Bond’s holiday reading list
Each year at this time I make a listing of the books I have read and enjoyed during the year. You might consider them for Christmas gifts (perhaps even for yourself).
Ronan Farrow, War and Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of
American Influence American diplomacy, Farrow argues, has declined after decades of political cowardice, short-sightedness, and outright malice. This is a clear recounting of the collapse of American diplomacy under pressure from the military-industrial complex. For Farrow the U.S. has ceased to be the global leader. His sources are wide ranging and very well informed. An enlightening and depressing work.
Bob Woodward, FEAR: Trump in the White House This is with a doubt the political book of the year. In his usual thorough fashion Woodward interviewed a vast number of people to piece together a disturbing portrait of how the Trump administration does and does not function when determining policy and setting objectives. The prime focus of Trumpian thought and action is always his own image. The book is, indeed, frightening. Kate Harris, Lands of Lost
Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road As a teenager, Kate Harris decided that she wanted to be an astronaut and travel to Mars. Later, after winning a Rhodes scholarship and attending MIT, she decided to travel the fabled Silk Road between Europe and China by bicycle with her friend Melody. She began in China peddling onto the Tibetan plateau, searching to escape beyond all bounds.
The farther she travelled, the closer she came to a world as wild as she felt within. This book is enchanting, exciting, reflective, and wry. It cerebrates our connections to the natural world and to each other.
Robert B. Reich, The Common Good Reich has written a very valuable book on the need to expand the moral imagination of the U.S. To him, the common good is the very essence of any society or nation. But in any nation, the common good undergoes cycles that re-enforce it as well as cycles that undermine it. In the last five decades, he believes that it has been steadily undermined in the U.S. and this process must be reversed. To accomplish this will require weighing the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully considering how the individual relates to honour, shame, patriotism, truth, as well as the meaning of leadership. Marvin Kalb, The Year I was Peter the Great Kalb arrived in Moscow in the year that Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin supposedly brought an end to the legacy of a harsh dictatorship. For the young foreign service officer, fluent in Russian and a doctoral student at Harvard, this was a golden opportunity of which he took full advantage. He traveled widely, spoke to countless students and, being a diplomat, had an opportunity to meet and talk with Khrushchev — who nicknamed him “Peter the Great.”
John McPhee, Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process McPhee’s vast range of subject matter, his clarity of prose and his attention to detail makes reading any of his works a delightful intellectual adventure. At last, he presents a de facto master class on the craft of writing. He presents definitive guidance in the decisions regarding arrangement, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces. I particularly enjoyed his description of the delicate art of getting sources to tell you what they might not otherwise reveal. The smooth text that finally emerges is the product of countless rewritings. Anyone thinking of becoming a full-time writer of any sort — fiction or non-fiction — should read and reread this masterful piece. Martin Walker, A Taste for
Vengeance This is the latest book about Bruno the chief of police in the mythical town of St. Denis in the Dordogne. As ever, the plot is both exciting and complicated, yet told in a laid back fashion. There is the usual focus on food and the richness of the provender of the region. Two main plots are somewhat intertwined. It makes it a lovely weekend read.
David Bond is a retired bank economist who resides in Kelowna.