I am not doing much mindless watching of the television with my mother around as a guest.  Most of my TV watching comes in chunks when I can catch up on my DVR'd television shows--the exception being 24.  There have been a couple of books that I have read and am working through, and a third is waiting.

PANIC The Story of Modern Financial Insanity is a book edited by Michael Lewis.  I finished this in mid-January after receiving it for a Christmas gift. Lewis examines four recent financial panics in the last two decades: the market crash of 1987, the death of Long Term Capital Management and the collapse of the Russian and Southeast Asian currencies, the Internet Bubble, and the recent housing crisis.

Panic is not a deep analysis of each of these crises.  Each section contains a narrative describing what has happened, then articles from various authors as to what has transpired or some other analysis.  What it does display, though, is the growing tendency of the market as information becomes much faster and more global to be much more prone to fits of panic.  I think it also presents the case of the growing intricacy of financial instruments--the concept of strategists who conceive of ways to make money in the market, the growth of hedge funds, and the ascendancy of mortgage-backed securities.  It's a quick read for anyone interested in the topic, and I recommend it for anyone interested in the current crisis with an eye to recent history.

The other book I am reading is Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.  If the history of the CIA is of any interest, this book is quite exhaustive and a good read.  It makes a very cogent case for the roots of the failure of the intelligence community through the Cold War and into the new century.  For anyone who has an interest in the CIA, this book is quite a good read.

The next book on the list is See No Evil by Robert Baer.  I have not started on this one yet, but it is the book that inspired the movie Syriana.  Again, with an eye toward recent history and intelligence-gathering, I am looking forward to this book.

With that, I feel like a much older version of Levar Burton in Reading Rainbow.