la some more..another lazy hot saturday afternoon in the northern capital. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda: This is the second most depressing book I have read so far. The author, Maj. Dalaire from Canada,who was the UN Commander for the Rwandan Operation admits that he suffered from bouts of depression after returning home from Rwanda. This book explains what really happened in Rwanda and what led to the genocide. He talks about the internal politics of Rwanda, the rivalry between RPF headed by Paul Kagame and the brutal RGF forces. This book might be of interest to those who are hopeful that the UN will get itself involved in Nepali crisis if the situation worsens. If you are interested in learning how the UN Peace Keeping missions worldwide work, how they choose (or not choose) the Peace Keeping forces, this is the book. This book not only strips France and Belgium of whatever credibility they have in international affairs when it comes to "morality", but also exposes the reality of the "Bangladeshi" peace keeping troops. Amazingly well written book. Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare: This book should be of interest to those who want to understand armed insurgencies all over the world. Philip Short, a journalist and an acclaimed biographer of Mao, explains how Saloth Sar became Pol Pot. The book also explains the Khmer Rouge idelogy/policy derived from a crackpot doctorate thesis of Khieu Samphan, who believed that the cities/city dwellers were the cause of poverty and underdevelopment in Cambodia. This book details the crimes committed by a bunch of revolutionaries in their attempt to change the society, and the extreme measures they chose to do so. For example, Cambodia didn't have any currency because currency, in their (revolutionaries) view was the remnant of Capitalism. Diplomacy: This book was written by two people, Prof. Henry Kissinger and Diplomat Henry Kissinger. The first part of the book written by Prof. Kissinger is amazingly great and informative. Prof. Kissinger explains the concepts of Balance of Power, Realpolitik, Bismark, Raison d'tat and others. However when Diplomat Kissinger writes on America's involvement in world affairs in the wake of the first world war, the book starts to read more and more straight out of Washington's altered archives. Whatever the book's and its author's shortcomings, this book is a must read (at least the half of it) to understand the basic concepts of international relations. Another honest book that didn't deserve the criticism it recieved, and that's worth reading is Robert Mcnamara's, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. Mcnamara who was the defense secretary during the Kennedy administration and for some time in the Johnson administration, and who advocated sending the troops to Vietnam and who later became the President of the World Bank, says, " well, we screwed up in Vietnam. It was a mistake. But I am not to be blamed for what happened. I was in the dark as everybody else was in those administrations" The part I found interesting was where he attributes the failure in Vietnam to lack of Vietnam/South East Asia area experts in Washington. Despite critics harsh critique of this book, I found it an honest book. One of the 11 lessons of Vietnam for the white house is: We do not have the God Given rights to shape other countries internal government/politics (or something along this line.) One can doubt McNamara's political honesty, but one cannot doubt his academic honesty because the Vintage paperback edition, includes some reviews of the book that appeared in leading newspapers/periodicals in the US. Not all those reviews (actually the majority of them) is quite critical of the book. But Mcnamara isn't defesnive and let's his readers of the book (and the reviews) come to their own conclusions.