In an effort to escape from the ever present bad news that seems to be the cornerstone of our current civilization I have spent much time recently watching old movies, and reading good books.

The desire that I feel to escape to a “happier time” is understandable, after all, we are living in an unstable world, where no one knows what the next shoe that will drop will be. Oddly enough, instead of turning to fantasy or other such genres I find greater comfort in books that mimic reality, reading about the extremes of what could be possible, but thankfully what has not yet occurred.

One such book is “Death Wave” by Stephen Kahn. This book provides an excellent analysis into much of what is currently happening in our world – in terms of the financial crisis.

From the book cover:

“In the midst of a financial crisis one man must save the world with the aid of a maniacal serial killer, his dead hamster, and a homeless bum named “Troll”.

Stewart is a young man trying to keep it together during the worst financial crisis since the great depression. The corrupt politics and corporate scandals…”

If you want to read more about this book, or listen to free excerpts from the audio book, please go to http://www.kafilmworks.com/deathwave/contents

William is a foreign affairs professional, specializing in foreign policy analysis, U.S. politics, writing, client relations, and communications. His research background and interests include Chinese foreign & security policy, U.S. national security policy, U.S.-Chinese Relations, defense issues, governance, and South Asia.
If you wish to contact William, please leave a comment and we will forward your thoughts to him.

Max Brooks’s book, World War Z is an excellent read for all of you zombie lovers out there. The book portrays (is about) humanity’s struggle against a zombie plague ( -virus) that brings mankind to the brink of annihilation and back again. Max Brooks does an extraordinary job of framing humanity’s fragility, limitations, resourcefulness and greatness in his oral history of civilizations fight for survival against overwhelming odds. His unique narrative style provides a wonderful individualistic perspective on how the Zombie War impacted different parts of the world culturally and in a religious sense.

The chronicle of the Zombie War in World War Z takes you from New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve year old patient zero, to floating cities of refugees that dotted the world’s oceans, to the initial feeble attempts by the major world powers to combat the rising and walking dead, to the development of the Redeker Plan that offered humanities best hope for survival, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt that helped turned the tide in North America and paved way for plausible recovery.

Max Brooks’s portrayal of what happens to the different governments and societies around the world as they struggle to overcome the zombie plague outbreak highlights the strengths and weaknesses of nation’s global health systems across the globe.

In addition to being an excellent story about zombies, the book World War Z has been taken a step further by Brooks and can be utilized by global health policy planners as an excellent scenario of how a pandemic might impact the different nations of the world and the types of policy solutions/actions that would be needed to contain such a pandemic. From a global health standpoint the book also highlights the current strengths and weaknesses in emergency response faced by many governments across the globe in handling health emergency such as a global pandemic. The incorporation of workable policy solutions (e.g. Redeker Plan and U.S Reconstruction Plan) that could be realistically used today to contain a pandemic makes the story that more practical and connects the reader to the plausibility of the events that take place.
Have you read this book? What did you think about it? Please submit your thoughts as a comment.

Political cartoon

This is a guest post written by, Daniel Nanavati

Daniel Nanavati is a writer living in Cornwall UK. His non-fiction work ‘A Brief History Of Lies’, published by Footsteps Press, is available on We Compare Books for the lowest possible price. ISBN 1449963277. A UK and European edition will be available at the end of May.

The skill of lying starts in most people by the time they are four, in a few of us by the time we are three, years old. The lies, and sometimes our ability in telling them, develops over childhood. Along with putting on ‘the face’ and their complexity. Psychologists call this ‘Machiavellian Intelligence’ and describe it as the ability in us to hold a world view, alter it to suit our agenda, hold in our minds the world view of others and skilfully sell them the altered world view. That takes a good deal of brain power.
The pre frontal cortex where all this carries on according to the rudimentary but interesting findings of a 2005 study, is also known to be the area of the brain that deals with ethical behaviour. So nature has given us an inbuilt bridle, if we choose to use it. The study was fascinating in showing that this area of the brain in psychological liars and autistic children were almost mirror images of each other. They chose autistic children because it is well known that they find it very hard to tell a lie even when told what to say.
The fact that we all ‘learn’ to lie but may all have different expertise in the area because of our brain tissue is a very new idea. It doesn’t do away with the ancient ideas of there being some acceptable lies (to help other people) but it does open up new areas for considerable human rights discussion. How far does this brain tissue matrix in the pre frontal cortex ‘help’ us lie? This has implications for the legal system, employment law and security agencies to name a few. I am sure right now if someone told you they wanted you to have an MRI scan to gauge your ‘likely ability to lie’ before they would employ you, you would hit the roof. But that day may be coming.
And when you think we use lies in every walk of life; that we live in a society where we expect to be lied to by politicians and lovers, business interests and journalists (in fact the very places we should demand only the truth) you may also to some extent welcome new advances and new knowledge.
But just to have a heightened ability to lie doesn’t mean we use it. 4% of us are practised liars according to the studies. The rest of us are habituated to the occasional lie, the social nicety, the self-deceit that gets us through the day. The truth isn’t so much out there, but in there somewhere!