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this book really boosted my faith. I love Bryan davis's work! Keep them coming Mr. Davis!

the best anatomy of a female friendship. also, great context for the writing of lucy grealy and ann patchett.

I got this book for free by reviewing a chapter of a writing textbook for some publisher. It sat on my shelf for a year and a half while I scraped together the courage to actually read it. At 500 pages, this is one long piece of nonfiction. The title alone is exhausting. But it won a Pulitzer! So away we go. The book begins shortly before I was born, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and erected a Communist leader. I don't remember this guy's name, but he never really had a strong grip on the country. That's all you need to know. (Clearly this is going to be a scholarly review.) From there, things get worse for Afghanistan. And then worse. And then worse. And then, again, worse. Now when I was in high school, I wasn't very into politics. I was more into staying on top of my nearly-4.0 at all costs. To an amazingly navel-gazing extent. But if you had asked me about Bill Clinton, I probably would have said that the whole Monica Lewinsky thing was right up there on the list of Most Important Things For America to be Worrying About. The important thing about that being, I was in high school. And whoever was making all that brouhaha probably should have been a little smarter than I was, because according to this book, there were about a million other things that were more important. One of which was Osama Bin Laden ratcheting up the crazy in a very public way. Steve Coll does a great job of presenting the facts without being partisan. However, as we all know (and by we I mean the postmodern feminist deconstructionists out there, so basically everyone reading this blog), all writing is political. Certain people, they don't look so good at the end of the book. When Bill Clinton says, "Well you know I really tried. That Osama sure is slippery though," (or something to that effect) you can't help saying, really Bill? Because maybe if you hadn't been such an asshole things would have worked out differently.

Hiaasen is a Florida author. This is a good one with some laughs and very interesting characters. Fun for me to read because I know exactly where a lot of the places are that are in the story and it is about the effect of a hurricane on people - the good, bad and ugly. I found it quite entertaining.