The Go-between by L. P. Hartley

From The Week of December 12, 2011

There are no wounds more damaging than those suffered as a child. For the young lack the armor possessed by the old, that particular toughening of skin and spirit that results from an accumulation of life's experiences. Adults can contextualize pain because they have endured it before and know it will pass, allowing peace to return at some future time. Children lack this perspective. To them, a wound may well last forever, or may well be the end of the world. They simply lack the knowledge to believe otherwise. Mr. Hartley has penned a wonderfully nostalgic novel and carried it to a moving conclusion, but it is providing this reminder, that we carry forward our childhood wounds, that his novel is gloriously and grievously potent.

Sparked by the rediscovery of a child's box of trinkets, The Go-between is an old man's ruminations on the most pivotal year of his life, 1900, when he was an innocent boy of 12. Colorless by nature, Leo Colston uses these mementos of his adolescence, chiefly a well-worn diary he once kept, to reflect upon his childhood, revealing in the process that Leo the younger was far different in temperament than Leo the elder. Where the latter is taciturn and grim, the former is spirited, energetic and care free, anticipating the life before him as much as he does the 20th century which holds so much promise. How did it come to pass that the same man could have possessed such different personalities at different stages of his life?

For an answer, Leo plunges us into the heat of the British summer of 1900 where, fresh off a difficult year at boarding school, young Leo accepts an invitation to summer with the Maudsleys, the well-to-do family of his schoolfriend, Marcus. While at Brandham Hall, a grand structure that once was the family home of the local viscount, Leo overcomes the shyness brought about by his relative poverty to capture brief moments of local glory by showcasing his voice at a concert and his glove in a cricket match. But as much as these pleasures sustain him, it is the devastating crush he has on Marian Maudsley, the elder sister of Marcus, that consumes all, turning else into pale remembrances. Leo will agree to do anything the lovely Marian wishes of him; serving as her little messenger boy -- carrying notes back and forth between herself and Ted burgess, a tenant of Brandham hall -- is nothing. But when it becomes clear that these notes are the keys to an inappropriate relationship between Marian and farmer Ted, Leo tries to withdraw. Marian is having none of it, though, and so Leo is forced to continue as the go-between, never imagining the doom his turn as Mercury might bring.

Originally published in 1953, The Go-between builds slowly to a wrenching conclusion. A classic of 20th century British literature, it is best remembered for its opening line: "the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." And yet, Mr. Hartley's novel is far more memorable as both a poignant and a devastating return to the memories and the wounds of childhood where formative experiences, for good or ill, shape us into the people we become. It is not too much to say that Leo is shattered by what befalls him at Brandham Hall in that fateful summer. He senses disaster's approach and even tries to avoid it. But falling prey to the passions of others, he cannot avoid onrushing events and is swallowed whole by them. His 12-year-old mind cannot grasp the complications of love and sex, of social classes and gender roles. He is an innocent, thoughtlessly taken up and discarded by fate and the Maudsleys, both of which expect him to understand and recover. But he does not and he cannot. For there are some introductions to life so harsh, so painful, that they cannot be overcome.

With its meandering plot, its preoccupation with symbols, its flirtation with the Zodiac and its exultation in nostalgia, The Go-between is slow to seize the reader's attention. But when the heat of the summer of 1900 finally proves too much for Leo and those for whom he has agreed to play postman, Mr. Hartley's piece explodes into an emotional, conflagrational conclusion that rends the heart. The innocence of youth, when lost, cannot be reclaimed. With a kind of gentle brutality, the author brings this lesson home. It will not be forgotten... (4/5 Stars)

Arrows of The Night by Richard Bonin

From The Week of December 12, 2011

What forces shape a nation's policies? Is it the will of its people bound together in common cause and cultural background? Is it the nation's media whose coverage of national issues helps mold the conversation? Perhaps it's the politicians who seek to satisfy all constituencies as a means of holding onto their preeminent power and influence. Most often, it is likely that all three primary forces have their role to play in the shaping of events, each balancing the other in a delicate dance of interlocking orbits the gestalt of which prevents a nation from skewing too far off course. But once in a great while, the dance is ignored, bypassed by a single force strong enough, clever enough, and manipulative enough to overpower the wisdom, the credulity and the common sense of a nation's leaders, all of whom should know better. Napoleon managed it through cunning and popular opinion. Hitler managed it through anger and manufactured outrage. Will the 21st century remember Ahmed Chalabi alongside these men of influence? Arrows of The Night suggests it well might.

Mr. Bonin, a producer for 60 Minutes, chronicles here the difficult, dramatic and destructive life of Ahmed Chalabi. The scion of a wealthy Iraqi family forced into exile by Saddam Hussein's rise to power in the 1960s, Ahmed weathered the isolation of boarding school in Britain, received his doctorate in mathematics in America, earned his financial stripes as a banker in Jordan and established himself as a man of intelligence and refined tastes all without a land to call home. Even more remarkable, he ascended to international success without the benefits of wealth his family had once enjoyed when, prior to Hussein's rise, they were allies of Iraq's royal family. Ahmed an exile, a self-made man, a success with a burning passion that no amount of personal achievement could sate. He wanted Saddam Hussein destroyed.

Setting out on a 20-year mission, Ahmed Chalabi rallied dissident Iraqis, seduced Neoconservatives, recruited US congressmen, and positioned himself for CIA assistance all in the singleminded desire to consign Saddam Hussein to history and replace him with a CIA-lead Iraq helmed by Ahmed Chalabi. Though his odyssey would experience numerous, ruinous ups and downs -- there appears to have been no bridge he was not willing to burn in the actualization of his goal, a fact which nearly found him barred from the halls of power --, he was ultimately successful in convincing the government of the United States to go to war in Iraq in 2003 and finish, there, what they failed to do 12 years earlier, to topple a tyrant from his throne and replace him with Ahmed Chalabi and the tenuous hope of democracy in the most unstable part of the world. He didn't sit in on the national security meetings; he didn't give the orders; he didn't have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks without which a war in Iraq would have seemed foolish. Nonetheless, he was there to capitalize on every opportunity, to push every button, to charm every powerbroker and to twist every arm in the realization of a dream 40 years in coming.

Arrows of The Night is a brilliant biography of an exceptional man and the flawed character that ultimately destroyed him. Drawing on interviews with Chalabi, along with conversations with politicians, powerbrokers and intelligence officers who dealt with him, Mr. Bonin paints a masterful and convincing portrait of a man so driven by a singular desire to restore his family's honor and position in Iraqi society that he is consumed by it. Ahmed Chalabi forgot need's most important lesson, that the stronger we want something, the more we are willing to compromise ourselves, our beliefs, our morals, even our friendships, in order to seize it. As humans, We are not strong enough, much less sufficiently self-aware, to indulge our needs without making sacrifices which is why we do not journey alone, why we have friends and allies to travel with us and keep us in line. Ahmed Chalabi was subsumed by his desire and there was no one there to stop him.

But as much as this work is a success as a biography, it is also a useful and potent glimpse into the workings of government and how it too is compromised by its wants. From the Neocons who believed so powerfully in their dogmas that they were willing to squander American lives and treasure to prove their eeeeerighteousness to the politicians who bring about so much destruction for the want to do half-hearted good, the government of the United States, here, is revealed to be a gigantic web of influence pedaling wherein each player does his level best to advance his own agenda by trading favors and capitalizing on alliances. To whatever extent this grim tapestry of government is authentic, it is utterly disturbing in its complete absence of decency and reason. Policy must be shaped by facts, not by factions and their dogmas. Allow oneself to be guided by the latter and he will quickly find himself mired in a calamitous war from which there is no fiscal recovery.

As disturbing as it is riveting. An excellent read. (4/5 Stars)

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

From The Week of December 12, 2011

Though their particulars very, every religion, the acknowledgement of and adherence to the divine, is based on a set of sacred rules that must be honored by its followers. For these rules are not only mechanisms by which a faith's clergy maintain power and influence, they are the means by which the followers of a given faith distinguish themselves from nonbelievers, from the less righteous. Take these rituals away and there's no means for any of the faithful to measure their adherence, to determine their level of godliness. They must be followed, obeyed, or the divine will withdraw his love.

But of course, some of these rules reveal themselves, in the fullness of time, to be rather silly. After all, most of our world's faiths laid down their laws in the dark and chaotic times prior to the rise of science and the rule of law which both invest the individual with secular logic and secular rights, neither of which play well with the amorphous whims of the insubstantial divine. So which laws should be obeyed and which ignored? Which did the divine intend to be unbreakable and which did he intend to be flexible? In this modern world, so shaped by scientific thought, these are the quandaries believers are left with. And fortunately, they have Mr. Jacobs, a fabulous eccentric, to turn to.

A liberal-minded New Yorker and writer for Esquire, Mr. Jacobs, Jewish by family history, sets out in The Year of Living Biblically to do precisely that, live for 365 days in full compliance with the laws of the Bible. Though this task soon proves to be impossible -- the good book is far too packed with arcane and conflicting laws to be obeyed 100 percent of the time --, the author, undaunted, endeavors to adhere to the many, many commandments as best he can. He stops shaving his face, blows a trumpet on the first day of every month, refuses to touch his unclean wife for seven days after her period, gives away ten percent of his income, and endows himself with the generosity of spirit and disposition his faith asks of him.

But though he is mostly successful in his efforts to follow the most obvious laws, there are many he doesn't know how to interpret. Was an eye for an eye literal or figurative? Was adultery actually adultery, or something else? Was thou shalt not kill actually intended as a constriction on killing? These and many other questions of context and metaphor, of interpretation and translation complicate Mr. Jacobs' journey, but never do they sway him from achieving his ultimate goal, understanding the book, its lessons and the impact it has on shaping the hearts and minds of its countless believers.

The Year of Living Biblically can be read in two ways, as a thoughtful and fruitful exploration of the bible and the lessons it has to offer, or as a devastating expose of the dogmas of the past which, to this day, are followed despite having been revealed as baseless. Though Mr. Jacobs himself clearly meant his investigation to take the path of the former -- he is ceaselessly earnest in his desire to explore the Bible with an honest heart and an open mind --, the doctrinal nonsense he unearths certainly encourages the reader into the arms of the latter view. So many of these rules have been banished, like embarrassing uncles at the family reunion, to the proverbial shed not because God has stopped caring about them but because they are either too arcane to be interpreted properly, or their requirements are too humiliating for their adherents to fulfil.

Not only must rules always be obeyed, all rules must always be obeyed. Otherwise, they should not be rules. There's plenty of evidence from secular society to convince us of the chaos of what results when rules are only enforced by some people some of the time. If we don't enforce all the rules all the time, only fools will follow them. In society, this begets lawlessness. In religion, this kills faith. For the whole enterprise hinges on the willingness of the divine to enforce his commandments. That Mr. Jacobs is able to run this experiment at all, and that it is so impossible to execute tells us all we need to know about the impotence of the divine.

This is a wonderful read, as entertaining for believers and secularists alike. For Mr. Jacobs has imbued his project with the twin spirits of humor and self-discovery which have rarely steered a writer wrong. Witty, fascinating, engaging and disturbing all... And certainly provides plenty of biblical trivia for dinner parties. (4/5 Stars)

Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch

From The Week of December 05, 2011

Though we christen it with a name and imbue it with godlike powers to manipulate events, Fate is nothing more than a human construct to explain the improbable and to soften up, for us, a deeper, more difficult truth. Life can turn on the smallest moments. The flight we didn't catch, the meeting we couldn't make, the promises we failed to keep... All of life's hiccups have the potential power to deprive us of vital opportunities while, perhaps, throwing up others in their place. After all, as much as we may disappoint some people with our failings, our mistakes may cause us to encounter lifelong loves who have the power to make us grateful for our foibles. Though one senses that Ms. Lynch is being far too modest when she credits this particular chaos for the good that has come to her, downplaying the depth of her own talent and determination, she has assembled some startling examples of just how much a life can change when one is least expecting it.

Born to affectionate parents of modest means, Jane Lynch spent much of her formative years firmly ensconced in the white-bred traditionalism of the American midwest which, for a child of the 70s, endowed with a theatrical spirit, was a poor match. She was a dreamer, fixed on fame and fortune, living in a world that insisted its youth foreswear the risks of Hollywood stardom for the safety of a quiet, unremarkable life. Slaving away in a department store simply was not going to cut it. Her exclusion from this community was only enhanced when, as a teenager, she realized she was gay, a secret she'd feel forced to conceal for years to come until stints performing in New York, Chicago and L.A. imbued her with the confidence to be herself.

Finding herself less than a match for society's standards of beauty, success was fleeting for Ms. Lynch early on. Her earliest victories were limited to appearances in commercials and on the small-time comedy stage. But when one such commercial hurled her into the orbit of Christopher Guest, an award-winning director of feature films, her fortunes dramatically shifted. Suddenly, she was in a movie, a serious actor who would go onto feature in numerous big-screen comedies before finding ultimate and lasting success on Glee, a hit launched in 2009 with Ms. Lynch as the show's sharp-tongued villain. Along her journey, she acquires friends, allies, pets and a wife, all while seemingly leaving little by way of acrimony in her wake. This is a worthy achievement for anyone, let alone one who has reached for and grasped the stars.

Though Ms. Lynch keeps her readers at arms length, Happy Accidents is a fun romp through the world of a struggling performer, the soul cursed with many things to say and with no one to listen. She communicates with clarity the ups and downs of her profession, thrilling in its victories without ignoring the powerful loneliness of its failures. She leaves the reader cheering her on when she finally earns lasting success. But despite Ms. Lynch's winning charm, we are never truly allowed inside her world, or her head. The author is frank about her struggles with alcohol sparked by hiding herself in the Closet; she is open about her personal foibles which have lead her to push people away; she even includes a few anecdotes that must have been difficult for her to reveal to perfect strangers and perhaps she considers this enough sharing. But there is always a reserve, a protective veneer, a smile forced to hide what lies beneath, that is tangible throughout and prevents the reader from fully embracing the subject.

It must be painfully difficult for an intensely private person to confess her life's secrets, but these are why autobiographies are written, so that their writers can work through their own history and so that their readers can feel as though they understand what lies behind the public masks of people they will probably never meet. To the extent that Ms. Lynch conveys her warmth, her charm and her lovable flaws, she is, here, eminently successful. But to the extent that she allows us to know her, to understand her,she leaves something to be desired. On balance, a worthwhile read that left me wanting good to come to a kind-hearted person who worked hard for her achievements. (3/5 Stars)

A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr

From The Week of December 05, 2011

Every human who has lived since evolution bestowed self-awareness upon his species has, from time-to-time, considered the many whys of his existence. Why am I alive? Why am I me? Why do I do what I do? Though answers to these questions have proven to be too individualized to be generally applied to the human race, this has not dissuaded countless generations from building narratives, stories, even mythologies, in an attempt to bring clarity to life's most eternal quandaries. For if we cannot understand our motivations or our aims, then how can we possibly live a coherent, healthy life?

While many of us have considered these questions, only a relative few have devoted their lives to solving them. Their explanations may be confusing, their methods may be scattered, and their motivations may be grandiose, but there can be no doubt that, in attempting to grapple with the foundations of what it means to be alive, they have advanced our knowledge and brought us closer to understanding ourselves. A Most Dangerous Method is a biography of three such figures. Neither their names, nor their contributions, will soon be forgotten.

Mr. Kerr, a clinical psychologist and historian, here, reconstructs the lives and the theories that elevated Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung from clinical obscurity into the pantheon of cultural immortality. Examiners of the human mind, this famous pair, Austrian and Swiss, Jewish and Christian, came together in the early years of the 20th century to create and codify Psychoanalysis, a semi-systematic attempt to treat mental illness by sifting through the human subconscious for clues to the inner conflicts plaguing the afflicted. A patient being subjected to Psychoanalysis would be told to confess their dreams, fears and fantasies which would be used to build a profile of the person's mental state. Unresolved issues could then be teased out by the clinician, allowing the patient to resolve his issues by confronting the underlying cause of his condition.

Though their insights undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of the human mind, and though their efforts unquestionably helped the many suffering souls they treated, their science was, argues Mr. Kerr, shaky at best. When not enveloped by their own psycho-dramas, Freud and Jung acted more like prophets of a sacred faith than spearheads of a new, scientific endeavor. The tactics they deployed against those who disagreed with them were machiavellian and vengeful, revealing a predisposition for self-importance that no amount of dream journals could cure. More over, though they were successful in helping their patients come to grips with a wide range of abuse and neglect, their efforts to rationalize and explicate the traps of the human subconscious fell back on mythology more than method, making their conclusions vulnerable to errors of logic and supposition.

Into this revolution steps the third and here-to-for unremarkable figure of Sabina Spielrein. Youthful and intelligent, the Russian immigrant to western Europe and western thought first surfaces when she is treated by Carl Jung for histrionics. As a byproduct of her treatment, a profound, and sometimes sexual, attachment is formed between doctor and patient that would, in some form or another, last for the remainder of their lives. Jung not only attracted Spielrein's love, he seems to have encouraged her study of psychology. Though Spielrein would go on to earn a doctorate, becoming an eager pupil of masters Freud and Jung, and though she had insights that might have received noteworthy praise at any other time, Spielrein, like other adherents of the faith of Psychoanalysis, was caught up in the intellectual feud between Freud and Jung that, having once erupted, never healed. For as much as they could claim to reveal the infirmities of others, they could not detect or treat their own.

Though Mr. Kerr's biography of the triad who gave birth to Psychoanalysis succeeds in shining worthwhile light on the complex personalities of Freud and Jung, and though it does posthumous justice to the wronged Sabina Spielrein, a woman history unfairly forgot, A Most Dangerous Method is, otherwise, an overly meticulous reconstruction of the early history of Psychoanalysis. Perhaps for those already learned in the concepts championed by Freud and Jung, Mr. Kerr's deconstructions of the interplay between our three protagonists, along with his analysis of their insights, reads as an intelligent and incisive critique. Not so for this layman who found himself repeatedly plunged into the deep end of Psychoanalysis and its many preconceptions. Rather than educate the reader on the nature of these ideas, Mr. Kerr presumes a level of proficiency that most of his audience lacks, leading to an unnecessarily opaque and technical 600-page adventure through what is clearly an important topic.

For all this, Mr. Kerr is a talented biographer. Wherever he might have erred in the theories of the piece, he steps right when portraying the three flawed geniuses who occupy the heart of this story. Spielrein's preoccupation with an inner demon tormenting her life, Jung's obsession with mythology and Freud's insistence on being the high priest of his own science are vividly explained and backed up by correspondence exchanged between all three principals. Their triumphs and their failures are understood through the lens of their own biases which they, in spite of being armed with keen minds and cutting-edge theories, could never outrun.

As a biography, wonderful and gripping work. As an explicator of Psychoanalysis and its place in modern psychology, it leaves much to be desired. All in all, a powerful if flawed read. (3/5 Stars)

Sea Of Poppies: The Ibis Trilogy 01 by Amitav Ghosh

From The Week of November 28, 2011

Though life is far from fair, with some among us blessed at birth with advantages of privilege and talent others are not, there can be no doubt that the average human has far more access to the halls of power than he did at any other time in the history of our species. Yes, many formidable barriers remain, barriers that must eventually be destroyed, but these impediments are, for the most part, surmountable and certainly bear few similarities to the soul-crushing nature of the rigid hierarchies that characterized societies only a century ago. Where we largely have access to the ladder of social mobility which allows us to dream of climbing to a better tomorrow, for ourselves and our children, our predecessors were often locked, by dint of birth and race, into roles they could not escape until death. They could not rise to lead their nations, or even to hold some sway over them. That was not within their cast. It is into this world of fixed outcomes and ceaseless toil that Mr. Ghosh plunges us. It is a world he has drawn exquisitely well.

The year is 1838 and India is firmly under the sway of the British Empire. English merchants and the sea-captains in their hire, command, in the name of their monarch, the fidelity of half the world. Like the ancient Romans from whom they are in part descended, their noteworthy citizens have the power to elevate or dash the fortunes of their colonial subjects enchained to them by imperial bands that will not be broken for at least a century. But though the British hold more sway over the world than any other single, contemporary power, their empire is not without problems. For while they can force vast nations like India and China to heel, they cannot always compel them to trade.

Though this is less of a problem with the thoroughly suborned India, whose leading citizens have been mostly co-opted by British coin, China remains a persistent thorn in the side of the English. Dismissed as inferior upstarts by the self-sufficient Chinese, mercantile Britain finds itself at a loss. For while they desire all the tea and silk China has to offer, they have nothing to offer China in turn, a sobering and humiliating reality which compels an increasingly desperate Britania to force upon the Chinese people large quantities of Indian opium in hopes of addicting them. If they are successful in transforming China into a nation of addicts, they will have created for themselves a market for a good that they have in abundance, a good that can complete the circuit of trade that threatened to deprive them of their cherished oriental delights.

Into this despicable business sails the Ibis, a schooner of American construction which comes to India for a refit at the lowest ebb of the opium trade. Its British owner, Mr. Burnham, has decided to recommission the ship for use as a ferry for indentured workers, the first shipment of which he soon dispatches to the nearby island of Mauritius. As the ship braves the seas, on route to its destination, its crew and its passengers are confronted with all manner of plights, both internal and external, which have the power to snatch away their meager lives. This is the Ibis. This is the Sea of Poppies.

It is difficult to imagine a novel being imbued with greater elegance of language and epicness of plot than Mr. Ghosh's sprawling and majisterial Sea of Poppies. Constructed around four well-drawn, primary characters, an American sailor, an indentured Indian woman, a disgraced rajah and a runaway house girl, the author manages to both flesh out a dozen secondary characters and inject each of them with grace and menace. More over, he accomplishes this while firmly establishing the novel's greatest virtue, the immersive world of 19th century India which, here, is rendered in shockingly glorious detail. The research necessary to properly enliven such a rich and exotic environment boggles the mind. This is, for a literary epicure, a rare delicacy.

For all its vividness, however, Sea of Poppies is nearly stillborn. Mr. Ghosh risks losing the patience of his readers by asking them to bear with him as he devotes more than half of his 550 pages to establishing his leading lights, both their pains and their personalities. And while this meandering meticulousness is wonderfully paid off at the novel's conclusion, arriving there is somewhat arduous.

Nonetheless, Mr. Ghosh's novel is a delight to the senses such as comes along once in a great while. It, like the opium that saturates it, must be savored when smoked. For who knows when next such a quality product will come. (4/5 Stars)

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

From The Week of November 28, 2011

Freedom is, for humans, a slippery slope. We needn't look beyond the history of government to furnish ourselves with proof of this truth. What began as a means (democracy) of cohering individuals into a society that shared power among its constituents (a republic), instead of concentrating it in the hands of a despot (a monarchy), has morphed, over the centuries, into an institution whose elected leaders, in the name of ensuring the safety of their citizens, roll back individual freedoms until the state occupies every aspect of civilian life. Neither government, nor its agents, are evil; there are many honorable men and women who are attracted by public service. No, statism arises out of good intentions because we have not incentivized government to shed unnecessary power. We have allowed it, instead, to follow the inevitable path of all unchecked institutions, to take upon itself all the influence it can muster. Ms. Beukes has, here, slid down to the bottom of this slippery slope in an attempt to imagine the endgame of this dangerous accretion. What her imagination finds down there has the power to disturb.

The year is 2018 and South Africa, after enjoying a brief spell as a post-Apartheid, racially integrated democracy, has lapsed into a kind of corporate-infused security state in which the safety of the people has taken on paramount importance. In the name of battling terrorism in all its forms, from anarchism to fundamentalism, the government has deployed any number of technologies (a taser delivered via text messaging) and biologicals (modified viruses that force the afflicted to seek treatment at state-run health facilities) against its own citizens. Yes, innocents will be caught up in the wash, but isn't that a fair price to pay for ensuring the safety of the majority?

Into this world of corporate statism, in which advertising is ubiquitous and career success depends upon branding and loyalty, wade a handful of loosely affiliated protagonists who each, in their own way, resist the status quo while trying to advance in a hostile world. The aspiring photographer who agrees to be a corporate guinea pig for their genetic experiments, the corporate IT professional who hacks for her subversive friends, the young revolutionary trying to make the docile public sit up and take notice of the corruption around them, and the adrift slacker who refuses to listen... Driven by their hopes and dreams, they try to succeed, to fulfil themselves, in a world too distracted by its vices and its devices to realize that their freedoms are slipping away. It's little wonder then that life in this South Africa is an uphill climb towards anything like contentment.

Though Moxyland is, in the main, too impressed with itself, and though it manages, at times, to drag even though it is a brisk 300 pages, Ms. Beukes' tale of corporate power in the age of totalitarianism lays claim to one of the best endings to a Sci-Fi novel in some time. Narratively driven by four main characters, each of whom tell their stories in the first person, Moxyland is thematically in stride with the works of William Gibson and George Orwell, each of whom wrote masterfully about the dangers of corporations and governments respectively. Ms. Beukes has dusted off their 20th century concerns, updated them with some 21st century worries about the powers and distractions of social media, added a healthy splash of Clockwork Orange-style jargon and cooked up a work of quality science fiction. Yes, some of the concepts are a bit farfetched for 2018, and her attempts to create a new lingo fall somewhat flat, but I can forgive these sins when the author brings her story to such a powerful and appropriately merciless conclusion.

Alarmist? Yes. Fretful? Certainly. But Ms. Beukes knew, all along, where she was taking her readers. They will not be disappointed... (3/5 Stars)

Comrade J by Pete Early

From The Week of November 28, 2011

Though we all, from time to time, find ourselves in disagreement with our nations, their laws, their customs, and their relationships with foreign powers, we still love the lands into which we were born. After all, with every formative moment we spent within their borders, they wove us into their societal tapestries, ensuring that we would be part of them, that we would know them in ways that we could never belong anywhere else. Our nations brand us as surely as we brand them, in shared experience and outlook and it is this mutual connection that fosters patriotism.

But of course, as much as it is valuable for a nation to have an identity, and as nourishing as it is for us to have a nation to belong to, nations are nothing more than mental constructs, agreements on paper that draw invisible lines on maps, not on land. The Earth did not decree that there should be 200-odd countries divvying up its landmass. We chose, and in many cases forced, such divisions. And as much as these divisions give our lives structure, they also bring us conflict. For national identity, in the end, fosters competition which in turn breeds jealousy, which engenders rivalry, which cries out for war. Mr. Early's tale may be a fascinating recount of post-Soviet conflict between the New Russia and the distracted United States, but ultimately it demonstrates the powerful divisiveness of nation states in a nuclear world.

Until the day, in 1993, when Boris Yeltsin ordered the Russian army to fire upon its own people as a means of holding onto power, Sergei Tretyakov was unwaveringly loyal to his motherland. Intelligent, ambitious and hard-working, he maneuvered his way into the powerful arms of the KGB, absorbed its training and enthusiastically set about implementing its harsh wishes. As a respected member of its directorate of foreign affairs, Tretyakov adopted numerous, diplomatic guises, first in Canada and then in the United States, as a means of recruiting spies, purchasing national intelligence, and furthering the aims of Soviet Russia. In this, he was, for more than a decade, prolifically successful, sending hundreds of stolen cables, schemes and political intelligence back to his masters in Moscow.

But after he saw the Russian tanks firing on the symbols of Russian government, Tretyakov, then a colonel in the KGB, could no longer ignore the injurious but obvious truth that he was working at the behest of a political class comprised of liars, thieves and opportunists who were not only unworthy of the risks he had taken in their name, they were unworthy of the country for which they purported to act. From that day forth, Sergei Tretyakov was a man searching for a newer, better home. Seven years later, as New York station chief for the SVR, the foreign-affairs successor to the directorate under the KGB, he defected to the United States, taking with him both a wealth of intelligence about Russia and a message for his soon-to-be fellow Americans. The new Russia may well be democratic in name, it may well have softened its stances and disarmed some of its nukes, but it is, in no way, a friend to America. According to Tretyakov, the Cold War is still alive.

For all of its flaws, Comrade J is a compelling read. Mr. Early, a journalist and author, was strongly encouraged by his contacts in the American intelligence community to hear out Sergei Tretyakov who, despite the danger inherent in coming forward, was eager to have his story told. And it's easy to see why. For beyond the salacious scandals, the stolen secrets, the plots and counter plots one might expect from a biography of a spy's life, Tretyakov is a representation of Russia, both its Soviet-era servitude and its post-Soviet opportunism. He, like many of his fellows, could adhere to Communism's strictures as long as he felt the system was fair and logical, as long as he felt he was working for people who had their country's best interests at heart. But when that was revealed to be little more than a lie, he carved out the best deal he could for himself and his family, just like Russia.

Unfortunately, though, so little of Tretyakov's story is verifiable that the reader is left wondering how much of his tale is actually true. Yes, Mr. Early has clearly gone to great lengths to confirm what he could, and the fact that American intelligence agencies were so eager to welcome Tretyakov, tells us that the man is credible, but there's simply no way of knowing how many of these events were twisted, distorted, or even made up. In light of this, it is impossible to know if Tretyakov's warning about the new Russia should be taken seriously.

Dancing In The Glory Of Monsters by Jason K. Stearns

From The Week of November 28, 2011

While we can all agree that war is a hellish and barbaric business that has few peers as measured by sheer destructive power, there is, at least, an opportunity for some good to come of it. The conclusion of World War II begot the Martial Plan which quite literally paved the roads for a united Europe. Stretching farther back into history, the colonial Americans earning their independence from the British in their revolutionary war laid the philosophical and political foundation for a nation that would become the most dominant force here-to-for witnessed by human civilization. However, as often as these bloody and costly conflicts might lead to a brighter tomorrow, they can just as easily leave behind festering wounds in the bodies and the minds of the belligerents who prosecute them, wounds that must be answered and then answered in turn in what swiftly becomes a loop of mutual annihilation. Though it is perhaps too early to decide which camp the Great War of Africa belongs to, the early returns, based on the observations of Mr. Stearns, favor the devastation of the latter over the hope of the former.

For the 30 years following the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected president of an independent Congo, this enormous and geographically diverse country in Africa was ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko, a murderous and self-indulgent tyrant who systematically plundered his nations resources, oversaw the decay of the national infrastructure, violently suppressed any form of opposition by dividing and conquering his enemies, and sold out what was left to foreign interests that looked the other way while he languished at the head of his own private fiefdom. It will come as no surprise then to learn that when the Mobutu government did nothing to prevent his country from sheltering the instigators and the implementors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, his house of cards finally collapsed when the vengeful Rwandans poured into his country and backed his enemy, Laurent Kabila, all the way to Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, where he seized power in the name of a new Congo.

Any hope, however, that the Kabila government might open the doors to the cleansing winds of democracy for the Congo was short-lived. Having been profoundly and irreversibly shaped by his decades in exile, Kabila demonstrated a shocking inability to govern and an unwillingness to allow anyone else to do it for him. This destructive combination crippled the new Congo and, in 2001, Kabila was assassinated, to be replaced by his only marginally more successful son. Ultimately, the crisis which grew out of the attempt to transform the Congo into a democratic state drew in eight African nations and authored countless rebel groups which ground out a five-year conflict from 1998 to 2003 that claimed the lives of upwards of seven million souls, many of whom were extinguished by disease and starvation, the handmaidens of war. This is one reporter's reconstruction of those terrifying years and the uneasy peace which has followed them to the present day.

Mr. Stearns, a Yale-educated writer and reporter, has, here, chillingly captured the costliest conflict since World War II. Marked by the chaos of shifting alliances and complicated rivalries, the author condenses a war that almost defies narrative into a dense but coherent series of events so tragic that they cause Mr. Stearns himself to wonder if the Congo is simply cursed, a country blessed with natural resources that must, nonetheless endure the corrosive caress of greed and rapaciousness. Yes, the work, at times, requires one to pause and consult Wikipedia as a means of digesting so many bloody events, but the portrait the author paints, of numerous, barely democratic governments clashing over both spilled blood and the riches of the Congo, is exquisite. He has clearly depicted the multitude of selfish ends that drove the instigators of this conflict and their failings which prevent it from being brought to anything like a fair and democratic conclusion.

Rarely has the Paradox of Plenty been more devastatingly exemplified. At times overwhelming, but otherwise a powerful reconstruction of what must surely be one of the most chaotic and despotic wars of recent memory. (4/5 Stars)

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie

From The Week of November 21, 2011

Of the many sins humanity has visited upon the world, war is surely the most grievous. For the benefit of the privileged, their pride and or their gain, the many are asked to sacrifice their liberty, their luxuries and their lives in order to execute unimaginably murderous engagements with the enemy. Perhaps, if the bloodshed could be confined to the battlefields, war could be granted some minimal respect as a means for conflict resolution. Invariably, though, its corrosiveness spills over onto perfectly innocent bystanders whose families and livelihoods are destroyed by the ambitions of men and women who do not know them and would not care about them even if they did. How often are these costly campaigns actually worthwhile? Is there truly no other way to mend what is broken? Or is humanity so brutal, so pig-headed, that nothing short of mass-violence can satisfy the honor and the dignity of the ruling class? With savage grace and cynical humor, Mr. Abercrombie asks these questions and more in the darkly entertaining The Heroes. The answers he finds amidst the blood and the corpses leave little room for a notion as silly as hope.

In a world of winter and stone, of greedy nobles and ruthless sorcerers, the armies of two kingdoms have come together, on here-to-for unwanted ground, to act out the violent will of kings. From the south comes the rapacious Union, a coalescence of fractious states forged into a unified whole by the ancient and whimsical Bayaz, first of the Magi. Accountable only to destiny, Bayaz long ago manipulated the Union into being as both a beacon of civilization and a bulwark against the cannibalistic forces gathering in the deserts beyond the Union's southern reaches. From the north come the Northmen, an alliance of warlike tribes bound by blood, by marriage, and by the black-hearted competence of their chieftain. Individualistic to a fault, the Northmen are disinclined to suborn themselves to the softness and the regimented order of the Union, preferring the familiar chaos of the clan-like lives they have always known.

Having recently suffered political and economic setbacks elsewhere, the Union is eager for victory and conquest against what it considers to be an easy, northern foe. Having recently enjoyed a resurgence in strength and focus under their pitiless leader, Black Dow, the Northmen are eager to test themselves against the Union in hopes of cementing their sovereignty and satisfying their pride. The result is a gruesome and costly three-day engagement in which thousands of Union soldiers and northern clansmen fight and die in what is bound to be remembered as a pointless and bloody skirmish for land neither side cares about. On this do the fortunes of great men rise and fall. On this are the modest hopes and dreams of commonfolk tested and dashed. This is war...

The Heroes will only serve to enhance Mr. Abercrombie's well-earned reputation for bloody nihilism. For this is nothing short of a black-humored, 550-page treatise on the ugliness and pointlessness of war. From pride-blinded rulers to their ambition-soaked generals, from cynical mercenaries to patriotic soldiers, the author creates a gallery of war's instigators and its adherents, its promoters and its customers, in an effort to reveal it for what it is; a murderous enterprise that harm's the many for the benefit of the few. In making this point, Mr. Abercrombie is far from militant. He neither laments nor agitates against this state of affairs. Rather, he begins with the basic premise that authoritarian societies are inherently violent, that their violence is fed by the capacity for violence that lives within man's soul, and that there is nothing for it but to laugh at its absurdities, cringe at its costs and get the fuck out of the way of its ravenous path. For if we know anything about the nature of war, it is merciless.

No, Mr. Abercrombie does not give birth to any legendary characters, nor does he spin any labyrinthine plots. Though these are skills he has summoned in the past, they are not evident in The Heroes. No, here, Mr. Abercrombie is a critic of the soul of man and of the societal constructs man creates. And in this, he is wonderfully witty and masterfully insightful. Futility has rarely had a more expressive champion. (4/5 Stars)

Hotel Heaven by Matthew Brace

From The Week of November 21, 2011

Though human personalities are often too individualized to be easily and accurately captured by generalizations, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that luxury is an indulgence that polarizes humans. Epicures, those who derive pleasure from delighting their senses, embrace luxury. After all, life is not only short, it is often punctuated by episodes of pain or boredom. Immersing oneself in aesthetic pleasures is one sure way of avoiding, or softening, life's uglier moments. Stoics, meanwhile, while not principally opposed to luxury, resist extravagance on the grounds that it is not only excessive but indulgent. The Good Life does not arise from intemperance; it flows from the satisfaction gleaned from hard work done well. Perhaps neither camp has the right of it. Maybe the answer lies somewhere in-between. If so, it will elude Mr. Brace for in this, his paean to life's luxuries, he leaves little doubt of which side of the question he favors.

From the historic to the opulent, from the scandalous to the futuristic, Hotel Heaven is a whirlwind tour of Earth's grandest hotels. After confessing an addiction to these palaces of luxury,Mr. Brace, a journalist and travel writer, eagerly recounts his many stays in the world's various five-star accommodations, reconstructing their grandeur with respect bordering on awe. But then it does not take the reader long to see why the author is so enamored with his pleasure palaces. For if he is not enjoying patronizing a middle-eastern hotel fit for a sheikh, he's soaking up the nostalgia of the Chelsea, the culture of the Savoy, or the fiery delights of Heaven in Fiji. There is no destination too outlandish, no delight too exquisite, no experience too seductive for this chronicler of luxury.

On the surface, Hotel Heaven is a piece of cultural fluff, an indulgent journey through exotic locales most of its readers will never see. In this, it is a successful work; for Mr. Brace has deployed the written word to wonderful advantage, conjuring up images of places of such sensory beauty that it makes the surroundings of ones ordinary life seem gray and drab by comparison. However, Mr. Brace, to his credit, does reach for something deeper than superficial hedonism. In reconstructing the history of the modern five-star hotel, he has introduced his readers to a story about innovation. After all, the desire of powerful and intelligent people to build, for their customers, shrines to elegance and pleasure have driven them to seek an efficiency of service, a thoroughness of detail, and a uniqueness of experience that their patrons will remember for always. This, along with the history lesson Mr. Brace conducts on each of his memorable hotels leaves the reader as enticed as he is educated.

Hotel Heaven does throw up some uncomfortable moments. There can be no doubt that, behind the facade of each of these magnificent locales, lie tales of exploited workers and polluted land. What's more, there is something eminently distasteful about the lavishness Mr. Brace celebrates here. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Just because some have it and others don't doesn't automatically mean that the haves greedily took the fair shares that belonged to the have-nots. Wealth can be expanded, grown. However, Hotel Heaven does serve to remind us that there is an unimaginable gulf of privilege that exists between the rich and the poor. And while this may not be the fault of any one person involved in this tale, it does prompt one to wonder at what gruelling tasks others have to perform in order to make perfect the experiences of the insanely well-off.

A fun read. For epicures, an inspiration to visit some of these legendary locales. For stoics, some sobering food for thought about the nature of indulgence. Regardless of your affiliation, entertaining... (3/5 Stars)

Keynes Hayek by Nicholas Wapshott

From The Week of November 21, 2011

Our world is defined by economics. Its theories are the engines that empower production, endow us with wealth, and open the riverways of international trade. It has given us the free market -- the cornerstone of commercial enterprise -- and the welfare state -- a safety net to protect the least fortunate from the worst of life's cruelties. No one reading this has not been shaped by its ideas, or benefited from the structure it has granted to the nations that shelter them. But as much as the practice of economics have unleashed the productive powers of humanity, it has also wrought unimaginable harm. For it has not only set into motion the business cycle, the vagaries of which have the power to crush the dreams of entrepreneurs and hard-workers everywhere, it has allowed governments the world over to seize upon its ideas as justification for all manner of exploitation.

If our world is defined by economics, then economics is defined by its theorists. And no two men did more to shape 20th century economic thought than John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek. This is their battle.

By most measures, J. M. Keynes was the most consequential economist of the 20th century. An Englishman of immense charm and intellect, he created the field of macroeconomics, that sub-discipline of economics which attempts to grapple with a nation's economy as a whole instead of its countless constituent parts. An advisor to governments and an advocate for the impoverished, Keynes advocated a kind of benevolent interventionism in the national economy never before attempted on such a broad and systematic scale. He believed that governments could mitigate economic upheaval, and its devastating consequences for the poor, by stimulating their economies during downturns, acts of boldness and confidence that would shorten the troughs of the business cycle and allow their economies to maintain full employment. His ideas lead to a revolution in economic thought that, in the halls of power, went unchallenged for 40 years until the stagflation of the 1970s which Keynesian economics was helpless to combat.

In virtually every way, F. A. Hayek was Keynes' polar opposite. Austrian by birth, Hayek staunchly argued that government should not intervene in its national economy. Limited by his poor grasp of English and his tendency to fall back on labyrinthine mathematical constructs to justify his positions, he believed that any good the government did by intervening to mitigate the pain of an economic downturn was more than offset by the risks it took in doing so. For not only do governments lack sufficient knowledge to properly guide their economies, they might well be encouraged by their occasional successes to widen their intervention, creating slippery-slope scenarios in which all civil power is eventually and inevitably grasped by the state. In other words, authoritarianism... Given that Hayek did much of his writing in the aftermath of two epic world wars, largely prosecuted by authoritarian states, this argument seemed to have merit. However, for decades, Hayek's advocacy for non-interference fell on the deaf ears of a world that considered it heartless, especially compared to Keynes' policies of careful and caring intervention.

Instilling drama and panache into an intellectual argument between two ivory-tower academics is a considerable challenge. And so it is to the credit of Mr. Wapshott, a British journalist, that he has imbued Keynes Hayek with an energy that transforms its dry subject into a battle worthy of the billing. The author is utterly convincing in his contention that the ideological war waged by Keynes, Hayek and their disciples has had a profound impact on the world as we know it. After all, political giants from LBJ to Margaret Thatcher, from Nixon to Reagan, have used the models these two men espoused as justification for their economic policies. And in our world, there are no greater forces than governments.

However, as much as this piece succeeds in its core contention, it is also both a wonderful biography and a treatise on modern economic theory. It deeply delves into the lives of these two men, chronicling their fascinating private and public lives with equal attentiveness. In this, the author allows his readers an opportunity to know these men, to revel in their moments of brilliance and to sympathize with their crushing defeats. Their episodes of Cassandra-like perception into the intertwined natures of economics and human nature, abound. But Keynes Hayek would be nothing more than a slick biography without its admirable ability to reduce complicated economic concepts into language the layperson can understand. Everything, from macroeconomics to the Keynesian multiplier are explained with clarity and brevity.

For anyone remotely interested in the tug-of-war the West is currently enduring between advocates of the free market and proponents of the welfare state, this is a must-read. Gripping and thorough work that is as informative as it is engaging. Exactly what I want from a history text. (5/5 Stars)

Death In The Haymarket by James Green

From The Week of November 21, 2011

Justice does not come to those who ask for it. It must be demanded, seized, through persistent protest, peaceful or otherwise. For, injustice is the outgrowth of greed, opportunism and the hunger for power, dark desires which create societal inequities that are much more easily engendered than eliminated. After all, what person, what race, what class, would knowingly, willingly and unreservedly surrender the privileges of power to the powerless? Who, having fought to carve out an advantage, would choose to forego that advantage in the name of fairness? Justice must be seized and it is this potent lesson which underpins Mr. Green's riveting history of a turning point in the history of American labor.

On May 4th, 1886, at the Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, protesters and police clashed in a violent incident that deeply influenced the politics and the ideology of 20th century American labor. After years of organized strikes, many of which were violently dispersed by industrial titans and their for-hire paramilitary muscle, tempers in the city were deeply frayed. The protesters, a collection of unionists, socialists and advocates for the eight-hour work day, had been bullied, beaten up, and shot at in their attempts to strike for improved wages and working conditions. The police, meanwhile, obligated to maintain the peace in the face of a movement willing to shut down the industrial heartbeat of the midwest in order to achieve their aims, were stressed by numerous encounters with protesters, pressured by powerful interests to impose order upon them, and fearful of the chaos that imposition might reap upon the factious and immigrant-heavy Chicago of the 1880s. The protesters, riled up by the police firing into a crowd of strikers just a day before, were angry and looking to make a statement. The police, tired of being thwarted in their many attempts to force peace, refused to back down. It was a powderkeg just waiting for its fuse to be lit.

We may never know who hurled the bomb into the crowd of police on that fateful day. Was it an agent provocateur trying to give police the excuse they needed to suppress the protesters, or was it a radicalized sympathizer who thought to strike a blow for the rallyers? Time has likely robbed us of proof of his identity and, consequently, his motivations, but we know this much. When that dynamite-packd explosive detonated amidst the police, grotesquely killing one of its officers, it unleashed a response from law-enforcement that lead to the deaths of seven other officers, an unknown number of protesters and a huge, city-wide crackdown on socialists, foreigners and anarchists, all in the name of finding the cop-killer who, with one bomb, with one flick of the wrist, changed the course of history. For within a year, eight of the protest's leaders would be executed by the state for their association with the crimes committed that day, crushing any hopes for their movement's success, as they envisioned it.

Death In The Haymarket is a compelling recount of a turning point in American history. Mr. Green, an American historian, skillfully and concisely details the socioeconomic forces that animated the protesters, the political and industrial interests that opposed them, the corrupted judicial system that convicted them, and the pro-industrial press that was so eager to condemn them. Though this account undoubtedly favors the laborers, portraying their leaders as honorable advocates for equality who might well have succeeded in their shared dream had they not been ground under the bootheels of powerful interests, the author does not demonize the movement's foes. But for a few magnates and trigger-happy cops,Mr. Green reserves his black hat for institutional corruption. More over, the author laments the extent to which the Haymarket Affair put an end to the hopes of millions of workers fighting for a fair deal. For, in many ways, it would take nearly 50 years for their reforms to take hold under the aegis of Roosevelt's New Deal.

This is wonderful work that captures an all-but-forgotten United States. This is not the America of airplanes and iPads. It is an America of impoverished immigrants and industrial titans, an America before the welfare state, before labor laws, before 20th century social activism instilled into American culture sympathy for the urban worker. This is an America where life is cheap, where corruption is rampant and where the wilds of the western frontier are right outside the door. It is an America to be remembered for the lessons it can teach us about justice and the extent to which violence will erupt when a fair deal is denied to any subset of a society's citizens. Vivid work. (4/5 Stars)

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

From The Week of November 14, 2011

No matter how devout we are, all humans adhere to a creed. For nonbelievers, it is often a set of ethical principles that guide their actions in life. But while believers aspire to a similar, living morality, they must also grapple with questions concerning the life to come. Upon the death of the flesh, Where will their immortal souls reside? And what must be done in life to smooth that soulful journey? How best do they get right with god? While agnostics and atheists are spared the contemplation of these difficult and ultimately unanswerable problems, they remain, at least for theologians, points of contention that distinguish the sects within humanity's major religions. Consequently, they can be, for followers of those sects, literally matters of life and death. Mr. Waugh treats it thus in Brideshead Revisited.

In the tumultuous wake of the First World War which consumed much of western Europe in its fiery conflagration, Charles Ryder, a young Englishman born into comfortable if common circumstances, attends Oxford college where he befriends Sebastian, the prodigal son of the aristocratic Marchmain family. Eccentric and dysfunctional, the Marchmain clan, Charles learns through his association with the charming if drunken Sebastian, is plagued by a decades-old schism begun when Lord Marchmain, after converting from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in order to marry Sebastian's mother (Teresa), abandoned both his religion and his bride to settle, with his French mistress, into a comfortable, epicurean life in Venice. This abdication left Lady Teresa Marchmain free to impose the strictures of her Catholicism upon her four children, each of whom react differently to this profound development.

While her eldest son, Brideshead, and her youngest daughter, Cordelia, enthusiastically embrace Roman Catholicism, her eldest daughter, Julia, and her youngest son, Sebastian, suffer under its yoke. The former rejects a clear path to happiness in order to adhere to the faith's principles while the latter descends into alcoholism in order to numb the pain of failing to meet the standards it imposes upon him. Collectively, the five Marchmains present the agnostic Charles, an aspiring artist, with an opportunity to explore his own faith, an opportunity he seizes with a mixture of fascination and contempt. This is his first-hand account of his 20-year association with the family and the profound extent to which it has shaped his relationships, his career, his worldview and his religiosity.

Widely considered to be a classic of 20th century English literature, Brideshead Revisited is, in the main, Mr. Waugh's attempt to make the argument for Roman Catholicism to a skeptical, Anglicanized England. It is a shame, then, that this is perhaps the novel's weakest element. For in attempting to imbue the strictures of Roman Catholicism with grace and dignity, the author has managed, through Julia's suffering, through Sebastian's misery, and through Lord Marchmain's illness, to convey the abject pettiness that consumes dogmatists intent upon convincing those who do not think as they do that theirs is the only rightful road, that to travel any other path is to invite the fearsome disappointment of the almighty.

Perhaps there's a worthwhile argument to be made here; there is, after all, much to be said for encouraging the wayward to live a good and righteous life. But the author, instead, elects to argue that the blessings of the divine can only be felt through strict adherence to the proper interpretation of the Christian god's, at best, ambiguous will. In this, Mr. Waugh espouses the same nonsense advanced by dogmatists the world over. If there is a god looking over us, and if he is as wise and kind and caring as some would have us believe, then the last thing such a being would care about is a slavish adherence to the fine points of religious rituals, or the accurate interpretation of scripture. An omnipresent being would judge us on the contents of our souls, on the depth of our humanity, and on the quality of our actions. He would measure us by what matters, not by honoring every possible point of canonical law.

As much as Brideshead Revisited labors under an outdated and misguided argument for religion, it is, in every other respect, an exquisite novel. Mr. Waugh imbues the friendship between Charles and Sebastian with emotion and subtlety, so much so that he leaves the reader grasping at the extent of the relationship shared between the two men. More over, the author's choice to make Charles the unreliable narrator is paid off wonderfully well, as the reader is treated to the innerworkings of a cynical mind occasionally brought low by fits of uncontrollable passion. Finally, the extent to which Mr. Waugh deploys the entanglements of religion to create tragedy and chaos in the Marchmain family leaves the canvas of the piece splattered with tempestuous emotion that does the work justice and brings each of its eccentric characters to life. Few English works can claim better prose.

This is a masterwork that is, unfortunately, marred by the biases and theological preoccupations of its author. Nonetheless, it is a worthy read. For it is a window into a time in English history now gone, the interwar period that brought low the manorborn and raised up the common man. And in this, it is as much a piece of delightful nostalgia as it is a work of literary excellence. (4/5 Stars)

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

From The Week of November 14, 2011

While most of us are blessed by good fortune to live long and healthy lives, some among us are confronted by extraordinary and existential medical conditions that cannot be overcome. Even as far as we have advanced our understanding of human medicine, the natures of these challenges remain terminal, pipers that must at some point be paid. But until that day, when the will can no longer stave off death, the afflicted have a decision to make. How will they occupy themselves in their final days, weeks, and months? Will they live as they always have? Will they hold out hope for a miracle? Will they plunder their savings for a final, unforgettable experience that frugality has here-to-for denied them? All the available avenues have merit, but there can be little doubt that the road Mr. Pausch has chosen is the most remarkable.

The Last Lecture, published mere months before Mr. Pausch's death in July of 2008, expands upon a singular, hour-long presentation he gave to a collection of students, faculty and friends at Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. Having been diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer, and having failed to win full remission from the condition, doctors informed Mr. Pausch, a professor of computer science at CMU, that he had only weeks to live. Over the understandable objections of his wife who strongly encouraged him to spend as much of his remaining life with her and his three young children, Mr. Pausch, a lifelong dreamer and work'a'holic, devoted himself to the crafting of one final lecture that would, in conveying the myriad lessons he learned from life, act as his legacy, to the world and to his children. On September 18, 2007, he delivered this final performance to an audience of hundreds. It has since been viewed millions of times, inspiring the writing of this book which distills, in point form, the ideas that comprised this most famous lecture.

By any measure, The Last Lecture is a thundering success. Narratively driven by Mr. Pausch's thoughts and feelings in the wake of his diagnoses and failed treatments, it thoroughly details the admirable character of a man determined to have succeeded at everything he tried. Though it would have been easy for Mr. Pausch to descend into self-referential backslapping, the author largely avoids this trap by freely crediting others, from his parents, to his football coach, to his doctoral advisor, to his wife, for making it possible for him to have had a wonderful life. Yes, Mr. Pausch is, at times, arrogant -- someone who decides to make theatre out of his final lecture cannot be else --, but, for the reader, the bitter flavor of his self-importance is amply softened by the sweetness of his humility and humor which, together, prevent this memoir from sliding into the kind of grandiosity that so often characterizes such works.

Ironically, to an extent, the work's events are overshadowed by the powerful, philosophical question it poses to its readers. If told that you had only a brief time left to live, what would you do with your final days? Would you spend that precious time with your family? What would you say to your friends and acquaintances? Would you continue to go to work? There is no single, proper response to this existential scenario and in this lies its power. Regardless of the ambiguity of the proper answer, let there be no doubt that Mr. Pausch has chosen well and with honor.

Notwithstanding its moments of self-absorption, this is exceptional and emotional work that flies well above the ocean of cliches that so often dominate the self-help genre. (4/5 Stars)

Jerusalem by Simon Sebag-Montefiore

From The Week of November 14, 2011

Though there are numerous methods by which humans have created orderly societies, peace and stability appear to depend upon one, powerful prerequisite. There must be enough land to be fairly shared by all. For if humans have cause to fight over land, on the grounds of its scarcity or its significance, then violence and discord are inevitable. And where violence and discord reign, order cannot take root. This is the lesson that the city of Jerusalem teaches us, both through its history and its present day. It is a lesson that Mr. Sebag-Montefiore's thorough biography of this most ancient and contentious city conveys so well.

Settled some 6,000 years ago, Jerusalem is one of the oldest, continuously inhabited human settlements on Earth. After its rise to regional prominence under King David, the city was claimed by the Persians, the Macedonians, the Maccabees, the Romans (pagans and Christians both), the house of Herod, Islamic kalifs, warlords from ancient Iraq, Christian Crusaders, Saladin, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, a succession of European empires, and regional Arab factions before the mantle of its ownership was finally seized by the Jewish people in the name of a new Israel. Amidst these contested centuries, the city has been sacked and besieged, its holy sites desecrated and its peoples savaged by wars, plagues and unimaginable deprivations. At its height it was a world-renowned place of trade and commerce that housed hundreds of thousands of souls. At its ebbs, it was a ravaged ruin, a rat-infested jungle of broken buildings that was home to barely 20,000 humans, its glory a dim and forgotten memory next to the brilliance of Damascus and Baghdad.

And yet, despite the wild variations in its fortunes, Jerusalem has always been the spiritual home to three of the world's most prominent faiths: Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Its holy sites are, for these adherents, literally biblical, the places where demigods lived and died. These are the ties that have maintained the settlement for all these centuries. But of course, these are also the ties that cause it to be the center of its factiousness. For each of these three faiths have a claim upon ground that has never been shared. It has only ever been fought for and won. It seems doubtful that this will change anytime soon.

Though Jerusalem is preoccupied with creating a catalogue of the lives of the powerful leaders who have, over the millennia, claimed and ruled this holy, human city, it is, in every other respect, an informational tour de force. Mr. Sebag-Montefiore, a British historian, is thorough to the point of academic rigor in his attempt to trace Jerusalem's political lineage from its founders down to the Six Day War which, since 1967, has momentarily settled the question of Jerusalem's ownership. He is refreshingly forthright concerning the fallibility of his sources, particularly for the city's earliest years, the history of which comes down to us primarily through biblical tales. Consequently, the author wisely confines this part of the narrative to a brief reconstruction of events as we understand them. The majority of the tale is taken up with Jerusalem's more recent history, the authenticity of which can be confirmed by multiple, contemporary sources. These more modern sections are filled with both the giants of history and the wars they waged, all of which are vividly rendered by the author.

However, as successful as Jerusalem is at teaching the reader about the city's political history, it does very little to convey a sense of Jerusalem as seen through the eyes of anyone but its rulers. But for some passages concerning architectural trends through time, and but for passing references to a few of its more famous artists, the reader is negligibly educated on life in the city, at any point. History is not just a reconstruction of the successes and the failures of kings and politicians. It is a tapestry comprised of culture and politics with neither more important than the other. Jerusalem has failed to considerably deepen my understanding of the city as a whole.

This is a thorough and successful read which is well worth the 650-page commitment. Jerusalem has a fascinating and tangled history which Mr. Sebag-Montefiore has admirably conveyed. Unfortunately, the lack of cultural information prevents it from achieving the greatest heights. (4/5 Stars)

Haiti After The Earthquake by Paul Farmer

From The Week of November 14, 2011

As much as rational analysis argues otherwise, some regions of the world appear to be cursed. Whether they find themselves at a nexus of tectonic instability, or blessed by natural resources that other societies want very much to steal, turmoil and conflict stain their histories, causing prosperity to be as elusive, for them, as tranquility. But even on a list of Earth's most cursed locales, Haiti stands apart. For the Atlantic hurricanes that sweep in to buffet this Caribbean island are as tempestuous as this impoverished nation's self-destructive politics. In Haiti After The Earthquake, Dr. Farmer and his associates attempt to give us a window into this nation and its history as seen through the recent, tragic events there. Unfortunately, they fail miserably.

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Port au-Prince, the densely populated capital of Haiti. Destroying buildings and roads, hospitals and power grids, the devastating temblor, considered as of this writing to be the third deadliest in recorded history, lead to the deaths of 316,000 people, wounded nearly as many, and rendered a million more destitute. Overwhelmed by such widespread destruction, the Haitian government long-plagued by corruption and instability, was unable to respond adequately to the severity of the disaster, a reality which quickly triggered a humanitarian response from the UN and neighboring nations which rushed life-saving assets to the crippled country. Though many lives were saved as a result of the swift, international reaction to Haiti's crisis, it also complicated matters. For without strong intra-agency coordination, the logistics of trying to help so many, in a nation suddenly without functioning infrastructure, created a bureaucratic nightmare the likes of which the western world has rarely seen.

A book entitled Haiti After The Earthquake should have two, straightforward tasks: to describe the earthquake and its aftermath and to use the earthquake as a vehicle to inform the reader about Haiti and its troubled history. Dr. Farmer and friends fail on both counts. Though some effort is made to elucidate the magnitude of the earthquake, the authors blur their descriptions of the 12th of January, and the fearful days thereafter, with their own preoccupied and emotional reactions to the devastation. If these accounts actually conveyed some solid information about the destruction of Port au-Prince, the self-obsession of the narrative would be tolerable. Unfortunately, these 400-odd pages are consumed, in the main, by the authors expressing their shock, their dismay, their worry for family, and their admirable desire to help the afflicted. This tells us far more about the authors than it does about the actual earthquake and its victims.

The effort to inform the reader about Haiti's history is equally as feeble. Dr. Farmer makes a token effort, reserving a couple dozen pages in the middle of his piece to give us a crash course in 200 years of Haitian history. Not only is this section hopelessly pro-Haiti -- it discusses at length the many international injustices Haiti has suffered while making very little attempt to locate any blame for the decay of its modern-day civil society --, it is misplaced in the narrative. It ought to have been expanded and positioned near the beginning of the piece where the reader, having had his sympathies activated by the enormity of the disaster, is educated on Haiti's difficult past and how these struggles inform its present. Poorly done...

There can be no doubt that the contributers to Haiti After The Earthquake made heroic efforts, in the days after the earthquake, to give succor to an impoverished people. Their successes should be championed; their morality should be applauded; and their tenacity should be used as an example to the rest of the world of the great achievements that emanate from the application of human compassion. However, the extent to which Dr. Farmer and his associates are consumed by their own existential drama prevents the reader from fully appreciating these admirable accomplishments, much less extracting valuable lessons from Haiti and its history.

Uninformative and poorly assembled... The self-absorption of an author should never supersede fidelity to the subject at hand. One of the worst reads this year... (1/5 Stars)

The Cold Commands: A Land Fit For Heroes 02 by Richard K. Morgan

From The Week of November 07, 2011

Once in awhile, an author distinguishes himself from the literary crowd to stand alone as the voice of a decade, a man whose work, albeit fictional and fantastical, perfectly harmonizes with both the tastes of his readers and the socioeconomic climate of his environment. This synergy, when it occurs, is something to behold, for it creates in the sympathetic and receptive reader a love for the text that is both rare and exquisite. These experiences must be cherished. For there is no guarantee the reader will ever again enjoy the unique sensation of appreciating every page and all the moments of brilliance they contain. Mr. Morgan is, in all his power and brutality, is just such an author and The Cold Commands is just such a book.

On a difficult world of deserts and tundras, of banished demigods and entitled elites, peace and justice are vanishingly rare commodities. There are, of course, moments in which the light of truth and fairness shine through the darkness of iniquity to provide some relief to the oppressed, but mostly the commonfolk live and endure under the bootheel of selfish nobles and extravagant emperors who think nothing of grinding them up in their internecine schemes. Though this swamp of inequity does its best to choke out the hope of all of those it touches, three battered souls occasionally bob up out of the fray to combat, each in their darkly cynical ways, the most intolerable of their world's excesses. It may well be that their efforts are futile, failing to enact lasting change for good, but who is to say the right cut throat, the properly smited demigod won't inch forward the hope for something like fairness.

Their bond forged in the last great war which swept across their world, threatening the very existence of man, Ringil, Egar and Archeth are allies in blood. Lord Ringil, exiled from his homeland for his homosexuality and his inconvenient politics, emerged from the war with a hero's reputation, but an affinity for the dark corners of the world and a propensity to reap nihilistic vengeance upon those who oppose him have left him open to the sweet seductions of powerful forces that stretch far beyond his little planet. Egar, his closest friend, and one of the few men alive who can rightfully call himself a dragonslayer, is a warrior of legend who, now that he has entered middle age, finds his personality incompatible with the nomadic people of the Step that birthed and shaped him. But where Ringil and Egar have chosen to reject their native peoples, Archeth's forefathers have abandoned her, choosing to flee a world they could not save,leaving it to her, a half-breed and outcast, to bring slivers of civilization to a violent empire.

Though their missions are different, their obsessions unique to themselves, the fates have conspired to reunite these three, brooding heroes in anticipation of a vital voyage into the northern seas where a city created by Archeth's vanished kin has re-emerged from centuries of somnolent obscurity. But before they can embark on this mission to divine the depths of the dark forces stalking their world, they must confront a zealous threat at home that might well crush their fledgling venture before it has even begun.

The Cold Commands, the second instalment in a proposed trilogy, is a far more contemplative novel than its action-packed predecessor. Though it is characterized by Mr. Morgan's customary intensity -- episodes of savage violence, carnal sex, merciless oppression and delightfully dark humor abound --, it is a transitional work that must act as connective tissue linking the saga's explosive beginnings to its undoubtedly cynical conclusion. In lesser hands, this would be cause for both boredom and concern; however, Mr. Morgan uses the relative lull in the narrative to fill in vital details about the world and the war with the Scalefolk which both improve our understanding of his antihero protagonists. This, combined with a swift and decisive conclusion make the two-and-a-half-year wait for The Cold Commands well worth it.

Mr. Morgan is a poet of war and an avatar of violence. I have never encountered another author who so capably weaves together the inequities of society, the dark nature of humanity, and the subversive power of coarse language into a single tale of humor and despair. He is not a perfect scribe; his tendency towards nihilism can tip over into chaos, as it did with Market Forces and the latter entries in the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy. However, when he is on his game, as he is here, as he was so memorably in Altered Carbon and Thirteen, he is a dark sage, a man capable of injecting more realism, more humanity, and more emotion into a world of his creation than authors of contemporary fiction can grant to our to the real world around us! He is intensely of the tumult of the first decade of the 21st century and for this, for the sublime nature of his work, and for his willingness to throw over all the idols and cliches, the niceties and the crutches, he deserves to be elevated to his rightful status among the greats of SF. (5/5 Stars)

The Death of Grass by John Christopher

From The Week of November 07, 2011

Though humanity has only enjoyed civilization for the last few millennia of its two-million-year history, those of us alive today cannot imagine a world without its blessings. After all, this Earth of societies and governments, of industry and commerce, is all we, and our ancestors, have ever known, banishing into history the necessities of sleeping in caves for shelter, huddling around fires for warmth, and killing animals for survival. However, much as we would like to think of civilization as permanent, steps taken that cannot be undone, it is, in reality, a fragile construct that only persists thanks to the unspoken agreement of the many to abide by the laws of the land. Threaten our safety, jeopardize our futures, take away our abundance and it would be only a matter of years before we returned to the animal behaviors that defined us for so long. This is the stirring, disturbing and thrilling lesson of Mr. Christopher's existential classic, The Death of Grass.

In a 1950s England recovering swiftly from the deprivations of the Second World War, life is characterized by order and prosperity. Sure, inequities persist, but most families get by in a country that is still sufficiently rural to feed, clothe and empower the majority of its citizens. However, no matter how well-oiled the machinery of civilization may be, it is always vulnerable to surprises, disturbances that cause vital components of its system to cease functioning. When word filters out of China that a virus there is rotting out the particular strain of grass that yields rice, their most critical crop, there is, in England, more sympathy than concern for civilization. But when attempts to combat the virus cause it to mutate into a strain with the power to kill off all forms of grass on the planet, then it becomes painfully clear, to everyone everywhere, that life will never again be the same.

With every grain-based crop failing, with Britain's 50 million souls waking up to the realization that the supply of fish and root vegetables cannot possibly sustain all of them, John Custance, an architect, his wife Anne and their two children mount a journey from their now worthless home in doomed London to a valley in Westmorland where, for years now, John's brother David has operated the family farm he inherited from their father. Initially augmented by John's friend Roger and his family, the party, captained by John, quickly grows to incorporate more desperate people seeking out safe harbor in a world that has, virtually overnight, descended into lawlessness and barbarism. For without an abundance of resources, a mad scramble for what's left will inevitably take place, an all-consuming drive for food that will leave little energy left over for the sustenance of civilization. On the way, the Custance clan will have to learn which of their morals they can afford to keep and which will have to be sacrificed in a world now defined by the singular will to survive.

Though The Death of Grass is not without its flaws, this dark and gripping novel from Mr. Christopher is powerfully and movingly conducted by its premise, that civilization depends upon a few key pillars to remain upright and that, should any of those pillars suddenly crumble, humanity will swiftly collapse back into the abysmal chaos of survival and death that characterized so much of the species' history. Mr. Christopher argues, rather convincingly, that human civilization is an outgrowth of our planet's vast resources which simply cannot be captured by one person, or even a small band of tyrants. It is so ubiquitous that it must be shared and enjoyed by most, allowing for prosperity to fuel society. Remove that abundance swiftly and without warning, reduce the supply of necessities to an amount that must be fought over in order to be had, enjoyed? Then might will make right and the darkness of feudalism will re-capture us all.

But as much as the novel succeeds in communicating the full horror of this reasonable, if pessimistic, deduction, a few key flaws prevent it from reaching its full potential. Published in 1956, The Death of Grass is very much a work of its era. Female characters here are largely neglected not only by the author but by his male characters. This is somewhat understandable given that the subject matter concerns paternalistic 1950s england, but not even in feudal societies were women this marginalized. They had voices, wills and purposes. Here, they lack even that much. The most developed woman in our roster of characters is John's wife, Anne, and her singular purpose appears to be to highlight the extent to which John Custance has changed from the man she married pre-collapse, transforming into the hardened killer of the new England.

More annoying than this form of period paternalism, though, is the extent to which the personalities of the main players shift in order to suit the author's needs. Some of this is forgivable; the reader understands quite well that minor characters are little more than plot devices to thrust the story along, but John and Roger are the story's two most developed characters and their behaviors are in-flux for most of the novel, hardening in the face of their circumstances, only to soften, only to harden again. The authoritative Roger is especially victimized by this schizophrenia, losing his assertiveness only to regain it and lose it once more for no apparent reason.

This is a swift and grim work of post-apocalyptic fiction that is vivid in its darkness, shocking in its violence, and provocative in its message, but the author's inability to provide the reader with a set of solidly familiar characters, and his incapacity to fully understand feudal England, mars the piece. (3/5 Stars)