Non-fiction Book Group Recommendations

(Submitted for Mary B.)
Several weeks ago I said that I would send the two of you names of books I have recently read, books that I would like to discuss with others.

It all started with:

1. Ferguson, N. (2002) Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. New York: Basic Books. Some of Ferguson's articles in The New York Times motivated me to read this book. I also wanted to consolidate what I knew about the British colonies. I finished the book while flying to Zurich on Labor Day, 2005, and groaned audibly with disappointment as I closed the book. The man sitting next to me heard that groan, questioned me, and then suggested I read other books by the same title. (It turned out he was a Princeton professor.) Even though I disagreed with his thesis, Ferguson does a fine job with the histories of various colonies.

2. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. These authors distinguish between the British colonialism and today's empire that draws upon the U.S. Constitution and ideas related to hybrid identities and expanding frontiers.

3. _________. (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Books. The authors pick up where the first book left off and argue that the US and its allies so control the world that the needs and interests of the multitudes cannot be heard in political arenas. Thus, they are not heard; their concerns are not dealt with. That's why multitudes take over the commons at times: the WTO meetings; the torchings in France, etc.

4. Pitts, J. (2005). A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pitts traces philosophic thought from Adam Smith, Edmund Berke, Jeremy Bentham, James Mills, John Stuart Mills, and Tocqueville in regard to colonialism and shows how the thinking dramatically changed. James Mills, John Stuart Mills, and Tocqueville trivialized natives living in places like India, China, the West Indies, and Algeria and came to believe that the despotism found in British and France colonialism was necessary to establish a European government and civilization in such places.

5. Mehta, U. S. (1999). Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mehta argues that the imposition of European rational thought, utilitarianism, and the liberalism of the colonial period resulted in despotism. These thought patterns, assumed to be universal, were unable to accommodate the strange and the unfamiliar. He believes phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches should have been taken.

6. Weaver, M.A. (2000). A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam.New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Mubarak and the blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, now imprisoned in solitary confinement for life in NYC, were born only miles apart in one of the poorest parts of Egypt. One became Egypt's political leader; the other, disturbed about deep, unending poverty, became a sheikh, developing his own militaristic philosophy of how to change the world and teaching his ideas to Osama bin Laden, leaders in Somalia, and elsewhere. This book provides an excellent background to help explain what is going on in the world today.

My cousin, who lives in Cairo and works for the Department of Antiquities there, sent me this book just before I went to Egypt. It was, indeed, an eye-opener, leading me to ask many questions and to go many places beyond where the tour went.

The above books provide an understanding or a set of different lenses through which to view what is going on in today's world.