The biggest, quietest revolution of the last century in The Box

From The Week of March 24th, 2014

Our world is defined by revolutions, slivers of time in which long-standing norms are upended by new ideas. Often, these upheavals are loud and violent, eruptions of frustration and rage that smash existing, flawed models, only to replace them with equally flawed ones of their own creation. Unsurprisingly, these revolutions seize the headlines, causing many to fear the new. But sometimes, moments of change are so humble, so subtle, that it takes years before they, and their virtues, are even recognized, let alone heralded. And by then, the world has already re-ordered itself around a new, powerful paradigm. It is this latter form of change that underpins this excellent history from Mr. Levinson.

For centuries, international commerce has been a dangerous and expensive proposition. In order to get one's products profitably to foreign markets, manufacturers had to entrust them to ships sailing across ever-changing seas. Not only did this create long delays, during which time market prices could collapse, it forced manufacturers to have faith in the capacity of the ship's crew to not break, steal, or otherwise tamper with their goods. And then, even if all went well, swift, smooth voyages captained by trustworthy folk, the product would have to be carefully extracted from the hold at the destination by yet more hands that might be tempted to intervene in this long, tenuous chain of commerce. With such nightmarish complications in mind, it's little wonder that merchants favored domestic markets over foreign ones.

In the 20th century, however, this equation began to radically shift, first with the onset of faster, sturdier ships which reduced transit times between ports, then with the most revolutionary change of all, the humble shipping container. A well-welded box forged from commonplace metals, its manufacturing cost was as insignificant as its introduction was revolutionary. Not only would it serve as added protection for the products it contained, it could be lifted from holds by powerful cranes capable of operating far faster than even dozens of humans working in concert. The swifter loading and unloading of ships meant less time in port, which meant more ships could be processed, which meant more goods at radically reduced costs thanks to the steep reduction in human labor. These cost savings would eventually make possible a global economy, one that would lift from poverty untold millions and ensure that our world would never be the same.

As fascinating as it is humble, The Box is a piece of exhilarating non-fiction. Marc Levinson, who specializes in such micro-histories, not only familiarizes us with the fraught and complex world of international shipping, and the colorful characters that have occupied its choppy waters, he details the thorny web of unionized labor, government interests and ruthless economics that have characterized its last 150 years. That all these intractable stakeholders could have the ground taken out from beneath them by something as ordinary as a shipping container seems absurd, and must have to many of them as well. And yet, the author does such a delightful job explaining the commercial dominos that fell in the wake of the container's introduction that the reader is left seized by both the obviousness of the box and by the wonder of how swiftly the world can be changed by new, economic realities.

At The Box's core is the story of Malcolm McLean, a mid-century trucking magnate credited with the wide-spread introduction of the container. Having witnessed its use to move military goods in the Second World War, he attempted, in the 1950s, to improve upon this process with a standardized container that could be all-but-mindlessly lifted onto and out of the holds of vessels transiting the Atlantic. Though it would take years for this practice to eliminate break-bulk shipping - the process of haphazardly filling a ship's hold with all manner of products -, its introduction nonetheless ignited a 20-year revolution in international shipping that transformed every aspect of the process. Not only did costs plummet, taking with them tens of thousands of jobs, vital ports, that had been shipping and receiving goods for hundreds of years, shut down as business shifted to locations that were closer to highway and rail systems that carried the container to its final destination. All this thanks to one man's vision...

In this way, Malcolm McLean feels like the first of the host of tech visionaries we celebrate today. He did not create a computer or write software, but he recognized an inefficiency, had an idea for how to remedy it and, as a consequence, utterly remade our world by making it economical for cheap goods to flow from Asia in exchange for profits that have lifted hundreds of millions out of soul-crushing poverty. To be responsible for all of that, to have had your idea be the launch point for global change, is a heady achievement that deserves to be more widely known regardless of what one thinks of globalization and its costs. Steve Jobs ain't got nothin' on Mr. McLean.

A thrilling ride... Mr. Levinson has a rare talent for finding the critically important in the seemingly mundane. We are the beneficiaries of such a gift. (5/5 Stars)

The thorny history of a famous cemetery in On Hallowed Ground

From The Week of March 24th, 2014

Our relationship with the dead, and the bodies they've left behind, is as revealing as it is complex. For while some dismiss the body as nothing more than empty vessel that can be discarded now that the soul no longer abides within it, many others hold such a deep connection with human remains that anything less than respectful reverence is cavalier and insensitive. For these individuals, the only way they can honor those who have past beyond this life is to ensure that they lie peacefully in undisturbed ground, that their graves, like them, are not forgotten. However, such reverence implies that, on some level, the spirits of the dead still care what happens to their bodies, that it means something to them to have been returned, with grace, to the earth in which they began.

Is there a connection? And should it matter? These are two unavoidable questions in a book about a cemetery. Mr. Poole may not have any immediate answers, but the clarity of the snapshot he has taken here of death, of ritual, of grief, and of ceremony is of such quality that answers seem unimportant.

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the worlds most famous landmarks. The exclusive preserve of those who have died in the defense of the United States, it is home to tens of thousands of veterans, from at least nine significant wars, whose graves are visited by more than seven-million people each year. Popularized by the televised burial of President Kennedy, Arlington is a shrine to ritual and respect. For its very ground holds what remains of those who died for their country, making it, outwardly, a monument to duty and patriotism.

Arlington's history, however, is far more troublesome. Originally the primary residence of Robert E. Lee, the legendary civil-War general, it was appropriated by the Union government after the Lees decamped to Virginia at the beginning of the American Civil War. Initially, it was to be used as a military camp, but once the war came to the doorstep of the capital, it was deployed as as a burial ground, for the bluecoats who died during that great American schism. Despite Mary lee's vigorous efforts to reclaim it, the government refused to surrender the sprawling farm, eventually, over the decades that followed, expelling everyone who lived on the property and converting it into a full-fledged cemetery that would be subjected to all manner of cultural winds that would force many of the graves to be dug up and reburied in order to satisfy the whims of the day.

A fascinating history of a lodestone of grief and remembrance, On Hallowed Ground is a surprisingly engaging journey through a famous monument. Robert Poole has produced a thorough chronicle of this sacred place, walking the reader through the many storms it has endured. His portraits of the stewards of Arlington are fond without fawning, showing respect for the work they have done without neglecting the ways in which their egos have shaped it. But perhaps most instructive are his careful descriptions of the key moments in the Cemetery's long existence, capped off with a detailed paean to the televised funeral of JFK that is both moving and vivid. Lush descriptions of the place not only evoke its grandeur, but remind us of the conflicts, both political and actual, that have defined it.

All literature makes some form of contribution to the culture. And yet, there are occasions when one is surprised by the size of such a contribution. On Hallowed Ground fits that bill. For what looks to be an ordinary history of an extraordinary cemetery becomes, in the author's hands, a revealing chronicle of an institution that, if it avoids scandal, does so just barely. From Arlington's controversial origins, to its mistreatment of black soldiers, to its preferential treatment of officers, it reminds us that even the bodies of the dead are subject to the politics of the day, however revolting we may find them now, and that, for all the reverence and ritual we may grant the dead, the institution that cares for them is, like all institutions, beleaguered by biases. One wouldn't expect a cemetery, no matter its fame, to attract such strong opinions, and yet, they reveal just how much meaning we invest in a place that is only, truly made significant by the value we the living give to it.

A work as revealing of human nature as it is of Arlington itself... Its beauty and its ironies won't soon be forgotten. (4/5 Stars)

The exquisite study of life and all its bittersweetness in The Hours

From The Week of March 17, 2014

As much as our memories suggest otherwise, life is filled with mundanity. Yes, we vividly remember the emotional moments that fire through our recollections, but these weddings and divorces, vacations and exhilarations, stand out largely thanks to just how much normality our brains have shrugged into the trash. Add up all the flashbulb days that transform and transfix us and, if we're fortunate, we're left with 40 or 50 standouts compared to tens of thousands of ordinaries. Which leads one to an inevitable conclusion.

To be good with life we must be good with the mundane. There is simply no other way to be happy. For to live principally for the days and nights that excite our blood is to place bets we're far more apt to lose than win. We must live for today, in whatever form it comes. But what if we cannot? What if the prospect of mundanity is a crushing reminder of of all of life's failures large and small? What if excitement is the only way for one to feel alive? What then? It's hard to imagine this pain demonstrated better than in Michael Cunningham's mesmerizing novel.

Decades apart, in three different parts of the world, the lives of Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown and Virginia Wolfe would appear to have little in common with one another. Clarissa is a woman of privilege, surrounded by artistic friends, living out the downside of middle age in 1990s New York; Laura is a still-youthful mother in California just beginning to come to grips with the constrictions of marriage in 1940s Los Angeles; and Virginia is a famous author, as brilliant as she is unstable, persisting in the suburbs of 1920s London. And yet, their lives are connected not just through the story of Mrs. Dalloway, which Virginia is creating, Laura is reading, and Clarissa is living, but through the extent to which they are all attempting to make good with the lives they've created and the talents they've been given.

The sum of these three interwoven narratives, The Hours is a captivating, non-linear rumination on the nature of everyday existence. Mr. Cunningham conceives of a single day in each woman's existence and, as the novel unfolds, allows their thoughts, their reactions and their emotions to fill in a life's worth of detail. By the work's conclusion, we not only understand Clarissa, Laura and Virginia in ways both profound and poignant, we come to understand that life is itself comprised of interactions which may individually appear to be meaningless but are, in the aggregate, quite literally who we are. We may be influenced by how our parents raised us, how our schools trained us and how our obligations wear on us, but how we handle all of life's moments is how we come to know ourselves and what we care about.

For The Hours' three spellbinding protagonists, this gestalt portrays a largely disquieting image of lives stifled by mental illness, by the chains of matrimony and by the weight of regret. In each case, we find disappointment lurking close by, waiting to ambush us at the first opportunity. For it is easy to feel, in retrospect, that we should have tried harder, should have overcome more, should have chosen better. And yet, we did what we could do in the moment. We gave what we could at the time. That this has failed to yield the optimum result is as much the fault of chance and circumstance than in our own stars. Of course, to us, this knowledge is cold comfort. It changes nothing. Our lives are still our own, still for us to lead, to endure.

As depressing as this truth appears, The Hours is in no way emotionally burdensome. Not only is there happiness here, even pleasure, an acknowledgement that mundanity has its own rewards, there is a powerful sense that most wounds can be healed if one recognizes them early enough. Regret and matrimony, for instance, are temporary states. Their condition can be alleviated in any number of ways, provided one has the time and the courage to do so. And in this way, we come to understand that mundanity is exquisitely bittersweet. It is the recognition of the good amidst the difficult. And it is this spirit that vivifies the book, elevating it from the dismal to the mind opening.

This is all quite deep. The fact is, in addition to its many rewarding layers, The Hours possesses glorious prose, a tender heart and a poignant message. It's little wonder that it won one of the most prestigious literary awards we have. Deservedly so... One of the most touching experiences I've had in years... (5/5 Stars)

An extraordinary mind, a tragic life in Tesla

From The Week of March 17, 2014

There's an element of madness in innovation, a capacity to seize the unknown that is foreign to the rest of us. We are born in established worlds, baked into environments that have been shaped by centuries of tradition and generations of experience. And so it is no surprise that our tastes, even our thoughts, are influenced by customs we cannot ignore. Not so for the visionaries in our midst who are, in some fundamental way, immune to the transmission of cultural DNA, who reject the known for the alien shores of undiscovered frontiers of science and philosophy. This is what makes them special, not their products or their plaudits, not their lives and the hagriographies written in their honor, this altered sight that allows them, for just a moment, to glimpse the beautiful chaos of the unformed. The glories and the costs of such perspectives are detailed thoroughly and methodically in Bernard Carlson's engaging biography of an exceedingly strange legend of history.

Born in a 19th-century Europe obsessed by the dying days of empire, Nicola Tesla would become one of the most transformative, American inventors of the industrial age. Widely credited with the creation of systems to harness the powers of Alternating Current, and having made powerful contributions to the understanding and usage of wireless transmission of both information and electricity, he was celebrated, in his day, as a wizard of science, a man who used his expansive imagination to dream up fanciful technologies and demonstrate them to crowds in awe of his discoveries. His insights and designs, even today, underpin technologies in everything from cars to smartphones. Many have won greater fame and awards for achieving far less. After all, were it not for Tesla Motors, named in homage to the great inventor, would anyone in mainstream culture even remember the man?

Why such a genius has had his star burn so dimly for so long has a complex answer rooted in Tesla's eccentricities and his society's biases. A likely bisexual who never married, Tesla did not conform to the social customs of his turn-of-the-century day. But as much as we would like to blame his lack of fame on something as simple as societal ignorance, we cannot. For it's equally clear that Tesla possessed a fondness for making boastful claims that he often failed to back up. Repeatedly, his more fantastic projects encountered unforeseen problems that set him back years, eventually earning him a reputation as someone whose bark was louder than his bite. These factors combined to banish him into relative obscurity, until a recent spate of biographies has re-established him as one of the great minds of our age.

At times revelatory and opinionated, Tesla is a thoughtful biography of a complex genius. Mr. Carlson, who does not shy away from attempting to explain both the man and his insights into electricity, its properties and the manner in which it interacts with our world, does an excellent job describing Tesla's successes, his failures and his methodologies. The reader is not only furnished with an understanding of the importance of 19-century patents, but with the science contained within those patents and how it has outlived Tesla himself, growing to become a fundamental technology upon which a large swath of our world operates.

But these explainations, however educational, are secondary to Tesla himself, a man with a remarkable life story that Mr. Carlson largely handles with respect and fascination. The author details his tragic family history, his personal drive to succeed, and the numerous ways in which the meritocratic United States aided him in turning his drawing-board scribblings into products and standards that could quite literally light the world. It's here that Mr. Carlson shines. For he is perfectly willing to speculate on Tesla's mentality, his drivers and his demons, doing so with an openness that is as refreshing as his insights are compelling. We'll never know for certain what Tesla the man was like, but Tesla does a wonderful job conveying a consistent impression of a man buoyed by a profound belief in himself and his capacity to overcome every obstacle. That this was both the great gift and central tragedy of Tesla's life will surprise no one who reads this book.

Where Tesla wanes is in the less interesting chapters of the inventor's later life. Mr. Carlson spends ample time on the disputes and the grudges, the insights and the patents, during the heady days of the 1890s. But Tesla is allowed, with only minimal comment, to lapse into his long twilight. Perhaps this reflects what little we know of Tesla's last 38 years, but one senses that the author was far more interested in the feverish years than he was in how a genius lives when the world stops paying attention to him. This, along with the absence of any effort to connect Tesla the man to Tesla Motors, much less the AC age that he gave birth to, seems a notable oversight.

Notwithstanding its shortcomings, Tesla is a mind-altering examination of the powers of imagination. For it is in no way a simple matter to conceive of an unmade world. Tesla is a blind man who managed to draw the blueprints to a city without having ever seen one, by simply willing himself to imagine it, to know it, to possess the whole of it. That act of purely mental discovery is remarkable. And that Mr. Carlson chose to position it at center stage of his biography is as laudatory as it is thought provoking. A good glimpse into a unique mind... (4/5 Stars)

A delightfully creepy journey through a twisted world in Annihilation

From The Week of March 10, 2014

In life, there are few certainties. Seven-billion humans stuck on an unpredictable world that is largely governed by chance ensures that much. But one thing we can be certain of is the sanctity of our own minds. These sublimely tuned systems of pattern recognition sort reality from fiction, friend from foe, even wisdom from foolishness, so effortlessly, so reliably, that we're often barely even aware these assessments are taking place. Our minds are the gatekeepers of sanity, providing boundaries without which the world would not make sense. Remove the mind's capacity to make these distinctions, damage its ability to see clearly, and the world becomes a foggy morass of which nothing can be certain, not even the fidelity of our own thoughts. This is a truth chillingly explored in this first entry in a new trilogy from Jeff Vandermeer.

Located just off a stretch of unpopulated coast in one of Earth's more tropical climes, Area X is a deadly and torturous enigma. A place of undefined borders, it appears to be populated by some kind of organizing intelligence made manifest in the behavior of the animals residing there. And yet, but for a handful of chilling encounters, few have ever seen physical agents of this most hidden and pervasive power. Which is not to say that humans haven't felt its presence. Repeatedly, governments have dispatched expeditions to Area X, in hopes of learning its secrets, only to have these highly trained professionals returned to them in extraordinary disarray. For some, their memories are gone, others, their health. But one constant remains. None come back unscarred.

The twelfth and most recent expedition is no exception. Comprised of four women, a biologist, a surveyor, a psychologist and an anthropologist, they are given training, equipment and a mission, to investigate Area X, in particular, a tower that seems to shaft deep into the earth. At first, they seem to be making progress in understanding this twisted place, but then soon events begin to proceed out of their control and, beforelong, nothing will be familiar, not even their own minds. There will be no comfort in this place without rules.

As creepy as it is swift, Annihilation is an entertaining piece of weird fiction. Mr. Vandermeer, who rose to prominence with a series of stories set in the strange city of Ambergris, has channeled his talent for creepy fantasy and carved out a foothold for it on our own world. This proximity, this sense that the rot now exists in a place we hold dear, invests the work with anxiety and urgency, neither of which the author wastes as he marches the reader down into his dark, infested imagination.

Of its many accomplishments, Annihilation's most important achievement is the degree to which it teases the reader into accepting that the line between sanity and madness is whisper thin. The governor of this line, the mind, can be tricked and influenced in so many ways that it's rather surprising that madness isn't a more pervasive problem for society. After all, how could anyone function if they could not trust their senses? Their memories? Their actions? How does anyone distinguish what must be fought from what must be loved when there is no cognitive anchor to hold onto? When there is only Area X, its lies and its mysteries laid bare in the warped light.

Mr. Vandermeer has always excelled at presenting his characters with an environment capable of driving them mad, of tormenting them with things they cannot understand until they have no safe ground left upon which to tread. Annihilation is no exception. But where this volume joins those in its power to entrance, it fails to back that up with compelling characters. In some sense, this is intentional. For Area X leaves no more room for personal identity than it does for personal freedom, devouring all before its strange, expansive threats. However, the reader is left to quietly rue these omissions, as none of the human wills present here amount to much more than their archetypical foundations. Certainly, the creeping sense of otherness makes up for this absence, but only just.

More delicious than disappointing... Weird promises to be an exciting genre for some time to come, particularly with minds like Mr. Vandermeer to guide it. (3/5 Stars)

the heartbreaking legacy of corruption and ideology in The Oligarchs

From The Week of March 10, 2014

However much we may debate its merits and pick at its flaws, there can be no doubt that capitalism is the engine that empowers the progress of civilization. In providing markets for products and rewards for risk, it has banished agrarian economies to the dustbin of history, rejecting its centuries of stagnation in favor of the decades of swift progress generated by industrialism. In doing so, it has been the mechanism by which positive change has built our world and given us hope for better futures.

But for all of capitalism's power, it is not a self-guiding system. It requires men and women to refine its rules and establish its aims. No surprise then that capitalism comes in many flavors ranging from the relatively free markets of the United States to the authoritarian ones in China. These strains are shaped by history and culture, experiences and values, from the tragic to the revolutionary, that characterize economies. Nowhere is this cultural influence more apparent than in Russia's 25-year relationship with capitalism, a journey chronicled here by Mr. Hoffman.

In 1991, with the arrest of Mikhail Gorbachev and the ascension of Boris Yeltsin, Russia's 70-year experiment with Communism came to an earthshaking end. After decades of speeches and marches, of command economies and five-year plans, the Soviet Union could no longer hide, from an ever more sophisticated world, that it had fallen into the past. Where the West was rising high on profitable markets demanding fancy cars and ever-more-powerful planes, the USSR, despite its countless bureaucrats and endless training, could not even manage to fill its stores with fresh vegetables, let alone entice anyone to choose its brands. Its promise, that the organized power of the people would ignite a worldwide revolution and a new age of enlightenment, had collapsed under the weight of its inefficiencies, its corruption and its politics, none of which encouraged innovation.

Over the next five years, Russia would embark upon one of the most ambitious and fraught economic experiments in human history. Through shady auctions and even shadier schemes, it would sell off its nationalized banks and oil companies, airlines and car dealerships, hoping to create an entrepreneurial class that would fill new markets with new products that the people would be proud to purchase. Instead, in its haste, it created opportunities for a handful of ambitious individuals to control Russia's most powerful and profitable assets. Practically overnight, oil barons and media titans, kings of construction and lords of finance, became Russia's board of directors, using their outsized influence to shape government policy and shape a better future for themselves and those who'd invested with them.

A chronicle of the lives of Russia's new class of industrial titans, The oligarchs is a thorough examination of a pivotal period in Russian history. David Hoffman, an author and journalist for the Washington Post, so thoroughly reconstructs the sociopolitical climate that characterized Russian life during the fall of the Soviet Union that the outcome -- the accretion of power into the hands of an extraordinarily exulted few -- seems inevitable. From the voucher schemes to the influence peddling, from the banker War to an actual war, we watch as men of unbridled ambition steal, cheat and grind their way to power, largely at the expense of the Russian people who, thanks to life under Communism, are ill-prepared to be worked and swindled for the benefit of others.

Though the work is primarily an introduction to the first generation of Oligarchs who rose to power in the early 1990s, vividly describing their lives both before and after the fall of the Soviet Union, The Oligarchs reaches for something grander than a dry recitation of past events. In diving deeply into the mechanisms that were meant to transition Russia to capitalism, Mr. Hoffman paints a portrait of the perniciousness of influence peddling and how it has disfigured the Russian economy. In allowing favoritism to play a key role in the minting of fortunes, in the merger of corporations, even in the selling off of national assets, a handful of officials have managed to create a version of capitalism in which the winners have already been chosen. The people, whose decisions ought to shape the markets, have no choice but to use untrustworthy banks and consolidated oil. After all, the very government that should be regulating these industries is simply encouraging them so long as they follow a few proscribed rules that suit the men who happen to be in power at the time.

Every system, be it economic or political, has some level of corruption. And yet, The Oligarchs does such a good job describing how its pervasiveness, its institutionalization, has lead to the present moment in Russian history that it is hard to care about the Boris Berezovskys and the Mikhail Khodorkovskys of the world. Their stories may be individually different, but the result is the same. They were winners who either demanded to be chosen by the system, or were chosen by it anyway. Yes, their ascendance required skill and cleverness, but it was also completely inevitable given the manner in which Russia was privatized. Someone would have won. And in doing so, they would have reaped absurd riches that were bound to create class resentment for generations to come. The flaw is in the system, not the men who simply fail, here, to be interesting.

An interesting primer on one of the sketchiest and most formative moments in recent Russian history... (3/5 Stars)

A riveting conclusion to an epic fight for survival in Dust

From The Week of March 3, 2014

For all of society's many virtues, for all that it is the mechanism by which civilization is thrust onward, it would grind to a halt without our lies to lubricate it. From secret projects to marital harmony, lies arm us with the means to avoid awkward confrontations with the truth that might tear apart our missions and our relationships, diverting what would otherwise be deathly blows into glancing hits that are soon abandoned to the trash heap that is our past. But while lies may normalize what could otherwise sunder us, they carry with them a terrible price. For each time they are used in the name of the good, they chip away at the trust of those we use them on until, eventually, their faith has been rubbled, leaving only anger stoked by being played the fool. Rarely has this rageful backlash been deployed better than in the conclusion to Hugh Howey's creepy and gripping series.

For the men and women of the Silos, the world is steel and stone. Having lived and died for centuries within 50 hermetically sealed arcologies, built 130-stories deep in the earth of a ruined world, they have no concept of Africa and America, of lions and monkeys, of snow and sun. After all, it is death to leave the silo, death to go out to the decayed remnants of what came before. And anyway, they have within their silos everything they could ever want: power, food, life and love. What could anyone else ask for?

But now, after centuries, the lies that have underpinned their lives are slowly being revealed, peeled back like layers of sediment to expose the whys and hows that lead them into these sealed lives, these stale existences proscribed by another's power. But rather than finding truths that will set them free, the people of the silos find only the ugliness of a plan so vile, so pervasive, that they will never be the same, knowledge so pernicious that it will spark a revolution that no one, not even the great men who set this scheme into motion, could have planned for. The result of this war will shape the world for millennia to come.

A worthy conclusion to one of the most successful pieces of terrifying science fiction ever penned, Dust is a work of beautiful dystopia. Eschewing the gory horror of the many previous works that have flirted with SciFi, and its nearly infinite capacity to imagine new and twisted worlds, Mr. Howey has brought to life a creepily, self-contained world, married it with a truly horrific premise and watched as his dark creation spawned stories to freeze the blood. Repeatedly, the reader is forced to look on helplessly as the people of the silos are battered by an enemy unfathomable to them, an omnipotent, controlling entity for which they have no analogue. Their collapse before its superior weapons and its mysterious knowledge is as inevitable as it is tragic, an all-too-familiar outcome when the strong clash with the weak.

And yet, where in past works the silos have lacked the tools to fight back, here, in Wool's endgame, the lies are seen for what they are. Precious knowledge that, hoarded for so long by the silos' overlords, has trickled out until the resourceful have glimpsed some measure of their master plan and used that knowledge to make, for the first time, plans of their own, to seize their autonomy, to realize that the truth actually can set them free. All of which would have been empty without Wool's previous works in which readers watched the silos bend under the weight of ignorance until it seemed as though they might all break and leave the world without hope. But with such a foundation in place, their outrage, their keen hunger for revenge, puts a fire in these pages that no criticism can douse, that no convenient turn of plot can reduce, that no force of the old world can stop. And it is a privilege to watch it all unfold.

Dust is not a revolution. Quite the contrary. It draws upon many established tropes to craft its tale. But where Mr. Howey supersedes those who've come before him is in the sheer terror he can instill in his environments. The doom, the claustrophobia, of the silos leaves the reader yearning for sunlight, for open spaces, for the world he knows. It leaves him wondering who will be the next character to fall in a war he can't possibly relate to. And in this, the author shows us the true power of knowledge. There are no clever villains spitting pithy lines about how knowledge is power. He doesn't need them. This truth scores every page and leaves no doubt that, short of the suns that give us life, knowledge has no peer.

For anyone remotely interested in scares and society, in prisons of the mind and the burdens of the heart, Wool is the bible you've been waiting for. Read it and its wonderful conclusion and thrill to literature done with style and cold steel. (5/5 Stars)

Elephants, their majesty and their power in The Elephant Whisperer

From The Week of March 3, 2014

The world is a playground for humanity. This is the inevitable conclusion drawn by a species that, for thousands of years, has flourished as Earth's apex predator. No other creature can match our intelligence, our self-awareness, our emotional depth. No other species has produced poets and playwrights, gods and scientists. These findings, these thought experiments, distinguish us from the great dumb herd that comprises the world we are free to exploit.

But naturally, this is nonsense, the destructive conclusion of biased thinking. For humans typically only respect as intelligent things they understand. Present to us music and math problems, politics and prose, that we, on some level, comprehend and we are more than willing to acknowledge your personhood, your worthiness. But communicate to us in a language we're not geared to understand -- the skitterings of the monkey, the song of the whale, the bone-deep vibrations of the elephant -- and you are a beast of burden, a thing whose power is to be harnessed and used to our benefit. This inexcusable intellectual arrogance has not only allowed us to ravage our planet, it has permitted us to do it guilt free. The costs are immeasurable, a truth vividly illustrated in Mr. Anthony's touching life story.

Compared to much of the rest of the world, Africa is a wonderland of biodiversity. Swamps and forests, deserts and jungles together contain a breathtaking spectrum of life, from tiny spiders to gigantic elephants, from venomous snakes to harmless dogs, a balance ecosystem in which the ruthless, millennia-long dance of nature and evolution has unfolded. But now, after countless centuries of natural ebb and flow, this treasure trove of life is under threat, not only from encroaching humans but their externalities as well. Urbanization, climate change and trophy hunting have reduced this once vibrant place to a shadow of what it was. Every year, the deserts grow at the expanse of the forests and once populous creatures are hunted for their meat and their horns, as the glories of evolution are reduced to cliched mementos of man's undeserved prowess.

Recently, however, movements have ignited to push back against this butchery of the wild. Conservationists have succeeded in having huge swaths of African territory designated as nature preserves where the ecosystem is allowed to flourish unmolested by all but a handful of poachers who are dealt with violently and mercilessly. Staffed by naturalists whose life's work is the understanding of and treatment of animals, and funded both by governments and tourism, these reserves hold a mirror up to the world, of how it once was and how it will someday never be, the essence of natural, if cruel, harmony.

The story of Lawrence Anthony, the head of the Thula Thula Game Reserve, The Elephant Whisperer is a charming adventure through the life of a world-class conservationist. Organized around Anthony's reception of a herd of elephants abused and hunted by man and the means by which he restores their health and their trust, the work expands to include lush descriptions of the Reserve: its incredible wildlife, its caring staff, its venomous dangers and its thorny politics which are uneasy at the best of times. Throughout, we are afforded glimpses of lives lived with purpose, not to gain advantage, not to hoard wealth, not even to accrue power; simply to hold on to the glories of what came before, beauty we are all-too-eager to bulldoze in favor of another town, another residential complex, another hotel and casino. In this, it is hard not to think of Anthony and those like him as the guardians of nature, as stewards of life the rest of us dismiss as unworthy.

There can be no doubt that Mr. Anthony's charm and passion rides high throughout The Elephant Whisperer, but it is to the credit of Anthony and his biographer that the elephant herd is the work's beating heart. Over and over, the authors demonstrate the grace and intelligence of these majestic creatures who appear as emotionally connected to their allies and their environment as they are willing to fiercely protect it. Described in vivid detail, their five-ton bodies seem as massive as their awareness of the external world is keen, communicating complex notions of friendship and suspicion with devastatingly simple gestures that leave the reader yearning to witness even one of these life-altering moments of cross-species connection. For they leave no doubt that we are not alone on this world we've claimed, that we share it with others who too-often go unheard in the congress of Earth's affairs.

There are flaws here. For a conservationist, Mr. Anthony is a little too fond of recounting his own successes. The Elephant Whisperer's first half is almost entirely about the compassion that Anthony and his friends have for the animals they steward. One cannot help but imagine an alternate text in which the animals feature more prominently than the humans. However, beginning in the work's second half, a series of devastating failures on Anthony's part allows the reader to forge an emotional connection with him and his cause. We are made to understand just how much this means to him and how much of a difference it makes to the creatures in the reserve. This sweeps aside concerns of egotism, leaving in its wake a heart warmed by the world he is fortunate enough to know so well.

A read with the power to re-shape the way one thinks about both Earth and our role in its concrete future... (4/5 Stars)

A tragicomic romp through a vivid world in the sublime Sharps

From The Week of February 24, 2014

For all but a powerful few, we are pawns in another's game, our lives subject to forces we'll never comprehend. The potent influences of politicians and CEOs, diplomats and warlords, may not seep to the surface of our daily existences, but they are there, nudging us in directions of another's choosing. Part of this shaping is indirect, the ripple effects created by the wakes of society's prime movers, but a significant component is conscious, the tangible result of men and women who believe they are in the right and who are not afraid of acting on that belief. But what if those beliefs are wrong? What if those plans are too cruel to be tolerated? When do we, as the pawns in their games, decide to take ourselves from the board and make our own choices? K. J. Parker poses these very questions in her fascinating, political adventure. The dark energy generated from their answers is enough to make this one of 2012's finest reads.

In a world of merchant banks and triumphant generals, of powerful priests and corrupted nobles, Permia and the Republic of Scheria endure an uneasy peace. The two countries have little in common. Their skills, their gods, even their politics are completely different, leaving little room for common ground. No surprise, then, that the two bickering nations have recently concluded a decades-long war that destroyed the economies of both countries and was only ended thanks to the brilliance, and the brutality, of Scheria's legendary general, Herec Carnufex, infamously known as the Irrigator. However much they may hate one another, though, they do share a love of fencing, a sport which is of fanatical importance in both lands and can perhaps serve as a bridge by which to heal old wounds.

That appears to be the idea behind a mutually agreed-upon tour in which Scheria's finest fencers will be escorted through passionate Permia and set against its greatest swordsmen, in an ostensibly symbolic display of skill and glory. But when Scheria's prime movers select a band of misfits to represent them, more than a few eyebrows are raised in influential circles. A woman? An accidental murderer? A veteran of the Permian war haunted by his service? The Irrigator's second son who seems far more interested in books than blades? This is hardly a team to be feared. So why have they been sent into an unfamiliar land, with foreign customs and unstable politics? Why do they all get the sense that they are taking part in a game none of them understand? As Permia erupts in revolt, they will have to find answers quickly or else full-on war may resume. And this time, there may not be anything left to salvage when the guns have ceased their firing.

Delightful and dour, Sharps is a sublime work of fantasy fiction from an author whose relative obscurity is entirely undeserved. Ms. Bishop does a masterful job of layering her plots with interconnected schemes that slowly, tragicomically unwind through the narrative, ensnaring her characters in webs of lies and powerplays that rarely end well. This sophistication, in both its understanding of the selfishness of human nature and of the corrosiveness of politics, provides the fertile ground from which her complex characters grow.

This is hardly the first time that misfits have been asked to, in some sense, save the world, but rarely has it been done with such class and verve. It is an easy thing to assemble a cast of clowns and watch them bumble their way towards an inevitable conclusion. It is entirely another matter to animate a company of selfish smart-asses, secretive heroes and foolish businessmen, who not only attract the reader's interest and fondness, but who also succeed in elevating themselves from their darkly humorous circumstances to be rounded, plausible individuals, endowed with the tragic desire to do right, to fulfil their own kind of justice. A misstep of any significance on Ms. Bishop's part and Sharps would have slid into the ditch of farcical absurdity, a world in which the outcome loses all mass. That she has avoided as much here is a credit to her skill.

No review of Sharps specifically, and Ms. Bishop's work generally, would be complete without commenting on the mountains of research and experience from which these tales benefit. The author has a complex understanding of banking and trade that surely flows from an inquisitive mind open to the training and the knowledge of numerous disciplines. But these economic principles are mere icing on the cake that is her familiarity with fencing without which the novel would be a pale shadow. The author speaks fluently of not just the moves but the mentality of the fencer, of the fears and moments of explosive action that characterize it. This expertise deeply enriches the work.

Sharps' only flaw is that it is not the beginning of a series, a greater whole for the eager to devour. We must content ourselves with this unmystical gem that, for all its dirty politics, shines like the sun. (5/5 Stars)

An unparalleled view of a darkly divided Israel in My Promised Land

From The Week of February 24, 2014

As much as we are individuals, endowed with our own wills, our own freedoms and our own futures, our lives are profoundly shaped by our ancestors and the lands into which they delivered us. We may rebel against them as a means of establishing our own identities, but the traditions, the habits, the pursuits that they considered important bed down in us until, eventually, we recognize their value and incorporate them into our own worldview. For the fortunate, these inherited values are confined to trivialities like what sporting teams we favor and what kind of manners we hold dear, but for those cultures who have suffered grievously at the hands of others, these values are fundamental to who they are, a series of unbroken vows made to those who died so that others may live. Rarely has this life-defining notion been so exquisitely captured than in Ari Shavit's sociopolitical history of Israel.

A meager strip of coastal and desert land hugging the Mediterranean sea, Israel has been for 60 years, a beacon of democracy and innovation in the Middle East. A fraction of the size of most of its neighboring nations, with whom it is on uneasy terms, it has, since its creation in 1948, consistently and stubbornly fended off annexation, defeating militaristic threats to its sovereignty with superior technology and tactics. Throughout, it has provided a proud and flourishing homeland for the Jewish people who, after the fall of Judea to the Romans in the 1st century, had been forced to nomadically roam through Asia and Europe, spending 1,900 years persisting in lands peopled by those who welcomed them and abhorred them. This disenfranchised journey came to an end in the Second World War when the Nazis' genocidal hatred made it clear that the Jewish people would never be safe living under foreign suns.

However, as much as Israel is an astonishing success, as much as its economic and industrial revolutions have shaped it into a land to be envied and a power to be feared, this triumph has come at a terrible cost to the Palestinian people who occupied this land prior to 1948. Muted and marginalized, their lands stolen and their region transformed, the Palestinians have been forced to watch while their homeland has been developed into a paean to the West: its institutions, its culture and its excesses. This transformation has fuelled resentments, grudges that have hardened with time and ill deeds, into malignancy that eats away at the heart of the Israeli miracle, burdening this new nation with the curse of its problematic founding.

A remarkable, first-hand journey through the 60 years of Israeli history, My Promised Land is a frank, confrontational and profoundly personal accounting of life in the world's first Jewish country in nearly 2,000 years. Mr. Shavit, a journalist for one of Israel's most prominent newspapers, collects the family histories of several of Israel's key luminaries, including that of his own father, and uses them to characterize the political and cultural forces that shape Israeli existence. In this, his work calls to mind George Packer's The Unwinding, an outstanding work of non-fiction with which My Promised Land is more than capable of keeping up. For it is an aggressive, unflinching and honest examination of the actions and the trends that have brought Israel to its present-day crisis with the Arab world.

Of its many virtues, My Promised Land provides the reader with a profound understanding of Zionism, that potent skein of Jewish belief that both founded their nation and seeded its future troubles. The author personalizes the crimes against the Jewish people, elevating them from textbook abstractions into living and breathing atrocities for which there had to be some kind of permanent solution. That became Israel, a land come refuge from tyranny and genocide, a land raised up by Jewish ingenuity and determination into modernity. Here, the indefatigable Jewish spirit is represented with such potence, as the reader watches deserts turned into orange groves, turned into industry, turned into commercial and residential developments, that one is left aglow with a wealth of respect and amazement for these dogged people who, armed with nothing, made a paradise out of sand.

Mr. Shavit could have left it at admiration. He could have penned his paean to Israel's founders and left well enough alone. Instead, in his harsh criticisms of Israel's handling of the displaced Palestinians, he exposes an intellectual honesty that lends his work moral heft. It is not an easy matter to lionize and criticize the same people, but the author manages this with a mixture of fire and class that captures the spirit of heated debate without descending into cynicism and ideology. This caustic fire he reserves for the subsequent generations which he clearly feels have betrayed the spirit of the Founders by squandering their gifts, their efforts, their sacrifices, in a land of hedonistic play and political backbiting. In this, he sounds like all social and political commentators of a certain age, men and women who so celebrate the past that the present seems a pale shadow.

From the Founders to the Ultra-orthodox fundamentalists, from Labor to the hard Right, from the orange groves to Startup Nation, My Promised Land is a sweeping, lively depiction of Israeli life that marvels at its successes and mourns its moral failings. It does not have answers. It does not even have proscriptions. It has only hope, hope that the divisive figures in power today do not ruin the glory of what great men and women devoted themselves to create. He sees a country deeply divided, a country that is increasingly religious and increasingly blind to its own turpitude, but he also remembers that all of this was once, not so long ago, hills and dust. Some measure of that spirit surely lives on today.

A dark and beautiful journey... (4/5 Stars)