To start this month, we have four very good and interesting recommendations from General Clark.

1) Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer : The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames
by Victor Cherkashin with Gregory Feifer

Written by retired senior KGB officer Victory Cherkashin, working with former Moscow correspondent for Radio Free Europe, Gregory Fiefer, this book has been called “a gripping but soberly written expose on the Cold War spy game” by Publisher’s Weekly. Cherkashin relates how he recruited and handled disgruntled CIA officer Aldrich Ames and FBI special agent Robert Haussen. While focussing on Soviet spy craft, the book also gives details on US spying and counter spying, providing an insiders view of the spy business from just after World War II through the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

2) The River of Doubt : Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
by Candice Millard

Candice Millard, former writer and editor at National Geographic, tells the story of Teddy Roosevelt’s near disastrous journey down an unexplored tributary of the Amazon River after he lost his third party bid for the White House in 1912, crushed by Woodrow Wilson after two terms in office. The expedition down “The River of Doubt”, as the tributary was known, was led jointly by Roosevelt and Brazil’s most celebrated explorer, Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon and included Roosevelt’s son Kermit. It was plagued by injury, Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows, piranhas, boulder-strewn rapids and failure to pack enough supplies. Three men died and Roosevelt himself nearly lost his life. The account is American history, a travel and adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait all wrapped into one.

3) Team of Rivals : The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin

In this book, ten years in the making, Pulitzer prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin examines the relationships President Abraham Lincoln had with three of his cabinet members, each of whom he’d beaten for the Republican nomination in 1860. Ohio Senator Salmon P. Chase, who never did get over his resentment at losing the nomination to a man he considered his inferior, became his secretary of the treasury. Missouri’s “distinguished elder statesman” Edward Bates, who came to admire and respect Lincoln as an unmatched leader, was named attorney general. And New York Senator William H. Seward, who was mortified to have lost the nomination to the lesser-born, less-educated Lincoln, was named secretary of state and became the President’s closest friend, advisor and ally in the Administration. Kearns relates how Lincoln beat these more accomplished men for the nomination and then worked with his former rivals to lead the nation through one of its darkest times.

4) Foxes in the Henhouse : How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What the Democrats Must Do to Run 'em Out
by Steve Jarding and Dave Saunders

“Rural strategists” Steve Jarding and Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, who both had a hand in Mark Warner’s successful run for governor of Virginia, here give us a blueprint for how the Democrats can win by taking back the South and the Midwest. They humorously discuss what went wrong in 2004, the hypocrisy that marked the rise of the Republicans in the South and Midwest, and what Democrats can do to win these voters back. Publishers Weekly says they “keep it lively, interspersing low-blow jabs at Republicans with statistics, political history and strategies for Democrats to connect with Bubbas over contentious issues like gun control, environmental protection, gay marriage and abortion.”

So, there you have it...Four interesting choices and recommendations from Wes. Anyone who reads one of these and would like to start a discussion on the particular book, please start a blog with your thoughts on the book and be sure to tag it with a “Wes Recommends” tag. All four sound like winners.