Scanning the Bookshelf

It could be that it takes a fresh set of eyes — say, someone from down under — to give us a fresh look at the Middle East. That someone just might be Paul McGeough, a foreign correspondent and Australian Journalist of the Year (twice). In "Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas" (The New Press, 477 pages, $26.95), McGeough uses an episode in the ongoing death match between Israel and Hamas as a springboard to illuminate all of the players in the game as well as the incredibly complex political interplay in the region.

The Sydney Morning Herald reporter has done a terrific job reconstructing events, mining his contacts to get interviews and deep, insider information. His writing is also terrific, and "Kill Khalid" reads as easy and fast as many a fictional thriller.

It's an odd way to comment on Mark Adams' fine "Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet" (Harper, 292 pages, $25.99), but my favorite part was reading the 18-page Appendix, "My Life on Physcultopathy." Here, Adams, in the interest of fairness since "Macfadden was a great believer in testing his new theories on himself," decided that "I, too, should play the test subject":

"... I had been working at home, which is a constant invitation to peek in the refrigerator, and the subconscious knowledge that I would try at least one more Macfadden regimen gave me carte blanche to eat like Robert De Niro preparing to play the fat Jake LaMotta in 'Raging Bull.'"

Once famous, now forgotten, Macfadden — magazine publisher and newspaper owner who helped plant the seeds for today's celebrity culture, self-made millionaire, Christian-based religion founder and, most importantly, the Jack LaLanne of his day — is brought back to life by Adams, who probably could have made a fortune borrowing Macfadden's ideas for a diet book:

"The fat melted off my body in phases, as if I were a chubby celebrity being Photoshopped for the cover of a women's magazine."

It's more a sliver than an actual book (and literally the size of a passport), but "The Godfather Doctrine: A Foreign Policy Parable" (Princeton University Press, 85 pages, $9.95) by John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell is one of the best foreign-policy "books" I've read in a long time.

"Where Tom sees Sollozzo as a reasonable if aggressive businessman whose concerns, like those of previous challengers, can be accommodated through compromise and conciliation, Sonny sees an existential threat — a clear and present danger that, like Iran in the view of many Republicans, must be swiftly cauterized."

The Corleone family as a metaphor for the United States — I take back everything (well, some of it) I've said about pointy-headed academics.

Hulsman and Mitchell see both liberal institutionalism (Tom) and neoconservatism (Sonny) as wrong-headed and dangerous to America, and feel realism (Michael) is the way to go. They make a good argument, and "The Godfather Doctrine" is too much fun to be read only by policy wonks.

As far as Thomas Woods is concerned, Obama & Co., particularly Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, has got it all wrong. In "Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse" (Regnery, 192 pages, $27.95), Woods ("The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History"), a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Ala., argues that "our wise rulers set about making things worse, beginning with (but not confining themselves to) a massive and unprecedented string of bailouts."

He's a staunch free-marketeer who believes the real cause of our current economic bust starts and ends in D.C. He's notably harsh in his criticism of the Federal Reserve; it's a safe bet that "Meltdown" won't be on Ben Bernanke's night stand.

Daniel Gross' "Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation" (Free Press, 104 pages, $9.99, paperback) took an unusual publishing route that may be a harbinger of things to come: It first appeared as an e-book.

In either form, the Newsweek columnist and editor has penned (e-penned?) a nifty, tight primer on the chaos around us. The title of the intro sums it up: "WTF?" I'd add an exclamation point to that, but point taken.

Things are moving so fast that even an e-book might not be able to keep up, Gross adds. Nonetheless, "Dumb Money" is a smart attempt to get a handle on things.

"Searching for Tamsen Donner" (University of Nebraska Press, 315 pages, $26.95) is an unexpected treat; I only picked it up because it's part of the "American Lives Series" and was edited by Tobias Wolfe — and I really like Wolfe's work.

He's dead-on with this choice. Author Gabrielle Burton has created a solid work of history that manages to be a wonderful, touching personal memoir as well. Her retracing of the route of the Donner party (Tamsen was married to George Donner, leader of the ill-fated group of pioneers) combined with hard research blends effortlessly with the rendering of Burton's own life: "Stories, like lives, take their own form ... but overall this is a personal narrative, my recollection and interpretation of my young family and myself who found ourselves traveling Tamsen Donner's path more than a century after she had."

Bonus: There are copies of 17 "extant letters" from Tamsen at the end. You will want to read them.

To find out more about Martin Zimmerman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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