Ryan's Reads 2011

Time for my annual "What did I read and what do I recommend" post. Its been another busy year with work, Sam, and another little one planned to come into our life, but I still found a little time to settle down with a book. This year I averaged a book a month, and I hope to at least keep that up next year. This year I didn't read any fiction. The books with a star by them are the ones I especially liked and recommend if you are looking for a great read. Here we go…

Religious/Religious History:

Parley P Pratt: The Aposle Paul of Mormonism
The book is a new scholarly biography on Parley P Prattt put out by Oxford Press. The book follows the LDS Apostle to Europe, South America, and throughout the US as he preached the gospel, tried to manage his family, and adapted to the turbulent events of Church leadership during 1830-1857. The book is fine, but doesn't seem to illuminate the subject as much as it could. He wrote an autobiography in the 1850's that is full of adventure, humor, and faith and I recommend starting there if you have interest in LDS history.

Return
*Is a book of spiritual teaching and advice by current LDS Apostle Robert D Hales. It's not rehashed conference talks and was really a great book. Cheyney and I would read a chapter a week for FHE this year. Elder Hales talks about his time as a fighter pilot, CEO of Gillet and other experiences to teach insights in living he has learned.

American Grace
A sociological study on contemporary religious identification and adherence in US. Per booklist "The authors complement their statistical analysis with colorful vignettes, humanizing their numbers with episodes from the lives of individual Protestants and Catholics, Jews and Mormons." Fun to look at what people of many faiths report they believe, how they practise, and what they think in general about other faiths, politics, and other issues.

The Mormon Menace
Is a history of Mormons in the South from 1850-1900. I had no idea the amount of persecution going on then in that area. Four Mormon Missionaries were killed, harassment and mobs were rampant, and Mormons were kicked out of many areas and states in the South including being completely removed from Georgia in the 1890's. Luckily college football and Chick-Fil-A were invented soon after that and the South became awesome.

US Politics/US/World History:

Capitalism and Freedom
Milton Friedman's book of libertarian economic philosophy written in the 1950's. A lot of his ideas were adopted and others seem way out in left field, but thought provoking. I don't agree with a lot about libertarianism, but there are some good ideas. This book is especially great if you are into Ron Paul.

Plain Honest Men
*A tic-toc history of the writing of the Constitution over a summer in Philadelphia. Contrary to some popular belief that making of the Constitution seemed messy and involved a lot of arm wringing and compromising between competing states. It seemed at times more of a truce than a defining political philosophy. The seeds of modern political disagreement were all there between differing factions as the document was created. Interesting tangential fact: In order to foster compromise no one involved in the convention from any of the states could talk about what was happening in the convention and they even went so far as to keep all the doors and windows closed all summer to maintain confidentiality. Hot hot hot!


Lords of Finance
*This book won a a Pulitzer in 2010 and is excellent. It's a look at the history of international finance leaders and their policies and interactions from the teens to the 1930's. I'm no economist and this did a great job of explaining complex ideas such as the gold standard, Keynesian economics, and ways of controlling a complex and variable economy. I felt smarter after reading this about so me issues that are in the news with current international finance concerns

The origins of political order
A big book of political philosophy by a a leading intellectual on the subject. I'd read "The End of History and the Last Man" while in grad school and was amazed by the insight and fortune telling of future history by that book. This book was more of a set up of history from the beginnings till 1750 and the follow up book is the one I am really looking forward to.

A paradise built in hell
A so-so history of how people react during mass traumatic events. The thesis-that altruism often trumps chaos is interesting, but the author uses mostly conjecture and focuses to much on self, injecting herself too often in to the subject. A little too breezy and magazine article like for my tastes.
Poisoning the Press
*This book is a lot of fun. Its a book about Richard Nixon and Jack Anderson an investigative reporter and how they battled in the 1950's and 1960's. I always heard Nixon was nuts, but man I had to skip some pages when Nixon was really being his vile self. I was born post Watergate and missed a lot of the History on this. Great read.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang
*When I was in grad school my friend Julian who worked at an international relations think tank used to get drunk and talk about North Korea and Cuba, and it was always pretty fascinating and got me interested in totalitarian states. Since then I've made an effort to watch Documentaries on North Korea, and picked up this book.This book is a memoir of a guy who was in a Korean Labor camp for about a decade. I kept on thinking as I read this, "I can't believe this has happened and is still happening." North Korea is fascinating, weird, and evil all at the same time. A great transporting book to learn about a place you can't go and are lucky you aren't a part of.

The Emperor of All Maladies
*A history of Cancer that won the Pulitzer recently. Fascinating stuff as the book takes you through history to see how treatments and medical knowledge develops and changes. It's very well written and engrossing for such a difficult topic.


Now it's your turn. What have you been reading, and what do you recommend?

Yearly Book Recommendations

• Time for my annual "What did I read and what do I recommend" post. Its been a busy year with moving and Sam coming into our life, but we still found time to settle down with a book. Here is what I read. I wont finish a book I don't like, and finished everything on this list. The book links with three stars by them are the ones I especially liked, if you are looking for a great read. Here we go…
• 
  
• US Politics/US/World History:
• ***Decision Points

I just finished George Bushes Presidential memoir. During his presidency he wasn't always the most expressive person, and this helped me understand how he thinks and what his reasoning was for his major decisions in his presidency. I came away with a lot more empathy for this man. He says the biggest success of his Presidency was funding Africa with 15 billion for HIV/AIDS treatment, and the biggest failure was his administrations response to Katrina.

• The Politician
• This book was a fun read. Cheyn read most of it to me. It is the memoir of John Edwards assistant, the one who claimed John Edwards love child was his own. John Edwards has to be the biggest political train wreck of the past 30 years and this was an insiders view of his downfall. It was fun living in the triangle and knowing where parts of the book took place. We even took a pilgrimage to John Edwards house earlier this year.
• Game Change
• This book was a inside view of the 2008 political campaigns. The reporters conducted tons of interviews after the fact to portray what was really going on during the presidential race. There were a lot of new insights and revelations. Sometimes the politicians potty mouths got to be a little much.
• ***Empire of Liberty
• This is the most recently published book in the Oxford History of America Series. This covered 1789-1815. I loved it. If you like an in depth look 800 page book on a part of American History, this is for you. I wanted to learn more about how the government worked and what the points of contention were like for the founders after Independence and the Constitution. I also got to learn more about Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington. A great book, almost as good as the next book in the series What Hath God Wrought, that I read last year.
• The Devil in the White City
• A history of the Worlds Fair in the late 1800's in Chicago revolving around the lives of the chief architect and a serial killer. Our friend Jessica Bean recommended this to me. I'm not really into true crime stuff, but this book was pretty engrossing as it alternated between the fair and the super evil serial killer.
• ***The Dead Hand
• This book won the Pulitzer last year. It is about the nuclear arms race and downfall of the USSR. I never knew there were so many nuclear weapons and how many brushes with near use of them there were during the cold war. the book also details the USSR's secret chemical weapons programs in the 1980's. There is a lot of scary stuff going on out there we don't know about at the time.
• Restless Giant
• Another book in the Oxford series. This covered 1974-2001. I was disappointed as it just read like a tic-toc of events and there wasn't a lot of historical insight. Maybe it was written too close to the time frame for the author to gain adequate perspective.
• ***Flags of Our Fathers
• This book follows the son of one of the flag raisers at Iowa Jima as he retraces the events of the battle and the men involved. It shows a broader perspective on peoples lives than just the battle and the cost of war on those who survived and those who did not.
• ***The Death of Sigmund Freud:The Legacy of His Last Days

Frued is a person of interest for me, due to his influence in counseling and therapy. This follows him through his last days escaping Nazi's in Vienna and battling cancer while being the leader of the psychoanalytic movement. It's not to dense and goes through his family life and philosophy in less than 300 pages.

• Religious/Religious History:
• The Loser Letters
• My Brother in Law Justin recommended this book to me. Its written in the style of the Screwtape Letters. The book is about a convert to atheism writing to prominent current atheist and reveals her reconversion to faith. It's short and has some fun banter.
• Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament
• Cheyn and I had a goal of reading the Old Testament this year and got this book to help us. This book was written by LDS academics to help the reader better understand the historical and cultural context of the Old Testament narratives. I learned a lot that I wouldn't have if I was just reading the Old Testament. The division of chapters in the book didn't always sync chronologically, so it wasn't a perfect companion.
• ***Great Basin Kingdom
• This is a great book of economic and LDS history that I had heard a lot about in other books, but finally got up the guts to read this year. The main focus is on the the economic experimentation of the Saints in Utah from 1847 to the late 1890's. Many of the economic programs are an exercise in futility in the turbulent backdrop of the early pioneers. The minute that the United Order or other cooperatives are about to work, on cue something always seems to go wrong.
• 
  
• There is a great part that explains how the practice of fast offerings started in 1857. The crickets came back and the crops suffered, so that winter Brigham Young said the members should start a weekly fast offering: giving a part of their weekly food and going without that day. Brigham also directed anyone able should hire new arrivals to work and pay them in food, just to keep people eating and alive, and have them work to keep their dignity. Many of the same practices continue in some form at this time in the Church on a global scale.
• 
  
• ***The Carthage Conspiracy
• This was written by Elder Oaks (then a law professor) and a historian about the trail of the Mob that killed Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith and injured others. It shows how the politicking leading up to the case between different Mormon and Anti-Mormon elements set the precedence for the trial. Contrary to some urban legends the men who got off had for the most part long and interesting lives. I especially enjoyed this book after reading it when we got to go to Carthage this fall.
• 
  
• Army Related Reading:
• On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
• The title pretty much sums it up. Reading it to better understand what the soldiers go through and hopefully be able to help.

• ***War
• This is a great book. A journalist embeds with a unit in a remote Afghanistan location and goes through what life is like for the soldiers. I like this book because it is vivid and lets you into a place and situation I will never be. A soldier may not want to or be able to express the day to day experience of their deployment the way the author was able to.

• Army Officers Guide
• My Boss Recommended this to me as a book to read to prepare for Army culture. I still don't get a lot, but this was a good primer for military culture.
• 
  
• Fiction:
• ***The Power and The Glory
• I usually only read one or two fiction books a year and this was this years choice. I had head Graham Green was a great author, but never gotten around to him. This book is excellent. It's about a backsliding Catholic Priest trying to survive in Mexico during a time of high religious persecution by a secularist regime in the early 20th century. Its less than 300 pages and I recommend it to anyone looking for great lit.
• 
  
• 
  
• So now its your turn. What did you read this year that what you do you recommend?
•