Dick Cheney's reading list

I'm with Tevi - there is something off with the tone of Steven Levingston's article on the books mentioned in Dick Cheney's new book (which I am listening to right now), In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir.

I am sorry - this reads like a snide little hissy fit;

Noticeably missing from the pages of Cheney’s memoir are references to books examining the big issues of our day — issues of crucial importance during his tenure with the Bush administration. From his memoir, it is impossible to know if he took any counsel at all from the estimable books of the past decade on national security, terrorism, torture, Islam, domestic surveillance. He remains opaque to the end.

I like Tevi's comment,

When it comes to the books Cheney read as vice president, though, Cheney is indeed less forthcoming about the titles. He does, however, list a variety of thinkers and writers with whom he met while in office, including Fouad Ajami, Nathaniel Philbrick, Jay Winik, Edmund Morris, David McCullough, Charles Krauthammer, and Victor Davis Hanson. In addition, while Cheney was vice president, there were public reports that Cheney read a number of books with contemporary policy implications, including Natan Sharansky’s The Case For Democracy: The Power Of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror, Elliott Cohen’s Supreme Command, and Winik’s April 1865 (interestingly, President Bush was reported to have read all three of those as well).

Cheney's book - especially the parts up to the 2000 election - should be required reading for anyone who is interested in Political Science and what it takes to be part of a political party's leadership.

Some people - I think Livingston may be one - will never be happy with Cheney as they have come to rely on the image of the beast of their own creation, and anything that may have them think otherwise will shake their world view and all its little supporting trusses to the point of making the entire artifice fall apart. Petty.

The books Cheney mentions are in the carousel below for your review is you are so inclined; decide for yourself.