Recommended Reads, Fifth in a Series

Stuff I'd recommend from the past three months:

* The Best and the Brightest (Halberstam) - A young and charismatic new president representing a new era and a new way of doing government, only to get bogged down in a war he kind of inherited and kind of exacerbated. We do well to know our history, lest we repeat it.

* Democracy in America (Tocqueville) - What a fantastic collection of musings by a young Frenchman on what democracy looked like in a young and growing world giant. As famous as this book is, I was constantly and pleasantly surprised at how relevant it still read.

* American Beliefs (McElroy) - Loved loved loved this look at traits forged at the inception of our nation that have continued to shape how we see ourselves as Americans. Especially fun to read right after Tocqueville.

* Nurture Assumption (Harris) - What's more surprising, that a child psychologist would dare claim parents have so little influence on how kids will turn out, or that she would be able to state that case so persuasively and humorously?

* Unpoverty (Lutz) - An unvarnished look at how the rest of the world lives. And yet, for the gaping divide in income levels, we all have a lot in common: a commitment to a better life for our family, and an irrepressible spirit to make that happen.

* National Bank of Dad (Owen) - How one dad teaches his kids about money. In a nutshell: give them responsibility over it. A lot more than I'd be comfortable.

* My American Journey (Powell) - Colin Powell's autobiography, as of 1994. Fun to see how each life experience shaped the way he approached the next assignment and formed the "rules for life" he orients his decisions around.