War and Peace

For almost my entire adult life, I've had to own the books I read. Because books are so much more than printed text bound by a stiff spine. A book is map that traces a life, the reader’s life. And my swollen bookshelf has always reflected a vision of myself I can glimpse in no other way. My books are the closest things I have to an ad hoc growth chart scrawled on a kitchen doorway.

But three years ago I decided to give up. Not reading, but the unyielding need to own, to collect, each book for my archive. I knew I was entering a new phase of my life where I’d be moving across the country as often as good fortune would allow, and I was also trying to reduce my carbon footprint (books—in a way—do grow on trees, and that's sort of the problem). I was also trying to work on my attachment to material possessions. And since books were my most prized possessions, I thought they’d make the perfect test. Ever since my vow to stop buying books, I’ve come to them by means of the public library and their many helpful librarians.

All this leads to me to say that yesterday, while at the local Goodwill, I was paying the cashier for a pair of $2.99 black slacks. And in comes this college student with a tattered box of books. On top was this amazing copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The book looked as though it had been plucked straight off the set of Dead Poet’s Society.

I needed this book. To read, yes, but mainly for the realness of its crumbling cover and faded yellow pages. I needed this book for the pure purpose of archeological preservation.

But what about my vow? I decided it would not be a transgression to ask the Goodwill employee if I could just have the book. I mean, they’d possessed it less than five seconds, and, really, what was it to them if some bibliophile took a pathological obsession with something that they’d trash as soon as send to HQ for pricing?

This book has been granted the wish of all books: It has been read.

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy

Political historians, I am convinced, will look back at the 2008 elections with an overwhelming sense of awe. Their incredulity will not be based on the changing face of the presidential ticket, rather they'll be baffled that no single campaign centered on America's (and the world's) most vital problem: Energy (or, put another way, Resource Scarcity).

In short, the 150 year holiday of cheap energy is over, and we must now invest in Energy Technology (ET) with the same collective gusto that animated the programs and projects of the New Deal, World War Two industrial production, and the Information Revolution of the 1990s. We must free ourselves from fossil fuels not only to keep our planet from baking itself into oblivion, but also for national security (buzz word, I know) aims that will be obvious to anyone who has either a subscription to The Economist, access to NPR, or an average-sized human brain.

In short, more people are scrambling for rapidly diminishing pools of energy. The cruel joke: he who wins, loses. Get it? The only viable choice lies in ET. How humans respond to Resource Scarcity will be the meta-narrative of history from here on out.

Michael Klare's new book (listen to his speech, too) makes the point better and with more elegance and nuance than I could ever hope.

Last note: I have no idea how we get the candidates discussing these issues in any substantive manner. Regarding Resource Scarcity, McCain and Obama continue to feed the public outlandishly generic platitudes. Far from making it the focal point of their campaigns, both seem to treating the issue as a box to be checked. Could anything be more foolhardy or myopic?

Bob Woodward on Fresh Air

Bob Woodward has just finished The War Within his fourth book about the Bush Administration.

For cliff notes, listen to him discuss his new work with Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

If you were born in the 1980s or after, Woodward is one-half of the reporting team that broke the Watergate scandal.