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The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
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Average Rating:  out of 63 Reviews
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Price: $27.95
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Sale: $9.25
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Manufacturer: Harper
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780061430626
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Ron Suskind
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Publisher: Harper
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Edition: 1
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Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931
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Publication Date: 2008-08-01
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Reading Level: 432
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Description: From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation’s struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today’s shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world. In a sweeping, propulsive, and multilayered narrative, The Way of the World investigates how America relinquished the moral leadership it now desperately needs to fight the real threat of our era: a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of "The Armageddon Test" —a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world’s nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons-grade uranium. In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency. While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate—and often daring—brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani émigré, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan teenager, a Holocaust survivor’s son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she’s been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need. They are all testing American values at a time of peril, and discovering solutions—human solutions—to so much that has gone wrong. For anyone hoping to exercise truly informed consent and begin the process of restoring the values and hope—along with the moral clarity and earned optimism—at the heart of the American tradition, The Way of the World is a must-read.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Excellent |
Date: 2009-01-08 |
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Details: A great book! Through disparate narratives and characters, Suskind deftly illustrates the many challenges faced by America today. He rightly suggests that survival in a post 9/11 world will require a depth of understanding, transparency, compassion, selflessness - a journey back to the core of our moral values and how we must tap into these values once again to find our place as the humble leaders of an increasingly dangerous world. |
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Review Summary: dullness |
Date: 2008-12-27 |
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Details: I bought this book in a hurry before I went on vacation. I feel like I chose unwisely. I am not familiar with the author but I expected it to be much better. |
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Review Summary: Suskind |
Date: 2008-12-21 |
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Details: I respect Suskind's writing on the whole but this book fell short. It seemed to read like a series of choppy essays that were pasted and bound together. His central thesis was that America has lost its standing in the world in the post-September 11th era. However I felt that the delivery was lacking relative to what I would have expected. |
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Review Summary: Partisanship Versus Honest Brokering |
Date: 2008-12-19 |
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Details: When I started reading _The Way Of The World_, I was hoping that I would be able to give it a five-star review. Unfortunately, I cannot. The book is poorly edited and poorly proofread. There is a distressing number of glaring errors of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Also, Suskind's writing style is leaden and preachy at times. He gives long, detailed descriptions of conversations in which people aren't talking about much of anything. The book is structured in a way that makes you feel like you are reading five or six long magazine articles simultaneously. First, you have a page about the exchange student from Afghanistan. Then, a page about the innocent man who was arrested just because police thought he looked suspicious. Then a page about the innocent man being detained at Guantanamo, and his lawyer. Then, a page about the anti-terrorism expert. Then, another page about the exchange student. Then, another page about the Pakistani who was walking near the White House wearing a backpack. Another page about the suffering man in Guantanamo. Suskind keeps jumping around like this, giving a fragment of one story, then a fragment of another, then another. Reading a book that is written this way can get tedious after a while. I think it would have been better if Suskind had simply told each story from start to finish without interruption, and given each story a separate chapter.
Even more serious is the question of whether Suskind has been careful to check his facts. For example, on page 119, he says that Donald Rumsfeld resigned as Defense Secretary in mid-December of 2006. Rumsfeld resigned on November 8th. It makes you wonder. If Suskind couldn't get it right when talking about such a well-known and easily checkable fact, how can we be sure he got his other facts right?
So now I've told you the things that I didn't like about this book. These are the reasons why I couldn't give it a five-star review. Happily, the book's good qualities outweigh its bad ones. First, the book does contain some very good writing. Suskind has a talent for parallels. The best example of this occurs early in the book, when President George W. Bush is making a speech about the great American values of freedom, democracy, and respect for human rights at the very same moment that a law-abiding, America-loving Pakistani man is having his rights violated by Washington DC police. Suskind alternates between the two scenes, the president's rhetoric, trying to sound like Lincoln or Churchill, and the police's actions, suggestive of a dictatorship, less than a mile away at the same time. This is probably the best example of pure good writing in the book.
There are other good qualities as well. This book has probably the best explanation we will ever get about the 16 word scandal. (The president's January 28th, 2003 State of the Union address included these words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In fact, the British government had never learned any such thing. In February, Colin Powell gave his presentation to the United Nations. In March, the war was launched. In May, the president gave his "Mission Accomplished" speech. In July, the White House admitted that those 16 words should not have been included in the president's speech.)
Of course, the book's biggest bombshell, and the main reason why people will want to read it and recommend it, is the revelation that CIA director George Tenet quietly carried out a White House order to plant a false story in the media for the purpose of influencing public opinion. If Suskind is correct about this, then important laws were broken, and serious crimes were committed. Tenet should have notified the Senate Intelligence Committee that the White House was ordering him to commit a crime. Instead, he just did what he was told. Those of you who don't have time to read the whole book, and just want to go straight to "the good part," will find it on pages 361-380. I very strongly hope that Barack Obama will find time to read those 20 pages, at least (if not the whole book) before he takes office on January 20th.
In closing, I would like to point out that Suskind's favorite theme, woven throughout most of his writing, is of the conflict between "partisanship" on the one hand, and "honest brokering" on the other. In writing this review, I have made a sincere effort to be an honest broker. |
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Review Summary: Good but not great book |
Date: 2008-12-14 |
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Details: I do think Mr. Suskind deserves some credit for what he attempted to do, which I see as chronicle America's fall from the moral high ground during the war on terror. He deftly chronicles the multitude of lies and deceptions that were used to put forward the War in Iraq. The book does lose its way when it diverges into other aspects of the war. While these stories maybe compelling they detract from the strongest story of the bunch.
An interesting read for the stories on the Bush administrations deceptions but overall a muddled and meandering book that doesn't do it's subject matter the full justice it deserves. |
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