Claire Berlinski

Was looking for a fair, unbiased look at the Iron Lady's legacy. What I found instead was a academic excuse of a love letter for Thatcher, complete with the infamous scene of Berlinski smelling the handbag as well as constantly making excuses for failed policies during Thatcher's era and trying to make it sound like London was ~saved~ by her policies; there is also the characterization of Labour men who disliked Thatcher as men with mommy issues. It was shallow and clunkily written and I regret starting it in the first place.… (meer)

Claire Berlinski is a very pretty (considering the serious subject matter, there is disconcertingly sexy photo of her on the back cover) American Jew who has lived and traveled in Europe, and has some tales to tell of her time there concerning immigrant Muslims and Europe's inability to assimilate them. One big chunk of the book is about her intimate knowledge of the people who were fictionalized in a very popular English book called "White Teeth," by a Jamaican (?) girl about minorities living and loving in Britain. Claire and the Jamaican girl were the real-life lovers of the fictionalized Pakistani brothers in that book, Claire quotes her ex-boyfriend extensively for this book, trying to get to the reasons for his hate given that he is a relatively successful and affluent Pakstani Briton.
Another big chunk of the book is devoted to the German rock band Rammstein, from which she implies that that old German mindset is readying itself to explode across Europe again.
I had been hoping to get a book to generally explain the various governments in modern Europe, but so far have been unable to find anything - this was the closest thing. I did learn one surprising thing - in France there is a governmental policy called "republicanism" which forbids the counting of people based on race.
And it was odd that though this was written in 2004, she gets into the Muslim problem in southwestern France, the area around Toulouse, which has been in the news just recently with the murder of seven by a Muslim there.
My search for a decent general description of modern European governments continues. All of the LThing recommendations for this book focus more on Muslims than on Europe.… (meer)

I ws completely absorbed by this novel which is a lightly disguised account of what it is like to join the CIA and go through their rigourous training system. As a non US citizen I read some of the views (not, I feel sure, those of the author's) about the success of their covert operations like many in the UK with an up-raised eyebrow and an amount of sceptiscim. When I was a child in central Africa, everyone knew who the local CIA agent was, even though he (accompanied by his wife) he was posing as an architect. They stood out like a sore thumb! And the wife gave my mum a brilliant recipe for Curried Chicken and Apple Soup which I often serve !
Actually this book made me really think about the morality of espionage, what it does it do to the spy?, do you get the information you REALLY need, what IS truth?
Pease will Claire Berlinski write a sequel soon!… (meer)