It's Even Worse Than It Looks (Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein, 2012)

I'm harboring some doubts I'm going to make it to 52 this year. It's all my fault since I took on the mighty REAMDE, which was the length of three books. However, there's this slim volume, checking in at just over 200 pages, to counterbalance it. Sort of.

I generally don't care much for "current affairs" books since their shelf-life is ridiculously short, kind of like pre-season NFL predictions. This one was featured a few years ago on the Dan Rather Reports program. I thought it was interesting because it was essentially written by two guys who are fiscally conservative and has generally voted Republican. In this book, they discuss the concept of "asymmetrical polarization" in politics. This means that while both sides of the aisle are gravitating more to the wings, it is far more problematic on the Republican side. Therefore attempts by the media to give "equal time" to each side results in a far more ludicrous amount of time spent on fringe thought like the "legitimacy" of Obama and contributing to the obnoxious gridlock that characterizing modern politics.

Mann and Ornstein are very good at laying out the groundwork about how messed up everything is, but I felt they came up a little short in the solutions department. First off, I don't see any of it working for the very reasons they give for dysfunction. All of the proposals would be DOA once they reach any area controlled by the GOP. Second, and not their fault, is the nature of current affairs books getting outdated. The results of 2012 were still unknown at the time the book was written. I don't think they saw another "wave" election hitting in 2014 either. However, I do agree that an all-Republican controlled government would be a Very Bad Thing, especially when the party has gone so far to the right that even George W. Bush couldn't get their nomination anymore without changing his own platform (as we witnessed Romney and McCain do, to the disgust of "old-school" Republicans).

The "nonfiction - other" shelf has been fairly active for the year. Here are the titles read this year in that category:

The Prince - Machiavelli's classic of how to be a powerful person
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson's history of science and how we really got to know about really early Earth history
A Thread Across the Ocean - a book that had been on my mind forever about the trans-Atlantic cable
The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson's dramatic change of focus from men who stare at goats to sociopaths, including ones that run corporations and companies
Born to Run - picked up on a whim to inspire my new running habit; I will never run like those guys
Collapse - Jared Diamond's OK sequel to the iconic Guns, Germs and Steel
It's Even Worse Than It Looks - see above!

Also, three that didn't really fit anywhere else:

Strengths-Based Leadership - required reading for the program I'm in, but insightful. I created a "bizlit" category for future similar titles.
Carlos in Gonna Get It - the second-to-last title on my YA list, written by a fellow Colby alum.
The Dead and the Gone - the last of my old YA reading list, which I've since collapsed into whatever genre those books feel most comfortable being part of