A lot of folks who come over here get serious withdrawal from television. Many, indeed, can’t survive without it. The concept of going without T.V. for a year to a year and a half no doubt fills them with dread. My neighbor’s like that. So it wasn’t surprising when I saw him walking into his trailer, struggling with his friend to carry in a brand-new wide-screen television.
Sure, they sell those here at the PX. I haven’t priced one myself, but I’m sure they’re not cheap. And once you get them, you’ve also got to buy a satellite dish in order to get service, unless you plan to watch local T.V. All that and you don’t get more than 2-3 hours of free time off of work a day anyway.
This amounts to an obsession, and frankly baffles me. Mao had it wrong. It isn’t religion that’s the opiate for the masses, it’s television.
Not that I never watch it myself, but it’s pretty rare. Back home I bought a used big screen television when I moved into a new apartment, but other than the occasional VHS tape, I never watched it for 6 months until the college football season began. Only then did I discover – to my shock - that the internal antenna was dead, and all I could get on network T.V. was snow.
Mostly, my ambivalence towards television is a product of my upbringing. My parents didn’t let me watch television on school nights, and when I was in college, I was too poor to afford a set, and too crunched for time. It was in college, when I was first living day-to-day with T.V. junkies, that it really hit me how much of a huge waste of time it is. Just do the math. The average American lives to be about 70. Let’s be generous and say we make it to 80 (just to make the math simple). That means that if we were to watch T.V. for three hours a day – one eighth of our life – it would add up to a total of 10 years. Add that to the one-third of our lives (26 years) we spend sleeping, and boom – nearly half your life is gone.
Certainly, T.V. isn’t completely without merit. It’s relaxing. It entertains you. But that’s about it. And there are tons of other ways to relax or entertain yourself that aren’t so insanely mind-wasting.
In contrast, I’ve always been a big reader of books. It was something I kept to myself when I was younger, as if it were something to be ashamed of. But now, I generally don’t care if people want to label me as a nerd or whatever. Because ultimately, I judge my own worth based on my standards, not those of others.
I don’t even fit that mold, truth be told. I’m a strong believer in the ethos of balance, and I’ve tried to engage in lots of physical activity to go along with my intellectual pursuits: hiking, kayaking, running, biking, carpentry and working out at the gym. All brains and no brawn is just as useless as its opposite. To me, the idea of having to be one or the other is a false choice. Not that I’m perfect in either field, but since I graduated from college, I’ve tripled my bench press weight and – in the same period of time – read just under 400 books.
Both activities are actually very similar. Ultimately, the mind is like a muscle, and the more you use it, the more flexible and more strong it becomes. You can also learn techniques to improve your retention and your speed. I initially developed some speed reading techniques in college in order to improve the efficiency of my cram sessions. But after school, I ditched those techniques. Only in the last couple of years did I revive them and implement them on a wider scale. Much like in the gym when you find a new workout for a particular muscle group which is more efficient, good reading techniques can be learned.
(Oddly enough, the best reader I've ever met is my brother. He's never graduated from college and is the world's biggest redneck, but he can somehow read a 300 page novel in about 2 hours. I only wish I was so good.)
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This year has been a record-breaking year for me on the book front, as I successfully knocked down 54. Twelve were in January alone, when I was under-employed and, due to a lot of bad weather, indoors most of the time. I averaged about four a month in the summer, and then saw my reading plummet during my army training and my first month or so in Iraq. As you can tell, I keep a running list of what I read. It serves both as a kind of trophy case and also as a mental refresher. Just reading the name of the book I read a few months reminds me suddenly of all sorts of things I experienced and learned when I read it.
My biggest passion is History, and the vast majority of my reads have been historical or biographical. I read two biographies of Winston Churchill this year, one of Hitler, and one of George Washington. The latter I read as part of my traditional Fourth of July book, which is always dedicated to a biography of a founding father. Over the years I’ve done three bios of George, two of Thomas Jefferson, one of Franklin and one of Alexander Hamilton. The John Adams one was on my list for 2008, but it was a little too big to lug over here.
Similarly, since March 2 is Texas Independence Day, I read at least one but usually two books on Texas History during that month. This year, I read “A Successful Failure,” by Odie Faulk, which is a history of the Spanish colonization of Texas. Wanting to study that period more closely, I also read "Spanish Texas, 1519-1821," by Donald E. Chipman.
When I decide I want to know something about a particular subject, I find it very informative to read multiple books like that during a short period of time. It’s like taking a mini college course. You gain impressions or insights from the first book, which are then challenged or enforced by the next book, and the entire process imbeds the essential information deeper into your subconscious. This year, I did three books on the German Luftwaffe in World War II. One was a general history, another was the memoirs of a dive-bomber pilot, and the third was the memoirs of a fighter pilot.
Another period I took a special interest in was World War II in the Pacific. A good general summary was "Triumph in the Pacific by" E.B. Potter and Chester W. Nimitz. A fun and compelling book on the little known battle for the Aleutian Islands was “The Thousand Mile War” by Brian Garfield. I then moved on to a book on Pearl Harbor, and then segued in to a series of books on 9/11. The similarities between the two events – and the tragic errors and unpreparedness that led to them – are fascinating.
Since my normal job is politics, I try to keep up on current affairs. I try to mix it up a little. I read a book on early 20th Century diplomacy, a book or two on gambling in America, and Bill O'Reilley's “Culture Warrior.” As part of my general reading to improve my understanding of terrorism for my Navy career, I read “Intelligence in War” by John Keegan, which details the history of my profession. I also read a great book on tactics and historical reflections on fighting modern insurgencies called “Modern Warfare” by Roger Trinquier, a fascinating study of the Algerian conflict that France faced in the 1950s. Many of the lessons Trinquier suggests – it was written in the middle of the Vietnam War and ignored – are actually being implemented here in Iraq now. I also read a couple of War on Terror books, including “Holy War, Inc.” by Peter Bergen, and “Terror and Liberalism,” a fascinating view of terrorism from a liberal named Paul Berman who laments how many of his political viewpoint ignore the real danger from militant Islam. I read a couple of books on the Muslim world in general, including “The Middle East” by Bernard Lewis. Actually, I listened to that one – and a half dozen others – on audio tape.
I also found time for a little fiction here and there. I love fiction, and I like to write short stories on the side, but the number of books I want to read to improve my knowledge base usually crowds them out. Among the fiction books I did read this year: “People of Darkness” by Tony Hillerman, “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, “Nights in Rodanthe” by Nicholas Sparks, “Man and Superman” (a play) by Bernard Shaw, "Next" by Michael Crichton, and “Fire Ice” and “Blue Gold” by Clive Cussler.
Cussler's probably my favorite novelist, though it's a love/hate relationship. Much like when I read the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, I find myself enjoying it immensely, and then coming to a part so damn annoying and illogical that I want to throw the book in the trash.
As important a part of my life that books are, I do have to say I've been disappointed in how little time I have to read. I was hoping that reading would be the one major hobby that I could bring with me over here, and even thought I might be able to read more than I was reading back home. Unfortunately, work hours are so long, and I'm reading so much stuff there that I am usually so mentally exhausted when I get back home. I've read seven books in the three months I've been in Baghdad, and frankly, I don't know how I was able to do that much.
Still, it helps to keep me sane and to escape from the rigors of work, which is both repetitive and at times quite emotionally stressful.
I know all this sounds kind of self-absorbed (reading it back to myself, that's how it reads to me), but (a.) this is a blog, and I can do that kind of stuff, and (b.) I just want to give folks a sense of who I am and who - by extension - we are over here. We're not just a bunch of high school drop-outs as say...John Kerry...would have you believe. Every day, I run into tons of really bright guys, like my friend Velko from the Bulgarian Army or my friend Stephen, a Southern U. grad and lawyer who works in the JAG corps. They run the gamut from the young guy in my section, Sgt. A., who is working his way through college in his off hours and is never anywhere without a book on history or literature, to the top two generals in the entire country, who I've seen in action and can attest are both incredibly smart.
After all, this is not the kind of war that can be won by a bunch of dolts. It takes folks who can think outside the box, innovate on the fly and constantly learn. When it comes to military knowledge, for all my reading I'm a dozen years behind most of these guys. But if there's one thing I discovered over the course of my intellectual development over the last 12 years, it's that it's never too late to start loving knowledge, and it's never out of reach to improve yourself.
