New Book - The Devil We Know: Dealing With the New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer

I finished reading Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia a couple weeks ago. It was a really good, thorough look at the Delta blues and the men and women (famous or not) who shaped modern American music. Most of the chapters focus on one particular individual, but branch out and discuss other musicians and what was going on around the time that the chapter subject was making music. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes the blues or like music history. Then, I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. I liked it. Each chapter is a letter from a guy named Charlie (not his real name apparently), writing to someone he simply calls "friend" as he goes through his freshman year of high school in 1991-1992. You never find out who he's writing to, or what his real name is, and there is only a brief explanation as to why he picked the person to whom he writes. Charlie is a shy (and possibly manic depressive) kid with two successful older siblings and relatively no friends, and the book chronicles his attempts to somewhat come out of his shell to make friends and experiment with drugs and relationships. As someone who frequently writes anonymous letters to a variety of recipients -- friends, family, sworn enemies, celebrities, musicians, athletes, newspapers, Jester's deceased pets, former employers, the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, pretty much every police department in Japan, Norse gods, the Mayo Clinic, deposed dictators, anyone named Vladimir, the internet, Gordon Shumway, myself -- I enjoyed it. It was a pretty short book and was a quick read. Now, I am reading The Devil We Know: Dealing With the New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer. Baer is an ex-CIA officer who spent a lot of time in the Middle East. He's written a few books about Middle Eastern politics, one of which I have read (Sleeping with the Devil, about US relations with Saudi Arabia), and two of his books (See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil) were the basis for the George Clooney movie Syriana. So far so good. Books read in 2011: Life by Keith Richards Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky