The borrowed book I've been reading for months (little by little) is A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It was written in 1980, then updated in 1999. I finally finished the first edition--the history of the U.S. from Native American times to 1978. The book is so compelling, I bought the updated edition of it today, hoping to catch up on the last twenty years. Here's conclusion I've made: We should by no means be surprised by current events. The U.S. has intervened in other countries' affairs from the beginning, and has enriched the already-wealthy in the process time and again.

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service. And during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism...Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street...Our boys were sent off to die with beautiful ideals painted in fromt of them. No one told them that dollars and dcents were the real reason they were marching off to kill and die."
~General Smedley Butler 1934, quoted in Addicted to War