Furies Of Calderon: Codex Alera 01 by Jim Butcher

From The Week of August 30, 2009

Fantasy sagas are about as ubiquitous as ice at the North Pole. This copiousness ought to please those readers who enjoy a good escape into a realm of magic, swords and dragons. But unfortunately, fantasy sagas require large investments of time for outcomes that are sometimes far from satisfying, be it the plot, or be it the interminable wait for the next installment in the series -- Paging George R.R. Martin. Helllllllo!

Fear neither in the case of The Codex Alera which is penned by Jim Butcher, of Harry Dresden fame. True, the story is far from original -- young boy with potential grows up to have a hand in the events of his world which is loosely based on the laws and customs of the Roman Empire --, but Mr. butcher's characters and races bring Alera to life. More than that, each book in this series has one moment of immense satisfaction, moments well worth wading through the characteristically long-winded prose to get to.

If you're looking for a fantasy saga that is far more mature than harry Potter, but not nearly so dark as Joe Abercrombie, then look no further. This is perfectly positioned for a reader in their late teens, a story that strikes notes similar to those in Young Adult fiction, but adult enough to thrill. And you might even wince a time or two as well. (4/5 Stars)

Between A Rock And A Hard Place by Aron Ralston

From The Week of August 30, 2009

When Aron Ralston went on a climbing trip in Utah in May of 2003, he was a young man searching for solitude and adventure. Six days later, he was being airlifted to a local area hospital, injured so severely that he was fighting for his life. Between a Rock and a Hard Place is Mr. Ralston's autobiographical account of those harrowing six days, both the challenges he faced and the lengths to which he had to go in order to survive. But this is not a powerful tale just because of Mr. Ralston's extraordinary situation; his serenity in the face of death is striking. Some of this is surely due to shock; another portion is surely due to the hindsight of having survived to tell his tale. Nonetheless, his story is shot through with enough examples of his steadfastness to suggest that Mr. Ralston possesses an admirable degree of self-composure that, one can only imagine, will serve him well in the years to come.(4/5 Stars)

The Secret Man by Bob Woodward

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A Woman In Charge by Carl Bernstein

From The Week of August 30, 2009

Written prior to 2008's Democratic nomination fight with Barak Obama, this is Carl Bernstein's stab at a definitive biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton, from her work as a lawyer on the Watergate case, to her introduction and marriage to Bill Clinton, to her glass-ceiling-busting presence in a leading Arkansan law firm in the 1970s, to the sex scandals, to Mr. Clinton's election to the presidency, to Healthcare in 1994, to Vincent Foster, to Monica Lewinsky, and finally to her own political career, first as senator and then as the Democratic party's presumptive nominee for the American presidency. Ms. Clinton has had a long and remarkable life and Mr. Bernstein leaves few stones unturned as he unsparingly recounts her successes and her failures.

I imagine that Ms. Clinton's supporters will find Mr. Bernstein too harsh and her detractors find him too soft, but I find this to be a sign of a good biography. Mr. Bernstein forsakes much of the muckraking and gossipping that soils most works of this type, producing instead an unflinching portrayal of one of America's most outstanding women. (4/5 Stars)

The Political Brain by Drew Westen

From The Week of August 23, 2009

Why do we vote? Why do we vote for certain people? When we watch political ads, what are we really seeing? Do these ads sway elections? Why do some adds work and others do not? Drew Westen, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emery university, grapples with these questions and more in the Political Brain which argues that human beings are fundamentally manipulatable creatures, susceptible to a whole range of tricks that tug at our mental heartstrings. This fascinating read is both educational and entertaining, pointing out, in the spirit of Robert Cialdini, how we are played and how we can recognize it. This book succeeds as much for the reader trying to learn more about politics as it does for the politician trying to cultivate votes.(4/5 Stars)

Team Of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

From The Week of August 23, 2009

Who is Abraham Lincoln and what was the essence of his greatness? In
Team of Rivals, Ms. Goodwin convincingly argues that it was his willingness to set aside his ego and appoint his political rivals to critical posts within his government that set him apart from other, lesser presidential lights. Ms. Goodwin explores the characters of Mr. Lincoln's rivals, their talents, their ambitions, and their families. And while Lincoln will always be favored by the history books, it's clear that Honest Abe chose well when he surrounded himself with his enemies. They
were, ultimately, able men and he would need every last ounce of their abilities to survive the five stormy years of his presidency. (4/5 Stars)

1864 by Charles Bracelen Flood

From The Week of August 23, 2009

There are certain years which seem to be nexus points in human history, encapsulations of a series of moments in time in which a single decision could begin a cascade of events capable of reshaping the futures of continents. Mr. Flood has fingered 1864 as one of these years for the United States. At its beginning, Abraham Lincoln is barely holding to power, a deeply unpopular president navigating an increasingly untenable war. His political rivals are assembling to challenge him in the general election, at a time when there seems to be no hope on the horizon. But by the end of 1864, Lincoln has not only won reelection, the American Civil War is all but over, with Sherman having burned the last hopes out of the Southern forces. Just how a president on his last legs recovered to be one of the most venerable figures in American history is at the heart of this well-told tale. (4.5/5 Stars)

The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley

From The Week of August 23, 2009

This is an absolutely gripping recount of Hurricane Katrina, both its impact and its aftermath. The author has wonderfully captured a whole host of characters, from the ambitious but criminally dysfunctional mayor of New Orleans, to the completely incompetent head of FEMA, to the emotionally distant President. But if Brinkley exposes a depressing view of politicians and their eagerness to save themselves over their constituents, he lauds the locals who risked their lives many times over to help their fellow citizens in one of America's most devastating floods.Mr. Brinkley has a keen eye for storytelling and pathos and it has served him well with this thorough chronicle of an ugly moment in American history and the lessons that should be learned from it. (4/5 Stars)

Dead Witch Walking: The Hollows 01 by Kim Harrison

From The Week of August 16, 2009

As of this writing, there have been five further instalments in the Hallows series. If they are anything like their progenitor, then they will be pleasing, tantalizing and ultimately fluffy affairs suitable for consumption at beaches and in waiting rooms. Dead Witch Walking takes place in an alternate-universe Cincinnati in which the barriers between earth and its Heaven and Hell have weakened to the extent that magic and the creatures who weave it openly intermingle with the human population. Rachel Morgan, our protagonist, is something of a government enforcer of the rules of magic. And like almost every heroine in detective-flavored fiction, she is charming, smart, overwrought and ultimately finds herself way in over her head. Fun but it will never be more. Ivy, Rachel's vampire friend, is ten times as cool as the main character and that doesn't bode well for the books to come which will inevitably feature Rachel over her supporting cast. (3/5 Stars)

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

From The Week of August 16, 2009

there is almost nothing about this interminable book that I found redeeming. It is a chronicle of the 14th century, in all its calamities, both wars and plagues. Perhaps there is an interesting pattern here, but it's drowned out by the author's obsessive research which dries out the tale to the point of complete desiccation. Still, if you enjoy ridiculously long novels as dry as the Gobe, go for it. (1/5 Stars)

Columbine by Dave Cullen

From The Week of August 16, 2009

This is a powerful retelling of one of the most disturbing and misunderstood events in the history of the United States, the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 which claimed the lives of 13 students plus the two perpetrators. Mr. Cullen challenges the prevailing view of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the instigators of the massacre, as two homicidal teenagers, amped up to kill by the nihilism of Goth culture, as exemplified by Marilyn Manson, and by the desensitizing effects of modern, violent video games. According to Mr. Cullen, these are mischaracterizations brought about by the media's need to judge an event immediately upon its conclusion. The media is not willing to wait months and years for the portraits of Harris (psychopathic) and Klebold (suicidal depressive) to take shape. Nor is it willing to wait around to discover the myriad ways in which the police bungled its response to the massacre. And when it is willing to investigate the lives of the students involved, it focuses on the victims, inadvertently aiding in one family's sanctification of their slain daughter based on an exchange with Harris alleged by witnesses to have never occurred.

But the aftermath of Columbine is only the dark half of Mr. Cullen's tale. The rest is taken up by tender and thoughtful representations of the victims, their lives and dreams, and of the brave teachers who did what they could to help save the defenseless students. Ultimately, Mr. Cullen concludes, Columbine's death toll could have been far higher had Harris and Klebold's plans succeeded as they imagined them. And for a police all too often deaf to nuanced work, that should be a dire warning indeed. An excellent and heartbreaking read. (4/5 Stars)

On Killing by Dave Grossman

From The Week of August 16, 2009

LTC. Grossman, a now retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army, has authored here a work that is as astonishing as it is disturbing. An expert in the study of killing, LTC. Grossman discusses the methods used by militaries the world over to teach their soldiers how to kill. The first half of the 20th century may have been the bloodiest in human history, but On Killing argues that, in fact, most of the soldiers in those wars deliberately fired their weapons inaccurately, in hopes of avoiding killing another human being. However, as the century wore on and military instructors began to incorporate psychological techniques into their training methods, the kill rate for the average soldier shot up, along with an equivalent rise in cases of PTSD among soldiers. It is a provocative argument, but one that LTC. Grossman backs up with statistics and research. His argument has frightening implications for armies of the future which may be completely desensitized to the harsh realities of war. (4/5 Stars)

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

From The Week of August 16, 2009

These days, vampire novels are a dime-a-dozen and for a good reason. The vampire is a powerful force within our culture, the representation of the fear of being different, the fear of what goes bump in the night, the fear of absolute dependence on another human being. Unfortunately, this effort, the first in Ms. Harris' Southern Vampire series, is not one of the more inspired instalments in this genre. True Blood, the HBO drama based upon Dead Until Dark and the novels it spawned, is a considerable improvement upon the work that gave it unlife. (2/5 Stars)

Hubris by Michael Isikoff And David Corn

From The Week of August 09, 2009

I was peripherally aware of the now infamous Sixteen Words in George W. Bush's 2003 State of The Union address and the role that Valerie Plame and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, played in the scandal created by those sixteen words, but it wasn't until I read Hubris, by Isikoff (Newsweek) and Corn (The Nation), that I understood the extent to which the diseased mentality of the Bush Administration drove the White House's vengeful exposing of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent. Though Hubris only tells one side of this difficult and complex story, Isikoff and Corn, together, paint a convincing portrait of a White House set on war in Iraq and how earnestness to avenge 9-11 lead to abuses, not only of the Constitution in the form of the Patriot Act, but of the dubious intelligence used to convince Congress to fund conflict in Iraq in 2003.

Even if readers ideologically disagree with the case put forth in Hubris, they must agree that the work makes two powerful arguments about human nature and its affect on politics and power. Firstly, the more powerful governments are, the more willing they are to use their power to destroy people who disagree with them. This is exemplified by the case of Plame whose career was sabotaged after her husband, a former US ambassador criticized the White House in a New York Times Op Ed. And secondly, the desires of presidents and their administrations are perfectly obvious to the agencies that support them. If a president wants a reason to go to war, those agencies will find a reason, if not by committing fraud then certainly by distorting the findings of science and intelligence to fit the needs of their bosses. This yes men culture is a pernicious force, especially when it is married to an administration willing to go to war over unfinished business. (4/5 Stars)

We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch

From The Week of August 09, 2009

This is a shattering recount of Rwanda's 1994 genocide, how it happened and how this tiny, landlocked, African nation is recovering from the mass slaughter of 800,000 of its citizens in a span of two months during that terrible year. The author has clearly spent time in Rwanda, interviewing the villains and... Well, there simply are no heroes in such a story, only survivors. A difficult read, but worthwhile for anyone interested in how these sorts of unconscionable catastrophes occur. (3/5 Stars)

Influence by rRobert Cialdini

From The Week of August 09, 2009

Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State university, and a self-confessed sucker, explores, in Influence, why we all struggle to say no to people who offer to sell us junk we don't even want! This is a quick and thought provoking read that details techniques companies and charitable groups use to separate us from our money and offers explanations, scientific and otherwise, for why they are so damned good at it, even when we know their game. (4/5 Stars)

Bittersweet by Nevada Barr

From The Week of August 09, 2009

I came across this book by accident, flipping through an audiobook catalogue and stopping on the author's unusual name; I am grateful for this piece of good fortune. In Bittersweet, Nevada Barr has created an amazing and devastating portrait of life in the Old West, specifically, Nevada of late 19th century. Two women, Imogene, a schoolteacher from Pennsylvania, and Sarah, one of her former students, try to carve a life out of a world hostile to them. It is tragedy, love story and landscape porn all rolled into one. I'll remember these vistas for a long time to come. For those of you interested in stories that follow the struggles of women in eras past, or for those who love a good Western, I cannot recommend this read more highly. (4/5 Stars)

The Castle by Franz Kafka

From The Week of August 09, 2009

Kafka floats out there, in western culture, like a mystery waiting to be confronted. Is it enjoyable? No, but The Castle, at least, is a clever and frighteningly labyrinthine denouncement of bureaucracy, both as a concept and as it is applied to governments that existed then and still exist now. I found this to be something of a good piece of art; you halfway understand it, but you walk away knowing there's more there if you just look a bit harder, or is that just an illusion? Interesting and challenging... (3/5 Stars)

Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny

From The Week of August 02, 2009

In 1948, in the first post-WWII clash between Soviet Russia and the Allied powers, the USSR cut off rail traffic into the sections of Berlin, Germany, under Allied control. It was an attempt to force the West to acknowledge the inevitability of a Germany governed from Moscow and withdraw its support. Instead, an effort to fly cargo into the Allied-controlled zones was organized by the United States Air Force and backed by British, Australian, and Canadian planes. By the end of 1949, 200,000 missions had been flown, delivering 13,000 tons of food to starving Berliners. The USSR eventually withdrew its blockade and the Berlin Airlift was credited with halting the Soviet advance into Europe.

Candy Bombers by Mr. Cherhny tells the tale of the men who proposed and then made possible the remarkable airlift and the pilots who flew those missions, some of whom would be remembered for generations as the men who dropped candy to the children of Berlin during one of its darkest hours. (4/5 Stars)

A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous

From The week of August 02, 2009

The sheer tonnage of books rehashing the events of World War II could sink ten Titanics. Problematically, most of these accounts are bird's-eye-view retellings of the war in its totality, accounts which naturally neglect the streetside view of the devastation: homes, lives, careers. We know what Churchill thought, what Roosevelt thought, what Hitler thought, what Stalin thought. What about the common people: the shopworker, the office assistant, the train operator, the laundress? A Woman in Berlin is a wonderful and disturbing diary of one young woman's experiences in that war-torn city from April to June of 1945. She seemingly spares few details as she recounts her sufferings at the hands of vengeful Soviet soldiers occupying Berlin, her daily struggles to find food and employment in a bombed-out city, and her feelings for the man (Hitler) who got Germany into the mess. This volume deals with mature subjects, but I found it essential to humanizing the everyday victims of war the world over. (3/5 stars)