Thursday 11 September 2008

PIG surprise

Today, browsing amazon.com to redo my account and add tags to the chess books I have review in the past, I decided to check the Politically Incorrect Guide series for signs of a new title - which seem to have become less frequent ever since the Guide to the Middle East appeared.

To my surprise, the next guide after the forthcoming Guide to the Civil War will be due out in April 2009 and will be called The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War. I would have expected myself something like The Politically Incorrect Guide to Foreign Aid or The Politically Incorrect Guide to Crime as a guess for the next new title. (As with the Rock hall, guessing the next new PIG title is something of a hobby for me).

Although Vietnam is often seen as a victory for the Left, I have never thought of the Politically Incorrect Guide-reading community as in favour of troop deployment in Vietnam. Thomas Woods has pointed out that the Right were often more historically anti- war than the Left, and many books I have read lately have given me the impression that the Right in the US and Australia did not react strongly against the "Sixties" until the "punk revolution". It has indeed become clear to me that the real legacy of punk in the US and Australia was in turning the Right firmly against the culture of the "Sixties".

I tried to e-mail the author without success, but perhaps there is more to the PIGs than I thought after seeing their previous forthcoming title.

No comments: