13 Hours

By Mitchell Zuckoff w/ Annex Security Team

 

A Review for Amazon

“This book documents the last hours of an American diplomatic outpost in one of the most dangerous corners of the globe. Based on exclusive firsthand accounts, it describes the bloody assault, tragic losses, and heroic deeds at the US State Department Special Mission Compound and at a nearby CIA base called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya, from the night of September 11, 2012, into the morning of the next day. It is not about what officials in the United States government knew, said, or did after the attack, or about the ongoing controversy over talking points, electoral politics, and alleged conspiracies and cover-ups. It is not about what happened in hearing rooms of the Capitol, anterooms of the White House, meeting rooms of the State Department, or green rooms of TV talk shows. It is about what happened on the ground, in the streets, and on the rooftops of Benghazi, when bullets flew, buildings burned, and mortars rained. When lives were saved, lost, and forever changed.”  So says Mitchell Zuckoff in “A NOTE TO THE READER”, at the beginning of the book.

 

The book is exciting.  It reads like a novel, except it is all true.  It introduces you to the people who lived and died that day.  It honors them, as it should.  It introduces some reality into a subject that is superficially discussed and manipulated to serve agendas.  It presents a picture of the Arab Spring and the tribal culture that is usually ignored in discussions of our policy in this part of the world.  I loved the book and hope you will read it and find it as meaningful as I did.

 

I found Google Earth to be helpful in reading and understanding this story.  I easily found both the annex and the Diplomatic Compound.  It made it easier to understand the physical and geographical descriptions in the account.  I could find, for instance, the building from which the attackers studied the layout of the compound and, therefore, have a sense of what the observer could see.  It helped.

Hard Choices

By Hillary Rodham Clinton

 

A Review for Amazon

Life is about making choices and my choosing this book was, for me, an unusual choice.  I bought it after reading the bad reviews.  At the time I bought the book, almost all the reviews were negative and had the feel of a “write your congressman campaign”.  Her photo was ridiculed and the fact that it was written in the first person was criticized.  It is a memoir.

 

As I started to write this review, I stopped and read the negative reviews again.  Today I would not buy the book because the negative reviews are now more insightful, which few were before.

 

This book appears to have been written as a cross between a SIX HUNDRED PAGE CAMPAIGN SPEECH and a political platform. You can almost here her voice rise as you read some paragraphs.  I can’t say that this approach is inappropriate, it makes sense to write a book like this when you are running for president and others have done the same thing.  Unfortunately, this is not a good effort.  As one reviewer noted, “it was written by committee”.  After reading the acknowledgements to see who was involved, I was not surprised to see that it was written, largely, by the same people who helped with her speeches. 

 

The first half of the book describes her time on the job and, to me, was a good insight into how the Obama administration functions.  The second half is mostly an issue list of positions for her campaign.  By the time I was 2/3 of the way through, I was tired.  Hillary’s book lists one issue after another that she cares passionately about.  It is a long list and a list to campaign on, I am sure; from human trafficking to working conditions in businesses abroad that do not have to abide by US standards.

 

There were things I liked about the book.  She does make points that are not entirely political.  One statement I have wanted to hear someone make for a long time was important to me.  When Hillary states that, “Most Americans understand that our troops often must be in harm’s way. But the same is also true for our intelligence officers, diplomats, and development experts, as we were tragically reminded during my years at State.”  I found the book no longer tedious, at least for a while.  I have always felt that Americans fail to appreciate the risk that our officials take to work in often-dangerous parts of the world.

 

I do not think this book will help Hillary be elected.  Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan could charm the nation but at least in this book, Hillary did not.  I am afraid that Americans are more likely to select someone because they would make a good senior class president than because they are qualified to perform the demanding task of President.