Robert D. Kaplan at Politics and Prose

The author of Imperial Grunts, Robert D. Kaplan, was at Politics and Prose earlier this evening to promote his twelfth book, Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts. The turn out for the reading and book signing was unusually small, but that might have been due to the Columbus Day long weekend.

Kaplan described his new book as a "gap filler" that focuses on the U.S. air force and navy in the Pacific. Although Kaplan isn't quite as electric as Mark Steyn or Christpher Hitchens, he does hold his own as well as Christopher Buckley and P.J. O'Rourke when he is at the lectern.

The number of young people in the audience was impressive. When I was in college, I was hip to O'Rourke, but wouldn't have been into Kaplan. I was still in my hippy dippy, "give peace a chance" phase, and talking about putting Noam Chomsky on my list of books to read.

However, when I was in Seoul, my American room mate pointed out that if the godless red hordes came pouring across the DMZ, it would be the U.S. Marines that would make sure any Canucks that got caught in the crossfire were airlifted back to the land of maple syrup. The Canadian embassey would foot the bill for all this, but the Yanks would be the ones doing all the heavy lifting. So much for Chomsky.

I'd rather read a good reporter like Kaplan, or an unapologetic humorist like O'Rourke who once noted, "Age and guile beat youth, innocence, and a bad haircut". It's nice to see that there are some kids out there who are a little ahead of the eight ball.