{"id":7961,"date":"2010-12-07T11:18:33","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T16:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7961"},"modified":"2010-12-07T11:18:33","modified_gmt":"2010-12-07T16:18:33","slug":"book-review-who-hates-whom-by-bob-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/book-review-who-hates-whom-by-bob-harris\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: <em>Who Hates Whom<\/em>, by Bob Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/whohateswhom_bobharris.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Cover: 'Who Hates Whom,' by Bob Harris\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/whohateswhom_bobharris_sm.jpg?resize=275%2C423&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"423\" \/><\/a>My latest review is up <a title=\"The Book Book: 'Who Hates Whom,' by Bob Harris\" href=\"http:\/\/thebookbook.blogspot.com\/2010\/12\/bob-harriswho-hates-whom.html\" target=\"_blank\">at <em>The Book Book<\/em><\/a>. This time around, it&#8217;s a non-fiction title, <em>Who Hates Whom<\/em>. (Subtitle: <em>Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>In brief, it&#8217;s a good overview of world &#8220;trouble spots&#8221; &#8212; where they are, how they became troublesome in the first place, who the major players are &#8212; as of the time the book came out, in 2007. One man&#8217;s &#8220;good,&#8221; though, is another man&#8217;s &#8220;Huh?&#8221; So let me rattle off what I liked about <em>Who Hates Whom<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>It&#8217;s brief<\/em> &#8212; 218 pages.<\/li>\n<li><em>It&#8217;s not tedious<\/em>. Harris&#8217;s past includes a stint as a stand-up comic; his previous book was a memoir of his time as a (successful) game-show contestant. He&#8217;s smart enough, in this case, to know that the reader will need relief from time to time, from the page after page of more or less exclusively bad news: he includes <em>jokes<\/em>, many of them at his own expense.<\/li>\n<li><em>It&#8217;s informative<\/em>. I left the book with a much better understanding of why Country X and Country Y have been at loggerheads for centuries &#8212; including the story, often, of what Country Z keeps doing to stir things up just as X and Y seem about to kiss and make up.<\/li>\n<li><em>It&#8217;s fair<\/em>. Harris is not out to grind any axes; as he points out, you can&#8217;t honestly consider all these situations in hopes of identifying the &#8220;good guys.&#8221; (Who the good guys are changes from one day to the next: yesterday&#8217;s officially designated terrorist is today&#8217;s freedom fighter.)<\/li>\n<li>And ultimately &#8212; perhaps surprisingly &#8212; <em>it&#8217;s hopeful<\/em>. Harris points out, truthfully, that this is not the most dangerous time to be alive on Earth&#8230; not even close. Things keep getting better, on average. I like that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Note for e-book readers:<\/strong> <em>Who Hates Whom<\/em> includes dozens of maps and photographs. You might want to consider that fact when deciding to go the e- vs. traditional book route. I read it on a Kindle, and didn&#8217;t mind it &#8212; but I know such things drive some people crazy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My latest review is up at The Book Book. This time around, it&#8217;s a non-fiction title, Who Hates Whom. (Subtitle: Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide.) In brief, it&#8217;s a good overview of world &#8220;trouble spots&#8221; &#8212; where they are, how they became troublesome in the first place, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,96,593,37,42,266,1905],"tags":[88,265,2098,2099],"class_list":{"0":"post-7961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-02_in-the-news","7":"category-politics-in-the-news","8":"category-history-in-the-news","9":"category-onlineworld","10":"category-ebooks-etc","11":"category-book-reviews-writing_cat","12":"category-my-kindle","13":"tag-war","14":"tag-the-book-book","15":"tag-bob-harris","16":"tag-who-hates-whom","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-24p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}