![](\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/hubris.jpg\")
<\/a>In the summer, I read mysteries and the odd thriller. That’s just what I’ve always done. The academic year was filled with reading for courses I was teaching, or about a confusing patient. Interesting stuff, but hardly light reading. So in the summer, beach reading for me. My favorites are the ones with serial characters – Tony Hellerman’s Joe Lephorn, Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon, Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole. I don’t enjoy the heavy handed thrillers as much, like Tom Clancy. They’re either too fanciful, or too real.<\/p>\nEven in my retirement, comes summer I start looking for the new mysteries. I’ve also taken to reading the political books. I started with the "other side" – Ledeen, Mylroie. I guess I wanted to know how they thought [or if they thought]. But lately, there have been some fine books from our team – Greenwald’s How Would a Patriot Act?<\/strong> being my favorite so far.<\/p>\n So, yesterday, Hubris<\/strong> came. I like David Corn except for two things. He’s a severe self promoter – so I skip that stuff. And he could have never mentioned his pal-ship with Viveca Novak and it would have been fine with me. But his blog is otherwise informative. I just read Isikoff’s articles along – no real opinion. So, today, I picked up Hubris<\/strong> and read the Introduction<\/em>. It reads like one of those summer thrillers – well written. It’s hard for me to imagine that it’s not a summer thriller as a matter of fact, too fanciful to be real. I was torn between holing up and reading it cover to cover versus putting it on a shelf and forgetting it’s there. It’s not the book I’m reacting to. The book is obviously well-sourced and well-done [so far]. It’s the subject matter. Just reading the Introduction<\/em>, it’s far worse than I thought, what went on behind those closed doors after 911. <\/p>\n I remember what we were told. I’ve been over it and over it enough times. Judith Miller’s articles. Bush and Cheney’s speeches. I’ve drawn timelines and charts, pored over emptywheel’s<\/strong>, Waas’s<\/strong>, eriposte’s<\/strong> parsing of the details. But what happened on the other side of that door confirms my worst fears – and all I’ve read is the Introduction<\/em>. <\/p>\n Hubris, indeed… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the summer, I read mysteries and the odd thriller. That’s just what I’ve always done. The academic year was filled with reading for courses I was teaching, or about a confusing patient. Interesting stuff, but hardly light reading. So in the summer, beach reading for me. My favorites are the ones with serial characters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}