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Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, Rachel Maddow 5 out of 5 stars. (kindle book)
From amazon:
"The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war.
Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan's radical presidency, the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the scope of American military power to overpower our political discourse.
Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seriously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about our vast and confounding national security state."
~~~~
I'll just start with saying that I've had a major geek girl crush on Ms. Maddow since first seeing her on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" many years ago. I'm an avid watcher of her show on MSNBC and when I heard about this book I was intrigued.
Normally I'm not a fan of books about military history, though I am a bit of a fan of progressive/liberal commentary. So, when I got an amazon gift card for Christmas last year I finally jumped on this one. It most certainly did not disappoint. Well-written, full of pertinent facts that even I could remember from history class way back when, and also full of new and interesting facts I did not know. That its course spanned the wars that I've been alive for made it even more interesting, and I found her commentary about the Reagan years to be most interesting of all.
She can make the absurd and scary seem almost funny in her sardonic style of writing, which is very intelligent, yet easily readable and accessible to most readers. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!
From amazon:
"The #1 New York Times bestseller that charts America’s dangerous drift into a state of perpetual war.
Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan's radical presidency, the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the scope of American military power to overpower our political discourse.
Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seriously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about our vast and confounding national security state."
~~~~
I'll just start with saying that I've had a major geek girl crush on Ms. Maddow since first seeing her on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" many years ago. I'm an avid watcher of her show on MSNBC and when I heard about this book I was intrigued.
Normally I'm not a fan of books about military history, though I am a bit of a fan of progressive/liberal commentary. So, when I got an amazon gift card for Christmas last year I finally jumped on this one. It most certainly did not disappoint. Well-written, full of pertinent facts that even I could remember from history class way back when, and also full of new and interesting facts I did not know. That its course spanned the wars that I've been alive for made it even more interesting, and I found her commentary about the Reagan years to be most interesting of all.
She can make the absurd and scary seem almost funny in her sardonic style of writing, which is very intelligent, yet easily readable and accessible to most readers. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!
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