Burn Me Deadly: Eddie Lacrosse 02 by Alex Bledsoe

From The Week of August 29, 2010

disappointment is all the more poignant when it is wholly unexpected. On the heels of the success of The Sword-edged Blonde, my high hopes for this second novel in the sword-and-sorcery/noir-detective crossover series from Mr. Bledsoe were shattered. The individual novels within detective series often stand alone, with only a handful of subtle callbacks to prior novels, but the fantasy setting here made me expect more of a connection to its excellent progenitor. Instead, I received a somewhat muddled tale of damsels and dragons which was too goofy to earn the proper gravitas.

Good deeds never go unpunished. Eddie Lacrosse, a swordsman who is what passes for a private investigator in his kingdom, is riding home one night when his offer to help a damsel in obvious distress draws him into a violent confrontation with a gang of thugs who nearly take his life. Lacrosse, who escapes the hangman's noose, has only two clues, the voice of a torturer and the polished boots of the ringleader. From here, he starts an investigation which will not end until royal secrets and mystic powers have had their say, culminating in the return to the kingdom of fearsome creatures thought long gone.

The mystery here doesn't hold a candle to that which both animated and memorably darkened The Sword-edged Blonde. Withithout that, and with the roster of characters largely constricted to Lacrosse, some damsels, and a handful of villains, there's not a lot here to embrace. We know from the first novel that Mr. Bledsoe has the skill to draw from the strengths of different genres to create an exciting, literary amalgam, but Burn Me Deadly simply does not ignite as its predecessor did. It's sword-and-sorcery themes are barely above the level of Dungeons and Dragons and its detection component is hardly noticeable. I will probably read the next entry, but my enthusiasm has been all but snuffed out. (2/5 Stars),/B>
disappointment is all the more poignant when it is wholly unexpected. On the heels of the success of The Sword-edged Blonde, my high hopes for this second novel in the sword-and-sorcery/noir-detective crossover series from Mr. Bledsoe were shattered. The individual novels within detective series often stand alone, with only a handful of subtle callbacks to prior novels, but the fantasy setting here made me expect more of a connection to its excellent progenitor. Instead, I received a somewhat muddled tale of damsels and dragons which was too goofy to earn the proper gravitas.

Good deeds never go unpunished. Eddie Lacrosse, a swordsman who is what passes for a private investigator in his kingdom, is riding home one night when his offer to help a damsel in obvious distress draws him into a violent confrontation with a gang of thugs who nearly take his life. Lacrosse, who escapes the hangman's noose, has only two clues, the voice of a torturer and the polished boots of the ringleader. From here, he starts an investigation which will not end until royal secrets and mystic powers have had their say, culminating in the return to the kingdom of fearsome creatures thought long gone.

The mystery here doesn't hold a candle to that which both animated and memorably darkened The Sword-edged Blonde. Withithout that, and with the roster of characters largely constricted to Lacrosse, some damsels, and a handful of villains, there's not a lot here to embrace. We know from the first novel that Mr. Bledsoe has the skill to draw from the strengths of different genres to create an exciting, literary amalgam, but Burn Me Deadly simply does not ignite as its predecessor did. It's sword-and-sorcery themes are barely above the level of Dungeons and Dragons and its detection component is hardly noticeable. I will probably read the next entry, but my enthusiasm has been all but snuffed out. (2/5 Stars)

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

From The Week of August 29, 2010

I'm sure that some have, and will, argue that Ms. Sebold's most famous work is too graphic and exploitative for comfort. Given the vividness of its heroine's ordeal, I can understand why. But though The Lovely Bones has its moment of appalling horror, and though that moment has the power to turn even a strong stomach, the moment is the axle around which the wheel of Ms. Sebold's story spins. Without that moment, her characters are pale shadows of their powerful, grieving selves.

Ms. Sebold is not the first author to have her narrator play almost no role in her own story, but she must surely be on a short list of authors who have their narrators conduct their stories from the afterlife. Susie Salmon, our young, innocent protagonist, has no sooner introduced herself to us when she is gruesomely attacked and murdered after taking a shortcut home from school. The perpetrator's identity is quite clear from the beginning of the book, but then Ms. Sebold has no reason to hide his identity. Susie is the only character who knows the truth and she has already begun her journey to her own personal heaven which is quiet, peaceful and safe. It is from this near nirvana that Susie looks down on her hometown and her grieving family, narrating their struggles to overcome first her disappearance and then her loss. She shows us the policeman who burns out trying to solve her case, her best friend whose life is changed forever by her loss, her sister who grows up in a home haunted by her, and her parents who simply cannot cope with her bodiless departure. As the years roll on and her memory slowly fades, everyone who knew her struggles to return to normalcy, but susie cannot relinquish the world until her case is solved, an act of justice that is a long time in coming to her.

The Lovely Bones is a wonderful and clever novel which overturns the traditional idea of a mystery. It reveals murdered and murderer to the reader in the first 20 pages, but holds back the means of the resolution until the last 20, a technique which proved devilishly effective in keeping me glued to the narrative. It's ironic then that susie is the story's least compelling character. I found nothing about her journey interesting or revelatory, but this may have been a consequence of the poignancy of the rest of the novel's characters who were, to a one, affecting and intense. I agree with those who believe that the murder was too graphic. It was, in all its grotesqueness, voyeuristic. Nonetheless, the extent to which that single event drives the novel and shapes its players is its greatest virtue. I doubt that this is the same novel without that moment of stomach-churning horror.Heartfelt work. (3/5 Stars)

The Most Powerful Idea In The World by William Rosen

From The Week of August 22, 2010

In what is at times both a dry and a fascinating investigation into the transformative effect steam power had upon the industrial revolution and the future of the Western world, Mr. Rosen ambitiously amalgamates the mechanics of the steam engine with the economics of invention to create a coherent explanation for the rise of Western power and the making of the modern world.

What began with Thomas Newcomen culminated in James Watt who, when he finally perfected his prototype steam engine, could not have imagined how his invention would ignite a revolution and change a world forever. While Mr. Rosen explores the various versions of Watt's design, he argues that the fact that Watt profited off the steam engine was a critical catalyst for the industrial revolution. It convinced other inventors that there was money to be made in invention, that it wasn't simply a playground for the independently wealthy as it had been for centuries prior. To make this case, Mr. Rosen draws into his tale Matthew Boulton, a wealthy businessman who capitalized Watt's experiments after Watt's partner defaulted on a debt to Boulton and turned over his share in the invention to the magnate. Boulton, a believer in the engine's transformative powers, lobbied hard for the British parliament to update its patent laws to protect the financial rights of inventors. Parliament agreed and, in doing so, took the final step into the industrial revolution for, now, with steam to power everything from naval ships to coal extraction, anything was possible.

Though it's clear that Mr. Rosen set out to write a biography of the steam engine, his contention that patents were a key factor in the rise of the modern world ends up philosophically dominating his book. This is to the good. Otherwise, this work would be little more than a series of tedious and lengthy descriptions of the engine's evolution which, nonetheless, burden it with fatiguing detail. If the argument for patents is its greatest virtue and the steam engine its most annoying sin, then Mr. Rosen's portraits of the lives and aims of the inventors and their investors elevates the subject from the purely academic to the powerfully universal. I side with those like Michael Heller who argue that patents now harm as much as help invention, but Mr. Rosen's case leaves little doubt that, without such financial protections to set fuse to the industrial revolution, we may still be living in a pre-electronic world. In this way, patents may be like unions, necessities for establishing a fair balance between the rights of interested parties, but burdens when those balances are established. In other words, their usefulness may diminish with the advancement of society.

Overly technical, but thoroughly argued. And I loved the scale of the work which stops just short of being overly ambitious. (3/5 Stars)

The Story Of Stuff by Annie Leonard

From The Week of August 22, 2010

This irredeemably pompous commentary on all matters environmental drove me as close as I've ever come to doing physical violence to a piece of literature. Ms. Leonard seems to have no sense of her own conceit as she proceeds to spend 350 pages castigating humanity for its wastefulness. According to Ms. Leonard, when it comes to commercialism, both in the buying and the selling, we are constant polluters, destroying our natural habitat by manufacturing chemicals and materials that, when they are no longer useful, get dumped into the environment. Everything from the toxicity of our shampoo to the guts of our computers are targets for Ms. Leonard's guilty rage. Oh, but there's someone arriving to save the day, with a new plan for how we can live in perfect harmony with the world. I'll give you one guess at the identity of this green caped crusader. Yes, got it in one, Ms. Leonard herself.

I am socially liberal. I believe in recycling, in reusing, in saving water, in solar power. On most points, Ms. Leonard and I philosophically agree. And yet the outrage, the guilt and the complete self-absorption pouring forth from these pages is difficult to swallow. As Ms. Leonard recounts the ways in which she's bravely fought entire state governments to bring justice to the voiceless, as she describes how her short film about the trashing of the environment has brought elementary school kids to tears, her pride towers over her work like a storm cloud ginned up by Global Warming. I read to educate myself on my world, my species, my universe. But how can I trust the opinions and the facts of someone so clearly taken by their own self-importance?

The Story Of Stuff is about the ways in which we waste and pollute. It tries to educate us on some of the toxins, some of the chemicals, some of the processes, and some of the solutions. These are worthy goals. But the good is drowned out by the parade Ms. Leonard throws for herself. This is a bitter disappointment and perhaps the most egregious example of self-aggrandizement I've read in years. (1/5 Stars)

The Sword-edged Blonde: Eddie Lacrosse 01 by Alex Bledsoe

From The Week of August 22, 2010

It is my contention that, to find quality fiction, one of the most successful courses is to seek out genre-bending novels. These are stories which either mash two genres together, or which do not easily conform to a single genre. Why is this true? Simple. This is where you will find authors who are unwilling to follow in the tired footsteps of those who came before them, authors who aspire to do and say more than can be done and said by yet another iteration within an established genre. These authors will fumble and misstep like the rest of us -- they are human after all --, but their willingness to venture forth into relatively uncharted territory ensures that, for the reader, the ride will be new and exciting. Mr. Bledsoe did not himself come up with the re-imagining of the noir detective story in a fantasy-fiction setting, but it is a young and fertile field in which The Sword-edged Blonde is a worthy contributer.

If one transported the 1930s noir detective into a kingdom of swords and sorcery, then Eddie Lacrosse would be the result, a world-weary, ex-mercenary swordsman whose eye for a good woman is about as poor as his ability to avoid trouble. Lacrosse is what passes for a private investigator in his corrupted monarchy, working out of the upstairs floor of a tavern managed by one of his many mysterious friends. He works hard at his mostly thankless craft while trying to forget an event in his past which has left upon him a deep scar. But when Philip, a childhood friend and now king of a neighboring realm, asks for Lacrosse's aid in exonerating Philip's queen of a grievous crime, Lacrosse is unceremoniously dumped into his dark past, revisiting it even while he sets out to clear a wronged queen's sullied name.

Mysteries depend upon their plots and their characters to win the day and in neither case does Mr. Bledsoe let us down. The former is suitably twisted in knots, introducing us into a world of hard lives and even harder gods and with very little justice to be found anywhere. The latter are lead by Lacrosse, a charming rogue with a heart blackened by time and loss. But he is not as irredeemable as he would have us believe, as evidenced by the strength of his ties to Philip which have the power to provoke him to right a wrong not of his making. The secondary players are just as strong. From the creatures inhabiting Lacrosse's home base at the tavern to Kathy, the messenger woman who travels with him for much of the book, they enliven a tale Lacrosse could not have carried on his own. Couple all this with a suitably dark conclusion and one has, in their hands, a tight, well-imagined story that is as charming in its unconventionality as it is disturbing in its darkness. Enjoyable. (3/5 Stars)

Mistakes Were Made But Not by Me by Carol Tavris And Elliot Aronson

From The Week of August 15, 2010

To best appreciate Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, both respected social psychologist's, this reader recommends an open and inquisitive mind. For this is not a sedate stroll around the edges of science. This is a sometimes difficult and always confronting climb up the mountains of self-deception and self-justification which, to some degree, challenge us all. That said, mistakes Were Made is charming, well-researched, and satisfying for those seeking to shine a little enlightenment on human behavior. (3/5 Stars)

Click here to read my full review up at my website.

Empire Of Blue Water by Stephan Talty

From The Week of August 15, 2010

When one picks up a naval history, one does not expect to be excited by the tale. They should be dry affairs, reflecting their antiquity. After all, 17th century captains of the sea have about as much in common with the current day as a pebble does with the moon and nobody pays that much heed to a pebble. And yet, Mr. Talty surprises and entertains with this riotous chronicle of what reads like a glorious time of chaos in the seas of our fair world.

In contrast to the power it would wield in later centuries, the 1600s were difficult and choppy waters for the British empire. While kings were being beheaded, while republicanism was being trialed, and while parliamentary systems were being empowered, England had to combat the ascendancy of Spain which had recently struck it filthy rich in South America. Unable to compete financially with a Spanish empire rolling in gold and silver, Britain had but one option, to lower its pompous standards and employ sea pirates as legitimate agents of the realm, funding them and contracting them to engage with the Spanish navy. For a powerful Spain not only threatened the security of British colonies, it threatened the safety of the isles themselves. No man was better positioned to take up this British hand of friendship than captain Henry Morgan. Now remembered more for the commercial rum that bears his name than for his own life as a terror of the seas, Morgan was eager to attain legitimacy in the eyes of his homeland. And so he set about outfitting, crewing and sailing a fleet of pirate ships that brought the Spanish Navy to its knees. Captain Morgan and his many victories and defeats are captured vividly by Mr. Talty who does not fail to provide an edifying big-picture backdrop to the career of one of the most successful and enthusiastic of pirate kings.

It seems a universal human truism that the privileged only ever entertain associations with commonfolk when their interests and their positions of power are threatened. Then, the privileged are grateful for every friend they can reliably claim. But when the rightful way of things is restored and the privileged are once again in safe harbor, then they have no time whatsoever for the knaves who helped keep them from ruin. So it went with captain Morgan whose successes only proved his downfall. The larger the threat he was to the Spanish, the more he and his pirates became a point of negotiation between the great powers. And Britain wasn't going to sacrifice an agreement with the Spanish over a bunch of rogues. Mr. Talty does a wonderful job capturing not only the highs and lows of a pirate's life, he nails the hypocrisy of the powerful men who needed them and then threw them away. He leaves us with a dazzling portrait of what must have been an amazing time on the contested Atlantic. (4/5 Stars)

Over The Edge by Greg Child

From The Week of August 15, 2010

What is intrinsic to rock climbing that makes such excellent journalists of its enthusiasts? Is it the isolation that grants them time to think and muse on the human condition? Is it the investigation of ones soul, a prerequisite for extreme pursuits, that sharpens their minds for the re-tracing of complex stories? Whatever the cause, I'm grateful for it. It has given us authors the likes of Mr. Child and Mr. Krakauer, writers of both skill and distinction. Over The Edge is a tale almost as amazing as Into Thin Air. It is certainly a tale twice as bizarre. It is a tale that won't be forgotten.

In 2000, four rock-climbers from the United States traveled to the mountains of central Asia on a planned climbing trip. Fully supplied, they had no sooner set out on their adventure, across some of the most remote terrain on Earth, when Islamic rebels fighting an insurgency in Kyrgyzstan stumbled across them and, for six days, held them hostage. The rebels marched them through enemy terrain, forcing them to come under fire from the regulars in the Kyrgyz military who were targeting the rebels. Remarkably, the hostages managed to survive both the combat and their captivity, using English -- a foreign language to the rebels -- to plan their eventual breakout. Though this harrowing ordeal understandably takes center stage, Mr. Child is meticulous in his portrayal of each of the four Americans. And though his desire to give equal representation to the rebels is thwarted by both circumstance and the skittishness of Kyrgyz authorities, his efforts here have the thoroughness characteristic of dogged pursuit of the truth.

On their own, the ordeal and Mr. Child's coverage of said ordeal would combine to tell an exciting tale, but an unexpected twist catapults Over The Edge into even stranger territory. For there have since been allegations levelled by Kyrgyz authorities that the American climbers lied about their captivity. Having questioned the only rebel left from the band that captured the Americans, these authorities claimed that the prisoner, under Kyrgyz questioning, denied knowledge of the incident and that the Americans may have had ulterior motives in publicizing what was, for Kyrgyzstan, an embarrassing lapse in internal security. Mr. Child's book, then, necessarily becomes a piece of investigative journalism as much as a story about rock-climbing and it's the better for it. Mr. Child missed his calling as a detective. Good work covering a fascinating trial. (3/5 Stars)

Too Far From Home by Chris Jones

From The Week of August 15, 2010

Having been suffering an occasional bout of insomnia, I was reluctantly awake early on the morning of February 1st, 2003, when Columbia, one of NASA's four space shuttles, broke up upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. I was four years old when Challenger met an equally horrific fate. And so, watching Columbia's end play out on CNN, I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Even if the cause of the disaster wasn't immediately clear, its ramifications were.

This spectacular catastrophe, occurring in an era of 24/7 media saturation, would have dire consequences for not only the shuttle program but NASA itself. Mr. Jones, a writer and editor at Esquire, captures Columbia's last flight, its mechanics and its fallout for the American space program. But while his book does credit to these weighty issues, it is inarguably at its best as it chronicles the harrowing return to Earth for the astronauts who, as a consequence of NASA grounding the shuttle fleet in the wake of the disaster, were stranded on the International Space Station. NASA's parallel efforts to bring the astronauts home, ultimately with Russian aid, and to discover the fatal flaw that provoked Columbia's doom is woven nicely into the broader public-relations implications of the disaster. Politically and philosophically, Columbia changed NASA's behavior, igniting a conversation about not only manned exploration of space but the cost-benefit analysis of that exploration using shuttles that were then 25 years old.

This is a tale with many players, almost all of whom equivocate as a result of what they have to lose politically, fiscally or socially. Mr. Jones does a credible if unspectacular job with the broader picture. Where he excels is with the stranded astronauts who remained on the ISS far longer than planned and returned home in what was, to say the least, the most unorthodox of ways. This is good work and it tells a story worth telling. (3/5 Stars)

Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent

From The Week of August 15, 2010

Partially as a consequence of her yearlong social experiment living outwardly as a man, an experiment documented in Self-made Man, Ms. Vincent experienced a resurgence in her chronic depression. The intensity of this episode was serious enough that she was encouraged by her therapist to commit herself to a mental institution. Ms. Vincent, whose curiosity is commendably boundless, turned her time as an in-patient into an opportunity to observe not only the personalities of her fellow detainees, but the attitudes of their keepers. The results of what she saw in her initial stay, and what she went onto witness in her investigational visits, are documented in a book that is, at times, moving and disturbing.

Voluntary Madness is driven by two core purposes: the quest for mental health in the modern, American medical system and an investigation into and expose of that same medical system. After recovering her equilibrium, Ms. Vincent checks out of her hospital and, provoked by her time there, decides to update the Nelly Bligh experiment. She voluntarily checks herself into three American, wellness centers which range from the entirely mainstream to the completely quirky. At each stop in her journey, she chronicles the injustices she witnesses, from the aloof doctors, to the system's over-reliance on sedatives, to the cruelties of burnt-out orderlies. But Ms. Vincent isn't always critical. She's careful to document the positives, though, these seem frighteningly and dangerously contingent upon the having of a good and ethical doctor. Throughout the investigation, Ms. Vincent comments on the drugs the patients are given, sketching out their histories, their over-proscription, and the healthy relationships their manufacturers have with the doctors who issue them.

This is excellent work. It would have been easy for Ms. Vincent to decry all that she saw, condemning it in the name of simple outrage, but her approach, while critical, feels even-handed and fair. Her ability to humanize even the worst of her fellow inmates is admirable and shows the open-mind necessary for the undertaking of a project as serious as this. Her criticism of the insurance industry, which drives up the cost for people in need of help, is rightfully savage. But it's her own journey to find the right path towards wellness that earned my sympathy. Many of us cannot relate to the problems suffered by those with chronic depression, but virtually all of us have had to confront a massive problem in our lives which did not come packaged with a ready solution, a problem whose investigation only threw up a myriad of possible answers which weren't guaranteed to be effective. This is the exact dilemma faced by so many of those like Ms. Vincent. And it's clear that everyone from the politicians, to the insurers, to the doctors, are letting them down. (4/5 Stars)

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman

From The Week of August 15, 2010

This first installment in a duology from Ms. Goodman, an Australian author of SF is very nearly the perfect coming-of-age novel. Not only does it illustrate the isolating awkwardness of adolescence, it empathizes with women and girls across the span of human time who have been shackled by societal prejudice against their gender.

In a realm patterned on Chinese mythology, the twelve energy dragons of good fortune operate, through their human representatives, and in accordance with the sitting emperor, to maintain balance and order in the realm. The human representatives of the dragons are always boys, chosen at the age of 12 to apprentice with their dragon's human master. When the master retires, the apprentice takes his place and assumes much of the dragon's power. After being plucked from the empire's slums, Eon has become his master's last and best hope of being chosen by a dragon, an honor which conveys much prestige upon the chosen's teacher. But Eon has a secret that only his master knows, that he is, in fact, a girl masquerading as a boy. A girl has not been chosen for generations, a consequence of society's discriminatory policies towards women. Eon initially fails at her choosing, but this defeat sets into motion a series of events which, if Eon can bring herself to embrace her identity, will see her shape the future of the empire.

Though Ms. Goodman's plot is simplistic, with many of its outcomes obvious, this book is about self-discovery, not complexity. The setting here, with its emperors, and its dragons and its mysticism, is to service Eon's evolution from a fearful and powerless girl, hiding behind a boy's mask, to a brave and composed young woman who can stand on her own and accept her identity in spite of her society's disapproval. Ms. Goodman's allegory, through Eon, is delightfully poignant. She has used the attainment of mystical powers as a stand-in for self-acceptance, teaching us that confidence and personal power only come through the embracing of ones true nature. It is beautifully done. But for a few moments on the harrowing side, for teenaged readers, this is a must-read for struggling adolescents. (4/5 Stars)

Hitler's Holy Relics by Sidney Kirkpatrick

From The Week of August 08, 2010

With events as well-chronicled as World War II, it is inevitable that historians will tire of covering the big battles and turn their inquisitive powers upon a phenomenon's more eccentric incidents. All spectacular events have them, bizarre chapters in which the insanity of war produces some truly strange episodes. Most of these chapters are lost to the vicissitudes of time, but not this war, not this conflict which redefined a world... Mr. Kirkpatrick's encapsulation of one of the strangest incidents in World War II, the German fixation with the trappings of ancient power, is a study in how the examination of a single thread inside the greater tapestry can lead to a better understanding of the big picture.

Throughout the war, it was clear to the Allies, and the world, that the Nazis were looting works of art from conquered territories and relocating them to German museums. Hitler, Mr. Kirkpatrick argues, instigated this systematic theft not just to legitimize his supremacy, he believed that, as the leader of the Aryans on Earth, he and his people owned supposedly Aryan art. The plan was to transform Nuremberg into a capital of art and a monument to the power of the Aryan race, creating a historical link, through time, from the killing of Christ down to Hitler himself. Of the many looted works, Charlemagne's crown jewels had the greatest significance. Even they might have had to take a back seat to the Lance of Destiny, otherwise known as the spear a Roman soldier used to skewer Christ, had it been authenticated. It is likely a fake.

Hitler's Holy Relics follows the efforts of Lieutenant Walter Horn, a German-born, naturalized US citizen who, in 1945, headed up a special unit tasked with recovering the looted works of art so that they could be returned to their proper owners. Horn, who went on to be a medieval scholar and an art historian at UC Berkeley, is one of those heroes, an ordinary, honest soul thrust into extraordinary events. His doggedness and his courage in the face of both German denials and Allied obfuscation, is a study in tenacity and honesty as he attempted to right a horrific wrong. It is a story that needed to be told, not just to give the rightful glory to an everyday hero, but to shed light on the madness of men like Hitler, men who believe so strongly in their vision of the world that there is no crime too heinous, no wrong too horrific, to keep them from reshaping it to fit their own beliefs.

This is a wonderful story told wonderfully well. (4/5 Stars)

Vampires by John Steakley

From The Week of August 08, 2010

Armor may not be the best piece of science fiction around, but at least that effort from Mr. Steakley is worth the paper its printed on. Vampires, the other of Steakley's famous works, is a repugnant accumulation of violence and despair that, for me, has no redeeming value.

The inspiration for the John Carpenter film of the same name, this tour de ugliness plunges the reader into a world darkened by vicious vampires which have swept across the world. Standing against the supernatural tide is Vampire INC., an Catholic-funded organization of mercenary cells which can be hired by local communities to exterminate the dangerous leeches. It's a decent premise for a vampire novel, perhaps even for a film, but Mr. Steakley's utter inability to infuse a shred of redeeming virtue in any of his characters dooms the tale. Which is well enough given that Vampires barely has a plot, unless one defines plot as overwrought dialogue squeezed between episodes of slaughter and nihilism.

The vampire as a concept, as a creature, is a wonderful way to explore the dark side of human nature. It is the manifestation of a truth that often rides just beneath the surface of human interaction, that humans feed off of one another on a daily basis, that some of use and exploit our fellows, while others give and heal. Mr. Steakley decides to ignore any notion of nuance, instead creating a paean to blood and death which gives the genre a bad name. (1/5 Stars)

Packing For Mars by Mary Roach

From The Week of August 08, 2010

Ms. Roach's quirky insight have served her well in the past. I found Stiff particularly delightful in its exploration of the various uses society has for the human cadaver. Consequently, I'm disappointed to report that Packing For Mars, an investigation into the nitty-gritty of human space travel, is disappointingly trivial and, at times, even surprisingly puerile.

If the human race is not to become extinct, we will eventually have to travel to other planets. Short of discovering some Star-Trek-like piece of technology which can replenish the Earth of all its finite resources, we will plunder Earth's reserves of metals and oils until there is nothing left to consume. Fortunately for us, there are other planets in the Solar System which have abundant resources we can put to our use, but it's the getting there to retrieve them that's slightly tricky. Enter Ms. Roach who has focused her inquisitive mind upon NASA and its efforts to work out some of the basic problems of interstellar travel. But Ms. Roach isn't so much interested in phasers and photon torpedos. She wants to know about the real challenges that never seem to make it into Star Wars. How will astronauts go to the bathroom? How will they not shrivel up into pretzels from lack of gravity? How do we solve for that pesky vertigo thing anyway? These and other basic questions dominate Packing For Mars which is, at root, an inquest into the plumming of space travel.

To the extent that Ms. Roach has investigated and publicized an under-represented aspect of space travel, her book is a success. It educates us on many of the problems future astronauts will have to face, particularly those which present in a weightless environment. And yet there's something juvenile about the pleasure Ms. Roach takes in all the shit and the vomit. The former, apparently, have been known to escape their containers to float around the cabins of spacecraft in zero-G, while the latter can spill around the inside of a spacesuit helmet if not properly dealt with.

Really? Space travel has to be reduced to this? I understand and respect Ms. Roach's attempt to speak to the real science of space travel, but she has over-shot realism and wound up in the gutter. I'm always up for a realistic discussion of the challenges of journeying to the stars, but maybe just a bit less puke next time.(2/5 Stars)

The Bicycle Runner by G. Franco Romagnoli

From The Week of August 08, 2010

Mr. Romagnoli's wonderful memoir of life in Rome during the occupation of the Nazis is as laugh-out-loud irreverent as it is heart-warming. Mr. Romagnoli, a student during the Second World War, looks back on one of Rome's harshest times with humor and hindsight, able to discuss the broader events of the war's impact on Rome alongside the machinations of his family's squabbles. It's clear that, for all of war's deprivations, Mr. Romagnoli would never quit living his life and doing what little he could to resist the Germans.

Click here to read the full review up at my website.

Shop Class As Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford

From The Week of August 08, 2010

In Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft, the blending together of government policies, cheap money in the form of credit, and changing social mores have created fertile ground for the pestilent spread of the management class over that most noble of endangered breeds, the Tradesman. Modern America, Crawford argues, has not only been negligent in its failure to nurture manufacturing as a species of the American economy, it has looked the other way while paper-pushing Managers overwhelmed the workforce.

Click here to read the rest of this review at my website.

Self-made Man by Norah Vincent

From The Week of August 08, 2010

If it weren't for the sincerity of Ms. Vincent's effort to investigate the human condition, Self-made Man would be nothing more than 300 pages of painful self-absorption. Fortunately for the reader, Ms. Vincent does take her subject seriously and, as a result, her effort here is nothing short of a wonderful exploration of what it is to be male.

In the 1990s, on a dare from a friend, Ms. Vincent spent a night in New York City passing as a man. It was a bit of fun, a game, nothing more, but the experience of that night must have stuck with her because, a few years later, she revisited the experiment, this time with considerably more commitment. Ms. Vincent resolved to spent an entire year as a man, enlisting the aid of her friends and some experts to perfect what would be a nearly impenetrable disguise. From her clothes to her walk, Ms. Vincent spared no aspect of herself in the transformation, even co-opting techniques for fake facial hair that would pass if not looked at too closely. But Ms. Vincent didn't just undergo a physical transformation; she changed her identity as well, adopting Ned as the name of her male alter ego and hanging out with a new set of guy friends who did not know she was a woman. As the year unfolds, Ned penetrates the various sanctums of maleness: the bar, the strip club, the monastery, the work place, all in an effort to discover the essence of maleness. Would they treat her differently as Ned than they would as Norah?

It's a fascinating experiment, but why go to all this fuss? Surely, subsuming ones natural personality for a disguise as complete as this takes a mental toll, like an actor who is never allowed to leave character. Though Ms. Vincent acknowledges that issues around her appearance were certainly in play -- she describes herself as presenting as boyish for a woman --, the knife must cut deeper than this. After all, other boyish women do not devote themselves to this kind of rigorous self-examination. No, her experiment is an effort to grasp, to know, her core identity. It is this central question that makes her experiment so captivating. Even as Ned moves awkwardly through the male world, learning their mannerisms, their rhythms of speech, their methods of expending their frustrations, we watch Ms. Vincent processing what she's seeing and feeling, comparing the input to herself, to her friends, to how she thinks she ought to be. In this way, Ms. Vincent is using an exploration of masculinity, in all its virtues and warts, as a means of exploring what it means to be feminine.

I cannot imagine any mental condition more traumatizing than feeling as though my body did not belong to me. It must be a shattering sensation, a sensation whose cause remains largely mysterious to us. Ms. Vincent's brave undertaking entertains us with its look at manhood in all its debauchery and sexual preoccupation, but it's what her experiment says about the nature of identity that educates and amazes. This is an unusual piece of non-fiction and well worth the read. (4/5 Stars)

If it weren't for the sincerity of Ms. Vincent's effort to investigate the human condition, Self-made Man would be nothing more than 300 pages of painful self-absorption. Fortunately for the reader, Ms. Vincent does take her subject seriously and, as a result, her effort here is nothing short of a wonderful exploration of what it is to be male.

In the 1990s, on a dare from a friend, Ms. Vincent spent a night in New York City passing as a man. It was a bit of fun, a game, nothing more, but the experience of that night must have stuck with her because, a few years later, she revisited the experiment, this time with considerably more commitment. Ms. Vincent resolved to spent an entire year as a man, enlisting the aid of her friends and some experts to perfect what would be a nearly impenetrable disguise. From her clothes to her walk, Ms. Vincent spared no aspect of herself in the transformation, even co-opting techniques for fake facial hair that would pass if not looked at too closely. But Ms. Vincent didn't just undergo a physical transformation; she changed her identity as well, adopting Ned as the name of her male alter ego and hanging out with a new set of guy friends who did not know she was a woman. As the year unfolds, Ned penetrates the various sanctums of maleness: the bar, the strip club, the monastery, the work place, all in an effort to discover the essence of maleness. Would they treat her differently as Ned than they would as Norah?

It's a fascinating experiment, but why go to all this fuss? Surely, subsuming ones natural personality for a disguise as complete as this takes a mental toll, like an actor who is never allowed to leave character. Though Ms. Vincent acknowledges that issues around her appearance were certainly in play -- she describes herself as presenting as boyish for a woman --, the knife must cut deeper than this. After all, other boyish women do not devote themselves to this kind of rigorous self-examination. No, her experiment is an effort to grasp, to know, her core identity. It is this central question that makes her experiment so captivating. Even as Ned moves awkwardly through the male world, learning their mannerisms, their rhythms of speech, their methods of expending their frustrations, we watch Ms. Vincent processing what she's seeing and feeling, comparing the input to herself, to her friends, to how she thinks she ought to be. In this way, Ms. Vincent is using an exploration of masculinity, in all its virtues and warts, as a means of exploring what it means to be feminine.

I cannot imagine any mental condition more traumatizing than feeling as though my body did not belong to me. It must be a shattering sensation, a sensation whose cause remains largely mysterious to us. Ms. Vincent's brave undertaking entertains us with its look at manhood in all its debauchery and sexual preoccupation, but it's what her experiment says about the nature of identity that educates and amazes. This is an unusual piece of non-fiction and well worth the read. (4/5 Stars)

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

From The Week of August 01, 2010

Mr. Gladwell's work has received admiring praise from a public enchanted with his capacity to find nuggets of revealing information in a sea of social and economic data. But while Outliers is a credit to him and to his dogged research, I come away from the piece feeling as though I've spent a few hours with an overeager salesman. Mr. Gladwell tries too hard to convince us that his informational nuggets are the definitive answers to questions that may never be entirely solved. And whenever someone acts as though they have all the answers, I get suspicious. So let us enjoy this book, but perhaps it might go down easier with just a grain or two of salt.

In Outliers, Mr. Gladwell attempts to get at the heart of why some people are more successful in life than others. To help him research the question, he investigates successful bands (The Beetles), successful entrepreneurs (Bill Gates), and successful athletes (ice hockey players), sifting through the data to find a characteristic that distinguishes them from their many less successful contemporaries. In each case, and there are many cases made here by Mr. Gladwell, he unearths a common informational clue which he then uses to piece together a coherent argument for why this trait may be a conclusive determiner of success. These determiners are sometimes shockingly mundane, like an opportunity for extra practice. At other times, they are depressingly pre-determined, like year of birth. But in each case, Mr. Gladwell is able to lay down a logical, convincing framework for why this trait is the difference between mild success and extraordinary success.

Mr. Gladwell is a wonderful researcher, but his ability to take what he has learned and package it into a coherent narrative is the essence of his own success. His digressions into the roots of culture and industry not only edify, but they make the reader feel as though he's along for the ride of research with Mr. Gladwell, Watson to his Sherlock Holmes as he ties disparate bits together to create information and understanding where there was only noise and chaos. And yet Mr. Gladwell's clever narratives aren't without controversy. It's often clear that he is capitalizing on existing research, publicizing conclusions drawn from academic studies and using those conclusions to support his own theories. This is perfectly legal; it's even commendable for such research would surely cost him many late nights before the laptop, but it all begins to seem reminiscent of what Apple has done with the Iphone. Mr. Gladwell wraps his inimitable style around ideas that are already a matter of public record and, in doing so, produces a product that seems more revelatory than it actually is. The works at Apple are the masters of this kind of slick marketing.

Outliers is a fun, easy, and educational read, but does it advance human knowledge? I'm not so sure. It may go some way to explaining advantage, which is one of its goals, but it all has the feel of something best not pried into too deeply. (3/5 Stars)

Divided- Kingdom by Rupert Thomson

From The Week of August 01, 2010

Social critique in literature is a difficult line to walk. Be too blunt with the message and it offends the reader and consumes the narrative; be too subtle with the message and risk not having it heard at all. Unfortunately for Mr. Thomson, he sides with the jackhammer, repeatedly bludgeoning the reader about the head with his clumsy metaphor for social engineering and racial segregation.

In a dystopian England of the near future, the government of the day has responded to mounting social unrest by re-apportioning the realm into four major divisions, red, yellow, green, and blue. Each division corresponds with one of the four Hippocratic humors: melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic. Believing that each human being has a dominant humor, the government forces each English citizen to take a test which predicts their humor, or disposition. The results of the test cause the citizen in question to be relocated to one of the four English zones where only members of their dominant humor live. Through this system of segregation, the government hopes to eliminate conflict from society. After all, if everyone in a given zone has roughly the same disposition, harmony within a given zone will be achieved. And if these zones are only allowed to interact on the most peripheral levels, then societal harmony will follow. This redistribution tears families apart and permanently re-orders society into something new, something no one has experience with, least of all poor Thomas Parry, our protagonist, who is ripped from his mother, sent to a school for testing, and then ordered into the Sanguine zone where he grows up to become a government official. Attending a diplomatic function at which all members from all four humors are present, Parry has a hallucinatory experience at a club in town, an experience which inspires him to break the law by sneaking into each of the four zones and experiencing, for himself, what life is really like in places from which only propaganda now flows.

I shouldn't be so critical of Mr. Thomson's work; after all, he is, in his heavy-handed way, attempting to say something. That's a lot more than can be said of most fiction which seeks only to entertain without edifying. But the attempt is just so patently graceless and ridiculous that I could not suspend my disbelief. A re-structuring of society on this scale would do enormous economic harm to a country. That would not solve social unrest; it would exacerbate it. The notion that a country with, what, 150,000 soldiers, could succeed in ripping the children from the arms of 20,000,000 parents defies logic. Mr. Thomson is right to point out that some governments have foolishly championed flawed notions before. Social Darwinism anyone? But at least those ideas were based on logical prejudice. This just seems to be an excuse for a particularly elaborate acid trip. Just not good enough. (2/5 Stars)

Blood River by Tim Butcher

From The Week of August 01, 2010

There is simply no way to measure the toll in human suffering exacted by imperialism. Put your finger on a map of the world; chances are, it will land near or on a country that has been convulsed by colonial rule, either in the giving or the receiving. It's taken centuries for Latin America to recover from Spanish rule, while Asia, though economically better off, isn't doing much better coming out from under the British. But of all the continents to have been plagued by this most rapacious of monarchical externalities, Africa has suffered the most. Perhaps it was that they had no history of a civil society to fall back on when colonialism finally ran its course. Perhaps the crimes of the Germans and the Dutch, the British and the Belgian, were simply too grievous to return from. No matter the cause, much of Africa's torment is directly attributable to European influence and nowhere is this more true than the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mr. Butcher, a British journalist, something of an insane adventurer, took it upon himself to re-trace the path of Henry Morton Stanley's trans-African journey. Though much of the distance is traveled by boat on the Congo river, the gruelling overland trek Mr. Butcher endures is both harrowing and astonishing, as he contends with unreliable guides, dangerous mercenaries, monstrous insects and killer viruses to complete a most remarkable odyssey. Why remarkable? Despite the passage of some 140 years, it was barely any easier for Mr. Butcher to complete the mission than it was for his predecessor, Stanley. A hundred and fourty years, in which the Western world went from horses to airplanes, from wagons to Ferraris and, here, nothing has changed. Mr. Butcher describes in heartbreaking detail how much of the environment Stanley would recognize. In fact, in many ways, it is in even greater disrepair now than it was a century ago, as the more modern conveniences of railroad tracks have succumbed to the oblivion of disuse. Along the way, Mr. Butcher describes the people he encounters, inspiring and sinister, while acting as tour guide for the reader uneducated in the area's history. The scars left by the Belgian overlords lingers on in one of the most lawless places left on Earth.

Mr. Butcher's portrait of a failed nation is moving and disturbing. Though he lacks Megan Stack's lyricism, the raw emotion is similar as he tests the limits of his mental and physical endurance in a place antithetical to human civilization. This is a monument to anti-imperialism, a 350 page attack on the price of interfering in another society's affairs. Who knows what Africa might have been without Western arrogance. We'll never know for now it is the continent of the gun. And we well know how much damage the uneducated can do with that most devastating of human inventions. (4/5 Stars)