Foreign Affairs Bestsellers - December/November 2008

1. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America. Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.95. [New Listing]
2. The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008. Bob Woodward. Simon & Schuster, $32.00. [New Listing]
3. The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Ron Suskind. Harper, $27.95. [New Listing]
4. The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. Jane Mayer. Doubleday, $27.50. [New Listing]
5. The Post-American World. Fareed Zakaria. Norton, $25.95. [Previous rank: 1]
6. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. Andrew C. Bacevich. Metropolitan Books, $24.00. [New Listing]
7. The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq. Bing West. Random House, $28.00. [New Listing]
8. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Krushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. Michael Dobbs. Knopf, $28.95. [Previous rank: 5]
9. Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Ahmed Rashid. Viking, $27.95 [Previous rank: 7]
10. Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History. Ted Sorensen. Harper, $27.95. [Previous rank: 2]
11. A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East. Kenneth M. Pollack. Random House, $30.00. [New Listing]
12. America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft with David Ignatius. Basic Books, $27.50. [New Listing]
13. Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs, From Communism to al-Qaeda. Richard Wallace and H. Keith Melton with Henry Robert Schlesinger. Dutton, $29.95. [Previous rank: 8]
14. Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East. Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac. Norton, $27.95. [New Listing]
15. Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq. Linda Robinson. PublicAffairs, $27.95. [New Listing]

I was shocked - shocked! - to realize that I had not posted one of these bestseller lists from Foreign Affairs magazine since March. I've been reading more books than periodicals lately, and I've been very busy. No excuses, just a fact.

I should note that, partly because this list is somewhat elderly, I have had the opportunity to read two of the books on the list: The War Within, by Bob Woodward, and The Dark Side, by Jane Meyer. I posted a review of The War Within to this blog some time ago. I have not reviewed The Dark Side here, although I read it some time ago. The Way of the World, by Ron Suskind, is in the stack of books I am planning to read. I hope you can find something in this list that you will think worth reading.