The Queue

"Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book."
—Venerable Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)

While Israel Slept is a journalistic account of how & why the State of Israel fell into complacency, allowing Hamas to carry out the October 7th massacres (2023), the worst pogrom since the Shoah during the Second World War. While Israel Slept is somewhat comparable to the 9/11 Commission Report, which I read twenty-plus years ago, though it is the fruit of private investigations, not a governmental inquiery. Katz & Bohbot are unsparing in their criticisms, except for their bizarre & fawning approval of the Biden Administration & all its works. They heavily criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without giving in to hysterical Bibi Derangement Syndrome; of course they criticize Netanyahu, he's Israel's longest-serving & incumbent P.M., in office for nineteen of the past twenty-nine years, including on 7 October 2023. No one in the Israeli security & defense establishment comes out of the evaluation of what went wrong looking good, except for a handful of lower-echelon Cassandras (whose warnings were, of course, not heeded).

While Israel Slept is a sad & frustrating read, because Katz & Bohbot paint of picture of decisions that look foolishly naïve & cynical, even without the lens of hindsight. After the Pogrom is going to be even more sad, because O'Neill is an incisive critic of madness, cowardice, & depravity. I take his criticims of the West's moral failure after the October 7th progrom all the more seriously because he & I have profound disagreements, especially about the Church & the positive rôle religion can play in society. He doesn't just "confirm my priors." He criticizes the Left as a man of the Left.

Recently
Pope Leo XIV, Dilexi Te: On Love for the Poor
Bishop Robert Barron, An Introduction to Prayer
Yaakov Katz & Amir Bohbot, While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East

Currently
Brendan O'Neill, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel, and the Crisis of Civilization

Presently
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Israel Alone
Kiel Phegley & Jacques Khouri, Strikers: A Graphic Novel
Andy Saunders, Apollo Remastered: The Ultimate Photographic Record *
Andy Saunders, Gemini and Mercury Remastered *
Joe Heschmeyer, The Eucharist Is Really Jesus: How Christ's Body and Blood Are the Key to Everything We Believe
Mike Aquilina, Understanding the Mass: 100 Questions, 100 Answers
Pope Leo XIII, The Leonine Encyclicals: 1878-1902
Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence

*Coffee table books.