Dan's Reading Journal

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

Erik Larson has written a couple of tense, exciting dramas about historical events.  Devil in the White City is a terrific book - fast-paced, edge of your seat action, and fascinating history of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the activities of a serial killer who arrives in Chicago contemporaneously with the World's Fair to prey on some of its visitors and employees.  Isaac's Storm is the story of the hurricane that devastated Galveston, Texas in 1900 and the meteorologist Isaac Cline who, while failing to predict the exact danger, also was unable to convince people of the severity of the coming storm. Larson was able to keep the tension by incrementally leading the reader through the increasing and unbelievable (by the residents) destruction.  Galveston was one of Texas' leading cities before this storm, it was not afterwards and has never recovered its stature.

Thunderstruck is the simultaneous story of Marconi's discovery, construction, and implementation of "wireless" communications and its use in capturing an unlikely and unfortunate murderer.  Unfortunately for the reader, Thunderstruck carries none of the tension or drama or excitement of either of the previous books.  Perhaps it is because we know only too well how successful Marconi (and the subsequent improvements on his patents) turned out. Perhaps the murder mystery was not mysterious enough or the foreshadowing more like a solar eclipse than a light penumbra on a cloudy day.  Thunderstruck misses the mark as excitement.  While interesting, informative, and mildly entertaining, the book is almost devoid of the drama of Larson's previous (wonderful) books.

In Devil in the White City, Larson is able to create tension and excitement around the difficulties of design and construction -- the political and philosophical barriers that are overcome present themselves as twists and turns in the story. There are issue surrounding the location, the theme, architectural control, and the timing and all are fraught with conflict.  The serial killer is devious, clever, and talented -- and evil. 

In Thunderstruck, even Marconi's struggles cannot be made into exciting action.  Marconi himself does not understand enough of the science to test theories, he just makes huge intuitive leaps.  The reader knows that something bad will happen each time Marconi sets off on another major construction effort based on another hunch.  His "adversary" is so much portrayed as an early poster child for attention deficit disorder that we know he could not possibly present a serious challenge.  In sum, no spark, no mystery. A nice, OK exploration but no heat.  The only surprise in the murder story is that the husband took so long to do away with his grasping, cheating, social-climbing, avaricious, joy-killing, life-sucking wife.  She is so odious that by the time of her eventually denouement, most of us would have happily volunteered to do the deed. Not much mystery here, either.

Pick up Erik Larson's other stories, but wait for the paperback on Thunderstruck (and you will not be heartbroken if you leave your copy on the plane).

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Sometimes, it is good to go back to the original.  I have seen "Capote" starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in an academy award performance.  I knew and had read about (in The New Yorker, I believe) the story of Harper Lee's (To Kill A Mockingbird) deep involvement in the interviewing, writing, and fact checking for Capote's novel, In Cold Blood.  I have even seen the 1967 movie starring Robert Blake (how ironic) as Perry Smith, Scott Wilson as Richard Hickok and John Forsythe as Alvin Dewey.  But I had never read the actual Capote novel...until now.

And now I know why it caused such a sensation when it was published in 1965, telling the story of the brutal murders of the entire Clutter family on their farm in Holcolm, Kansas.  By now, you know the story, and Capote's novel represented either the first time or just the best example in modern literary culture up to that time of a true crime documentary recounted as if it were a fiction novel.  Hanna Arendt, upon looking at Adolf Eichmann sitting in the dock at his trial in Israel, commented upon "the banality of evil".  Her book, published in 1963, described her thesis "that people who carry out unspeakable crimes, like Eichmann, a top administrator in the machinery of the Nazi death camps, may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats".  Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on "normalization." This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as "the way things are done." There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals" (Quote from Edward S. Herman)

I can not think of a better parallel with In Cold Blood.  What Arendt did for Eichmann, Capote did for the nature of "American" violence and the wonder of it all, how these mal-adjusted but essentially non-violent criminals turned out to be brutal, uncaring, animals for a short period of time.  Perry Smith and Richard Hickok were captured (eventually, because they just were not that smart), tried, and executed.  What Capote does is capture the impact of the brutality -- not just the murders (brutal enough), but the impact on the local law enforcement, neighbors, and townspeople.  How does fear creep in and take over a life? -- Capote captures the process elegantly.  How do seemingly and relatively harmless petty thieves turn into bloodthirsty murderers?  Capote shows you.  He may never be able to definitively answer why it happened, but through his wonderful eye and terrific prose, he shows you all the possibilities.

Capote's later devolvement to a caricature is not evident in this book.  His writing is clear, immensely descriptive, and has emotional impact. From the first paragraph you get the impression that Capote has observed Holcolm with a very objective and clear eye.  While he might not be "of there", he understands it.  The same is true of his portrayal of the Clutter family - he captures the essence of the successful farmer, Herbert William Clutter and his continually indisposed wife, Bonnie.  He does an even better job of the son, Kenyon and the daughter, Nancy.  Capote's description of Nancy as the star student, mother's helper, girlfriend, and 4H member may be the period piece ever written regarding a Midwest farmgirl's existence in the mid-to-late 1950's.  Similarly, Capote's decscriptions of Perry Smith's upbringing, prison experience and Perry's post-capture explanations of his own nature are phenomenal, yielding insight into the tortured psyche of this unhappy, unlucky, unloved, unempathetic cold-blooded killer.

Capote is also tremendous at the reportage.  He reconstructs the circumstances, the facts, the theories and the actions as well as has been done. 

If you have not, you should pick up and read this book.  It will help you understand why Capote got the chance to become the celebrity he did become.  And if you want a modern day equivalent (good, not Capote's equal, but very good and equally brutal, even more graphic), pick up Postively Fifth Street by James McManus [Dan's Review] and check it out.

Ten Dead Men by David Beresford

The historic power sharing arrangement just agreed to by The Rev Ian Paisley (of the Protestant Democratic Unionists) and Martin McGuinness (of the Catholic Sein Fein, the political arm of the now demilitarized Irish Republican Army) provoked a re-reading of David Beresford's Ten Dead Men, first published in 1987. Ten Dead Men tells the story of the 1981 hunger strike by IRA members imprisoned in the now infamous Maze Prison (known as Long Kesh to the Republicans). As the title suggests, ten IRA members sacrificed their lives to protest (primarily) their imprisonment as criminals as opposed to political prisoners and to embarrass the British Government.

Based on the book, and reflecting on the 25 years since the tragedy.....I can only hope, but not prove that these men's deaths had some meaning beyond the moment. The details of the circumstances of their imprisonment, the IRA's political motivations and their protest movement within the Northern Ireland prison systems as described by Beresford are much more mundane than I would first assumed.

Perhaps it is because the time has passed and the passions cooled. Perhaps it is that I am not Irish nor Protestant nor Catholic. Perhaps it is because (and I doubt this one) that Beresford has not given us the details in a way that would inflame or inspire. But overall, I was amazed at the pettiness of issues that fostered, enabled, supported, and encouraged these ten men to take their lives. Issues over whether they had to wear prison uniforms (as criminals) rather than street clothes (as political prisoners).....the resolution of which was they went naked for long periods of time. The attempts to "shame" their captors by degrading their living conditions....smearing feces on the walls of their cells repeatedly for months at a time, by not bathing, by using the floors instead of the bathrooms. The arguments amongst themselves over issues like who got to go first and who was better at insulting the guards. And, ultimately by very methodically starving themselves to death (and being allowed to do so) to make a statement about the "humanity" of their imprisonment and treatment. Beresford does, I think, an admirable job in showing us just how mundane and petty the day-to-day discussions and issues and actions and reactions.

Also take note of the fact that Beresford is not creating the dialogue here....he is illustrating the action, the emotions, the attitudes through the use of letters, notes, and manifestos written by the inmates and IRA leadership and smuggled into and out of Long Kesh. So, the focus on the minutia, the slights and hurts and disappointments caused by the smallest and seemingly most inconsequential of interactions, is not a creation of the author's but a revelation by the players in this most destructive game of political resistance.

Perhaps the message is that any group oppressed for long enough will begin to devalue their own lives to the point where taking that life is seen as good way to send a message. Perhaps. But perhaps -- with 25 years perspective and with homicide bombers doing their ugly deeds with a frightening frequency in Iraq and Israel and Afghanistan, and Indonesia and other places -- perhaps the message is that the leaders of a cause who have lost their sense of perspective have, and always will, be willing to sacrifice their soldiers (and never themselves) to that cause.

Rereading Ten Dead Men did nothing to improve my confidence in, or respect for, the IRA leadership at that time (nor for that matter, the Ulsterites nor the Brits) -- it did provoke a huge amount of sympathy for the people on the street - the IRA members who sacrificed themselves, the people hurt and killed in the collateral damage, and the policeman targeted simply for wearing the uniform.

Perhaps as well, something was learned.....that those ten deaths had to happen and time had to pass before the leadership of both the Ulsterites and the Republicans could do today what they have done. If would be comforting to think so. Unfortunately, I remain unsure.

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

I guess I am just a sucker for strange facts. I adored Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, the story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, its editor (James Murray) and one of its most prolific contributors (or readers, as they say) Dr. W.C. Minor, a retired US Army captain, Yale graduate, and inmate at England’s Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. You can find my review of this in the non-fiction section of my blog. I also loved Nathaniel’s Nutmeg by Giles Milton. Nutmeg is the story of the discovery of, fight for, and exploitation of the Spice Islands and little Run Island (home of the nutmeg). The battle between Nathaniel Courthope and the Dutch East India Company is beautifully documented and a rousing adventure story. Britain finally traded tiny Run Island to the Dutch…..in exchange for that other obscure Island, Manhattan.

Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky, belongs to this wonderful club of storytellers cum historians (or is it vice versa?) that bring the everyday and commonplace (after all, this is about salt) to us in a way almost unimaginable until we view their wonderful creation.

This is both a history and an adventure story. Kurlansky starts in pre-history and moves us up through the modern age with a series of fascinating vignettes regarding the importance, discovery, extraction and use of salt. He even throws in a few recipes along the way. From Africa, to China, to Europe to the Americas, the impact of salt and its vital role in keeping us both health and satiated is traced in a wonderfully easy to read style that is peppered with insight and fun facts to know and love. Find out about the role that salt plays in the creation of Egyptian mummies, in Indian independence, in the caviar industry, and in the technology of drilling deep wells. Meet Clarence Birdseye and Mahatma Gandhi. Find out why the words soldier and salami come from the same root. What makes pickles pickled? Where did ketchup come from?..... I promise that you won’t like the answer!! All these questions you always wondered about (didn’t you? Be honest!!) can and will be answered by reading this delightful book.

It seems that Kurlansky has made a bit of a career out of this genre as he is also the author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World and The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell. While cod fish also feature prominently in Salt, I have not had the pleasure of reading either Cod or The Big Oyster, but I do now look forward to it.

Heat by Bill Buford

Let’s start this simply. Do you like to eat? Do you like to drink? Do you harbor irrational romantic notions about Italy and Italian cooking? Answer no to any of the above and it is likely that you will not find Heat by Bill Buford to be as terrific a book and story as I did.

Now for the final exam: If someone said that your meal would require you to eat foods that contained an abnormally high percentage of pork fat are you a) revolted? or b) intrigued? If your answers contained a “no” above and you answered “a” in the second question….go on to the next review….this book is definitely not for you. Welcome to the age of the reality novel. Like the reality TV, it involves both humiliation and triumph; introspection and competition; blood, sweat and only occasionally tears.

Bill Buford writes of his experience in testing out the question of “what kind of professional cook could I be if I tried”. Because he is somewhat better wired in to the NY restaurant scene than say you or I might be, he lands a starter kitchen job in Mario Batali’s three-star establishment, Babbo’s. Buford was somewhat of an amateur chef before embarking on this quest, and soon discovers that gulf between the amateur and professional chef is not much different from that of the golfer, basketball player or poker player – that is to say – huge. Buford captures the same intensity, pressure and stress as well as humor, comedy and delightful irreverence in the kitchen that Anthony Bourdain captured in “Kitchen Confidential” (also a great story) with just a notch less of the testosterone (not none, just a bit less) of Bourdain. From kitchen slave to prep chef to grill chef, Buford works his way through the restaurant “Stations of the Cross” with the out-sized personality of Mario Batali as his goad, guide and occasional mentor.

It is Batali’s bubbe mises (old wives tales for those who’s Yiddish is rusty) – the romantic, fabled, and perhaps apocryphal tales of how “real” food is prepared in Italy that sets Buford off on the second part of his quest. Buford ends up spending a lot of time in a relatively obscure Italian Appennine village learning how to make sausage and meat dishes (and how to be come a butcher of pigs and cows) from a 3rd or 4th generation Tuscan butcher (referred to as “the Maestro”) who works in a 3rd, 4th, or 5th generation butcher shop cum restaurant whose owner tends to belt out Dante at odd moments. He learns the art of pasta making (tortellini being the specialty) from Gianni and Betta, owners of a pizzeria in the small town of Porretta. In between, Buford augments his education by learning the art of preparing game from Marco Pierre White in London.

What Buford does so well is describe the art, the accumulated knowledge, and the incredible muscle memory of those who can cook, make pasta, or butcher better than almost anyone else. There are only a few great master craftsmen who can actually lead you through the thinking and the intimate knowledge that they possess in a way that actually makes it clear to the layman. Buford does that for the Maestro’s butchering techniques and Betta’s tortellini and Mario Batali’s insight into taste and it makes for a terrific experience.

In between spates of cooking, Buford researches the origins of pasta and regales us with tales of celebrity chefs in New York. But the magic and fun and delight of Heat is food and cooking – how to prepare it so that it is eaten with gusto.

Buon appetito !!

Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we blacks are wise.
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes
--Langston Hughes, 1923

Thus begins Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice. This is the historical record of the trial of Ossian Sweet, an African-American resident of Detroit brought to trial in 1925 for killing a white man.

Kevin Boyle sets out to tell the historical story; the great black migration to the northern industrial cities like Detroit and Detroit’s unique circumstances in particular. Boyle leads us through the changes in Detroit – from enticing potential workers to settle there to the institutional discrimination and racism that populist politics created after black people actually did move there.

Boyle also tells the story of Ossian Sweet, only a few generations removed from slavery and how he was raised in the rural, Jim Crow south and what it took for him to survive with dignity intact, and also to get an education, become a doctor, and leave the south for a better life in the north.

With very specific and in-depth attention to detail (but never boring or overdone), Boyle sets the story and provides the context for what happens next.

What happened next was that after establishing a practice in Detroit, Dr. Ossian Sweet and his new bride buy a house in a predominately white neighborhood. Predictably, the mob gathers, Sweet’s friends come to the house to support and aid him and on the second night, shots are fired from within the house and a white man in the mob is killed. Sweet and his supporters in the house are arrested and put on trial for murder.

Boyle then weaves together the story of Detroit politics, national racial politics (including the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan), the progressive Church movements (including a young pastor by the name of Reinhold Niebuhr) and the role of the partisan press (both national and local). While doing that, Boyle also recounts/recreates for us a taut legal drama headed up by a cast that includes Clarence Darrow.

Arc of Justice is a moving but also very disturbing narrative. That it is moving is due both to the actual facts and to Boyle’s skill as a writer. That it is disturbing is also a tribute to Boyle’s writing, as it presents to the reader the dispassionate recounting of facts that produce jaw-clenching anger on the part of the reader when confronted by such blatant disregard for human rights and human dignity. The fact that much fewer of these blatant displays of anti-black racism occur in this country is a testimony to how far we have come. That any of this still occurs at all in this country is a chilling reminder of how close to the edge we still are as a society and how vigilant we must continue to be in confronting the baser impulses of our fellow citizens.

Boyle has given us a well-documented, well-written and moving reminder that “those who do not remember history are bound to repeat it”.

The arc of the moral universe is long,
But it bends toward justice.
--Abolitionist Theodore Parker c. 1850

Let us all hope that Theodore Parker was right.

1776 by David McCullough

Looking back over my postings, I just realized that I never reviewed 1776 by David McCullough. My mistake - large mistake actually. McCullough is the author of John Adams, Truman, Brave Companions, and Mornings on Horseback (Theodore Roosevelt) and 1776 is as good as anything he has ever written and that is saying a lot. This is the story of the year 1776 - the first full year of the war, the declaration of independence, the siege of Boston and the battle for New York (among other battles). It is the story of the maturing of the Commander-in-Chief (Washington), his Generals (including Greene and Knox) and the Loyalists, English Generals (Sir WIlliam Howe) and Hessian mercenaries fighting in the wilds of Staten Island, the Bronx, and New Jersey.

As ever, McCullough brings his genius both to the story and to developing our understanding of the historical character we know as General Washington. While we obviously know the outcome, most of us have never been this close to the fascinating details. If you have ever read McCullough, and have not read this, you have been missing out. If you have never read McCullough, this is a great place to start.

Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides

Blood and Thunder was listed as one of the 10 best non-fiction books of the year by The Week magazine. I agree. Meticulously researched, well written with little if any extraneous fluff, and able to put a lot of flesh on the bones of some historically elusive characters, Hampton Sides (author of the equally good "Ghost Soldiers") has put together a terrific biography of the mountain man Christopher "Kit" Carson and the story of the US Government's battles to win the west and the subsequent subjugation of the Navaho (as well as the Apache) tribes.

Centered in the New Mexico territory and highlighting President Polk's engineered war with Mexico to secure ocean-to-ocean borders, Kit Carson's life as a mountain man, trapper, soldier, farmer and both friend and foe to the Southwestern Indians is an exciting story. This is the birth of "Manifest Destiny" and it would seem that Kit Carson was a key, if not pivotal, player -- if not in actual deed, then certainly in legend. Sides illuminates this history with very good character portrayals of the heroes and the villains -and quite interestingly illustrates that the same person might be both, depending on the circumstances. Certainly this is true of Kit Carson - alternatively Indian fighter and tribal champion and husband of an Indian wife and equally true of Narbona, the Dine (Navaho) leader who perhaps best understood both the threat and the inevitability of the incursion of these "New Men" into traditional Navaho lands.

Sides also gives us the historical march of characters in fine fashion: the typical Indian-haters (the brief, but damning description of Major John Chivington as the best example), the schemers (Colonel John C. Fremont appears to be a luckier George Armstrong Custer), a few true competent leaders (Narbona, General Stephen Watts Kearny) a host of the fascinatingly incompetent and the well intended but just plain wrong (General James Henry Carleton, the incredibly competent officer whose implementation of a Navaho "reservation" resulted in the death of over one-third of the population).

From St. Louis (the launching point) to California and New Mexico Territory (the target) and back to Washington (the source of ambition), Sides provides a fast-moving and illuminating history of the "conquest" of the west through both the events and the people -- primarily through the major characters of Kit Carson, General Kearny, and Narbona. There is lots here you either did not know or thought you knew (but you will find out differently). Well written and well-paced, this is a great vacation read as well as a great addition to your American History collection.

Agincourt by Juliet Barker

St. Crispin’s day, 1415. Outnumbered at least 6 to 1, hobbled and reduced by dysentery and hunger, and facing a well-fed, confident, and altogether superior French army, Henry V leads one thousand men-at-arms and five thousand long-bow archers into battle at Agincourt.

Shakespeare has Henry wandering among the troops on the battle’s eve to gauge the mood of the army, an event Juliet Barker tends to believe is historically accurate, or at least in character. Shakespeare has Henry rallying his troops with the famous speech:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

While the speech is a product of Shakespeare’s imagination, the subtitle of Juliet Barker’s Agincourt is Henry V and the Battle that made England. Based on her terrifically interesting and fabulously researched (40 pages of notes and an 11 page bibliography) account, Shakespeare may have just been a bit less melodramatic than the reality. The result of Agincourt was (in this election year) a lopsided “thumping” of the French that had significant repercussions for both the French and English monarchies.

For the French, their decimated ranks of knights and nobles set the stage for the resurrection of an English empire in France. The loss created a political environment that resulted in Charles VI disinheriting his own son, marrying his daughter to the King of England and accepting Henry as his heir. For Henry V, son of the usurper Henry IV, victory at Agincourt legitimized his family claim to the throne as such a victory was seen by all (in this medieval setting) as the result of divine approval.

Juliet Barker does a terrific job in three areas: First, she makes it possible for the layman to understand the politics of the time – at least as best one can without having been raised in the tradition. Second, she does a marvelous job of involving the reader in the Medieval context – how life was lived, how war was prepared for, how taxes were raised to support the war, how peasant, knight, and noble related to the King. Third, she is able to make the battles and sieges come alive. She does a very good job in describing the physical, psychological, and political demands and effects of medieval warfare – complete with bringing alive the range of political intrigue from petty to malicious to treasonable.
Admittedly, you will need at least a passing interest in English (or French) history to make the leap into this book. But if you do, the Henry V you know from Shakespeare will come even more alive. The real history is even more fascinating than Shakespeare’s (though the couplets are decidedly inferior).

Barker lays out the context in good, but not overwhelming detail. Henry IV (Henry of Bolingbroke, son of John of Gault) had been banished from England for 10 years to avoid a blood feud with the Duke of Norfolk. While exiled, John of Gault died and Richard II confiscated Henry of Bolingbroke’s lands – a huge inheritance that actually threatened to be a “state within a state”. Henry, supported by the King of France, returned to England, captured Richard II and imprisoned him in the Tower of London (where he subsequently died of starvation) and had himself crowed King Henry IV in 1399. Henry V was born in 1387 and when his father, Henry IV died in 1413, he ascended the throne of England anxious to prove his legitimacy and assert his rights to Aquitaine (through his mother) in France.

Barker is careful in developing Henry V as both a devout Catholic and as a true Knight. In Henry’s world, chivalry is not dead. He observes the rules and protocols of medieval combat -- always providing a last chance to avoid bloodshed, honoring the privileges of rank regardless of which side that rank resides and most of all, firmly believing that victory is God-given, i.e., only God grants victory. At the same time, Henry V is a shrewd negotiator, a master manipulator, and one tough hombre on the battlefield.

Henry’s story, and the prelude, the battle itself, and the post victory aftermath are wonderfully drawn by Barker and should hold your interest fast. Give it a try.

In The Wake of the Plague - Norman F. Cantor

The Black Death & The World It Made

In the style of Guns, Germs, and Steel, this brief and easily read treatise is a treasure trove of insight and implications. Presenting a fascinating theory that the Black Death was most likely a pandemic caused by a parallel course of bubonic plague and anthrax, Cantor goes on to illustrate the religious, political, and socio-economic impact of the series of “plague years” of the 14th century. The rise of the paid working class (due to a lack of labor), the change in the relationship between lord and peasant, and the new role of women as property holders (due to the laws supporting widows), and the changes produced in the Church (as landowner, serf-holder, and having lost up to 40% of its staff) this 14th century disaster formed the basis for the beginning of modern capitalism and the “privatization” of Christianity. Cantor also provides an intriguing look at pandemics of the past

Chutzpah - Alan M. Dershowitz

Published in 1991, this semi-autobiographical polemic is worth revisiting in light of the recent acceleration of anti-Semitism throughout the world. Dershowitz’s basic thesis – that Jews are too passive in their defense of their rights in America and around the world – is perhaps more insightful today than it was when first published. Dershowitz is masterful at exposing both ultra-left and ultra-right anti-Semitism and is unapologetic about asking the rest of us to do the same.

Whether closet anti-Semitism at Harvard over the selection of Deans, or the overt anti-Semitism of the PLO, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, or white-shoe New York law firms, Dershowitz calls it as he sees it. Dershowitz has a rapier wit, as example: “Noam Chomsky - [founder of the Israel disinvestment movement] continues to be a popular speaker at universities. His anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-western, and somewhat paranoid worldview will always have a kind of superficial hold on college sophomores. But the attraction rarely extends into the junior year.” If only he was right about the last sentence.

A good read with a specific point of view and no messing around with what he thinks. Try it.

Three Roads To The Alamo - William C. Davis

The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barrett Travis

We all know the story of the Alamo. We all know about Davy Crockett and his coonskin cap and about Jim Bowie and his knife. Forget what you know. It’s all wrong.

The three characters of Three Roads to the Alamo are nothing even close to what we thought we knew. In this very detailed study, William Davis leads us through the failed political career and family of David (never Davy) Crockett, the corrupt land swindles and political intrigues of James (never Jim) Bowie, and the failed (and then resurrected) law career of William Barrett Travis. The history of Texian independence, the production of a war with Mexico, and the trail of failure, deceit, and physical bravery that bring these three to Texas and the Alamo is fascinating. All three are flawed human beings. Crockett works out his family and political failures (he won a seat in Congress twice and lost twice) by fleeing into the woods to kill every animal he can find ends up in Texas as part of a spur of the moment campaign pledge (“if I lose, I’ll go to Texas”). Bowie, whose total forgery of land deeds in Louisiana catches up to him, sees a chance to start his forging career all over again in Texas – just a step or two in front of the law. Barrett flees his debts and his family in Clairborne, Alabama for a fresh start. They all end up in Texas, they all end up fighting for Texian independence, and they all pay the ultimate price at the Alamo mission when General Santa Anna decides to make an example out of them.

Davis gives an incredibly detailed account (perhaps more than you would ever want) of the journey through life of these three American heroes. It is history as you have not seen or heard of before.

Selkirk’s Island - Diana Souhami

The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe

I am a total sucker for a good, real adventure. For example, I devoured Alfred Lansing and Caroline Alexander’s Shackleton and adored Dava Sobel’s Longitude as well as William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways. For those who do not quite understood the combination of idiocy and moxie that is required to volunteer do the unthinkable and incredible try Redmond O’Hanlon – any of his books will do, but Into the Heart of Borneo is truly a real adventure story. So are Into the Wild and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Try Fire by Sebastian Junger or Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean.

Then there are the adventures of the non-volunteers -- those unfortunates that get thrown into the fight for survival. As in The Perfect Storm (Sebastian Junger again) or Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read. By the way, I consider any story regarding the attempt to summit Everest to be about volunteers, no matter what the weather and conditions. Given that the history since 1953 has been that about one in four people attempting to summit Everest happen to die in the attempt makes this a volunteer effort – one should expect to get in very serious trouble. But we digress.

In Selkirk’s Island, Diana Souhami pieces together the story of Alexander Selkirk, an erstwhile seaman on an English privateer who gets cross-wise with the Captain (William Dampier) and is marooned on Juan Fernandez Island some 360 miles off the coast of Chile at about 34 south latitude. Marooned as in left alone. Marooned as in no food, no water, no tools, nothing left behind on the Island but Alexander Selkirk. Marooned as in an Island 12 miles long, 4 miles wide, 34 miles around and not much else. An Island produced by volcanoes some 4 million years ago with multiple mountain peaks some 3000 feet high.

So as to not to make it a mystery, Selkirk survives 4 plus years. Believe it or not, it could have been worse. While there were no people on The Island when Selkirk arrives, there were a couple of failed attempts at colonization that left behind some herds of goats. He makes the best of them and all the other amenities the island can offer. He indeed builds and maintains a home and his life in intriguing and fascinating ways. He is ultimately rescued and returns to England. Selkirk himself is not very appealing as a character. His only claim to fame is that he didn’t die on The Island (renamed Robinson Crusoe Island by the Chileans in 1966). When he does die – after his return to England and then his return to the sea, one is not much overcome with grief.

Souhami is both inventive and creative in how she puts this story together. She weaves in the history of British naval privateering of the late 1600’s and early 1700’s. She paints totally credible and realistic picture of the hardship and horror of the seafaring life for the ordinary sailor (and many officers as well). Her story makes Winston Churchill’s summation of British naval tradition, “it’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash” seem to be somewhat a softening of the reality. The lawlessness, greed, disregard for life, and living conditions come alive in her retelling.

She recounts the geological history of The Island in ways that make it interesting and captivating and weaves the discussion in and around the narrative. In particular, reflections on The Island that come from her visit to it are very well done. The scholarship seems solid and is interestingly paralleled by some of the sub-plots in The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks. Pirate Hunter, by the way, is not as good a book nor as well told, but does corroborate William Dampier’s descent into actual piracy and completely confirms (as do many others) Souhami’s depiction of the conditions of naval life at the turn of the century.

Souhami also tells a good story of the machinations and intrigue – political and economic – both before and after Selkirk’s voyage. The greedy aristocrats are more than happy to believe Dampier’s story about the easy pickings from the Spanish galleons when all know that they are talking about murder, rape, thievery, and mayhem. As long as the King gets his cut, all is possible. Upon Selkirk’s return, the story of greed and avarice turns to who can most quickly profit from the story. Eventually Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe becomes the winning entry but by no means even an early attempt to cash in.
Souhami is masterful in creating a whole story around the small kernel of Selkirk’s abandonment, survival, and rescue. This is very much worth reading.

Positively Fifth Street - James McManus

There is a word in every culture to describe James McManus. . In Yiddish, the word is definitely chutzpah; in Spanish, cojones would seem the most appropriate. In English it may be gall or guts. My Latin and Greek are a bit rusty, but I am willing to bet they have the appropriate word as well.

You just gotta love the guy: a Professor at the Art Institute of Chicago who does free-lance writing gets a gig to cover a lurid Las Vegas murder trial for Harper’s Magazine, leaves his new wife for weeks; takes the $5 grand advance and – while covering the trial – enters the World Series of Poker.

Just to round out the action. The murdered is Ted Binion, the scion of the Las Vegas Horseshoe Casino, home of (yup, you knew it was coming) the $23 million World Series of Poker.

The murder is indeed lurid, racy, and unforgettable as McManus tells it. In fact, McManus’s first chapter – all 16 pages – may be the most hair-raising description of (pardon the pun) naked greed, wanton lust, and total amorality ever packed into crime description. It sets the stage for a foray into the history of the Horseshoe Casio that quickly morphs into the history of Las Vegas. McManus does a terrific job of tracking the migration of Las Vegas from a mob-financed oasis of betting in the desert to the Casino Wars, though to the modern age Las Vegas reborn as family entertainment. McManus also places the murder (and the murderers) within their time and place and by the end – you know each and every one of them – perhaps more than you would like.

Thus, McManus does a terrific job with all three elements – the trial and its characters, the making of Ted Binion (the murdered) and the context that was (and is) Las Vegas.

The second theme of the book is just as good as the first. McManus traces the history of The World Series of Poker – the winners, the losers, the wild characters, and the action – while educating the reader into the finer points of Texas Hold ‘Em (the game of choice) and the hysteria, hysterics, and mania of winner-take-all pots that run into the millions. McManus traces his own development as a Poker player and holds your interest in doing so. His descriptions of the mind-bending psychological game that is played in parallel with the statistics-driven physical game are simply fascinating.

So, you can learn high-stakes poker with its intricacies of bluff and bluster and the intricacies of betrayal, greed and indifference all at the same time. McManus has given us a terrific story, with excitement and tension in every dimension.

You are going to have to read the book to find out how well Jim McManus does at the World Series of Poker. As far as the trial goes, well, guess it depends on what YOU think the appropriate penalty for murder should be.

Blue Latitudes - Tony Horowitz

The subtitle of Blue Latitudes is “boldly going where Captain Cook has gone before” and Tony Horowitz and his occasional side man, Roger Williamson (a constantly well-oiled Aussie) take it seriously…. sort of. The book is a combination of historical research (and setting some facts straight), and anthropological look at the “civilizing” impact that Cook (and the West) had on the countries he “discovered” and/or just visited (including Australia and the Great Barrier Reef, New Zealand, Polynesia, Tahiti, Hawaii, Bora-Bora, Easter Island, New Guinea and the Aleutian Islands. Trailing along (and sometimes leading) is also a completely madcap travel guide and stream-of-consciousness social commentary of Tony (the American with the Australian spouse) and Roger (the Australian married to beer).

Captain James Cook was born in 1728 and died in Hawaii in 1779. In between, he made three major circumnavigations of the globe (or nearly so) and filled in nearly one-third of the world’s map that heretofore included sea monsters and imaginary continents. Cook’s first voyage, begun in 1768 and taking three years, produced charts so accurate that some of them stayed in use until the 1990’s. His two later voyages took him from pole to pole; from Tasmania to Tierra del Fuego, and to the shores of Siberia. In total, Cook logged some 200,000 miles (8 times around the world) and touched off (or provoked) any number of profound changes in the societies (ranging from the paradise of Tahiti to the cannibals of Vannatu and New Guinea, to the fierce tribes in Polynesia and Hawaii).

Horowitz really does good work here. He says, “apart from the coast near Sydney, I’d seen none of the territory Cook explored…the list of alluring destinations seemed endless. I wondered what those places were like today, if any trace of Cook’s boot prints remained. I also wanted to turn the spyglass around. What had Pacific peoples made of the pale strangers appearing from the sea, and how did their descendents remember Cook now. I wanted to probe Cook, as well. His journals recorded every detail of where he went, and what he did. They rarely revealed why. Perhaps, following in Cooks wake, I could fathom the biggin-born farm boy whose ambition drove him farther than any man, until it killed him on a faraway shore called Owhyee.” Blue Latitudes delivers on his initial promise.

Horowitz tunes up for his travels by signing up as a crew member for a leg of a trip on a replica of Cook’s first vessel, His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour. Horowitz’s leg of the voyage is one week – from Washington to Vancouver. One week in “blue water” and Horowitz quickly turns to an exploration of what it must have been like to be seasick, scurvied and starved and frightened and wet for three years at a time. His description of what life was like for a 16th century sailor, tied to his own week-long experience is hilarious, educational, and deeply disturbing.

After the tune up, off they go….retracing the voyage, interviewing the current generations, and dealing with modern day bureaucracy, air travel, and accommodations in the developing world. Through his typical alcoholic haze, Roger has the most telling observations…of the impact of the white man’s coming on the native populations as well as the attractiveness of local women and the quality of local beer. All the way, Horowitz weaves in his own observations of society (and its relative state of progress or regression) while introducing, interpreting and elucidating Cook’s journals and descriptions of the same places. I will not spoil the fun of this book by revealing the findings – about the “facts” of Cook’s voyages nor the observations of the current state of affairs in the places Cook traveled

However, I will leave you with Horowitz’s last words on Cook and on his own efforts, [Cook] was one of the world’s great explorers, but also among the its last. In his wake, other discoverers filled in the few remaining blanks on the map. Eventually, there wasn’t any place left on earth where no man had gone before…as an Alaskan archeologist had told me, there was evidence of a “novelty-seeking” gene in humans’ make up. Cook, because of the early deaths of his own children, wasn’t able to pass this trait along. But maybe I could, if not genetically, then with my stories about the navigator.”

I say, job well done. Enjoy this wonderful book.

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping - Paco Underhill

And now, a commercial interruption. Paco Underhill, founder, owner, President, and leading researcher for the company Envirosell, has undertaken the task of explaining to us the ‘science of shopping’. Imagine, if you will (apologies to Rod Serling) that Margaret Mead had forsaken Papua New Guinea in her early career and focused instead on Rodeo Drive or more likely, on the regional shopping mall and strip center closest to your home. Add a dash of Siegfried and Roy (Paco has the industry reputation of being equal parts scientist, showman, and promoter) and you have Why We Buy.

This is a very quick and enjoyable read. It will probably tell you more about yourself than you ever wanted to know. Further, it will really make you mad. After all, you are an individual, master of your own fate, possessing an acuity and intelligence that makes you impervious to all that advertising and retailer guile. Let Paco burst your bubble. You are really a creature of habit, with predictable responses to specific stimuli and are prone to massive manipulation by those who study such things. There you are – naked for all of us to see, observe, and profit from.

The one negative of this book is that it is a 250-page advertisement for Mr. Underhill’s company. Time and time again the reader is exposed to his client list and how dumb they are and how smart he is because he watches you shop. There is a bit of the Tom Peters arrogance in this -- it all sounds so obvious in the telling that we are all tempted to believe we should have known -- after all, all you have to do is watch. Not quite. Mr. Underhill is certainly on target when he tells us that the senior executives of large retailers have a tendency (there is some sort of determinism going on here) to become removed from the front-line of customer interaction. Absolutely. And just as clearly, it is important for that group to figure out mechanisms that replace the intimate knowledge of the one store owner-operator. However, Mr. Underhill tends to underestimate the challenge of translating that intimate one-store, one owner knowledge within an organization that is now 25,000 stores (McDonald’s) or 6,000 (The Limited, Inc.) or even 3,500 (Wal-Mart). Unless, of course, you hire Paco and his tribe of merry pranksters at Envirosell – then you are smart. Yeah, right.

On the other side of the equation, Mr. Underhill and his team have done some very interesting work and know some very interesting things about you. Further, he has written about this knowledge in quite the entertaining fashion. He is funny and his observations on the human condition are, in some combination, astute, funny, and irreverent.

For example, take the ‘butt-brush factor’. Here’s the deal. Shoppers, particularly women, don’t like being brushed or touched from behind. They’ll even move away from merchandise they are interested in to avoid it. By observation, it is clear that narrow aisles and fixtures close together that crowd people together to create the butt-brush factor to occur are driving customers away. Solution: create space and sales go up. We knew that, right?

Other observations on human reality are insightful. We all know that grocery stores put the milk and bread in the back of the store to make us shop the entire store before getting to the stuff we really want and need. We also know that convenience stores were created so you did not have to do that -- the essentials were up front and you can just “grab and go”. Now the grocery stores are stocking essentials in both places – in the back and up front – to serve both the weekly food buying and grab and go constituents. See, the creation of 55,000 convenience stores actually taught the supermarket folks something new. Paco’s point: why did it take so long? Good point.

Another favorite is signs (known in the trade as signage, by the way). Door signs….the average person looks at a sign on the entrance door for less than two seconds. Guess that message should not be “we make the best burger by cooking to order over a char-grill so you can have it fresh” Try “Flame Broiled” instead. Banks come in for a lot of heat in this book (and by direct contact, quite deservedly so). My favorite is the bank with the window sign meant to be read by motorists passing by, “Please come in and ask a friendly banker to explain our wonderful new free checking policy”. First, drivers don’t spend much time looking perpendicular to their driving direction. Second, try “Free Checking” in big bold letters with good color contrast. Obvious? You bet. Now, next time you are out and about, check out the signs. How obvious is it now?

Why we buy is chock full of interesting tidbits like that above. Like why is men’s underwear (or pants, jeans, shirts) arranged so that the small sizes are on the top shelf and the large sizes at the bottom near the floor? Aren’t the big, fat, large size guys the ones who will have the most trouble bending over? Guess what? They do and when it’s really uncomfortable, they just don’t bother to buy. Same principle works for stuff for old people….why make them bend, stoop, and crouch when it drives them away? Move the stuff and let those who can, like the teenagers, bend and stoop. Guess what happens when you do? Sales go up.

Why is it that the typeface on acne medicine is 10 point type or larger and the typeface on analgesics and cold medicine is between 6 and 9 points? So the teenagers with young eyes can read the directions on their pimple cream and the middle-aged and seniors buying cold medicine and stuff for arthritis can’t? Doesn’t make sense, says Paco and he is right.

And there is lots more. Why do office supply stores sell electric pencil sharpeners where there are no plugs to try them out? Why does Gillette make a line of men’s deodorants with identical packaging except for the name of the scent and then put a strip of heavy duty-foil over the applicator so you can’t smell it? Why do retailers put window signs facing out with nothing on the back so that the people inside the store are looking at big, white rectangles? Why do retailers limit people to bringing 3 items into the dressing room, when we know that men will purchase three-quarters of everything they bring in with them?

Paco Underhill does a great job of exposing lots of these little idiocies and they are fun to read and know about. For a retailer (such as I), it’s a very healthy reminder that “retail is detail”.

So what if it’s a long, running advertisement for Mr. Underhill’s services….you’ll never hire him anyway.

The Professor and the Madman - Simon Winchester

OK, I admit it. Getting anyone but a committed lexicophile to be even moderately interested in a book about the making of a dictionary is probably a very tough putt. Come on, give me a break. After all, this is the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, all right, so it is like doing your nails or watching paint dry. But, imagine that it is Nicole Kidman’s nails (or Jude Law's if you prefer) or that it is San Simeon that is being painted. If your imagination can soar that far, then you can imagine – sitting where you are right now, how good a book is The Professor and The Madman. Really.

First and foremost, Simon Winchester can write. Usually, great quotes for book reviews come from the beginning or middle of a book. And most often, they come from the story itself. Winchester even writes great acknowledgements, to wit:

On the other side of the Atlantic, matters proceeded rather differently….St. Elizabeth’s Hospital is no longer a federal institution but is run by the government of the District of Columbia -- a government that has experienced some well-publicized troubles in recent years. And at first, perhaps because of this, the hospital refused point-blank to release any of its files, and went so far as to suggest, quite seriously, that I engage a lawyer and sue in order to obtain them.

However, some while later a cursory search I made one day of the National Archives pages on the World Wide Web suggested to me that the papers relating to Doctor Minor…might well be in federal custody. A couple of requests through the internet, a happy conversation with the extremely helpful archivist Bill Breach, and suddenly more than seven hundred pages arrived in a FedEx package. It was more gratifying to be able to telephone St. Elizabeth’s the next day and tell the unhelpful officials there which file I then had sitting before me on my desk. They were not best pleased. (Italics are my own)

I hope I never anger Mr. Winchester.

This is a truly fascinating real story, well told. A doctor, having served in the Federal Army during the Civil War, is clearly exhibiting mental illness. Crossing the Atlantic and settling in London in order to change his surroundings, his mental instability leads him to a most unfortunate act – he murders an innocent man. Cognizant of the mistake and of the clear mental disorder that Doctor Minor exhibits, Her Majesty’s Government sentences the good Doctor to be kept at Broadmoor – a mental institution “until Her Majesty’s Pleasure be known”, in other words, for life. At Broadmoor, Dr. Minor becomes aware of the search for volunteers to help assemble the authoritative English dictionary, is accepted as such and carries on a twenty year productive relationship with James Murray (later Sir James), the editor. It is only after 10 years or so that Sir James becomes aware of the actual circumstances under which Doctor Minor labors.

In all, Doctor Minor meticulously researches, defines, and finds the earliest and best uses of more than 10,000 words – all while living inside a mental institution and under the Damoclean sword of insanity.

This is also a story of Victorian England at its most enduring and endearing – taking on a challenge beyond imagination, supporting it, and seeing the impossible become the possible. The Oxford English Dictionary: Seventy years in the making, 414,825 words defined, 1,827,306 illustrative quotations, 178 miles of hand set type and every single word in the English language save the one that was lost (bondmaid). Completed in 1927, it was started in 1857. Sir James became editor in 1878 and served for twenty years. Sir James, turned down in 1867 for a job at the British Museum, had only the following as qualifications as lexicographer:

….I possess a general acquaintance with the languages and literature of the Aryan and Syro-Arabic classes – not indeed to say that I am familiar with all or nearly all of these, but that I possess the general lexical and structural knowledge which makes the intimate knowledge only a matter of a little application. With several I have a more intimate acquaintance as with the Romance tongues, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, Latin and in a less degree Portuguese, Vandois, Provencal and various dialects. In the Teutonic branch, I am tolerably familiar with Dutch (having at my place of business correspondence to read in Dutch, German, French and occasionally other languages) Flemish, German, Danish. In Anglo-Saxon and Moeso-Gothic my studies have been much closer, I having prepared some works for publication upon these languages. I know a little of the Celtic and am at present engaged with the Sclavonic, having obtained a useful knowledge of the Russian. In the Persian, Archaemenian Cuneiform, and Sanscrit branches, I know for the purposes of Comparative Philology. I have sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac to read at sight the Old Testament and Peshito; to a less degree I know Aramaic Arabic, Coptic, and Phoenician to the point where it was left by Genesius.

Oh, by the way, Sir James wrote the above in 1867, when he was thirty. Even if I count the computer languages I know and throw in the odd phrases of Yiddish I possess plus my high school French, I can’t get my language count to five and I have a college and graduate degree. Sir James left school at fourteen and continued his education by vita diligentissima, loosely translated as ‘on his own, by dogged determination.

Thus, when it comes to language, English in particular, the combination of Doctor William Chester Minor and Sir James Murray make William Safire and his Sunday New York Times column look like the work of a rank amateur.

So, if you wish to travel back to he days when the likes of Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, John Dryden, and Jonathan Swift were all decrying the lack of a dictionary and the need to “fix” the English language, this is the book for you. Trace that beginning past Samuel Johnson’s first effort under the presumed patronage of Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth earl of Chesterfield about whose niggardly support and subsequent claims of partnership Johnson later commented that “Lord Chesterfield has the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master”.

Move on, then, to the even more riveting project proposed in 1857 by the Philology Society that turned into the Oxford English Dictionary. That proposal, “to peruse all of English Literature and to comb the London and New York newspapers and the most literate of he magazines and journals” was not complete. The dictionary wrote Richard Chenevix Trench as its first advocate must also create “an historical monument, the history of a nation contemplated from one point of view” with, for every single word, a passage quoted from literature that showed where each word was used first. Carry on as “The Professor and the Madman” illustrates how that project was accomplished.

Now, that’s entertainment.

Subsequent Note: Winchester's next project, "The Map that Changed the World" is about the life, times and travails of William Smith, creator of the world's first geologic map. Smith is only slightly more unknown and obscure as the main characters in "The Professor and the Madman".

"The Map" is every bit as interesting and entertaining as it is a wonder that you are interested in anything as arcane as this topic. Good stuff.

The Color of Water - James McBride

I am not African-American, nor am I about to become African-American any time soon. However, I am a Jew, and so I thought I knew how tough it was to grow up different and alien and removed from other people. I also thought I knew what it was to mix cultures as me and my Episcopalian wife raise two daughters as Jews. Well, Now I know that I know only a little. James McBride knows a lot. He's the son of a Black man and a White Jewish woman converted to Christianity. In fact, The Color of Water is mostly the story of how one Ruchel Dwajra Zylska, born in Poland as the daughter of Fishel Zylska, an Orthodox rabbi, lived so fully and accomplished so much as:
a) Rachel Deborah Shilsky, the immigrant Jewish child that settled in Suffolk, Virginia
b) Ruth McBride, the child bride of Andrew McBride (an African-American) and the co-founder of the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, NY who died in 1957
c) Ruth Jordan, the wife of Hunter Jordan, also an African-American, who worked for the City Housing Authority of New York and lived the Red Hook Housing projects in Brooklyn before settling in to St. Albans, Queens. Hunter died in 1972
d) The mother of 12 college graduates, including two MDs, seven master's degrees, one MBA, one Ph.D., one RN
e) Graduated from college herself in 1986, at the age of 65

As it is said in the Passover Haggadah….it would have been sufficient for Ruth McBride Jordan to have "simply" been a church founder, wife, mother, and a powerful influence on all for whom she felt responsible.

The magic of The Color of Water is how James McBride so ably writes about the mixing of cultural heritages to produce a family that survived and thrived on the strength of this one woman. McBride mixed his own commentary and observation with Ruthie's words and recollections and the words of her family and friends to illustrate the quiet and absolute confidence inside of this remarkable woman. Think of it -- the same woman who was discriminated in the South for being a 'Christ killer' founds a Baptist Church in New York. The woman who speaks Yiddish is reviled as a 'Nigger lover'. She raised 12 Black boys and girls through the most turbulent times in American race relations -- and did so with an iron hand.

McBride also writes intelligently about past and current Black/Jewish relations. He does so, most of the time, with insight and compassion for both groups. Two examples: First: "It was in her sense of education, more than any other, that Mommy conveyed her Jewishness to us. She admired the way Jewish parents raised their children to be scholastic standouts…to attend certain schools, to be taught by certain teachers who enforced discipline and encouraged learning, and she followed their lead." Second: "When Malcolm X, the supposed demon of the white man, was killed, I asked her who he was and she said, 'He was a man ahead of his time.' She actually liked Malcolm X. She put him in nearly the same category as her other civil rights heroes….she viewed the civil rights achievements of black Americans with pride, as if they were her own." These excerpts are not blindingly insightful except for the human face that James McBride adds...this is not about principle, its about people.

Above all, Ruth was a mother - and McBride is a writer. To her young black son during a period of increasing rhetoric and violence as black militancy increased…"if it doesn't involve you going to school or church, I could care less about it and my answer is no whatever it is". You can just here the child say, "Ah, mom!"!

It may be McBride's observations of his own feelings that bring the most hope to the issue of blacks and Jews. He writes, " Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds. My view of the world is not merely that of a black man but that of a black man with something of a Jewish soul. I don't consider myself Jewish, but when I look at the Holocaust photographs of Jewish women whose children have been wrenched from them by Nazi soldiers, the women look like my own mother and I think to myself, there but for the grace of God goes my own mother -- and by extension, myself." The Talmud (paraphrased greatly) says "if I am not for you, then who am I?" James McBride's mother brought this to her children and James's has brought it to us.

While overall a triumph, I found a number of minor instances and devolvements into stereotyping -- just enough to remind me and other readers that we all have our prejudices, no matter how subtle. Read this book. You will be better off for having done so.

Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

Krakauer is an expert mountain climber and adventurer, author of “Into Thin Air”, the story about the ill-fated 1996 Everest expedition season. In “Into The Wild”, Krakauer traces the motivations, emotions, and other travails of Christopher McCandless, who died of starvation in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992, 100 days after hiking into some of the most unforgiving territory you can find.

Krakauer is extremely good at writing about human adventure and the challenges that we place before us to conquer. In both of his “Into The …” books, he brings a realism to the activities of mountain climbers and other adventurers that only one of the adventurers can bring. With regard to Christopher McCandless, Krakauer is the first to admit that it is only too easy to dismiss this 23 year- old as foolish, foolhardy, arrogant and ignorant. After all, when you march into the Alaskan wilderness in April with nothing but a ten-pound bag of rice, a pair of boots from Kmart, a rifle and a few boxes of shells, winter coat suitable for Boulder, Colorado, -- after having been on a two year bum-around-the-country trip, given away your bank account, and burnt your cash, -- it is easy to hoot and holler at the seeming stupidity.

Krakauer tries to make the case that McCandless was more complicated than simply being stupid. First, he traces a childhood that looks outwardly normal and fairly comfortable only to find the elements of rather complex and uncomfortable set of emotional connection with the parents. All this in the search for motivations for the behavior exhibited later by McCandless. Second, he tries to imbue McCandless with a love of nature and natural beauty that is rare and exceptional. In support of this second point, Krakauer has dug up and recounts a number of other stories about the demise of the solitary Alaskan adventurer – including a story from his own youth about a seemingly reckless quest that nearly cost him his life.

Krakauer makes an interesting case for seeing McCandless as one who – had he survived – would have been hailed as real Alaskan hero – the man who survived truly on his own, with minimal outside support, in the harshest wilderness this country has to offer. Krakauer really submits for our consideration how thin the line is between accepting an incredible, but thinkable, physical and emotional survival challenge and sheer idiocy.

In my mind, Krakauer does a masterful job at presenting the case, but failed to make the case to me. In the end, I could only see the end result - dead young man who did not need to die. I could not accept that meeting the challenge was worth the risk.

I guess that’s why I read and comment about the adventures instead of pursuing them.