BOOK REPORTS—

Love My Rifle More Than You by Kayla Williams

A sensitive, spicy and intelligent young lady, Williams describes her service in the US Army with a year’s armed service in Iraq. She is fluent in Arabic so was assigned to military intelligence and saw the war—and the men with whom she served--in the rawest form. I hope she writes a sequel.


Way Off the Road by Bill Geist

An anthology of some 28 short tales describing visits to quirky, small-town USA. You’ll learn first about a town so small they have their parade stand still and townsfolk walk around it. He finishes with The Napa Valley of Cow Chips, Beaver, OK Pop: 1,478. You’ll likely enjoy everything in between as well.


A Russian Diary by Anna Politkovskaya

A sobering, chilling look at how Russian President Putin is systematically returning the country to a dictatorship. The book bogs down in repetitiveness; a blur of unpronounceable names in similar despair, but, she makes a convincing case Russia is not like the country we had imagined after the cold war and the fall of the Soviet Union. Scary.


American Islam by Paul M. Barrett

Subtitled “The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion” this book is a balanced and informative look at the practice of Islam in the US today. While the reader is left with a clear picture of this struggle as presented through vignettes of American Muslims it also is noteworthy there is an overall indictment of the radical component of the religion largely originating from the Wahhabism centered in Saudi Arabia and southern Asia.