60 Extraordinary Political Novels

Granted, some are more "political" than others but they are worth your time.

1. The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor
2. Animal Farm by George Orwell
3. 1984 by George Orwell
4. The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
5. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
6. The Wall by John Hersey
7. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
8. All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
9. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
10. Primary Colors by Anonymous (Joe Klein)
11. First Among Equals by Jeffrey Archer
12. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
13. Lincoln by Gore Vidal
14. In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck
15. Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
16. The Warden by Anthony Trollope
17. Watergate by Thomas Mallon
18. The House of Cards Trilogy by Michael Dobbs
19. No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
20. Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
21. Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
22. Life with a Star by Jiri Weil
23. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
24. The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning
25. The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning
26. Badenheim 1939 by Aharon Appelfeld
27. The Fox in the Attic by Richard Hughes
28. The Comedians by Graham Greene
29. The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
30. State of Fear by Michael Crichton
31. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
32. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
33. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
34. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
35. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
36. The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
37. Caesar by Colleen McCullough
38. The Winds of War by Herman Wouk
39. War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk
40. Mendelssohn is on the Roof by Jiri Weil
41. Julian by Gore Vidal
42. The Secret of Santa Vittoria by Robert Crichton
43. The Commissariat of Enlightenment by Ken Kalfus
44. Washington, D.C. by Gore Vidal
45. A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell
46. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
47. Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem
48. The Autobiography of Henry VIII, with Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George
49. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
50. Restoration by Rose Tremain
51. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
52. All in the Family by Edwin O'Connor
53. Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe
54. I, Claudius by Robert Graves
55. Claudius The God by Robert Graves
56. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
57. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
58. A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe
59. Fatherland by Robert Harris
60. A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin

A Few Thoughts on Presentations

• Always put yourself in the shoes of your audience.
• Prepare for the obvious questions. [Consider why that is important.]
• Don't start a presentation unless you have the time to do it properly.
• Generalizations need examples to bring them into focus.
• Examples, once they begin to multiply, need generalizations to link them together. 
• Any slide which does not strengthen or clarify the message should be omitted.
• The same goes for examples.
• It is better to pass on giving a presentation than to give one when you are not ready. [Anyone who has done otherwise will know what I mean.]
• Never try to portray a penguin as a peacock. Your credibility will become a dodo.

The Radioactive Issue of Prevention

If an organization botches the prevention of a crisis, attention is understandably devoted to the handling of the crisis. That attention, however, should not remove future exploration of why the crisis arrived in the first place.

Time and again, I've seen management teams avoid that exploration because they know their hands are not clean. It is refreshing when you see a team with the courage to conduct a "Where did we screw up?" analysis. It is also rare.

This often is a "dog that didn't bark" moment. Listen for the mysterious silence on the question of prevention and watch for activities which are meant to obscure and not clarify.

Quote of the Day

I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked. 

- Raymond Chandler

Find Something Beautiful Today

Saturday Evening

A few emails, a draft of some ideas about a project, conversations with my wife, watching the latter part of Get Shorty and later, a Donald Westlake novel. 

Slow can be very nice.

Back from The Old Pueblo

I'm back from a board meeting of the Arizona Historical Society. It was held in Tucson and a good time was had by all.

Two individuals who were honored mentioned that they live near San Xavier del Bac, a beautiful mission built by the Spanish. 

I immediately envied them. The Sonoran desert is extraordinary and you have not fully lived until you've smelled creosote after a desert rain.

Conservatives, Liberals, and the Media

Very interesting. 

The Pew Research Journalism Project's report on political polarization and media habits.

Wisdom from the Movies

Dialogue from The Muppet Movie:

Gonzo: Well, I want to go to Bombay, India and become a movie star.
Fozzie: You don't go to Bombay to become a movie star! You go where we're going: Hollywood.
Gonzo: Sure, if you want to do it the "easy" way. 

Quote of the Day

[Ted] Williams used a postal scale in the clubhouse to make sure humidity had not increased the weight of his bats. An official of the Louisville Slugger company once challenged Williams to pick the one bat among six that weighed half an ounce more than the other five. He did. He once sent back to the factory a shipment of bats because he sensed that the handles were too thick. They were, by .005 of an inch. 

- From Bunts by George F. Will

[Editor's note: Name of book corrected. Mistake due to sloth. Bear with me.]