I don’t know how many children’s books, if any, have been reviewed on The Moderate Voice.

Additionally, I don’t know how many children, if any, read The Moderate Voice. But I do know that thousands of intelligent, dedicated, loving parents and grandparents, who deeply care about what their youngsters read, do religiously read these “pages.”

Now that I have stroked your ego, let me tell you about a terrific new children’s book that I have gotten my hands on.

“A Few Good Greek Myths” is a beautifully illustrated (more about that in a moment) book that will fascinate and entertain the reader—both young and not so young—with more than just “a few good Greek myths.”

The author, Michael O’Brien, first explains the roots, the origins and the history of myths. What I would call the myths about myths, but what O’Brien more elegantly describes as follows:

Myths are more than ripping yarns…[they] deal with the dual contradictions of the human condition: why do bad things happen to good people; why is there so much confusion, war and unfairness? They also address man’s most curious concerns: where did we come from, why are we here and who are the great powers?

You ask, “is this a children’s book?” Relax, this is about as “deep” as it gets. After a great overview of myths in other cultures (Egypt, India, China, etc.,) and an introduction to the “Olympians” and the “Big Five Heroes” of Greek mythology, it is on to a delightful journey through all your favorite Greek myths, narrated in a refreshing way, with a touch of humor.

The reader (re-)learns in detail about such favorites as Zeus, Odysseus, Prometheus, Icarus, Atlas, the Trojan Horse, Orpheus and Eurydice, etc. And, if the young and not so young reader still hasn’t had enough, there are two final chapters with “Some Other Pretty Good Myths,” and “Myths Up For Honorable Mention.”

My brief mention earlier about how beautifully this book is illustrated, is probably an understatement. The book contains a “baker’s dozen” gorgeous, color woodcut prints that are truly works of art. They are done by Peter Scacco.

For the sake of full disclosure: Both (Dr) Michael O’Brien, the author, and Peter Scacco, the illustrator, are good friends in Austin, Texas. Both are also tennis partners, but they have never let me win a match in exchange for a favorable review of their book. Such a courtesy on their part just wasn’t necessary…

Please click here to check out the book at Amazon.com

I didn’t think I had it in me, but I have just finished yet another book about World War II, probably the hundredth or so that I have read in a lifetime of interest in the myriad angles, intricacies and strategies of that great conflict fought by my parents’ generation. I am glad that I did what with the dust-up in Georgia and a war in Iraq that has lasted considerably longer than the time between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and their unconditional surrender.

Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45, published in March, focuses on the closing years of the war in the Pacific and among the lessons it offers is that the politicians who are starting wars these days like Bush and Putin, as well as pundits like Kristol and Kagan who are constantly agitating for even more wars, are a bunch of cocked hats by comparison.

I doubt that Max Hastings, the esteemed journalist-historian and author of Retribution, would say as much. In fact, Hastings has pretty much been in the neocon camp on Iraq.

That doesn’t diminish a provocative book full of fresh insights that acknowledges Japanese brutality was returned in kind by the Americans, and to pretend that race had nothing to do with that tit-for-tat is to ignore the historic record. But Hastings writes that neither should it be ignored that Japanese sadism and disregard for the lives of their own infantrymen, fliers and subjugates invited the Yankee payback.

As Hastings notes in the introduction:

“For students of history . . . the manner in which the Second World War ended is even more fascinating than that in which it began. Giants of their respective nations, or rather mortal men cast into giants’ roles, resolved the great issues of the twentieth century on battlefields in three dimensions, and in the war rooms of their capitals. Some of the most populous societies on earth teemed in flux. Technology displayed a terrifying maturity. . . . For millions, 1944-45 brought liberation, the banishment of privation, fear and oppression; but air attacks during those years killed larger numbers of people than in the rest of the conflict put together. Posterity knows that the war ended in August 1945. However, it would have provided scant comfort to the men who risked their lives in the Pacific island battles, as well as in the other bloody campaigns of that spring and summer, to be assured that the tumult would soon be stilled. Soldiers may accept a need to be the first to die in a war, but there is often an unseemly scramble to avoid becoming the last.”

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

Yesterday I quoted Stephen J. Dubner’s criticism of Michael Pollan and the local food movement and concluded, generously, that “Dubner’s contribution to the [food] debate is to keep it real.”

Then I listened to his appearance (mp3) on The Takeaway. Dubner apparently hardly even bothered to prepare for the show. Said he, straight off, when the interviewer assumed he had “actually been investigating the impulse…to grow it yourself and you’ve come up with some hard cold reality-based conclusions:”

Well, investigating is a generous word for what I’ve been doing but I’ve poked around a little bit, right, so it’s a complex problem which is part of the issue here. The minute we talk about food miles… the math gets pretty complicated.

Yes, it does, Stephen. That’s what we need you for!

Dubner goes on to tell us that “the grocery store is the end product of a couple centuries of food production research.” Ipso factso the food coming from it “ends up having probably a smaller footprint than a hundred people growing locally.” In case you missed it, the emphasis on that probably is mine! It would have been helpful had Stephen done some research prior to coming on the show, and maybe cited some of it!

He goes on to cite his personal farm experience, as if to suggest that childhood experience is evidence of anything other than the single instance it represents. (Like the ice cream anecdote I quoted yesterday that was so ably dismissed by my commenter, thank you GreenDreams!) Anecdotes without standards and testing do not add up to evidence, Stephen. 

The last of the whoppers is his notion of “the average grocery store” providing variety and freedom of choice. He says, “If I don’t want to buy the agribusiness, I don’t have to.” In fact, it’s very important to understand that we can only choose from the choices presented.  The entire discussion on that program was a missed opportunity for the worthwhile discussion this nation wants to have. We’re hungry for it, that’s why they booked you Stephen!

Even remembering that Dubner is the journalist half of the Freakonomics duo (Steven Levitt, the wunderkind economist, is the other) he owed it to his audience to have done better. A good place to start might have been the February 25, New Yorker, Big Foot: In measuring carbon emissions, it’s easy to confuse morality and science:

Many factors influence the carbon footprint of a product: water use, cultivation and harvesting methods, quantity and type of fertilizer, even the type of fuel used to make the package. Sea-freight emissions are less than a sixtieth of those associated with airplanes, and you don’t have to build highways to berth a ship. Last year, a study of the carbon cost of the global wine trade found that it is actually more “green” for New Yorkers to drink wine from Bordeaux, which is shipped by sea, than wine from California, sent by truck. That is largely because shipping wine is mostly shipping glass. The study found that “the efficiencies of shipping drive a ‘green line’ all the way to Columbus, Ohio, the point where a wine from Bordeaux and Napa has the same carbon intensity.”

The environmental burden imposed by importing apples from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can be lower than if the apples were raised fifty miles away. “In New Zealand, they have more sunshine than in the U.K., which helps productivity,” Williams explained. That means the yield of New Zealand apples far exceeds the yield of those grown in northern climates, so the energy required for farmers to grow the crop is correspondingly lower. It also helps that the electricity in New Zealand is mostly generated by renewable sources, none of which emit large amounts of CO₂.

Researchers at Lincoln University, in Christchurch, found that lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped eleven thousand miles by boat to England produced six hundred and eighty-eight kilograms of carbon-dioxide emissions per ton, about a fourth the amount produced by British lamb. In part, that is because pastures in New Zealand need far less fertilizer than most grazing land in Britain (or in many parts of the United States). Similarly, importing beans from Uganda or Kenya—where the farms are small, tractor use is limited, and the fertilizer is almost always manure—tends to be more efficient than growing beans in Europe, with its reliance on energy-dependent irrigation systems.

I get that it’s tricky problem. But the answer’s not glib bromides about the history of supermarkets!

This is just one of the allegations in Roger Faligot’s book, The Chinese Secret Services: From Mao to the Olympic Games. This specialist in intelligence retraces the history of the ties between the Middle Kingdom and al-Qaeda. According to this review of the book from Le Matin of Switzerland, the author writes, ‘The first negotiations with Osama bin Laden’s entourage are alleged to have been held in 2006 in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province … What has China promised to prevent a suicide bomber from blowing himself up during the finals for the 100-meter dash? And most importantly, what confidence can we give any commitment undertaken by Osama bin Laden? The answer will come next August in Beijing.’

By Ian Hamel

Translated By James Jacobson

February 23, 2008

Switzerland - Le Matin - Original Article (French)

Tomorrow, the word “Guoanbu ” will be as familiar as CIA, KGB or General Intelligence . China has not only become a great world power, it has also erected the most important secret services in the world. They comprise two million spies who scrutinize your acts and gestures, especially if you’re an athlete, a sports journalist or an opponent of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing. For the latter, China has also established a center for special intelligence equipped with a budget of $1.3 billion.

Security has become a national priority in the Middle Kingdom, which dreads nothing more than dramas like the one that occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989 ; demonstrations by Beijing’s Uyghur opponents (a Muslim minority from West China ); or protests by the Tibetans, during the global festival of sport next August. In The Chinese Secret Services. from Mao to the Olympic Games, China expert Roger Faligot reveals that General Chen Xiaogong, the new coordinator of military intelligence, negotiated with al-Qaeda to prevent terrorist attacks during the Olympics.

MAO’S GRANDSON

There relationship between China and the Islamist movement are long-standing. At the end of 1979 beginning with the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the Chinese decided to help the Mujahideen. Beijing provided Simonov sub-machine guns and Kalashnikov assault rifles, which have the advantage of using the same ammunition as Russian weapons. Within the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad, there is a military attaché named Kong Jining. This commander, who supplied the Islamists with weapons of war, was none other than Mao Zedong’s grandson.

“The choice of such an agent shows the importance that the Chinese placed on operations in Afghanistan. These good relations have continued with the Taliban. At the end of 2001 …

READ THE REST ON WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign coverage of the United States.

Once upon a time, on the the Iberian peninsula, in what is now southern Spain, Jews, Muslims and Christians lived in harmony, and the mild tension between them led to creativity. It became a kind of garden for the flowering of art, architecture, business, ideas, music, a (often grudging) respect for other religions — and a nest for the Renaissance.

People lived side by side, living under Islamic rule for some 7 centuries. But then it soured.

Suddenly, it was Muslim faction against Muslim faction. The Pope deciding to try and clear Spain of Muslims. Key cities were burned to the ground. Whole libraries burned. Thousands died. And so did this early example of what can happen when there’s diversity and tolerance. Meanwhile, what happened to the Jews towards the end of that period was a mini-foreshadowing of what would happen in the 20th century under Germany’s Adolph Hitler.

Is this a fairy tale? Something perhaps about a parallel universe?

Not at all — and today at 9 p.m. (but check your local listings since it may be shown at a different hour) you can see that such a place existed, in another simpler, yet in some ways more complex era.

The place: PBS. The event: the national premiere of “Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain” (check your local listings as times may vary). The production company: Unity Productions Foundation, which gave us “Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet” in 2002.

Award-winning director Rob Gardner (Islam: Empire of Faith) has crafted a superb, compelling true tale about another world — one so long ago…but one that provides some warnings to the present world. Because he shows how when there was diversity, creativity flowered and the various communities coped, lived side by side, and blossomed. If it was not quite the quintessential consensus society, it wasn’t a constantly confrontational society, either.

But once the absolutists stepped in — an early version of “my way or the highway” (with the stab of a sword cut in) — the result was upheaval and everyone lost something.

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When I returned from vacation, there were several books waiting for me to read (and review). I published a post listing all of them. Books, however, were not the only thing sent to me: I also received a screener for the documentary Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain, scheduled to debut on PBS on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 9PM. After reading the introduction which accompanied the actual documentary, I could not wait to watch it. It seemed – to put it mildly – like a fascinating subject, about a place and time most of us do not know much about. Luckily, I was not disappointed.

Although the makers certainly had an agenda – convincing the viewer that multiculturalism can work and that we can learn from the situation in Spain during the Middle Ages and before Christians ‘reconquered’ it – one has to admit (even a fierce critic of multiculturalism such as me) that they made a good case and that they did not hide the downsides of the society of al-Andalus. When different groups fought against each other, when fundamentalists tried to take control over cities or villages, the documentary spends attention to it and explains when things went wrong and why.

Islamic Spain was, in the words of the introduction and the documentary confirms it, “the one civilization of pluralism and interfaith cooperation that for a few centuries lit the Dark Ages in Medieval Europe.” After Muslims conquered a large part of, what we call Spain today, they decided not to force their religion on others; instead, they proved themselves to be tolerant. People of other faiths had to pay extra taxes and accept the authority of the Muslim government, but that was about it.

The documentary pays attention to the rulers – in reenacted scenes – who tried to make this complicated society work. One of the most effective rulers was Abdul Rahman III. When the Muslims had just taken over, they were more busy fighting each other for a few decades, than with building a tolerant, thriving society. Until Abdul Rahman the Third took over, that is. He enforced order, made friends and declared himself Caliph (rightful heir to Mohammed). More importantly, he also turned Al-Andalus into a little paradise on earth.

Abdul Rahman III was, according to the documentary, a man far ahead of his time – at least according to European norms that is. He was tolerant towards Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. He also encouraged men of great intelligence to study the works of the ancients and to, by doing so, improve society. He talked to Christian European leaders, accepted their representatives to his court and he sent ambassadors of his own to European kingdoms. Instead of sending people of his own religion – as was normal at that time – Rahman III chose to send Christians to represent him.

He also allowed people of other religions to make a career for themselves. According to Cities of Light, one of the greatest scientists (and poets) of that time and place was… a Jew.

Not only does the documentary show us reenacted scenes, key to the explanation of how they lived and what the political structure was like, are experts. Several experts weigh in. Obviously history experts, but also Islamic scholars and a Jewish scholar. The last one convincingly explains that, at that time, it was better for Jews to live in Al-Andalus – under Islamic rule – than under Christian rule. Christians often persecuted Jews, in Al-Andalus, on the other hand, they were free and even allowed to make a great career for themselves.

The documentary argues not just the above: it also proves that the seeds of the renaissance were laid in this time. The Muslims in Al-Andalus studied the works of the ancients, and their translations and explanations then spread throughout both the Muslims and the Christian world – and that is nothing to say about the tolerance and the prominent role poetry played in this modern yet ancient society.

Since all men are sinners, the relative haven of tolerance and religious cooperation had to come to an end. A violent end. More and more both Muslims and Christians were influenced by their less tolerant co-religionists and violent clashes occured moe and more. Then, the Muslims invaded Constantinople – a tremendous loss for Christian Europe. The response: Christian Kingdoms united and ‘reconquered’ Al-Andalus (or Spain). Soon religious tolerance disappeared and the once multicultural society of Al-Andalus was nothing but a vague memory in the minds of the men and women who once lived there.

Well, vague, the documentary constantly uses poems of people who either lived in Islamic Spain or who remembered it by story telling (cultural inheritance). These poems are often quite strong – the emotions – and make the viewer aware of how terrible the loss was to the Muslim empire. They remembered Al-Andalus for its tolerance, peace and beauty. They remembered it as the ultimate society.

When I say beauty, I mean it. The documentary makers remade some important places (like palaces) and show us how the rulers (and other people) lived. When Christian leaders came to visit the Caliph, they were more than impressed by what they saw. Where Christian Kings lived in cold palaces, without much beauty, Al-Andalus was a haven of green and fountains. Beautiful, no awesome mosques were built, amazing palaces were constructed, and – above all – they had running water: something Europeans did not have.

As said, it all had to come to an end. The experts – and by now even the viewer who might be a critic of multiculturalism – are filled with sadness and regret. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but fact remains that the loss of Al-Andalus as a highly tolerant society, was not just a loss to the Muslim empire, but to humanity itself.

The main point of the producers (and of the experts who all seem to agree with each other which is one of its main weaknesses) is that as long as people of different faiths respect and accept each other(‘s differences), society can flourish. Even more so, the example of Al-Andalus shows that only open societies can flourish: when society – irrelevant what kind of religion – closes itself to other societies (of other religions), it is in the very real danger of stagnation and even degradation.

When watching Cities of Light one cannot help but to agree with that thesis, at least partially. What the makers sadly forget to address is how to behave once one of the religions falls hostage to fundamentalists and, therefore, becomes intolerant. More, one can also wonder whether any multicultural society can last. When we look at history, we see examples of multiculturalism, and Al-Andalus is a prime example of it, but if we look at the fate of these societies and especially of Al-Andalus, is it not fair to conclude that perhaps – sadly – multicultural societies are doomed to failure because, in the end, man becomes intolerant since intolerance (evil) is in our nature?

And that, that is one of the questions I have asked a producer of Cities of Light. The interview will be published ASAP. In the meantime, you all should not forget to tune into PBS coming Wednesday at 9PM to watch this enlightening documentary. Questions remain, but this documentary is quite important: in the larger debate about Islam and about multiculturalism we sometimes forget to look at the good sides – besides that, often the Islamic empire is made out to be ‘evil’ in Western books or we simply do not know anything about it – it is time to change that. History is not all black and white.

For more information about Cities of Light please visit Unity Productions Foundation website.

Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain
Producer / Director: Robert Gardner
Executive Producers: Alexander Kronemer & Michael Wolfe
Narrator: Sam Mercurio

Scholars:
- Lourdes Maria Alvarez: Director of the Center for Catalan Studies and a professor of Spanish at Catholic University in Washington, DC.
- Brian Catlos: Associate Professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
- Ahmad Dallal: Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Chair of the Arabic and Islamic Studies Department at Georgetown University
- D. Fairchild Ruggles: Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf: Founder and CEO of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA Society) and Imam of Masjid Al-Farah, a mosque in New York City
- Mustapha Kamal: Currently a lecturer in Arabic, Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies, at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he focuses on instruction of Arabic language and literature
- Chris Lowney: Former Jesuit and author of A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Medieval Spain
- David Nirenbergs: Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of the Humanities in Medieval History at John Hopkins University
- Raymond P. Scheindlin: Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary and Director of JTS’s Shalom Spiegel Institute of Medieval Hebrew Poetry

American Ballet Theatre has presented six different productions of The Sleeping Beauty over the years. While the version that premiered last weekend on the Metropolitan Opera stage at Lincoln Center in New York City is recognizable to anyone familiar with the oft-told fairy tale, it is a radical departure in some respects, which begs the question as to whether it will stand the test of finicky critics and balletomaines who usually like their classics served straight up and expect nothing short of brilliance from this world famous dance company.

The Sleeping Beauty, like Swan Lake and The Nutcracker — all with music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky — is among the most beloved and oft performed classical ballets. No company worth its tutus fails to dance it — and dance it in a form that would be recognizable to Marius Petipa, its first and foremost choreographer (1890) as maître de ballet of the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg.

The new American Ballet Theatre version that the Dear Friend & Conscience and I saw at the Met last night apparently is the first that is a collaboration between a company’s artistic director and a former ballerina who has danced the title role of Princess Aurora.

They would be Kevin McKenzie and Gelsey Kirkland, with a big assist from Kirkland’s husband, Michael Chernov, in the capacity of dramaturge (playright).

The dynamic trio’s production is more or less true to the original story:

The evil fairy Caraboose, upset that she has been omitted from the A-List for the christening of Princess Aurora, pricks the princess’s finger with a spindle, condemning her to death instead of a life of unimaginable perfection that would inevitably lead to marriage to an unimaginably perfect prince. The Lilac Fairy intervenes, promising King Florestan and his queen that Princess Aurora will not die, but instead will fall into a deep sleep which will end with the kiss of a king’s son who will marry her. Sigh.

The most ostensible departures in the new The Sleeping Beauty are . . .

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

Leon Botstein is a very busy man. When not writing about music or editing books and teaching, he runs Bard College (and has since 1975 when he was elected its president at age 29), as well as recording internationally, conducting the American Symphony Orchestra and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. He also is brilliantly erudite, drop-dead funny and could hold his own on a late-night talk show.

Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra have been presenting a wonderful series called Classics Declassified for several years at Columbia University’s Miller Theater at 116th Street and Broadway in New York City.

These intimate Sunday afternoon sessions (a bargain at $17, even less for students and seniors) begin with Botstein discussing the composer and symphonic masterpiece du jour, with the orchestra “illustrating” Botstein’s comments with brief musical passages. After an intermission, the ASO performs the work in its entirety and then conductor and musicians take questions from the audience.

On Sunday, the Dear Friend & Conscience and I were in the packed hall as Claude Debussy’s “La Mer” got the Classics Declassified treatment.

“La Mer” occupies a special place in my classical pantheon because it was on the very first album — a boxed set of symphonies that included, among other others Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherezade” and Ravel’s “Bolero” — that I bought at an A&P supermarket at age 13 with money from my newspaper route.

But beyond this wee personal footnote, Debussy revolutionized how people thought about music. Indeed, nothing like “La Mer” had come before but plenty not unlike it came later. (Stravinsky, for one, was deeply influenced by Debussy.)

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

One of my favorite literary websites is Cosmoetica. It has something like 50,000 hits per day I believe, so it is fair to say that I am not the only one who thinks highly of Dan and Jessica Schneider. A little while ago, they e-mailed me saying that they were asked to do some work for a great website called Monsters and Critics (you’ll find a link to this website in the right sidebar of my blog, under “Literary Links”), which has approximately 150,000 visitors today if I am not mistaken. Of course I have congratulated the couple with this privately, but let me also do it publicly: it is a great opportunity for them, and… they deserve it. Well done, congrats.

Monsters and Critics might also publish some reviews written by me in the near future. Not reviews of novels, but of political and historical books. Ten days after a review will be published at C&M, I will publish the review here and at my personal blog.

Anyway, the above as an aside, the purpose of this post is to share the following poem, written by Dan Schneider:

ANOTHER LIFE

An electric wire holds life, like this dawn,
high over the gutter, of the infinite
city, where Jacob Schwarz sees his only Keds,
dangling above him. He cannot get them down,

though he shakes like the dark wing of an unmade
bird, under his bosom, for a wind to blow
him to freedom. He learns, like others, the way

they multiply, and rot, on utility
wires, and that Zebby O’Toole runs the show
on Harmon Street. In a few days they will be

worthless, for the weather, and the sun-blanched white
Jacob mouths vague locutions. His curbside seat
ends any thoughts of what loss is. For his Keds
his head moves 80° in the starsight.

Copyright Dan Schneider

Once in a while an album comes along by a favorite musician that is like listening to him for the first time all over again.

One such album is Neil Young’s new Live at Massey Hall (Reprise/Wea), a captivating collection of 17 songs recorded by the great singer-songwriter at a solo concert in January 1971 but never before released.

“I’m gonna sing mostly new songs tonight,” Toronto-born Young tells the hometown audience, “I’ve written so many new ones that I can’t think of anything else to do with them other than sing ‘em.”

And sing ‘em he does in his distinctive nasal tenor — a 26-year-old who already had blazed a white-hot trail through folk and rock and was on the verge of superstardom.

It isn’t possible to name highlights from the album, a phenomenal high-resolution recording of a quality that would have been unthinkable back in the day.

There is not a weak song on Live at Massey Hall, but “Tell Me Why,” “The Needle and The Damage Done,” “Down By the River” and “Ohio” – as well as my all-time Young fave “Cowgirl in the Sand” — stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to put down whatever I was doing and simply listen.

Young, of course, has remained determinedly true to his school – an outspoken critic of government deceit and advocate for environmentalism and small farmers then and now. Would that we had a few more like him.

There also is an enhanced CD/DVD version of Live At Massey Hall. Click below:

When I borrowed Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President while Driving Liberals Insane by New York Post columnist John Podhoretz, from the library (for an essay on George W. Bush’s presidency / administration), I expected to be in for a right-wing propaganda drive.

Podhoretz did not disappoint me.

Bush Country is one of the most biased and partisan books I have ever read. Its underlying idea: Bush et al. = good. ‘Liberals’ = bad. Liberals are blind, they refuse to understand that Bush is one of the greatest presidents America ever had, etc.

Yes, one of the greatest presidents the U.S. ever had according to John Podhoretz. As you all know, I disagree quite strongly with that: instead to me, Bush is one of the worst post-World War Two U.S. presidents.

Podhoretz’s main argument for his statement that Bush is such a tremendous president is the way Bush dealt with 9/11, how he decided to attack Afghanistan and later Iraq, how he handled those two wars, how he liberated the people of those two countries and how, all in all, both wars are a gigantic success.

That’s the problem with writing a book about a president who was going to win re-election and, thus, would serve another four years after your book got published.
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