Review: The Iraq Winning Hearts and Minds Mission Fails
The Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal has some nice things to say in its review of We Meant Well ahead of my appearance at the IdeaFestival 2012, September 19-22, at the Kentucky Center in...
View ArticleReview of We Meant Well: Integrity and Intelligence to Allow Those Who Were...
A new review of the paperback edition of We Meant Well is available on the site Political Theology: As a disabled veteran of combat service in Vietnam (I was a grunt), I find most observations and/or...
View ArticleReview: Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
There are ghosts in Washington that few will talk about, roaming the halls of the Pentagon, inside the State Department and the CIA, and at the White House, moaning “Vietnam, Vietnam.” Nick Turse, in...
View ArticleReview: Coyne’s “Doing Bad by Doing Good, Why Humanitarian Action Fails”
(This review first appeared on the Huffington Post) If Christopher Coyne’s new book, Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Failsneeded a subtitle, I’d be willing to offer up “We Meant Well,...
View ArticleReview: “An Impassioned Spokesman for Those with No Voice”
Lisa Ranger, on Amazon, wrote this review of Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent: Mr. Van Buren takes us on a dark journey not to some strange dystopia, but to a dismal and grimy world...
View ArticleFireDogLake Book Chat Transcript
We had a great time recently on FireDogLake.com discussing Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. If you missed that live chat, there’s a transcript now online. Take a look at the full chat...
View ArticleReview: Fire Dog Lake–“A Sober Reflection on the U.S. Economy”
For those visiting for the first time from TomDispatch, Salon, HuffPo or another web site, welcome. If you found my article there, A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts, useful, please take a look at my...
View ArticleReview: The story of what makes – and unmakes – the American Dream
An Amazon reviewer had this to say about Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent: Read this book. If you ever wonder what happened to the American middle class over the past 30 years or to the...
View ArticleOliver Stone Endorses We Meant Well
Film Director Oliver Stone (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street, Untold History of the United States, W., Nixon, Salvador) endorsed We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the...
View ArticleBook Review: Agent Storm, My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA
Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA is a worthy read; if it was fiction it might be called “a good yarn.” The book is instead straight-up non-fiction, making it all the more interesting as...
View ArticleBooklist Namechecks Beckett for Ghosts of Tom Joad
From Booklist, here’s the newest review of Ghosts of Tom Joad, with a generous comparison to Samuel Beckett: As Earl takes an endless bus ride around his hometown of Reeve, Ohio, we witness the...
View ArticleNew Review of Ghosts of Tom Joad: “He makes it real”
Fire Dog Lake blogger Ohio Barbarian posted this review of Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent (emphasis added). Yes, I know this book was featured on the FDL Book Salon back in May. I...
View ArticleMovie Review: CitizenFour, Snowden for Lovers and Haters
Two kinds of people are interested in Laura Pointras’ new documentary, CitizenFour, about Edward Snowden’s early contacts with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and herself. Let’s have a...
View ArticleMovie Review: “Braddock America”
If I’d made a documentary film about the scars left on America through industrialization, instead of writing Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent about it, what I would have likely ended up...
View ArticleReview: Morris Berman’s New Book on Japan, “Neurotic Beauty”
Neurotic Beauty: An Outsider Looks At Japan is a fine addition to a long list of books that attempt to explain Japan, what one observer has called the “most foreign of foreign countries.” Berman...
View ArticleReview: Old Silk Road, by Brandon Caro
Brandon Caro’s debut novel, Old Silk Road, is an important, tough read, both for the dirt-under-its-nails portrayal of soldiers at war, and for a complex plot that rewards a reader with insights into...
View ArticleReview: Randy Brown’s ‘Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire’
One of the unique things surrounding America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the extraordinary number of books written by servicemen and women. Unlike in previous wars, the best telling of the...
View ArticleBook Review: Youngblood
Youngblood, a new novel by Matt Gallagher set in the late stages of the Iraq War, is a powerful fiction debut from an author already known for his nonfiction portrayal of that conflict in Kaboom:...
View ArticleOliver Stone’s New Movie ‘Snowden’ Tackles the Myth
Snowden is a helluva movie, kicking an audience’s ass on a number of levels. I had a chance to see the film last night at a preview event; it opens everywhere on September 16. Go see it. On one level...
View ArticleClimate Change Book Review: Splinterlands, by John Feffer
Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, first published in 1888. In it, Julian West falls into a deep sleep, only to awaken 113 years later. As he opens his...
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