BobHarris.com - Military.com

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."

-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”

— Boston Globe

"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."

— New York Observer

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

Main

Military.com

Tag it now -

Tuesday, 19 October 2004

My best friend in the whole wide world (not to mention a hell of a writer) wants to point everybody over to Military.com, a website which ain't exactly a bastion of liberal anti-war activists.

And yet these are some of the top headlines over there:

Marines Show Frustration In Iraq, which begins with this:

The sound of the Black Hawk medical helicopter is an ominous sign for the Marines patrolling this forgotten western corner of Iraq that borders Syria. It means that one of them is seriously wounded or killed at the hands of their elusive enemy...

"We are losing guys left and right," says Cpl. Cody King, 20, of Phoenix, Ariz. "All we are doing around here is getting blown up," he says, not hiding his anger.

Reservists Doubt Their Combat Readiness:

... almost half of Army Reserve soldiers believed their units were not "well prepared" for their wartime missions. Army Reservists who had served in Iraq graded their units' readiness for war even lower...

Check out the lead sentence of Troops Experience Difficulties In Voting:

U.S. service members based in Iraq and across the globe can't be confident that their votes will be counted in this year's presidential election, analysts and military advocates said this week.

And further down, in the featured articles, we even learn that all the high-tech advantages field commanders supposedly had during Shock'n'Awe™ simply didn't exist:

... a largely classified Rand Corp. study of new technology in the Iraq war found that front-line commanders in the shock-and-awe attack had about as much situational awareness of the battlefield as their grandfathers did in World War II.

Which is to say, not very much at all.

My experience with Armed Forces Radio taught me more than once that the guys actually getting shot at are often a hell of a lot more interested in the truth than anybody in the States -- media, politicians, or you and me. This is a site I'll be returning to almost daily. You might do the same.