New 06.25.05

Back before he jumped into writing nearly 24/7 on the latest edition of his successful textbook, Chip Hauss wrote from Virginia about a couple he things he'd read. "Here are two great books which may have passed below your radar screens. "Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. You don't have be a soccer/football nut to love this book. Foer uses soccer and the conflicts it engenders to consider some of the most important issues the world faces today, especially ethnic disputes. Foer is a political reporter for the New Republic, not a sports writer, so, this book digs more deeply into the spats between Protestants and Catholics in the UK and the divisions between the Serbs and their opponents in the former Yugoslavia than it does corner kicks and yellow cards. I used it in my graduate comparative politics seminar with tremendous success. "Jon Katz is one of my favorite authors. I found him with his mystery series "starring" Kit DeLeeuw, a laid off investment banker turned suburban detective who used Post It notes on his Volvo dashboard to remind him when to pick up the kids. After the series got canceled, he turned to nonfiction, most notably with Running to the Mountain. Jon had always wanted to write a book about Thomas Merton and bought a cabin in upstate New York where he could do so in isolation. The book ended up being about his odyssey which made it, also, a perfect book about Merton. [I reviewed Running to the Mountain. -KW] "Since then, Jon has turned his attention to dogs, most recently with The Dogs of Bedlam Farm. Katz progressed (?) from the cabin to a rundown farm where he could train this three border collies to herd his thirteen sheep and two donkeys during a rough upstate New York winter. As with Running..., Dogs... is not simply about, well, dogs. It's more about how a balding middle class Jewish guy (me, except for the balding) comes to grips with the demons of his past and present." Thanks for the notes, Chip. These books were quite beneath my radar and both are appealing. Katz' journey to writing about Merton struck a chord with me, and while I'm neither Jewish nor balding nor a dog guy, I'm tempted to read his new book. And I'm anxious to give the Foer book a try. An alternative to the sloppy thinking of Thomas Friedman on global issues would be very welcome.