Incarnational Orthopraxy: Recent Books

I have no excuses, nor any witty statements to make about it; I just really like books and want to share about the books I read/began while I was away during the holidays.

I read John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which was enlightening and annoying at the same time. It was enlightening to listen to somebody who was actually doing this dirty work and saying "Yes, this really is the way things work." It was frustrating because it was always apparent that he wasn't telling the whole story; he was holding back, and I'm guessing it was for self-preservation. The way he explains how an economic hit man works in the book goes like this: The U.S. learned a valuable lesson in contrasting the overthrow of the Shah in Iran with the failure to win in Vietnam. We need to use more subtle techniques in order to get our way in other countries. So the government began working closely with big businesses. So a bunch of ECM's show up in a poor country and tell them that if they take out huge loans, they can advance their country with power grids, dams, oil reserves, etc, and become rich and modernized. So companies like Haliburton then come in and get richer off the deal. Meanwhile, the country can't pay off its debt, but the ruler doesn't care because he has been bribed and is now a billionaire. At this point the country makes some big deals with the U.S. because it can't pay off its loans; we get to oil prospect, elimination of trade tarrifs, etc. If the leader of the country doesn't cooperate, we (the CIA) either stage a coup, execute the leader, or as a last resort, invade the country militarily. So it was a good book, and one that I would recommend to any American wishing to actually know why the world really hates us.
On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt. Yes, yes, it is a funny title. But it also a good discussion starter (as I discovered when I carried it around my church building), since we do live in a society where bullshit is widely accepted and fills the air whereever you go.
I also read George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying. This was a painful mirror for me, telling the story of a man who is obsessed with not being controlled by money, yet that is exactly what his problem is the entire time. How could you not love Orwell?
Right now I'm a couple of pages short of finishing Barak Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope. Although I still claim to not be loyal to any political party, a friend bought this for me and the title sounded promising; I like the idea of a politician running on hope rather than fear and hate. There are times where I resonate with what he is saying, but overall he still seems like a politician to me. Sad but true.
Yesterday I finished James K. A. Smith's Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? It is a fabulous book! First of all, anybody who writes about Foucault makes me happy. But beyond that, he did a great job of showing how Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida are not the little antichrists that many in the church paints them as. Instead, he shows us what these men have to offer the church, without buying into every last word they say. In other words, it was great, great, great, and I highly recommend it, especially to anybody who is part of a "postmodern church," but has no idea what that means (which is anybody who would call their chuch postmodern).
I also read VanderKam and Flint's book The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was a great introduction, which is exactly what I needed.