I’ll be going on vacation next week, and one of my goals is to do some reading while I’m relaxing on our cruise. It occurred to me that it has been quite a while since I have discussed the books that I receive or those that I have managed to read — far too few of the latter, but plenty of the former.  I bought my Kindle (and later received an iPad) primarily to spend more of my time reading.  It hasn’t quite worked out as well as I’d hoped, but perhaps I’ll get some momentum going this week.

Below is the Amazon widget that has the books I’ve received this week, as well as the Kindle books that I have already set aside for my trip:

• Core of Conviction, Michele Bachmann — Every presidential candidate in the last few cycles has offered a campaign book explaining why they seek the highest office in the land.  Bachmann’s looks interesting, though, thanks to the challenges she faced and her conversion from a Jimmy Carter backer to a rock-ribbed Republican conservative, and then to an iconoclastic Tea Party leader while a member of Congress.
• Seal Target Geronimo, Chuck Pfarrer — I have a review hardcopy, but I’m also going to buy the Kindle version for my trip.  Pfarrer interviewed the men who conducted the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, and the inside story differs significantly from what the White House and media reported.  Looking forward to this read.
• Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer — Schweizer blew the whistle on insider trading by members of Congress, but that’s not the only revelation in his book.  He also details the crony capitalism and the legalized legislative graft that occurs on Capitol Hill.  This is another one that I bought on Kindle so that I could take it on vacation.
• Democracy Denied, Phil Kerpen — My friend from Americans for Prosperity, Phil Kerpen, warns that Barack Obama’s attempts to bypass Congress will usher in an age of autocracy and undermine the very idea of representative government.  My friend Warner Todd Huston writes that “Kerpen details the way the Obama administration, guided by a hardcore, left-wing ideology, is attempting to take control of the Internet, is trying to eliminate private property rights, is destroying the business sector in favor of big labor unionization, is using the outsized fear of global warming to ramp up a socialist-styled enlargement of government control on all fronts from the EPA to our energy sector, and more. In each case, Kerpen notes that this regulatory overreach is directly contrary to our American character and our core ideals.”
• Bowing to Beijing, Brett Decker & William Triplett — Does a rising China necessarily mean a declining America?  Yes, argue Decker & Triplett, and they also argue that Barack Obama is hastening the transition through incompetence and worse.  The green-jobs stimulus benefits China most, the book argues, while China conducts an economic war against the US, including buying stakes in American financial institutions and counterfeiting our currency.

Disclosure: For the clueless or the FTC (but I repeat myself!),  I get compensated for sales made through these links.