No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society
By Robert O'Harrow Jr. Free Press, 368 pages, $26.

In No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society, Robert O'Harrow Jr. confirms our worst fears about privacy: we are being watched by a variety of institutions, and the institutions are taking notes. It is no exaggeration to say that everyone living in the United States should read this thoroughly researched, cleanly written, and undeniably important book.

O'Harrow, a Washington Post reporter who has written extensively on privacy issues for the Post and other periodicals, details the open secrets of increasing surveillance in the United States. The change he describes stems from recent improvements in computer technology and the intelligence reforms that followed 9/11.

The 1990s saw a qualitative shift in the ability of computers to gather, store, and analyze personal data about individuals. For the first time, computers had become sophisticated enough to store billions and even trillions of pieces of information gleaned from credit-card transactions, catalog orders, and bank accounts, as well as public documents such as deeds, birth certificates, and automobile records. Private companies like Acxiom Corp. and ChoicePoint began to create "data warehouses" they constantly update using electronic and physical records. The companies and their competitors have put together dossiers on 200 million U.S. adults, some specific enough to include your photograph, the names of your friends and colleagues, even the names and ages of your children.

Prior to 9/11, almost all of these databases were still in the hands of private companies, which sold them to marketers, credit bureaus, and other companies that wanted specific information about members of the public. But the terror attacks spurred government officials and lawmakers to take advantage of the burgeoning personal information business. On Sept. 12, 2001, Hank Asher, the CEO of data giant SeisInt, offered his company's massive database to federal law enforcement agents, who eventually set up a command center on SeisInt's campus. Other data brokers followed suit, and soon public-private partnerships were springing up by the dozens. The USA PATRIOT Act cleared away legal hurdles that once prevented the government from gathering and sharing information. Inspired by the example of companies like SeisInt, and invigorated by their newfound power, the security bureaucracies began building databases of their own.

O'Harrow provides a window into the emerging world of domestic spying that is available nowhere else. His command of the subject, and his interviews with key players on both sides, makes for compelling reading. Without ever sounding pedantic, he details the technological and legal changes that are taking place. The changes affect all of us directly, and, as O'Harrow makes clear, they could spell disaster for our way of life. (Matthew Shechmeister)

No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
By Reza Aslan. Random House, 336 pages, $25.95.

"We are living in the Islamic reformation," Reza Aslan writes in his new book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. His historical narrative describes the origins of Islam and its evolution up to a point – but then glosses over the bulk of its modern history. Aslan shares his wealth of knowledge regarding Islam's formative years, providing a solid foundation for understanding the intricacies and complexities of this religion. But after preparing the reader to be illuminated on topics such as the Muslim empire, European colonialism, and the postcolonial Islamic state and terrorism, he merely mentions them in passing.

Even though the narrative neglects modern history, its discussion of early Muslim history is well written and insightful. Aslan's concise description of pre-Islamic Arabia, a region that was home to Judaism, Christianity, and paganism, is more than a simple history lesson. He describes what he sees as major misconceptions about the relationships among the monotheistic religions. He describes their dealings as symbiotic, arguing that for Muhammad, Islam wasn't a new religion but a way to reform the religious beliefs and practices of Arabs and bring the Jewish and Christian god to them. However, Aslan fails to explain how this era of good feelings came to an end. While he doesn't cover the current relationship between the various Islamic sects – Sunni and Shiite – he fully explains their origins and their ensuing disagreements over the correct practice of Islam.

No god but God is informative, but it takes on too daunting a task. Aslan begins with an abundance of detail only to let his narrative trail off and his focus disappear. This problem could have been solved had the book been five times as long or had he not attempted as much. Reading this book will, however, give you a good understanding of the roots of Islam and its practice. As such, the book is a good starting point. (Maya Melenchuk)

Angry Black White Boy: A Novel
By Adam Mansbach. Three Rivers Press, 352 pages, $12.95 (paper).

Adam Mansbach's seamlessly accurate, biting satire of white b-boy culture, Angry Black White Boy: A Novel, is so dead-on that it does what many issue-of-the-moment books aim to do and rarely succeed at: it shoots itself in the foot. By the time that Macon Detornay, the novel's protagonist, arrives at the cataclysmic riot that is the climax of the book, we know why he's there, we can see what's coming – and, as with the best horror films, we stick around to watch, horrified, as the catastrophe hits. But the self-serving narration grinds on your nerves like a cheese grater way too long and way too hard.

Detornay is a race traitor, one of those ubiquitous white kids who have renounced their culture but not their credit cards and have memorized The Autobiography of Malcolm X but rarely talk to actual black people. After leaving his parents' house in suburban Boston for a squat in Jamaica Plain, Detornay enrolls as a freshman at Columbia University. He handpicks a black roommate, joins the Black Student Union, and gets a job as a cab driver so he can rob white passengers in order to make a social statement. Within 50 pages, all the subplots fade away into the larger plot: Detornay wants to start a black cultural revolution.

Mansbach, a Berkeley-area novelist, poet, and hip-hop MC, has an incredible familiarity with the background material. There's some confusion going on between character and writer, and much, if not all, of it is intentional. Even the catastrophic moment when Detornay realizes the flaw in his master plan is a sly wink at the reader, as if Mansbach is saying to us, "See, I know what I'm doing – and this is the point where it becomes overkill."

The fundamental problem, however, is that White Boy overkills us from the start. The supporting cast – from Detornay's black-but-not-radical roommate to a P. Diddy-quoting black studies professor – are well-crafted caricatures, but Mansbach's pastiche of Detornay's world is like a really good remix of a really bad hip-hop song; no matter how funky the beats are, if the MC's mumbling incoherently, nobody's ever going to understand him or her.

Along the way, Mansbach makes several astute observations about hip-hop culture – at least, a white side of hip-hop culture. But he really doesn't offer any insights into white hip-hop culture, instead settling his character in a world that, by nature, he doesn't want to confront or judge. And this is the major failing of White Boy – that, ultimately, there is no voice of reason. It's as if Mansbach is presenting the problem to the world, saying, "Here I am; make your own judgment," but he's already defeated his own arguments, answered his own questions, and Angry Black White Boy, like its title, fails to pack a punch at anyone. (Matthue Roth)

If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind
By Vilmos Csányi. North Point Press, 334 pages, $25.

To anyone who has lived with a dog, the revelations of canine intelligence and sensibility in Vilmos Csányi's If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind will bring delight and possibly reassurance, but not surprise. The Hungarian author is a professor of ethology – the scientific study of animal behavior – at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and accordingly he brings to the endeavor a skeptical rigor that helps him steer clear of the shoals of sentimentality on one hand and, on the other, the all-too-convenient human view that animals are dumb beasts we may treat as it pleases and suits us. But he is also a keeper and keen observer of dogs who understands that anecdotal information, when obtained from long and loving observation, is quite as valuable as anything that might emerge from a laboratory – and far more entertaining reading in the bargain. (His own dogs are named, entertainingly, Flip and Jerry.)

One of the more startling disclosures in the book is that dogs, or their "tame wolf" ancestors, have been bound up in the human story not just for a few thousand years but for more than a hundred thousand – practically the entire run of Homo sapiens on the planet thus far. Dogs have, he says, in effect evolved with us. The earliest canines served humans as guard animals, cleansing scavengers, and warming blankets on cold nights, and in return they found reliable sources of food and a pack arrangement that agreed with them.

Csányi finds a good deal of evidence that dogs are able to understand bits of language, to make requests and ask questions, and to solve complex problems. His findings are consistent with what most dog owners know in our hearts. But while dogs "learn signs easily and are perhaps able to endow some of them with the properties of symbols," they do not live, and suffer, by symbols as we do. They simply live. (Paul Reidinger)

Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart
By Liza Featherstone. Basic Books, 282 pages, $25.

If you already hate Wal-Mart and its ravaging of the socioeconomic landscape (and if you're reading the Bay Guardian, chances are that you do), I can guarantee that by the time you reach page 20 of Liza Featherstone's Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart, you'll be furious. Trite is the news that the corporate behemoth undervalues its employees, drains small towns of local business and revenue, and takes advantage of government-run low-income programs to keep Wal-Mart communities poor enough to keep shopping at the "beast from Bentonville." But if gross wage disparities along gender lines and having half as many women in management positions as the competition don't get your blood boiling, then the business meetings held at Hooters will. With thorough legwork and a patient ear, Featherstone (a contributor to the Nation) flexes her journalistic chops and documents the systematic and calculated oppression of the company's female employees and the groundbreaking lawsuit filed to hold the company accountable for its actions. The author's careful storytelling, countless interviews (with Wal-Mart management, female employees, and their lawyers), and her accessible prose do what few other feminist texts can accomplish: convincingly speak to Christian, Republican women of the sort involved in the legal battle – the sort of women who would never dare to use the f word – to tell them that they are worthy of equal pay and equal promotion for equal work. Of course the usual liberal crowd is catered to with equal aplomb, but here they are cheering from the sidelines. (Karen Solomon)