Books read January through December 2005
| Author | Fortier, Norman "Bud" |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Ballantine Books, 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 350 |
| Extras | photos, map, glossary |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | January 2005 |
A college sophomore in a Civilian Pilot Training Program, Fortier was sworn into the services as an air cadet in 1942. Training in the U.S. and England, he went into combat in a P-47 in September, 1943. Ambitious for advancement and for a crack at the enemy, he pushed forward. After quite a long time he succeeded in becoming both an ace and a combat leader flying P-51s out of England and then France on escort, fighter sweep and ground attack missions.
There is the same sense of combat aggressiveness in Fortier's memoir that one finds in all successful fighter pilot's memoirs. These men experienced plenty of fear and not a few moments of terror in the air, but they wanted to fight and believed strongly in their ability to prevail. Among the American pilots, unlike the Germans and Japanese, they also had a firm and well-founded belief in ultimate victory that added much to their confidence and made them perhaps more willing to fly aggressively and pound the enemy. There were very few fights in which F and his comrades found themselves under attack by an aggressive and more numerous enemy.
We have reached the end of the line for these last remaining WWII veterans. I am glad that F wrote this memoir and put all of this into the record before it was too late. These men didn't always have a clear sense of the political significance of the war, but they did have some, and we owe them much.
It seemed like all of the men of my parent's generation served in the war and many of my father's friends saw combat. Most were ordinary men thrust into this extraordinary situation. It marked some of them for the rest of their lives.
| Author | Bear, Greg |
|---|---|
| Publication | Ibooks, 2002 |
| Copyright Date | 1985 |
| Number of Pages | 344 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | January 2005 |
A brilliant but rather simple minded scientist at a high tech California biotechnology company works for several years to develop intelligent, single celled animals, developed from his own cell tissue. The work is illegal and against company policy. When the company finds out they order him to destroy the culture. Unable to save it and smuggle it out any other way, he injects the cells into his own blood stream where they multiply and gradually take over his entire body, then the bodies of his girlfriend, his friends - more and more people until the entire continent of North America has become a single colony of super-intelligent beings that dispense with their human hosts, completely reform the continent, and transform cities and landscapes into entirely new formations. The rest of the world looks on in horror, powerless to do anything at all as the very physics of this part of the solar system is transformed in an alien and unpredictable earth.
The story follows several people - a scientist, a slightly retarded young woman, a pair of backwoods brothers, all of whom are kept alive and used for their own ends by the new race of beings.
B gives us bits and pieces of the new life form, all perceived more or less from the human point of view. He treats it as a truly alien and superior species, one that absorbs its erstwhile hosts and preserves something, though we are not sure what, of the host personalities. In the end it leaves the human race helpless, uncomprehending, lost, and possibly doomed.
B is uncompromising in his books about the future of the human race. He sees us as obsolete creatures, certain to be replaced by a more advanced species. The process may be tragic for humanity but neutral or even positive for the universe as a whole.
Bear is dark and difficult but always interesting.
I can't dismiss books like this as simple fiction. I have my doubts about the specifics of the future development of intelligence. Can intelligence be organized at an intracellular scale? Can independent cells that are in something other than continuous, fixed, tangible contact act together intelligently? I don't think it can be done in any of the ways that evolved intelligent creatures use, but it's hard to say for certain that it's impossible.
Nevertheless, we can leave that issue aside and ask the more general question of whether a super-human, advanced intelligence can arise on the earth, take over the planet, and relegate us to the status of dogs and cats, if we're very lucky, or to something much less worthy in the new life form's eyes if we are not.
The answer to that question is surely, Yes. We may not even be all that far from it. Homo Sapiens might be a short lived race and civilization just a brief blip in a transition from relatively simpler minded creatures to truly advanced creatures who may be created by us but may or may not be anything like us and may or may not tolerate us.
| Author | Swofford, Anthony |
|---|---|
| Publication | Simon and Schuster Audio, 2003 |
| Number of Pages | 384 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Gulf War; Iraq |
| When Read | February 2005 |
Swofford joined the Marine Corps right out of high school. His ex-Air Force sergeant father advised against it but S was gung ho. Offended by the abuse at boot camp, he nevertheless stuck it out and became a true believer, addicted to the physical training, weapons training, hard drinking, roughhousing, and esprit de corps of the Marines. He became a sergeant, a scout sniper, a man who could run, fight, and shoot with the best of them. He could take his M-16 apart and reassemble it blindfolded.
When the first Gulf War came, S was sent. He saw action in the ground war and pitied and disdained Saddam's untrained, frightened conscripts with their rusty rifles and forlorn fates.
Ultimately, the Marine Corps culture of macho physicality, drunken brawling, loyalty to comrades, and primitive ideas weren't enough. He had become a jarhead. He had been in a war. He and his mates could and did lick the meanest and nastiest hometown men in a bar fight. It was enough. Moved and changed by his experience and looking back on it in some wonder, he left the corps and began a private life.
S is an intelligent man and a respectable observer. His book is interesting because it gives us an authentic look at a life and an institution and a group of young men who are sometimes seen but not heard from. The life he portrays is terribly ignorant and primitive but it is raw and intense. It is at once terribly repellent and terribly appealing. Perhaps it's one of those things that are terrible to do but great to have done.
I expect this book to take a place among the standard classic accounts of military life - one of the books that describes the reality apart from the adventure and hype that many books have.
In addition to giving us an inside view of the Marine Corps, Swofford also gives us an inside view of the first Gulf War. There are many interesting impressions - marines horsing around and making lewd adolescent play in front of female reporters, officers pushing marines out of the way in order to have the experience of calling in air or artillery to kill Iraqis, a general atmosphere of men in totally dominating positions relative to their enemies.
The experience he presents seems to have little in common with my father's stories of the Marine Corps in World War II. Routed into technical service as a radar technician, he never saw any actual combat though, as both a Jew and a man with a tough guy reputation, he had a number of fights, including a serious one against a professional heavyweight boxer, putting the other guy into the hospital after a long fight. Dad was a married man, 28 years old when he went in in 1942 and (I think) 32 when he came out. It was a different perspective, and one that I was interested in comparing to Swofford's view as I read the book.
Oddly, looking this book up on Amazon, I saw multiple editions in English with two or three different subtitles, depending on how you count them. A French edition had a totally unrelated subtitle.
| Author | Loyd, Anthony |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2000 |
| Number of Pages | 338 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Bosnian War |
| When Read | February 2005 |
After resigning his commission in the British Army, Lloyd wandered in the far east, began using drugs, then returned to England. Hoping to find something worthwhile and interesting he took a course in photojournalism and taught himself, with the aid of a girl, Serbo-Croatian. Unable to get any news organization to sponsor him, he went to Bosnia on his own to cover the developing Bosnian war.
His understanding of the language, the people, the cultures, the politics, and the war deepened as he thrust himself forward into the worst hot spots. While other journalists hung around UN headquarters, L stayed always in the field. Eventually he started getting writing assignments. His words and photos were being published in London.
The war was as horrible as any. Gangs of thugs in uniform fought to steal Bosnian goods and land and rape the girls. Often, backing down from tough Bosnian fighters or professional UN soldiers, their favorite targets were unarmed civilians. Snipers shot old ladies. Roadside gangs hijacked UN trucks and killed the drivers. One Croatian unit wired three Bosnian prisoners with explosives, tied their hands, and sent them back to the Bosnian line - then blew them up. The Serbs and Croatians were the worst. But even the Bosnians, the only ones with a tolerant, multi-ethnic politics, were far from perfect.
L also covered Chechnya in a war equally squalid and fought with vastly more sophisticated weapons. Whole towns and cities were leveled and yet the Chechens remained remarkably tough and resilient.
Vacillating between his depression and drug addiction and his addiction to the adrenalin high of the wars, L seems somehow to have maintained considerable humanity and objectivity. He wrote a compelling and very informative book.
I think I learned more about the Bosnian War from this book than from anything else I read, although I also learned a lot from The Cellist of Sarajevo, q.v.
| Author | Lethem, Jonathan |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2003 |
| Copyright Date | 1999 |
| Number of Pages | 528 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | March 2005 |
Dylan Ebdus is installed in an almost all black Brooklyn neighborhood by his radical mother who forces him into the public school where he is "yoked", robbed, and abused every day of his miserable, depressed, terrorized, lonely life. His mother abandons the family, leaving him with his depressed, totally withdrawn, artist father who spends all his time painting obscure images on movie film, supporting the two of them with jobs painting science fiction book covers.
Dylan's life revolves around two friends. One is Arthur Lomb, another oppressed white boy with nothing in common with Dylan but the color of his skin. The other is Mingus Rude, a neighbor boy of almost ineffable grace who will dare anything and do anything, a boy whose main aim in life is to write his enigmatic "tag" "DOSE" on every surface in the city. But Mingus sacrifices himself for his own depressed, crack head father, a once successful gospel and recording artist singer. He winds up in jail.
There are exotic fantasy / reality aspects to the story involving a magic ring conferring the ability to fly on Mingus and to be invisible on Dylan, but bringing only death to the ill fated bully who weaves in and out of Dylan's life.
This was a very depressing, difficult to read book, but one with much truth in it. I presume there is much autobiographical material. Its view of black urban culture has no politically correct gloss over it. He tells it like it is. Whites come off no better than blacks. The fine characters, Mingus and even the blasted fathers, his and Mingus', are not saved by their inner grace. All must succumb.
This was a very unusual, interesting, disturbing book.
This book made a deep impression on me.
The idea of living in a neighborhood where your child is terrorized every day is pretty hard to take. Although the father continued to feed and clothe his son, he was otherwise mainly involved only with himself. The mother was worse - first forcing her son into this horrible position and then abandoning him there. All of that added on to the terror of the street did indeed leave Dylan mostly in solitude, with only his inner self as the "fortress" to retire into.
The book was indeed very difficult to read, and nothing at all like the other book of his that I read later, Gun With Occasional Music.
| Author | Le Carre, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Back Bay Books, Little Brown and Co., 2003 |
| Number of Pages | 455 |
| Genres | Fiction; Spy |
| When Read | March 2005 |
Born in Lahore Pakistan of a British Army major on his way down the socio-economic ladder and an Irish housemaid who died in childbirth, Ted Mundy grows up in Pakistan, then England, unattached, alienated, without family, and not knowing where he belongs in the world. In college he learns German and goes to Berlin to perfect his language skill. There he falls in with Sasha, an anarchist or communist (it's not completely clear which) intellectual and they become fast friends. When the West German police move to kill Sasha in the late 60's, Mundy saves him and takes a terrible beating from the police. Later, Sasha shows up as an East German agent who wants to funnel information to the West. But he will only deal with Ted Mundy. British intelligence recruits Mundy - who becomes a spy and double agent. Mundy's marriage and career are sacrificed in the service, but he does the job assigned him for the sake of Sasha and perhaps in the hope that he is doing some good in the world.
Years later, in 2003, M is working as a tour guide at one of Mad Ludwig's castles. He has rescued a young Turkish prostitute and her son, creating a new family for himself and some sort of a meaningful life. Then Sasha reappears and draws M into another undercover scheme - to create a school for radicals funded by a radicalized billionaire. Against all his better judgment M is sucked in. He cooperates with American intelligence when they snatch him, but it is a setup. The "billionaire" is working for the CIA and Ted and Sasha are lured into a trap and murdered in a highly publicized anti-terrorist raid in Heidelberg created to push German public opinion to the American side.
As always, L's writing is literate, manic, and brilliant. His characters are agonizingly flawed and painfully real. His politics are utterly cynical and yet utterly convincing. In the end, the "War on Terror" is revealed as no less cynical and no less corrupt than the Cold War. Absolute Friends is another Le Carre masterpiece.
My statement that Le Carre's "politics are utterly cynical" requires qualification. It is not Le Carre who is utterly cynical, it is the politics that his books protest against that are cynical.
Is he right? Are the intelligence agencies of both East and West completely amoral, unconcerned with lying or with causing harm to innocent people in the furtherance of their often obscure goals? How would I know? All I have are the words of people like Le Carre, Robert Littell, Philip Agee, juxtaposed against the words of the pro-spy writers perhaps including Gerald Seymour, also a sophisticated writer. I can accept the word of my author(s) of choice, or I can give in to confirmation bias. What I don't know how to do is to get at the objective truth. Perhaps the truth varies over time. I don't know.
| Author | Turow, Scott |
|---|---|
| Publication | Random House Audiobooks, 1999 |
| Number of Pages | 384 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Legal |
| When Read | April 2005 |
Personal injury lawyer Robbie Feavor has been sucked into a system of payoffs to judges to throw cases in his favor. The upright Kindle County prosecutor has figured it out and confronts him in a sting operation. He must either wear a listening device and trap his collaborators or go to jail, leaving his wife, who is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease.
FBI agent "Even Miller" is assigned to Robbie's law office in an undercover role to watch him. Feavor is a fascinating character - a man of enormous charm, deep feelings, and real loyalty to friends and family, while he is at the same time a liar and a manipulator. He is unfaithful to his wheelchair bound wife and yet is the most dutiful husband. He pays off judges and yet seems to actually take care of his clients.
The FBI sting is incredibly expensive and elaborate. But in spite of all efforts, it only succeeds in busting an old Jewish judge, a black judge, a law clerk who is dying of cancer anyway, and a go between. The mastermind directing it all is never pinned down and eventually succeeds in becoming the chief judge.
The narrative technique is unusual. Narration switches between third person and first person by Robbie's lawyer. But it works. The content is also unusual and is very effective. Turow's characters, from the gregarious, inimitable Robbie to the uptight, controlled Even, to the chronically ill partner, the corrupt cops, the crusading prosecutor, the old Jew, the aggressive black judge, and the evil mastermind, are all marvelously different and very compelling. As I now expect from Turow, his books are hard to put down and hard to clear from my head.
Spoiler alert here for any other reader of these notes.
At the end of the book the old law clerk with cancer kills Robbie right in the court room by smashing his head in with a golf club. Even then goes back to Robbie's house to find his wife, who is at death's door, unable to move and unable to speak. She has wanted Robbie to take away her life support but he was never willing to do it.
Even doesn't tell the woman that her husband is dead. She says that Robbie sent her. She asks the wife to blink her eyes if she still wants the life support removed. The wife blinks her eyes. Even says that Robbie loves her but could not do this himself. She removes the life support and the wife dies.
It was a very moving scene.
| Author | Greenberg, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | The Teaching Company, 2001 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| Keywords | Music |
| When Read | April 2005 |
Professor Greenberg's musical biography presents Mozart in a very different light from the received image of a despondent, child-like man. Mozart was indeed irresponsible with money but, if anything, according to G, it was his father Leopold who behaved badly, not Wolfgang. Leopold browbeat the child. Leopold lived off his son's income and had the gall to claim that Wolfgang owed him money. Leopold managed the boy's life in a stifling way - trying to prevent any attachment to a woman or any sign of independence from his father. Leopold bungled his son's career and forced him into service with the arrogant and anti-musical archbishop.
But more important to me than G's defense of WM's personality was his explication of the music. M produced much revolutionary music. It was not the Romantic revolution. It was different. it was a creation of new idioms, new ways of thinking, within the classical tradition.
Mozart, as much or more than any other composer, had an extraordinarily deep and facile understanding of music. He could produce thousands of new ideas with the most remarkable clarity and musicality. G slows all of this down for us, showing us, in simple layman's terms, what an extraordinary creation is before us.
Greenberg's writing and presentation are over the top. He doesn't measure his words. But that's okay. His enthusiasm can be tiresome but it is often infections.
This was the first of The Teaching Company / Robert Greenberg lectures that I listened to, but not the last. The CD format was far superior to a printed book because the author could play the music, something that I couldn't get from reading excerpts from scores that appear, for example, in Alfred Einstein's Mozart: His character, his work.
Back in the 1980's, working for Online Computer Systems, I got to visit some museums with great art historians as part of a project done for the J. Paul Getty Trust. I remember studying a painting for a long time, then Hank Millon, one of the art historian Getty consultants, came over and explained what I was seeing. It was a revelation, as if I had missed most of the intention and achievement of the artist. Listening to Robert Greenberg was a similar experience. I don't know how much I retained but I think I still have some of it, and it was wonderful to experience the lecture and the music together.
| Author | Shaw, Irwin |
|---|---|
| Publication | Delacorte Press, 1973 |
| Number of Pages | 368 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | April 2005 |
Theater and film producer Jesse Craig, a man in his late 40's who has done no work in five years, arrives at the Cannes Film Festival with a secret manuscript he is writing and a burden of "issues" with his career, his former wife, his daughters, his past partners and collaborators, his mistress, his agent, and with a young woman journalist who pesters him, threatens him, sleeps with him, and subverts his daughter.
Craig spends his days dealing with promoters, writers, journalists, etc. We never fully understand what he's trying to do or what he wants in Cannes or anywhere else. Is he in love with his mistress? Was he in love with his wife? What does he want done with his manuscript? We also find it difficult to relate to the people around him. we never know exactly what they want from him or he from them.
He finds a backer for his screenplay. He leaves Cannes and returns to New York. He suffers a physical breakdown and is told by his doctor to give up alcohol and smoking or die. But in the final scene he leaves the hospital and goes straight to a bar in a willful act of both self-assertion and self-destruction.
I didn't really care for this book. After reading the truly excellent The Young Lions I expected much more - more great writing, more diverse characters, more personal heroism. But what we get is ennui, depression, solipsism, and self-centeredness. Craig's marriage was truly incomprehensible to me - though I accept that there must be marriages like that. His great talent was surprisingly unconvincing. Surprisingly because Shaw really has a great talent of his own. The book was, objectively, not bad. But I expected more.
| Author | Newby, P.H. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 1995 |
| Number of Pages | 210 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History; Biography |
| Keywords | Middle East |
| When Read | April 2005 |
This is a quite sympathetic biography of Saladin, the Kurdish soldier who became sultan of Egypt and leader of the Muslim armies against the Crusaders. S lived from 1137-1193. Sent to Egypt with an Arab, Turkish, Kurdish, etc. army to relieve pressure from Christian invaders, he eventually overthrew the corrupt government and assumed power. He then fought the crusaders for many years - losing many battles but always holding some kind of army together in spite of losses, desertions, whole army divisions going home, internal squabbles among commanders, and political intrigues by Muslim kings and princes who feared and envied him.
S was a successful commander and leader but not a military genius. He made mistakes and lost what might have been winnable battles. He never created an army with the extraordinary fighting qualities of some of the Crusader units. But his forte was constancy, magnanimity, and devotion to the cause. He kept nothing for himself. He owned no possessions. He lived in his tent and on horseback. he gave away all of the wealth he captured.
Although he was capable of the harshest justice, he was also noble and generous to his enemies. When he made a promise he kept it, even if it was a promise to an infidel.
His achievements occurred at a critical point in Arab history but his goals of Muslim unity, religious piety, and honorable government could not be sustained after his death.
| Author | Otanka, Julie |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 143 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Japanese internment in World War II |
| When Read | April 2005 |
A Japanese American woman and her children are interned in a desert concentration camp during World War II. The husband had already been taken away in an earlier roundup. The story of the effects on the family are told in simple affect-less terms. Nothing very terrible happens. No one is beaten up or dragged off to jail. But the people are terribly damaged nonetheless. Father, mother, and daughter, each in a different way, lose their bearings. They are unable to continue their lives in captivity and unable to resume their old lives when they finally return to their robbed and vandalized California home. The father seems beaten and is unable to work. The mother becomes a maid, scrubbing floors to earn food for the family. The daughter seems emotionally detached and disturbed. Only the boy seems to be able to cope. Or perhaps I should say they all cope, but only the boy seems intact at the end.
The novel is simple and quiet. There are no big scenes, no big actions, no emotional outbursts. But the effect is very powerful. We see how ostracizing these people has wounded them deeply. We see the inner destruction.
The flat affect of the novel, seen from the very first in the woman's matter of fact killing of their faithful old dog, is an excellent example of how very powerful emotions can be invoked in the simplest and quietest way.
Marcia's Aunt Betty was one of the Japanese Americans rounded up in 1942 and sent to a camp with her parents. I believe they released her at age 18 in 1943 when she applied to art school in Chicago and was accepted. She was a delightful person and a fine artist who died only just recently. I never spent much time with her and never discussed her experience in the camps or during the war. However, knowing of her experience gave me a personal interest in this book that I might not otherwise have had.
| Author | Pressfield, Steven |
|---|---|
| Publication | Santa Clara, CA: Books on Tape, 2004 |
| Number of Pages | 368 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Ancient world; Alexander the Great |
| When Read | May 2005 |
This novel of Alexander portrays him as a driven man, unable to rest, completely devoted to the service of his daemon - an ambitious force propelling him forward to conquer the world. Winning battle after battle, conquering first the Persians and then people further east who had done him no harm, he would have driven on to the ends of India and beyond if his men permitted it. As it was, he led, coaxed, shamed, and bullied them into following him far beyond where they wanted to go. Even his Companions, the men who grew up with him, fought for him, often saved his life, could not convince him to change or divert him from his course, even if it meant their lives.
The battle scenes in this book were extraordinary. P gives a convincing view of the strategy and tactics. He portrays A's victories as due not just to superior generalship but also to the incredible training, discipline, and toughness of his men and of his own unflinching courage - always putting himself at the very point of the spearhead - driving into his opponents' army, heading for a personal attack on the opposing king.
Although this portrayal of Alexander is fascinating and compelling, P gives us only one side of his character. The changes he wrought in Asia, the synthesis of Greek and Persian culture, the new trade and economy, are not discussed - or maybe they were over discussed in the biography I read. Certainly Pressfield's view of Alexander as a driven man is convincing. But then so was Napoleon. There are interesting parallels.
I retain a number of scenes from this book in my memory. One is of Alexander's cavalry with himself at the head, at the very point of a triangle, flanked by his companions, driving towards Darius, through his huge army. Another was of Alexander scaling the wall of a fortified town in Afghanistan. He and three other men drop over the wall but the Greeks behind them are repelled. Alexander is repeatedly wounded until he is down on the ground. His two remaining companions fight like demons, defending him for half an hour until the Greeks break through and rescue them. A third is a column of Alexander's cavalry marching into the steppes of central Asia. An army of Scythian mounted bowman surround them, riding in a circle and shooting arrows into the Greeks. Without missing a step Alexander divides his force into two columns, drives straight into opposite sides of the circle, then his two columns head towards each other, trapping and annihilating one semicircle of the Scythian forces. The rest surrender.
I don't know if these stories are true. I don't know if Pressfield's dramatizations are accurate, but they were compelling. Surely Alexander was one of the greatest generals of all time.
The other book I read about Alexander was a biography, The Genius of Alexander the Great by N.G.L. Hammond.
| Author | Garrels, Anne |
|---|---|
| Publication | Audio Renaissance, 2003 |
| Number of Pages | 264 |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Keywords | Middle East; Iraq; Gulf War |
| When Read | May 2005 |
Garrels reported from Baghdad before, during, and after the second Gulf War. She worked with Iraqi government assigned drivers and translators, one of whom turned out to be a highly intelligent and independent minded former army officer who was able to put her in closer touch with Iraqis and, in some cases, gather information for her.
Until the day before the American entry into the city, G was subjected to a steady and increasing barrage of bureaucratic harassing and entanglement, aimed partly at controlling the news but more largely at extorting money for graft. As a lowly NPR radio correspondent G was far less visible than the TV and big newspaper journalists who often had to pay ten times as much.
G's own personal safety was at risk in this endeavor. NPR often wanted her to get out but she was determined to see things through in spite of the danger and discomfort and her intense dislike of the greedy and venal officials she was forced to work with.
G's narrative is interspersed with email from her husband, Vint Laurence, who reported on her safety and condition, referring to her as Brenda Starr in most of these "Brenda Bulletins" sent to their friends.
There were no surprises in the story. We all saw all of this unfold before us. her inside view merely fleshed out what we knew had to be the case. Not surprisingly, although there was real hatred for Saddam, there was no love for America then, and probably not much now.
I have tried to understand the Gulf wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the "War on Terror" with ISIS and al Quada. I've probably read a lot more about the subject than most laymen who have no personal or career investment in those wars. I want, first of all, to be able to hold an informed opinion on whether we should be fighting these wars at all. So far, I've not been able to come to any absolute conclusions. It seems that we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. I can see the point of view of George W. Bush, who wanted to crush tyranny and install democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can see the point of view of his father who sought the much more limited objective of defending American allies but otherwise keeping out. I can see Clinton's position of just keeping a lid on Iraq, and Obama's position of getting us out of the middle eastern conflicts.
The war in Iraq was a diversion from the original plan of fighting violent Islamic extremism since Saddam Hussein was no true Muslim and held the religious extremists in check. Now we're back to fighting the extremists and one problem seems the same in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably in Syria and Libya too. It is that the extremists, stupid, ignorant, violent, intolerant, and misogynist as they are, are comparatively honest. Their enemies, the people we take as our friends, are dishonest and corrupt. They can never win the support of the people. It seems to me that gives us a built-in losing hand. The more successful our military is, the more opportunities we create in our "allies" for dishonesty and corruption. We can hold any territory we like, wherever we like. We can install Marine divisions that cannot be defeated by local guerrillas. But we haven't got enough soldiers to occupy the entire country and we wouldn't have the support of the American people to try. So it seems to me that our efforts, expensive as they are in treasure, lives, and the good will of other peoples, are doomed.
I didn't read anything in Anne Garrels' book that changed my thinking on any of that. If someone can demonstrate a method we can use to install an honest, incorruptible government in these countries, then I might change my mind. Until then, I'm against anything but the very most carefully limited and tightly focused military operations in the Middle East.
| Author | Cahill, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2003 |
| Number of Pages | 352 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Ancient Greece |
| When Read | June 2005 |
This is a delightful and somewhat personal view of ancient Greek culture, concentrating on its literature - Homer, Sappho, the great dramatists, Pericles' funeral oration, Plato, and others. His reading of these sources is enlightened, sensitive, and well informed by an understanding of their context. He is able to write useful analysis of the parallel developments in literature, technology (especially the Greek alphabet and the introduction of papyrus), and politics - showing how the developments in literature reflect those in other spheres.
There is a lot of material here on the personal aspects of Greek life, from homo-eroticism, which is extensively discussed, to the first appearance of personally identifiable feelings in literature in the poetry of Sappho. Greek contributions to drama, poetry, philosophy, and history are all discussed.
C's discussion of Homer is extensive and fascinating. He contrasts Odysseus, Achilles, Menelaus, Hector, and Priam, and calls attention to the primacy of wit over strength and the human qualities of Hector, Andromache and Priam - seeing Troy as a kind of ideal city, peopled by a humane and noble race, seen by Homer as a lost land.
C is not a Greek scholar and doesn't try to be. He's a humanist - well read and with a deep understanding of what literature is about. His sensitivity to the depth, expression, and innovation of the Greeks brings it all to life. I will read more of him.
This kind of study is fascinating to me. More than with any other animal, human evolution was accompanied by intellectual and cultural evolution which, at some point in our prehistory, "took off" in a self-sustaining development of language, technology, art, science, philosophy, and any number of new activities that is continuing and accelerating in the present day. How did it happen? Why did it happen? What are the steps in its progress? Where is it heading for the future? Ancient Greece was one of the centers of this development.
We as individuals have only very limited parts to play in this development. Even the great geniuses - Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - only have limited parts, parts that would probably have been taken up by others if those men had never lived. Our own lives are short and our consciousness is narrow and limited. Our greatness, such as it is, is in our participation in this grand and glorious development and our satisfaction is in our understanding of it.
I know that statement is pretentious and sentimental. I know that the universe doesn't care about us humans and our satisfactions are temporary and ephemeral. But I get some satisfaction from it all. I think Cahill did too, and he shared it with us. He wrote a good book.
I think it was in this book that I learned that the Greek alphabet was the first to include vowels, which are not in the Hebrew alphabet. The addition of vowels made it much easier for people to learn to read and write. If you knew how to speak Greek, which every Greek did, it was unnecessary to know the specific spelling of each word in order to read and write it. So, as earlier alphabets were a big advance over hieroglyphics, the Greek alphabet was a notable advance over them.
| Author | Mosley, Walter |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 2004 |
| Copyright Date | 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 320 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Easy Rawlins |
| When Read | June 2005 |
In 1964, Easy Rawlins is living a settled life. He works as a school janitor, supports his two adopted children Jesus and Flower, and is living with a beautiful Caribbean woman. But then an old friend asks Easy to help hm by finding his wife's son Brawly and getting him to keep out of trouble.
Brawly had become involved with a black revolutionary group composed of a mix of idealistic young people, older crooks, and a government informant and provocateur stirring them up to commit a robbery that will actually be a police trap, allowing the cops to eliminate this group of perceived black communist troublemakers.
Easy has a tough time penetrating all this. He works both with and against the cops and both with and against the revolutionaries - always walking a fine ethical line and always aiming to do the one thing that nobody believes is his real aim - saving Brawly Brown.
In the end, seeing no way to keep BB out of the robbery, Easy traps him and shoots him in the thigh and buttocks with a small caliber rifle. B never knows who shot him but he misses the robbery where everyone is killed.
Mosley's continuation of the series is successfull and is close to the standard of the others - if slightly tamer. Easy is still the man of guilt, angst, and anger. He pines for his friend Mouse who may or may not be dead (see last book.) He struggles with Jesus' desire to quit school. He handles his love life awkwardly. He is conflicted at every turn. It is vintage Easy Rawlins.
| Author | Golding, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harbrace Paperbound Library |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 208 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | June 2005 |
Christopher Hadley "Pincher" Martin is cast into the North Atlantic when his destroyer is torpedoed during World War II. Washed up on a near barren rock in mid-Atlantic he survives by eating mussels and drinking rain water while setting up signals to attract any ships or planes that might come by.
Day after day he is more damaged by his terrible diet and by exposure to sun, rain, rock, cold, and salt. Day after day he slips nearer to madness.
His thoughts are a mingled confusion of present and past time. He guiltily recalls his attempt to rape his best friend's fiancee and the inner psychological betrayal of his friend - who also served as a seaman on the same destroyer. The ship may or may not have been torpedoed because of his inattention and preoccupation. He may or may not have been on his way to murder his friend when the ship sank.
The ending is very bad. In the last chapter his remains wash ashore on a Scottish island and we learn that he died in the ocean, all of his adventures on the rock being but the dream of his last few minutes or even moments of life. Fooey!
The story is brutish and repulsive. The ending is a cheap trick. Pincher Martin himself is a selfish, lying, nasty man. Our sympathy for him is mixed with revulsion. I read with a mixture of distaste and absorption. And yet there is something here. This is far from G's best book but it rises out of the ordinary anyway.
Golding had written two much better books before this, Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, as well as better books after it. He seemed to me to be an uneven writer, brilliant, violent, treating his characters brutally but with deep penetration. There are still some of his books that I haven't read and might yet get to.
| Author | Brin, David |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Tor Books, 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 568 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | June 2005 |
Brin postulates a future in which the "standing wave" of a human mind can be "imprinted" on a clay body to bring a clone to life with all of the faculties and memories of the original but a lifespan of only 24 hours. If the clone uploads its memories back to its "rig" before it dissolves, the original human can incorporate them into his own memories. Each person tends to concentrate only on leisure or important work, using clay "roxes" to do dangerous, unpleasant, boring, or other work that he simply can't or won't get to.
Albert Morris, the hero of this delightful book, is a detective working on a number of parallel cases that turn out to be interrelated. A mad scientist has come up with ways to prolong the lives of clay people and to imprint from one to another. He is working on a plan to imprint himself into an enormous standing wave based on the sacrifice of a million people. A Jeckel and Hyde daughter of the scientist imprints criminals against her will. A billionaire industrialist attempts to enrich himself further by spreading chaos. Only "real Albert", his gray "detective" clone, and his green "Frankenstein" clone, and his friends stand in their way.
The book is full of charming scenes, hilarious puns, mile-a-minute action, and humble clay folk, each trying to do the right thing, or the wrong thing, depending on who they are. The point of view shifts each chapter from real Albert to one of his "dittos" or "golems", to another and back to real Al again. We're often left with cliff hangers at each context switch.
The ending is muddled and too tricky, but the writing is delightful, the concept is full of great possibilities - all imaginatively exploited, and it's just a fun read.
Books like this present the reader with an imaginary world with possibilities that all of us would love to have and explore. Wouldn't it be fun to be able to create a surrogate to try out some dangerous activity and make the trial a part of your memories? Wouldn't it be great to be able to create a golem to do the distasteful things that you don't like to do but must? One of the attractions of science fiction and fantasy is that they provide worlds in which these kinds of things seem to come to life. In good SF, as opposed to fantasy, there's even some plausibility to the stories.
| Author | Zimmer, Carl |
|---|---|
| Publication | Harper Collins, 2001 |
| Number of Pages | 364 |
| Extras | illustrations, photos |
| Extras | Forward by Stephen Jay Gould |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biology |
| Keywords | Evolution |
| When Read | July 2005 |
Written as a "companion to the Public Broadcasting system series", this popular work traces the history of the theory of evolution, paying particular attention to Darwin but continuing the story through the 20th and start of the 21st centuries to explain many facets of evolution unknown to Darwin but important in understanding the scope and application of the theory.
Zimmer gives a very appealing account of Darwin the man, from D's childhood, his horror of medical school, voyage of the Beagle, marriage to a devout lady-like cousin, and so on. D went to extraordinary lengths to establish the truth of his theory before publishing it. Knowing that he would be attacked for impiety as well as error, he did his best to only claim what he could clearly prove and to avoid all discussion of God, religion, Genesis, or any topics leading directly to those. He concealed his own growing religious skepticism and refused to be drawn out on it. His science was truly excellent and far ahead of most of his contemporaries.
The book also discusses the age of the earth, the age of fossils, the development of bacteria, the "Cambrian explosion", mass extinctions, the development of Homo Sapiens, and the place of man as a small twig on the tree of life, but one who is initiating one of the largest extinctions. There is also a chapter at the end that struggles to conclude that believers in God may still, logically, believe in evolution and vice versa.
The book is a polemic aimed against the anti-scientific proponents of "Creationism" and "Intelligent Design". It is excellent for that purpose and still good enough to be of considerable interest to a layman like myself who doesn't need convincing.
| Author | King, Laurie R. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2004 |
| Number of Pages | 400 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | July 2005 |
Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell go to India in 1924. They are there to search for the missing Kimball O'Hara, the "Kim" of Rudyard Kipling fame. "O'Hara", as they call him, is a secret agent for the Empire but has not been seen in several years. A packet of his things was discovered leading Holmes to believe he was in trouble and needed help - prompting the trip to India.
Traveling by ship with an American family, they arrive, meet their contact, and assume a disguise as a traveling Muslim magician/entertainer and his assistant. They darken their skin and hair and learn Hindi - which, of course, Holmes already knew.
The bad guy of the story turns out to be a young Maharajah, a man who lives a reckless life of boar hunting, flying airplanes, keeping a zoo, raping women, and kidnapping O'Hara. He has a plan to get Soviet aid, then betray the Soviets and appear a hero - to take over the British Indian government. H and R work separately against him and ultimately figure everything out to rescue O'Hara and kidnap/arrest the bad guy - after the usual twists, turns, and dramatics.
King is a reliable writer. I can count on some intelligence, education, and literate writing from her. The plots are far-fetched but in the spirit of Conan Doyle's own far-fetched stories. This one pleased me as well as the others, which is to say, it pleased me.
| Author | Harris, Robert |
|---|---|
| Publication | books on Tape, 2003 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Roman Empire |
| When Read | July 2005 |
Young Marcus Attilius Primus, known simply as Attilius, is appointed Aquarius (chief water engineer) in charge of the great Augusta aqueduct that brings water to Pompeii, Misenum, and many other southern Italian towns. Born of three generations of aquarii, he takes his work very seriously but is constantly undermined by a foreman named Corax who challenges his leadership and undermines his efforts, eventually accepting payment from the crass market manipulator Ampliatus to kill Attilius before he discovers that Amp. is getting water at cut rate prices by corrupting Attilius' predecessor.
When the town of Mesenum runs dry, Attilius heads a work crew to Pompeii to find and repair the problem. But the problem is that it is the year 79 AD and Mount Vesuvius is about to blow its top. Tremors before the eruption caused the break.
Attilius is assisted by the wonderfully characterized Pliny the Elder - fat, old, and sent out in a final assignment as grand admiral of a peacetime fleet. Pliny makes one brilliant and objective observation after another and moves very courageously to rescue survivors of the eruption with his fleet - losing his life while facing bravely into danger.
There is also, of course, a nice love story, a contest of wills with the evil Ampliatus, who is also father of the beautiful Corelia, and lots of technical detail on Roman engineering.
I enjoy a good historical romance and, if the author works in some technical detail, then I like it all the better. Writing and characterization are adequate but not literary. It's intended as, and succeeds as, an entertaining read.
Odd details survive from my reading. In this book I recall that the Roman fleet arrives offshore at Pompeii to rescue the populace. Attilius, now on board the flagship with Pliny, needs to go ashore to rescue someone, but it is raining rocks. Debris from the volcanic explosions are raining down, killing people right and left. Pliny gives Attilius his metal war helmet which he wears ashore to protect himself.
I must not have looked up Pliny the Elder when I wrote these book notes. Pliny would have been about 56 years old when he died, not the old man I reported in my abstract, even when I wrote it at age 59. I don't now recall if Harris called him "old" or whether I got that impression without explicit help from the author.
One of the things I liked about this book was that both Pliny and Attilius had very scientific outlooks in the story, as they would have in real life. By his choice and presentation of characters, the author was thinking of Rome very much as a civilization and not just an old time.
| Author | Winchester, Simon |
|---|---|
| Publication | Harper Audio, 2003 |
| Number of Pages | 288 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| When Read | July 2005 |
Begun in 1857 and not completed until 1928, this was one of those monumental academic tasks undertaken for the love of it and persevered in in the face of every difficulty. The editors were deeply educated men, assisted by an army of often equally talented volunteers. Their task was nothing less than to read the whole of English literature. All of it! From 870 to 1870 and beyond. They attempted to find the first publication of every word, to trace its etymology in living and dead languages, to find its core meaning and all ancillary meanings, to describe its pronunciation, and to do all this in the most authoritative possible way.
Where correctness and rigor warred with economy and practicality, the editors chose correctness every time. This was to be a complete documentation of the entire language, living and dead. It had to be done right.
Winchester is clearly a lover of language himself. He writes articulately and precisely. He writes also with a love of these eccentric people who dedicated themselves to this esoteric and unlikely task for the benefit of all.
I liked that.
Who would have thought that the story of compiling a dictionary, seemingly the very most prosaic, boring, and undramatic of tasks, could be made interesting. But W did it.
I once thought of my 3x5 inch book cards as creating a perfect discipline for writing notes about books, but now I miss all of the other information that I would like to have recorded.
One of the great stories of the OED was the role of the volunteers. I don't recall their names. Many of them were men and women who knew dozens of languages, sometimes including Sanskrit, Aramaic, and other dead languages that contained roots of English words that no one could possibly know except them. One was something of a maniac who murdered a complete stranger and was in prison where he was maintained by his wealthy brother in a private cell with his 3,000 books. Asked about a word he was said to be able to look around his cell, pull down a specific book, open to a specific page, and read out a sentence using that word in just the sense desired by the editors.
One day before too many decades have passed I hope that someone, maybe Simon Winchester himself, will write the story of the Wikipedia. It is surely as great a story as the OED. ... I just looked up Winchester's website and was about to contact him, but then I thought I ought to check amazon.com to find out if there are already books about the Wikipedia. It turns out that there are, in fact there are quite a few of them. I did not send my note to Winchester.
| Author | Capon, Brian |
|---|---|
| Publication | Timber Press, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 239 |
| Extras | illustrations, glossary, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Science |
| Keywords | Botany |
| When Read | July 2005 |
Capon covers just the basics for the interested adult who wants to supplement his practical experience with plants with a little scientific theory. It's not really for gardeners, but for anyone who knows very little and wants to get a broad understanding as quickly and easily as possible.
There is no detail. Cell biology is covered in seven pages, including illustrations. Other topics are similarly abbreviated. The illustrations are excellent.
I found this book in both of the public libraries I frequent. I suspect it has sold well for a small press scientific book. I liked it enough and felt that it and botany were worth promoting enough, that I wrote a review for Amazon.com
As of this writing, my review of this book on Amazon is the most successful of those I have written. It garnered 75 positive marks out of 75 cast. My review of Campbell's Biology got 145 marks, but that included only 140 positive. And of course quite a few reviews that I worked hard on (I work hard on all of them) got no comment at all, or got negative comments - for example when I defended Deborah Lipstadt against the Nazi David Irving.
Checking just now, my review has 79 positive marks, but it won't get any more and won't be seen by anyone since Amazon introduced its "Verified purchase" policy that only shows reviews by people who bought the book from Amazon. To see it you have to know the arcane procedure for viewing all reviews, not just the "verified purchase" reviews. Almost all of my reviews have disappeared in this way. The only ones they show are for books that they don't have at least four or five reviews by verified purchasers. It was suggested by some that I join goodreads.com. I did, but then they were bought by Amazon. I guess I'll just keep my opinions about books in these notes.
| Author | Stevenson, William |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Ballantine Books, 1980 |
| Copyright Date | 1976 |
| Number of Pages | 541 |
| Extras | maps, photos, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | July 2005 |
Undercover warfare against Germany began early in the war, developing under Churchill into an extensive effort with important headquarters in New York, training centers in Britain and Canada, and far flung operations in Bermuda, Mexico, South America, and in resistance units in occupied Europe.
The battle was fought on many levels, not the least of which was a battle for public and government opinion in the neutral United States. But there were also significant efforts to arrest, discredit, frame, or even kill German agents and sympathizers throughout the western hemisphere, and of course there were secret assassinations and acts of sabotage inside Europe - from the Norsk Hydropower heavy water shipments to the killing of Heydrich.
Surprisingly, there was considerable tension between the Brits and the FBI that turned out to have been caused by the English/Russian double agent, Kim Philby.
William Stephenson (not the author of the book) led the "British Security Coordination." He was a pilot, engineer, boxer, industrialist, organizer, and chief spy - a man who invested his own considerable self-made fortune in saving the British Commonwealth and destroying what he believed to be a great and absolute evil. We owe much to him and to the many brave people who gave their lives in the struggle.
| Author | Grisham, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Random House, Books on Tape, 2001 |
| Number of Pages | 384 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 2005 |
G writes here about childhood in rural Arkansas. In 1952, seven year old Luke lives with his World War II veteran father, his town, gown, and city yearning mother, and his grandparents "Pappy" and "Gran", on their cotton farm where they eke out a living in good years to pay the rent on the farm, the loans on their equipment, and the piece wages to their hired "hill people" and Mexicans brought in for the harvest.
Everybody more or less gets along but Hank, the burly and dangerous son of the hill people - who is mean, tough, and calculating. Hank kills an equally mean but not nearly as tough local boy in a fight - basically just murdering him with a 2x4 after already whipping him and his two brothers in a back street brawl. Hank also beats and hurts a professional wrestler at the traveling carnival and harasses the Mexicans - throwing rocks at them at night. but he is undone when, leaving the camp, he is followed by the tough Mexican, "Cowboy", who kills him with a knife, then sneaks back and runs off with Hank's beautiful sister.
The story is full of country charm. Decent, honest, hard working, poor people struggle for a living while upholding traditional family and Christian values. Pappy and Gran, and Luke's Mom and Dad, are heroes in their own ways and impart to Luke all that he really needs from a family.
In the end, Luke's Dad takes the family to Detroit for a job in the auto plants. The farm simply cannot exist without this and we know that Luke will not go back.
This was a fine story and different kind of Grisham novel.
The story was told entirely from Luke's point of view. Luke witnessed the fight in which Hank killed the tough bully and told the sheriff that "it was three against one", giving Hank some justification for using the board to hit his opponent. He saved Hank at that time, but Hank was really beyond redemption. Hank and Cowboy never got along. On the baseball team that Pappy and Luke's Dad (a former semi-pro baseball player) organized, Luke got them to make Cowboy, a young man of extraordinary athletic talent, the pitcher. Hank and Cowboy almost came to blows on the baseball field with Cowboy stopping him by pulling out his switchblade. From then on, each knew that there would come a time for them to have it out.
The time came in the middle of the night. Luke slipped out of the house and witnessed Hank attempt to kill Cowboy and Cowboy knifing him instead and dumping his body in the river. He was traumatized but he would not tell anyone what he saw. Cowboy had fallen in love with the girl and she with him. They went off. As far as anyone else knew, Hank had also run off and disappeared. At age seven, Luke had to take a grown up view of the situation. He did.
It was really quite a fine novel. I still remember quite a bit of it.
| Author | Robinson, Peter |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1989 |
| Number of Pages | 317 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | July 2005 |
Police Inspector Alan Banks is guarding a right wing MP at a speech when a demonstration outside the hall turns into a melee and a cop is stabbed to death. Soon "Dirty Dick" Burgess arrives in the little Northern village of Eastdale determined to find the anarchists and communists whom he is sure are responsible.
P.I. Banks investigates with Burgess, with Banks thinking things out and pursuing various leads while Burgess bullies and intimidates, going after the easy target of a young rootless kid with a background of trouble.
In the end, the real killer is revealed as a peaceful man who killed a vicious cop who had maimed and traumatized a former lover. The killer committed suicide at the end.
This is a traditional police procedural, well written, with pretty good characterization but with the customary artificial plot devices and effects to stimulate interest and misdirect the reader. In short, it's a well done but solidly traditional mystery reader's mystery.
Books like this are a pleasure to read.
| Author | Burnie, David |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: DK Publishing, 2004 |
| Copyright Date | 1989 |
| Number of Pages | 72 |
| Extras | index glossary illustrations |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biology |
| Keywords | Botany |
| When Read | July 2005 |
This is one book in a series of picture books for children. But it's informative and beautifully illustrated. Some simple concepts that were not perfectly clear to me from other sources were made clear in this book, either by the simple text or the superb illustrations.
On a technical scale of 1-10, this is a 1, or perhaps if the scale is exponential 2 or 2.5. There is no theory but there are fine illustrations of the diversity of plant life with a very broad approach showing roots, shoots, flowers, leaves, reproduction cycles, plant defenses and many other topics, each presented in two pages containing a general paragraph followed by around ten illustrations, all very diverse and most very clear and illustrative of the points made. Each illustration has its own caption of one to five sentences.
For an adult reader less interested in the subject than the deeper but still superficial Botany for Gardeners, this isn't a bad choice.
| Author | Zola, Emile |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1877 |
| Number of Pages | 528 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 2005 |
Gervaise, a young laundress with two small children, is robbed and abandoned by Lantier, her common law husband. She works hard to support her children and eventually yields to a proposal by Coupeau, an earnest, sober, hard working young man. Each works very hard and saves their money to open Gervaise's own laundry. But Coupeau, a roofer, falls of a roof and is laid up for months. When he finally recovers he has lost the hapbit of working. He grows lazy and begins to drink at L'Assommoir.
Gervaise tries hard to continue in her new shop but Coupeau squanders the money and then Lantier comes back and begins living off her too, with Coupeau's blessing. Unable to resolve her crisis, Gervaise finally decides that she might as well enjoy herself if everybody else does. She too begins to drink. The family slides slowly into complete and abject squalor. Their daughter takes to the streets, Coupeau suffers episodes of delirium tremens, they lose the shop. Drink becomes more important than food or shelter. Coupeau dies and Gervaise finally expires in a stairwell.
Zola pulls no punches in this story of alcoholism, brutality, sexism, and primitive thinking in his tale of working class Parisian life. It is both difficult to read and compelling at the same time. The end, awful as it is, is a relief. This life of misery is finally over. It is a common story, but not one common in literature and one not written before Zola's time.
| Author | Lord, Walter |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper and Row, 1967 |
| Number of Pages | 306 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | August 2005 |
Looking back at the Battle of Midway from our perspective of the end of the war it's easy to imagine that the U.S. crushed Japan with overwhelming technical and material superiority. But the true situation was nothing like that at Midway. It was the Japanese who had most of the advantages at the outset - more ships, more planes, more advanced aircraft, more training, vastly more experience. Almost all of the Americans who defeated them were men who had not been in combat before. Their victory does seem incredible.
Lord mixes an objective high level view of the battle with many personal accounts based on interviews with the men, both American and Japanese, who were there. He gives some sense of the experience of combat along with the high level strategic view.
I grew up reading books like this and I still like them.
Without realizing that I had already read it, I read this book again in 2016. I think I've done that at least a half dozen times. I was making my notes in XML at that point and produced a much more detailed entry than this one.
| Author | Carter, Jimmy |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 2003 |
| Number of Pages | 465 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Revolution |
| When Read | August 2005 |
At age 79, former President Jimmy Carter published a first novel, and a surprisingly good one at that.
Young Ethan from Philadelphia marries a local girl and the two go to North Carolina, following Ethan's older brother who has opened a shoemaking and leather goods shop in an interior village in Pennsylvania. Ethan starts a farm but is driven from it by land speculating cronies of the Royal Governor who are stealing all the good land from the local colonists. They also hang his brother as a rebel - though the brothers never hurt anyone or broke any laws. So Ethan and his wife move to Georgia where the governor is more honest. Ethan forms friendships with Quakers, Indians, Tories, and rebels. When the war comes he tries to stay out but is drawn in on the rebel side, participating in various battles and emerging changed, distant, and estranged from his wife Epsie.
Politically, this is a remarkably sophisticated book. One main character, "Burnfoot Brown", is a Tory military commander who leads woodsmen and Indians of the "Florida Rangers" in raids that conquer most of Georgia.
We see mixtures of atrocity and heroism on each side. Just when you think a man is an evil bastard he does something heroic.
The strength of animosity and commitment on each side is greater than I imagined. It was a desperate, bitter war. Perhaps all wars are.
Carter's political and historical realization is excellent and the emotional character development and articulateness, and the content of his writing struck me as surprisingly competent.
The more I learn about Carter the more I respect him. He is a very decent, very intelligent, very educated, very thoughtful man.
Thomas "Burnfoot" Brown was a Tory sympathizer who was tortured by "Sons of Liberty" partisans and had one of his feet severely burned in the episode. In the novel at least (and I now see that the Wikipedia confirms it), it converted him from a sympathizer to a committed and dangerous military opponent of the revolution.
History is a subject that all politicians ought to be acquainted with, but I expect that most are not. However, knowing that Newt Gingrich was a professor of history I can see that studying history doesn't, by itself, make one a good man.
I've come to like and respect Carter a lot more than I did when he was President - a time when my own leftist leanings, less tolerant than they are today, made me think of him as yet another representative of the ruling class.
| Author | Tanner, Marcus |
|---|---|
| Publication | New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997 |
| Number of Pages | 338 |
| Extras | photos, maps, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Croatia |
| When Read | September 2005 |
Croat tribes moved out of the Ukraine, Poland, and/or Belarus to arrive in the Balkans in the sixth century. An independent, Catholic, Croat state, more influenced by Venice and Italy than by Byzantium. The state was attacked and destroyed many times, from many directions. Magyars ended it in the eleventh century. Mongols briefly devastated it in the thirteenth. Turks took it in the fifteenth. The frequent wars between Austria, Hungary, and Turkey often involved Croatia. Only semi-autonomous in the Hungarian and then Austro-Hungarian Empires, it became part of Yugoslavia when Serbia's allies won World War I, but was treated badly by Serb rulers. A fascist party, the Ustashe, was put in command by the Axis during World War II and enthusiastically supported the war against helpless Jews and less helpless Serbs. The Communist partisan victors in the war attempted a truly non-nationalist but nevertheless corrupt and oppressive regime which fell apart after Tito's death, largely because of the opportunistic greed of Slobodan Milosevic.
Croatia's independence movement in the 90's was compounded of legitimate resistance to the barbaric attacks by Serbian gangster militias - enthusiastically supported by politically primitive local Serbs, opportunistic moves by relatively unscrupulous Croat politicians, and larger forces of disintegration, opportunism, ethnic hatred, and cultural imbecility in the entire region.
Reading the book made me glad that I live in the U.S.A. For all of our own faults, opportunists, race hatreds, and cultural imbecility, we've still done better than the Yugoslavs.
Marcia and I have been to Croatia, once as part of a bus tour in December, 2005 (in preparation for which I read this book) and once again on a cruise ship stopping near Dubrovnik in 2016. The war was over and reconstruction was well underway. By the second visit, the war would have been history for the young people in the country, something that happened to their parents and grandparents. Were these young people free, or at least freer, of the ethnic hatreds of the earlier period? I don't know. One of the problems of tourist travel is that you don't really meet people or talk to them.
Ethnic hatreds begin with the worst people in each ethnic group - the gangsters who don't think at all and are only interested in rape, pillage, and thuggery. They commit the crimes that stimulate the ordinary folk to believe that the ethnic prejudices are actually true. People are sucked in and politicians like Milosevich in Serbia (or, to some extent, Trump in the USA) come to the fore and prey on people's fears. It takes a high level of civilization indeed to resist these tendencies, as witnessed in Nazi Germany.
| Author | Bear, Greg |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: TOR Books, 1988 |
| Copyright Date | 1979 |
| Number of Pages | 312 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | September 2005 |
Engineer Larry Fowler visits an old friend and his father in a cabin in the mountains in California. There they encounter a strange and dangerous phenomenon, some sort of living being that sucks heat out of the air, hates people, and drives people to hate and even kill each other. It decimates a town in New Mexico and kills people in its path.
The government hires scientists and psychics to track the phenomenon and analyze it. Eventually they figure it out and destroy it, but the "psychlone" may have been a military experiment gone wrong, and one that is still in progress.
This is an odd story with a nasty end. Larry himself is killed. Psychics take over the point of view. The psychlone is never well explained and is inconsistent with our current understanding of the world (Doesn't extracting heat from air violate the second law of thermodynamics? Shouldn't it require more energy input than it extracts?) It relies too much on reifying psychological states.
It was not my favorite Bear - though I do see the threads that it has in common with other Bear novels that also treat psychological powers as physical forces. It's not, however, something that seems realistic to me - especially in this story.
| Author | Woodward, Bob |
|---|---|
| Publication | Simon and Schuster, 2004 |
| Number of Pages | 480 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Middle East; Gulf War |
| When Read | September 2005 |
This reading of W's book was an abridgment, which I didn't know until the end because it was only noted on one small spot on the CD case and that was covered by a library label. A bummer.
Bush began thinking about an invasion a year before he spoke about it publicly, and Cheney was hot to invade, apparently from before he assumed his office. Cheney's biggest fear as the date drew near was that Saddam would abdicate or, even worse, give in and prevent the war. Cheney was convinced that only a war would show the world, and the Middle East in particular, that the U.S. could not be fooled with, taunted, threatened (as he perceived it), or thwarted as Saddam Hussein had done. At every point at which a possible way out might have appeared, Cheney pushed hard to avoid it and keep Bush focused on war.
Of the "principals", Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, and less centrally, Rice and Tenet, only Colin Powell tried to avoid war. only he understood that the outcome was unpredictable. Only he recognized the damage being done to our relations with our allies. But he got nowhere. In one on one meetings with Bush he would think he had convinced the President only to find out later that Bush didn't really understand what Powell had said.
Rumsfeld played more of a technical role - supporting the war but neither pushing for it nor justifying it. Powell was often angry at him. To my surprise, I found that Tenet, Director of the CIA, really had misled Bush - telling all of the leaders that the case for "weapons of mass destruction" was a "slam dunk".
Woodward is a faithful reporter. He ferrets out the facts and gets truly surprising candor from his interviewees. But he does not do any analysis of deeper issues. Why was Cheney so committed? What do Cheney, Rice, and Bush see as the U.S. national interest? It's not there.
Bush does not impress me at all in this book. His heart may be in the right place but the man is just not up to the complexities of his job.
I presume that Tenet convinced himself as well as the others. I don't remember if it was Woodward (I think it was) or another author who explained that Bush, and perhaps Cheney, created a culture of agreement around themselves. Someone who said things that Bush didn't believe and support would soon find himself excluded from meeting or speaking with the President. They all reinforced each other in thinking that Hussein had to have weapons of mass destruction. He was known to have made and used them in the past. It was inconceivable that the leopard would have changed his spots. I believed it myself and was quite surprised to find out that it wasn't true. But Tenet's responsibility went beyond saying what he believed had to be the case. He failed to carry out that responsibility when he said outright that it was a "slam dunk", implying that there was certain evidence. He wanted so much to be a good team player that he misled Bush and Powell, telling them that the CIA had evidence when all they really had was surmise and logic. It takes a great deal of intelligence and intellectual sophistication to run the United States government and it's frightening to me to have seen so many presidents who lacked those qualities.
| Author | Cahill, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: BDD Audio, 1999 |
| Number of Pages | 353 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| When Read | September 2005 |
Beginning with an interpretation of the Maccabean revolt, Cahill analyzes the religious, social and political climate of the times of Jesus, and then discusses the different authors of the New Testament and the meaning of the stories of Jesus' life that are presented there.
C is never explicit about the supernatural events that are described. He doesn't take a clear stand on whether Jesus rose from the grave or performed the various miracles attributed to him. This may have been a decision on his part to make his understanding of Christianity palatable to both the believer and the non-believer.
C describes the early first century church as the true legacy of Jesus. Church hierarchy, dogma, sexism, authoritarianism, had not yet set in. J's message of love, hope, and care for our fellow men was more pure then with the rigid and more oppressive aspects of institutional religion not yet in place. His analysis is appealing and very humane and he sheds much light on the real contributions of Judaism and Christianity in the development of civilization. Until Judaism, religion was something of a charming tale for children, not believed by any educated man. The Jews introduced serious religion aimed at truly guiding lives. Jesus added to that a deep concept of love for one's fellows.
C ends with a discussion of a modern Italian religious community that he sees as a true carrier of Jesus' message.
Although this book has not won me to Christianity it has shown me how an intelligent, well meaning and highly educated man can be a Christian, and shown me something appealing in the religion. It is also a good antidote to fundamentalist poisons.
I wrote " Until Judaism, religion was something of a charming tale for children, not believed by any educated man." Looking back on our history, I can't think of any notion of "an educated man" until the era of classical Greece in the west, and perhaps Confucius in China. The Judaism of the Old Testament is really from before that era. And throughout ancient times, even into and far beyond the birth of Christianity, Islam, and maybe Buddhism too (though I know hardly anything about it and can't really say), the number of educated folk was only a tiny percentage of the population while religious belief was widespread among the people.
I have very mixed feelings about the right way to talk about religion to religious people. Should I say what I think, which is that God does not exist and we need to get over our belief in the supernatural and in a "final authority" for right and wrong? Or should I move the point of aim further towards religion and work instead to convince people to adopt liberal religions like Unitarianism and others that stay further away from ideas of supernaturalism? If Cahill is an atheist, then he's one in the second camp. Perhaps Bernie Sanders is there too. However I have been reading and listening to more work by atheist intellectuals (Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens), who are in the first camp, which is where I most naturally fit. It is very difficult for me to tell stories that I believe to be false, or to hold back information that I believe to be true, but I do recognize that most religious believers are unable to accept atheism of any kind but it is still of some service to them to win them away from fundamentalism. That is why an atheist like Ayaan Hirsi Ali converted from Islam to Christianity. She felt she had no hope of converting Muslims to atheism but thought that perhaps she could convert some to a milder form of religion.
| Author | Christie, Agatha |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1920 |
| Number of Pages | 196 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | October 2005 |
Christie's first novel introduces Hercule Poirot and his unimaginative friend Hastings, the narrator of the stories.
The great lady of the house is murdered by poison. Her recently married and significantly younger husband, a man believed by all to be a calculating opportunist, is accused of the crime but appears to have a solid alibi. Suspicion shifts to a number of others in the household and Hastings' friend John, son and heir of the lady, is arrested.
Hastings brings in Poirot, a Belgian private detective living in a rented room nearby after fleeing the Germans in Belgium. Poirot discovers one critical detail after another, always two steps ahead of the police and four steps ahead of poor solid but simple Hastings. Gradually he unravels the mystery but holds his cards very close to his chest until he has finally developed the proof. He reveals all at the end, catching the lying, murdering husband, freeing John, and setting all to rights.
The writing is charming. It's easy to see why English readers fell in love with C's books. She is intelligent, clever, funny, and creates characters who, even if artificial, are delightful. A wonderful first novel.
I read this book because it was Christie's first. I had read others of her books and was curious to see whether she started out well or developed her art through experience. The answer is Yes. She did both.
| Author | Perkins, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | San Francisco: Bennett Koehler Publishers, 2004 |
| Number of Pages | 250 |
| Extras | index, notes |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| When Read | October 2005 |
From 1971 to 1981 Perkins worked for Charles T. Main Co., becoming chief economist and Manager of Economic and Regional Planning. His job was to perform field studies in third world countries and then write economic plans and proposals that would justify absurdly large loans (or oil expenditures in the cases of Iran and Saudi Arabia) to build power plants and other infrastructure projects that, in reality, would never pay off their costs. The purpose of these loans was 1) to reap rich rewards for Main, Bechtel, Halliburton, and a few similar companies, 2) to force the countries to accept American government dictates in return for perpetually expanding the loans to avoid immediate bankruptcy, and 3) to bind the countries to American investors rather than European and Japanese investors. The results were spectacularly successful for the U.S. oil, energy, and construction companies, and for U.S. policy, and spectacularly disastrous for the countries themselves in loss of jobs, loss of raw materials, loss of tax revenue (it went into debt service), loss of national living standards, and astonishing destruction of the environment. Those who won't play ball, like Omar Torrijos of Panama or Jaime Roldos of Ecuador are assassinated or, like Allende, overthrown, or even like Noriega or Saddam Hussein, invaded.
Perkins is not the most coherent or convincing advocate of this view. He has too many personal issues and not enough deep analysis or thorough documentation. But I don't doubt that he is right. American Imperialism is strong and aggressive and fully in charge of the Republican governments. Although his main attacks are against Reagan and the two Bushes, Clinton is not absolved of the charges. Only Jimmy Carter is seen by P as a truly progressive president.
It's hard for me to imagine any government of any country truly serving its people as opposed to serving the interests of a restricted, wealthy, and powerful class. The Soviet Union and China attempted to do it and succeeded in some ways but failed miserably in others. The U.S. has also succeeded in some ways but failed in others. Other countries that might be imagined to have succeeded, Britain, France, Canada, Sweden, maybe Singapore, Australia and others, all succeed to some extent and for some period of time.
But what can we do? Throwing up our hands will only make it worse. Fighting, as Perkins did with this book, is the best that can be done. Leon Trotsky was asked (I'm recalling this from Deutscher's biography) what he would say or do if it turned out that the communist enterprise was hopeless and could not succeed. He answered that in that case he would commit to the labor struggle to improve the conditions of working people within capitalism.
I no longer see any prospect for the overthrow of capitalism or, if that should be accomplished, for its replacement by a better system rather than a worse one. But we have to keep doing what we can to achieve the best conditions that we can. Maybe sometime in the future, if humans have evolved through genetic engineering, something more can be accomplished.
| Author | Dos Passos, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 1997 |
| Copyright Date | 1921 |
| Number of Pages | 400 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | World War I |
| When Read | October 2005 |
Three young men, Fuselli from San Francisco, Chrisfield from Indiana, and Andrews, a Harvard student and classical musician, all join the army and are shipped to France in 1918. Each is disappointed and disaffected, each for his own reasons. Fuselli wants to make good and become a corporal. He sucks up to the sergeants and keeps his nose clean but never makes it past private first class. Chrisfield is a man who cannot control his anger and, almost in a trance, he murders a lieutenant who had given him a tough time, later deserting when he believed he was going to be found out.
Andrews however is the center of the story, taking the whole last half. He is unable to cope with army discipline, inanity, boredom, and petty tyranny of officers and sergeants who destroy men's hopes and inflict suffering out of laziness, arrogance, and total unconcern with anyone but themselves.
Andrews is caught out without a pass, arrested, beaten, convicted without a trial or opportunity to contact his unit, and sent to a hard labor battalion. He escapes on pure impulse when another escapee pushes him along. Then he begins a downward spiral as he confides in a French woman who was attracted to his music and eventually is betrayed by a landlady when he can't pay his rent. His arrest seems inevitable and he doesn't make any real effort to escape.
This is a terribly depressing book with a depressing view of the U.S., the Army, and society in general. Unfortunately it is all too convincing. It is a classic of American anti-establishment literature.
I have some tendency, and I suspect that many others do too, to view the past as a simpler era than the present. We feel too much nostalgia for old times. This book is a good antidote to that. We know about the hardships of the war but this book introduces us to something else, the harsh ugliness of military society. It wasn't all about doughboys fresh off the farm singing "Over There".
I believe that I read this book as a boy. I may have been somewhere between 10 and 13 years old. I was interested in and drawn to the adventure of military history and fiction (and still am in more adult ways for which "adventure" isn't the best description) and picked up this book from the library. I seem to remember that I thought it was off topic and I kept reading to get to the part where they fight the Germans. I was too young to understand it.
| Author | Galston, Arthur W. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Scientific American Library, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 245 |
| Extras | index, bibliography |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biology |
| Keywords | Molecular biology; Botany |
| When Read | October 2005 |
G, a leading botanist and emeritus professor, has written a very lucid and accessible book on some very advanced topics in botany. There are eight chapters on Photosynthesis, Light and the Life Cycle, Growth and Chemical Signals (plant hormones), Movement of Plants (phototropism, gravitropism, tendrils, insectivores), Coping with Stress (heat, cold, dessication, herbivore attack, competition, and injury), Regeneration, Cooperation with Microbes (nitrogen fixation, fungal mycorrhizae), and Improving the Green Machine (genetic engineering - including some discussion of ethics.)
G is one of those scientists with a deep appreciation of his subject and of the many fine scientists, from Darwin on, whose brilliant deductions and experiments have advanced our knowledge.
Some of his short observations have been a revelation to me. For example, he says that animals can move away from stress but plants have to stand and take it. It's a simple and obvious observation but one that puts things in a different perspective. His observations in many other areas help the reader to appreciate, as well as understand, both the complexity and sophistication of life processes, and the intelligence and sophistication of scientific research.
This is the second botany book I have completed after the simpler and much less demanding Botany for Gardeners. It's not a textbook (I'm in the middle of two of those) and is written for the layman, but it's still quite sophisticated. I've learned a lot from it.
[When filing this book card I spotted G's book on China that I read 31 years ago. Two interesting books by the same interesting man.]
| Author | Smith, Martin Cruz |
|---|---|
| Publication | Hampton, NH: BBC Audio Books, 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 400 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | November 2005 |
Harry Niles, born of American missionaries, grows up in Japan. He is a gambler, a hustler, a night club owner, and a sort of would be American agent who wants to stop the coming Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, partly out of loyalty to the United States, and partly out of love of Japan, which he believes will be crushed if it goes to war against the U.S.
The story is told in a present time of December 5-6, 1941, and also in flashbacks to Harry's childhood in the early 1920's, where he is constantly chased and mercilessly beaten by his thuggish "friends" playing beat the foreigner, and is protected and educated by an artist and a whore who take him in.
Harry balances many dangers. He has played a dirty trick on the Japanese Navy and some oil companies by concocting false evidence of American oil in Hawaii. He is suspected and watched. It is only a matter of time before he is arrested and tortured. He is also pursued by an army colonel with delusions of samurai grandeur and a desire to cut off Harry's head. His girlfriend, a beautiful, mysterious, jealous girl with an unknown past, may also want to kill him. And his lover's husband, a British diplomat, would be happy to beat his brains out.
The story is wild and implausible. The characters are exaggerated. Harry is impossible. Yet it's an interesting read. I felt manipulated by the author and rather longed for Harry's trauma to be over, but still found Smith's ideas to be unconventional, stimulating, and interesting.
Some of the scenes in the novel revolve around an attempt by a charlatan to prove that he can convert sea water into oil. In the novel, the Japanese arrange demonstrations, invite their scientists, and invite Harry to watch, expecting the scientists to render scientific judgment and Harry to say whether he spotted any tricks - something they consider him an expert about.
The scientists don't really need to see the demonstration. They know it's baloney. They tell the Navy that it doesn't matter what they see in the demonstration. It can't be done. Anything they see to the contrary can only be a trick. If I remember correctly, Harry is more ambiguous. I seem to recall that he tells them it's a trick but does so in a way that makes them think he's hiding the truth.
The Japanese do not come off well in this book. They aren't stupid, but they are brutal, a little crazy, and able to convince themselves of what they want to believe, against knowledgeable advice. If Smith has much of this right, I certainly would not have wanted to live in a place like Japan in the 1930's and 40's.
My reading of Eri Hota's Japan 1941, Countdown to Infamy (q.v.), confirms the conclusion of my notes from 2012. The Japanese military leadership was indeed delusional. Their own experts, commissioned to study the possible outcomes of a war against the United States, told them that Japan couldn't win. U.S. superiority in natural resources, industrialization, and population size, all made Japanese defeat inevitable. But they convinced themselves that they'd win because of their invincible spirit.
| Author | Williams, Layla |
|---|---|
| Author | Staub, Michael E. |
| Publication | New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2005 |
| Number of Pages | 290 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| Keywords | Gulf War |
| When Read | November 2005 |
W worked as an Arabic translator for the U.S. Army. She grew up in a relatively poor environment and may have been treated in high school as the class slut. But she managed to get herself through college, entered a marriage that soon failed, took up with a Jordanian boyfriend, then joined the Army on the downside of that relationship and was sent to language school. at age 28 she found herself in Kuwait, about to enter Iraq at the start of the second Gulf War.
W said that a woman in the army is said either to be a slut, a girl who sleeps with everyone, or a bitch, a girl who sleeps with everyone but you - whoever you are. In the midst of thousands of testosterone soaked young men, all tormented by the presence of a small number of women, every young woman felt very keenly her female status. W seems to have liked men and been comfortable with these young working class warriors, while at the same time feeling isolated by her sex and by her interest in books and ideas. She tried hard to be a good soldier and do a good job of representing the U.S. to Iraqis and assisting soldiers in the field. She tried hard to fit in with the guys and succeeded well with some, not as well with others. She ignored her own growing health problems to stay at her work and to cope with an incompetent and neurotic female superior.
It is an unusual book about a topic, women at war, for which few books (if any?) have been written.
I felt considerable sympathy for Kayla Williams. She wrote with a lot of candor and honesty about herself, not trying to hide mistakes that she made or feelings that she felt that might not have been acceptable to every reader. She was under a lot of pressure from the young men she worked with but she never lost her sympathy with them or her understanding of them.
I remember one incident where she was at an isolated base and one of the young soldiers asked her to "Show us your tits Kayla." She resisted but was considering giving in when they took up a collection to pay her to do it. At that point she decided that she couldn't do it and couldn't accept money to do it.
It impressed me that she considered doing it. She didn't regard the boys' desires as immoral or disgusting. She understood them as human beings. But it also impressed me that she didn't do it. Most of all perhaps, it impressed me that she included all of this information in her book, presumably knowing very well that some people would condemn her for having considered baring her chest to the boys.
| Author | Alexander, Bruce |
|---|---|
| Publication | Santa Ana, CA: Books on Tape, 2002 |
| Number of Pages | 324 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | November 2005 |
Seventeen year old Jeremy, personal assistant and law student of blind London judge Sir John Fielding, helps to investigate the murder of a servant and the theft of letters of state from the house of a foreign office official in 1773. The papers turn up in Boston where they are printed and used to embarrass the Royal Governor of Massachusetts colony. The principal suspect in the case is none other than Benjamin Franklin, who is representing four colonies in London.
This book is part of a series involving Jeremy and Sir John. It's one of those comfortable sorts of series peopled by attractive, comfortable characters in a homey setting, including a young girl who loves Jeremy, Lady Fielding - a little neurotic and flighty, a doctor, a constable, and an Irish cook.
Franklin is well represented. He is caricatured, but not unintelligent. Well, maybe he's not so well represented, but he is fun to read about.
In the end, all is satisfactorily resolved and Jeremy, in an act of heroism, kills the ruthless killer hired by the foreign office official to clean up his mess.
The book reminds me of the Nero Wolfe stories a bit. It is a pleasant read.
| Author | Niven, Larry |
|---|---|
| Publication | Del Rey Books |
| Copyright Date | 1968 |
| Number of Pages | 285 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | November 2005 |
This is a collection of eight stories originally published serially in Worlds of If. They feature a smart alec hero who gets tricked into doing dangerous things by sly aliens or humans, but always manages to pull some trick out of his sleeve that capitalizes on the cupidity of the nasties to win the day.
The stories are separate, independent and free-standing, but all feature pilot Beowulf Shaeffer whom, we learn in a late story, is a human born on a low gravity planet where he grew seven feet tall, albino, and skinny as a rail.
The stories are sheer fun. There is no deep message, no projection of a dark future, or even a bright future, no scientific education (though the science is acceptably interesting) and no deep characters or character development. But they nevertheless manage to be entertaining as hell.
This paperback that I read was the 15th printing of this book in twenty years.
| Author | Toibin, Colm |
|---|---|
| Publication | Blackstone Audio Books, 2004 |
| Copyright Date | 2004 |
| Number of Pages | 338 |
| Genres | Fiction; Biographical fiction |
| Keywords | Henry James |
| When Read | November 2005 |
This book opens in 1895 with Henry James about to watch, or to run from, the first performance of his only play on the London stage. It then follows James' emotional ups and downs through his attractions to various men and women, his literary efforts, his fear and avoidance of people who try too hard to engage him or get close to him, his purchase of a house, and his handling of the deaths of a cousin, a sister, and a dear friend. The story also covers many flashbacks to childhood and family life before and during the Civil War which he and brother William avoided while his other two brothers fought, one suffering grievous wounds.
The book is about James' interior life - his deep sensibilities, his powerful intellect, his ambiguous physical attractions, his self-enforced isolation from others, in spite of his frequent social contacts. There is a great deal about his relationships with a neurotic but brilliant sister, a cousin, and a woman writer - all women who were attracted to and emotionally dependent upon him, and all of whom died in ways that he or others thought had something to do with his supposed rejection of them.
Perhaps the most striking feature of this very excellent book is its Jamesian style. Toibin writes very much as James did, gradually building deeply meaningful appreciations of the complexities, sorrows, strengths, and disappointments of life out of subtly nuanced observations and actions. This really is a fine work of literature and a fine appreciation of Henry James. It will lead me to read more James and maybe more Toibin.
| Author | Panzer, Mary |
|---|---|
| Publication | Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Portrait Gallery, 1997 |
| Number of Pages | 233 |
| Extras | photos, bibliography, index |
| Extras | Essay by Jeane K. Foley |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| Keywords | Photography; Matthew Brady |
| When Read | December 2005 |
Brady played a unique role both in the history of American photography, and in the photography of American history. He mastered the daguerreotype technique in its infancy and perfected a grand portrait style. But his real contribution, I think, was his vision of photography as a record of the nation and civilization, and his determination to become the chief creator of that record.
His ambition was personal. He wanted to be rich and famous. But I think fame meant more than money and the fame he wanted was for great work. He identified his personal ambition with an ambition to document the history of the country.
Photography in those days was, first and foremost, portraiture. For Brady it meant making portraits of ALL of the leading people in the nation, in government, industry, and in the arts. It was important to him, not just to photograph most senators, but to get all of them. And the effect of his ambition was complementary in the population. No doubt many prominent people felt they truly "made it" when they were photographed by Brady.
B's practical sense lagged behind his ambition, leading to tragic failures in his financial affairs and a resultant loss of many of his priceless images. We are the worse for that.
Panzer's book is very interesting for its writing, its well reproduced photos, and its fascinating republication of appreciations written in Brady's own time.
I'm now reading the biography of another famous and famously ambitious man, Steve Jobs. Earlier today I typed in an entry for James Watson's book - yet another famously ambitious man. At a younger age, stories like theirs might have made me feel bad about my own lack of ambition. Now I'm not so sure. A great marriage, a comfortable material life, leisure to read and listen to music, the chance to write these notes and my diaries, all seem pretty good to me.
I think there ought to be a standard minimum technique for preserving precious images like Brady's photographs. For example, some genius of digital imaging working for Google or the Library of Congress could do experiments and come up with recommended techniques for photographing and lighting images, for a standard number of pixels per inch, standard bit depth, standard color palette that would ensure that someone reproducing or projecting the image, or displaying it on a computer screen, getting colors that matched the original, and so on. I once thought about sending out proposals to the J. Paul Getty Trust, or Google, or the Library of Congress, but like all the grand schemes I think about, I didn't do it. I worry that we're losing precious parts of our heritage in the meantime.
| Author | Weyman, Stanley J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1890 |
| Number of Pages | 144 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | France |
| When Read | December 2005 |
This was Weyman's first novel. Three young brothers with girls names rush to the aid of their beautiful cousin Kit when they learn that M. le Vidame de Bezers, a fierce, ruthless, haughty, giant of a man wants Kit and has resolved to kill the young man she loves to get her. The three brothers, Anne, Marie, and St. Croix, leave their family manor and head for Paris to warn the young fellow. But they arrive after the Vidame, known as the Wolf, and are held by him.
The year is 1572 and the boys arrive just before the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Huguenots. They escape the Wolf and have a series of adventures in which we see the horrors of the massacre. They are too late to save Kit's lover and all are captured again by the Wolf, who disdains and defies the ignorant rabble to take all of them, including the Huguenot young man, with him on a journey to his new royal posting. Eventually, all comes out well as the Wolf, beastly as he is, is also a man of great pride and personal dignity - "honor" not being quite the right word.
This is not the best of W's books, but it introduces many of his great abilities - a historical sense, an ability to create characters who are both fine and just a bit dense and ridiculous, good and worthy villains, and much romantic adventure. It is hard not to enjoy his books.
| Author | Trollope, Anthony |
|---|---|
| Publication | Gutenberg |
| Copyright Date | 1861 |
| Number of Pages | 46 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | 19th century |
| When Read | December 2005 |
This is really a long short story rather than a novel. It is about a proper Englishwoman, a young and attractive mother of a 12 year old girl, and the wife of a general. She takes her daughter on an extended visit to Rome in 1859 where she mixes immediately with the resident society of British and American artists, connoisseurs, travelers, and ex-patriots who have created their own community there.
She patronizes an Irish sculptor named O'Brien in a way that convinces him that she is romantically interested in him. In fact, she is something of a fool with no romantic interests at all and not the slightest understanding of the nature and consequences of her actions.
The inevitable happens. O'Brien makes a proposition, perhaps more out of a sense of obligation to her than out of genuine passion. She is offended and breaks off with him and the whole crowd. The group is amused by the whole affair. Finally, the leader of the social set patches things over and brings her back into society. She has learned nothing and understood nothing, but is able to resume her place.
This story was apparently criticized as low and immoral at the time of its publication, but I found it quite intelligent and perceptive. T had the measure of the absurdities in Victorian society and exposed them in what seemed to me a quite decorous manner.
Now that I have access to more contemporary electronic books, I'm reading fewer nineteenth century novels from Gutenberg. But there are certainly a lot of good ones. I wish I could live forever just read all of this stuff, and then start over and read it all again.
| Author | Watson, James D. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Signet Books, New American Library, 1968 |
| Copyright Date | 1968 |
| Number of Pages | 143 |
| Extras | photos, diagrams |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biology |
| Keywords | DNA |
| When Read | December 2005 |
Still in his early twenties, W arrived in Europe to further his studies and research, convinced (quite rightly) of his superior intelligence and full of (well justified) confidence in his ability to do world class research - especially on the structure of DNA. Everyone knew by then that DNA was the stuff of genes and they knew its empirical formula, but no one yet knew the structure of the molecule.
After making himself a general pain-in-the-ass, he was shunted off to work with an even more obvious PITA, the loud, boisterous, 35 year old who still hadn't gotten his Ph.D., Francis Crick. The two developed numerous novel insights and began racing, mainly against the prodigious and greatly admired and feared Linus Pauling. Against all odds, in spite of the anger of their associates, they developed the bold insights into the interpretation of the data that enabled them first, to figure out the double helix structure, and then to work out all the math to prove that it was the best fit to the data as well as the most elegant and richest explanation of how DNA worked.
The story is fascinating. Not much is held back. We see all the warts of scientific competition, all the inflated and deflated egos, and all the brutal hard work and leaps of genius. Watson himself, at age 24, had the final critical insight that put it all together.
A fascinating read.
I was quite unaware of all of the controversy surrounding this book when I read it. Had I been more aware I might have tempered the "quite rightly" and "well justified" remarks a bit.
Some of the criticism was aimed at Watson's cavalier treatment of Rosalind Franklin, a scientist who produced some of the x-ray crystallography that was key to understanding the structure. Maurice Wilkins, Watson and Crick's laboratory director, was also slighted in the book. Some have also argued that Watson gave a larger share of the discovery to himself than was warranted - that Crick may have done more of the work.
I'm not in a position to judge any of that. That such criticisms exist should certainly be noted and are included in the 1980 Norton Critical Edition of the work. I haven't read these criticisms and perhaps I shouldn't say anything about them one way or the other, but even if they are true, the book is still a fascinating read. Unraveling the structure and function of DNA has been one of the truly great and important events in the history of human knowledge. It was a turning point in biology that made possible an explosion in our understanding of life. On the technical chemical and molecular level, it was as important as the theory of evolution was on the larger scale.
Watson's book conveys the excitement of the research that he and Crick carried out. Looking back, it is odd to think that at least part of the driving force in that research was the competition with the incomparable Linus Pauling, a great genius who didn't figure it out in time to beat Watson and Crick. The discovery was earth shaking. The rivalry was not. But that's the nature of human beings. We are motivated by personal emotions and ambitions. But, well, at least we got a great discovery out of it.
| Author | Cahill, Thomas |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 1998 |
| Copyright Date | 1998 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Jews |
| When Read | December 2005 |
This is part of Cahill's interesting, well read, but idiosyncratic view of the ancient world. He begins with an extended analysis of the Gilgamesh story and then moves on to the story of Abraham, which he analyzes at great length but in a novel and, to me, unconvincing manner. He sees Abraham as the founder of a new tradition of change in an otherwise static world. He sees A as the first man for whom personal action makes a big difference in life. He sees Abraham and Sarah as the first ordinary people in history. He then works through some of the main stories of the Old Testament, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, and others. There's no hero worship in his discussion. He's cognizant of all of the flaws and barbarities of early civilization, but he seems to me to be too taken with the early Bible literature and not enough with the economic, political and technological facets that should inform history.
But then C is not writing history. He writes extended essays on the progress of the spirit in the development of civilization.
I found this the weakest of the three books of his that I've read. His grand conclusions left me entirely unconvinced. His dwelling on some themes bored me. But he is an engaging personality. I'll always give him that.
Reading my notes from 2005 I was particularly struck by Cahill's observations about Abraham and Sarah as the first ordinary people in history, and the first to be depicted as making a big difference in life and in civilization. Is it true? What about some of the people named in Homer's work? They might have been contemporaneous with Abraham or, if not, the writers would certainly have worked just as early as the writers of the Old Testament. Is it possible that the people we call "Homer", the authors of the Old Testament, and the authors of the Gilgamesh story, and other authors we know nothing about, actually produced other stories of other people, now all lost to us?
I wasn't as taken with this book as I was by the other Cahill books that I read that year, but I do appreciate Cahill's curiosity about the origins of human culture. He asked and tried to answer questions that tell us a lot about who we are.