In the interest of helping spread the word on great books that get lost in the shuffle, I'm starting a new category, "Overlooked Books". This will include books for all age groups, all genres. All of them are books I've read and liked (some brand new, some older) and I don't think enough folks have noticed them.

I'm working on a review right now for two recent books I haven't seen a lot of press about elsewhere, A Good War is Hard to Find from Soft Skull and Iraq: A War from Interlink. Iraq is a collection of photos from the war taken by AP photographers. Many of them show civilians, all are rather different from what we see in western media. Basically, these are pull no punches photographs and show war just as it is. Chris Hedges has an intro that is incredibly blunt. Here's a bit:

"We prefer the abstractions of glory, honor, patriotism and heroism, the big thumping bands that play patriotic music and the tough words that pump us up as powerful and great. All these words and posturing, of course, in the terror and brutality of combat are empty, meaningless and obscene. But those who sell us this myth do not know war. They will never know war."

I also highly recommend Hedges' book, War is a Force That Gives us Meaning.

I wasn't sure how I was going to review this book - it's hard to say anything deep and meaningful about a collection of photographs now matter how intense and impressive - but then I came across an excerpt of David Griffith's book, A Good War Is Hard To Find, in The Utne Reader and requested a copy from Soft Skull. The two books will work perfectly together as Griffith is directly curious about how images of violence affect us and how the truth about violence has been distorted in American culture.

Griffith's book is deeply personal; it's a collection of essays of his thoughts on everything from Hiroshima, the bombing of Dresden, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the motivations of those directly involved that draws on all sorts of pop culture references. He writes about Flannery O'Conner at one point and Deliverance and Pulp Fiction at another. High culture, low culture, even the weirdness of his wife's old boyfriend having a home built electric chair in his living room (college boys are such fun, aren't they?). It all wraps around and comes together in Griffith's mind as he tries to understand and come to terms with his place in a country that largely identifies itself as Christian and knows about such violence but determinedly remains oblivious to the real impact of that violence on others.

This is exactly the sort of small thought provoking book that I think should win awards and I'd love to know if anyone on any of the big nominating committees has even ever heard of it.

On top of these two great titles I also just finished Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone, his memoir about being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. As this book will soon be sold in every Starbucks across the country I know it will not be overlooked (thank heavens) but it was rather timely to read how he became a soldier at 13 and spent a large part of every day being instructed in the glory that is American war movies. The boys watched them, got high on marijuana and cocaine and then went off to kill other boys who had been motivated in the same way by rebel leaders. I have as much affection for a few hours of shoot-em-up as the next person, but what Rambo can do in conjunction with the right lies and best drugs to a teenager with a gun is disturbing to say the least. The whole child soldier issue is so buried by western media (remember you can be 17 in this country and be givine a gun and sent off to kill also) that seeing what his experiences did to Beah is riveting stuff. The book is amazing. Hell, read all three of these books and you just might feel compelled to do something.

Even though Tony Snow will say it doesn't matter. Or President Bush will assert he doesnt' need anyone's authority but his own. Still, you could do something. The White House accepts email, I'm just saying.