Excellent
A great book! Through disparate narratives and characters, Suskind deftly illustrates the many challenges faced by America today. He rightly suggests that survival in a post 9/11 world will require a depth of understanding, transparency, compassion, selflessness - a journey back to the core of our moral values and how we must tap into these values once again to find our place as the humble leaders of an increasingly dangerous world.
dullness
I bought The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism in a hurry before I went on vacation. I feel like I chose unwisely. I am not familiar with the author but I expected it to be much better.
Suskind
I respect Suskind's writing on the whole but The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism fell short. It seemed to read like a series of choppy essays that were pasted and bound together. His central thesis was that America has lost its standing in the world in the post-September 11th era. However I felt that the delivery was lacking relative to what I would have expected.
Partisanship Versus Honest Brokering
When I started reading _The Way Of The World_, I was hoping that I would be able to give it a five-star review. Unfortunately, I cannot. The book is poorly edited and poorly proofread. There is a distressing number of glaring errors of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Also, Suskind's writing style is leaden and preachy at times. He gives long, detailed descriptions of conversations in which people aren't talking about much of anything. The book is structured in a way that makes you feel like you are reading five or six long magazine articles simultaneously. First, you have a page about the exchange student from Afghanistan. Then, a page about the innocent man who was arrested just because police thought he looked suspicious. Then a page ... Read More
Good but not great book
I do think Mr. Suskind deserves some credit for what he attempted to do, which I see as chronicle America's fall from the moral high ground during the war on terror. He deftly chronicles the multitude of lies and deceptions that were used to put forward the War in Iraq. The book does lose its way when it diverges into other aspects of the war. While these stories maybe compelling they detract from the strongest story of the bunch.
An interesting read for the stories on the Bush administrations deceptions but overall a muddled and meandering book that doesn't do it's subject matter the full justice it deserves.
