he's not about to let history affect his convictions. He knows free markets are the answer to whatever ails us. What I'm not sure of is who "us" is.

John Bellamy Foster/Fred Magdoff: The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (paperback, 2009, Monthly Review Press): Short (160 pp) Marxian analysis of how capitalism's tendencies toward stagnation led to the current crisis. [link]

Justin Fox: The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street (2009, Harper Business): Organized thematically, jumping around in time, which lets him sneak a big subject into 400 pages.

Thomas Frank: The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the Nation (2008; paperback, 2009, Holt): A pretty accurate summary of the Republicans' run of ruin in Washington. Paperback added something to the subtitle; not sure if the book has been updated. [link]

Steve Fraser: Wall Street: America's Dream Palace (2008, Yale University Press): Background on the allure and romance of Wall Street, which goes a long way to letting them get away with it all. A short (208 pp) book following his much longer Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. [link]

Daniel Friedman: Morals and Markets: An Evolutionary Account of the Modern World (2008, Palgrave Macmillan): A survey of cases where markets disconnected from morals with various ill effects. Not directly related to the latest financial crisis, but earlier ones appear to similar effect, and of course there are numerous analogous examples.

Charles Gasparino: The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System (2009, Harper Collins): CNBC personality blames it all on Wall Street's embrace of risk.

Nicole Gelinas: After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street -- and Washington (2009, Encounter): Looks like a brief for deeper and more effective regulation, although Amazon seems to be bundling it with conservative books, some utterly nonsensical -- probably the publisher.

Mark Gilbert: Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable (2010, Bloomberg Press): "Greed, stupidity, and hubris" -- sure, all those factors are endemic in the banking world, and maybe we should do something about that (not that I see much interest in or hope for disparaging greed systemwide), but the bit about collusion is more interesting and possibly more fateful. Gilbert reported for Bloomberg from London. All Amazon reviews are raves, and Nomi Prins praises this short (192 pp) book.

Gary Gorton: Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007 (2010, Oxford University Press): Rather short (240 pp) big picture survey of the meltdown, with references back to similar events like 1893 and 1907. Argues that this panic was concentrated in the financial sector, which put the panic at a distance from everyday understanding even if it couldn't contain its effects. [Mar. 8]

Edward M Gramlich: Subprime Mortgages: America's Latest Boom and Bust (paperback, 2007, Urban Institute Press): A short (120 pp), relatively early primer on on the problem, before it became clear how toxic those mortgages had become, or how crooked the whole affair was.

James Grant: Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond (2008, Axios): Collected from speeches and editorials by the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer. Seems to have had a clue on the subprime crisis.

Alan Greenspan: The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (2007, Penguin Press): Memoir written shortly after leaving the Fed, shortly before the housing bubble that he failed to recognize burst with all of its repercussions. One of the key actors in deregulating the banks, initiator of the "Greenspan put" which meant the Fed would reliably respond to any dip in the stock market, occasional pitch-man for variable rate subprime mortgages. Some people blame it all on him. Sometimes his ego seems big enough to bear that much responsibility.

Stephany Griffith-Jones/José Antonio Ocampo/Joseph Stiglitz, eds: Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis (paperback, 2010, Oxford University Press): A collection of academic papers pushing for significant reform of the banking system. [Mar. 12]

Daniel Gross: Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation (paperback, 2009, Free Press): Short (112 pp) account of the current financial debacle, rushed out in paperback first. Even so, I wonder how much news there is here, let alone analysis.

Ethan S Harris: Ben Bernanke's Fed: The Federal Reserve After Greenspan (2008; revised ed, paperback, 2010, Harvard Business Press): Seemed quick on the draw when it came out before Bernanke got a chance to live up to his reputation as an inflation hawk or get blindsided by the subprime bubble collapse. Paperback has been revised, but most often with these things the stamp is set at the start.

William J Holstein: Why GM Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon (2009, Walker): A timely subject, given that the US government is likely to wind up owning about 50% of the formerly huge automaker, and few people (if anyone) have a clue to do about it. Looks like this has more to do with the size and economic relationships that GM has than the details of car making.

Douglas W. Hubbard: The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It (2009, Wiley): Back to the drawing board. One thing we know now is that the computer models for risk management on things like CDOs and CDSs have been wildly wrong. Presumably Hubbard, who's supposed to be an expert in such, is out to correct that.

Tetsuya Ishikawa: How I Caused the Credit Crunch (paperback, 2009, Icon Books): Banker, Japanese by birth, grew up in London, attended Eton and Oxford; worked for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, ABN AMRO, securitizing toxic assets, so maybe it was his fault. Just not quite his alone.

Harold James: The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle (2009, Harvard University Press): One argument here is that the globalization juggernaut is a likely victim of the recession, much like globalization was undercut by the Great Depression. Previously wrote: The End of Globalization: Lessons From the Great Depression.

Asgeir Jonsson: Why Iceland?: How One of the World's Smallest Countries Became the Meltdown's Biggest Casualty (2009, McGraw-Hill): Interesting case study, although both the extreme boom and the bust were exaggerated by the tiny size of the economy.

Dave Kansas: The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It: What You Need to Know About the Greatest Financial Crisis of Our Time -- and How to Survive It (paperback, 2009, Harper): Financial writer, depends on brand name for authority, writes down to his presumed audience, which might include Rip Van Winkle.

Henry Kaufman: The Road to Financial Reformation: Warnings, Consequences, Reforms (2009, Wiley): Notoriously bearish financial analyst gets to write an I-told-you-so book, and lay out some ideas for fixing things. Niall Ferguson wrote the intro, which doesn't strike me as a plus.

Kate Kelly: Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Thoughest Firm on Wall Street (2009; paperback, 2010, Portfolio Trade): An hour-by-hour account of the last tree days that terminated the venerable investment bank -- short on context or analysis, which no doubt heightens the blindsided by reality shock.

Lawrence J Kotlikoff: Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World's Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking (2010, Wiley): Stewart played the earnest small town banker in Frank Capra's film, It's a Wonderful Life, whose depression was cured by a chance to look decades ahead at all the good he would do with his bank. Such banks don't exist any more, but Kotlikoff has some sort of scheme to bring them back. The fact is that we need some small subset of banking services, and almost everything else that modern banks do is predatory -- scams that suck money out of the real economy and into the bankers' pockets.

Paul Krugman: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (2008; paperback, 2009, WW Norton): Revised a year ago from the 1999 original, written then in response to the East Asian collapse of 1997, which bears many of the same traits as the current boom/bust. [link]

Adam LeBor: The Believers: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff's $65 Billion Investment Scam (2010, Orion): This looks to be better tied to the real issues than the quickie bios that dwell on Madoff's personal extravagance. His "too good to be true" scam depended on those gullible enough to buy in, which is the underlying condition (part stupid, part greedy, part just sunny optimism) that allowed the entire investment world to lose their moorings.

Les Leopold: The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity--and What We Can Do About It (paperback, Chelsea Green): The Wall Street debacle told by a labor economist. I dislike "and what we can do about it" titles, but this is most likely a good primer on the problem, the place to start.

Michael Lewis, ed: Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity (2008, WW Norton): A quickie collection of old and not-so-old pieces, just in time to slap some product on the latest financial disaster, and to be obsolete almost instantly.

Roger Lowenstein: The End of Wall Street (2010, Penguin): Bloomberg columnist, has several big finance books to his credit; tries to pull the big picture together. His experience with financial disasters includes a book on LTCM: When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management [Apr. 6]

Barry C Lynn: Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (2010, Wiley): Argues that the most dangerous trend in American business is the persistent move towards greater monopoly power. I think he's basically right here, and that this may be an important book. Author previously wrote End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, which I have on my shelf but unfortunately haven't gotten to.

Benoit Mandelbrot/Richard L Hudson: The (Mis)Behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward (2004; paperback, 2006, Basic Books): Mandelbrot wrote the book on fractals in 1983, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. This is his second book on applying fractal theory to finance, after 1997's Fractals and Scaling in Finance. Predates the recent crisis, but has various past crises to work with -- the main effect a critique of conventional models of risk.

Harry Markopolos: No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller (2010, Wiley): The Bernie Madoff story, as told by the whistleblower who brought the case before a somnambulant SEC.

Paul Mason: Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed (paperback, 2009, Verso): Economics editor at BBC Newsnight, good for a view outside of the usual US self-focus.

Duff McDonald: Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase (2009, Simon & Schuster): Suck this up: Dimon is "a dedicated family man whose uncanny facility with numbers and tireless work ethic are complemented by fierce loyalty and an unrelenting aversion to office politics [ . . . ] the only man in finance today who can be called an American hero." Dimon's been in the news much lately. Few things soured me on Obama more than the day Obama talked about what a "savvy businessman" Dimon is.

Lawrence G McDonald/Patrick Robinson: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers (2009, Crown): Significant because the Lehman bankruptcy was the single most traumatic event of the financial collapse of 2008. Insiders might know something about that, but most of what happened lies elsewhere, including the political decision to let Lehman collapse.

Adam Michaelson: The Foreclosure of America: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of Countrywide Home Loans, the Mortgage Crisis, and the Default of the American Dream (2009, Berkley): The subprime mortage meltdown, as told by a Senior VP of Marketing at Countrywide, the nation's largest subprime racketeer. Many reviewers claim that it's shallow and self-serving.

William Baker/Addison Wiggin: Endless Money: The Moral Hazards of Socialism (2009, Wiley): Exposes "the dark motives and drivers of today's socialist alliance, a combination of the über rich and the rights of the entitled lower-middle class." Sounds like if we had only kept to the gold standard we wouldn't have had all that growth which turned into bubbles and burst into recessions.

Paul Muolo/Mathew Padilla: Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis (2008, Wiley): Two journalists track down the chain of responsibility for the subprime mortgage meltdown.

Shari B Olefson: Foreclosure Nation: Mortgaging the American Dream (paperback, 2009, Prometheus): Florida real estate attorney, probably much more here on nuts and bolts of dealing with a problem mortgage than overall analysis of how the market got to be so messed up.

Jerry Oppenheimer: Madoff with the Money (2009, Wiley): Cute title, one of many on the subject. Author previously wrote an unauthorized bio of Martha Stewart. [paperback Aug. 10]

Fintan O'Toole: Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger (2010, Public Affairs): Ireland's economy got a big rise on the front side of a capitalist-friendly boom from 1995-2007, including a big chunk of the housing bubble. Then when the world banking crashed, Ireland was hit harder than most.

Frank Partnoy: The Match King: Ivar Krueger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals (2009, Public Affairs): The grandfather of all Ponzi schemes, not least Bernie Madoff's. Relevant today, natch, but the big scandals these days have more to do with Alan Greenspan, Richard Rubin, and Jamie Dimon. Partnoy has a couple of pre-crisis books that seem at least as relevant: FIASCO: Guns, Gooze, and Bllodlust -- The Truth About High Finance (1998), and Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets (2004).

Raj Patel: The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy (paperback, 2010, Picador): Starts with Oscar Wilde quote: "nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." This distinction between price and value leads to many ideas that could upset the conventional apple cart of economics. Previously wrote on food, Stuffed and Starved. Naomi Klein raves about him.

Scott Patterson: The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It (2010, Crown Business): Presumably newer than the old math whizzes that soared and crashed LTCM back in the more innocent 1990s. Warren Buffett: "Beware of geeks bearing formulas."

Ron Paul: End the Fed (2009, Grand Central): In the great debate between freshwater and saltwater economists, Paul sides with the Austrians, who'd gladly forego any kind of water in favor of heavy metals. I like Paul on some issues, and I'm not a fan of the Fed. I don't doubt that he can score lots of points over secrecy and lack of accountability, which has often let the Fed follow dangerous political interests. I find it really hard to take this seriously, but it turns out that fighting the Fed is an old libertarian theme: Murray Rothbard had a similar book, The Case Against the Fed.

Henry M Paulson Jr: On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System (2010, Business Plus): Bush's Treasury Secretary, one of the key actors in the bailout; before that head of Goldman Sachs, one of the key actors in causing the problem in the first place. Ever wonder why he switched jobs when he did? In every nook and cranny of the federal government, Bush gladly turned chicken coops over to foxes, but only Paulson had the gall to demand a $700 billion slush fund with no oversight. This is no doubt an important book on the crisis, but with equal certainty will not be an honest or critical one. The question is what seeps through -- most likely, hubris.

Kevin Phillips: Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2008, Penguin Books): Not much info, but money played a key role in his American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, and the world of finance isn't getting any firmer. [link]

Richard A Posner: A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (2009, Harvard University Press): The federal judge who knows and writes about everything weighs in on the economy. Reviewers are struck that someone deeply embued in Chicago School economics winds up promoting regulation as the necessary answer. Liberal economists already know that, so the main prospect here is the matter of discovery.

Robert Pozen: Too Big to Save? How to Fix the US Financial System (2009, Wiley): A nuts and bolts guide to reforming the financial system. Not sure where he's coming from or going, because things like "a way to revive the securitization of loans" aren't intrinsically clear.

Donald Rapp: Bubbles, Booms, and Busts: The Rise and Fall of Financial Assets (2009, Springer): Some on the subprime fiasco, more on older instances going back to the 1720s -- what, no tulips? Seems to have a political agenda, ranting against "tax and spend" Democrats and "spend and borrow" Republicans, citing Cheney's "Deficits don't matter" as "the theme of American finance." But if deficits didn't matter to the banks, why bail them out?

Jack Rasmus: Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression (paperback, 2010, Pluto Press): Argues that massive job creation programs and wealth redistribution are needed to prevent the recession from getting worse and/or dragging on indefinitely. Clearly doesn't understand that the bankers that move and shake the world can get along fine without workers. [May 11]

Colin Read: Global Financial Meltdown: How We Can Avoid the Next Economic Crisis (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Another big picture book, tries to be forward looking. No idea what all it covers, but Dean Baker approves.

Andrew Redleaf/Richard Vigilante: Panic: The Betrayal of Capitalism by Wall Street and Washington (2010, Richard Vigilante Books): Redleaf is a hedge fund manager who predicted the banking crisis in a letter to his clients in Dec. 2006. Looks like this could be a right-wing rant, but Robert Shiller approved, and here's one quote: "Bush's initial policy on the crisis was similar to his Iraq policy: create a Green Zone and a Red Zone. Both policies were failures."

Carmen M Reinhart/Kenneth Rogoff: This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (2009, Princeton University Press): A comparative history of numerous financial crises, presumably showing that they aren't so different after all. Lots of charts and numbers.

Lawrence Roberts: The Great Housing Bubble: Why Did House Prices Fall? (paperback, 2008, Monterey Cypress): Land developer consultant in California, had a view "from ground zero" of the housing bubble.

Paul Craig Roberts: How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds (paperback, 2010, AK Press): Former Reagan Treasury undersecretary turned CounterPunch columnist. Looks like a set of such columns, on the many ways the economy has been degraded.

Guillermo Rosas: Curbing Bailouts: Bank Crises and Democratic Accountability in Comparative Perspective (2009, University of Michigan Press): Over the last twenty years banks have been bailed out on every continent but Antarctica, so there are plenty of samples for comparison. No doubt most are inside deals, with safeguards to make sure ordinary people never get a cut, which may be where questions of democracy come into play.

Stephen J Rose: Rebound: Why America Will Emerge Stronger From the Financial Crisis (2010, St Martin's Press): Calls for "simple financial regulation and forthcoming investments in education, health care and energy," arguing that the fundamentals of the US economy are so rich that little more is needed. This runs against our recent experience with jobless recoveries; maybe it assumes a more liberal political climate where jobs are actually a public concern. [Apr. 13]

Brian Ross: The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth (2009, Hyperion): One of many potboilers on Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, which is kind of a sidecar to the real action.

Shane Ross: The Bankers: How the Banks Ruined the Irish Economy (paperback, 2009, Penguin Ireland): The bankers, the light-fingered regulators, the housing scams, all the things that happened elsewhere, the same old story sketched out in small scale with different names and places but much the same reasons.

Nouriel Roubini/Stephen Mihm: Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance (2010, Penguin Press): Roubini, a NYU business school professor, was one of the first Cassandras predicting the finance system collapse. Book looks at all sorts of recent finance system failures. [May 11]

Danny Schechter: Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (paperback, 2008, Cosimo): Self-described investigative journalist, television producer, director of the DVD In Debt We Trust. My guess is that this isn't very deep, but the guy at least has a nose for dirt, and shouldn't have any trouble finding some.

Robert Scheer: The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Loved Them (paperback, 2010, Nation Books): TruthDig editor, out for some good old fashioned muckraking. [Sept. 7]

Peter Schweizer: Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy -- and How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them (2009, Harper): Blames a long list of "liberal technocrats" -- actually, all Democrats (possible exception Saul Alinsky), mostly for encouraging "broadening home ownership," putting the banks "under the thumb of local activists," producing a "Robin Hood capitalism run wild." Actually, some of those listed (like Robert Rubin) did have dirty hands, but it wasn't because they were hurting poor people by lending them money. Rubin, for instance, cleared over $100 million at Citigroup after he left the Clinton administration.

Frederick J Sheehan: Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (2009, McGraw-Hill): Well, Greenspan's reputation didn't take long to drop into the toilet.

Robert J Shiller: The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do About It (2008, Princeton University Press): One of the first books out on the financial meltdown, early enough that it focuses on the subprime mortgage mess rather than the bigger picture.

Jeroen Smit: The Perfect Prey: The Fall of ABN Amro, or What Went Wrong in the Banking Industry (2010, Quercus): ABN Amro was a venerable 183-year-old Dutch bank acquired by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in Oct. 2007 and quickly scrapped for whatever profits could be gleaned. RBS, in turn, had to be rescued by the British government the next year. Just one of many recent banking stories: Tolstoy's unhappy families may all be different, but bad banks are distressfully alike.

Roy C Smith: Paper Fortunes: Modern Wall Street: Where It's Been, and Where It's Going (2010, St Martin's Press): Former Goldman Sachs investment banker, has a bunch of books on banking, including Global Banking (2003) and Comeback: The Restoration of American Banking Power in the New World Economy (1994). I have no real sense of where this fits in.

Andrew Smithers: Wall Street Revalued: Imperfect Markets and Inept Central Bankers (2009, Wiley): Economist, but main interest seems to be advising investors. Previously co-wrote, with Stephen Wright, Valuing Wall Street: Protecting Wealth in Turbulent Times, which this title plays off of. Thinks that central bankers should tighten money supply not only to fight inflation but also to prevent overvaluation of stocks (pace the Fed's actual policy of propping up the stock market, commonly described as the "Greenspan put").

George Soros: The Crash of 2008 and What It Means: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (revised ed, paperback, 2009, Public Affairs): Revised from The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. Seems inevitable that Soros would weigh in, but this seems to have some economic analysis to it, as well as the experience of a guy who's moved a few billion dollars in and out of the casino.

Thomas Sowell: The Housing Boom and Bust (2009; rev ed, paperback, 2010, Basic Books): Conservative economist and ideologue, has a large number of books, some clearly tied to economics, some with ponderous titles like Intellectuals and Society, a few on race like Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Andrew Spencer: Tower of Thieves: Inside AIG's Culture of Corporate Greed (2009, Brick Tower): Another insider account, based on someone named John Falcetta, and, well, you can guess what he found.

Jim Stanford: Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism (paperback, 2008, Pluto Press): Not so short at 360 pages, but illustrated with cartoons. Figure this to be a leftist approach.

Judith E Stein: Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (2010, Yale University Press): The 1970s are best known for the stagflation phenomenon, but in retrospect there was more changing than just a bad stretch with the money supply: domestic oil production peaked in 1969, trade turned to a deficit in 1970, a conservative movement started to gain traction, real wages for male workers started to decline. The transition from manufacturing to finance is typically interesting, even though it was not until the 1980s when it began to really take a toll. [May 25]

Gary H Stern/Ron J Feldman: Too Big to Fail: The Hazards of Bank Bailouts (paperback, 2009, Brookings Institution Press): Policy wonk book on how to get out from under the TBTF doctrine. Intro by Paul Volcker.

Joseph E Stiglitz: The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis (paperback, 2010, New Press): A set of policy recommendations based on the financial crisis and other concurrent problems ("food, water, energy, and sustainability"). [Apr. 27]

Leila Simona Talani, ed: The Global Crash: Towards a New Global Regime? (2010, Palgrave Macmillan): Short (224 pp), expensive ($90), collection of academic papers; UK editor. [July 20]

John R Talbott: The Coming Crash in the Housing Market: 10 Things You can Do Now to Protect Your Most Valuable Investment (paperback, 2003, McGraw-Hill): Possibly the earliest book to clearly identify the housing bubble. Predicted it would bust in two years, which was a bit short. Still, when it did bust it broke big.

John R Talbott: Sell Now!: The End of the Housing Bubble (paperback, 2006, St Martin's Griffin): Crossing over from Chicken Little to an I-told-you-so scold. Seems to have overestimated how much house prices would fall, not that he can be said to have overstated the problem.

John R Talbott: Contagion: The Financial Epidemic That Is Sweeping the Global Economy . . . and How to Protect Yourself From It (2008, Wiley): Another book on the subprime mess and how toxic assets spread illness throughout the financial system. Author recently wrote Obanomics: How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics.

John R Talbott: The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street (2009, Seven Stories Press): A straightforward catalog, starting with "lies that caused this mess" and more on hedge funds, derivatives, pseudo-reform and real reform.

Gillian Tett: Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at JP Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe (2009, Free Press): Funny how that happens. The "bold dream" was the 1994 invention of CDOs, the basic form for the securitization of subprime mortgages. [paperback Apr. 13]

Joseph Tibman: The Murder of Lehman Brothers: An Insider's Look at the Global Meltdown (2009, Brick Tower): Pseudonym for a 20-year Lehman Brothers veteran tells a "story of greed run amok."

Pablo Triana: Lecturing Birds on Flying: Can Mathematical Theories Destroy the Financial Markets? (2009, Wiley): Evidently so. This digs into the latest models that supposedly give traders mysterious advantages in beating the market. Foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose market math books (Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan) have a lot of fans (many of whom hate this book).

Katrina vanden Heuvel, ed: Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover (paperback, 2009, Nation Books): Quickie compilation of Nation pieces on the economic downturn. Probably some worthwhile, some dated, some that could use a little more seasoning.

Johan Van Overtveldt: Bernanke's Test: Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and the Drama of the Central Banker (2009, Agate B2): Pro-Fed brief by the author of The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business. [paperback Apr. 1]

Vicky Ward: The Devil's Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers (2010, Wiley): The by-now usual story of CDO gamesmanship inside the late investment bank, with all the usual arrogance and braggadocio, and someone named Marcus Brutus. [Apr. 12]

Brian S Wesbury: It's Not as Bad as You Think: Why Capitalism Trumps Fear and the Economy Will Thrive (2009, Wiley): A "top economic forecaster"; i.e., the sort of guy who's been selling you this crap for years now. Oh, that little blip in 2008: blame it on "mark-to-market" accounting rules, which somehow were never the problem when the market was up.

David Wessel: In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic (2009, Crown Business): The view focusing on the Federal Reserve and Bernanke, who gets to come off as a hero as opposed to just one of many contributors to the meltdown. The Fed pumped the bubble up with nearly free cash, made no effort to limit its expansion or the propagation of risk through the system, then met the collapse with ingenious and unprecedented methods to transfuse cash into the bleeding banks. Greenspan had more to do with the early stages, but Bernanke was never far from the mark, nor did he ever show the slightest inkling of grasping where it was all going. [paperback Aug. 11]

Mark Williams: Uncontrolled Risk: The Lessons of Lehman Brothers and How Systemic Risk Can Still Bring Down the World Financial System (2010, McGraw-Hill): B-school professor, risk management expert, looks back in wonder. [Apr. 6]

Martin Wolf: Fixing Global Finance (2008; updated ed, paperback, 2010, Johns Hopkins University Press): Sees one of those perfect storms of global macroeconomic imbalances, caused largely by "aggressive monetary easing" and the willingness of the US to act as "borrower of last resort." Proposes various ways to rejigger the system, mostly involving reducing the centrality of the US economy. Author also wrote Why Globalization Works, where the very title says something about his priorities.

Richard Wolff: Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It (paperback, 2009, Olive Branch Press): Given the title, could have used a slightly grosser cover illustration -- the one they have shows a stack of Franklins scattering in the wind. Wolff is a Marxist economist, so he's in his moment.

Thomas E Woods Jr: Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse (2009, Regnery): From the Product Description: "If you are fed up with Washington boondoggles, and you like the small-government, politically-incorrect thinking of Ron Paul, then you'll love Tom Woods's Meltdown." Note that their selling point is self-satisfaction, nothing to do with whether anything here is right. One learns, for instance, that never mind Roosevelt, it was Hoover's activist government that deepened the Great Depression. Ron Paul wrote the intro; he's a stopped clock, right on only one issue, and this isn't it.

Robert E Wright, ed: Bailouts: Public Money, Private Profit (paperback, 2010, Columbia University Press): Short (160 pp) focus on bailout issues, possibly even raising the morality of it all. Wright has mostly written on finance history going back to Alexander Hamilton, but has a book coming out in August that may be of interest: Fubarnomics: A Lighthearted, Seroius Look at America's Economic Ills (Prometheus).

Michael D Yates/Fred Magdoff: The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know (paperback, 2009, Monthly Review Press): Short (144 pp) tutorial on the causes and effects of the crisis, concerned more with the real world economy than with the shibboleths of Wall Street.

Mark M Zandi: Financial Shock: Global Panic and Government Bailouts: How We Got Here and What Must Be Done to Fix It (2008; updated ed, paperback, 2009, FT Press): Analyst book, always full of advice. First ed. focused on "subprime mortgage implosion"; revised edition had to follow up on the consequences, which are still playing out.

Gregory Zuckerman: The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History (2009, Broadway Business): John Paulson is not, nor even related to, Goldman Sachs honcho/Treasury secretary Hank Paulson. John Paulson runs the hedge fund Paulson & Co., which bet heavily against the subprime mortgage racket, making billions of dollars from the Wall Street meltdown. This is a good thing?

The third list picks up books that provide deeper background to the current crisis without actually dealing with it.

Moshe Adler: Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science That Makes Life Dismal (2009, New Press): About time someone turned the tables on "the dismal science" and show that what's dismal about it is how susceptible it is to political whims of its practitioners.

Liaquat Ahamed: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2009; paperback, 2009, Penguin): Actually, a history featuring four bankers from the 1920s, leading up to the 1929 Crash and Depression, and how the central banks bungled the crisis. Still, this appears at a time when the sequel is being acted out. Even if the analogies aren't obvious, the penchant for arrogance and error is still all too evident. Most likely the spookiest part will be Germany, given what happened there.

George A Akerlof/Robert J Shiller: Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (2009, Princeton University Press): A look at how psychological factors impact economic decisions -- presumably a corrective to the ultra-rationalism most economists assume to simplify their equations. Title, I believe, comes from Keynes. Schiller previously wrote Irrational Exuberance, about the stock bubble (second edition in 2006), and The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened and What to Do About It. [link]

Daniel Altman: Neoconomy: George Bush's Revolutionary Gamble With America's Future (2004; paperback, 2005, Public Affairs): Focuses on Bush's tax cuts and efforts to trim programs like social security.

Stephen H Axilrod: Inside the Fed: Monetary Policy and Its Management, Martin Through Greenspan to Benanke (2009, MIT Press): Until Bernanke most of what the Fed did was diddle with the money supply, taking the punch bowl away when parties started to get going (unless you're Greenspan and the party is Republican, of course), and this briefly (213 pp) surveys that side, from a long time insider's perspective.

Bradley Bateman/Toshiaki Hirai/Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, eds: The Return to Keynes (2010, Belknap Press): Nothing like a crisis to nudge economists back to studying reality, even to bringing back tools that allow you to do something about it.

Paul Blustein: The Chastening: Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF (paperback, 2003, Public Affairs): For 50+ years the IMF had been the stern parent of the third world, doling out money to keep first world banks afloat while tying its loans to forcing pro-capitalist "Washington consensus" policies on nations in dire need of development. Then came the 1997-99 East Asia crisis, where recovery and development was inversely related to IMF "help." Within a decade, no one would want IMF money on the old terms, and the IMF would be scrambling to change its usual prescriptions.

Paul Blustein: And the Money Kept Roling In (and Out): Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina (paperback, 2006, Public Affairs): Another turning point for the IMF was its disastrous handling of Argentina's collapse, one of many important data points on the trail to the current recession.

Paul Blustein: Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System (2009, Public Affairs): Mostly on the failed Doha Round of trade talks -- the one that might actually help the third world but was postponed and ultimately shelved.

Steven M Davidoff: Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal, and the Private Equity Implosion (2009, Wiley): Quite a bit here about how private equity groups, sovereign wealth funds, and investment banks takeover businesses, and includes some deals the government set up as part of its bank bailouts. Interesting stuff, almost all of which makes insiders ridiculously rich while putting a drag on the real economy.

June Breton Fisher: When Money Was in Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street (2010, Palgrave Macmillan): Gilded age history; thank God we got over all that. [Apr. 27]

John Gillespie/David Zweig: Money for Nothing: How the Failure of Corporate Boards Is Ruining American Business and Costing Us Trillions (2010, Free Press): A couple of investment bankers put much of the blame for the financial crisis and plenty more on corporate boards. Reminds me of the low esteen Robert Townsend (Further Up the Organization) had for boards.

William Greider: Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (1987; paperback, 1989, Simon & Schuster): The then-definitive book on the Fed, and still the place to start. Focuses more (and more critically) on the sainted Paul Volcker than on the then-neophyte Alan Greenspan.

Richard C Koo: The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons From Japan's Great Recession (2009; revised ed, paperback, 2009, Norton): The quick revisions, adding 32 pages, must reflect how relevant Japan's long recession is to our own, as well as to the 1930s, which loom large here. Author, chief economist at the Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo, previously wrote a similar book, Balance Sheet Recession: Japan's Struggle with Uncharted Economics and its Global Implications (2003). This seems to both bring it up to date and tie the lessons together.

Josh Kosman: The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis (2009, Portfolio): I guess this makes sense. Private equity companies use their leverage to buy up real companies and suck them dry, leaving them with huge piles of debt, which means that creditors can get screwed on both ends of the deal, while the banks at least reap huge fees for their complicity.

Steven G Medema: The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas (2009, Princeton University Press): Adam Smith has been so subsumed under his "invisible hand" concept that the idea has taken a life of its own. Not really sure what Medema does with it, but it should be clear that while markets produce efficient results under ideal conditions, their real world leaves much to be desired. Medema has a bunch of books on history of economic thought, including a couple specifically on Ronald Coase, who I associate with blind faith in markets.

Murray Milgate/Shannon C Stimson: After Adam Smith: A Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy (2009, Princeton University Press): Intellectual history on the evolution of economic thought in the hundred years following Adam Smith -- i.e., the 19th century.

Kevin Phillips: American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006, Viking): This is where the one-time Republican strategist develops his "we are doomed" theory. His equation is based on three deep insights: the willful ignorance imposed by the political ascent of fundamentalist Christianity; the argument that American power was always based on a natural resource that is now in permanent decline: oil; and the turn to finance as America's main way of making money, in stark contrast to simply making things. He traces other empires through the same eclipse -- the wind-powered Dutch and the coal-fired British. That a financial debacle would mark the end is certainly implied. He wrote a told-you-so sequel just two years later. [link]

Naomi Prins: Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America (2004; paperback, 2006, New Press).

Nomi Prins: Jacked: How "Conservatives" Are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not) (paperback, 2006, Polipoint Press).

Alasdair Roberts: The Logic of Discipline: Global Capitalism and the Architecture of Government (2010, Oxford University Press): Short (216 pp) book covering the broad range of economic liberalization from 1978-2008, which set up the surprise ending. Author's tendency to look at capitalism as liberalism seems to be one of those UK quirks. Previously wrote The Collapse of Fortress Bush: The Crisis and Authority of American Government, which saw Bush as the prisoner of American liberalism and neomilitarism. How quaint. [Apr. 21]

Nouriel Roubini/Brad Setser: Bailouts or Bail-Ins: Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Markets (paperback, 2004, Peterson Institute): A lot of background on financial crises elsewhere, the sort of things economists once believed couldn't happen here.

Robert J Shiller: Irrational Exuberance (2000; 2nd ed, 2005; paperback, 2006, Broadway): A book on bubbles, taking its title from the Alan Greenspan quote. One reason for the revised edition is that Shiller wrote a 2003 paper explaining why there was no housing bubble. Seems to have learned better, and given the pub dates he was quicker than some.

Robert Skidelsky: Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009, Public Affairs): Keynes biographer, his multi-volume series reissued abridged in 2005 to a mere 1056 pages. This reminder comes in at 240 pages. It seems to me that Keynes' disappearance has been greatly exaggerated, but there's nothing like a huge worldwide financial crisis to bring people back to the essential books. Also see: Peter Clarke: Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist.

Christopher Wood: The Bubble Economy: Japan's Extraordinary Speculative Boom of the '80s and the Dramatic Bust of the '90s (1992; paperback, 2005, Solstice): Not sure if this has been revised since it was originally published, but the bust dragged on longer than anyone imagined possible.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Music Week

Music: Current count 16472 [16445] rated (+27), 797 [798] unrated (-1).

Jazz Prospecting (CG #23, Part 5)

Another interim week, waiting for the latest Jazz Consumer Guide to drop -- no news on that, which means this week is out -- moving deliberately on to the next one. Having a tough time writing about jazz these days, especially warming to anything I'm hearing -- and not for lack of time, as most of the following took three spins before I settled on something. The one new A- is marginal: I could just as easily have slid it down a notch, but grading on a curve implies that something should come up on top.

Marius Nordal: Boomer Jazz (2005 [2009], Origin): Pianist, third album since 1996, don't know much more about him but he's probably a boomer, especially since he defines the period as 15 years after WWII, encompassing 76 million kids. Having been born in 1950, I'm less certain that I should be included. Those born 1946-48 were the leading edge of the population explosion, and as such got a jump on a rapidly expanding economy. Just one example was that they got quickly hired into academia, whereas the tail end of the generation found far fewer opportunities. Another, of course, was that they caught the 1960s when everything seemed to be possible, whereas my sub-generation (and I was a bit slow in this regard, for personal reasons I won't bore you with) rattled around in their wake. So mashing all these short time sequences never made much sense to me -- I recall that at one point generations were held to cycle every three years. As for this record, Nordal plays solo piano on 10 songs from the 1960s, ending with one he wrote (presumably much later). These were, of course, songs that I grew up with, but even in the 1960s most were songs I associated with an older sub-generation, one that was more condescending to rock and roll. Three Beatles songs were from McCartney's arty-nostalgic phase; Simon & Garfunkel were even stuffier (well, "Scarborough Fair" was; "Mrs. Robinson" had a beat); and Roberta Flack, Jack Jones, and Bread were anything but hip. I favored the Rolling Stones over the Beatles at the time, and read Allen Ginsberg instead of Simon's Robert Frost. So the only thing here that much impresses me is Chuck Berry's "School Days," done up cleverly as boogie-woogie -- a choice cut. B

Dan Weiss Trio: Timshel (2008 [2010], Sunnyside): Drummer-led piano trio, with Jacob Sacks on piano and Thomas Morgan on bass -- Morgan seems to be everywhere these days. Second album for Weiss, plus a list of 30 or so side credits since 1999, including impressive work on tabla for Rudresh Mahanthappa and Rez Abbasi. Wrote all the pieces, including ones called "Prelude," "Interlude" and "Postlude." I like the bits where the piano reduces to a rocking rhythm instrument. Less impressive is the slow stuff influenced by the 'ludes. B+(**)

Greg Burk: Many Worlds (2007 [2009], 482 Music): Pianist, b. 1969, originally from Lansing, MI; studied at New England Conservatory, taught at Berklee, played in Either/Orchestra; after 10 years in Boston relocated to Italy (Rome). Ninth album since 2000, a quartet with Henry Cook on sax (alto, soprano) and flute, Ron Seguin on bass (contrabass and something he calls "electric acoustic bass"), and Michel Lambert on drums/percussion. This struck me as overly ornate at first, with Cook's reeds wispy and Burk's piano wrapped up in long exploratory runs, but the more I listen the more it coheres -- especially the physics-inspired six-part "Many Worlds Suite," which ends in a discordance that surely isn't mere chaos. B+(***)

Jerry Bergonzi: Three for All (2008 [2010], Savant): Tenor saxophonist, plays some soprano, also get a piano credit here, which suggests some overdubbing. With Dave Santoro on bass and Andrea Michelutti on drums. Bergonzi has been on a terrific run lately, with two straight A- albums (Tenor Talk and Simply Put), and nothing very far off the mark. This has a couple of blemishes which I blame on the soprano. Terrific tenor player, deep tone, has all the moves; group lets him play. B+(***)

Salvatore Bonafede Trio: Sicilian Opening (2009 [2010], Jazz Eyes): Pianist, b. 1962 in Palermo, in Sicily. Has a dozen, maybe more albums, since 1990. Piano trio with Marco Panascia on bass, Marcello Pellitteri on drums. Light touch, even temper. Does a Beatles piece, which I always dread, but acquits it nicely. B+(**)

Graham Decter: Right on Time (2008 [2009], Capri): Guitarist, from and based in Los Angeles; studied at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY; plays in Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Debut album, a quartet, backed by the Clayton-Hamilton trio: John Clayton on bass, Jeff Hamilton on drums, Tamir Hendelman on piano. Needless to say, they swing. Program includes one original, two Ellingtons, Johnny Hodges' "Squatty Roo," pieces by Ray Brown and Thad Jones, a Jobim, other standards. Decter's guitar complements the trio, adding texture and pushing them a bit. B+(**)

Kelley Suttenfield: Where Is Love? (2007 [2009], Rhombus): Standards singer, based in New York, probably young, debut album, backed by piano-guitar-bass-drums, nobody I've heard of. Has an exceptionally nice voice, measured delivery with nothing terribly idiosyncratic about it. I don't care much for the song selection, with "And I Love Her" and "Ode to Billy Joe" the sore points, but she covered Veloso instead of Jobim, tried on a Betty Carter piece, sashayed into vocalese on "West Coast Blues," and did well by "Nature Boy." Most effective was "My One and Only Love" -- probably because it was the simplest. B+(*)

Emilio Solla & the Tango Jazz Conspiracy: Bien Sur! (2009 [2010], Fresh Sound World Jazz): Argentine pianist, based in New York, second album I'm aware of, probably has more. Tango forms, but mostly jazz musicians, notably Chris Cheek on soprano, tenor, and baritone sax, and Richie Barshay on drums and percussion. In his liner notes, feels a bit uncomfortable taking jazz liberties with his national music, but the record splits the difference nicely. B+(**)

Rufus Reid: Out Front (2008 [2010], Motema): Bassist-led piano trio, with Steve Allee on piano and Duduka Da Fonseca on drums. Reid has nine albums under his own name, plus a vast number of side credits going back to a 1970 gig with Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon. Allee, a fine mainstream pianist with four albums since 1995, has yet to break out of the pack. Da Fonseca is a Brazilian drummer/percussionist with several albums of his own. All three contribute songs, plus there are covers from Marcos Silva, Tadd Dameron, and Eddie Harris (another former Reid employer). "Out Front" means more bass solos. With Reid that's nothing to complain about. B+(*)

Marc Mommaas: Landmarc (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1969 in Netherlands, grew up in Amsterdam, moved to New York in 1997. Third album. Basically a trio with Nate Radley on guitar and Tony Moreno on drums, plus an extra guitarist on 5 of 9 pieces -- two with Rez Abbasi, three with Vic Juris. The guitars are sweet and slinky; the sax tends to be atmospheric. B+(**)

Zora Young: The French Connection (2007-08 [2009], Delmark): Blues singer, b. 1948, fifth album since 1991 -- third on Delmark -- cut with three different French bands. Uneven sound -- sometimes seems a bit distant, although she has that basic Bessie Smith projection that doesn't need a microphone, and that carries a record that is strongest at its most retro. B+(*)

Juhani Aaltonen Quartet: Conclusions (2009 [2010], Tum): Finnish tenor saxophonist, b. 1935, not well known here but should be recognized as a major figure -- I have yet to track down his well-regarded 1970s recordings, but I can highly recommend two relatively recent ones, Mother Tongue and Reflections. Quartet includes Iro Haarla (piano and harp), Ulf Krokfors (double bass), and Reino Laine (drums), with Haarla and Krokfors contributing four and two songs respectively -- Aaltonen the other four. He has a marvelous sound on tenor, more lyrical here than in the past, but I especially enjoy it when he roughs things up a bit. My main reservations at first were the two flute and one alto flute pieces. I never cared much for the sound, but he's as expert at it as any saxophonist I can think of -- Lew Tabackin, or perhaps Vinny Golia, someone not overly smitten by the Pied Piper notion, nor squarely centered on bop (James Moody) and/or swing (Frank Wess). A-

Kalle Kalima & K-18: Some Kubricks of Blood (2007 [2010], Tum): Guitarist, from Finland, b. 1973, studied in Germany with Raoul Björkenheim among others; has a couple albums, maybe two dozen side credits, many with Jazzanova. Unusual group sound here, with Ville Kujala's quarter-tone accordion, Mikko Innanen's saxes (alto, soprano, baritone), and Teppo Hauta-aho on double bass -- no drummer, which helps explain why this gets stuck in weird eddies. Compositions are keyed to various Stanley Kubrick films. Packaging, liner notes, and artwork are superb, as usual for this label. Despite the disconnects, interesting in various spots. B+(*)

Mort Weiss: Raising the Bar (2009 [2010], SMS Jazz): Clarinetist, started his musical career after he retired from a bread-and-butter career, and has put together a string of engaging albums ever since, with a mix of swing and bop moves. This one is solo clarinet, two originals, a bunch of well worn covers, the better known the better. Normally I would complain about the lack of balance/momentum/something that is inevitable with solo efforts, but he more than makes up for that in charm. Closes with "My Way" -- and earns it. B+(***)

Ambrose Field/John Potter: Being Dufay (2007 [2009], ECM New Series): Field is credited with "live and studio electronics"; Potter as "tenor," meaning a vocalist with classical standing. Record is "based on vocal fragments by Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474)," a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. The electronics separate this from any baggage I associate with classical music. The voice wends through the words without excessive drama or disruption. Lovely, actually. B+(**)

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Tony Allen: Secret Agent (World Circuit/Nonesuch): advance, Apr. 13
• Correction: Two Nights in April (Ayler)
• Erika: Obsession (Erika)
• Tia Fuller: Decisive Steps (Mack Avenue)
• Gaida: Levantine Indulgence (Palymra): Mar. 21
• Garaj Mahal: More Mr. Nice Guy (Owl Studios)
• Garaj Mahal & Fareed Haque: Discovery (Moog Music)
• Grupo Fantasma: El Existential (Nat Geo): advance, May 11
• Brian Landrus: Foward (Cadence Jazz
• Joëlle Léandre/François Houle/Raymond Strid: Last Seen Headed: Live at Sons D'Hiver (Ayler)
• John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension: To the One (Abstract Logix): Apr. 20
• Dan Pratt Organ Quartet: Toe the Line (Posi-Tone): Mar. 30
• 3ology With Ron Miles (Tapestry)
• Gabriele Tranchina: A Song of Love's Color (Jazzheads): Apr. 13
• Petra van Nuis & Andy Brown: Far Away Places (String Damper): Mar. 30

Purchases:

• Vampire Weekend: Contra (2010, XL)

Sunday, March 14, 2010

School Days

Justin Elliott: Conservative Bloc Prevails in Latest TX Textbooks Standards Vote: I take two positives away from this news item. One is that Kansas is no longer in the running for dumbest state school board in the country. The other is that it will be all the more obvious to Texas schoolchildren that their teachers are lying to them -- an insight that will prepare them for a lifetime of political flacks and businessfolk of all stripes. Neil Postman once wrote that the most important thing a student can learn is to develop a fine-tuned bullshit detector. Texas students are sure going to get a lot of practice. Of course, in the long run ignorance only gets you so far. Sooner or later you need to learn something, and it's actually easier when you're young, so in that regard this is a tragic waste of youth, as well as a self-defeating assertion of mindless authority.

Quicksand

It's always tempting to read too little into the recent contretemps between VP Joe Biden and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel timed its announcement of additional settlement building in East Jerusalem to coincide with Biden's arrival to try to force engagement in some sort of back-channel talks with rump PA president Mahmoud Abbas. The least Abbas could insist on was a settlement freeze, so Netanyahu's government's action was a deliberate attempt to undermine whatever scant chance the talks might have had. The Obama administration had also insisted on freezing settlements over a year ago, but had yet to push back when Netanyahu failed to restrain the settler movement. Still, this timing was shock enough to force Biden to "condemn" the plans -- a position that was reiterated by usually compliant state secretary Hillary Clinton. In widely reported "private" talks, Biden lectured Netanyahu on how failure to make progress on Palestine was endangering US troops in "Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan." To my knowledge, that is the first time any official US source, at least since 2001, has identified Israel-Palestine as a liability, hence as a strategic interest, to US interests in the region. All of this suggests that Obama is finally trying to get back in charge of the diplomatic initiative he started over a year ago with appointment of George Mitchell. Obama has become widely viewed as an ineffective leader, mostly due to his inability to lead Congress, but he has more effective power to direct foreign affairs, so this would be one way to burnish his credentials as a world leader -- a long shot, given Israel's past performance, but also a huge win if he can only pull it off.

For his part, Netanyahu has more experience than any other Israeli leader at thwarting American wishes for a peace agreement with the Palestinians, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is very good at it. It mostly means that the Americans have never been serious enough persistently enough to overcome Israeli resistance -- even though there have been clear instances where Israel has bent to US will: the Madrid talks forced by Bush I (which, by the way, resulted not in agreement but in Shamir's loss to Rabin, which in turn led to the Oslo agreement), and Bush II's embargo of military aid which held Sharon to go through with his Gaza disengagement plan. If he wanted to, there are lots of ways Obama can apply pressure on Israel -- both behind the scenes and out front. He could even give Israeli voters reason to change their government, which would not be hard to do given Netanyahu's rickety coalition.

As always, the question is American willpower. Before Biden left, he conceded that, "the United States has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel." As Paul Woodward pointed out, this is on its face ridiculous. Israel may have no better friend than the US, but the US has plenty of friends who cause us no trouble and don't require the constant stroking that Israel does:

Is it because Israel is the most ill-mannered among America's friends that it has to be flattered with this "best friend" status? Is it because Israel remains perpetually on the verge of throwing a tantrum that its wet nurse feels compelled to constantly sing sweet words to this troublesome infant?

Early on, you should recall, Netanyahu's game plan was to pump up the Iranian threat and insist that the US solve that before getting engaged with the Palestinian issue. Unfortunately, Obama obliged, instead of pointing out the obvious: that the two are separate and independent fronts, connected only in the sense that a Palestinian settlement would make Iran much less threatening even without Iranian agreement.

Woodward has another update here. Also see Stephen M. Walt: Welcome to Israel, Mr. Vice-President. The most interesting paragraph here came as an aside:

Lastly, my FP colleague Dan Drezner asked a good question the other day: Why has Israeli diplomacy committed so many obvious gaffes recently? Part of the blame undoubtedly lies with particular individuals, but I think there are also structural (or even structural realist) factors at work. Realist theory argues that the pressures of international competition impose a certain discipline on a country's diplomatic conduct: when actions have real consequences, you need to think things through carefully and act with prudence and restraint. But when any country is insulated from the short-term consequences of its own blunders, you can expect it to act in a less careful or disciplined way. Domestic politics will exert greater weight, ideological fantasies get pursued, and personal whims are more easily indulged.

Just as America's dominant position allowed it to pursue a lot of ill-advised excesses over the past fifteen years (see under: Iraq), America's "special relationship" with Israel has insulated the latter from the consequences of its own follies. We see the results in the entire settlement enterprise -- which threatens to turn Israel into an apartheid state and jeopardizes its long-term future -- and in ham-fisted diplomatic kerfluffles like the Biden visit or the deliberate humiliation of the Turkish Ambassador by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. The original Zionists faced a more challenging environment and usually acted with great adroitness, consistency of purpose and imagination, while their successors in recent decades have been able to misbehave in part because Uncle Sam was always there to provide support and diplomatic cover.

One way to look at this is to imagine Israel as being caught in quicksand: the more they struggle, the quicker they sink, but they have to struggle, because they're sinking anyway. The quicksand is the fundamental contradictions at the root of their power: the idea that they can fight the entire world forever to establish a Jewish State that can lord it over everyone else who happens to be in the way. In this they are struggling against history: against the main thrust of the last century toward equal and individual rights, and against the declining power and influence of their imperial sponsors, who are themselves ever more conscious of how Israel stands apart.

Israel exists to a large extent because of David Ben-Gurion: in particular because of his cunning in playing off the various angles of world opinion. Regardless of which angle he was playing, he was always consistent in his endgame: that Israel should emerge as a respected member of the world community. Israel has lost that aim, and with it any hope for living peacefully in a world which really, deep down, is ever more disenchanted by war. The turning point was the 1967 war, which the retired Ben-Gurion opposed, at least until he got a glimpse of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and blinked. (Of course, there were other turning points, as he built up Israel's military juggernaut, as he played up the trauma of the Holocaust in the Eichmann trial, as he compromised his secular-socialist ideals in deals with the religious right and any white colonial power that would work with him.) But in his quest for respect, it's hard to imagine him turning down the Arab League proposal of recognition in exchange for return to the pre-1967 borders: that very deal would have been the vindication of everything he stood for.

On the other hand, Netanyahu can't make that deal, because Israel has swallowed the poison pill of the settler movement. To do so would tear the right apart in Israel, and there is no left anymore (cf. the Gideon Levy quote in There has never been an Israeli peace camp). As such, there is no Israeli political force that can extract the country from the quicksand of its delusions. That leaves the US, which isn't much hope given that we're stuck in our own quicksand, but at least it's easier to recognize someone else's problems. And it's certainly positive that Obama, Biden, and Clinton even, have begun to see that this quicksand is something we share -- that may even justify all this talk about there being "no space" between Israel and the US.

PS: Some more info on why the above took place is in Paul Woodward: Isreal is putting American lives at risk and the article quoted/linked to: Mark Perry: The Petraeus briefing: Biden's embarrassment is not the whole story:

[T]he briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus's instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. "Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling," a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. "America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding." But Petraeus wasn't finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command -- or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus's reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region's most troublesome conflict.

The Mullen briefing and Petraeus's request hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus's request that CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians was denied ("it was dead on arrival," a Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama Administration decided it would redouble its efforts -- pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American press speculated that Mullen's trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians "in a larger, regional, context" -- as having a direct impact on America's status in the region.

Israel's reaction to Biden's visit was to announce that it was building more settlements, explicitly contrary to US policy (not to mention a couple of UN Security Council resolutions). Then:

But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus's Mullen briefing: "This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace." Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: "The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism." The message couldn't be plainer: Israel's intransigence could cost American lives.

Also: Dmitry Reider: Israel Punks Itself: A little something on Israel's latest PR campaign. The author sums up:

Thus, while ostensibly making every effort to reach out, Israel is instead curling deeper and deeper into itself, engaging not so much in public diplomacy as in navel-gazing. Rather than changing the policies that are rapidly turning it into an international pariah, or even honestly arguing its viewpoints, the state is inoculating its citizens against realistic and very real outside criticism. In the long run, this means it will become even more difficult to persuade Israel to change its course -- and to save it from the damage it inflicts upon itself.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Rhapsody Stream Notes

These seem to be running about once a month, which lets me pick up the Recycled Goods entries for the archive file. Fewer this month than the last couple, as I didn't go on any binges. (Well, I went on one, looking up lots of old Ravi Shankar albums, but that's withheld for now, to be worked into a future Recycled Goods.)

Insert main section of file here.

Full archive file here.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

My Year in the Dark

Last time I decided to write up notes/grades on movies as I saw them, then I promptly failed to do so. This should catch me up:

Movie: The Road: Bleak post-apocalypse movie, in a world where virtually all plant and animal life have been decimated, with a man and his son trekking cross-country to find the shore and hopefully something better. Lots of rough spots, some with cannibals. Viggo Mortensen literally carries the movie. B+

Movie: Avatar: Tends to get by on its impressive technical achievements, but I actually enjoyed the human sequences, even with their mechanical overkill, more than the computer-generated stuff, which among other things scaled the sets way too vertically. Way too much in almost every way, not least the constant fighting both as law of the jungle and battle for the planet. Story line has been compared to Pocahontas, but note one big difference: these natives had a good share of domesticated animals. Shows someone has read Jared Diamond. B+

Movie: The Last Station: The last year of Leo Tolstoy, with his political interest, his cult followers, his estranged but not invisible wife -- the latter role most likely puffed up for the film, which is only fair for Helen Mirren. Seems awkward and troubling at first, with nobody really living up to their roles, but this has grown fonder over time, so maybe I have it underrated. B+

Movie: Coraline: Caught on TV. Animated feature, Oscar-nominated, mostly left me dumbfounded, although there's some brilliantly inventive visual gags, and the bacon frying sure looked tasty. B

Movie: Lemon Tree: We also saw this 2008 Israeli movie (on DVD), directed by Eran Riklis. The setup is an Israeli Defense Minister moves to a big new house adjacent to a lemon grove owned by a widowed Palestinian woman. The lemon trees are soon perceived to be a security threat, so the DM muscles his way into the grove, setting up a guard post, fencing the trees in where the owner can no longer take care of them or live off them, at one point sending troops in to steal lemons, and eventually pruning the trees to bare stumps beyond a huge concrete wall. The DM's wife observes all this with some disease but little resolve. The Palestinian woman recruits a lawyer to challenge the encroachment, and the case works its way to Israel's supreme kangaroo court. As the lawyer points out, happy endings only occur in American films. The conflict is contained in relatively simple terms: the impact of custom on both sides, the construction of barriers that cannot be broken down by neighbors, the omnipresent threat of Israeli force. In the end the Palestinian resource is destroyed and the DM's house is estranged from the world. For Israel this is what success looks like. A-

Watched the Oscars, which must mean that historically it has more credibility than the Grammys (which I never watch). Watched it with less interest than in many years, probably because I had seen so few movies this past year, maybe even because the few nominees that I had seen were so underwhelming.

1. Capitalism: A Love Story [A]
2. Cheri [A-]
3. An Education [A-]
4. Up [A-]
5. Lemon Tree [A-]
6. Julie & Julia [A-]
7. A Serious Man [B+]
8. The Last Station [B+]
9. The Soloist [B+]
10. Inglourious Basterds [B+]
11. Invictus [B+]
12. State of Play [B+]
13. Avatar [B+]
14. Public Enemies [B]
15. Where the Wild Things Are [B]
16. Sherlock Holmes [B]
17. Star Trek [B]
18. Coraline [B]

Of course, Michael Moore's film isn't fair competition here. The best movie I saw this year was Cheri -- totally missed in the Oscar process even though Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates made the show as presenters.

I wound up dropping The Soloist a notch from my previous note; I may have A Serious Man and The Last Station a bit underrated. Lots of things we meant to see and didn't get to -- (500) Days of Summer, Broken Embraces, Coco Before Chanel, Crazy Heart, District 9, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Hurt Locker, The Informant, The Messenger, Nine, Precious, Sin Nombre, A Single Man, Up in the Air, The Young Victoria -- partly endless demands on weekends, partly the sad state of Wichita theatres (meaning local monopolist Warren Theatres).

Bad Reviews

Jason Gross: Why We Need Bad Reviews: From July 9 last year, just stumbled on this accidentally, mostly because I'm held up as an example of a critic who's too soft on bad jazz albums. Starts with a tweet: "Do bad reviews of jazz CDs help or hurt the art form? Why do you think jazz critics and bloggers are so hesitant to trash?" My short answer is that there's not much to trash: most jazz albums are conceived around interesting enough ideas and are more than competently executed. The few that aren't are best forgotten because, unlike other pop music forms, few stand any chance of becoming public nuissances. If I was covering other kinds of popular music -- country, rap, alt-to-metal rock bands, folk, soft soul, or new age come to mind -- the ratio would shift substantially. (I could add pop jazz to that list. I hardly get any of it anymore, but I cover what I get and it mostly ranges from innocuous to dreadful.) But the place to judge how critical I am isn't Jazz CG, which at 30-40 records per column and 4 columns per year only lets me address 20-25% of the jazz records that come my way. The other 75-80% show up in my lists, database, and above all in my Jazz Prospecting blog posts, and most of the duds and nonentities (as well as a lot of merely good albums) get buried there -- but not without a trace: I track everything I hear -- some 600 jazz albums per year, all sorted out in a list from top to bottom. Even when I'm polite in my notes, the rank list is necessarily brutal. Maybe the grade scale could be slid down a bit -- I find that it's pretty consistent with what I've been doing for many years -- but the relative ordering is inescapable.

As for whether more negative reviews would be good for jazz, I can't say. I do find that most of the jazz reviews I glance at are so positive as to not be useful or even credible. Everyone liking everything doesn't help much, but the problem is not so much that a few slams would make a critic more credible as that I keep reading critics fawning over records I know not to be in any way exceptional. I don't get enough feedback from readers to have a good sense of how my reviews are taken -- probably one reason I latched onto this piece, given more import because I know Jason Gross and know that his listening habits and range of interests are rather analogous to my own (e.g., he produces some of the longest year-end lists I'm aware of). I get roughly one complaint a month from someone who thinks I should listen to their record again (and more closely), and I get a similar number of compliments for finding things or (more often than I would expect) slamming some dud. If I had more space, I might list more duds, but I figure the limited space I do have is better used to recommend something worthwhile. At the margins you can argue that either way -- is it more useful to praise the 35th best album of the column or to disparage the 4th or 5th worst? -- so I may be letting my druthers win out. I don't particularly like dumping on a record, especially an artist I respect, given that anyone producing serious jazz is having a tough go of it. But I do recognize the need to be honest and consistent across the whole range of my listening, even when it drags me into uncomfortable territory -- both personally and aesthetically. And while words sometimes fail me, grades make their point brusquely.

PS: Worth reading the exceptionally high-grade comments. Especially good to hear from Ed Ward. I can say that his point about fear of being denied access for bad reviews -- at least affordable access; hardly any critic has the freedom of a budget to explore -- is valid on occasion, although it has only rarely happened to me.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Charley Colbert

I heard last night that Charley Colbert died, in Philadelphia, following a lengthy and, I gather, rather gruesome illness. Hadn't thought about him in many years, but we worked together in the early 1980s at Varityper in NJ -- an AM International division that made typesetting equipment. A year or two before they hired me, Varityper set up its software engineering department to use a DEC PDP-11/70 and UNIX 7 as its development platform. This was back when UNIX was a research project, available from Bell Labs as unsupported source code. My career as a software engineer was to no small extent based on what I learned from reading the UNIX source code -- I learned a lot about how to structure programs, as well as a fair amount about the personalities of the various researchers who contributed the code. Charley was the shop's top UNIX guru: he built the system, kept it running, and was the guy everyone went to for answers -- at least everyone who could deal with a manner that was, uh, abrasive and haughty. My basic tactic at that stage in my career was to seek out the smartest people I could find and glom onto them, and Charley was one of those people. And once you got past the initial intimidation, he turned out to have a wicked sense of humor -- not to mention a vocabulary he chalked up to his time in the navy. I never saw him again after I left Varityper -- or was it after he left?

Seems like a lot of people passed through or by my life over the years, mostly in brief time slices at various jobs where they are very familiar for a while but quickly disconnected. Every now and then you wonder whatever happened to them. It turns out that it's surprisingly hard even to track them down on the web. There are about 25 Charles Colberts hooked into LinkedIn, but none of them look right. I found an obit, but it was for a Colbert who died in Indianapolis early this year. About the only one I've tried who shows up first on a Google search is Tom Hull, so I guess I have to wait until they search me out (as a few have done). Meanwhile, here's a post for the real, as far as I'm concerned the one and only, Charley Colbert.

Music Week

Music: Current count 16445 [16420] rated (+25), 798 [798] unrated (-0). Had a rough week with house stuff and other demanding chores; somehow survived all that. This week looks like we're in for an extended stretch of spring showers, which should keep me in, nose to the grindstone.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #23, Part 4)

Still in limbo between filing a Jazz CG column and waiting for it to appear. I suppose if I was publishing monthly I wouldn't have such stretches, but I can't say as I mind a break. Pulling stuff somewhat at random below. Also checked out a few of Christgau's Consumer Guide March picks on Rhapsody: Eddie Argos/Dyan Valdés, Dessa, and Whitefield Brothers strike me as keepers, along with Youssou N'Dour and Vampire Weekend which I got to earlier -- will have a batch of Rhapsody stream notes sometime this week. Also started listening to old Ravi Shankar to try to find a context for the new Rare and Glorious comp, which thus far is holding up as well as any. That'll go into Recycled Goods. Still, not finding much jazz that impresses me: only one 2010 A-list record so far, vs. 9 non-jazz releases. Got a letter from one artist complaining that I had missed his masterpiece. No doubt many more think that, but I'm probably as consistent as ever, and we're just going through a minor slump stretch, which happens now and then.

Pablo Held: Music (2009 [2010], Pirouet): Pianist, quite young (b. 1986), from Germany, leading a trio with Robert Landfermann on bass and Jonas Burgwinkel on drums on his second album. Covers from Olivier Messaien and Herbie Hancock, plus eight originals. Starts quiet and cautious, but gradually opens up. B+(**)

Free Unfold Trio: Ballades (2009 [2010], Ayler): Piano trio, led by Jobic Le Masson, with Benjamin Duboc on bass and Didier Lasserre on drums. Two (or four) pieces, composed (or improvised) by the group, totalling a scant 28:39. French group, has one previous album together, and Le Masson has a trio album under his own name. Ballade means slow here, a untethered set of ambient abstractions, interesting but likely to slip past without much notice. B+(*)

Ehud Asherie: Modern Life (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Pianist, b. 1979 in Israel, based in New York, third album -- after a trio and a quintet with Grant Stewart and Ryan Kisor. Mainstream player, crosses bop and swing, cites Errol Garner as an influence. Two originals; eight covers, the bop side drawing on Hank Jones and Tadd Dameron, the standards songbook more dominant. One reason this quartet is a tad more retro is that it features tenor saxophonist Harry Allen, and he pretty neatly turns it into a Harry Allen album, which is fine by me. B+(***)

Sam Weiser: Sam I Am (2009 [2010], Disappear): Violinist, 15 years old (so that's 1994?), New Yorker, Mets fan, studied with Mark O'Connor, won some prize named for martyred journalist Daniel Pearl. Advance copy, no musician or session credits, a puke-yellow hype sheet with nothing I want to know. Main vocalist (6 cuts) is presumably Sonia Rutstein of folkie duo Disappear Fear who also does business as SONiA -- somebody else leads on Eddie Palmieri's "Azucar," a token piece of Latin jazz that gets away from everyone. Otherwise the catholic song selection works reasonably well, with Rutstein's three songs guarding against over-familiarity. The violin leads are rich and plush, the band swings; I wouldn't say anyone's improvising or even trying anything novel, but it's pretty listenable. Some day maybe Weiser will grow up and hire a real publicist. B+(*) [advance]

Mark Egan: Truth Be Told (2009 [2010], Wavetone): Electric bassist -- "fretted and fretless" is how he puts it -- b. 1951, has eight or so records since 1985, plus a large number of side credits going back to 1977 -- Pat Metheny, Bill Evans (the saxophonist, who plays here), Gil Evans, Mark Murphy, Jason Miles, Joe Beck. Basically a funk-fusion quintet, like Weather Report at their most homogenized, with less distinctive players at every slot: Egan, Evans, Vinnie Colaiuta (drums), Roger Squitero (percussion), and especially Mitch Forman (keyboards). C+

Paul Meyers Quartet: Featuring Frank Wess (2007 [2010], Miles High): Nylon string guitarist. I screwed up his biographical data last time, and I'm not totally clear now, but looks like he was b. 1956 in New York, attended SUNY Potsdam and New England Conservatory. Fifth album since 2004, but side credits go back to 1989 or 1981 or even 1974. Has an interest in Brazilian music -- not evident here. Wess, on flute as well as tenor sax, is counted in the Quartet, along with Martin Wind on bass and Tony Jefferson on drums. Andy Bey is "special guest" on "Lazy Afternoon" -- quite enough, I'd say, as he's even more mannered than usual. Guitar has a soft, sweet twang, tasty alongside Wess's tenor sax (caveat emptor on the flute). B+(**)

The Trio [Peter Erskine/Chuck Berghofer/Terry Trotter]: Live @ Charlie O's (2009 [2010], Fuzzy Music): No idea how many groups have called themselves The Trio over the years. Certainly enough to have made my pet peeve list. Seems like an exercise in ego, but pianist Terry Trotter has done a remarkable job of avoiding the spotlight since when? The 1960s? AMG credits him with two albums, having overlooked a ouple of Trotter Trio outings. AMG and All About Jazz have no biographies, and Trotter has no web page, let alone MySpace. Wikipedia has two lines: "studio pianist living in Los Angeles." Bassist Berghofer, by comparison, is widely known, and drummer Erskine even more so -- even if you're not a Weather Report fan. No song credits, but looks like standard fare, done with polish and aplomb. B+(**)

Mitch Marcus Quintet: Countdown 2 Meltdown (2009 [2010], Porto Franco): Tenor saxophonist; put his group together in Indiana then moved to Berkeley. Third album. Despite the reinforcement of a second saxophonist -- Sylvain Carton on alto -- the dominant player, and possibly major talent, here is guitarist Mike Abraham, knocking out a hard fusion-funk groove and dressing it up on his solos. At best this reminds me of Anders Nilsson. B+(*)

Soren Moller & Dick Oatts: The Clouds Above (2007 [2010], Audial): Moller is a Danish pianist, 34 (b. 1976?), based in New York where he is part of NYNDK. Second duo album with Oatts, credited here with "saxophones and flute" -- usually plays alto. Oatts has eight albums since 1998 on the Danish label Steeplechase (which I don't get), plus quite a few side credits going back to 1978 (with Mel Lewis). I wasn't much aware of him until I saw him doing a teaching session at Wichita State. (David Berkman had been advertised, but limited his contribution to heckling from the audience.) I figure him for a high quality journeyman, able to fit into most contexts. Moller wrote all of the pieces except for something from Prokofiev, and takes the lead here, but Oatts does a lovely job of coloring -- can't even complain about the flute near the end. B+(***)

Ken Peplowski: Noir Blue (2009 [2010], Capri): Plays clarinet and tenor sax. I prefer the latter, but he prefers the former. Basically a "young fogey" -- part of the postbop generation of swing-oriented players like Scott Hamilton and the Vaché brothers -- with an extensive discography of good but rarely outstanding records. Compatible quartet here: Shelley Berg on piano, Jay Leonhart on bass, Joe LaBarbera on drums. Nice tenor work. Wish there was more of it. B+(*)

Ralph Bowen: Due Reverence (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Tenor saxophonist, mainstream player, consistently impressive. Last record rated an HM. This has comparable strengths when he's on, but I've played it a lot and keep losing the thread. Strong quintet, with Sean Jones (trumpet), Adam Rogers (guitar), John Patitucci (bass), Antonio Sanchez (drums). B+(*)

Sean Bergin's New Mob: Chicken Feet: Live at the Bimhuis (2007 [2010], Pingo): Dutch saxophonist, also on the line here for flute, ukulele, and vocals, although most of the vocals belong to Una Bergin and Felicity Provan. They are sometimes distracting, sometimes surreal, which underscores the comic vein in the Dutch avant-garde. Not all that easy to follow, but sneaky clever when you let it go. B+(*)

Bill Cunliffe/Holly Hofmann: Three's Company (2009 [2010], Capri): Piano and flute respectively. Hofmann's in the upper ranks of Downbeat's poll because there's hardly anyone else, and Cunliffe doesn't place because there are jillions of good pianists (though somewhat less that are better than him). Most tracks add a guest, which usually helps -- the contrast with Terrell Stafford's trumpet yields a choice cut (the title track), where the three contributors abstractly lean against each other. The other guests spots: Regina Carter (violin), Ken Peplowski (clarinet), Alvester Garnett (drums). B+(*)

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Abraham Inc.: Tweet Tweet (Dot Dot Dot Music): advance
• Aida Severo (Slam -09)
• Tommy Babin's Benzene: Your Body Is Your Prison (Drip Audio)
• Jerry Bergonzi: Three for All (Savant)
• Anat Cohen: Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard (Anzic): advance, Apr. 13
• Stephan Crump with Rosetta Trio: Reclamation (Sunnyside): Apr. 20
• The Dominant 7 and The Jazz Arts Messengers: Fourteen Channels (Tapestry)
• Damian Erskine: To Speak (DE)
• Ben Goldberg: Go Home (BAG -09)
• The Inhabitants: A Vacant Lot (Drip Audio)
• Nomore Shapes: Creesus Crisis (Drip Audio)
• Jeremy Pelt: Men of Honor (High Note)
• Tin Hat: Foreign Legion (BAG)

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Universe Politics

Kate Zernike: Democrats Need a Rally Monkey. Since I wrote my Latte? piece Friday, it's come to my attention that there is a burgeoning Coffee Party movement out to rally the Democratic Party faithful. Not exactly what I had in mind. I was looking for something to push the left's ideas and proposals onto a Democratic administration that is more inclined to look right toward the corporate establishment than left toward its own rank and file. That's different than rallying the base to support the party leadership against the much worse Republicans. Nothing really wrong with that, but after Bush and Cheney and DeLay and Gingrich and Dole and Bush and Reagan, not to mention Nixon, it's not like we have to be reminded to hold our noses and vote for whatever numbskull Democrat stands between sanity and Republican rule. It's just that until you start putting some real alternative ideas into discussion we won't actually be able to solve much of anything.

I'm not much worried about the 2010 elections; even less so about Obama's reelection prospects in 2012. For all the Tea Party hysteria, it's a marginal and mostly incoherent movement, and can easily be painted as such: Nixon's Silent Majority spin seems especially ripe for the taking here, even though the bigot subtext then is on the other foot now. Moreover, there's no reason to think that voters primarily concerned with the sad state of the economy, and their own slack job prospects, should start trusting the Republicans now when the Democrats have always scored better on those issues. And as much as I regret Obama's failure to end Bush's wide-ranging wars of terror, he hasn't opened himself up to stab-in-the-back charges of defeatism, nor has he exhibited Bush's recklessness. Plus the economy is on at least a modest upturn. The only big risk I see is the chance of a nasty ethics blow-up, which could occur if anyone looked real close at the administration's inside dealing -- e.g., on banking and health care, but also on defense and nuclear power and who knows what else. Obama should have done more to clean up the possibility of such corruption -- starting with exposing the extent of it under Bush, and going on to attacking the corrosive role of money in elections -- but by playing it so close to the vest he may be minimizing the chance of something exploding.

Of course, the Republicans will continue to harp on the debt, which would be less damaging if Obama fought them head on rather than throwing out concessions like his mini spending cuts and commission. The short-term problem would go away quickly with higher taxes on the superrich, and the long-term problem requires significant health care reform. Both of these things are valuable in themselves, and no discussion of public debt should take place without bringing them up. Still, Obama's wiggling on debt shows his political calculation, as does nearly every other retreat and compromise. He's angling for control of sane middle ground: incremental solutions which help a little while leaving the whole established order looking pretty much as before -- a world where there are many small winners and few big losers. No reason to think this won't work, at least for him, at least for the next few election cycles. The problem is that necessary change gets swept under the rug or barred from the door. That's what you need a grassroots movement, apart from the Democratic Party establishment, to advance.

Paul Krugman: Senator Bunning's Universe: Bunning managed to fillibuster an extension of unemployment benefits long enough to disrupt the flow of funds to chronically unemployed workers. John Kyl defends Bunning, arguing that unemployment benefits disincentivizes workers from seeking employment opportunities (as if this matters when such opportunities don't even exist). As Krugman points out, Bunning and Kyl inhabit a different universe from that of the Democrats who pushed the bill through: a universe different both intellectually and morally. Kyl, for instance, is frantically concerned about the 0.25 percent of estates not sheltered from the estate tax. Doesn't he understand that the purpose of the estate tax is to disincentivize the superrich from dying? (Or being killed off by their heirs?)

One thing about this vast chasm between political universes is that the boundaries are relatively fixed. There's virtually nothing that Obama can do to get Republican votes short of escalating the war in Afghanistan, pumping up the defense budget, or surrendering a key post like Chairman of the Fed to someone like Ben Bernanke. Why bother? We should be broadening the discussion in the real universe to include proposals that might make a real difference. That other universe is so far removed from reality it's unlikely to matter anyway, especially if we stop flattering it by paying it so much attention.

Friday, March 05, 2010

Latte, Anyone?

I was reading a front-page Wichita Eagle article today about a local Tea Party organizer, and it got me to thinking. A small fraction of the Tea Party gripes are well-founded: especially how the political influence of large companies -- especially investment banks -- corrupts government into granting them outrageous favors. On the other hand, the notion that the answer here is disabling the government -- shrinking it and drowning it in the bathtub, in Grover Norquist's phrase -- is self-defeating. I don't doubt that government bureaucracies, like all bureaucracies, are self-perpetuating, but the government, in principle at least, belongs to the people, and provides a means for acting in the public interest in straightforward ways that private interests are incapable of. If you really do care about problems like bank racketeering you need to pry the government away from being subservient to the banks and return it to the rightful role as the people's agent. To do that involves shaking up several mindsets, but one step that would help a lot would be to publicly fund election campaigns, and to ban (or at least castigate) private and group "contributions" (bribes, really).

I don't much understand the Tea Party platform, which seems to be full of contradictions, and I've never credited their claims of nonpartisanship, which strike me as nothing more than a cynical effort to dispose of the memory of Bush and his Republican claque while doubling down on his most disastrous policies. What makes them so incredible is how their opposition to Obama is so unhinged from Obama's uninspired and unthreatening policies. The people who really do have bones to pick with Obama are the people who elected him: the wars and America's megalomaniacal imperial posture, the insider deals on the banks, the insider deals on health care, the inadequate stimulus, disinterest in a fairer tax system (even the modest step of undoing the Bush tax favors), the whitewashing of the Bush administration's contempt for democracy, the lack of any effort whatsoever to secure democracy from the influence of money. There's more space separating Obama from the left than there is between Obama and the bipartisan elites he works so hard to suck up to.

The main thing that prevents such a movement from forming is the fear that splitting the Democrats will tilt the country back into the hands of the right-wing nutters. I've never been one to split up the united front, but we desperately need some way to get issues back into discussion. It's not like there's any bunch of enlightened elites working in the background to solve these problems, nor that there are a bunch of rich guys anxious to make sure that public interest concerns get a fair hearing.

Not sure what to call such a movement, but one way to discredit a stereotype is to embrace it: maybe we need Latte Parties?

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Krugman

Larissa MacFarquhar: The Deflationist. Profile, with picture of the wife and cats, and more than you really need to know about the condo in St. Croix. Subtitle is "How Paul Krugman found politics." Answer has a lot to do with wife Robin Wells, who as far as I can tell is sharper and more passionate about it.

During the eighties, he thought that supply-side economics was stupid, but he didn't think that much about it. Unlike Wells, who was so upset when Reagan was elected that she moved to England, Krugman found Reagan comical rather than evil. "I had very little sense of what was at stake in the tax issues," he says. "I was into career-building at that point and not that concerned." He worked for Reagan on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers for a year, but even that didn't get him thinking about politics. [ . . . ]

For the first twenty years of Krugman's adult life, his world was divided not into left and right but into smart and stupid. "The great lesson was the low level of discussion," he says of his time in Washington. "The then Secretary of the Treasury" -- Donald Regan -- "was not that bright, and you could have angry exchanges where neither side understood the policy."

The first book I read by Krugman was Peddling Prosperity: Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations (1995), a Clinton-era book that was remarkably even-handed in dumping on liberal Democrats as well as conservative Republicans. (I missed his earlier popular book The Age of Diminished Expectations: US Economic Policy in the 1990s, which is more likely to have taken aim at Reagan's economic policies.) MacFarquhar sums up:

Krugman's tribe was academic economists, and insofar as he paid any attention to people outside that tribe, his enemy was stupid pseudo-economists who didn't understand what they were talking about but who, with attention-grabbing titles and simplistic ideas, persuaded lots of powerful people to listen to them. He called these types "policy entrepreneurs" -- a term that, by differentiating them from the academic economists he respected, was meant to be horribly biting. He was driven mad by Lester Thurow and Robert Reich in particular, both of whom had written books touting a theory that he believed to be nonsense: that America was competing in a global marketplace with other countries in much the same way that corporations competed with one another. In fact, Krugman argued, in a series of contemptuous articles in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere, countries were not at all like corporations.

That's an important point, one that a lot of things flow out of. For starters, corporations can fire workers, but countries cannot. Corporations are hierarchical, authoritarian, streamlined, purposely disciplined, and secretive in ways that would be intolerable in a country. Given these disparities you have to wonder why anyone would think that corporate leadership in any way qualified one for leading a country.

One thing you have to give Krugman credit for is that he didn't waste any time trying to be fair and balanced about George W. Bush: he published his attack on Bush's tax plans -- Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan -- before the ink was dry. In a world where politics was filled with calculated bullshit, he bought none of it. He hasn't cut Obama much slack either:

In fact, the change came faster than either of them had anticipated, because during the primary campaign Krugman was very critical of Barack Obama. He was critical chiefly because, of the three main candidates, Obama seemed to him the most conservative (his health plan, for instance, didn't mandate universal coverage), but it wasn't just his policies that Krugman objected to. He couldn't stand all the feel-good stuff about hope and dialogue and reconciliation. He hated that Obama was out there saying nice things about Reagan when what Democrats needed to do most was debunk the persistent myth that Reaganomics had been good for America. He thought Obama was completely wrong to believe that the country's problems were due largely to partisan nastiness, and ridiculously naďve to imagine that he could bring together Republicans and insurance companies to reform health care. "Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world," he wrote in 2007.

I suspect now that Krugman's initial antipathy to Obama had more to do with his freshwater/saltwater economic dichotomy: while you can't paint Obama as a purebred Chicago-school economist, he does seem to have picked up pieces of the attitude, especially Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's subtly manipulative "nudge" framework. Krugman may be right that Obama was more conservative than Clinton or Edwards, but he was free of some of their baggage -- not least their Iraq War votes. Since Obama took office some things are clearer and some are not. His cautious, conservative instincts have come out front, way ahead of his clear reasoning and even his inspirational oratory. He has repeatedly not just pulled his punches but refused to throw them. He unaccountably, inexcusably kept much of Bush's security and treasury teams, adding a few Clinton people (including dependably hawkish Hillary Clinton), and they have continued to operate much as they did under Bush (or at least under Clinton). Krugman has yet to criticize such policies in personal terms (as I just did), but he's held tight to the issues, cutting Obama slack as a practicing politician but not as a policy theorist (e.g., on stimulus size).

A lot of background info here, including a good summary of the academic work that Krugman built his Nobel Prize rep on. More currently:

Why was it so politically difficult to reregulate the banks? he wondered. Why couldn't the Administration harness the populist outrage? What good had Wall Street ever done for America? "There must be something useful in there, but it is really hard to see what," he says. "That's everybody's challenge: come up with a clearly beneficial example of financial innovation without mentioning A.T.M.s, and no one can do it. If there are arbitrage opportunities and you're able to spot them a few seconds before anybody else, you can make a lot of money, but there's no actual social gain from doing that. We've tried talking to our friends in finance, and they say, 'Liquidity, liquidity, liquidity.' Well, there is some social loss if people are hanging on to a lot of idle cash, so the financial system, by providing liquid assets that provide a pretty good yield, is supposed to deal with that. But it turns out that, just when you need it most, that liquidity froze." [ . . . ]

The crisis should have been a lesson to people not to rush into investments that they didn't understand, but Krugman suspects that it wasn't. "It hasn't been the searing experience," he says. "A lot of people got burned, but I'm not sure that they'll remember. You really have to have a Depression mentality to say, 'I'd rather have cash or Treasury bills that yield almost nothing, rather than this product that my banker assures me is perfectly safe and yields two per cent.' So, unless there's a lot more regulation, we could do this again." Krugman had been getting more and more pessimistic about the possibilities for recovery. Already, incredibly, people seemed to be forgetting that America's economy had nearly collapsed, and the usual critics of deficit spending and those who did not share his sanguine attitude toward inflation were speaking up again.

Part of the problem is that there are lots of variant notions of what constitutes a recovery, starting with Goldman Sachs' profit/loss sheet, which has already recovered (without so much as a "thank you very much"). Part of the problem is that it's harder than ever to connect the dots, especially when people in a position of authority like Obama are reluctant to do so. I basically bought the argument that it was necessary to bail the banks out in order to prevent further destruction of the real economy, but we should have gotten the necessary reforms as part of the quid pro quo back when the banks were facing the abyss. That didn't happen -- in part because Bush and Obama didn't want to further undermine confidence in the system; in part because the banks had so much inside clout the regulators were tripping over themselves trying to do them favors -- and as the moment has passed, the metaphor has lost its impact (if indeed anyone outside of the financial sector understood it anyway).

Ask the Author Live: Larissa MacFarquhar with Paul Krugman: An interview (no longer live) following up on the article.

Loudon Wainwright III: The Paul Krugman Blues: Not up to "Kings and Queens" or "Rufus Is a Tit Man" but germane enough for a link.

Paul Krugman: The Bankruptcy Boys: The best of his recent columns, maybe because the target is as easy to hit as an elephant. Republicans have been pursuing this "starve the beast" strategy for years. (I first ran into it when a friend insisted on tipping in cash for credit card-charged meals so that the tip might escape the taxman's net, thereby depriving the government of a tiny bit of money to waste.) The most extreme version of this is the Republican vote against raising the federal debt limit -- a ploy to force the government into default, which will presumably make borrowing any more money more expensive. Such a move would be nothing short of insane, but there it is. And really, drowning the government in the bathtub is just as insane.

But there is a kind of logic to the current Republican position: in effect, the party is doubling down on starve-the-beast. Depriving the government of revenue, it turns out, wasn't enough to push politicians into dismantling the welfare state. So now the de facto strategy is to oppose any responsible action until we are in the midst of a fiscal catastrophe.

Why anyone would trust the Republicans to manage the government they hate through a catastrophe is beyond me. Masochism? Stupidity? Death wish?

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Recycled Goods (71): February 2010

Pick up text here.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Music Week

Music: Current count 16420 [16393] rated (+27), 798 [798] unrated (+0). Another week.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #23, Part 3)

Jazz Consumer Guide is out of my hands but still a few weeks away from publication. Good time to Just pick my way through the backlog. Finding some good records, but no great ones. Lots more to go.

Jerry Leake: Cubist (2009 [2010], Rhombus Publishing): Percussionist employing almost every instrument from around the world, graduated from Berklee, teaches at New England Conservatory and Tufts, has published eight books, released four records. This one marks a move towards assembling a band -- nominally an octet, but only guitarist-producer Randy Roos joins Leake on a majority of cuts. Some cuts develop an impressive African vibe; others add Turkish and Indian flavors. B+(**)

Babatunde Lea: Umbo Weti: A Tribute to Leon Thomas (2008 [2009], Motéma, 2CD): Drummer, I'm finding very little useful biography: grew up in New York and Englewood, NJ; now based in San Francisco, evidently since the late 1960s. ("In the late 1960s the youthful 49 year old percussionist migrated westward to the Bay Area": when was he 49? If in the late 1960s he'd be 90 now, which he sure doesn't look; if now he would have left NY/NJ by the time he was 10, hardly grown up.) Released an album in 1979, then nothing until 1996, a half-dozen (more/less) since. Leon Thomas (1937-99) might have been a blues shouter but he ran into the avant-garde, cutting six 1969-73 albums, plus appearing on albums by Pharoah Sanders, Oliver Nelson, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Archie Shepp, Mary Lou Williams, and Santana. His discography is spotty after that -- a 1988 Blues Band album I rather like, a 1998 duet with Jeri Brown, not much more. This was cut live at Yoshi, with Dwight Trible carrying the vocal burden, Ernie Watts waxing eloquent on tenor sax where Sanders and Shepp turned shrill, Patrice Rushen on piano and Gary Brown on bass. B+(***)

Maria Neckam: Deeper (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Singer-songwriter, born in Austria, lived in Netherlands before winding up in Brooklyn. First record. Mostly backed by a slinky, slippery group consisting of Aaron Goldberg on piano, Thomas Morgan on double bass, and Colin Stranahan on drums, with a horn or two added on 5 of 10 songs. Peter Eldridge also sings on one song. Lyrics are buried in a PDF on the extended CD, but 90% of "Missing You" is rote repetition of "missing you," and I didn't notice anything else much, uh, deeper. C+

John Ellis & Double-Wide: Puppet Mischief (2009 [2010], ObliqSound): Tenor saxophonist, also plays bass clarinet here, b. 1974, sixth album since 1996. Seems that he has been aiming at some sort of a popular mainstream synthesis -- past album titles emphasize a common touch ("Roots Branches and Leaves," "One Foot in the Swamp"), and his Double-Wide aims low even when the shot drifts high. Blues are part, but also this veers toward circus music -- maybe it's Matt Perrine's sousaphone in lieu of bass, or Brian Coogan's organ (also in lieu of bass). The fourth group member is Jason Marsalis on drums, but things are made more complex with two guests: Alan Ferber on trombone and Gregoire Maret on harmonica, both quality additions. B+(*)

Tineke Postma: The Traveller (2009 [2010], Etcetera Now): Alto saxophonist, some soprano, b. 1978, Netherlands. Fourth album, this one fronting a quality American quartet: Geri Allen on piano, Scott Colley on bass, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums. Pushes hard on the edges of postbop, but doesn't make much of a breakthrough. B+(*)

Liam Sillery: Phenomenology (2008 [2010], OA2): Trumpeter, b. 1972, from New Jersey, fourth album since 2005, a hard bop quintet with name players -- at least in my book: Matt Blostein (alto sax), Jesse Stacken (piano), Thomas Morgan (bass), Vinnie Sperrazza (drums) -- and postbop airs but also rough edges. Best when they pick up the pace. B+(**)

Pablo Aslan: Tango Grill (2010, Zoho): Bassist, born in Argentina, based in New York, has several records based on tango themes -- 2007's Buenos Aires Tango Standards is one I particularly recommend. New one is more of the same -- an assortment of old tango tunes given a jolt of jazz improv, with piano and trumpet kicking in as well as the usual bandoneon and violin. B+(***)

David S. Ware: Saturnian (Solo Saxophones, Volume 1) (2009 [2010], AUM Fidelity): Practice as slow-motion performance: the inevitable solo album, tenor sax (of course), also stritch and saxello which are a bit funkier, perhaps because they're hard to play without thinking of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. But Ware, always a methodical guy, only plays one at a time. B+(***)

Sebastiano Meloni/Adriano Orrů/Tony Oxley: Improvised Pieces for Trio (2008 [2010], Big Round): Piano-bass-drums trio, respectively. Meloni and Orrů live in Cagliari, Italy; they have a short discography which hasn't come to AMG's attention yet. Credits are split 7 for Meloni, 7 for the group (one is just an Orrů-Oxley duo). Meloni plays sharp and percussive, able to take the lead when he sees fit. Oxley is relatively famous: a major drummer of Europe's avant-garde, past 70 now, with a Penguin Guide crown album to his credit (1969's The Baptised Traveler). B+(***)

Dan Dean: 251 (2009 [2010], Origin): Bassist; credits don't specify, but pictures show him playing electric. First album, although AMG lists about 50 credits going back to 1976. The songs here are covers, most well known standards ("'S Wonderful," "One Note Samba," "All the Things You Are," "In Walked Bud," "Body and Soul," etc.) done as duets with various keyboard players: George Duke, Larry Goldings (organ), Gil Goldstein (also plays accordion), Kenny Werner. Werner's cuts are brightly pianistic; Goldings is Goldings, and there's not much a bassist can do about that. B

Phil Kelly & the Northwest Prevailing Winds: Ballet of the Bouncing Beagles (2009, Origin): Big big band -- 22 pieces, plus string programming -- from Seattle, with a couple of recognized names but not many -- Jerry Dodgion, Pete Christlieb, Grant Geissman, Jay Thomas are the names I know. Third album for composer-arranger Kelly, who came out of Texas, where he was arranger for the Fort Worth Symphony Pops for 25 years. Reminds me of Kenton, sometimes even at his best, hardly ever at his worst. B+(*)

Scenes: Rinnova (2009 [2010], Origin): Guitarist John Stowell, leading a trio with Seattle stalwarts Jeff Johnson (bass) and John Bishop (drums). Second album as Scenes, plus an earlier quartet album titled Scenes. Stowell's credits go back to the mid-1970s. AMG credits him with 13 albums and a few more credits, mostly since 2000. Has an engagingly subtle style, calmly picking his way through intricate sequences. Need more time to decide just how substantial this is. [B+(***)]

Aaron Immanuel Wright: Eleven Daughters (2009 [2010], Origin): Bassist, b. 1979, from Oregon, studied in California, got a BA in philosophy, based now in New York. Wrote (or co-wrote with drummer Brian Menendez) 6 of 7 songs, with a cover of "Laura." Group is a quartet with Tim Willcox on tenor sax and Darrell Grant on piano. I suppose one way you can tell it's the bassist's record is that neither sax nor piano ever break loose. Such balance may be admirable, but it doesn't do much to get your attention. B

Tord Gustavsen Ensemble: Restored, Returned (2009 [2010], ECM): Pianist, b. 1970, from Norway, has three previous trio albums on ECM, slyly simple and elegant things that put him in the upper tier of ECM's ambience. This is a slightly bigger production, in which he plays slightly less. Several pieces are built around W.H. Auden poetry, sung by Kristin Asbjřrnsen, who gives them a sultry musicality far removed from the archness that most found poetry results in. Tore Brunborg plays tenor and soprano sax, gently caressing the melodies and filling them out. B+(***)

Pete Lockett's Network of Sparks: One (1999 [2010], Summerfold): Percussion ensemble, released on Bill Bruford's label, as Bruford joins in and gets a "featuring" credit. Reissue of first album, released on Melt 2000 in 1999 or 2000, with same cover plus the legend across the bottom: "Rhythms and pulses from around the world." Lockett has five or more later albums, most or all with Nana Tsiboe (from Ghana, plays congas and djembe) and Simon Limbrick (mostly plays marimba and vibes), who are spotted here on about half of the cuts, along with Bruford (5 tracks, mostly drum set), Pam Chowhan and Johnny Kaisi (one track each). Lockett is credited with dozens of things, including samplers and sound treatments. Two pieces by other drum ensemble pioneers (Max Roach, Pierre Favre), the rest originals. B+(*)

Maxfield Gast: Eat Your Beats (2009 [2010], Militia Hill): Saxophonist (alto, soprano, EWI; also trumpet, synth, and drum programming) from Philadelphia. First album. Occasionally adds keybs, bass, and/or drums, but sometimes just does it all himself. One of his web pages describes this as "a combination of old-school instrumental hip hop, drum & bass, soul, and funk." I wound up refiling it as pop jazz, which isn't quite fair: it isn't slick or smooth or catchy, and it doesn't make you feel like wretching. On the other hand, it doesn't do much else either. Minor grooves, nothing to get your attention (least of all the saxophone), yet it doesn't slip into ambience either. B-

Carl Fischer & Organic Groove Ensemble: Adverse Times (2009 [2010], Fischmusic): Trumpet player (also flugelhorn and valve trombone here), second album. Played with Maynard Ferguson Big Bop Nouveau Band 1993-98, winding up as music director, and returning for spots up to 2004. Otherwise, resume mostly features performances (but I don't see any recording credits) with pop stars: Dianne Schuur, Mary Wilson, Blood Sweat & Tears, Dells, Four Tops, Will Smith, Shakira, Sam Moore, Sophie B. Hawkins, Mariah Carey, Billy Joel. Organic Groove seems to mean Hammond B3, guitar, tabla, and Latin percussion. Two vocals by Brent Carter are definite downers. The trumpet does remind a bit of Ferguson, to whom the album is dedicated. B

Orrin Evans: Faith in Action (2009 [2010], Posi-Tone): Pianist, b. 1975 or 1976 (seen both cited) in Trenton, NJ; raised in Philadelphia, studied at Rutgers (e.g., Kenny Barron), based in Philadelphia. Tenth album since 1994, most on Criss Cross. First one I've heard, partially plugging one of the larger gaps in my listening. Piano trio with Luques Curtis on bass, various drummers (Nasheet Waits, Rocky Bryant, Gene Jackson). Mostly Bobby Watson songs (5 of 10) -- Evans has appeared on a couple Watson albums, and Watson wrote an appreciative note on the inside, something about finding the portal and unlocking the compositions. That's too technical for me: what I hear is a first-rate postbop pianist picking his way through intricate material, impressive enough but nothing quite grabs me. Need to listen to him more, but that's true of a lot of more/less equivalent pianists. B+(**)

Roberto Fonseca: Akokan (2008 [2010], Enja/Justin Time): Cuban pianist, b. 1975, has six or so albums since 2001. Has a light touch, speed, and sophistication when out in the lead. His accoutrements are less impressive. Javier Zalba plays flute, clarinet, and baritone sax, none particularly apt. Several vocals also produce mixed effects. Few Afro-Cuban trademarks, which is neither here nor there. B+(*)

These are some even quicker notes based on downloading or streaming records. I don't have the packaging here, don't have the official hype, often don't have much information to go on. I have a couple of extra rules here: everything gets reviewed/graded in one shot (sometimes with a second play), even when I'm still guessing on a grade; the records go into my flush file (i.e., no Jazz CG entry, unless I make an exception for an obvious dud). If/when I get an actual copy I'll reconsider the record.

Terry Riley: Autodreamographical Tales (2010, Tzadik): Two multipart series, the title piece spoken word over ambient sounds, "The Hook Lecture" built around piano pieces (with some spoken word) that are somewhat more than minimalist. The spoken word isn't without interest, although it can be slow going. The piano is richly textured. I suppose there's a classical analogue, but don't know enough to pin it down, partly because I've never heard classical piano I liked quite this much. B+(*) [Rhapsody]

John Zorn: Femina (2008 [2009], Tzadik): A tribute to the ladies. The CD is organized as Parts 1-4, but the website notes that Zorn composed (doesn't play) this using his "file card technique," and the granularity includes references to: Hildegard von Bingen, Meredith Monk, Simone de Beauvoir, Frida Kahlo, Madame Blavatsky, Isadora Duncan, Hélčne Cixous, Gertrude Stein, Abe Sada, Sylvia Plath, Louise Bourgeois, Margaret Mead, Loie Fuller, Dorothy Parker, Yoko Ono, moon goddess En Hedu'Anna, and others. Players are: Jennifer Choi (violin), Okkyung Lee (cello), Carl Emanuel (harp), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), Ikue Mori (electronics), and Shayna Dunkelman (percussion), with Laurie Anderson offering some words at the beginning. While the action can shift dramatically, it mostly meanders unimpressively. B- [Rhapsody]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Jason Adasiewicz's Rolldown: Varmint (Cuneiform)
• Ehud Asherie: Modern Life (Posi-Tone)
• Stefano Battaglia/Michele Rabbia: Pastorale (ECM): advance, Mar. 30
• François Couturier: Un Jour Si Blanc (ECM): advance, Mar. 30
• Ergo: Multitude, Solitude (Cuneiform)
• First Meeting: Cut the Rope (Libra): Mar. 23
• Satoko Fujii Ma-Do: Desert Ship (Not Two): Mar. 23
• Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo: Zakopane (Libra): Mar. 23
• Gato Libre: Shiro (Libra): Mar. 23
• Aaron Goldberg: Home (Sunnyside): Apr. 13
• Helge Lien Trio: Hello Troll (Ozella)
• Little Women: Throat (AUM Fidelity): Apr. 13
• New York Art Quartet: Old Stuff (1965, Cuneiform)
• Mark O'Connor: Jam Session (OMAC)
• Ken Peplowski: Noir Blue (Capri)
• Jean-Michel Pilc: True Story (Dreyfus)
• Karl Seglem: NORSKjazz.no (Ozella)
• Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars: Rise & Shine (Cumbancha): Mar. 23
• The Vinson Valega Group: Biophilia (Consilience Productions): Mar. 16
• VW Brothers [Paul van Wageningen/Marc van Wageningen]: Muziek (Patois)
• The Wee Trio: Capitol Diner Vol. 2 Animal Style (Bionic)

Friday, February 26, 2010

Tanker Deals

Wichita Eagle: Tanker contract looks promising: I haven't been counting, so I'm not sure whether this is the 30th or the 300th editorial or op-ed column the Eagle has run in favor of wasting $35 billion taxpayer dollars to give the Air Force something they don't need and that will only be used to get the US involved in foreign conflicts faster than ever. This is a monumentally bad program which can and should be attacked on numerous grounds: it is a colossal waste; the whole program has been fraught with corruption (with one Boeing official, Darleen Druyun, winding up in jail, and several other resignations); and it makes a long-term strategic commitment to extending our worst desires to act as the world's police force. It isn't even much of a jobs program: this editorial, like every other, leads off with promises of jobs: the usual share promised to Wichita has been 1000, although lately Boeing has been backing down on that as they find they need to spread more jobs around to lock up more congressional support. That political clout came in handy in 2008 when the Air Force awarded the contract to Northrop and their proposal to modify Airbus airliners -- a deal which has its own cadre of congressional flacks, starting with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). All that political pressure resulted in rebidding the deal on terms more favorable to Boeing.

You have to wonder why Boeing's lobbyists even bother to plant so much propaganda in the Wichita Eagle, given that the whole state's congressional delegation has long been bought and paid for. Leading the fight is ex-Boeing employee Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), who has been obsessing about tankers so long that Bush wound up nicknaming him Tanker Todd. One thing that's curious about all of this is that the current tanker fleet, based on venerable Boeing 707 aircraft that have been periodically upgraded with new wings and engines, are based and maintained here in Wichita, a steady source of jobs that would be phased out with new tankers. Even if Boeing wins the contract, they're always happy to auction the jobs to the highest (or more often the lowest) bidder. They've already wiped out 90% of their Wichita plant, and they moved their headquarters from Seattle to Chicago so the executives would be less likely to run into unemployed plant workers. Meanwhile, they've spread out facilities all over the country, wherever they could find political favor, plus they've pawned much of their work off on China and Japan -- including the wings on their new 787 Dreamliner, something hitherto regarded as the crown jewels of the airframe industry. (They've even sublet their real crown jewels -- their lobbying organization -- to China back in the 1990s to press for "most favorable nation" trade status.)

Boeing cooked up the tanker scam about 10 years ago as a way to extend their soon-to-be-obsolete 767 production line. The Air Force didn't have any interest in new tankers, and certainly didn't have any budget for it, so Boeing proposed to finance the tankers privately and lease them to the Air Force, where they'd be buried in the operating budget, away from the more competitive procurement budget. Needless to say, the lease scheme opened up hitherto unimagined avenues for ripping off the government. John McCain played a small role in shooting the lease scam down, but eventually Boeing got the Air Force to put the deal on its procurement wish list, but that wound up inviting EADS into the bidding -- after all, Airbus has their own obsolescent airliners, the US desperately needs European support for its NATO disaster in Afghanistan, and Northrup, with their own roster of paid politicians, was eager to partner with them on a cushy deal.

So now we have lobby money flying thicker than ever, but all you ever read is how many jobs would be created -- numbers that seem really paltry compared to the $35 billion outlay -- and maybe a bit about how old the KC-135s are. The antiwar movement has missed a golden opportunity to shoot this turkey down, because it raises so many issues, especially about how we view the future role of the US in world affairs, but also about how business and politics colludes in the US, and how the Defense Department juggernaut keeps feeding conflicts by investing in them.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Book Notes

Another quick round of book notes, including some of the Af/Pak books mentioned in yesterday's post. I haven't actually been looking around very hard: haven't spent as much time as usual in bookstores or libraries, and haven't spent much time scrounging through the new release lists. Nonetheless, I've accumulated my quota of things to mention.

Moshe Adler: Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science That Makes Life Dismal (2009, New Press): About time someone turned the tables on "the dismal science" and show that what's dismal about it is how susceptible it is to political whims of its practitioners.

Perry Anderson: The New Old World (2009, Verso): New Left Review editor and historian, surveys Europe after the Cold War, a time when Europe is widely presumed to have come into its own, but still habitually follows US foreign policy, no matter how benighted (which under Bush, in particular, was pretty far gone).

Joyce Oldham Appleby: The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2010, WW Norton): General history, touting the culture of capitalism as well as the economics.

René Backmann: A Wall in Palestine (paperback, 2010, Picador): More like the wall in Palestine, cutting through the West Bank, less for security than to impose a new partition on the landscape, and not much about that either given the Israelis show every intent to keep both sides.

Bruce Bartlett: The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a Way Forward (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Still a self-styled conservative, but whereas his 2006 book still clung to Reagan's legacy (title: Impostor: How George W Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy) and his 2008 book was dishonest (title: Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past) he finally has some doubts about Saint Ronald. Now he's pitching Keynes and the Welfare State to his conservative brethren, but it's probably too high and hard for them to touch.

Mats Berdal: Building Peace after War: A Critical Assessment of International Peacebuilding from Cambodia to Afghanistan (paperback, 2009, Taylor & Francis): Short (186 pp) primer, drawing on multiple cases including Congo. Most likely this is one of those subjects where successes are all alike but failures each break apart in their own ways.

Barbara Bick: Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan (paperback, 2008, Feminist Press at CUNY): Peace/women's rights activist, moved to Afghanistan in 1990 as civil war superseded the US-backed mujahideen war against the Soviet-backed regime, again in 2001 to the anti-Taliban Panjshir Valley before 9/11, again in 2004.

Eric Blehm: The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan (2010, Harper): Heroic war literature with all those touchingly valorous little details. Hard to tell what actually happened from the hype, but it looks like this team dropped into Afghanistan in late 2001 to help organize Karzai's anti-Taliban Pashtun rebellion, which didn't exactly work out even then let alone for the long haul. More Afghan war memoirs/stories since last I collected a list: Jon Lee Anderson: The Lion's Grave: Dispatches From Afghanistan; Colin Berry: The Deniable Agent: Undercover in Afghanistan; Christie Blatchford: Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army; Matthew Currier Burden: The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches from Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan; John T Carney: No Room for Error: The Covert Operations of America's Special Tactics Units From Iran to Afghanistan; Dayna Curry/Heather Mercer: Prisoners of Hope: The Story of Our Captivity and Freedom in Afghanistan; Ed Darack: Victory Point: Operations Red Wings and Whalers - The Marine Corps ' Battle for Freedom in Afghanistan; Lt Gen Michael DeLong: A General Speaks Out: The Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Mike Friscolanti: Friendly Fire: The Untold Story of the US Bombing That Killed Four Canadian Soldiers in Afghanistan; Chuck Larson: Heroes Among Us: Firsthand Accounts of Combat from America's Most Decorated Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan; Marcus Luttrell/Patrick Robinson: Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10; Malcolm MacPherson: Roberts Ridge : A Story of Courage and Sacrifice on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan; Sean Maloney: Enduring the Freedom: A Rogue Historian in Afghanistan, and Confronting the Chaos: A Rogue Military Historian Returns to Afghanistan; Sean Naylor: Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda; Johnny Rico: Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America; Peter Telep: Direct Action: Special Forces in Afghanistan; Chris Wattie: Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, the Taliban and the Battle That Saved Afghanistan; Stephen D Wrage, ed: Immaculate Warfare: Participants Reflect on the Air Campaigns Over Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq; Thomas W Young: The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan; also: Masood Farivar: Confessions of a Mullah Warrior; Emmanuel Guibert/Frederic Lemercier/Didier Lefevre: The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders; Patrick Macrory: Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan 1842; Matthew J Morgan: A Democracy Is Born: An Insider's Account of the Battle Against Terrorism in Afghanistan; Jules Stewart: Crimson Snow: Britain's First Disaster in Afghanistan (i.e., 1841); Christine Sullivan: Saving Cinnamon: The Amazing True Story of a Missing Military Puppy and the Desperate Mission to Bring Her Home; Mary Tillman: Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman.

Kristina Borjesson, ed: Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11: The Journalists Speak Out (2005, Prometheus): Interviews with 21 journalists on the pressures to support the Bush terror wars. Not sure who all is interviewed, but some war critics are included -- Paul Krugman, Juan Cole, Chris Hedges -- as well as bigwigs like Ted Koppel. Borjesson previously edited Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press.

Jennifer Burns: Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2009, Oxford University Press): Right-wing libertarian hero, one of the more unorthodox and unruly figures in American conservatism, all but worshipped for her two big novels, the main point of which seems to be that you can never be too greedy. I developed an intense dislike for her based on exposure to acolyte Nathaniel Branden, which may or may not be fully deserved.

Matthew Carr: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (2009, New Press): In 1492 the Christian Reconquista defeated the last Muslim enclave in Spain. It also marked the beginning of the Inquisition, which killed or expelled all of the Muslims and Jews from Spain. This focuses on the Muslim side of the story, a horrific episode of what we now call ethnic cleansing.

Hillel Cohen: Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967 (2010, University of California Press): Important book on Israel's recruitment and use of collaborators. Cohen previously covered the earlier period in Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. Subsequent volumes are likely to get ever stickier, especially after 1967 when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and after 1988 when Intifada broke out. Still, the principles were established early, and the effects within Palestinian society have been devastating. (I've read reviews of the original Hebrew edition.)

Stephen F Cohen: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (2009, Columbia University Press): The main interest here is probably the path by which the US and post-Soviet Russia returned to a quasi-Cold War standoff. Not sure how much of that there is, since Cohen is a Soviet studies guy, and likes to show off his expertise back to prime Stalinism.

Stephen P Cohen: Beyond America's Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Plenty to write about, but unless one tackles Israel, petrodollars, and military hubris there's not much to say about it. Cohen is a think tank "expert" on the region, which means he's on someone's payroll.

Brian Coughley: War, Coups and Terror: Pakistan's Army in Years of Turmoil (2009, Skyhorse): A British "expert" on all aspects of the Pakistan military, having spent a good deal of his life in Imperial armies.

David Faber: And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees (2009, Wiley): CNBC business analyst, keeps it short (208 pp) and vivid, but probably not very deep.

David Faber: Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II (2009, Simon & Schuster): The event in question is the most clichéd in the 20th century, so it would be good to get a fresh review of the situation. Not sure whether this book does that, but it does appear to be a substantial book on the subject -- at least it weighs out at 528 pp. Not sure that it helps that he's less a historian than a journalist.

Michael Fellman: In the Name of God and Country: Reconsidering Terrorism in American History (2010, Yale University Press): Argues that terrorism has been "a constant and driving force in American history." Casts a fairly wide net: John Brown, Sherman's march through Georgia (but not his efforts to exterminate bison to starve out the Indians?), Ku Klux Klan, Haymarket Square, the Philippines War. We all recall that "violence as as American as apple pie," but I'm doubtful that resurrecting our love/hate affair with terrorism is a good idea.

Antonio Giustozzi: Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (paperback, 2009, Columbia University Press): Promises a great deal of detail on how the neo-Taliban works, but I suspect it's still sketchy, and I'm not sure how the author got what he got.

Antonio Giustozzi: Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords of Afghanistan (2009, Columbia University Press): Not sure that the warlord side of the Afghan equation is any easier to research than the Taliban side. Ismail Khan and Abdul Rashid Dostum are prominent subjects here.

Michael Hogan: Savage Capitalism and the Myth of Democracy: Latin America in the Third Millennium (paperback, 2009, Booklocker.com): Essays on Latin America, recommended by Noam Chomsky. Probably not the Michael J Hogan who has a number of books on cold war diplomatic history, nor the novelist Michael Hogan, but the Michael Hogan with a couple of previous books on Mexico is a possibility.

Raymond Ibrahim, ed: The Al Qaeda Reader (paperback, 2007, Broadway): In case your copy of Mein Kampf is lonely. Introduction is by Victor Davis Hanson, who's certain to muddy the waters.

Tim Jackson: Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (2009, Earthscan): Short book (160 pp), arguing that it is possible to have broader prosperity without economic growth, a good thing given the limits to growth posed by natural resource constraints. Most economists seem to believe that trickle down from infinite growth will satisfy everyone, but that strikes me as not just untenable but downright dumb.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson/Joseph N Cappella: Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (2008; paperback, 2010, Oxford University Press): Also focuses on Wall Street Journal opinion pages and Fox News. Has a lot of charts and stuff.

Alex S Jones: Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy (2009, Oxford University Press): Specifically newspaper news. Others have pointed out that there is no shortage of demand for news now; rather, there's a shortfall in supply from newspapers, which traditionally provided news as a sideline to their now-suffering business of selling advertising. I'll also add that the demise of newspapers is less of a problem than the demise of democracy, which has been increasingly evident in newspapers' lack of interest in searching out real political problems.

Robert Lacey: Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (2009, Viking): Broad-ranging survey of Saudi Arabia these days. Lacey previously wrote The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'ud back in 1981, which had the good fortune of being banned by the Saudis.

David Loyn: In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian and American Occupation (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Short book (288 pp) for the range, but occupations often look alike. Nice company.

Jamie Maslin: Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn: A Hitchhiker's Adventures in the New Iran (2009, Skyhorse): Sounds like a good idea to me, but I'd bet that Iranians don't hold a candle to good ole American porn, much less American rap. Still, good to see that Iran isn't as monolithic as caricatured. On the other hand, I can't say that porn and rap have ever had much political impact, even here.

Pankaj Mishra: Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond (paperback, 2007, Picador): Travel reporting on the influence of the west on south and central Asia.

Richard North: Ministry of Defeat: The British in Iraq 2003-2009 (2009, Continuum): "This has become one of the most humiliating chapters in British Military History . . . the only real success of the British Government has been to hide from view." Still sounds smarter than the Americans.

William L O'Neill: A Bubble in Time: America During the Interwar Years, 1989-2001 (2009, Ivan R Dee): A history of the 1990s, a rare period of peace and prosperity bracketed by the two forever wars. O'Neill has tended to write kaleidoscopic period histories: A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home & Abroad in World War II; American High: The Years of Confidence 1945-1960; Coming Apart: An Informal History of the 1960s.

Jerrold M Post: The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda (paperback, 2008, Palgrave Macmillan): Dives into the murky waters of trying to build a psychological profile for terrorists, which seems like one more way to miss the political point.

Filip Reyntjens: The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006 (2009, Cambridge University Press): Books about the extraordinarily bloody Congo War(s) are finally coming to light: Gerard Prunier's was called Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe, which still seems to be like the first goto book, but reviews were pretty mixed.

Bruce Riedel: The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future (2008, Brookings Press): CIA guy, GWOT insider, profiles the Enemy in considerable detail, thinks he knows how to beat him/them.

Andrew M Roe: Waging War in Waziristan: The British Struggle in the Land of bin Laden, 1849-1947 (2010, University Press of Kansas): "As much of a powder keg today as it was when India was part of the British Empire," and much for the same reasons. I still recall John Major after 9/11 boasting of how much the British could teach the US about dealing with terrorism. This is what they can teach us about securing the sliver of Pakistan called Waziristan.

Mick Simonelli: Riding a Donkey Backwards Through Afghanistan: How I Successfully Spent $400 Million of Your Taxpayer Dollars to Build the Afghanistan National Army (paperback, 2009, Mill City): Obviously, an inside job; I gather he's planning on a sequel where he bumps the figure to $2.1 billion. At that rate, Afghanistan will have the highest military expense/GDP ratio in the world, a ratio unimaginable in any country that has to pay its way. Only someone who realizes how ridiculous that is would name his book thusly.

Rodney Stark: God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades (2009, Harper Collins): Argues that the Crusades were just the response of Europe to "Muslim terrorist aggression," as opposed to religious fanaticism or incipient imperialism, which have been pretty universally understood to be the range of options. Wonder where he got such a novel idea? Certainly not from history.

Mary Anne Weaver: Pakistan: Deep Inside the World's Most Frightening State (paperback, 2010, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Looks like a rework of Weaver's 2002 book Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan, maybe even a plain reissue: certainly a lot more has happened in the last eight years than comfortably fits within an extra 16 pages.

David Wildman/Phyllis Bennis: Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer (paperback, 2010, Olive Branch Press): Bennis also has primers on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Iraq war. Few critics cover the ground more surely or get to the point quicker.

Garry Wills: Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (2010, Penguin Press): Another book on the endless growth of presidential power, this one tying it to the atom bomb trigger, going back as far as the Manhattan project.

I usually do a paperback update, but will hold that off until next time. (Shouldn't be soon enough, as I have 34 notes left over.)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

An Extended AfPak Reading List

Peter Bergen: The Ultimate AfPak Reading List: Bergen's reading list covers Afghanistan (Soviet Invasion from 1979-89, rise and rule of the Talian 1994-2001, and post-2001), Pakistan (general, post-2001 Jihadism), and Al Qaeda (general, 1988-2001, since 2001, media strategy) with some background (underlyilng causes of 9/11 attacks, Islamist terrorism and its intellectual influences). A big chunk of those books have been on my reading list, so I thought I'd consolidate the list from 11 pages to 1, merge the categories, drop the essays (which no doubt are of equal interest), and add links to my book pages (where I have them; [*] denotes an entry in by Book Notes file):

• 9/11 Commission Report (2004, Norton): An authoritative account and actually a good read, surprisingly so for a government report.
• Hassan Abbas: Pakistan's Drift Into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America's War on Terror (2005, M.E. Sharpe, 2005): 89-177.
• Mariam Abou Zahab/Olivier Roy: Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection (2004, Hurst). [*]
• Abdel-Bari Atwan: The Secret History of al-Qa'ida (2006, University of California Press). A concise primer. [*]
• Daniel Benjamin/Steven Simon: The Age of Sacred Terror (2002, Random House): 38-94.
• Owen Bennett Jones: Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (2002, Yale University Press). [*; 3rd ed, 2009, Yale University Press]
• Peter Bergen: Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (2002, Touchstone): Reporting on the ground about al Qaeda around the world. Easy read (I think.)
• Peter Bergen: The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader (2006, Free Press): A collection of interviews with those who have known bin Laden and key documents such as the founding minutes of al Qaeda.
• Paul Berman: Terror and Liberalism (2003, Norton): Argues that the jihadist threat is similar to the fascist or communist threat in terms of both its ideology and goals.
• Gary Bernsten: Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda (2005, Crown): CIA officer recounts the fall of Taliban and the battle of Tora Bora.
• Henry Bradsher: Afghan Communism and Soviet Intervention (1999, Oxford University Press).
• Jason Burke: Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror (2003, IB Tauris): A really sharp combination of on the ground reporting and analysis.
• Sarah Chayes: The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (2006, Penguin): A journalist-turned-aid worker based in Kandahar for four years after the fall of the Taliban provides an interesting and important account of mistakes made by all the players in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
• Richard Clarke, ed: Terrorism: What the Next President Will Face (2008, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science).
• Stephen Cohen: The Idea of Pakistan (2005, Brookings): Well written general history. 61-200.
• Steve Coll: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (paperback, 2004, Penguin Press): Deeply reported. Won the Pulitzer for best non-fiction book of 2004. [*]
• Steve Coll: The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008, Penguin Press): An absorbing read about a family caught between the 7th and 21st centuries. Finalist for a Pulitzer in 2008. [*]
• David Cook: Understanding Jihad (2005, University of California Press): An erudite explanation of the history of jihadist thought.
• Gordon Corera: Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the AQ Khan Network (2006, Oxford University Press).
• George Crile: Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (2003, Atlantic Monthly Press). [*]
• James Dobbins: After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan (2008, Potomac Press).
• Gilles Dorronsoro: Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to Present (2005, Columbia University Press, 2005): Dense, authoritative study. [*]
• Mamoun Fandy: Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (1999, St Martin's Press): 177-194.
• Douglas Farah: Blood From Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror (2004, Broadway).
• Gregory Feifer: The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan (2009, Harper Collins).
• Reuven Firestone: Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (1999, Oxford University Press): 13-18 and 47-65.
• Yosri Fouda/Nick Fielding: Masterminds of Terror (2003, Mainstream Publishing): 73-87, 105-122, 123-147, 196-202.
• Douglas Frantz/Catherine Collins: The Man From Pakistan: The True Story of the World's Most Dangerous Nuclear Smuggler (2007, Grand Central Publishing). [note: originally published as The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets . . . and How We Could Have Stopped Him (2007, Twelve)] [*]
• Dalton Fury: Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man (2008, St Martin's Press). [*]
• Fawaz Gerges: The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (2005, Cambridge): Well researched account of how the global jihadist movement is riven by internecine ideological disputes and petty feuds. 1-80, 119-151, 185-250. [*]
• Antonio Giustozzi: Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: the Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (2006, Columbia University Press). [*]
• Karen Greenberg, ed: Al Qaeda Now: Understanding Today's Terrorists (2005, Cambridge): A stimulating collection of essays.
• Roy Gutman: How We Missed the Story: Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan (2008, USIP Press). [*]
• Husain Haqqani: Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (2005, Carnegie).
• Bruce Hoffman: Inside Terrorism (1998, Columbia University Press): 87-129.
• Rex Hudson: The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why (1999, Lyons Press).
• Zahid Hussain: Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle Within Militant Islam (2007, Columbia). [*]
• Jamestown Foundation: Pakistan's Troubled Frontier: The Future of the FATA and the NWFP (2009).
• Chris Johnson/Jolyon Leslie: Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace (2004, Zed Books): Two long time aid workers paint a bleak picture of Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban.
• Seth Jones: In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (2009, Norton). [*]
• Gilles Kepel: Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh (1986, University of California Press): 36-67.
• Gilles Kepel: Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (2002, Belknap Press): 1-20. [*]
• David Kilcullen: The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (2009, Oxford University Press). [*]
• Alan Krueger: What Makes a Terrorist (2007, Princeton University Press): 1-52.
• Bernard Lewis: The Political Language of Islam (1988, University of Chicago Press): 71-90.
• Brynjar Lia: Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri (2008, Columbia University Press)
• William Maley, ed: Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban (1998, New York University Press)
• William Maley: Rescuing Afghanistan (2007, UNSW Press): A concise book that examines the problems and possible solutions in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban government.
• Terry McDermott: Perfect Soldiers: The Hijackers -- Who They Were, Why They Did It (2005, Harper Collins): An excellent narrative.
• Hugh Miles: Al-Jazeera (2005, Abacus).
• Pervez Musharraf: In the Line of Fire (2008, Free Press): 197-281.
• Shuja Nawaz: Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (2008, Oxford University Press). [*]
• Sean Naylor: Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda (2005, Berkeley Publishing Group): Army Times reporter gives a deeply reported account of Operation Anaconda. [*]
• Robert Pape: Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005, Random House): Argues that campaigns of suicide terrorism are more motivated by nationalism than religion.
• Marianne Pearl: A Mighty Heart (2003, Scribner): 113-189.
• Sayyid Qutb: Milestones (1991, American Trust Publications).
• Ahmed Rashid: Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (paperback, 2001, Yale University Press). [*]
• Ahmed Rashid: Descent Into Chaos: The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008, Penguin). [*]
• Louise Richardson: What Terrorists Want (2007, Random House): 38-103. [*]
• Bruce Riedel: The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future (2008, Brookings Press). [*]
• Malise Ruthven: A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America (2002, Granta Books): 72-98.
• Marc Sageman: Understanding Terror Networks (2004, University of Pennsylvania Press): Sageman's groundbreaking sociological analysis of who joins al Qaeda and affiliated groups. [*]
• Nicholas Schmidle: To Live or Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan (2009, Henry Holt). [*]
• Gary Schroen: First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (2005, Ballantine). [*]
• Michael Scheuer [aka: Anonymous]: Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America (paperback, 2002, Brasseys): Written by the former head of the bin Laden unit at CIA. Well researched, analytically sharp.
• Michael Semple: Reconciliation in Afghanistan (2009, USIP Press).
• Mark Urban: War in Afghanistan (1998, Macmillan Press).
• Gabriel Weimann: Terror on the Internet (2006, United States Institute of Peace): The most authoritative account of terrorists' use of the Internet.
• Laurence Wright: The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006, Knopf): A gripping narrative of the jihadist movement from its birth in Egypt in the mid-20th century up until 9/11. Won the Pulitzer Prize for best non-fiction book of 2006. [*]
• Mohammad Yousaf/Mark Adkin: Afghanistan -- The Bear: The Defeat of a Superpower. (1992, Leo Cooper) [possibly reissued as The Battle for Afghanistan: The Soviets Versus the Mujahideen in the 1980s (2009, Pen & Sword)].
• Rahimullah Yusufzai: Most Wanted: Profiles of Terror (2002, Lotus/Roli): 132-144, Interrogations of Omar Sheikh and Maulana Azhar.
• Ayman al Zawahiri: Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet (2001): This document is Zawahiri's autobiography, and it also outlines his political philosophy. It runs about 75 pages and is essential reading to understand him.

The section on Pakistan is very short, not that there's a lot more to choose from, aside from narrow and rather dated monographs. The omission of Tariq Ali's The Duel is notable both as a substantial book on Pakistan and for what it says about American power as a root cause for the troubles. The section on root causes is also short, and focuses exclusively on terrorist psychology, whereas it should be obvious that at least part of the problem is the US has sent its corporations, military, and spies far from the homeland. No small amount has been written about that, both on the general problems of empire and on specific conflicts -- Iraq and Israel would each swamp the list, Iran and Saudi Arabia would add significantly to it, and there are other hot spots. For the most part I haven't singled out books like that unless they specifically tripped my keyword searches below. Any broad spectrum survey of US politics in the region would include works by Gabriel Kolko, Noam Chomsky, James Carroll, Jonathan Schell, Chalmers Johnson, Andrew Bacevich, Stephen Kinzer, Tim Weiner, Dilip Hiro, Tariq Ali, and Michael Klare.

Scrounging through the Book Notes file, looking for keywords (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Islam, jihad, al Qaeda, terror), but skipping books focusing on other Arab areas, suggests some additional books. The main thing that's missing above is a better critique on how the US got so tangled up in the Muslim world that it became a target of al Qaeda, and what sort of ideology plays out in the compulsion to revenge 9/11 by waging an indiscriminate war against civilians who had nothing to do with al Qaeda.

• Akbar S Ahmed: Resistance and Control in Pakistan (1983; revised ed, paperback, 2004, Taylor & Francis)
• Tariq Ali: The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002, Verso): The first significant effort to recognize the common obsessions of both sides.
• Tariq Ali: Rough Music: Blair Bombs Baghdad London Terror (paperback, 2006, Verso)
• Tariq Ali: The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008; paperback, 2009, Scribner): An important introduction to Pakistan, uncovering much that is uncommented on elsewhere, such as the pervasive corruption.
• Ali A Allawi: The Crisis of Islamic Civilization (2009, Yale University Press)
• Tamin Ansary: Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes (2009, Public Affairs)
• Reza Aslan: How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror (2009, Random House): A deep look at the split within Islam.
• Walden Bello: Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmaking of the American Empire (paperback, 2006, Holt)
• Mats Berdal: Building Peace After War: A Critical Assessment of International Peacebuilding (paperback, 2009, Taylor & Francis)
• Barbara Bick: Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan (paperback, 2008, Feminist Press at CUNY)
• Artyom Borovik: The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan (paperback, 2001, Grove Press)
• Michael Burleigh: Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (2009, Harper Collins)
• Caleb Carr: The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again (2002, Random House)
• Matthew Carr: The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism From the Assassination of Tsar Alexander II to Al-Qaeda (paperback, 2008, New Press)
• Melody Ermachild Chavis: Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: The Martyr Who Founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (paperback, 2004, St Martin's Press)
• Ira Chernus: Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin (paperback, 2006, Paradigm)
• John Cooley: Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (3rd ed, paperback, 2002, Pluto Press)
• Brian Coughley: War, Coups and Terror: Pakistan's Army in Years of Turmoil (2009, Skyhorse)
• Christopher Coyne: After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy (paperback, 2007, Stanford Economics and Finance)
• Robert D Crews/Amin Tarzi, eds: The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan (2008; paperback, 2009, Harvard University Press) [*]
• Mark Danner: Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War (2009, Nation Books)
• Meghnad Desai: Rethinking Islamism: The Ideology of the New Terror (paperback, 2006, IB Tauris)
• Robert Dreyfuss: Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (2005; paperback, 2006, Holt): How the US promoted Jihadism for Cold War purposes.
• David B Edwards: Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (paperback, 2002, University of California Press)
• Susan Faludi: The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (2007, Metropolitan Books): Paints the US response to 9/11 as a nervous breakdown, couched in eons of frontier myth.
• Paul Fitzgerald/Elizabeth Gould: Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story (paperback, 2009, City Lights)
• Fawaz A Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (paperback, 1999, Cambridge University Press)
• Fawaz A Gerges: Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (2006; paperback, 2007, Harcourt)
• Antonio Giustozzi: Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords of Afghanistan (2009, Columbia University Press)
• Aaron Glantz: Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations (paperback, 2008, Haymarket Books)
• Larry P Goodson: Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban (paperback, 2001, University of Washington Press)
• Lester W Grau/Michael A Gress, eds: The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost (paperback, 2002, University Press of Kansas): From the Russian General Staff papers.
• John Gray: Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern (paperback, 2005, New Press)
• Ramachandra Guha: India After Gandhi: The History of the Largest Democracy (2007, Ecco): Long history of India, which inevitably impinges on Pakistan.
• Stephen Holmes: The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror (2007, Cambridge University Press)
• Raymond Ibrahim, ed: The Al Qaeda Reader (paperback, 2007, Broadway)
• Ayesha Jalal: Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (2008, Harvard University Press)
• Arif Jamal: Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir (2009, Melville House)
• Chris Johnson/Joylon Leslie: Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace (2nd ed, paperback, 2008, Zed Books)
• Ann Jones: Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan (paperback, 2007, Picador)
• Robert D Kaplan: Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan (1990; paperback, 2001, Vintage): Cheerleader-propagandist for the mujahideen.
• Robert D Kaplan: Imperial Grunts: On the Ground With the American Military, From Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq (2005, Random House)
• Robert D Kaplan: Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground (2007, Random House)
• Gilles Kepel: The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (2004, Belknap Press): A postscript to the author's critically important Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, which left off viewing 9/11 as a desperate measure reflecting bin Laden's terminal weakness.
• Gilles Kepel/Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds: Al Qaeda in Its Own Words (2008; paperback, 2009, Belknap Press)
• Rashid Khalidi: Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Hegemony in the Middle East (2009, Beacon Press)
• M Ashgar Khan: We've Learnt Nothing from History: Pakistan: Politics and Military Power (2006, Oxford University Press)
• Yasmin Khan: The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (paperback, 2008, Yale University Press)
• Sonali Kolhatkar/James Ingalls: Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (paperback, 2006, Seven Stories Press)
• Jon Krakauer: Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (2009, Doubleday)
• Christina Lamb: The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan (2003; paperback, 2004, Harper Perennial)
• Mark LeVine: Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (2005, Oneworld)
• Mark LeVine: Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (paperback, 2008, Three Rivers Press)
• Bernard Lewis: What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (paperback, 2002, Harper Perennial)
• Adam B Lowther: Americans and Asymmetric Conflict: Lebanon, Somalia, and Afghanistan (2007, ABC-CLIO)
• David Loyn: In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian and American Occupation (2009, Palgrave Macmillan)
• William Maley: The Afghanistan Wars (2002; second ed, paperback, Palgrave Macmillan 2009)
• Mahmood Mamdani: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (2004, Pantheon): On how our views of Muslims are affected by US tactical interests, no matter how inconsistent.
• Eric S Margolis: War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet (revised ed, paperback, 2002, Routledge)
• Eric S Margolis: American Raj: America and the Muslim World (2008; paperback, 2009, Key Porter)
• Stephen L Melton: The Clausewitz Delusion: How the American Army Screwed Up the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (A Way Forward) (2009, MBI)
• Nick B Mills: Karzai: The Failing American Intervention and the Struggle for Afghanistan (2007, John Wiley & Sons)
• Pankaj Mishra: Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond (paperback, 2007, Picador)
• Greg Mortensen: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time (paperback, 2007, Penguin Books): An alternate, more practicable path to nation-building.
• Greg Mortensen: Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2009, Viking)
• Azhar Hassan Nadeem: Pakistan: The Political Economy of Lawlessness (2002, Oxford University Press)
• Omar Nasiri: Inside the Global Jihad: My Life With Al Qaeda: A Spy's Story (2006; paperback, 2008, Perseus)
• Ronald E Neumann: The Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan (2009, Potomac Books)
• Gretchen Peters: Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda (2009, Thomas Dunne)
• Gregory Alonso Pirio: The African Jihad: Bin Laden's Quest for the Horn of Africa (paperback, 2007, Red Sea Press)
• Norman Podhoretz: World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (2007, Doubleday)
• William R Polk: Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, From the American Revolution to Iraq (2007, Harper): A comparative history as the US moves from revolutionary insurgents to imperial counterinsurgents.
• Jerrold M Post: The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda (paperback, 2008, Palgrave Macmillan)
• Deborah Rodriguez: Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (paperback, 2007, Random House)
• Andrew M Roe: Waging War in Waziristan: The British Struggle in the Land of bin Laden, 1849-1947 (2010, University Press of Kansas)
• Olivier Roy: The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East (2008, Columbia University Press)
• Barnett R Rubin: The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (2nd ed, paperback, 2002, Yale University Press)
• Marc Sageman: Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (2007, University of Pennsylvania Press
• Marc Sageman, ed: Unmasking Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities (paperback, 2007, Jamestown Foundation)
• Michael Scheuer [Anonymous]: Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (2004, Potomac Books)
• Michael Scheuer: Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (2008, Free Press)
• Asne Seierstad: The Bookseller of Kabul (paperback, 2004, Little Brown)
• Ayesha Siddiqa: Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy (paperback, 2007, Pluto Press)
• Mick Simonelli: Riding a Donkey Backwards Through Afghanistan: How I Successfully Spent $400 Million of Your Taxpayer Dollars to Build the Afghanistan National Army (paperback, 2009, Mill City)
• Rory Stewart: The Places in Between (2004; paperback, 2006, Harvest Books): A winter 2001-02 trek across the mountains, in Babur's footsteps, in Bush's wake, in the brief moment of Taliban retreat.
• Stephen Tanner: Afghanistan: A Military History From Alexander the Great to the War Against the Taliban (2002; revised ed, paperback, 2009, Da Capo)
• John B Taylor: Global Financial Warriors: The Untold Story of International Finance in the Post-9/11 World (paperback, 2008, WW Norton)
• Alex von Tunzelman: Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (2007, Henry Holt): A top-down view of partition, easy on Nehru, hard on Jinnah.
• Mary Anne Weaver: Pakistan: Deep Inside the World's Most Frightening State (paperback, 2010, Farrar Straus and Giroux)
• David Wildman/Phyllis Bennis: Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer (paperback, 2010, Olive Branch Press)
• Lawrence Ziring: Pakistan: At the Crosscurrent of History (paperback, 2005, Oneworld)

Also found mentions of a bunch of Afghanistan war memoirs: Jon Lee Anderson: The Lion's Grave: Dispatches From Afghanistan; Colin Berry: The Deniable Agent: Undercover in Afghanistan; Christie Blatchford: Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army; Eric Blehm: The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan; Mark W Bromwich: Captains Blog: The Chronicles of My Afghan Vacation; Matthew Currier Burden: The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches from Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan; John T Carney: No Room for Error: The Covert Operations of America's Special Tactics Units From Iran to Afghanistan; Jeff Courter: Afghan Journal: A Soldier's Year in Afghanistan; Dayna Curry/Heather Mercer: Prisoners of Hope: The Story of Our Captivity and Freedom in Afghanistan; Ed Darack: Victory Point: Operations Red Wings and Whalers - The Marine Corps' Battle for Freedom in Afghanistan; Lt Gen Michael DeLong: A General Speaks Out: The Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Brandon Friedman: The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War; Mike Friscolanti: Friendly Fire: The Untold Story of the US Bombing That Killed Four Canadian Soldiers in Afghanistan; Chuck Larson: Heroes Among Us: Firsthand Accounts of Combat from America's Most Decorated Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan; Joe LeBleu: Long Rifle: A Sniper's Story in Iraq and Afghanistan; Marcus Luttrell/Patrick Robinson: Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10; Malcolm MacPherson: Roberts Ridge : A Story of Courage and Sacrifice on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan; Sean Maloney: Enduring the Freedom: A Rogue Historian in Afghanistan; Platte B Moring III: Honor First: A Citizen-Soldier in Afghanistan; Craig M Mullaney: The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education; Johnny Rico: Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America; Mike Ryan: Battlefield Afghanistan; Doug Stanton: Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan; Peter Telep: Direct Action: Special Forces in Afghanistan; Benjamin Tupper: Welcome To Afghanistan: Send More Ammo: The Tragicomic Art of Making War as an Embedded Trainer in the Afghan National Army; Chris Wattie: Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, the Taliban and the Battle That Saved Afghanistan; Stephen D Wrage, ed: Immaculate Warfare: Participants Reflect on the Air Campaigns Over Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq; Thomas W Young: The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan; Regulo Zapata Jr: Desperate Lands: The War on Terror Through the Eyes of a Special Forces Soldier; also: Masood Farivar: Confessions of a Mullah Warrior; Emmanuel Guibert/Frederic Lemercier/Didier Lefevre: The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders; Ali Ahmad Jalali: Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters Patrick Macrory: Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan 1842; Matthew J Morgan: A Democracy Is Born: An Insider's Account of the Battle Against Terrorism in Afghanistan; Jules Stewart: Crimson Snow: Britain's First Disaster in Afghanistan (i.e., 1841); Christine Sullivan: Saving Cinnamon: The Amazing True Story of a Missing Military Puppy and the Desperate Mission to Bring Her Home; Vladislav Tamarov: Afghanistan: A Russian Soldier's Story; Mary Tillman: Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman; This list continues to grow at a rapid pace.

The stuff I've added is no doubt less selective than the original list, although it also helps fill in critical holes. Overall, this seems like an awful lot of material, but there are a lot of things poorly covered if covered at all: starting with day-by-day political relationships between the US and various Afghani and Pakistani agents; there is little systematic military analysis, especially of damage to civilians; there is little accounting of money spent; there is a massive propaganda snow job to unshovel; there are secret prisons with a legacy of torture; there is the matter of Karzai's miraculous purchase on his office. So the ultimate list is still to come. But this is a start.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Some Day

Really bad day today. Water heater stopped heating water yesterday. Got up way too early to start calling around. Consensus opinion is that it needed a new thermocouple. On warranty, so I called the manufacturer and they agreed to ship one. Should get here tomorrow. However, we were anxious to get it fixed today if at all possible, so I thought I'd try to find one locally. Decided I needed to take the old one out to see just what I needed, and I screwed that up: tried taking the wrong thing off, then when that got difficult, I had a wrench slip, which knocked a hole in the pilot tube -- turning a minor, routine, warranty-covered repair into a major, my fault one -- and smashing my little finger in the process. After that, I decided I might as well replace the unit. Bought one, an expensive 12-year-warranty model. Got a friend with a pickup to pick it up and drag it home, and got a plumber out to put it together. Also bought a refrigerator-weight hand truck to help move it downstairs and the old one up. Did that. Opened it up, and the new one had two big dents in it, one on top rim, the other on the bottom rim. Decided to go ahead and hook it up, which went smoothly, but leaves me with a mess to sort out with the vendor/manufacturer, plus I have the old water heater to get rid of. Did get a shower.

Was delayed in starting dinner for a potluck at the Peace Center. Tried making a Moroccan braised chicken dish with a thick sauce of onions, green olives, and preserved lemon peel. Didn't get it done in time, so we went to the event empty-handed. Finished it when we got home. Event at least was worthwhile, and nothing anyone else brought would have gone with what I didn't bring. Two local guys went to Egypt to join the Gaza Freedom March, before being shut out by the Egyptian police state. They went on to Jordan and to the West Bank, where one came from and has extensive family, which was eye-opening to the other, so the trip was much enjoyed.

Back home now. Dead tired and worn out; finger hurts, not least when typing. Playing records that aren't bad but aren't interesting either, leaving me with little to say. Have two library books due tomorrow: haven't managed to finish fileting the first, and haven't cracked open the other.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Music Week

Music: Current count 16393 [16357] rated (+36), 798 [815] unrated (-17). Made a dent in the jazz prospecting backlog. Can't say as I enjoyed myself much.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #23, Part 2)

Finally got in a whole week of dipping into the jazz prospecting queue, almost at random, picking up some stuff that had fallen (sometimes literally) through the cracks, and some things I've passed over many times (as if avoiding).

Michaël Attias: Renku in Coimbra (2008 [2009], Clean Feed): Alto saxophonist, b. 1968 in Israel, moved to US in 1977, bounced back and forth between US and Europe until settling in New York in 1994. Group is a trio with John Hebert on bass and Satoshi Takeishi on drums; same group recorded Renku in 2004. Attias wrote two pieces, Hebert three (including the one reprised at the end); the two outside pieces are by Lee Konitz and Jimmy Lyons, touchstones for Attias. Russ Lossing joins in on piano on one cut, but in three plays I have to admit I didn't notice him. Tight group, the sax not unusual for free jazz, the bass and drums busy but not overbearing. B+(**)

Steven Schoenberg: Live: An Improvisational Journey (2006-08 [2010], Quabbin): Pianist, b. 1952. AMG lists him as Classical, but doesn't list any classical recordings by him. Rather, we have an 1982 album Pianoworks reissued on his label in 2007, plus one more -- none reviewed or rated. His website is on of those Flash things designed to make extracting information so painful you give up. Seems to do film and theatre work. Married his his school sweetheart, Jane, who works with him in some capacity, but not on this solo set, improvised live at Smith College, Northampton, MA (except for two cuts recorded later). Doesn't strike me as very jazz-oriented, but likable as piano music goes, rhythmically regular with a lot of harmonic fill. B+(*)

Curt Berg & the Avon Street Quintet: At Stagg Street Studio (2009, Origin): Trombonist, originally from Iowa, studied at Drake and USC. Broke in with Woody Herman c. 1970, and has several more big band credits -- Don Ellis, Jim Self, Vince Mendoza. First album, with saxophonist Tom Luer and pianist Andy Langham, plus bass (Lyman Medeiros) and drums (Bill Berg, don't know if related). Berg wrote all of the songs, including three he dedicated to Gary Foster, Eliot Spitzer, and Moacir Santos. Trombone almost always plays in unison with the sax -- soprano, alto, and tenor are listed in that order -- for a harmonic effect I don't care for, but the rhythm is gingerly sprung. B

Big Crazy Energy New York Band: Inspirations, Vol. 1 (2008 [2010], Rosa): Leader here is Norwegian trombonist Jens Wendelboe, who cut a couple of non-NY Big Crazy Energy Band albums in the early 1990s. He plays, conducts, produces, wrote or co-wrote 5 of 9 songs, and keeps the energy level high. Still, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, his high energy physics isn't crazy enough. Can't say I like closing with a Beatles tune either. B-

Tineke de Jong/Albert van Veenendaal/Alan Purves/Hans Habesos: Midday Moon (2008 [2009], Brokken): Dutch group. De Jong plays violin, van Veenendaal (prepared) piano, Purves percussion, Hasebos marimba. De Jong's notes describe herself as "a classical violinist inspired by jazz standards" and van Veenendaal as "an improvising pianist without style boundaries." In other words, she's more conventionally boxed in, whereas the pianist easily breaks convention. Especially striking when the drums and marimba expand on the prepared piano's percussion; less so when de Jong returns to chamber jazz, which predominates. B+(**)

Q'd Up: Quintessence (2009, Jazz Hang): Utah group, fourth album since 1999, with previous iterations of the group going back to 1983. Steve Lindeman (piano, keyboards) and Jay Lawrence (drums, vibes) write most of the pieces, with a couple of assists from vocalist Kelly Eisenhour (who sings three cuts) and a couple of standards. Ray Smith plays various saxophones and woodwinds, Matt Larson plays acoustic and electric bass, and Ron Brough plays vibes when not switching off for drums. Overall they claim 25 instruments, which varies the sound in ways hard to pigeonhole, except what you get from postbop. B

Matt Slocum: Portraits (2009 [2010], Chandra): Drummer, from Minnesota, now based in New Jersey, looks like his first album, although AMG has him confused with another Matt Slocum who plays guitar and cello, particularly in the band Sixpence None the Richer. Piano trio plus guest sax on 4 of 9 cuts. The pianist, who lays out on two of the sax cuts, is Gerald Clayton, impressive here. Bassist is Massimo Biolcati. Walter Smith III and Dayna Stephens play tenor sax on two cuts each, with Jaleel Shaw on alto on a cut with Stephens -- Smith's two cuts stand out. B+(*)

Ralph Lalama Quartet: The Audience (2009 [2010], Mighty Quinn): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1951, 7th album since 1990 (first 5 on Criss Cross), with John Hart on guitar, Rick Petrone on bass, Joe Corsello on drums. Mainstream, more bop than post, with Rollins an obvious model -- "I'm an Old Cowhand" is a nice touch even if it falls well short of Way Out West. Hart has a good day. B+(**)

Lajos Dudas: Chamber Music Live (1990 [2009], Pannon Classic): Not sure why I have this down as a 2009 release: it was mastered in 1997 and most likely released shortly after that. Jewel case is a little worn, too. Dudas plays clarinet, was born 1941, don't know how many records he has but he sent me one in 2008, Jazz on Stage, that made my HM list. This was recorded live in Bonn, with Sebastian Buchholz on alto sax and "buch-horn" -- the two horns provide a sharp-shrill contrast, vigorous when it's just the two of them. The third participant is vocalist Yldiz Ibrahimova, who has one of those operatic voices I can rarely stand. B

Darryl Harper: Stories in Real Time (2009, Hipnotic): Clarinet player, b. 1968, has four previous records as the Onus -- the one I've heard an HM. Teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University. Organized this group as a clarinet quartet with piano, bass, and drums, plus occasional vocalist Marianne Solivan. Sometimes goes for a chamber jazz/quasi-classical sound, and sometimes makes it work, although he can also throw out a piece of light funk like "Tore Up." Don't care for the singer, although she's not without interest, at least on the "Saints and Sinners" suite. B+(*)

Scott DuBois: Black Hawk Dance (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Guitarist, b. 1978, fourth album since 2005, second I have heard. His 2008 album Banshees got shortchanged in Jazz CG (19) with a high HM. This is only slightly less striking, probably because he slows the pace more, and defers less to his sax/bass clarinet player, Gebhard Ullman. Quartet is filled out capably by Thomas Morgan (bass) and Kresten Osgood (drums). Ullman has never sounded more like a mainstream bopper, which actually suits him well. B+(***)

Vivian Houle: Treize (2008 [2009], Drip Audio): Canadian vocalist, works through 13 tracks each with a different musician. Some pieces lean toward art song, or even opera, while others match the instrument head on -- especially the duo with drummer Kenton Loewen. I'm duly impressed, but can't say as I enjoyed much of it. B

Lee Shaw Trio: Blossom (2009, ARC): Pianist, from Oklahoma, b. 1926, played a little and taught a lot over the years, but didn't start to establish a discography until a mid-1990s trio with bassist Rich Syracuse and husband-drummer Stan Lee. Stan died in 2001, replaced (on drums, anyway) by Rich Siegel. Mostly Shaw originals, with one from Siegel, two from Syracuse, and two 1940s bop pieces from Fats Navarro and Johnny Guarnieri. B+(*)

Matt Vashlishan: No Such Thing (2008 [2009], Origin): Alto saxophonist, b. 1982, from the Poconos, based in/near Miami, latched onto Dave Liebman, adopting not just his sound but his look as well, and more importantly a big chunk of his band for his debut album: Vic Juris on guitar, Tony Marino on bass, Michael Stephans on drums, Liebman himself on soprano and tenor sax. Paired the saxes tend to run in boppish chase sequences, light-footed and fleet. A couple of change of pace pieces show nice form and tone. Juris gets in some tasty solos, too. B+(***)

Dana Hall: Into the Light (2009, Origin): Drummer, first album although he has a couple dozen side credits going back to 1998, including two with trumpeter Terell Stafford, who leads off here. Quintet, sort of post-hard bop, with Tim Warfield on tenor sax, Bruce Barth on piano/Fender Rhodes, and Rodney Whitaker on bass. The horns crackle, but come off a bit sloppy, with Warfield never clearly establishing himself. The drummer asserts his control by playing even louder, and is dazzling at best. B+(*)

Mike LeDonne: The Groover (2009 [2010], Savant): Keyboard player, mostly organ these days, something he's been getting progressively better at. The soul jazz formula is a dime a dozen, but you can't fault him for skimping on ingredients: Eric Alexander on tenor sax, Peter Bernstein on guitar, Joe Farnsworth on drums. Alexander's swoop through "On the Street Where You Live" is a high point, and Bernstein is always good for a few tasty solos. B+(*)

Chris Potter/Steve Wilson/Terrell Stafford/Keith Javors/Delbert Felix/John Davis: Coming Together (2005 [2009], Inarhyme): Originally intended to be the first album by saxophonist Brendan Edward Romaneck, 1981-2005, who wrote 8 of 11 tracks -- three covers are "My Shining Hour," "Nancy With the Laughing Face," and "Killing Me Softly With His Song." After Romaneck's "sudden and tragic end," the sax role was picked up by Chris Potter (first six tracks) and Steve Wilson (last five tracks). Potter's quartet sessions jump off to a fast start with a tour de force attack on "My Shining Hour." Romaneck's compositions are less compelling but provide plenty of scaffolding for Potter. Wilson's quintet sessions, with Terell Stafford on trumpet/flugelhorn, are less sharp, of course, but still of a high order. B+(**)

The American Music Project: On the Bright Side (2004-05 [2009], Inarhyme): Quartet with Dane Bays (alto sax), Keith Javors (piano), Dave Ziegner (bass), and Alex Brooks (drums) providing the jazz backbone, plus two vocalists: singer Curtis Isom and rapper Dejuan "D Priest" Everett. Bays wrote the music, except for a John Coltrane piece ("Lonnie's Lament"); Everett wrote the words, including a "Welcome" that spells everything out literally. I won't argue that this isn't quintessential Americana, but neither the rapper -- who sounds a bit like Chuck D but less so -- nor the singer hold their own, and while there's nothing wrong with the band -- I'll never complain about too much sax -- they're not really the point. B+(*)

Jeff Baker: Of Things Not Seen (2006-07 [2009], OA2): Vocalist, most likely Seattle-based, fourth album since 2003's inevitable Baker Sings Chet. This one is gospel-themed -- Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" threw me off for a minute, but two straight songs with "Thou" in the title steered me back. Stylistically he reminds me of Kurt Elling without the numerous annoying tics. Cut in Seattle with Origin's all-stars -- the Bill Anschell-Jeff Johnson-John Bishop trio is impeccable, and Brent Jensen is superb as always. Not into the songs, although the unlisted 12th song, with uncredited violin and backup singer, has some grace within it. B-

Marc Copland: Alone (2008-09 [2009], Pirouet): Postbop pianist, b. 1948, closing in on his 30th album since 1988, should be a major figure but they're so many pianists. As the title explains, solo. Very measured, quiet even, exactly the sort of thing that never commands my attention in a solo piano record. Starts with "Soul Eyes"; includes three originals and three Joni Mitchell songs among ten total. Intelligent and lovely, of course. B+(**)

Robin Verheyen: Starbound (2009, Pirouet): Saxophonist, lists soprano ahead of tenor, b. 1983 in Belgium; studied at Manhattan School of Music; based in New York. First record, a quartet with Bill Carrothers on piano, Nicolas Thys on bass, Dré Pallemaerts on drums. Wrote 9 of 11 pieces, with one by Thys and "I Wish I Knew" (Harry Warren, Mack Gordon). B+(**)

Gail Pettis: Here in the Moment (2008-09 [2010], OA2): Standards singer, b. 1958 in Kentucky, grew up in Gary, IN; now based in Seattle. Second album, split between two piano trios. Most songs have been done a lot -- "Night and Day," "Day in Day Out," "Nature Boy," "I Could Have Danced All Night" -- but she handles them with authority and a touch of soul. B+(*)

Hadley Caliman: Straight Ahead (2008 [2010], Origin): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1932, cut a few albums in the 1970s then nothing until 2008. Second comeback album, with Thomas Marriott on trumpet, Eric Verlinde on piano, also bass and drums. Mainstream player, not an especially strong voice, but his "Lush Life" is particularly nice. B+(*)

Bob Sneider & Paul Hofmann: Serve and Volley (2008 [2010], Origin): Guitarist and pianist, respectively, in a duo. Sneider has five previous albums, including a couple of Film Noir Projects with Joe Locke, and two previous duos with Hofmann. I find this a little light and sketchy. Title piece, by the way, is a 22:32 five-part suite. B

Dave Sharp's Secret Seven: 7 (2009 [2010], Vortex Jazz): Bassist, mostly electric, from Ann Arbor, MI. Group actually a quartet -- Chris Kaercher (various saxes, flute, harmonica), Dale Grisa (Hammond B3, piano), Eric "Chucho" Wilhelm (drums, percussion) -- with extras added here and there. Sharp and Kaercher share writing credits. Mostly funk grooves, with honking sax blasts; harmless. Ends with two "bonus tracks": a "radio edit" of the opener, and a vocal also pegged to radio, an r&b cover called "Can I Be Your Squeeze?" B

Tom Braxton: Endless Highway (2009, Pacific Coast Jazz): Saxophonist, tenor first, then soprano, alto, flute, keybs. Fourth album since 1998, dedicated to the late Wayman Tisdale. Pop jazz, soupy keybs, pumping sax riffs. Closes with three radio edits, including obligatory vocal fluff. B-

Dave King: Indelicate (2009 [2010], Sunnyside): Happy Apple/Bad Plus drummer, goes solo for his debut album with his drum track alongside an indelicate piano track. King wrote all the pieces. Probably unfair to say he plays piano like he plays drums, but the repetitive riffs and frills could easily have been conceived on drums; on the other hand, he never adds the sort of frills that are as natural to pianists as limbering up. Interesting, but not very compelling. B+(*)

The Zeke Martin Project: U4RIA (2009, Zeke Martin Project): Drummer, b. 1973, Brussels, Belgium; at age 12 played with Steve Lacy; moved to Cambridge, MA for high school, then on to New York, then back to Boston. Group is a quartet with Sean Berry (sax), Yusaku Yoshimura (keyboards, harmonics), and Rozhan Razman (bass). Seven cuts, all standard jazz/pop covers, only one I didn't recognize is Jaco Pastorius's "Teen Town." Little new here, but they bring graceful swing and good cheer to the project. One vocal: Nina Parlour on "Summertime." B

Darunam/Milan: The Last Angel on Earth (2008 [2009], 64-56 Media): Darunam is a group/duo of guitarist Radovan Jovicevic and vocalist Manu Narayan. Jovicevic is Serbian; Narayan Indian-American. They met up in New York, and have one previous album. Milan is Milan Milosevic, clarinet player, also from Belgrade (presumably not the Bosnian basketball player). Songs are based on various angels, saints, or deities, including Bacchus, Raphael, Cupid, Karl [Marx], Mahatma [Gandhi], and Theresa [Mother]. Mostly in English -- Vanessa Ivey also sings some -- sort of world fusion with Balkan and Indian elements but nothing that clear. Interesting sound mix; less sure about the themes. B+(*)

Tierra Negra & Muriel Anderson: New World Flamenco (2009 [2010], Tierra Negra): Tierra Negra is a pair of German flamenco guitar players, Raughi Ebert and Leo Henrichs. They have at least 9 albums since 1997. Anderson is an American guitarist, based in Nashville, considered Folk by AMG, credited with "classic & harp guitar" here. She has more than a dozen albums since 1989. Her website includes recipes but no biography. Most cuts include bass, drums, percussion; some palmas, but mostly the percussion is secondary. Nothing cooks, but intricate guitarwork can be its own reward. B+(**)

Kat Parra: Dos Amantes (2009 [2010], JazzMa): Singer, b. 1962 in Detroit (AMG, which also describes her as "a Northern California native who lived in Chile as a teenager"), based in San Jose, CA. Third album. Picks her way around Latin musics, including a special interest in Sephardic Jewrs, tracing their music from Spain to North Africa and singing in Ladino -- she calls her group The Sephardic Music Experience. All this would be fascinating if only she were better at it. Her voice has little appeal, the backing singers (where used) add clutter, the Sephardic pieces lack the kick of the Afro-Cubans, and a piece of Afro-Peruvian Landó is even duller. B-

Peggo: In Love (2009 [2010], Big Round): Not much info here, although the "enhanced CD" sticker promises more if I pop the CD into a computer. Don't have recording dates, so 2009 is a guess; don't have musician credits. Singer's full name Peggo Horstmann Hodes, where Horstmann is the surname of her grandfather Henry -- cited as her introduction to these old standards -- and Hodes is her husband's surname, congressman Paul (D-NH). First album, although she has a couple of early-1990s children's albums as Peggosus, and there are three evidently folkie Peggo & Paul albums. This one is straight standards, all indelible classics, with a "Medley of Love" mopping up nine more. The anonymous band does its job; a plain-sounding male singer joined in for the last two cuts, contrasting with her somewhat theatrical pitch. B+(*)

Melanie Mitrano: All Things Gold (2009 [2010], Big Round): Singer-songwriter, "Dr. Mitrano" on her website: "first woman to receive a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the New England Conservatory in Boston" -- doesn't say when, but she started teaching in 1996. Resume seems to be mostly classical, which is how AMG files her -- her MySpace page starts with "What's a nice classical singer like me . . ." Second album since 2006. Backed with a piano trio plus guest horns here and there. Voice doesn't set off any opera alarms; she goes with the flow, and the band swings. Has some things to say too. B+(**)

Mel Carter: The Heart and Soul of Mel Carter (2008 [2009], CSP): Singer, b. 1943 (although I've also seen 1939 cited). AMG: "Mel Carter was soul music at its most vanilla, if indeed he could be characterized as a soul singer at all." He recorded steadily 1963-70, with a top ten hit in 1965 ("Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me") and two more singles grazing the top 40. This is his first album since 1970, a standards set with a jazz combo, bookended with two takes of Hoagy Carmichael's "Heart and Soul," with some 1950s doo wop fare, like "The Glory of Love," worked into the mix. Don't know his early work other than the hit(s), but I'd guess the vanilla is mostly in the mix -- not an issue here, nor need he break new ground. He's a good ballad singer, and the songs and arrangements suit him fine. B+(**)

Eddie C Campbell: Tear This World Up (2008 [2009], Delmark): Chicago bluesman, plays guitar and sings, b. 1939, in Mississippi like so many others -- was 6 when he made aliyah. Only his eighth album since his 1977 debut, first in a decade. Not much to differentiate him from a dozen others, except that he's still around and kicking it, and blues authority grows on old guys. B+(**)

Burkina Electric: Paspanga (2009 [2010], Cantaloupe): Another African fusion project where a visitor (drummer/electronics wiz Lukas Ligeti) lands somewhere (Burkina Faso) and hooks up with local musicians (guitarist Wende K. Blass and singer Maď Lingani), the result being an African no less syncretic than the natives produce these days, but better distributed. Ligeti brought a German d/b/a Pyrolator along for more electronics. The only other credits are two dancers, brought along to "help us draw audiences into our unusual rhythms" and thereby to validate them. The rhythms are synthesized from local traditions, and scarcely feel wanting even if the main reason for going to Africa is to up the rhythm quotient. The guitar is less slick than the coast and less rustic than the desert. The vocals are down home, as they should be. A-

These are some even quicker notes based on downloading or streaming records. I don't have the packaging here, don't have the official hype, often don't have much information to go on. I have a couple of extra rules here: everything gets reviewed/graded in one shot (sometimes with a second play), even when I'm still guessing on a grade; the records go into my flush file (i.e., no Jazz CG entry, unless I make an exception for an obvious dud). If/when I get an actual copy I'll reconsider the record.

Tim Warfield: One for Shirley (2007 [2008], Criss Cross): Tenor saxophonist, part of the "tough young tenors" generation, with an impressive debut album in 1995, but this is only his fifth album, the first since 2002. Shirley, of course, is Shirley Scott, the legendary soul jazz organ player, with Pat Bianchi filling her role here. No bassist necessary, but drummer Byron Landham gets reinforcements from percussionist Daniel G. Sadownick, and Terell Stafford slip in some trumpet -- not a soul jazz standard, but Stafford and Warfield are a frequent team. Aims low, and succeeds simply, although not as simply and elegantly as Scott's usual tenor player, Stanley Turrentine, could do. B+(*) [Rhapsody]

No final grades/notes this week on records put back for further listening the first time around.

Unpacking: Found in the mail this week:

• Mirio Cosottini/Andrea Melani/Tonino Miano/Alessio Pisani: Cardinal (Grimedia Impressus)
• Jorrit Dijkstra: Pillow Circles (Clean Feed)
• Scott Fields Ensemble: Fugu (1995, Clean Feed)
• Fight the Big Bull: All Is Gladness in the Kingdom (Clean Feed)
• Tom Harrell: Roman Nights (High Note)
• Pablo Held: Music (Pirouet)
• Barb Jungr: The Men I Love: The New American Songbook (Naim): May 11
• Kirk Knuffke: Amnesia Brown (Clean Feed)
• Rudresh Mahanthappa & Steve Lehman: Dual Identity (Clean Feed): advance, Mar.
• Peppe Merolla: Stick With Me (PJ Productions)
• Sei Miguel: Esfingico (Clean Feed)
• Marc Mommaas: Land (Sunnyside): Mar. 30
• Red Trio (Clean Feed)
• Eric Reed & Cyrus Chestnut: Plenty Swing, Plenty Soul (Savant)
• Rufus Reid: Out Front (Motema): Mar. 9
• Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté: Ali and Toumani (Nonesuch)
• The Ullmann/Swell 4: News? No News! (Jazzwerkstatt): advance

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Optional Wars on Terrorism

Matthew Yglesias: A Sensible Response to Terrorism:

As you probably know, a white guy entranced by an extremely version of Tea Party-style right-populist paranoia deliberately crashed an airplane into an IRS building in Texas yesterday. I'm not especially interested in debating semantics, but I think it's very clear that if this had been done by a brownish-looking Muslim guy whose suicide note paralleled Islamist political themes that the right wing would be pissing its pants and demanding that anyone who refused the label the attack "terrorism" be put up on treason charges. But the new rules seem to be that politically motivated violence when undertaken by white people isn't terrorism.

But instead of complaining about the hypocrisy involved in not trying to whip people into a fit of terror and madness about this incident, I think it makes more sense to congratulate everyone on handling this in a calm and sensible manner. [ . . . ]

Stack's stated purpose for undertaking the attack was to try to prompt a counterproductive overreaction: "I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are." It's smart, then, that as a country we're responding to his terrorism by trying to avoid counterproductive overreactions. But of course this is also Osama bin Laden's goal and it's also appropriate to respond to Islamist political violence in a similar spirit. [emphasis original]

The lesson I draw from this is that it is possible to respond to provocations in different ways according to the political interests of those in power. Bin Laden got his war because that's the way Bush wanted to play it. He craved the opportunity to become a War President, and played up his Commander-in-Chief role to the day he left office. What Stack did, however, is far less useful either to Obama or to the Republicans who seem more inclined to spin it into jokes. Even if someone wanted to escalate the event into a war, what could you do? Send drones out over West Texas looking for wedding parties to bomb? Round up random taxi drivers and beat them to death? Those are things we did in Afghanistan, but it's highly unlikely that we'd treat American citizens with that same level of contempt and indifference.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Family Dinner

I hauled a bunch of tools down to the basement today, and stripped off the tarp that had been covering the dining room table. Then I made dinner, not the first since we got the countertop finished but the first sizable affair: originally expected seven, then had three cancels, so added two more, then the cancels showed up anyway, giving us eight at one time, plus one more straggler later. Plenty of food, anyway. I decided to do Ruth Reichl's "family dinner" from Garlic and Sapphires: roast leg of lamb, scalloped potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts, but since I had mascarpone in the refrigerator, I replaced the last-minute chocolate cake with tiramisu. Roasted the lamb in the gas oven, and did the potatoes in the electric. The lamb came out a bit mixed: well done on the outside, rare near the bone, both quite tasty. The other dishes were slightly underdone, but close enough. Everyone was pleased.

The dinner conversation was dicier. Someone referred to Koch -- not clear whether the company, which has a long track record for environmental lapses, or the brothers, who rank among the top five families who bankrolled the far right's think tanks -- as evil, and that snowballed into an intemperate argument about capitalism vs. socialism and/or capitalism vs. democracy, as if both pairs were necessarily antipodal and exclusionary. One low point was when someone asserted that there are no socialists any more, a point a third or more of those around the table would take personal exception to. And there were others, just less clear. I can't go back and rehearse the points, but as someone who rarely manages to get a word in, I can at least make my points.

The first is that socialists within democracies -- including most of Western Europe and excluding the likes of Stalin and Mao -- have always supported democracy with individual rights including a broad right to property, and have usually supported a vibrant, open market system where the primary actors are capitalists. The few exceptions to the latter point tend to be archaic, as these days hardly anyone objects to a well regulated free enterprise system. In fact, it is not unusual for socialists in power to spend more energy maintaining the viability of capitalism than to advance worker interests -- France under Mitterand being one of the more obvious instances. (Obama, of course, doesn't come anywhere near qualifying as a socialist, but his instinct, like FDR's, to save capitalism by reforming it is something nearly all socialists share.)

So my first point is that socialism and capitalism are not incompatible: socialism is in fact built on capitalism, only reformed to mitigate the excesses that capitalists are prone to. Another way of putting this is that there are many variants of capitalism; consequently, it is a fallacy to speak of capitalism as requiring specific historical traits that turn out to be inessential, such as child labor, suppression of labor unions, a free hand to pollute, immunity from torts, or price fixing. It is just as easy to imagine a capitalist system where workers are guaranteed basic rights, where externalities (like pollution) are limited by market mechanisms (like cap-and-trade), where countervailing powers ensure that markets are transparent and competitive. It probably doesn't help when either side labels such reforms as socialism, but it isn't crazy: we live in a world where social values matter, even more than profits or self-serving freedom.

The argument here goes back to the Koch brothers. As near as I can tell, they -- and their privately held company -- hold two sets of closely related but asymmetrical political ideals. On the one hand, they are extreme libertarians -- Bill Koch, for instance, ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket. My first encounter with Koch was when I worked for a Wichita typesetting shop and wound up doing several jobs for them: retyping the books of Murray Rothbard. Someone tonight pointed out how we routinely expect services from government like firefighting -- and as such how we have to have some kind of government, even if a restricted one. Rothbard, of course, disagreed: he saw no problem in each individual or company contracting with its own favored firefighting service, or failing to do so would suffer the consequences of receiving no help in fighting fires. (Rothbard had even nuttier ideas, like contracting with private services for money and justice.) In this vein, the Kochs became major backers of libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute.

On the other hand, the Koch's company took a more pragmatic tack, making the right contributions to the right politicians to garner the favors of a government effectively controlled as an oligarchy. In this regard, the Kochs act much like any other oil company, seeking tax breaks and regulatory favors: their big payoff coming early in the Bush administration when they were able to consolidate and dispose of more than a hundred environmental pollution cases. The Kochs' libertarianism is especially ironic here: their company is utterly dependent on the powers of government to establish the property rights their business would be nothing without, yet they deny that the public that makes their business possible should have any authority to limit the damage their business can do.

The more I read into the "irritable mental gestures" that pass for thought on the American right, the more struck I am by how narrow and selfish the individual interests championed are, and by how paranoid they are in ascribing the consequences of failing to get their way. Kim Phillips-Fein's Invisible Hands: The Businessman's Crusade Against the New Deal starts off with the story of how the Du Ponts turned on FDR: one point was when one of the Du Pont brothers discovered that three of his black servants had quit his employ in favor of government relief jobs. From that point onward, every time a businessman fails to prevail, especially over a worker, he accuses the government of driving not just toward socialism but all the way to totalitarianism. It never occurs to them to compromise to respect other people's rights -- the only right they can imagine is their own. It's sad that anyone believes them, but the Kochs are by far the richest guys in these parts, their company is not nearly as stupidly run as their ideology, they have a big payroll, and many people are inclined to suck up to the rich and powerful, or to cynically let them have their way.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

The Politics of Denial

Steve Benen: Georgia Senators Forget the President's Name: This is a good example of how Obama can't get any credit even when he does something wrong -- and wrong not in the sense of carrying on a discredited Bush policy like Guantanamo or military tribunals or free money for banker bonuses or bombing Pakistan with drones trying to provoke a civil war or carrying Netanyahu's water in his diversionary campaign to stir up trouble with Iran. More like wrong as in something he did completely on his own, trying to jump start nuclear power plant building by guaranteeing massive loans, saddling the public with all the risk while private companies reap the profits. Needless to say, Georgia's Republican senators are into that sort of thing, but not to the point of acknowledging that it wouldn't have happened but for Obama:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman noted yesterday, for example, that Sens. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) issued a seven-paragraph, 392-word joint statement, lauding the new nuclear initiative. Number of times Isakson and Chambliss used the words "president," "Obama," and/or "White House"? Zero. Even though the senators were delighted to hear the president's announcement, as Bookman concluded, the two "just couldn't bring themselves" to agree with Obama by name.

I can see the political logic, but usually when you can get the other party to do your bidding, you're at least civil about it -- if only to claim that even-so-and-so sees the wisdom of your policy. I suppose one can come up with several theories why the Republicans are behaving this way. One is that they're really worried that Obama will consolidate a center-right that effectively stifles the left while avoiding the pitfalls of the far right, thereby rendering the Republican Party useless to the ruling class: in this scenario, anything they can do to delegitimize Obama, even if it's just a rude slight, is necessary. Another is that they're just racists, pretending (as their forefathers did) that blacks are (or should be) nothing more than invisible servants. Of course, you'd think Georgia Republicans would know better.

As for Obama's pro-nuclear power stance, I can't say I approve, nor that it's one of his biggest mistakes. My UK missile defense correspondent wrote back that he was surprised and disappointed that I oppose nuclear power. That's not exactly what I think, but it is an approximation. I think the US nuclear power industry has a huge problem with waste management, and that until someone does something to get that under control it's irresponsible to build more power plants. I also think that proliferation hasn't been adequately thought through. In the beginning nuclear power plants were a front for nuclear arms production, and that aspect has never been cleanly separated out -- in large part because the demand for nuclear arms has never been extinguished. One major consequence of this is that the industry has never had anything resembling transparency, which has meant that it has never been possible to accurately assess risks. (One of the few assessments we have is that private capital has been unwilling to invest in nuclear power plants since the 1970s, or really forever given the role the AEC played.) More generally, there are lots of externalities associated with nuclear power plants, which have historically been ignored but really need to be reckoned. (On the other hand, one can argue that coal-fired power plants have greater externalities, but it's hard to compare without having full transparency.)

Moreover, there are political issues. In particular, we had the spectacle of George Bush running around the world promoting nuclear power yet recoiling when Iran bought into the argument. I am, quite frankly, more worried that an Iranian nuclear power plant might melt down than that Iran would be able to blackmail the world with nuclear bombs. This in turn gets wrapped up in the global geopolitics of energy use. I've read various things about how much usable uranium exists, which make it more or less attractive, but either way it poses a race to see who can use it all up first. And that gets to my deeper misgivings: I expect that we are headed into a period of energy use contraction, and expect that to have profound effects on how we live -- maybe for the worse, or possibly, if we get smart about it, for the better. I don't see a lot of value in throwing more energy investments at the problem just to avoid the day of reckoning -- although I don't mind relatively safe investments to soften the blow. It may well be that in the long run we need to figure out how to do nuclear power right, and make use of that. But we're not there yet, and I don't see a lot of evidence that we're headed in the direction of getting smarter. Indeed, judging from the Georgia Republicans in the Senate, I'd say the opposite is the case.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Old Deal

Steve Fraser: A Tale of Two Presidents: The notion that Obama might be a "transformational president" like Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed brief favor back when we could actually imagine "change we can believe in" as meaning something concrete. A year into their respective first terms, Roosevelt moved much further than he could have imagined, while Obama has rarely done anything but backpeddle. Fraser contrasts the two, seeing Obama's New Deal trajectory as reversed from Roosevelt's, approaching populism only as his attempts at accommodating the powers keep failing. Consider Obama's prospects:

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, off-year elections do not always favor the minority party. Indeed, 1934 may be the best example of the opposite effect. Exactly because the New Deal showed itself ever readier to junk the ancien régime, break with economic orthodoxy, and above all say goodbye to its erstwhile corporate friends, it was rewarded handsomely at the polls. None of that apparently will be repeated in 2010, given an administration that seems to be running a New Deal in reverse.

There is plenty of reason to think that the financial collapse that triggered this recession was every bit as severe as that of 1929, but the resulting worldwide depression was arrested in much shorter order. This had less to do with the underlying dynamics than the fact that people in power -- even in the ultrareactionary Bush administration -- felt the need to act aggressively. And even though their solution was to re-stuff the pockets of the rich, the political support they needed came not from the Republican rank and file but from Democrats who bought the argument that a collapse on Wall Street would be a disaster for Main Street. That seemed like a good deal at the time, but less so now: not only was the crisis resolved on terms extremely favorable to the same bankers who caused the problems in the first place, but the apparent ease with which the crisis was averted has evidently dispelled any chance of changing things to prevent similar crises in the future, let alone any effort to make up for the damages done.

You can chalk this up to our reluctance to learn anything except in the hardest ways possible. At least in 1933 when Roosevelt came to the White House there was no doubt that the nation faced a grave situation. The main thing Roosevelt brought into play was a strong predilection for taking action, even if he didn't have a firm idea of what to do, and even if he wound up pursuing different approaches following no fixed ideology. That he was ultimately seen as a liberal had less to do with how he wanted to act than with the fact that his various liberal initiatives helped the economy and helped people cope with the economy whereas his conservative initiatives -- like slashing spending and balancing the budget -- failed. Obama has no such luxury today, partly because we don't think we're so desperate, and partly because the ideological blinders have been clamped down so tight.

On the other hand, you have to wonder why it should be so difficult. When the stock bubble burst in 2000-01, uncovering mountains of fraud that sank Bush's buddies at Enron, even a Republican president and congress felt obliged to make some token reforms, yet the banking industry, following a much larger and much more damaging meltdown, is good to go back to business as usual with little if any reform. Part of this is that Republicans have cynically chosen to block any reform that in any way crimps a potentially lucrative contributor, but it's also because the media seems determined to stifle anything that smacks of populist revolt -- even to the point of anointing the Republicans as the real populists, leaving the word hopelessly neutered. It's almost as if the media is doing the work of its corporate paymasters.

Roosevelt had no trouble striking a populist pose because it was in the air, driven by the agitated poor and confirmed by the readily identifiable "economic royalists" who opposed him. Obama will have a tougher time, if indeed he ever decides to try. He is certainly even less inclined to try than Roosevelt, whose own upper class pedigree gave his rabblerousing a cloak of irony. But what Obama is bound to discover is that the elites he tries to appeal to with reason have their heads stuck in a view of their interests that is ultimately bad for most Americans and eventually even for themselves. So Obama could find he needs to move to the left to save himself, or to save the country, or even to save its ruling class. The question is whether he does so soon enough and strongly enough to save the Democrats' grip on congress in 2010.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Indictable Conspirator

Paul Woodward: British officials say Mossad murdered Hamas commander: Starts with passport photos of suspicious persons traveling on anything but Israeli passports. (In particular, there is a report that the real Melvyn Mildiner never left Jerusalem and is actively seeking to clear himself.) The juicy part is here:

If the investigation into the murder of the Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai on January 20, establishes that it was carried out by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, Dubai police have said they will issue an arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While this would not be the first time an Israeli leader faced the risk of arrest, unlike previous instances which have involved alleged war crimes, in this instance Netanyahu would presumably be treated as a co-conspirator to pre-meditated murder in a case that already involves Interpol.

This reminds one of the CIA abduction case in Italy, which as far as I know is still waiting for the agents to be captured, but wasn't pursued so quickly to the desk where the buck stops. But then that seems to be a shorter path in Israel, where prime ministers routinely sign off on Mossad operations (or order them up directly). This may seem like politics, but once one starts looking at such actions as criminal conspiracies -- and assassination is nothing if not criminal -- they take on a life of their own.

By the way, Woodward forgot about another class of indicted Israeli prime ministers: those who got nabbed for corruption. Ehud Olmert tops that list. Not sure who else, but Ariel Sharon seemed to be headed that way before he checked into the witless protection program.

Mar 2001