Marc's Reading List

The Third Angel

2008-05-27T14:56:00.002-06:00

The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman

Category: Connect Stories Grade: B

This is not one of Hoffman's better outings. While pitched as a novel (the actual title is The Third Angel: A Novel), the book is actually three connected novellas or long short stories. The stories are connected so they need to be read together. They're chronologically backwards. The first story takes place today while the next two each take characters from the prior story, jump back 20-30 years and tell a new story. This artifact means that some of the references made in the first story don't make much sense until you reach the end of the book when things snap in to place. I guess that's an interesting technique to use but the net result is that the first story wasn't terribly interesting as you read it. With the "snap", things get better - I'd have probably given the book at best a "C" after the first story - but never quite make it to the level of some of her past efforts, especially Practical Magic.

If she has to use the title to tell us the book's a novel, it's probably got a problem.

Child 44

2008-05-27T14:41:00.002-06:00

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Category: Novel Grade: A-

It's usually tough to try to mix genres in a single book. Smith isn't quite sure what he wants this book to be - political commentary on 1950s USSR? murder mystery? love story? the next Silence of the Lambs? Surprisingly, for reasons I can't quite figure out, the mishmash works. Smith has produced a real page-turner.

Ultimately, this book is mostly about life under a totalitarian regime - the Soviet Union of the 1950s. It's really pretty terrifying to watch people try to live a normal life when every utterance could be a crime against the state; when to be accused was to be convicted. With power given to some of the worst elements of society, arbitrariness and personal vendettas are played out in scenes of torture and roundups. Our hero is a secret police agent who is slapped in the face by the fact that his latest arrest is so clearly innocent of the crimes with which he is charged. This makes him question all of the people he has sent to their deaths or the Gulags in his career. Once he loses the view that the state is infallible, his life slowly crumbles.

The framework that we're given around which the action pivots is a string of murders of children. Each individual murder is "solved" by pinning the blame on a convenient "degenerate" chosen from the ranks of local homosexuals and, occasionally, mentally ill, but usually harmless folks. Officially, of course, the Communist regime has solved societies problems so crimes, other than crimes against the state, no longer exist. To look for patterns that might point to brutal murder is to question the effectiveness of the state and is, therefore, a crime itself. So this long, horrible string of murders (look to the book's title to see how bad) continues.

The book definitely has some weaknesses as you'd expect from a first novel. The ending is pretty weak being dependent on pretty silly coincidences. The author also has a tendency to switch perspective between paragraphs which can get annoying at times. These flaws aside, the book holds up well. I'll definitely give Smith a second chance when his next book comes out.

The Kindle - a new way to read

2008-05-19T11:40:00.002-06:00

I've recently joined a book club and have decided not to review the books that we'll read for the club discussions. So, I'll skip the review for the last book I read - The Open Road by Pico Iyer. Instead, I'm going to talk a little about my new toy.

I've seen a lot of talk about "eBook readers" -- hand-held electronic devices for reading books -- over the last few years and, since last fall, some pretty positive reviews of Amazon's new device called the Kindle. The device was so wildly popular since it's launch that they've been impossible to get. So, when I got an email from Amazon a few weeks ago saying that they were finally caught up and had immediate availability, I decided to take the plunge. I've never been much of a fan of reading things on my computer screen. As much of a techie as I am, I still have a tendency to print documents and read them on paper. Even so - a new toy is a new toy and, after a few clicks and waiting a few days, my new Kindle arrived on my doorstep.

The first thing you notice, even before you open the package, is that the Kindle weighs almost nothing. The device, on the surface, is about the size of a trade paperback book and just over a half inch thick. The display takes up about two thirds of the device leaving room for a full keyboard. The second thing you notice is that, obviously, somebody who actually reads books has been deeply involved in designing not only the device, but the experience. When I powered up the device, the screen was already labeled "Marc's Kindle" and one of the documents on it was a letter labeled "Welcome Marc" from Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon. While these seem like just cute touches, the implication was refreshing -- no long registration process to go through; no details to supply - since I bought the device from Amazon and they already know me, my Kindle was already my Kindle and was synced with my Amazon account.

OK - so no registration, but how hard was it to actually get something to read on to this device. The first pleasant surprise was that I didn't have to hook the Kindle to my computer or even to my Internet access. The device uses cellular service so it's all set to go - no communications subscription required. Even at the lake where cellular service is weak, I had no problem getting started. It came up on a screen that let me search for available books (there are about 150,000 so far). I typed the author's name using the small but usable keyboard, and up popped a list of the author's books, including the one I wanted. One more click (using a clever, scroll wheel, sidebar cursor - trust me on this one) and I had purchased the book. Within 2-3 minutes the entire book had been delivered and was ready to read. (Note - you can also shop on Amazon with your computer and just tell it you want the Kindle edition. By the time, you get back to your Kindle, the book will be there.) While you can add memory cards to get more capacity, as it ships, the Kindle will hold roughly 200 books.

Great so it's easy to use. Still, ultimately, the only value for a book reader is, well, to actually be able to read books. So now I had my first book and was ready to give it a shot. I selected the book and up popped the first page. On first glance, the display technology is amazing. The device uses what's called eInk - a very high contrast display. On second, third and 50th glance, still amazing. I'm halfway through my second book and reading the display is like reading paper - none of the typical computer screen eye strain. There's no back light which makes it easier on the eyes - though, of course, it means you can't read in the dark. The contrast is strong enough that regardless of the ambient light (including in sun light), I've got no issues with the display quality. It's a little annoying when you move to the next page because there's a sort of flash as the previous page is erased. Surprisingly, I stopped noticing this very quickly. One great side affect of using a display is that it's trivial to change the size of the print. While this is terrific for folks who are starting to need "big print" books, it's good even for the rest of us. I've found myself, after a long day staring at a computer screen, picking up my Kindle and bumping the font size to make it easier to read.

How about the reading "mechanics". Turning a page is easy - there are big "next page" buttons on both sides of the screen, tapered downward to make them feel more natural. If anything, it's a little too easy to flip pages and, once in a while, I find myself flipping forward at the wrong time. On the left side of the screen, there's a big "prev page" button to go backwards so it's not a big deal and a problem that seems to be diminishing with familiarity. The size and shape of the Kindle adds some unexpected advantages - since there's only one screen (where a book has two at a time), one handed reading is far easier, especially given the extremely light weight. The single screen also makes "awkward position" reading - like lying on your side - far easier.

One great feature, especially if you're reading for a purpose - work, a book club, learning - it's trivial to annotate. It was hammered in to me growing up to have respect for books - not just what was in them, but the physical book itself. For that reason, I've always had problems with highlighting, writing notes in the margin or, most painfully, dog-earing. With the Kindle, it's easy to do all these things without damaging the book. You then get a separate area you can go to that'll let you see your highlights and notes and jump directly to the spot in the book that you wanted to remember. Another advantage -- once you have highlighted a section of text, with a couple of clicks, you can bring up the definitions of all the words in the section using the built in dictionary.

The device also has a moderately featured web-browser and an mp3 player built-in, along with the ability to subscribe to various newspapers, magazines and blogs. In addition, there is a very simple way that you can take documents of certain types from your computer and have them moved to your Kindle - a great way to keep lots of documents you need for work or travel. I haven't played with these features yet.

So far, the battery life has been a non-issue. Most of the time, you can leave the wireless access off - a simple, easy to access switch - and increase the time between charges. With wireless mostly off, I'm halfway through my second book with only a single recharge - i.e. it'll give you at least a full book on a single charge.

As always, no device - especially a first release - is perfect and this one is no exception. The few minor quibbles I've got with the device itself include (1) as mentioned above, there's a sort of flash when you change pages, (2) the button arrangement is a little funny with different size buttons on each side, (3) the buttons aren't configurable - it'd be nice to make a few harder to use, (4) the fake leather cover that ships with the Kindle is terrible, but I've ordered a better one.

The one big downside of the Kindle is, of course, price. The device currently sells for $400. That may come down but it's more likely that the price will stay up there for a while as they add features. If you read a lot and buy a lot of books, the price shouldn't be a barrier at all for a simple reason -- the cost of the books that you buy are dramatically lower. Current best-sellers that, in hardback, would sell for $25-30 are $10. I have yet to pay more than $14 for a book and lots of older titles are available for as little as $3-4. For a reader like me, that means the device will pay for itself in less than a year.

As you can tell, I'm really high on the Kindle. It's the first eBook reader I've seen that actually appears viable. That said, however, there are downsides to the whole eBook experience. I made my first post-Kindle trip to a bookstore a few days ago and was kind of lost. I kept seeing books I was interested in but didn't want to buy so that I could get the Kindle edition. For the first time in ages, I walked out of a book store without a purchase. In addition, since there's no physical book, you can't pass on your latest discovery to a friend. Finally, while there are already a whole lot of Kindle compatible books out there, not every book is available.

I obviously highly recommend this device - especially to a few groups of folks - those who read a lot; those who buy books as soon as they're released; those who need a little larger font size; those who carry their books around with them. Amazon's stated design goal for the Kindle was that it should "disappear" after a few uses - it should just be a book - surprisingly, they seem to have largely succeeded.

Ask me for a demo next time you see me. I love showing off new toys.

The Man Who Made Lists

2008-05-19T11:26:00.002-06:00

The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall

Category: Biography/history Grade: A-

There are very few books or category of books that are identifiable solely by some one's name. If I tell you to go look up a word in your Johnson's, you'll probably give me a blank stare. On the other hand, if you have more than a 4th grade education and I give you the same instruction, but tell you to look up the word in your Roget's, you immediately know what I'm talking about. Not sure many of us would have made it through school without using the same few words over and over without this handy catalog of synonyms. That said, it hadn't ever really occurred to me that I know absolutely nothing about the man who created this reference.

Kendall, in his first book, sets out to correct that and ends up writing a thoroughly entertaining story. The sub-title of the book sums it up pretty well -- Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus. The story takes place in the late 18th century. In the description, Peter Mark Roget grew up as a fairly typical nerd. He's the kind of kid that would never get off the computer today. Even though his masterwork didn't get published until he was elderly, the seeds are there as we see the classification phobia of a boy who's organizing of words, and then plants and animals, was a tool he used to fight off depression and loneliness. There's a strong history of insanity in the boy's family - several suicides and a mother and sister who were, for long periods, clinically insane.

Surprisingly, for someone so known for his literary impact, Roget turns out to have been a medical man and, unusual for the time, actually an educated, trained medical man. He spent years in a medical practice until, for lack of modern tools, he was unable to save the life of an uncle who was, for all practical purposes, Roget's father. After that, he retreated in to academia and became one of the more successful lecturers and authors of the day. It was only in retirement, probably once again to stave off madness, that he completed the project for which he became famous.

Kendall has done a great job of making this man's life interesting and entertaining. Roget is probably one of the more subtly influential people of the last 3 or 4 centuries. Kendall brings him to life.

The Good Rat

2008-05-19T11:23:00.002-06:00

The Good Rat: A True Story by Jimmy Breslin

Category: True Crime Grade: C

We can make this one quick. This is the true story of the testimony of Burton Caplan, a "canary" that sings about some crooked cops in Brooklyn who did murder and other work for a hire for the mob. Breslin's point seems to be that the Mafia just isn't terribly exciting or interesting any more. He's right - the book is proof.

The Philosopher's Apprentice

2008-05-19T11:00:00.003-06:00

The Philosopher's Apprentice by James Morrow

Category: Satire Grade: A

This novel is pretty close to a masterpiece but, unfortunately, one that I can't recommend to too many people. If you've been following this blog for a while, you may remember that I started reading Morrow with a book called Towing Jehovah - in which a group finds God's body in the Pacific and tows it back to Florida to turn it in to a theme park. Much like that one, you've got to have a tolerance for a high level of sacrilege and plain old weirdness to appreciate most of Morrow's books. He seemed to signal a shift in genre to historical fiction with his last book, The Last Witchfinder, that, with a few exceptions, played it pretty straight. Given the title of this book, that's kind of what I was expecting - less satire, more "serious literature".

The book starts out headed in that direction when the lead character storms out of his dissertation defense and gives up the chance of earning his PhD in philosophy. A few hours later, while drowning his problems in a pitcher, he's approached by a stranger who offers him what sounds like a dream job -- high salary, living on a tropical island, tutoring a single student. He's told that his student, a 15 year old girl, was in an accident and has a form of amnesia that leaves her with no moral sensibility. So far, it sounds like a great set up for a serious foray in to the works of all kinds of philosophers. There's plenty of that, but very quickly we're flying off on all kinds of tangents.

I try to avoid putting a lot of plot detail in to these reviews so that the books isn't ruined for everybody, but - spoiler alert - I'm going to give a quick overview of some the directions we go since, frankly, I think it's a good idea to scare most of you off from reading this one. OK, so, not surprisingly, our 15 year old is not an amnesiac. Soon after arriving on the island the hero meets the girl's "mother", a brilliant geneticist. The woman has a terminal disease but wants to have a broad ranging motherhood experience. So she and a colleague have invented a machine that can take a cloned embryo and grow it in a vat to any desired age while, at the same time, pumping the child full of encyclopedic knowledge. At various places on the island, the woman has a 6 year old daughter, an 11 year old and a 15 year old - well, not daughters really; sisters?

The oldest girl, thanks to our tutor hero, gains a fully, maybe over- developed moral sense and becomes the brilliant head of a massive feminist cult. Our hero comes in and out of her life as she does one outrageous thing after the other. Inevitably, there's a right-wing counter-conspiracy that, having stolen the cloning vat, engineers the wildest and most effective social protest ever. We also have a long story arch about the hijacking of an exact replica of the Titanic during which all the first class swells are sent to do the ship's scut work and the maids and butlers are moved to the first class quarters.

Hopefully, this is enough to convince most of you not to go looking for this book. For those few I haven't scared off, I really recommend this book. It's fast-paced, well-written, hilarious in places and definitely makes you think -- all the makings of a classic satire. If you can just get past the weirdness...

Physics of the Impossible

2008-04-23T11:26:00.002-06:00

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

Category: Science Grade: B

I'd like to speak to the inner nerd in each of you. If you don't have an inner nerd, go do something else -- you won't like this book. If you think you might, ask yourself some of these questions. When you first saw Star Trek, did you get interested when Kirk said "Shields up!" or "Beam me up, Scotty."? When you watched Star Wars (the good ones), did you jump up and down when Yoda levitated the cruiser in the swamp? When a Jedi Knight turned on his light saber, did you say "I want one of those!". If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should give this book a shot.

Kaku is a serious scientist. He's in the theoretical physics department at City University of New York where he's searched for years for the "theory of everything", the grand unifying theory that, with one set of equations, would tie all the forces of nature together. On the side, he writes popular science books. This could be one of the more difficult genres to write. You have to oversimplify things a tremendous amount to interest the lay reader while not squeezing the reality out of your descriptions (or embarrassing yourself among your peers).

Kaku starts from the premise, proven true over and over again, that "impossible" is not an absolute description. Things we take for granted -- air travel, global communication and others -- were, at one time, thought impossible by reputable scientists. Here, he looks at lots of things that are science fiction staples -- force fields, invisibility, teleportation, starships, time travel and others -- and tries to describe how they might be accomplished at some point in the future. He carefully analyzes each subject and tries to slot that subject as one of his three classes of "impossible" -- 1) doesn't violate the laws of physics and might be doable in the next century, 2) doesn't violate the laws of physics and might be doable in the distant future and 3) violates the laws of physics. The results are sometimes surprising and always interesting.

As he gets farther in to the class 3 impossibilities, I have to admit that he frequently lost me. No matter how many times I read a lay explanation of quantum physics, it still doesn't make sense to me.

Anyway, if you're bored by this point of the review, the book will put you to sleep. If your interest has been tweaked, give it a shot.

He uses quotes at the beginning of each chapter and he had me at chapter one when he used my favorite quote - Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws. I'll only give you the third here since it sums up why cutting edge science can be so interesting -- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."!

Compulsion

2008-04-20T09:32:00.002-06:00

Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman

Category: Mystery Grade: B+

I really love Taco Bell. It's the best of fast food. You know you're never going to get a gourmet meal, but you know you're always going to enjoy what you get for what it is. It's also dirt cheap. My favorite is the double-decker taco - a crispy taco smeared with refried beans and wrapped in a flour tortilla. Sometimes there's not enough meat; sometimes the taco shell isn't quite crispy; sometimes, for me, there's not enough tomato, but it always fills me up and tastes good and costs $1.29.

Kellerman (and his wife Faye, but, to me, not his son Jesse) writes fast food fiction. The investment is low - they're fast reads that don't require a lot of thought - no big words and lots of dialogue. You know you're never going to get lasting literature. Sometimes the plot is a little thin; sometimes the conclusion is a little silly, but it's always a fun read with great characters and an interesting story.

Enough said.

Gertude Bell

2008-04-20T09:15:00.002-06:00

Gertrude Bell, Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell

Category: Biography Grade: A

I consider myself well-educated and well-read so, after reading this book, it's pretty mind-boggling to me that I had never actually heard of Gertrude Bell. In my unscientific poll of friends and family, essentially no one had ever heard of her other than a few who had recently seen this book on the shelves. In the first half of the 20th century, especially between the World Wars, Bell was one of the most interesting, most adventurous, most influential and probably most important women alive. In the Middle East, she was probably the one person, per this book, responsible for the decisions made in how the imperial powers would treat this area of the world. Certainly far more important to history than T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) who has gotten all the good press and, of course, the Oscar winning movie. Hopefully, this book will kick off a resurgence in interest in Bell. Her life would make an incredible movie!

Born in the late 19th century, Bell, from the beginning, discarded the roll assigned to women of the time. What she wanted to do, she did. She became a traveler and adventurer - visiting all over the world and becoming one of the foremost mountain climbers, certainly the foremost female mountain climber, of the day. When she decided she was interested in the Middle East, she learned from the bottom up - by repeatedly hiring a small party of guides and heading in to the desert for months and even years at a time. In an era (still the norm today), when the sheikhs of the region were absolute rulers of their tiny area and when women were not accepted anywhere except the harem, Bell became an unveiled, intellectual friend to the male leaders. When, after World War I, the time came to decide the political future of the area, Bell was the strongest proponent for the independence of Middle Eastern countries. And yet, first hand, she understood the difficulties that would arise from the inherent tribalism as a competitor to nationalism. She drew the borders of modern Iraq. She was largely responsible for elevating King Faisel to the initial throne of Iraq. She was a major advisor to Churchill and others at the time.

Not surprisingly, this story is extremely relevant to the world today. The political lessons that Bell learned the hard way - the dominance of tribalism and religious sects over national identity - seem to have been, once again, forgotten by Western powers. The seeds of our current inability to bring coherence to the region are definitely visible in Bell's story. I highly recommend this book to anybody who is interested in history, current affairs or even just good story telling.

Thursday Next - First Among Sequels

2007-08-24T08:58:00.000-06:00

Thursday Next - First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde

Category: Fiction Grade: A

In keeping with the new series review policy, this review will be a short one.

As with all the Thursday Next books, this was terrific. The premise is that Next is a detective working for the Literary Crimes division of the police. She is able to cross between the real world and the fictional world. In other words, don't bother to pick up any book in the series unless you're a fantasy fan who can suspend belief. If you do, you're reward with a fun romp filled with literary references and characters along with extremely clever (and often silly) word play. My favorite in this book -- two detectives have jumped in to a story and have been warned that somebody is actually, at that time reading the book. Of course, it'll just confuse the reader if he notices two unexpected, anachronistic characters hanging around so the pair has to hide since, as anybody knows, detectives are better off "Dead than Read".

I hope that Fforde has as much fun writing these books as I do reading them.

A small warning -- this is a series that you definitely want to read in order so, if it sounds appealing, go back and pick up The Eyre Affair.

Tales from Q School

2007-08-24T08:44:00.000-06:00

Tales from Q School by John Feinstein

Category: Sports Grade: C+

Like a lot of non-golfers, Tiger has made me an avid golf spectator. Between that and my often reported belief that Feinstein is the best sports writer out there, I decided to pick up his latest, Tales from Q School. Q School is the shorthand name that golfers use to describe the three round qualifying tournament that gets golfers on to the PGA tour. You don't hear much about it unless you watch the Golf Channel in the late fall. This is because most of the golfers whose names are familiar are exempted out of the qualifying tournament for things like being one of the top money winners in the previous year. Tiger, for example, has never had to go to Q School.

That makes Q School one of the tensest events that a golf pro can enter. For most events on tour, whether the "big league" PGA tour or other circuits for less known players, if you don't do well, you typically just have to wait for the following weekend when another tournament will start fresh with everybody at even par. In Q School, though, if you have a bad weekend (or even a particularly bad day), you won't get another shot at the big time for a full year until the next Q School. I.e. this tournament (a series of three tournaments) determines whether a golfer can actually make a living playing golf for the upcoming year. Because of all the exemptions, Q School is populated mostly by either young players trying to break in to the sport or older players trying to hang on for one more year. All of this keeps the tension level high.

Feinstein uses his standard technique of embedding himself in the sport for the duration -- in this case three consecutive weekends -- and really getting to know the players involved. The book is all anecdotes and interviews. Most of the stories revolve around drives that find the rough or four foot putts that go an inch wide. These, in this book, typically cause the golfer to miss the cut by a stroke - missing the ability to make a living by the tiniest of margins.

Unfortunately, this is also what makes the book less than Feinstein's best work. While he gives a view to dozens of golfers (almost all of which you've never heard of), the stories get to the point where they all look alike. The book is highly repetitive and, ultimately, pretty boring. It's only worth picking up if you're a hardcore golf fan.

The Last Chinese Chef

2007-08-20T10:21:00.001-06:00

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones

Category: Novel Grade: A

As most of you know, Carolyn and I don't have the same taste in books at all. We tend to like different subject matter and different writing styles. Because of that, of course, even as much as we both read, we seldom recommend books to each other. Most of the time, when I recommend something to her, it's either about 19th century New York or 14th century England. Most of the time, when she recommends something to me, it's got something to do with food. Of the few books I recommend to her, she likes some of them. Of the few books she recommends to me, I almost always like them. As you've probably figured out by now, The Last Chinese Chef is Carolyn's latest crossover recommendation and her record is intact -- it's about food and I really enjoyed it.

OK, it's not really about food. The novel is the story of woman who learns of a paternity suit filed against her dead husband's estate by a Chinese woman. When she learns that the paternity claim is at least possible, she heads to China to try to clear things up. She happens to be a food columnist for a "Gourmet"-like magazine and the magazine gives her the assignment to interview a American/Chinese/Jewish chef who comes from a long line of Imperial chefs in China, including the mid-twentieth century author of a book called The Last Chinese Chef.

Mones, who spent several decades in business in China, has used true Chinese cooking (not American-Chinese which is completely different) as the framework to enclose her story. The chef is competing in a contest that involves the top chefs of China. He is a traditionalist who has studied the cuisine of China. He has come to understand that cooking is about not only about the chef and the food, but also about the gourmet, the ambiance of the meal and, most importantly, about the community that forms around the sharing of food. The concept of eating a meal alone is completely foreign to the Chinese culture.

There's a lot in the book about the various dishes that the chef prepares -- trying to combine the flavors, the textures, the visual qualities, the misdirection - that makes a Chinese banquet something extraordinary. Anybody who knows us well knows that food and shared meals are an important of our lives. This book plays in to that feeling. It makes you want to eat; it makes you want to share a quality meal; it even makes you want to cook!

Chinese cooking is actually the perfect metaphor for this book. The parts are OK - the story is decent; the writing is pretty good; the characterizations are interesting. It's a lot like the ingredients of a good meal - garlic is OK; ginger is pretty good; pork and fish can be interesting. But put everything together in just the right way and, like this book, you end up with something memorable.

Does anybody know an Austin restaurant that cooks authentic Chinese food?

The Tenderness of Wolves

2007-08-20T10:12:00.000-06:00

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

Category: Novel Grade: B

This debut novel by Penney isn't bad. It's a murder mystery of sorts that takes place in the Canadian wilderness of the 19th century. That's part of the problem for me - I don't usually enjoy wilderness fiction. My guess is that, if you normally enjoy reading this kind of book, you'll probably like this one.

It's a fairly complex story that gets kicked off by the murder of a trapper in a small Canadian town in 1867. A seventeen year old boy disappears at the same time as the murder and the assumption is made that he's the culprit, although a half-breed is accused in the meantime. The representatives of the Hudson Bay Company come to town to try to arrest the murderer. There are so many angles at this point that the book gets fairly confusing. The boy's mother takes off with the escaped half breed to try to find the boy. There's a storyline about a couple of village girls who disappeared decades before; a Utopian village of Norwegians; a viscious ex company man and a stash of missing furs.

All in all, it did hold my interest to the end, but barely.

Satan's Circus

2007-08-18T18:39:00.001-06:00

Satan's Circus by Mike Dash

Category: History Grade: B

No, it's not what you think. There are no demons, pitchforks or hellfire in the book. It's not the latest from Steven King. It turns out that the "vice" area of Manhattan in the late 19th and early 20th century was called, that's right, Satan's Circus. In some parts of this area there were as many as twenty brothels to a city block. In an area about 25 blocks by 5 blocks you could service just about any bad happen you had - drinking, gambling or just about any kind of sex.

I've really gotten to like reading about this era in New York history. Of course, there's a lot about Tammany Hall. Boss Tweed is long gone by the 1880s - the Tammany leader through most of the book is Big Tim Sullivan. This is the heyday of some legendary New York gangsters - especially, the Jewish gangs led by Arnold Rothstein. There are almost no honest cops in Manhattan although there are a lot of cops (and politicians and judges) who take great care to distinguish between "clean graft" and "dirty graft" which, of course, makes the lines hard to draw.

The focal point of Dash's (non-fiction) book is a very famous murder trial that took place right at the dawn of the 20th century. A local gambler who has tried and failed to start his own club several times, is now heavily in debt to Big Tim. The gambler, Herman Rosenthal, decides to raise some money by selling his story to the press - a story that features a corrupt cop named Charley Becker. Rosenthal provides some basic information that results in sensationalized stories. Rosenthal is supposed to meet with a reporter to lay out the details and the proof and, surprise, surprise, ends up dead instead. The book details the murder and Becker's trials.

The book got a slightly lower grade than it actually deserves because Dash spends a lot of time talking about what's going on in New York during the 19th century, a period that I've already read a lot about. So, if you don't know much about Tammany Hall and the ethnic gangs of New York, you'll probably enjoy the book even more.

The Book of Lost Things

2007-08-12T14:45:00.000-06:00

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Category: Fantasy Grade: B-

This is pretty standard post-Potter, coming-of-age fantasy novel. It's well written and it got of to a terrific start with a wrenching, emotional portrait of a young boy who believes that his obsessive-compulsive routines might keep his dying mother alive. The closing of the book is also a beautiful contrast to the usual "happily ever after". While I picked this one up thinking this was a book aimed at the Potter crowd, it's definitely a far more adult story that it seemed from the book jacket.

The rest of the book isn't bad. If you'd never read any other fantasy novels or seen other fantasy movies, it would have been perfectly enjoyable. The problem with it is that Connolly has borrowed plot devices from so many other sources that, after a while, it just gets both distracting and annoying. Maybe he was going for homage, but it comes across as just derivative. The basic crossing to another world comes from the Narnia series. The first character the boy comes across in the new world is the Woodsman -- an over sized man with an isolated cabin who is more comfortable in the world of trees and animals than people - can everybody say Hagrid? There are talking animals a la the Pullman series (if you don't know Pullman's work you will when the first of the movies "The Golden Compass" comes out in the fall). Most blatantly, Connolly takes major chunks from the Wizard of Oz -- the Woodsman is much like the Tin Man, there's a "white stone road" that will take the hero to the "king" who will know how to get him home - there's even a gang of harpies who behave exactly like the flying monkeys!

Very unoriginal.

Boomsday

2007-08-12T14:19:00.000-06:00

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley

Category: Novel Grade: A

Buckley is definitely the best political satirist writing today. In the past, however, he's tackled fairly safe topics. His most well known book that was made in to a movie a few years ago was Thank You for Smoking. In that book, Buckley made hilarious fun of the so-called death lobbyists - the folks who work the Washington power structure looking out for the best interests of the tobacco, alcohol and gun industries. In Boomsday, with equally funny results, he tackles a much touchier topic - the cost of government benefits for the Boomer generation. He illustrates the big fallacy of Social Security - that its an insurance program. I.e. that the money that a worker contributes during his life somehow pays for the benefits that worker will draw after retirement. The reality is a lot scarier and, in some ways, more sinister. It's today's workers that actually pay for the benefits of today's retirees. With the retirement of the Boomer generation, the largest in history, a rapidly increasing chunk of today's wages will have to be used to pay retirement and health care benefits.

What Buckley postulates in this book is effectively a potential tax payer rebellion. He's a satirist so he comes up with lots of new benefits that are being approved by the federal government mostly because of the power of the Boomer lobbyists (a theme?) - e.g. a new Social Security benefit to support the latest Boomer trend -- designer mausoleums! A blog written by the book's heroine (?) stirs up the young to, among other things, attack Florida golf courses as a form of protest.

What makes the book hysterical and more than a little uncomfortable, is the blogger's proposed solution to the problem - tax incentives for "voluntary transition" at age 70. I.e. government funded suicide. A taxpayer would get benefits like elimination of all estate taxes just by agreeing to "transit" to a better place. The blogger proposes the solution as merely a way to bring attention to the issues, never expecting or really wanting the solution to become law. What makes the book scary and, at the same time, funny, is that (a) of course, the financial analysis proves beyond a doubt that the scheme would make Social Security solvent forever and (b) not surprisingly, an opportunistic politician decides that he can ride the issue to the White House. Again, the numbers work -- if you can get all the "U30s" (the under 30 crowd) to get mad and vote, you can safely ignore everybody else.

Buckley then pulls out the whole bag of tricks for a Washington satirist -- a spin doctor who gets caught organizing a golf tournament in North Korea to encourage good will, an LBJ-like cynical President, a hypocritical tele-evangelist (whose downfall is the funniest part of the book) and even a Larry Ellison like ego-entrepreneur.

The book is an easy entertaining read - a good beach book, even if its a little late in the season. If you don't mind being a little ashamed of the fact that you think this stuff is funny, give it a shot.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicles

2007-08-09T09:30:00.001-06:00

The Wind-up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami

Category: Novel Grade: B+

That's two by Murakami this summer and I think I'm becoming a fan. His books are definitely not for everybody - he's sort of a magical-realist. The two books I've read so far, this one and the much shorter After Dark, both blur the lines between reality and fantasy. Chronicles is probably the author's best known and definitely his longest book. It winds together a bunch of different plots lines - something I'm not usually in to. Here, the focus of the book is the narrator's disintegrating marriage, but there's also strange story lines about a teenage girl up the street, a very weird "psychic treatment", a charismatic Japanese politician and an involved story about violence during both of Japan's mid-centuries wars - with China and then with the Soviet Union. In spite of the book's 600 page length, Murakami, at least in this book, is amazingly efficient with his prose. The tiniest details come back to be wound in to the story later in the book. Ultimately, all of the story lines tie together in what, finally, is a beautiful, but disturbing book.

The writing is lyrical, even in translation. Most of the book is told in first person - it's the kind of book where you can hear the narrator telling you the story in a quiet voice. The translator, Jay Rubin, has apparently done most of Murakami's books and it's hard to imagine the talent required to take prose like this and make it poetic in another language. Reading Chronicles really made me wish I could read Japanese to see what this writing is like in the original.

This book isn't nearly as dense as the masterpiece of magical realism - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez. If you liked Solitude, or if you always wanted to read something like it, but weren't willing to invest the effort to get through, you might like Chronicles. It's definitely enough to keep me moving through the Murakami library.

The Double Agents

2007-08-02T09:04:00.000-06:00

The Double Agents by W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV

Category: Military Fiction Grade: A

OK - new rule. I read a fair amount of serial fiction. Griffin is probably the best example. As I've said in the past, I've probably read more books by him than any other author (39 and counting). In general, a series is either good or bad without a lot of variation from book to book. So from now on, series fiction will get really short reviews - it's just getting hard to think of something clever to say about what's essentially one long book.

This one is the sixth book in the Men at War series about the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. It takes place during World War II. Griffin always throws in some element of soap opera - there's always at least a few heaving breasts - but is books are uniformly entertaining and action packed. This one is too. Enough said.

(Actually, there is one thing out of the ordinary about this one -- David Niven, Peter Ustinov and Ian Fleming are all a major part of one of the story lines.)

Blood and Thunder

2007-07-31T13:36:00.001-06:00

Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides

Category: History Grade: B+

For some reason this period of history - mid 19th century - is not one I've been terribly interested in or read a lot about. The American westward expansion more than doubled the size of the United States after the Louisiana Purchase. It also involved the virtual destruction of almost all Native American tribes in the Southwest. Maybe its because the stories of this period have been so sensationalized over the years, but I don't know that I've ever gotten all the way through a history book about this era.

While, in a lot of ways, Sides has really overwritten this book, with way too much flowery language, the primary hook he decided to use is pretty engaging. The focal point of the book is the life of Kit Carson -- the real life of Kit Carson, not the mostly fictitious stories that were made up and published about him in "blood and thunders", the nickname for the adventure stories told about the west. According to Sides, Carson was actually a pretty mild-mannered man who was only rarely the vicious Indian fighter of legend. He was a quiet mountain man - a trapper in his early days who preferred the isolation of the trail to life in a city. He became a renowned scout and, later, a military leader. He was, most of the time, a friend to the Indians and was married to a Hispanic woman. His home, famously, was in Taos, New Mexico, but he spent much of his life on the trails from coast to coast. In his day, he was, reluctantly, the symbol of westward expansion.

While the book roams all over the country, it geographic focus is Santa Fe. Not surprisingly, given that the timeline runs from the 1830s to the 1870s, much of the story is about the subjugation of the Native Americans. As with most histories of this period, Americans don't particularly come across as the good guys, but Sides is balanced enough to show why the Anglos moving west considered the Indians their enemies. Ultimately, he makes it pretty clear that the aggressive, city-oriented, hierarchical society of the whites could never have coexisted with the nomadic, leaderless tribes, especially like the Navajos. In the end, Sides doesn't make what happened to the Indians acceptable, but he does go a long way to making it understandable.

This is really the story of frontier warfare. The period, though dominated, by the constant skirmishes with the Indians, also includes the war with Mexico and the Civil War. I had never really thought much about how the Civil War played out in the Southwest but there were some pretty major battles there. The Civil War became largely an excuse for the Texas-dominated branch of the Rebel army to attempt to annex the western areas of New Mexico that they had coveted for so long.

This turns out to be a good general introduction to the history of the Southwest. Sides' focus on the people of the era, particularly Carson, make for a very readable overview.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-07-22T11:58:00.000-06:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

Category: Fantasy Grade: A+

Well, I did manage to get a few hours sleep last night but, other than that, I read this one straight through. I might be one of the older ones to do this, but definitely not the only one.

Every generation needs some work of art that makes a parent want to pass it down to his children. For most of the second half of the 20th century, that art was probably in the form of a movie. For me, it was the Wizard of Oz. It's my first memory of a going to the movies - Aunt Mina took me. I couldn't have been more than six or seven but that afternoon, sitting in the Paramount, is one I'll never forget. That movie was magic - the change from black-and-white Kansas to full color Oz, the cleverness of the yellow brick road and the lollipop guild, the terror of the flying monkeys (that I watched while cowering behind the seat in front of me) - these are the images that I couldn't wait to share with my kids when they were old enough. For those younger than me, it might be E.T. or Star Wars, but those moments were probably captured in movies.

For that group of high school kids that was hanging around bookstores Friday night waiting for midnight (who read the first Potter when they were 8), that feeling is unquestionably tied up with Harry, Ron and Hermione. Because of this attachment that will be passed on to the children ten years from now, I'll happily nominate Rowlings as the most influential writer of the last hundred years. She could easily be considered this because she's written the best, most approachable, not to mention longest, at almost 5000 pages, fantasy series ever - far outstripping, in my humble view, authors like Tolkien or Lewis. Much more importantly, she has single-handedly created millions on millions of kids who find magic between the covers of a book. She's extended the life of the book, in the face of 21st century technology, not to mention being the savior of the small, independent book store.

Think about so-called children's literature before Harry. The books that come to mind - Charlotte's Web, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys - were just plain juvenile. Children's authors really believed that kids couldn't handle a challenge -- big words, complex plots, well developed characters and, most obviously, thick books. Rowlings has changed all that by asking her readers to raise their ability to handle her stories instead of lowering her style to match their ability. In today's world of TAKS testing, grade inflation and six-year college degrees, it's a lesson that our educators should take to heart - making kids reach makes them smarter.

I'm not actually going to say a lot about Deadly Hallows - if you're not a fan, you probably think I'm nuts. If you are a fan, you've probably already started it or plan to so and you'd kill me if I gave away the story points. Suffice it to say that, to me this was the perfect topper to this series. It's a great book on its own with enough complexity and action to keep you glued, but it also gives a solid dose of closure to the series. While I'm a little sad to see the series end, it does end with this book -- I hope the Rowlings has more stories in her, but she should definitely let go of Potter.

Bloodthirsty

2007-07-20T18:14:00.000-06:00

Bloodthirsty by Marshall Karp

Category: Mystery Grade: A

It was a little risky to pick this book up. There's a little extra pressure to reviewing it. If you've been following this blog for a while, you might remember that I reviewed Karp's first book, The Rabbit Factory. It was a fun book and I gave it an "A-". Much to my surprise, the next week, I got an email from the author thanking me for the review. We swapped a couple of emails and he told me was working on a sequel featuring his LAPD detectives, Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs. I'm guessing that Marshall is still lurking out there in the blogosphere and, eventually, will probably read this review. (Marshall - if you do, drop me an email and say hello!) Given that, I was a little concerned that the new book would be a bust and I'd have to decide whether to give it a bad review or chicken out and pretend I didn't read it.

Fortunately - no problem. This book was even better than the first one - partly because the characters are now familiar. The big difference between this and the first book is that there are fewer distracting side plots in this one. The main storyline has plenty of twists to keep you guessing. More important for a mystery fan, Karp gives you enough clues to figure out where the story is going if you're really, really clever. I wasn't, but, once he hits a plot twist, you can look back in the book and see the clues that you should have caught. It's really frustrating to a mystery fan when other authors takes a turn that has absolutely no setup.

While I really enjoyed the plot in Bloodthirsty - a serial killing with a strange M.O. - Karp's strength is still character development. His primary characters, Lomax and Biggs are interesting, funny and, riding a little high trying to sell the Rabbit Factory story to the movies. But these aren't just cops - they're husbands/boyfriends, fathers, sons, friends - and essentially all of the supporting characters are completely three dimensional. My favorite is still Lomax's father, Big Jim - a character that could probably star in his own book.

As in the first book, Karp isn't aspiring to create high literature here. He's written another entertaining read and has me ready to get in line for the third book (or a movie?). Marshall, if you reading this - go back to work!

Richistan

2007-07-20T18:03:00.000-06:00

Richistan by Robert Frank

Category: Current Affairs Grade: B+

This book is almost embarrassing to review. Frank, a Wall Street Journal writer, spent years reporting on the wealthy. He came to the conclusion that the rich (in the U.S. in this book) really live in a different world. He decided to travel through the world and describe the lifestyles he found. His first quick conclusion was that millionaires are a whole lot more prevalent than they used to be (even adjusted for inflation). He divides Richistan in to four different "states" - Lower Richistan ($1-10M net worth), Middle Richistan ($10-100M net worth), Upper Richistan ($100M-$1B) and, of course, Billionaireville ($1B+).

He spends most of time in the last two states and discovers that inflation in those states is dramatically worse than in the "real world". The competition for the best, the most and the biggest keeps the uber-rich continuously spending. The 500 foot yacht is no longer unusual. The 30,000 square foot home is becoming common among this group. On the other hand, the demographics of the group is pretty different than in the past -- people are younger, dress less formally, don't use chauffeurs and, often, keep working long past having "enough" money. Philanthropy has become a more participatory activity with fewer gifts to "name" charities and more do it yourself social investing. The chapter about this actually focuses on an Austinite - Phillip Berber and his Glimmer of Hope Foundation.

Interesting world.

The Quest

2007-07-20T17:54:00.000-06:00

The Quest by Wilbur Smith

Category: Historical Novel (sort of) Grade: B

Wilbur Smith is a very prolific writer of mostly historical fiction. The Quest is the fourth book in his series about ancient Egypt. The series focuses on Taita, a eunuch and advisor to the Pharaohs of Egypt. He's a "long liver" having lived through the reigns of four or five Pharaohs. The previous three novels have been reality based. This one flies way off in to the realm of fantasy. In doing so, Smith becomes extremely derivative. This book reads like a compilation of the stories of Tolkien, Rowlins and others. There are quests, reincarnation, witches, fantastical healing and, frankly, ultimately, it was too much. The book managed to hang on to a B rating because Smith really writes amazing ancient battle scenes - a little gory, but engaging.

If you're interested in Egypt, I still recommend the earlier books in the series, especially the first one, River God. Definitely don't start with this one.

The Black Swan

2007-07-13T09:48:00.000-06:00

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Category: Philosophy Grade: B+

This book made my head hurt.

Taleb, by background, is a trader. I guess I hadn't really grasped the fact from the reviews and the jacket cover that this was really a philosophy book. That made it, at times, hard to follow. In addition, Taleb's tone is very confrontational. He's obviously not out to win friends among the financial and philosophical community. He even trashes icons like the economist Paul Samuelson and his followers.

Taleb's basic premise is that most things -- life, history, the financial markets - are driven not by predictable, analyzable continuity (or by bell curves), but by Black Swans. The term comes from the fact that, for centuries, most scientist believed that all swans were white based on thousands and thousands of observations. I.e. nobody had ever seen a swan that wasn't white so, therefore, all swans must be white. This theory had to be thrown out when the unexpected happened -- scientists found black swans in Australia. More specifically, a Black Swan, per Taleb, has three characteristics -- its unpredictable, it has major impact and, most of the time, it can be analyzed (not necessarily correctly) in hindsight. The best examples of Black Swan in the recent past are 9/11 and Katrina (and, more personally, the massive floodings in Marble Falls this summer). Note, not all Black Swans are negative. Again from personal experience, the success of AOL has to be considered a Black Swan - one that worked out pretty well for me.

Taleb points out that predicting based on experience is an extremely dangerous thing to do. Essentially, "if you don't study history, you're doomed to repeat it" doesn't work for him. The classic example he uses is the "Thanksgiving turkey" scenario. If you're a turkey, for a thousand days you're pampered and well fed. After a thousand observations, it's reasonable for you, the turkey, to assume that tomorrow will be another day like yesterday. Surprise, surprise - instead of getting dinner, you are dinner on the 1001st day! The general conclusions from this is that you can't draw definitive positive conclusions from any number of positive observations. You can, however, draw negative conclusions from a single negative observation. For example, thousands of white swans don't prove that all swans are white, while a single black swan proves that not all swans are white. He also warns against transposition errors -- "not all swans are white" is not the same as "all swans are not white".

From a practical point of view, Taleb's conclusion is that professional predictors are useless. In fact, he claims that they're worse than useless since they don't accept the fact that they could be wrong. Since a lot of research in the financial world is devoted to building more and more elaborate economic and market models, this is naturally a controversial position.

Ultimately, of course, since Black Swans are, by definition, unpredictable, you can't really plan for them. You can, however, plan on the assumption that some Black Swan will happen. On the negative side, most of us do this -- we buy insurance. Insurance always seems like a useless thing to do, until the Black Swan happens. Just ask the uninsured Katrina victims. On the positive side, you can put yourself in position to take advantage of positive Black Swans - e.g. join start up companies.

Reading contrarians like Taleb is definitely worthwhile. I actually happen to identify with his writings, but even if he just makes you think more critically, he's worth reading.

Social Commentary

2007-07-13T09:16:00.001-06:00

I've tried to avoid doing a much of any social commentary on this blog since, if I get started, I'd probably be spewing propaganda for weeks. However, I ran across a brief article in the latest Newsweek that really summed up a whole lot of today's problems for me.

The article was about a new trend, which I generally support, to hold parents responsible for the crimes of their minor children. Even though I'm a liberal on most issues, I do believe that the primary responsibility for giving kids a moral basis lies with the family, not with the schools or the government. I think there's a roll for everybody to play, but the lynch pin is the home. So, it makes sense to me that, if kids go wrong early, there should be consequences for their parents.

But come on -- let's at least be logical about this and send the message we want kids to get. In Louisiana, a parent can be fined $250 if their child joins a gang. Not much, but a start. In California, if a parent provides, intentionally or accidentally, a gun to a child who then goes on to seriously injure or kill somebody, the parent can be fined $30,000. OK, better. However, there is now a federal law that says, if a child illegally downloads a song from the Internet, the parent can be fined up to $150,000!!!

Now that we have are child-rearing philosophy straight, let me provide the obvious advice to those of you who still have kids at home. If you're thinking about buying your child an mp3 player, forget it. It's a whole lot cheaper to get them a handgun! And if you really want to be financially responsible, forget the Kazaa account, take the kid shopping for gang colors!

Makes you proud to be an American!

The Good Guy

2007-07-02T22:15:00.001-06:00

The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

Category: Thriller Grade: A-

And back to entertaining garbage... This book has three parts -- a brief ten page section to set up the premise, an involved chase scene and, finally, a relatively brief explanation of why everything happened. The premise is pretty clever -- a man (our hero) walks in to his favorite bar. After a few minutes at the bar, a stranger walks over, hands our hero $10K and a picture of the woman our hero is supposed to kill and leaves the bar. A few minutes later, a second stranger walks in to the bar and walks up our hero to ask for his assignment. The hero, having figured out that he has somehow gotten in to the middle of a murder-for-hire, gives the second stranger the money and tells him "never mind", thinking that'll make everybody happy and keep the woman alive.

Of course, it doesn't work out that way. The contract killer figures out what happened and, because of professional pride and the fact that he enjoys killing people, decides to go ahead with the murder. In addition, he figures that, since our hero can identify him, our hero will have to go to and, since the murderer is a sporting man, he calls our hero and tells him so!

I haven't given away much here. The setup I've described all happens in the first ten pages or so. Then, most of the book is devoted to the cat and mouse game between the murderer and the hero and, of course, the intended victim since we need an attractive, quirky female lead to make the action interesting. Surprisingly, Koontz is then able to give us 300 pages of non-stop, very entertaining action. As I said, its basically one long chase scene and, like the best Die Hard movie, it keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole way.

The last section - the explanation of why anybody wanted to kill this reasonably nice woman in the first place - is the weak point of the book and cost it a couple of points. It was a little lame and felt like Koontz finished and realized he'd left this big issue hanging out there.

The weak points aren't enough to kill the fun of the story and the pace of the action. This is a great summer read. Perfect for sitting by the pool or waiting for the sun to come out.

The Secret Life of Houdini

2007-07-02T21:56:00.000-06:00

The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush and Larry Sloman

Category: Biography Grade: B-

It's hard to imagine but, in his day, mostly the early years of the 20th century, Houdini was about as big a superstar as it gets. This was an era before any kind of real mass media -- even the movies only kicked in late in Houdini's career. Born Erik Weisz in Hungary in 1874, the man who would become Harry Houdini was moved to the United States early in his life and became Elrich Weiss. He adopted the name Houdini as a tribute to a French magician named Robert-Houdin - a man that Houdini eventually turned on, publishing a book exposing him as a fraud.

Houdini was really one of the first to understand the values of self-promotion. Everything he did in his early life was designed with one purpose - to promote the career of Harry Houdini. For example, when he first became an escape artist and for most of his career, he would, on arriving in a new town for a show, head straight for the local police office. There, he would challenge the local cops to secure him in any combination of standard-issue handcuffs, leg irons, even jail cells and proceed to astonish everybody (including, of course, the assembled press) with his ability to escape. Throughout his career, he maintained close relations with not only local police all over the world but also the leaders of the Secret Service and Britain's MI-5. In one of the controversial aspects of the book, the authors show reasonably convincing evidence that Houdini acted throughout his life as an unofficial resource for these spy agencies.

Late in his career, Houdini became a crusader against the Spiritualist Movement, the religion that was predicated on the ability to speak, through mediums, to the dead. Especially after the death of the mother to whom he was devoted, Houdini desperately wanted to uncover the path to communicating with the dead but eventually, through his unique knowledge of showmanship and scam, came to denounce every medium he came across as a fraud. He repeatedly offered big rewards to any medium who could show an ability to communicate that couldn't be easily duplicated with the trick's of Houdini and, of course, never had to pay off. He became a major antagonist to the movement that was spearheaded by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Doyle, late in his life, was the most visible advocate of Spiritualism.

As a life story, Houdini's is fascinating. As a biography, this one leaves a little to be desired. Like a lot of today's movies, it could have used a much more forceful editor. Big chunks of the book prove highly repetitive -- Houdini was locked in chains, then escaped; Houdini was locked in other chains, then escaped -- over and over and over again. Once his career took off, Houdini never had much trouble filling an audience but, after all the repetition, its hard to understand how.

This book does give great pictures of the vaudeville/entertainment world of the early 20th century and a terrific overview of the Spiritualist Movement. It could have been a great one if somebody had convinced the author to trim a hundred pages or so.

After Dark

2007-06-24T12:20:00.000-06:00

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Category: Novel Grade: B+

I should have known to expect a philosophical novel that isn't quite what it seems to be. Murakami is a very popular Japanese author whose novels have been translated into 38 languages. He recently received the Kafka Prize. On top of that, our friend at the bookstore saw me pick this one up and commented -- "That's a good one of his to start with -- it's short!". So I can't say I wasn't warned.

Anyway, I did end up enjoying the book. It's a little stilted as is pretty common for books written in a foreign language and translated to English. (There is a lot of music mentioned in to the book - I wonder if the translator replaces Japanese jazz titles with American ones for the translation?). The book is about two sisters in Tokyo. Mari, the one we meet first in the middle of the night in a Denny's, is the focal point of the realistic part of the novel. Her sister, Eri, on the other hand, has been asleep for the last two months and we see her, in her sleep, moving between her bedroom and another room reflected in the TV in her room. Nothing much really happens, but it's actually kind of cool the way Murakami weaves what's essential a magical realist novel. Not sure I know what he was trying to say, but he said it really well.

The Book of Air and Shadows

2007-06-24T12:07:00.001-06:00

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber

Category: Novel Grade: B-

I picked this one up because I had read a kidlit book that Gruber wrote last year and it was decent - not great, but decent. This is one of his adult novels and it falls in the same category. This is one of the many "son of DaVinci Code" books that I usually avoid. You know, modern day people discovery some ancient secret launching an across-the-ages thriller. In general in this category, you never really know whether what you're reading about is an actual ancient mystery or a modern day scam. Same with Gruber's book. It's got a very been there/done that feel to it.

In this case, the "discovery" revolves around a set of 17th century letters that talk about a plot to spy on Shakespeare and, ultimately, talks about an undiscovered play that is supposedly buried somewhere in England. An unknown Shakespeare play, especially one written in his own hand would, as you might imagine, be worth millions, if not hundreds of millions. Gangsters get involved - in fact rival groups of gangsters; a professor gets tortured and murdered; a lawyer and a wannabe fill maker get involved; there are a couple of mystery women; an ex-wife; an OCD kid... Gruber tries to jam so many different plot lines in to the novel, that, after a while, it just gets too confusing. He never gets the reader to the point where you really care much about these people and their complicated lives.

Silas Marner

2007-06-20T21:48:00.000-06:00

Silas Marner by George Elliot

Category: Novel Grade: A-

And so another touchstone of my teenage years falls. In my memory, the two worst books ever written, both required reading in high school, were The Red Badge of Courage and Silas Marner. Last summer, I discovered that Crane's novel was actually really good. Earlier this summer, if you remember, I made some snide comment about Silas Marner in one of my other book reviews. Almost immediately, Christian challenged me, saying it was actually one of his favorites. He's got degrees from Duke and Yale so I, of course, figured he was being elitist and trying to show off his knowledge and sophistication and so, I accepted his challenge and agreed to read the book. I asked our friend who owns the little book store that we use to order it for me. She laughed and said she remembered it to as the worst book she ever read.

What a surprise! This is actually a beautiful little book. The prose, being 150 years old, is a little dense for my taste with paragraphs that can run three or four pages. Given that, however, it was a much more complex story than I expected with incredibly well drawn characters. There are only two things that I can come up with to blame my past feelings about the book. The one I believe is true is that this is just a terrible book to give to 16 or 17 year old kids. Jason even said he had to read the book in middle school! Kids that age just aren't prepared for a book like this and I stick with my belief that, at that age, this is a good book to kill any interest in literature that a kid might have. The other, and probably true theory, given that parts of the story weren't familiar to me at all, was that I actually dodged the assignment in high school and only read parts of the book (or, more likely, read the Cliffs Notes).

This is only a couple of hundred pages long and is a pretty quick read. If you want to challenge your memories of those horrible books from high school, give it a try. You may be surprised.

Roll the Bones

2007-06-16T17:08:00.001-06:00

Roll the Bones, The History of Gambling by David G. Schwartz

Category: History Grade: B-

My first surprise with this book was that there is such a thing as a professor of gambling! The author is Director of the Center for Gaming Studies at UNLV. Who knew.

The next surprise was that you could write a textbook about gambling history. The book is very comprehensive - spanning gambling from the folks who starting gaming with the astragalus, foot bones from a variety of animals right through to the explosion of online gambling in the last decade. Like a textbook, this was interesting, but, for the most part pretty dry. You wouldn't think it was possible to write a dry book about gambling but it is.

There are some high points -- the early stages of the creation of Vegas; the rise of horse racing around the world - but over 100 pages about the development of lotteries can get pretty boring.

You're not likely to enjoy this book unless you're a big fan of gambling, so don't bother. The summary you're led to is that gambling is absolutely basic to human nature and that virtually all attempts to ban or severely restrict gambling have crumbled in a relatively short period of time. So, if you have to drive too far to get to a casino, just hang on.

Empire

2007-06-10T10:19:00.000-06:00

Empire by Orson Scott Card

Category: SciFi Grade: C+

Card is actually a pretty good writer. His two series - the Ender SciFi series and the Alvin Marker fantasy series are both classics. I'm still waiting for him to hit a home run (or even a solid double) outside of these two series. This book definitely isn't the one.

The premise here is that, in the very near future, the Red State/Blue State divisions in the United States actually lead to civil war. The underlying warning -- that today's polarization leads to an openness to manipulation by a smart, silent group of hidden powerful people - is as old as literature. It wasn't until I got to the end that I realized that what Card had been chartered to do in this book is write a novelization of an upcoming video game and, boy, does it feel like that. You get the impression, at times, that the action has been plotted by a committee of 14 year old boys. There's all kinds of video-game-oriented weapons and lots of shoot-em-up action. The plot is also very disjointed -- you sometimes feel like you're watching a Die Hard movie that's had 5 minute chunks snipped out every once in a while.

I do, though, have to throw out one interesting thing about Card. He was really one of the first to believe in the value of an online presence for a popular author. His current online community, www.hatrack.com, started out as a dedicated forum on AOL close to twenty years ago. I still remember the day that he came to headquarters to discuss how the forum would be set up. Since most of us, back then, were certifiable nerds, that was a very well attended meeting. He was a strange guy -- overweight, Mormon, very conservative for the times -- but he absolutely understood the power of an online fan club. Today, he actually releases most of his books a chapter at a time as he writes them on his web site and actually listens to and incorporates feedback from his fans.

Check out the website or his early book, Ender's Game, but skip this one.

Water for Elephants

2007-06-08T18:34:00.000-06:00

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Category: Novel Grade: A

This book seems to have become a staple of the book club circuit and its pretty easy to see why. It's a well constructed story with a really good ending. I will warn those of you with squeamish stomachs that one of the themes of the book is animal cruelty and, while it' not horribly graphic, it's definitely there.

Gruen has adopted a somewhat unusual structure for the book. The first three chapters cover the middle, end and beginning of the story and everything converges from there. Since this all happens in the first 15 pages or so, I don't feel bad about having a little bit of a spoiler. The bulk of the book takes place at a not-so-great traveling circus. In the opening pages, we get what is really the climax of the book - a murder (sort-of) and a stampede of all the animals in the circus menagerie and, we meet the book's narrator, Jacob Jankowsky. In the second chapter, we jump way ahead to Jankowsky at age 93 in a nursing home. Then in the third chapter, we go all the way to the beginning of the story -- with Jankowsky as a veternary student who learns that his parents have been killed in a car wreck. When he returns to school after the funeral for his finals, he is so distraught that he ends up running out of the exam room and, in desperation, hopping a train that's moving through town. It's only when he wakes up the next morning that he realizes that the train he's jumped belongs to the Benzini Brothers Traveling Circus and so, without really making a decision, Jankowsky becomes a circus-hand.

The book bounces back and forth between Jake in his 20s at the circus and Jake in his 90s at the nursing home. Most of the interesting parts of the story take place at the circus and leads you to the climax that you already know is coming, but didn't quite understand. You get a great view of circus life and the freaks, roustabouts and performers that populate it. You may wonder, during the book, why Gruen bothered to include the "old Jake" story line. It makes for some good comic relief but, in the end, becomes a critical part of the story.

Grit your teeth through the animal-cruelty parts (and know that it all works out for in the end). You'll enjoy this one.

Einstein

2007-06-07T10:56:00.000-06:00

Einstein by Walter Isaacson

Category: Biography Grade: A

I couldn't put this one down. Take what was probably one of the most brilliant scientific minds of all time in an outspoken German Jew in the first half of the 20th century and it's not hard to see why you'd get an incredible story. If you look at the people, in history, who advanced our understanding of the world the most, there are only a handful of candidates - maybe Galilleo, Newton, Watson & Crick (DNA) and, of course, Albert Einstein. Even today, half a century after his death, his face is still one of the recognizable on the planet. But, while everybody knows him as the formulator of the Special and General Theories of Relativity, most people didn't know much about his life. With the popularity of Isaacson's book, hopefully, that will change.

To most of us, the fascinating parts of the book are the biographical parts. Don't get me wrong - there's a lot of science in this book. Between Einstein's inherent ability to make the complex understandable and a surprising knack by Isaacson to make the pictures even clearer, the science became much more comprehensible than I expected. There's a lot about relativity, the lack of an "absolute" definition of time and space and, even, quantum theory, that I understand far better after reading the book. That said, you have to adjust your reading style for this book to jump in to fast forward whenever the science gets over your head. I pride myself on being a pretty smart guy, but there were parts of this book where I had no clue what was being discussed. Everybody will have there own point where the concepts start to blur - just skip those sections.

What you're left with is the story of brilliant non-conformist who lived during interesting times. Einstein is probably the only scientist who ever achieved the status of international rock star. He was universally known and loved in an age before television. On his initial visits to the United States, he was greeted with parades and parties. Part of his appeal was that his science, while not always understood, was very highly publicized. He also, of course, looked the part of the "mad scientist". Closely related to his science were the relationships he maintained with some of the great names (in science, at least) of the times -- Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Oppenheimer, among others. It would have been amazing to have been seated at the table when these minds started discussing not only the nature of the cosmos, but politics, literature and just about everything else. These people, especially Einstein in his youth, were willing to make leaps of knowledge that overthrew centuries of accepted belief. Then you watch, as he grew older, Einstein flip from the rebellious creator of the relativity theory to the reactionary protector of that theory in the face of quantum theory.

The book also shows the personal side of Einstein's life. In his early life, contrary to legend, Einstein was actually a reasonably good student. The "genius who flunked math" turns out not to be true at all. Some of the other "legends", however, are real - most of his best work, including the Special Relativity Theory and the famous equation relating energy to matter, was done in a single year of his life, 1905, while he was very junior clerk at the Swiss Patent Office. He held that lowly job because it was the only one he could get, thanks to a connection, after several years of post-graduate unemployment. He was married twice - the second time to a first cousin. He was very outspoken when it came to politics -- he was, for most of his life a socialist, but his early pacifism was thrown out when faced with Hitler. He was a lifelong proponent of a world government as the only way to deal with a militarized, and especially a nuclear, world. He was a non-practicing Jew, really a deist, who became an ardent Zionist, but one who believed the Jewish moral character would be defined by how the Zionists treated their Palestinian neighbors. He was even, on the death of Chaim Weizmann offered the presidency of Israel, which he declined.

The picture you come away with is of a brilliant man who, amazingly for all the celebrity, was a genuinely nice and kind man. I know that sounds a little trite, but he seemed to be straightforward, open and down-to-earth through his entire life.

A quick word about the author -- this isn't the first of Isaacson's books that I've read or that has become a best seller. He's previous popular biography was Benjamin Franklin, An American Life. He rights in a clear, but insightful way and seems to have a knack for making the complex, whether its quantum theory or international politics of the 19th century, easy to grasp. I do now want to go back and read some of his older books, especially one called The Wise Men about the group led by Dean Acheson that defined U.S. foreign policy for the second half of the 20th century. His other book is a biography of Henry Kissinger. I'm amazed at a talent that can write over such a wide range. It's likely, especially now that David Halberstam is gone, that Isaacson could emerge as one of the premier historians/biographers for the next couple of decades.

Buddha

2007-06-04T10:27:00.000-06:00

Buddha by Deepak Chopra

Category: Historical Novel Grade: B+

Coming in to this book, I knew relatively little about Buddha or Buddhism. Once before, I tried Chopra's fiction and it wasn't bad. This book, a novelization of the life of Buddha, seemed like an interesting chance to take. It's short - only 250 pages - so it wasn't a big risk. It turned out, as you can tell from the grade, to be a worthwhile risk to take, although, as you'll see below it had an interested, an somewhat unexpected, impact.

The book is divided in to three sections, as was the life of the subject. In the first section, we see the birth and early life of Siddhartha. Born a prince in a far eastern kingdom, he ends up as the cause of much suffering when the king, after hearing a prophecy about his son's life, decides to raise him in an environment where no suffering is visible. To accomplish this, the king makes Siddhartha a prisoner in the palace and banishes anyone who is old, infirm or ugly from the court. In order to provide companionship to the boy, the king also invites (actually, summons) a cousin, Devadatta to live at court. Devadatta is destined to become the lifelong enemy of Siddhartha.

In the second section of the book and of the Buddha's life, Siddhartha, after wandering from the palace and discovering the nearby suffering population, abandons his life to become a wandering monk known as Gautama. He spends decades in wandering, struggling to become enlightened by learning the powers of meditation and deprivation. His near death leads him to a form of enlightenment and, as he is nursed back to health by a peasant girl, he enters the third phase of his life (and of the book) as the Buddha. In this phase, he returns to his father's kingdom for the inevitable confrontation with Devadatta to big enlightenment and peace ot the kingdom.

The book is well written and interesting. With the frequent appearance of the demon, Mara, and the tales of gurus who teach by remaining in motionless meditation for days at a time, the book takes on an edge of fantasy. Even though the story forms the basis for one of the world's major religions, it reminds me a lot of the fantasy novels of Tolkien or Pullman. Interestingly (and sorry if I offend), this leads inevitably to the fine line between religion and fantasy. The distinction seems to be a pretty basic one -- indoctrination. Raised with a belief in the reality of legend, a child comes to accept his or her religion as "gospel" (again, sorry for the pun). Viewed without the indoctrination, the legends are clearly recognizable as allegorical, sometimes beautiful, fantasy. The historical suffering caused by these conflicting fantasies, however, is very real. Makes you think, huh.

The Rising Tide

2007-06-02T08:30:00.001-06:00

The Rising Tide By Jeff Shaara

Category: Novel Grade: A

Shaara is really emerging as the best author currently writing war-based fiction. He comes about his talent honestly. His father was the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Killer Angels, about the Civil War. Jeff Shaara hit the grand running by completing the Civil War series that his father started. He's gone on to write books about the Revolutionary War and the First World War. This book, The Rising Tide, is the first of a trilogy about World War II - more specifically about the war in Africa and Europe against Germany.

Shaara accomplishes a lot with a proven style. First, he believes that, while he writes about history, what he's really doing is telling a great story. While I'm a big fan of W.E.B. Griffin and his military novels, Shaara doesn't get in to any of the soap-opera aspects of the story that are such a prominent part of the Griffin books. Wives, family and sex play almost no part in Shaara's writing making his books more "serious" while, surprisingly not losing any of the entertainment value.

Second, Shaara has a key asset in his M.O. for telling these stories, one that he's used in every book so far, as I recall. While he doesn't write in the first person, Shaara always chooses a few people in the story to serve as multiple focal points. Each chapter in the book uses the viewpoint of a particular person to provide context for what's going on. This technique works because Shaara does such a good job of choosing his focal points. He starts by identifying a small number of the major players on both sides of the war. Here he's used Eisenhower, Montgomery and Rommel with a few chapters late in the book that focus on Patton and Kesselring, Rommel's superior. These focal points allow Shaara to tell the "high level" story -- the international politics, the strategy planning, the frustrations and gives us glimpses of the strengths and the weakness of Roosevelt, Churchill and Hitler.

What gives the book its emotional pull, however, is the second set of choices that Shaara makes in finding focal points. He always includes at least a couple of the normally faceless men who actually fight the war. In this book, he's pulled out two that not only show the agony on the ground, but also let Shaara talk about the new tools that began to be used in World War II. The two (fictional) men that Shaara singles out are Private Logan, a tank gunner, and Sergeant Adams, a paratrooper. Through these men, we get to see the on-the-ground reality - the mix of extraordinary boredom combined with the terror experienced by what were basically kids in the face of the most devastating war in history.

The combination of a terrific story and Shaara's style makes for a really incredible book. In keeping with the theme started in the last review, this is exactly the kind of book that we should be assigning to our high school students. While its well researched and, as far as I can tell, historically accurate (except for the completely cleaned up language), what this book really does, aside from entertaining and educating, is make the reader interested in learning more -- exactly what we should be trying to do with kids. Kids who grow up interested in history are far more valuable to them and to society than kids who learn (and may or may not remember) that date of D-Day.

The Canon

2007-05-29T15:05:00.000-06:00

The Canon by Natalie Angier

Category: Popular Science Grade: B+

In the introduction, Angier states her goal -- to make science interesting to people who don't seem to be interested in science. It's an admirable goal. As with other subjects (and as you've seen me rant before), our educational system seems to be intent on leaching the joy out of all the subjects in gets its hands on. When it comes to history, we teach dates, battles and icons instead of the really interesting stories of the real people who, for example, became our Founding Fathers. In literature, we make reading a chore by pushing Silas Marner on teenagers instead of making them love reading by giving the interesting and appropriate books to read. Similarly, Angier's correct contention is that we force kids to memorize periodic tables and molecular diagrams instead of teaching them to be fascinated by our universe, our planet and our biosphere. We work hard to make sure that by the time they're 18, our kids know a fair number of useless facts, but have no interest in lifelong learning.

So, you might ask, why do we care if our adult population is interested in science? OK - here comes another rant. Did you watch the first debate among the Republican candidates? At one point, the moderator asked all the candidates to raise their hands if they didn't believe in evolution. Out of ten candidates, three adult, very smart, very well educated men raised their hands!!!!! Sadly enough, that statistic is reflected in the population at large with a third of college educated people throwing the undeniably valid and undeniably beautiful system of evolution out the window. In another arena, a lack of understanding of our procreation system leads to truly silly policies like the federal government's stance on stem cell research - that it's OK to take minute blobs of jelly that may potentially become a fetus and freeze them forever or throw them in the garbage, but its morally wrong to use those cells to answer questions about diseases that kill people every minute! If we had an adult population that had even a basic understanding of the underlying science, maybe we could get off the dime.

Sorry -- back to the review...

The Canon comes close to succeeding in Angier's goal of making science more approachable. I'd say, if you could measure your interest in science on a 1 (fascinated by textbooks) to 10 (bored to tears by Planet Earth) scale, most science writing captures the ones and twos. This book probably extends to the threes and fours and maybe even the fives. In just 250 pages, Angier covers, well, everything with chapters on the scientific method, probability, physics, chemistry, evolution, biology, geology and astronomy. She gets reasonably in to the science but she leavens the details with lots of analogies that let you visualize really complex topics.

One downside to the book that I, eventually found annoying -- Angier is really a science journalist. She's used to writing columns and stories for The New York Times for which she's won the Pulitzer Prize. She writes with a somewhat flippant style - constantly trying to be funny or, at least, cute. For example, at one point she's talking about the difference in the body between sprinting and distance running (anaerobic versus aerobic) and says that with oxygen (aerobic) you can run "the whole day if you're training for the Olympics, or owe a lot of money to an unofficial lending source in New Jersey". In an essay, this kind of humor can be entertaining. For hundreds of pages, it isn't.

Other than that quibble, if you're even remotely interested in knowing more about the basics of science, this book isn't bad. Her subtitle aptly calls this book "A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science". For the most part, its fascinating.

Vanishing Act

2007-05-27T17:48:00.000-06:00

Vanishing Act by John Feinstein

Category: Young Adult Fiction Grade: B

As those of you who've followed this blog for a while know, I think John Feinstein is the best book-length sports writer working today. He's just released a new book about the pro-golf tour so you'll probably hear from me later this summer about his "mainstream" writing. When I saw that he had written a young adult sports-oriented mystery, I couldn't resist picking it up. It actually turns out to be the second book in a series and I didn't read the first one, but I don't think it matters much.

As with virtually all young-adult fiction these days, the stars of the book are kids - in this case, two 13 year old aspiring sports reporters, Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson. In the first book, that I didn't read, they apparently each won an essay contest and won press credentials to the college basketball Final Four. At that event, they stumbled on a point shaving scandal and saved the life of one of the final four players. That sets up this book which has the two of them, now with reputations, meeting in New York to cover the U.S. Open tennis tournament. As expected, they get involved in a crime, help to solve it and continue on their path to becoming the next star in sports journalism.

The bad news here is that Feinstein has, to some degree, fallen in to the trap that a lot of YA writers fall in to - he's written down to his audience. Because of that, the book, while it reads really fast, doesn't feel terribly well written. Rowlings, Pullman and others have proven that kids like to read well written books and that you don't need to dumb down the writing to capture their attention. The other problem the book has (and I know this sounds contradictory) is Feinstein has put dialog in the mouths of 13 year old kids that just don't seem to fit. Weird but what we get is author's words that sound too juvenile and hero's words that sound too adult.

The good news here is that Feinstein had actually written a pretty entertaining story. If you follow tennis at all, you'll find real people that you know -- Bud Collins has a major role in the story and Andy Roddick has a cameo. The characters are well developed and, other than talking like they were 30, they act like we'd expect them to act. While the story line is a little far fetched, it's realistic enough that in the crazy world of professional athletics, you wouldn't be completely stunned if it actually happened.

Fast read and not a bad book at all for anybody. Highly recommended for teenage sports fans.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

2007-05-27T17:21:00.001-06:00

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

Category: Novel Grade: B+

There's no denying that Michael Chabon has both abundant talent and abundant imagination. In lesser hands, this book could have been an absolute disaster. In his, it's a readable, entertaining and very unusual book. The premise -- it's modern day Sitka, Alaska. This is a "temporary" settlement zone that the U.S. set aside for Jewish refugees after their imagined expulsion from the short-lived land of Israel in 1948. The story takes place in the last couple of months before "Reversion" - the plan by the fundamentalist twenty-first century government of the U.S. to give Alaska back to the Alaskans. Some of the Jews will be allowed to stay - most will have to leave for parts unknown.

That's the setting. Within the setting, most of the books is a murder mystery featuring detective Meyer Landsman. He's living in a flophouse hotel a few years after his divorce from the woman who is now his boss in the Homicide Division of Sitka Central. He's a totally mal-adjusted drunk and a so-so policeman. His partner, Berko Shemets, is a hulking half-Tinglit half-orthodox Jew. The story begins when Meyer is called downstairs by the manager of the flophouse to investigate the death of one of the other residents - a Jewish junkie who was shot in the head shortly after servicing his heroin habit.

For the most part, the "Jews in Alaska" premise doesn't mean much to the first third or the last third of the story other than to give Chabon a lot of chances to use Yiddish words and phrases and to include a lot of Jewish names. As the story develops, however, we're plunged in to the world of the Verbov Rabbi - a Hasidic cult who left Europe for Alaska and has become not just a messianic cult, but also the largest organized crime family in the district. You begin to see why I say that turning this in to a readable book takes a major talent.

While this isn't nearly in the league of Chabon's major work so far - The Amazing Adventures of Kavlier and Clay - it's still a great showcase for his abilities. He could easily be the best of a young crop of writers just making their way up the world of literary fiction. He's an incredibly visual writer that can make you see what he wants you to see with a few words. I'll give one example. The first time that Landsman goes to the Verbov community he finds that the core of the community is a near replica of the European village that the group came from, except for the fact that the houses are new and the streets are clean. Chabon tells us that the area at the core of the Verbov world is a "Disneyland shtetl" and, bingo, you have a near perfect picture in your mind of what he wants you to see -- in two words!

Overall, this is kind of bell-curve of book. It begins, even though there's a murder right away, as a very small, kind of personal book. It's the story of Landsman's disintegrating life set in the context of the destruction of the world he knows by the fast approaching "Reversion". The middle of the book shoots up like shape of the bell curve and becomes a huge story of cultural and geopolitical battles and gives full attention to the Jewish theme of the book. It then trails back in to Landsman's world and ends almost with a sigh.

Even though I gave the book a decent grade, I'm not sure whether I recommend it or not. I almost put it down a couple of times, although I'm glad I didn't. It's a fairly complicated story and, at times, hard to follow. I'm glad Chabon wrote this instead of a lesser talent. Even with all his talent, Chabon really skirted the edge of strange with this one.

On the ground in Colorado

2007-05-25T10:06:00.000-06:00

Not a book review, but just though I'd let you guys know that we safely made the transfer to our place in Colorado. The intent had been to get here today, but we actually drove straight through from Lubbock yesterday. We planned to have three easy days but - a warning - if you ever plan to stop for the night in Trinidad, Colorado, make other plans. First, the town is all torn up with road work. More importantly, there wasn't a roadside hotel that looked livable without a major hose-down with disinfectant! We decided to go on to the next town -- Walsenberg -- where we were to pick up a back road we use. There was one motel in Walsenberg - a 50s era Best Western. We were tired enough to stop but they actually had no vacancies! At that point, it made more sense to keep going. That's right at 600 miles for the day and we pulled in here about 7:30 - about 11 hours of driving. We were pretty exhausted but, this morning, after a good night's sleep, we're glad we pushed through.

We did continue our efforts to eliminate all cities and major highways from the trip up here. Thanks to a tip from the Davis's, we started using a back road last summer that takes us way around Pueblo - one of the armpits of the world. This trip, we added new back routes that eliminated San Angelo, Big Spring and Amarillo. The back roads are, of course, smaller roads but that was more than made up for by the almost complete lack of traffic. There were stretches were we didn't see another car for a half hour! The routes are a little straighter and without the stoplights of the cities, it probably cut an hour off the trip. When you couple that with some really pretty scenery instead of downtown Amarillo, it was definitely worth the detours. At one point yesterday, we went through a huge wind farm that must have had a 1000 wind turbines. They make for an almost extraterrestial landscape.

So anyway, we're here. Today, of course, we'll spend a good chunk of the day running around to do the startup grocery shopping, try to figure out a way around town with all the summer road closures, hit the cheese and wine store, find where our favorite book store moved to and, of course, hit one of our favorite restaurants. I've already scheduled an A/V guy to visit this afternoon to look at this year's TV changes so the fun begins.

Finally, of course, the reading pace will pick up so you can expect an upsurge in the number of reviews. Once in a while, I'll throw in a weather report (today - sunny with a low in the 30s and a high in the mid-60s), just cause its fun to rub it in. As always, if you're sick of hearing from me, let me know and I'll be happy to take you off the list.

Mysteries of the Middle Ages

2007-05-20T18:53:00.001-06:00

Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill

Category: History Grade: B

This book is the 5th in Cahill's seven book "hinges of history" series. He is superb at historical analysis looking for the key events and people that had major impact on the world. His previous books have looked at the Jews, the Irish and the Greeks plus an excellent book on the "historical" Jesus. There are quite a few historians who don't think much of anything critical happened in the Middle Ages. Cahill isn't one of them. He makes a great case that the events of this period of history, roughly the 12th through 14th centuries, went a long way to defining the modern world. In fact, the book's subtitle is pretty emphatic -- The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe.

You get a great view of some personalities of this period that most people know little about, even though the names are familiar. Hildegaard, a twelfth century girl from the Rhineland, was given to the church as an eight year old. She went on to become one of the first women in history whose writings were taken seriously by the all-male clergy. Cahill credits Hildegaard, along with Eleanor of Aquitaine with starting what has become a major revolution in the role of women in society. Cahill continues to show us a series of major figures of the era who changed the nature of sexuality and romantic love, literature and art -- figures like Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Dante and others.

I only have a couple of knocks on this book that dropped its grade a little -- actually one knock in two forms. Cahill has tendency, once in a while, to throw in anachronistic references to modern times -- e.g. a comment about Iraq in the middle of a discussion of the Crusades. At first I appreciated his effort to try to make century-old history relevant but, eventually, it just got distracting. The second knock is the ultimate representative of this problem -- in fact, just skip the last chapter. After this really informative and often moving book, Cahill goes off on a half dozen page rant about the modern Catholic Church, most of it about the pedophilia scandals of the recent past. Its a vicious attack - maybe even a warranted one -- just way out of place as the summary piece of the book.

Obsession

2007-05-13T11:57:00.000-06:00

Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman

Category: Mystery Grade: A

I rest my case. If you remember, three or four books ago, I reviewed a book of two novellas written by Kellerman, together with his wife Fay. I didn't think much of them and said, at the time, that they didn't reflect the abilities of the two authors. Obsession, the latest in Kellerman's Alex Delaware series, really illustrates what I mean. This book was terrific. The main characters, Delaware, his gay police buddy, Milo, his girlfriend Robin (who, thankfully has returned home in this book) and, of course, the dog Blanche (a replacement for Spike who died peacefully of old age) are familiar as old shoes. They're interesting people who happen to solve crimes. Kellerman makes you feel like you're riding around in the back seat rather than just reading about these folks. The central mystery of the book, a might-have-happened murder, while interesting and well told, is almost beside the point. Its just good to be hanging out with these guys again.

These are "low density" books - lots of dialog, lots of short sentences, fast pace - that make them great summer reads.

You Don't Love Me Yet

2007-05-13T11:49:00.000-06:00

You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

Category: Fiction Grade: C+

I first got started reading Lethem when Carolyn recommended a novel called Motherless Brooklyn. It was a mystery starring a detective with Tourette's Syndrome. It was strange, a little manic (as might be expected) and an exhilirating read. I've read a couple of other Lethem's since and one thing that's clear -- you can't really expect anything particular from his books. He doesn't have a distinctive style or voice and he loves to experiment.

This short novel is just strange. It focuses on a group of friends trying to make it in an "artsy" band. These definitely aren't rock stars with all kinds of insecurities and strange behaviour. Lucinda, the bass player, ends up going to work for a friend and former lover who is a performance artist, sort-of. He's created a fake office and posted signs all over town urging people to call his hot line to complain. Lucinda ends up in a strange, almost purely sexual, relationship with one of the callers. The whole book is just watching these off-kilter personalities interact with each other. Its well written but, at times, seems to really drag. Ultimately, I don't think Lethem ever convinced me to particularly care about these people.

Warning -- there's a fair amount of graphic sex in this book.

At Canaan's Edge

2007-05-13T11:14:00.000-06:00

At Canaan's Edge by Taylor Branch

Category: History Grade: B

This is the last volume of Branch's monumental trilogy called America in the King Years. Its an absolutely exhaustive (> 2200 pages total) history of the peak years of the civil rights movement in the United States. While not up to the level of the first volume, this is still a very readable book that leaves out no details about what was going on in the movement during the years from 1965 through the King assassination. As I had said with the second volume, the book suffers from the fact that, while significant progress was made in civil rights during this period, it was also a period filled with tragedy -- the racial violence in the South, the urban riots of Watts and other cities, the Robert Kennedy and King assassinations and, of course, the growing pain of the Viet Nam war.

The distractions that infected the civil rights movement in the early 60s, especially the divisions around Malcolm X, effectively take over the movement in this period. On the one hand, the non-violent philosophy on which the movement was based begins to break down as is seen in the riots and the emergence of the "Black Power" organizations led by defectors like Stokely Carmichael. The dissension and in-fighting inside the SCLC and other predominately black organizations also grew during this period fueled by serious arguments about what the roll of white Americans should be in these organizations and not-so-serious distractions like the ambition of Jesse Jackson and the just-plain-nuttiness of Adam Clayton Powell. Ultimately, the movement was largely overwhelmed by the anti-war movement, one that increasingly called on the time, power and conscience of King himself.

As always, when I read about this period of American history, I'm drawn to the contradictions of Lyndon Johnson. On domestic issues, Johnson could easily be one of the most courageous President's we've had. His complete personal devotion to the inequities of racism and the problem of poverty are undeniable. I still remember watching his speech before Congress urging them to pass the Civil Rights Act on the heals of the violence in Selma. Johnson was not a great speaker. His forte was going one-on-one in people's faces. He was awkward and stiff behind a podium. What this did, however, was that, when he was impassioned and eloquent, he really flew. The speech began simply -- "I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy." -- but the speech reached its emotional peak when Johnson really shocked the world with a few words -- "Because it is not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And--we--shall--overcome!" By invoking the anthem of the civil rights movement, Johnson virtually guaranteed passage of the bill in the most dramatic way, knowing he was probably losing the South for his Democratic Party for a generation.

Ultimately, as we know (and as is relevant today), Johnson showed a complete lack of courage when it came to Viet Nam. Its clear from recordings and notes that Johnson anguished over America's increasing roll in the Far East. There were times when he admitted privately there was no possibility of any meaningful victory there. But he seemed powerless to stop the slide in to the bog. In a lot of ways, Johnson lost his presidency and his position in history to machismo. He could have been (and in some ways was) one of the best of the 20th century. Instead, he'll always be remembered as the Viet Nam President.

A couple of other observations that have to be made after reading this series (some of which I've made before):

for decades, this country was largely run by J. Edgar Hoover. His flagrant disregard of law, chain-of-command and, in a lot of cases, decency, allowed him to control leaders of all kinds both in and out of government. This could be the closest the U.S. has ever come to a dictatorship.
in an interesting reversal, Hoover's illegal wiretapping and bugging of King and the people around him, ended up giving us a significantly more complete picture of the movement than would have been possible by any other means.
you can make a pretty good case that the people who pushed the civil rights agenda most effectively, if inadvertently, were the hard-core segregationists of the Deep South. The arbitrary killings, beatings, torturings plus the mostly petty laws designed only to keep the former slaves in their place were so morally reprehensible that even Americans who were ambivalent about the Negro couldn't help but be outraged.

This is a serious series and a major commitment for a reader. But, its a commitment well worth reading. The picture it gives of King and his legacy and his times is clear and invaluable.

Capital Crimes

2007-04-15T13:30:00.000-06:00

Capital Crimes by Jonathan & Faye Kellerman

Category: Crime Short Fiction Grade: C+

I really wish these two would stop this. The Kellermans are a husband and wife team who write mysteries separately and together. Separately, their books are great. Her's feature Rina and Peter Decker - she's a lifelong Orthodox Jew and he's an LAPD detective who, as a young adult, learned he had been adopted from an Orthodox family and is trying to reset his roots. Jonathan's books feature Alex Delaware, a psychologist who works with the LAPD. Their books are almost always enjoyable - fast paced, interestingly plotted, great character development.

This is the second time they've tried to write a book together and it hasn't really worked either time. The problem isn't, I don't think, that they can't work together. Rather, the problem is that, both times, they've tried to write two novellas instead of one novel. They write pretty low density work -- lots of dialog; short paragraphs. In addition, with both of them, character development is always at least as important as plot progression. They haven't given up either low density or characters in the new book (Decker and Delaware even make appearances). Unfortunately, what suffers is the plot progression. They don't seem to have adjusted their plotting to the shorter format. They start with interesting stories and then spend a lot of time letting us get to know the detectives involved and a few of the key characters. The problem is they get lost in this. Its like, in each of the novellas, they got about 125 pages in and realized that, unlike their novels, they were almost out of space! In both stories, they drop an artificial and abrupt solution on the crime. In both cases, the murderer turns out to be someone we didn't get to know at all.

I'll keep reading their individual novels and I'll probably even keeping trying their short format work to see if they get it right. I just wish they'd try collaborating on a full length novel - I think it could be good. This book isn't.

Accelerando

2007-04-15T13:16:00.000-06:00

Accelerando by Charles Stross

Category: SciFi Grade: B

This is the geekiest book I've read in years. It's part of sub-genre of SciFi called CyberPunk - an arena that was kicked off by incredible book years ago called Neuromancer by William Gibson. The key element to the genre is so-called "augmented" humans - people who have been enhanced with computer technology to improve their ability to remember, think and communicated (hence the "cyber"). The entire book is in geek-speak. E.g. early in the book, instead of eating breakfast, the main character "mechanically assimilates a bowl of cornflakes". See what I mean?

So bottom line -- I can't imagine there's more than one or two of you out there reading this who will put up with this for more than a few pages. And its kind of a shame because its not a half bad book. If you've been following this blog for a while, you might remember me talking about a book called The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. That was a non-fiction speculation about the convergence of various technologies in the coming century that would increasingly blur the lines between "natural" and artificial intelligence. Its fascinating and scary stuff and will pit our grandchildren and their children up against decisions about what constitutes human.

Accelerando is a fictional (and sometimes comical) treatment of the same subject. It's spans the first three or four centuries ahead of us. Fairly near term, the human race as invented the ability to add external improvements to their mental ability (not far fetched and not too far down the road). Once this starts, you quickly end up with two classes of humans - augmented and unaugmented. In almost any field, the augmented humans outperform their less capable brothers and sisters because they can think orders of magnitude faster. Of course, we're in to slippery slope territory here and, what comes with augmentation is the ability to back up, copy and continually enhance our "selves". It addresses issues like - what happens if I go star traveling and, while I'm gone, a copy of "me" runs in to debt or gets in to trouble. What's my responsibility when I get back?

You can see that the story is going to get very twisted. Between the complex story line and the geeky language, its very hard to follow but, in the end, worth it. I can't imagine any of you will read this and its a shame.

TV - Planet Earth

2007-04-06T12:36:00.000-06:00

Planet Earth on The Discover Channel

Category: Nature Documentary Grade: A+

I don't write about television shows much. That's really because most of the TV I watch is just junk. For the most part, I watch TV to be entertained, not educated. (Although, as an aside, if Sanjaya wins American Idol and Frankie wins The Apprentice, I'll probably give up on reality TV).

Once in a while, however, a show comes along that is so stunning that I've just got to tell people about it. Discovery's Planet Earth could easily be the most amazing TV show I've ever seen. I know what you're thinking -- what could be more boring than a "nature" show. Well, you're wrong. To make this series of eleven episodes, the crew used incredible, state of the art and beyond equipment including satellite imaging, gyro-stabilized cameras on helicopters and balloons, amazing long distance photographic equipment with everything filmed in high-definition. Most amazingly, the crew had vast amounts of patience sometimes sitting in barely tolerable conditions for weeks just to get a few seconds of video.

There are things in this series that, at least according to the narrator, have never been filmed before -- a snow leopard on the hunt, birds of paradise up close, a polar bear and her cubs as they break out of their hibernation cave. But even things that are familiar become mind-boggling in the detail that's shown. You really spend most of the hour with your mouth hanging open. Each episode focuses on a particular type of habitat. So far we've watched Deep Ocean, Mountains and Pole to Pole. Every time you think you've seen the ultimate, they throw something even better. These shows are likely to end up with their own section of our recorder permanently so we can watch them over and over.

One of the interesting things they've done - the shows are just over 45 minutes apiece. Each is then following by a brief "making of" documentary, also in HD. Seeing what the crew went through, the technology they had to use and exhilaration they felt when the "got the shot" is fascinating.

Two warnings about this series:

They're probably not suitable for small children. This is raw nature programming so, while there's not a lot of gore, there's a lot of predators going after their prey. I hate for kids not to see this but, watch it first before you show it to them.
If you don't already have high-def, I hesitate to recommend this. Its probably still gorgeous in standard-def, but this is the kind of programming that high-def was made for. You may find yourself heading to Best Buy to upgrade!

Infamous Scribblers

2007-04-06T11:40:00.000-06:00

Infamous Scribblers by Eric Burns

Category: History Grade: B

With so much discussion today about the political leanings of the press, its helpful to realize that the concept of an unbiased press is really a pretty recent one. This book, whose subtitle is "The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism", makes it pretty clear that, during the time of the Revolutionary War, impartial journalists were a breed that just didn't exist. It also makes clear that, in service to a cause, journalists of this period didn't care much about things like fairness, political correctness, independence or even, in many cases, truth.

Some of the worst offenders are some of the most well known names of the period. While Benjamin Franklin himself seems to have been opinionated but honest in his writings, his older brother and his grandson never let truth stand in the way of making a point. Among the worst, however, was Samuel Adams - one of the strongest of the Sons of Liberty and absolutely vitriolic in print. He went after his targets with a vengeance and, when he didn't have things to say that made them look bad, he just made things up.

Interestingly, one of the most venerated founding fathers was also one of the most underhanded when it came to using the press for political purposes. Thomas Jefferson not only secretly funded a republican newspaper, he gave the editor a no-show federal job to help make ends meet and then lied about his involvement, denying it until his death. He wasn't alone among the politicians of the day. Many of them, including Hamilton, Madison and even Adams, were prone to funneling information to the press and even directly writing for publication under pseudonyms. In public, Washington was just about the only one above the fray but, in his private correspondence, he was vocal about the press. In fact, the title of this book Infamous Scribblers came from a letter written by Washington.

The books reasonably well written and, if you like reading history about this period, I'd recommend it.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

2007-04-01T12:13:00.000-06:00

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Category: YA Novel Grade: B

Back to the Young Adult category. This is a very popular book right now and is in the process of being made in to a movie. Its a fairly simple story about a boy living in the back passageways of a railroad station who befriends a man named Melies, a real life film maker in the late 19th century who, supposedly, has become something of a hermit operating a toy shop in the railroad station. (Side note - Melies most famous image - one of the first to show the fantasy possibilities of film - was a segment of film where a rocket lands in the eye of the "man in the moon").

What Selznick has done is to produce a book that is half way between a novel and a graphic novel. The intimidating size of the book (almost two inches thick) doesn't affect the reading since almost two thirds of the pages contain hand draw pictures. The pictures are definitely cinematic -- they are sequential views of scenes that tie the text together. Interestingly, the pictures are part of the story, rather than illustrations of the story.

Without the pictures, this would have been a forgettable book. With the pictures it was interesting way to pass a couple of hours. Highly recommended for the 10-14 year old reader.

Helen of Troy

2007-04-01T12:02:00.000-06:00

Helen of Troy by Margaret George

Category: Biographical Novel Grade: B

Margaret George is, without a doubt, the best biographical novelist out there. Her books are typically huge - 800 page plus and really bring her subjects to life. She's done masterful jobs on Henry the VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, Cleopatra and, most recently, Mary Magdelen. Her research is impeccable and the books are all readable immersions in the life and times of her subject.

Her latest, though, is a little bit of an odd duck. Fortunately, Helen of Troy is as well written and, in many ways, as entertaining as her previous books. The problem (which she discusses herself in an author's note at the end) is that Helen of Troy is more a mythical, than a historical person. There's no strong evidence that these stories, portrayed so vividly in the Iliad and the Odyssey, actually happened. In addition, these stories, which George is retelling, contain a lot of material that relate to the interaction between the gods of the day and the mortals in the story. George faced the decision of whether to pitch this story as a complex story about people - Helen, Achilles, Odysseus, Menelaus, Paris and other's familiar to anybody who has studied the classics - or to more closely reflect Homer's world of active gods. George chose to fall somewhere in the middle, but Zeus, Aphrodite and all their cohorts do play a visible roll in the book. Ultimately, what you end up with is book that can't quite decide whether its a history or a fantasy. For this reason, I don't think this book measures up to her past efforts. However, if you enjoy reading about this period of time, and you can't bring yourself to tackle Homer, it's still a good book.

Jokes My Father Never Taught Me

2007-03-23T11:11:00.000-06:00

Jokes My Father Never Taught Me by Rain Pryor

Category: Memoir Grade: D

Rain Pryor is the half-black, half-Jewish daughter of Richard Pryor. You'd think that'd be interesting ground to cover. Unfortunately, it isn't. There's almost nothing here that isn't well known about Pryor and, frankly, Rain isn't terribly interesting. In addition, she's a pretty run-of-the-mill writer. Skip this one.

You Suck - A Love Story

2007-03-23T11:06:00.000-06:00

You Suck - A Love Story byt Christopher Moore

Category: Comic Novel Grade: B+

Just a brief review of this since, if you're not a Christopher Moore fan, you probably won't be interested. This is actually a sequel to his previous comic vampire novel, Bloodsucking Fiends. I know the titles are terrible, but the books are really funny. This continues the story of Thomas C. Flood, the former leader of the vampire-hunting night crew from the grocery store where he used to work. Since the last book, Thomas's girlfriend, Jody has turned Thomas in to a vampire and the two of them are now out to find some minion's since somebody has to do the day time work.

I know it sounds really stupid and, basically, it is. But its a short easy read that'll have you laughing out loud. Not Moore's best (that's position still held by The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove), but good for a laugh.

Exile

2007-03-18T11:21:00.000-06:00

Exile by Richard North Patterson

Category: Novel Grade: A

When I was in junior high, we studied Texas history. I've read a lot since then about the early days in Texas and about the Alamo, San Jacinto, William Travis, Sam Houston, Davey Crockett and the other heroes of the War of Independence from Mexico. Back to junior high, I remember coming home one day and Mom asked me what we had studied that day. I was excited about the stories of the revolution. Mom got kind of a funny look on her face. You see, she grew up in Mexico and, to her, having received her early education in Mexico, the revolution I was so proud of was a rebellion; the heroes I thought were so cool were criminals, even terrorists. This was my first introduction to perspective as a major part of history. Usually, only the winner's perspective survives to become history, but widely different perspectives can create huge difficulties in trying to solve the world's problems.

And so, we come to Exile, Patterson's latest book. Let's dispose of the easy part first. Patterson is a great writer of what I'd call political thrillers. I've enjoyed every one of his books and this one is no exception. As a storyteller, he's terrific. This book is well paced, covers a lot of ground and has enough twists to keep you glued. Purely as a novel, I'd recommend this book.

A brief plot summary - the primary character in the book is David Wolfe, a well connected, Harvard-educated lawyer in San Francisco who is on track to enter politics within a few years and who, before ever running for anything, is already being talked about as possibly the first Jewish President. He's engaged to Carole, the socialite and politically active daughter of a Holocaust survivor with whom David has also become close. The skeleton in David's closet is a law-school affair with a beautiful Palestinian woman, but that's been over for almost 15 years. Carole and David host a small dinner for the visiting Israeli Prime Minister - a man who is the main backer behind striking a "land-for-peace" deal with the Palestinians. The day after the dinner, the PM is assassinated in a suicide bombing in the streets of San Francisco. A few days later, Hana, David's law-school paramour, is charged with complicity and David ends up representing her, effectively ending his political career. All of this takes place in the first 10% of this book so I haven't given away much that you couldn't get from the jacket cover.

To this point, it looks like Patterson has a good shot at bringing home another of his interesting, but not terribly important books. It'll sell well and everybody will love it. However, Patterson is looking for more this time. He's done painstaking research on the issues of the Middle East, traveling throughout the region and, obviously, listening closely to everybody who would talk to him. And here we get back to my junior high lesson on perspective -- we learn pretty definitively that common perspective is something that just doesn't exist there. The obvious variances are between the Israelis and the rest of the region, but what we see here is also the wide differences within the communities that make achieving a lasting peace so difficult. Both sides have groups that see the need to accommodate each other -- among the Palestinians there are those who are willing, supposedly, to leave Israel in peace if granted a country of their own; in Israel there are those who are, supposedly, willing to accommodate a dual state solution in order to secure Israel's borders. However, both sides also have the "God's will" groups - in Palestine, groups like Hamas, whose goals are built around the destruction of Israel, while in Israel, the right-wing groups that believe that God granted "Greater Israel" to the Jewish people and the needs of the Palestinians are irrelevant to that right.

What makes Patterson's book so affecting is that, rather than preach at the reader, Patterson sends his protagonist to listen and let's the reader overhear. By doing so, he personalizes all of the various perspectives. He listens to Israeli's who have lost loved ones to suicide bombers. He listens to Palestinians who have known no life outside of a refugee camp. He listens to settlers who will fight before they will abandon homes they believe are gifts from God. He listens to terrorists who believe they are fighting an occupying army. Frankly, it leaves the reader with very little hope of seeing a Middle East peace in our lifetimes.

I almost never use quotes from the books I talk about, but I'm going to here. Fairly late in the book, David is meeting with one of his Israeli contacts and summarizes what he's learned:

"You know what amazes me, Zev? It's that so many Jews and Palestinians don't give a damn about one another's stories. Too many Palestinians don't grasp why three thousand years of death and persecution makes Jews want their own homeland, or how suicide bombings alienate Jews and extend the occupation. Too many Jews refuse to acknowledge their role in the misery of Palestinians since 1948, or that the daily toll of occupation helps fuel more hatred and violence. So both become cliches: Jews are victims and oppressors; Palestinians are victims and terrorists. And the cycle of death rolls on."

If you're interested in a rounded view of the Middle East through the eyes of all of the players, this book is must read.

Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty

2007-03-14T13:02:00.000-06:00

Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty by Tim Sandlin

Category: Novel Grade: C+

Great premise for a book. The year is 2022 and the action takes place in Mission Pescadero, a retirement home. If you do the math, you'll see that the residents are, well, me and my fellow baby boomers. Since its California, there's a real mix of people all divided up by what they were up to the 60s. There's the Haight-Ashbury table (peace and love), the Haight-Ashbury table (drugs and revolution), the Berkeley table, the mid-West table, ... You get the drift. Even though the folks are "getting on in years", there's still lots of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

And, of course, there's "the man" - in this case, Alexandra, the director, who wants to keep everything quiet and controlled and will send any unruly resident, "through the tunnel" to the Nursing Care wing, where they are drugged in to oblivion. And there's "the pig" - in the case, Cyrus Monk, a local police lieutenant who believe his Vietnam vet father was driven to suicide by the hippies, represented in force by the residents of Pescadero. There's the inevitable revolution and takeover, the inevitable LSD spiked punch, the inevitable...

You get the picture -- pretty predictable. I had high hopes for this and it wasn't terrible. Just wasn't particularly good either.

House of Rain

2007-03-10T21:02:00.000-06:00

House of Rain by Craig Childs

Category: History (sort of) Grade: A-

Childs has really written three different books in putting House of Rain together. Two of them are implied in the book's subtitle - "Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest" - while the third is sort of a side effect.

The first book - the one that caused me to buy the biij - is about the Anasazi. For those of you who aren't up on your Native American history, the Anasazi were a civilization of cliff dwellers in the southwest -- southern Colorado and northern New Mexico/Arizona. Legend has it that, one day in the 15th century, the entire people just disappeared. Its been a major area of research by archaeologists in that part of the world. Its hard not to be stunned when you seen these incredible constructs. Probably the most well known is in Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado, but these amazing little cities, or at least their ruins, appear all over the place. Its not completely clear what the cliff dwellings were used for - living space, defensive installations, religious sites or, most likely, a combination of all the above. Childs, in this book, ends up talking to lots of prominent archaeologists, and gets many theories on the table of what happened. What comes out is a picture of a migratory people who moved back and forth across the landscape and, seemingly, ended up heading further and further south, mostly as a result of drought. It remains a mystery, but probably not the cut-and-dried "disappearance" that is the popular story.

The second book - the side-effect book - tells the story of the methods that the archaeologists use to do their research. In a lot of ways, this was the most interesting of the three books. Its amazing what can be gleaned (guessed?) by looking at the design and decoration of pottery. Practical stuff carries a very different message than ornamental (and, therefore, probably religious). By tracking, where pieces of pottery show up and when, archaeologists can get a pretty good picture of migration patterns of various peoples. Other techniques that I found especially interesting:

by taking a core sample of wooden pillars and beams, scientists can analyze the rings from the source trees and use them to provide pretty good accuracy as to when the construction took place.
in one of my favorites, scientists take advantage of the fact that isotopes in teeth are deposited as the teeth are created, but isotopes in bones turn over about once a decade. By using the teeth and bones found in ruins, scientists can identify where people were born (teeth) and where they migrated to (bones) - again providing a method for tracking migration

The third book actually turns out to be the most interesting. It's essentially Childs' journal as he walks the Southwest from Native site to site. His bio on the jacket lists him as a naturalist and adventurer and this definitely comes through in his narrative. He talks about following hunches and traces of water as he wanders through the wilderness sometimes going days or even weeks without other people. He talks about coming out of the wilderness in to pueblos or Mexican villages afters days of walking. His lyrical writing really makes you feel like you're going along with him. Some of the writing is just plain beautiful. I thought he was going to fall in to a common writer's trap at the end of the book when, in the fourth chapter from the end, he writes a perfect ending for the book. Like some, less than successful writers, I was disappointed that, after that perfect ending, he kept going. To my surprise, the ending of the next chapter was just as good as were the ends of the last two chapters.

If you have any interest in Native history, archeology, early civilizations or just good writing, this is a book you might enjoy.

The Looking Glass Wars

2007-03-04T19:07:00.000-06:00

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

Category: KidLit Grade: B+

I tend to be a sucker for books like this. Beddor has taken the story everybody knows of Alice in Wonderland and written a fantasy (aimed at teens) that purports to tell the "real" story. It turns out, according to Beddor, that Lewis Carroll actually mangled the story told to him by Alyss Heart (even misspelling her name). Alyss ended up in Victorian London after escaping from Wonderland during a the battle in which her Aunt Redd forcefully took the crown of the Queen of Hearts from her sister, Alyss's mother. Carroll's silly version does, however, turn out to be just enough of a clue for the head of Heart Security, Hatter Madigan (get it?), to find Alyss and help her get back to Wonderland to reclaim her crown.

OK, I grant you it sounds silly, but its actually a lot of fun. Beddor has used the characters of Carroll's book as a a starting point to create some great characters and a really amazing world in which people travel by looking glass, card soldiers are real and the main aristocratic families of the world are the Hearts, the Spades, the Clubs and the Diamonds. The story is engaging, especially when it has characters from Wonderland trying to make their way in "our" world. Beddor gets a little carried away when he's over describing some of the weapons in the world and that kept him from getting an A, but he's definitely got my attention and I eagerly await volume two of this trilogy.

Trouble

2007-02-23T21:27:00.000-06:00

Trouble by Jesse Kellerman

Category: Fiction Grade: F

This was a lay down. Jesse, the son of authors Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, doesn't have any where near their talent. He relies on shock value to keep the reader interested and it doesn't work. The book tells the story of a surgical intern who, supposedly saves a woman's life from a street attack by killing her attacker. There's plenty of nauseating detail about surgical procedures. If that weren't enough, the woman he saves (sorry for the spoiler) turns out to be a masochistic psycho-chick. The descriptions of violent sex finally turned me off completely and I put the book away. Only go here if you've got a really strong stomach (and don't tell me that you decided to read the book - I don't want to know).

Palestine - Peace Not Apartheid

2007-02-23T21:09:00.000-06:00

Palestine; Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter

Category: International Affairs Grade: B

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this review. I don't usually talk politics publicly - its really a no-win thing to do. Former President Carter has just been lambasted by the main stream press and American Jewish leaders. There's a lot wrong with this book, but the reaction reminds me a lot of the broad inter-generational attitude in the 60s summed in the bumper sticker slogan - "America - Love it or Leave it". Alan Dershowitz commented on Carter's book - "he blames everything on Israel and nothing on the Palestinians". Unfortunately, as in the 60s, there's a strong push, in the United States, to take the opposite view. The strength of the American Jewish lobby has defined the slightest anti-Israel statement as fundamentally anti-Semitic. Disagreements and discussions that are fairly common within the Israeli people - settlements or no settlements, land for peace, the wall - are condemned without discussion in the United States.

There is strong international support, reflected by repeated UN resolutions and repeated multi-party agreements, that Israel, as a country has a right to exist in peace. Carter never suggests otherwise. While his biases are clear and, as I gather from a little research, sometimes wrong, his fundamental point seems simple and, to me, pretty obvious. This area of the world will never know peace unless some just solution is found for the million plus refugees that have been created by the creation and expansion of Israel. Whether the expansion is justified, and what the Israeli borders should be doesn't change this basic fact. Maybe expelling these people from their homes and settling them in foreign countries, long term refugee camps or occupied territory is a necessary evil for the long term security of the Israeli people. It doesn't change the fact that a million rootless people are a permanent breeding ground for unrest and international terrorism. The "war on terrorism" is not a battle that can be won with missiles and tanks. Its a hearts-and-minds battle. Creating a permanent underclass in the region is not a viable solution.

One of the best things about the 60s was that it taught people that love of country did not require unconditional acceptance. Rather, the survivability of democracy requires constant skepticism about the things done in our names. The lesson for today is that, especially to an American Jew, support for Israel can not demand blind allegiance. Don't accept the branding that Carter has received. Read the book for yourself; do the research; make up your own mind. Otherwise, don't criticize.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

2007-02-23T13:56:00.000-06:00

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Category: Classic Fiction Grade: A

And so we continue with the effort to try to read some of the classics that, when we had to read them as kids or college students, we hated.

Almost everybody knows the basic premise of this book -- painting ages, real person doesn't. The theme has been used repeatedly in various formats, but this is the first time (or at least the first time I remember) that I read the original. The first really surprising thing is that the book reads like it was written last year, not 115 years ago. I guess it shows that true "wit" is ageless. Wilde is an amazingly good writer. Wilde was one of the leaders in promoting a hedonistic, i.e. pleasure first, lifestyle in late 19th century England. Of course, the homosexual undertones of the book had to be masked enough that publishers would accept his book for publication. Wilde eventually ended up imprisoned because of a homosexual affair he had about five years after writing this book.

The common view of the book - an aging painting leaves the subject young and beautiful is actually only half the story. As the book develops, the painting becomes far more than a stand in for Gray's beauty. It becomes first his conscience, then a repository for all the less-than-beautiful things that make up Gray's hedonistic life. It's unusual in that, essentially, Wilde ends up condemning the life that he himself lived.

This is one of the books that will encourage you to continue finding all the classics that you really should read before you die.

The Ancestor's Tale

2007-02-22T18:15:00.000-06:00

The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins

Category: Science Grade: B+

Well, we have a first. Occasionally, Dan will recommend a book to me and I've learned over the years that he likes to read on a different intellectual plane than the rest of us. I've tried reading Salman Rushdie and Anthony Burgess and just couldn't get going. I guess they fly right over my head. But finally...

Writing a good book about science for a lay audience is really tough. Most scientists (or engineers or musicians or just about anybody), have their own jargon. Stripping out the jargon so us normal people don't get lost without stripping out the content at the same time is a task that most science writers just aren't up to. Most science books I've tried to read go to one of two extremes - they either read like children's books or they read like textbooks. Neither approach is likely to hold somebody's interest.

Dawkins has really accomplished something in this book. He's managed to explain evolution in an interesting and engaging way that keeps you reading for some 600+ pages. He's used two gimmicks to frame the science that are, in large part, responsible for keeping things approachable. First, he tells the story of evolution backwards. That is, he starts with humans and works backward through time chronicling each different group of living things from which our evolutionary path sprang. He speculates about what he calls our concestors - a creature that is, possibly, a common ancestor of us and the newly joined branch. It takes a little getting used to the fact that time is moving backwards but, given the way evolution works, each step is relatively small (in the grand scheme).

The second gimmick is to use Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as a model for his story telling. At each branch point, Dawkins picks one of the creatures from the new branch and uses that creature to give us a relevant and almost always interesting lesson.

First thing I have to say about this book -- if you can read this and come away without a firm conviction that evolution is the way things happened, you're just not paying attention. Although its called the "theory" of evolution, there's so much documented evidence, so many interesting experiments, that its just inconceivable that evolution isn't a good model of how the earth turned in to the environment that we know. With the time frames we're thinking about here - hundreds of millions of years - of course, we'll never have unchallengeable proof of the theory, but its so elegant and fits what we do know so perfectly that, while there may be more and more details that we discover with better research tools, the framework of evolution is the way things happened.

Think about simple things - front, back, up, down, left and right. Most animals that we're familiar with have a front and a back. Since most animals move to find food, its logical that animals who had their food intake portal (call it a mouth) in the "front", would be more likely to survive to adulthood and breed. Once that happens, animals who's waste removal portal is the farthest from their mouths - i.e. where it won't contaminate their food supply - are, again, more likely to breed. Similarly, if you think about most environments, up is very different from down. Attacks from predators are more likely to come from "up" as is light. "Down" is usually somewhat more protected and somewhat darker. So, creatures with protection like a shell or spikes, on the "top" will breed. If you think about most fish, they tend to be darker on the top than the bottom. This would seem to be because, given that light comes from "up", this kind of shading provides better camouflage. It just makes sense if you've got millions of years to breed for the most effective bodies. Oh, and left and right? For almost all animals, left and right don't pose different threats or advantages so most animals are side-to-side symetrical!

This isn't an easy book to read. Even though Dawkins has definitely made it approachable, there's a lot of long, Latin names to get through and even a fair amount of math in some sections. If you like science, though, this is a terrific broad brush view of evolution with a lot of biology, biochemistry and even some physics thrown in.

One final note - if you're a creationist and are easily offended, skip this book. Dawkins is convincing enough that he'll make you feel silly and, on occasion, he does rub it in a little. But, I have to say, if you're a creationist because of a belief in a God who created all this - wouldn't you really rather believe in a God that could design an incredible system like evolution than a God that could make a platypus?

Distribution change

2007-02-21T12:46:00.000-06:00

Folks -- I'm changing the way these reviews get delivered to your mailbox. You should see almost no difference. Sometime in the next half hour or so, you should get another post using the new method. If you don't see that post, check your "junk mail" folder to see if the email was flagged as junk and tell your spam filter that it's a legit email. If you don't see the message there either, drop me an email and I'll try to figure out what's going on.

The Hunters

2007-02-05T09:45:00.000-06:00

The Hunters by W.E.B. Griffin

Category: Military Fiction Grade: A

This can be a really short review since, at this point, either you read Griffin or you don't. I counted up and its pretty clear that I've read more books by this guy than anybody else I read. He's written 38 books and I've read all 38 - all broken in to series of 6-10 books; all with military themes. They are uniformly well written and entertaining, whether he's talking about World War II, Korea, Viet Nam or even, in one series, stories of the Philadelphia police department.

The Hunter is the third book in the "Presidential Agent" series. It takes place now and involves a special group of agents, led by Charlie Castillo, who work directly for the President and do jobs that aren't quite within the standard operating procedure of existing intelligence organizations or, occasionally, within the law. Castillo and his crew travel all the world turning over rocks to deal with the things that crawl under them.

Griffin's books aren't "high literature", but I'll keep buying them and reading them as soon as they come out. Hopefully, he's got another 38 books in him.

Walt Disney

2007-02-04T13:17:00.000-06:00

Walt Disney by Neal Gabler

Category: Biography Grade: A

So, in the middle of reading this book, Liz posed the question to me - "Why do read biographies?". Good question. Ultimately, a biography is no different from any other book -- it needs to be well written, tell a good story and cover a topic that's interesting. The added plus, to anybody that likes to read history, comes when the author uses the framework of a biography to make a personal story out of the times when the subject lived. Most of the time, the subject of a biography has had some kind of major impact on the world around and has, in turn, been impacted by the things that happen in the world during his or her life. If the times are interesting and the impact is large, then you've got the potential for a great book. If a talented writer gets their hands on the story, then a biography can be full of insights that you don't find in a broader history of the times.

It's hard to imagine anyone in the arts that, ultimately, had more impact on the world than Walt Disney. My generation grew up watching him on Sunday nights showing us clever animations, interesting live-action stories and, of course, Davy Crockett. Our children's generation grew thinking of Disneyland and DisneyWorld as the most sought after vacation destination. It's pretty amazing when you think of all the "firsts" that can be attributed to Disney's company and, as you learn in this book, really to Walt himself -- first personality-based animation, first feature length animation, first "theme" park and on and on. Throughout the 50s and most of the 60s, he was America's Uncle Walt.

Fortunately, Gabler is a great writer. He's clearly done his homewhere, producing 600+ pages of detail. However, he's good enough at what he does to know that, for all the "firsts", this had to be a personal story of one man. Gabler spends a lot of time looking for the motivation behind Disney's ambition. Disney turns out to be, according to Gabler, somewhat insecure and working hard to correct for a childhood during which, he felt, he had little or no control over his own life. For him, the animations became a process where Walt was building worlds to his own specs over which he had complete control. For the early works, especially Snow White, the first feature length animated feature, Walt had his fingers on every part of the project. He could be viscious when he had to be to protect his vision of where the project was going. He pretty much never worried about money -- that was his brother Roy's problem. In fact, he worried so little about money, that company was almost always on the brink of failure until the parks started to open. The parks were Walt's ultimate effort to create a complete physical world where he could be God. He actually had an apartment above a store front on Main Street at Disneyland where he frequently stayed so he could observe.

Surprisingly, you don't learn a lot of negative stuff about Disney although you do suspect that Gabler may be playing down parts of that. Walt was definitely a tyrant on any project that he thought was worthy of his personal attention. As I've said, he had no real concept of money. In the mode of many artists, he wanted perfection and didn't really care, at least for the first couple of decades, whether Roy could manage to turn a profit as long as there was funding for his projects. He became very conservative and a staunch anti-Communist in his later days -- driven primarily by the animators strike at the studio. Walt needed the "communist conspiracy" to deflect what he ultimately felt was a betrayal by his friend's and co-workers.

This book and learning about Disney's life is probably not going to appeal to anybody much younger than 50. While the story is good and his impact was huge, the "I lived through it" is part of the appeal to a reader.

Oh - and the one downside of reading biographies? You know how they end. If you manage to push through a long detailed biography, its primarily because you formed an attachment of sorts to the subject. When the subject eventually dies, you actually feel it personally.

The Shape Shifter

2007-01-25T13:48:00.000-06:00

The Shape Shifter by Tony Hillerman

Category: Mystery Grade: B

This is Hillerman's 20th mystery novel centered on the Native American community. He has done two series - one featuring Joe Leaphorn and the other featuring Jim Chee, both Navajo tribal policeman. A couple of years ago, Hillerman brought the two characters together and the books since then have featured, or at least had appearances by both. Leaphorn, newly retired in this book, was sent as a young child to a school designed to integrate Native children in to the broader culture. Part of that education was designed to wean these children away from their own Navajo culture so, as its represented, Leaphorn is fairly assimilated and extremely skeptical of Navajo legends. Chee, on the other hand, is much younger and is trying to simultaneous be a policeman in the modern world and a Navajo shaman who knows the old ways.

Unfortunately, this book, while good, focuses on Leaphorn, with Chee only making a token appearance. What that means is the book is a fairly standard detective novel without much of dipping in to Navajo lore - the thing that makes most Hillerman books interesting. The story itself is a good one involving a "cold case" that Leaphorn starts looking in to mostly because he's bored with the retired life. The cold case fairly quickly becomes a current case with the commission of new crimes, but Leaphorn continues to work the case unofficially.

Bottom line -- nothing wrong with the book. It's entertaining and a good, fairly short diversion. It's just not the kind of multi-cultural story that Hillerman's fans have come to expect. Leaphorn is probably a character who has played himself out. It's time for Hillerman to focus on Chee and his new wife, Bernadette, also a policewoman. Hillerman can get enough of his traditional vs. modern tension between the newlyweds. Put Leaphorn out to pasture.

Hopefully have the problem fixed

2007-01-24T16:43:00.000-06:00

Folks -- not sure how long this distribution list has been broken. Apparently, a change got made to prevent spam from being sent to the whole list and, when that happened, it stopped sending any of the posts out to everybody. Sorry.

All of the reviews for the past few months are still out there. You can always look at the whole blog by going to mseriff.blogspot.com. If you receive this email, then you should start getting the reviews sent to you directly via email again. As always, if you'd rather not get them, I'll be happy to take you off the list.

A quick overview of the reviews that you probably didn't get:

Title/Author/Category/Grade
Pillar of Fire/Branch/History/A-
The Road/McCarthy/Novel/C
Variable Star/Heinlein&Robinson/Sci Fi/B
The Wayward Bus/Steinbeck/Novel/B+
Timothy Leary/Greenfield/Biography/B-
Glass Books of the Dream Eaters/Dahlquist/Novel/A
The Innocent Man/Grisham/True Crime/B-
Thunderstruck/Larsen/History/A-
The Fourth Bear/FFord/Novel/B+
Audacity of Hope/Obama/Political/A-

In theory, you should be able to click on the title of the book to pull up the full review.

The Audacity of Hope

2007-01-14T17:19:00.000-06:00

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

Category: Political/Memoir Grade: A-

Every indication is that Barack Obama is going to emerge as one of the primary political leaders of the next decade whether he runs for President next time or not. Because of that alone, I'd recommend anybody interested in where the country is going pick up a copy of this book. Whether you agree with Obama's politics (for the most part, I do) or not, his thoughts are going to be a big part of framing the debates of the next few years.

That said, the other reason to read Obama is that he's just an amazing writer. His first book, Dreams of My Father, is incredible, especially since it was written before he became a politician. This new book is really serving a very specific purpose and you have to remember that as you read. That purpose, of course, is to set Obama on the path to the Presidency. He's not quite as candid as he was in his first book, but, for a politician there really seems to be a lot of soul baring going on.

His chapters on the constitution and politics are written by a politician. They're well constructed, informative and give you a good idea of his position on a lot of issues and also a good glimpse of what his style might be. Of course, he has relatively little power right now, so it'll be very interesting to see if his, centrist, listen-to-everybody, comprising style would last when he's got his fingers on the button.

To get a better idea of his ability as writer, though, pay special attention to the chapters on faith and family. Its really beautiful writing. If the President thing doesn't work out, he's definitely got a future as a writer.

This book ended by making me hope Obama does decide to declare his candidacy. I'm pretty sure at this point I'd support him, but, whether you would or not, you'll see that an Obama candidacy would really raise the quality of the discussion during the election. Here's hoping that the other candidates rise to his level instead of sucking the soul out of this guy.

The Fourth Bear

2007-01-14T17:11:00.000-06:00

The Fourth Bear by Jasper FFord

Category: Nursery Crime Grade: B+

Really hardly worth reviewing this one. At this point, you're either reading Jasper Fforde or you're not. He has two series going. The first is the Thursday Next mysteries. These feature a police force that is able to go in and out of literature. Makes for some interesting twists and makes you feel pretty literary, if you get the references.

The Fourth Bear is the second book in Fforde's "nursery crime" series. These are sendups of police procedurals. They focus on the detective Jack Spratt - yes, of "eats no fat" fame. In this world, nursery characters coexist with "real people" and, for the most part, their actions follow the pattern. E.g. Spratt really doesn't eat any fat. His first wife, of the "no lean" fame, is dead and his second wife doesn't know that Jack is a nursery character.

The first book, The Big Over Easy, about the murder of Humpty Dumpty, was cute and entertaining. This one isn't quite as good, mainly because this is really a one joke series, but it still holds up enough to be enjoyable. Spratt is investigating the apparent murder of Goldilocks and it seems to have something to do with the recent escape of the notorious physo-killer, the Gingerbread Man. No, that's not a nickname -- he's eight feet tall and four inches thick...

OK, its really starting to sound pretty stupid, but its fun. If you haven't read Fforde before, I'd probably recommend starting with the Thursday Next series. You'll either think its the stupidest thing you've ever read or, like me, you'll be hooked and will add Fforde to your "always buy" list.

Thunderstruck

2007-01-14T17:01:00.000-06:00

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

Category: History/True Crime Grade: A-

OK, so right after telling you I don't like true crime novels, here comes a good review for a book that is half crime non-fiction. Sorry.

Larson seems to have stepped in to a really interesting way to combine stories. He picks some major crime and some contemporary major historical event and weaves them together in to a non-fiction gem. He kind of did this in his first book, Isaac's Storm, a great book about the early 20th century hurricane that destroyed most of Galveston. He really mastered the technique in his second book, Devil in the White City. In that book, he interweaves the story of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with the story of one of the first known serial killers. Great book if you haven't read it.

Although the critics haven't been as kind to Thunderstruck, I thought it was right up there with Larson's previous books. The historical part of the book tells the story of Marconi and the development of wireless communications. Its actually a really interesting story that highlights the war between scientists and inventors, international business competition and even a little about the impact of business startups on marriages. Its really something that I new almost nothing about and it could have been an interesting book on its own.

True to his style though, Larson draws you in to the story of Hawley Crippen, a patent medicine salesman (among other things). This was apparently a very famous murder case at the time. Crippen ended up being one of Scotland Yard's big investigations (and more successful that the previous one - Jack the Ripper). It was also the first big murder that was followed all over the globe thanks to Marconi's new invention.

Larson's style is light. He's a storyteller not a historian. Doesn't really matter whether you come to this book because of the murder story or the Marconi story, you'll enjoy it either way.

The Innocent Man

2007-01-14T16:56:00.000-06:00

The Innocent Man by John Grisham

Category: True Crime Grade: B-

I'm not crazy about true crime books, so maybe I'm biased on this one, but I really think Grisham should stick to his fiction. He has definitely done a lot of research on this crime - a wrongful conviction that took place in Oklahoma in the early 70s. He's able to include lots of dialog to make this a really quick read.

There are two basic problems with the book. First and foremost, the story around the crime and the trials just isn't all that interesting. To make matters worse, the second problem is that Grisham pretty explicitly tells us how its all going to work within the first few pages. He then reinforces the direction with his comments and tone thoughout the book. There's just no suspense at all. Ultimately, I think that's why I don't like this kind of book. It takes a really talented writer to make you interested in a trip to a place you already no about. It can be done. If you want a good example of this genre, try Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song.

Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

2007-01-14T16:43:00.000-06:00

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist

Category: Fiction Grade: A

This novel is pretty hard to categorize, but I'll try. Take 4 parts historical fiction, 3 parts spy/action fiction, 2 parts science fiction and 1 part (or maybe half a part) of romance novel, mix them together and you'll this terrific first book by Gordon Dahlquist. Its definitely one of the more original plot lines I've read in quite a while.

I'm not going to say a whole lot about the story since half the fun of the book is slowly figuring out what's going on. It takes place in Victorian England. The fact that there are trains but no cars, slots in to the late 19th century. The three stars of the book are a recently jilted young woman, a German court doctor to a visiting prince and a street tough for hire. They independently stumble on a strange plot that has something to do with the minerals found on the woman's former fiance's estate that is processed in to a beautiful blue glass with strange attributes. Without giving away too much, I can tell you that the breakup of the woman's engagement, the doctor's loss of his prince and the street toughs most recent job all have to do with events that surround the blue glass.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll remember a book from last summer called The Stolen Child. If you picked that one up and liked it, give this a try. It's likely to appeal to the same reader. For most of the book, the fantasy/science fiction is pretty subtle so you don't have to be a Tolkien fan to like this.

One quick comment on the mechanics of the author put this book together. There are a lot of books out there where, apparently, the author assumed that the reader would devote his life to reading from the time he picked up the book until the time he puts it down. Long chapters; no intra-chapter breaks -- i.e. no logical place to stop when its time to turn out the light. Dahlquist gets it right here -- the book is broken in to bite sized pieces. Chapters tend to run long but, there's a defined stopping point every couple of pages. Wish more authors would do this.

Here comes catch up

2007-01-14T16:41:00.000-06:00

I haven't forgotten you guys! Between company and my new Playstation 3, I haven't gotten to the keyboard to review any of the books I've read over the last 3 or 4 weeks, so you're about to get a short flood (well, 5) reviews. There are definitely some good ones in the list so take a close look if you're looking for reading material.

By the way, the PS3 is incredible. Amazing graphics and the games are really full blown "you're in it" movies. We've come a long way since Pong!

Timothy Leary

2006-12-21T12:57:00.000-06:00

Timothy Leary, A Biography by Robert Greenfield

Category: Biography Grade: B-

I think it kind of sums up Timothy Leary's life when you realize that pretty much nobody under the age of 30 today has any idea who he was. The "world-changing" psychedelic movement really came to nothing. I can't remember the last time I heard about LSD in any discussion other than nostalgic ones. According to Greenfield (and not a big surprise), Leary was an extraordinarily egotistical guy who went wherever the wind blew him, as long as it kept him in the public eye -- from Harvard professor, to LSD-advocate, to new-age guru, to prison escapee, to revolutionary and, all the time, to huckster.

The book somehow does manage to maintain your attention even though, viewed in hindsight, Leary's life never really amounted to much. Its easily summed up as "find a substance - take it - see what happens". Its not a very flattering biography. It does, however, include side trips to look at most of the interesting names from the 60s - Allen Ginsburg, Jerry Garcia, Jerry Rubin, Stokely Carmichael, etc. It would have been a better book if Greenfield had spent a little more time on these other folks around Leary that really made the 60s what they were. Again, you're left with the feeling that Leary was just a sideshow.

Its hard to recommend this book to anybody that wasn't a young adult in the 60s. Without that basis it'll probably bore you to tears. With the 60s as an "as-lived" background, especially if, unlike me, you were in to the drug culture/psychedelic movement, you'll probably find it interesting.

The Wayward Bus

2006-12-10T21:38:00.000-06:00

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

Category: Fiction Grade: B+

This'll be a pretty short review. John Steinbeck is, in my mind, the best novelist ever. While this book isn't quite up to the standards of classics like Of Mice and Men, East of Eden or Grapes of Wrath, its still classic Steinbeck. Steinbeck writes terrific stories but his strength is in the way he creates characters that you feel like you know and he does it in the briefest, most visual way possible.

Just one example of Steinbeck's efficiency. In describing Juan Chicoy, the lead character, he says "He walked as though he were going to some exact spot." Think about.

If you haven't read Steinbeck, start.

Variable Star

2006-12-10T21:28:00.000-06:00

Variable Star by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson

Category: Science Fiction Grade: B

I've been reading science fiction for a long time. The time I started - late 50s/early 60s - was really pretty much the golden age of the genre. The best author of the day was clearly Isaac Asimov, but right up there with him was Robert Heinlein. He probably wrote the best single sci-fi book of the time (maybe of all time), Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein has been gone for a while now, but a couple of years ago, his literary executor discovered among Heinlein papers, notes and a detailed outline for a novel that had never been written. The Heinlein estate hired Spider Robinson, an accomplished writer in his own right, to put together a full length novel based on the outline. The result is Variable Star.

The book isn't bad. It's not up there with the best of either Heinlein or Robinson, but it's very readable. It's pretty hardcore "space opera" - space ships, colonies headed to the stars, exploding planets. It's fairly cerebral with not a whole lot of action. Interestingly, for a science fiction novel, one of the themes is music as the eternal language. Overall, a fun read.

The Road

2006-11-21T12:57:00.000-06:00

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Category: Fiction Grade: C

What a huge disappointment! After reading some of McCarthy's past work, especially All the Pretty Horses or No Country For Old Men, I really think he's one of the best novelists alive. He writes stark, graphic, often violent novels. They're difficult to read. He has lots of quirks, almost literary tics, like never using apostrophes, but his books carry through all this.

Not this one. The Road is the story of a father and son - never named - in a post-apocalyptic world. All the plants, animals and most humans are dead. The pair is walking south. Basically, that's it. Nothing particularly interesting happens. There are no flights of beautiful prose. The story is bleak and we repeatedly get scintillating conversations between the duo like "You OK?" - "Sure" - "OK" - "OK". Over and over.

Skip this one and go pick up something like Blood Meridian or one of the ones mentioned above to see what this incredible writer can do on a good day.

Pillar of Fire

2006-11-16T11:46:00.000-06:00

Pillar of Fire, America in the King Years 1963-65
By Taylor Branch

Category: History Grade: A-

This is the second volume in Branch's history of the civil rights movement that focuses on Martin Luther King. As you might remember the first volume was my non-fiction "book-of-the-summer" a few months ago. While the second volume isn't quite as good as the first, its still a terrific read. In the first volume, frankly, there weren't a lot of things of interest going on in the United States during the period covered. That let Branch really focus on the civil rights movement and move at a fairly leisurely pace through the 900 page book. He's got two things working against him in the second volume -- first, his editor obviously balked at a second book the same length so this book is "only" about 600 pages long. Second, the 3 year period he's writing about is jam packed with events both inside the civil rights movement and out. These were the years of the Kennedy administration and the assassination; Johnson's push for both civil rights and voting rights legislation and, of course, the creep in to the Vietnam War. Inside the civil rights movement, there are major developments all over - Selma, St Augustine, Birmingham, the death of Medgar Evers and so on. This leads to a much more frenetic pace for this book. Branch frequently switches topics from page to page and, occasionally from paragraph to paragraph. Its harder to keep up, but worth it.

There are three dominating themes that carry through the whole book. The scary one, as always in reading about this period, is the overwhelming control that J Edgar Hoover had over the country, including its leaders. Unbeknownst to anybody except Bobby Kennedy and a few other Justice Department people, Hoover bugged King and his entourage constantly and engaged in a pretty intense effort to discredit King. I guess with this week's groundbreaking for the new MLK memorial on the Washington mall, we know who history gives the win to, but at the time, it was in serious doubt.

The second big theme is the internal warfare within the black community. The battles with the most impact were between the various "mainstream" civil rights groups - NAACP, SNCC, SCLC. Differences in attitudes and power struggles had a major impact on what got done and how. The tiptoeing that King did to keep to keep his second in command, Ralph Abernathy, happy was amazing. But, of course, the most interesting warfare was within the Black Muslim community - essentially, the story of Malcolm X. This book ends with his assassination and leaves you wondering what would have been different if the growing relationship between Malcolm and the mainstream community hadn't been cut short.

The final theme, and maybe the most interesting, is the constant battle between politics and morality reflected by both the state/federal battle and the inside looks at the White House. As you probably know if you've read a lot about the two of them, everything indicates that Kennedy was the hardcore politician while Johnson pursued the moral goals (other than Vietnam) out of conviction, rather than politics. Just backwards from the uninformed conventional wisdom.

Even though it wasn't quite as good as the first volume, it still has me anxious to start the third. Any writer that can keep you interested in a single subject through some 2000+ pages definitely has something going.

Seriff Foundation Featured!

2006-11-16T11:44:00.000-06:00

Folks -- a diversion from the usual book reviews. Take a look at the web site www.c-s-f.org. This is the Conference of Southwest Foundations and, each month, they feature one of their member foundations on their home page. This month its us! If you click on, the foundation name to the right of the logo, it'll bring up a description of what we've been up to for the last 5 or 6 years.

Nice to be recognized.

Artemis Fowl, The Lost Colony

2006-10-26T17:46:00.000-06:00

Artemis Fowl, The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer

Category: Kid-lit Grade: A

So, what makes kid-lit kid-lit? When I was growing up, we boys read the Hardy Boys and girls read Nancy Drew and everybody read the Bobsey Twins. The books were short. They had big print. They had simple plots with "smack-you-between-the-eyes" morals. Everybody assumed that, to keep teens interested, these were the rules you had to follow. This situation was slowly changing over the couple of decades. Authors like C.S. Lewis (Narnia), Phillip Pullman (Golden Compass) and even, to some extent, Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) were writing stories that were intelligent, well written with complex plots. They were about the same length as adult novels. Then in the 90s, Harry Potter changed all the rules for popular teen (even pre-teen) and young adult books. All of a sudden, it was OK if a big was long, complicated with fully fleshed out characters - kids, and many adults, would stand in line to buy a good book. About the only thing that all of the so-called kid-lit books have in common is that the primary characters were kids - i.e. somebody kids could relate to. But these were such interesting kids that the books appealed to a wide audience.

The Artemis Fowl series took advantage of this new world with a series about a teenage (actually younger in the first book) genius who starts out as one of the world 11 year old master criminals. In the middle of one of his capers, he discovers the long hidden underground world the fairies -- gnomes, pixies, demons, imps - a great big cast of characters. Through the books, we watch Artemis get a little older and develop an interesting moral sense.

The Lost Colony is the fifth book in the series. Artemis is 14 and - surprise, surprise - has hit puberty and discovered girls. The girl another child genius is about where Artemis was 4 books ago -- 11 and brilliant, manipulating all the adults around her. When they both end up working on the same fairy-world issue, for opposite reasons, they make a connection that jumps all over the map.

This is not serious fiction like Tolkien or, to be honest, not even like Rowlins. Its light, funny, well-written and full of action. Its just a plain entertaining read. I highly recommend it to any of you who have any tolerance for fantasy and, of course, to any of you who have any control over the reading lists of a kid-lit target. If you seriously want to give this series a try, I'd suggest you pick up the first book. A lot of the in jokes won't make sense if you don't read the books in order.

Reading Like a Writer

2006-10-24T08:23:00.000-06:00

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Category: Literary Criticism Grade: A-

Prose is a prolific writer, having written a couple of dozen books - fiction, non-fiction and children's books. I have to be honest and say that I'd never really heard of her or read any of work. That'll probably change. I saw of review of this one and decided to give it a try. What I found is well-written and very interesting description of how books are put together. The book is dead-on with its sub-title -- "A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them".

In addition to her writing, the author has spent a lot of time in the classroom teaching literature and conducting writing workshops. She's a proponent of "close reading" - basically a belief that you should pay attention to what you're reading in deep details - e.g. that the words are as important as the concept. Normally, I'm put of by this style of reading. If you've followed this blog, you know that I love to read. To me, books are entertaining, informative, distracting, immersive and so on. A good book should make you feel like you're reading a good book - that simple. Too often, especially in school, we're taught that its important to understand a book than to enjoy it. This tends to lead to children, and eventually adults, who never pick up a book for pleasure.

Well, Prose manages to turn that belief on its ear a little bit. The chapter headings give you an idea of what you're in for -- Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Narration, Character, Dialogue, Gesture and wrapping up with Learning from Chekhov. What should really be pretty dull, turns out to grab you almost from the beginning and, just as she predicted, turns you in to a better reader. While you don't lose the ability to feel the power or beauty of a book, Prose gives you the tools to understand why. It doesn't hurt that her own writing style is excellent - I'll be looking for some of her fiction next time I'm in a book store.

Prose provides lots of examples from all kinds of sources that illustrate her points. She ranges all over the map from Chekhov and Tolstoy to Raymond Chandler. At the end of the book, she has a list of "Books to Be Read Immediately". To be honest, its not likely that I'll start working my way through her list. Its also not likely that I'll give up reading entertaining hacks like Dean Koontz. Thanks to Prose, however, I'll least be able to tell the difference between hacks and authors.

Catching up

2006-10-16T12:01:00.000-06:00

Since we've gotten back to Texas, as you might guess, its been really, really hectic. I haven't stopped reading, but I'm getting farther and farther behind on posted reviews. If there had been a really killer book, I'd have found the time, but the last three were decent, but not great. Here's an update:

Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen
Category: Fiction Grade: B+

A fairly short novel by the Newsweek columnist, Anna Quindlen. I always read her books because she's definitely got a way with putting things together. This is necessary because most of her books are borderline "chick-lit". This one is no exception. Its the story of the Fitzmaurice sisters -- Meghan is the glamour sister pretty much patterned after Katie Couric, while Bridget is the kind of frumpy social worker sister. The stories follows the complete dissolution of Meghan's life after a particularly bad on air faux-pas. The story is engaging, but not too taxing -- great for a beach or vacation read. Quindlen has a very spare writing style - she never takes a paragraph to say what a few words will say perfectly well. You just feel comfortable reading her work.

The Devil's Doctor by Philip Ball
Category: Science history Grade: B

This was actually pretty good I've got no clue who to recommend it to. Its a historical biography of a guy named Paracelsus - somebody I'd never heard of before. He was a 15th century "doctor". What makes the book interesting is that this was era when it was hard to spot the borderlines between doctors, scientists, alchemists and magicians. Ball's premise is essentially that Paracelsus was one of the transition folks who deeply believed in alchemy but also saw the body as a "small world" where chemical alchemy could be used to treat all kinds of diseases. He was really one of the inventors of modern medicine although he never quite separated his work from his religious beliefs. The upheaval of the times was not only scientific -- with Paracelsus, Newton, Galileo, etc. It was also the days of Martin Luther and the Reformation. The Devil's Doctor is a fairly long book that follows the subject's travels all over Europe as he's kicked out of city after city for his beliefs and practices. Almost nobody is going to like this book - Dan, Steve, Ted - not sure who else, so unless you're really in to history, science or medicine (preferably, all three), skip this one.

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Category: Fiction Grade: C+

It's really a shame about this one. Haddon's first novel was the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, a strange name for a novel told from the perspective of an autistic child. That one was terrific and showed a lot of promise. When I heard that he had a new one, I headed straight out to get it and moved it to the top of the pile. It wasn't completely awful but it was a major disappointment. His writing skills are still there but, this time, he takes on the story of an English family. I know its chauvinistic but with all the British phrasing and slang that I don't know about, everything felt just a little off the whole way.

The story is about a family that is in the process of falling apart -- husband losing his mind, wife having an affair, daughter getting married to someone the family doesn't approve of and son who can't decide whether to make a commitment to his gay lover. While things happen in the book, it never really feels like anything is happening. If it hadn't been for Haddon's first book, I'd have probably laid this one down. I still highly recommend that one, but this one you can skip.

Octavian Nothing

2006-09-27T14:33:00.000-06:00

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson

Category: Young Adult Fiction Grade: C+

This is an interesting one. Ultimately not very good, but interesting. First, I found it in the teen/young adult section of the book store where I tend to shop for good fantasy. This sounded like a serious, but different, fantasy. The opening premise is that the lead character, Octavian, and his mother live a pampered life in the "Novanglian College of Lucidity". They're the only occupants who have names; everyone else is known by their number. Octavian spends his days being classically educated and his evenings entertaining guests with his beautiful mother. Great start - now what?

(Spoiler alert -- since I'm not particularly recommending this book, I'm giving away the plot below so if there's any chance you'll read it, just go read it.)

As the story develops, it becomes more real-world as it tries to teach lessons about slavery and capitalism. As it turns out, Octavian is a slave living a pre-revolutionary Massachusetts. He is the subject of an experiment to determine if a classically educated black can reach the same levels of "intellectual sophistication" as similarly educated white children. About half-way through the book, the college's patron dies and his family brings in "investors" who want to change the experiments to produce products and answers that will serve them economically. With a very heavy hand, the author then proceeds to show that, capitalism screws up everything. The experiment with Octavian changes in to "let's prove a black can't be educated". The head moneyman comes in a makes a pass at Octavian's mother. When she refuses, she and Octavian are basically turned back in to house-slaves. At this point, the author gets to show the brutality of slavery and the hypocrisy of the revolution against England while maintaining slavery.

The book is also written in the languages styles of the 18th century and about of a third of it is told in the form of letters home from soliders - both things I don't really like in a book. It's also the first volume of a pair of books but I probably won't bother with the next one.

The General & The Jaguar

2006-09-16T09:37:00.000-06:00

The General & The Jaguar by Eileen Welsome

Category: History Grade: D

I tried - I really tried. This book about Pancho Villa and the tail end of the Mexican Revolution should have been good. Its a really interesting period of history. Villa is one of the those larger than life figures that everybody knows but nobody really knows much about. To some, he was a Mexican hero, but his vanity, gratuitous murder and destruction leads to a different opinion. So when I saw a book about Villa and about Pershing's hunt for him, written but a former Pulizter Prize winner, I jumped at it.

Well, I lasted about 125 pages. This book is so filled with totally meaningless details that it gets boring. The writer is trying hard to be "literary", but her prose comes across as just plain silly. I'll give you one example and then not waste any more of your time. Apparently, then night that Villa decided to cross the border and attack an American city (Columbus, NM), the weather was dry. Instead of just saying "it wasn't raining", Welsome says "No mediating layer of moisture existed between the troops and the night sky...". I mean, come on!

Enough said.

The Known World

2006-09-13T08:16:00.000-06:00

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Category: Novel Grade: B+

This book was really popular about a year, even winning a Pulitzer Prize. I avoided it since its about one of the subjects that I usually avoid reading about - slavery. Typically, books about slavery take the approach of rubbing the readers nose in the horrors. They're usually full of floggings, lynchings and the like and, frankly, the gruesome isn't necessary to prove that slavery was a terrible institution. Consequently, first time around, I skipped this book.

Jones has recently published a book of short stories that continue the stories of some of the people in The Known World and, because of that, has been back in the news and the book review journals. As before, the book is a little controversial, but there are reputable reviewers out there who are calling this one of the best novels of the last couple of decades. So I finally gave in and picked the book up.

First, let me warn that this is not an easy book to read. Jones definitely plays fast and loose with both time and place producing a decidedly non-linear book. He's constantly doing brief asides -- he'll be talking about some character and flash forward fifty years to the circumstances of that person's death. Sometimes, he'll introduce a flashback that'll last fifteen or twenty pages. He's telling the stories of dozens of people and, at times, it can be hard to figure out who and when he's talking about.

That said, this is a pretty powerful book. The plot vehicle he uses is to tell the story of a family of free blacks in the South who went on to own a dozen or so slaves of their own. This incongruity of blacks owning blacks is the centerpiece that lets him tell, in some ways, a very mundane story about the lives of slaves and the rigid rules that divide slaves from masters, even when they're both the same race. Surprisingly, the fact that there aren't a lot of histrionics emphasize the moral repugnance of slavery. Jones definitely shows that "gruesome" doesn't have to involve blood and violence -- its just as apparent in the everybody life of a slave.

OK - that sounded really preachy, but, while a difficult read, this book was pretty good. Good enough that, even though I tend not to read about slavery or read short stories, I'll definitely pick up Jones's followup.

Summing up the Summer List

2006-09-07T12:16:00.000-06:00

Well, summer in Colorado is over so the, while I'm going to keep posting reviews, the pace will definitely slow down since things are a little busier in Texas than, saw, nothing in Colorado! I thought I'd take a minute a highlight the books that I'd recommend the most from the summer reading.

And the winner is.....

Two books over the summer got A+ ratings - one fiction, one nonfiction. Both will require a little commitment - the fiction because its weird; the nonfiction because its long - but you'll definitely be rewarded with these two amazing books. The best fiction book of the summer, hands down, was The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Winning with just as much ease on the non-fiction side - Taylor Branch's extraordinary first volume of his "America in the King Years" series, Parting the Waters.

Other books that I definitely recommend:

Kingfish - excellent bio of Huey Long. Read it before you go see "All the King's Men" this fall.

Sound and Fury - surprisingly heart-grabbing double bio of Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell

A Dirty Job - funniest book of the year

The Rabbit Factory - great first mystery novel (and the author actually posted to the blog!)

The Stolen Child - good fantasy novel for non-fantasy readers

Finally, there's gotta be some really good trash on the list of recommendations! Try Kellerman's Gone or Koontz's The Husband.

Enjoy!

The Art of Deception

2006-09-07T11:51:00.000-06:00

The Art of Deception by Laurie R. King

Category: Mystery Grade: C+

With a couple of exceptions, all of Laurie King's fall in to one of two series. The one I read her for is the "Mary Russell" series in which Russell is a young women who, late in his life (around 1900), marries Sherlock Holmes and solves crimes with him. These are really terrific books. The other King series, which I usually don't read, is the Kate Martinelli series -- a current-day San Francisco cop. The Art of Deception, a Martinelli book, caught my eye because the center of the mystery is a supposedly recently discovered Arthur Conan Doyle manuscript that seems to be a lost Sherlock Holmes story. The murdered man and most of the suspects are part of a dinner group of Sherlock fanatics.

I should have stuck to my instincts on King books. Mirroring her overall writing, this is really two books in one since, as Martinelli reads the lost Holmes story, we get to read it too. While the Holmes story is actually pretty good, there's not enough to it to save what is, otherwise, a pretty standard police procedural novel. Like most series books, there's a fair amount about Martinelli's personal life but its not particularly interesting. The murder isn't very interesting, the search for the murder isn't very interesting and the book's ending is especially weak.

While I highly recommend most of King's "Mary Russell" books, there are definitely far more interesting detective novels out there. Skip this one.

Black Maestro

2006-08-31T10:08:00.000-06:00

Black Maestro by Joe Drape
The Epic Life of an American Legend

Category: Biography Grade: B+

Its pretty rare that I'll experiment with a biography of somebody I've never heard up, but this book was a birthday present so I decided to give it a try. Well worthwhile. The subject of this book is Jimmy Winkfield, a black jockey who was born in the early 1880s. His story turns out to be pretty amazing, helped along by the Drape's lyrical writing style.

Born in Kentucky, Winkfield spent his childhood hanging around the horse farms of the Bluegrass. As a boy, he learned by watching and loved everything about horses - grooming, training, exercising but most of all racing. He became one of the most accomplished American jockeys of the late 19th century, winning the Kentucky Derby two years in a row. However, these were also the years that Jim Crow laws were becoming entrenched across the United States and, slowly, black jockeys disappeared from the scene - sometimes driven out by rough treatment on the track by other jockeys and sometimes just denied rides by owners. This changing American landscape sent Winkfield off on an amazing world tour that lasted decades.

Settling for years in Russia where being black wasn't a handicap (especially since he was usually the only one around), Winkfield became the leading Russian jockey working for the son of an Armenian oil man who was determined to make Russia a powerhouse. At the peak of his productive years, he got caught up in the Russian Revolution and was part of a group that led hundreds of Russian thoroughbreds on a months long trip across Europe to France. He left his White Russian wife and their son behind with eventual tragic consequences. Eventually, the Nazis drove Winkfield back to the United States where he lived out his life.

This is a well written, entertaining book that anybody who likes sports or history will enjoy.

Last Dance

2006-08-22T14:42:00.000-06:00

Last Dance by John Feinstein
Behind the Scenes at the Final Four

Category: Sports Grade: B+

I said it earlier this summer and I'll say it again -- John Feinstein is the best sports writer out there today. His books, like this one, are consistently well written, interesting and, especially for the sports fan, show terrific insight in to the games he covers.

This one, as the subtitle implies, is about what I think is probably the best sports event of the year -- the NCAA basketball Final Four. Although its still terrific, this isn't one of Feinstein's best books, mainly because he abandons his normal modus operandi. Usually, he signs for in depth coverage of a specific team or group of teams for a long period of time - usually a full season. For example, in his most recent book, Next Man Up, he spent a full season with the Baltimore Ravens. For what I think is his best book, The Last Amateurs, he spent a complete year with the basketball teams of the Patriot League - one of the last group of teams that didn't offer athletic scholarship. This lets him get in deep for close looks at the players and coaches involved. There's a lot of talk about basketball and football games, but the game is mostly about characters that you actually get to know.

In Last Dance, Feinstein uses the Final Four as a framework to talk about some of the great figures of the game - coaches like Krzyzewski, Smith and Williams; some of the stellar players that competed in the Final Four - both stars and end-of-the-benchers. He also gives us vignettes about refs, reporters and even administrators. He doesn't even talk much about the actual Final Four games until over half way through the book. Unfortunately, Final Four week isn't enough glue to hold the stories together so want you get the book is essentially a series of loosely related essays. A bad side affect of this is that there are lot of stories that get repeated two, three and even four times in different parts of the book.

There's still good stuff here and any serious basketball fan should really enjoy the book. If you try and like it, definitely move on to some of Feinstein's better work.

Kingfish

2006-08-21T12:51:00.000-06:00

Kingfish, The Reign of Huey P. Long by Richard D. White, Jr.

Category: Biography Grade: A

I bought this book a couple of months ago but, coincidentally, the Denver Post did a mini-review of the book yesterday. There comment -- you can never go wrong reading about Huey Long. Definitely true. I've read other books about him plus, of course, the novel All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren whose main character is a thinly disguised Kingfish. The novel was made in to a great movie decades ago with Broderick Crawford and has been remade for release this fall starring Sean Penn. Really looking forward to that one.

Long portrayed himself as a populist - looking out for the little guy. He became governor of Louisiana by constantly attacking the entrenched political machines and the wealthy people and corporations (especially Standard Oil) that kept Louisiana pretty backwards. In his early days as governor, he actually kept many of his promises and did amazing things for the state -- free textbooks for students for the first time, paving thousands of miles of roads, turning LSU from nothing to a major university, getting rid of the poll tax. While doing this, however, Long turned himself in to pretty much the absolute dictator of the state. He was colorful, controlling, a political genius and as vindictive as they come. He and his cronies also robbed the state blind and, to pay for everything he did - both for the state and for himself - raised taxes by 75% and raised state debt by 1500%!

At the peak of his power, Long himself had actually moved on to the U.S. Senate but, through a puppet governor whose election he arranged, he still maintained a tight control over the state. It was common for Long to come in to Baton Rouge, call a special session and have 30 or 40 bills that he wrote himself passed by the legislature in a few hours. After his first few years in power, he did relatively little for the state. Most of the bills passed were either designed to punish his opponents (e.g. by making their businesses illegal) or increasing his control (e.g. by turning the hiring and firing of all teachers, policemen and municipal works into state employees). When crossed by city politicians, his reaction could be drastic. In Baton Rouge, he had martial law declared. In New Orleans, he sent in the state militia to ensure that the mayor was powerless.

While, after his first few years of acquiring power, Long did relatively little for the state or the "little guy", his popularity continued to soar. He became a violent enemy of FDR and began to become well known nationally. His populist proposals, made through his national organizations, Share Our Wealth, never made much sense but sounded incredible to a nation still in recovery from the great depression. For example, one of his cornerstones was to, via taxation, confiscate all wealth over a million dollars and, in return, guarantee everyone an annual income of $4000. Of course, the numbers didn't work - he actually would have add to confiscate all income over $4000 in order to guarantee an income to everyone of $1400! However, the struggling poor in the country weren't economists and Huey's way sounded like the answer. At its peak, Share Our Wealth had a membership of over 8 million people.

Huey was assassinated at the age of 42. At that point his fellow Senators despised him and FDR was the FBI and the IRS (actually its predecessor) to try to bring the Kingfish down. Its interest to speculate what would have happened had Long lived. He had already announced his candidacy for President at his death. While he knew he couldn't win in 1936, he had growing confidence that he could pull enough votes away from FDR to put Hoover back in the White House. He assumed that Hoover, as he did the first time around, would screw up and that Huey would then become the front runner in 1940. This scenario could easily have given the United States a dictator, rather than a President, at the worst possible time.

White has a great writing style. He supplies plenty of detail without ever getting lost in them. He's great a quick-stroke characters - and there are lots of them. This is a book that both history and political buffs will enjoy. Especially if you've never read anything about the Kingfish, pick this one up.

Small Steps

2006-08-19T19:52:00.000-06:00

Small Steps by Louis Sachar

Category: Teen Fiction Grade: B+

OK, so its a kids book. Sachar's well known book (and more recently a movie) is called and it was actually pretty good and this one takes place in Austin (Sachar is an Austinite), so I decided to give this one a try. It isn't really a sequel to Holes, but it does feature a couple of the kids from that book - Armpit and X-Ray. There's nothing really fancy about this story - it deals with ticket scalping and a very sheltered rock star. It only took about 3 hours to read and that was because I was watching a basketball game at the same time.

All in all, it was a decent story and good writing. It's aimed at teens so there's nothing fancy about it, but I enjoyed it.

The book is only about 200 pages long with big print. Since I don't want the review to be longer than the book, I'll quit now.

The Devil is a Gentleman

2006-08-18T17:48:00.000-06:00

The Devil is a Gentleman by J.C. Hallman
Exploring America's Religious Fringe

Category: Religious History Grade: D

Laid it down after reading about a couple of UFO groups and an American Druid group. Just boring.

Labyrinth

2006-08-17T12:48:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Category: Historical Fiction Grade: B

Not surprisingly, there's been a string of books like Labyrinth in the last couple of years. With the success of The Da Vinci Code, lots of authors are trotting out fiction that deals with more alternative definitions of the Holy Grail - what it is, what happened to it, how it might affect today's world. Mosse has kind of written a feminist interpretation here with women playing the key rolls - both good and evil.

What makes this one interesting is that Mosse actually tells the dual story with part happening today and the other part happening in the 13th century. Fortunately, the majority of the book takes place in France in the 13th century since the book is so-so whenever it turns to the modern characters and much more interesting when it stays in the ancient world. The period of time Mosse deals with is the fairly unknown European Crusades. During this period of time, the Catholic world mounted a Crusade, not against the Muslim world of the Holy Land, but against the heretical (e.g. the emerging Protestant) world of Southern France. As with many religious wars, this Crusade was 10% about religion and 90% about land, money and power.

The primary story features Alais, the daughter of the advisor to one of the rulers of Southern France and the husband of a chevalier, essentially a knight, in the same court. What Alais learns over the course of the book is that her father is part of an ancient order designed to protect the Grail (sound familiar?). When her father dies during a siege, she picks up his responsibilities. The second story, taking place in 2005, features Alice (get it?) a woman who accidentally (or is it?) discovers the ancient cave that is the.... well, I won't give it away.

Even though the book teeters precariously on the edge of being a "bodice ripper" at times and a romance novel at other times, its still a decent read as long as Mosse is dealing with history. Whenever she jumps to the modern era, the book gets more exciting, but a little silly.

Phil -- this is probably one that Katherine would like.

Sweet and Low

2006-08-14T12:56:00.000-06:00

Sweet and Low by Rich Cohen

Category: Family memoir Grade: C+

I'll never say anything bad about my family again (not, of course, that I would ever say anything bad about my family!). This book is the story of the Eisenstadt family - the family that founded and still owns Cumberland Packaging - the makers of Sweet and Low. The story is told by the grandson of the founders, Rich Cohen. He's part of the branch of the family that ended up getting disinherited so he's got a bit of a bone to pick. This is one screwed up family. Starting with the patriarch, Ben - his first big brainstorm was mucking with a tea bagging machine to create the first sugar packets. He did this so he wouldn't have to clean the sugar containers on the tables in his diner. Ben took it to Domino Sugar without bothering to file a patent and, predictably, Domino stole his idea. Years later, as the diet craze struck, he launched the Sweet and Low brand and built a mega-business. The rest of the family was equally nuts. Ben's son Marvin (known as Uncle Marvelous) took over the business, but also hired a couple of mob-connected senior execs (e.g. a CFO who's previous experience was as a mechanic) who proceeded to rob the company blind and, eventually, get Marvin indicted. There's sister Gladys who, one day, wasn't feeling well and went to her room -- for 30 years!

Unfortunately, as interesting as the story is, there are two flaws that keep the book from being as good as the story. First and foremost, Cohen really isn't that great a writer. He's not "put-it-down" terrible, but his writing frequently gets in the way of storytelling. This shouldn't have surprised me. I read two of his previous books -- Tough Jews (about Jewish gangsters) and The Avengers (about, I think, Israeli spies). Interesting stories -- mediocre writing.

His second flaw is that he keeps heading off on to tangents - most especially his long digression in to the history of sugar. The family was enough of a story and he should have stuck to that.

This book was (again, especially the story) good enough that I'll probably pick up his next book, but not good enough that I can recommend it to anybody.

A Dirty Job

2006-08-10T13:47:00.000-06:00

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

Category: Fiction Grade: A

Moore is probably one of those authors that you've never heard of unless you've heard of him. I stumbled across one of his books years ago -- a book called The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. Its just what it sounds like - the story of a prehistoric beast that crawls out of the ocean in the village of Melancholy Cove and makes everybody around, well, horny. Very few books make me laugh out loud but this one did and I was hooked. Just the titles of Moore's books can be hysterical - Island of the Sequined Love Nun - and, of course, the one before this one -- Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. Moore is the most consistently funny writer out there. If you read his stuff on the bus, people will stare!

His latest, A Dirty Job, is the story of Charlie Asher. His young adored wife dies in childhood and when Death (well, actually small "d" death since there are lots of them) comes in to collect her soul, Charlie sees him. He's hard to miss since he's a seven foot tall black guy dressed completely in mint green, but a "death" at work is supposed to be invisible to everybody. The upshot is that Charlie has been chosen somehow to become one of the "deaths". His job is to collect the souls of the recently departed and recycle them to some other person in need of a soul. Hmmm -- doesn't sound very funny, but you gotta trust me, it is.

The plot revolves around the fact that, if any of the "deaths" screw up, the forces of the Dark Underworld get stronger and, eventually will come back above and take over the world. Needless to say, there are some great battles with the underworld characters, especially the "sewer harpies" - not your Steven King kind of battles - much more entertaining. While taking care of his job, Charlie also to continue to run his second store, deal with his employees - a teenage Goth and an ex-cop looking for love on the Internet, raise his daughter Sophie and her pets the giant hellhounds.

Most comic novels have this problem - they're impossible to explain in a way that gets the humor across. But this one - for that matter any of Moore's books - defy explanations and keep you laughing.

Five Families

2006-08-07T11:19:00.000-06:00

Five Families by Selwyn Raab
The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires

Category: Crime History Grade: B

No, I haven't forgotten about you guys. This latest book was a big project, clocking it at over 700 pages. Its well written and not terribly heavy reading - just really long. The subtitle really says it all. Raab, a long time crime reporter for the New York Times, has written a definitive history of the New York City branches of the Mafia. He traces back to the 19th century origins in Sicily up to pretty much the present day. Bottom line - the real stories are far more interesting, if not quite as romantic, as anything in The Godfather trilogy. And Tony Soprano is just a wimp!

Throughout the book, you are repeatedly struck by two overall impressions. First, the casual brutality, while not surprising if you've read anything about these guys, is astounding. He sang to the cops -- kill him. He got too ambitious -- kill him. He wasn't turning over enough cash to the boss - kill him. He insulted somebody - kill him. He touched the wrong guys daughter -- kill him. Just not a lot of job security in this organization.

The second thing, however, is that some of the guys were really, really smart - especially before the 1980s. Probably the most impressive gangster of the bunch was Lucky Luciano. Before him, these were basically Italian immigrant street gangs. They were making money, but they were also feuding with each other costing not only money, but lives. In addition, every war would turn up the police heat a little bit. It was Luciano's concept to divide the pie up on the theory that was plenty for everybody. In the now familiar story, everybody would be divided up in to families (five in New York, with one each in other major cities). The families would be divided in to groups of roughly ten "made guys" - run by a "capo" and supported by dozens of support troops, most of whom would never move up the ladder. Luciano's major innovation was the creation of the "commission" to settle disputes between families on territories, division of profits, creation of new "made guys" and, of course, to have approval over hits, or murders. While everybody could profit, nobody had any connection to crimes that they weren't directly involved in providing, for decades, immunity for prosecution - especially for the bosses - the higher ups who never got their hands dirty.

Raab also talks a lot about the other side of the Mafia battles. From Hoover's denial that the Mafia exists until forced to acknowledge it by the Kennedy brothers to Rudy Guliani who was one of the first successful prosecutors using new legal tools like the RICO statutes. The story of RICO (an acronym created backwards - the author wanted the law to carry the name of Edward G. Robinson's character in Little Caesar) is really pretty interesting. It was handcrafted to go after "criminal enterprises" like the Mafia by introducing laws that allowed cops to go after the leaders of the families by tying them to the benefits and oversight of crimes not just the commission of them. However, the law was actually on the books for over a decade, unused, before a couple of FBI agents went to a seminar given by the law professor who drafted it while an attorney for a senate committee. In the 80s and 90s, RICO became the primary tool for largely dismantling the entire crime infrastructure. By strengthening the reach and length of the penalties, RICO encouraged a lot of mobsters to switch sides. In those decades, a lot of the cases - John Gotti, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, "Chin" Gigante - were front page news.

Raab's book is a long trek so you really need have at least some interest in organized crime stories. If you don't, you'll probably be bored by page 70, much less page 700. For the few of you who do have an interest, this is probably the best single source of info I've seen on this subject.

A Crack in the Edge of the World

2006-07-31T16:34:00.000-06:00

A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester

Category: Natural History Grade: D

Well, we have our second "lay-down" of the summer. I only made it about thirty pages in to this one. Its about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and I had high hopes for it since I enjoyed the author's previous book Krakatoa. Not sure what happened with this one. Based on the style, I'd almost guest that Winchester's contract called for a per word or an average-sentence-length payment. Note to budding authors -- great writing should have the reader thinking about personalities, events, imagery, etc. If you get the reader thinking about, sentence structure and synonyms, forget it.

Sound and Fury

2006-07-30T15:10:00.000-06:00

Sound and Fury by Dave Kindred

Category: Sports biography Grade: A

I usually like to wait a day or so before writing one of these reviews, but I wanted to get this one done right away. I just finished this book 2 minutes ago and I have a confession to make. I hope this doesn't destroy the last bit of macho image I might have, but at a couple of points in the book, there were huge tears rolling down my face. That's especially surprising since this is a sports book, but one that defines an era -- the dual biography of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell.

Those of you who are about my age will remember that Ali was kind of a touchpoint for the boomer generation. Some saw him as a loud-mouthed, draft dodger. Others saw him as both the greatest fighter who ever lived and as a man to whom principles were worth everything. I am definitely in the latter category. During my high school and college years, Ali stood up, at the risk of everything he had, and said he would not accept being drafted. It was obvious then, as now, that this wasn't about fear of fighting -- clearly, an Ali in uniform would have spent his time, selling government bonds and fighting exhibitions to entertain the troops. He never would have seen a shot fired in anger. In spite of this, he said to the world that the war was wrong and the he would never go to the far east to fight for the rights of people when his own country didn't extend those rights to him and his people. In his own simple words -- "I ain't got nothing against the Viet Cong".

The reality of Ali as this book tells well is, of course, far more complicated. At bottom, Ali was and remains a simple and often gullible man. He was run for decades by the Nation of Islam - publicly spouting racial separatism, second class status for women and some really harebrained ideas about God and religion invented by Elijah Muhammad. In later years, he was constantly taken advantage of by businessmen trying to shortcut making a buck by using Ali's name. In the ring, though he was a thing of beauty - both his physical appearance and his skills. Who knows what his legend would look like without the government persecution that illegally kept him out of the ring for years.

Today, his physical infirmities have made a quiet and somehow dignified man. He is no longer the "living flame" that Kindred calls him and yet the disabilities have made him almost a saint in today's world. In the most powerful chapter in Kindred's book, he writes movingly of Ali's appearance at the Atlanta Olympics to light the Olympic flame - a black Muslim in a resurrected Southern city the symbol that, at a minimum, some progress has been made. I reacted to this section of the book in the same way I reacted, sitting in my living room, when Ali, bloated and ill, became the surprise of the Olympics -- in tears.

And then there's Cosell - there were times he wanted to make you turn the radio off and throw something at the TV. However, he brought a rampant intelligence to sports broadcasting that had never been their before. Before Howard, sports journalism was about simple play-by-plays. Sportscasters told you what was happening, but never why or what it meant. Cosell changed all that. Its no accident that he was the first sportscaster ever inducted in to the TV hall of fame. Kindred does show us the life, not just the image -- Cosell's struggles to leave his law practice behind to break in to sports; his enormous ego that both drove and retarded his career and his devotion to his wife, Emmy.

I've tried to be honest with you guys in these reviews and tell you when I thought a book's audience would and should be limited to those with particular interests. This, however, is a sports book that will be just as enjoyable to non-sports fans as to fanatics. Through the story of the friendship (sort of) between these two men, Kindred manages to tell us about the changes in the last 40 years. I highly recommend it to everybody.

Digging to America

2006-07-27T09:51:00.000-06:00

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Category: Fiction Grade: B

I tend to automatically pick up new Anne Tyler books. She's a great who's forte is character development. Her books are always pleasant reads. The ultimate problem with most of her books is that not much happens. In her latest, Digging to America, Tyler follows two families who adopt Korean infant girls. Taking place in the days before adoptive parents had to travel to meet their new children in foreign countries, the two families end up meeting the same flight to pick up their new daughters. Their chance meeting at the airport develops in to an ever closer, if unlikely, friendship.

The Donaldson family is an almost comical uber-American family. Led by the adopting mother Bitsy, a pushy and domineering woman, the Donaldson's turn out at the airport in force. The major family members are wearing buttons that say "mother", "father", "grandmother", etc. and what seems like 40 friends and family are standing around waiting for the flight with signs, gifts and cameras. At the edge of the crowd, the Yazdans, just mother, father and grandmother stand quietly waiting for their daughter. The Yazdans are Iranian-Americans - father born in the U.S. but mother and grandmother both born in Iran under the Shah.

The book then follows the two families over the course of some 6 or 8 years as the girls grow up. Bitsy pulls the two families together - mostly around "Arrival Day", an annual celebration of the day the girls arrive in the U.S. Bitsy strains to ensure that her daughter, Jin-Ho, retains her Korean culture while the Yazdans work just as hard to make sure that their daughter, Susan, is American through and through. Its not quite clear why the friendship develops. The two girls never particularly care for each other but Bitsy's pushiness seems to be reason enough. The large extended families on both sides get pulled in to the story.

You'd think, with all of this in the mix, that there'd be a plot in here somewhere, but I never did find it. Because of Tyler's talents, the reader pays attention to the characters and even cares about what happens to them, if anything ever did. All-in-all its a decent and relaxing read. Just don't expect to jump up and down with the excitement of the story's action.

Doing Nothing

2006-07-25T18:13:00.000-06:00

Doing Nothing by Tom Lutz
A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America

Category: Uh - Sociology Study? Grade: B

OK - so I saw the title of this one on the bookshelf at the bookstore. Figured it would be a fun read and, maybe, would improve my self-understanding. It started out like I expected with the author talking about the revelation he had when his son decided to take a year off before college and moved in with him. The son like a lot of 18 year olds these days was going through a slacker period, spending most of time on the couch channel surfing or playing video games. To his, surprise, the author (who had dropped out for a while himself in the 60s) found himself becoming angry. The kid should be out doing something; earning a living; accomplishing something! Being a writer, he caught himself and decided to turn these feelings in to a book and headed off to research the American art of "doing nothing".

At this point, the book, to my surprise, got more interesting, but very, very dry. To do a useful study of being idle required plenty of discussion of the nature of work in this country over the last couple of centuries. The premise Lutz started with was that, up until the 18th century, work wasn't something that a man had any choice about (and women didn't count yet). When a boy was old enough to work, he just started working - usually on the farm or the family store. It wasn't a conscious choice until roughly the time of the American Revolution. Because of this, Lutz fairly naturally starts his discussion with the American icon of work and usefulness, Ben Franklin, and the first British proponent of the idle life, Samuel Johnson.

Each chapter of the book jumps forward looking at the parallel changes in the world of work and the world of the slacker - Marx and Mellville, flappers and labor leaders, Jack Kerouac and the Man in the Gray Flannel suit and, most recently feverish entrepreneurs and the hippies and slackers of the last half century. Despite the dryness of the subject, Lutz does manage to maintain the interest all the way through the current day. He even makes a pretty good case, based on vacation schedules and a bias towards very brief meetings, that Dubya is, in fact, our first slacker President! Interestingly, he shares a belief among some of Dubya's college friends that George W. was, in fact, the inspiration for Bluto, the John Belushi character in the movie Animal House. Don't it make you proud!

This is another that's hard to recommend. Probably only read good for serious history addicts.

The Brief History of the Dead

2006-07-22T12:21:00.000-06:00

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Category: Speculative fiction Grade: A+

This is the kind of book that you read for. It's not for everybody since its a little strange, but, for me, it's, by far, the best book of the summer so far. It's what I tend to call a "concept" book - one that takes a strange concept and carries it to its logical conclusions. In this case, the concept comes from African societies and is called "sasha". These societies divide humans into three categories - the living, the wholly dead (zamani) and those living in sasha - those that some living human still remembers directly.

Brockmeier tells a duel story, bouncing back and forth between the still living and the sasha. He introduces a second major plot device that lets him sharply focus the consequences of the existence of the sasha. This review is extremely hard to write because I'd really like to spill the beans here and tell you what happens but watching the story slowly develop is what makes this book so good. So, even though, it'll dramatically shorten the review, I'm going to be a good guy and not say any more about the book's plot.

This reasonably short book is just beautifully written. It is, at times, funny, surprising, sad, depressing and even a little scary. It also has probably the best death scene I've ever read anywhere. The book just grabs you and doesn't let go. I happened to be standing up when I started reading the last 20 or 30 pages and ended up reading the rest of the book standing in that one spot and then being stunningly disappointed that it was over.

The Reckless Decade

2006-07-20T11:04:00.000-06:00

The Reckless Decade, America in the 1890s by H.W. Brands

Category: History Grade: B-

If you've followed this blog, you know I read a lot of history. Typically, popular history focuses on either huge events (almost always wars) or huge personalities. Brands has taken a different approach here deciding to focus on the last decade of the 19th century, years that don't usually show up in most history books at all. Like most readers of popular history, I probably wouldn't ordinarily have picked up this book. However, Brands is the author of terrific historical biographies of Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt. In addition, he's an Austinite, although a professor at, gulp, Texas A&M. So I decided to give this one a try.

Almost by definition, since it covers a period where not many earth shaking things happened, the book disappoints a little. However, there was enough going on in this decade to make an interesting enough read. Put in to the perspective that this period is only a little over a hundred years ago and some of the things that happened become more fascinating.

The book opens with the massacre and Wounded Knee and the last of the land rushes where anybody, by getting to a claim first, could get access to free land in the west (the west at this time being Oklahoma). The closing of the frontier and the near complete defeat of Native Americans marked a major change in the mindset of the average American. The possibility of throwing everything to the winds and heading the frontier was ending. This intensified the regional distinctions between the west (agricultural) and the east (industrial and financial).

The surprising thing, to me at least, was how much violence grew out of this disparity. This was the age of the consolidation of both industry, under Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan, and the growth of both the union and populist movements. Time after time, the conflicts that arose ended up in pitched battles in the streets. There was during this time, a growing belief that the glory days of the United States were in fact past. In fact, the swing of a few thousand votes in the presidential elections of the 1890s probably mark the difference between the U.S. we know today and a country that would have headed a socialist path.

The other major themes of the book vary a lot in terms of capturing your attention. A lot of time, money and oratory in this period was spent debating about whether U.S. currency should be tied to a gold standard, a silver standard or both. This is something, frankly, I've never really understood so this section of the book was a little boring. On the other hand, the first stirrings of the civil rights movement, with the philosophical sparring of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois was far more interesting. The book then shifts back to America's growing international presence in the Spanish-American War and the debate over American imperialism surrounding the acquisition of the Philippines.

Ultimately, this is a history lovers book. If you found this review a little dry, you should avoid it.