Dan's Reading Journal

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley

First things first....Walter Mosley can write and he can write very, very well.  He can write mysteries and he can write science fiction and he can write just about anything he cares to write and I can almost guarantee that it will be excellent.  Walter Mosley is a black man with a Jewish mother -- or is that a Jewish man with a Black father.....makes no difference.....Mosley writes about the black experience in the 50s and 60s in his Easy Rawlins series, and slightly more recent experience in his Leonid McGill books.  For what it is like to go from 20 years in prison to life in LA, try the two books starring Socrates Fortlow.  Now remember - for the most part, Mosley writes about the black experience in America -- and more specifically in Los Angeles.  He carries the black experience theme into his science fiction writing as well and for some of the most inventive sci-fi I have ever read, try Futureland.  See my review of Blonde Faith for more in depth coverage.

In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Mosley is back at it again - merging genres, exploring the nature of the nature of aging, and the human experience.  Ptolemy Grey is 91 years old, in the grip of dementia, living alone in filth and squalor due to his inattentiveness - a recluse abused by the woman addict who lives above him, scared to go out without his great nephew Reggie, who comes by every few weeks and who has just died.  Introduced at the wake to a family friend - Robyn Small - who is (at first) inexplicably taken with Grey and helps him to clean up his apartment and his life.  Grey is introduced to a doctor who has an experimental treatment that will reinvigorate his body and mind -- at the price of shortening his life.  Grey takes the deal and proceeds to investigate the cause of his great-nephews death while remembering the death of his childhood mentor, Coydog McCann.  All the while his relationship with Robyn deepens and his memory and judgement returns in a flurry.

This is not a perfect novel - the artifice of the "special treatment" is thin, but the depiction of the plight of the aged and infirm is emotionally powerful.  Mosley is clearly thinking about mortality and his musings over the purpose of life, relationships, and family -- and of memory and of loss.  This is a tough book with a realistic picture of life at its end....but it is also warm and reaffirming regarding the nature of personal relationships and of caring.  Mosley does his usual terrific job of word-work and description....I had trouble getting into the book because of the masterful job Mosley did at the beginning with the scattered recollections and perceptions of Grey in his dementia.  Yes, there are a few deux-ex-machina instances, but get beyond those and this is a fantastically insightful and moving novel.  I highly recommend it for your consideration.

 

Zero History by William Gibson

Ah, hubris.  It will get me every single time.  Back in 2007 I wrote a review of William Gibson's Spook Country that was glowing.  I really enjoy reading William Gibson and sung the praises of virtually everything he wrote that I had read (click on the link above to read of my worshipping at the Gibson altar).  Then comes the quasi-sequel, Zero History.  Many of the same characters appear - Hollis Henry, the highly idiosyncratic ex-punk band singer now freelance journalist, Hubertus Bigend, the even more highly idiosyncratic global marketing/advertising magnate (and more than part-time seer with a touch of paranoid megalomaniac thrown in), and Milgrim, the junkie then ex-junkie with perfect idiomatic Russian and phenomenal "hide-in-plain-sight" skills, and various and assorted other minor characters.

The problem is that the cool ideas (of which there are a few, but much, much fewer than either Spook Country or Pattern Recognition) can't outrun the blandness of the plot (relative to his past efforts).  Things happen in Zero History, but I can't always really figure out why.  Hubertus is a bit obtuse and opaque, Hollis is unfocused and then lucky, and Milgrim is programmed and manipulated but weirdly attached to the story.  In Pattern Recognition, Hubertus and Cayce Pollard have real insights into the nature of the modern world of branding and youth culture and the critique and understanding of modern marketing is sharp and crisp.  In Spook Country, Hollis does real investigative reporting - putting interesting clues together in ways most people could not and Milgrim, while still a bit ephemeral, is strangely interesting.  Zero History has none of that connective tissue....yes, some things happened, but I often lost the thread or found it either entirely obvious or coming out of left field.

The other frustration with the book is the fact that the most interesting characters are relegated to minor roles....Two former members of Hollis's band, The Curfew, make appearances, but are not highly developed.  Heidi, who has a terrific sense of the absurd, a terrific addition to heavy-duty violent exercise, and a philosophy that is some strange combination of samurai, US Marine Corps, and George Carlin turns in a too small, but more interesting than Hollis appearance.  Inchmale (ex-drummer?) is a hot shot music producer who is only alluded to as a semi-magical god of getting the best performance out of anybody -- but exists only by reference.  Hollis's ex-but then not-ex boyfriend Gareth has some very interesting inclinations and history as in he jumps off the highest building in the world, and has the kind of friends that make people disappear and things go boom comes in at the end, but even then is more a presence than a character.  The book would have been improved by having them be more central to the character development and action.

Do not get me wrong -- all in, William Gibson is always interesting, has very cool insights into the world in which we live, and creates interesting characters. I did not dislike this book but Zero History is not one of his best by a long shot.  If you have not read William Gibson before, do not start here.  Go back to my review of Spook Country (click this link) and get any one one of his books pictured at the bottom of the review.

 

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

From the author of the absolutely phenomenal Seabiscuit comes the equally phenomenal and even more moving Unbroken. Ever wonder why our parent's generation never warmed up completely to Japanese cars and culture?  Ever ponder that which makes some individuals cling to life with unbelievable tenacity while others sharing the same experience can't hang on?  Unbroken explores these themes and more through the biography of the extraordinary life of Louie Zamperini.  This is a story of competitiveness, compassion, carnage, and cruelty, Unbroken is a marvel you will find very hard to put down.

Hillenbrand starts with the somewhat troubled youth and then rehabilitation of Louis Zampernini.  And Louie really turned around indeed....before joining the Navy, Louie was considered a real threat to be a gold medalist and the first man to break the 4 minute mile. That could have been story enough, but it is Louie's war time story (and post-war) that distinguish his life and this book.  Thus, Unbroken is the story of the war in the Pacific...and Louis's short career as a bombardier on a P-29.  It is a story of survival at sea, survival as a POW, and survival as a survivor.  Hillenbrand does justice to all phases of Louie's life -- her research, interviewing, and assembly of Louie's story (and the story of all the men) as a prisoner-of-war in a Japanese prison camp creates prose that has visceral impact.  You will cringe and be sickened by what you read, but marvel at the human spirit. Her treatment of Louie's post-war life is equally good and equally moving.

Hillenbrand reintroduces all the skills she displayed in bringing Seabiscuit to us...meticulous research, a terrific grasp of detail, and the ability to produce compelling, gripping, and emotionally moving prose.  If you, as a number of friends who have mentioned to me, are better versed in the European theatre in WWII than the Pacific, you are in for an education.  If the survivor rate of German and Japanese POWs in American hands was 99%, the survival rate of American POWs in Japanese custody was only 60%.  Louis Zamperini was one of the survivors.  The record for survival for downed airman at sea in a life raft was like 40 days....Louis Zampeini lasted 47.

I will not retell the story here other than to say again how incredibly  well told and compelling it is....start this book at the beginning of your weekend....because you really will not be able to put it down.

City Room by Arthur Gelb

There is a payoff to listening to your father.  In this case it was the recommendation to hunt down and obtain an out of print book titled "City Room" by Arthur Gelb.  Gelb joined The New York Times as a night copyboy (the lowest professional position at the paper) in 1944 and retired as The New York Times Managing Director some 45 years later.

Gelb has written such a fine account that I wished he could have worked at The New York times for 100 years.  Engaging, intriguing, fascinating and just plain enjoyable, Gelb's 45 years with the gray lady brought him into contact with great newsmakers, celebrities, and major pieces of our history.  Throughout all, he brings the facts, the context, and the impact and operations of the paper into sharp focus -- all with a reporter's eye for detail and writing with the classic journalistic understanding that some editor might come by and slash half the column inches out of the story....so the impact, heat, and meaning all show up early in the narrative.

Name dropping is unavoidable....brought under the tutelage of the eminent editor, Abe Rosenthal, Gelb met, reported on, and mingled with the best and the brightest from the end of WWII to the Clinton White House.  He was a copy boy, arts editor, news editor, Sunday supplement editor and just about everything else.  He "discovered" Joe Papp, reported on Joe McCarthy, covered Nixon's resignation, helped publish the Pentagon Papers, joked with Marilyn Monroe and Tallulah Bankhead, exposed corruption in the New York City police force, and covered the Rosenberg's trial and execution.

Gelb is open and honest about the workings of The New York Times and that produces a phenomenally interesting view into how the news is dug up and reported.  He does not shirk from criticism, most notably in his discussion about The Times timidity when it came to reporting on the Holocaust amidst worries about being viewed as "too Jewish" a paper. But he also covers the emergence of truth in reporting about rape, homosexuality (and how long it took to allow the word "gay" into print) and AIDS, as well as the struggle for ensuring women got a fair shot in the newsroom.

Truly this is a journey from a newsroom that was exclusively male -- complete with spittoons, typewriters, and guys monopolizing pay phones to the modern technology of reporting and competing with television and the internet.  It is a fascinating journey and a simply terrific story well told.

While I typically shun and detest the quips on the back of the book extolling its virtues, in this case they are accurate.  Charlayne Hunter-Gault said of City Room that is was, "a reminder of what it means to be the best", and Pete Hamill remarked that "a sense of intelligent innocence permeates this affectionate memoir."  Both are quite correct -- and so was Dad.

Vacation Reading Review

Open by Andre Agassi

Andre Agassi's autobiography is an engaging, honest, and well written recounting of a reluctant and rebellious champion.  The double entendre of the title is well delivered in the story - Agassi is amazingly open about his relationship with his disturbingly uncompromising father, his own temper and lack of discipline, his drug use, and his indifference to winning.  He has a wonderful sense of himself, can and does laugh at himself, and pulls no punches.  His description of the pre-teen and teen "tennis factories" he attended is both enlightening and frightening. Same can be said for Agassi's description of the professional tennis circuit grind....a grind of monumental proportions that he describes with passion and a double dose of reality.  Redemption (and the completion of himself as a whole human being) comes in the form of his relationship and subsequent marriage to Steffi Graf.  It was a delight to watch Andre and Steffi play an exhibition match as doubles partners against John McEnroe and Kim Clisters for the opening of the new Wimbledon Centre Court.  After reading Open, it was great to see him smile.

 

The Last Stand:  Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick

Nathaniel Philbrick is an historical novelist of some accomplishment -- Philbrick is the author of Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essexamong many others and has a great following and has had great reviews.  Having read any number of Custer biographies and novels, I think Philbrick misses with The Last Stand.  First, there is way too much detail and minutia -- one can get buried in the various strands and sidenotes to the main story.  Second, he does not add a lot, if anything, to the body of work -- The Last Standadds no new knowledge or insight.  Lastly, and most important, I think Philbrick comes off more as a Custer apologist than anything else.  Looking back on the whole, I find myself thinking that the nuance of interpretation in Philbrick's work always errs on the side of justifying and sometimes even validating Custer.  This would not be the conclusion of a number of other reviewers (as I have seen them) - but that is the overall impression I am left with.  It is also an impression I disagree with -- If I look back on Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell, A Terrible Glory by Jim Donovan, Killing Custer by James Welch and Paul Stekler, and Custer and Crazy Horse by Stephen Ambrose (among a number of other Custer books), I simply can not conjure up any sympathy for the vainglorious arrogance of Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne

Now, if you want to delve into a topic of the old west that few have tread on before, try Empire of the Summer Moon:  Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.  This is a number of stories in parallel.  Gwynne does a terrific job of telling the story of Cynthia Ann Parker - kidnapped at the age of nine by the Comanches and - against all the social mores of the time - chose to stay with the tribe when given a choice.  It is also the story of the Great Plains Indians and their epic struggle against both the Mexicans and Americans to maintain their independence as well as the story of the Comanches as a people and how they came to be the dominant and most feared group of Native Americans on the Plains -- and some of the best cavalry ever.  Finally, it is the story of Cynthia Ann's son, Quanah Parker was both a brilliant warrior and feared war chief in battle with the US Cavalry but also became a respected leader who helped his people following their defeat and subsequent relocation to the reservation.  Gwynne tells a thrilling tale that is hard to put down -- and anchors it with terrific research and compelling characterizations.

The "Old Man's War" Trilogy + 1 by John Scalzi

It is always fun to find a new author (i.e., new to me).  It is even better to find one who is capable of continuing the Robert Heinlein tradition of ripping good stories with really cool ideas without being simply a rip-off of the old master.  In my mind, Scalzi joins the ranks of John Varley, Spider Robinson, and Joe Haldeman in combining all the right elements to thrill, entertain, and push your thinking about how the world(s) we live in might look like in the future.  Old Man's Wartraces the induction of one John Perry (age 75) into the Colonial Defense Force....the CDF has figured out a way to rejuvenate and reinvigorate seniors - the only catch is you can't return to Earth if you survive your 10 year enlistment.  As his combat experience adds up, Perry goes through the typical questioning of means and ends....all the while helping humanity expand its reach in the cosmos while competing with many other species trying to do the same thing.  Neat ideas, good story and plot, and an entertaining way to get the reader to confront some truly mind-bending philosophical challenges.  The Ghost Brigades is an offshoot - the Colonial Defense Force (CDF) is still trying to defend the human colonists from alien attack, and this story follows the group of cloned human soldiers known as the Ghost Brigades (Special Forces) and one in particular, Jared Dirac.  Dirac is not only a clone, he is the first clone with a transferred consciousness -- from a traitor to the human race.  It is hoped that Dirac can shed some light on when, and how the traitor is going to betray his species.  His special training as a super soldier puts him in harm's way and when the memories start to emerge the action gets interesting.  Scalzi uses some of the characters from the first novel to provide continuity and does a good job integrating the stories.  The first two novels characters come together in The Last Colony.  John Perry (from Old Man's War) and Jane Sagan (Jared Dirac's Lieutenant from The Ghost Brigades and John Perry's acquaintance in Old Man's War)are both retired ... and married....and have an adopted daughter Zoe...and are now living happily and quitely on the colony of Huckleberry when the CDF asks them to lead a new colony effort on the planet named Roanoke.  The Conclave of 412 non-human races is trying to stop all colonization except those of Conclave members and the CDF wants Roanoke to challenge this situation.  John and Jane agree -- and with 2,500 members from the 10 largest human colonist worlds, they set out to colonize Roanoke.  However, the CDF is really using them as bait.....and the plot she thickens intensively.  John and Jane are left trying to figure out not only how to survive on a planet they were unprepared to colonize, but also how to cope with a double-crossing military, and a hostile group of alien races.....and a teenage daughter and her alien bodyguards (a long story).  A interesting twist to the solution and a very entertaining read.

Zoe's Tale is the plus one....Scalzi intended to stop at the trilogy, but was encouraged by fans to keep going.  Instead of a new story, Scalzi pulls off a brilliant move -- he retells the story of The Last Colony but from Zoe's point of view.  Zoe is the adopted daughter of John an Jane....but is the biological daughter of Charles Boutin - the traitor of The Ghost Brigades story.  Sidenote:  Boutin was working with a race known as the Obin - a race with intelligence, but without individual consciousness.  Boutin's speciality was in consciousness transfer so, in return for helping Boutin, the Obin were to receive technology that allowed them to develop what they lacked.  Boutin dies in The Ghost Brigades, but his work is completed and the Obin now regard his daughter Zoe with almost godlike reverence and have sent two of their kind as her bodyguards - whom Zoe names Hickory and Dickory.  Hickory and Dickory record Zoe's life and use that the educate the rest of the Obin about what "consciousness" really means.  So we have a teen girl who is marooned with her parents and 2,500 other people from 10 other planets on a planet not of their choosing....and the game is on.  Scalzi gets the witty, sarcastic, teen thing down pat -- it is entertaining as hell and rings very very true.  Sure, the story is already known, but Scalzi puts the meat on the bones of the hints dropped about Zoe's role in resolving this inter-galactic confrontation.  This was fun to read.

 

The Laundry Series - The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross

Bob Howard is back.  After appearances in The Jennifer Morgue and The Atrocity Archives, the protagonist operative for the uber-secret occult management branch of British Intelligence known as The Laundry is back in action and as entertaining as ever.

Charles Stross is the exceptionally talented, and slightly twisted, author of a variety of science fiction  novels almost all of which I would highly recommend.  He has got a great touch for repartee, a twisted sense of humor, and an eye for the absurd, particularly when discussing the conduct of governmental bureaucracies.  In The Laundry series, we meet Bob Howard, press-ganged into government service when his experiments in computer science come dangerously close to allowing the monsters that dwell in parallel universes (we call them the occult) to break through to our dimension.  The Laundry is the British first line of defense, and Stross has done a marvelous job of creating a British spy agency and (another) British spy who manages to get in and out of major league trouble while saving the world from, well, yes, the bad guys.  The Fuller Memorandum is the third installment, and I won't even begin to try to do any plot reveal here -- this is Ian Fleming meets H.P. Lovecraft told somewhat tongue-in-cheek with a nod to Franz Kafka.  It a series of greatly entertaining ideas with fabulous humor and a love interest.  This cannot be beat as an excuse for occupying otherwise useful time you might have....highly recommended for raising your eyebrows and generating chuckles.

Accelerando (and others) by Charles Stross

When Charles Stross is not writing about Bob Howard and The Laundry (see above), he writes terrific science fiction (see Saturn's Children (in Last of the Summer Reading)).  So far, I would highly recommend Iron Sunrise, Halting State (really terrific), Singularity Sky in addition to the aforementioned Saturn's Children which I found to be fabulously entertaining. What Stross has is a continual set of really interesting ideas about how the world might work in the future -- the near-term future and the very, very, very long-term future. In Accelerando, Stross deals with what he sees as the near-term future for nanotechnology and the linking of massive computing power directly into the human experience - including artificial constructs for real people and virtual space travel.  Interesting and intriguing ideas coupled as always with a serious amount of wise-cracking satirical commentary and an interesting story.

In Singularity Sky and its sequel, Iron Sunrise, Stross deals with intergalactic trade wars and what happens to humans when they encounter vastly superior beings with vastly superior technology.  We follow the exploits of UN Special Operative Rachael Mansour and her husband, Martin Springfield as they cross planets, cultures, and try to deal with time travel -- a potentially history altering activity expressly forbidden by the dominant and superior technology wielder, the Eschaton.  Entertaining and interesting and Stross develops the conditions and the characters in a very engaging fashion. These two books are chock full of interesting ideas and twists on the human condition.

Near term future of sorts is deal with in Halting State -- where our reluctant hero is Jack Reed - an unemployed gaming programmer who ends up teamed with London insurance accountant Elaine Barnaby and Sgt Sue Smith of the Edinborough Police Department to solve a series of high-tech crimes that all begin with a heist of virtual goods within a hugely successful networked gaming system.  Technology has gone wild here, but in ways that are easily recognizable if perhaps pushed to the edge.  The high-tech crime mystery stuff is exceptionally well crafted within in the context of a global info-war, the three main characters are a hoot and a half and quite well developed, and the dialogue and content require some intelligence to grasp and follow.  I really enjoyed Halting State.

 

A Lily of the Field by John Lawton

Ok, so sometimes I am not so attentive. It was not until I had finished this book (downloaded onto my Kindle after reading a review) that I realized (as I was looking for more by the author) that this is the seventh Inspector Troy novel written by John Lawton.  Well, if the rest are like this one, it will be good to get a hold of all of them.

A Lily of the field covers the time period roughly corresponding to the Anschluss through the end of the war and the use of the atomic bomb.  It is a spy novel and a very British mystery novel.  Our titular hero, Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard gets involved in investigating a murder that becomes much more complicated when it is clear that espionage is involved. Two stories - the spy novel and the murder mystery are in parallel and occasionally overlap.  It is also an interesting commentary on "where you stand depends on where you sit" when it comes to who spies for whom and why.

The action starts with the aspiring Austrian musician Meret Voytek, who, despite not being Jewish, is sent to Auschwitz for political reasons.  In America, the Manhattan project is absorbing as many German and Eastern European Jewish physicists as possible in their race to beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb.  Many years later, Voytek is in London performing where Andre Skolnik (a terrible painter and potential Soviet spy) is murdered. Multiple plot lines, conflicting evidence, and back and forth from Russia to Germany to London, to the USA make for an interesting cold war spy story very well told.

 

The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper

OK, emboldened by my recent foray into the past with Moby Dick, I thought I would try my hand at another American classic.  My father told me stories about Natty Bumppo in The Deer Slayer and The Last of the Mohicans (two of the 5 novels making up The Leatherstocking Tales) and I thought the movie version of Last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day Lewis and Russell Means was beautifully filmed and wonderfully staged. 

Do not repeat my mistake.  As wonderful as the movie interpretation or TV adaptation or stories your father told you might be, the reading of at least the first two installments of The Leatherstocking Tales is a task for the very, very patient.  First, the language is very dated.  Unlike Melville, whose prose is erudite and full of analogies, Cooper attempts the vernacular....and the vernacular of pre-Revolutionary America (just before, during and just after the French and Indian War of 1757) as interpreted by Cooper in 1825 (through 1840) is ponderous and thick.  Second, while the action exists, it is described in ways that rid the events of their excitement - too flowery, too complex, much overdone.  Third, reflecting perhaps the times and the man, the books are a continuing litany of racist stereotyping and discussion. While both groups have honor and clearly separated superiorities, there was way too much discussion of what white Christians and Indians were capable of compared to each other.  I simply got tired of the topic.

Overall, it was simply to hard to get through the first two to have any ambition to try to complete the cycle.  Watch the movie.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville/The Whale by Philip Hoare

I finally read Moby Dick.  For some time now I have been working to correct the enormous gaps in my "classical" education (note my attempt to comprehend the The Illiad earlier) and so I decided to try Melville.  It was worth the effort.  I will not attempt to critique Herman Melville's masterpiece here, but would like to note a few observations about the novel, and my interaction with it.

If you are the product of a mediocre high school education and a college experience where you avoided the English department (as I am), Melville is going to make you feel tremendously undereducated.  The Kindle edition I read (a Penquin enriched ebook) was chock full of footnotes for the myriad Greek, Roman, Shakespearean, Biblical and other references that Mr. Melville weaves in to his story and with rare exception I had to look up each and every one.  This experience is humbling, but enlightening. It also means that my quest for shoring up my classical education is likely to last the rest of my natural life.

This is not (as I had expected) the story about a whale, it is a story about whaling.  Moby Dick may dominate the mood and context, but the vast majority of the action is about whaling, whalers, and the physical, psychological, and metaphysical implications and requirements of whaling.  Melville spends many of his 135 chapters (don't worry, they are short chapters) discussing the various skills, arts, tools, and approaches required for successful whaling.  Written more than 150 years ago, Melville can more than hold your interest.

Moby Dick is as much a book of Melville's view of America and Americans as anything else.  Not to get too thick, but Melville sees whaling - the risk taking, the requirements of courage and skill, the individual effort required as well as the specialization of tasks all fitting together in a well-functioning team. That team is a combination and integration of all types of people from all types of places who together and separately reflect what Melville sees as a quintessentially American set of characteristics.  Oh, yes, other countries can be whalers, but no one is as good at is as Americans (even as many of the participants did not enter this life as Americans).

Melville says, "The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition".  Later Stubb observes, "..that though man loves his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.  Shall I say, this could only be written by a man who understands what it is to try to make a living by working - and by working for someone else.

Melville also knows human nature - he has keen insights - from Ishmael's observations on man and religion, Starbucks attitudes towards his shipmates (..."I will have no man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale....an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward), to Stubb's observation on the human condition referenced above to Ahab's motivations and behavior, Melville provides us with a glimpse into the human condition.

Melville's whale is the centerpiece for Philip Hoare's The Whale, a biography of sorts of whales and whaling.  I read The Whale in parallel with Moby Dick, using it as a reference of sorts - much like Torah students rely on the Talmud for commentary.  Interesting, readable, and intriguing in its own right, Hoare helped me understand Moby Dick.  Hoare says of Melville's story, "what began as an exercise in propaganda for the American whaling industry ended up as a warning to all mankind of its own evil."  If by evil we mean the human ability to become fixated on ends without regard to means, I think Hoare captures the lesson well.

The Whale is chock full of whale and whaling information (and sometimes arcana) and the story of Philip Hoare's fascination with whales is a really good one....from his first glimpses to his investigation of New Bedford to his swimming with whales, Hoare really sets out to tell the whale's story - sometimes in all of its unfortunately depressing detail of killing, destruction and death of nearly entire species.  Hoare also accuses Melville of plagiarizing Thomas Beale's "The Natural History of the Sperm Whale" for most of the whale "facts" in Moby Dick.  Now that is interesting.  Hoare believes that Melville used Beale's observations (along with Melville's own visits to the popular traveling whale exhibits of the time) to create "an elaborate conceit...an arch architectural exercise in irony, a wry and witty metaphor for man's use of the whale" -- and one that Hoare obviously believes is poor justification for the ruthless killing of all cetaceans.

By the time you are done, you will be ready to write to the International Whaling Commission (IWC).  To reinforce our human inability to do the right thing (and thereby underlining the importance Melville's warning), the IWC just lifted the moratorium on hunting humpback whales - so now Greenland, Norway, and Japan can get back to the slaughter.  Not much progress in 150 years, eh?

Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend by James S. Hirsh

I picked up this book because I liked Willie Mays as a kid (I was a Mets fan and had the privilege of watching Willie Mays at the end of his career) and because Pete Hamill, who is no slouch of a writer all on his own, wrote a terrific review of this book in The New York Times Sunday Book Review.  Check out the review at Pete Hamill's Review.

I always thought Willie Mays was a phenomenal athlete and Hirsh's book will leave you rather breathless at Mays' exploits.  However, you probably do need to have an appreciation of the sport of baseball to enjoy this book -- because there is a lot of baseball as you might imagine to be the case for a man who played professional ball for almost 25 years.  Willie Mays started his career in the old Negro leagues (he was in high school) and played there for a couple of years before being drafted by the San Francisco Giants and playing in the minors for just a bit before being called up to "save" the Giants.  And save them he did.  Hirsh, who also wrote the biography of Hurricane Carter, does a good job of illuminating what was truly astonishing about Willie Mays's talent without becoming breathless.  However, there is also no question that Hirsh is a fan (read the author's note at the end).

Aside from Mays physical dominance in the game and his truly astonishing athleticism, Hirsh provides an insightful look into an age and attitude almost unthinkable today.  Willie was 19 years old when he broke into the big leagues in 1951 and black players were still a rarity (Jackie Robinson was in his late 20s in 1947 when he broke the color line, Larry Doby was 24 or 25 and both spent years in the Negro Leagues beforehand).  There were still teams in 1959 that did not have black players on the roster.  Moreover, most of us have viewed our sports through the age of free-agency.  But Willie Mays, whose top salary was $125,00 a year (and he was the top paid player that year) was subject to the "reserve clause" - in practical terms, he was owned by the San Francisco Giants and Horace Stoneham, the Giants owner.  It was amazing to me that Willie Mays, who in 1960 had batted over .300 in 6 of the previous 7 years (and in the year he missed, he hit .296) was still doing barnstorming tours with other black players and Negro league stars to make additional money.

Hirsh brings out the total story of Mays and Stoneham -- Stoneham had the courage and character to have the most black/latin players on his team at time where people worried that attendance would suffer with too many "colored" on the team.  Stoneham and his family adored and took care of Willie and the respect was mutual for many, many years.  The denouement of the relationship is sad and unfortunate and Hirsch does it justice.

The other major storyline that Hirsh does fair justice with is the relationship between Willie Mays and the civil rights movement.  Mays was criticized by Jackie Robinson and others for not being more aggressive, but Hirsh deftly demonstrates that Mays was very well aware of what was going on and made a conscious choice to contribute in ways that were true to his character as well as his strong belief that actions speak louder than words.

Willie Mays was a marvel.  He ended his career including the last two miserable years (in terms of performance) with the Mets as a .302 hitter with well over 3,000 hits and 660 home runs.  Had he not missed most of the 1952 and all of the 1953 season, he could have easily hit over 720 home runs and perhaps more (he averaged 45 home runs a season in the two years after his army stint).  He learned many of life's lessons the hard way given he really grew up in baseball and in the glare of the spotlight. 

His is a life of accomplishments worth remembering.  If you like baseball at all, you should read
Willie Mays:  The Life, The Legend.

Brodeck: A Novel by Philippe Claudel

Brodeck: A Novel is a stunning, disturbing, and thoroughly fabulous book.  It is beautifully, artistically, and powerfully written -- which I assume means that Mr. Claudel can write like a demon and that his translator, John Cullen, has delivered a performance at the top of his game.

Brodeck is essentially some strange cross between Jerzy Kosinski, The Brothers Grimm, and Franz Kafka.  It is a lyrical, introspective, yet foreboding, dark, and ominous.  The story is set is some indeterminate yet familiar middle-European country.  Brodeck, a resident (for vague reasons) and survivor of a prison/concentration camp during an unnamed war (quite reminiscent perhaps of WWII), returns to his home village and to his wife and child.  Not soon after, he is drafted by the town's mayor to write a treatise essentially absolving the village inhabitants of the murder of a mysterious (and wondrous) stranger.

This is a book about the banality of evil, and hatred, and dark, furtive secrets.  But is is mostly a powerful and hugely disturbing exploration of what it is like to be the "other", the strange one, the person out of place in society.  Brodeck grows up different.  Orphaned early (but we really do not know how), he is picked up by a old woman on the road who takes him to another village to live. Brodeck leaves his village to attend the university in the city - and at that university he is out of place, the strange one, not like the others. It is not completely clear what distinguishes Brodeck from his classmates -- it is (as is much in this novel) left unspecified - his he a Gypsy? a Jew? a country bumpkin?  Not defined, but definitely different.  When war breaks out he is thrown into a concentration camp where he survives by becoming a guard's pet.  Literally.  Brodeck becomes Brodeck the Dog, moving about on all fours, eating from bowl on the ground.  He returns to his village and his job as a writer of reports for some vague government bureaucracy.  On day, and stranger arrives in town....the stranger is, well, strange.  He talks in a formal florid style, he dresses differently, he takes lodging at the village inn (run by the village mayor, he has apparent wealth and spends it in the village and in entertainments for the villagers.  The stranger is polite and friendly.  He takes long, solitary walks and is forever writing things down in his book.  When he exhibits his drawings, they turn out to be accurate, but unflattering (and more than a little insightful) portraits of the village inhabitants....and he is later murdered.  Brodeck is drafted to provide the official, whitewashed version of events.

Brodeck knows about being "the other" and is now writing about his own village's treatment of a different "other".  Brodeck "knows how men act when they know they are not alone, when the can melt into a crowd and be absorbed into a mass that encompasses and transcends them, a mass comprising thousands of faces like theirs....the truth is that the crowd itself is a monster...there are no peaceful crowds, either.  Even when there's laughter, smiles, music, choruses, behind all that there's blood: vexed, overheated, inflamed blood, stirred and maddened in its own vortex".  Words borne from experience, in Brodeck's case.  Phenomenal writing in Claudel's case.

Claudel is exploring the world where everyone hates the foreigner, the stranger, the other.  Truly, as Claudel sees it, "there are no happy crowds".  Brodeck, abandoned as a child, raised by a strange outsider, attending a university as a unique minority, imprisoned and abused for no discernible logic, and living amongst those he knows have their doubts - he knows what it is like to be on the outside and is wrestling with absolving his fellow villagers of the crime of which he knows they are guilty.  He really knows..."people are afraid of someone who keeps quiet.  Someone who says nothing. Someone who looks and says nothing.  If he stays mute, how can we know what he's thinking?" and "but down here, it is best never to be right.  That's one thing you always end up paying a very high price for."

Claudel's insight into the hearts and minds is astonishingly good. He knows about ignorance and how it breeds mass hysteria and collective cowardice.  Through Brodeck, he observes that "stupidity is a sickness that goes very well with fear.  They batten on each other, creating a gangrene that seeks only to propagate itself."

In the end, it is Brodeck's capacity - in the face of everything else - to continue to love that gives us hope.  While elucidating the terrible pain that humans visit upon each other, the stupid violence of crowds, the evil visited upon others in the name of hatred, Brodeck can still love.

This is a fabulous novel.  Please read it.

The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville

As my readers know, I am a sucker for an author with a good idea.  Stuart Neville has a really good idea and the result (in a first novel amazement) is The Ghosts of Belfast.  Gerry Fegan is a former IRA hit man with more than a bit of problem with mental stability.  He is haunted in fact by the ghosts of the 12 men, women, and children he has murdered on behalf of his superiors in the IRA.  He comes to the conclusion that his only hope to flee these apparitions is to take out all of those who gave him the orders to kill.  This, as you can well imagine, creates quite a few problems for an old Republican with a drinking problem.  His life expectancy doesn't begin to increase when the higher-ups start showing up dead. 

Neville paints a bleak picture of the heroics of the IRA and of its impact on Northern Ireland and Belfast.  His depiction of the wanton violence - now more motivated by the politics of hatred than the politics of progress. (Interesting how political crime in Ireland has devolved into organized crime.  In the US, it appears it went the other way.) The toll on the people and the places are horrific - the decades long nightmare creates psychological burdens for all the survivors - and it isn't pretty in the least.  Neville's dialog is authentic (as far as I can tell - perhaps I should say that his dialog is persuasive) and the story rockets along pretty well with the chapters numbered backward from 12 (that's a hint, I suspect).

Neville includes a bit of a love story, but it is the core violence and the price paid for that violence that is central to The Ghosts of Belfast.  Neville appears to have an insider's view of what's happened and what is happening in Northern Ireland.  That there is any peace - however fragile - appears to be one of our modern miracles if Neville's view of the world has any merit.

The Loss of Two Dear Friends

In the past month, and almost within the same week, I lost two very dear friends.  Dick Francis was 89 years old.  Robert B. Parker was 76.  Between them, they wrote more than 110 books and I have read every one of them except their last (only one of which has just been published) and you can bet that they are on order.

By my loose reckoning, I have spent something like 15 weeks of 40 hour work weeks with Mr. Francis and Mr. Parker, but really it is much more than that.  I started reading Dick Francis in college and seeing as though he started writing in 1962, I had a lot of catching up to do.  I started reading Robert B. Parker in college as well, but it really started getting interesting when a) I moved to Boston, the location of many of his novels, and b) my girlfriend then fiance then spouse started reading Parker as well.  I even received a signed Parker book from my then fiance as a gift.  I was thrilled.  I have multiple bookshelves devoted to both of these men.  Most of my Dick Francis collection, unfortunately now, is in paperback.  But we have all the Parker's in hardcover and many are duplicated in paper.

Dick Francis started his career training to be a jockey (he left school at 15) , but WWII interrupted that progression and he became a fighter and bomber pilot for the Royal Air force - piloting Hurricanes and Spitfires.  He became a steeplechase jockey upon his return from the war and was a very successful one - named champion jockey in 1953-54.  He was the Queen's jockey as well, but had a spectacular failure in "the National" when his horse collapsed just before the finish line.  A number of subsequent injuries forced his retirement as a jockey (in the late 60s) and he began writing articles for The Sunday Express of London (something he did for the next 16 years).  Racing's loss was my gain.  Each of Dick Francis's novels was somehow related to horse racing, but not necessarily as the central theme.  In each and every case, Francis did meticulous research to understand and then use specific expertise in his mystery novels.  For example, in Bonecrack I learned about antiques and the business of antique dealing, in Shattered, glass blowing, and in Second Wind, meteorology.  Mr. Francis wrote a terrific mystery - intriguing, confusing, interesting.  Most of the time English racing was the backdrop and I lost myself in his books.  Mr. Francis never wrote the same book, each had its own world.  Even when he used the same main character (as he did only rarely with Sid Halley and Kit Fielding), the books were all stand-alone.

Robert B. Parker graduated from college and went to war in Korea.  When he returned he went back to school and got his Master's in English Literature and worked in advertising for a while.  He returned to Boston University and received his Ph.D. with a dissertation titled "The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality", addressed the fictional private-eye heroes created by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald.  He taught at Northeastern University, became a full professor but turned to full time writing after his first few novels were published.  Parker gave us the wise-cracking, good-hearted, but hard-as-nails PI by the name of Spenser, the love of his life Susan Silverman, and his sometimes partner/backup Hawk.  He gave us Captain Healy and Lt. Quirk, and Sargent Belson. They were my friends.  Even better, my spouse and I read the same books, loved the intimate patter between Spenser and Susan, and occasionally thought (but never spoke) that we had conversations like they did.  Parker had other character series -- the ex-big city cop now small town cop with a drinking problem (Jesse Stone),  and the daughter of a Boston cop, ex-cop turned private eye with a mobster's son as an ex-husband (Sunny Randall) and a few really good westerns featuring Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.

Parker had a philosophy that he used in all 60+ novels - there is honor in this world and the good, right people - regardless of what else they may do - worry about that.  Those people have a code of conduct and they follow it.  Spenser has a code he lives by (and he's a good guy).  Hawk, who is decidedly not always a good guy, has a very similar code that guides him and while he may break legs for a living, Spenser can rely on him to to do the right thing.  Similarly, Hawk can unconditionally rely on Spenser.  Its simplistic, sure.  But it helped Robert B. Parker entertain me endlessly.

Parker and Francis provided the literary equivalent of comfort food.  When I was stressed, or tired, or uncomfortable, or sick, I would pull out a volume and re-read. I would laugh at the same wisecracks (Parker) or marvel at the mastery of a foreign skill (Francis) and disappear from the world for a few hours (both).  I can still do that - in fact, there are two Parker novels and one Francis book on my bedside table right now and I bet neither was written before 1990.  It is nice to know that in some ways they will never leave me.

However, there will be (by May of this year) no more new Spenser novels or Jesse Stone, or Sunny Randall stories. No more adventures with Virgil and Everett and I will really miss all of them. I loved it when I found out a new book was out.  I will miss that excitement too.  Better news for the Francis dynasty -- the last four Dick Francis mysteries were co-written with his son, Felix.  While I know it will not be exactly the same, I hope Felix gives it a shot -- it would be a delight to have some new Francis mysteries to keep me company.

For Dick Francis's bibliography, please visit Dick Francis;

For Robert B. Parker's bibliography, please visit  Robert B. Parker

The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe

Subtitled "An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream", Patrick Radden Keefe's research and resulting expose/novel is indeed a revealing, sometimes revolting, and completely revelatory look at the mechanics of human smuggling.

The tale centers around a middle-aged noodle shop proprietor (in fact a grand-mother) known as Sister Ping who starts out "helping" and ends up creating and leading (i.e., as the "snakehead") a world-wide criminal organization focused on transporting willing Fujianese (from Fujian province in China) illegally into the United States, making herself fabulously wealthy (like in the $40mm range) in the process.  It is also a tale of how economic conditions (poverty in Fujian province, opportunity in the United States) drive desire and the flow of human capital and how law enforcement (and in many cases, the laws themselves) seem to be always one step behind - at least a day late and a dollar short. 

Keefe does a very good job tracing the connections, pathways, and ruses used to get thousands of people from China to the United States via Hong Kong, Burma, Thailand, Kenya, South America and Mexico using planes, trains, boats and automobiles.  Note here that none of these illegal immigrants are being forced to come to the US - quite the opposite - they pay a lot of money to take the risky journey.  Keefe also humanizes the transported - showing how in many cases they come to establish healthy, happy, and productive lives once they reach our shores.

Sister Ping's empire starts in the 1980's as a wave of immigrants from Fujian province start flowing to the US given economic conditions.  Sister Ping builds an organization to meet the demand and is regarded as a hero back home.  In the US, many of the illegal arrivals have to spend many of their first years here living in the background, in the shadows and controlled by Chinese gangs wherever they happen to settle.  Things begin to unravel in 1993 when the Golden Venture, an almost un-seaworthy ship rented for the purpose of bringing some 300 illegals into the US, founders off the shore of Long Island (in Queens).  As the police and others arrive to find hundreds of non-English speaking Chinese swimming to shore (and more trapped on a sinking ship), the chase begins. 

It takes the FBI some 10 years to figure all this out, but in the end Sister Ping's gang enforcers have turned on each other in fits of murderous violence and in revenge turn each other in to the cops, her husband is suspected of ratting her out to save himself, and Sister Ping is finally identified, arrested, tried, and sentenced to many years in jail.

Keefe makes this a much of an adventure/mystery as he can, but the fascinating part is really in the details of how Sister Ping put this all together - how the system worked, and how everyone involved contributed to ferry thousands of illegals to our shores.  The other thing Keefe does with great skill is to show how - no matter how good the intentions, an enterprise with criminal activity at its core necessarily becomes dangerous and viscious.  As the criminality climbs, the quality of resources available as labor devolves.  Soon the lower levels of the organization begin to try to overly enrich themselves and turn into into those for whom criminality becomes an objective in itself - with all of its attendant violence and chaos.

Interesting reading, fascinating reality, and not a bad set of things to know about how the world works.  Give "The Snakehead" a try.

A Country of Vast Designs by Robert W. Merry

It is clear to me that many of my readers have not been sitting around asking themselves, "I wonder when the next biography of James K. Polk is coming out?" I get it, I really do.  James K. Polk is would probably not be on the top of my list either except for a couple of things.  First, I am an Andrew Jackson fan, and just finished a good (but not great) biography by Jon Meacham (editor of Newsweek) by the title of American Lion - a book, I am ashamed to say, I have failed to review in this blog.  So my interest is Jacksonian America is reason #1 - and Polk was, perhaps the last of the Jacksonian Presidents.  Second, it got a very good review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review ( by the way, The Sunday Book Review is edited by a college colleague and much better writer than I, by the name of Sam Tanenhaus).   Third, as the history major, I have always been intrigued by the the people and events that shaped America.  And James K. Polk certainly helped shape America.  Polk was an unapologetic expansionist and under his watch, the United States expanded by one-third adding Texas, the Oregon Territory, and New Mexico and California. It is in that vein that I recommend reading A Country of Vast Designs.

Merry, the President and Editor-in-Chief of Congressional Quarterly, Inc did a a very good job keeping my interest and wove the key themes of Polk's presidency (slavery, manifest destiny, diplomacy with Britain, and war) together with skill.  Merry has a perspective on Polk and history that I found interesting.  With regard to Polk, he shows how indomitable will (and political maneuvering) can and does trump morality and how by holding fast to an overarching strategy (or vision) Polk overcame all the deficiencies of personal relations that he created for himself.

Polk's presidency was preceeded by Jackson, then Van Buren and Tyler (Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison who died of pneumonia a month after giving a 3 hour inaugural speech in the bitter cold) and preceeded Zachary Taylor (who won his fame in Polk's war with Mexico), Millard Fillmore (who succeeded upon Taylor's death in office after only 16 months), Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan (who was Polk's irascible and irritating - if not downright disloyal - Secretary of State).  Abraham Lincoln was elected President follwing Buchanan.  Polk sat right in the middle of the creation of the USA we know today - land acquistion by conquest and diplomacy, the beginnings of the politics of succession and the Civil War, and the death of the Whigs and creation of the Republican Party (under Abraham Lincoln among others).

In many way Polk evoked some of the same feelings as Truman did and for many of the same reasons.  They saw the world in straighforward fashion, had a vision of success, and used all the tools at their disposal to ensure that success happened.  In Polk's case, a war with Mexico brought Texas (and one could argue California, New Mexico, and Arizona) into the United States -- and Polk has been vilified since for engineering a war for profit.  Truman lost no sleep in ordering the use of nuclear bombs to bring an end to the war with Japan.  Simple ends accomplished by using all the tools at their disposal. 

While not purple prose, Merry is an engaging writer and I found the subject matter - and the politics - of great interest.   As a side note, one of the intriguing aspects of Polk's time was that the Whigs (later the Republicans) were the advocates against slavery while the Democrats agitated against the use of tax funds for public improvement projects like roads (because it was unconstitutional). 

Everything in a circle, yes? Thus, Polk's extraordinary success in a time of politics every bit as bitter and partisan as today's actually gives me hope that we can yet accomplish something important and meaningful.

As a post-script, American Lion by Jon Meacham is a very worthwhile read as well.  Meacham spends even more time than Merry going through the minutia of the brutal political environment of the time - as Jackson generated even more partisan politics than Polk.  Anyone who thinks it is only recently that dysfunction, deceit, and distortion have risen to the top of the political scene need to read both these books.  As in, when it comes to politics -- whether discussing Cicero, Jackson, or Obama -- there really ain't much new under the sun.

   

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second of the ten novels planned by Stieg Larsson.  Unfortunately, with his untimely death, it is the second of a trilogy.  The final installment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, is due out in the US this year. I reviewed Larsson's first novel in my "Summer Reading" reviews this past summer -  see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I will not get into the debate of whether The Girl Who Played with Fire is better than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I find those debates of little merit.  The first novel has the advantage of bringing all of the cleverness, intrigue, terrific character quirks, and everything else to the reader as new and fresh. Clearly that is never true of the second in a series which has the heavy task of carrying the load from the first novel and then has to reengage, re-energize, and renew the reader's relationship.  Larsson does this with terrific form, great excitement, and an electric story.

Quick synopsis:  A freelance journalist is about to expose some very important people involved in the sex trafficking trade.  The journalist and his girlfriend are found shot to death and Lisbeth Salander (our computer hacker, state monitored violent offender co-protagonist from the first novel) is the prime suspect as her fingerprints are found all over the crime scene.  The journalist Mikael Blomkvist (the other co-protagonist), who hasn't seen Lisbeth in quite some time, works to clear her.

There are plenty of twists, turns, and reverses.  There are multiple murders, multiple investigations, complications, and confusion.  Larsson's great prose and incredibly interesting characters will first spark, pique, and then continue to hold your interest. This guy could write a murder mystery...he can also write misdirection, sex, and action.  If for nothing else, read The Girl Who Played with Fire for all that.

However, I read Stieg Larsson for his absolute refutation of all those myths we are told about the wonders of the Scandinavian society.  You know, although they have higher taxes, they have a better health care system, more gender equality, better functioning government, more tolerance, cleaner cities, they are in better shape and they have better and more sex (ok, this last part appears that it might be true..but remember, this IS fiction).  Before you buy into all or any of that, read this. 

Stieg Larsson's Sweden is anti-all-the-hype, it is dark, it is scary, and it is bleak.  Not always, but often.  It strips bear the emotions, betrays the senses, and challenges the soul.  Punctuated by an occasional but always entertaining and quirky sense of humor, Larsson has something to say about what has happened in Sweden and what the human cost has been.  I find it fascinating.  Read anything that Stieg Larsson has written.

God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

If you regularly attend religious services, you will not like this book.  If you have any affinity for the basic tenets (i.e., the sacred texts) of your particular spiritual association, you will not like this book.  If you have any attachment to the historical founders of your religion, you will not like this book.  If you have any respect for the clergy (of any stripe) based on their goodness derived from their adherence to the basic teachings of their faith, you will not like this book.  In fact, even if you are basically agnostic or atheist but are tolerant of your faith-bearing neighbors, there is a good chance you will not like this book.  And, if you are among the orthodox of your specific faith, you will not only hate this book, but actively agitate that it is blasphemy.

Christopher Hitchens has subtitled his book, "How religion poisons everything" and by God (pun intended) he means it. Compared to Hitchens, Sam Harris (the first of the recent anti-religion treatises in "The End of Faith") is a nice guy with a quaint perspective.  Harris's basic premise was that anyone who believed that their basic sacred text (e.g., Koran, Torah, New Testament, Bagvadhgita) was the literal word of God would by definition trample the rights (and eventually justify the taking of life) of anyone who did not agree with them.  In Harris's case unthinking belief drives irrational human behavior. It is my interpretation (or my feeble memory) that Harris leaves open the possibility that when tempered by real reformation, religious values might actually be put to some good.

Hitchens goes one step further...for him, the essential belief systems of religion are based on seriously flawed fables, fictions, falsehoods, fabrications, and total folderol.  Religion according to Hitchens is "man-made" and contributes nothing but oppression, violence, and the suppression of the human spirit.  Hitchens see religion as anti-science and anti-reason.  He has no time for the supposed saints and prophets. Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad get skewered as do more modern incarnations of religious leadership as Brigham Young, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi).  No one is spared, for example, "and in North Korea today, what has gone awry is not communism but Confucianism".  Ouch!

Hitchens' detractors (and there are many as you can imagine) argue that he is one-sided, unfair, and blind to other interpretations.  They argue that Hitchens ignores the good that religion has brought us, that evil deeds are committed by both believers and non-believers, and that not everyone is a fundamentalist.

So why read this? 

Because despite the ramped up rhetoric, Hitchens does a few things worth examining closely.  First, he clearly exposes some of the greatest hypocrisies within the major religions.  The Catholic Church is devoted to improving the condition of humans but relegates 50% of the population to second class status (women); Orthodox Jews continue rituals and practices that violate any number of laws on a regular basis. Hindus and Muslims kill each other with wild abandon and glee.  Islamist jihadis celebrate the deaths of Americans and Israelis. And on and on. 

Second, while Hitchens critics continue to hammer at him that evil is done by all, Hitchens does more than a credible job of demonstrating that deliberate evil is done by, for, and in the name of the very institutions that should be models of better behavior.  Hitchens detractors on this are simply disingenuous....he is absolutely right.  Our religious institutions, hierarchies, and leaders should be more than the rest of us..more moral.  Hitchens' litany is compelling even if most of us will reject his arguments.  His detractors maintain that most of this is ancient history.  Catholics reject the Inquisition.  Jews no longer practice animal sacrifice.  Muslims no longer convert by the sword.  Really?  The current Pope wants to saint Pope Pius -- known for (at best) his indifference to the Holocaust.  The fanatics of the BJP in India have bombed mosques.  Islamists murder cartoonists and apostates, and kill their raped daughters for dishonoring the family. How far have we really come?

Finally, read this because, despite the reviews that argue that Hitchens' arguments regarding intelligent design are overdone, I did not find that to be true. 

Overall, I certainly believe that Hitchens is monumentally angry at religion.  I am also sure he drops into hyperbole on a regular basis.  He is also monumentally erudite and viciously incisive.  He will make you uncomfortable and he will make you think.  That is worth all the rest.

The Illiad by Homer (translated by Samuel Butler)

There are some serious gaps in my education.  I never finished Joyce's Ulysses, I had huge problems with Faulkner, and choked on Flannery O'Connor.  I was not an English major, thus did not confront Milton or Sir Walter Scott.  I managed to get to Steinbeck, Hemingway, Styron, as well as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky but really fell down on the classics.  Thus, I decided to load my Kindle with The Iliad and give it a go.  Well, I gave it a go, and I am gone.  First, what led me to expect I would be reading about the Trojan Horse?  Because I am an ignoramus, that's why.  The Trojan Horse shows up in the Aeneid by Virgil (I think) -- Yup, that's right, I haven't read that either.  What a dummy.

Second, no one warned me that the Iliad's closest literary rivals (at least in style) are either the Book of Lists or the generations section of the Book of Genesis.  My guess is that fully 50%  of the Iliad is made up of the litany of who killed who, with what weapon, by what gruesome wound, and what lineage just got cut short. Not a few, not tens, but hundreds.  With a sword though the jaw, with a sword through the stomach, with a sword through (or above, below or next to) the nipple.  I think Homer (or his translator) has a thing for nipples -- it is the most frequently mentioned location for where swords (or pikes, or staffs, or whatever) puncture the human (male) body.

Achilles is an arrogant sort, supremely confident but only focused on himself and his due. Just a bit of an ego, to say the least.  Agamemnon is apparently a grasping, pecuniary sort -- abusing his position as King to enrich himself.  Homer also does not lack for ego, sees himself as a hero, and plays to the part   right up until he ends up mano-a-mano with Achilles which prompts Hector to run like hell around the walls of Troy with Achilles in hot pursuit.  Paris appears only in a supporting role, portrayed as a lover, not a fighter (a coward, in fact) and a kidnapper to boot.  Helen plays a bit part...beautiful, but little else.  Odysseus (Ulysses) appears as a courageous fighter, wise counsel, albeit with a temper.  The Gods flit in and out, playing favorites with the humans, determining their fate, influencing human behavior, and arguing, scheming, and fighting amongst themselves

There is more, but I must admit I was not engaged.  I am truly sorry.  I know it is a tremendous story. I would like to blame it on the translation, but that would be unfair.  It is me. I'll wait awhile and try The Odyssey - a story I adored as a child.

Wanting: A Novel by Richard Flanagan

The practitioners of (good) historical fiction are a multi-talented lot.  They possess the ability to write plot and character, a deep knowledge of their chosen period, and a creative spark and insight to tie the two together in a way that intrigues but does not stretch the readers' credulity.  Richard Flanagan demonstrates his virtuosity in Wanting: A Novel.  Flanagan gives us two very different stories of the nineteenth century:  In Tasmania (Van Dieman's Land); an aboriginal tribe fights for its existence and one of its daughters, Mathinna, is adopted by the new Vice-Regent (Governor General) and his wife - the explorer Sir John Franklin and his wife, Lady Jane.  Years later, Lady Jane implores Charles Dickens to write a defense of her husband (lost in an Artic expedition) that Dickens turns into a play where Dicken's plays the main character.  In the casting and presentation of the play, Dickens meets, falls in love with, and then must deal with his marriage and his desire for the actress Ellen Ternan.

Flanagan does a magnificant job of asking the question (and answering it with his plot creations and his prose) of what is savage and uncivilized and what is cultured and civilized.  The cultured Franklins, particularly Lady Jane, are enthalled by the aborigine Mathinna and tear her away from her people and her culture to live with them in Hobart (the capital), where Lady Jane embarks upon her "education".  When she fails to become the cute, black, Christian child Lady Jane envisions, Mathinna is, at the end, abandoned. As the Franklins leave Tasmania (forced out by politics), they leave things worse than when they arrived.  Mathinna's people are  mistreated, their culture unappreciated and dismissed, with their aspirations and desires as a people demeaned and disregared by the civilizing British.  If anybody had ever thought to ask, they would have discovered that neither Mathinna nor the Aborigines have seen fulfilled any of what they might have wanted.

Years later, as Dickens writes his impassioned defense of John Franklin and his Artic expedition (without any evidence accused of cannibalism), burying himself in his work to take his thoughts away from the death of his daughter Dora, he recognizes that his marriage is empty; unfulfilled and unfulfilling.  He meets Ms. Ternan
while casting his play and falls in love -- but can not fully remove himself from his marriage.  He loses himself more and more in his play, in his acting -- where he has written John Franklin as the conquering hero, the civilized (and civilizing) British gentleman; erudite and cultured who would certainly die honorably if the choice were between that and resorting to cannabilism to survive in the unforgiving Artic.

In the end, Flanagan has given us a terrific insight into desire -- the cost of possessing it and the cost of its lack of fulfillment.  Lady Jane wants, but can not have, the conversion of Mathinna she so desparately wants. Just like she must work so hard to ensure her husband's (and thus her own) reputation.  Mathinna desires a return to her people, but she has been changed and cannot go back.  The result is a devastation of the individual.  John Franklin wants greatness, but is defeated in politics, and ultimately is killed by his ambition.  Dickens can not have his daughter back, nor can he produce (nor receive) the love and affection in his marriage he so fervently desires.  Nor, once he finds love, can he have it and share it with the world.

Flanagan is incisive and powerful.  He intrigues us and creates strong emotions.  This is worth reading.

Public Enemies by Brian Burrough

First, an admission.  I could swear I have reviewed this book before....I just can't find the writing anywhere.  So, at the risk of repeating myself or, alternatively, here is what I imagined I said.

It is hard to imagine making Bonnie & Clyde, John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, and J. Egdgar Hoover boring, but Brian Burrough manages the task in Public Enemies.  Made into a movie starring Johnny Depp (as Dillinger), the book reads more like a PhD dissertation than an exciting piece of writing. 

Now, it is possible you wanted to research the FBI's 1930s flowering as a crime-fighting institution and/or wanted all the facts on the various travel activities and lodging locations of the era's most wanted criminals.  If so, Burrough has nailed it for you.  The research underlying this book is extensive, exhaustive and impressive. The recitation of minutia is often overwhelming.  While Burrough does provide information on the key players, I often found myself thinking he could have provided more interesting insights into the personalities, motives, and/or back-story on the characters.  Lots of facts, little excitement.  Peeking out in between all this detail, on occasion, are interesting events and occurances, but they are not enough to lighten the load.

One thing that Burrough did a very good job of was illuminating the incompetence, puffery, buffoonery, and althogether unsavory beginnings of the FBI as the nation's crime-fighting force.  Exposing J. Edgar Hoover for the paper tiger that he really was is the one major saving grace of Public Enemies.  Hoover's posturing machinations to make himself and his institution look even remotely effective is unnerving because it worked in the 1930s and up through the 70s.  It is so patently obvious that the man was a phony, malevolent, power-hungry incompetent in retrospect that is easy to forget how much damage he really did while in power.  Burrough does a good job of reminding us of both the charade and the unfortunate result.

Burrough writes, "but while the FBI's "socially positive" role was on public display during 1933 and 1934, so too can the seeds of the FBI's later abuses be seen:  the beating of suspects, the "kidnapping" of Verne Miller's girlfriend, Vi Mathias; tbe conviction of Adam Richetti on perjured FBI testimony; and the arrest and trial of Roger Touhy for the Hamm kidnapping.  The War on Crime bestowed upon Hoover's FBI something close to absolute power, and the day eventually came when Hoover's FBI was corrupted absolutely by it.  The Bureau wrestles with its legacy to this day". 

I would add that the hypocrisy that Hoover represented personally would almost by definition create an institution that reflected the glaring deficiencies of its leader.  The FBI is much better off out from under the leadership and legacy of J. Edgar Hoover.

For no other reason than Burroughs documentation of the FBIs reality at its beginning, it is worth wading through some less than exciting details in Public Enemies.

The Professional by Robert B. Parker

Spenser, Hawk, Susan Silverman, Sgt. Belson, Captain Quirk, Vinnie Morris and Bernie Marcus -- after 36 Spenser novels, these characters are good friends that I very much look forward to visiting.  The Professional is Parker's best Spenser novel of the past few years. Quite frankly, the plot hardly matters.  Spenser and Hawk live by their very unique codes of honor and conduct, trade quips, and outwit the bad guys.  Susan continues her career as a therapist, loves Spenser unconditionally, and trades quips with the guys. Quirk and Belson keep Boston safe from the bad guys, grudgingly lend a hand to Spenser when he needs it (because he has earned their respect) and trades quips with each other and with Spenser.

Oh, yeah and in The Professional, Spenser tries to figure out how an apparently sex-addicted good-looking nebbish name Gary has managed to successfully blackmail a significant number of rich women.  The plot thickens (well, at least there is a noticeable increase in viscosity) when some of the women start turning up dead.  Spenser discovers that not all the women are rich, Gary isn't all that bad a guy, and some of the husbands are dodgy.  Susan lends a hand by contributing her insights and Hawk watches Spenser's back.  

Needless to say, all's well that ends well.  Parker and Spenser provide much entertainment.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

There have been a rash of books purporting to explain everyday human behavior and its consequences.  Nassim Taleb has shown us that most of the stock market performance that creates a following is more randomness than actual performance (see Fooled by Randomness) and that most of the real money made on Wall Street is due to the rare and unpredictable rather than "playing the odds" (see The Black Swan).  Malcolm Gladwell has become a staple on The New York Times bestseller lists with The Tipping Point, Outliers, and Blink, each of which explains some aspect of human performance or human phenomena.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein wrote Nudge...discussing how our psychological quirks can be exploited by government policy and businesses to nudge us in the right direction and correct (or prevent) some of the damage inherent in totally free markets.  They call it "libertarian paternalism" -- they favor "nudges" over laws, bans, and edicts.

Where Thaler and Sunstein focus on the political, Dan Ariely focuses on the more mundane, more everyday reality of human behavior and its implications for public policy in Predictably Irrational.  Ariely, an Israeli behavioral economist now at Duke University, shows us how our perceptions of reality, our expectations, emotions and acceptance of social norms all combine to help us make irrational decisions.  By bringing hard science and hard facts to the study of human decision-making, Ariely demonstrates that our irrationality is truly predictable.

Want to stop teenage pregnancy and/or prevent coerced sex?  Well, Ariely's research will conclusively demonstrate that "just say no" is worthless because male decision-making under conditions of arousal is dramatically less rational than when not aroused (i.e., like when answering a survey).  For example, when aroused, almost half of men say they would keep trying to have sex even when their partner says "no" - up from only 20% when not aroused.  Slip a woman a drug to increase the chance of having sex?  Only 5% of men said yes in the survey....but 26% said yes when aroused.  So, if you are a woman and want to ensure that you won't be pressured into sex....never put yourself in a position where you are negotiating with an aroused man..because he will not make rational decisions.

How about this --  everyone cheats...Ariely proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt (the experiments Ariely designed and executed to determine this are just plain fascinating)...but if you want to significantly reduce the incidence of cheating or stealing...just have people try to write down as many of the 10 Commandments as they can remember.  It works even if hours in advance of the opportunity to cheat.  We humans have strange minds, eh?

Ariely and his team does it again and again...why we would pick a beer laced with balsamic vinegar rather than regular beer...why we will cheat less when cash is at stake, but more when things that can be used as cash are at stake...why the price of the painkiller influences our evaluation of effectiveness...and on and on.

Ariely writes with a terrific sense of humor, an entertaining sense of wonder, and occasionally with tongue firmly in cheek.  Predictably Irrational is readable, entertaining, and incredibly interesting.  Have fun and learn something, give this a try.

How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy

How Rome Fell:  Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy is definitely NOT light summer reading. I am in awe of Goldsworthy's scholarship and his grasp of the material.  The book addresses two major questions:  first, why Rome "fell" and second, do any of the myriad of current tomes about the lessons to be learned by the United States from the fall of Rome hold water?  (this second question, as you have no doubt already guessed has been rephrased by this reviewer -- Goldsworthy is much more eloquent).

This is not light reading - and, in some cases is mind-numbingly difficult to remember - the speed at which emperors are created, rule, and discarded is often faster than I could comprehend.  Covering the period from Marcus Aurelius (161 C.E.) to the fall of the Western Empire (roughly 600 C.E), there are probably more than 50 Emperors (for the combined empire and then following the Western Empire once split), and at least that many defeated usurpers if not more.  We have the Huns, the Goths, the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, and the Vandals, not to mention the Persians, Parthians, and others.  Truth told, I could not retain it all. 

However, the "simple answer" to the first question is that Rome beat itself and devolved into tribal kingdoms.  No enemy really ever rivaled Rome's power, not even the Persians (who were by far the closest).  By devoted so much of its energy and resources to maintaining the safety of the Emperors - though dividing responsibilities to avoid creating rivals to the throne, civil wars, defeating numerous usurpers (and sometimes losing) and being stretched very thin, Rome became unable and unwilling to mass its power.  The decline started in the third century and by the sixth, power had devolved to the kings - the senate had been effectively emasculated, and there simply was no longer the centrifugal force to keep the empire together.  The loss of the power of the senatorial class also meant that rivals to the Emperor now could arise from almost any source - the military mostly, but also the civil administration.  As Emperor after Emperor tried to keep his throne, he weakened the very forces that supported the Empire - strong, centralized armies, strong centralized politics (the senate), and stong battle-hardened Emperors.  More reliance on "foreign" sources of manpower as the Empire's need's grew. Bureaucracy and corruption increased, Emperors became more isolated, armies became localized and eventually, slowly, but inexorably, the fabric of empire (institutions, traditions, fealty, and purpose) was worn down.

Lessons for the today's only superpower...only a few and some of them surprising.  First, a reliance on other than regular army (mercenaries for Rome, and private companies for the US) weaken the regular armed forces capabilties...and what was once "a choice then becomes an unavoidable necessity and alongside this goes a loss of control". And, Goldsworthy adds, a loss of purpose, loyalty, and the risk of personal gain superceding the wider needs of the country.  Interesting, eh?

Rome never had a true competitor, and thus the growth of bureaucracy (at the expense of the armed forces) does not necessarily reward talent or efficiency and effectiveness - and Goldsworthy notes that "it is very easy for a large institution to lose sight of its real purpose ...government can all too easily become a question of trying to stay in power under any circumstances...real success or failure is hard to measure, especially in the short term.  Targets and personal gain are attractive alternatives".  Message received...remind anyone of standardized test results and body counts?

Finally, it took a very long time for Rome to decline, "from the third century onwards Roman emperors lost a sense of their wider role and instead concentrated on survival...the rot began at the top....sheer size meant that for a very long time the Romans either kept winning, or at the very least, did not suffer defeats that were catastrophic....the empire was in decline, but able to continue for many lifetimes".  Message received...remind anyone of our two political parties? 

Goldsworthy ends by saying "decline is not inevitable, but the risk is always there", and then quotes a urbane student of his discussing schisms within the Church in the fifth and sixth centuries...{in a fake rural accent} "you know, people are kinda stoopid".....no truer words have ever been spoken.

A Terrible Splendor by Marshall Jon Fisher

A Terrible Splendor:  Three Extraordinary Men, A World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played by Marshall Jon Fisher is the story of "Big" Bill Tilden, Don Budge, Baron Gottfried Von Cramm and the beginnings of professional tennis....and the beginning of World War II....and what it was like to be homosexual in Nazi Germany AND in the pre-war United States...and what it is like to play and beat a legend.  Fisher tells a very engaging story with a tendency to hyperbole (just check out the title, but then this was published before the Nadal/Federer or the Roddick/Federer finals).  He does however, provide a fascinating and engaging look into a past world - when tennis was dominated by talented and dedicated amateurs.  It is also an interesting look into the conflict between the German aristocracy and the rise of Nazism and the impact of anti-Semitism on German sports.  Von Cramm is the gracious and dedicated player, the penultimate sportsman (he argues points that his opponent should have been given), and has a Jewish lover.  Bill Tilden is the consummate player, but also lives dangerously close to (and more than occasionally crosses) the edge of what was then considered acceptable behavior.  Don Budge is the new guy with the astounding serve. Tilden serves as von Cramm's coach (pardon the pun) and Budge and von Cramm meet in the deciding game of the 1937 Davis Cup match (then the biggest event of the sport) between Germany and the United States.  Having been caught in the Nazi machine, winning is one of the few things that can keep von Cramm out of big trouble. 

Clearly tilted towards the fascinating characters of Tilden and von Cramm, Budge pretty much gets the short shrift in terms of the narrative.  Between them all, but mostly falling on Tilden's shoulders, is the beginning of the professional tennis we know today.  If you are into tennis, or just a pretty good story, this was quite entertaining.

Last of the Summer Reading

Looking back, the last of the true summer reading have clearly been (mostly) a search for escapism. Not that I have a lot to escape from, mind you, but I have always been able to waste time on good junk -- so, here are three places for you to waste your time.

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child - When you really need to blow a couple of hours with no mental exertion and the latest Robert B. Parker (Spenser) or Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch) is not available, reach for one of the 11 Jack Reacher novels written by Lee Child.  As I have noted before, many times the plot device is not believable and Reacher is definitely a strange bird.  Jack Reacher is a 13 year MP veteran who, having been cut loose due to the peace dividend, is now a drifter with no fixed address and a paranoiac fear of any hint of permanence, i.e.,  he owns nothing but the clothes on his back and a toothbrush.  He does, however manage to save the world from really bad guys, has a mean streak that won't quit, and enjoys his revenge as a dish served hot or cold but demands to be served.  Bad Luck and Trouble is no less (or more) believable than any of the others, and that is not a bad thing.

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross is a very clever sci-fi adventure with some very neat twists and turns. The initial premise is pretty cool and quite definitely intriguing -- sometime very far into the future the universe has been populated for some time by androids who have done and continue to do the heavy lifting.  Oh, yeah, one complication -- all the humans have all died off, leaving a very robust and active android society complete with unfulfilled pleasure models (programmed to love humans)and a caste hierarchy that at its bottom rung holds the majority of the population as slave-chipped serfs.  Replete with plenty of sex and violence, this may not be (or on the other hand....) everyone's cup of tea.  Like most good sci-fi, Stross has created that alternative universe....but also successfully mirrors the human condition and frailties.  Identity politics and philosophy do not merge all that seamlessly with cruelty, sex, and violence, but the kernel of the idea is strong and pretty much carries the book.  With the main character Freya reminding us of characters past written by Heinlein, Varley, Asimov and others, it was an enjoyable read.  Probably not for everyone.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman presented this reviewer with two problems.  First, I had previous read Gaiman's American Gods which, by the end of it, I thoroughly detested.  Second, this is fantasy and typically I have a huge allergic reaction to trolls, witches, warlocks and their compatriots.  However, Gaiman is a prodigious author, acclaimed by many (a Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker award winner as well as a Newbery Award winner) and multi-genre - children's books, sci-fi, comics (now known as graphic novels) as well as fantasy and film screenplays.  I thought it only appropriate that I give Gaiman another try. 

Neverwhere was Gaiman's first solo novel and it was entertaining. The plot (the protaganist, Richard Mayhew, a resident of London, learns that being the good Samaritan often carries a heavy price.  In this case Mayhew is drawn into the world of "London Below", a shadowing city of mysterious, dark, and oft-disappearing people and places.  Magic abounds as he helps Door find the who and why of the assassins that murdered her family.  Other colorful characters abound and the pace does not tarry.  If you can tolerate fantasy (and not just a little whiff of Dungeons and Dragons), this could be some fun.  It also motivated me to try some more Gaiman -- but I haven't done so yet.

Joker One by Donovan Campbell

Reality war stories are often harrowing, haunting, and incredibly intriguing.  The experience is not unlike the observation of a car wreck....you don't really want to, but can't help but look.  I heard Donovan Campbell interviewed by Terri Gross (the NPR Fresh Air program) and was totally fascinated by this young man's understanding of leadership, his exercise thereof and his accounts of how he learned how to lead while serving as a platoon leader (as a Marine Corps lieutenant) in Iraq.  To quote from the Harvard Business Publishing, " Donovan Campbell is currently a Zone Sales Leader Designate working for Frito-Lay in Dallas, Texas. He returned to Frito in September from a year-long involuntary military recall, during which he helped Special Operations Command Central start its Tribal Engagement Initiative in Afghanistan. After four years as a Marine Corps infantry officer, intelligence officer, and sniper platoon commander, including two tours in Iraq, Campbell graduated from Harvard Business School. His book about his Marine platoon and their 2004 Iraq tour together, Joker One, [was] be published in 2009."

The book, Joker One (the name of his platoon) is no disappointment.  Campbell was assigned to Ramadi in 2004, which turned out to be one of the hottest spots of insurgent activity in the entire country.  Campbell describes his introduction to Iraq, his getting to know and then getting to lead the members of his platoon, and the action events in which the platoon participated.  While not totally objective (who could be?), Campbell does an outstanding job of introducing the laymen to modern urban anti-insurgency warfare, concisely and incisively describes firefight action, and brings the heat, terror, fear, and physicality of war very much into the reader's consciousness.  I will not belabor the aspects of fighting and attack - suffice to say that by the end of his tour he has pretty much decided he will die (and has moved on beyond that) and that his (and his even more experienced gunnery sargent) hands shake continuously.

What is most fascinating about Joker One is how Campbell describes his job relative to both his superiors and his subordinates, the men in his care.  The leadership lessons, examples, and teaching/training (both on-the-job and that provided by the Marine Corps) is extraordinary to read.  The fact that he came home in one piece - and that is platoon suffered only one KIA (many wounded) is astonishing.  That all of this happened when he was about 24 or 25 years old is testimony to the kind of individual he is and the kind of training you get as a Marine officer.  I was hard pressed not to be incredibly impressed with the thoughtfulness, composure, compassion, and commitment demonstrated by Campbell and his men.

You can read the transcript of his interview on NPR at Joker One/Donovan Campbell on Fresh Air.  The book and the interview are very much worth your time.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I may the the last person you know to read Team of Rivals and I probably am a bit of a contrarian with some of my reaction.  Let me say up-front that it is a terrific store of information and I learned a lot that I did not know.  The premise of the work is interesting -- Abraham Lincoln has not been given his due as a political genius nor a leader (manager) of people.  Goodwin sets about and very successfully makes her point. And doing huge injustice to her scholarship, those points are simple and straightforward.  First, Lincoln's nomination as the Republican nominee and his subsequent election as President was no fluke, no accident, and anything but lucky.  Rather, Lincoln's election was the direct result of his own political acumen and the application thereof to the situation as he saw it (better than most) and his execution (better and more sophisticated than almost everyone).  Second, his process of selecting, attracting, and managing the key members of his cabinet - all of whom were his rivals for the Presidency (William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates) was an unparalleled demonstration of superior knowledge and understanding of human behavior and motivation.  Her exploration and demonstration of her thesis is interesting and the politics of the US from 1844 - 1864 is indeed fascinating.  While I am certainly no expert, Goodwin's scholarship appears exhaustive and detailed.

The book suffers from two flaws in my opinion.  First, Goodwin has sharp insights, but is constantly asserting as fact what she believes Lincoln was feeling or what his motivation or thinking must have been.  I do not question her analysis, but it was occasionally noticeable that conjecture was presented as fact. Second, the story is not told linearly, but jumps vertically through the experiences of Lincoln, Seward, Chase, and Bates.  It took me a while to get it  - until I did, it was a bit confusing.  Once I got it, it worked rather well. 

Goodwin is a thoughtful writer, but her prose is not exciting nor inventive.  As a small example, Salmon Chase's daughter Kate is describe numerous times....and always the same way, "beautiful".  Minor perhaps, but it was telling. However, these are small flaws. In the whole the scholarship overwhelms the narrative deficiencies.  More important, there is so much to learn and Goodwin lays it all out for us. 

As a final note, while the book centers on Lincoln, I found the descriptions of Seward and Chase to be very, very interesting (Bates was less a focus, or left less of an impression on me).  Chase turned out to be a self-centered, colorless and while effective in his technical role he was endlessly and quite annoyingly blind to his own impact on others.  Seward, in contrast, came across as a terrific ally who subjugated his own interests (after losing the nomination to Lincoln) to the betterment of the country.  Not only was he a tireless worker, he showed extraordinary judgment, tact, and commitment.  Seward, unfortunately, paid a much higher price for his loyalty than Chase paid for his lack thereof and comes off decidedly as the better man.

Doris Kearns Goodwin's Abraham Lincoln is a terrifically complex, interesting, fascinating, and absorbing character.  I truly enjoyed getting to know him, his style, his way of thinking and acting, and his ability to understand the American people both writ large and individual by individual.

While a bit of an effort, it appears to be worth the work of reading Team of Rivals. No question you will learn something new.

Defiance - The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec

Summer Reading.....

The movie, Defiance is based on Nechama Tec's Defiance - The Bielski Partisans.  Make no mistake, the devastating terror and heart-stopping danger is very real, but the story telling was much improved by the Hollywood script writers.  Having said that, Tec has none-the-less done the world a huge favor in putting together the interviews, research, and chronology of the Bielski partisans.  Led by the Bielski brothers, this Belorussian Jewish group became part of the Soviet resistance against the Nazi aggression.  While there were many Russian, Polish, and other resistance groups, few were Jewish, and virtually none of them other than the Bielski group welcomed unarmed men, women, children, young or old.  Even less than that accepted unarmed Jews.  From 1942 through 1944 (until the Soviet liberation) the Bielski partisan group created a community that lived deep in the forests and swamps of Belorussia and kept more than 1,200 Jews alive.  "Liberating" food from local peasants, cooperating with armed Soviet partisan groups by sending fighters and providing services (like gun repair and tailoring), the Bielski partisans represented one of the largest rescues of Jews by Jews in World War II.

The history is important, no doubt.  Tec's book, however, reads like a college paper.  Comparing and incorporating differing perspectives (some collected from survivors) and different attitudes is always difficult and Tec has the intellectual honesty not to judge, but the result is a very academic treatment of the situation - little emotion, little tension.  This is a telling, not a novel.  It sets the historical record straight and gives an appropriate recognition to some people who sought no honors and no glory, but deserve a tremendous amount of both.

Tuvia Bielski was interviewed by the author some weeks before he died.  He sought no fame and no aggrandizement.  I doubt seriously that he looked much like Daniel Craig.  Perhaps the times make the man, but after reading this historical record you will have no doubt that, in this case, the man also make the times.

Summer Vacation Reading

Most of my vacation reading is escapist stuff....and this vacation was no exception. I will review the important, heavier, mostly non-fiction stuff individually.  Here is the "junk" reading....

Thrillers, Mysteries, and Such

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson is really worth reading.  For whatever reason, I have been drawn to Swedish mystery and cop stories for some time. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo wrote ten Martin Beck police procedurals from 1965 to 1975 and while they were clearly reflections of the times (the authors were pretty determined to show how their socialist country was exhibiting many of the same problems as capitalist countries) these 10 novels were wonderful minimalist mysteries.  Stieg Larsson has written a very interesting action story though the action is somewhat muted by Larsson's style.  The style does not detract, however, but seems to mirror my recollections of the "Swedish style". No punches pulled, but there is a bit of minimalist in Larsson as well and that sharpens some of the prose.  The title character is not the lead character, and while she is integral to the main mystery, her own backstory is equally absorbing. 

The quick synopsis -- Mikael Blomkvist is given a chance to redeem himself from professional misconduct when he is employed by a Swedish industrial tycoon (and head of a strange and dysfunctional family) to spend a year writing the family history as the cover for investigating the disappearance of the tycoon's grand-niece some years before.   In the course of events, he is introduced to and hires Lisbeth Salander (her of the tattoo) to assist in the investigation.  Lisbeth has her own story and her own style -- she is more than modestly anti-social and is an absolute wonder in her ability to ferret out information.

So, an interesting crime story, a pretty good mystery, a couple of terrific characters, a fabulous recrafting of the closed-room crime story (all the family lives on the same island -- calling Mrs. Marple!!), and a true anti-hero in the character of Lisbeth.  Enjoy.

Only bummer was finding out that Stieg Larsson - an investigative journalist in Stockholm - died in 2004, leaving behind a trilogy of which The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first published in the the US.

Bad Elmore Leonard is better than most people's best.  No one typically writes a better gritty, more real than reality story about crime, criminals, and damage than Leonard.  In Road Dogs, Leonard brings back Jack Foley, the star of Out of Sight (played by George Clooney in the movie of the same name) as well as Cundo Rey, the Cuban gangster who first appeared in La Brava and Dawn Navarro, the psychic from Riding the Rap.  Foley and Rey befriend each other in prison by watching each other's back (the prison term is "road dogs") and when Foley gets out he heads for Rey's homes (he owns two) in California (at Rey's request) to stay for a while and check in on Rey's wife, Dawn.  Dawn is a temptress who has been waiting 8 years for Rey to get out of prison so she can get his money.  Rey is a borderline psychotic with a temper and an imagination that focuses on infidelity.  Foley is a bank robber and con man and ladies man and there we go.  While Leonard throws in some pretty good tricks, Foley comes off a bit too smart -- he is never fooled and he's never without a comeback or response.  Rey and Navarro seem more contrived and less possible with each passing page.  The witty dialog is good, but the plot seems pre-ordained and a bit tired.  Still fun to read - as I said, Elmore Leonard on his worst day is a pleasure, but this is certainly nowhere close to his best.

  

Persuader; Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child are only two of some 14 Jack Reacher action novels.  Jack Reacher was an Army MP for 13 years (in the early stories, Jack is still in uniform) and is now a happily unemployed drifter who just happens to end up in some outrageous situations for which he is more than adequately prepared to act.  Think Spenser without the civilizing accoutrements of girlfriend, apartment, sidekick helper and the ability and desire to cook and eat good food.  Reacher has commitment issues...like he take clothes to the cleaners because he just isn't sure he will be in the same town when they are finished.  Like he trusts no one - not the government, not the cops, not the crowds, not the bad guys -- no one but himself.  At six-five and 250 pounds of all the MP training the Army could provide, he is a whole lot of skill waiting to happen...and Lee Child gives him the opportunity in every book.

Often, that opportunity is really contrived.  In Persuader (#7), Reacher just happens to be in Boston and just happens to spot a guy who was murdered 10 years previously (on a case Reacher was investigating).  Trying to get some information on the guy's limo lands Reacher in the middle of an unsanctioned FBI sting on what the FBI believes is a drug tycoon.  Fur flies.  Reacher to the rescue!

In Gone Tomorrow, the opportunity is (if you would consider this possible) even more far fetched.  Reacher is in New York, on a subway at 2 am and is one of 5 passengers -- when he looks at one of them, he goes through the entire Israeli 11 point list of what makes a suicide bomber and she nails all 11 --  but he is wrong about the bomber part....as he approaches her she pulls out a gun and kills herself.  And we are off to the races as Reacher gets hip-deep into the war in Afghanistan, a Senatorial election, and a major babe whose mother is an ex-Soviet political commissar looking for an American soldier.  PS, it turns out that of the 5 people on the subway car at 5am, one is Reacher, one is the suicide, one is the Congressman who wants to be Senator's chief of staff, and two are FBI agents. 

So, other than the fact that the story origins are completely unbelievable, Lee Child can write tight action and create very good mystery stories.  The Reacher novels are wonderful in their ability to suck the reader in and help waste a couple of otherwise perfectly usable hours.  Lot's of tight scrapes, twists and turns, feats of incredible physical activity, bad guys getting what they deserve, and Reacher's dry, skeptical, ironic, and totally sarcastic view of life in America (and some other places).

Silks by Dick Francis and Felix Francis is the second collaboration between the father (Dick) and son (Felix).  Dick Francis has written some 40 mystery stories and unlike Robert B. Parker (whom I adore, but must be honest with myself) Francis does not write the same book over and over again. Quite the opposite, in fact.  While all of Francis' books involve horses and horse racing of one sort or another, they also always include some other area of professional and technical expertise.  In Dead Heat (2007) the protagonist is a chef and we learn a lot about what it takes to be a professional chef and own and run a restaurant; in Banker (1982) the key character is a merchant banker.  In Silks, our hero is an English barrister (lawyer, but the kind that try cases) working towards becoming a Queen's Counsel (a status conferred by the Crown).  The double entendre is that while all race horses and their jockeys were specific silks, so are the Queen's Counsels required to wear silk gowns to distinguish their status.

In Silks, barrister Geoffrey Mason is an amateur jockey who takes on case of a professional jockey accused of murder.  Under threat already by former client he begins to be pressured to lose the case by parties unknown...and off we go.  Francis has never written a boring book, he is always interesting, his research is always good, and the mystery has enough to it to keep the reader interested and anticipating what comes next. If you have not read any Dick Francis, pick any one of the 40 up and you will not be disappointed.

   

Science Fiction

Joe Haldeman writes intriguing sci-fi. I reviewed The Accidental Time Machine back in March (see Spring Break 2009 Reviews) and I also very much enjoyed The Forever War.  Haldeman has the really good ideas and the story telling knack that puts him very close to the Robert Heinlein/John Varley school of science fiction.  Camouflage is no exception. The idea here is a really good twist on and combination of the "we have been visited before" theme and the "they walk among us" theme of science fiction.  In Camouflage, an egg shaped artifact is found on the ocean floor and all attempts to communicate with it, open it, or even scratch it fall way short of success.  In parallel, we are made privy to the fact that not one, but two different alien intelligences are (and have been for quite some time) on earth observing us.  One, known as the changeling, has been on earth a very long time, but only recently has it taken human form.  The other, known as the chameleon, has always been in human form.  The changeling has the capacity to learn and to love.  The chameleon is a conqueror, looking for victory and delighting in war and its process.  The Changeling and the Chameleon are ignorant of each other's presence, but with the discovery of the artifact, that is about to change.  Haldeman writes a good story, and shows really good character development in our aliens (and others).

Jack McDevitt is also a good story teller.  I really like his Alex Benedict/Chase Kolpath series (Polaris, Seeker, The Devil's Eye, A Talent for War) and branched out beyond those with Ancient Shores.  It was worth the risk.  Simple premise, big impact -- a farmer in North Dakota uncovers a sailboat on his property.  Interesting given that there has been no lake in the area for about 10,000 years.  Even more interesting is the material of the boat and sail has an atomic number on the periodic table well beyond what we currently have identified.  A search for other artifacts (along the shores of the ancient lakebed) turns up a building made of the same material as the boat -- and it is on Sioux land. The building houses a transportation device that links instantaneously to other habitable planets.

McDevitt takes us through some interesting suppositions and possibilities like what will the US government do about something like this when it sits on Sioux territory?  What happens to the world economy when industries like transportation (air, rail, ship) start to be questioned as to viability?  Or what happens when oil is discovered on one of the planets -- what happens to the power politics in the middle east?  How do governments and media coexist in such situations?

An interesting story with some cool sci-fi tidbits. Only bummer was the ending which comes straight out of nowhere and is pretty damn ridiculous.  Other than that....a good waste of time.

Time travel...of all sorts is a constant sci-fi theme.  Parallel universes...ditto.  Paul Melko combines the two themes in Walls of the Universe and turns in a really nifty story.  A high school kid named John Rayburn is tracked down and tricked into changing places with John Prime -- a parallel universe version of Rayburn who just happens to have a device that allows the user to travel to parallel worlds.  Only problem is that this device is busted....Rayburn can't return home.  Turns out there are many travelers and many planets, but not all of them are nice and comfortable.  Melko takes this traditional track and makes it interesting and most important, personal.  We get to know both Johns and the whys and wherefores of what makes them tick.  Personal ethics get confronted and bad guys are met and friends get made.  The story of how and then if John can return to his original universe is well written and engaging.  Melko (a new author for me) does a very good job of personality development and writes a very readable story.  I look forward to reading more by this author.

The Death of a Friend: Reflections

I lost a friend last week.  My friend Steve was a neighbor for many years when we lived in Cleveland, a racquetball companion, a house project assistant (and we often reversed roles), a brilliant craftsman of his art, and an all around good guy and buddy. His wife, my wife, he and I got together regularly, cooked meals, chatted. Our wives were friends and had many mutual friends. They rented the house across the street from us for a year or two, then moved a couple streets away when they bought their first house in town.

Steve and his wife were around when both our children were born.  My eldest loved to visit Steve and their dogs (including a Newfie that she could ride like a horse). Steve and I dug gardens and built fences together. He was a California guys' guy...that means we talked talked cars, motorcycles and politics as well as cooking. He introduced me to racquetball and whirlpool at the Y and I introduced him to the old schvitz (steam bath) in what used to be the Jewish neighborhood and was by then pretty much in the center of the ghetto. Where else could guys go to get steam, get beaten with birch branches and then sit, wrapped in nothing but a town, and eat an enormous steak covered with garlic (in a room with linoleum floor, dinette sets and pictures of Moshe Dayan and Benito Mussolini on the walls) and then take a nap?  We had a great time even though he worked like crazy and so did I.

We moved first and we kept in touch - sort of...occasional emails, a couple of visits back.  But we were guy friends -- which meant we could pick up the conversation after 9 months of no communication like it was yesterday -- which is what we did for a few years.  Then they moved back to California and contact dwindled to occasional and brief emails and then mostly nothing. 

Steve is dead, now, at the age of 48 from an apparent heart attack.  I found out a couple of days after the event and could not make the funeral. The loss of Steve is a tragedy - for his family, for his friends, and for those who loved his art.  He had so much more left to give us, to do, to accomplish. 

I am so damn angry about Steve's passing....much more angry than sad.  I am 5+ years older than Steve and for the entire time I knew him he was in much better shape, ate healthier, worked out more, and was generally more physically active that I ever was.  I smoked, he didn't. I was 30 pounds overweight, he wasn't.  I sat on my backside all day and then ran though airports.  His craft required physical stamina and incredible lung capacity.  He's dead and I am not.  I know life isn't fair, but quite frankly, God has some real explaining to do on this one and the lack of answers or logic makes me furious.  But - pause for thought -- I was brought up knowing that life is not fair so what was the source of this anger?   I have thought about this for some days and think I have the answer.

When my sister died some 40 years ago, we made a family pact - on two issues.  First, we were never to say goodbye to each other without certain knowledge that we were all "current" -- that we had said everything that needed to be said -- that if anything were to happen that not one of us would look back and say, "if only I had told them or if only I had said..."  Second, we were never to let communication lapse for any reason - not for conflict or disagreement or geography or job or kids or whatever.  For 40 years, we have done a reasonably good job of keeping that commitment. 

Only thing I did not do was to extend that commitment to the few true friends I had -- and Steve was one of those friends.  I let communication lapse, I did not pursue and continue, I did not say everything that needed to be said.  Maybe I am the unusual and unique guy, but when I look around, I don't see many guys my age with tons of close guy friends...a few at most.  Lots of casual acquaintances, but not many hard and fast friends.  Steve was one of those friends and I let it go, did not work hard enough to maintain contact, made the wrong efforts.

So, in addition to being sad, I am indeed angry ... at myself.  In addition to being a great guy and good friend, Steve has, in his passing, also served as a teacher.  He has re-taught me the lesson of 40 years ago.  Family and close friends are few, rare, and very much worth working very hard to ensure not to lose contact. 

Thanks, Steve, for one last act of friendship.

The Death of a Pet: Reflections

Almost 3 years ago, my youngest daughter and I went off the the pet store to buy an aquarium and some fish and came back with a baby ferret and a ferret condo for it to live in.  Don't ask, it just happened that way.  My spouse was both aghast and unhappy with my judgment -- as in, "what in your 17 years of marriage to me would allow you to think that I might want a ferret in my house?"  My daughter, always on the lookout for a potential furry, cuddly pet was delighted as my allergies (both to animal fur and pet maintenance activities) had so far prevented any in-house pets other than the random turtle.

Funny thing happened, though -- over time, my wife and I fell in love with this 2 pound pea-brained animal who was always happy and glad to see us (read: be let out of its cage) and was so dumb that everything was new each time she was let out -- explored the same places, took and ferreted away the same stuff my wife and I had retrieved and put back last time she was out.  Not really dumb, though..just amazingly persistent.  My daughter named her Julie because we bought her in July.  We let her play in our TV room when we were watching TV or took her into a bedroom and let her run around.  She was expert in getting into drawers (from the back), stealing anything small off the bedside table and exploring anything that she could climb up on or in to.  Behind the love seat in our bedroom corner was her treasure trove -- consisting of a half dozen knotted up plastic shirt-bags, all of my wife's hand creams, pens, pencils, paper trash from the trash basket, anything in a plastic bag, and my loafers.  Take the stuff away and put it back where it belonged -- it was back in the corner the next time Julie got to play.

In January Julie was diagnosed with cancer -- we brought her in after she had lost 40% of her already meager body weight. We actually paid for intestinal surgery to remove a tumor, but later found out that it was in her lymph nodes.  We brought her home and she gained some weight back and continued to be her normal life playful, curious, and cute.  She then started to lose weight again, and a week or so ago began to get the shakes and fall asleep on the floor when we let her out.  Last night we took her to the vet who told us the shivering was a signal of inexorable decline and perhaps pain.  We decided to spare this little creature any more pain and had her gently and quietly euthanized. The whole family was there -- holding her, saying goodbye.  The family left after she was sedated and I stayed behind with the vet for the euthanizing shot.

It is my reaction that has me baffled. I know that admitting this will put my He-Man club membership in jeopardy, but I left the vet's office and walked home in tears -- all this little dumb animal ever did was give us joy and laughter and now she was gone.  I cried again before going to sleep...I am going to miss Julie.

I know that the loss of a pet is a momentary sadness -- particularly compared with the loss of a friend (which also happened to me earlier this week -- see my other posting on this date).  However, I don't remember losing a pet and feeling this way.  I never felt close to the dogs we had growing up, and our cats lived so long that I was away from home when they died.  The corny old adage of "walk a mile in someone's moccasins" comes to mind -- I can assure you that I will have a lot more empathy for my friends' stories about losing a pet from this point forward.

Spring Break 2009 (and some books, too!)

We have a family split when it comes to vacation activities.  We have one action junkie daughter who needs constant things to do and places to go 24/7.  We have another daughter who is content to lie on the beach or poolside and occasionally rouse herself to read a book (or more prevalently now, do Facebook, Twitter, or its ilk on the computer).  My long-suffering wife is (now) somewhere in-between - she does get bored with sitting around and baking in the sun and feels the need to visit the sites both small and insignificant (the cheese factory, the beer-drinking pigs) and the important and interesting (the castle, the mountain peaks, the national parks).  Then there is me -- content to sit in the shade (I burn like an SOB even with gobs of SPF 30) and read.  The only constraint on my incredible appetite for this was the number of books I could convince myself to lug along.  Then came the Amazon Kindle and no more constraint.  In a mere 6 ounces (or less), I can possess tens of books -- and if Sprint is available, I have access to thousands more.  Problem (though not always marital bliss) solved.

In between books, we managed to see most of the sites that Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands offered and they were, for the most part, delightful.  This trip was booked and mostly paid for before the current market collapse, so we felt duty-bound not to lose even more money by canceling.  Once again a lesson learned....book in advance so you can't back out --  a respite from the world is a good thing.  Virgin Gorda is quiet, the beaches virtually deserted (and beautiful), and the distractions minimal.  If you do not care to pay the exorbitant costs of flying there from somewhere else, the ferry from St. Thomas is about 90 minutes out (no stops) and about 2 hours plus going back (a stop in Tortola so you can pay your $5 per person exit fee and have your bags pass through a search -- although the more experienced travelers simply left their bags on the ferry).  The Baths is a gorgeous national park with huge boulders that create caves sitting right on the beach and a don't miss attraction. The Copper Mine was almost worth the drive and has the advantage of taking very little time to traverse the grounds. 

Food is expensive if you eat out -- we were a bit surprised at the cost, but there were a couple of interesting and good places;  the onion rings at the Top of the Baths were outstanding, the pasta was quite good at The Rock Cafe, and mostly everything, including the New Orleans Rum Punch, the tuna and salmon sashimi, and all the other seafood and salads were very good at Chez Bamboo.  Groceries were only to be had a one rather sorry dockside store -very expensive - and one look at the meat selection made restaurant-goers out of us.

The sun and stars are big attractions and were spectacular.  Unfortunately for us, the surf was a bit rugged for snorkeling, but it is reputed to be terrific.  All in - a very good time.

Time for books too -- here goes (in order of seriousness of literature):

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz -- This is a wonderfully written, funny and disturbing novel about life; life in the Dominican Republic; life for Dominican immigrants who settle in New Jersey; life being a nerd in a culture where nerds are even less highly regarded than mainstream America.  It is also a devastating simple and effective expose and condemnation of the Trujillo dictatorship (and its only slightly less equally awful successors) in all of its brutality.  Oscar Wao is a misplaced teenager and then young adult -- a sci-fi loving, video game playing, fantasy-writing fat to the point of ridicule guy in a macho culture and Junot Diaz does a masterful job showing us how losers lose and still (sort of) survive being teenagers.  Oscar's family comes from Santo Domingo - having fled the Trujillo regime and believing themselves somewhat cursed (his mother's legacy). The backstory is at least as interesting, if not perhaps even more so, than the current events and Diaz weaves the two together exceptionally well.  Characters abound as family members are described and the life of the dictator held tropical island is made apparent.  My only complaint was my lack of Spanish -- it would have been helpful to catch some of the jokes.

The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg -- Bragg has written two other novels about his family - All Over But The Shouting is a moving tribute to the character and toughness of his mother who managed to survive an alcoholic and abusive husband to raise 3 boys under the toughest conditions imaginable - extreme poverty, no skills, and no way out.  It is also the story of Bragg's hardscrabble youth and his overwhelming attachment to the hardworking, no luck, no future people that inhabit the Southern mill towns like the one he grew up in.  In Ava's Man, Bragg shows us and tells us where his mother got her grit, determination, and ability to love -- from his maternal grandmother Ava and his grandfather, Charlie.  Charlie is Ava's Man and Bragg's tribute to this product of the Appalachian foothills along the Georgia-Alabama border is terrific.  Hard working, hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving -- Bragg describes a people and a place that most of us either never knew or didn't care to -- but should have and one having read his work, are glad that we now do.

The Prince of Frogtown returns to his father - the man that Bragg would like to but cannot forget. Charles Bragg was known to his middle son as a mostly absent drunken abusive and uncaring man -- but who also left memories when he as a small child he simply can not forget, nor (until this book) understand or explain.  Rick Bragg asks his older brother Sam, "Can you remember one good thing Daddy ever did?".  That answer, and a few others, are what make up this book about his father - the man and motivations that Rick Bragg never knew.  Interwoven with the story of his father are wonderful little vignettes of Bragg's encounters with a boy who will become his stepson as Bragg falls in love with a woman who has a nine-year old son.  Dealing (at age 46) with a young boy brings Bragg back to his own childhood and his relationship with his father and Bragg is simply terrific in bringing his own upbringing (good and bad) and his relationship with his father to his relationship with the boy.

To know the father he really never knew, Bragg goes back and talks to his father's friends and acquaintances and the result is touching, surprising, and a terrifically told story.

Fooled by Randomness:  The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb -- This book by the author of The Black Swan has an interesting and perhaps even fascinating thesis - most of what you see and believe as success may really be nothing but luck.  Reading this book today is a revelation -- first published in 2001, Taleb successfully predicts the market meltdown we are experiencing. However, that is neither the core nor the purpose of the book, nor does Taleb claim any prescience but it is the inescapable conclusion that Taleb leads you to in his work.  He also does a terrific job of explaining why most of the statistics you see quoted about market performance are complete nonsense.

Now having said all that - and believing there are some very, very insightful and cool ideas in this book, Taleb is a load to read.  He is clearly incredibly well educated and well-read, and smart as hell, and...well, to quote from his own bio, "Part literary essayist, part empiricist, part researcher, part no-nonsense businessman, he spent eighteen years as a mathematical trader, and was the Dean’s Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst"  -- and boy, does he let you know it.  He often says he was not well liked by his fellow traders and after reading him for a while, you can easily imagine why.  He is, as we used to say, a bit over done.

However, you can also easily look beyond that as he describes why much of what we call success is random, how what we are told is performance is so often the result of surviorship bias, and why a lot of other financial secrets of success is only so much hot air.  Put up with the pinky-raising flowery language, the classics quoting, and the hardly believable self-deprecation and read the really insightful stuff that Taleb has to offer.

Fear Itself by Walter Mosley -- I have reviewed Mosley before -- see Blonde Faith and I think he is a fabulous writer.  Mystery, science fiction, short stories, social commentary ... Mosley is versatile, creative, innovative and he makes you look at an America that most of us don't see, haven't seen, and probably should see.  In Fear Itself, Mosley continues the "Fearless Jones" series that features the headliner (Fearless) and Paris Minton.  Paris is the normal guy -- trying to make a living, educate himself and get ahead.  Fearless is the energy, the moxie, and the aggression - the Korean War vet that can not read well, but that you want by your side for his loyalty and his street smarts.  Mosley is showing us Los Angeles in the 1950's and 60's -- let me rephrase - Mosley is showing us black Los Angeles in the 1950's and 60's as he does in the Easy Rawlins series.  The twist for this story is that Mosley is showing us the stuggle for financial independence in the black community at this time.  Paris Minton owns a used book store and dreams of owning more and bigger stores.  Kit Mitchell leases land north of LA and grows watermelons and trucks them in to LA (and sells them as Texas Watermelons); Henry Orkan distributes beauty supplies; Milo Sweet is a disbarred lawyer and bail bondsman looking for ways to expand his scope and reach.  Other people own bars, restaurants, and boarding houses (black people can not stay at LA hotels and motels).  They all want to meet and get close to Winifred Fine, who owns the beauty supply company and the fruit market, three gas stations, two hardware stores, and Nathan's bakery -- she's the first black millionaire they have ever heard of.  What Mosley is doing is showing the reader the reality of how hard it was and how hard people, black people had to work to make it -- but he is also showing us how absolutely just like the rest of (most of) us that is like. 

As always, Mosley is both entertaining (a good story, more than credible mystery, great characters)and thought provoking.

Rough Weather by Robert B. Parker - I really adore Parker and I really adore the Spenser series.  After 30 years and 36 novels (just on Spenser), Spenser, Hawk, Susan Silverman, Chollo, Bobby Horse, Teddy Sapp, Martin Quirk, and Frank Belson (among others) are old (and appreciated) friends.  I still laugh at the corny conversation between Spenser and Hawk.  I like the exchange between Susan and Spenser as they try to understand their relationship and the rules that Spenser lives by.  I like the bad guys going down and sometimes even the bad guys who aren't so bad.  Like I said, its like being with old friends.

Rough Weather stars Spenser, Hawk, Susan, and reintroduces Rugar (the Gray Man), a very bad guy who once almost succeeded in killing Spenser.  Hired by a very rich woman (to do exactly what is not quite sure) to attend her daughters wedding, Spenser is witness to Rugar (and his team) kidnapping the bride and killing the groom.  And off we go.

It is Spenser at his familiar best and although I must admit there is now a sameness to many of the books, I really do look forward to each and every one.

The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Halderman -- No vacation reading list would be complete without some total flights of fancy (i.e., Sci-Fi) and Joe Halderman is an author I have just recently discovered.  I liked The Forever War and picked this up as well and enjoyed it thoroughly.  While the theme has been done before, Halderman throws in enough humor, reality (what its like to be a graduate student and post-doc), science (he actually tries to explain string theory), and nifty ideas (at one point in the future all economic activity becomes barter based -- because all the basic needs are taken care of) to make the traditional time travel story work quite well.

Matt Fuller is slaving away as a post-doc in physics at MIT when he accidentally invents a time machine.  Each time he pushes the button the machine jumps into the future -- and each time it jumps 12 times the distance into the future.  When he loses his job, he begins to experiment and...well, off he goes.  Haldeman does not just reinvent H.G. Wells, though he does a bit.  See, once again, the future ain't what its all cracked up to be.  So Matt goes to jail (and is somehow bailed out by himself), visits a future where Jesus has returned (and MIT is now the Massachusetts Institute of Theosophy); where Earth suffers an ecological disaster, where Australia is the only populated continent, where the Moon has been turned into an amusement park, and where humans have fled the planet to populate the galaxy.  Haldeman deals well with the science, the time travel paradox (i.e., what if you went into the past and changed it), and along the way tells an highly entertaining story.

Savage Stories of Conan by Robert E. Howard -- Every single Conan short story ever written all in one volume....for less than a dollar on Amazon for Kindle.  What can I say?  Every man needs a way to be 13 all over again.....and for less than a dollar, who could resist?

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

If you have been the brave, attentive reader of The Reading Journal that I presume, you know that I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson.  You can review most of his work in my review of (CRTL-Click on the link) Neal Stephenson.

Now, having said that, I did have trouble finishing his last effort, The Baroque Cycle, Stephenson's massive three-volume fantasy-cum-swashbuckler-political thriller-mathematics history lesson bounce through 18th century Western Europe. I ended my review of Stephenson with Volume 1 (which I loved) with the prophecy that Volume II was on its way and it was "probably worth it".  Volume II was -- sort of.  Volume III however, nearly killed me and by the time I had choked my way through it, I was done with Stephenson for a while. So, when Anathem came out to some terrific raves, I succumbed to the temptation and ordered both the book and the Kindle version.  When this massive 935-page tome hit my mailbox I was convinced that Stephenson had caught a bad case of authorial-extension disorder -- that terribly debilitating malady that strikes some writers causing them to substitute volume for quality.  Think of it as "Dickens Disease", though Dickens had an excuse -- he got paid by the word.

I hated the first 25 or so pages (perhaps it was the first 50 -- hard to tell on the Kindle) -- where Stephenson commits all the sins (as far as I am concerned) -- he introduces a whole new planet, a new language with new meanings but close enough to what you understand for it to be monumentally confusing; he gives things weird names (like in a bad sci-fi story); he spends pages describing arcane features of a society's architecture (this for me a torture - my ability to conceive of three-dimensional space is limited at best); and worse -- he begins to describe the integration of philosophy and meta-physics.  To top it off, he introduces the novel with a review of a made up 7,000 year history and starts the reader off with trying to understand the practices of his made-up religious order.  I was ready to throw in the towel.

But Stephenson is nothing if not a practiced artist, so I stuck with Anathem and I am glad that I did. Anatham finally succeeds for me in creating a different world in a different place. and the world of Fra Erasmus is very definitely different.  The "mathic" world is separated from the "saecular" world.  The world of higher math and philosophy has morphed into what we would see as quasi-religious orders - different orders with different orientations towards math, physics, and philosopy and the integration thereof.  The orders live in a concent (co-ed monastery) and are removed and separate from the outside world.  Stephenson ultimately succeeds in delivering these separate worlds/lives to us - thought the use of new words to describe things is always something akin to irritating.

Once every 10 years (or once every 1, 10, 100, or 1,000 years depending on which "order" you belong to) the concent is opened for 10 days and the "mathic" and "saecular" worlds are allowed to co-mingle.  It is on the eve of one such 10 year "apert" that our story begins and we get to know Fra Erasmus.

Fra Erasumus was "collected" to the order 10 years ago as a child - and now as a teenager he is about to get his first look in a decade at the world he left behind. It is the beginning of a grand adventure - one that puts him, his friends, his order, and his world in the midst of a global drama with potentially cataclysmic consequences.  It is Stephenson's skill as both a story-teller, researcher, and futurist that kept me engaged and interested (after I got through the architecture) and after a while, I was simply fascinated.

Like his work in The Diamond Age, Stephenson is a master at combining history and future - creating a world at the same time familiar and wildly different, combining real science with science-fiction, and creating characters that we can identify with mostly - but not totally.  Anathem turns out to be a terrific mystery story, an intriguing exploration of philosophy and mathematics, a pretty cool sci-fi concept (or perhaps more than one) with good dialogue, real humor and warmth, and some decent action. Also, it contains a couple of really good twists that are both entertaining and surprising. 

Warning - you must be patient -- this story takes a while to grab you.  Now, to be honest, if you don't like sci-fi, or have no interest in math, science or philosphy you might find Anathem to be dull and uninteresting. A number of other reviews have remarked that Stephenson is not for everybody and that is certainly true.  But if you liked The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon or are a big fan of William Gibson or perhaps even Larry Niven (e.g., Ringworld), give Anathem and Neal Stephenson a try.

Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

Let's get this over with quick -- Warren Buffet, while apparently a moral and, in some ways ways, wise man, may have very little to teach you and me about "the business of life" based on his personal life in general.  Then again, maybe he does.  Warren Buffet is a mass of contradictions.

In addition to being the 1st or 2nd richest human being on the planet is/was also mono-maniacally focused on money-making, incapable of sustaining a monogamous relationship with his spouse;  mostly a miser, but not quite; at best an indifferent parent - at worst, perhaps incapable of really caring about his children; absolutely cold and cruel to his adopted grandchildren (he couldn't quite see them as real family); pathologically incapable of dealing with stress or crisis in his family (and not all that prepared to do so in business either); a man with limited tastes to the point of dysfunction or autism (he only went to China with Bill Gates when he learned that Gates had taken along a chef that would make Buffett hamburgers and fries for every meal). Even recognizing the dysfunction of the family he was raised in, he rarely spoke to his mother after he left home.  He attended neither his mother''s funeral nor his wife's.

However, Mr. Buffett has had an interesting life and has taken some surprising courageous stands.  Brought up by (and marrying into) ultra-right wing Republicans (his father was so extreme that the Republicans eventually dumped him) and more than simply casual anti-Semites (his father-in-law forbid Warren's eventual wife-to-be from pursuing a romance with a Jewish man), it is a testimony to his personal values that he has become attached to a number of liberal causes and has been proven right more than wrong.  He asked, and became the first non-Jewish member of the Jewish country club in Omaha (at a time where religion determined where one could be a member).  Once a member, he turned around and sponsored the first Jewish member of the Omaha Club. He has always been somewhat of a philanthropist (although up until his startling announcement of giving 85% of his wealth to the Gates foundation, always hitting a bit below his grade-level) and the causes he supported were surprisingly liberal, i.e., women's reproductive rights.

That he has integrity in business dealings is beyond doubt and that in and of itself is noteworthy in these times.  That he has been upfront and out-spoken about the need for self-restraint on Wall Street (decrying the culture of greed and the danger of over-leverage, derivatives, and "irrational exuberance") is a mark of reason and business wisdom.  The fact that he has been a quiet force for dumping over-paid, underperforming CEOs who were enriching themselves at stockholder expense is laudatory.  He has been consistent in his opposition to the dismantling of the estate tax -- he has always believed that dynastic wealth is a anathema to democracy.  His investment record is still unchallenged.  No one has out-performed the market as consistently as Warren Buffett.

However, when the Right-to-Life movement threatened to boycott one of his companies, he had the companies in question quit making donations to the charities that Right-to-Life objected to.  After deriding derivatives as an evil (and after pulling Salomon out of the activity, and refusing to assist Long-Term Capital Management in their pursuit of derivatives) he has issued derivatives based on Berkshire-Hathaway.

His story is interesting - and remains so despite Alice Schoeder's daunting level of detail.  Some of that detail is fun and interesting (e.g., Buffet's purchase of the Omaha Furniture Marta and his dealings with its obstreperous, Eastern-European Jewish mother owner/operator) while some of it, particularly some of the family detail, seemed overdone.

All in, Buffet ends very much on the plus side of the ledger -- perhaps the price of genius is weirdness,  hard-to-understand focus, and dysfunctional families.  Buffett's family may have suffered and he may have very weird habits and idiosyncrasies, but his vision regarding investing and money-making has been relatively consistent and moral.  His integrity is mostly intact, and he is still - after 50 years - regarded as an oracle.  For a guy who has been worth as much as $60-70 billion dollars, that is quite an accomplishment.  So is the amount of wealth he has created and promised to give away.

The Whiskey Rebels (and more) by David Liss

I am feeling badly that I have let my readers down.  Having just finished The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss, I looked back into The Reading Journal archives discovering to my enormous embarrassment that the only other novel that I have reviewed by David Liss is The Coffee Trader - (CTRL-click to jump to that review) a highly recommended read.  Unfortunately, that means I have neglected to tell you about a number of other terrific books by David Liss that your really should not miss.

Let me start with my most recent - The Whiskey Rebels.  Liss's MO is to take a significant historical economic event and make it a major character in his novels.  In this novel, the event is the Whiskey Rebellion - a populist insurrection in 1791 precipitated by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton's tax on whiskey.  With the Articles of Confederation recently succeeded by the US Constitution in 1789, The Federal government took on the state's Revolutionary War debt and a very straightforward way to raise money came immediately to Hamilton's fertile mind (demonstrating the power of the Federal government and a bit of temperance moralizing also played a big role in this tax). Read more about The Whiskey Rebellion on Wikipedia.

Liss introduces us to the western frontier (think western Pennsylvania here) where the recently free indentured servants, the poor, the adventurous, and those ready and willing to prey on the dreams of such people are drawn to the promise of a new life and cheap land.  Liss creates a couple of terrific characters in this novel.  Ethan Saunders, late of General Washington's espionage group, is living in disgrace (which will be a key element in the story) in Philadelphia.  He is engaged by his former fiancee (lost to him by his disgrace) to help look for her missing husband. In the midst of that mission, Saunders gets involved with Hamilton's Treasury Department and the battle over the Bank of the United States - including direct confrontation with the supporters of Thomas Jefferson.

Meanwhile, Joan Maycott marries a War veteran and they are forced by circumstance to seek their fortunes on the frontier.  Fleeced by the rapaciousness of the powerful who happen to be Hamiltonians, their subsequent inventive success in the Whiskey Trade both attracts the predators even more and is threatened by the Whiskey Tax -- and Joan sets about seeking redress.

The lives of Saunders and Maycott (as you might guess) become intertwined, and Liss creates an intriguing patriotic mystery story out of the immediate post-Revolutionary War period.  Once again, it helps if you are a bit of a history buff - but the history does not overwhelm, it makes it very interesting.  Not quite as good as The Coffee Trader or A Conspiracy of Paper, but The Whiskey Rebels is good for a strong recommendation.

A Conspiracy of Paper was actually Liss' first novel (I read The Coffee Trader first), and it is a terrific book, fun to read, inventive characters, and (to me) a fascinating subject.  Set in 18th century London, we are introduced to (again, or in this case the beginning of the trend) both a personal mystery and a national mystery.  National in scope, London in 1719 was fixated on what came to be known as the South Sea bubble -- a cycle of unfettered speculation on the stock shares (new concept) of the South Seas Company - a monarchy-chartered enterprise to exploit England's dominance in sea-faring and exploration (not to mention colonization and exploitation).  Liss leads us through the ins and outs of stock trading, insider trading, and shady brokers (timely, huh?).  The personal story is carried by Benjamin Weaver, ex-pugilist champion turned thief-taker and strong-arm man.  Weaver is an unusual man for his time - a Jew who is estranged from his family and community, a boxer turned bandit cum Robin Hood.  Weaver gets involved in two seemingly unrelated cases -- the first is that he suspects foul play in the unexpected death of his father and the second is a client quite anxious to reclaim some very important papers.   His involvement brings him into contact and conflict with Jonathan Wilde -- the king of London's "Thief-takers" -- head of a gang that offers to reclaim property stolen from the owners, when in fact committing the crimes in the first place.

All of this activity gets intertwined - Weaver, his father, the lost papers, and speculation in the South Sea Company, and Weaver's unique relationship to his heritage.  Liss introduces us to the top-and-bottom of London society -- the rising rich merchant classes, the Lords and Ladies, and the thieves, whores, and cut-purses.  They all converge in incredibly well drawn salons, coffee-houses, brothels, and gin joints.  Liss makes this world come alive - and as this novel was an outgrowth of his Ph.D. dissertation, I am assuming the details are correct.  Regardless of accuracy, Liss provides an action-packed world and an relatively unforgettable main character.  A Conspiracy of Paper was every bit as good as The Coffee Trader.

A Spectacle of Corruption is the sequel to A Conspiracy of Paper and in the way of most sequels, while interesting and entertaining, it is not as good as his two previous (and one subsequent) efforts.  in Spectacle, Benjamin Weaver is back, this time accused of murder and thrown into the infamous Newgate prison.  With the help of an unknown (to Weaver) accomplish, he manages to escape (in terrific style, I must say) only to find himself hip-deep in the political machinations of the Jacobites who are agitating for the overthrow of the King George I in favor of the recently de-throned James II, a Catholic.  The most exciting parts of A Spectacle of Corruption involve Ben Weaver in action - in disguise as a wealthy plantation owner, in courting a key adversary's sister, or as muscle in the head-bashing that accompanies the political rivalries.  Less successful is Liss' attempts to explain the details of the Whig/Tory rivalries and the abundance of deux-ex-machina situations and coincidences that appear just a bit too contrived....however, once through the political details and suspending disbelief on the other stuff, Liss provides a pretty good action novel that is, once again, rich in details about a life long past.  Still worth the effort and it is fun following Benjamin Weaver wrestle with both his heritage and his love life.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of March, a book I disliked so much I declined to review it.  However, my spouse and I agreed that our Hannukah gifting this year would be limited (for the adults) to one moderate gift, and her gift to me was a limited edition replica of the Sarajevo Haggadah.  The real story of the Sarajevo Haggadah is fascinating and stirring (CTRL click to see the Wikipedia entry). Geraldine Brooks wrote People of the Book and mostly fictionalized the story.  The combination of getting a replica of the Haggadah and the fact that my wife's book group loved the book prompted me to put my past experience with March behind me and give Ms. Brooks another try.  Another impetus to give Ms. Brooks another try was my discovery that she is married to the author Tony Horwitz, author of Blue Highways, one of the most intriguing (and hilarious and educational) travelogues cum history lessons I have ever read.  So, I began.

I could not put this book down.  I fell asleep on it on a Friday night, woke up Saturday morning, made coffee, and finished the book.  Brook's fiction is virtually complete - there are only a few real facts on which she builds her novel, but that is really OK.  There are really good invented backstories - and while there is a very real manuscript and manuscript conservation expert as well as a couple of heroic Bosnian Muslim librarians in the novel and in reality, Brooks is quick to point out that the novel's personalities are in no way based on the historical figures.  With that, you are off to the races as Brooks intertwines a personal and family mystery with a fictionalized explanation of how this 500+ year-old manuscript was created, sheltered, and finally brought into the limelight following the Bosnian/Serb/Croat war that reduced most of Sarajevo to rubble.

The personal family story includes a tip-of-the-hat to old adage that all families are dysfunctional in their own special ways.  In this case the Austrialian manuscript restorer, Hanna Heath, deals with her single parent domineering and hypercritical neurosurgeon of a mother (incredibly well drawn) and on top of that an affair with a Bosnian Muslim whose child was made comatose by a sniper, and professional betrayal.

Alernating chapters bring progess on the Hanna Heath personal story and explanations of how the Sarajevo Haggadah got to be where and what it was.  Following a few clues - an insect wing found in the binding, a set of missing silver clasps, a wine stain, a tiny few salt crystals, a white hair and a couple of historical recreations, Hanna's personal adventures advance with our understanding of how this manuscript was treated, transported, and working backwards, created.

Brooks' main characters are interesting and believable - though some of the explanations of their behavior and motivations are a bit contrived.  Brooks pulls it off however by making the situations (both "real time" with Hanna and historically with the Haggadah) intriguing and the dialogue crisp - humor applied sparingly but quite effectively.  By using the backdrop of the actual Bosnian war as  informative background, modern-day parallel of the religious strife that accompanied the Haggadah's semi-miraculous survival, and a reflective look at the unfortunate paucity of elapsed time exhibiting the peaceful coexistence of Muslims, Christians, and Jews (of which Sarajevo, after WWII but prior the the war in the 90s seemed to represent).  Fictional history well told.  Personal and family adventures interesting and well-drawn.  Have fun with People of the Book and you will learn a few things along the way.

The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer

Unless you are on either extreme fringe of today's American politics, you are probably somewhat conflicted by US policy towards Iran.  Are they a threat?  Will they really try to create a nuclear weapon?  Do they really sponsor anti-American terrorists?  Should we confront them militarily or will diplomacy work?  Are they really an existential threat to Israel?

The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer should answer any number of those questions - not through political exegesis by through the subtle exploration of one family's experience with post-revolution Iran.  Here is a picture of the day-to-day erosion of basic civil liberties and civil behaviors that the Iranian revolution put in place and has kept in place since the Islamic regime took over.  Sofer's family escaped this darkening place in 1982 (when she was 10 years old), but her tale of what happened to her Jewish family is harrowing and telling.  Without warning, without legal foundation, and without mercy, her father is visited by the Revolutionary Guards and taken away to prison.  It is fairly clear that his only crimes are being Jewish in an Islamic state, and having had a once thriving jewelry store whose assets are now coveted by others.  Success, wealth, and having once served those who served the Shah are enough reasons for loss of liberty, property, and dignity.

Sofer tells her story in three tracks.  First, the story of how her mother tries to keep her family together and free from harm.  This is complicated by Dalia's theft of some very important papers (regarding her father) from the Warden of the prison that holds her father (the Warden's daughter was a playmate).  Second, the story of her non-religious brother's life in New York where he is struggling to make a living, but falls in love with the daughter of his Hasidic landlord.  Third, through the story of her father's experience in prison.

Sofer is best when describing a character's feelings - though she tends toward a bit more introspection and perhaps self-pity than is always comfortable.  Her dialog is not spectacular (and occasionally a bit contrived) But much more often than not, she is terrifically accurate in her descriptions of the emotional impact of events on people.  How she feels being deprived of her father, her playmates, her school.  How her brother feels being stereotyped and profiled in New York, how he feels about his European devout landlord, how he feels being poor.  Best drawn, perhaps are her mother and father - both suffering privations they never contemplated and both figuring out how to survive.  In the mother's case, being deprived of her husband, her security, and her whole world view.  In the father's case, being exposed to random terror and torture, to constant threats and the loss of any standing.  Sofer makes the reader feel each hurt, each slight, each small (and large) stripping away of comfort and dignity.

Moreover, Sofer's account reads eerily and scarily like anything you have ever read about the coming of the Nazi's to power and the implementation of the Nuremberg laws. Are the Iranians a threat?  Perhaps not the people, but any government that would perpetrate upon its own people what this one has is very definitely a threat.  Yes, of course, the Jews come (and came) first as targets...but then come the liberals, the educated, the Christians, and so on.  We have seen this before and we know where it ends.  Pastor Martin Niemöller reaction to the inaction of Germany's intellectuals is quite germane here:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

George Santyana said so correctly, " Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it".  Dalia Sofer has shown us the present threat and reminded us of the past threat in The Septembers of Shiraz, and we should heed the warning.

1945 by Robert Conroy

I love alternative history -- the what if exploration of what history might have been like if just one thing had happened differently.  What if Genghis Khan had not died and thus the Mongol army had not retreated from the borders of Vienna?  What if John Wilkes Booth had missed or What if Robert E. Lee had accepted a commission with the Union Army.  Harry Turtledove has made a career out of these -- but I find them hit or miss.

Robert Conroy has written three alternative histories, and the latest, 1945, is an exploration of American and Japanese politics and military strategy.  Here's the deal, the militarists in Japan seize Emperor Hirohito before he can surrender and the United States (with no help from its Russian Allies) is forced to proceed with the invasion of the Japanese mainland.  As the casualties mount, support for the effort produces hawks and doves in America and political unrest rises.  In Japan, desperate fanatics use desperate tactics to "protect" the homeland and repel the invaders. Real Japanese military patriots try to find a way to save their country from massive loss of life.  American military commanders who now have men in the field try to minimize casualties while maximizing territorial gains -- and hold off the nuke 'em into the stone age factions.  Add a couple of plot twists like a Japanese-American spy for the US who happens to find out where the Emperor is being held and a still active (and still arrogant) General MacArthur and you are off to the races.

I found the military strategy to be simply fascinating - and though I do not know how much real research Conroy did, it was pretty convincing to me.  This was a quick, entertaining and quite interesting read.  Have fun with it.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a wonderfully written and inventive work of fiction.  Do not let the fact that it was chosen by Oprah's Book Club set you off of it.  Wroblewski's first novel is an intriguing story that weaves multiple (but very familiar) themes together with great skill, terrific prose, and gut wrenching emotion.  Edgar Sawtelle is also  fantastical in very interesting and compelling ways.

At its simplest, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a family story -- and as it has been said, each family is dysfunctional in its own ways.  The Sawtelle family raises and trains a (fictitious) breed of dog whose reputation for companionship, courage, and comportment has made them popular and desirable.  Edgar, born mute, is the only child and dog raiser and trainer-in-training for the family business set in the beautiful country of rural Wisconsin.  Trouble comes when Edgar's paternal uncle, Claude returns to the farm and with the subsequent unexpected and sudden death of Edgar's father. At its most complex, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a rural American retelling of Hamlet with a bit of fantasy built in.

Wroblewski's prose is lyrical and detailed, lovingly crafted and a delight to read.  One of the various small sub-stories within the novel is the art and science of naming the pups -- a job of heavy import and responsibility that falls for the first time to Edgar early in the story.  Wroblewski's exploration of the meaning, the options, the seriousness and love and care that Edgar devotes to this task is a small wonder.  I for one would not have thought that dog-naming would be a topic that held much interest.  Wrobelski makes it fascinating and engaging.

Intertwined with the other details of dog-raising and training that Wrobelski makes interesting and even fascinating, he has also made the dogs into characters themselves.  The litter of pups that Edgar gets responsibility for training (also his first go at this task) each develops real, individual personalities.  Edgar's best friend, and a first-rate example of what the Sawtelle dog breed represents, is his companion Almondine.  In a way that seems to fit the story, without being overly weird or fantastical, Almondine narrates a few chapters -- Wroblewski's use of the dog as observer of the human condition while not original, is very well done and believable.  The reader comes to feel for Almondine as one would for a human character that was well drawn.

Of course, the idyllic existence is not to last.  I give nothing away by telling you that the plot convention is that Edgar suspects Claude's nefarious involvement in Gar's (Edgar's father) unexpected death.   When a well-developed but ultimately failed attempt to implicate Claude goes disastrously wrong, the mute Edgar takes to the wilds of Wisconsin with three yearling dogs.  Wroblewski's ability to bring you close into the life of the family is equally well done as he describes how a young teenager and three spectacularly trained dogs can survive on their own in the woods of Wisconsin.

This book has marvelous touches.  The description of Edgar's mother taking her "unusual" child to the local wise-but-strange old woman after having endured the long run of doctors with no diagnoses and no suggestions is but a glimpse of Wrobelski's weaving of the normal with the 20-degrees off normal and making it work.  Later in the book there are interactions between the humans and an almost ephemeral stray dog that seems to appear and vanish.  Wrobelski's painting of the rural Wisconsin environs - the wind, the rain, the sunlight are pictures painted with words.

This is a book worth reading for its wonderful use of language and its details of life.  Upon my first reading of the book, I was angry with the ending.  Upon reflection and with a couple of re-readings of the ending, I have come to appreciate what Wroblewski has created with The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Remember how I describe the book at the beginning of this review.  I encourage you to pick this up and enjoy it.

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

I do not know what fascinates me more about India -- the fact that it is the world's largest democracy, a technological nuclear-armed marvel with the greatest disparity imaginable between the haves and have nots or the fact that it is so entirely foreign to me - caste system, Hindu-dominated, unbearable weather, and an education system that graduates more superior engineers in one year than the US does in 5 years.

Regardless of the source of my fascination,  The Space Between Us reminded me that yes, again, the things that make cultures different are dwarfed by the things that are similar -- in this case, the fact that all families are dysfunctional in their own way, that the gulf between the servant under-class and the well-to-do is more about opportunity and luck than it is about desire and wisdom and finally, that power corrupts -- those that have the ability to exert power over others and do so for their own pleasure do so because they can - plain and simple.

The Space Between Us is reminiscent of A Fine Balance but is set in modern-day urban India.  It is a very personal and intimate story of three women -- Sera Dubash, an upper middle class housewife trapped in an abusive marriage; Bhima, her servant of twenty years and Bhima's pregnant college-dropout grand-daughter, Maya Phedke.  There is also Sera's daughter-in-law, Dinaz and her son, Viraf and her husband, Feroz.  This book is about family drama and culture and the intermingling of both.  This book is also devastatingly drawn around the pain of everyday life.  While caste, religion and culture color everything - -and India is very clearly a foreign place (to this reader), the themes and results are universal, they happen everywhere, to everyone.

The magic and miracle of The Space Between Us lies in Thrity Umrigar's ability to have us feel for Sera, Bhima, and Maya while despising Viraf and Feroz without it becoming a parody.  We have empathy for the women and disgust for the men and it feels right.  So, culture, tradition, and economic disparity all combine to create empathy amidst tragedy. Umrigar is able to put us in these people's homes and lives in a way that creates familiarity - or at least a sensitivity - regardless of the foreignness of the reality.  I have never lived in an urban Indian slum, but I have visited there with Bhima and Maya.

The Space Between Us is not for the faint of heart, nor is it a great book for those who are depressed.  The themes and outcomes are dark and full of hurt and injustice -- and are very, very real.

The Ender Series by Orson Scott Card

The Ender Series by Orson Scott Card

 

I have just finished a sci-fi orgy – reading, in order, Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, and Ender’s Shadow.  The series started in 1977 and the last of the ones that I read was published in 1999.  Card is nothing if not prolific, the author of some 50 books in a number of series ranging from science fiction to women of the book of Genesis.

 

To the books:  if was 14 again, I would have adored these novels.  The plots are modestly engaging if uncomplicated, not particularly involved or challenging. The dialog is similar – it keeps you going, but is not really scintillating very often. However the science fiction is relatively cool, and the characters are able to do very interesting things – there are battles between siblings, there is politics, religion, war, philosophy and ethics.  There is romance, but not much sex (more on that later).  There are multiple worlds and faster-than-light travel and sentient computer programs.  There are “games” kids play while relaxing that are actually liked to alien minds. There are interesting ideas for sure and intriguing uses of cultures (not many folks can combine Samoan culture with higher-order artificial intelligence and create an entire world where those with obsessive-compulsive disorders are revered for their genius.

 

Moreover, these novels won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in back to back years (a rarity if not the only instance of this happening) and Card has be lauded by many literary organizations, authors, and academic institutions.

 

So, what’s not to like?

 

I felt vaguely uncomfortable after reading the first novel, Ender’s Game and that discomfort continued through the rest of the novels.

 

First, the Ender series is based on the notion that the world is breeding children for intelligence while at the same time controlling the population (i.e., 2 children per couple).  The 5, 6, 7, and 8 year-olds are plucked from their families and trained for combat.  The earth, and all humanity is preparing for another encounter with the Formics (aka the Buggers) who were only narrowly (and admittedly, by sheer luck) defeated in their first foray into humanity’s hegemony.  I found these toddlers spouting Clausewitz, studying tactics, formed into mock armies that fight each other at The Battle School at bit off-putting.  You have to buy into the premise – that the entire human universe needs a commander capable of leading all of the human’s military might against the enemy and that commander is going to – after 70 years of searching – come from someone who is between 8 and 12 years old.   When Star Trek did eugenics in “The Wrath of Khan”, it was kind of cool.  Card doing it with babies who kill each other – pretend-wise in mock battles, in reality due to interpersonal conflicts and to survive alone in the future’s big city slums, is creepy.  Sort of like that investment banking commercial with the talking baby in the high chair….kinda creepy.

 

Second, the major ethical issue of the series is xenocide – the complete and total destruction of an alien race.  Xenocide is the result of the training of these young children to be military commanders and Card deals with both the acculturation of these young leaders that enables it, and the adults who place all their faith – and the fate of all humanity – on a bunch of kids they have brutally trained in uber-Darwinian fashion.  Without giving too much away, Card’s biggest dilemma is not the actual fact of xenocide, but the fact that he has created a sympathetic character – a child yet – who is both responsible, but also a “victim”.  Sound familiar – a boy traumatized (by both the upcoming conflict and the adults who are training him) and convinced that this alien race is going to destroy humanity.  Thus, the total destruction of this race is justified. The parallels were/are disturbing – and they were really disturbing for Elaine Radford who asserts that Card is creating an apologia for Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.  See Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman at http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html.  Radford is more than a bit extreme, but she has a very provocative perspective.

 

It would appear that Card is saying that IF your intentions were legitimate, then there is no moral dilemma.  And here is where I was most disturbed by Card.  In his series, two different children end up in position where they could kill another child (in one case, twice).  With the first child (the double killer), the intentions were titularly self defense and safety and the results are two dead children. However, it is abundantly unclear that death was the only solution -- and the perpetrator was never told he had killed someone.  In the second case, while clearly taking care of a real threat to his life, a child plots, plans, and executes a very involved plan that could, but does not end up in a killing.  In Card’s world, the first child, the real killer of children is as clean as the second child who did not kill because his intentions were morally correct.  I don’t buy it and neither does John Kessler, who has written a much more elegant discussion of what is fundamentally disturbing about Orson Scott Card’s morality here – see Creating the Innocent Killer at  http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm

 

Third, my search for info on Orson Scott Card found the two articles above, but also found an enormous amount of bad press about the guy.  Do an Internet search and you find any number of people who have bad things to say about Card, e.g.,

 

First, an accusation that he is a homophobe.  Catch this quote “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no comparison. A black as a person does not by being black harm anyone. Gay rights is a collective delusion that’s being attempted. And the idea of ‘gay marriage’ — it’s hard to find a ridiculous enough comparison.”  Now, to be fair, Card was raised as a Mormon and writes compassionately about the Catholic Church and neither of those institutions have been exactly soft on homosexual rights.

 

Second, he has accused Barack Obama of being an “elitist” and holding environmentalism as a religion because of comments Obama has made about the USA's disproportionate impact on the environment "We already know, from Obama's comments at a private meeting with big-pocket donors in San Francisco that he's an elitist who sneers at the common people who cling to religion and guns because they're bitter about job losses twenty years ago. But what this statement reveals is that Obama's real religion has nothing to do with Reverend Wright. Obama is a true believer in the religion of Environmentalism. Not the science of the environment. Where that science survives, it provides us with a vital service; and it doesn't take any faith to believe in the findings of genuine scientists doing science properly.  No, I'm speaking of the religion. It's not an organized religion (though the U.N. did organize the great testament of faith in the utterly unproven doctrine of human-caused global warming…”

Now that’s kinda off-the-wall – particularly the comments about the UN – what’s next, ranting about “black helicopters”?

Third, he is more than occasionally swept away by his religious beliefs. While writing about Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (and making at least a cogent argument for why it should not be seen as anti-Semitic), he shouts out this one, "Hollywood touts itself as courageous -- just like the rest of the PC Left -- whenever they stomp on Christians. It's part of the elitist war on Christianity that's clearly going on. Other people's ethnic heritage "folk beliefs"can be celebrated in school -- but Christian customs and beliefs can hardly be mentioned.” Sorry, Orson Scott Card, but you will have to do a lot more that quote Pat Buchanan to get me to believe there is any effective concerted effort to prosecute a “war” on Christianity in the United States. If anything, coming from someone who is not Christian but lives in a very conservative, Christian county, the battle is to get most people to understand that not everyone is Christian.

So, wrapping all this up….it would appear that Mr. Card is an inventive writer, a man of deep religious beliefs, a author committed to advancing the state-of-the-art of writing, and more than occasionally a writer of deeply conservative and reactionary screeds.  A complicated man.

So, it is a mixed bag for sure.  However, I do not believe I will be buying any more of Mr. Card’s books.

Polaris by Jack McDevitt

A friend recommended Jack McDevitt to me -- and it is truly a gift to be given a new author who turns out to be compatible.  I picked up Jack McDevitt's Polaris and was very pleasantly surprised by this well written mystery cum sci-fi novel.  Now, this is not great literature, but Polaris is an engaging story, well written, with a couple of very well-drawn and very interesting characters.  The mystery is better than fair and the sci-fi is quite well done -- and not over-done (by overdone I typically mean sci-fi with too many made up names with lots of strung together odd consonants and lots of strange alien creatures).

This mystery is narrated by our protagonist -- a savvy, smart woman with a great sense of irony and a very dry sense of humor.  McDevitt does a pretty good job of presenting a far human future (say 2,000 years from now) that is recognizable but enough different and with enough good ideas about what it might contain to keep the reader interested.  His main chararcter, Chase Kolpath, is interesting and intriguing and worth the sequel that this book pretty much guarantees would be a good idea.

I plan on reading more of McDevitt and I recommend him to you.

Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley

I can not believe I have never reviewed any of Walter Mosley (or if I have, I can not find it).  In either case, it is an error in judgment.  Mosley is a prodigious author, 11 Easy Rawlins novels, 13 or so other fiction novels and a number of non-fiction works.

I have read a number of the Easy Rawlins novels, including the latest, Blonde Faith and I recommend them all for a variety of reasons. Mosley writes mystery fiction very well.  His plots, while not complex, are interesting and intriquing.  His characters (developed over many years and many novels) are even more interesting and intriguing.  However, Mosley's towering accomplishment is to invite the reader, particularly the white, middle-class (or better) reader, into a world we rarely see and often work hard to avoid.  Want to know why black men are angry?  Want to know what it is like to be suspected, scrutinized, scorned, and excoriated simply because of the color of your skin?  Want to know what it is like to operate in a world where almost every member of the "establishment", from governmental official to policeman to doorman makes an immediate (and typically negative) assessment of who you are and your purpose with one look at you?  Read the Easy Rawlins books and you will know....and once you know, it will eat at you and make you feel ashamed of your own, even unconscious behavior.  Because, as they say on Avenue Q, "we are all a little bit racist, you know".

Easy Rawlins is an unoffical private investigator who lives a sometimes hardscrabble and sometimes not-so-hardscrabble life in the Los Angeles of the 50's and 60's.  He is a WWII vet who saw all of man's inhumanity to man in the European theatre and returns to a different, but unfortunately similar, world in the post-war LA.  He grew up in Houston's famously dangerous Fifth Ward, and his best friend as a child (and as a man) is a cold-blooded killer and expert thief with the antithetical nickname of "Mouse".  Within all of this, and with all his work, he assembles a relatively non-traditional family and becomes a caring and dedicated father.

In Blonde Faith, Mouse's wife tells him that Mouse is wanted for murder (another friend of Easy's) and is missing.  Knowing the LAPD's obsession with Mouse, Easy is convinced that they will shoot first and ask questions later - regardless of the truth.  To complicate the feeling of loss, Easy has lost the woman he truly loves - she is about to marry another man.  Easy's typically difficult search for dignity and lack of pain in the world is very much multiplied by his personal life.

Mosley writes about what it is to be a man as much as he writes about what it is to be a black man.  Sometimes they are the same thing, often they are not.  Being a black man in 1960's LA is more complicated than being a white man -- and Mosley demonstrates this with amazing fluidity without turning to polemic.  The truth is so apparent that all he has to do is show it to you -- and that is an art form in and of itself.

Blonde Faith's plot plays out nicely but it is the characters - Easy, Mouse, the bartender, Easy's friends, including a restaurant manager, a black technology whiz and the supposed murder victim (a special forces vet by the name of Christmas Black) and the cops who make Mosley's Easy Rawlins novels work so well.

Mosley also has range.  He has written everything from good non-fiction to good and inventive science fiction (try Futureland).  Be entertained and learn something.  That's a pretty good one-two punch.  Walter Mosley delivers in style.

Short Takes (April) Non-Fiction

Back to the Library.  You know, you would think I would have figured out long ago how much cheaper it is to pay late fees rather than buy books.  So, just like the SciFi, I have been trolling around in the new non-fiction section.

Desperate Passage by Ethan Rarick is a quite well written new look at the tragedy of the Donner Party.  The story I was familiar with was one of bad luck resulting in horrific tragedy as this hapless group of California-bound migrants gets stuck in a big winter storm in the Sierra Nevadas.  As people die of starvation the group turns to cannibalism to stay alive.

Rarick takes new evidence and a fresh look and brings together an even more compelling story of arrogance, ignorance, boosterism, politics, and true heroism.  Pulling from family letters, recent medical research, and weather patterns, Rarick really shows how the truly bad decision-making and gullibility of the Donner Party combined with both the willful negligence of the "experts" hyping a new route west (some had never taken the path they recommended) and Sierra Nevada weather conspired to doom the Donner Party to privation and starvation.  Interesting tidbits include the fact that a much higher percentage of women survived versus men -- attributable to a) higher body fat of women; b) the fact that many of the men engaged in more physically challenging tasks, and c) the men were considerably older. Also, singles had a much lower survival rate than those with a family network.

While not racing prose, Rarick combines a decent narrative with historical artifacts and recent science to make an interesting book.  The Donner Party were initially thought of as blunderers who got what they deserved and were resurrected later as an example of tough frontier survivors with unconquerable spirit.  Certainly there were a few heroes whose story is awesome and compelling.  Rarick's conclusion is that the story is more than "gleaming heroism or sullied villainy...but a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous". 

My reading is somewhat different.  At every possible decision point, The Donner Party made the wrong, bad decision - sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes for expedience, and sometimes due to arrogance or hubris.  Their track record was perfect....from their late start from Independence right up to the choice to stay high in the Sierras rather than backtrack to lower altitude, the Donner Party picked wrong every time.  While not villainous, it was more than just bad luck.  I think they were arrogant and badly led and woefully underinformed.  Read the book and you can decide.

The Bounty by Caroline Alexander is another example of well trod ground being re-plowed.  Certainly almost everyone knows the story of Fletcher Christian and Captain Bligh's trip to Tahiti, the mutiny, the almost unbelievable seamanship demonstrated by Bligh to get his little lifeboat across 3,600 miles of ocean to civilization, and the mutineer's voyage to and subsequent life (and ultimate rediscovery) on Pitcairn's Island. 

Alexander is the author of Endurance, the story of Ernest Shackleton's amazing journey of survival in the Arctic.  The Bounty is not quite as gripping and compelling.  The Bounty is well researched and the story moves along reasonably well up to the trial of the mutineers that are recaptured on Tahiti and then (pardon the pun) it seems like the story is dragging an anchor.  The trial and punishment phase of the novel just do not provide the zip that the beginning and the end of the story seem to have.

However, if you ever wondered what really happened to Fletcher Christian (and the other mutineers on Pitcairn) or Captain Bligh (who became on of the Governor-Generals of Australia, among other things) or the poor blokes who remained behind in Tahiti and were tried for mutiny, you could do a lot worse than reading this -- just skim through a lot of the trial details.

Short Takes (April 2008) Science Fiction

Escapist, junk reading is fun....most of the time.  I have found my public library's "What's New" (i.e., just published) section to be a great place to try out stuff just based on title.  I admit I usually do this with Science Fiction I am unwilling to take a flyer on and buy. This time however, the SciFi was almost a strikeout, but not quite.

Hunter's Run by George R.R. Martin, Gardiner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham plays through and combines some interesting concepts (most not original, but then, few ever are), but is amazingly less exciting than the the prestige of the three authors would lead you to believe.  The idea that the third world's (earth's that is) poor end up as labor on a new world is not new.  In fact, Richard K. Morgan does it a lot better, but it is not done badly here.  The idea that humans interact with other species is not new either and that concept has been done better elsewhere.  The idea that an alien race is hiding out from another alien race on a planet colonized by humans is an interesting twist.  The idea that the aliens hiding out are part of a collective consciousness, but able to act independently has also been done before (remember the Borg?).  The idea that the aliens clone the human who ignorantly runs into them and risks exposing them and then uses the clone to track down the original who escaped from them is pretty cool (as is the idea that the clone doesn't know who he is chasing for quite some time).  However, the aliens are not particularly well developed as a concept and come off more like Marvel Comics characters than anything else.  Moreover, the chase through the jungle has been done before as well.  The ending - if you persevere long enough to get there - has a pretty good twist.  Joe Bob would tell you to check it out (because it reads like a B drive-in movie).

Patrimony by Alan Dean Foster is a young adult scifi book billed as a "Pip and Flinx" adventure and reads just like you would expect.  Lots of places with weird names (lots of consonants and lots of x's and z's), lots of planets and species with weird names and off-putting appearances and personal hygiene (how many times should a species that smells bad but can not smell themselves be used as a plot device?). The tip off should have been the subtitle, " A Pip and Flinx Adventure" - Flinx is the genetically altered human in search of his father and Pip is the equally genetically manufactured flying venomous snake that communicates telepathically with Flinx.  And, oh yeah, they ought to be out saving the universe by finding an ancient, sentient weapons platform with which to fight off the coming scourge, but..... You get the point.....you have to be 14 and really in love with SciFi.

Northern Canadian Farming

If you do not believe in destiny, how do you explain this?:  In the last month, and specifically while on vacation, I managed to pick up three books by two different authors all set in rural farming communities in Northern Canada (probably Ontario or Quebec). Reviews will follow for Mary Larson's Crow Lake (her first novel) and The Other Side of the Bridge and for Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves (her first novel).  Want more?  Both authors live in the United Kingdom. 

Both authors capture time and place very well and create universal themes with interesting characters.  Check out the reviews.

Crow Lake/The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson

Mary Lawson does not write action adventures.  There is plenty of action, and lots of adventure, but it is of the unfolding, slow reveal type.  Lawson's two books are engaging and captivating and carry the hallmark of what I love about great fiction -- they transport the reader to an unknown place and make it familiar and understandable and interesting.  Mary Lawson does that by taking us to rural farming communities in Northern Ontario.

In Crow Lake, we follow the trials, tribulations, and family interplay of the Morrison family as narrated by Kate Morrison as they work through how to survive the loss of their parents.  Kate has two teenage brothers and a younger sister and is reflecting back 20 years (from the present time) on the difficulties of that time.  Kate does this while trying to sort through her personal life in the present.  That present is more than a bit confused:  a relationship with a lover who wants more from her and her relationship with her favorite brother, who, while helping to develop in her the love of science which is her current profession, gave up his own promising development for reasons that are best discovered in the book.

Lawson is not breaking new ground here.  There is family tragedy and sacrifice.  There are incredibly dysfunctional families as neighbors.  Nature is capricious and cruel.  Being orphaned is both unfair and a tremendous challenge to overcome. Young men have sex drive.  As in most things, it is not the "what" as much as the how and why and where.

It is both the complete nature of place (the town, the farm, the weather), the people (Kate's family, the extended Morrison family who wants to help, the Pye's (the neighbors) with problems of their own, and the (pardon the multi-syllabic intervention) juxtaposition of what is happening in Kate's life in the present with what happened to Kate's life in the past that makes the "what" so captivating.  And captivating is the right word.  Lawson's prose is comfortable and familiar, yet rich and robust.  While there is some mystery to the story - it is not a mystery and it is not difficult to surmise what might happen or come next.  None of that diminishes the story nor the reader's delight in the short time spent in Crow Lake.

Lawson takes us back to Northern Ontario with many of the same themes in The Other Side of the Bridge.  The story begins in the depression and is focused on the characters and world of two brothers (Arthur and Jake Dunn) and the circumstances are once again familiar.  Arthur is a big, kind, and socially awkward boy (then man) who loves farming and hates school.  Jake is the prodigal son, effective in avoiding any semblance of work on the farm, smart, bright and accomplished in school (when he cares), good looking and attractive to women, and (at its most benign) a complete scamp.  Jake is expert at both getting what he wants and getting Arthur in trouble. The story is the relationship of the brothers, the relationship of a man to his land, a husband to his wife (and vice versa), a man and a woman to their honor.

It is also the story of Ian Christopherson, the son of the small town doctor, who both chafes severely at the assumption that he will assume the mantle of his father, is wounded severely by being abandoned by his mother, and is (as only a teenager can be) enthralled the significantly older woman who is Arthur's wife.  In a totally unexpected move (at least to his father and friends) , Ian takes a summer and weekend job working for Arthur on the farm.  It is through Ian's eyes that we see the town, its inhabitants, and its situation as other than fairy tale perfect.

As in Crow Lake, Lawson introduces some mystery into the story and again it is not hard to figure out.  And, once again, that in no way diminishes the power of the story.  There are two (perhaps two and one-half) plotlines here -- first, why did Laura marry Arthur and how does the relationship between Arthur and Jake resolve itself and second, what kind of person will Ian become and what will he become.

For the first, it is the universal situation of brothers in conflict and here there is conflict and manipulation and expediency and cruelty and kindness and redemption.  For the second, it is the universal coming of age story.  In both cases, Lawson does a masterful job of retelling these universal themes and the book, like her first, is captivating and engaging and powerful.

Enjoy Mary Lawson.

The Jew of Home Depot by Max Apple

"If I could just write like Max Apple......"  My guess is that most existing and aspiring authors will utter something along those lines after reading Max Apple's latest collection (his first in 20 years), The Jew of Home Depot.  These 13 individual gems sparkle and delight.

As the ad said, "you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy" Max Apple, but as my Jewish mother would say, "it doesn't hurt either".  Many of Max Apple's characters are Jewish, but in most cases their Jewishness serves to bring the human condition into brighter relief.  Apple can develop a full-formed character in a flash (or a couple of pages, at most) - in many cases, I have a better sense of Apple's characters after a few paragraphs than I get from some authors mid-way through their novels.  It is a wonderful and entertaining gift. He truly is a peer of Garrison Keillor and Calvin Trillin, who possesses similar gifts.

Apple ranges pretty wide.  In Yao's Chick, it is the saga of the abnormally tall first-generation Chinese from Vietnam daughter trying to make her way in America while dealing with her immigrant parents.  But it could be ANY first-generation American dealing with immigrant parents (or grand-parents)...Apple gets the nuances, but also captures the larger human experience that all first-gen folks go through.  In Stabbing an Elephant, a new senior Rabbi faces his first true political test -- how to deal with a powerful board member and a 4-year old child.  In the space of a couple of short paragraphs, Apple is able to demonstrate why the old Rabbi was beloved, how elastic Judaism can be, and how the personal and professional can become so incredibly tied together.  I am also sure that any person well versed in the clergy/congregation relationship will find humor and truth in the story.  In the Jew of Home Depot, it really does help to be Jewish, but the essence still rings through.  What happens when New York Lubuvitcher Orthodoxy meets Texas small town?  What happens when teenagers, no matter how sheltered, discover a new and different world.  What happens when desires are thwarted?  Apple gives a look inside, a glimpse of the way things are and they way things could be -- both for the better and for the worse.  In Sized Up, Apple ponders the fate of a man whose middle-aged crisis creates an inescapable desire for a child ("yet at 46, and not in love, he wanted a child").  When one amour, an attractive 40 year-old 6 confesses her horror at the idea of a pregnancy that would destroy her life-long size 6 and the another, a 30 year-old flight attendant insists that it is more important that she can always walk down the aisle of the plane with no problem, our protagonist becomes fixated on larger women.  Apple makes it believable, real, and terrific.

In my favorite story, Proton Decay, a middle-aged, very successful, never married Cleveland business man (3 pharmacies and a package store) falls for, then schemes to meet, a scientist who spends months under water in an abandoned salt mine looking for evidence of ....well, you get the point.  After seeing the article in the newspaper and the segment on 60 minutes, he is in love.  Max Apple makes it an interesting, engaging, and all together like-it-so-much-you-will-read-it-again story.

The art of the short story is nowhere near dead.  Max Apple alone ensures that it stays that way.

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

Let's cut to the chase quickly here.  I hated this book.  Not dislike, not did not care for, not indifferent or ambivalent or so-so or take it or leave it.  Hated it.  Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2007 and was one of the New York Times Best Books of 2007.  With all due respect, they could not be more wrong.

First, it is verbose and overlong - 614 pages that might (just might) have been a decent enough novel if cut roughly in half.  Second, for all of its descriptions, prose, and philosophy, only a very few of the many characters really are developed enough for the reader to really understand.  The characters that do stand out tend to be the ones making the shorter appearances (notably, Bill and James Houston's mother).  Third, you have read or seen all of this before in different places, and it was better the first time.  The insanity of war (Catch-22), the surreal nature of Vietnam (Apocalypse Now), how the government misrepresented the war (Bright, Shining Lie and The Best and The Brightest), the absurdity of it all (Going After Cacciato), what war can do to a individual survivor (Paco's Story and Close Quarters) and the 20/20 hindsight of what really happens to the "gung-ho" guys (Bright Shining Lie again) and many, many others.  Nothing in Tree of Smoke struck me as good as the same/similar character or situation I read/saw previously.

Finally,  this book was pitched as showing us the "moral and spiritual extremes of the Vietnam War" and for all of the clamor, really shows neither.  I could not find much spiritual about the book, let alone an extreme.  As far as the moral lessons, Tree of Smoke offers nothing new and the rehash of the old is mildly entertaining at its best and tedious most of the time.

I would not make the effort on this one.

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson is a superb biographer (his Benjamin Franklin: An American Life was simply terrific) and Einstein: His Life and Universe does not disappoint.  Of course with Franklin and Einstein it may be hard to go wrong, but Isaacson approached these giants not with awe but with interest and has created a terrific book.  This is not a simple recitation of time and events, but more focused on how Einstein thought, his personality and how that shaped how (and about what) he thought.  This makes for fascinating reading and Isaacson brings out how very self-aware Einstein really was when it came to his own scientific thinking.  I found it both striking and surprising how aware Einstein was of his becoming more of a "conservative" as he grew older -- switching from being the challenger of the status quo to defender. Einstein's scientific "conservatism" (as illustrated by his difficulties in embracing quantum theory development) come less from his hanging on to his own theories and more from his incredibly strong belief that "God does not play dice" with the universe.  That is, Einstein could not accept as complete the idea that there were not rules and principles that could explain how the universe worked -- that probabilities were all we could determine.  His conservatism came from an underlying and life-long conviction that there was an order to the universe that was structured and ordered, if currently beyond our (and his) grasp.  Isaacson gives us this insight and with it an understanding of and, in my case at least, a tremendous compassion for, Einstein's world view.

Isaacson also shows how that self-awareness was not quite so acute in Einstein's personal life - his estrangement from his first wife and first child, to his relationships with his subsequent children, to his seemingly random affairs.  Perhaps such is the case with such genius.  He was however, aware enough of his own capabilities not to accept the Presidency of the State of Israel -- knowing his talents were not diplomatic. 

One of Isaacson's unique contributions is his ability to bring Einstein to life as not only the genius, but also as the human, the citizen, the friend.  Einstein gave his personal support to Zionism and maintained a life-long aversion to, and resistance to, coercive, discriminatory, and thought-restrictive governments - Nazi, Soviet, or McCarthyism.  While originally a total pacifist, Nazi ideology and aggression made him revisit his philosophy and he lent his support to the Allied efforts to defeat Germany and Japan.  In scientific concerns, social concerns, and in life in general, Isaacson shows us a genius willing to learn from new facts, but steadfast in his principles.

Perhaps the greatest testimony to Isaacson's Einstein is, when finished with the book, not only did I think I had a small understanding of the man, I also had an overwhelming desire to have known Albert Einstein, to have walked and talked with him.  I think I would have enjoyed it very much. 

Israel Trip Journal

December 21/22:  Everything on time - just amazing.  Checked bags all the way through the transfer and then to Tel Aviv.  Security a breeze.  Flight was fine but even after the 2 and one-half Ambien tablets - NO SLEEP.  A bit of confusion over the kid's seats but everything worked out.

Lost no bags, got to the hotel and Uri picked us up (old friend of the family living in Rehovot) and we had a lovely meal with him and Dalia.  They have a terrific apartment next to the Weitzman Institute.  We caught up and then did a walking tour of the Institute which is beautiful - lots of great grounds, lots of buildings.  Uri showed us "his" building - the one he thought of, got funding for, and got built.  Uri drove us back (I had fallen asleep in a chair) and we went into Tel Aviv for sushi and then to the hotel and complete collapse.

December 23:  Ah, drugs.  Sleep was wonderful.  The rest of the group arrived a bit late so we just walked the boardwalk outside of the hotel to the Irgun museum (which the kids visited later).  It is a picture pretty blue Mediterranean beach.  We met the group at the Palmach museum.  This was a very moving experience - the story of the Haganah (which was formed from the Jewish Youth movement, the Jewish volunteers of WWI,  but mostly from the Jewish brigades that served the British in WWII) turning into the Israeli Defense Force and the battle for statehood.  Quite well done albeit a bit biased towards the Haganah vs. the Irgun.  Went to dinner at Magonda - a Yemenite restaurant - and had a terrific meal.  Hummus and salads and kabob of chicken and lamb followed by baklava and just a few Rolaids.  A wonderful day full of blue sky and temperature in the mid-60s.

December 24:  What an amazing change in topography.  From Tel Aviv to Be'er Sheva is like going from Missouri to Arizona (only in this case it is probably less than 75 miles).  The desert here is barren, dry browns, and desolate.  40 years wandering around in this was no mean feat.  Beautiful (if you like deserts and I do), but in places brutally devoid of life - no water, and almost no plant life.

On to Moshav Nevatim (a Moshav is a capitalist Kibbutz -- a voluntary cooperative with private property rights) the home of the Cochin Jews of India.  What a great story!  They claim a 3,000 year history as Jews and can prove well over 1,000 years.  Interesting to see a synagogue decorated in Indian designs and colors.  Special dresses for the High Holy Days look like the clothes my Indian sister-in-law gave my kids (made in her home town).  Had lunch at "Miriam's Kitchen", run by a couple that made Aliyah in the early 1950's from Cochin (as did most of the India Jewish community).  This was a real treat and my youngest daughter even ate the chickpeas!

From Nevatim to the Dead Sea - the surrounding desert is really dead looking land.  The water is some 30% salt -- try as I might, I could not keep my feet and dip my shoulders under the water.  Other than the Dead Sea itself (which is shrinking) and the surrounding desert geography, it could have been Marco Island, Florida -- tourist haven, hotels, buffet dinners, and pools.  The Dead Sea has now separated into two distinct bodies of water and the Israelis are pumping water from one to the other.  Issue is really flow from the Jordan River and Sea of Galilee - the source of ALL of Israel's drinking water.

December 25:  Masada (a Romanization of the Hebrew Metzada meaning "fortress") -- the desert is an overwhelming presence - stark, desolate, rugged.  Out of nowhere rises this mesa or butte upon which King Herod built a pleasure palace some 1300 feet above the Dead Sea.  Apparently Herod used the place to entertain guests rather than for much personal use.  This is where from 67 to 73 CE the last 1,500 resistors in the war between Rome and the Jews took refuge.  Taking the position from the Roman garrison and converting the bath houses into mikvehs, building a synagogue revealed by the geniza (the storage place for old sacred texts) that was discovered, the Jews of Masada lived here for 6 years until the Romans laid siege.  The defensive position was close to perfect, but not quite perfect enough.  Standing on the top, you can clearly see the Roman encampments and the siege wall and the ramp that the Roman general, Lucius Flavius Silva, ordered built up to the walls of the fortress.  Taking months and lots of casualties, the ramp was finally completed.  Upon breaching the walls however, the Romans found (here is the myth) that every man, woman, and child had committed suicide or been killed rather than become slaves of  Rome .  Thus ended Jewish independence in Judea.

On the way to Mitzpeh Ramon (a kibbutz), we stopped and visited David Ben-Gurion's tomb.  A striking setting that might best be describe to Americans as looking just like the badlands of North Dakota.  Situated on the edge of a deep canyon, in the middle of the desert that he so loved and believed would one day bloom, Ben-Gurion and his wife Paula stand testimony to the inventiveness and stubborn will to survive in this harsh climate.

Notes on 12/25: It is Christmas, but I have seen not one iota of any indication of the holiday since being in-country.  Nothing in Tel Aviv, the  Dead Sea , or any of our stops in the desert -- nothing.  Also passed a number of Bedouin encampments on the trip - ramshackle huts with camels tethered in a pen just next door.

Later that evening at the Hotel (the Ramon Inn), there was an "entertainer" in the lobby where we were having a drink -- you know, a guitar and recorded background music.  It was pretty funny sitting in a kibbutz hotel (originally a development community for immigrants) literally in the middle of nowhere listening to some Israeli guy singing "Hotel California".  When he did an Elvis tune he became known as Jelvis (Jewish Elvis).  Then the teen counselors and our security guard got up and started to sing along (I nick-named the trio as the "Jewpremes").  The guitar guy started doing Israeli and Jewish songs and all the kids under 19 started singing and dancing along -- and each of them had the biggest smile you have ever seen.  This went on for at least an hour and no way were the parents going to break this up.  Finally, around 11:30 pm our entertainer called it a night and the old folks got to collapse into bed...but what a memory.

December 26:  The Maktesh Ramon is a big hole in the ground.  It is 250 million years old and one of only a few of this type of geological formations on earth.  It looks like a much bigger version of every other desert canyon you have ever seen and that is about it.  It is cool to be able to look at a wall and know that every striation means going back in time a few million years.  And it is a very big hole.  We did stop at a volcanic "tel" (hill) and walked silently up and down.  Very quiet and very peaceful and still a complete wonder how a people could create a society and civilization and culture in such a barren place.  Apparently this location was a secret path between north and south used by the proto-Arabs engaged in the spice trades.

The desert seems to create a lot of religious and spiritual awareness -- maybe desolation and loneliness have something to do with it.  Or maybe it is the vastness of the space and the challenge and the smallness of our own capabilities that force humans to seek explanations beyond themselves.  But the theme is pretty clear in many religions - the cities are bad, and the desert is clarifying and cleansing.

On to Tel Beit Guvrin and the town of Tel Marisha -- a 2,300 year old location where they have excavated about 5,000 homes via their "basements".  These are man-made underground caverns where the inhabitants excavated the chalk to build their homes and then put their industry (olive oil production, textile making) in the space below their homes.  We participated in the dig and almost everyone found pottery shards --- one couple found almost a third of a pitcher - complete with handle.

Then on to Jerusalem -- just before sunset arriving at Mt. Scopus.  A panoramic view of the entire city with a bird's eye view of the Old City and the Kottel and the Dome of the Rock.  No matter your background, seeing this live for the first time was stirring and just a bit overwhelming.  It was quite neat to have a cup of wine and say the Shehechiyanu in this place.

December 27:  The Kottel is striking in what it represents and in its physical appearance.  Even more impact is achieved when there is an IDF induction ceremony taking place on the Kottel plaza in front of the wall.  Fathers and Mothers congratulating their sons and daughters - kissing them, clapping them on the back with a hug, shaking their hands.  It was an amazing moment for any parent, but particularly amazing for the parents of teenagers (as we are).  None of this prevented anyone from praying at the wall, and many did so, completely oblivious of the ceremony.

I put my friends' prayers in the wall and said the Shehechiyanu and touched the wall and stood back and watched the devout davening (praying, typically nodding forward and back with and for emphasis).  I did not get the spiritual spark that some say they experience at the Wall.  I looked at all this activity and wondered how close to idolatry it all really was.  I begrudge no one their faith or practice, but it did strike me that it did not move me.  To the left of the men's sections start the Kottel "tunnels" -- just directly next to the outdoor wall section there were 4 rooms covered by Byzantine arches (on top of which, the city of Jerusalem continues to operate, I presume).  These were full of men, mostly orthodox and many ultra-orthodox davening and dancing and yes, it is praying to God but I found the induction ceremony more moving, fuller of emotional content. 

Perhaps my experience was colored by the incident at the Kottel overlook (before we went down to the plaza and the wall).  As the IDF was practicing for the ceremony, they played the Hatikvah (Israel's national anthem).  One of the Hebrew speakers in our group asked a black-hatted and suited ultra-Orthodox man to stop talking during the playing of the national anthem and his response was "it isn't like this is the Amidah (a very important prayer), so I can talk".  This is just one indication of what little value he placed on the State of Israel, without which, of course, he would not be able to get anywhere near this place.  The modern Orthodox community is the backbone of the state and of the IDF, but many ultra-Orthodox are removed from this - Torah study exempts them from military service, and they are subsidized by the state and have very little to do with the secular world....but command great power and authority.  There are no reform or conservative marriages in Israel - only the Orthodox.  Only the Orthodox can declare a conversion valid.  But this small sliver commands great political power in Israel 's multi-party parliamentary democracy.  And the ultra-Orthodox birth rate dwarfs any other segment. Israel is going to struggle mightily with this in the future -- how to attach all groups to the support of the State, retaining Israel's role as a Jewish State, and accommodating an increasingly pluralistic (Ultra-Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative/Reform, and secular) society.  I suspect it will not be easy.

There is a connection between Yad Vashem and the Kottel (at least in my mind).  The loss of the Temple in 70 CE (same war that resulted in the Masada incident) and then the failed Bar Kokhba revolt in the mid-130s (also against the Romans) resulted not only in military defeat and the destruction of the Temple, but in the destruction of the nation.  The Romans cleared Judea of its Jewish population.  We lost the center of the religion, the land upon which we lived, and the ability to defend ourselves as we became (mostly) the Diaspora.  How different Jewish history might have been had we lost the Temple, but not the nation.  Temples can (and were) rebuilt.  It took 1,900 years to recover the nation.

The Kottel tunnels run almost the entire length of the western wall of the Temple Mount (the Temple Mount was the "box" Herod had built on top of the rugged mountain to provide a flat building surface for the Temple).  The tunnels show both architecture and archeology and date from 2,300 years ago,  layer upon layer.  Starting with bedrock, then a fortress built by the Hasmoneans, then Herod's Temple Mount, then the Romans, the Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Moslems (who built the Dome of the Rock).  In places the excavations can be seen to run 30-50 feet down and as much up - all stonework.  The "tunnel" is underground, but the "floor" is really the shopping street in Herod's time (and for the Romans following) and this is underneath the current Old City Moslem Quarter.  The impact is physical and utterly captivating and we saw only a tiny piece of the excavations.  Of course, the Israeli's can not excavate underneath the Temple Mount without causing a war with the Moslems.

Also toured the old City of David, site of King David's palace.  This is not attached to the Temple Mount but is in a different section of town.  Actually, there was not that much to look at as the excavations are ongoing.  There are some very impressive walls (figuring this is coming up on 2,800 years ago) and you can see rooms (with toilet, no less).  But mostly, the evidence is being uncovered as the first physical proof of Davidic times -- real evidence of David's City - the one of legend.  The fact that the entrance is currently a pop and chip shop does detract a bit from the solemnity of the place -- an admission I hate to make but must in the spirit that the absurd usually meets reality somewhere.

December 28:  Yad Vashem made me cry.  While not a Ph. D. candidate, I have seen the pictures, read the books, and seen the movies and documentaries about the Shoah, so it was not the content.  Our guides recounting the story about a boy who did not want to be separated from his mother when they got off the train at the camp.  He shouted at her as she pushed him away into a different line "I hate you and hope you die" only to end up as a survivor of the camps (while his mother was obviously not).  This boy's (now a man) recounting of the pain of remembering his last words to his mother was beyond painful, beyond the large lump in the throat caused by seeing pictures.  But it was the Children's Memorial that made me lose it....walking through the endless lit candles as the names of 1.5 million children are being read and remembering the parents who could not protect them and THEN seeing the memorial to Korczak (Korczak and the Children of the Ghetto) -- it was too much and the tears came freely.  I think every time I am faced with this issue - a parent's inability to protect their children - I think of my father's reaction to the death of my sister and I begin, just a tiny bit, to understand what desperate hopelessness must feel like.

The world, or at least the majority of the world most of the time, does not seem to care much for Jews who defend themselves and whether we live here in Israel or not we are always lumped together.  It is not Israelis that the Arabs talk about destroying, it is the Jews.  If we ignore the signals -- from Iran, or Syria, or Hamas, or Hezbollah, or from those who want Israel to become a secular state or those who think Pat Buchanan has something to say, or the French who have proved unable and/or unwilling to protect their Jewish citizens against violence from Moslem Arab gangs, or British journalists and academics who boycott Israel (before they ever boycotted the IRA), or the fact that the International Red Cross recognizes the Red Crescent but refuses to recognize Magen David Adom (Red Star of David), or the fact that debates on whether the Shoah actually occurred regularly appear on US college campuses (imagine if the debate topic was whether slavery occurred), or the anti-Israel reporting and misrepresentation that is a routine part of NPR and CNN and the BBC and many US and European newspapers, or the state-sponsored distribution of Nazi and Russian generated anti-Semitic literature that runs daily in Arab media...and on and on.  If we ignore these signals then we are bound to repeat history.  The only two reasons I believe will stand in the way of such tragedy are the State of Israel (and the IDF) and my strong belief that the United States has a moral compass (occasionally terribly off target but generally on target give enough time and a big enough crisis) that would compel it to act when no others would or will.  It is the reality here in Israel and the fact of this Jewish State (as the declaration of independence puts it) that truly serves notice about never again and  I, for one, am glad that the world will have to get used to the idea that Jews are no longer stateless, powerless, nor helpless.

So the past two days converge at the Kottel, celebrating the 2,000 year old dream come true and Yad Vashem, celebrating the survival of a stubborn people who refuse to give up or surrender.

A further celebration of life was our post-Yad Vashem trip to the shuk (market) – the big open air market
in Jerusalem where fruits, vegetables, and baked goods (among other food stuffs) are sold.  On a Friday afternoon prior to Shabbat the place is positively teeming with people of every imaginable stripe who are haggling, bumping, and jostling with each other to get the Sabbath treats they need.  It is the North Market on Barry Bonds steroids and populated by the Jewish United Nations.

A late lunch at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant just off the main streets of the shuk was fabulous.  Sat down and got served 6 different “salads” – olives, pickles, pickled cabbage, curried cabbage, eggplant, and something akin to salsa PLUS a stack of steaming hot pita bread.  Then we ordered.  We ordered the “Jerusalem mix” and the waiter asked if we knew what it was.  When we said not really, he informed us that it was “all the insides of the chicken” and suggested we try the regular chicken which was “very juicy”.  We beat a dignified retreat and agreed with our waiter.  It was all delicious and for the nine of us it came out to about 280 shekels  -- about $8 apiece.

That night we attended one of the oldest (and one of the few) Progressive (Reform) synagogues in Jerusalem (or the whole country for that matter).  I could follow most of the service.  It was more contemplative than our services – but with no emotional highs or excitement.  However, it did illustrate the ease of holding services in your native language.

December 29:  A day off (Shabbat gets observed in Jerusalem for the most part).  Went back to the Old City via the Jaffa Gate and wandered around until we found the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which was build by Constantine’s mother, Queen Helena sometime after 327 CE.  This is the place where Jesus was crucified (Golgotha) and we did see the crest of the hill – the rock – upon which this deed took place.  It is also a location that Helena decided was where Jesus lay following his crucifixion (turns out that it probably is not in reality) but it is still held to be a very holy site and there were many pilgrims paying homage.  Given that it was Shabbat, most of the people were definitely Christians (many praying) or American or European tourist Jews who are not shomer shabbos (Sabbath observant).

We walked from the Church back to the Kottel and tried to get up on the Temple Mount to see the Dome of the Rock, but it was closed (maybe because of Shabbat).  So we went out to the south and exited the Old City by the Dung Gate and then walked around the Old City to the west until reentered at the Zion Gate.  We then walked the entire length of the Old City from Zion Gate to Damascus Gate, through the Old City shuk.

The shuk is organized according to the old principle of where to locate the second ice cream stand on a long stretch of beach (answer:  right next to the first ice cream store).  Thus, you tend to pass by sections of purveyors of the same thing – 10 rug stores in a row, 20 souvenir shops, 15 t-shirt stores, etc.  On Shabbat in the Jewish Quarter, most everything was closed.  The Armenian section was open for business selling tchoctkes, souvenirs, and religious items (though I was very wisely advised not to buy any Judaica from  anyone open on Shabbat).  We came to the beginning of the Moslem/Arab Quarter and there was still a lot of religious items and stuff appealing to tourists (like rugs, t-shirts, jewelry).  .  As we continued however, the shops began to change to day-to-day living fare – spices, meats, groceries then apparel, small housewares and the truly mundane stuff like shoe repair and pharmacy.  The more daily shopping the shuk represented, the narrower the street, the louder it got, the more crowded it seemed, and the fewer westerners and Jews we saw.  By the time we exited at the Damascus Gate it was (or so it seemed) almost totally Arab/Moslem – with many women in traditional head covering.  It was quite a different feel than what we experienced at the opposite side.  We exited and quickly found a taxi to take us back to the hotel.  I ended up with three varieties of zatar (accent on the first syllable, a spice that is great in olive oil for dipping your bread into) and a whole new understanding of the dynamics of Jerusalem . 

Dinner at Eucalyptus was out of this world.  11 courses of which most were notable – sun dried tomato pesto (and pita), lentil soup (terrific), tomato soup with mint (unbelievably good – to die for) and the upside-down chicken with rice.  Topping it all off was a dessert that looked (and tasted) like liquid halvah with honey.  Truly scrumptious.

December 30:  A political day – sorties through the neighborhoods of Jerusalem.  Arab then Jewish then Arab then Jewish and on and on.  Separating Jerusalem is anything but as simple as it sounds and may be a fool’s errand.  There are streets so narrow that you can spread your arms and nearly touch both walls – with what was Jordanian from 1948 through 1967 on your left and what was Israel on your right – and the bullet holes are still there. Bethlehem is like 1 kilometer from the last Jerusalem suburb.  Not far away, not really that separate at all.  The Jewish “settlement” now big in the US news as representative of building on the “west bank” is a long-standing development of 20,000 or so that is simply adding 300 units attached to what already exists – Har Hom was declared Israeli in 1967 and they have been building ever since and it is in every way a suburb of Jerusalem.  The west bank that we saw (we drove around it on the borders) is something like 80% open and empty land.  Where there are settlements (Jewish) and villages (Arab) they are literally next door to each other – looking a lot like Central and South Bexley (if you are from Columbus, Ohio) or Deerfield and Northbrook (if you are from the Chicago North Suburbs).

When we looked at the territory won back in the 1967 war – the highpoints of land that were Arab controlled look directly down into Jewish neighborhoods and the bullet marks on the walls of the apartment buildings are grim reminders of the pre-1967 reality.  Palestinian demands for pre-67 borders are unlikely to provide even the most basic of security requirements for the Jews.  There will have to be more clear-headed thinking and negotiation on this, for the simple demands will be rejected for the most obvious of reasons – it would be suicidal.  The security “wall” is truly ugly.  It is only a wall in the urban areas.  In the more rural areas it is a fence.  It is also, however, incredibly effective.  Deaths from suicide/murder bombers are down from the hundreds to less than 10 in 2007.  I do not know the ultimate solution, but drawing the line by who lives where today is not going to work – it is too convoluted and complex to work.

The last trip of the day was to Har Herzl – the National Cemetery.  Har Herzl is impressive and sobering and somber in exactly the same fashion as Arlington.  Here lies Yitzak Rabin, Golda Meir, and 21,000 Israeli soldiers killed defending their right to exist as a nation.  I guess there is not much else to say.

An Observation:  At every monument, historical place, biblical place, or museum we visited we saw groups of IDF soldiers visiting the same places and receiving lectures from their officers.  At Mt. Scopus, the Palmach museum, the Haas Promenade overlooking Jerusalem, Herzl’s tomb, and the Kottel.  In each and every place Israeli soldiers were learning about their history, the reason for the IDF and its role and what they were being asked to defend.  Most instructive.  I found it a practice worth instituting in our country.  I think it would help.

December 31:  Jesse’s (on of the kids on the trip) Bar Mitzvah was just great.  It was held at the Hebrew Union College Synagogue and the only attendees were the folks on our tour.  It was warm and familial and Jesse did a wonderful job (and he is a great kid).

We visited the Arab-Israeli (Israeli citizens of Arab descent) town of Sakhlin.  The community leader who spoke to us was clearly a moderate and asked for equal treatment in funding and real estate rights.  He acknowledged Israel as a Jewish State, but wanted the State to help realize equal treatment.  We had lunch in a tent of meeting and then took a tour of the town in which there were many mosques, one unused Christian church and one Jewish grave (a famous Rabbi) which remained undisturbed in the middle of the residential neighborhood (in stark contrast to the Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem that was desecrated by the Jordanians when they controlled it from 1948-1967).

This community leader expressed a clear wish to remain a citizen of Israel even when a Palestinian state is created. Israel provides a better economy, better opportunities, better treatment, and a more democratic government.  The only note of question was his stated desire for “total democracy” – this could be interpreted as a genuine desire for equal treatment or a not-so-subtle reference to the Arab “one state solution” – combining the west bank and Israel with a democratic vote  - a solution that would virtually guarantee that Israel would cease to exist as a Jewish state.  The Israeli Declaration of Independence establishes “a Jewish State in Israel ” – it will be hard to imagine backing away from that.

January 1:  The ancient city of Dan was fascinating – a city built at least 1,800 years ago conquered by the Tribe of Dan – with high walls and plaza, houses with what they think is a mikveh (ritual bath).  These ancients are old, but as Danny (our guide) keeps telling us, not primitive.  I certainly would have nary a clue how to build what they managed to create.

From there we went to the top of a nearby mountain (hill, really) and all of a sudden we were looking directly into to Syria. For the first time on the trip, it was freezing (high wind, cold air).  This is the Golan Heights and all of a sudden it became clear.  Whoever holds this ground commands the territory – which happens to be the kibbutzim of Israel on one side – the entire valley is open as a field of fire and that is exactly what happened to the Israelis from 1948 to 1967.  Looking into the Syrian side, you can see a village that the Syrians abandoned and rebuilt further away – and then accused the Israelis of pillage and plunder.

From the Golan, we went west to the Lebanese border and an IDF outpost for one of the most emotional events of the trip.  We picked up Eton , who lives on the kibbutz closest to the outpost.  Eton has a terrific relationship with the soldiers both because he served similarly some 20 years or so ago and because this outpost is the frontline of protection against Hezbollah predation on the kibbutz.  We met the soldiers – kids, mostly – stationed yards from the border within sight of a town that the United Nations bisected by drawing the cease-fire line right through the middle.  The town is now, de facto, a Hezbollah stronghold even though the Arabs living in town are and want to be Israeli citizens.

This is the 603^rd combat engineering brigade and a tank unit – about 60 soldiers in all.  A 23 year-old captain leads the engineering brigade of 18 soldiers and one of the tank commanders is 19 years old.  Of the 18, 7 are not Israeli – 2 from the US, 2 from France, one each from South Africa, Morocco, and Australia and of the 11 remaining Israeli’s, 9 were Jews and 2 were Druze and all of them except the Captain are under the age of 22.  It is cold, barren, lonely, grim, and deadly serious.  This is the outpost that Hezbollah hit first and hardest in the last “war”.  You can see the Lebanese farmers working their fields and the half underground houses that Hezbollah used and uses for launching Katyusha rockets at Israel and for observing the border.

These are 19, 20, and 21 year-old kids.  The non-Israelis have no place to go on leave (they have no family in Israel).  The live in feet-thick concrete sheds (to protect them from artillery and rocket fire) with room for 2 sets of bunks and 6 square feet (perhaps) of floor space – 4 to each tiny room with a 3 inch steel door.  Most of the sheds had plug in space heaters hooked up to a generator.  Almost to a man (no women that we saw on this outpost), they were unassuming, shy, and incredibly modest and they are the frontline against any aggression or infiltration by Hezbollah and they are cold, dirty, hungry, and often bored. 

We gathered with those soldiers that were not on duty or patrol and Rabbi Z recited the IDF prayer for their safe keeping and for victory.  Kid soldiers with big guns strapped over their shoulders wearing grimy green uniforms wearing kipot (or not) all inclined their heads as we prayed.  We could not help but be moved.

The teenage girls swooned over the dark, handsome, green-eyed, and incredibly shy 19 year-old tank commander.  The collective gaggle of teenage girls all agreed that there does not appear to be a bad looking IDF guy.

We left our gifts – socks, underwear, long johns, candy, dried fruit, and games -- and Eton was effusive in his appreciation.  We asked what else we could do for these kids and Eton suggested that we could send hot pizza (believe it or not, there is a pizza place that will deliver to the outpost – as long as they call ahead and tell the soldiers the route and the vehicle being driven).  It about 3 minutes we collected the 1,000 shekels ($250) needed to bring hot pizza to 60 hungry young men.  What a world!  Eton was so delighted he volunteered to do the delivery.  We later found out that we can do this from the US – although you cannot specify were it goes.  Go to http://pizzaidf.org

We ended the day at Har Halutz (Mt. Pioneer), an 85 family Reform community in the Galilee

.  We had dinner with a delightful couple and their 3 children at home (2 others are older and already in the IDF).  We had a terrific dinner in their lovely home (she is an artist, he an architect who also does work for the community).  Their daughter had just finished her initial course as a combat medic (this after basic training).  The two boys were in high school and great kids (my daughters assessment was that they were “hot”).  Our discussion was wide ranging – their stories of how they got where they were and ours as well.  On politics, not surprisingly, they favored American candidates with unequivocal support for Israel.  What a good time and a much needed dose of familiar normalcy (for us Americans) after our time in the border regions with the soldiers.

January 2:  It is the last day and we/I are bone tired.  I did not wake up wanting to do another hike on another hill or see another ruin.  The ancient Galilean capital of Tzipori is where the focus of Jewish life moved to following the destruction of the Temple and the failed Bar Kochba rebellion in the 130s which the Romans not only brutally crushed, but killed or exiled all the Jews in Judea.  Well, once again, it was worth the effort.  This was an amazing city of 10,000 plus with houses with dining rooms with beautiful mosaic floors and bathrooms with running water.  Remember:  ancient does not mean primitive.  Tzipori was a town of Jews and non-Jews – but the Jews maintained some distinctive building characteristics which is how we could determine that this was a mixed community.  Most amazing was the synagogue.  The mosaic on the floor shows the binding of Isaac and a zodiac with the Sun God, inscriptions in both Hebrew and Greek.  Inside the mosaic was a list of donors whose contributions made the building of the synagogue possible.  Some things just do not change after 1,800 years.

Dinner that night in Tel Aviv and a walk back to the hotel along the boardwalk on the Mediterranean. Up very early and off to Ben-Gurion Airport.  And that is the trip. 

January 3/4:  Getting from Tel Aviv to Newark went off like clockwork.  The 3 hour delay in Newark, however was a killer.  Finally got home and into bed around 2:30 am (9:30 am Israel time) we had been up 27+ hours).

Looking back, it was a fabulously well planned and executed trip.  Our tour guide was terrific – poised, relaxed, amazingly knowledgeable and well prepared and made all the difference in the world.  The group had no complainers and got along quite well and that was both wonderful and unusual.  The kids (12 of them) were inclusive and caring and that was terrific.  The Israeli accomplishments are wondrous.  The challenges that  Israel faces are legion, but these are the good guys and it was good to have such practical, solid, and vivid reminders of that simple fact. 

Coming back to the US -- it was interesting to see and hear President Bush’s commentary on his first trip to the Middle East.  While acknowledging Israel’s need for secure borders, the first thing mentioned is Israel’s need to abandon the “occupation” of the West Bank.  OK, and what issue, topic, or position will the Palestinians ever offer a compromise?  Because if they do, it will be for the first time.  Until the Palestinians show a willingness to negotiate rather than demand, no progress will or can be made.  It was an interesting time to be in Israel, all right.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Gregory David Roberts (GDR) has a backstory that should rank up there with all the phonies you have read about, but does not because it is (unbelievably, unfortunately, and incredibly) real.  So real is the experience and so overwhelming, that it provokes quotes like the following in response to a question about Hannah Arendt's observation regarding "the banality of evil" (first used to describe Adolf Eichman sitting in the dock during his trial in Israel); "a phrase like “the banality of evil” doesn’t mean anything. That phrase is typical of a lot of the philosophy of the 20th century in my view; it is the philosophy of appearance, the philosophy of phrases that look more clever than they actually are. The second thing is, if you’ve actually been chained to a wall and tortured, the last thing it is is banal."
See Interview with Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram is an epic in the style of the great adventure stories and I will not take anything away from GDR's story by telling you that the outline of the novel is completely biographical, yet is fiction.  Typically, a novelist's first (and sometimes second, third and every) book is based on their personal experiences, and in GDR's case, it appears he had enough for a dozen books, but fit a lot into the almost thousand pages of his first.  It is worth the reading on a couple of levels.  First, it is a hell of a story.  If you liked Papillion, you will like Shantaram.  If you liked The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask, you will like Shantaram.  It is a rollicking story of success, failure, adventure, lost loves, betrayal, brutality, and redemption. It has prison breaks and all too real descriptions of third-world incarceration and corruption.  It has murder, mayhem, and the mafia. Second, it is a fascinating look at India.  If you read and liked A Fine Balance or City of Joy, you will find the insights that GDR has to offer of equal interest. Want an idea of what it is like to live in a Bombay slum, here it is as vivid and compelling as I have found anywhere.  Want a picture of village life, here it is, with wonderful detail and insight. The city of Bombay and the village of Sunder are major characters in this novel. Geography or place plays a large role in the shaping of events, thoughts, and behavior.  Where you are from matters and GDR does a very good job of weaving that reality into his story.  Third, it is a credible (with a few incredible moments) story of personal journey and the contrasts that make us the personalities that we are.  Drug runner, mafia enforcer, black market currency operator vs. slum medical clinic founder/operator, anti-Soviet mujahadeen in Afghanistan, slum dweller. Do opposites really attract?  I do not know the answer, but do know that they combine fantastically in the personality of Gregory Roberts. Finally, in many ways, it is a story of redemption, and I will let Gregory Roberts tell you about that.

At the end, Shantaram is a lot of things, but most interestingly, it is a window into a most unusual man - an intellectual criminal, a philosophical freedom fighter, a modern samurai to his modern mafia master, a great and caring friend, with an incredibly strong and flexible psyche.  I highly recommend Shantaram.

Everyman by Philip Roth

Philip Roth is revered, and I suspect he should be.  Philip Roth did not (according to the New York Times Review of Books) write the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years.  That honor went to Toni Morrison's Beloved.  Roth was runner up with American Pastoral, but also received votes for 5 other novels.  Interestingly, out of the 20 odd books nominated with multiple votes, Roth wrote 6 of them.  So I do believe he might be termed the best American novelist of the past 25 years.

Everyman returns to a common Roth theme, the common human theme of diminished vitality due to aging. We follow our protagonist from child of immigrant father and younger brother to young man rising in the business world, to husband and father, to illness and recovery, to health and then illness, decline and then death. Roth has the knack of creating and explaining entire relationships in a few sentences -- with a few, brief phrases we recognize the situation, the drama, the complexity, and the frustrations and joys.  It is truly the work of an artist at the top of his game. True, Roth's common themes (this is his 27th book) are still there -- his Jewish upbringing (both the plusses and minuses from Roth's perspective, family ties (and the lack thereof); sex (never enough)....these will be familiar to the Roth reader.

Roth has a memory for detail and situation that rings true - sometimes so true it is unbelievable.  Perhaps that is the mark of artistry - to take an event and make it ring true to so many, for each individual reader to say, "oh my, that is exactly how I felt" when we all know that all of us could hardly have felt the same....and yet, there it is.  Roth did that for me as he described the young boy's trip to the hospital to have a hernia repaired.  I would have believed that he was describing my experience, the fear, the anticipation, the fascination with what was going on with the child in the bed next to mine - all of it seemingly my life, not Roth's character.  In that lies genius and for that alone it is worth reading Everyman, for I have no doubt that many of us will find the moment of our unique experience that Roth has captured so incredibly well.  Whether it is accomplishment or loss; the relationship you had with your father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, son; the thoughts of envy or superiority; winning or losing; or elation or depression; I am betting one or more of those emotions/feelings come alive for you from Roth's pen.

Everyman also reminds me of either how far away from normal I have come, or how far away Roth and his experience are from my notion of normal.  Roth's character marries thrice by choice (that is, no spouse dies); is estranged from his children by the first marriage; has numerous affairs including one with a women half his age and is invited to engage in sexual practices that are, shall we say, unusual.  Reality?  Fantasy?  Or is this some strange combination of the above?  Most of us do not marry three times.  Most men do not have affairs with women half their age, do they?  When did I veer off so far from this so-called normality?

With that, however, many of the Roth's other observations continue to ring true - the wistfulness of past virility/energy/power; the regret at having not said what should have been said to both loved ones and enemies; the loss of friends and family, all this Roth has nailed down beautifully.  Certainly, there is as much, if not more, to dislike in this man's life as there might be to admire but just as certainly there are those things -- good and bad -- that we recognize as true of and for ourselves.  That is indeed what Everyman set out to do and did indeed accomplish.

The Defining Moment by Jonathan Alter

This is definitely not a case of unbiased objective reporting.  Jonathan Alter (a Newsweek senior editor) is a fan, an interpreter, and on occasion, a bit of an apologist. However, he also looks at Roosevelt with a clear eye and does not gloss over or ignore that which is unpleasant about the man, his motives, and his actions.  Alter is also a very good writer and The Defining Moment is an easy, interesting read.

Alter focuses on the first 100 days of FDR's Presidency with heavy references to influences, incidents, and intrigues that preceded his inauguration.  A bit of childhood, a bit of college, and a bit of early politics are used to explain (or introduce) a number of character traits that are viewed later (with perfect hindsight) as productive virtues.  These include FDR's easy going style that avoided confrontation, his uncanny ability to seem to agree with his discussion partner while committing to nothing specific, his tendency to delay decision-making, and then when forced, to be a broad and vague as possible, and his tendency to pit his advisors against each other when wrestling with a problem.  There are also those that can be seen as virtues from the beginning  -- including FDR's ability to talk with almost anyone from any background, his ability to be a "long-rifle" (i.e., to see into the future, what Alter calls "longheadedness"), his incredible courage and stamina, his bias for experimentation and action, and ultimately, his caring for, and faith in, "the people".

Alter also rehashes a lot of well-trod ground in recounting FDR's privileged background, his close relationship to his mother, his marriage to Eleanor, his philandering, and his polio.  All of this is readable, but adds little to what most of us already know.

Alter shows us an FDR who was a consummate politician with all the ugly ramifications thereof - making the case that FDR might have well allowed the economy to sink even lower than it might (by his withholding of agreement with Hoover) prior to his inauguration so that he might look even better upon entering office. 

Perhaps what Alter does add to the body of FDR knowledge, interpretation, and mythology is his illumination around FDR's willingness to experiment and fail - his bias for action.  Whether that be the Civilian Conservation Corps (successful) or his attempt to pack the Supreme Court (an unmitigated failure), Alter shows us an FDR whose modern day mantra would have been "lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way".  Alter shows an FDR with supreme courage and confidence in his own convictions, a man who held his views relatively close to the vest but who also wanted, encouraged, and devoured outside opinions.

Alter also tends to put great weight behind the emotional and psychological impact that FDR had on the country -- the spiritual "lift" that was created by his actions, his fireside chats, and his obvious engagement (as opposed to Hoover's perceived aloofness from "the people").  FDR's bias for action and experimentation did a lot to create this "lift" -- politically, action was almost as good as result.  In truth, Alter is also left with having to explain that beyond the appearance of progress, the actuality of progress was not so much until war production started to impact the economy.  Some really good things happened -- a strengthened banking system, more controls on robber-barons, social security and others. But there was nothing like producing guns, tanks, and munitions for getting ourselves back on our feet and Alter does not shrink from this conclusion.

In all, Alter's FDR is a more human version of the myth, but unlike some reviewers, I believe that FDR is not diminished by that humanity (with all of its attendant failings) nor is he diminished by fact that many of his actions did nor produce the immediate result of ending the depression.  Many of those actions have stood the test of time.  Moreover, Roosevelt did the one thing that must have been the hardest thing not to do -- he refused to become a dictator and he could have done so.  Many encouraged him to do so, Congress was ready to pass extraordinary legislation mandating great powers to the President.  While occasionally lamenting his decision (mostly tongue-in-cheek), FDR, for whatever combinations of faith and personality, refused to take that road.  Alter, in his analysis of both the man and the moment, show us that this alone would have been enough to make Franklin Delano Roosevelt a great President -- and this makes The Defining Moment worth the time.