The Virex Trilogy by Eric Brown

From The Week of April 16, 2012

What does it mean to be human? Our bones have been measured, our hearts weighed, our blood analyzed. Our very cells have been dissected, their secrets laid bare under the powerful inquisition of the microscope. But can these metrics of flesh and muscle, reflex and strength, define human? Perhaps our minds are the better arbiter of who we are, oceanic consciousnesses made possible by the gestalt of a trillion neural connections woven into the fabric of our brains. Until science has banished the mysteries of the human mind, the question remains one for philosophers to reason through, their intellectual progress forever hindered by their imperfect understanding of a beautiful system. However, someday soon, neurology will solve for the unknown and we will know what it means to be human and whether or not it is defined by the elusive soul. What will that world look like? Will it be better or worse for the knowing? Mr. Brown muses in his sweeping trilogy.

The year is 2040 and New York has become new India. Widespread environmental collapse has devastated large swaths of inhabited land and left the Big Apple stewing in a mixture of extreme temperatures and monsoon rain which perpetually pound at a treeless, hyper-urban landscape. Refugees from Asia and the American South, fleeing now uninhabitable climbs, have flooded the city, swelling it beyond the capacity of its public services. The police labor to maintain some semblance of law and order, but justice is more often found at the point of a gun in this torrential world in which technology is as ubiquitous as concrete.

As a consequence of the influx of refugees, the city has deputized private investigators into its police force. Though these hybrid cops are permitted to keep their own offices, take their own cases and charge whatever fees the market will bear, they are peace officers, men and women who will, in an ideal world, help to strengthen the palsied arm of the law in feverish New York. Their effectiveness, however, is minimized by a world in which technology is evolving at far too rapid a rate for the law to comprehend, much less grapple with.

In New York Nights, the trilogy's curtain-raiser, we meet One such quasi detective. Hal Halliday is a smart but self-destructive investigator in his 30s who, despite the passage of many years, remains burdened by a traumatic childhood. A refugee of the NYPD, Hal was welcomed into private practice by Barney Kluger, an older, wiser man with tragedies of his own. Together, the partners and friends are submerged into the world of virtual reality (VR), when they are hired to find a missing woman. A trendy technology taking New York by storm, VR is reshaping human interaction. Bars all over the city are buying and renting out Jellytanks, immersive tubs in which humans can lose themselves, their minds transported to a million programmable vistas.

Fearful of VR's social consequences, Virex, an insurgent organization intent upon bringing down the big corporations promoting VR technology, attempt to warn the public about the emotional and physical costs of overusing the emerging technology. But their warnings are largely ignored until a rogue intelligence escapes its VR makers and flees into the Internet where its schemes to be alive and free entangle and devastate a community of alternative Women, several of whom turn up murdered. Hal must reach into his past and the sister he's all-but written off to find a way to stop the emergent AI.

In New York Blues, the trilogy's second instalment, a few dark months have past. Lonely and caseless, Hal has turned to a street kid for companionship. A refugee from the Atlanta Meltdown, Casey is a homeless girl looking for a chance to escape her origins. And so, when Hal offers her a place to stay, she quickly blossoms, becoming not only his connection to the outside world but a key cog in the biggest case of his life. For the Vanessa Artoise, movie star extraordinaire, has just darkened his door with her legendary beauty and she's willing to pay Hal anything to find her missing sister.

Seconds after accepting the case, an attempt is made on Vanessa's life, an effort that galvanizes Hal into action. Sniffing out the sister's trail, however, leads him into the dark and twisted heart of VR where powerful men troll for impressionable girls, exploiting them for the fulfilment of their fantasies and their obsessions. To find Vanessa's sister, Hal will have to confront the very creators of these virtual paradises on their own turf, a disadvantage that will not only endanger him but the few people in this world he cares for.

In New York Dreams, the trilogy culminates with the full realization of VR's potential. Where once it was only safe for humans to spend hours in the Jellytanks before having to exit from perfect hallucinations, now they can spend days in Vr, exploring ever-more-elaborate environments which can be tailored to suit the every whim of the user. How can the real world, with all its flaws and foibles, its pains and disappointments, possibly compete? Virex, which has been warning humanity about this grim future for years now, ought to be poised to best exploit this breakthrough. But the insurgency, once so noisy, has been betrayed. Key operatives at the heart of the conspiracy have been secretly replaced by the enemy.

Rendered toothless, the organization is in no position to halt the conspiracy which claims the lives of several men and women, one of which was once dear to Hal. The investigator might never have known about the deaths were it not for Casey who helps to extract him from his own VR dreams long enough to put him on the conspiracy's cold trail. Will he discover the plans of the mysterious Methuselah Project before it's too late, or will his body, weakened by his addiction to VR, fail him and leave him, like everyone else, helpless before the dawn of a new world?

Though The Virex Trilogy lacks the brilliance of plot and prose necessary for lasting acclaim, its entertaining plots and thoughtful ruminations elevate it above the fray. Mr. Brown's characters are refreshingly human, flawed specimens who lack not only physical beauty but social graces. Instead, they stagger through life, blundering from moment-to-moment, never prepared for what's to come. This faintly autistic take on human nature is both engaging and appropriate for the author's somewhat alarmist future.

There are problems here. For a series named The Virex Trilogy, there's remarkably little Virex about it. The organization, which at times appears to be on the brink of full-blown terrorism, yields its time to the cast of characters who orbit Hal's world. Not until the final novel is Virex explored at any depth and even then it is only elaborated on in the service of the plot. This, along with characters who inexplicably float in and out of the story, leaves far-too-bare the mechanics of plot. Polishing up his tapestry in order to hide the threadbare bits is not Mr. Brown's strong suit.

That said, there's much here to admire. Virtual reality has been explored before, but Mr. Brown takes up this trope not only in the service of his story, but in the interests of exploring its many and varied consequences. In this, he manages to make some thoughtful points about the underpinnings of human interaction and human experience. And so, while the tales told here are otherwise inescapably mundane in their construction, the social critiques woven into them lend life and color to both the world and its inhabitants.

Solidly entertaining... Mr. Brown won't hit many home runs, but he'll rarely strike out either. Instead, he can be consistently relied upon for a good double. There are far, far worse fates. (3/5 Stars)

Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres

From The Week of April 16, 2012

for many of us, there is no greater virtue in life than adhering to ones creed. For as long as one follows his heart, honors his beliefs and obeys his faith, rewards will come to him, from his god and from his community. The former will acknowledge his fidelity; the latter will respect his consistency and upstanding nature. But as much as having a code is respectable, too many of these strict adherents neglect life's most enduring lesson, that love powers human civilization.

Love of land and country, of partner and children, of neighbor and community... Love, in all its forms, makes us all threads in the tapestry of the world. It is the lubrication that makes enduring the friction of daily existence possible. No creed, no matter how wrathful its god, should ever supersede that. And yet, for some, it does, to the painful cost of their children. Ms. Scheeres' gripping memoir elaborates.

The moment her deeply conservative parents adopted two African-American boys into their otherwise pristinely white family, Julia Scheeres' life changed forever. For it introduced into her existence an angel and a devil, a friend and a foe, who would bless and scar her life for years to come. Brothers rescued from foster care, Julia found in David, the younger of the boys, a soulmate, a twin by spirit if not by blood. In Jerome, however, the older and stronger of the boys, she found an enemy, a pugnacious spirit who dealt with his won abuse by abusing others, chiefly, Julia who was far too scared to reveal to her fundamentalist parents what Jerome did to her at night.

A shy girl, Julia's adolescence in rural Indiana of the 1980s would've been challenging enough on its own. Undergoing this turbulent passage into adulthood with two black siblings, in an all-white county, was a recipe for social and emotional disaster. While fending off Jerome's cruel advances and being a supportive friend to David, she had to find herself, attend school, obey her parents' strict instructions and locate friends and allies all without any support or assistance from the outside world. No wonder then that, after operating under the pressure of such conflicting forces, she turned to sex and alcohol, unforgivable sins in the eyes of her parents, sins that would see her eventually banished to an intensely Christian reform school in the Caribbean where, in the footsteps of her miserable brother David, she labored to escape a harsh and abusive existence and build a life for herself from the wreckage of her childhood.

Though Jesus Land is, in the main, a shattering memoir, a first-hand recount of an impossibly challenging adolescence in a hopelessly idealized time in American history, it is also, inescapably, a vivid and confrontational expose of the cruelty that arises from religious dogma. Drawing from journals and other contemporaneous writings to reconstruct her adolescence, Ms. Scheeres chillingly captures both the macro and the micro level hypocrisy of the Christians she grew up with. The former is represented here by the youth of her all-white hometown, ostensibly wholesome kids who, nonetheless, used both verbal and physical abuse against Julia and David in sincerely unchristian assaults. The latter is represented by the author's parents who, in their insistence on a program of emotional neglect and physical abuse towards their adopted children, entirely undid any good they might've claimed to have done when they rescued David and Jerome from foster care. For instead of raising healthy, productive citizens, their parenting transformed Jerome into a sexually abusive felon and David into a bewildered, self-hating mourner. As such, anyone in search of proof that actions speak louder than words need look no further than the 320-odd pages of this electrifying and terrifying memoir.

There are problems here. Events from two-plus decades in ms. Scheeres' past are rendered in unerring detail, raising some doubts as to the authenticity of the narrative. One would have to virtually record ones entire life in order to reconstruct such a faithful representation of such distant events. Journals help, certainly, but some of the conversations here must have been necessarily re-imagined. This causes me to wonder if some of the cruelties described here have been unintentionally exaggerated, inflamed by the author's painful recollection of a childhood anyone would want to forget. But even the narrative is viewed through a skeptic's lens, it remains an engrossing and flabbergasting series of revelations about the nature of zealotry and its capacity to create monstrous human beings.

Religiosity is a scourge upon our societies. If believers actually adhered to the codes laid down for them by their gods, perhaps religion could be a force for good in our world. But it is demonstrably clear, both here and in the countless atrocities, large and small, committed in the name of religion, in express violation of religion's ethics, that believers only obey their commandments when it's convenient for them to do so, ignoring them when their hearts encourage them to be cruel.

Mesmerizing work. Considering the horror of Ms. Scheeres' formative years, it's a wonder she's functional. That she's created for herself a successful career in literature is remarkable. (4/5 Stars)

Echoes of The Ancient Skies by E.C. Krupp

From The Week of April 16, 2012
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As much as we are motivated by our immediate and instinctive drives for food and sex, shelter and purpose, our lives are fundamentally shaped by our need to understand the world around us. Why are there rivers of water and stars in the sky? Why do some years bring droughts and others monsoons? Why does day give way to night and night day? Because modern humans can draw upon generations of preserved knowledge, and then fertilize that foundation with more modern theories of science, we have hard answers to these questions, answers based on empirical data and serious observation. We know that water chases gravity and that the sky is illuminated by light from distant suns. We understand that weather patterns are subject to cycles and that our planet's rotation gives it a 24-hour day-night cycle. But what if we didn't know these things? What if we had no schools to teach us, no books to impart knowledge? How would we explain the world then? In this, his study of the relationship ancient cultures had with astronomy, Mr. Krupp explains.

From Babylonian sky gods to Mayan snake deities, from Egyptian pyramids to Incan temples, Mr. Krupp summons the symbology, the calendars, the gods and the monuments that Earth's ancient cultures used to explain the world around them, using them to weave an exquisite tapestry that explains how ancient cultures viewed their place in their bewildering world. Lacking anything like a modern comprehension of the universe, and devoid of any scientific method by which to acquire that knowledge, every proto-civilization, from the Chinese to the Celtic, from the Indian to the Native Indian, was kept from finding non-mystical answers to the question of their origins. And so they turned to metaphor and story to supply the necessary truths. They invented pantheons of gods and spirits, investing them with the knowledge of the omnipotent and then built temples to them as a means of communicating with them and beseeching their indulgence in a world often marked by turmoil and mercilessness.

This worldview, so rich with mythology and tale, heroes and demons, both enriched and defined the lives of those who occupied these ancient cultures. They believed themselves to be playing a tiny part in a cosmic game whose significance was never questioned. After all, to question would be to invite the scorn of the beings who brought the rains that fertilized the crops, who brought the sun out of night, and who kept the seas from consuming the earth. To go against them would not only be folly, it'd be the end of everything they knew.

Echoes of The Ancient Skies is a delightful and engrossing expose of the intense, personal relationships ancient cultures had with their gods and their skies. Mr. Krupp has managed that most rare of literary feats, marrying an academic history with a vital narrative to create an enduring work that enlightens as much as it entertains. With chapters on symbols and rituals, temples and gods, calendars and ceremonies, the author revives a half dozen ancient cultures and describes in marvelous detail how they constructed a logical world without any understanding of how that world actually functioned. In this, he reveals not only how devoted humans are to uncovering the roots of their origins, but the phenomenal extent to which they can and will construct rich narratives that connect them with a universe they can barely comprehend. This wonderful journey is only slightly marred by a seriously dated conclusion, the only point at which the work shows its nearly 30 years of age.

There is no one way for humans to be. Even today, we believe in different stories and metaphors, using them to wire us into a broader world, a larger plan. Over the centuries, those beliefs have come and gone a thousand times, leaving behind only a single constant. We always will search for answers, to our origins and to the universe that has been our cradle. The gods, even the constellations, will change, but the drive remains. Echoes of The Ancient Skies is a beautiful exemplar of this truth about our fundamental nature. And this is what allows the work to transcend a simple, archaeological discourse.

Sharp and compelling to the end... Required reading for anyone even passingly interested in our cultural evolution. (4/5 Stars)

By Blood by Ellen Ullman

From The Week of April 09, 2012

No matter how our lives turn out, whether we become presidents or poppers, innovators or winos, our happiness is determined by our origins. We may be lavished with honors, plaudits and triumphs. We may explore the ends of the earth and hold industries in our hands. Nonetheless, securing the approval of those who birthed us, those who shaped us, consumes us. For without them, we would not exist. Without them to shelter us through our development, we would not be who we are. For all that they might anger and frustrate us, we owe them. We want to repay that debt by making them proud.

But what if we can't? What if, because of small minds and small hearts, we can't win their approval? Worse yet, what if, through no fault of our own, we never had the chance because they surrendered us to other parents, other futures? How then do we satisfy our need to be loved? Ms. Ullman ruminates in this wonderfully strange novel.

The year is 1974 and foggy San Francisco is still hungover from the energetic highs of the 1960s. Disco fills its nightclubs and the Zodiac Killer occupies its tabloids while its districts expand and contract, shift and evolve, to meet the wide-ranging tastes of the cities multicultural and multigenerational clientele. Into this sleepy sea of self-discovery tumbles another in a long line of seekers, a university professor who, thanks to an indiscretion with a male student, has been banished from the familiar world of academia. Forced to adjust himself to this world of the real with which he's only passingly familiar, the professor engages a room on the eighth floor of an office tower where he begins to optimistically sketch out lesson plans for future semesters even while the investigation into his misconduct continues.

All of the professor's plans, however, are aborted when, one day, he realizes that he shares a shockingly thin wall with a psychiatrist's practice. Over the subsequent weeks and months, the professor falls into the habit of eavesdropping on the psychiatrist's sessions with Patient 3, a lesbian in her 30s who, in spite of a successful career, is less than happy with the life she's carved out for herself. The source of her discontent stems from her adoptive parents who keep secrets from her even while struggling to accept her gayness. If she could only find her birth mother, perhaps she might find some acceptance... The utterly engrossed professor has a new mission, a new obsession. Secretly, stealthily, he will bend his powers upon the problem of uncovering the woman's origins. For it is infinitely more interesting than contemplating his dim and meager future.

Refreshingly bizarre, By Blood combines an inventive premise with a gripping tale of secretive origins to create an engrossing read full of war, its degradations and its shames. Told primarily through the overheard dialogue between the psychiatrist and her patient, the narrative taps into the turbulent political and economic times of the 1970s before expanding to touch upon the careless freedom of western Europe in the 1920s and 30s, the horrific deprivations of the Nazis in the 1940s, and finally the creation and the maintenance of the Jewish state in the 1950s. All are sourced in order to enrich a tangled tapestry of twisting lies and fateful choices. Ms. Ullman's characters, though few, are as fully realized as her lush reconstructions of wartime Germany and post-1967 Israel, both of which are delightfully and chillingly animated so that we might step into the past and regard the full extent to which war, and the ideologies that feed it, contort the human soul and compel it to make decisions it should never have to make.

The richness of the story, however, is secondary to the author's contemplations of the nature of identity and the extent to which it is shaped by ones origins. Her story's primary protagonists, the professor and the patient, are never named. More over, they both have allowed their uncertain parentage to distort their personalities, reducing them to successful but hopeless obsessives who require answers in order to be complete, to be at rest. What they miss, of course, is that they are seeking love, not answers, affection not explanations. They desire what they did not get when they needed it most, a foundation of unreserved support and acceptance that empowers children to flower into adults.

This is a fascinating and compelling novel which strongly resists being put down until its final page has been turned. Such origin stories tend towards navel-gazing, but Ms. Ullman's tale possesses more than enough sinfulness to keep things spicy. (5/5 Stars)

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

From The Week of April 09, 2012

We may exist for thousands of days, but our lives pivot on a handful of moments. No matter how cautious our choices, how judicious our actions, how wise our deliberations, we cannot control, nor can we anticipate, the varied and random events that come together to rain disaster down upon our heads. Like converging icebergs in a stormy sea, chaos and chance can effortlessly smash us to pieces between their limitless slabs of icy steel. How do we cope with such pain? How do we move on and live with this burden upon our souls when we cannot forget? Johnson reflects.

Robert Granger never was a brilliant or talented man. Born of meager means, into the harsh frontier of the 19th century Wild West, he grew up aimless in a pitiless world. Having never benefited from the guidance of parents to shape him, to motivate him beyond his limitations, his was a desultory youth until a chance encounter with a man condemned to die taught him to find some focus in an unforgiving world where the law was as scarce as mercy. Understanding his limitations and yet driven to make something of himself, Granger found a job, laying down new track for the railroad, and a wife who made it all worthwhile. But when a disastrous fire ripped through the Pacific Northwest, taking away all that he loved, all his plans, his work, his toil, became ashes and dust. He would have to start again in a world just beginning to succumb to the powers and the technologies of man.

As brief as it is powerful, Train Dreams is a glorious glimpse at the rise of American power. Granger, an average man in every respect, is the lens through which we watch human ingenuity begin to conquer the land and subject it to the whims of man. We watch the track of civilization laid down through hills and gorges, through valleys and towns, track that reaches out to connect the untamed frontier of the west with the domesticated class of the east. But no matter how powerful our machines, no matter how fearsome our engines, no matter how profoundly we rework the earth that birthed us, we are still subject to both the whims of fate and the erosion of time, eternal forces that brush aside our plans and wear us down until we are but shadows of what we were, a truth that Granger comes to learn all too well.

There's silence here, silence and grace reminiscent of Hemingway and McCarthy. Few words are wasted in the portrayal of colliding worlds: Indian and European, nature and civilization, family and commerce, east and west. All swirl about Granger, hardly noticed by a man who, having endured a tragedy he could not have prevented, endeavors unbowed through a world that has less and less time for mysticism, for chicanery, as the harsh lights of industry blast away all but the most monetary conceits.

A quiet but deeply affecting novel about change in all its forms. Mr. Johnson picked a perfect, unobtrusive protagonist, a man of such bland character that he becomes a template upon which the reader can weld himself, experiencing the tumult of the transition from the old world to the new. Beautiful in its artful simplicity... The rise of a grander world has rarely been so exquisitely juxtaposed against the frailties of man. (4/5 Stars)

Elixir by Brian Fagan

From The Week of April 09, 2012

Why do we treasure that which is rare and take for granted that which is plentiful? Humans are creatures blessed with sufficient powers of reasoning to comprehend that, so long as a resource is finite, its value should be determined by its utility, not its scarcity. A limited supply is just that, a limited supply. If millions of years are required to make more of what we use, then we best not spend all that we have unless we wish to go without. This is fairly simple logic, and yet we continue to save our fondest regard for that which is rarest and squander that which is not, obsessed by the notion of possessing the last sliver of the available pie while paying no mind to the unavoidable truth that, in some way, we require all of Earth's finite resources to sustain ourselves. This is Mr. Fagan's eminently sensible argument in this, his sweeping study of the history of water.

For billions of years, it has flowed across the surface of our world, chasing gravity while participating in an environmental cycle essential for our existence. It has carved out rivers and streams, created spectacular lakes and valleys. It has born on its breast the building blocks of life, implanting them on distant shores. It has made possible all that we hold dear. It is water. And, today, it is everywhere, so ubiquitous that most of us in the developed world give not a moment's thought to wasting it. However, it was not always thus.

Before the advent of modern technology, before public works projects built dams and tapped underground reservoirs, our ancestors, from Africa to Mesopotamia, from China to Mexico, depended upon the weather to grant them water for their survival. This precious resource was so scarce at times that temples were erected to gods who might have some sway over temperamental climates that brought droughts as often as deluges. Water was considered sacred, a worthy commodity for the swearing of oaths.

But then man discovered agriculture. He learned how to find water and spread it across his fields to grow yet more food, allowing the population to expand, allowing for the advancement of science, allowing for the discovery of yet more ways of cultivating the land and harnessing the watery discharge of glaciers and lakes, springs and aquifers. With these advancements came yet more people, with more ideas, moments of insight that would ignite civilization. Water taps replaced the fallen temples and yet another resource became a means to our end.

From the utility of Mesopotamian wadis to the grandeur of Roman aqueducts, from religion to imperialism, Elixir is a history of water and its cultivation. Mr. Fagan reaches back into the dark depths of our history in order to describe the dozens of ingenious methods our ancestors used to capture and store this most vital of life's lubricants. In doing so, he pulls back the curtain on a dozen dead civilizations, restoring them temporarily to life, commemorating them for their ingenuity. Each effort, each invention, becomes a brick in the wall of progress that culminates in a modern day world that, thanks to the pleasures of excess, has forgotten the preservational lessons of earlier eras, squandering that which we cannot make again.

In this, Mr. Fagan's history becomes a rather pointed critique of the cavalier attitude we have adopted towards water, a resource vanishing at increasingly rapid rates thanks to the explosive expansion of the human population. What will we do when the very stuff of life, becomes too scarce to be handed round? Will thirsty societies simply close up shop and quietly go into the night without so much as a whimper? Or will they fight for their survival, deploying all the destructive tools necessary to secure their continued existences? In light of our warlike history, the latter is all but a certainty. What sort of world, what manner of civilization, will be left behind by the water wars of the near future?

This is a most thorough history of a most underappreciated resource. Diamonds and gold will not sustain us. They cannot quench our thirst or water our crops. Life is filled with baubles, trinkets, in which we invest so much pride. All this while the water that sustained us is used to carry away our waste. Elixir is as revelatory as it is complete, as enlightening as it is frightening. Ours is an uncertain future. (4/5 Stars)

The Secret Army by Richard Michael Gibson & Wen-hua Chen

From The Week of April 09, 2012

Though we may, with apologies and reparations for past discretions, endeavor to wipe clean the slate of history as a means of creating a better future, we can never begin anew. For the past is always with us. It may well be that those who shaped it have died, thus relinquishing their destructive hold on power, but they inevitably leave behind destabilizing legacies that corrode subsequent generations. It is difficult for stable nations to combat such patterns -- the United States is still suffering the effects of the organized crime networks created during Prohibition. It is infinitely harder for poor nations to subdue these forces. After all, here, state power is invariably fragmented among disparate interests, the chaos of which permits criminal elements to operate largely without constraint in semi-autonomous regions far from the halls of power. Few parts of the world are more painfully aware of these truths than southeast Asia. Mr. Gibson and Mr. Chen explain why.

Thanks to its decades-long status as the world's preeminent opiate producer, the Golden Triangle, that troubled intersection of Burma, Laos and Thailand, was, for much of the 20th century, a zone of concern for many of the world's governments. Dominated by private armies in the pay of drug traffickers, this region has been plagued by well-funded armies who have worked to corrupt and or repel the armies of the neighborhood's sovereign nations in order to maintain a stranglehold over one of the world's most lucrative elicit trades. Time after time, these forces either co-opt or kill their opponents, preventing area governments from asserting control over their own territories. But how did this come about? Was it inevitable, thanks to the curse of geography, that the Golden Triangle would be a zone of conflict, or is the region's turmoil rooted in its history?

In The Secret Army, misters Gibson and Chen contend that the roots of the region's problems lies in the Chinese civil war, a bloody and consequential conflict between nationalists and communists that eventually saw Mao elevated to supreme power, Chiang Kai-shek expelled to Taiwan and collectivism implemented across the world's most populous nation. Kai-shek, backed by American fear of Communism's spread, continued to resist Communist China, resorting to insurgencies and private armies in hopes of destabilizing the regime and opening up an avenue to victory. When these efforts at agitation failed, however, the armies, here-to-for funded by the US via Kai-shek, rather than disband as ostensibly ordered, took up a new banner, profit. This launched 30 years of conflict in the Golden Triangle, 30 years in which the struggling, post-colonial regimes in nearby nations failed to uproot this scourge, allowing it to embed itself so deeply within the region's tapestry that its corrosive effects are felt today.

While The Secret Army is a compelling and provocative history of one of the world's most troubled regions, the authors assume a familiarity with the region and its players that is absent in all but a handful of their readers. Names, dates, and battles blur past in a hazy and confusing march of history that feels as though it was curtailed here for the sake of time and space. Yes, the authors manage to convey the overall picture of the destructive forces that shaped the region, but these details, the nuances, the players, are barely more than pieces on a chessboard. Little illumination is given to the motivations and the personalities that shaped them. Time squandered on developing the American side of the equation could have been used to generate more thorough portraits of the Chinese, Burmese and Thai actors that prevented the Golden Triangle from being pacified and dragged into the 21st century.

The authors have, here, a fascinating history which vividly spells out the extent to which the vital interests of small nations are ignored by the convenient needs of larger nations, no matter how immoral. It appropriately catalogues the many grievances area governments surely have towards the West which was so preoccupied with the hope of defeating Communist China that it allowed southeast Asia to burn. However, The Secret Army needed to be as much a biography as a history. It needed to introduce us to the powers in the region, put faces to the names. And this it spectacularly failed to do.

Thorough work, but it is as troubled as the region it concerns itself with. (2/5 Stars)

River Of Smoke: The Ibis Trilogy 02 by Amitav Ghosh

From The Week of April 02, 2012

Trade is the foundation of human civilization. Not only does it provide the means by which we peacefully exchange goods, it underpins and empowers our economies which are the engines of innovation. For without trade, there would not be a means by which the inventive could profit from their ingenuity. Remove this incentive to innovate and our world would swiftly devolve into pre-industrial tribalism, knowledge hoarded by a select few while the masses eke out meager and ignorant existences in a world without light.

While we cannot dispute trade's value to our civilization, we can question its morality. For it often seems as though goodness and decency are left behind in the name of profit. All too often, the lives of the exploited are gathered up and ground down without the profiteers taking even a passing notice in their unjust fates. Is this simply a reflection of human nature, greed overpowering honor on the road to the future? Or is it a failure to look beyond our own stars, our own gain, to gaze upon a world driven by incentives but moderated by fairness? These are the questions Mr. Ghosh weaves into his textured tapestry of life in 19th century Asia. They are questions we all should ponder.

The year is 1838 and China is dusting off the drums of war in preparation for a vigorous pounding. For decades, this proud nation has looked the other way while British opium, grown and shipped from colonial India, made its way into its harbors and thence into the lungs, minds and dreams of its countless millions. For decades, China has watched helplessly as British merchants were enriched by this amoral trade while its own subjects were indentured, sold into slavery to the poppy. No longer... This situation is an offense to the dignity of the Chinese emperor and will not be tolerated, hence the appointment of an imperial commissioner to see to it that this addictive scourge is banished from its shores. Endowed with extraordinary powers, this commissioner must not be swayed by British bribes or British power in an effort to execute his divine mission.

Arrayed against the will of the emperor are the men who have made opium their exploitive stock in lucrative trade. A consortium of British and Indian operators based in the coastal town of Fanqui, they consider opium merely a product to be bought and sold, hiding behind the enlightened principles of free trade in order to avoid the grim reality of the lives their product destroys. Among this consortium is Bahram Modi, an Indian merchant who has elevated himself, through skill and marriage, from his meager roots into a position of wealth and status. This prominence is threatened, however, when the machinations of his family necessitate that Bahram wager his career and future on a single shipment of opium whose value could make him entirely his own master. Having succeeded in bringing this shipment through a terrible storm, Bahram is confronted by the Chinese crackdown on his product and must, with the help of is household, weather this latest and greatest tempest that threatens to engulf the entire region in war.

Picking up soon after the conclusion of the excellent Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, the second, expansive novel in a proposed trilogy by Mr. Ghosh, plunges the reader into the fumy tumult that presaged the First Opium War. Gathering up most of his well-rendered characters from the prior novel, the author transports Neel, the deposed Raj, Ah Fat, the escaped convict, and Paulette, the would-be botanist, from the sea to the hustle and bustle of the Chinese ports. Here, Mr. Ghosh is at his best, bringing to life a dead world with such exquisite clarity and lifelike vitality that the reader can almost feel the oppressive humidity, see the waterways clogged with fishboats, and hear the self-important justifications of British merchants trying to excuse their perfidy. Politics, culture and self-interest have rarely been more judiciously used to spice such a rich literary stew.

For all of Mr. Ghosh's imaginative and reconstructive talents, however, River of Smoke is severely hindered by a shocking absence of plot. At the best of times, the author's novels have a tendency to meander, a complaint readily forgiven when, as with Sea of Poppies, their conclusions are so rewarding. Here, though, Mr. Ghosh doubles down on this less-than-pleasant trait while failing to deliver anything like the conclusive punch that made River of Smoke's progenitor so memorable. This is, without doubt, a novel to delight the senses, a stimulating revivification of a world now lost to us. But this virtue, along with the author's nuanced critique of amoral capitalism, is not enough to rescue it from a disturbing absence of story.

Mr. Ghosh has few peers when it comes to quality, cinematic fiction. Unfortunately, his storyteller's instincts are, here, not equal to his imagination. (3/5 Stars)

Mastermind by Richard Miniter

From The Week of April 02, 2012

As much as history has been shaped by pivotal moments in time, nexuses of people and events that have together written the future, individual humans have also had the power to reorder our world. Through will and happenstance, power and timing, men and women, properly positioned, have redefined the destinies of nation: Henry VIII with England, Napoleon with France, Hitler with Germany. Even a moment's thought causes a dozen examples to tumble out of the past. But what of the present? Has the world grown too large, too diverse, for individuals to set the policies of nations, or can even the wisest heads be lost over the provocations of the few? In this troubling and troubled biography of a terrorist mastermind, Mr. Miniter argues that, far from dead, the Great Man theory of history is alive and well in the 21st century. Only, in this case, the subject has more in common with darkness than he does with greatness.

From the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center to 9/11, from the reprehensible East African Embassy bombings to the grotesque execution of Daniel Pearl, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been the author of a dozen murderous plots against the United States which, together, have taken the lives of thousands. Initially operating on his own, as much for glory as for ideology, KSM, as he is known in the intelligence community, graduated in the late 1990s to the top ranks of Al-Qaeda where, for the next six years, he directed that organizations most effective operations against the West. Since his capture in 2003, Al-Qaeda has been more bark than bite, leading Mr. Miniter, along with many other intelligence agencies, to conclude that KSM's intelligence and cunning fuelled Al-Qaeda, a reconfiguration that shifts Osama Bin Laden from mastermind to figurehead and spiritual leader.

But who is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? What propelled him to take up such a destructive profession? How could a young man educated in Virginia grow to so despise the country that gave him safe harbor? Mr. Miniter explores these issues and more in this confrontational biography of the Al-Qaeda operative and key strategist. Drawing on interviews with some of KSM's teachers and interrogators, the author reconstructs Mohammed's life, from his impoverished childhood in the Middle East and Asia, through his adolescent years in the united States, to his adult life as a masterful weaver of schemes and plots which, the author argues, were motivated by the furtherance of KSM's own fame and glory more than any ideological purpose. He was a mass-murderer born into a most profitable time for his kind. Until his 2003 arrest in Pakistan, he was at the top of his field, much to the cost of his victims.

Mastermind is a fascinating read that struggles to overcome its flaws. Mr. Miniter has rendered a captivating portrait of one of the 21st century's most murderous non-state actors. His depiction of KSM as a seeker of glory over ideology appears to fit nicely with KSM's arrogant behavior during his detainment in Guantanamo Bay prison. More over, the author's investigative efforts, to uncover KSM's history, both in the United States and abroad, are commendably thorough, provoking as many thoughtful questions about KSM as the laws and the ethics of the country that, for a time, generously welcomed him onto its shores.

However, as much as Mr. Miniter succeeds in capturing his subject, both the author's politics and the extent to which he allows them to color this work condemn it. Mr. Miniter is not only an advocate for torture as a weapon in the arsenal of the United States against its enemies, he is an avid believer in seemingly all of KSM's many lies and taunts, threats and claims. This despite depicting the man as an avid schemer and self-aggrandiser... These, along with his criticism of the press' coverage of KSM's legal maneuverings, are suggestive of a deep cynicism on the part of the author that leaves the work feeling far more polemical than biographical. One gets the sense that the author is more interested in bearing his grudges than he is the truths his investigative efforts have uncovered.

A solid biography permanently damaged by the author's facile attacks on the positions of those who disagree with him. Mr. Miniter should have saved his criticisms, valid and otherwise, for another, more partisan forum than this, an important biography of a pivotal figure in our recent history. (2/5 Stars)

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson

From The Week of April 02, 2012

Since man first put ink to paper, he has been trying to understand his origins, not only of his species but his culture. Why is the world the way it is? What human decisions and tricks of fate went into shaping the life around him? These are valid questions that, for centuries, have only had xenophobic answers. For without technology to connect us all, the rich were left to justify their success while the poor were left to lament their failures, neither group able to sufficiently extricate themselves from their own biases long enough to comprehend the roots of a fundamental problem. Why do some societies flourish while others languish? Why do some civilizations innovate while others stagnate? Why do some cultures invent while others stand in stone? It may be that others, in the future, will come upon a more perfect answer for these age-old queries, but I doubt that it will refute the wonderful, incisive contention, of Misters Acemoglu and Robinson, that it is, at root, about institutions and their structures.

From British colonialism in Africa
to the Spanish conquest of South America, from the experiment of the American Colonies to the political freedoms of the Glorious Revolution, Why Nations Fail is a hunt through world history for the secrets that have elevated some nations to the foremost ranks of human history while abandoning others to wither and die in obscurity. Though the vagaries of fate play a substantial role in giving the successful a leg up over the failures, the authors of this engrossing study conclude that a nation's political institutions primarily define its destiny.

If these institutions are Inclusive, established to protect the rights of all citizens while encouraging them to innovate and better themselves, then progress will flow naturally from this foundation of fairness. The people will understand that their ideas and efforts will be honored. They will, in turn, repay that respect with their faith and their service. But if a nation's political institutions are Extractive, existing only as channels through which wealth can flow from the hands of the exploited underclasses and into the full pockets of their plutocratic masters, then stagnation is inevitable. Citizens will be plagued by cynicism and distrust, burdens that erode their productivity while blunting their ingenuity. After all, who wants to innovate for someone else's gain?

Why Nations Fail is nothing short of brilliant. In systematically demolishing arguments for racial, social and cultural causes for the success of nations, Mr. Acemoglu and Mr. Robinson have stripped away many of the societal biases that have lead past theorists astray. Underneath, they have uncovered an abiding truth of human nature, that, by in large, we perpetuate the patterns into which we are born. What those around us celebrate and honor we too will hail. For it is easy, in such light, to see the virtues of a thing when they are being feted. But similarly, what those around us sneer at and scorn we too are bound to denigrate. For it takes a brave soul indeed to stand out among ones peers and declare them to all be in the wrong. This conformity gives our society and its institutions momentum. It ensures that whatever is set in place is bound to be continued for generations to come. For nothing short of revolution can summon the collective will to overturn what has been so fatefully set in motion.

In light of this truth, it is clear that a nation's political institutions are the harbingers of its future. If they are founded on principles of freedom, then freedom will propagate. The people will value those institutions and will work to uphold them. But if those institutions are rotten and shortsighted, then chaos will reign and woe to those idealistic souls who will seek to turn around that momentum. For as Iraq and Afghanistan have so vividly and recently demonstrated to us, the freight train of corruption is neither simply nor safely halted. Generations were necessary for western Europe to overcome its monarchs and implement fairer societies. There is no evidence to indicate that forcing these freedoms on corrupted nations will accelerate this process.

A masterful work that educates the reader on the sins of colonialism and the twists of our history as much as it does on the foundations of our societies. This is unquestionably my read of the year thus far. It deserves all the awards it will hopefully earn. (5/5 Stars)

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

From The Week of March 26, 2012

Of all the derivations of authoritarianism humanity has experimented with through the long, dark centuries of our development, surely none have sown as much grief and destruction, in the name of order and stability, as empire. It instills in its citizens a sense of cultural and personal superiority, an arrogant ethos which is then used to both justify and fuel its expansion. Such conquests are branded as peace through pacification, but in reality they are little more than expressions of dominance, demonstrations of might makes right prettied up by representative assemblies and presidential speeches. Promises of extending rights of empire to the peoples of newly conquered provinces quickly give way to prejudice, laying bare the ugliest truth,that empire is nothing more than systematic exploitation. Though The Hunger Games is, in the main, a powerful critique of the corrosive conflation of entertainment and destruction, this anti-imperialist drumbeat is a constant and effective throb throughout Ms. Collins' blockbuster series.

The Hunger Games, the trilogy's first and titular instalment, enshrouds us in a post-American, dystopian future savaged by war. The once proud United States is now but a memory, all its technology, its culture, its idealism, lost in the rubble of its great cities. In its place sprawls Panem, an assemblage of twelve specialized Districts organized around the Capital, a splashy city of fantastic technology and cultural excess that has been, for decades now, enriched by the tributes it has demanded and taken from its outlying colonies. Though it represents itself as a presidential republic, Panem is a sham democracy, a machine that exists only to exploit the resources of the Districts for its own gain. Hence, the Hunger Games.

Billed as a televised contest between Districts, the Hunger Games are an annual event in the Capital in which paired, adolescent conscripts from each District fight one another to the death for the entertainment of Panem's wealthiest citizens. Though fame and glory ostensibly flow to both the victor and his District, the main purpose of the Games is to remind the Districts of their abject servitude, to leave little doubt in the minds of the rebellious that the omnipotent Capital can and will ensure both the general order and its own primacy no matter the cost in lives and morality.

When Katniss Everdeen, a young woman from District 12, is forced to watch her younger sister chosen for the 74th Hunger Games, she does what few participants from her impoverished District have ever done. She volunteers for the Hunger Games, usurping her proscribed sister's place. Teamed up with an idealistic boy, Katniss, a hunter by inclination, stands little chance against the stronger, cleverer, and better-trained professionals opposing her. However, armed with a determination to see her family and the wilds of her District once more, she commits herself to the Games, not at all aware that she is a critical piece in a game far beyond her understanding.

In Catching Fire, the series' second entry, the Capital has special plans for the 75th annual Hunger Games. Rather than draw unseasoned contestants from the general population, the Three-quarter Quell will sample only past victors of the games. This all-star cast of 24, armed with both age and experience, must deliver the bloodiest Games yet. However, the Capital and its Gamekeepers have overlooked an obvious weakness in their plans. For they have assembled the 24 most clever and ruthless men and women their imperial system has produced. What's more, they have armed them and given them all the reason in the world to throw off the charade they have been forced to participate in. Will this band of victors succeed in overturning the Games and putting an end to the crime of the reapings, or will the Capital's strength again allow it to put out the fires of rebellion?

In Mockingjay, the final book of The Hunger Games, Panem is in chaos. District 13, thought to have been obliterated in the failed rebellion that inaugurated the Hunger Games, has emerged from its underground bunkers to strike back at the Capital. Through a policy of systematic recruitment, District 13 hopes to win the support of the other Districts, isolating the Capital ahead of a final confrontation between these two old foes. But if District 13 is to succeed in its plans, it will have to use propaganda to convince the downtrodden Districts that its sails have been filled by the winds of righteousness and good fortune. To accomplish this, it will need a symbol, a creature that simultaneously represents the Districts and the better future District 13 is promising them. Enter the fiery Mockingjay, a creature of the Capital's creation that has thrown off its slave chains and become something new and free.

Though The Hunger Games Trilogy has its fair share of problems, it is electrified by a sharp, insightful and damning critique of the extent to which21st century popular culture has unhealthily blended entertainment and violence into a toxic brew all-too-readily consumed by westerners. Drawing upon themes of Roman excess, Ms. Collins mixes in criticism of Reality TV and finishes with a splash of American existentialism. Her final product is a wonderfully biting concoction that takes aim at our media as much as at us, at our political leaders as much as at those who blithely follow them. The result is the natural evolution of the medium, the Final Solution for a culture seeking the ultimate amalgam of titillation and horror, amusement and devastation.

However, as much as this series is empowered by its core idea, the execution here leaves much to be desired. The standard raised so proudly in The Hunger Games is only half-heartedly taken up by Catching Fire, a book far too consumed by its retread plot and its mushy melodrama. Perhaps the first novel would have born the same warts, but it was animated by the uniqueness of the author's idea, a glamour which concealed its faults. The second instalment cannot capitalize on the same advantage, the same energy, a reality which causes it to suffer noticeably when compared with its progenitor. Mockingjay appears, at first glance, to succumb to similar handicaps, trading mushiness for corniness here, but Ms. Collins' decision to forsake the easy, predictable conclusion rescues the novel, blessing the series with a wonderfully messy denouement.

Much has and will be said about The Hunger Games Trilogy. Excited friends will badger you to read it while the media will bombard you with endless commercials for and critiques of its film adaptations. Not all of this is nonsense. The Hunger Games is smart, incisive and relentless. It rarely indulges in easy answers. In this, it is as worthy an entry point for young readers as it is a harsh introduction to a difficult future. However, the hype is also precisely that, excitement generated by non-readers discovering the glory of literature. More seasoned bibliophiles will nod in admiration and respect at Ms. Collins and her work, having enjoyed the journey; however, for them, this will never match up to those pieces of fantastic fiction that caused them to lose their literary virginity. The nostalgia for those works will inevitably trump the new.

If you are thinking about succumbing to the cultural pressure and reading this series, I recommend the first novel. It is packed with all of Ms. Collins' best work. Novels two and three simply do not match the power of the first. But at least you'll understand what the craze is about.

Fascinating, energetic, and grim, but troubled by its tendency for melodrama. (3/5 Stars)

Born in Africa by Martin Meredith

From The Week of March 26, 2012

The myriad mysteries that enshroud the origins of our species hold, for us, an endless fascination. They cause us to reach back thousands of years in search for elusive clues to those critical links in the evolutionary chain that can tell us from whence we've come and, perhaps, even for where we're destined. However, is the search for our origins not simultaneously the most and the least consequential drama of our age?

On one hand, satisfactorily solving such queries might lead to the end of racism and speciesism, cultural blights that have tormented us and our planet for centuries now. Scientific proof might force us all to acknowledge our common origins. But on the other hand, science can never entirely dispel the bigotry that lives on in our hearts. Science has proven that the world is billions of years old and yet the devout among us insist otherwise. Reason does not always reach the stubborn.

Such questions of consequence spin through Mr. Meredith's riveting history of humanity. For, here, he has catalogued our efforts to solve the fundamental questions of the why, the how, and the when from which we've come, He follows the generations of scientists and bonehunters who have combed our world's oldest places, searching relentlessly for answers that might well have eluded us entirely were it not for advancements in genetics. These truthseekers did not undertake such journeys for profit; in fact, most appear to have practically starved, often pouring their last pennies into an effort to glimpse the fundamentals of our species. Largely without external funding, many seekers have been scorned for their discoveries, bone-truths that throw up inconvenient narratives about who we are and from whom we've come. This treatment has nursed rivalries, encouraged frauds and empowered familial dynasties, all of which color this most epic hunt across Africa for the origins of humanity.

From deserts to caves, from labs to museums, Born in Africa is a wonderfully concise expose of a century-long battle over the story of our beginnings. Divided into two primary sections, part I deals with the dogged and underfunded scientists who have characterized this search. The author unknots their dysfunctional community, revealing how discord contorts life on the fringes of scientific respectability. Part II is a chronicle of what we know so far. After exposing us to the multiregional hypothesis of our origins in part I, here, he lays out the single-origin theory which is now widely accepted in mainstream science. In doing so, Mr. Meredith explains how, despite the fact that modern humans are believed to have migrated out of Africa in a series of waves, beginning some 120,000 years ago, there is evidence of human habitation in Europe and Asia that predate such migrations. The clear narrative leaves little doubt of the theory's solidity.

Born in Africa is a swift and fascinating read that tackles a difficult and contentious subject with intelligence and insight. The rivalries are as engrossing as the science. This is guaranteed to enlighten all but the most primatologically informed. (4/5 Stars)

Autumn in The Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt

From The Week of March 26, 2012

Rebellion is a fascinating aspect of human civilization. For while it is a marvelous tool for the oppressed to use to sweep away the political hierarchies which, in their calcification, have descended into corruption and self-interest, it is, at the same time, innately alienating. It is a gestalt of the most earnest wishes of the most passionate people within the citizenry. For moderates, from those complicit in the ruling regime to those who aimed simply to keep their heads down and survive, such strong emotion, and the actions that flow from them, are a threat to everything they know and hold dear. The result, then, is a messy conflagration of gravitational forces pulling at one another in an attemptt to impose their unique vision upon their opposition. The stresses, understandably, are often enough to rip society apart at its seams. If the Arab Spring's various uprisings are not proof enough of these consequences, then let us turn to 19century China for a most vivid example. Mr. Platt enlightens us.

Considered to be the most lethal civil war in human history, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) consumed 19th century China like a virus, leaving in its wake wide swaths of starvation, disease and despair. Thought to have claimed the lives of approximately 20 million Chinese, it was sparked by attempts by Christian converts to dispel the sins and the stagnation of the Qing dynasty and replace it with a new, westernized nation founded on fundamentalist Christian values. It would not die until it had claimed more than 20 times as many casualties, and lasted almost four times as long, as the more famous American Civil War.

Despite the rebellion's virtuous cause, its successful recruitment of native Chinese to its banner, its numerous military victories and its extension of the hand of friendship to a western Europe with which it shared much in the way of ideology, the insurgents were unable to uproot the Qing dynasty which would survive another five decades until the fall of imperial China in 1911. Not only did the rebel's fundamentalist Christianity clash with a strongly Confucian China, Europe was skeptical of the promises of reform and solidarity falling so eagerly from the lips of the rebels. Their resulting skittishness lead the European powers to largely throw their imperial weight behind the devil they knew. The devil in this case was the Manchurian emperor of China, the centuries-old legacy of the Mongolian conquest of China, a man so un-Chinese, so removed from the day-to-day plight of his people, that cities were built within cities simply to house him, to keep him apart from the unwashed.

Lacking external support, and having effectively divided China into warring camps, the rebels failed to create their new, modern China. Instead, they delivered her into a prolonged conflict that only re-affirmed western ideas of Chinese barbarism while strengthening a failing dynasty of authoritarians set on commanding the fealty of this country of nearly half a billion. In the ashes of Nanjing, freedom would have to wait.

Autumn in The Heavenly Kingdom is an exquisite, narrative history of an important insurrection largely forgotten in the West. Dwarfed in cultural importance by both the Crimean war and the American Civil War, contemporaneous conflicts that helped to reshape western notions of freedom, justice and statehood, the Taiping Rebellion is, nonetheless, a pivotal moment in history. Had the followers of Hong Xiuquan managed to transform China into something resembling a western nation, Mao never rises. He never clashes with the United States. Millions upon millions of people do not die. The Korean War never comes to pass. Harnessing this consequential energy, Mr. Platt submerges us in a world of resplendent cities and gigantic armies, religious zealots and imperial stalwarts, European hypocrisy and earnest idealism, all in a successful effort to bring to life a distant world and the sometimes inscrutable war that convulsed it.

While Mr. Platt renders the conflict's prime movers with style and skill, and while he vividly depicts the numerous battles that characterized this failed rebellion, there are moments in which his chronicle yields under the weight of names and events lacking context for the 21st century reader. So much has happened since, both to China and the world, that the morals and the ideologies that underpinned the actors here seem at times bewildering. The author would have done better to have concentrated his narrative on a few key figures in the conflict instead of spreading out to encompass what must be dozens of characters trapped in a spiderweb of shifting alliances and elusive motives.

Notwithstanding the historical dislocation, this is a wonderful journey into a most violent and pivotal time. As exciting as it is tragic... (4/5 Stars)