The Quiet American by Graham Greene

The Quiet American by Graham Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel is great. There's so much to it that I'm not sure how to review it.

[Full disclosure: Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is currently my favorite book ever, and has been for 10 years, and probably 500 books. But The End of the Affair is not an ambiguous book like this one.]

A huge part of the book is about the foreign involvement, diplomacy, and media in Saigon during the Vietnam war. To a small degree, it's also about the Vietnamese people at that time. It's more about religion and ethics, and the evils of relativism. It's about the inability to really know other people, and possibly even to know ourselves? It's about the different ways people understand - or misunderstand love. It's a crime mystery.

It's just very good! But The End of the Affair is still my #1.

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Dispatches by Michael Herr

Dispatches by Michael Herr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really powerful nonfiction account of the Vietnam War. Intense.

Though by no means the central point or theme of this book (which was something like war is hell) the problems of the free press struggling against direction from business, government leadership, and the military is notable particularly because of our current political problems.

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The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Even though this covers basic mindfulness and meditation really well, it's not a good starting place for the average American. It is a great book to revisit if you're already acquainted with the scientific evidence that mindfulness and meditation work, and can even be used in your meditations by following along the text.

As a starting point, I recommend The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt and Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation by Sharon Salzburg. If you're not religious or spiritual Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris would be good too (though maybe skip it if you are religious).

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