My Stroke Of Insight by Jill Taylor

From The Week of September 05, 2010

While there is a whiff of self-congratulatory praise about this deeply personal memoir, Dr. Taylor, an American neurologist, has assembled a most remarkable account of a terrifying event.

On the morning of December 10th, 1996, Dr. Taylor woke up, intending to go to work at Harvard. But no sooner was she out of bed and into her morning routine then she began to notice abnormal sensations in her head and extremities. Not until much later would she realize that blood was already pooling on the left hemisphere of her brain, the gory discharge of an aneurysm she was in the midst of suffering. Dr. Taylor, realizing that something was deeply wrong, attempted to summon help, but in that brief time, she had already lost the capacity to understand phone numbers, just one of the innumerable brain functions impaired and then destroyed as a consequence of her stroke. Despite her best efforts, it was hours until she could finally summon help, hours before she was in the hospital and receiving treatment from doctors she must have known, seen, talked to, been friends with. What follows from that fateful day is a gripping description of Dr. Taylor's eight-year recovery from a morning's worth of damage, a stroke which crippled her capacity to perform basic mathematics, to place her memories in chronological order, to logic out her surroundings. She was left with her right brain, her creative brain, now irrepressibly dominant. And the experiences she relates from this state of pure emotion is both terrifying and enviable.

Dr. Taylor has not simply reconstructed, here, her life's most pivotal event, she walks the reader through the anatomy of her stroke, from the sensations to the deficits, sparing nothing as she endeavors to make us understand even a fraction of not only her ordeal but her long and difficult rehabilitation. It's remarkable to read a neurologist's thoughts about her own stroke, to have what are otherwise fairly dry details personalized in the profoundist way. Yes, there's some self-aggrandizement here, but when one has achieved as much as Dr. Taylor has, when one has worked this hard to return from such crippling deficits, a little self-indulgence is understandable. To my knowledge, a unique tale. (3/5 Stars)

Coyote Rising: The Coyote Trilogy 02 by Allen Steele

From The Week of September 19, 2010

Where Coyote was a novel about escaping tyranny for the new world, Coyote Rising finds our libertarian revolutionaries fighting for all that they've painstakingly built for themselves on Coyote, the moon to which they fled for a new start. Though the obviousness of the themes and the outcomes hamstrings this second effort from Mr. Steele, it is not without its charms.

Unlike the colonists on Coyote who spent the 230 year journey to the moon in biological stasis, nearly three centuries have past for everyone on Earth, plenty of time for technology to advance and for social systems to rise and fall. The tyrannical America, against which Lee rebelled, has ceased to exist, but the radical socialism that has replaced it isn't much of an improvement. New faces, new lingo, but the same single-party tyranny lies at the heart of their philosophy. The Western Hemisphere Union, or WHU, has arrived at Coyote, in ships much faster than the Alabama, and they too are eager to plant their flag, claim Coyote's land and convince the colonists to come over to their side. Seeing the WHU's representatives for what they are, the same enemy behind a different mask, Lee and his confederates wage and insurgency to reclaim what is rightfully theirs. But how can they succeed against such a technologically superior foe?

Coyote Rising introduces us to some new characters, two of which bring a welcome balance to the story. Alegra is a WHU refugee from Earth who wants only to quietly settle on Coyote and play her music in peace. Through her, we understand that Earth is in ecological collapse, a key motivating factor in the WHU's desire to claim Coyote for its own. For a trilogy far too black and white, Alegra is a welcome shade of gray. James Garcia, an ingenious architect, has also traveled with the WHU delegation. Troubled by his conscience, Garcia's sympathies with the colonists lead him down a dark and dangerous road. Together, James and Alegra do far more credit to the story than the cartoonishly machiavellian Matriarch and her hackneyed, robot henchman who, together, manage to make evil look clownish and silly. There's no genuine menace here. And this combined with an obvious conclusion robs the story of much of its punch.

Coyote Rising wanted to be defiant in the same way that Coyote was rebellious, but while the action pleases, the enemies here are just too flat. I'll stop short of calling this a disappointment because there was much here that satisfied, but the drop in quality from the first novel was unfortunately steep. (3/5 Stars)

Coyote: The Coyote Trilogy 01 by Allen Steele

From The Week of September 19, 2010

Coyote is, for my tastes, as close as it will likely ever get to perfectly satisfying science fiction. Mr. Steele rambles, he meanders, and he pontificates without much by way of subtlety, but the earnest egalitarianism expressed in this novel about liberation from tyranny is exciting, gripping, and gleeful. It has a spirit which makes its flaws unimportant.

The 21st century has not gone well for the United States. A rising tide of religious intolerance has swept into power a one-party state which, by the 2070s, has succeeded in making a mockery out of all the freedoms for which America once stood. Now, fascism reigns in the guise of a kind of faux liberty platform, a fascism which jails dissident intellectuals, neglects the inconvenient poor, and forces upon everyone a rigid order designed to institutionalize the worship of the nation's heroic political leaders. But though everyone may be afraid to speak out, fear cannot be an excuse for inaction. Something must be done to reverse the tide of recent history. A hero is required.

Enter Captain Robert Lee, a descendant of the great Virginian general. Having long since had enough of this tyrannical America, he plots to spit in its face. For he has been chosen to captain the government's vanity project, the URSS Alabama, an interstellar spacecraft designed to carry this new brand of authoritarian Americanism to the stars. Carefully selecting a crew loyal to him, Lee bids his time and then, in a move whose boldness is worthy of his famous ancestor, Lee steals the URSS Alabama, taking with him, to the stars, the seeds of a new beginning.

Coyote has, imbued in its pages, a spark of the freedom that kindled the American Revolution. The tyrannical government is a 2070 version of the nearsighted British who peevishly attempted to claw back power from the 1776ers. In the same vein, captain Lee fits the reluctant hero of George Washington, a man forced to be a statesman, to lead a people even though he is not suited for it. But as much as politics launch Coyote on its journey, the second and third acts of the story are just as good. The former chronicles the Alabama's journey to the moon Coyote. This, humanity's first interstellar jaunt, is wonderfully harrowing. The latter is taken by the frontier life: the settling of a new world, the establishing of a newer, freer government, and the revelling in the opportunity to live, liberated, under a new set of stars.

Yes, Coyote sprawls more than it ought to, and, yes, it uses a baseball bat to make some of its arguments, but the irrepressible verve of its dissidents fighting to be free powers the story relentlessly on towards a satisfying conclusion. This is the kind of fiction only an American could write. And yes, that is a compliment. Well done, Mr. Steele. (4/5 Stars)

The Wolf by Richard Guilliatt And Peter Hohnen

From The Week of September 19, 2010

It is often said that wars, specifically the moneys that wars attract, are an influential engine for technological advancement. And while this is an over-simplification of a much more nuanced truth, the SMS Wolf is a good example of how war drives humanity to explore the limits of industry and technology in the hopes of finding a competitive advantage. The Wolf is a chronicle not only of the SMS Wolf and its journey, but of the human forces that propel us to such extremes.

On November 30th, 1916, the SMS Wolf, a vessel of the German Imperial Navy, left port on a fourteen-month journey that would see it travel half the Earth's surface, sink 37 enemy vessels, capture 467 prisoners of war and return home to Germany without once putting into port. To achieve this, the SMS Wolf disguised itself as a commercial vessel, lulling its prey into a false sense of security before it revealed its true colors and stormed its enemy. Though its primary mission was to mine important harbors in Australia and Asia, it took every opportunity to terrorize commercial shipping in the same region, efforts which, thanks to the self-censorship of the Australian press, were only marginally successful. Captained by a charismatic soldier whose powerful will kept his ship on mission for fully half the war without taking instruction from his superiors, the SMS Wolf became, for many, a floating habitat, as entire enemy crews were imprisoned aboard her decks, crews that were fed, housed and largely allowed to mingle with the Wolf's crew until it returned home in February of 1918.

Mr. Gilliath and Mr. Hohnen effectively tell three stories in The Wolf. They describe the commercial raider's mission, the life aboard ship during that time, and the impact it had on the countries it attacked. And given the tendency for authors of micro history to flesh out the minutest details in order to justify their publication, they manage to balance these three interests with an admirable eye for the compelling. There are no villains here, no sides to root for. There are merely human beings, some with missions to attack, some with obligations to protect, and others who get caught between. Of the three legs of the narrative, the plight of the captives is the most potent, as the authors reconstruct the journals of men and women who, in exchange for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, earn a 14 month stay on a warship fighting a war they aren't involved in. What surprises is the intensity of The snapshot the authors take of Australia in the early 20th century. Compared to what is, governmentally, a fairly liberal democracy today, it is, in 1918, little more than a colonial property with a compliant press, a restrictive government and a oppressive police.

This is excellent work, as gripping to naval aficionados as war enthusiasts and fans of extreme pursuits. (3/5 Stars)

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

From The Week of September 12, 2010

I and many others have rightfully hailed William Gibson for his clairvoyance with regard to what the future holds for humanity technologically and societally. Mr. Stephenson is deserving of precisely the same praise because this 1992 novel has, with remarkable accuracy, hit upon a phenomenon developing even now. Snow Crash may be bizarre and overly self-indulgent, but the way in which it predicts the development of Second Life and its universe of avatars gives it a cultural resonance which will see it relevant for years to come.

In the early 21st century, the United States has economically collapsed, dissolving into various sovereign neighborhoods and communities which, collectively, make up a tattered, societal tapestry. In the real world, this society is dominated by those corporate powers which have come through the collapse with cash in their pockets: fast food chains, church organizations, security firms, defense contractors, and organized crime to detail a few. In the virtual world of the Metaverse, a next-generation Internet which is shockingly similar to Second Life, there is a greater sense of personal power and societal structure. Users present virtually with the use of avatars which they can tailor to suit their interests and their whims. Everyone from the rich to the poor participate in the Metaverse, but status here is controlled less by personal wealth than by the quality of ones connection to the Metaverse. Public terminals, for instance, have low bandwidth, causing users to show up like pale shadows of what they ought to be. But high bandwidth users present strongly and can add all sorts of detail to their avatars lesser users cannot.

In the midst of this jumbled world, a virus has begun to spread, first in the Metaverse and then in the real world. Part computer virus, part human condition, it is infectious and devastating, besetting its victims with an increased susceptibility to mental persuasion and group-think, vulnerabilities which powerful forces within this shattered world are ready to exploit. Hiro, a young computer hacker who recently lost his job as a pizza delivery boy, and YT, a teenaged courier, team up in the wake of the Snow Crash virus to collect and sell information to various interested parties. But as they uncover the importance of the virus and the identities of those disseminating it in order to exploit its effects, their motives will have to evolve from pure self-interest towards something more benevolent if they are to prevent the world falling into servitude.

Mr. Stephenson has put together a clever and dynamic novel. Snow Crash is more than a piece of predictive fiction; it is a re-imagining of the role of linguistics and mythology in a world of moral bankruptcy and economic decay. Mr. Stephenson plays with a lot of themes here, even a few strains of humor, but I could not shake the cartoonish silliness of its protagonists and its overly baroque environment. Mr. Stephenson was no doubt trying to access the mind and culture of a common citizen in his future dominated by pop culture and fast food chains, but to this 21st century reader it comes off as silly and juvenile. If the world is going to end, I need my protagonists to have more gravitas. Snow Crash gives me a sword-wielding pizza boy with mad hacking skills. Maybe that is the hero of this future, but I couldn't buy in. In spite of this, the novel's inventiveness is enough to carry it over the line. (3/5 Stars)

Suck It, Wonder Woman by Olivia Munn

From The Week of September 12, 2010

Though dominated by the fluff expected of any memoir penned by a comedian, Ms. Munn's story of struggle and success in Hollywood has an unanticipated but welcome gravitas. Sure, we read these books for the funnies, for a charming glimpse into the lives of oddballs who rise to the surface of cultural consciousness, but when Ms. Munn opens up about her dislocated youth divided between japan and Oklahoma, and when she details her teenaged struggles with her family, it becomes clear that the reader is being given access to an author who has approached her project with thoughtful and earnest sincerity. This openness creates an emotional connection with Ms. Munn which allows the reader to react with amazement and horror at the cast of freakish characters she encounters upon her move to Hollywood. The host of sycophantic agents and eccentric stars appall as much as they amuse, their foibles paraded before us as though Ms. Munn was a tour guide to an especially bizarre carnival.

I tend not to read the memoirs of movie stars. As if it's not enough to have lived exceptional lives, spreading themselves across popular culture, they must offload their well-coiffed and perfectly charming narcissism onto us in book form as well? It's not enough that we go see their movies, that we venerate them in the media. They also need the affirmation that comes with convincing us they aren't that different from us after all? Like I said, repugnance. Ms. Munn may be successful, she may be beautiful, but what she isn't is blessed. She worked for what she's earned. And even though she now has and can enjoy her success, we see how her success is a byproduct of her damage. This is real. This is authentic. Suck It Wonder Woman is tight, funny and well done, but its relatability, its humanity, is what makes it a success. (3/5 Stars)

The Most Dangerous Place by Imtiaz Gul

From The Week of September 12, 2010

In North America, much has been made of the fact that the charitable response to the floods in Pakistan has fallen markedly short of the aid collected for the Haitian earthquake. Some have tried to dismiss this disparity by arguing for disaster fatigue, that a series of recent natural catastrophes, coupled with the 2008 financial crisis, have combined to empty the pockets of philanthropically minded Westerners. But Imtias Gul's account of the dramatic ways in which Pakistan is failing as a state convinces me that Westerners are wiser with their money than these people give them credit for.

Descent Into chaos is a chronicle not just of the Islamic insurgencies throughout Pakistan and the lengths to which the Pakistani government has had to be strong-armed by the West into fighting these insurgencies, it is the journal of a country slowly falling apart before our eyes. Too many corrupted agents in the ISI willing to work with and protect terrorists, too many crippled governments overcome by religious and militaristic bombardment, too weak an effort to create a civil society that might have knitted together a country born in religious discord. The result is a Pakistan fractured by tribal rivalries, populated by religious zealots, and agitated by strongmen who want to control their own little fiefdoms. We can call it a War on Terror if we wish, but the truth, as always, is simpler. Some people want power over other people. The lengths to which they are allowed to pursue that domination is dictated by the strength of the rule of law. A strong state captures and prosecutes strongmen, allowing citizens to believe in freedom and justice and to act accordingly. A weak state fails to capture or prosecute those men, allowing them to kill and pillage, fracturing society and degrading the people's belief in freedom.

This is where Imtiaz Gul's book excels. In covering the rebel commanders, the compromised agents, the threatened governors, the bloody battles and the forgotten people, he paints for his readers a portrait of failure, a failure which demonstrates the importance of the institutions of law we take so for granted in the West. Revealing and depressing in equal measure.(3/5 Stars)

America: A Citizen's Guide To Democracy by Jon Stewart

From The Week of September 12, 2010
From The Week of September 05, 2010

I've never watched a full episode of The Daily Show, but if that program is as funny as the book penned by its host, then I have a new show to watch. This unfailingly sarcastic, alternate history of America, while wildly and intentionally inaccurate, hits upon a core truth of politics in America, that it is brutish, ugly, and, well, dumb.

With hilarious interjections from political figures like Thomas Jefferson and John Kerry, America is essentially a mock study guide to that nation's government. In acerbic detail, it lays out the basics of the Constitution, the branches of government, the positions of power and the ways that power is abused. No shortcoming of the American system is overlooked; after all, there's plenty of happy scorn to be flung about. All this is contained in some 200 pages of tight, hilarious history that will in no way prepare anyone for an election in America, but it certainly will prepare one for the ceaselessly inane thunderings of politicians and the pundits who judge them

There are times when we lose sight of just how ridiculous life has become in an age of 24/7 media. Mr. Stewart's effort may trivialize important issues, but if it gets just one person to crack open a real history of America, or if it gets just one person to stop caring about the pontifications of pandering politicians, then it has done good. (3/5 Stars)

Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley

From The Week of September 05, 2010

Occupying the heart of all good satire is a pervasive sadness that beats, barely audibly, beneath the happy noise of the surface comedy. The sadness is what lends enough gravitas to the funny to make it meaningful and potent. By this definition, Thank You For Smoking is bloody good satire.

Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for big tobacco, is living a guiltless life. He has no particular qualms with pedaling cigarettes; everyone has the right to buy and consume what they wish. That is, after all, the American Way. But while guilt may not keep Nick up at night, his job security is. His boss is tightening the screws on him, setting for Nick performance targets he can't possibly hit. The boss' hope is that Nick will fail and the boss will have a reason to replace him with a more attractive subordinate. Naylor does not just succeed at the task set before him, he succeeds to such a degree that he draws the admiring and protective attentions of the Captain, Naylor's boss's boss, a chronically ill tobacco titan who approves of Nick's initiative. This is the catalyst for the main thrust of the novel, as Nick, with the Captain's backing, proceeds to ascend in power and esteem within the company by executing a series of stunts and interviews that show the world as much courage as they do heartlessness. But when Nick is kidnapped and nearly killed by having his body covered in Nicotine patches, the good life seems to have come to an end and Nick is forced to reconsider his friends and his livelihood within the company as a battle for control over his division plays out around him.

Mr. Buckley's novel is unfalteringly clever. In connecting Nick's ascendancy to the ever-increasing outrageousness of his lies and evasions to the media about smoking and its harmful effects, he illustrates a fundamental truth of human nature, that the big lie is the best lie. Everyone believes the big lie because it's easier to believe in the big lie than it is to believe in the inconvenient truth. The big lie can make people look strong and confident and in control when the reality is markedly different. The only problem with the big lie is the fall which is inevitable and made, by dint of the accumulation of deceits, all the more harsh. What's more, we celebrate liars. By not examining their actions with the light of truth, by choosing to believe in what they are selling us, we reward their lying which only makes them continue in the fiction. This is the sadness of big tobacco's big lie. It worked for them! They knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. They played the big lie. And when it went wrong for them, when the heyday ended, they capitulated, but not before 30 years of knowingly profiting on the sickening of their consumers. Mr. Buckley shows us a dark and funny glimpse into the culture of death, into the soullessness of selling. It's a credit to his skill that we laugh and do not cry. (3/5 Stars)

Paradise Lost by John Milton

From The Week of September 05, 2010

I may be something of a literary snob, but I am not a heartless literary snob. I understand that, but for poetry lovers and bibliophilic masochists, one does not voluntarily read Paradise Lost, especially if one does not have at least a passing familiarity with 17th century English. And yet, this is one of the great re-shapings of Western literature, not just because it fleshes out the Book of Genesis, but because it commandeers the players of that story, Adam, Eve, God and Satan, and re-casts their roles as heroes and villains. This may or may not have been intentional on Milton's part, his sympathies having run strongly to the protestant. But it's certainly clear that, with the advancement of liberal democracy since the poem's first publication, the way we view the players here, and even the players in the Bible, has changed with the evolution of society's values.

Paradise Lost is a 5,000 line poem that was meant to be performed for an audience. This is not just apparent in its structure, with the action at the beginning and the explanation for the action later on, it is in the prominence of the narrator's role throughout. The narrator reveals to the reader the sight of Lucifer and his host of rebel angels thrown down into Hell. The narrator spies on first their recovery and then their council which decides to send Satan out from Hell on a mission to find the new Earth of God's creation. The narrator flies us through the cosmos with Satan as he works his way passed the gates of Hell and into paradise where, disguising himself as a serpent, he tempts Eve into committing the first sin, the disobedience of God, eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. And it's the narrator who sadly recounts to us the consequences of that sin as Adam grows angry with Eve, then angry with his plight, before ultimately becoming resigned to his fate as first man and first woman are educated about the world and then thrown into it, exiling them forever from Eden.

Reading these words, it is an easy thing to close ones eyes and imagine a long ago town square where a blind Milton summoned the attention of his fellow Englishman with a new kind of drama which put energy and excitement into an old and tired tail his listeners would have heard a million times before. The vivid descriptions of the foulness of Hell juxtaposed by the beauty of Eden fire the imagination, just as its detailed recountings of the arguments between God and Christ, between Satan and his captains, between Adam and Eve, bring life to characters who, being that many of them are objects of worship, deserve nothing less. It makes real, and personal, a story that otherwise seems remote, animating drama from lore. But in doing this, it throws up some interesting surprises.

There can be no question that, viewed through a 21st century lens, Satan is the protagonist and antihero of Paradise Lost. Adam and Eve are slavish adherents to God's will until Satan subverts that blind faith, prodding the pair to put their own actions, their own needs, ahead of god, ahead of others. What would have read as selfish and impious to the 17th century reads now as a clear and concise statement of individual freedom, the right to act as one wishes and be what one wishes to be. The Satan of Paradise Lost is an American individualist. God of Paradise Lost is a tyrant who demands fealty for the sake of fealty. And when his children let him down, as he knows they will, he punishes them with the withdrawal of his affections and the revocation of his largess. True, Satan does these things for his own selfish and petty motives, but the symbolism here is nonetheless difficult to ignore.

This is a powerful and beautiful recreation of a biblical story which has had profound implications for the way that men treat women, for the way we view evil, and for the way that we all view power and those who have it. It's difficult, no question, but it's well worth it. You just might want to have a dictionary handy, one with lots of old English words. (5/5 Stars)

The Girl Who Played With Fire: Millennium Trilogy 02 by Stieg Larsson

From The Week of August 29, 2010

The first novel in Mr. Larsson's Millennium trilogy thundered onto the literary scene with its antihero protagonists and its atypically graceful mystery. And so it would come as no surprise to me if this second installment sold as well as the first, as fans hungry for more Blomkvist and Salander divest bookstores the world over of their many copies. I would be equally willing to wager, however, that fan enjoyment of The Girl Who Played With Fire was far below that of its progenitor because this is, in every way, an inferior book.

Flush with the successful solving of the Vanger cold case, Mikael Blomkvist and his magazine have justifiably earned reputations for their willingness to take on the most controversial of subjects. And so there's no hesitation from Blomkvist when he's approached to run a story about sex trafficking in Sweden. But when the two journalists who researched the explosive piece turn up dead, around the same time the body of Lisbet Salander's abusive guardian is discovered by Swedish authorities, Blomkvist is forced to ask uncomfortable questions about Salander, his one-time partner who has since disappeared without a trace. The police finger Salander for all three killings, a reality which obligates Blomkvist to exonerate Salander while he pursues the real murderer of his two colleagues. All this leads Blomkvist down a dark road, a road straight into Lisbet Salander's torturous past, a past from which few escape.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was not without its salaciousness, but the success of that novel, and indeed the success of Nordic Noir generally, lies in the extent to which the crimes being investigated are, by non-Scandinavian standards, fairly tame. Its strength lies in its innocence, in its absence of splashy gore and irredeemable evil. Here, Mr. Larsson threw all of that away, substituting the cold grace of his first novel with the sadistic sex and the hackneyed "I am your father Luke" tropes which characterize crappy crime fiction. What's more, Mr. Larsson completely fails to sell us on Salander's guilt, a failure compounded by the pain of having to sit through half the book while everyone but Blomkvist blindly gropes towards this obvious conclusion. And then to have these 600 pages culminate in a scene straight out of you can't kill me Hollywood? Not good enough.

The Girl Who Played With Fire needed to be shorter by a good 200 pages, and a lot less cliched, to meet the standard set by The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. That worthy effort will live on in my memory, but this here has made me doubt if the third installment will deserve even a look. A shame. (2/5 Stars)

England's Mistress by Kate Williams

From The Week of August 29, 2010

There may not be much wisdom to be gleaned from the lives of the spectacular, but we can marvel at their experiences, their triumphs and their failures, extracting from the ride a vicarious thrill of what it would be like to shape history. Lady Emma Hamilton was the most famous beauty of her time, a beauty born in poverty, a beauty that died in obscurity. Between her sunrise and sunset, she lived a life the likes to which few can relate.

In 1765, Emma Hamilton was born into the poverty characteristic of a commoner in 18th century England, destitution driven by not enough money and too many mouthes to feed. Consequently, Emma was obligated to follow in the footsteps of most girls from her cohort, finding placement as a maid in a wealthy home. Another girl in her situation might have been content with a roof over her head and food in her belly, but 12-year-old Emma burned for more. In time, she moved on to apprentice herself to various actresses, learning stagecraft while she served them. But with her opportunities for advancement in the legitimate world limited, she turned to the seedy underbelly of British society, a world whose eccentric practices were fuelled by the preoccupations and the vices of the idle rich. In this dark world of noble men behaving badly, she excelled, but not without the price paid by all women who allow themselves to be treated as a lush fruit to be handed round and tasted. Degraded but undeterred, Emma persisted until she captured the attention of a man rich enough to permanently deliver her from her ignoble birth. He would mistreat her, stringing out their engagement, refusing to commit to her in the way she promised to do for him. but no matter, she belonged now to a different strata of society in which other men could be found, could be loved.

Thanks to the devoted efforts of a portraitist, Emma's fame was already spreading, but it wasn't until, years later, when she entered into a controversial affair with the greatest naval hero of the age, that her star reached its zenith. The union of Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson coupled together the era's epic beauty with its epic hero, binding them in such mutual devotion that they ignored all the socioeconomic obstacles in the way of their love. And so, when Nelson died at Trafalgar, Emma was left with the couple's massive debts and no way to alleviate them. Without money, without a husband, without powerful friends to call upon, her fall was sudden and sharp, leaving her to waste away in an obscurity almost worse than the poverty of her youth.

It would be difficult for any author with a fingerful of talent to screw up a story with such a dynamic subject. Ms. Williams doesn't disappoint with a rapturous chronicle of a meteoric life. The parallels with modern celebrity are as striking as the starkness of 18th century poverty and the acts of desperation it provoked from those who lived under its monarchical shadow. I tend to be critical of long biographies; they have a nasty tendency to take 50-page digressions into unnecessary tangents, but the life of this remarkable woman could have filled two volumes. A must read for anyone interested in exceptional lives. And for fans of gritty history, viewed from ground 0, England's Mistress has to be on any shortlist for the five books for the the desert island. (4/5 Stars)

Commander Of The Exodus by Yoram Kaniuk

From The Week of August 29, 2010

Whatever ones views of Israel and its role in the instability of the Middle East, the story of its creation as a modern state is remarkable. Mr. Kaniuk, an Israeli journalist and playwright, has isolated just one of the threads of that creation tapestry and, here, spins it dramatically, revealing in the process a brave mission, commanded by a hero, meant to right a terrible wrong.

In 1947, coming off the unspeakable crime of the Holocaust, and attempting to create a Jewish state in what was then Palestine, a mission was launched by the fledgling state that would come to be known as Israel to gather up Holocaust survivors and to transport them, by boat, from Europe to Israel. The intent was not only to populate a new Jewish state but to protect the persecuted and to attempt to reunite them with what was left of their families. When we think of missions, however, we imagine technical expertise and fast ships and well-armed guerillas making sure the Holocaust survivors were safe. But in 1947, Israel was barely an idea being kicked around by a collection of Jewish settlers squatting on British-controlled Palestine. Even pooling their efforts, they could barely manage to requisition a couple of beaten-down, 20-year-old ships which had to be stripped down to take on as many passengers as possible. They were nothing more than floating refugee columns, drifting across the seas towards Palestine, praying for a miracle.

This new Exodus, this time from Europe, was commanded by Yossi Harel, a brave and dynamic young soldier who, amongst an assortment of dangers, faced down British patrol boats in order to see his refugees safely to their destination. His harrowing exploits are painfully captured by Mr. Kaniuk who describes in vivid detail the acquisition of the boats, the retrieval of the Holocaust survivors, the transportation of the survivors across the seas to Israel and, finally, the heartless conduct of the British soldiers who turned them away at the threshold of freedom. Shameful and heartbreaking. Surely there is no more poignant symbol of Jewish helplessness in the face of the crimes committed against them than this act of dishonorable indifference to their plight. Not that this stopped Harel from trying again, unwilling to give up before his mission was complete.

Mr. Kaniuk has penned a powerful story, one which feels as though it's taken some license with real events in the name of good narrative. But this in no way diminishes Harel's stalwartness or the refugees' desperation, both of which set this tale of woe alight. (3/5 Stars)

The Worst Jobs In History by Tony Robinson

From The Week of August 29, 2010

The history we read in books, the history we watch on television, the history handed down to us through legend, necessarily focuses on the big events and the giants who shaped them. But even history has an underbelly and Mr. Robinson has taken it upon himself to shine a light on the forgotten souls who collectively, day in and day out, did as much to define our lives and our history as the heroes and villains we love and loath.

After a day spent fighting, just how did a knight get his armor clean? Could the poorest of the poor really find wealth in human sewage? Just how foul is the job of a tanner anyway? With equal parts amazement and disgust, Mr. Robinson takes us through a history of British employment, from the time of Christ through to recent memory. While describing some jobs you could not pay modern man $100,000 a year to perform, he illuminates just how brutal and painful life was for the 99 percent of those who did not live lives of privilege. As foul as these occupations are, and there are many I now wish I could forget, they shine an overdue light on the desperation of the masses who performed them, people who had no option but to pinch their noses shut and do what needed doing, all in hopes of a few precious coins with which to buy life's basic necessities.

There's a wonderful, dark, British humor about Mr. Robinson's chronicle which kept me laughing even as I wished at times to die, but there's an underlying sadness here which I imagine was not intentional. Merely attempting to conceive of how hard life must have been for so many... Only to realize that we've done virtually nothing to remember them, to honor them... When I imagine the torrent of words each year that are squandered on the uplifting of men like Churchill and the decrying of men like Hitler, and when I compare this incalculable number with the dearth of words devoted to the drudges who made their wars possible, their lives possible, it leaves me wondering just how distorted our priorities are. In any event, this is excellent and hilarious work, but please do make sure you have a sickbag handy. You may need it. (4/5 Stars)

Anarchism And Other Essays by Emma Goldman

From The Week of August 29, 2010

She may not have as fervent a following as some 20th century political philosophers, but upon reading this collection of essays from Emma Goldman, the brilliant Russian-born anarchist who came in the 1880s to America in search of a newer and freer life, it is clear to me that she has earned her place among humanity's greatest thinkers. Her passion against injustice is boundless; her fight against prejudice is exemplary; her will to press on in spite of a lifetime's worth of disappointments is courageous. She is a marvel.

the following is Ms. Goldman's most famous quote. I place it here because it explains so succinctly the origins of her philosophy outlined in these essays: " Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations." I've never read a profounder or clearer definition of freedom.

From the paucity of womens rights, to the poor treatment of prisoners, to the crime of marriage, to the trap of patriotism, Ms. Goldman leaves few of our Western sacred cows untouched as, well ahead of her time, she opens fire on the unfairness of life. Informed by her upbringing in a Czarist Russia, and having had her education in tyranny continued in some f the darkest decades for liberty in the American experiment, Ms. Goldman emerges from her crucible with a coherent philosophy which echos through each of these essays. Fairness can only be achieved when we treat everyone equally. And we can only treat everyone equally when we acknowledge that everyone has the right to be an individual, and when we relinquish our right to judge them for their choices. This is wonderful work and it will spur me onto someday read her autobiography. First, I will let these declarations of freedom breathe awhile, content in the knowledge that I am not alone in the way I think about the world. (4/5 Stars)

Burn Me Deadly: Eddie Lacrosse 02 by Alex Bledsoe

From The Week of August 29, 2010

disappointment is all the more poignant when it is wholly unexpected. On the heels of the success of The Sword-edged Blonde, my high hopes for this second novel in the sword-and-sorcery/noir-detective crossover series from Mr. Bledsoe were shattered. The individual novels within detective series often stand alone, with only a handful of subtle callbacks to prior novels, but the fantasy setting here made me expect more of a connection to its excellent progenitor. Instead, I received a somewhat muddled tale of damsels and dragons which was too goofy to earn the proper gravitas.

Good deeds never go unpunished. Eddie Lacrosse, a swordsman who is what passes for a private investigator in his kingdom, is riding home one night when his offer to help a damsel in obvious distress draws him into a violent confrontation with a gang of thugs who nearly take his life. Lacrosse, who escapes the hangman's noose, has only two clues, the voice of a torturer and the polished boots of the ringleader. From here, he starts an investigation which will not end until royal secrets and mystic powers have had their say, culminating in the return to the kingdom of fearsome creatures thought long gone.

The mystery here doesn't hold a candle to that which both animated and memorably darkened The Sword-edged Blonde. Withithout that, and with the roster of characters largely constricted to Lacrosse, some damsels, and a handful of villains, there's not a lot here to embrace. We know from the first novel that Mr. Bledsoe has the skill to draw from the strengths of different genres to create an exciting, literary amalgam, but Burn Me Deadly simply does not ignite as its predecessor did. It's sword-and-sorcery themes are barely above the level of Dungeons and Dragons and its detection component is hardly noticeable. I will probably read the next entry, but my enthusiasm has been all but snuffed out. (2/5 Stars),/B>
disappointment is all the more poignant when it is wholly unexpected. On the heels of the success of The Sword-edged Blonde, my high hopes for this second novel in the sword-and-sorcery/noir-detective crossover series from Mr. Bledsoe were shattered. The individual novels within detective series often stand alone, with only a handful of subtle callbacks to prior novels, but the fantasy setting here made me expect more of a connection to its excellent progenitor. Instead, I received a somewhat muddled tale of damsels and dragons which was too goofy to earn the proper gravitas.

Good deeds never go unpunished. Eddie Lacrosse, a swordsman who is what passes for a private investigator in his kingdom, is riding home one night when his offer to help a damsel in obvious distress draws him into a violent confrontation with a gang of thugs who nearly take his life. Lacrosse, who escapes the hangman's noose, has only two clues, the voice of a torturer and the polished boots of the ringleader. From here, he starts an investigation which will not end until royal secrets and mystic powers have had their say, culminating in the return to the kingdom of fearsome creatures thought long gone.

The mystery here doesn't hold a candle to that which both animated and memorably darkened The Sword-edged Blonde. Withithout that, and with the roster of characters largely constricted to Lacrosse, some damsels, and a handful of villains, there's not a lot here to embrace. We know from the first novel that Mr. Bledsoe has the skill to draw from the strengths of different genres to create an exciting, literary amalgam, but Burn Me Deadly simply does not ignite as its predecessor did. It's sword-and-sorcery themes are barely above the level of Dungeons and Dragons and its detection component is hardly noticeable. I will probably read the next entry, but my enthusiasm has been all but snuffed out. (2/5 Stars)

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

From The Week of August 29, 2010

I'm sure that some have, and will, argue that Ms. Sebold's most famous work is too graphic and exploitative for comfort. Given the vividness of its heroine's ordeal, I can understand why. But though The Lovely Bones has its moment of appalling horror, and though that moment has the power to turn even a strong stomach, the moment is the axle around which the wheel of Ms. Sebold's story spins. Without that moment, her characters are pale shadows of their powerful, grieving selves.

Ms. Sebold is not the first author to have her narrator play almost no role in her own story, but she must surely be on a short list of authors who have their narrators conduct their stories from the afterlife. Susie Salmon, our young, innocent protagonist, has no sooner introduced herself to us when she is gruesomely attacked and murdered after taking a shortcut home from school. The perpetrator's identity is quite clear from the beginning of the book, but then Ms. Sebold has no reason to hide his identity. Susie is the only character who knows the truth and she has already begun her journey to her own personal heaven which is quiet, peaceful and safe. It is from this near nirvana that Susie looks down on her hometown and her grieving family, narrating their struggles to overcome first her disappearance and then her loss. She shows us the policeman who burns out trying to solve her case, her best friend whose life is changed forever by her loss, her sister who grows up in a home haunted by her, and her parents who simply cannot cope with her bodiless departure. As the years roll on and her memory slowly fades, everyone who knew her struggles to return to normalcy, but susie cannot relinquish the world until her case is solved, an act of justice that is a long time in coming to her.

The Lovely Bones is a wonderful and clever novel which overturns the traditional idea of a mystery. It reveals murdered and murderer to the reader in the first 20 pages, but holds back the means of the resolution until the last 20, a technique which proved devilishly effective in keeping me glued to the narrative. It's ironic then that susie is the story's least compelling character. I found nothing about her journey interesting or revelatory, but this may have been a consequence of the poignancy of the rest of the novel's characters who were, to a one, affecting and intense. I agree with those who believe that the murder was too graphic. It was, in all its grotesqueness, voyeuristic. Nonetheless, the extent to which that single event drives the novel and shapes its players is its greatest virtue. I doubt that this is the same novel without that moment of stomach-churning horror.Heartfelt work. (3/5 Stars)

The Most Powerful Idea In The World by William Rosen

From The Week of August 22, 2010

In what is at times both a dry and a fascinating investigation into the transformative effect steam power had upon the industrial revolution and the future of the Western world, Mr. Rosen ambitiously amalgamates the mechanics of the steam engine with the economics of invention to create a coherent explanation for the rise of Western power and the making of the modern world.

What began with Thomas Newcomen culminated in James Watt who, when he finally perfected his prototype steam engine, could not have imagined how his invention would ignite a revolution and change a world forever. While Mr. Rosen explores the various versions of Watt's design, he argues that the fact that Watt profited off the steam engine was a critical catalyst for the industrial revolution. It convinced other inventors that there was money to be made in invention, that it wasn't simply a playground for the independently wealthy as it had been for centuries prior. To make this case, Mr. Rosen draws into his tale Matthew Boulton, a wealthy businessman who capitalized Watt's experiments after Watt's partner defaulted on a debt to Boulton and turned over his share in the invention to the magnate. Boulton, a believer in the engine's transformative powers, lobbied hard for the British parliament to update its patent laws to protect the financial rights of inventors. Parliament agreed and, in doing so, took the final step into the industrial revolution for, now, with steam to power everything from naval ships to coal extraction, anything was possible.

Though it's clear that Mr. Rosen set out to write a biography of the steam engine, his contention that patents were a key factor in the rise of the modern world ends up philosophically dominating his book. This is to the good. Otherwise, this work would be little more than a series of tedious and lengthy descriptions of the engine's evolution which, nonetheless, burden it with fatiguing detail. If the argument for patents is its greatest virtue and the steam engine its most annoying sin, then Mr. Rosen's portraits of the lives and aims of the inventors and their investors elevates the subject from the purely academic to the powerfully universal. I side with those like Michael Heller who argue that patents now harm as much as help invention, but Mr. Rosen's case leaves little doubt that, without such financial protections to set fuse to the industrial revolution, we may still be living in a pre-electronic world. In this way, patents may be like unions, necessities for establishing a fair balance between the rights of interested parties, but burdens when those balances are established. In other words, their usefulness may diminish with the advancement of society.

Overly technical, but thoroughly argued. And I loved the scale of the work which stops just short of being overly ambitious. (3/5 Stars)

The Story Of Stuff by Annie Leonard

From The Week of August 22, 2010

This irredeemably pompous commentary on all matters environmental drove me as close as I've ever come to doing physical violence to a piece of literature. Ms. Leonard seems to have no sense of her own conceit as she proceeds to spend 350 pages castigating humanity for its wastefulness. According to Ms. Leonard, when it comes to commercialism, both in the buying and the selling, we are constant polluters, destroying our natural habitat by manufacturing chemicals and materials that, when they are no longer useful, get dumped into the environment. Everything from the toxicity of our shampoo to the guts of our computers are targets for Ms. Leonard's guilty rage. Oh, but there's someone arriving to save the day, with a new plan for how we can live in perfect harmony with the world. I'll give you one guess at the identity of this green caped crusader. Yes, got it in one, Ms. Leonard herself.

I am socially liberal. I believe in recycling, in reusing, in saving water, in solar power. On most points, Ms. Leonard and I philosophically agree. And yet the outrage, the guilt and the complete self-absorption pouring forth from these pages is difficult to swallow. As Ms. Leonard recounts the ways in which she's bravely fought entire state governments to bring justice to the voiceless, as she describes how her short film about the trashing of the environment has brought elementary school kids to tears, her pride towers over her work like a storm cloud ginned up by Global Warming. I read to educate myself on my world, my species, my universe. But how can I trust the opinions and the facts of someone so clearly taken by their own self-importance?

The Story Of Stuff is about the ways in which we waste and pollute. It tries to educate us on some of the toxins, some of the chemicals, some of the processes, and some of the solutions. These are worthy goals. But the good is drowned out by the parade Ms. Leonard throws for herself. This is a bitter disappointment and perhaps the most egregious example of self-aggrandizement I've read in years. (1/5 Stars)

The Sword-edged Blonde: Eddie Lacrosse 01 by Alex Bledsoe

From The Week of August 22, 2010

It is my contention that, to find quality fiction, one of the most successful courses is to seek out genre-bending novels. These are stories which either mash two genres together, or which do not easily conform to a single genre. Why is this true? Simple. This is where you will find authors who are unwilling to follow in the tired footsteps of those who came before them, authors who aspire to do and say more than can be done and said by yet another iteration within an established genre. These authors will fumble and misstep like the rest of us -- they are human after all --, but their willingness to venture forth into relatively uncharted territory ensures that, for the reader, the ride will be new and exciting. Mr. Bledsoe did not himself come up with the re-imagining of the noir detective story in a fantasy-fiction setting, but it is a young and fertile field in which The Sword-edged Blonde is a worthy contributer.

If one transported the 1930s noir detective into a kingdom of swords and sorcery, then Eddie Lacrosse would be the result, a world-weary, ex-mercenary swordsman whose eye for a good woman is about as poor as his ability to avoid trouble. Lacrosse is what passes for a private investigator in his corrupted monarchy, working out of the upstairs floor of a tavern managed by one of his many mysterious friends. He works hard at his mostly thankless craft while trying to forget an event in his past which has left upon him a deep scar. But when Philip, a childhood friend and now king of a neighboring realm, asks for Lacrosse's aid in exonerating Philip's queen of a grievous crime, Lacrosse is unceremoniously dumped into his dark past, revisiting it even while he sets out to clear a wronged queen's sullied name.

Mysteries depend upon their plots and their characters to win the day and in neither case does Mr. Bledsoe let us down. The former is suitably twisted in knots, introducing us into a world of hard lives and even harder gods and with very little justice to be found anywhere. The latter are lead by Lacrosse, a charming rogue with a heart blackened by time and loss. But he is not as irredeemable as he would have us believe, as evidenced by the strength of his ties to Philip which have the power to provoke him to right a wrong not of his making. The secondary players are just as strong. From the creatures inhabiting Lacrosse's home base at the tavern to Kathy, the messenger woman who travels with him for much of the book, they enliven a tale Lacrosse could not have carried on his own. Couple all this with a suitably dark conclusion and one has, in their hands, a tight, well-imagined story that is as charming in its unconventionality as it is disturbing in its darkness. Enjoyable. (3/5 Stars)

Mistakes Were Made But Not by Me by Carol Tavris And Elliot Aronson

From The Week of August 15, 2010

To best appreciate Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, both respected social psychologist's, this reader recommends an open and inquisitive mind. For this is not a sedate stroll around the edges of science. This is a sometimes difficult and always confronting climb up the mountains of self-deception and self-justification which, to some degree, challenge us all. That said, mistakes Were Made is charming, well-researched, and satisfying for those seeking to shine a little enlightenment on human behavior. (3/5 Stars)

Click here to read my full review up at my website.

Empire Of Blue Water by Stephan Talty

From The Week of August 15, 2010

When one picks up a naval history, one does not expect to be excited by the tale. They should be dry affairs, reflecting their antiquity. After all, 17th century captains of the sea have about as much in common with the current day as a pebble does with the moon and nobody pays that much heed to a pebble. And yet, Mr. Talty surprises and entertains with this riotous chronicle of what reads like a glorious time of chaos in the seas of our fair world.

In contrast to the power it would wield in later centuries, the 1600s were difficult and choppy waters for the British empire. While kings were being beheaded, while republicanism was being trialed, and while parliamentary systems were being empowered, England had to combat the ascendancy of Spain which had recently struck it filthy rich in South America. Unable to compete financially with a Spanish empire rolling in gold and silver, Britain had but one option, to lower its pompous standards and employ sea pirates as legitimate agents of the realm, funding them and contracting them to engage with the Spanish navy. For a powerful Spain not only threatened the security of British colonies, it threatened the safety of the isles themselves. No man was better positioned to take up this British hand of friendship than captain Henry Morgan. Now remembered more for the commercial rum that bears his name than for his own life as a terror of the seas, Morgan was eager to attain legitimacy in the eyes of his homeland. And so he set about outfitting, crewing and sailing a fleet of pirate ships that brought the Spanish Navy to its knees. Captain Morgan and his many victories and defeats are captured vividly by Mr. Talty who does not fail to provide an edifying big-picture backdrop to the career of one of the most successful and enthusiastic of pirate kings.

It seems a universal human truism that the privileged only ever entertain associations with commonfolk when their interests and their positions of power are threatened. Then, the privileged are grateful for every friend they can reliably claim. But when the rightful way of things is restored and the privileged are once again in safe harbor, then they have no time whatsoever for the knaves who helped keep them from ruin. So it went with captain Morgan whose successes only proved his downfall. The larger the threat he was to the Spanish, the more he and his pirates became a point of negotiation between the great powers. And Britain wasn't going to sacrifice an agreement with the Spanish over a bunch of rogues. Mr. Talty does a wonderful job capturing not only the highs and lows of a pirate's life, he nails the hypocrisy of the powerful men who needed them and then threw them away. He leaves us with a dazzling portrait of what must have been an amazing time on the contested Atlantic. (4/5 Stars)

Over The Edge by Greg Child

From The Week of August 15, 2010

What is intrinsic to rock climbing that makes such excellent journalists of its enthusiasts? Is it the isolation that grants them time to think and muse on the human condition? Is it the investigation of ones soul, a prerequisite for extreme pursuits, that sharpens their minds for the re-tracing of complex stories? Whatever the cause, I'm grateful for it. It has given us authors the likes of Mr. Child and Mr. Krakauer, writers of both skill and distinction. Over The Edge is a tale almost as amazing as Into Thin Air. It is certainly a tale twice as bizarre. It is a tale that won't be forgotten.

In 2000, four rock-climbers from the United States traveled to the mountains of central Asia on a planned climbing trip. Fully supplied, they had no sooner set out on their adventure, across some of the most remote terrain on Earth, when Islamic rebels fighting an insurgency in Kyrgyzstan stumbled across them and, for six days, held them hostage. The rebels marched them through enemy terrain, forcing them to come under fire from the regulars in the Kyrgyz military who were targeting the rebels. Remarkably, the hostages managed to survive both the combat and their captivity, using English -- a foreign language to the rebels -- to plan their eventual breakout. Though this harrowing ordeal understandably takes center stage, Mr. Child is meticulous in his portrayal of each of the four Americans. And though his desire to give equal representation to the rebels is thwarted by both circumstance and the skittishness of Kyrgyz authorities, his efforts here have the thoroughness characteristic of dogged pursuit of the truth.

On their own, the ordeal and Mr. Child's coverage of said ordeal would combine to tell an exciting tale, but an unexpected twist catapults Over The Edge into even stranger territory. For there have since been allegations levelled by Kyrgyz authorities that the American climbers lied about their captivity. Having questioned the only rebel left from the band that captured the Americans, these authorities claimed that the prisoner, under Kyrgyz questioning, denied knowledge of the incident and that the Americans may have had ulterior motives in publicizing what was, for Kyrgyzstan, an embarrassing lapse in internal security. Mr. Child's book, then, necessarily becomes a piece of investigative journalism as much as a story about rock-climbing and it's the better for it. Mr. Child missed his calling as a detective. Good work covering a fascinating trial. (3/5 Stars)

Too Far From Home by Chris Jones

From The Week of August 15, 2010

Having been suffering an occasional bout of insomnia, I was reluctantly awake early on the morning of February 1st, 2003, when Columbia, one of NASA's four space shuttles, broke up upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. I was four years old when Challenger met an equally horrific fate. And so, watching Columbia's end play out on CNN, I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Even if the cause of the disaster wasn't immediately clear, its ramifications were.

This spectacular catastrophe, occurring in an era of 24/7 media saturation, would have dire consequences for not only the shuttle program but NASA itself. Mr. Jones, a writer and editor at Esquire, captures Columbia's last flight, its mechanics and its fallout for the American space program. But while his book does credit to these weighty issues, it is inarguably at its best as it chronicles the harrowing return to Earth for the astronauts who, as a consequence of NASA grounding the shuttle fleet in the wake of the disaster, were stranded on the International Space Station. NASA's parallel efforts to bring the astronauts home, ultimately with Russian aid, and to discover the fatal flaw that provoked Columbia's doom is woven nicely into the broader public-relations implications of the disaster. Politically and philosophically, Columbia changed NASA's behavior, igniting a conversation about not only manned exploration of space but the cost-benefit analysis of that exploration using shuttles that were then 25 years old.

This is a tale with many players, almost all of whom equivocate as a result of what they have to lose politically, fiscally or socially. Mr. Jones does a credible if unspectacular job with the broader picture. Where he excels is with the stranded astronauts who remained on the ISS far longer than planned and returned home in what was, to say the least, the most unorthodox of ways. This is good work and it tells a story worth telling. (3/5 Stars)

Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent

From The Week of August 15, 2010

Partially as a consequence of her yearlong social experiment living outwardly as a man, an experiment documented in Self-made Man, Ms. Vincent experienced a resurgence in her chronic depression. The intensity of this episode was serious enough that she was encouraged by her therapist to commit herself to a mental institution. Ms. Vincent, whose curiosity is commendably boundless, turned her time as an in-patient into an opportunity to observe not only the personalities of her fellow detainees, but the attitudes of their keepers. The results of what she saw in her initial stay, and what she went onto witness in her investigational visits, are documented in a book that is, at times, moving and disturbing.

Voluntary Madness is driven by two core purposes: the quest for mental health in the modern, American medical system and an investigation into and expose of that same medical system. After recovering her equilibrium, Ms. Vincent checks out of her hospital and, provoked by her time there, decides to update the Nelly Bligh experiment. She voluntarily checks herself into three American, wellness centers which range from the entirely mainstream to the completely quirky. At each stop in her journey, she chronicles the injustices she witnesses, from the aloof doctors, to the system's over-reliance on sedatives, to the cruelties of burnt-out orderlies. But Ms. Vincent isn't always critical. She's careful to document the positives, though, these seem frighteningly and dangerously contingent upon the having of a good and ethical doctor. Throughout the investigation, Ms. Vincent comments on the drugs the patients are given, sketching out their histories, their over-proscription, and the healthy relationships their manufacturers have with the doctors who issue them.

This is excellent work. It would have been easy for Ms. Vincent to decry all that she saw, condemning it in the name of simple outrage, but her approach, while critical, feels even-handed and fair. Her ability to humanize even the worst of her fellow inmates is admirable and shows the open-mind necessary for the undertaking of a project as serious as this. Her criticism of the insurance industry, which drives up the cost for people in need of help, is rightfully savage. But it's her own journey to find the right path towards wellness that earned my sympathy. Many of us cannot relate to the problems suffered by those with chronic depression, but virtually all of us have had to confront a massive problem in our lives which did not come packaged with a ready solution, a problem whose investigation only threw up a myriad of possible answers which weren't guaranteed to be effective. This is the exact dilemma faced by so many of those like Ms. Vincent. And it's clear that everyone from the politicians, to the insurers, to the doctors, are letting them down. (4/5 Stars)

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman

From The Week of August 15, 2010

This first installment in a duology from Ms. Goodman, an Australian author of SF is very nearly the perfect coming-of-age novel. Not only does it illustrate the isolating awkwardness of adolescence, it empathizes with women and girls across the span of human time who have been shackled by societal prejudice against their gender.

In a realm patterned on Chinese mythology, the twelve energy dragons of good fortune operate, through their human representatives, and in accordance with the sitting emperor, to maintain balance and order in the realm. The human representatives of the dragons are always boys, chosen at the age of 12 to apprentice with their dragon's human master. When the master retires, the apprentice takes his place and assumes much of the dragon's power. After being plucked from the empire's slums, Eon has become his master's last and best hope of being chosen by a dragon, an honor which conveys much prestige upon the chosen's teacher. But Eon has a secret that only his master knows, that he is, in fact, a girl masquerading as a boy. A girl has not been chosen for generations, a consequence of society's discriminatory policies towards women. Eon initially fails at her choosing, but this defeat sets into motion a series of events which, if Eon can bring herself to embrace her identity, will see her shape the future of the empire.

Though Ms. Goodman's plot is simplistic, with many of its outcomes obvious, this book is about self-discovery, not complexity. The setting here, with its emperors, and its dragons and its mysticism, is to service Eon's evolution from a fearful and powerless girl, hiding behind a boy's mask, to a brave and composed young woman who can stand on her own and accept her identity in spite of her society's disapproval. Ms. Goodman's allegory, through Eon, is delightfully poignant. She has used the attainment of mystical powers as a stand-in for self-acceptance, teaching us that confidence and personal power only come through the embracing of ones true nature. It is beautifully done. But for a few moments on the harrowing side, for teenaged readers, this is a must-read for struggling adolescents. (4/5 Stars)

Hitler's Holy Relics by Sidney Kirkpatrick

From The Week of August 08, 2010

With events as well-chronicled as World War II, it is inevitable that historians will tire of covering the big battles and turn their inquisitive powers upon a phenomenon's more eccentric incidents. All spectacular events have them, bizarre chapters in which the insanity of war produces some truly strange episodes. Most of these chapters are lost to the vicissitudes of time, but not this war, not this conflict which redefined a world... Mr. Kirkpatrick's encapsulation of one of the strangest incidents in World War II, the German fixation with the trappings of ancient power, is a study in how the examination of a single thread inside the greater tapestry can lead to a better understanding of the big picture.

Throughout the war, it was clear to the Allies, and the world, that the Nazis were looting works of art from conquered territories and relocating them to German museums. Hitler, Mr. Kirkpatrick argues, instigated this systematic theft not just to legitimize his supremacy, he believed that, as the leader of the Aryans on Earth, he and his people owned supposedly Aryan art. The plan was to transform Nuremberg into a capital of art and a monument to the power of the Aryan race, creating a historical link, through time, from the killing of Christ down to Hitler himself. Of the many looted works, Charlemagne's crown jewels had the greatest significance. Even they might have had to take a back seat to the Lance of Destiny, otherwise known as the spear a Roman soldier used to skewer Christ, had it been authenticated. It is likely a fake.

Hitler's Holy Relics follows the efforts of Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-born, naturalized US citizen who, in 1945, headed up a special unit tasked with recovering the looted works of art so that they could be returned to their proper owners. Horn, who went on to be a medieval scholar and an art historian at UC Berkeley, is one of those heroes, an ordinary, honest soul thrust into extraordinary events. His doggedness and his courage in the face of both German denials and Allied obfuscation, is a study in tenacity and honesty as he attempted to right a horrific wrong. It is a story that needed to be told, not just to give the rightful glory to an everyday hero, but to shed light on the madness of men like Hitler, men who believe so strongly in their vision of the world that there is no crime too heinous, no wrong too horrific, to keep them from reshaping it to fit their own beliefs.

This is a wonderful story told wonderfully well. (4/5 Stars)

Vampires by John Steakley

From The Week of August 08, 2010

Armor may not be the best piece of science fiction around, but at least that effort from Mr. Steakley is worth the paper its printed on. Vampires, the other of Steakley's famous works, is a repugnant accumulation of violence and despair that, for me, has no redeeming value.

The inspiration for the John Carpenter film of the same name, this tour de ugliness plunges the reader into a world darkened by vicious vampires which have swept across the world. Standing against the supernatural tide is Vampire INC., an Catholic-funded organization of mercenary cells which can be hired by local communities to exterminate the dangerous leeches. It's a decent premise for a vampire novel, perhaps even for a film, but Mr. Steakley's utter inability to infuse a shred of redeeming virtue in any of his characters dooms the tale. Which is well enough given that Vampires barely has a plot, unless one defines plot as overwrought dialogue squeezed between episodes of slaughter and nihilism.

The vampire as a concept, as a creature, is a wonderful way to explore the dark side of human nature. It is the manifestation of a truth that often rides just beneath the surface of human interaction, that humans feed off of one another on a daily basis, that some of use and exploit our fellows, while others give and heal. Mr. Steakley decides to ignore any notion of nuance, instead creating a paean to blood and death which gives the genre a bad name. (1/5 Stars)

Packing For Mars by Mary Roach

From The Week of August 08, 2010

Ms. Roach's quirky insight have served her well in the past. I found Stiff particularly delightful in its exploration of the various uses society has for the human cadaver. Consequently, I'm disappointed to report that Packing For Mars, an investigation into the nitty-gritty of human space travel, is disappointingly trivial and, at times, even surprisingly puerile.

If the human race is not to become extinct, we will eventually have to travel to other planets. Short of discovering some Star-Trek-like piece of technology which can replenish the Earth of all its finite resources, we will plunder Earth's reserves of metals and oils until there is nothing left to consume. Fortunately for us, there are other planets in the Solar System which have abundant resources we can put to our use, but it's the getting there to retrieve them that's slightly tricky. Enter Ms. Roach who has focused her inquisitive mind upon NASA and its efforts to work out some of the basic problems of interstellar travel. But Ms. Roach isn't so much interested in phasers and photon torpedos. She wants to know about the real challenges that never seem to make it into Star Wars. How will astronauts go to the bathroom? How will they not shrivel up into pretzels from lack of gravity? How do we solve for that pesky vertigo thing anyway? These and other basic questions dominate Packing For Mars which is, at root, an inquest into the plumming of space travel.

To the extent that Ms. Roach has investigated and publicized an under-represented aspect of space travel, her book is a success. It educates us on many of the problems future astronauts will have to face, particularly those which present in a weightless environment. And yet there's something juvenile about the pleasure Ms. Roach takes in all the shit and the vomit. The former, apparently, have been known to escape their containers to float around the cabins of spacecraft in zero-G, while the latter can spill around the inside of a spacesuit helmet if not properly dealt with.

Really? Space travel has to be reduced to this? I understand and respect Ms. Roach's attempt to speak to the real science of space travel, but she has over-shot realism and wound up in the gutter. I'm always up for a realistic discussion of the challenges of journeying to the stars, but maybe just a bit less puke next time.(2/5 Stars)

The Bicycle Runner by G. Franco Romagnoli

From The Week of August 08, 2010

Mr. Romagnoli's wonderful memoir of life in Rome during the occupation of the Nazis is as laugh-out-loud irreverent as it is heart-warming. Mr. Romagnoli, a student during the Second World War, looks back on one of Rome's harshest times with humor and hindsight, able to discuss the broader events of the war's impact on Rome alongside the machinations of his family's squabbles. It's clear that, for all of war's deprivations, Mr. Romagnoli would never quit living his life and doing what little he could to resist the Germans.

Click here to read the full review up at my website.

Shop Class As Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford

From The Week of August 08, 2010

In Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft, the blending together of government policies, cheap money in the form of credit, and changing social mores have created fertile ground for the pestilent spread of the management class over that most noble of endangered breeds, the Tradesman. Modern America, Crawford argues, has not only been negligent in its failure to nurture manufacturing as a species of the American economy, it has looked the other way while paper-pushing Managers overwhelmed the workforce.

Click here to read the rest of this review at my website.

Self-made Man by Norah Vincent

From The Week of August 08, 2010

If it weren't for the sincerity of Ms. Vincent's effort to investigate the human condition, Self-made Man would be nothing more than 300 pages of painful self-absorption. Fortunately for the reader, Ms. Vincent does take her subject seriously and, as a result, her effort here is nothing short of a wonderful exploration of what it is to be male.

In the 1990s, on a dare from a friend, Ms. Vincent spent a night in New York City passing as a man. It was a bit of fun, a game, nothing more, but the experience of that night must have stuck with her because, a few years later, she revisited the experiment, this time with considerably more commitment. Ms. Vincent resolved to spent an entire year as a man, enlisting the aid of her friends and some experts to perfect what would be a nearly impenetrable disguise. From her clothes to her walk, Ms. Vincent spared no aspect of herself in the transformation, even co-opting techniques for fake facial hair that would pass if not looked at too closely. But Ms. Vincent didn't just undergo a physical transformation; she changed her identity as well, adopting Ned as the name of her male alter ego and hanging out with a new set of guy friends who did not know she was a woman. As the year unfolds, Ned penetrates the various sanctums of maleness: the bar, the strip club, the monastery, the work place, all in an effort to discover the essence of maleness. Would they treat her differently as Ned than they would as Norah?

It's a fascinating experiment, but why go to all this fuss? Surely, subsuming ones natural personality for a disguise as complete as this takes a mental toll, like an actor who is never allowed to leave character. Though Ms. Vincent acknowledges that issues around her appearance were certainly in play -- she describes herself as presenting as boyish for a woman --, the knife must cut deeper than this. After all, other boyish women do not devote themselves to this kind of rigorous self-examination. No, her experiment is an effort to grasp, to know, her core identity. It is this central question that makes her experiment so captivating. Even as Ned moves awkwardly through the male world, learning their mannerisms, their rhythms of speech, their methods of expending their frustrations, we watch Ms. Vincent processing what she's seeing and feeling, comparing the input to herself, to her friends, to how she thinks she ought to be. In this way, Ms. Vincent is using an exploration of masculinity, in all its virtues and warts, as a means of exploring what it means to be feminine.

I cannot imagine any mental condition more traumatizing than feeling as though my body did not belong to me. It must be a shattering sensation, a sensation whose cause remains largely mysterious to us. Ms. Vincent's brave undertaking entertains us with its look at manhood in all its debauchery and sexual preoccupation, but it's what her experiment says about the nature of identity that educates and amazes. This is an unusual piece of non-fiction and well worth the read. (4/5 Stars)

If it weren't for the sincerity of Ms. Vincent's effort to investigate the human condition, Self-made Man would be nothing more than 300 pages of painful self-absorption. Fortunately for the reader, Ms. Vincent does take her subject seriously and, as a result, her effort here is nothing short of a wonderful exploration of what it is to be male.

In the 1990s, on a dare from a friend, Ms. Vincent spent a night in New York City passing as a man. It was a bit of fun, a game, nothing more, but the experience of that night must have stuck with her because, a few years later, she revisited the experiment, this time with considerably more commitment. Ms. Vincent resolved to spent an entire year as a man, enlisting the aid of her friends and some experts to perfect what would be a nearly impenetrable disguise. From her clothes to her walk, Ms. Vincent spared no aspect of herself in the transformation, even co-opting techniques for fake facial hair that would pass if not looked at too closely. But Ms. Vincent didn't just undergo a physical transformation; she changed her identity as well, adopting Ned as the name of her male alter ego and hanging out with a new set of guy friends who did not know she was a woman. As the year unfolds, Ned penetrates the various sanctums of maleness: the bar, the strip club, the monastery, the work place, all in an effort to discover the essence of maleness. Would they treat her differently as Ned than they would as Norah?

It's a fascinating experiment, but why go to all this fuss? Surely, subsuming ones natural personality for a disguise as complete as this takes a mental toll, like an actor who is never allowed to leave character. Though Ms. Vincent acknowledges that issues around her appearance were certainly in play -- she describes herself as presenting as boyish for a woman --, the knife must cut deeper than this. After all, other boyish women do not devote themselves to this kind of rigorous self-examination. No, her experiment is an effort to grasp, to know, her core identity. It is this central question that makes her experiment so captivating. Even as Ned moves awkwardly through the male world, learning their mannerisms, their rhythms of speech, their methods of expending their frustrations, we watch Ms. Vincent processing what she's seeing and feeling, comparing the input to herself, to her friends, to how she thinks she ought to be. In this way, Ms. Vincent is using an exploration of masculinity, in all its virtues and warts, as a means of exploring what it means to be feminine.

I cannot imagine any mental condition more traumatizing than feeling as though my body did not belong to me. It must be a shattering sensation, a sensation whose cause remains largely mysterious to us. Ms. Vincent's brave undertaking entertains us with its look at manhood in all its debauchery and sexual preoccupation, but it's what her experiment says about the nature of identity that educates and amazes. This is an unusual piece of non-fiction and well worth the read. (4/5 Stars)

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

From The Week of August 01, 2010

Mr. Gladwell's work has received admiring praise from a public enchanted with his capacity to find nuggets of revealing information in a sea of social and economic data. But while Outliers is a credit to him and to his dogged research, I come away from the piece feeling as though I've spent a few hours with an overeager salesman. Mr. Gladwell tries too hard to convince us that his informational nuggets are the definitive answers to questions that may never be entirely solved. And whenever someone acts as though they have all the answers, I get suspicious. So let us enjoy this book, but perhaps it might go down easier with just a grain or two of salt.

In Outliers, Mr. Gladwell attempts to get at the heart of why some people are more successful in life than others. To help him research the question, he investigates successful bands (The Beetles), successful entrepreneurs (Bill Gates), and successful athletes (ice hockey players), sifting through the data to find a characteristic that distinguishes them from their many less successful contemporaries. In each case, and there are many cases made here by Mr. Gladwell, he unearths a common informational clue which he then uses to piece together a coherent argument for why this trait may be a conclusive determiner of success. These determiners are sometimes shockingly mundane, like an opportunity for extra practice. At other times, they are depressingly pre-determined, like year of birth. But in each case, Mr. Gladwell is able to lay down a logical, convincing framework for why this trait is the difference between mild success and extraordinary success.

Mr. Gladwell is a wonderful researcher, but his ability to take what he has learned and package it into a coherent narrative is the essence of his own success. His digressions into the roots of culture and industry not only edify, but they make the reader feel as though he's along for the ride of research with Mr. Gladwell, Watson to his Sherlock Holmes as he ties disparate bits together to create information and understanding where there was only noise and chaos. And yet Mr. Gladwell's clever narratives aren't without controversy. It's often clear that he is capitalizing on existing research, publicizing conclusions drawn from academic studies and using those conclusions to support his own theories. This is perfectly legal; it's even commendable for such research would surely cost him many late nights before the laptop, but it all begins to seem reminiscent of what Apple has done with the Iphone. Mr. Gladwell wraps his inimitable style around ideas that are already a matter of public record and, in doing so, produces a product that seems more revelatory than it actually is. The works at Apple are the masters of this kind of slick marketing.

Outliers is a fun, easy, and educational read, but does it advance human knowledge? I'm not so sure. It may go some way to explaining advantage, which is one of its goals, but it all has the feel of something best not pried into too deeply. (3/5 Stars)