Coinciding with the Herald story (April 26) about the disconnect in our community with the War on Terror, our book club grappled with some of the relevant and urgent issues confronting U.S. security in Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by former NPR correspondent, Sarah Chayes. The author proposes that endemic corruption – and American tolerance and collaboration with corruption – is a force multiplier in the security threat to this country. Chayes grounds her proposition in first-hand knowledge of vertically integrated corruption in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Tunisia and elsewhere.

At the end of our discussion, one of the book-club members suggested this book should be the community read for Durango. Another member of the book club suggested that people in Durango really aren’t too interested in these distant conflagrations.

Thieves of State should be a community read in every community. Chayes outlines issues at the heart of past and current American-intended and -unintended complicity in conflicts that are transpiring across South Asia, the Middle East and northern Africa. She proposes the difficult choices that have everything to do with future foreign policy and everything to do with our community’s voice.

Linda Barnes

Durango