Tuesday, March 4, 2014

A Faithful Spy during Love and War.

Looking in on someone's marriage could be perceived as spying, but in this case, the couple offers up a memoir of oddities, challenges, love and understandings of when opposites attract, so different in personality and political views one wonders, why in the heck are they married?

But they make it work. They being Mary Matalin and James Carville.  Yes you may have heard of these two pundits. One right and one left. Politically Polarized.


Matalin, worked in the Reagan, Bush 41 and 43 administrations and as counselor to VP Dick Cheney.

Carville was the lead strategist for Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

They both have appeared on numerous television talk shows; Matalin recently has been appointed as Visiting Distinguished Lecturer at Loyola University New Orleans; Carville teaches political science at Tulane University.

Love and War is a revealing look at what happens when opposites unite and how, going tit for tat, toe to toe they stay above the fray and have a successful marriage.

 

 
 
Through sometimes brutal and tenacious honesty, Matalin and Carville opine on various topics:  children, politics, ADHD, election recounts, New Orleans and football, 9/11, Katrina and an oil spill, friends such as Mr. Meet the Press Tim Russert, success and failure, life and loss, the Bushes and Clintons or Clintons and Bushes depending how you may cast your vote, and those things that are just "none of your darn business".

Aside from the occasional potshot at this administration or that one,(depending on your political persuasion) you may not agree with Matalin or Carville or both, but with an open mind and a thirst for learning and understanding  people, you'll find this to be a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining memoir. 

Civil Rights Activist Audre Lorde once said, 'It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.'
 
Perhaps using a quote by a civil rights activist to compare the differences of a married couple may not be the proper reference, but the quote speaks to differences in all of us. And despite those differences, things can work. Although at times on the verge of a breaking point, they respect each others perspectives and understand the greater good - - the love for and of one another.

Their passion is evident in topics they cover, such as Matalin on her one time employer and long time friend, Dick Cheney; Carville on his deep rooted love of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana which Matalin also embraces. Fittingly enough, one just has to look at the design and colors of the book cover to understand this.

And how apropos, I finished reading it on Mardi Gras.

Clearly, Matalin and Carville have their diversities, but they recognize, accept, and truly celebrate them through Love...and War.

________________________________________

As I most often do, I have one or two, sometimes three books going at once. And, I'll find how seemingly unrelated things become linked. My reading of a faithful marriage being eerily or 'synchronistically' connected to my next read.

Now, I'm not one to spy on people, but to some degree we all have a little curiosity in each of us,  always wanting to know a little of this and a little of that, regardless of the subject matter. Isn’t that why reality TV is so successful? One could argue biographies, autobiographies and memoirs are just that, reality TV but in written form.

While reading Love and War, a couple well known journalists that I follow on twitter tweeted their excitement over the publishing of a new novel. Having not read this author, I looked to find which was his first book. And that was in the form of faithful one, Alex Berenson's first novel - - The Faithful Spy. 






 I looked for The Faithful Spy on my shelf, opened it up and off I went.

With the backdrop of the 9/11 and the chase for Bin Laden, Berenson spins a timely and creative adventure of CIA operative John Wells. One novel of several.

So here I found myself, peeking into and learning about the lives of two well known figures in our political hemisphere, all the while living the intense fictional life of a spy.

Other John Wells books by Alex Berenson:




Pick up a book or teach a child to read, the Love of Reading is a Faithful Endeavor!


*please note as you browse through my blog you have the opportunity to purchase  books directly from this website. However, I no longer earn any income from this particular site as when the state of MN required websites to pay taxes on their affiliate programs, Amazon abruptly ended theirs. Although I don't blog that much anymore, I do so now purely for the enjoyment of writing and promoting reading and a little music along the way.
 

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