Flow My Tears The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

From The Week of September 19, 2011

Though humans take for granted many aspects of life, identity is arguably the most important of these overlooked fundamentals. For it is identity that grounds us in reality, the rock of self around which the oceans of our chaotic world crash and break. Without a solid grasp of who we are and what we stand for, we are anchorless in a world built on principles of consistency and logic. For some, this is a natural consequence of mental conditions like Schizophrenia, conditions that cause the human mind to distort reality. But what if identity is actively stripped from us? What if it is removed from the equation of human life? Do we become shiftless beings, not only unstuck in reality but cut out of the working machinery of the world around us? Flow My Tears The Policeman Said first asks the question and then sets out to provide an answer that is as nightmarish as it is compelling.

Originally published in 1974, this award-winning novel from Mr. Dick, best known for writing the short story upon which the movie Blade Runner was based, imagines the dystopian future of 1988 in which the United States, after convulsing its way through a second civil war, this one brought about as a result of the social revolution of the 1960s, has collapsed into a brutal, totalitarian police state. The Nats (national guardsmen) and the Pols (the police) comprise the government which is justifiably feared by a well-cowed citizenry distracted by the widespread availability of elicit sex and recreational drugs. The students who fought the police for control of the country's future have been thoroughly defeated, many captured and relocated to labor camps while the few that remain free scratch out a meager existence underground, away from the harsh lights of a relentless authority.

In this dark world of checkpoints and police brutality, of forced labor camps and sterilized minorities, life is livable for those who keep their heads down and avoid the notice of the authorities. One of the most successful of these is Jason Taverner, one of the world's most famous celebrities. The anchor of a variety program, he is regularly watched and adored by millions of rabid fans who assiduously ignore the fact that, in his fifth decade now, their hero is not only aging, his famous voice is failing. Carefully cloaked in the privilege of his powerful celebrity, Jason fears nothing, that is, until a late-night encounter with a woman scorned sends him to the hospital for treatment, where upon he wakes to find himself in a shabby hotel. Worse, while he still has his nice clothes and rich-man's cash, he seems to have entered a world in which Jason Taverner never existed, a world that has never known his smile, his voice, or his television program. His agents, lawyers, lovers and friends? All deny having ever heard of the world-famous Jason Taverner.

In one night, Jason has plunged from the heights of privilege into the depths of the underclass, that body of the unknown and forgotten people who so often find themselves ground beneath the heavy boots of the authorities. Will Jack recapture the heights he once knew, or will this world that never knew him be too unforgiving of a man who does not fit the proper pattern, this man who does not exist?

Flow My Tears The Policeman Said is thought provoking work which is as philosophical as it is mysterious. While exploring the nature of identity and love, celebrity and society, Mr. Dick is careful to hand out only clues to Taverner's ultimate fate, the nature of which hangs potently over the entirety of this charmingly dated novel. However, for all its stimulating virtues, it is not without flaws. Though all is made clear at the conclusion of the piece, the author's reveal has the feel of a cheat, falling back on strange pseudo science to justify a plot whose authenticity would have benefited from remaining mysterious. What's more, Mr. Dick, here, is hard on his main female characters, none of whom exhibit even glimmers of sanity or impulse control. Granted, Mr. Dick's male characters hardly fair much better, but the men have their motivations explained, their backgrounds fleshed out. The women, meanwhile, remain difficult and whiny caricatures who appear to be present in the story merely to provoke the men into self-revelation.

All this being true, Mr. Dick is nonetheless considered a master of science fiction because of works like these. He utilizes the tools provided to him by the genre, genetic engineering, futuristic technology, massive social change, etc., to build a platform for a provocative discussion about what grounds us in our society, what keeps us from slipping out of our place in the hierarchy that provides structure to our civilization. His conclusion, that this is almost entirely attributable to identity, as recognized by ourselves and by those around us, is as convincing as it is a gateway into a greater discussion about the way in which humans interact with their civilizations.

Sure, it's dated, presenting a world that possesses flying cars while still utilizing payphones, but we can forgive this. After all, for Mr. Dick, the backdrop seems to be nothing more than window dressing for the investigation of humanity that is the drama of the piece. (3/5 Stars)

The Quiet War by Paul McAuley

From The Week of September 19, 2011

Science fiction has always been a genre shaped by authors who required an outlet for their frustrations with the status quo. To escape the social, political, economic and gender restraints that shackled their societies, they fashioned new and dynamic futures that functioned as canvases for the innovative civilizations their minds imagined and their hands painted. This is how the genre has undergone numerous evolutions since its inception in the early 20th century without losing its relevance to the present moment. Whatever problems preoccupy us now, there are authors out there imagining the endgame and welding onto that framework a story that allows us to explore the issues of the day.

It should come as no surprise then to discover that the last decade of science fiction has been, to a substantial extent, preoccupied with the outcome of what now seems like inevitable environmental collapse. This is the pressing, eschatological issue of the day. We may well hold together enough tatters of our civilization to begin to rehabilitate our planet, but it seems unlikely in the extreme that we will manage to do this without social upheaval and, all its concordant human suffering, on a massive scale. So what will society look like when we emerge from this crisis into a world beyond fossil fuels? Will it maintain the freedoms we hold dear, or will it forsake them in light of a more effective way of combating all of life's problems? The Quiet War is a thoroughly entertaining exploration of one man's answer to this fundamental query.

In the 23rd century, humans have long since taken to the stars to escape an Earth devastated by anthropogenic climate change. Setting down roots on the moon, Mars and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, these Outers, as they have come to be called, build new civilizations while they look back at a browned and grayed Earth upon which the remainder of beleaguered humanity labors to mend a broken planet. Where the technologically superior Outers are free to innovate and adapt to their new circumstances, gluing their communities together with a radical form of democratic socialism that binds everyone in common cause and shared toil, Earth-bound humanity reforms itself around religion and authoritarianism, both heavily influenced by the green policies they are forced to adopt in order to save themselves. Where the Outers diversify into numerous post-national states, the humans on Earth calcify into two major powers, the European Union and Greater Brazil, both of which appear to be exploitative oligarchies designed to funnel power and privilege into the hands of the omnipotent families that control them. As much as certain factions may wish otherwise, war between such opposing ideologies is all-but inevitable.

Though Earth is now enjoying a slow recovery, it has not come quick enough for North America which is now a devastated wasteland ruled by corrupted churches and prowled by powerful gangs. Out of this mess scrabbles two of the stories four protagonists, Macy Minnot and Cash Baker. The former is a biologist who escapes the ruins of Pittsburgh to work her trade in the Outer colonies. The latter is a fighter pilot from Texas who submits to surgical upgrades of his mind and his nervous system so that he can fly Greater Brazil's newest line of combat ships. Both represent the exploited underclass of Greater Brazilian society. Macy fights her enslavement, rebelling until she is beyond their influence. Cash, meanwhile, conforms, thrilled by his upgrades and the blessings they have granted him.

The Earthside humans could not have rehabilitated their planet without genetic engineering and it is this pursuit which empowers and enables the novel's other two protagonists. Sri Hong-Owen is a gene wizard, a leading scientist who also belongs to one of the ruling clans within Greater Brazilian society. As brilliant a political tactician as she is a biologist, she works to continue Earth's recovery while quietly agitating for a conflict with the Outers that she hopes will bring her face-to-face with her century's most brilliant geneticist. Eight, meanwhile, is the product of one of Sri's experiments, a genetically grown assassin who is deployed as a weapon against the Outers in the conflict that consumes the second half of the novel. Together, Sri and Eight represent both the science that has healed Earth and its costs. For the tide of public opinion on Earth has turned against such massive genetic manipulation, causing minds like Sri and people like Eight to be abhorrent to what Earthers view as the natural way of life.

At first, The Quiet War seems as though it will suffocate from its own inertia, but once Mr. McAuley's complex novel shudders into motion, it becomes a tense and tightly plotted rumination on the nature of politics and extremism. The Outers, democratic and individualistic, ought to be the heroes of the piece, preserving, in the face of the authoritarian threat from Earth, the traditions readers recognize and cherish. However, the author argues that just because a society worships freedom does not make it virtuous. On the contrary, the author contends that all political systems, no matter how liberal they are, are susceptible to subversion from internal extremists who, in their dissatisfaction with the status quo, are perfectly willing to sew widespread chaos in order to actualize their radicalism. Virtue, if it is to be found anywhere, must be located in a peace that transcends ideology, a peace that acknowledges everyone's right to act freely and to not have another's will imposed upon them; a lesson for both liberal and authoritarian states. This is a difficult point that Mr. McAuley manages to make vividly and forcefully.

Slow to ignite, but once it's burning this is quite the vivid and combative journey. I will certainly be scooping up the sequel. (4/5 Stars)

Shetland Diaries by Simon King

From The Week of September 19, 2011

As Earth's ecology continues to deteriorate, humanity will be increasingly confronted by the unavoidable truths of species extinction and environmental collapse brought about by human profligacy. Such sins will be ignored for a little while longer, but not when sharks and whales, tigers and wolves, disappear from a world in which diversity is little more than a fleeting memory. And in that grayer world, in that world of concrete and glass, we will read books about past times, times in which man thought nothing of devoting his life to the simple, childlike enjoyment of watching animals. And amongst that pile of quiet, thoughtful literature will surely be this effort from Mr. King.

Shetland Diaries is a slim but heartfelt chronicle of two separate journeys, taken in 2008 and 2009, to Shetland, those most isolated of Scottish isles which, as the author points out early on, are nearer to the Arctic than to London. These twin adventures are undertaken by Mr. King, a British, wildlife filmmaker, who, together with his young family, enthusiastically endeavors to record seals and otters, puffins and storm petrels, in all their natural glory. Under normal circumstances, capturing such wildlife on camera should be a simple task, especially for one of Mr. King's expertise. But in the remote Shetlands, where the population is scarce, the winds fierce, and the shores lashed by the timeless fury of the northern Atlantic, such simple efforts become, for Mr.King, the things of Herculean legend, tales to be told to friends and family. Despite these challenges, the author manages to capture, for his British audiences back home, the beauty of life beyond civilization, that great diversity of existence that persists in the vastness of seas and skies too cold and too tumultuous for our soft, human liking.

Though Shetland Diaries is not without its flaws, Mr. King has succeeded in producing for his readers a thorough and entertaining travel log of a place few of them will ever see. For not only has he turned his naturalist's eye towards the various engaging species which populate, utilize and beautify Shetland with their glory, he is a keen observer of its buoyant and playful human culture which, unsurprisingly, is thickly seasoned with Nordic influences. Judiciously edited tales of their fun-filled festivals amuse as much as reconstructions of their salt-of-the-earth humanism warmed the cockles of this cynic's heart. But while Mr. King strikes the proper balance between the loveliness of nature, the wonder of animal behavior, and the kindness of down-home strangers, he has reserved too sizeable a portion of his tale for his own self-importance. For those of us who will never meet him, we care far more about seeing out through his eyes, not in towards his preoccupations, which are many, from his typically adorable child, to his, of course, lovely and patient wife. I'm sure Mr. King is a kind and generous soul, but I am here for the animals and the visuals, not for the vagaries of the author's home life, or the pratfalls of his technological setbacks.

Nonetheless, this remains work that both warms the heart and sobers the soul. For it exposes us to the best and the worst of humanity, our kindness and our destructiveness. In both exposing and re-enforcing this, Mr. King has done us all a service. (3/5 Stars)

The Age of Empathy by Frans de Waal

From The Week of September 19, 2011

Though we may, at some point in the future, discover that we are not Earth's only highly intelligent species, this much is inarguable. We are the masters of Earth. Perhaps, in the decades and the centuries to come, we will even be the masters of outer space, and the planets we'll find out in that immeasurable vastness. With this in mind, there are surely few academic pursuits more important than primatology, the study of the apes from which we have evolved. After all, short of a gigantic leap forward in our understanding of the human brain, it will be through studying these creatures that we will understand ourselves. And we must understand ourselves if we are to survive long enough to build a better, grander future. To that end, The Age of Empathy does not disappoint.

From mirror neurons to Emotional contagion, from Selection Pressure to Targeted Helping, Mr. de Waal, a primatologist and professor of primate behavior, endeavors, in The Age of Empathy investigate the roots and the components of empathy in primates. After all, looked at superficially, empathy, that is identifying oneself with another's pain, ought to be a weakness, not a strength. It causes us to sacrifice our hard-earned resources and privileges to bring aid to others, some of whom are strangers who we may never meet again. For creatures so obviously driven by self-interest, how could such an Achilles heel have been allowed to persist?

Mr. de Waal argues that, far from a weakness, empathy is a vital cog in the wheel that drives human communities. For it is empathy that allows us to connect with our fellows, to form relationships with our loved ones, to bind ourselves with our friends in common and related cause. We only think of empathy as weak because of the extent to which the Social Darwinists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries have distorted evolution in order to fit it into their central fantasy, that humans are driven by self-interest because only the fittest survive. This theory has propagated through human culture not because it is right, but because it justifies the ruthlessness with which the few can exploit the many. Mr. de Waal points out that this theory is clearly wrong. Every time it has been tried, suppressing empathy in favor of self-interest, the communities in question have been riddled with coldly calculating creatures who are tragically damaged and incapable of kindness. Given that such communities are, in primates and inhumanity, vastly outnumbered by communities founded on empathy and shared purpose, the theory of rational self-interest must be wrong.

Drawing on his decades of experience observing and learning from primates, Mr. de Waal replaces self-interest with a broader theory of human nature, that, in order to survive, primates became social beings and that humans have only emphasized this trait in their own evolution. For creatures to socially coexist, empathy is essential for the creation of relationships that knit communities together. More importantly, empathy is a stepping stone to trust which is the currency of human relationships, not self-interest. This has been demonstrated not only in experiments with primates, but in numerous examinations of other animals and, of course, countless human experiences.

The Age of Empathy is provocative work. Mr. de Waal is unafraid to extrapolate the lessons he has learned from studying primates and to apply them to both human behavior and human politics. While a sincere admirer of the American spirit, highlighting the United States as perhaps the lone country in the world where achievement beyond ones fellows is celebrated as a great and commendable goal, he is deeply critical of the extent to which the American people have lapsed into an unhealthy distrust of their government. In pointing out how important the virtues of trust and fairness are to primates, he clearly believes that this enmity will only sow discord within the American community and drive away quality people from what are the country's most critical posts. In this, Mr. de Waal connects his academic work to the broader world in a way that transforms the series of fascinating experiments described here into lessons on human nature that could profoundly impact the way we interact with one another. Though the author convincingly dispels the myth of survival of the fittest, he does not convince the reader that he has all the answers. But then, vitally, he never claims to have all the answers. He only endeavors to discover them and opine on their meaning which is its own form of admirable behavior.

This is popular science for those looking to nature for answers to questions about human nature. For those who do not believe that primates have anything to offer us, they will find here only frustration and fodder for polemics. (4/5 Stars)

The Red Prince by Timothy Snyder

From The Week of September 19, 2011

There are some among us who live such remarkable lives, so energized with action, so fraught with peril, so near to the nexus of historical events, that, when I encounter them, I ask myself if I would trade places with them. After all, while there is glory and excitement in such lives, tragedy is never far afield, stalking its prey with relentless hunger. Is it better to venture forth boldly, inviting disaster, or to live long and quietly, content with ones modest existence? Normally, I would favor the latter, but this riveting biography of Archduke Wilhelm Franz of Austria has, at least for now, convinced me otherwise.

Mr. Snyder, who earned my lasting respect with the vivid and terrifying Bloodlands, here, enhances his literary reputation with a gripping biography of Wilhelm Habsburg, a man who, at various points in his life, was an archduke of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a freedom fighter agitating for Ukrainian statehood, a British spy, a political exile, and a combat veteran of multiple wars. Born in 1895 to royal parents -- his father a Habsburg Archduke; his mother an Italian princess --, Wilhelm was raised in the old Europe, a Europe before the two great wars, a Europe governed by elites, controlled by empires, and owned by monarchs. By the time of his death in 1948, at the hands of Soviet torturers who rightly considered him an Ukrainian nationalist, that world was dead, replaced by nation states ruled by democratic parliaments or political blocks steered by ruthless dictators. In-between, he fought in both world wars, watched his family's power and status reduced to a historical footnote, endured sex scandals engineered by fraudsters, and generally did his best to survive in a world that no longer paid homage to his imperial origins.

A fighter and a would-be king, a romantic and a homosexual, Wilhelm Habsburg was a witness to, and a victim of, history. At least, this is Mr. Snyder's learned interpretation of a dynamic man who, despite enjoying unimaginable privilege, was a man without a nation. In The Red Prince, Wilhelm seems to float through life, trying to eke out pleasure from its highs while bracing for its devastating lows, only finding a solid purpose in the tragic plight of the Ukrainian people in whose cause he loyally served and for whom he eventually died. However, this shiftlessness is understandable. Few among us are asked to keep pace with the frantic march of history which all-but devoured Habsburg power during World War I. None of us have had to face the prospect of being left behind by history, of losing, in a span of years, much of what we knew, of being tumbled down from the implacable heights of empire into a world of proletariat power.We should detest Wilhelm Habsburg, representing as he does a time in human history plagued by exploitation and authoritarianism. But watching this flawed man lose everything, even his family, while trying to find something in the new world to which he can adhere, creates a sympathetic connection with the reader that is wide open by the time he reaches Wilhelm's cruel demise.

Mr. Snyder does not disappoint. Though this piece lacks the intensity of Bloodlands, it is an excellent specimen of a fulfilling biography, that is, the thorough capturing of a dynamic life which is beset and shaped by great events. In this, the author has not only chosen his subject well, he has done the largely neglected Wilhelm well-deserved justice. For even though he was a creature born of empire, he found it within himself to advocate for the freedom of the oppressed, advocacy for which his fascinating life was extinguished. This is lovely work. (4/5 Stars)

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

From The Week of September 12, 2011

Much of the 20th century was taken up by the debate over the proper answer to a single, momentous question. For a free society, what is the ideal government? Is it the government which governs least as favored by avid free-marketeers? Is it the government which governs most as favored by socialists and communists? Or is it perhaps a government that occupies a middle road, adopting elements of each extreme to forge some sort of working, if messy, amalgam? To answer this question, The Dispossessed wraps itself in science fiction, imagining a future world in which these thought experiments can be safely run and conclusions drawn. And though the novel indulges in some of the genre's less pleasant tropes, it is otherwise, justifiably, a classic of utopian fiction.

In a star system not far from the burned-out Earth of the future, a planet and its moon persist in close proximity to one another, each supporting very different societies. On Urras, the planet, abundant natural resources and an endurable climate have catalyzed both industrialization and the rise of nation states. Though capitalism has been the traditional model, recent challenges to its dominance have come from two very different groups. The most dangerous of these is Thu, one of Urras' more powerful nation states, which practices an authoritarian collectivism similar to the Soviet Union of the early 20th century. Its ruling class, claiming the imprimatur of its proletariat, agitates against Io, the capitalist state which claims to be a profiteer's paradise (read the United States).
. The second threat comes from Urras' moon, anarres, a dry and desolate place which, for two centuries, has been devotedly cultivated by anarcho-collectivists fled urras centuries earlier to found a free paradise.

This delicate balance of rival states and opposing ideologies is tipped into chaos when Shevek, a brilliant physicist, from anarres, travels to Urras, claiming to have insights into a grand unified theory that would revolutionize physics and open the door to new and powerful technologies. He is received by Io and put up in prime housing, given servants, a teaching position and access to Io's highly educated intelligentsia. But instead of impressing him, the luxuries of Io's society discomfort Shevek who has only ever known the radical utilitarianism practiced on Anarres. What the people of Io see as the fruits of profit he sees as the sins of exploitation. If he gives his discovery to Io, will they commodify it? Will they turn it into another of their brilliant baubles? And would that not be a betrayal of everything he was raised to believe in, that people are free only when they are able to make their own choices, uncoerced by any ruling class? Shevek must rely on his own wits and wisdom to help him navigate a foreign world and its foreign customs in hopes of arriving at a solution that satisfies his morality and his ethics. For given into the wrong hands, his knowledge could mean the end of everything he knows.

Though The Dispossessed is something of a difficult slog, the extent to which Ms. Le Guin has created an innovative and believable alternative to the polarization of American capitalism and Soviet collectivism marks this work out as something special. Anarres is easily the novel's greatest virtue. For here Ms. Le Guin has dreamed up a kind of non-authoritarian communism, a political system founded on an anarchism quite similar to that imagined by Emma Goldman. While everyone lives free, completely unfettered by rules or obstructions, each member of Anarres' society is taught that their survival hinges upon collective effort. There is no private property; there is only that which belongs to the whole and can be used by everyone. The whole is grown by the collective efforts of all with hording kept in check by the threat of public ridicule.

At first glance, it seems like this might actually be a viable alternative to authoritarian systems, but this strain of anarcho-collectivism has two problems, the first of which Ms. Le Guin has already anticipated. Firstly, humans are, by nature, hierarchical animals and, consequently, they naturally gravitate towards powerful personalities. Not everyone has an equivalent desire to be an individual. Some people want to conform. And where there is conformity there will be someone willing to capitalize on that conformity. This is a problem that plagues anarres. For as much as its society was founded on non-authoritarian freedom, the passage of 200 years has begun to calcify the permanent revolution, allowing authority figures to loom larger and larger, accreting power from the individuals they purport to serve. Secondly, Ms. Le Guin does not convince me that the Anarres model would work anywhere else. In order for her experiment to function, the author had to run it on a desert moon whose proper cultivation required the collective efforts of all its entrapped inhabitants. The people of anarres cannot leave for other opportunities, other lives. The absence of a space program obligates them to work together. This creates a bond among the people of Anarres, a bond with their comrades and the land they work, which helps to re-enforce their ideology. But what if such an experiment was run on Earth, a place where the experiment's participants were constantly being bombarded with capitalistic temptations, where they could leave for capitalism at whim? It seems to me that though ideal in theory, Ms. Le Guin's radical collectivism suffers in practice the same flaw of all anarchist societies, that it is inherently asocietal, that its rabid individualism tears at the communal bonds that create societies, preventing a coherent culture from coalescing.

The Dispossessed is, in many respects, a failure as a piece of entertainment. Stuffiness, long-windedness and a total absence of action plague long stretches of the work. However, as a thought experiment? As an effort to imagine and then actualize an idea of how we might ideally live? It is brilliantly conceived and artfully laid out. This is thoughtful, intellectual fiction. For those seeking entertainment, best look elsewhere. (3/5 Stars)

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

From The Week of September 12, 2011

We have all had an experience with death. Be it our beloveds, best friends and parents, or our acquaintances, cousins and coworkers, we've all tasted the bitterness of loss, waking the morning after only to be hit by the knowledge that there is now a hole in our lives that was not there 24 hours earlier. For the most part, this loss is manageable, a fact of life that must be accepted. But what if this wasn't so? What if those we loved, those we worked with, those we greeted on our way to work just disappeared without a trace, without explanation? What if we are left behind?

Mr. Perrotta, a writer of popular fiction, cleverly and keenly imagines, in The Leftovers, a world in which the Rapture, or something like it, comes to Earth and removes a substantial portion of the human population. The old and the young, the popular and the freakish, the straight and the gay all experience disappearances, leaving those who were not taken on that fateful day to grieve, to rage, and finally to wonder at the rhyme and the reason of it all. The cross-section of the vanished is so thorough that sinfulness does not appear to have been a factor. Nonetheless, they are gone, abandoning the rest to persist in a world rejected by god.

Though many quickly adjust to the shock, losing only acquaintances and allies, others are tormented by the loss of husbands and children. And though some take comfort in the knowledge that the disappeared have been chosen for some purpose; others find that this solace is more than overcome by confusion and despair that accompanies the knowledge that they themselves were not chosen, were deemed not worthy. Though the former are mostly successful in their efforts to piece their lives back together, the latter struggle so mightily that many of them turn to the Guilty Remnant, a religious order that has sworn to silently remind the rest of humanity of that fateful day and the deficiencies that have clearly kept them from being delivered along with the disappeared.

The story follows the lives of the Garvey family. The father, Kevin, is the mayor of a small town in the American Northeast who is trying to raise his teenaged daughter on his own now that his wife, Laurie, has left them for the Guilty Remnant. But no amount of sympathetic understanding from her father can keep Jill Garvey from rebellion. She has taken up with a new friend, Amy, a troubled teen who moved in with the Garveys after her mother's disappearance opened the door to her stepfather's abuse. And yet Jill's struggles to find her place dwarf her elder brother's collegiate flailings. Tom Garvey has dropped out of school and churned his way through religious cults and spiritual movements in an effort to find a meaning that may forever elude him. Together, Kevin and Laurie, Jill and Tom, expose us to a changed world, a world that struggles to heal itself in the wake of an event the Leftovers are ill-prepared to endure. But can this wound be healed, or is the world a tapestry ruined by having had sections of its soul excised?

Though Mr. Perrotta's plodding plot leaves something to be desired, and though his conclusion here lacks for explosiveness, The Leftovers is thoughtful work as dark as it is playful. There is a desire amongst certain segments of the population to obsess over the end times, to read portentousness into every possible pattern. Instead of castigating these obsessives, Mr. Perrotta makes an attempt to understand what life would be like for those not taken by the Rapture, what society might be like with part of its body amputated by god. His conclusion? Life goes on. As with every tragedy in our lives, and in the lives of those who came before us, we endure. For to do else is to waste the life we have been given, by god or by the universe. We grieve, we mourn and then we move on because that is what we do.

The Leftovers marries engaging characters with a thoughtful premise to create an entertaining end product. Yes, Mr. Perrotta belabors the point, coming within an eyelash of finding a dead horse to thrash, but this and a somewhat quiet conclusion are only meager stains on what is otherwise a pleasant and introspective read. (3/5 Stars)

The Gridlock Economy by Michael Heller

From The Week of September 12, 2011

In 1968, Garrett hardin, an ecologist, published an article in the Journal of Science in which he described what he called the Tragedy of The Commons. This occurs when a shared resource, E.G. The stock of salmon in a river, is irrationally depleted by the resource's users even though each user is fully aware that overusing the resource will kill it. The Tragedy of The Commons argues that none of the resource's users moderate their use to save the resource because they are all individually convinced that every other user will take more than their share of what remains. Therefore, they conclude that they might as well take what they can get now before the resource is completely exhausted. This human behavior has since been documented countless times and must be the single largest roadblock in the way of legislating against anthropogenic climate change. After all, if I am polluting, then why shouldn't you? But while we understand the concept of overuse, is the opposite true as well? Is it possible to underuse a resource?

We can look at plundered resources and see how we have abused them: rivers without salmon, jungles without tigers, atmosphere without an Ozone layer. But how do we see underuse? How do we see the drug not developed, the technology not invented, the industry not catalyzed? These potentials, unlike industrial smog, are invisible by dint of having never existed, ideas in our minds and on our chalkboards never actualized because of some law, some restriction, some impediment. This is what Mr. Heller calls the Tragedy of the Anticommons, a situation in which people with competing financial stakes, rather than spurring innovation, stifle progress that would benefit everyone. But why does this happen?

Mr. Heller, a professor of Contract Law at Columbia University, describes, in The Gridlock Economy a vital disconnect between our 21st century world and the 19th century ideas of patent law that govern it. Patents, which originated as a form of financial protection for inventors who wanted to profit off their years of experimentation and toil, were conceived in a world where one idea begot one invention. When James Watt invented the steam engine, he didn't file patents for each part of his engine. He filed a patent for the engine he sold to his buyers. But in our world of complex drugs and intricate smartphones, technology is composed of dozens, perhaps even hundreds of inventions, meaning, to make the IPhone, Apple must hold dozens if not hundreds of patents, or receive permission from the holders of those patents to use their invention. And in a world driven by the pursuit of profit, in a world that hinges on maintaining the slightest advantage over ones competition, such patents can be the difference between success and failure of a product and of a company.

After explaining patents and the purpose they serve, Mr. Heller does an excellent job of illustrating how they are preventing us from realizing the next generation of technologies:the fragmentation of over-the-air broadcasting which is keeping us from having revolutionary WI-FI, the gene patents on Golden Rice which nearly kept this genetically engineered crop from being fed to the starving for which it was made, the doctors who abandon research into developing curative drugs because of the impossibility of obtaining permission to use the necessary molecules and processes. The inventions and innovations being shackled by outdated patent law are widespread. But rather than throw out the idea of patents, Mr. Heller wants simply to update them to reflect a world in which ownership of a thing is often divided up amongst numerous self-interested parties.

Though Mr. Heller's reforms lack punch, his work here offers the reader a valuable look into an underexposed world. Patents were meant to encourage invention by creating a financial incentive for inventors. They were not meant to enchain innovation by forcing progressive companies to assemble a jigsaw of patents simply to create a product. For all his bland conclusions, Mr. Heller is utterly convincing that reform in this area is not only necessary, it may catalyzing the next wave of innovation. And given the financial state of the world as of this writing in 2011, we sorely need it. (4/5 Stars)

War Talk by Arundhati Roy

From The Week of September 12, 2011

Institutions are inherently corrupt. They operate by funneling power away from their many members and into the clutches of their few leaders. And we know from painful experience that whenever power of any significance is collected in the hands of a few, the sins of greed and arrogance and self-righteousness are soon to follow. With this in mind, how are governments not institutions writ large? Yes, they are veneered in respectability thanks to their elective natures, but the moment their elections conclude, they become autocratic institutions, their power limited only by the desire to maintain it. This, at least, is Ms. Roy's view and in this she is quite convincing.

From the Palestinian problem to the Iraq War, from the arrogance of leaders past to the bias of today's cable news, War Talk is a series of essays which coalesce around the events of September 11, 2001, and the extent to which this attack welcomed the United States into a difficult and dangerous world largely of its own creation. After all, Ms. Roy argues, America has worked its ostensibly benevolent will upon the world's various international conflicts for going on 60 years now. And rather than creating a world of peaceful, free commerce -- America's stated aims --, it has wrought bloodshed and misery: toppling governments, supporting despots, proliferating nuclear weapons and binding subservient nations to exploitative contracts that best serve its corporate backers. But though all this is rather obvious to the rest of the world, it is not obvious to the American people who, when they open a newspaper or turn on the news, are not greeted with the sins of their government; they are presented with the noble sacrifices of their soldiers trying to build schools in countries they've just bombed back to the stone age. Freedom, Ms. Roy points out, cannot be brought about by violence.

If Ms. Roy is right to argue that institutions are corrupt and that corrupt institutions and the principles they are founded upon are bound to fail, then what will replace them? Ms. Roy seems less than certain. She favors the power of the people in whom she clearly invests her hopes. Perhaps if we all had to live together, neighbor with neighbor, community with community, face to face with those we purport to hate and beholden to no master, then we would not war. We would find alternative solutions to the problems that plague us. We are aware of the sins of free market capitalism. We are aware of the sins of the hierarchical power structures upon which institutions and governments are based. To continue to pursue them knowing the damage they cause would be nothing short of folly.

Unfortunately, this, to me, is naive. Replacing corrupt institutions with people power is a lovely idea, but how? Direct democracy offers some hope, but as much as direct democracy endows the people with the full measure of national power, how the people vote is still subject to the same biases and prejudices Ms. Roy blames the media for perpetuating. So not only do we require the people to change their political systems, we need them to demand a vast reform of the modern media as well? This seems hopelessly far-fetched.

Ms. Roy is an impassioned essayist. Her advocacy for the downtrodden is as inspiring as her rage at the cruelty of our rulers is invigorating. But while her heart is in the right place, any hope for positive change seems a long way off. We will need multiple revolutions to see a world Ms. Roy can admire. And right now, we all care too much for the things we stand to lose to take a chance on a better future. (3/5 Stars)

Moral Combat by Michael Burleigh

From The Week of September 12, 2011

For the last sixty years, the West has been taught that World War II was a moral War of good versus evil, of freedom versus totalitarianism, of tolerance versus prejudice. And because we are Westerners, because this narrative flatters our sense of superiority, we have endorsed it as truth. After all, not only have the unspeakable sins of despots like Hitler left us with plenty of evidence to support this self-congratulatory retelling, we had to find some way of psychologically and spiritually justifying the immense cost, in lives and resources, the war's prosecution levied upon the world. Certainly, there is truth in this narrative -- the barbarity of the Axis powers staggers the mind --, but it does not automatically follow that the Allied powers that fought them were noble.

In Moral Combat, Mr. Burleigh, a British historian, investigates the extent to which all of the national combatants in World War II neglected their humanity, carrying out a war that cost the lives of 60 million people and forever reshaped our world. From the bombing of Dresden to the rape of Nanking,His chronicle, coming in at some 650 pages, extensively reconstructs both the war's crimes and their social, political, and ethical consequences. Though the spotlight here is often trained on the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their allies, understandably so given their brutality, the extent to which these crimes have been imprinted upon our collective consciousness by past reconstructions saps them of their punch, especially relative to the underreported crimes of the Allies which Mr. Burleigh relentlessly and thoroughly assembles here. For while countless films, books and stories ensure that we will never forget the Holocaust, how many of us remember that, for want of an ally with which to resist the overwhelming might of Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill, that most venerated leader of World War II, joined forces with the most murderous dictator of the 20th century, Joseph Stalin who, by the time of their alliance, already had the blood of millions staining his hands?

Though Moral Combat lacks the focus and intensity of Bloodlands, its lengthy and fairhanded reconstruction of war crimes during the Second World War is both potent and enlightening. It dismisses the popular narrative declaring WWII a war of good versus evil and replaces it with the more realistic notion of a war of clashing ideologies, democracy versus totalitarianism. And though we might wish to believe otherwise, neither side is able to claim the moral high ground. For as many times as the allies might point to the Death Camps as symbols of Nazi depravity, the Nazis could, if they were here, point to Dresden and the rape and bombing of Berlin as moral crimes the victorious Allies never had to answer for. After all, the defeated foe can hardly set up their own Nuremberg, their own Tokyo.

For all that Moral Combat is vigorous and thorough, Mr. Burleigh fails to draw any conclusions from his research. Though he dispenses with the allied claim of moral superiority, he does not speak to any of the broader themes his research uncovered. His chronicle allows the reader to conclude that war crimes are an inevitable outcome of Total War, that a nation cannot practice Total War without inviting the possibility of equally total destruction, but we never learn if these are the author's conclusions. For other than a handful of sarcastic comments, he is silent on what he has learned. Perhaps he meant this to be an academic text from which his readers must draw their own conclusions, but we read great historians as much for the clarity of their insight as we do for the power of their research. Timothy Snyder did not fail his duty as a historian by opining in Bloodlands. After consuming 650 pages of academic writing, a few of the author's own conclusions is the least the reader can expect.

Interesting and at times provocative, but its flaws leave substantial holes in the end product. (3/5 Stars)

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

From The Week of September 05, 2011

Prior to The Road, I would not have thought it possible for a story of smoke and ash, fire and death, desolation and despair, to be a story of love. And yet, in the hands of arguably the greatest living American author, all things are possible. Mr. McCarthy, who has, for decades, specialized in bleak landscapes and even bleaker characters, has, here, elevated the here-to-for pulpy post-apocalyptic novel to fine art. It will be a long while before this effort is matched.

All is ashes. From the burned out forests, to the filth-covered fields, from the husks of skeletal cities to the impenetrable gray of polluted skies, the world lies in ruins. How it came to be this way no one knows. For the perpetrators of this collapse are as dead as the warheads they used to achieve it. But then this is not a world that cares about hows; it cannot afford such luxuries. After all, life at the end of the world is all-but consumed by the necessities of survival. For those precious few who have not yet lost their humanity, sustenance is extracted from the remnants of the old world, canned goods that cannot be replicated. For the rest, well, the remains of the children given over to the cooking fires are testament to how far they've fallen.

They may well be the last good guys in the world, two battered, road-weary travelers determined to escape the bitter cold of winter by slowly, painfully walking south, hoping to eventually reach the impossibly distant sea. To get there, the Man and the Boy, who are never named, will have to navigate the eponymous road, what's left of the U.S. highway network which is now a magnet for thieves, cannibals, slavers and lost souls. To protect his son from these myriad threats the Man has only two bullets and an old revolver with which to fire them. But even the gun is, in the end, only a threat. He cannot waste his precious ammunition on road agents. No, these bullets must be preserved, insurance against a dark day in which, on the brink of being taken by slavers or worse, he will use them to remove himself and his son from this cruel world, allowing both of them to follow in the footsteps of the boy's mother who gave up when things were considerably brighter than they are now. Will these two wandering souls make it to the sea? If they do, will it offer them succor, or has it joined the rest of the world in being swallowed by man's depravities?

Though The Road exhibits many of Mr. McCarthy's customary themes, desolate landscapes, hopeless endeavors, periods of explosive violence, it is easily his simplest and his most loving effort. Absent here is the philosophical complexity of Blood Meridian, or the vastness and the emotion of his Borderlands Trilogy. Here, there is, in the main, a father's love for his son, his need to protect him, to give him a chance at life, to give him hope for the future, and to impart to him an example of human decency that will endure beyond the Man's inevitable death. Underlying this core relationship, however, is the central question Mr. McCarthy puts to the reader.

At what point is life no longer worth living?

The Road presents us with two answers to this question. The Boy's mother argues that nothing is gained from persisting in the face of oblivion. After all, what's the point? Is it so that you can say, with pride, that you lasted longer than your fellows, that you tried harder, dug deeper, that you refused to capitulate? What does any of that matter when you're dead? You're better off surrendering to the night and hoping that the universe proffers us a second chance at life somewhere else.

But if we always yield to the inevitable, the Man counters, how can we ever make life better? If there's no point to spitting in the face of the impossible, how do oppressive regimes get overthrown? How are injustices set right? How are prejudices eliminated in the pursuit of an improved, enlightened species? It may be that doom is inevitable, but if we always surrender to the inevitable then we're nothing more than machines performing cost benefit analysis. Perhaps believing that our fortitude sets an example for those who come next is a conceit we use to drive ourselves onward, but on the off-chance that it isn't, on the off-chance that there is a next generation of us that takes hold, that resurrects the world, then our example of persistence in the face of the impossible will aid in making that a reality.

The Road is a masterwork. Mr. McCarthy's characteristically spare prose is a perfect compliment to his grim setting. More over, in a story with only two substantive characters and very little in the way of action, he succeeds in thoroughly entertaining his readers by connecting them to both the survivalist philosophy that underpins the plot and the post-nuclear environment that enshrouds it. All this with an adroitness of language and a subtlety of storytelling that left me in awe. Few of us will ever write like this, with such simplicity, grace, beauty, and love. Such rare gems must be properly admired. (5/5 Stars)

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

From The Week of September 05, 2011

Since the Industrial Revolution, the human population has expanded so rapidly that, today, more than six times as many humans are alive as were alive 100 years ago. Even more frightening are estimates for future growth which generally put the population's peak at nine billion by the middle of the 21st century. For the planet to carry such a bloated population, humans will have to urbanize even more than they already have which strongly suggests that urban planning will be a critical field of study in the decades to come.

One obvious solution for how nine billion souls will transport themselves in what is likely to be a peak or post oil world is the bicycle, that most sturdy and lightweight of wheeled machines which requires only the pumping of human legs to power it. But what might it be like to use a bicycle on a daily basis? And which are the best machines to use? Which cities sport the best layouts? And what might one see and experience when one is not traveling at 60 miles per hour? These are just some of the questions I'd hoped Bicycle Diaries might answer. Unfortunately, it is far more of a paean to its author's apparent fame, and a canvas for his artistic adventures, than it is a thoughtful discussion on the bicycle and its benefits and challenges.

From New York to Los Angeles, from Berlin to Hong Kong, Mr. Byrne, a musician and avid cyclist, travels the world on two wheels. Distilling decades of cycling down into 300 slim pages, he describes his journeys through the vastness of the American south, the hyper-urban buzz of the American northeast, the cyclist-friendly sanity of northern Europe and the lively chaos of South America, all while painting vivid, if fleeting, portraits of the cultures through which he pedals. The result is a whirlwind tour of the world's major cities, in all its glories and its warts, as seen through the eyes of a cyclist.

Bicycle Diaries is a glorified travel log. Mr. Byrne has a keen eye for cultural distinctiveness, convincingly describing the societal faultlines that run through our world. Unfortunately, this talent, along with a flair for a good turn of phrase, cannot save this mishmash of social commentary and bicycle philosophizing. Mr. Byrne spends twice as much time here reconstructing musical gigs and picking over his fascination with high art than he does on his actual bicycle which goes without a single mention in his main narrative. In fact, some of his city tours don't seem to involve a bicycle at all which makes me wonder if they were included only for contrast. I went in hoping to find descriptions of urban environments enmeshed with entertaining, two-wheeled adventures. I came out unenlightened by a few half-assed stories chased with some interesting cultural observations.

Engaging at times, but far too self-focused to be of interest to anyone who is not already a fan of the author. I wanted to be captured by the union of the wind, the machine and human ingenuity. Instead? Navel-gazing of an unsatisfying sort. (2/5 Stars)

The Pirate Queen by Susan Ronald

From The Week of September 05, 2011

Many authors have published scholarly works on the British Empire and the fantastic eccentrics who ruled it. Where some of these works have entertained and informed others have been little more than unenlightening, interminable paeans to obsessively thorough research. This reconstruction of the reign of Elizabeth I of England, with a particular emphasis on the willful talents of her seafairing adventurers, sails a middle course.

Ms. Ronald, an author and historian, chronicles, here, the extent to which the rise of British naval power in the 16th century buoyed the reign of Elizabeth I and set down the cornerstones of empire for the centuries to come. After establishing 16th century Britain as something of a European backwater, especially relative to the overwhelming might of its rival Spain, she demonstrates how, in 40 years of clever maneuvering and innovative thinking, Elizabeth empowered ambitious Englishmen like Francis Drake, John Hawkins, William Winter and Walter Raleigh to venture out into the dangerous seas and bring back the treasures of empire. Unleashed to practice what amounted to government-sanctioned piracy, these men harried Spain by sinking its ships, stealing its gold and silver, and driving it to fury and distraction, all while helping Elizabeth to fund a defense of Protestant England against catholic Europe. So successful were their combined efforts that, by the end of Elizabeth's reign, Britain was fast becoming a dominant power that bore little resemblance to the hinterland kingdom she'd inherited from her elder sister.

Though Elizabeth's shrewdness is, here, on display, Ms. Ronald is clearly transfixed by the daring of the men Elizabeth tapped to build her an empire. Drake's wisdom and boldness, Hawkins' persistence, Winter's genius and Raleigh's arrogance are all convincingly captured by the author who generates thorough portraits of all four players in this mercantile drama. More over, Ms. Ronald contextualizes these portraits by describing the voyages these men undertook, the ships they used to execute them, the guns they used to defend them, and the plunder they took to make it all worthwhile.

But as much as The Pirate Queen succeeds as a biography of both these men and their time, it is sold as a reconstruction of Elizabeth I and her reign. In this, it surely fails. For the eponymous queen is scarcely present in these 500 pages. Sure, she looms over the piece, her policies discussed, her loves detailed, her cautiousness admired, but she is nothing more than a pale shadow next to Francis Drake who is so lavishly praised and extensively chronicled by Ms. Ronald that the reader could not be blamed for thinking him the main character in her tale.

This is quality work, but Ms. Ronald is not a polished writer of history. In delving into her subject, she lost focus on Elizabeth, her heroine, and allowed her fondness for Drake to transform the narrative. What's more, someone, pleas god, challenge her to go just one year without using the word parsimonious. Based on how frequently it is deployed here, I imagine this would cause the author immense discomfort. (3/5 Stars)

The Fear by Peter Godwin

From The Week of September 05, 2011

While I strongly believe that goodness lies at the core of human nature, there are regions of our world so tormented by human cruelty, so desolated by human selfishness, and so beset by human tyrants that I find it difficult to sustain my faith. I tell myself that the suffering of every day people in countries like Zimbabwe stems from the capacity of narcissistic despots to convince their beleaguered populations that all would collapse were it not for the benevolent father who so bravely and selflessly shields them from the rest of the exploitative world. I tell myself that uneducated people stand no chance against these manipulative rulers who have mastered every Orwellian trick of the authoritarian trade. I tell myself many things, but I cannot shake the feeling that I am fooling myself. For if I am right, if man is fundamentally good unless, or until, he is twisted by his fellows, by his environment, then why don't we remember this and use this priceless knowledge against the next wolf in sheep's clothing? Why don't we see beyond their populist facades to the ugly truths hidden inside them? Why don't we stop them before they have inculcated us with there violence, convinced us to revel in their vainglory? Why don't we learn from history? Perhaps I'll never find an answer to this question, but so long as I search I will remember The Fear by Peter Godwin. For there can be no more vivid a demonstration of the consequences of acceding to a tyrant.

Mr. Godwin, a native of Zimbabwe and now a journalist residing in New York, offers us not even a milligram of numbing anesthetic before relentlessly branding us with his searing tale of life in modern-day Zimbabwe. Opening in 2008, with what were then thought to be Robert Mugabe's last days, this piece of Gonzo Journalism enthusiastically chronicles that year's Zimbabwean presidential election in which the all-but-outlawed opposition party, the MDC, miraculously triumphed over Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF. However, the sweetness of victory soon fades when it becomes clear that the MDC has only managed a plurality of votes, a fact which Mugabe uses as an excuse to hold onto power until a presidential runoff later that year. Mr. Godwin documents how, in the intervening months, Zanu-PF viciously and systematically hunted, tortured and killed MDC candidates, community organizers and even voters in a campaign of terror designed to convince the battered Zimbabwean population to restore Mugabe to his rightful place as unchallenged leader.

Mr. Godwin gathers up first-hand accounts of these atrocities and publishes them here in what quickly becomes a narrative of crimes against activists, dissidents and political opponents. Their stories, raw retellings of appalling acts of sadistic cruelty, must be heard to be believed. For these are human beings who are raped and beaten, burned and broken, for nothing more than asserting their right to be free. And what befalls them in order to express this most basic right surpasses description. They are sins beyond naming.

This is exceptional work. Though Mr. Godwin devotes most of his efforts to lifting the curtain on Zanu-PF's crimes, his own remembrances of Zimbabwe and his descriptions of daily life in that wracked nation are equally well-done. The Godwins are a reflection of their homeland, souls trying to escape cynicism and despair by grasping at hope, no matter how faintly it flickers. The author's scalpel-sharp portrayal of Mugabe is scornful, his depiction of Zanu-PF's victims is memorable, and his tapestry of Zimbabwean life will not be forgotten. For no one who reads this book will be able to walk away unmoved by the suffering the ignorant heap upon the willful. The piece is only marred by an all-too-brief history lesson on Mugabe's years as Zimbabwe's ruler. I'm sure, for many of his readers, this is a familiar subject. However, for many more, Zimbabwe is yet one more resource-rich, self-destructive African country cursed by the shadow of colonial misrule. For these, more background was required.

Utterly unforgettable. (5/5 Stars)

The Escapement: The Engineers 03 by K. J. Parker

From The Week of August 28, 2011

Of all human emotions, love does the most harm. For it is love for our mates that drives us into the eager arms of vengeance and revenge, love of country and tribe that provokes us to kill and be killed, love of a cause that motivates us to blind devotion. There is no room for else. This is the argument made by The Escapement, the concluding volume of a bleak and twisted trilogy that examines the root emotions of human motivations before quietly and mercilessly concluding that this singular emotion, cherished, romanticized and venerated in poem and song, is nothing more than ammunition for barbarity.

After readers witnessed the framing and forced exile of Ziani Vaatzes in Devices And Desires, and his elevation from engineer to kingmaker in Evil For Evil, there ought to be little surprise to find the beleaguered but resilient Mezentian engineer thriving in The Escapement. For after setting into motion an intricate plan to actualize his revenge upon the narrowminded civilization that tried to execute him, Ziani is about to see years of plots and schemes, blood and sweat, luck and good fortune come together to deliver into his hands the fate of an entire people. He has not only successfully forged an alliance between the factional forces opposing the normally all-powerful Mezentians, he has manipulated this new alliance into besieging the Great Republic in hopes of forcing from Mezentia concessions that would see him restored to his old life. Not only has he achieved all this without creating enemies, he's succeeded in his aims while simultaneously earning himself the trust of the alliance's leaders. This is no mean feat for an intelligent but unemotional engineer who could have never imagined his life taking such a torturous turn.

The Escapement is a race against time. Will the forces under Duke Valens succeed in destroying the fabled Mezentian defenses, opening up the wealthy city to the tender mercies of savages and soldiers? Or will the Mezentians, unaccustomed to war splaying itself out across their doorstep, hold out long enough that Valens' army will starve itself into defeat? The winds of fate are blowing and, though much is uncertain, the wise man knows this much. Ziani Vaatzes will have a say in the outcome. He's lived this long...

K. J. Parker has penned, here, a difficult conclusion to what was a challenging trilogy. There is brilliance here. Parker has a vivid grasp of engineering, a language of power and exactitude which has no room for mercy. What's more, the author's eagerness to explore man's darkest nature, to reach in and extract the truths underpining his actions, grants the piece an intellectual honesty that, while savage and grim,is engaging and thoughtful. But while there's plenty here to recommend it, the flaws that flirted with Devices And Desires and tormented Evil For Evil make their presences felt here as well. The navel-gazing monologues have slightly more purpose this time, but there are still many more than necessary. More over, Parker's campaign to convince the reader that Ziani Vaatzes is smart enough to manipulate four civilizations into fighting a war against one another is no more successful here than it was in past volumes. This series is built on the premise that men are fallible and limited, that not even the most brilliant mind can conceive of all the answers, that life is made up of colliding events which produce sparks triggering yet more events. All this runs counter to Ziani Vaatzes who is both godlike in his insight and omnipotent in his actions.

There's enough here to interest admirers of dark fantasy, but there is too much slogging to call it great. Innovative but troubled. (3/5 Stars)

How Bad Are Bananas by Mike Berners-lee

From The Week of August 28, 2011

A week does not go by in which we are not reminded of the price Earth pays for humanity's ongoing existence. From mining to deforestation, from oceans polluted by our garbage to landmasses remade for our crops, the cost of civilization is everywhere and, as much as some wish it otherwise, impossible to ignore. But while there is little we can do to put an end to this exploitation, short of returning to the darkness of pre-industrial agrarian life, we can make small changes that may help slow the rate at which we devour the planet. Rather than the guilt and outrage characteristic of large swaths of environmentalist writing, this spirit of pragmatism is what fuses this effort from Mr. Berners-lee.

How Bad Are Bananas is a dogged investigation of the carbon footprint of our everyday practices. From the cars and trains that transport us to the cellphones and laptops that keep us connected, Mr. Berners-Lee meticulously calculates the cost, in greenhouse gases, of producing our food, treating our waste, entertaining our minds, and cleaning our homes. In this, he uncovers a number of fascinating truths that have the power to surprise. For instance, best estimates put cellphone use at less than 1 percent of our total, carbon output per year, vanishingly small for a device owned and used by more than a quarter of the human population. But as much as cellphones, televisions and dishwashers surprise with their economy of carbon output, staples like rice and cheese join newspapers and light-rail trains in a category of products that astonish with their carbon costliness. In some cases, cheese actually produces more CO2E than meat and rice, meanwhile, is only fractionally better than cement, a flabbergasting result which is sure to stun the environmental laity.

But as much as there are surprising results among the products chronicled here, How Bad Are Bananas does not overturn the basic truths about carbon emissions, mainly, that transportation and livestock grown for human production combine to represent an eye-popping percentage of anthropogenic carbon. So while Mr. Berners-Lee helps his readers to understand the small ways in which they can shrink their carbon footprints, the alternately frustrating and depressing reality remains, that, short of grounding our planes, junking our cars and swearing off meat, there is precious little we can do to slow down the CO2 juggernaut that threatens to transform our world.

This is admirably researched work that does what all educational pamphlets should do, entertain and enlighten. I would have appreciated a more thorough effort from the author to compare the products listed here with one another, or perhaps to rate, as a percent of global carbon use, each product so that the reader could have easily measured them against other activities. Instead, each product was measured in kilograms or pounds of emissions, a measurement which means precious little to the average reader. Nonetheless, this is an instructive read. (3/5 Stars)

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande

From The Week of August 28, 2011

For most of us, English grammar is a challenging subject. For while brave teachers have been thanklessly instructing us in its fundamentals, for decades now, English speakers have been learning their language without any knowledge of the mishmash of Dutch, French, German, Latin and Norse tongues from which it has been haphazardly assembled. As a result, most of us quickly forget the bewildering (at best) and senseless (at worst) array of rules we were taught in High School, instead, absorbing what laws we can through intuition and common usage. This is far from ideal, which makes our grammar far from ideal. And when some aspect of our character is substandard, we can count on there being puffed-up perfectionists ready to step in and correct us while being aglow with smug superiority. Thank the gods, then, for Ms. Casagrande.

From the semicolon to the subjunctive, from "I"s and "we"s to "that"s and "which"s, Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies is a playful and enlightening romp through the maddening world of English grammar. But unlike the school lessons, to which attention had to be encouraged by the threat of ruler-wrapped knuckles, Ms. Casagrande, an American author and journalist, teaches through humor, infusing an otherwise dry subject with entertaining verve.

While Ms. Casagrande's primary purpose here is to educate her readers on some core principles of English grammar, she also devotes considerable time to the castigation of grammar snobs. From Lynn Truss to the anonymous hordes who feel it their duty to correct every error, the author contends that these snobbish, self-styled, gram=mar experts are far from helpful and that they intimidate those with only passable grammar by proudly declaring their arcane knowledge. Ms. Casagrande argues that, in reality, not even grammar experts know all the rules, that some situations have no hard-and-fast rules, and that comprehension ought to be the standard by which we judge communication.

Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies is an enjoyable read. While Ms. Casagrande is overzealous in her criticism of grammar snobs -- I read Lynn Truss as far more humorous than she --, her underlying point, that snobbery only inhibits learning while fostering a dangerous elitism, is both valid and well-argued. Humanity has, at many points in its history, surrendered authority to various priesthoods, all of which claim specialized, doctrinal knowledge of important subjects. But rather than using their esoteric knowledge to educate laypeople, these self-appointed guardians of the arcane sanctified their learning, insisting that only they can properly dispense its wisdom. In doing so, they claim unto themselves power that, by rights, ought to be equally held by everyone. Grammar snobs may not have nice robes or gilded crosses, but this should fool no one into thinking that they are not the newest iteration of this sad practice. Knowledge belongs to everyone and can be accessed by anyone. And whomsoever claims otherwise is only trying to make himself feel special.

Educational, funny and with a bit of intellectual bite. (3/5 Stars)

The Science of Evil by Simon Baron Cohen

From The Week of August 28, 2011

There can be little doubt that the need to know is one of man's most influential virtues. It has driven him to harness fire, fashion weapons, cultivate the land and found civilizations. But as much as this desire to understand has spurred humanity onto new heights and new achievements, its benefits are not enjoyed without costs. After all, the same need to know that ignites curiosity also drives man to find answers to more troublesome questions. Why do good people die young? Why are the righteous defeated by the ignorant? Why are we here? Unsurprisingly, answers to these philosophical queries have not been forthcoming, prompting man to sketch out his own explanations.

Evil. There is evil at work in the world, an evil that strengthens the arms of the ignorant, an evil that causes the good to die young. Evil accounts for all the inequities, all the unfairness. Evil is what infects the hearts and minds and turns them to wicked purposes.

This narrative is as old as human culture, but now, thanks to the rigors of modern science, evil, like so many other boogyman before it, is yielding. It is being brought under the inquisitive light of reason, forced to identify itself as man's inability to empathize with his fellows. After all, if man has no empathy for his neighbors, he cannot imagine the pain of harming them. And if he cannot imagine the pain of harming them, then there is nothing to stop him from harming them. And if there's nothing to stop him from harming them, then he will harm them, and for no reason anyone else can see. This, to his fellows, is evil, violence made inexplicable by an inability to imagine life without empathy. This is, at least, Mr. Baron-Cohen's premise and he argues it logically and effectively.

The Science of Evil is a swift and systematic attempt to classify and understand those among us who lack empathy. After laying out the numerous regions of the brain responsible for empathy, Mr. Baron-Cohen, a professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, transitions from a scientific explanation of empathy -- feeling discomfort at another's pain -- into an attempt to classify those devoid of empathy.

To this end, Mr. Baron-Cohen's research leads him to divide our subjects into two major groups, Zero Positives and Zero Negatives. The zero represents the amount of empathy the subject displays while the designation of Positive or Negative denotes the bent of the subject's personality. For instance, a Zero Positive might be a harmless Autistic, someone with a mind beset by the beauty and the safety of the world's mathematical constructs. Zero Negative, meanwhile, could be any of a number of antisocial personality types ranging from the psychopathic (P), to the narcissistic (N), to the borderline (B). Such personalities are capable of great harm, ruthlessly deploying weapons of violence and manipulation in order to mercilessly achieve their own ends.

Though brief, The Science of Evil is a fascinating and educational examination of Zero-Empathy personalities and the harm they are capable of. But unlike the prior generations of so-called experts who would have dismissed these humans as misfits, Mr. Baron-Cohen has shed some light on how Zero Empathy comes about and how it can be avoided. In doing so, he does not only enlighten his readers on the role empathy plays in gluing together human society, he helps us to understand that there is no such thing as evil; there is merely that which we do not understand. To call this evil is to allow ourselves to shelter in our prejudices, to dismiss the unknown as unworthy of our exploration. Such narrowmindedness only begets ignorance and that we must not accept. (3/5 Stars)

1848 by Mike Rapport

From The Week of August 28, 2011

since man blundered into civilization, he has been at war with himself. Much as theologians would have it otherwise, this is not a conflict of angels against devils, man's best against his worst, in a battle for his soul. No, this is a war of actual significance that has consequences for himself and for humanity.

Opposing one another across the battlefield of human nature are two powerful antagonists, man's desire for order and man's desire for freedom. The former subverts freedom by electing tyrants to impose peace and structure upon the world. The latter, meanwhile, agitates against order by investing every man with the pains and responsibilities for his own liberty. Unlike conventional wars, this most internal conflict may never end; after all, the wisdom necessary to find the proper balance between such contrary forces may only be found in the divine. But as help from the gods does not seem forthcoming, all we can do is look to past skirmishes and hope that somewhere, within this sea of tyrants and troublemakers, we can find some kind of harmony. In this effort, the revolutions that convulsed Europe in 1848 can be quite instructive.

1848 is Mr. Rapport's meticulous reconstruction of the cries for liberty that thundered across Europe in that most revolutionary year. A generation after the Congress of Vienna restored authoritarian rule to a continent tormented by Napoleonic populism, an entirely new disagreement erupted, putting to an end 30 years of imposed peace. Unlike the Napoleonic Wars which were rooted in a dangerous and ultimately tragic militarism, this new war was social in nature, fuelled by the socioeconomic inequities characteristic of all authoritarian states. The working classes, in want of access to food, capital and self-rule, rebelled, overthrowing a monarchy in France, igniting the spirit of national unity in Italy and the German states, and rolling back the imperialism of the Habsburg Empire which, at this time, governed much of central Europe. These revolutions, influenced both by the democratic success in the United States and the intellectual contributions of Marx and Engels, sought to replace kings and emperors with presidents and prime ministers. Constitutions were written, republics declared, parliaments held.

But while these revolutions achieved many, early successes, it took only a matter of months for discord to set in. The revolutionaries had, in the end, only the revolution in common. They were, otherwise, ethnically, politically and socially diverse. Some wanted only an end to authoritarian rule while others desired democracy. Some favored only a limited franchise while others agitated for universal male suffrage. Some wanted a moderate, progressive actualization of reforms while others advocated that the rotten anthill be kicked over and swiftly replaced with a new and better way. Under these pressures, these once-united revolutionaries fragmented into combative factions, some insisting on order, others shouting for freedom. Against this divided front, it proved surprisingly easy for the washed-out tide of absolutest rule to sweep back across the European shore and obliterate most, if not all, of the political gains of 1848.

It is no surprise that the 1848 revolutions hold little fascination for anyone outside academia. But for Napoleon III and Giuseppe Garibaldi, this upheaval produced no historical giants, men who withstood the rigors of time to be immortalized by our culture. More over, Mr. Rapport's scholarly style, here, does very little to make these uprisings any more accessible; 1848's dryness is on par with most of its characters. But while Mr. Rapport fails to inject his work with the verve characteristic of most popular histories, he has done a wonderful job of both thoroughly reconstructing a tumult of chaotic and confusing events and extracting from them a logical conclusion. For while the revolutions of 1848 may not have given birth to many actual reforms, they sparked in the hearts and minds of the subsequent generations ideas of freedom and universal brotherhood that would culminate in the liberalization of the 20th century.

A solid history. Mr. Rapport does not miss his subject's central dilemma. Man desires to be free, but how free? How much discord is he willing to entertain in order to be free? It is a question that doomed the revolutions of 1848. Will it linger over us for the centuries to come as well? (3/5 Stars)

Evil For Evil: The Engineers 02 by K. J. Parker

From The Week of August 21, 2011

In Devices And Desires, K. J. Parker introduced readers to a mechanical universe in which precision and exactitude are matchless virtues which, if sufficiently mastered, can convey extraordinary powers upon both society and the individual. In Evil For Evil, the author expands upon this theme by arguing that these standards of personal conduct open up the mind to possibilities of perception and manipulation that, when cleverly used against the other players in life's game, can bring both victory and revenge. Though Parker earns points for novelty and for the courage of realizing that novelty in a vivid and interesting setting, he, or she -- the author's identity is unknown --, fails both to convince the reader of this premise and to maintain the reader's interest through to the lengthy novel's modest conclusion.

When we were last with Ziani Vaatzes, the exiled Mezentian foreman, wanted by his homeland for both fleeing his own execution and deploying his knowledge against the Great Republic that taught him, the city state that took him in was being obliterated. Betrayed to the besieging enemy, the hopeless Duke Orsea and his people were attempting to flee the Mezentian mercenaries who, having suffered massive casualties in the taking of the city, were set on slaughter. But whereas Ziani, by rights, ought to have run out of luck and been re-captured by the victorious forces, we find him, now, escaping into the protection of Duke Valens who, out of love for Orsea's wife, rides to the rescue of his fellow duke and his beleaguered people. But while Valens' ride has won them a brief reprieve, the relentless, Mezentian eye will soon turn to his lands where, despite Valens' cunning and extraordinary intelligence, there seems no force capable of stopping them. Or is there?

As Ziani is settling in to work for his second duke in a matter of months, a mysterious stranger arrives, pleading to become assistant to the wanted Mezentian engineer. Dismissive at first, Ziani's impression of this tall and ugly human evolves rapidly when his new assistant proves himself to have an intellect, in some ways, superior to Ziani's own. However, as much as this new stranger may offer Valens and his people a weapon that might level the playing field against the Mezentian armies, his dark past may well make it impossible for that advantage to be realized.

For lovers of dark fantasy, Evil For Evil has much to recommend it. It presents an unrelentingly bleak view of human relationships, deeming them to be based on treacherous emotions. In this universe, love is the most terrible force in the world for it is the only power capable of causing he who experiences it to jeopardize all in order to hold faith with it. While this makes the read unendurable at times, it also provides it a great deal of dark energy which Parker puts to great use by laying waste to the conceits of happiness and heroism. Given that the fantasy genre is all-too-littered with spunky, world-saving wizards and the fluffy, happy fellows who love them, this is a welcome digression into potent, imaginative realism.

But for all this, Evil For Evil must be considered a three-pronged failure. Most importantly, it is interminably long. Its 700 pages are bloated with endless and repetitive monologues on the nature of human failing, the removal of even a handful of which could comfortably reduce the piece by a couple of hundred pages. Secondly, it makes an unsuccessful attempt to convince the reader of its most vital plot point, that one man can, through sufficient foresight and planning, manipulate entire civilizations and their leaders into a succession of actions, all designed to bring about a single, future outcome. Not only is this highly implausible, it directly clashes with another of the author's themes, that plans rarely if ever work out the way their planners expect them to. In a universe based on realism, this is an annoying dependence on deus ex machina. Finally, but for one major incident, the book is almost entirely expository. It seeks more to justify its few developments than to launch the reader towards a satisfying conclusion. I will read on, mostly because I'm sufficiently invested to want to know how the story ends, but my suspicion is that this could have easily been a duology with the first volume concluding with the major event in this piece, and the final volume picking up from that.

Disappointing. Seven-hundred pages is a lot of dead trees for far too little advancement. (2/5 Stars)

Bonnie Prince Charlie by Carolly Erickson

From The Week of August 21, 2011

Though scientists will, I imagine, continue to debate, for some time, the question of nature versus nurture and which plays a more prominent role in the development of a human being, nature must have the upper hand. For it seems, in life after life, that our environment has a profound say in who we are and what we make of ourselves. From the faiths we proclaim, to the morals we espouse, to the biases we hold, and the ideologies we advocate, the things we believe in are imprinted upon us by the society to which we belong. There's nothing inherently wrong with this; after all, there are plenty of societies that inculcate their citizens with kindness and generosity. But of course, in such a scenario, a great deal of importance rests on the quality of that inculcating society. If it is healthy and good, then its citizens are bound to follow in its footsteps. But if it is plagued by inequity and narrowmindedness, then these shortcomings will burden its people with flaws they will struggle to overcome. There can be few better examples of this principle at work than Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Christened Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Silvester Severino Maria Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie was born, in 1720, to the self-styled James III of England and VIII of Scotland whose Catholic father, James II, was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. As a result, the Bonnie Prince was not born in England but at the papal court in Rome where his father James, after two miserably unsuccessful attempts to reclaim the throne for his father, came to reside, exiled from his homeland. Young Charlie was groomed, from an early age, to be the great, Catholic hope, the Stewart who would return to a Britain lost to Anglicanism, raise up the banner of the pro-papal Stewarts and win back the throne for his crownless father. As such, while his younger, more artistic brother threw himself into a pious and Romantic education, Charlie was mastered in the art of combat and infused with the arrogance necessary for a man to overcome all odds in the achievement of a difficult goal.

In 1744, the 24-year-old Charlie snuck out of Italy and relocated to France where the French king, agreed to support a Catholic invasion of England with ships and men under the Stewart banner. But when the vagaries of seasonal weather combined with general incompetence to scuttle the planned French invasion, an impulsive Charlie, believing Jacobite loyalists would rally to him the moment he raised his standard on British soil, ignored the entreaties from his father to return to Rome and boldly sailed to England where a skirmish with the British navy forced him to land in desolate Scotland. Charlie's boldness was born out, however, when, within the year, he had forged a Scottish army capable of marching on London. But when factional infighting forced a retreat at the vital moment, the dream was doomed and, in 1745, at Culloden, the dream died in a decisive and devastating English victory.

Ms. Erickson, a veteran biographer, has done justice, here, to a worthy subject. For while her reconstruction of the Jacobite rebellion is compelling and entertaining, it's her portrait of Charles Stewart himself that captivates. This is a man trained practically from birth to achieve a single, nearly impossible dream, to restore his father to his rightful throne. And so, when circumstances conspire to kill that dream, he is a failure. Without a Catholic monarchy in england, he is nothing more than a nobleman, a man trained to do the one thing he cannot achieve. It's no wonder then that he slowly became a cruel, selfish, licentious drunk, a man playing out the string of life with the knowledge that he could never actualize what he was made for. The pall that would cast over ones life beggars the imagination.

This is as much a study in character and human nature as it is a biography of the death of the Stewart dynasty. In both respects, it is a wonderful success. (5/5 Stars)