Timothy Leary

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Take Me to the River

Take Me to the River by Peter Alson

Category: Poker memoir Grade: C+

For those of you not in to America's latest "sports" craze, the "river" is the last card dealt in Texas Hold 'em poker - the maker and breaker of dreams at the poker table. The subtitle of the book is "A Wayward and Perilous Journey to the World Series of Poker.

Poker is one of the fastest growing leisure activities in the country these days. The World Series of Poker was started way before the craze by Benny Binion the Vegas legend who opened the Horseshoe Hotel and Casino in downtown Vegas. The first WSOP was just a handful of poker pros who played for a couple of days and then voted amongst themselves and elected the poker "world champion". After a couple of years, it switched to a winner take all format - i.e. they keep playing until one player has all the chips. This year, the event will last more than six weeks (going on right now) and contain tournaments in multiple poker games with over 36,000 entrants. Parts of the tournament, usually the final tables, will be broadcast all over the cable dial -- ESPN, Bravo, the Travel Channel and, starting last year, live on one of the networks.

So I guess its no surprised that we're starting to see more and more books about poker. By far the vast majority of them are "how-to" books with the big stars in the game like Doyle Brunson and Phil Helmuth cashing in on their popularity by writing down their secrets for everybody - or at least most of them. In the last couple of years, though, there have been a few good books written for more general audiences about the game and the people in them.

However, I'm just not sure that Alson's Take Me to the River, is going to appeal to much of anybody. Don't get me wrong -- it's not a terrible book. He's a decent writer. But the book is really about him, not the WSOP. I just never got to the point where I much cared about his ongoing efforts to decide whether to get married in mid-life - decided for him by an unexpected pregnancy. He does introduce a few somewhat interesting characters, like his friend and sometimes roommate in Vegas, Nicky, but he never devotes enough effort to get the reader involved. He does talk a fair amount about poker and throws in some good tips for how to play, but never enough to make this a how-to book. He does talk a lot about the WSOP but never enough to really feel the atmosphere. He keeps coming back to himself and, as I said, I just didn't care.

So - if what you want is a good poker how-to book, go pick up one of Doyle Brunson's book. If you want a good book about the WSOP, you're better off to pick up a great book like Positively Fifth Street (good even for non poker players). If you want a closeup look at some of the great characters in poker, pick up Alson's first book about Stuey Unger called One of a Kind (to show I'm not biased against Alson). Don't waste your time with this one.

The Whiskey Rebellion

The Whiskey Rebellion by William Hogeland

Category: History Grade: B-

First, a digression. Go to the last entry on my blog - not the email you received, but follow the link to mseriff.blogspot.com and look at the entry for the book called The Rabbit Factory and you'll something really interest and, to me, exciting and a little intimidating. Look down below the review and you'll see a comment posted to the blog by the book's author, Marshall Karp! This is just very, very cool. Back in the day, when I was still involved in building AOL, one of the buzz words that got thrown around was "disintermediation". All that really means is that online services allow simple, cheap and casual direct connections between the producers and consumers of information - i.e. between authors and readers. I really enjoy doing these reviews and knowing that there are around 40 of you or so out there who (I hope) read them is terrific. But the thought that, with no effort on my part, this is a means to, occasionally, meet (sort-of) the authors that create the books is just amazing to me. In hindsight, though, I'm really glad I gave The Rabbit Factory a good review!

Now on to The Whiskey Rebellion. The myth that we learn in school is that the Founding Fathers created the United States with little or no opposition and that the country was off and running towards its smooth, democratic futures. The only big hiccup was the Civil War. The reality is that almost continuously until after the Civil War, the odds on this country surviving as a single country was constantly in doubt. Even the structure of government - democracy or pseudo-monarchy - was up for grabs. There was much talk of making Washington king rather than president and the political battles inside the establishment were vicious.

Hogeland's book, while not the best written history I've read, does cover an interesting period - something that could easily be called the first civil war (maybe even the second if you count Shay's Rebellion). As the name implies, the rebellion grew out of opposition to the first tax on domestic production - the whiskey tax. The tax was devised by Alexander Hamilton - Washington's Secretary of the Treasury. While the obvious reason for the tax was to raise federal dollars, mostly to pay off the debts of the revolutionary war, Hamilton's backstory was that the tax would go a long way to create the industrialized, financially oriented nation that he was trying to create. His primary opponent in this was Thomas Jefferson, the leader of the anti-federalists. In the short term, this disagreement forced Jefferson to resign the cabinet and gave Hamilton a clear, although not very long lived, advantage.

The tax was a killer to small distillers and, especially to western distillers (remember that "western" in this age means Pittsburgh). In the west, whiskey was used almost as currency. Grain was big, bulky and hard to ship so it wasn't particularly valuable. Take the same grain and distill it to whiskey and you could use it to pay the rent or easily and profitably ship it east. The new tax, however, had to be paid in coin - something most distillers didn't have. In addition, the way the tax was implemented, it strongly favored the huge distillers (mostly eastern or at least with eastern connections) over the small - forcing the little guys out of business.

Hogeland goes in to great detail introducing us to the people of the west who masterminded the rebellion (and some who just got caught up the flow). Some were just nuts - e.g. Henry Husband who had gone a wealthy family to being a wealthy Quaker to, eventually becoming an unkempt religious hermit. Others, like Henry Breckinridge, who got caught trying to be the moderate who mediated between the sides and ended being persecuted by both. Of course, Hamilton and Washington play a big roll.

Washington eventually decides that defiance of the law, however motivated, can't stand and for the first time, sends troops (federalized state militias since there is not yet any federal standing army) against U.S. citizens. In the face of the show of force, the rebellion completely falls apart with a few leaders fleeing and only a few people ever prosecuted. The long term impact is a huge victory for Hamilton and his concepts setting the stage for the financial structure that would, in the long run, make this country a great economic power.

Sometimes books are worth reading because they're well written; sometimes because they tell a great story. The real winners are the ones that do both. While this book isn't one of those, if you like history, especially early American history, you'll probably like this one.

The Rabbit Factory

The Rabbit Factory by Marshall Karp

Category: Mystery Grade: A-

Sometimes you just luck in to one. This is Karp's first novel, although he's been writing (mostly screenplays) for a long time. I hadn't seen any reviews of it or had any recommendations. It just happened to be sitting on the "new stuff" table at the little book store we go to up here. The title sounded kind of interesting so I picked it up.

I was a little worried in the begging since the first character we meet is a pedophile who bribed his way in to a job as a starring character at a Disneyland like amusement park. I really didn't want to get in to a really heavy book so I was actually reasonably happy when this character gets murdered on page 10. He's murdered at FamilyLand, the park, in his costume. So right away you're left to wonder whether this is going to be about a vigilante or about somebody with a grudge against the park.

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes clear that this only the first in a series of murders designed to destroy the company that runs the park. Bodies fall, but somehow, the book stays pretty light and at times funny. Karp clearly intends this to be the first in a series since he spends a lot of time developing his main character - an LAPD detective name Mike Lomax. Lomax is only six months from the death of his wife and he's just starting to rediscover his life. There area bunch of interesting characters developed around him - his colorful father, his ne'er-do-well brother and, of course, a new girlfriend.

There are a lot of sideplots, but somehow Karp manages to keep all of the balls in the air without your feeling overloaded. The main plot has just enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and the sideplots interleave seamlessly. You get blindsided by the plot enough times to keep you interesting and, despite they mayhem, keep you laughing.

Its a 600+ page book but thats a little misleading since the print is big and the pages are small. It took almost no time to read. Nothing serious; didn't learn a thing; thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dream Boogie

Dream Boogie, The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Gurlanick

Category: Music biography Grade: B-

I'm a little disappointed. I was really looking forward to this one. I read some of Guralnick's work earlier in the summer and liked it. He's considered one of the premier writers about mid-twentieth century blues and rock -- he wrote Last Train to Memphis probably the most well known bio of Elvis. On top of that, I knew the outlines of Cooke's life and was anxious to learn more.

What Guralnick ended up with was an exhaustive, and exhausting, bio. Every detail of Cooke's life is there and that's a good thing. The problem is, he keeps taking major side trails in to the gory details of a lot of the people around him too. What should have been an interesting 400 page book gets stretched out to 650 pages. It had me doing something I almost never do with a book that I actually finish -- skimming. For somebody who might be professionally interested in Cooke and his music (i.e. Dan), this is a great reference. For the rest of us, its overkill.

That said, I still finished it and enjoyed learning more about Cooke. He's pretty different from most of the rock stars you read about. Sam grew up pretty middle class in a reasonably happy home. Like most black artists of that time period (the 40s) he started as a gospel singer and then switched to pop. Its fun to watch some of the random talent that pops up in his life. Some of them, like Lou Rawls, Little Richard or Bobby Womack aren't really surprising. But a few definitely make you laugh -- one of Sam's first recorded pop songs was written by Sonny Bono! One of the early A&R guys that worked with was Herb Alpert!

So, the book was OK, but I'm still glad I picked it up because it sent me back to the music of Sam Cooke and I had really forgotten how sensational he was. Its was a major loss when he was murdered in his early 30s just as he was coming in to his own as a star. But, man, the music he left behind -- songs like You Send Me, Twisting the Night Away, Cupid, Chain Gang - just one incredible song after another. In the year before he died, Cooke was getting increasingly active in the civil rights movement and showed where he was heading with the terrific song, Change is Gonna Come. And if you think, Tennessee Waltz, is a country song, go back and listen to Cooke's gospel-tinged rendition.

Bottom line -- read the book if you're really, really, really interested in the lives of the early rock stars. Whether you are or not, head to iTunes or your local record store and get one of Cooke's Greatest Hits albums. You won't be sorry.

The Saboeurs

The Saboteurs, A Men at War Novel by W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV

Category: War Novel Grade: B+

W.E.B. Griffin has, for the last 40 years plus, been the premier writer of military-based action novels (with a little soap opera mixed in). By my count, this is his 41st book, spread over six different series. Each series follows an ongoing group of characters through time periods ranging from a few years through decades. At their best, they provide an entertaining way to get an up close feel for what the military is and has been like during major periods of history.

This book, The Saboteurs, is the fifth book in the Men at War series. This series, so far, covers a pretty brief period of time - the early- to mid-forties during U.S. participation in World War II. The focus is on Wild Bill Donovan and the Office of Strategic Services or OSS, the precursor to today's CIA. This agency grew out of Donovan's personal friendship with FDR coupled with some of FDR's doubts about J Edgar Hoover and the FBI. FDR used the agency to run clandestine operations both at home and abroad during the war, especially those tasks that he didn't want to run through Hoover's "hooray for the FBI" PR machine.

There are a couple of interrelated story lines running through the book. The first continues the stories from the earlier books - the efforts of the OSS to (a) extract German and Italian scientists, especially those that could help the Manhattan Project and slow down the German's nuclear weapon efforts and (b) insert teams behind enemy lines to gather intelligence and to support the underground in Europe. This part of the book follows Dick Canidy, the young intelligence officer, as he sets up a team to go in to Sicily. You get a good flavor of, of all things, the Fulton Fish Market in New York, where Canidy works with fishmongers and mobsters to help his efforts. Even Lucky Luciano gets involved in the patriotic efforts from behind bars.

The second storyline is one you don't hear to much about - the German efforts to put saboteurs on to U.S. soil as part of Hitler's efforts to "bring the war home" to America. We actually follow four German intelligence men as a UBoat lands them in Florida and they split in to two teams to wreak havoc across the country. Even though the FBI is actively looking for these saboteurs, FDR is worried that the publicity splash that Hoover could be expected to make when (and if ) he caught the guys would only emphasize the German presence and create more panic rather than less. Because of this, FDR tasks the OSS with finding and quietly eliminating the German teams. I won't spoil this by describing how this happens, but it definitely doesn't end the way I expected.

These books, despite the subject, are light, easy reading. Griffin has always tried to make things more interesting by throwing in personal details about the (mostly) men he writes about - their friendships, backgrounds and, of course, their love lives. He even throws in some gratuitous sex every once in a while to keep you awake.

An interesting piece of side information -- if you like Griffin's works, like I do, there are two good signs in this book. First, a traditional cliff hanger at the end ensures that this isn't the last book of the series. Secondly, this books seems to be a training ground of sorts. For the first time, Griffin has a co-author - William E. Butterworth IV - his son. Good news for fans.

Next Man Up

Next Man Up by John Feinstein

Category: Sports Grade: B

When it comes to in depth writing about sports, there's nobody better than John Feinstein. You probably won't enjoy his books unless you're a sports fan which is kind of a shame. His books are typically about 30% hard core sports and the rest good stories about the people and the politics of sports. If you non-sports fans can get yourselves to skim the game details in the book, you'd probably enjoy the rest.

What makes Feinstein's books interesting is his approach. He typically spends a long period of time - usually a season - focusing on a particular sport, team or, occasionally, a rivalry. When he decided to write this book about the professional football, he started by asking a bunch of teams if they would give him total access to the team - not just sitting on the sidelines for practices and games, but sitting in on business and player personnel meetings. Nobody had ever done that before so, understandably, he didn't get a lot of interest from the teams. Fortunately, in one of those friend-of-a-friend circumstances, he was able to make contact with Steve Bisciotti, the Baltimore businessman who had just taken majority ownership of the Ravens from Hall-of-Fame owner Art Modell. Bisciotti like the idea and after securing agreement from the coach, Brian Billick (enthusiastically) and the general manager, Ossie Newsome (reluctantly), they had a deal.

Luckily for Feinstein, this turned out to be a narratively interesting, if ultimately unsuccessful, year (2004) for the Ravens. They had a new owner who was trying to figure out what it meant to be an owner. The Ravens had been successful over the past few years and thought they had a serious chance at making a run for the Superbowl. There were two off-the-field dramas during the year - the ultimately dismissed murder charge against Ray Lewis and a fairly bogus drug charge against Jamal Lewis. There were a slew of injuries to key players requiring the coaches and personnel people to do some fancy dancing with replacements. Finally, there were the ups and downs of the season itself. That year the Ravens were the last team eliminated from the playoffs.

As I said above, about 30% of the books is hard core with 3-5 pages devoted to the details of each game of the season. Even for a football fan, these are actually the least interesting parts of the book. What makes the book fun to read is the focus on the people and relationships. We get a lot of backstories about how the coaches and players got to where they are. You get to really know some of the marginal players who don't know from week-to-week whether they'll be playing football in front of 80,000 people or flipping burgers somewhere. You feel the agony of the players who get cut and, surprisingly, of the coaches who have to cut them. You get to see players near the end of their careers working to convince everybody around them that they can still play.

Did I convince any of you non-sportsfans? Didn't think so.

The Husband

The Husband by Dean Koontz

Category: Suspense Grade: A-

OK, analogy time. Eating and reading, to me, are a lot alike. There aren't too many things in the world better than good piece of filet, cooked perfectly. If you've been following these reviews, you know that, the last book I read, Parting the Waters, was that caliber to me.

However, no matter how much you appreciate sitting down to the best possible food, sometimes you just really, really feel like a Big Mac! Dean Koontz, for those of you who have never tried him, is one of those authors who has become the MacDonalds of the literary world. All of his books are fast, easy and satisfying, even if they make you feel a little guilty about enjoying them so much.

First, the book goes down really easy. Short sentences, unchallenging vocabulary, lots of dialog. When you look at a page of a Koontz book, you see mostly white space. The time to read this book is measured in hours, not days.

Second, the book, of course, has to have meat - not much, but enough so that you've got something to bite in to. In this case, the meat is an interesting plot. The book begins when a fairly ordinary gardner gets a call on his cell phone. The caller tells him - "We've got your wife. You can have her back for two million dollars." Given that the gardner has about $25K in the bank and, by the way, truly loves his wife, this becomes a great set up for the story.

Third, you've got to have the "supporting material" - the lettuce, tomatoes and cheese. Koontz gives us that by populating the book with interesting characters that push the story along, while making sure we never quite grasp which ones are important (the cheese) and which ones are just there for looks (the lettuce) - a scraggly surfer-dude sidekick, a father with weird ideas about parenting and, of course, an array of bad guys to choose from.

But, what makes a Big Mac a Big Mac is, of course, the secret sauce. Here is where Koontz is at his best giving us a fast paced plot with unpredictable twists and turns. Even though pieces of the plot might look like globs of unknown stuff, they constantly surprise the reader with how easy they go down.

The ending is a little weak - kind of like those last few cold french fries - but, by then, you've got a smile on your face and you're ready, after a brief diversion, to go on with the rest of your day.

The book was actually probably good enough to get an "A", but, like a Big Mac, it leaves you feeling a little guilty that you actually this crap, so......

Parting the Waters

Parting the Waters by Taylor branch

Category: Historical Biography Grade: A+

First, warning. Starting this book is a huge commitment. It's 900+ pages long and is the first of three volumes of equal length. I.e. you really, really need to like this kind of book to get started down this path. If you do, however, as you can tell from the grade, you'll be well rewarded. You need to be willing to commit to a lot of reading since, if you make it through this first book, I can't imagine that you, like me, won't want to read the entire series.

The sub-title of the book tells you pretty well what it's about -- America in the King Years 1954-63. The author, in the introduction, summarizes his approach. He doesn't just want to write a biography of Martin Luther King; he also wants to tell the stories of the times and, in particular in this volume, of the broader civil rights movement. His story-telling style leads him to call this book a "narrative historical biography". It's an apt description. Branch won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for this book.

Branch's choice of style makes this a very readable book even for those of you do don't read a lot of non-fiction. Based on contemporary accounts, many interviews and, in an interesting twist of irony, transcripts of FBI wire taps, the book is full of the day to day stories and conversations that made up this movement. Given that this volume covers the movement's early years it is almost exclusively about desegregation and voting rights. Most of the book dwells in fascinating detail on some of the most visible episodes in the decade long battle -- the Montgomery bus boycott, the battles with Bull Connors in Birmingham and the major freedom march on Washington, best known for King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

What makes the book so interesting, however, is that its far from just a recitation of the marches, sit-ins and demonstrations that are the visible symbols of this period. It really focuses on the people involved - in straightforward detail. King, is of course, the focus as he became the face and, especially the voice, of the civil rights movement. We see both the good and the bad about King - his leadership, his amazing oratorical skills, but also his insecurities and, late in the book, his personal weaknesses. We also get a great picture of some of the other movement leaders - Abernathy, Wilkins, Moses, Shuttleworth, etc. While there's a lot in the book about the backroom conflicts between the movement leaders, what comes out so strongly is the shear raw courage that was displayed by these men and the thousands of blacks who enrolled in the day-to-day actions that were as likely to be repelled by arrests, firehoses and dogs and they were to accomplish anything in the short run.

There's nothing like hindsight to bring moral clarity, but Branch doesn't really have to embellish much to paint the segregationist leaders in a bad light. From the major names of the South like Barnett, Wallace and, of course, Bull Connors, to the many small town sheriffs and officials, you watch in disbelief as these powerful people tried to stop black Americans from becoming participants in the American way. Not surprisingly, the most dramatic outcome of the actions of the racist leaders was to provide the dramatic pictures and soundtrack that made clear to the rest of the country where the "right" was.

Because of his historical approach, you also get pictures of some of the other major historical figures of the time -- Eisenhower's discomfort around blacks, the active roll played in the movement by Harry Belafonte, the mostly ineffectual leadership of the Kennedys and, most frighteningly, the level of control that J. Edgar Hoover exercised for decades at the FBI. Near the end of the book, we see glimpses of the very different atmosphere that will be covered in Branch's next book, Pillar of Fire. On the leadership side, this book ends just after the Kennedy assassination as Lyndon Johnson takes over with his surprisingly supportive policies. On the movement side, we see the splits in the black community growing with the arrival on the scene of Malcolm X and, of course, the war in Vietnam has begun to shape the national dialogue.

As is obvious by now, I really recommend this one to anybody who likes history or biography.

Rainbows End

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

Category: Sci-Fi Grade: A-

Not sure why I'm even reviewing this one for everybody. Don't get me wrong -- as you can tell by the grade, this was actually a really good book. The problem, for most readers, is that, even though the story takes place in the relatively near future (never specified, but meant to be 15 or 20 years down the road), this is hard-core science fiction. I guess I should have left this kind of book behind with my teens, but, when I get a really good one, my inherent geekiness comes out.

Vinge is a well-respected mathematician and computer scientist who spent years in academia before becoming a full time writer. He combines a great knowledge base, a bent for speculating about where we're headed and strong storytelling skills to produce a book that's fast paced and entertaining. He extrapolates the current world of teens constantly "IMing" each other to a future where most everybody is "wearing" -- using intelligent contact lenses and clothing to be constantly online and in communication with everybody else. A wearer can instantly call up virtual reality "overlays" so that, for example, the building he's looking at can take on any of the solid-as-reality appearances that have been designed by other wearers from all over the globe -- with a blink or a flick, a plain concrete bunker can become a skyscraper, a castle or an ivy-covered cottage.

The story revolves around some cooperating intelligence officers who suspect, based on analysis of a surprisingly successful ad for a honey-nougat candy, that someone is close to perfecting the ultimate WMD - YGBM technology. Nah, you'll never figure it out - it stands for "You Gotta Believe Me" - the ability, using mass media, to convince everybody to believe something. I.e. the ultimate extension of Madison Avenue technology and, perfected, the ultimate in mind control.

To attach the problem, the intelligence officers recruit the Rabbit! This brilliant operative in cyberspace who, most of time, is seen in virtual reality as a carrot-chomping rabbit, mounts a campaign to find and destroy the YGBM lab. He pulls in some strange and sometimes unwitting cohorts - most interestingly a group of "back-from-the-near-dead" senior citizens who have been rejuvenated by advancing medical technology.

See, I told you -- by now, I've probably lost everybody on the list with the possible exception of Dan and Jason.

Anyway, its a fun read. A little confusing with all the technology but, at heart, a good-old shoot-em-up spy novel.

A Year in the World

A Year in the World by Frances Mayes

Category: Travel Grade: D

Well, we have our first "lay-down" of the summer. Those of you followed the blog last year know that I won't make it to the end of a mediocre book. This one actually really surprises me since I liked her previous books, especially Under the Tuscan Sun. Mayes is a poet, with six books of poetry to her credit, and the writing in her new book is very, well, poetic.

Unfortunately, what made her prior books so interesting was that, while they were basically about Tuscany and/or traveling, she quickly made them about interesting people she found on her travels. In the first 50 pages or so of this new book, nobody, with the exception of a long dead poet, occupies more than a few sentences. After reading about the old streets and the beautiful views over and over, this book just lost my interest.

If you're interested in details about some of the places she visits during her year of traveling, you might go for this one. Otherwise, you're in for some serious boredom.

American Gospel

American Gospel by Jon Meacham

Category: U.S. History Grade: B

This book is a survey of the place of religion in the United States from the Founding pretty much through the present day. Meacham's premise is that "public religion" - a general belief in God - has been a critical part of the formation of our country since its beginning. He starts with the Founding Fathers, most importantly Jefferson, Adams and Franklin, and shows that while all were deists, none were devout participants in organized religion. Jefferson, in particular, pushed the notion of the separation of church and state. His premise, a little surprisingly, was not necessarily to protect the government and citizens from the intrusion of relgion. In spite of his generic beliefs, he believed that the survival of organized religions were important to the future of our country.

Meacham shows how personal religious beliefs of our leaders have affected how they respond to the issues they face. He focuses on some of the obvious recent presidents - Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson and Reagan. He also has some interesting things to say about the relationship between Billy Graham and Richard Nixon.

As you can tell, there's not a lot of enthusiasm behind this review. The book was good, but not great. If you've got a specific interest in either the Founding Fathers or the roll of religion in society, you'll enjoy it. If not, don't bother.

The Stolen Child

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

Category: Fantasy Grade: A-

Carolyn and I don't typically have the same taste in books. I'd say that maybe one of every ten books each of us reads gets referred to the other. Of those, maybe half actually get read and half of those actually have us both saying good things. Top that off with the fact that Carolyn almost never reads fantasy novels (the last was probably Bear's Infinity Concerto a decade ago) and you'll understand why I was a little skeptical when she raved about Donohue's debut novel and strongly suggested I read it. But, given that this was a book that sounded up my alley, I decided to give it a try.

For most of you (as suggested by a review of the book in Newsweek), the fact that its called a fantasy will be a showstopper and that'd really be a shame. I can understand the reluctance since, for the most part, fantasy novels are pigeon-holed -- they're about dragons or knights or quests or hobbits and have a real small audience. They're usually written for teens and you have to be a real fan to find the gems.

The Stolen Child is different - it's pretty much a fantasy for thinking adults. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't anywhere near the sex and violence that you usually find in teen-targeted fantasies, it's just a little more cerebral than most of the genre. The book is based on the old legend of "changelings". In the legend, children are stolen from their homes and replaced by a changeling who takes over the child's life. The stolen child then becomes part of the pack of changelings until decades or even centuries later, it becomes their turn to take over the life of yet another child.

This book starts with the theft/replacement of a six-year-old Henry Day. Henry has run away from home, giving the changeling tribe the opportunity to snatch the boy they've been observing. Armed with the knowledge that the tribe has gained, the eldest of the changelings leaves the tribe to, essentially, become Henry Day. Interesting setup and, we firmly expect to follow the trials of the changeling's effort to assume his new life -- to fill in the gaps in his knowledge of the family; to learn to modify his body to mimic a boy growing up; to forget his past as a changeling and, before that, as a real child. We get this and the story is fascinating, but that alone would have made this a readable, but probably ordinary book.

What makes Donohue's book special is that the "original" Henry Day, now a changeling called Aniday, stays with us throughout the book. The chapters alternate between the two characters and follows them through the next several decades as the real-world Henry Day grows to be a man with familiar but slightly "off" life and the changeling-world Aniday tries to master the ageless life of the changeling tribe in an increasingly hostile world.

To me, unless you're a true "sword-and-sorcery" fantasy fan, books like this, that mingle the familiar with the fantastic are the best kind of fantasy novels. Donohue's prose is terrific. Finally, unlike most of today's fantasy novels, this one does not seem to be a setup for a series of sequels. In fact, I was all set to give this book a solid B rating until the very-satisfying ending, pushed the grade up. This is definitely a fantasy for those of you don't usually read fantasy.