A Quote by George Packer
One book that I heard was circulating the Green Zone was "Bureaucracy Does Its Thing" by Robert Komer , who worked for President [Lindon] Johnson in Saigon. This book is about the inevitably of screwing up when a country takes on a war with so little understanding of the country they are fighting.
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My dad challenged every president from President [Dwight] Eisenhower and Vice President [Richard] Nixon to President [J.F] Kennedy, Vice President [Lindon] Johnson to President Johnson and Vice President [Hubert] Humphrey. It`s challenging the administrations to do the right thing.
You all know that certain things are necessary to make a religion. First of all, there is the book. The power of the book is simply marvellous! Whatever it be, the book is the centre round which human allegiance gathers. Not one religion is living today but has a book. With all its rationalism and tall talk, humanity still clings to the books. In your country every attempt to start a religion without a book has failed. In India sects rise with great success, but within a few years they die down, because there is no book behind them. So in every other country.
We need a leader who has a sense of balance, an understanding of the ebb and flow of history and a sense of our country's unique place in it. This is a foreign policy debate, and you cannot conduct foreign policy without a sense of what we are fighting for. And any President who can reduce the conduct of this country's affairs to a morning's attack by a bunch of demented fascists does not, in my view, understand what this great nation is all about.
There should be a whole book written about that one word: country. What does that mean, country? It's such a huge umbrella. I would hope that what makes it country is that it all starts with a song. The story being told in three and a half minutes that is not being told on another station.
There's a book that's critical to understanding anxiety, a 17th-century book, 'The Anatomy of Melancholy,' by Robert Burton. I wanted to write something like that.
I think this book, Matthew Desmond's "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.", if you have a friend who is a public official, hand him or her this book. It's that important. And this book raises some serious questions about what kind of country do we want to be.
Every book that you pick up takes you a step away from your real world, but if you read a book about magic, it takes you an extra two steps.
I heard Robert Johnson way before I heard about Eric Clapton.
Boswell: But, Sir is it not somewhat singular that you should happen to have Cocker's Arithmetic about you on your journey? Dr. Johnson: Why, Sir if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible.
I'd never heard of Robert Hellenga; I didn't think a book with the name 'Snakewoman of Little Egypt' would hold any appeal for me at all.
Claudia Rankine's book-length poem 'Citizen' was nominated for National Book Critics Circle awards in the categories of poetry and criticism. It is one of the most devastating takes on American culture I have read in a long time, laying bare the stakes of being black in a country long ambivalent about our presence here.
I would like my book to give people insight to the war before and after, but I don't think anyone could read my book and suddenly make up her mind about the war. I want to write for everybody.
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.
For example, an author whose parents fled a war but he himself was born in the country where they fled to, and that is where he went to school and college before he wrote his first book of poetry in the language of this country - he should be labeled as: "Author whose parents fled a war but he himself was born in the country where they fled to, and that is where he went to school and college before he wrote his first book of poetry in the language of this country."
Rule 1, on page I of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow". Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: "Do not go fighting with your land armies in China". It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives...
My favorite sports novel is End Zone by Delillo. It's such a great looking book too, the black cover with the football player on it. It's just a fantastic little book.
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