Movie and Book Recommendations

One thing that I will do from time to time on this blog is make some recommendations of movies and books that I like. It is my way of letting you know what I think is worth your time.
First, though it probably doesn't need a recommendation, I was to let you know that I really enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire. Even though it was one a bunch of awards and is up for an Oscar, this is not how I found out about this movie. On his weekly show in CNN, Fareed Zakaria always makes recommendations about movies, books, or music that he like (kind of like me). A few months ago, after the Mumbai attacks, Fareed recommended Slumdog. It was a great movie because it had everything. It was funny, serious, educational, entertaining, and captivating. It is probably one of most well-rounded movies that I have seen in a long time. If you get the chance, go and watch. It is only about 2 hours, but you will think that you were only on the movies for about 30 minutes.
My book recommendation is the book How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq by Matthew Alexander (not his real name). Like the vast majority of books I read, I heard about this book on the Daily Show with John Stewart and it peaked my interests. Now I don't read a lot, but I have gotten into it lately and this book was wonderful. It was not long (which is key for me) and it was an extremely easy read. The book is about how this group of interrogators used new tactics, such as respect, friendship, understanding, and rapport to get suspects to give them the information they needed. It really gives you an excellent understanding into the minds of not only the interrogators, but also the suspects. It is also a wonderfully amazing book about strategy and having to outsmart someone who didn't want to give you what you needed. I don't want to give the whole book away, but it really shows how helpful these tactics can be and how useless the tactics of fear and control really are.