two books

I read these two books last week. They don't have a lot in common, except they're both great.

The Sorensen book is a great inside look at the Kennedy administration (among other things). I admit that I'm similar to Truman in that I tend to inherently distrust politicians that come from established, wealthy dynasties, but man, Kennedy sure picked some smart advisers--thankfully, when it came to the Cuban missile crisis, which was an even more lunatic two weeks than I had thought previously. Sorensen is the perfect example of a pragmatic idealist (i.e. the best kind of idealist).

As far as Cormac McCarthy's The Road, well, these two sentences illustrate how great it is:

"The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond."