On Target by Rowley

As you may know, I work for Target Corporation and feel an obligation to understand the history of this company. For this and other reasons, I picked up this highly recommended book (recommended by people at Target), hoping to gain a stronger sense of the history of Target. Unfortunately, I was highly let down by this book. While delivering a decent history of the company, the book primarily served as a big advertisement for the company while primarily focusing on the company's relatively recent attempts to bring in renowned designers. However, being that I know of no other book dedicated to Target's history, my investigation into this company may be a bit more difficult than I had originally anticipated. Fortunately, this other did provide a few citations, and I have begun to collect some of her primary sources, hoping to find more insight into this company's rich history. Expect to see me talking about more books somehow connected to Target's history.

Completed mid November

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

Named one of the 10 best non-fiction books of 2006 by the New York Times (those hippy bastards), the Looming Tower paints a fairly thorough history of Al Qaeda up to September 11, 2001. Going into this book, all I knew was that Al Qaeda was evil and wanted to kill all my future babies. Upon completion, I now consider myself far more versed on Al Qaeda than anyone in the Bush administration (I probably was beforehand as well). This book traces Al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism back to Egyptian Sayyid Qutb who, after living for some time in a quiet suburban town in Colorado during the 1950s, called for jihad (I'm surprised Michael Moore didn't mention this in Bowling for Columbine because it supports his hypothesis that suburban Colorado creates fucked up people). It then talks about living in caves and a contractor named Bin Laden who ultimately make a very expected attack on the United States in 2001. The book claims Bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacked the United States because of the US presence in the mid-East. However, we all know the real reason, as Rudy Guiliani best puts it: "They attacked us for our freedom." A very good book if you are willing to tolerate the discrepancies between Wright and the Christian Right.

Completed sometime in October