Day of Reckoning

Posted on July 13, 2013 by smellincoffee

Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Greed, and Ideology are Tearing America Apart
© 2009 Patrick Buchanan
309 pages

What’s wrong with America? Change, brown people, and wars, judging by Day of Reckoning.  Published in 2009, presumably to capitalize on the election, Day of Reckoning puts forth Patrick Buchanan’s vision for America: less war, stronger borders,, protectionism, and more white babies, especially the good Anglo kind.  (Nothing is said about Saxon babies, but one assumes they’re OK.)  Although marred by stupefying sketchiness at times, and more a thought-dump than a coherent argument, Reckoning makes a couple of good points about imperialism and the perils of ideology. Even so, I would have probably passed on it had I not been curious about the ‘paleoconservatives’.

Pat Buchanan might not find the lack of one dominating theme tying his book together a bad thing: coherent worldviews, especially forceful ones, are his target. Ideology has ruined politics, he writes, encouraging people to interpret everything that happens through the lens of their particular system of belief, and motivating them to change everything to fulfill their dream – whether the ideology is Leninism or Free Trade. Change is bad.  This is at the heart of Buchanan’s writing. Things that cause change, like energetic politics and mobs, are to be avoided. It doesn’t matter if Yugoslavians want to break up, or that Chechnyans want freedom from Russia: stability is god.  Although I found some of his grousing sympathetic (I’m still mulling over global free trade, but much prefer a United States with factories to one without),  the evidence he presents in favor of his causes isn’t exactly convincing. Did the early American and British empires, when they were strong and rising, have free trade? No, Ergo, free trade destroys empires.  Isn’t that a good thing? Again, Mr. Buchanan isn’t consistent. He’s an impassioned critic of American misadventures in nation-building and wars on terror/drugs/etc, but he protests them not out of the principle that imperialism is malevolent, but  because these badly-managed affairs have sapped American strength.  Glory, power, empire — all good things, but they have to be managed with great efficiency. He is a grim pragmatic: whatever is working now, keep it.

Although a healthy respect for the destructive power of ideology is warranted (witness the French and Russian revolutions),  the author’s revulsion for change on principle strikes me as more reactionary than thoughtful,  and his conservatism as more or less self serving: he’s fine with democracy among fine white western folk, but generic eastern Europeans and Arabs? Best to let them be managed by reasonable strongmen, like that Saddam Hussein fellow who kept Iraq in such good order until our tanks mucked things up. I’d give points for brazen self-interested honestly had he been consistent there, but in cataloging America’s imperial wars, he managed to completely skip the invasion of Mexico, a fact worth nothing considering that he’s staunchly against immigration.

Day of Reckoning is a book that I should have left on the shelf, I think. I will say this, though: unlike so many other political works, it doesn’t feature the author on the cover, a marketing tactic I find particularly obnoxious.

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The Persistence of Memory – Silent Weapons

Posted on July 9, 2013 by smellincoffee

Star Trek TNG Cold Equations, Books 1 & 2: The Persistence of Memory and Silent Weapons
© 2012 David Mack
400 and 352 pages

The last time David Mack penned a Trek trilogy, billions upon billions died (Destiny), the Borg were vanquished, and thousands of readers’ minds were blown by the intensity of it all. Now he’s at it again with Cold Equations, set in the era of the Typhon Pact. A half-score of the Federation’s most chronic enemies have their own confederacy, and the two states have been engaged in a cold war of sorts for the last couple of years, vying for power through covert missions. The Persistence of Memory opens with an attack on one of the Federation’s most important research laboratories, one housing the deactivated bodies of B4, Lore, Lal, and various other Soong-type androids…the deceased Commander Data’s family, as it were.  A cloaked ship, later to be revealed Breen, raids the lab and nicks the bodies…and as the Enterprise-E is conducting its investigation, a man is spotted on the streets who looks very much like Data. The man is none other than Noonien Soong, Data’s inventor-father — a man who was supposed to have died years ago.  But there he is, and looking rather young to boot — what gives? The Persistence of Memory is largely his story,  the tale of one slightly-mad scientist to achieve immortality while watching the drama of his offspring from afar, with some political drama tacked on at the end.

That drama takes on a life of its own in Cold Equations, where Breen intrigue threatens to disrupt a delicate negotiation between the Federation president, Naniette Bacco, and the Gorn Hegemony. Shenanigans from a Soong-type android lead to Data’s arrest (did I mention? he’s back), and then come explosions and assassinations.  The Enterprise is on the scene, attempting to solve the mystery to both get their friend exonerated and to prevent their president’s untimely demise, but something is screwy.  Their mystery-solving works all too well, aided by a series of anonymous tips that raise Worf’s hackles (and Klingons have very big hackles), and lead him to suspect that someone, somewhere, is pulling the strings, manipulating the Enterprise, the Federation, and even the Gorn into playing parts in a bigger scheme. Thus a murder mystery becomes a massive political drama in which the struggle for power between Typhon Pact members proves to be more interesting than the Cold War-like tension between the Federation and Space-Moscow.  Unlike the Federation, which is more or less united (forgetting for the moment the angsty Andorians), the Typhon Pact members all have separate agendas, and they view one another as temporary expedients to their eventual nationalistic supremacy than actual partners.

After the epic-beyond-words achievements of Destiny,  poor David Mack has a lot to live up to. Cold Equations doesn’t feature thousands of Borg cubes running willy-nilly, eating planets and inspiring mesmerizing speeches from doomed civic leaders, it’s still a fantastic trilogy so far. The Persistence of Memory not only brought Data back (sort of), but gave his, Lore’s, and other androids’ stories utter cohesion: what Christopher Bennett did for time travel threads, Mack does with robotics, linking not only the Soong family but episodes from the original series.  Soong’s perspective on watching his sons grow up is captivating, and then right behind that comes an intelligent political thriller that doesn’t simply throw two entities against one another, but has  at least five participating in a tangled web of self-interest and lies.  I already purchased the finale, The Body Electric, and look forward to reading that soon.

Related:
Cold Equations on TvTropes

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This week at the library: Independence Day, simple living, cities, and the digestive tract

Posted on July 7, 2013 by smellincoffee

Last week’s titles: 
American Creation, Joseph Ellis | Gulp, Mary Roach |  Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry |  His Excellency, Joseph Ellis | Edens Lost and Found, various authors

Dear readers:

This past week I finished up my Independence Day tribute with a biography of no less than George Washington. His Excellency by Joseph Ellis was a fitting capstone to the series this year, as it would be in any year. I had planned on reading a primary document of the American Revolution, like Tom Paine’s Common Sense.  Since my revolutionary readings in the last couple of years  have favored the conservatives and nationalists, I think next year I might try a biography of romantic, idealistic, avowedly anti-federalist Thomas Jefferson.

A few days ago I read through Simplicity: Essays, a collection of essays on minimalism. Divided into three parts, the essays invite readers to consider their relationship with their things, create a meaningful life,  practice habits that make themselves happier and better, and offer advice on getting friends and family to realize, no, you’re not crazy because you’re getting rid of all your stuff. It fits comfortably within the realm of self-help, with less philosophy than I’d hoped. The authors write a great deal about themselves, mentioning with frequency how they left their high-powered six-figure jobs behind to focus on helping other people, and how much happier they were without all the baggage.  I purchased it as a $1 e-book, but it has a ‘real’ counterpart. I don’t think I’m giving the book its fair due because it was so similar to Disrupting the Rabblement in terms of its advice, and I was looking for something more in the neighborhood of The Plain Reader, that invites us to think about a wide variety of areas of our lives that could do with grooming. The authors here only looked at owning things and mental habits.

I recently finished the gargantuan task of bringing my Shelfari and GoodReads accounts completely up to date: not only is most every book found here to be listed there, but they’re complete with reviews and labels.  There were some books that didn’t get full reviews here, so I didn’t  crosspost them.  That work done,  my intention is to keep those far more current than they usually are. In the process of adding labels to some two thousand books, I created a few  there that I think would serve the blog here nicely as well: “praxis” and “direct action” among them.

This next week:
– Star Trek Cold Equations, book 2: Silent Weapons Another Cold War in Space political-action thriller, this picks up from The Persistence of Memory which I read  a few months back but (embarrassingly) forgot to review. I seriously didn’t realize that until last week when I combed every post in the last year looking for any mention of the book. Oops. Turns out there’s a half-finished review in my drafts folder..
–  Someone has suggested I read a novel called The Apothecary, by Maile Meloy.
– I also have Getting There, the story of the rivalry between roads and rail in the 21st century. Go trains!
–   Seeing as Bastille Day is a week away, I should read something French. Alas, the interlibrary loan request I put out hasn’t come in yet, so I may not get to read French Kids Eat Everything until after the 14th.  I’m sure my library has something appropriately French in the meantime.

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Edens Lost and Found

Posted on July 7, 2013 by smellincoffee

Edens Lost and Found: How Ordinary Citizens are Restoring Our Great American Cities
©  2006 Harry Wiland, Dale Bell,  Joseph D’Agnes
285 pages


I can hear Atlanta crying loud as she looks for hope and change / but we can’t count on a government to create a life we want to see.. (“Our Cities”, The Wild)

The 20th century was not kind to American cities, and the challenges of the 21st, resource scarcity and climate change among them, seem hardly more favorable, especially as the national government continues to flounder. But across the country, citizens are taking challenges for opportunities, and effecting positive change in their own cities.  In Edens Lost and Found, the authors share stories from all stripes of people in Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle who are doing their part to make their cities more ecologically-savvy, resilient, and overall better places to live.

Adapted from a PBS series, the book is divided into four larger chapters, each containing a half-dozen or so sections of stories about individuals or groups making a difference. The chapter starts off with a history of its host city, one which briefly details the city’s unique challenges and strengths: Los Angeles, for instance, is or was in the strange spot of simultaneously stressing about flooding and having to import water for its citizens’ needs. The citizen-actions range from the small-scale (a man stubbornly removing trash from an abandoned lot so that his daughters could have a clean place to play) to the somewhat larger, as when citizen actions catch the government’s attention and it decides to fund their efforts, as it did when  Chicagoans attempted to safeguard the prairies from further development.  Not every action is done by an individual person: one section in Seattle, for instance, covers the decision of one sporting-goods store to become environmentally friendly and more compelling at the same time by catching rainwater and channeling it to safety in the form of a waterfall. Their actions address a variety of needs, all adding value but in different areas. There are artists here, who transform empty walls into murals,  as well as those who convert an abandoned building into a hydroponics garden that doubles as an urban farmer’s market.  The editor-authors also add sidebars for those who want to recreate  the actions celebrated her: one such column offers advice on creating a nature trail.

Although the individual stories didn’t mesh together well beyond sharing the same setting, the authors’ attempt to create cohesion with an introduction to each city, and the marginal use of shared themes (managing watersheds, for instance),  serves the book well. It succeeds less on narrative and more on substance: these accounts of citizens engaging in direct action and rebuilding their cities are most inspiring,  giving reason for hope.

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His Excellency

Posted on July 6, 2013 by smellincoffee

His Excellency: George Washington
© 2005 Joseph Ellis
352 pages



Most of the Founding Fathers are exalted, but not quite divine. They are icons not without blemish: John Adams had his temper,   Benjamin Franklin his shameless lechery. But George Washington towers above the rest; in the American mythos, he is more divine than Jesus — Jesus, at least, was tempted. Joseph Ellis’ admitted attempt in His Excellency is to capture the demigod and bring Washington down to Earth. His biography succeeds in making Washington more of a human character, one who in his own time recognized he was being made into a legend and did his best to fulfill the reputation, both for the sake of the nation and his quiet sense of pride.

With precious little material to inform historians about his early years, Washington seems to spring into the world in the manner of Athena: fully-formed, and already in the thick of things as an inexperienced officer who accidentally set off the French and Indian War — making American history without even trying. His military service, marriage into a wealthy family, and natural air of authority led him to early prominence in Virginia, especially as ties between Britain and her colonies became increasingly frayed. He would be first president of the Second Continental Congress, then commander in chief of its army, and still later the first president of the American union.  His adult accomplishments are well known to most, at least their particulars. What motivates Ellis is a desire to understand what made His Excellency tick.  The biography subsequently takes the form of a character study.

From Ellis’ account, control is the presiding theme of Washington’s life:  control over his passions, his finances, his legacy. Though idealized, he emerges here an intensely pragmatic man who expects the worst and works to minimize risks. This is why he prefers a professional army to one composed of militia-men: though a force of citizens which comes together in times of crisis has great romantic appeal, Washington’s own experience saw nothing in a republican fyrd to commend them. Untrained militia melted away in combat, or lost interest in the war. Only discipline and strength could meet adversity. In the face of the challenges the early Republic faced, Washington wanted those values in the saddle, not Jeffersonian hopes.   Of course,  his opponents might argue that decentralized power mitigated the risk of abuse moreso than a strong state, but Washington distrusted a passionate mob more than he did corrupt aristocrats, possibly because he regarded corruption as self-defeating.  Though held as a champion of American liberty, Washington was thus very conservative in his way: he worked for American independence out of practicality, believing that Britain literally could not govern from a distance, and people needed to be governed, both by a government that prevented them from doing harm to one another and by self-imposed limits.  The limits on Washington were all self-imposed: Ellis sees him as pursuing virtue for the practical reasons: not only would he be happier, but his name would be more gloriously remembered. Posterity would judge him not by the power he held, but by the power he refrained from using, and so Ellis places great emphasis on the numerous times Washington voluntarily surrendered power, moves that not only protected him from the charge of monarchism, but gave the American people a legend to idolize: behold, the philosopher-president, the noble Cinncinatus who governs wisely and then retires, avoiding being stained with the purple dye that Marcus Aurelius cautioned himself against being touched by.

I found His Excellency  to be a most…appropriate biography, in that it reveals the Father of his Country to be a man with vices (like a lust for land), but whose pursuit of self-interest led to him becoming an exemplar of civic virtue. It’s the American dream.  Both those who want to learn about his human side– his errors and frailties — and those who want to learn more about his life without the shining armor being tarnished will find His Excellency a solid contribution to their understanding.

Related:
Nehru: the Invention of India, Shashi Tharoor

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Jayber Crow

Posted on July 3, 2013 by smellincoffee

Jayber Crow: the Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber of the Port William Membership, As Written by Himself
© 2000
363 pages

“Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told.”

Jayber Crow is many things. It is one of the most agonizingly beautiful and moving novels I have ever read. It’s a lyrical testament to the power of love,  the richness of community, and the pleasures of a life lived close to the rhythms  of nature.  And it’s also the story of a man named Jonah, called Jayber, who once thought he had the call to preach, but left the seminary to practice barbering to live out the questions that the seminary had no answers for. It is the story of a man twice orphaned, who went on a journey, a pilgrimage, and found himself. It is a work of art.

I should acknowledge from the start that I am biased to like — to adore — this book, for the author’s narrative voice is the kind I like best; gentle, wise, and slyly witful. I was unable to simply read the book; it had to be read aloud. Slowly. Multiple times.  The text is swollen with sentences that, like fruit hanging from a tree, demand to be plucked and savoured; they have body, being something beyond ordinary words.  Jayber Crow isn’t an action drama with a clearly defined Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, and Conclusion; it’s a coming of age story, in which the gracefully maturing subjects are both Jayber and his adopted home of Port William.  Jayber is a child of the Great Depression, and arrives in town shortly before the outbreak of World War 2.  That war and those that follow  will hurt his fair city, but the pain of them brings his characters to life all the more. It is a deeply reflective novel, in which Jayber will begin to wax poetic about one topic or another — the decline of ecologically-savvy family farms and the advent of debt-based agribusiness, or the damage automobiles do to one’s sense of place — for a spell before returning to telling the story of Port William as it attempts to survive the 20th century like a little skiff tossed in a turbulent ocean.

For a long time then I seemed to live by a slender thread of faith, spun out from within me. From this single thread I spun strands that joined me to all the good things of the world. And then I spun more threads that joined all the strands together, making a life. And when it was complete, or nearly so, it was shapely and beautiful in the light of day. It endured through the nights, but sometimes it only barely did. It would be tattered and set awry by things that fell or blew or fled or flew. Many of the strands would be broken.  Those I would spin and weave again in the morning. 

p. 330

I think the only words that do Jayber Crow justice are the words of the author himself, so plea  peruse some of the quotations for this book listed at GoodReads or even Tumblr. One selection which I posted on facebook:

One Saturday evening, while Troy was waiting his turn in the chair, [he said] “They ought to round up every one of them [war protesters] and put them right in front of the communists, and then whoever killed who, it would all be to the good.”
There was a little pause after that. Nobody wanted to try and top it. I thought of Athey’s reply to Hiram Hench.
It was hard to do, but I quit cutting hair and looked at Troy. I said “‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.'”
Troy jerked his head up and widened his eyes at me. “Where did you get that crap?”
I said, “Jesus Christ.”
And Troy said, “Oh”.
It would have been a great moment in the history of Christianity, except that I did not love Troy.

If I could only ever read one novel for the rest of my life, Jayber Crow would be it. The idea that it has only been in existence for thirteen years is staggering. It seems ageless.

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Gulp

Posted on July 2, 2013 by smellincoffee

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
© 2013 Mary Roach
352 pages

Mary Roach is no stranger to delving into topics which others find icky — like corpses. Even her more conventional works flirt with taboo, and in Gulp she embraces disgust whole-heartedly, by treating readers with iron stomachs to a discussion of all things digestive. Gulp is not, strictly speaking, a book about the digestive system. Instead, it’s a history of the odder means scientists through the centuries have fashioned to study it, though some of the questions themselves are startling enough (how many cellphones can you pack into a rectum?) Its intent is more entertaining than educational, but readers will glean an understanding of how our body works regardless, and perhaps learn more than they wished they knew. The body’s own structure gives Roach an organizational structure her other books might lack: her record of experiments follows the ‘alimentary canal’, an older name for the digestive tract, from our tongue right through the intestines and out the other side, pausing for a great many fart jokes.  Roach is definitely a ‘popular’ science writer in that she writes for the lowest common denominator, appealing to as many readers as can be possibly found who are willing to read about spit and constipation.  This is not a work that takes itself seriously; it is disgusting, funny, and informative in that order. Largely entertaining,  but a touch on the gratuitous side.

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American Creation

Posted on June 29, 2013 by smellincoffee

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic
© Joseph Ellis
304 pages

In Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis used a series of nonfictional ‘stories’ about the founding fathers of the United States to illustrate how their personal relationships with one another shaped the struggle for independence and later the creation of the Republic.  In American Creation, he uses the same approach, a series of vignettes, to explore moments which defined the course that Republic would take. Most occur after the revolution is won, and demonstrate how differently the founders dreamed from one another despite their accomplishments working with one another.  The result is what I’ve come to expect of Joseph Ellis: colorful narrative history that doesn’t begrudge sympathy to any founder and leaves the reader with a fuller appreciation for the Revolution — one which sees the founders as men, not demigods, who struggled against not only the prejudices and foibles of third parties, but against one another and their own inner demons.

The titular triumphs are well known, like the Declaration of Independence and  the miraculous survival of the Continental Army after Valley Forge, which was effected by both the persistent support of the people for the struggle and Washington’s adoption of a strategy that played to his strengths: avoid battle and focus instead on controlling the countryside. Even so, Ellis may pass along new information to students of the period: for instance,  months before the storied Declaration of Independence was presented and signed,  each American colony drew up a constitution for itself in preparation for the impending separation from England, asserting self-rule in a fashion with immediate practical effects and much less bombast.  Of the tragedies, there are three: the failure to strangle slavery, the lack of any effective and just “Indian policy”, and the birth of vicious parties. All three have the same mother: the interests of Southern planters, asserting the sovereignty of their individual states and dismissing the authority of any central government influenced by merchants and bankers.  Although Ellis is not a partisan historian,  the verdict of his pen is more for the Federalists than the Republicans.  The closest he comes to outright favoritism is in the chapter on party politics, “The Conspiracy”, in which he attempts to answer the question: why were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison so paranoid about the Federalists, acting as though men who had lead the assault against tyranny would become tyrants themselves?  Adam’s authorization of the Alien and Sedition acts hadn’t yet come into being, nor had Hamilton suggested to Adams that South America could do with a proper invasion, but both make the student of history wonder if maybe Republican concerns weren’t justified to some degree. Jefferson emerges from the section seemingly like an ambitious lunatic, however  — which, perhaps he was. Though regarded as a man of science, his romantic attachment to the French Revolution, which he devoted service to at the expense of the American government, reveals how profoundly irrational he could be.

None of the founders emerge from this narrative unscathed: even the divine Washington is revealed as only human, unable to will a perfect treaty with a native nation (the Creeks, here) into being:  not are the Creeks cleverly led by a man who is treacherous as any Congressional politician, but American settlers have the damndest habit of not doing what the government would wish them to do. They keep flooding into Creek territory without a care in the world for foreign policy. Parliament would no doubt sympathize — and just wait until you try taxing them, George. Oh, wait — the whiskey rebellion is also covered. Men who occupy lesser roles in most Revolution narratives get to shine more here, like Roger Livingston, the Forrest Gump of the revolution, always somehow in the middle of the biggest moments of American history.  American Creation is a fitting read for the Fourth, one which offers a vision hopeful yet sober of what was created, and what may yet be restored: a nation of the people, by the people, for the people.

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GoodReads is *Weird*

Posted on June 29, 2013 by smellincoffee

Witness:

Based on my “Alabama” shelf, it is recommending I read Understanding Power, by Noam Chomsky; Killing Hope, a history of CIA operations; a history of the Russian Revolution; a work detailing how human rights have been destroyed in the rise of corporate power; and a history of anarchism.

Because each of these things reminds me so much of Alabama.  On another page, it is insisting I check out an anthology of wisdom literature based on my Transportation and Urbanism shelves.

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The Story of My Experiments with Truth

Posted on June 28, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Story of my Experiments with Truth
 © 1927 Mohandas K. Gandhi
480 pages


Dover Press cover

The Story of my Experiments with Truth is a piecemeal autobiography of Mohandas Gandhi,  who earned acclaim by leading India to independence from the British Empire through nonviolent means. It includes only the early portions of his life, ending in the 1920s long before the most famous incidents of the Indian movement.   Gandhi establishes early on that he chose to downplay much discussion of his political activism in this work on the grounds that he had already written a history of his early struggles in South Africa, and that his later battles were so widely known they needed no further coverage from his pen.  Despite that intention, politics peppers this story of his life, as he viewed public service as inseparable from any other portion of his being, and especially from his sense of spirituality, the pursuit of truth. Politics was simply a means of acting on the truth, of proclaiming it to the world.

If not politics, what then is this autobiography?  Released in sections through a newsletter, it has no central focus;  his search for truth is at best a recurring theme. There’s politics here, interwoven with the accounts of legal cases and the epic quest to find his ashram a hand loom (this merited two chapters), but his reflections on religion, spirituality, and ethics give the work most of its substance. The work allows readers to see the legend of the Mahatma slowly emerge from the life of a passionate Indian lawyer who seems beset by scrupulosity, constantly ashamed of his wretched failings, recoiling in horror from the great sins of marriage and drinking goat’s milk.  Gandhi is not a moderate: after encountering a concept and deciding it worthy of an effort, the effort given is mighty: he adopts practices whole cloth. After being introduced to the concept of economic self reliance, he arranges for his newspaper staff to join him at a communal farm. When he became convinced of the spiritual and medical effects of total abstinence, he became celibate and began sleeping in a separate bed from his wife. Period. His ability to make radical changes in his life increased with practice: as a young man, avoiding meat seemed a terrible burden, one difficult to take up — but a decade later, with much experience, he could declare war against his libido by refusing to engage in so much as an amorous thought, and developing a diet that wouldn’t lead to excess ‘interest’. (Meat and milk lead to sexy thoughts. Fruit, not so much. )  At the same time, he records some of his religious explorations, his reading of other sacred texts and comparing them to his own.  This was only a minor portion of the content, however.

Those interested in the formative years and experience of Gandhi may find this book of interest; it is also marginally useful to those seeking information about his South African years, in which he fought to help Indians relegated to indentured servitude reclaim their dignity before the law and before themselves.  It is not a cohesive work, however, and doesn’t contain any extensive, in-depth writing on any given subject: instead, one sees the big ideas slowly developed over the course of his early life,  coming together year by year, a worldview given life one practice and one belief at a time.  Gandhi is at once inspiring and unsettling in the extremes of his life, dedicated to truth.

Related:
Nehru: the Invention of India; Shashi Tharoor
The Confessions,  St. Augustine (who was also given to literary self-flagellation)

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