L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy

From The Week of July 10, 2011

We are conformists; this is one of humanity's most fundamental truths. Most of us grow up to reflect the environment we were born into. If that environment is marked by racism, abusiveness, or cruelty, then odds are we will be racist, abusive or cruel. This is not only a self-defense mechanism, the normalization and externalization of the pain we felt, the pain we now want to inflict, it is a natural byproduct of a species designed to be social, a species programmed to participate in communities. And communities cannot exist without conformity. Consequently, nothing is more important to the health of a community than the actualization of fairness, lawfulness, and kindness. Conversely, there is nothing more damaging than the institutionalization of brutality, criminality and exploitation. It is difficult to imagine a piece of crime fiction getting at this truism any more effectively than Mr. Ellroy's dizzying 1990 classic, L.A. Confidential.

Set against the backdrop of 1950s Hollywood, L.A. Confidential is a serpentine chronicle of the corrupt practices of the Los Angeles Police Department as exemplified by three officers. Bud White is the survivor of a broken and abusive home who exercises his demons by punishing wifebeaters. His penchant for ruthless violence is cultivated by Captain Dudley Smith, a sinister Irishman who appears to have his fingers in many, disreputable pies. Jack Vincennes, the high-flying Big V, is the second leg of L.A. Confidential's cop tripod. A participant in the Bloody Christmas beatings, Vincennes is dangerously unstable, capable of episodes of ugliness and violence that would make Bud White blush. Finally, Ed Exley, college graduate and hero of WWII... An opportunist, Exley uses a mixture of competence, cunning and political connections to rise through the LAPD, attempting to remain a clean skin even while he swims through the cesspool of seedy L.A. And its even seedier police department.

The lives of these four men entwine when an apparent robbery gone wrong leaves employees of the Night Owl cafe grotesquely murdered. Initially, suspicion for the foul crimes falls on a trio of African Americans who are brutalized by police eager for a confession. When the three men are exonerated of the murders, it's far too late. They are already dead, crushed under the bootheels of ambitious men who care more about achieving their own ends than they do about justice. Slowly, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the Night Owl murders are far more than they originally seemed, the tip of an iceberg floating in waters soiled by pornography, child prostitution, and sadistic perversion the likes of which not even the hardened men of the LAPD can conceive.

L.A. Confidential is both a rewarding and a challenging work. Told in a stream-of-consciousness staccato, it unleashes upon the reader a bewildering array of sleazy characters and smutty deeds only some of which are explicable. But while the prose offers only blurry snapshots of L.A.'s 1950s underbelly, it succeeds in imbedding the reader in the heads of its dirty protagonists, forcing him to live in the twisted minds of men who each have their own ways of coping with the brutality of the police department and the depravity of the streets it is ostensibly sworn to protect. In this, we watch Mr. Ellroy explore how these men came to be what they are, how they were primed by their upbringings and then infected by the LAPD's ugly culture, a combination which transformed them into nightmares, ignoble men clutching at the tatters of their humanity.

If L.A. Confidential 's strength is its characters and their plights, its weakness is its mystery which is bogged down by labyrinthine twists and turns which leave the reader dizzy and confused. Too many names, too many moving parts, too many pieces of disconnected information, all of which Mr. Ellroy packs into a big, filthy ball and hurls at the reader like a Nolan Ryan fastball. As such, Mr. Ellroy's furious piece is far more crime fiction than it is mystery fiction, far more an indictment of corrupt cultures than an opportunity to catch the bad guy. But then it's impossible for L.A. Confidential can't catch the bad guys. There'd be no one left to walk the streets.

Quality work, but difficult at times to follow. (3/5 Stars)

Earth by Jon Stewart

From The Week of July 10, 2011

Jon Stewart is a wonderful satirist. His blend of humor and outrage seems, at times, to be the perfect cocktail for a world overcome with dishonest politicians, crazy celebrities and media sensationalists obsessed with the spotlight. Given that America, hit all these notes rather well, I expected a similarly potent cocktail from this latest effort, Earth. I was sorely disappointed.

Earth is an open letter to future aliens who visit Earth, only to find the planet deserted. Humanity, it seems, has exterminated itself in one of a myriad of ways, leaving the aliens to pick over the bones of our forgotten civilization. The letter tries to explain to the aliens who we were by first laying down some basic facts about humanity, before layering on details about our politics, our societies, our customs and our religions. In this, Mr. Stewart pokes fun at many of our ridiculous notions while offering a what can I say, this was who we were' apologetic shrug to the curious aliens.

Though Earth does have its humorous moments, these come far too infrequently for good satire. America worked because, even in the midst of its absurdity, it had a point to make, primarily that, for a country claiming to be great, the people of the United States, on balance, know far less than they ought to about both their politicians and their political system. In this, it taught even as it gently scolded. Earth offers no such lesson wrapped in absurdity. It is merely an all-too-familiar recitation of the litany of mistakes we've made as a race. There is no teachable moments here, no central objective. Earth is a weak attempt to laugh at how pathetic we are. Perhaps if the aliens had brought some more biting criticism to the table, there might've been some punch here. As is, Earth commits the cardinal sin of all comedy. It just isn't that funny. If there are no teachable moments and the humor is hit and miss at best, then what's left? Precious little... (2/5 Stars)

Jon Stewart is a wonderful satirist. His blend of humor and outrage seems, at times, to be the perfect cocktail for a world overcome with dishonest politicians, crazy celebrities and media sensationalists obsessed with the spotlight. Given that America, hit all these notes rather well, I expected a similarly potent cocktail from this latest effort, Earth. I was sorely disappointed.

Earth is an open letter to future aliens who visit Earth, only to find the planet deserted. Humanity, it seems, has exterminated itself in one of a myriad of ways, leaving the aliens to pick over the bones of our forgotten civilization. The letter tries to explain to the aliens who we were by first laying down some basic facts about humanity, before layering on details about our politics, our societies, our customs and our religions. In this, Mr. Stewart pokes fun at many of our ridiculous notions while offering a what can I say, this was who we were' apologetic shrug to the curious aliens.

Though Earth does have its humorous moments, these come far too infrequently for good satire. America worked because, even in the midst of its absurdity, it had a point to make, primarily that, for a country claiming to be great, the people of the United States, on balance, know far less than they ought to about both their politicians and their political system. In this, it taught even as it gently scolded. Earth offers no such lesson wrapped in absurdity. It is merely an all-too-familiar recitation of the litany of mistakes we've made as a race. There is no teachable moments here, no central objective. Earth is a weak attempt to laugh at how pathetic we are. Perhaps if the aliens had brought some more biting criticism to the table, there might've been some punch here. As is, Earth commits the cardinal sin of all comedy. It just isn't that funny. If there are no teachable moments and the humor is hit and miss at best, then what's left? Precious little... (2/5 Stars)

The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

From The Week of July 10, 2011

While we lend, as a rule, too much sway to the Great Man version of history, that view of our past which filters historical events through a preoccupation with presidents and generals, popes and revolutionaries, overlooking the overwhelming contributions from the countless common citizens, humanity does, from time to time, churn out an individual so vigorous of spirit, so immense of reputation, so unyielding of will, that we must take notice of him and his deeds. In this, few figures can match Theodore Roosevelt. Racist, imperialist, Christian supremacist perhaps, but also a man of such relentless determination, such indomitable fortitude, that his deeds ought to be remembered, and even respected, in spite of his sins. Ms. Millard has captured here the most daring of Roosevelt's non-military pursuits and, in doing so, brought to light not only an aging president's awakening to the rights of men from other races and creeds, but the story of a Brazilian hero who has, for the most part, been unjustly forgotten by the world beyond South America.

After failing, in 1912, in his bid to re-capture the presidency of the United States, an office he'd relinquished to his hand-picked successor, William Taft, a man widely considered to be a failure in the office, Theodore Roosevelt was at a loss. Afflicted by the familial melancholy, he dwelled in his electoral rejection until a chance meeting with an arrogant priest of his acquaintance alerted him to an exciting expedition being assembled to explore the River of Doubt, a then mysterious and unexplored river running through the Amazon Rainforest. Signing on with enthusiasm, the expedition quickly took shape around his famous name, adding Kermit, his eldest son, George Cherrie, a famous naturalist and explorer of the time, and Candido Rondon, the Brazilian commander of the expedition and a man with immense experience with the region. After months of planning and dozens of diplomatic engagements, the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition finally got underway early in 1914, taking weeks just to reach the river. On February 27th, 1914, after offloading supplies and men they could no longer afford to carry, the expedition started down the River of Doubt, embarking upon a weeks-long mission of starvation, disease and danger which would see men lost to the rapids, men lost to madness, and men lost to the deprivations of a journey no one had ever before undertaken. Countless, laborious portages; innumerable and unavoidable insects; and unknowable and lethal indians with no prior experience of the outside world all characterized the journey which nearly took the life of its most famous participant, the formidable Roosevelt.

Ms. Millard is a first-rate storyteller. Though she, at times, takes liberties with the thoughts of the Indian tribes the Expedition encountered, Her account is otherwise authenticated by the first-hand reflections of the expedition's members who, in writing frequently to their loved ones back home, vividly expressed the seemingly insurmountable dangers facing them. Ms. Millard ties these accounts together with an excellent and informative primer on the Amazon Rainforest: its evolutionary design, its bewildering composition and its innumerable menaces. Her efforts here are unquestionably aided by what is a story out of legend, a script fit for a movie, but the author's keen, biographer's eye allows her to augment a great story with informative sketches of each of the Expedition's participants.

For all that The River of Doubt is primarily about Theodore Roosevelt and his struggle to find meaning after the doors to ultimate power are closed to him, Candido Rondon is, without doubt, the story's true hero. The Brazilian commander is far ahead of his time, a thoughtful and honest humanitarian whose impoverished and difficult adolescence gave him an empathy for the plight of the Native Indians that far surpasses the call of duty. Rondon's attempts to explore, to see, and to understand, all without judgement or enmity, mark him out as an extraordinary soul who clearly has a positive influence on the here-to-for prejudicial and provincial Roosevelt. Easily the star of this wonderful, literary show.

This is, in virtually every way, a successful and enjoyable biography. Top five this year, with a bullet. (5/5 Stars)

Napoleon's Wars by Charles Esdaile

From The Week of July 10, 2011

Histories which concern themselves with events prior to the 20th century invariably collide with a problem endemic to the genre. The farther back in time they attempt to reach, the more opaque events become. Not only do the ravages of time rub out valuable sources of information necessary for the corroboration of events, the context in which the events took place is lost, leaving us to only wonder at the myriad motivations which impelled the past's prime movers. The Napoleonic Wars are a classic example of this problem. For while they transpired at the dawn of the 19th century, in a time of printing presses and parliaments which disseminated information that survives to this day, the shifting alliances, internecine conflicts and political firestorms are 200 years removed from us, mired in a barely post-feudalist world mostly ruled by absolute monarchs and the ambitious men who sought to eclipse them. In other words, this is very much not our world. Though Mr. Esdaile goes a long way to illuminating the wars themselves, he fails to connect us to the thought processes of the men who instigated them, an inadequacy which dooms his history.

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of ruinous campaigns which, for the first time in history, coupled technological advancements birthed by the Industrial Revolution with new military ideas of mass-conscription and standardized training to create huge armies the likes of which the world had never seen. These titanic forces smashed into one another all across Europe, soaking lands, from Russia in the east to Spain in the west, in the lifeblood of millions of dead soldiers. Sparked in 1793 by the First Coalition of European kingdoms which, in the wake of the French Revolution, banded together to use military force to restore the Bourbon monarchy to the vacated French throne, they did not end until the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, casting him from Europe and condemning him to a death in exile. In the intervening 22 years, Napoleon rose from the ranks of a disorganized French army, hurriedly raised to defend the new republic from coalition invasion, to become the most powerful man in Europe. Originally cloaked in republican idealism, he soon became a tyrant, sweeping aside the violence and the confusion that followed in the wake of the French Revolution and replacing it with a military-backed empire with Napoleon at its head. He lead campaigns to conquer territory in Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Russia and Egypt. In doing so, he very nearly succeeded in creating a single block of European kingdoms bent on locking his greatest enemy, England, out in the economic cold. But a guerrilla war in Spain, followed by a notoriously calamitous invasion of Russia sapped his great French army of strength and legitimacy, leading to his overthrow and abdication.

Mr. Esdaile bites off far more than he can chew in this self-styled international history of the period between 1803 and 1815, when Napoleon was emperor of France and very nearly ruler of Europe. Though the author is mostly successful in his attempt to escort us through the ever-shifting sands of the various alliances that sought to oppose Napoleon, he fails to provide anywhere near enough background on the various players involved, leading to confusion and dismay for a reader drowning in a sea of unfamiliar names and labyrinthine political compacts. As a result, Mr. Esdaile hits most of the major notes, the rise of Napoleon, the consolidation of the powers against him, the wars the two sides waged, and the consequences of those wars, while failing to animate the why behind these conflicts: the ambition that drove them, the politics that shaped them, the recriminations and retaliations that perpetuated them.

To be fair, Mr. Esdaile set himself a difficult task. How does one write a history about multiple wars, on multiple fronts, all while providing enough background to tie it all together? His unfortunate answer was to middle it, a single volume history which is too brief to tell the whole story and too long to provide a synopsis. Damningly, I learned more about the Napoleonic Wars from two hours spent with Wikipedia than I learned from blurrily staring at these 650 pages of half-explained alliances and dizzying conflicts. This may be well-researched, but it fails to do what a history must always do best, make explicable events and times now removed from us. (1/5 Stars)

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud

From The Week of July 03, 2011

Of all the cruelties humanity has, spawned during its time on Earth, none can match war for its corrosiveness. It has shattered families, inspired generational hatreds and ended entire civilizations. But while the physical and societal damage it has wrought is obvious and detectable, its deepest cut, its gravest perversion, is the extent to which it corrupts the souls of the pure. For the Greatest Generation, those many veterans who returned from World War II, it lived in their pained silences. For the soldiers who suffered through Vietnam, it was in the shame imposed upon them by a violently antiwar populous. And for those who've prosecuted our most recent conflicts, it is in the PTSD brought on by never knowing friend from foe, innocent from combatant, bomb from IED. These wounds linger. They change lives and alter destinies. They make it impossible to live as one might have wished. And it is this idea which empowers Ms. Skibsrud's tale of quiet, quirky family life in the wake of tragedy.

The Sentimentalists concerns itself with an adult woman's reflections upon her eccentric adolescence. Growing up in the northern midwest of the United States and southern Canada, the daughter of a father who served in Vietnam narrates her childhood's key events, most of which center on her father's amusing peculiarities: his addled good humor, his fantastic projects, his endless stories, and his strange and devoted friendship with a disabled man tied to his past. Gradually, as the story develops, the reader comes to understand that many of the father's (Napoleon's) oddities are externalities of his time in the Vietnam War, and though he's initially reluctant to burden the narrator with his soldiering there, he eventually confesses that he was a witness to a war crime, committed by his company, an outrage which, to his credit, he tried to bring to the attention of his superiors. Armed with this new information, the daughter, who never names herself, realizes how her father's experience in the war changed him and made him into the quirky, dysfunctional and yet lovable man she's known for so long.

Though Ms. Skibsrud does a wonderful job illustrating the cost paid by an unprotected mind forced to witness atrocities, and while this provides the foundation for a story about family, the skill with which she reconstructs the thrills and the strangeness of adolescence is breathtakingly accurate. Her spare, reflective prose succeeds in conveying all of childhood's little details, the quirks, the rituals, and the jealousies, which shape our youth and form the language by which we learn to dialogue with our parents and the world. In this, Ms. Skibsrud has written an intensely authentic work which deploys the trappings of the humble family to say something profound about the human experience and the extent to which it is guided by what has come before. It's no wonder this piece of poetic fiction won the 2010 Giller prize. Beautiful in its sadness, its nostalgia and its ruminations on life as we understand it. (4/5 Stars)

Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard

From The Week of July 03, 2011

Who are we? And why do we do what we do? Surely, these are the most fundamental questions that can be asked of humanity and its nature, yet, odds are many, many years will pass before universal answers are found for them. Who we are as individuals may be the product of our genetics, our parents, our friends, our environments, our whims, or a combination of all or some of these, but we can't know for certain. And until we do know for certain, we cannot know why we succumb to foolishness, why we are ensnared by temptation, or why we repeat the same, stupid actions over and over until we've squandered what may be the only life we have. Out of Sight may be, in the grand tradition of Mr. Leonard, a fun, funny and subversive crime romp, but in its exploration of these fundamental questions, it advances itself from the mediocrity of crime fiction's back benches into the meritorious front row of inquisitive literature.

Blessed with memorable beauty and equipped with her father's moral compass, life for Karen Sisco, a deputy U.S. Marshal stationed in sunny Florida, ought to be fairly effortless. Her love life, however -- her last boyfriend turned out to be a bank robber --, suggests that, deep down, not all is well with the blond-haired honey with the shotgun on her hip. This thirst for danger is deeply indulged when Karen interrupts a prison breakout but, instead, winds up locked in the trunk of a getaway car with a dangerous convict snuggled up behind her. This is Jack Foley, a man who has done three sizeable stretches of time for bank robbery. It's no wonder then that he's eager to escape. But when Karen interferes with his flight, she stirs up emotions in him, feelings that stretch beyond the understandable anger one would feel for someone who ruined his plans. As they part ways and Foley latches on to the prospect of a job in Detroit that might get him the cash he needs to make a real getaway, Karen doggedly pursues him, both of them remembering their interlude together in the trunk and wondering if, in the brief window of time they have left to them, if there might be room for something that transcends the restrictions placed upon them by the roles they've chosen to play.

Out of Sight entertains the reader with an assortment of quirky, Leonardian characters who weave in and out of perils, some of which are of their making, some of which are completely beyond their control. But while the novel is well-served by a solid plot and suitable actors to fill fairly predictable roles, it is the core relationship shared by Foley and Sisco, criminal and woman of the law, which gives this piece its punch. In lesser hands, this would be nothing more than corny trash, the officer of the law tempted over to the dark side by the archetypical, irresistible bad boy, but Mr. Leonard avoids such cliches by ensuring that their attraction is equal and mutual. More over, they are cognizant of the fact that what they have is limited by time and circumstance, that it is a connection that must exist outside of the lives they've chosen for themselves, that it cannot possibly endure. They are two mature adults reaching across their choices, their histories and their self-interests to unite in common attraction, a need that supersedes their life paths.

In this, Mr. Leonard has done something special. He's understood that, being that we are nothing more than the culmination of a million choices across our years on this planet, it is possible to set aside, for a little while, who we are and what we've done. We are not owned by our jobs, our parents, or our chosen destinies. We can just be human beings, creatures capable of momentarily shrugging off their identities.Mr. Leonard grasps this somewhat scary notion and actualizes it in a delightfully subtle and praiseworthy manner.

This is quality and thoughtful work, a rare philosophical gem in the crime fiction arena. (4/5 Stars)

Getting Stoned With Savages by J. Maarten Troost

From The Week of July 03, 2011

When we were last with Mr. Troost in Sex Lives of Cannibals, he and his wife, Sylvia, were struggling to re-adjust to the saturation of Western life after spending two years in tiny and bizarre Kiribati, a country in the South Pacific leagues from civilization. Though they both found gainful employment upon their return to the West, a certain disaffection for the rat race, along with a seemingly insatiable wanderlust, soon motivated them into a search for another adventure. Which is how, not long after recovering from Kiribati, Mr. Troost is once again surfing the cultures of far away lands, this time dividing his penetrating wit between Fiji, which has recently suffered a military coupe, and the island nation of Vanuatu, later to be popularized by the television series Survivor which used it as the setting for one of its many cycles.

Getting Stoned With Savages is aptly named for it does often seem as though Mr. Troost's insights into these island cultures are gleaned through the powerful and revolting intoxicants imbibed there. And yet his willingness to try any substance, to risk every adventure, to confront every monstrous insect, imbues this, his second journey into the wilds of the undeveloped world, with a passion and a humor to rival his Kiribati experience. Despite the Kava haze which lingers over his account, Mr. Troost is able to knit his adventures here into a coherent if fragmented narrative which educates the reader on Vanuatu's French colonial history, on the eccentricities of its people and practices, and on the vast inequities between its rulers and its citizens which seem to characterize most island cultures. All this while Sylvia bravely gives birth to their first child who spends his initial year on Earth in the sun, sea and sweat of the Pacific islands.

Without his telltale wit, Mr. Troost's work would be nothing more than interesting if unspectacular logs of his various travels. But it is his packaging of his distinct brand of humor with a savage dislike for both colonialism and political corruption which allow hiss journeys to leap off the page. Though Sex Lives of Cannibals had a novelty that Getting Stoned With Savages lacks, Mr. Troost is, in every other respect, at the peak of his powers.

Conceptually, the only flaw here is the extent to which he has to cover up for the fact that this tale is devoid of a central event around which the rest of the story pivots. His attempt to talk to a living cannibal offers up some momentary hope in this regard, but this effort soon fails, lapsing the reader back into a series of barely connected adventures which have but one thing in common, that they all occur to Mr. Troost. This ought to be disappointing, but I would rather authenticity than dishonesty designed to sensationalize a flagging tale. And besides, the human experience is, here, a quality substitute for drama as, with admirable courage, the author exhibits himself and the cultures he explores, leaving little hidden away. Entertaining work. (3/5 Stars)

Into Africa by Martin Dugard

From The Week of July 03, 2011

Though we sometimes chafe at its ubiquitousness and angst over its sensationalism, there can be no doubt that our world is better off for having a modern media. Its capacity to inform us about both the state of our world and the power of its prime movers allows us to be infinitely more educated about current affairs than any generation prior to the present. However, for all its good, the modern media does, in all its saturation, put an end to mysteries which, in the past, accrued enormous cultural significance as a direct result of their being impossible for the media to report on. No tale exemplifies this lost ignorance more than that of the lost adventurer who, having dropped off civilization's radar into the mists of the unknown, spends years in the wilderness, exploring, charting, engaging with new cultures while his many admirers back home fret over his absence and their lack of contact with him. Not only have most of our geographical frontiers been explored, satellites make such communication blackouts almost impossible. And thus, there may never again be another meeting like that which took place on October 27th, 1871, when the American newsman and explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, finally met the British missionary and expeditionist, Dr. David Livingstone in the depths of Africa, thousands of miles from the lights of civilization.

This vivid effort from Mr. Dugard is a dual biography which takes up, as its twin subjects, the life stories of Stanley and Livingstone. It reaches across decades in an effort to contextualize the famous meeting near Lake Tanganyika which forever connected newsman and Christian, sensationalist and explorer, rescuer and rescued. Though the two men receive equal treatment, it is Stanley's background that animates Into Africa. For while much is already known of the Scottish Livingstone and his exploratory sojourns through Africa which made him famous and inflamed his advocacy for the abolition of slavery as a Western practice, Henry Morton Stanley has remained something of a mystery. Orphaned young, Mr. Dugard burns off the many lies Stanley told about himself to reveal a complex figure who pursued Livingstone more out of personal gain than for any affinity or fondness for the man. After all, Stanley was a man of masks, a young and abused emigrant to America who, after being fostered for awhile by a successful family in New Orleans, found his way into the Confederate army during the American Civil War, only to be captured by Unionists and freed to fight for them against the South. Drifting through his own life, he caught on at the New York Herald, a popular newspaper of the period and eventually, thanks to a scandal which entangled President Grant, found himself charged with the ambitious task of finding Dr. Livingstone who, by 1870, was four years marooned in the jungles of Africa and long since believed dead by the West.

Though Stanley's background is more arresting, Dr. Livingstone's is not without its moments. Mr. Dugard paints a portrait of a man gripped by a powerful, Christian faith which, over a meritorious career, helped earn him fame and fortune as an adventurer, a chronicler of Africa, and a crusader against slavery. But no amount of success, professionally or privately, could sway him from an obsession to find the source of the Nile. It was this need to know which drove the then famous abolitionist back into Africa for a final and fateful five-year journey which culminated in the meeting with Stanley in 1871. The author describes a man who was so driven to see, to know, and to do, that his passion lead to his wife's demise at the hands of his Africa. What's more, he clearly sacrificed familiarity of his children to conquer both frontiers and iniquities which, as often as not, proved immune to his blows. A powerful and conflicted figure who, as a result of his fearlessness, his courage and his faith, was a national hero to the British Empire.

Interweaving the histories of these two men with the twin journeys which eventuated in their meeting on that fateful day, Mr. Dugard brings to life both his subjects and the times which shaped them. Though his account presumes to know a great deal about Henry Morton Stanley's psychological state, enough of the man's own writings are included here to back up the author's psychoanalysis. And so, though we may have left behind the era of the great adventure, we can relive them in literature and Mr. Dugard does not in the least disappoint with this chronicle of a famous and burdened explorer and the efforts of a troubled American to locate him at the end of the civilized world. (4/5 Stars)

Three Empires On The Nile by Dominic Green

From The Week of July 03, 2011

To the cost of millions who've suffered under its yoke, the world, particularly the West, has learned that colonialism is a euphemism for the systematic exploitation of the weak by the strong. Empowered by a belief in their own superiority, strong groups justified these subjections on the claim of necessity: that they required the resources held by weak groups, that weak groups were too ignorant to understand how best to utilize what they had, that weak groups needed to be properly civilized by the strong in order for them to think and behave properly. But while most forms of colonialism have been rightfully abolished, one of its most insidious tenets persists into the present. This practice concerns the grotesque manner in which the governments of strong groups help to prop up the tyrants of weak groups because it is politically and economically advantageous for them to do so. And it is precisely this manipulative power which pervades Mr. Green's account of the thirty years of political and social upheaval which beset Egypt from the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal to the end of the 19th century.

From the overthrow of the fiscally ruinous Khedive Ismail who ruled, as a playboy, over Egypt until 1879, to the zealous and nihilistic jihad prosecuted by the Mahdi and his followers in the 1880s, and to the final subjugation of rebellious elements by the British in the 1890s, Mr. Green escorts the reader on a sweeping exploration of Egypt and Sudan of the late 19th century. Exhibiting little of its former, pre-Christian glory, the region is rife with poverty and oppression, dominated by poorly educated peasants who have the misfortune of being ruled by the Turkish throne of the Ottoman empire. Perhaps, if the Khedive's rule had been moderately progressive, events would not have slipped his control to evolve into 30 years of bloody chaos. But after hailing Western Europe as the future, Khedive Ismail spent his country into oblivion, a calamity which not only necessitated his removal from power but provided the spiritual fuel by which Sudan went up in religious flames. It not only radicalized Muhammad Ahmad until he believed himself the Mahdi, Islam's prophesized redeemer of the Earth, it gave him an opportunity to recruit an army tens of thousands strong, an army which, in the name of ridding Egypt and Sudan of corruption and foreign influences, devoted the next ten years to turning the region into a war-torn wasteland.

But while the Khedive's failures gave rise to the annihilation of the Mahdi and his crusade, it also empowered men like Ahmed Urabi, the first Egyptian of the modern era to rise from the peasantry to force some kind of reform upon his incredibly corrupted country.

Three Empires On The Nile is full of war and chaos, politics and corruption, religion and devastation. Through men like Charles Gordon, the engineer and reformer, it explores the spirit of adventure and power that infused British life at the peak of its imperial powers. Through the Mahdi and his war, it elucidates the extent to which religious extremism is an outgrowth of poverty and oppression, and that such fundamentalism often ends up destroying the very thing it is suffering to save. Finally, through William Gladstone, the British Prime Minister of the period, it explains how the three Cs of the British empire, Christianity, Commerce and civilization, energized the empire's expansion and lead to its colonial entanglements in parts of the world it could not understand.

Mr. Green's excellent history is full of fascinating and profoundly flawed characters, explorers and drunkards, warriors and self-flagellators, zealots and martyrs, all of whom are set against the ancient world of Egypt and the burning sands of the Sudan. While its conclusion overreaches by attempting to connect these three tempestuous decades to more recent history, it is, in every other way, a wonderful examination of three of history's Cs, colonialism, corruption and change, the omnipresence of which have shaped our nations and our lives. Terrific work. (5/5 Stars)

Riding The Rap: Raylan Givens 02 by Elmore Leonard

From The Week of June 26, 2011

It is rare to find a series in which a sequel outshines the book that gave it life, and yet Riding The Rap is, in every way, a superior effort to its progenitor, a cool and graceful work which exhibits every measure of Mr. Leonard's characteristic talent.

Harry Arno, the retired bookie who found himself in such deep water in Pronto, cannot catch a break. No sooner has he settled back into his life in Florida then he's tricked, kidnapped, and held captive by serious men intent upon extorting him of the considerable fortune he spent the last twenty years skimming from his Italian bosses. Raylan Givens, U.S. Marshal and cowboy badass, doesn't have a particular fondness for Harry, but he did steal the man's girlfriend. And so, at Joyce's pestering, he investigates Arno's disappearance, swimming through a world of criminality and mysticism in hopes of uncovering the truth, a truth that will lead him into the proximity of dangerous women and into the orbit of murderous men.

Mr. Leonard has rectified many of Pronto's problems. He's relegated Harry to a secondary role to give his new protagonist, Givens, room to breathe and shine. But while the marshal is a potent force, Riding The Rap's villains are equally worthy. Dopy, nihilistic, and greedy, they captured my interest even while their cruelties went unpunished.

When Mr. Leonard is at the top of his game, as he is here, he combines vivid characters with busy plots to create stories which are as intense as they are entertaining. His Westernness reminds me of a saner Cormac McArthy, capable of imbuing his tales with emotional depth without betraying his Hemingwayan minimalism. In a literary era that celebrates Dan Brown's shallow bloviations, it is pleasing to know that tight, dramatic, pulpy fiction can still be produced and appreciated.

Justified, the FX drama featuring Raylan Givens, inspired me to read the novels that gave it life. Not only was I not disappointed, both Riding The Rap and Pronto made me wish that translating literature to the silver screen was a simpler achievement. Is there anything in entertainment more rewarding than seeing a character on the printed page brought to life by the screen? Hail Raylan Givens. Hail Justified. Hail Elmore Leonard. (5/5 Stars)

Pronto: Rayland Givens 01 by Elmore Leonard

From The Week of June 26, 2011

Coolness. Some have it, some want it, some chase it, but all of us admire it. It is an unquantifiable blending of calmness and competence that has the power to transform us, to make movie stars of actors, to make musical legends of dive-bar strummers, to make presidents of ordinary politicians. It is not too much to say that it orders society, helping to distinguish the leaders from the followers, the charmed from the luckless. Coolness... It's what Mr. Leonard does better than almost anyone else.

Florida may be his jurisdiction, but U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens is all Kentucky. A one-time coal miner who came up hard in a world of unionized strikes and the company gun thugs who broke them, he's traded in his shovel for a badge,Appalachian hatreds for Miami glitz, but his cowboy hat remains, along with a sense of old world justice. Raylan Givens is the product of a long-dead time, a lawman from the untamed West dumped into a settled world of legalities and niceties. But while this clash gets our marshal into hot water, it also earns him respect, fear and enough room to do his job.

All of which come in handy when he is called upon to find and protect Harry Arno, a Miami-area bookie who, after being set up for a fall by elements within the Italian crime family for which he toils, flees to Italy where, 50 years earlier, he'd been stationed as a young American soldier during the Second World War. The aging Arno might've gotten away clean if it weren't for his need to have his girlfriend join him in exile, a decision he may well come to regret. For more than the law has followed Joyce across the Atlantic. Italian gun thugs track her to Italy where they are convinced she will lead them to Arno and the vengeance they require.

Though Pronto does many things well, it lacks the intensity that powered Leonardian classics like Glitz and Get Shorty. The reader is treated to some quaint, Italian scenery, some truly eccentric gangsters, and one ascendent badass in the form of Givens, but the plot is not of a quality to match Mr. Leonard's characters who are unsurprisingly first-rate. Harry Arno's sunsetting into a kind of pathetic elderhood was as interesting as the shortsighted gangster politics which entangled him in a mess not of his own making. But Givens steals the show, upstaging Harry to such an extent that it undermines the drama around which Pronto pivots. There are laughs here, and the trademark Leonardian coolness, but this is not much more than a quick, summer read. (3/5 Stars)

Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy

From The Week of June 26, 2011

Revolutions rarely seem to pan out the way their instigators expect them to. Darwinism begot Social Darwinism, Marxism begot Stalinism, and imperialism begot terrorism and exploitation. Ariel Levy argues, in Female Chauvinist Pigs, that we can add feminism to our list. For rather than engendering equality between the sexes, as imagined by its architects, feminism has empowered what Ms. Levy calls the rise of Raunch culture, or the transformation of the female form into a commodity to be consumed by men and women alike.

From Playboy to Girls Gone Wild, from strippers to lesbian bois, Ms. Levy assembles a history of Raunch culture which she connects back to a 1970s dispute between two factions of feminists born out of Womens Liberation. The antiporn faction argued, unsurprisingly, that pornography was smut, a degradation driven by male desire and, therefore, something to be rejected. The sex-positive faction that opposed them advocated for sexual freedom, choosing to define equality between the genders as the ability to be, do and love whatever and whoever they pleased. Though antiporn feminists won a few early victories, Sex-positive feminists won the war, unleashing a culture of women, freed from the chains of propriety, ready to act as they saw fit. Thirty years on, that freedom has been made manifest in Playboy centerfolds and silicon enhancements. It is exemplified by stripper poles and lurid photo shoots. It has penetrated even youth culture where younger and younger girls desire to -- or feel pressured to -- perform for the boys who purport to love them. Is this feminism's legacy? Is this true sexual freedom?

Though Ms. Levy stops short of heaping a full measure of scorn upon Raunch culture, she effectively highlights its shortcomings while leaving open the question of its benefits. In this, she leaves little doubt about the extent to which the commodification of the female form discomforts her. In her defense, it is far more difficult to quantify the benefits of Raunch culture; after all, it's all-but impossible to know how many women have used their bodies to pay for everything from their education to their clothes. Not only can't we generate a number, we can't even know for sure that these women take psychological damage from this exchange. Some women, I imagine, take little or no damage from selling themselves, buffering themselves from its coerciveness with healthy helpings of self-confidence. Others, meanwhile, are surely crushed by it, left exposed to its debasement by past abuse and poor self-esteem. It's much easier to gather graphic evidence on how female commodification has distorted womens bodies and their position in society. Here, Ms. Levy is razor- sharp, deploying scores of interviews to enlighten her readers on a world that makes even this freedom-loving libertarian squirm uncomfortably.

This is a worthy read. Ms. Levy has hit upon an important problem with sex-positive female identity, chiefly that it has permitted women to descend into the superficiality that often characterizes male sexual behavior. But there's an important aspect of this story Ms. Levy neglects.

So long as men desire women as strongly as they do presently, it will be impossible for women to completely liberate themselves from Raunch culture, from commodification. The human experience tells us that everything, from our bodies to our ethics, is for sale, for the right price. Men want from women what only women have and they often want it to the exclusion of almost everything else in their lives. As a result, men are willing to pay an extraordinary price for that female commodity. How is any human supposed to resist that?! Women are handicapped because male desire has set up an unfair game in which women have to resist temptation to profit from the easy road of giving themselves away for financial and social gain. To me, the issues Ms. Levy raises aren't feminist in nature; they are psychological. How do human beings resist commodification when it's so easy for them to get what they want for what, for some of them, may be little cost? I have little doubt that, if the roles here were reversed and women wanted from men what men want from women, men would be commodifying themselves. Men would be descending into Raunch culture. It's just too tempting to do life the easy way.

This is fascinating work. (3/5 Stars)

Inside The Kingdom by Robert Lacey

From The Week of June 26, 2011

All nations undergo transformations, moments of political, social and or economic enlightenment which haul them, kicking and screaming, into modernity. But while some nations have the benefit of centuries of gradual change to soften their landings, others are compelled to endure radical re-modellings that span only decades, evolutions which toss them, unprepared, into worlds they do not know. Of these nations, none can claim a recent history more spectacular than Saudi Arabia.

As recently as 1950, Saudi Arabia was a desert kingdom, a canvas of sand and stone dotted with villages and governed by tribes that lived on and worked with land that had more or less remained the same for 2,000 years. But with rise of American power and the discovery of oil in those sands, everything changed. In sixty years, thanks to in whole to the fortunes reaped from its oil, Saudi Arabia has gone from a politically unimportant backwater to a nation of 27 million souls, ruled by a hyper-rich elite who have converted much of their wealth into economic and political power. The former, they've spent on their nation's rapid and jarring modernization, raising cities out of sand dunes. The latter they've spent on consolidating their influence not only throughout the Middle East but abroad as well; after all, Saudi oil flows liberally through gas stations in the United States and China alike. How can a country re-organize itself from a rural, agricultural society to a modern, urban state in two generations?

It can't, at least not peacefully. Too many people to educate, too many people to subordinate, too many people to fit into the new hierarchy... Too much change...Beginning with Juhayman's seizing of the Grand Mosque in 1979, Mr. Lacey, a British historian, charts the shifting sands of Saudi Arabian life that have characterized its rise to prominence. He accomplishes this largely through an examination of the Saudi royal family, beginning with each king's political and economic policies before describing how those policies have impacted on everyday Saudis and the lives they struggle to lead. The picture that emerges is chaotic, a tangled web of tribal loyalties, powerful interests and religious zealousness which, together, have prevented Saudi Arabia from developing a healthy civil society.

Mr. Lacey rarely misses his mark. Though he, like every critic of the Middle East, has a tendency to draw overly general conclusions from the available evidence, he spends the majority of this chronicle laying down a solid narrative that covers the key events in recent, Saudi history and the prime movers who have participated in and shaped those events. From the chaos of the Siege of Mecca to the terror of 9-11, Mr. Lacey is informative about the cultural and political challenges the Kingdom has faced and will face in the future. But while I come away from Inside The Kingdom educated about the roadblocks that stand in the way of Saudi Arabia's liberalization, this piece offers almost nothing but a cursory description of the factional forces that fragment the kingdom into its three major regions, Mecca in the west, Riyadh in the center and the oil fields in the east. In other words, this is a Great Man history, one that concentrates on the movers and shakers, not the movements that underpin them.

Politically sharp and narratively gripping. This is good and informative work, but I will have to look elsewhere for an understanding of the Saudi Arabian people. (3/5 Stars)

The Bonfire by Marc Wortman

From The Week of June 26, 2011

They say that pride cometh before the fall, an adage tailor-made for antebellum Atlanta of the 1860s. an overnight sensation, the city's success elevated it from a red-clay backwater to one of the American South's preeminent industrial engines. But while success can generate new wealth, birth new opportunities, and open new doors, it also attracts attention, Northern scrutiny that, during the American Civil War, would see the city burn.

Mr. Wortman's excellent history foregoes a moment-by-moment re-telling of Gen. William Sherman's burning of Atlanta. Instead, the author pulls back his focus until he can capture a broader view that embeds the Atlanta Campaign in the dense tapestry of the war. To tell his tale, Mr. Wortman marshalls a number of compelling characters, mayors, slaves, eyewitnesses, generals, using their first-hand accounts to convey a city on an economic rise to stardom, a city that proved, during the war, to be a vital cog in the South's war machine. In this, the reader is treated to the juxtaposition of proud parades and boastful military salutes, spilling through its streets in 1861, with the ragged retreats and the helpless dismay of occupation and then desecration in 1864. Between, we watch as Atlanta's fortunes ascend until it is designated by the North as a primary target of Union wrath. Where upon, the Union's blockade of its goods, the Confederacy's devaluation of its dollar to worthlessness and the natural instability of an economy in wartime combine to plunge Atlanta into chaos and ruin, smashing its power as thoroughly as Sherman's fire devoured its homes and businesses.

As much as this is a military tale, featuring Gen. Sherman's conquest and burning of the South and his costly victories over Southern armies generalled by Johnston and Hood, The Bonfire is a treatise on human nature which devotes many of its pages to the illumination of the attitudes, both civilian and government, that pervaded the period. And so, while Mr. Wortman goes a long way to explaining why Atlanta burned, he's also able to reveal a general theme for the war. Humans are, on balance, unwilling to give up that which benefits them most. In fact, they are so devoted to the maintenance of their advantages over others that they are willing to contort their ethics, to blind themselves to obvious inequities, in hopes of holding on to what they have. This is exemplified not only in the fight over tariffs which amplified the political discord that lead up to the war, but the South's unwillingness to give up the economic advantage that slavery provided them. Instead, they went to war over the right to earn money via the exploitation of the disenfranchised. In this, they ensured but one thing, the devastation of their way of life.

This is a pleasingly expansive history which suffers not at all for being 470 pages. A thorough blending of eyewitnesses and interested parties ensures that many of the major points of view are given both time and satisfaction. Armies, politics, and the clash of civilizations... In Mr. Wortman's hands, these make a well-mixed cocktail. (4/5 Stars)