WANTED WOMEN: Faith, Lies & The War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Aafia Siddiqui, by Deborah Scroggins – Harper/HarperCollinsPublishers New York, NY Copyright © 2012 by Deborah Scroggins.

 A review by Bill Dahl

A Legitimate Pulitzer Prize Candidate:

When I received my copy for review – the title and cover made me skeptical…but…I started reading…then – I couldn’t out it down.

This book is unique and profoundly distinctive in so many ways. The following are noteworthy:

a) Deborah Scroggins spent 6 years on this project.

b) Initially, I viewed the structure of the book as a gamble – alternating chapters for Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Aafia Siddiqui – I came to absolutely adore it.

c) The author had never interviewed either woman directly during the research and writing of the book. Yet, the tertiary sources Scroggins plied to obtain the pertinent material are both comprehensive and intimate – providing the reader with the ability to become acutely familiar with each subject.

d) You can’t write a book like this without placing your personal safety and welfare in jeopardy (no matter what the author says).

This work has it all: religion, women’s rights, equality, terrorists, murder, birth, faith development, human development, intrigue, political intrigue, Somalia, the war on terror, the disconnect between the west and the rest, family relations, refugees, terrorism, suicide bombings, contradiction, lies, deception, death, Africa, immigration, racism, Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons, abductions, prejudice, divorce, intolerance, relationships, misunderstanding, certainty, fundamentalism, Judaism, Pakistan, charisma, injustice, finance, bodyguards, assassinations, court proceedings, mental health issues, separation, The U.S., extremism, the media, anarchy, survival, irrationality, mystery, children, misperception, military engagement, war, genocide, foreign policy, Iran, Iraq, the oppressed, poverty, affluence, the pursuit of personal achievement, strategic international relations, CIA, FBI, ISI, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Daniel Pearl – and running for your life…whatever that may mean.

In the absence of such an incredibly gifted investigative journalist/author (Deborah Scroggins) – this book might have easily become a mediocre mess. I garnered a deep appreciation for both the writing and storytelling skill of Scroggins, as well as the unimaginable perseverance she aptly displays – crafting a page-turning, insightful examination of the intersection where the issues I enumerate above collide…in the lives of real people…today. She lets the story speak for itself (if there really is such a thing). The voice Scroggins equips the two central characters with is a feast for the reader.  The manner in which she shares this story is so terribly poignant and powerful yet, unequivocally uniquely creative – causes the reader to become curious, engaged, concerned, educated, perplexed, angry — to ponder deeply — and arrive at a place where one understands just how much difficult work we have yet to accomplish — in directly addressing the innumerable challenges, contradictions and life shaping/threatening conditions WANTED WOMEN: Faith, Lies & The War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Aafia Siddiqui so cogently illuminates.

Today, as a species, in our current historical epoch, homo-sapiens (that’d be us) – particularly those who are sufficiently fortunate to be free from worry about survival on a daily basis – also seem to have acquired another peculiar tendency this book illuminated for me. It’s epistemological self-righteousness – We humans have an infernal capacity to come to believe what we think we know is both adequate and sufficient. As Princeton research psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Dan Kahneman has said in his most recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow – we develop the tendency to think What You See Is All There Is. Kahneman writes: “At work here is that powerful WYSIATI rule: You cannot help dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know. You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it.”[i] Kahneman refers to this as “pretended knowledge” – a phenomenon very apparent in the lives of both Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui…and our world.

As any superlative literary work of non-fiction requires Deborah Scroggins’ WANTED WOMEN: Faith, Lies & The War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Aafia Siddiqui leaves the reader with the veil epistemological modesty firmly affixed to ones’ heart and soul. Yet, the work clearly defines the challenges ahead, prompting the essential dialog required to re-think our current beliefs, policies, practices and past approaches to the ongoing, unresolved issues so vividly and persuasively illuminated by this book. There’s vastly more import to this work than your what you see is all there is mechanism might suggest.

Like I said…a legitimate Pulitzer Prize candidate. Believe it!

Marvin Kalb is the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice (Emeritus) at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (among other noteworthy endeavors and achievements).Deborah Kalb is a freelance writer and journalist who has penned insights for Gannett, Congressional Quarterly, U.S. News and World Report etc.

Although the Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975, the U.S. had officially “lost” its first war to “a raggedy-ass little fourth rate country,” – according to Lyndon Johnson.

Although President George W. Bush declared “we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome” (along with other famous utterances like “mission accomplished”), the authors painstakingly provide the heretofore untold dialog and impact the Vietnam War has had on each and every administration from Ford through the present day.

American history inhabits the heads and hearts of policy makers, advisors and Presidents alike. This book provides factual verification of the ongoing influence of the Vietnam War in our national security policy considerations.

Frankly, for political science, American history and folks with a penchant for the behind-the-scenes gestation of foreign policy – This book is REQUIRED READING.

A truly remarkable contribution to the works associated with the history of the American presidency, our nation — and our present-future.

1) Let’s start out with the obvious question…what brought you to the decision to write The Sword of the Lord?

Andrew Himes: I felt compelled to understand my own life and my family’s history, which has been so bound up with the history of fundamentalism for many generations. I had a pretty tough time growing up in my family, which boasted many Baptist preachers, while I was a black sheep, unreconstructed rebel, and general trouble-maker. I was a special problem for myself and everybody else too, because my granddad, John R. Rice, was perhaps the most influential fundamentalist in the US for decades in the mid-20^th century. By the time I was in my 30s, I was powerfully motivated to explore and write about our common history. After Granddad’s death in 1980, it’s taken me three decades to develop enough humility, wisdom, and capacity for love to be able to write this book.

2) The book is heavily dependent on research. What are some of the challenges you faced while researching the book?

Andrew Himes: First, my own massive ignorance. It turns out that I knew little about religious history or aspects of US history that were informed by evangelical Christianity. I had to read and reference over 200 books in order to write my one book. Every time I thought I had written a complete story, I read yet another author and discovered another gap in my knowledge and understanding. Another challenge was that I wasn’t trained as a professional historian, yet I wanted to write a compelling story that was also accurate, truthful, balanced, analytical, and fully referenced. So I had a lot of learning to do!

3) The book is obviously deeply personal as it’s all about your family. Did you face any resistance in writing about your family’s history?

Andrew Himes: No resistance from my family, in the end. During the early part of the writing process, some of my relatives might have been concerned that I would unearth and then write about things that could embarrass the family. But when I began to share drafts of the manuscript and ask for critical feedback, we had some wonderful conversations about the importance of understanding and acknowledging our history, even when it might be painful. For example, we are not proud that an earlier generation of our family owned slaves and participated in that terrible crime against other human beings. But when we acknowledge that past, we are enabled to work for racial reconciliation and healing.

4) Who do you think will be most interested in reading The Sword of the Lord?

Andrew Himes: I think its most passionate audience will be conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, because it’s a valuable history of the times and people who framed that religious tradition and community, and largely unknown, especially to younger evangelicals. It will also be fascinating for Christians from mainline Protestant, Catholic, and emergent communities, because it will help them understand the evangelical world in a new and more compassionate way. And it will be interesting to a general secular audience because it reveals core threads of American political and religious history that have been little understood–including both the rise of the Religious Right and the role that evangelicals have played in struggles for separation between church and state, to end slavery, create equality for women, and work for social justice.

5) Was there anything that surprised you in the research and writing of the book? Did you make any discoveries that changed your perspective?

Andrew Himes: Absolutely yes. I came to a much deeper appreciation of my granddad and grandmother and the rest of my large and wonderful family. I summed up how valuable my upbringing was and how much I am shaped by my family and our heritage. So now I can go on to consciously live up to that heritage. As I came to understand how the trauma of war, violent conflict, and economic insecurity affected the lives of my ancestors, I developed much more compassion for them. From my modern context and point of view, I might judge my ancestors of 150 years ago as doing indefensible, incomprehensible, and evil things. But when I see them in the context of their own place and time, I have to grant that they were doing the best they knew to do, and from motives that they believed were pure. I think we are talking about generations of people suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). And we need to work consciously at our own healing. So I think I’ve become a better listener and more compassionate person as a result of writing the book. Surprisingly, I’ve developed more compassion for myself as well, and the crazy, angry, screwed-up kid I was when I was growing up in my fundamentalist family.

6) What is some of the initial feedback you’ve received about the book?

Andrew Himes: So far all the feedback has been unanimous and very positive. Readers say that they have learned something important about themselves when they finish. My objective was to write a truthful and accurate account of a complex and painful history, and to do so with a deep sense of love and fairness for the people I wrote about. I think people are really getting that.

7) What’s next for you and the book? What is the best way for readers to stay updated with you?

Andrew Himes: May 16^th is the date for the final release of the book. The final edition will have a new foreword by Parker Palmer, plus illustrations, a timeline, and a study guide. We hope to have 100 blog reviews posted by that date, and are recruiting 1000 people to buy the book on Amazon on May 16^th, which will catapult it into the Top Ten bestsellers on Amazon that day. To join the Amazon campaign or to apply for a free review copy if you are a blogger, come to www.swordofthelordbook.com. Click on the Subscribe button to keep up to date with my newsletter. You’ll find links on my web site to follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you Andrew.

Cavorting With The Carnivore of Curiosity!!!

Brooks, David THE SOCIAL ANIMAL – The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, Random House – an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. New York, NY Copyright © 2011 by David Brooks.

What Can I Say! WOW! I Needed That!

Admittedly, I’m a fan of David Brooks mind. I don’t agree with everything he writes in his op-eds for the NY times. Yet, I have developed an appreciation for the carnivore-like appetite he has for exploring a wide range of subjects – particularly those breakthroughs on the forefront of science.

In this book, Brooks creates some fictional characters and allows us to walk along with them on their journey through life – integrating science, philosophy and his own interpretation of the aforementioned – and weaving this into the story line. It works!

Brooks begins with this poignant insight:

“We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few years, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, and others have made great strides in understanding the building blocks of human flourishing. And a core finding of their work is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking. We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.” p..x.

Anyone whose has watched The Brain Series on Charlie Rose simply must read this book. Yet, it’s more than that. This book will be terribly interesting to an audience will be deep and wide.

For me, some of the most delicious items in the book included some of the following excerpts:

“You are the spiritual entity that emerges out of the material networks in your head.” (p 49).

“The ability to construct templates about the future is vitally important to future success.” (p.328).

“Epistemological modesty is an attitude toward life. This attitude is built on the awareness that we don’t know ourselves. Most of what we think and believe is unavailable to conscious review. We are our own deepest mystery.” (Pp.245-6).

Brooks writes: “Sounds and syllables come together and produce a story that has an emotional power that is irreducible to its constituent parts.” (P.109). Well, he proved just that in this book. Outtakes and excerpts just won’t produce the delicious meal this fare delivers to the reader.

Buy it. Devour it! One of my favorites YTD in 2011.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly The Evolving Self – A Psychology for the Third Millenium, Harper Perennial – A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, Copyright © 1993 By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Don’t Delay – READ THIS BOOK TODAY! No kidding…No exaggeration…

I have a personal discipline – For every 5 books I read, one of those books MUST be at least five years old. Once again, I have been immensely blessed by this discipline.

What honestly startled me about this book, published in 1993, the unfinished business that remains to be realized is both profound and poignant. It’s simply that prescient.

The following are a few tidbit excerpts. As you read them, please consider their pertinence today:

“At this point in our history it should be possible for an individual to build a self that is not simply the outcome of biological drives and cultural habits, but a conscious, personal creation. That self will be aware of its freedom and not fear it.” P. 4.

The point is not to be browbeaten into the belief that you are powerless. It is in the interest of those who control our energy to make it seem that the status quo is natural, right, and impossible to change. It is in our interest to figure out that this is not always true. P. 105.

Having learned that boredom and worry are the norm in the family, in the school, and in the community at large, children give up curiosity, interest, the desire to explore new possibilities, and become used to passive entertainment. P.203.

Most novel ideas or behaviors are generated by people who try out new things because they are bored by old routines, or because they are confounded by chaos. P. 255.

If you’re bored by old routines and/or curious or concerned about chaos in this world, this book is for you.

One of my favorites YTD in 2011 — even though it was published in 1993.

Another! by Harvard’s  Magnificent Maiden of Mindfulness!

Langer, Ellen J. On Becoming An Artist – Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity, Ballantine Books – an imprint of Random House Publishing Group, Random House, Inc. New York, NY Copyright © 2005 by Ellen Langer, Ph. D.

The Magnificent Maiden of Mindfulness – Ellen J. Langer

Frankly, I’ve now read all of Ellen Langer’s books – intentionally – not due to a college curriculum requirement or anything like that. I chose to. Well, almost chose to. After reading her first book, one is inhabited by a thirst for more. For me, Harvard’s Ellen J. Langer is unequivocally The Magnificent Maiden of Mindfulness.

This book is densely populated by the insights of one who has spent a lifetime exploring (social research) this topic, and applying these same principles to her own life – a rarity in and of itself. As expressed in the Introduction to this book, this is why I read Ellen Langer:

“Mindlessness, instead, typically comes about by default, not design. When we live our lives mindlessly, we don’t see, hear, taste, or experience much of what might turn lives verging on boredom into lives that are rich and exciting.” P.xvii

Langer discusses the topics of refraining from judgment, comparing ourselves to others, that the creative pursuits are available to all, experimenting, making mistakes and going public – for the joy of it.

A few particularly poignant gems for me, included the following:

“Many of the limits we impose on ourselves are illusory.” (p.165).

We think of uncertainty as a problem to be overcome, and our desire for certainty may be what leads us to accept prepackaged choices rather than deal with an unbounded set of possibilities.  (p.223).

“Painting by numbers, literally and figuratively, where there is a rigid expectation that things will be a certain way, is not likely to advance the individual or the culture.” (p.97).

This particular book shares her personal journey in becoming curious and interested to being recognized as a renowned painter. I loved it.

The capacity for creativity is resident within each and every life. It takes a book like this to move one from thinking about that to doing something about it.

An amazing book! A phenomenal story!….

Wow!!! I Mean WOW!

Some books contain stuff that stick to your soul – This is one of them. They should give you a pair of gloves or an infant’s bib with this book. This is one of them.

I adore books I truly learn from where the delightful capacity to read about a subject of interest is not turned into a burden by a bright author – that just can’t write very well. Sir Ken Robinson’s book, Out of Our Minds – Learning To Be Creative is clearly NOT one of those.

Here are a few tidbits that I really appreciated:

The necessity of unlearning: “We all live our lives guided by ideas to which we are devoted but which may no longer be true or relevant. We are hypnotized or enthralled by them. To move forward we have to shake free of them.” (p. 7).

The Reality of Change: “The rate and scale of change engulfing the world is creating a tidal shift in how people live and earn their living.” (p. 82).

THE 21^st Century Challenge: “In the 21^st century humanity faces some of its most daunting challenges. Our best resource is to cultivate our singular abilities of imagination, creativity and innovation. Our greatest peril would be to face the future without investing fully in those abilities.” (P. 47).

The Imperative Questions: “The questions we ask are often more important than the answers we search for. Every question leads to particular lines of inquiry. Change the question and whole new horizons may open up to is. The true value of a generative idea is that it leads to new sorts of questions.” (P.163).

I just cannot do this book justice here. The practical, insightful, approachable manner that Robinson shares his wisdom with the reader is refreshing and magnetic.

A really Great Book!

Note From Bill Dahl:

I REALLY enjoyed Mike’s book. You will too. You DON’T have to be a cancer patient to appreciate this book.

I asked Mike to “interview himself.” So here it is:

Clark, Taylor – NERVE – Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, And The Brave New Science Of Fear and Cool, Little, Brown and Company – Hachette Book Group, New York, NY Copyright © 2011 by Taylor Clark.

Taylor Clark’s new book demonstrates, once again, that he is a magnificent story-teller. This is one of those books that should have a WARNING LABEL on the jacket: “WARNING: If You Pick This Book Up – You Won’t Be Able To Put It Down.”

What’s refreshing for me as evidenced by NERVE is that talented writers are beginning to explore science and share the same in a manner that is both inviting and digestible by a broad and diverse audience. Clark’s frankness about this fact (see pp.13-14) is invigorating – along with his confession of being one who has NOT triumphed over fear, anxiety, worry and stress – yet, remains “a fairly neurotic guy.” (You’ve gotta love that kind of authenticity…I certainly do.

Clark weaves the science into incredibly entertaining non-fiction stories that will keep you turning the pages. His thesis is the path of fear is the path of life (p.282) – and provides bushels of evidence to support the same.

This is NOT one of those sappy books on fear, courage or life that has the “buck up buster” theme running throughout the pages (Thank God for that!!!). Clark has an ability to speak about the reality of the subject, making it literary fare for ordinary folks, those with a keen interest in the subject matter, the social/neuroscience community — and those who just want a book that is filled with the wit and ways of a truly talented storyteller and investigative journalist.

There are mounds of  gems in this book. Here are a couple I distinctly appreciated from NERVE:

So the measure of our ability to deal well with fear isn’t whether we get afraid, but how we connect with that fear. In the end, this is the kind of “nerve” that matters most: the nerve to open up to fear, work with it, and do the right thing regardless of how we feel. P.282.

Bravery isn’t being fearless. Bravery is being scared and doing the right thing anyway.

Developing solid cognition under fire isn’t about thinking fearlessly but about thinking alongside fear. P.158.

We can take small, concrete steps toward our goals, to show ourselves that we are authors of our own fate – not helpless in the face of adversity.  P.128

A GREAT book! A fantastic writer. A wonderful gift for a friend, colleague or family member as well. BUY IT!