Jim Morrison by Stephen Davis

From The Week of March 14, 2010

This will not be the last biography of Jim Morrison, the larger-than-life frontman of The Doors, but it must surely be considered one of the most human. Mr. Davis, while revealing himself to be a fan of this most influential of 1960s bands, maintains a certain distance from his subject, presenting the facts as he sees them to his readers while largely withholding judgement of the actions described. It is a difficult stance, occupying a kind of awkward middle ground of neither total objectivity nor total fandom, but I found Mr. Davis' centrism rewarding, animating his chronicle from a collection of facts into portraits of real lives of real people.

Jim Morrison had an amazing and yet difficult life. The son of an admiral in the US Navy, he was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. And when it became obvious that Mr. Morrison wanted nothing less than to serve, the cord that connected him to his family was cut, casting him out into the world of the weird and the wonderful where Mr. Morrison found comfort and kinship. From difficult youth, Mr. Morrison slid ass-first into stardom which seems to have come, to himself and to the band, as something of a surprise. The greater surprise for the rest of the world was how short that stardom was to last, no more than five years from the flickerings of fame to the fateful night in Paris which found the icon dead of an overdose. But those five years... Has anyone ever been on such a fantastic ride? Has anyone been more aware of himself on that ride, the extent to which he was using himself up? To understand that he would die young but refusing to care is an incredibly powerful sentiment which hangs over this whole book as a kind of badge of courage. For say what you will about the man, and many have and many will, Jim Morrison was courageous and heroically alive in a way that 99 percent of us will never be. He was free. His freedom killed him, but what must he have learned in exchange for paying that price? What must he have seen, in and out of his strange and genius mind?

Mr. Davis has penned a balanced look at both the man and the band, hailing their importance in rock while pointing out that they were often a miserable live band, owing to attitude and to drug abuse. His portrayal of the drummer as something of a self-righteous hypocrite is just as memorable as the love-and-hate affair Morrison had with his famous girlfriend. And though we conclude with an icon's premature death, Mr. Davis lingers on the notion that legacy always outlives the man. This is true of Shakespeare and, at least for 40 years, it is true of Jim Morrison. (4/5 Stars)

Lady Knight by L. J. Baker

From The Week of March 14, 2010

I found Lady Knight by accident, searching through a catalogue of books for another title which I enjoyed only a fraction as much as I enjoyed this lovely tale from Ms. Baker which follows the star-crossed love a female knight has for a noblewoman trapped in a loveless, arranged marriage. Though Ms. Baker's prose flows well, it's clear that she wasn't quite sure what to do with a few of her supporting characters. The knight's cousin, a powerful priestess, would seem, by the attention lavished upon her by the author, to play a larger role in the tale than she ultimately does, something of a manipulative but secondary villain. But these weaknesses of structure do not ruin a good read.

Fantasy fiction all-too-rarely entertains alternative voices with alternative relationships. One would expect science fiction and fantasy to be the most inclusive of the atypical, gender and sexuality. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. But this is to Ms. Baker's benefit for it's clear that much of Lady Knight's punch comes from the unusual gender roles and relationships presented. Make the eponymous knight a male and this is not much more than B-grade fantasy whose story's been told a thousand times before. (3/5 Stars)

The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson

From The Week of March 14, 2010

There are some tales so bizarre, so firmly planted on the extremest fringe, that they become difficult to define. Is this a genuine attempt at uncovering the whackjobs who occupy our world, or are we in the hands of an author who is just as whacky as the whackjobs he seeks to expose? The blurred line is, if intentional, a credit to Mr. Ronson's distinctly British humor which delights in each of the interviews included in this piece of rewarding, laugh-out-loud journalism.

Chiefly, The Men Who Stare At Goats concerns Mr. Ronson's investigation into an US military program's attempts to channel the controversial powers of the paranormal into a stable, coherent, tangible doctrine which would allow the paranormal's various disciplines to be used as weapons against America's enemies. This investigation takes Mr. Ronson from California to Ohio, to Washington D.C., where army generals, cult leaders and hermit mystics are interviewed and their knowledge digested. Mr. Ronson deliberately withholds judgement on his subjects which is a wonderful choice. It allows the insanity to hang out there, alone, naked to the world.

Though it's fairly safe to conclude that the paranormal won't be troubling us in the near future, a disturbing trend emerges in Mr. Ronson's tale, the power that belief in the supernatural has over American society. He chronicles a popular, overnight talk show, Coast to Coast AM which regularly entertains notion of the weird and has, at times in the past, done harm as a result of not shooting down the theories of its guests, theories which, when disseminated, do real damage to real people. It's a strange thing to read a book about figures on the fringe, only to discover that the millions of people who believe them must also be fringe. At this point, can the fringe be considered fringe? It seems unlikely.

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a concise and laugh-filled riot which, unless you are on that growing fringe, is sure to entertain. (3/5 Stars)

All Tomorrow's Parties: The Bridge Trilogy 03 by William Gibson

From The Week of March 14, 2010

Though this final installment of The Bridge Trilogy brings the bifurcated characters of the first two novels together to pay off the series, All Tomorrow's Parties sags heavily under the weight of what it is forced to carry. Mr. Gibson is at his best when he welds the superficial onto the important, exemplified by Chia (a school girl) being introduced to the Assembler, a technology that will forever change her world. But whereas the superficial was well-refined in the first two novels, here it is set aside for expediency, that is, the culmination of what this whole trilogy is about. He who can anticipate the future can control information. He who controls information can manipulate it to their advantage and to the detriment of others. This, in a nutshell, is the lesson of the trilogy. This is where we've been headed since we first met Berry Rydell. But while this lesson is philosophically satisfying, the enjoyableness of the first two novels has been the characters and they seem to suffer, here, for being more obviously puppets for the thrust of Mr. Gibson's brand of technological theology.

Laney's deterioration into what he feared most is heartbreaking to watch, while the re-introduction of Berry and Chevette is welcome and amusing. Yet, having the two casts together somehow doesn't amalgamate into something greater than its parts. This may be a reach to explain why I enjoyed this conclusion less than Virtual Light and Idoru, but it just doesn't come alive as it should.

Nonetheless, this is rare fiction, the likes of which comes along only once every few years. Mr. Gibson has a gift and the reader is unquestionably blessed to watch that gift at work. (3/5 Stars)

Idoru: The Bridge Trilogy 02 by William Gibson

From The Week of March 14, 2010

Though Idoru exists in the same world, at roughly the same time, as Virtual Light, its progenitor, the reader is introduced to a cast of new characters and settings. While this frees the reader up to read Idoru as a stand-alone work of fiction, and while I believe this to be the best book of the trilogy, excising Berry, Chevette and the rest of Virtual Light's characters so completely from the story is jarring.

We shift our focus from disunited California to Tokyo where Colin Laney, a productive but brain-damaged American, is hired on by the loyal lieutenant of an aging rock star. Laney is ordered to turn his special talents -- Laney's disability seems to have given him unusual powers for intuiting bits of critically important data out of a sea of mundane information -- towards finding out if the rock star (Rez) is being manipulated by his enemies into marrying an artificial intelligence. Laney's world eventually collides with Idoru's second main character, Chia, a disaffected schoolgirl from Seattle who is designated by her chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club to travel on her own to Tokyo in hopes of finding out if Rez is serious about marrying the eponymous Idoru.

Though the story here seems superficial, Mr. Gibson uses the characters in Idoru to speak to a broader movement in his trilogy, chiefly that information has become the most valuable commodity. This truth not only makes the holders of information important, it makes the finders of information extraordinarily valuable. Though a story about the importance of information is hardly novel, Mr. Gibson's approach interweaves this notion with the excitement and risk of new, revolutionary technologies and comes out with a finished product which delights both intellectually and superficially.

Finally, a word on Idoru's characters. Laney is exquisitely tortured by his disability which hangs over him like the
sword of Damocles, while Chia is so naive that she can't even seem to conceive of how much danger she's in. But as good as the mains service the story, Mr. Gibson's supporting characters burn even brighter. Rez's search for love in any form as he descends from the zenith of fame is poignant, as is the undying loyalty of Blackwell, his chief of security. Most potent, for me, is Laney's domineering ex-boss at Slitscan which is a sort of futuristic
Entertainment Tonight on steroids. Kathy is wonderfully repugnant and, to the extent that she is in the novel, is a treasure. They all bring life to the best of the Bridge books. (4/5 Stars)

Virtual Light: The Bridge Trilogy 01 by William Gibson

From The Week of March 07, 2010

Virtual Light: The Bridge Trilogy 01 by William Gibson

Neuromancer was the formative novel of my youth. It rocked me in ways I cannot describe. It changed forever my tastes for fiction even while setting an almost impossible bar for other works to achieve. For this, I'm eternally grateful to Mr. Gibson. As a consequence of Neuromancer's brilliance however, The Bridge Trilogy cannot hold up. There's greatness here, in all the important aspects of literature, but there's a kind of pointlessness to it all that detracts from the trilogy's power. Case had a hand in changing his world forever; can Berry claim the same? Let's find out.

Set on a near-future Earth dominated by celebrity, media and information technology, a bike courier, Chevette, comes into possession of a pair of glasses which prove to be extraordinarily important to a group of shadowy figures who'll do about anything to get their hands on them. One of the factions hires Berry Rydell, a discredited police officer turned security guard, to put his cop's nose to good use and find the glasses and their keeper before his competition get there first. The story weaves its way through a dystopian California divided into two distinct states, north and south. We linger longest on the Bridge, a kind of artificial community which has occupied the earthquake-crippled Bay Bridge, connecting Oakland with San Francisco. It's here that our story flourishes, an amazing, diverse community which receives the full measure of Mr. Gibson's wonderful imagination.

For a novel pre-dating the Internet -- it was originally published in 1993 --, Mr. Gibson was cuttingly prescient about our obsession with celebrity culture in a world where information is as ubiquitous as the media. So while some of the details haven't born out -- not that he ever claimed they would --, Mr. Gibson's cultural analysis is bang on. This allows Virtual Light to age far more gracefully than most science fiction. The setting and the characters shine, here, more than the plot does. Berry and Chevette are adorable in their sad, earnest, mismatchedness. And the greedy, self-interested agents pursuing them are three-dimensional portrayals of people who sold themselves to the system. A great start. (4/5 Stars)

Defend The Realm by Christopher Andrew

From The Week of March 07, 2010

To an extent, historians can't win. If their publications are too dry, we criticize them, as
I have done, for not animating their characters. However, if they err on the side of being too slick, too flashy, then we wonder how much literary license was taken with the facts. Is there a happy medium, or are there just readers with different tastes? That question needn't be settled here, for, coming in at 1,100 pages and weighing in at three pounds, there is little slickness about this mammoth history of Britain's domestic security service, MI5.

Christopher Andrew, a respected historian, was given access to MI5's actual files in this unique collaboration between the public record, as represented by academia, and secrecy, as treasured by the security services. The project's stated goal? To produce, for MI5's centennial, an authorized biography of the service, from its founding in the lead-up to the First World War, through to its noteworthy shift of responsibility from Soviet spying to counter-terrorism. And to the extent that we are educated in the most important cases MI5 has worked on, Mr. Andrew's history is meticulous and, as far as we know, thorough. But that's the problem with Defend The Realm; meticulousness is all we are offered. The personalities of the MI5 directors are given some attention, as are a handful of important operatives, but there's no grasp of MI5's culture, or personality. Defend The Realm is an utterly precise, but ultimately humorless look at one spy service's century of operations in the shadows and, to my knowledge, there isn't a single story about pills, hookers and a foreign dignitary together in a hotel room. Now, that wasn't the book's purpose, but if the character, the flavor, is missing, what else was too sensitive or too embarrassing to print?

For all its scholarliness, this is a fascinating collection of rivalries, engagements and politicking that is worth reading if you're interested in matters security. The book is structured like a pyramid, traveling linearly through the history of MI5. The founding and its initial years are given the most time, while each successive decade of service has a narrower and narrower scope. The book's last great hurrah chronicles the fall of the soviet Union because, though it touches on MI5's new objective of counter-terrorism, details are simply inadequate to consider this last section worthy of an authorized history. A flawed but interesting work which will not at all slake the thirst of those who believe that spying isn't so nearly lifeless as this. (3/5 Stars)

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

From The Week of March 07, 2010

There has been, it seems to me, a significant upswell in interest in the Tudor dynasty: their rulers, their women, and their attendants. Surely no other hundred-year patch of history has been so obsessively tilled, so speculated upon, than that which starred Henry VIII and his daughters. Unquestionably, the Tudor dynasty has some fascinating figures deserved of this loving attention, but surely other stretches of time, with equally interesting characters, have been forsaken in favor of another portrait of the century of Shakespeare. Could it be that the world's best historians are British and British historians can only get off on the Tudors? Perhaps. And yet Wolf Hall throws all this out the window, making a bonfire for my antipathy as it steals my heart and earns my admiration.

In Wolf Hall, Ms. Mantel wastes little time distinguishing herself from Philippa Gregory. Her prose is peerless. It's economy of phrasing nods respectfully to Hemingwayian minimalism, but it's the emotion she's able to generate from her fairly stoic subject that truly impresses. Thomas Cromwell, henchman-in-chief to a rather childlike Henry VIII, is, outwardly, the essence of stoic, relentless determination. But Ms. Mantel's skill grants her hero an internal personality just as dynamic as the external one Cromwell shows to the world. And this is where the novel succeeds so well for Ms. Mantel has clearly set herself the task of imagining the psyche of a man who has been, for the most part, cruelled by history. Someone had to be the mastermind of Henry VIII's bloody reign. And given that the king's propensity for violence largely corresponds to the period after Cromwell replaced the executed Thomas Moore as his chief minister, fitting Cromwell for the black hat made sense. And yet, this is a man who raised himself up from remarkably -- for his time -- modest means to become a statesman, a thinker and an advocate for the powers of the state over the dominion of religion. Can such a visionary of the future, democratic state be such a villain?

Ms. Mantel's ministerial novel covers the first half of Cromwell's life: his struggles, his family, and his rise to prominence. But even as he attains fame and fortune, the enormity of which surely outstrip even his wildest dreams, sorrow stalks his every step. For the order of the world cannot be overturned, not without exacting its price in blood. While Cromwell is the shining jewel of this novel, Ms. Mantel's deftness with dialogue doesn't desert her when it comes to the historical giants within Cromwell's orbit. The pompous and petty Cardinal Wolsey puts in a potent appearance, as does a wonderfully conceited Thomas Moore who comes off here as a rather savage soul. My favorite satellite, however, is king Henry who is oddly innocent in Ms. Mantel's tale. But then if there had never been anyone to thwart your will, if you were surrounded by sycophants who praised your deeds and forgave your sins, if you were so isolated from the world that your only contact with the people is through their representatives and not the people themselves, would you not also be childishly innocent? It's a fascinating choice, but one that rings true.

This is an outstanding piece of literature. Yes, it is historical fiction; but for the research Ms. Mantel conducted, this story is entirely conjecture. But the quality of the work is measure by the sound of its authenticity and, in Wolf Hall, the sound is as sweet as angel song. (5/5 Stars)

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein

From The Week of February 28, 2010

We've all, no doubt, read our fair share of investigative pieces, the brave journalist submerging himself into the dark and scummy underbelly of society to expose a grievous wrong. They may not be dime a dozen -- not that a dime will buy you much these days --, but they are plentiful. And though each brings an important subject matter into the light, there's a certain fatigue that comes with having your sympathy tugged and your empathy awakened one too many times. Three quarters of Mr. Adelstein's tale falls prey to this sin of unoriginality, pages taken up with the experiences of an American journalist working the crime beat at a Tokyo daily, prying just a bit too deeply into the affairs of the Yakuza. But then something happens.

With about fifty pages left to his tale, Mr. Adelstein experiences a moment of such exquisite brutality that I do not have a name for it. Had what happened to Mr. Adelstein happened to me, I could not have born it. Nor could I have looked in the eye the man who had done it. There are some things in this life that simply cannot be endured. Being even indirectly responsible for pain befalling someone else? That is one of those things.

Tokyo Vice is an interesting piece of journalism utterly transformed, by tragedy, into a work of art. The reader is given a naked glimpse of what real criminals are like. There are no Tony Sopranos here; there are no thieves with hearts of gold. There is just the darkness that consumes those capable of wielding the sharp knife of brutality. Tokyo Vice concludes with a kick to the unmentionables I will never forget. And for that, I am at least mostly grateful. Read this and then forward your psychiatrist's bill onto Mr. Adelstein. It's his fault for putting to paper a shattering story of real life crime with real life consequences. This gets five stars on the last 50 pages alone. (5/5 Stars)

Canticle: Psalms Of Isaak 02 by Ken Scholes

From The Week of February 28, 2010

Though Mr. Scholes must, by now, recognize that he is sitting upon a goldmine in the Psalms of Isaak series, he does not commit the crime, as many before him have done, of slowing down the pace of his series in order to sell more books. If anything, Mr. Scholes has thrown the throttle wide open on this second, apocalyptic offering from a future Earth swathed in desert and darkness.

All the sharply drawn characters from Lamentation are back, save for the ones who died, but don't rule them out completely. In a world where songs can be made into weapons of war, and where mechanical birds can snuff out the light of knowledge, not even the barrier of death can hold entirely firm. One gets the sense that, before Mr. Scholes is through, some of those characters will wish for death, for, sometimes, that is preferable to knowledge in an unforgiving world.

Canticle is as pacy as it is well-plotted, but the pathos is what sets this series apart from other fantasy offerings. The taste of bitterness lingers on every page. Mr. Scholes is exquisite with emotion, for, even the victories his characters achieve seem to come through sorrowful self-discovery. This is not a perfect book, but if you liked Lamentation's unique blend of politics and fantasy, set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, then Canticle will not disappoint. (4/5 Stars)

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

From The Week of February 28, 2010

Every so often, I stumble across a book whose subject is so startling, so bewildering, that I find myself almost breathless as I read its most riveting sections. The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks is the latest installment in this rare line of unexpected delights. Ms. Skloot, a freelance writer on science, skillfully entwines two narrative strains to create an edifying and exciting tale of discovery and injustice that I won't soon forget.

Henrietta Lacks had a difficult life. An African American woman, living in the first half of the 20th century, she did not escape the poverty of her upbringing which continued to plague her family after her death. Though much of her life appears to have been lived without an overabundance of happiness, she is described as an even-tempered, kind person who should have been better served by those who claimed to be her societal superiors. Diagnosed with cervical cancer, Ms. Lacks was treated at Johns Hopkins. However, like many others afflicted with her illness, the treatment was unsuccessful and, only months later, she died at the age of 31, leaving her children to be raised under less than pleasant circumstances. Though, for the scientific community, this is where Ms. Lacks' story ends and their journey begins, Ms. Skloot is not so dismissive of the woman science forgot. She befriends Ms. Lacks' family and exposes, here, a life, a family, and some of the ugly secrets of 20th century medicine its practitioners would like to forget.

Hela. That is the name science gave to what researchers found in Ms. Lacks' tumor. Unlike anything they had seen before, these cells were somehow alive. In fact, sixty years on, they are alive still and have been utilized in what Ms. Skloot estimates to be something like 60,000 scientific experiments. Though the process is still not entirely understood, Ms. Skloot describes in detail the evolutionary end-around Ms. Lacks' cancer cells performed to achieve immortality. Infinite division, infinite repair, infinite cancer. The immortality of Ms. lacks cancer cells did not save her, but they have contributed to saving millions of lives since.

connecting the life of Henrietta Lacks with her remarkable cells, Ms. Skloot creates a story that should have been told decades ago. But sometimes, those of us who consider ourselves educated have the largest egos. And the most enduring barrier to truth is ego, is it not? The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks rights a grievous wrong and, in doing so, teaches us about life, science and humility. An excellent read. (4/5 Stars)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

From The Week of February 28, 2010

It may be that many of you have seen the famous film which was based on this infamous 1962 novel by Mr. Burgess. If not, and if you're not familiar with the book either, then strap in and hold on. You're about to embark upon a difficult and disturbing journey into the lives and minds of four disaffected youths, living in a future, dystopian Britain rife with nihilism and the degradation of society.

Alex, our main eyes and ears on this journey -- it is impossible to call the vile thug a protagonist --, seems to live, moment to moment, experience to experience. In an effort to stave off boredom, and to maintain his status as head of his little gang of youths, he leads them to acts of brutality which are as mindless as they are cruel. There's literally no level to which Alex and his crew will not stoop. And so, when the gang is busted up and Alex apprehended by the authorities, the reader feels a certain sense of satisfaction, that the world is being set right. But of course, this is where the true nightmare begins. Alex is subjected to a kind of cruel brainwashing which distorts his sense of pleasure and pain. But not only does the brainwashing de-claw him, it makes painful his one, true, innocent pleasure in life, music.

Though Mr. Burgess' plot is moving and disturbing, the extent to which he's able to seize our anger at Alex, twist it up and use it against us is the genius of the piece. The dialect Alex uses to narrate the tale is clever and affecting as well, but there was something powerful in feeling pity for such a vile creature. It takes a special kind of skill to pull off such a feat. Foulness aside -- and I do not think this book could've been any longer than its slim 190 pages without making me want to swallow razorblades --, I salute Mr. Burgess' literary craft. This is a difficult job done well. (3/5 Stars)

Push by Sapphire

From The Week of February 28, 2010

After hearing that the film was receiving Oscar attention, I found myself curious about its source material, this provocative, 1996 novel from Sapphire which, while something of an exercise in emotional masochism, heartens as much as it horrifies. Push is the story of a 16-year-old, African American woman from Harlem, New York. Though the main thrust of the story is taken up with a single year of her life, 1987, details of her horrific childhood provide the context necessary to understand why Precious is the illiterate, depressed mother of two children she did not consent to have. Thank heavens this is fiction.

But this is perhaps Push's strength. Though the ugliness that retards Precious' development is nothing more than fiction, there are surely people in the world who suffer as Precious does. And is there anything more heinous than a child who is crushed before he or she ever gets a fair chance at life? Push challenges our prejudices by forcing us to see into the lives of those we're so quick to judge. And though many real-life survivors of abuse may not be as brave as fictional Precious, they all deserve our support, not to mention the full protection of the laws we hold so dear.

For all the foulness, this is an uplifting book. More than its message though, its literary significance is noteworthy. It is written in stream of consciousness, with many of the words spelled phonetically. In the beginning of the novel, Precious can barely think in a way capable of communicating with her readers. But as she develops, her voice improves, not only in diction but in her ability to utilizes metaphor and nuance. It's not an original technique, to use the words on the page to reflect a character's development, but Sapphire puts it to skillful and effective use here. (3/5 Stars)

Red Orchestra by Anne Nelson

From The Week of February 28, 2010

It fascinates us, I think, to look back on periods in our history which exhibit all the symptoms of mass insanity. How did that happen, we ask in bewilderment. That would never happen now, we sagely reassure ourselves. The Nazis are the perfect case study for this phenomenon. All but the most pessimistic among us will agree that the average soul is a good soul. But if that's true, how do we explain the Nazis? How can so many ordinary people, good people, sane people, participate in a regime so heinous as to defy description?

Though Ms. Nelson does not directly speak to this most strange of human phenomenons, she does, in Red Orchestra, put a sizeable hole in the notion that opposition to Hitler and his cronies was non-existent. She, here, lifts the curtain of history upon a troop of brave, young men and women, educators, artists, performers, thinkers, who, upon witnessing Hitler's rise to power, try to do something about it. Swimming as they did in similar social circles, these allies were able to exchange messages, plan sedition, and pass on secrets to Allied governments, all in an effort to destabilize Hitler's regime and bring about a change for the better, for the sane. But as with most well-run, totalitarian regimes, their efforts were uprooted, unmasked and paraded scornfully before the people with a good lie or two thrown in just to make sure everyone knew who deserved the devil's horns. Some of them were executed by shamefully packed German courts while others escaped harm, but the outcome is not the objective of Ms. Nelson's tale. Hers is a lesson in conscience, conscience in the face of what people know to be wrong. It is a story about being overmatched, out-manned and out-gunned and going ahead anyway. Because right is not conditional. It's not dependent upon whether or not someone is going to take your head off for saying what is true. Right is right, no matter what the consequences are. This group of friends understood that and acted accordingly. Examples of greater courage are few and far between. (3/5 Stars)

The Steel Remains: A Land Fit For Heroes 01 by Richard K. Morgan

From The Week of February 21, 2010

Before you cast open the cover of one of the best books you'll ever read, you must do one thing. You must rid yourself of any notion of sweetness and light, of innocence and nobility. CThese are nothing but a bard's fictions, nice, little lies people tell each other to make the hard world seem softer. We all know better, don't we? That selfishness and cruelty don't even break a sweat as they stomp chivalry and beauty into the dust.

There you go. That feels better, doesn't it? Now you're ready to take a ride into darkness the likes of which you've not experienced. For Mr. Morgan gathers up every cliche of fantasy fiction and knifes them open just to see what might pour out. The result? A gloriously funny, exquisitely savage, and relentlessly confrontational piece of dark-as-sin, fantasy fiction that will have you scream in terror or elation, depending upon the strength of your stomach. All lyricism aside, Mr. Morgan has written the perfect book which even his considerable talents will find difficult to top. For we have here a combination of genre-busting characters tested by the tightest and darkest of plots rife with petty gods, zealot priests and indulgent emperors who, together, govern a corrupted world and its many beleaguered races.

Only an Englishman could write a book like this. Only he could bless it with the kind of dark humor that keeps the tale from tipping over into pure viciousness. And that is how this seductress charms, hilarity. Even in the thickness of battle, when the blood is splattering each page, there's a kind of maniac glee that cannot but infect the riveted reader. An unmatched tale of three antiheroes banding together for one, last kick at the can of glory, this time, against all odds, and all this in a land fit only for sadists. There are not enough stars in the sky for this book. (5/5 Stars)

PS: Please, blame me for ruining it for you if, on my recommendation you buy this and hate it. For I'm the one who skewed your expectations. I read this book cold, with only the vaguest idea of what it was about and the Prologue about blew the top of my head off. I couldn't help but slobber all over this review. My apologies if that messed up the bar for you. There was never a hope in Hell that this review would be even close to impartial.

The Rise And Fall Of Alexandria by Justin Pollard

From The Week of February 28, 2010

How do we know what we know about the past? Since the advent of modern technology, the sum total of human knowledge has been spread over a dizzying array of computer systems, databases, and library archives, all of which are difficult to destroy. And so we can feel fairly confident that our descendants will have a pretty clear picture of who we are and what we did. There's too much data for uncertainty. But stretch back before European Enlightenment and we have a much different picture of history. Literacy is confined to a tiny, privileged minority which means that, in the absence of a strong, oral history to pass on the knowledge of the common folk, what we do know of the past is determined by those rich enough, or religious enough, to have had the time and or the passion to write down and preserve, for posterity, the events of their times. Take a moment and grasp this notion. How much of what we know is skewed by bias, by false testimony, by deliberate deception? Not only that, what giants of history have come and gone, their accounts lost to us through misfortune? Because a book didn't get translated, or a church decided the story was inappropriate, or a fire burned off the material with which we could have constructed a history. Everything we know is filtered through a few thousand accounts of events we can barely relate to, but it didn't have to be this way.

Alexandria, the center of human knowledge. Named after the great conquerer, it was popularized by Ptolemy, an Alexandrian general with aspirations of greatness, to follow in his master's footsteps. And though he was somewhat successful in his goal, creating a line of kings and queens that lasted for centuries, his greater gift, at least to those who came after him, was his capital city, to which scholars, philosophers, mathematicians and dreamers all flocked. We know from modern day examples that places of knowledge have a kind of magnetism, that they draw in talent from far and wide. Look no further than the some 80 colleges ringed about Boston, Massachusetts for proof of that. Alexandria was no exception. At the height of the city's power, its library alone may have held tens of thousands of books procured from ships that would come into Alexandria's port, or bought at book fairs from all over the learned world. It is perhaps the gravest human travesty that the library burned, no doubt taking with it heroes now forever lost to us.

Knowledge may well be the most powerful human force, making the shaping of knowledge a close second. This is a theme that runs clear through Mr. Pollard's biography of Alexandria: the city, its rulers, its thinkers, and its great library. It chronicles the city's rise to prominence, which seems almost a beacon of knowledge in the night of ignorance, and its fall, an event which might well have plunged the western world into centuries of intellectual stagnation. This book is as thought provoking as it is edifying, asking us to wonder how our world might have been different had the light of knowledge been allowed to burn for awhile longer. Well told and with some fascinating, historical figures I'd never heard of. (4/5 Stars)

Alexander The Great And His Time by Agnis Sevill

From The Week of February 21, 2010

He is the most celebrated conquerer and hero in human history, the great unifier of seemingly half the world, Alexander, who spent his adult life in a saddle, leading an army of conquest and consolidation. Ms. Sevill's account of the great hero's life is forced into guesswork far more often than we'd like, but then there's much about the enigmatic Alexander that we do not know. And so gaps are filled in, suppositions made, avenues of thought explored, knowing all the while that only some of his deeds have come down to us through the turbulence of history.

Though Ms. Sevill does spent most of her time on Alexander's life, his birth to a fractious court, his difficult relationship with his mother, his thirst for knowledge, his heroic tutors, his stunning tactics, she leaves off her account with a rumination on the man's legacy. For while few will argue the claim at the top of this review, can the title of greatest conquerer and hero truly be claimed by one who died so young and whose reputation far outstripped his actual legacy? His empire fell apart almost immediately upon his death. And though his name thunders through history, does that not have to be weighed against his lack of planning for his own death, the event of which caused widespread chaos and strife? In this, he strikes me as not unlike Genghis Khan, a great man of his time who believed that he could forge a lasting legacy through strength of will alone, not thinking that, without his spirit to maintain the order he created with the edge of his sword, all would fall quickly into disarray.

What is greatness? Is it military genius? Or is it having the clarity of mind to imagine the next step, the next chapter, and plan for it? If it is the former, then Alexander is the unchallenged head of the pantheon of heroes. But if it is the latter, then I'm far from certain he rates above a particularly wise farmer.

In any event, a well-told history, insofar as we know it to be. (3/5 Stars)

Up In The Air by Walter Kern

From The Week of February 21, 2010

I love quirky novels. Though I do not always enjoy them, they have an oddly potent energy and passion I find fascinating. Up In The Air does not disappoint in its strangeness. Far from it. Any piece of fiction about a lonely man's obsessive quest to earn a million frequent flyer miles has surely earned its weirdness credibility a million times over.

Ryan Bingham, our disturbed protagonist, loves to fly. He seems to love everything about it: the chance to talk to anyone from any line of work, the sensation of freedom that comes from being 30,000 feet up, the ability to be anywhere in only a few hours. He loves rental cars and hotel rooms as well. They allow him never to leave any part of himself behind, no footprint, no signature. This kind of impermanence is a fetish for Mr. Bingham who is madly trying to complete his quest before his boss realizes he has left his job and retaliates by cancelling the credit card Mr. Bingham is using to accrue his points.

The novel takes a decidedly dark turn when Mr. Bingham starts to believe that someone is stealing his frequent flyer miles to take flights to places he's never been. Or has he been to those places, those towns and simply forgot? How would he know if he was? Mr. Kern's has written a story that hinges almost entirely on one character, Ryan Bingham, which is a gamble, but a gamble he successfully pulls off. There's a disquiet the reader experiences while watching Mr. Bingham's deterioration, a kind of anxiety I can only equate to watching the deranged unravel before our very eyes. And yet, rather than come off as ridiculous, Bingham is a clever allegory for our dislocated times in which nothing that we have, nothing that we own, is permanent, is lasting. Everything comes and goes, replaced by something new, just like Mr. Bingham, just like this keyboard I type on.

A thoughtful and powerful read. It reminds me of the not-so-quiet desperation exemplified in films like American Beauty. There's a franticness about the protagonist that is urgent and worrisome. Highly recommended if, like me, you like pieces that are some ways off the beaten path. (4/5 Stars)

Freedom For The Thought That We Hate by Anthony Lewis

From The Week of February 14, 2010

Freedom For The Thought That We Hate is a biography of the First Amendment, it's enshrinement in the American Constitution, its initial, conservative interpretation, and then, finally, its rise to unfettered dominance in the 20th century. Mr. Lewis sites Oliver Holmes as one of its most vigorous champions while covering other famous cases in which it played a preeminent role.

Freedom of Speech is a universally recognized right among enlightened nations, but that particularly unfettered strain of free speech practiced by Americans is comparatively rare. Most other nations, particularly those to have come out of the British Commonwealth, practice a more modest form of free speech which takes into account the greater good of society. If the speech is harmful to a great many people, then it can be justifiably censured. The manner in which such a system could be abused by government is obvious, but it seems to me that the American strain of free speech is not without its own flaws, for instance the Westboro Baptist church which pickets military funerals as a protest against the relatively permissive (for them) stance American society has taken towards homosexuality. This is considered protected speech because all speech is protected speech, but as Mr. Lewis points out, speech today has taken on a different meaning than the one originally intended for it. More over, an organization such as the Westboro Baptist church would have been unthinkable in the time when the American Constitution enshrined their first and least alienable amendment.

The debate will rage on which strain of free speech is better, safer, andfairer. However, that we can even have the debate is a sign that we possess the very right that the Founders thought so important. In writing this, I am practicing free speech, as was Mr. Lewis when he wrote his lovely book. A good biography of a difficult subject, least of all because it cannot defend itself. But that's well enough because millions stand ready, the world over, to defend it to the death. (4/5 Stars)

Switching Time by Richard K. Baer

From The Week of February 14, 2010

For those of us blessed with mental health, and though we may sometimes take it for granted, it is difficult to imagine a worse torment than the loss of ones mind. And yet that torment must be as nothing compared to what the sufferers of Multiple Personality Disorder are forced to endure. What would it be like to lose whole stretches of time and to not know why? What would it be like to realize that you've been acting during your lost hours, relating with other people, in situations utterly foreign to you? What would you do? What would you be willing to sacrifice to regain your sanity?

Dr. Baer relates, in Switching Time his experiences with one of his patients, a relationship that lasted many years and survived many trials. As he patiently assists the woman in piecing her life back together, we learn that her condition is caused by childhood trauma so dark, so awful, that it will not be discussed here. Suffice it to say that it is no wonder that the woman's mind broke under the strain of what she was forced to endure at the hands of those she ought to have trusted most.

Though the medicine practiced here is fascinating, the human story overwhelms the procedure. How many undiagnosed sufferers of MPD are out there, even now, survivors of unspeakable events, not knowing why they are losing time? Losing their lives... A stunning read and a must-consume for anyone even mildly interested in the plight of the mentally ill. (4/5 Stars)

Titan by Stephen Baxter

From The Week of February 14, 2010

There is but one group of readers who will be satisfied with Mr. Baxter's Titan, those readers who think, as he does, that science fiction is nothing more than orgiastic expressions of geekdom. Titan is an idea and nothing more. It doesn't have a purpose. Its characters barely grow. Hell, its villains, such as they are, have utterly incomprehensible motives until the reader realizes that the story has to be advanced forward somehow and that this monumental lifting has to fall to someone. This is geekdom, plain and simple, a quality idea dredged up from the mind of a scientist and put to paper with little thought of what to wrap around it; a hotdog with no bun. For those of you still interested in such plain fare...

In a near future America on the march towards religious zealotry -- because that's original! --, funding is being cut from the space program. In a last ditch effort to explore the solar system, a collection of astronauts and scientists hatch a plan to cannibalize the remaining extraorbital craft to build a single ship that will travel a select group of them to Saturn's moon, Titan, where they will live out their days, exploring and researching, knowing they cannot return home. Though there's an admirable kind of scientific existentialism about this one-way mission, and though some may find the human relations among the crew of some note, the story runs out of legs once the mission reaches Titan. Mr. Baxter's tale concludes with a coda so ridiculous, so disconnected from the main thrust of his story, that it's not worth detailing here.

A story must be animated by something more than an idea. It has to be inflated by characters and their personalities. It has to be alive. And unfortunately, Mr. Baxter has only simulated life in Titan. There is no true genesis. (1/5 Stars)

Dirt by Neil Strauss

From The Week of February 07, 2010

Dirt is an appropriate title for one of the filthiest works of non-fiction ever penned. There are surely other works which contain more salacious details of a group of men and their depraved exploits, but Mr. Strauss has them beat on the sheer variety of filth represented. Of course, when your subject is the infamous Motley Crue, getting dirty is far from difficult.

Fans of titillating tell-alls will be disappointed by the absence of serious graphic detail which goes wanting in favor of a sweeping portrayal of a band, its members, and their antics. And though triumph and tragedy feature prominently, there's plenty of time to zoom in on the details, capturing cancelled shows, foolish fights, petty squabbles and a dizzying array of tours which prove too numerous and various to follow. And lest we forget, the women, a veritable flurry of models who rotate through the tale as girlfriends, wives, ex-wives and friends of ex-wives. For all this, the most memorable scene is stolen by Ozzy Osbourne who, in one spectacular display of disgustitude, manages to combine about four of the foulest human activities into one, indescribable event. Just one hint... It involves ants.

For all of Motley Crue's extravagance, for all their grudges, disputes, and battles, there's an admirably captured sense of camaraderie here that lingers throughout. It and money are no doubt the only redeeming virtues for the schedules these men have kept over the years. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that the whole affair would be unbearable without them. And too, beneath the noise, there are touching moments, one death in particular that will stay with me for some time. Mr. Strauss strikes a good balance between the depravity and the humanity and leaves the reader satisfied that he has some sense of rock's last, real, riotous band. (4/5 Stars)

Game Change by John Heilemann And Mark Halperin

From The Week of February 07, 2010

Politics is such an ugly business, populated as it is with labyrinthine agendas and ideological entrenchment. If it weren't for the obscene amount of public power wielded by the victors of the various elections, no sane person would bother with it.

Yet, somehow, politics has become a spectator sport, particularly in the United States where the polarization of the two major parties establishes a kind of red-team versus blue-team mentality that fits the sports analogy perfectly. Who's up? Who's down? Who's about to rally and whose about to take their ball and go home? This is the talk of bars and coffee shops.

So it should not surprise, in the least, that the fortunes of politicians are covered with the same zeal and the same loose, ethical standards found in sportswriting. For make no mistake, Game Change cannot pretend to have any journalistic credibility. It is an eminently entertaining recount of the 2008 Presidential race which draws wonderfully acidic portraits of all the major participants from Barack Obama to Sarah Palin, but there's hardly any attribution anywhere, especially in the most juicy moments. Compare this to the book by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson which covered the same topic but kept itself from the kind of backroom speculation Game Change devolves to.

There's room in our culture for Game Change. After all, there's room in our culture for gossip pages at magazines, but we should not assume that this has any more credibility than that. Perhaps Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann nail every point, properly paint every character portrait, but without attribution we can't know that. Without attribution, this is just particularly well-researched gossip.

That said, it is a delightful read. The portrait of Elizabeth Edwards is devastating and memorable, as is the extent to which the McCain/Palin campaign seemed doomed from the start. But enjoyable isn't credible and so I must walk away from Game Change unsure of what's true and what's old-fashioned score-settling. (3/5 Stars)

The Third Claw Of God: Andrea Cort 02 by Adam-Troy Castro

From The Week of February 07, 2010

Having lost the novelty of the first tale which won our affections, sequels must invariably have superior plots to their progenitors in order to avoid disappointment. For not only do readers come to them armed with hopes unfairly elevated by the first book in a given series, authors are often the last to know when they've milked too much of a good thing and turned it sour with repetition. Not so with The Third Claw Of God which is every bit as good as the book that gave it life.

While Emissaries From The Dead emphasized the science fiction over the mystery, The Third Claw of God takes the opposite approach, providing a science fiction setting for a fascinating, if old-school, detective story. En-route to execute another in a long line of repugnant tasks, handed down to her by her extortive masters in the judicial branch of this future, human civilization, Andrea Cort, diplomat extraordinaire, and her two companions are trapped aboard a stricken transport ferrying them to the surface of their destination, a planet become personal fiefdom for one of the most rapacious families in the known worlds. Somehow, during the accident, a murder was committed, a murder which could have only been carried out by someone still aboard the lavish and now crippled ferry. Being as how everyone on the transport is trapped for the next few hours, there's no reason for Ms. Cort not to bring her considerable powers to bear upon the unsolved crime.

Mr. Castro has intentionally restricted the scenery of his book down to the transport and little else. So unlike with Emissaries, he cannot rely upon his creative scenery to carry the story. He turns instead to a cast of fascinating characters, spiteful, greedy, vindictive, jealous, and murderous, to propel the story along. And they give him admirable service, animating an excellent second effort from Mr. Castro that will have me reading the third when it comes out. The Third Claw Of God showed real range, given how much it varied from Emissaries. Impressive work. (4/5 Stars)

Emissaries From The Dead: Andrea Cort 01 by Adam-Troy Castro

From The Week of February 07, 2010

Weird is a specialty of Science Fiction. In no other genre of literature is a good story more dependent upon the author unfettering his imagination from the bounds of social custom and the laws of the universe. In such an inventive environment, weirdness is almost an inevitability. Mr. Castro's first novel in a series based on his heroine, Andrea Cort, troubled diplomat, is not only no exception to this weirdness rule, it celebrates its freakishness in ways alternately enjoyable and frightening.

Centuries into the future, humanity has spread across the stars, populating not only planets and moons but artificial habitats which float, fully formed , in deepest space. Humans have not only discovered that they are far from alone in the universe, they've grown comfortable living on already occupied worlds, co-mingling with alien species and even depending upon alien habitats for their own survival. Andrea Cort is, herself, an experiment of interspecies relations. The half-mad product of a social experiment between humans and aliens which went horribly, horribly wrong, she has grown into, to all outward appearances, a powerful, domineering diplomat attached to what we might think of as the judicial branch of human government. Internally, however, Ms. Cort is a roil of uncertainty and confusion, tumultuous emotions which are the legacy of a nightmarish childhood. She is an indentured worker of the state, paying off debts both actual and spiritual. And the latest installment she must pay off? Solving a murder on a dangerous, alien habitat, rife with rivalries, secrets and species no human has begun to understand.

Mr. Castro's biography doesn't exactly inspire confidence; one does not expect great, imaginative fiction from a man who has written Spiderman novels. Shame on me for judging him. This is an excellent piece of science fiction, exactly as it should be: creative, expansive, thrilling, risque and bizarre. I have particular admiration for the sexual relationships Mr. Castro has generated here. Ms. Cort's intimacies with a pair of humans who've chosen to live together telepathically, as a kind of sibling pair, is fascinating and titillating. A well-rounded effort. (4/5 Stars)

Random Acts Of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack

From The Week of January 31, 2010

I found this vivid piece of near-future fiction trolling through various tags on Amazon.com. And though this is a highly disturbing read, its glory outshines its grit.

Set in New York City of the near future, and during a relatively rapid deterioration of society into lawlessness and decay, Random Acts Of Senseless Violence follows one upper-middleclass family through the eyes of its eldest daughter, 12 year old Lola who narrates the story through entries in her diary. Mr. Womack's excellent plotting allows us to watch Lola's sweetness give way to a kind of madness as she mirrors the decay of her city and her society. It tracks the toughening-up of her friends, the decline of her schools, the chaos of her streets and the devolution of her family all while breaking our hearts with a young girl's need to be loved and wanted.

This is one of the most well-plotted works of apocalyptic fiction I've ever read and it's a shame that Mr. Womack has not been more widely acclaimed for it. Nihilistic? Yes. Frightening? Absolutely. Better for being both? Without a doubt... (4/5 Stars)

Conquistador by Buddy Levy

From The Week of January 31, 2010

Conquistador is Mr. Levy's startling account of the fall of the Aztec Empire. Mr. Levy frames his tale around what we know of its conquerer, Cortez, who, in 1519, came to shore with 11 ships, 500 men and dubious legal authority. In fact, at the time, he and his men were considered mutineers. However, after exploring the empire and adopting an ingenious strategy of cultivating alliances, and igniting hatreds between, various tribes, Cortez was able to conquer one of the world's mightiest empires in less than two years, achieving in the deed legitimacy in the eyes of his Spanish betters.

Though we look back now upon this time of European conquest with revulsion, noting in particular the cruelty that was a daily practice of conquerers of the period, it is difficult not to marvel at what, even now, seems an impossible feat. To conquer millions of people with but 500 soldiers, no matter the pre-existing divisions within the empire... That is a remarkable, if morally bankrupt, endeavor. Mr. Levy educates us on the deprivations Cortez and his men endured, the tribes they encountered, the battles they fought and, to his credit, the obscenities they wrought upon a people who welcomed them with open arms. The passages in which Mr. Levy describes the desecration of Aztec temples were particularly difficult to read. And yet, it is important to know that we are all capable of such cruelty when, armed by an insensitivity to the pain of others, we allow ourselves to be driven by the hunger to taste greatness. (4/5 Stars)

Nothing To Envy by Barbara Demick

From The Week of January 31, 2010

At the beginning of Ms. Demick's Nothing To Envy, the author describes satellite photos of Asia by night, of how the landscape veritably blazes with electric light save for one area which is as a black hole to the world around it. This is North Korea. It's a wonderful image and it doesn't take Ms. Demick long to use it to exemplify the extent to which this most mysterious nation has cut itself off from the rest of the world economically, industrially and informationally. North Korea is a black hole which sucks up the lives and dreams of its citizens who, according to Ms. Demick's account, are decades behind the rest of the world.

We know now that Communism does not work. Human nature is structured such that we compete with our fellows to succeed, to have more, to be the best. Our natures are antithetical to Communism which is based on an equal division of labor and reward. But Communism's failure is not solely the fault of competitiveness. Humans do not do well when power over other humans is bestowed upon them. In fact, having power over other people is perhaps the quickest way to corrupt a human being, to cause him to lose perspective on his ethics, his morality. And so the centralization of authority demanded by planned economies are doomed to create a tiny, corrupted, ruling class willing to jackboot its way over the prone bodies of its adherence in order to maintain but one goal, the preservation of power.

This is what has happened to North Korea which has chillingly become a living monument to George Orwell's 1984. To cement the political system in place, the leaders of the Communist revolution there have created a cult of personality around the ruling family, plastering their likenesses across billboards, requiring their framed countenances to be hung in living rooms, forcing schools to teach their words, and preventing anyone from hearing voices other than their own. Corruption, on the deepest, most profoundest level... The embodiment of absolute power and how it creates in those who have it a demand for slavish fealty from their subjects... And the worst part, as documented innothing To Envy, not even the widespread starvation of its citizens, brought about by famine, has ignited the faintest change.

Ms. Demick has drawn a heartbreaking portrait of daily life among North Koreans, brave and battered people living in a country that is a graveyard for their hopes and dreams. This is a shattering work. (5/5 Stars)

A World Lit Only by Fire by William Manchester

From The Week of January 31, 2010

Mr. Manchester's account of Medieval Europe, its corrupted institutions, its painful trials, and its self-destructive arrogance, alternately burns with indignance and sighs with exasperation. Many have tried to explain or explain away the darkest time in the history of the West, that period roughly between the end of the Roman Empire and the don of 17th century enlightenment, a thousand year stretch of anti-science dominated by a zealous adherence to the Catholic church. Mr. Manchester adds to this debate by exemplifying the lengths to which powerful figures of the time, specifically bishops and monarchs, were willing to go to maintain a stranglehold on power. We see how, time after time, big institutions stomped out the ember of scientific knowledge, unless of course it suited them to foster it, all in the name of obedience to the lord.

We know now the folly of large institutions. We understand that they accrete power unto themselves and, in doing so, set about destroying themselves and all they stand for. For as lord Acton so ably put it, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And this is the shame of this world that is only lit by fire, that the two groups invested with absolute authority, the church and the state, were so self-interested and so corrupt, that they refused to relinquish any authority, no matter what cost to humanity in lives, in careers, in hopes. This is an excellent and depressing book about the power of ignorance and centralized authority. No correlation to our times at all, noooo... (4/5 Stars)

Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre

From The Week of January 31, 2010

In a future Earth covered in deserts and baked by a relentless sun, a healer moves across the land, from settlement to settlement, plying her trade and doing what she can to bring some measure of peace to the world's miserable inhabitants. Though the healer has her own knowledge gained from study in her mountain home, her dreamsnake, an alien creature whose bite delivers an intoxicating venom, aids her in her efforts and otherwise provides companionship to Snake in her long, lonely journeys.

Throughout her journey, we encounter the various societies that have sprung up in this hard land, from feudal towns, to egalitarian tribes, to technocratic enclaves where knowledge is jealously guarded. And so, while the story revolves around Snake's odyssey to replace the dreamsnake she has lost and the revelations that unfold as a result of her quest, the state of the world, its inhabitants and their societies, are the true stars of the show. Ms. McIntyre has created a vivid world whose sufferers are tested daily by an unforgiving sun and a radioactive landscape. Their beliefs and eccentricities propel the story to a rewardingly organic conclusion. Ms. McIntyre's superior skills never once let us down here as she makes believable a tortured land and its challenged people. (3/5 Stars)

Newton And The Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

From The Week of January 24, 2010

The name of Sir Isaac Newton thunders across human history. Science and physics textbooks are riddled with his theories which give name and form to some of the most fundamental aspects of our universe. And so how it was that I knew nothing of the great man's second career as Britain's Master of The Mint bewilders me. But then, as Mr. Levenson argues, no one would have known about Mr. Newton's second life if it weren't for Newton's famous battle with William Chaloner.

A brazen and intelligent thief, William Chaloner was a forger of British coins which, it turns out, was a fairly popular profession in the late 17th century. Some accounts hold British coins of this period to be the most debased in the world. Enter Newton who, having not been financially compensated to his satisfaction for his theories of physics, sought out the post of Master Of The Mint as a means of securing his financial future. After revolutionizing the minting process, Newton set about prosecuting various counterfeiters, or coiners as they were called, until he came across William Chaloner who was, himself, a match for the brilliant mathematician.

And so we come to the setting of Mr. Levenson's wonderful book, the battle between Newton, the explainer of gravity, the great thinker, and William Chaloner, the thief and coiner, the man who professed his innocence so strenuously that he claimed to British authorities that he was merely perfecting the coining process as a means to help improve the protection of the British coin. And a battle it is too for we have never seen Newton so savage, so vicious, so bloodthirsty. But then you might be a bit savage when, after descending from your ivory tower of academia you're forced to wade through the filthy, mean streets of London's underground where the procurement of a fortune can only be achieved through means nefarious.

This is a delightful and fascinating read. (/5 Stars)

American Lion by Jon Meacham

From The Week of January 24, 2010

American Lion is Jon Meacham's excellent biography of Andrew Jackson, that most bellicose of early American presidents. An unknown figure outside military circles prior to the War of 1812, Gen. Jackson's star swiftly rose after beating back a British attempt, in 1815, to seize the port of New Orleans as a prelude to capturing and claiming the vast territory of the Louisiana purchase which Thomas Jefferson had bought from the French some ten years earlier. A mere 14 years after this noteworthy victory, Mr. Jackson became president of his nation, serving out two terms in the highest office before retiring to Tennessee where he died some eight years later. A farmer, a soldier, a judge, and a general, Mr. Jackson stands in the forefront of the second wave of American luminaries behind the nation's founders, for, he did has much to shape the future of his nation as any of his generation.

Mr. Meacham ably covers the totality of Mr. Jackson's life, from his successes to his failures, from his allies to his enemies. He documents the family of Old Hickory, lavishing special attention upon two figures closest to America's seventh president, Rachel Donelson, his much-loved wife who died just prior to Jackson's inauguration, and Andrew Donelson, his nephew and adopted son who became the President's private secretary during his years at the White House.

Setting aside the quality of their research, successful biographies hinge on one thing, animating the subject in question, making the reader feel as though they know the subject and can predict their actions. Mr. Meacham achieves this goal by focusing more on the man and his life than on his eight years in the White House and all the predictable struggles inherent to that office. Quality work based on a difficult subject. (3/5 Stars)

The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley

From The Week of January 24, 2010

In 1905, seven senators, 23 congressmen, a future president of the United States and the daughter of the then sitting president, Theodore Roosevelt, embarked upon a three month diplomatic cruise to Asia which, or so Mr. Bradley argues in The Imperial Cruise, determined the course of American-Asian relations for the next 50 years. And yet, labelling the cruise an important event in American history does not do it justice. The breezy role call of luminaries aboard ship passes over the brightest star in that constellation, Alice Roosevelt, a young woman of such fame and fortune that she was often hailed as the American princess. And though the diplomatic mission visited Japan, Korea, China and the Philippines, cementing at each turn American policies that would change the future of the nation, it was Ms. Roosevelt who attracted the crowds in tens of thousands who flocked to see the spirited, first daughter of a nation that would come to dominate the century ahead.

Though Alice Roosevelt's fingerprints are all over Mr Bradley's tale, his broader theme, that President Roosevelt's Aryan belief in white, Christian superiority was the driving force behind his belligerence towards Asia, is startling. A great deal of research has clearly gone into supporting this contention and the weight of Mr. Bradley's findings largely convince. Yet something of the claim feels a little too neat, a little too tidy. We sometimes reach for elaborate reasons to explain incomprehensible events when arrogance and a sense of self-importance will do well enough.

Mr. Bradley has chronicled a remarkable three months in American history and, in doing so, goes into some detail of the American war with the Philippines and the recent, cultural developments in Japan and Korea. This is an excellent piece of non-fiction that could've been 50 pages longer. Some of the foreign dignitaries and leaders encountered by our American delegates have been given quite short shrift. (4/5 Stars)

A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski

From The Week of January 24, 2010

A Door Into Ocean offers the reader a mixed bag of delights and frustrations. Superficially, it is the story of a boy who, in seeking to avoid his uninspiring future, travels with two women to his planet's water-covered moon where he is introduced to the native society's notion of egalitarianism, that is, the idea that all resources everywhere belong to the collective society, neatly eliminating the rivalries and selfishness that arise from competitive capitalism. In this, Ms. Slonczewski successfully animates her characters, emotionally connecting them to us and making us care about the awful things that befall them. It's only on a deeper level that the story begins to collapse.

At some point in the future, humans inhabit an ore-rich planet which is dominated by a particularly avaricious form of capitalism. And though we don't spend much time on the planet, it is strongly implied that its society is locked into a kind of futuristic feudalism that has institutionalized corruption and cut out the rungs necessary for the lower classes to advance up the ladder of society. Meanwhile, on the planet's watery moon, a different kind of society has sprung up, one that has adopted the opposite approach of sharing everything and owning nothing. The differences between the two societies are only enhanced when the reader realizes that the moon, Shora, is an all-female society and that the planet, Valedon, is highly paternalistic.

When an author sets out to write social commentary and couch it in science fiction, which is what Ms. Slonczewski has done, that commentary cannot be so black and white. We know from bitter experience that there is not one, perfect social system. Virtually every possible permutation has been tried and most have failed for one reason or another. Every notion has its flaws. And so, when Ms. Slonczewski represents her egalitarian moon-dwellers as perfect, pacifist, socialist angels being defiled in the face of rabid, voracious, capitalist warmongers, cognitive dissonance yanks the reader out of the story. Capitalism certainly has its faults; it would be foolish to argue otherwise. But Ms. Slonczewski has gone the other way and tried to argue that it has no virtues which is equally wrong. Capitalism is rapacious, but so are human beings. The systems we create are manifestations of our ideas, our wants. Those flaws are in our systems because they are in us. They aren't exogenous. It seems to me that Ms. Slonczewski has tried to blame the system, not the people, that the system creates the people, egalitarianism = benevolent, capitalism = predatory. And that's an oversimplification that the book is not good enough to withstand.

In summary, Ms. Slonczewski has penned a wonderful book which has quite a rare problem. It's wonderful characters are perfectly and even painfully three-dimensional, but the polarized settings in which she imbeds them are two-dimensional generalizations. Nonetheless, the feminism here is intriguing and Shora's pacifism in the face of such devastation is heartbreakingly poignant. A flawed diamond. (3/5 Stars)

Counting Heads by David Marusek

From The Week of January 24, 2010

Counting Heads is a failure. Sold as a futuristic thriller revolving around the efforts by various combative factions to seize a cryogenically frozen head, Mr. Marusek spends far more time lavishing attention upon his world than he does attending to his plot which, half the time, has nothing to do with a frozen head, much less any search for it. The characters are interesting and Mr. Marusek can certainly write well, but this is world-building porn, not a story driven by any goal, at least not any goal that matters to the reader.

Writing science fiction is a difficult balancing act. It must challenge our way of looking at the world without veering too far away from what we can relate to. For if we can't relate to the characters in any meaningful way, we cannot care about what befalls them. Mr. Marusek spends the first 200 pages trying and failing to convince us to care about his characters and then the next 200 pages thrusting them aside in favor of the plot he neglected in the first 200! That's hardly what I'd call balance. Frustrating, annoying and unsatisfying for anyone not completely captivated by world-building fiction. (2/5 Stars)

We Were One by Patrick K. O'Donnell

From The Week of January 17, 2010

We know from those who have engaged in man's darkest and most enduring pursuit that war is a hellish thing. It has inspired us to achieve feats of technology and unity undreamed of in times less desperate, all while requiring us to pay a grievous cost, in the form of the stains on our souls and in the form of the innumerable lives that have been snatched away by its brutality. Thanks to a free press and to modern technologies, some of which were inspired by war, the talk of war is now steered by a war's justness, not its glory. Citizens can properly assess the cost of conflict, to grasp whether or not their leaders are lying to them about its righteousness. Which is what makes reflecting upon the 2003 Iraq War so achingly painful. We knew its price. We knew it was launched on shaky intelligence. We knew it was bankrupt. And yet we went on, largely because we had no choice, because a handful of men now decide the fates of millions.

These are points worth making. Perhaps Mr. O'Donnell has even made them in some of his other works. However, We Were One is not a macro view of war and its weight. It's a personal tale of one unit in Iraq, in that ugly war. It is about a unit of men who took a town, Fallujah, invested with insurgents and made it safe. They did not achieve this goal through overwhelming force of numbers, of weapons, or of air support. In fact, they had no technological advantage over the enemy at all. They were hard men who took a hard town because they owed it to their fallen friends.

We Were One is a story about brotherhood and bravery. There are no Rumsfelds here, no Bushes. There is just courage in the face of overwhelming fire. We can debate the virtuousness of war all we like, but when they happen we must not look away from those who fight them. For we will miss something precious indeed, the lengths to which human beings will go to save their friends and comrades when their lives are on the line.

Moving and tragic. I could have wished for a bit more criticism on the war from Mr. O'Donnell, but that wasn't his objective here. We Were One is about soldiers, not wars. And to that end, it is a tale told very well. (4/5 Stars)

The Score Takes Care Of Itself by Bill Walsh

From The Week of January 17, 2010

In 1979, coming off a 2/14 1978 season, the San Francisco 49ers, then one of the NFL's most pathetic franchises, hired a head coach with no prior experience in the NFL. He was 48-year-old Bill Walsh, a collegiate coach who, while a known commodity in the, was an unknown to the team's beaten-down fans.

Nine years later, in 1988, Bill Walsh would retire, having transformed not only the 49ers into the most successful NFL franchise from 1980 to 2000, he forever changed the style of play in a league once dominated by hyper-basic, run-first offenses. Bill Walsh won three Superbowls not by getting lucky, not by stepping into the right team at the right time; he won because he installed an ethos in the 49ers, from the players to the secretaries, an ethos that demanded commitment to detail, respect for ones fellows and success from ones endeavors. He changed the culture of a team and, in doing so, rewrote the NFL's record books.

In The Score Takes Care Of Itself, Bill Walsh, over a series of interviews conducted a few years before his death, ruminates over his successes and failures, spending as much time on his philosophy of success as he does the glorious history of his time at the 49ers. In words eerily familiar to what one might hear at a seminar on good corporate culture, he expounds on his belief that success is based as much on attitude and deportment as it is on talent, and that people are defined as much by their comrades and coworkers as they are by their own actions.

Here are the thoughts of a good man reflecting upon his successful life, a man who achieved more than anyone could've dreamed before voluntarily stepping away and letting someone else take the glory of his creation. We would be fools to ignore his wisdom. We would be unkind not to acknowledge his goodness. (4/5 Stars)

A Few Seconds Of Panic by Stefan Fatsis

From The Week of January 17, 2010

A Few Seconds Of Panic is Stefan Fatsis' delightfully funny look inside a modern NFL locker room during training camp, the gruelling, summer portion of the NFL year where rosters are set, plays installed, and camaraderie forged for the difficult season ahead. But Mr. Fatsis, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and currently a contributer to NPR's All Things Considered and Slate's Hangup And Listen, doesn't just want to report on football players; he wants to endure training camp as a player would. And so, in the tradition of Paper Lion, he negotiates himself an invitation to the Denver Broncos' camp under Mike Shanahan, trying out at one of the more marginal positions on a football team, punter.

Though there's never any chance that a 43-year-old sportswriter will ever actually make the regular season roster for the Broncos, his fellow team mates, amused and delighted by Fatsis' attempt to kick his way their world, welcome him their fold. They open up to him in ways they would never open up to a regular reporter. And though the success of this book does not hinge solely on the congeniality of the players he competes and trains with -- his charming descriptions of teaching himself to punt prior to trying out with Denver definitely entertain --, A Few Seconds Of Panic would be much poorer for the Broncos shutting him out, dismissing him as a joke.

It's trendy to cut down professional athletes. They are grotesquely over-remunerated for the jobs they perform. and if we aren't discussing their bloated wages, we're pointing out how much trouble they get into, who has the most DWIs, who beats his wife, who hits the Crack pipe. This ignores, of course, that the owners and administrators of the leagues these athletes work for have traditionally been the ones to scale up their profits, to extort more money from fans through tickets and merchandising, and that players have tried mostly to earn for themselves a fair slice of that greedy pie. The lesson here? That we should never judge people we don't know. Without all the facts, we're forced to make generalizations and generalizations about a group of people are, if not outright wrong, are certainly unnuanced and unfair. The players Mr. Fatsis encounters are three-dimensional, possessing morals and dreams and flaws just like the rest of us. Yes, they are handsomely compensated for playing a game, but then they also possess an uncommon drive to succeed, to be better, a drive which has thrust them up into the stratosphere of success. They are people and I, for one, find that gratifying. As is this book... (4/5 Stars)

A Meeting At Corvallis: The Emberverse 03 by S. M. Stirling

From The Week of January 17, 2010

Though The Protector's War offered little indication that this series was headed in the right direction, A Meeting At Corvallis goes a long way to redeeming the Emberverse. For if Mr. Stirling struggles sometimes to flesh out his characters beyond the archetypes upon which he has based them, he certainly knows how to set up and execute a war. And it's a big one too, an apocalyptic clash of post-Change civilizations the outcome of which will determine the rights and freedoms of the survivors who will live under the victors.

There's so much action and plot development here that the two-dimensional characters become secondary to the story, mere placeholders for its main thrust, a battle to the death between freedom, defended by Juniper's clansmen and Mike's Bearkillers, and feudalism, forwarded by the Lord Protector and his army. Though I'll likely stop reading here, this volume has considerably improved the chances that I might someday read on. For even if Mr. Stirling succumbs to cliches and Dungeons-and-Dragons cheesiness, he's not afraid to ante up the lives of his characters and roll the dice of fate to see what shakes out. (3/5 Stars)

The Protector's War: The Emberverse 02 by S. M. Stirling

From The Week of January 10, 2010

Though The Protector's War inherits the flaws of its progenitor -- see my review of Dies The Fire for a rumination on this series' two-dimensional characters --, it has just enough blood-thumping action to paper over the cookie-cutter nature of most of its heroes and villains. In a wish to write about a modern world stripped of both modern technology and the rule of law, Mr. Stirling has neatly amalgamated medieval Europe with a 21st century landscape of starving cities and successful communes. But while we can credit him for originality of premise, something here feels just a bit too lifted from the pages of some Dungeons and Dragons campaign: the evil overlord who seeks to impose his cruel will upon a desperate public, the brave witch who stands up to him, the honorable mercenaries who defy him, and the poor serfs who get caught in the crossfire. Perhaps it's too much to ask for nuance from a story premised on the notion that the fundamental laws of the universe have inexplicably changed overnight -- this does seem like suspend-your-sense-of-disbelief territory --, but I needed more.

You can supercharge your story with heart-stopping action all you like. If the plot is cartoonish, and if I can't be made to care about the players involved in this contest of wills and political systems, then the theatrical battles, the hostages, the negotiations, and the blood oaths of vengeance are reduced to a soap opera.

For all of this, I will read on, but only because the next installment appears to thrust this saga towards something of a satisfying conclusion. Mr. Stirling has all the ingredients here, but they just don't quite brew together into something more than palatable. I was hoping for an evolution from Dies The Fire. It never materialized. (2/5 Stars)