Amy Waldman takes the temperature of American tolerance in The Submission

From The Week of December 3, 2012
Of the many cancers that can ruin lives and relationships, suspicion is the most devastating. For within those afflicted by its necrotic caress -- the wife cheated on, the employee lied to, the sibling betrayed --, distrust finds fertile ground in which to breed, ruining for good any chance of repairing what has been so thoroughly broken. But as much as suspicion damages the individual, it has an equally deleterious impact on societies, devouring the people's faith in their government, in their institutions, even in their fellow man. When this faith is broken, when the people no longer believe that they will be served and protected by the shieldwalls they pay taxes to keep in place, then discord and discourtesy rule the day, forces that possess more than enough power to devour belief and hope and replace them with conspiracism and anger. This is an enduring truth cleverly captured in Ms. Waldman's fascinating if problematic novel.
The year is 2003 and the United States is in the process of coping with the many traumas resulting from the terrible attacks on September 11th, 2001. While the military, economic and legislative fallouts from the destruction of the Twin Towers unfold around them, a group of eleven jurers have been tasked with the sensitive mission of choosing a memorial for the victims that will be created at Ground 0. This assemblage of artists and intellectuals, including at least one 9/11 widow, know nothing of the architects behind the various submissions up for consideration. They see only the designs which are contentiously whittled down to a single victor, a garden composed to represent death and rebirth, destruction and healing. There's just one problem. The architect of the winning submission is a Muslim.

The son of Indian immigrants, Mohammed Khan is an American through and through. He's worked hard for his achievements, harder perhaps than most. For with a name like Mohammed Kahn, he has had to overcome subtle forms of discrimination inherent in any significantly religious society. But now his day has come. His design has been chosen to be brought into being, immortalized as a symbol of strength and dignity to those who sought to destroy his country. And yet, the moment the public learns that the architect of the memorial to the victims of a crime perpetrated by Muslims is himself a Muslim, his dream is jeopardized and his motivations questioned. His very identity is under attack as elements of his own society savage him. Should he withdraw out of sensitivity to the families of the victims? What were his motivations for submitting his design in the first place? And is it a paradise for martyrs? He is in the midst of a public inferno that he's far from certain he can survive.

At times captivating and intense, The Submission is an eminently readable examination of the state of American tolerance. No other country of consequence has been founded on such highminded principles of freedom and justice. And yet, it is also a nation that appears to blithely ignore these foundational virtues when convenient, substituting them with the same skeins of suspicion and distrust that plague every corrupt human society. Ms. Waldman vividly captures this very paradox with deftness and skill, all while animating her various actors with a keen eye for detail, nuanced emotion and personal complexity. In this, she has brought to life a New York, with its power and its diversity, its classes and its crimes, that anyone can recognize.

For all its virtues, though, The Submission is troubled by a fluidity of character and plot that burdens the narrative. By the conclusion of Ms. Waldman's work, most of her primary characters have transitioned to the opposite position from the one they held at the beginning of the novel. While this is not impossible for any human to accomplish, it is certainly rare for anyone to completely reorder their lives and their worldview because of a single issue, albeit the defining issue of their lives. It is far more common for people to dig in their heels and hold to their existing positions until it becomes disadvantageous for them to do so, at which point they will find a way to justify the degrees to which they've switched sides. But this is not how Ms. Waldman's world functions. Here, good people and good intentions are relentlessly chipped away at by agendas and suspicion until the latter have succeeded in reducing the former to ash.

For its challenges, Ms. Waldman has succeeded in a very difficult task. By carrying off the central conceit of her novel, that a muslim might win a contest to build the memorial for 9/11, she has allowed her readers to contemplate, through her lens, their own tolerances and prejudices. It's unclear if this novel was inspired by the recent controversy over the Ground Zero Mosque. If not, it is serendipitous. For that controversy activated many of the same emotions and ethical knots as the issues tackled herein. If, however, it was inspired by this controversy, then it is a solid re-imagination of America's original sin, chiefly, that it is not in actuality the country it purports to be in principle. Its people, their cultures and their values, have failed to live up to the highmindedness of their nation's founders, a reality which creates constant friction between a people as they are and as they should be.

Fascinating work burdened by its own contortions... (3/5 Stars)

Lives of every-day Iranians detailed in Alison Wearing's Honeymoon in Purda

From The Week of December 3, 2012
As much as the connections between humanity's various societies have been deepened by the Internet, in both its capacity to expose and unite, life beyond our customary borders is still foreign to us. For there is no land like the one that reared us. We know its rhythms and its eccentricities, the beauty of its trees and the sweetness of its air. We speak its language with a fluidity that we shall never lose. And so everything we encounter outside that bubble is filtered through the lens of our native land. It is not simply accepted as is, or how it should be. It is compared and contrasted by minds seeking always to find the right way of things when there is no such way. There is only what is. And the sooner we understand that, the easier it will be for us to accept the unknown and the foreign. This is a lesson wonderfully illustrated in Ms. Wearing's travel log which is no less relevant for its age.

For most of us in the West, Iran is a fascinating enigma, a proud nation about which very little is concretely known. We hear about its faiths and its leaders, its oil and its revolution, but we know next to nothing about its ordinary citizens, their lives, their customs, their pasttimes. To those uninterested in politics, this is incomprehensible. After all, as one of the oldest inhabited territories in the world, Iran occupies a unique place in human history, one that has not only captivated scholars but engrossed anthropologists attempting to trace the history of our species. But to those who do wrap themselves in current events, the answer to this dearth of knowledge is all-too-depressingly obvious. For as a consequence of western colonialism and general interference in its government and its resources, Iran is an intensely closed society, commanded by a government highly suspicious of Greeks bearing gifts.

Heedless of this impediment and eager to see the world, two youthful Canadians set out to explore this mysterious nation. Masquerading as husband and wife in order to smooth their passage through a more rigid culture, Ms. Wearing and Ian, her gay companion devote five months of the year 2000 to traveling through Iran's cities and villages, its mountains and its deserts, its snows and its sweltering heat. And even though Ms. Wearing spends much of the journey enshrouded in conservative, Islamic garb, in deference to the sensitivities of the people they encounter, she is able to experience this distant country with the intensity of an artist, and through the eyes of a woman for whom everything she sees is foreign. Her experiences are unforgettable.

Writing with the passion of a painter and the literary flair of a diarist, Ms. Wearing's Honeymoon in Purda is an oddly affecting work of non-fiction that touches on the philosophical as much as it does the practical. Unapologetic of her open, western sensibilities, the author is simultaneously respectful of the traditions of the land she's chosen to explore, immersing herself, for better or worse, in the habits and the rituals of a very foreign place. This cultural awareness not only prevents her work here from drifting into smugness or self-involvement, it exposes her to people who, despite holding very different political and cultural views, are ready and willing to engage with her. Honeymoon in Purda makes it clear that we are imbibing the thoughts of a rare mind, unencumbered by the narrowness of age and or prejudice.

Naturally, there are moments when Alison and Ian grate upon the reader. However, this is as much a credit to them as a curse to the work. For it is a consequence of their willingness to be seen at their worst, not a result of a failing of character. And in any event, the extent to which they expose us to Christians and Mexicans, to drug-dealers and beleaguered wives, to eager shopkeepers and hospitable soldiers, more than makes up for any frustrations one might have for the pair's foibles. This is Iran as it has rarely been seen, Iran as it may not be seen again for some time, more's the pity.

Honeymoon in Purda is a lovely chronicle of a life-altering journey that is elevated above the fray by its characters, both exhilarating and depressing. Some literary license has to have been taken, to have so accurately transcribed so many of the conversations that take place here, but this is a flaw that does nothing to reduce my appreciation. (4/5 Stars)

Tudor England's generation gap comes to life in Thomas Penn's Winter King

From The Week of December 3, 2012
Death and renewal, life's fundamental opposing forces, define our world. They breathe change into our seasons and put fuel into the earth. They provide food for organisms and ensure evolutions steady march. No force is beyond their authority, not even the stars that make life possible. But inside these universal systems, death and renewal shape our lives just as profoundly. They define our relationships, our jobs, and especially our goals, demanding that we move through our limited existence with alacrity and desperation, propelled by the knowledge that everything we are and everything we love is not only finite but fleeting. Even if we cannot hear this driving drumbeat of life, it guides our actions which, in turn, shape our kingdoms, our empires, even our nations. This is a truth well-captured by Mr. Penn's engaging biography of the sunset of the life of Henry VII and the sunrise of his sun, the infamous Henry VIII.

Uncounted barrels of ink have been spilled in an attempt to illustrate the lives and times of the House of Tudor, a brief but influential dynasty that, in the sixteenth century, uplifted England from a political also-rand to a mercantile powerhouse to rival Europe's richest empires. Much of this attention has been understandably taken up by Henry VIII, and his numerous wives, and his daughter, Elizabeth I, who governed her country more wisely than most of its kings. One created a religion; the other created an empire. Together, they were salacious and noble, headstrong and ruthless. But though this attention is warranted, it excludes perhaps the most fascinating Tudor ruler, the man who set the stage for the men and women who followed him.

As firm as he was cheap, as wise as he was suspicious, Henry VII spent his life uniting a fractured crown. Forcing his way to power in the wake of the War of the Roses, a merciless conflict that pitted two of England's most powerful families against one another in a devastating war, he devoted decades of his life to improving England's fiscal standing, linking its fortunes to Europe's most powerful banners. In these maneuvers, he was largely successful, partly thanks to his willingness to use any tactic, no matter how underhanded, to achieve his ends. But such a zealous pursuit of wealth and power with which to pass on to ones heirs must leave its marks, not only on the man but the nation as well, and Henry VII was no exception. For as he lay dying, as his promising son stood ready to inherit all that he had wrought, he was powerless to check the cronies and the influencers, the strongmen and the schemers who he'd used to elevate England and who he'd once played so well. And so, though his son would inherit arguably the richest kingdom in Europe, he would also inherit a security state with a keenly self-interested apparatus, one both willing to manipulate its king and be bound by him, a dangerous precedent that served the younger henry not nearly as well as it did his wiser father.

Winter King is a potent and powerful biography of a transformative period in world history. Mr. Penn invites us back to the dawn of the British Empire, a time in which england lay battered and broken by feuds empowered by greed and self-entitlement, an England that no one could have imagined becoming the defining power of the next 500 years. Here, the author winningly illustrates the lives of the two men who did the most to reshape that country's destiny, setting it upon the path of fame and infamy, fortune and conquest. He captures the fundamental differences between the calculating father and the headstrong son, the shrewd king in his final years and the ambitious prince in his roaring youth, leaving no doubt in the minds of his readers that these men, and the events they weathered, loomed over the generations that followed them. Loves and marriages, schemes and tourneys, assassinations and betrayals are all covered here, detailed in a tome inescapably defined by the cruel but inevitable tides of life.

This is not a perfect history. Mr. Penn disappointingly ignores the first half of Henry VII's life, summing it up in a few pages that gloss over the period's most shattering conflict. This is likely a stylistic choice. For throughout most of the work, the author juxtaposes father and son, their duties, their attitudes, their faiths and their friends. He could hardly adhere to this theme if he covered the time before the younger Henry's birth. Nonetheless, a significant degree of context is lost in this choice, context that might well have aided the reader in understanding the zealously frugal elder henry. As it is, we are introduced to him as an older man, one who has already been forged by the crucible of his time.

Notwithstanding its compromises, Winter King is as readable as it is informative. Too much has already been said of the Tudors. And yet, this is less of an homage than it is an acknowledgement of an exceptional man largely overshadowed by the controversial deeds of his dashing son. In this, it is well worth devouring. (4/5 Stars)

Longitude by Dava Sobel

From The Week of November 26th, 2012
Though our world is, for the most part, advanced by slow and steady progress that is too esoteric and individually insignificant for humanity to recognize, there can be no doubt that there are colossal moments in the history of human knowledge which have spilled entire revolutions of thought and understanding. From the realization that the Earth is round to the discovery that there do not be dragons at the edges of the world, the revelations of individuals have reshaped the fortunes of kingdoms and continents, all while laying the groundwork for the discoveries to come. It is an awesome notion, to think that ones own genius may live on for centuries, long after ones own bones are dust. And yet, Copernicus and Galileo, Newton and Einstein are proof of its truth. It would be a shame to exclude John Harrison from this honored list. For, as Ms. Sobel demonstrates, he too changed the world.

For much of recorded history, accurately measuring longitude while at sea, or on the move generally, was maddeningly difficult. Compelled to rely upon flawed methods like Dead Reckoning -- using a previous known position to calculate direction and speed --, or Lunar Navigation -- measuring the moon against another celestial body --, voyagers were often profoundly mislead by their results. This practice proved particularly lethal at sea where accurately fixing ones position could mean the difference between striking land or starving at sea. In a world where journeying between continents was rare, this was a vexing problem only for that small subset of adventurers fixed upon the exploration of the globe. However, with the advent of widespread mercantile trade in the last 500 years, it became a problem of much greater societal import, leading to prizes being extended by various bodies for a proper solution.

Enter John Harrison. A self-taught watchmaker, he defied conventional wisdom, that the longitude problem would be solved through an improved understanding of astronomy, and endeavored, instead, to rectify it through the proper keeping of time. For if a captain could set a ship-board clock to local time at the beginning of their voyage, and trust that said clock could keep accurate time through the whole of their journey, then they could compare local time with high noon wherever they were in the world and use the difference between the two to calculate their distance from home. On paper, this seems a simple enough problem, but how could someone in the 18th century create a clock whose mechanisms for time-keeping would be perfectly immune against storms and waves, dryness and humidity, vibrations and oscillations? Through trial and error, across decades of effort, Mr. Harrison sought to make such a perfect clock. His efforts would prove to be as successful as they were underappreciated.

From the exploits of the Harrisons to the shameful machinations of those who sought to deny them credit, Longitude is a brief but delightful contemplation of what, today, is a trivial pursuit. Not so 300 years ago, when life and death rode on knowing where one was in relation to the world around one. Ms. Sobel demonstrates how Mr. Harrison's solution to this problem was as brilliant as it was poorly received by the brightest minds of his day, their biases leading them to throw in his path every roadblock, every impediment to the achievement of his proper recognition. Professional jealousy veritably drips from these 150 pages, the envy of frustrated men coming to naught in the face of a fix far to clever for them. Ms. Sobel's account of this most interesting historical development is lovely but for its length. Devoted to keeping her work brief, her biography of john Harrison and his time necessarily suffers, curtailed far too much for this reader's liking. Certainly, it is better, especially with non-fiction, to err on the side of brevity over long-windedness, but there's brevity and then there's Longitude which seems, at times, like a rushed tour of something great and yet half-hidden from view, its mysteries left to the sands of time. I was left eager for more, both of Harrison himself and his competitors and foes. But alas, such knowledge will have to come from other sources.

Fine work... Ms. Sobel invariably delivers with her micro histories and Longitude is no exception. However, look not here for the whole story. That must be found in weightier volumes. (3/5 Stars)

Soldier Dogs by Maria Goodavage

From The Week of November 26, 2012 >
As much as our lives are defined by humanity, its emotions and its foibles, its actions and its reactions, ours is not the only species to leave its mark on our planet. Every day, creatures we barely understand, let alone relate to, persist, their fortunes rising and falling largely based on how useful they are to us. If, like with insects, we deem them to be bothersome, or even deleterious to our health, they are exterminated, snuffed out for a crime no more heinous than the fulfillment of their genetic destiny. However, if they are dogs, whose faces we find cute, whose fur we find pleasing to the eye and whose affections we find spiritually enriching, then they are permitted to populate in great numbers so long as they continue to please us. Of course, pleasure isn't the only benefit of domesticating such animal friends. Service can also be within their purview. And, truly, what service is nobler than war? Mr. Goodavage explains in her biography of the 21st century war dog.

Though dogs have, for centuries, had their noses used to sniff out the enemy and have had their fierceness and bulk deployed to guard military camps, it was only with war's recent evolution that a dog's skills were put to more complex use. With the rise of non-state actors, and given the degree to which these actors have thrown out the rulebook when it comes to the so-called honorable codes of combat, war in the 21st century is far less about numbers and battlefields, tanks and trenches. It is about fear and terror, the power to demoralize the enemy until it is willing to act as you desire it to. Consequently, all manner of dirty tricks are used to crush ones foe, the most notorious of which is the famed IED, an improvised explosive designed to harm the enemy when he least expects, in the process, causing as much damage as possible.

When it lacks knowledge of both the terrain and its culture, how does an occupying force avoid such booby-traps? By using every weapon at its disposal, the most effective of which is the highly developed nose of a dog. Reputedly to be many magnitudes more sensitive than our own, a dog's olfactory sense can distinguish from thousands of scents, over hundreds of miles, across dozens of days. Properly trained, it can pursue a particular scent for hours at a time without distraction, its mind singularly fixed on the completion of a goal for which it has been trained to expect a reward. These soldier dogs have been a runaway success in these new theatres of war, saving uncounted lives by providing an early warning system for the enemy's machinations, all while creating effortlessly the deep bonds of personality and loyalty that make it so treasured by humans. These are the new faces of a new kind of war, one that is fought with drones and Hellfire missiles, across mountains and cities, without uniforms or even command structures. It is war for which the instinctive animal is quite well-suited. Though it is not without flaws, Soldier Dogs is a buoyant and affectionate examination of this new breed of soldiers. From training methods to types of deployment, from breeds to purple hearts for bravery, Ms. Goodavage does a thorough job capturing the degree to which humans have begun to understand his best friend and to use that knowledge to execute one of its most indulged pursuits. She masterfully bestows personalities upon each of the cases featured here, their talents and their limitations covered with equal pleasure and fascination.

However, for as much as Ms. Goodavage captivates us with tales of canine heroism already acceding into legend, she gives virtually no consideration at all to the ethical questions that naturally underpin the practice of using dogs as instruments of war. The closest she comes is when she evinces her distaste for the US military's classification of them as materiel, arguing that they deserve much more status than that. But this strong opinion arises out of the author's belief that the faithful service of these war dogs has earned them much more respect than they are now given. It does not stem from the far more fundamental question of whether this is an even remotely ethical practice, to train guileless and relatively unintelligent animals to fight our wars, to clean up our ugly business, to avoid unpleasantries we put in place. By her own admission, Ms. Goodavage recognizes these dogs do not understand that they are fighting a war. All they care about is the reward of a job well done, having no concept of the terrible risks they take every time they are sent sniffing after buried explosives easily powerful enough to obliterate them when triggered. This is a glaring omission for a work with aspirations of understanding the world of war dogs. By and large, Soldier Dogs is a charming glimpse of a world few of us will ever see. However, in not confronting the most fundamental issue of this practice, it is also a work that surrenders any aspirations of being consequential or journalistic which this reader considers a shame. Fun for what it is... (3/5 Stars)