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)

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)

An extraordinary person, an unjust fate in The Spy Who Loved

From the Week of February 17th, 2014

Joy comes in many forms. Be it ushering a new life into the world or watching a young mind expand with the possibilities of the life to come, be it performing a perfect piece of music or experiencing the power of a sublimely toned body, we are all uplifted by the exhilaration of life's rare moments, those cherished slivers of time in which we, or those we know, are at our best. But while, for most of us, it is enough to simply have these precious memories, others are not so easily satiated by the past. For these souls, joy only erupts from the extremity of emotion and circumstance, from moments in which one's life or one's wellbeing has been wagered on the outcome. Which is precisely why the past wont' suffice. For it is already a known quantity, a settled question from which victory has already flowed. The next battle is the only cure. But as Clare Mulley explains in her riveting work, for some, there can be no more battles.

Born in 1905 to a wealthy, landed family in Poland, Krystyna Skarbec of a daughter of the aristocracy, an educated beauty of class and repute whose life was overturned and shaped by the two great wars that transfixed Europe in the first few decades of the 20th century. Without the Nazis and Communism, without politics and ideology, she might have been someone's wife, a creature living a life of proscribed comfort in which the sorrows and frustrations of being a pretty woman in a man's world would have remained her own. But when the freedom of her beloved country was crushed beneath the jackboots of continental regimes hungering to impose their notion of unity upon the world, the cage of her social confinement was breached, allowing her to crawl out into a broken world and fight for her own freedom.

Beginning in 1939 and only concluding with the end of the Second World War, Krystyna Skarbec, naturalized by Britain as Christine Granville, was an agent in both the Polish Resistance and the Special Operations Executive, a British organization whose remit was to spy on the Axis powers and to commit acts of sabotage where possible. Trained in everything from parachute drops to the transmission of secret codes, Skarbec operated behind enemy lines in much of occupied western Europe, curriering messages to the Allies, helping to take fortified Nazi positions and even intervening to bribe Nazi officers to spare allied prisoners. But despite her extraordinary efforts and the Allied victory over the Axis, she was never able to free her beloved Poland which would remain in the rough hands of soviet Russia long after she had succumbed to the miseries of postwar life.

The spellbinding account of a remarkable woman, The Spy Who Loved is nothing short of extraordinary. Ms. Mulley, an author and journalist, has helped to resurrect the life and times of a woman who should have never been lost to the rough tides of history, whose fearlessness and determination remain inspirational even some sixty years after her death. Swiftly dispensing with Granville's early years, the author concentrates on Granvile's wartime service, painting a lush portrait of a woman of charm and hunger, of grand habits and even grander drive who surmounted the prejudices of her age to leave her mark, to make a difference, to be someone. That sorrow was her primary reward for such strength of will is a pity that no amount of acclaim can sooth.

Cultures then and now might call Krystyna Skarbec a slut. They might look at her sexual appetites and her many lovers and dismiss her as a woman who slept her way to success. Indeed, this opinion, or fear of, is partially responsible for her present anonymity. For the men with whom she was close were so eager to guard her reputation that they were reluctant for her story to be told at all. This is idiocy. For while it is inappropriate to so blithely condemn any woman, it is even more foolish to do so with a woman who behaved no differently than any of her many male comrades. And even were it appropriate to label any woman such, such a label would not fit. For far from a degenerate, skarbec seized life, sucking from it every drop of nourishment it could offer her. In wartime, she comes alive, relishing her own agency, her own power, her own capacity to be a hero. This is the designation she has earned, not one rooted in dated sexist notions of foolish propriety.

As much as this is a winning biography of a rare woman in a brutal period of history, The Spy Who Loved is also a kind of office drama set in wartime. As the first woman to join the SOE, Skarbec was beset by all manner of prejudices that, with sixty years of reformist hindsight, appear even more absurd now than they must have seemed to her then. Despite her willingness to risk her life for her country, despite her obvious competence in the arenas of espionage and sabotage, she was distrusted, denied the legal use of a gun and often marginalized to the sidelines of a war she was eager to fight. Worst of all these nonsensical sins, however, is Skarbec's treatment after the war where upon England, the nation so fond of thinking of itself as the great civilizer, entangled her in sexist legalities which not only denied her the combat medals she so clearly deserved, but obligated her to pretend to be married in order to receive the citizenship she'd so clearly earned. It is shameful enough that these foolish codes troubled such a courageous veteran. That they also indirectly contributed to her death is an intolerable irony.

The Spy Who Loved could have devoted more time to Skarbec's early years. And indeed, it is slightly troubling that so much of the work has to be told through the eyes of others, an unfortunate necessity thanks to the dearth of skarbec's own correspondence. But these are small imperfections in what is otherwise the biography of a brave, liberated hero who should be celebrated for achievements on the battlefield and pitied for the peace she could never find off of it. Unforgettable... (4/5 Stars)

The next Walmart and the life of its genius creator in The Everything Store

From The Week of January 13th, 2014

Genius is a fascinating and complex virtue. From physics to literature, from mathematics to philosophy, it has allowed the gifted among us to make quantum leaps of understanding that have changed our world and benefited us all. But while such gifts are to be admired, and perhaps even envied, by us mere mortals, they do not come without a price. For to be so far beyond one's peers in a particular area is to understand what it means to be alone, to see the world the way few others do. It's only natural for this to encourage arrogance at the expense of empathy, to foster autocracy at the expense of collaboration. Many geniuses will be socially connected enough to avoid this fate, but others, particularly those who find themselves at the pinnacle of powerful organizations shaped by their particular talents? Perhaps not. The ups and downs of just such an adventure are chronicled by Brad Stone's engrossing history of Amazon.com.

One of the earliest successes of the internet age, Amazon.com, known now as simply amazon, began in 1995 as a small bookstore operated out of a Seattle garage and has, in the years since, grown into one of the world's largest retailers. Shaped by an unwavering devotion to the customer, it is the Walmart of the Internet, luring in many of the world's best and most ubiquitous brands with the promise of its 200-million users and deploying that market power to relentlessly drive down costs for the benefit of the consumer. From books to toys, from music to jewellery, it has extended its tentacles into virtually every aspect of modern commercialism while investing its profits into 21st-century industries like cloud computing and digital streaming, ventures that promise to position amazon as one of the most vital companies of the next 20 years.

But how did a tiny internet startup grow to rival Walmart? The dreamchild of Jeff Bezos, amazon's gifted founder, it was conceived in the halls of a new-York-City hedge fund as an "everything store," a a customer-first retailer that would leverage the advantages of the internet to put products in the hands of customers swiftly and smartly. Without much backing from external sources, however, Mr. Bezos began more modestly with a bookstore that would use its vast warehouses to collect every book in print, giving consumers access to literature that rarely, if ever, made it onto shelves of brick-and-mortar booksellers. Early success with this model made the company one of the internet's dot com success stories, opening a geyser of investment that Mr. Bezos would use to make his dream of an efficient, universal marketplace a startling reality.

The controversial history of this legendary company, The Everything Store is an arresting work of non-fiction. Mr. Stone, a journalist for Bloomberg Business Week, takes the life of Jeff Bezos and the rise of amazon and interweaves their narrative histories into a united tale that is much about the complexities of business as it is the personal characteristics of amazon's brilliant and driven founder and CEO. Despite having little access to Mr. Bezos himself, or his immediate family, the author constructs a detailed portrait of amazon's ascendance on the back of dozens of interviews with men and women who played key roles in its rise. Though many of these accounts are critical of Mr. Bezos and his managerial style which seems, at times, abrasive and obsessive, their admiration for his gifts and respect for his devotion is nearly universal. Their anecdotes coalesce into a portrait of a man who is both brilliant and uncompromising, insightful and reckless, but who is nonetheless seized by an entrepreneurial will so potent that it suffuses this work with its passion.

The Everything Store is more than an assemblage of legendary meetings and dramatic near-misses, celebrated acquisitions and quiet grudges. It is, at its core, a work about the unique strain of corporate philosophy imposed upon amazon by its fixated founder. Since launching the company in the 1990s, he has refused to let himself, or his company, slow down to catch a breath. Believing that consumerism on the Internet is a landgrab that the old stalwarts of commerce are ill-equipped to capitalize on, he has relentlessly pushed for amazon to grow, often, far beyond its capacity to handle the demands placed upon it by customers who expect satisfaction, who have no sympathy for its eccentricities, and who have no idea of the mad scramble to both keep the website running and their orders fulfilled. On the surface, this strategy seems insane. Shouldn't one consolidate one's gains before thrusting one's pride and joy into new frontiers? And yet, Mr. Bezos' frenetic pace, though costly in terms of personnel and failed ventures, has not destroyed amazon. It has, instead, shaped it into a rival to Walmart which was already the world's largest retailer before Amazon was even being conceived. Reckless, perhaps, but successful? No question...

A review of this work would be incomplete if it failed to address the controversies that have swirled around it. Many of amazon's luminaries, both those who granted Mr. Stone interviews and those who did not, have gone public with their complaints which have ranged from accusing the author of mishandling their quotes to making profound factual errors that might undermine the confidence of some in its authenticity. As there's no way to verify these claims, it is pointless to even contemplate siding with either party. However, some of the accusations do have some corroborating evidence. Mr. Stone does take liberty with his characterization of Mr. Bezos, occasionally straying into his mind during certain key moments to guess at his feelings, his thoughts. Mr. Stone also meddles in the personal history of Mr. Bezos in a manner that is, at best, presumptuous and, at worst, ethically questionable. However, the former is but a relatively small crime in the world of narrative fiction and the latter is a matter between the principals and not us. For the rest, one will have to decide for oneself who is more believable, the journalist attempting to thoroughly tell the story of a tech titan, or those inside trying to protect their friends and the brand they've all worked so determinedly to build. Given the balanced tone of the work which, to my mind, has few if any hints of a deeper agenda, I side with the journalist.

An inspirational and transformative work about an exceptional company and the even more exceptional minds and spirits that shaped it... A must-read for 2014... (4/5 Stars)

The life of one of our century's most gifted designers in Jony Ive

From The Week of January 13th, 2014

Humans have a complex relationship with objects of their own creation. Built to express needs ranging from the pleasurable to the essential, their utility ought to be far more important than their beauty. After all, valuable resources must be gathered and precious time expended to manufacture them, making it foolhardy for form to trump function. And yet, a simple glance at the clothes and phones, the houses and the vehicles, present in our world tells us that the opposite is true, that beauty overpowers utility at every turn. Why this is so remains unclear. Certainly, peer pressure plays a role; humans signalling to their fellows that they have taste. No doubt aesthetics also has its say, precision of design pleasing our powerful sense of geometric rightness. But no sense of fashion, no matter how strong, should have the power to overcome an object's utility, a truth most thoroughly pummeled in Leander Kahney's fabulous biography of Apple Inc. Visionary designer.

Coming of age in England's Winter of Discontent, an era of political discord, economic stagnation and social upheaval, Jonathan Ive has become the world's foremost designer. Raised by a celebrated educator who challenged and encouraged him, he won awards for school projects in his teens, was a partner at a designed firm at 23, and, at 25, had moved to California to begin work at Apple during the lost years between Steve Jobs' controversial departure and his triumphant return. Since then, he has gone on to shape the industrial design of virtually all of Apple's successful products which, since the introduction of the first iPod in 2003, have revolutionized technology, transforming it from the quirky fascination of geeks and hobbyists into a hundred-billion-dollar industry that lives in the pockets, on the desks, and in the hands of consumers the world over.

Chronicling these two transformative decades, Jony Ive is a spellbinding journey through the life of a brilliant designer at a fabled company. Mr. Kahney, a long-time technology journalist, has largely overcome the legendary secrecy of Apple and its chief designer to construct a fairly thorough portrait of both company and visionary. After dispensing with Mr. Ive's early life, the author marches us through apple's string of celebrated products, from the iPod to the iPhone, vividly capturing not only their aesthetics, but the innovations of design and manufacturing that made them possible. Consequently, the reader becomes fairly fluent with the modern mysteries of manufacturing, processes so exquisitely intricate that they have brought about the age of mass-produced products of exactingly high standards.

But while Jony Ive opens the door on the nature of 21st-century manufacturing, it is, at root, the depiction of one man's talent and how that talent has re-shaped an industry. Steve Jobs has been rightfully hailed for his vision and his marketing prowess; no one else has had the will to turn computing into a high-end commodity capable of compelling a substantial percentage of the world's population to buy what are fundamentally expensive toys. But perhaps his wisest, and bravest, decision was to redesign his own company, elevating Jony Ive and his industrial-design team above the Apple engineers who would bring their products to life. This decision has understandably created tensions within the company, jealousies that have seen engineers leave for other firms like Google where engineering is both paramount and sacrosanct. But however many of these battles apple has lost, it has, over the last fifteen years, won the war. By recognizing Mr. Ive's singular abilities, and by giving him and his design team the keys to its princely kingdom, it has inaugurated an age of beautiful computing that no one else has come close to matching.

As much as Jony Ive succeeds in conveying the visionary nature of company and designer, it is necessarily limited by Apple's famously tight lips. Apple considers virtually everything that goes on within its walls a trade secret, refusing to divulge even trivial details about its processes or its people. This philosophy extends to its manufacturing partners as well, Asian corporations too afraid of losing Apple's business to speak out about their own innovations. This is a pity. For there is no doubt that this is a royal marriage of design and process, of form and function, one that has shaped the early years of our century. And to have the vital moments of that marriage obscured by a silence bordering on the petty is as sad as it is neurotic. Consequently, Mr. Kahney is forced to unearth the broken pieces of a complex whole, doing what he can to fit the pieces together in hopes of getting some sense of the bigger picture. That he succeeds at all is a credit to his diligence.

For anyone interested in the intricacies of industrial design and the almost magical powers of modern manufacturing, an absolute must read. Jony Ive leaves no doubt that we live on the brink of a fascinating future, a future substantially stewarded by a soft-spoken Englishman with a rare gift. (5/5 Stars)

The stressful world of the NFL explored in Collision Low Crossers

From The Week of January 6th, 2014

Most of us strive for balanced lives, existences in which the joys and burdens of work and family, obligation and friendship, are distributed in such a way that we anticipate, rather than dread, the dawn. It is generally accepted that this is healthy, a sensible approach to grappling with the complexities of modern society and our place within it. And yet, some among us, even while being aware that this is true, wholly reject such balance, eschewing it in the pursuit of glorious victories both personal and organizational. These individuals want nothing of our mundanity. They do not want to find their place in the whole. They want to invest themselves in the dream of achieving something rare, a moment of purest triumph in which they rise above their competitors to be acknowledged as champions. This perfect moment, this gestalt of planning and purpose, is worth any sacrifice, no matter how consequential. Rarely has this drive been detailed with such clarity than in Nicholas Dawidoff's excellent examination.

American football is a tumultuous sport, an autumnal ritual of codified violence in which teams of exquisitely trained and highly paid athletes repeatedly careen into one another in the pursuit of victory. This theatre of pain and glory has become the United States' most popular spectacle, a pastime taken in by tens of millions each weekend not just because of its gladiatorial ruthlessness, but because of its esoteric intricacies. Each Sunday, teams execute the most complex of plays, drilled into them by endless practice, oftentimes to spectacular effect, leaving onlookers as awed at the result as they are mystified by the process. It is the sport whose strategies and plays are least understood by its fans, precisely because of a complexity that demands that its coaches and its players devote sometimes hundreds of hours to gameplans that play out over a single afternoon.

One of the 32 teams that compete at this sport's highest level, the New York Jets have been a largely moribund franchise. Burdened by a history of failure punctuated by a few legendary successes, and overshadowed by the more celebrated giants with whom they share a city, they are the team only its fans could love and admire. However, in 2009, its status as one of the NFL's also-rands is overturned when, after hiring a flamboyant and innovative head coach and drafting a celebrated and talented quarterback, they begin an era of winning, one built on a powerful defense characterized by "organized chaos" designed to fool opposing quarterbacks into consequential mistakes. This new, creative approach to a game that so often hails traditional modes of play elevates the Jets, over the next three years, to the brink of ultimate success which, nonetheless, remains frustratingly elusive.

The tale of a singular season during this era of Jets success, and a biography of the men who shaped and characterized it, Collision Low Crossers is an exceptional piece of sports journalism. Mr. Dawidoff, an author who has written for numerous sports and news publications, was given unprecedented access, during the 2011 NFL season, to the New York Jets: their facility, their players, their coaches, and their games. From these countless hours of observation and camaraderie emerges a fascinating portrait of men, of all ages and from all walks of life, coming together to chase the white whale of ultimate success. From the office dramas of bickering coaches to the complicated motivations of team mates in conflict, we watch as the hope of a promising season is sidetracked by errors and injuries, by immaturity and ill fortune. And yet, these failures seem less the result of poor coaching, or organizational control, than they are the inevitable outcome of a highly stressed and obsessive workplace. And yet, these misfortunes are overshadowed by the vivid depiction of the bonds forged by common purpose and shared sacrifice that smacks more of the military than of football.

However much Collision Low Crossers concerns itself with the vicissitudes of football, it is ultimately a study of the men who have given their lives to it. From the the creativity and brashness of Rex Ryan to the quiet intensity of Mike Pettine, we are given a glimpse of human beings who have completely turned their backs on conventional existence. Health and family, anniversaries and holidays, all the high points in our lives, seem secondary to men lost in the dream of the perfect play, perfect execution, perfect success. For the players, the rewards for their devotion, and their sacrifice, are obvious, access to exorbitant wealth that can set them up for life. For the coaches, however, the motivation is murkier, rooted more in their relationships with their fathers, with their backgrounds and with the need to get it right. In this, their obsessiveness is no different than that which seizes any professional seeking to master his craft. And yet, at least they have the reasonable expectation of reward. Here, the sacrifices are made not only without the guarantee of success, but while knowing the odds are against it.

Collision Low Crossers could have been more thorough. For instance, the author doesn't appear to have spoken to even one of the partners these men have effectively widowed. Nor does he give any real context to the long-term physical toll the sport takes on its participants. However, much like his subjects, Mr. Dawidoff never promised balance. This is an expose of the life of a practitioner of football, of men worshipping at the altar of glory while knowing that, to be glorious, they must count on the contributions of men with whom they might have nothing in common. And in this, it is a its own kind of triumph, one that does honor to the tradition of imbedded sportswriting from which it descends. Spellbinding work... (5/5 Stars)

America's tragic and emotive decline in the outstanding The Unwinding

From The Week of October 20th, 2013

Despite our monumental efforts to secure the stability of our world, all things end. We know this not only through our experiences with the world around us, but thanks to our preserved history which, if nothing else, is a long, bewildering catalogue of the rise and fall of people and civilizations, conquerers and cultures, that now are dust. Those comfortable with the notion of change accept this entropy as a universal truth of existence, one which adds urgency and gravitas to our fleeting lives. However, those who find change discomfiting reject this all-too-natural cycle of destruction and evolution, insisting, for reasons of pride and tradition, that the now must remain thus forever. While neither view is perfect, the unchanging, in their valorizing of the now, blind themselves to the very decay they want so much to resist. Rarely has this truth been more exquisitely demonstrated than in George Packer's disquieting work.

For more than two centuries, the United States has been a beacon of hope and progress to a world often buffeted by war and oppression. Open borders, limited government, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit has not only made it the world's leading manufacturer for most of the last century, but ensured that it was considered the gold standard for innovation and entertainment dispensed throughout the world. For decades, this reputation acted like a virtuous cycle for the US, luring the talented and the beleaguered to its profitable shores and thereby ensuring its continued dominance. But now it appears as though that unbroken run of exceptionalism is slowly coming to an end.

For the last 40 years, successive governments have been undoing these glorious advantages. A combination of profligate public spending, economically ruinous wars, ideologically divisive politicians and massive income inequality have deeply damaged the social contract and allowed the wealthy and the powerful to capture ever greater amounts of the national resources. This avarice comes at the expense of not only the poor but the nation's once-dominant middle class which, in its ubiquity, ensured that a sense of fairness and brotherhood was shared through most of society. It has been a slow, agonizing fall, one spread out over many years and across many small setbacks. These are their stories.

A remarkable document, The Unwinding is a shattering, first-hand journey through the decaying social fabric of the United States. Mr. Packer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, gathers up the stories of every-day Americans, deploying their experiences to reveal just how hard life has gotten for people born on, or even near, the margins. From small-scale entrepreneurs to community activists, from the retired to stock clerks, we watch as the country in which they have all invested so much time, belief and love slowly, relentlessly chips away at their hopes and dreams until there is nothing left but bitterness and failure. One would expect, naturally, that such a chronicle be difficult to consume, being that it contains such miserable multitudes. And yet, their unwillingness to be crushed, their dogged determination to press on despite having little hope for a better tomorrow makes this a far less depressing experience than it would seem.

Though Mr. Packer largely refuses to comment, generally, on the American decline, he supplements his work with a few profiles of some of the one-percenters who either helped accelerate this decline, or were near the halls of power while it was taking place. Through this, he is able to communicate a fascinating insight. For none of these men -- and they are all men -- appear to be overtly greedy or even cruel. They merely succeeded within a system that allowed them to rocket so far beyond their fellow American's that they might as well not even share the same country. Yes, the system in question is a human creation and, therefore, humans are ultimately responsible for its flaws and its inequities. But that responsibility is spread out across too many people, and too many generations, to reliably assess.

Which brings us to the work's underlying theme. One cannot fix what one does not think is broken. Those in the halls of power have invariably succeeded thanks to a myriad of advantages both within and without of their control. Despite their testaments to the contrary, they can't relate to the lives of the poor, or the disenfranchised, or the sick, or the duped. But they can relate to those with whom they spend their days: political operatives and party moneymen, opportunists and egotists. They are creatures of narratives and ideologies which pedal the notion that everyone can succeed while knowing, all the while, that this is a pipedream. It's this cynical disconnect, not any particular law or moment, that has lead the United States to this moment.

But for a few moments of narrative dislocation, as the reader is forced to jump between wildly different points of view, The Unwinding is splendid and revelatory work. A must-read for anyone remotely interested in the real-world workings of a nation, in all its dirty, hard work. (5/5 Stars)/

Jesus the man brought to light in Aslan's engrossing Zealot

From The Week of October 8th, 2013

Of all the forces that move humanity, few are as potent as mythology. Through its songs and sonnets, stories and parables, It gives reason to the unknown, it imbues the aimless with purpose, and it establishes a scaffolding upon which cultures can erect their histories and traditions. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, when most of the world knew nothing of the written word and the revelations of science, this was the most successful means by which to teach and to exchange ideas. As such, it is a vital step in the development of human civilization.

But mythology does have its price which becomes all-too-apparent in a world of literacy and discovery. For it inculcates in its practitioners, its adherents, a belief in falsehoods. It directs people to put their faith in fables that, at worst, never happened and, at best, bear only a passing resemblance to actual history. Worse, though, is mythology's tendency to bury historical truths under an avalanche of fairy tales which makes finding the truth and dispensing it to the masses a herculean task. Fortunately, our world possesses scholars capable of unearthing those truths and assembling them for public consumption. Reza Aslan's effort here is one such success.

Rushing like a tide out of the mists of time, Christianity has spent 2,000 years covering much of the known world. Though it has branched into different doctrines, different schools, the key shibboleths of its origin story remain the same, that Jesus Christ is the savior of humanity, that he descended to Earth to spread the word of the Christian god, and that he allowed himself to die for the sins of God's children. Christians understandably focus their energies on the Christ, the divine spirit of what Paul called the Risen Christ. But what of the Christ of the Flesh? What of the man? Who was he?

Working from the Gospels and the histories of the Romans, the only written accounts of events during Jesus' life, Mr. Aslan assembles a fascinating if fragmented portrait of this most transformative figure. Over this most engrossing, 300page history lesson, which devotes nearly as much time to the setting of Jesus' life as it does to the man himself, we come to learn that Jesus of Nazareth did exist, that he did claim the mantle of the Messiah, that he did accrue a following in Judea, a Roman territory, and that he was crucified by the Romans for sedition. We are introduced to Jesus' siblings, which were numerous; his circumstances, which were meager; his worldview, which was inescapably Jewish; and his mission, which was nothing short of the overthrow of the world order as he knew it. But more than this, we come to comprehend some measure of the man himself, an individual possessed of charisma, leadership and a willingness to throw off everything he knew in the achievement of his goal.

To scholars of the Historical Christ, much of Zealot's revelations are already apparent. But to those who only know the myth and not the history, it is nothing short of a bomb dropped on our preconceptions. For Mr. Aslan spells out, clearly and inescapably, that Jesus of Nazareth was a brown, Jewish, foreign-born socialist, a truth that makes laughable the literally and figuratively white-washed depictions of the myth we've come to know. Moreover, Jesus of Nazareth went well beyond even the modern-day conception of socialism. For this was not a man interested in the redistributions of wealth with which we are familiar. He aimed to invert the world order, to make the first last, the rich poor, the well-fed starving, a worldview that, while in some sense vengeful, adds valuable three-dimensionality to a man made two-dimensional by both the passage of time and the yearnings of his followers.

Zealot is by no means a perfect work. Though Mr. Aslan is often careful to back up his assertions with contemporaneous accounts, his portrait of Jesus does not quite match his own assertions of the man's noble character. The author frequently hails Jesus of Nazareth for his courage and his charisma, and yet, other than his capacity to accrue followers, we see few examples of these virtues. Moreover, upending the world order in such a dramatic way hardly seems laudatory. On the contrary, it appears, albeit from the impossibly comfortable remove of 2013, to be a recipe for disaster. The author's refutations of the mythologies surrounding Paul and Pontius Pilate are laser sharp and backed up with numerous examples of the absurd ways in which time and belief have distorted the deeds of both men, but the case for a commendable Historical Jesus remains thin.

However, let this in no way diminish Zealot's power. This is bound to be a controversial work. For it attacks, directly and obliquely, the stories uncounted generations have told themselves about the most famous man in human history. It possesses the wisdom, the clarity, the rigor and the wherewithal to withstand such assaults. I can think of few works of literature that better exemplify the written word's power to distill and dispense history, truth and a lifetime's worth of learning. (4/5 Stars)

One of the most shameful episodes in French history in The Dreyfus Affair

From The Week of September 9th, 2013

There can be no doubt that the concept of the nation state has been a net benefit to humanity. It organizes disparate populations, it implements a standard of law and personal conduct that fosters communities, and it ignites the twin fires of enlightenment and industry that are the engine of progress. However, no matter how long the nation state abides, it will forever be plagued by an unreconcilable conflict of interests that is sure to eventually doom it. For the nation state requires individuals to believe in a collective idea, an artificial construct of borders and traditions that, as time advances, as its honor, its past, and its values become ingrained in generations, its adherents will increasingly strive to protect. And given that national power is accrued at the expense of individual power, eventually, the rights of the individual will become completely subject to the whims and the needs of the state, requiring revolution and upheaval to reset the balance. This lesson is made exquisitely clear in Piers Paul Read's excellent work.

In 1894, France found itself embroiled in a scandal that, with the benefit of hindsight, seems fitting for its troubled nineteenth century. For these hundred years were, for this proud nation, some of the most turbulent in its history. Continental wars, political crises and social upheaval all had their violent moments in the sun, requiring the French people to continually adjust themselves to ever-changing circumstances. But while most of these conflicts were instigated by external provocations or internal ambitions, the Dreyfus Affair was a trauma that bubbled up from a most unexpected and well-regarded source, the grand French army.

A relatively well-off French Jew, Alfred Dreyfus was a difficult man to like. A serious officer who had attained the honorable rank of captain, he appears to have had little regard for what others thought of him, a disposition no doubt accentuated by the fact that he earned, as a result of his family's extensive holdings, a pension far in excess of the wage of most of his comrades. However, no matter his social shortcomings, he seems to have been an honorable member of an honored institution, making it all the more shocking when, in 1894, he was accused of treason.

Still smarting from defeats in the Franco-Prussian war, French relations with Imperial Germany were uneasy at best. So when evidence arose, of classified French-Army documents being passed to the Germans, an investigation was feverishly launched to find the perpetrator. Suspicion immediately fell upon Dreyfus who, despite the case against him being weak-unto-nonexistent, was hurriedly convicted, court marshalled and sent to rot in a hellish French penal colony. This injustice inspired a five-year campaign, spearheaded by his wife, his family, and certain honorable members of the Army high command, to exonerate him, an effort that was ultimately successful, though, not before damages to health, to career and to reputation were done to Dreyfus, to his allies, and to France itself, damages that would leave scars well into the next century.

A riveting tale of betrayal and determination, The Dreyfus Affair is first-rate micro-history. Drawing upon the documents from Dreyfus' two military trials, as well as the victim's personal correspondence, Mr. Read has fashioned an arresting work of injustice and dishonor that not only explicates this 120-year-old crime, but rightfully elevates it into a parable for humanity. All of the players in this repugnant incident are given life and form. Moreover, the reader is made to understand both the agonies of the wrongfully accused and the torments of solitary confinement in ways that will linger for some time. All of these virtues do merit to the memory of a shamefully persecuted man.

The Dreyfus Affair is a complex work that is at its best when speaking to the shortcomings of humanity, in general, and French culture, in particular. The men and women who fought righteously for Dreyfus are inspiring. For these ranks were not merely made up of a family that would naturally be expected to defend him. Officers, novelists and politicians all rallied to Dreyfus' cause. And while it's too much to expect that they did so without any sort of personal agenda, it's clear that their motives were pure in a manner that does honor to the French character. However, on the other side of the ledger lies some of the most shameful conduct imaginable. The strong skein of anti-Semitism that ran through French society at this time is made eminently and revoltingly clear. Moreover, the willingness of the Army's high command to blithely let Dreyfus rot even long after they learned that the case against him was nonexistent is nothing short of the definition of selfishness. For these men put the health of the state and the honor of the army ahead of the truth and, in doing so, consciously protected a "pure French" traitor while condemning the innocent "French Jew." The state over the individual, concealing a crime to shield the honor of institutions... It does not get more convenient, nor more despicable.

An absolute must-read that transcends time and place and speaks to political and philosophical conflicts as real today as they were in the nineteenth century... Excellent work... (4/5 Stars)

Petraeus, Counterinsurgency and the new US military in The Insurgents

From The Week of July 29th, 2013

There is no activity with which humanity has more familiarity than war. From the earliest tribes to present-day superpowers, it has been practiced so ubiquitously that it has defined the destinies of virtually every culture we've ever created. And yet, for all this expertise, we are, by and large, miserable, shortsighted wielders of the discipline, profoundly trapped by our biases of the enemy, an overinflated sense of our own martial past, and a rigid adherence to structure and tradition that eschews the bold in favor of the safe. Perhaps, in times past, when men like Alexander the Great could rise out of relative obscurity to conquer half the world, these afflictions were surmountable by the all-but-divine will of a single man, but in this age of massive armies and technological warfare, there is little room remaining for individual geniuses to operate and affect both their futures and those of the nations to which they've sworn fealty. Still, some will try. And Fred Kaplan has, here, chronicled at length the most famous of these revolutionaries.

The son of a librarian and a sea captain, David Petraeus has lived a remarkable life. From 1974 until his retirement from military service in 2011, he served the US Army with distinction, holding numerous commands both domestically, in the training of special forces, and overseas, in hot wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But though, by all reports, he was a relentlessly driven soldier with a legendary work ethic and capacity to endure punishment, he is best known for his defining role in championing the doctrine of Counterinsurgency, or COIN, which is credited with having helped to empower the Sunni Awakening of 2007 in Iraq which changed the fortunes of that doomed war dramatically, permitting the United States military to deal a devastating blow to Al-Qaeda and their allies. Though his application of COIN in Afghanistan would be less successful, it would do little to tarnish the reputation of this new, intellectually driven form of warfare.

Technology has forever changed our world and this is no more true than for the practice of war. Terrorism has empowered non-state actors, giving them the ability to stand up to much larger nations, at least for a time. Successfully eliminating these insurgent groups would require very different tactics than those nations have traditionally used. The holder of three degrees, David Petraeus believed so deeply in this consequential shift that he devoted his career to compelling the US Army to evolve, to be smaller, trimmer and smarter. After years in the wilderness, after having his reforms blocked by generals and defense secretaries uninterested in coloring outside the lines, he and several key allies both military and civilian, successfully agitated for a new approach to 21st-century warfare, one that relied upon cultivating the trust of leaders in the warzones in question and using those contacts to uproot the enemies hiding in their midst. And though ambition, along with a scandalous affair, would eventually doom his career, his disgrace would come long after he'd left his scholarly mark upon one of the world's most rigid institutions.

The Insurgents is a thorough, well-paced, and engrossing examination of the Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the men and women who fought for it in the face of stiff resistance from well-entrenched traditionalists eager to ignore the evolution of modern warfare. Mr. Kaplan, an author and journalist, uses David Petraeus' career as a focus, a touchstone from which he can cast a wide net that captures not only COIN and its impact on the United States' most recent wars, but the shambolic manner in which the US military is run. Given how infrequently the US military has been defeated, this would appear to be an absurd claim. And yet, this organization suffers from the kind of institutional rot present in all bloated organizations, a decay that results from the self-interested motivations of powerful individuals within the organization who, because they cannot be sure of their place in a changing environment, resist such change with all their might. One need only look at the manner in which the Iraq War was justified and then prosecuted to understand the shattering, real-world consequences of such stubbornness.

As much as the US military comes off poorly here, let it not be said that Mr. Kaplan is in the bag for David Petraeus and his famous doctrine. Quite the contrary. The author is clearly sceptical of the degree to which COIN influenced the outcome of the Iraq War. And he's wise to be. For it seems almost impossible to separate COIN's impact from the abject misery of local Iraqis who, having finally had enough of being victimized by thuggish Al-Qaeda, rebelled against them and, with the eager aid of the United States, crushed their operations. Given that the whole purpose of COIN is to give breathing space for good people to organize against the destructive elements inside their own societies, it is hard to argue that COIN was not a benefit in Iraq, but its fairly evident failure to improve the situation in Afghanistan is a serious blow to its credibility. COIN's defenders will argue that Afghanistan is a uniquely atomized country, one that simply cannot be fairly governed in the modern world and, given its miserable history, that may well be true, but this in no way helps COIN's case.

The Insurgents has its sketchy moments. It seems evident that this book had all-but-come to print when the story of Petraeus' affair broke, compelling Mr. Kaplan to pen a hasty and uninformative coda to his chronicle. Moreover, the author doesn't appear to have had any access to Petraeus himself which is somewhat problematic given the heavily biographical nature of the work. However, these are minor knitpicks in what is otherwise a balanced, rational account of two bad wars, the men who prosecuted them and the ideas that bubbled up to impact them.

An excellent primer on the new face of war... (4/5 Stars)

Faith, justice and innocence all go missing in Redrum The Innocent

From The Week of June 17th, 2013

As much as we plan and dream, organize and hope, our lives are beyond our control. We live in a world of billions, a world in which, every day, countless people make decisions that have an impact on both our present and our future. We can't resist that. We lack the knowledge and the power to turn back that flood. And so we ignore it, concentrating on what we can change, on what we can see affecting us in the moment. This is a much more palatable existence, one that gives us the illusion of command. But what happens when that illusion is shattered? What happens when our lives are turned upside down by events we could no more predict than we could accept? What are we then? And how do we survive? Kirk Makin ruminates in his sprawling work of non-fiction.

On October 3rd, 1984, Christine Jessop, a playful, adventurous, nine-year-old girl living in Queensville, Ontario, vanished without a trace from her quiet, suburban home, shocking a community unfamiliar with such terrible events. Over the next three months, fuelled by her mother's hope for the girl's safe return, the police and the public would undertake a regional search for little Christine, one that would end in tears when her broken body was found some 50 miles from her home, in woods frozen by winter. With only a few suspects and even less evidence, investigators soon locked in on Guy Paul Morin, the Jessops' eccentric, 24-year-old neighbor who, though lacking any sort of motive, much less a criminal history, was extensively questioned by cops increasingly eager to find their man. Their suspicions were only strengthened when they learned that Morin declined to join the extensive, public search for Christine, in the desperate days just after her disappearance.

Using hair and fiber samples taken from Morin and his car, police would eventually arrest Morin, charging him with Christine's murder. Fixated by his social awkwardness, they would spend the next year largely ignoring other suspects, SHAPING what few pieces of evidence they had into a case against Morin that would lead to two controversial and contentious trials, the second of which would finally convict him of a crime he did not commit. This truth, however, would only come to light in 1995, 14 months after his conviction, when newly developed DNA techniques would rule out his involvement with Christine. This shameful miscarriage of justice would conclude with a 1997 inquiry which excoriated the police and the judiciary, accusing the former of leaping to unsupported conclusions and recommending that the latter change its prejudicial procedures. But none of this would help Guy Paul Morin regain his life. Nor would it return Christine to a Jessop family shattered by her disappearance.

As shattering as it is revelatory, Redrum The Innocent is Mr. Makin's extensive chronicle of both the murder of Christine Jessop and the judicial farce that would attempt to identify and punish her killer. Drawing on dozens of interviews with the principals and countless hours spent observing Morin's two trials, the author masterfully weaves together the personal and the professional, painting intimate portraits of the prime movers while methodically laying out the dubious evidence used to first hound and then to imprison an innocent man. Between, Mr. Makin systematically savages the case against Morin, not only revealing its shoddy construction, but detailing the unforgivable extent to which police fixated on Morin, contorting the facts to better fit their assumptions of his guilt. His efforts here are so thorough, so overwhelming, that they leave the reader's faith in the judicial system deeply shaken.

There is no doubt that Redrum The Innocent is at its most potent when describing the ways in which the police bungled the investigation of Christine Jessop's murder. In fairness, the cops in question were neither trained nor prepared to handle such a complex and difficult case. None of their rural charm, or good ol' boy instincts would help them find their man. For the degree to which they were overwhelmed by what unfolded, we can have sympathy. However, what we cannot tolerate, much less accept, is the degree to which the police refused to acknowledge their own inadequacy. Instead of welcoming outside assistance, they fell back on interdivisional rivalries out of the selfish desire to claim the glory of finding Christine's killer. This hunger would lead them to not only manipulate evidence and coach witnesses as a means of firming up the case against Morin, it would cause them to unforgivably dismiss the leads that might have lead to Christine's killer. As a consequence of hurling all their energies at an innocent man, the killer was never found, a fact which has left the Jessop family in ruins.

If this is the work's travesty, its tragedy is saved for the Morins and the Jessops, two families smashed by this ordeal. As a result of the harsh light of the investigation, secrets and lies are forced out of the shadows, truths nearly as cruel as the murder itself. This endless, grinding process of lurching towards something like justice leaves the reader hollowed out, hoping for some measure of peace, of justice, that never comes. We should be better than this. It should be easier than this. Alas...

Redrum The Innocent could have used an edit trim some of its 750 pages. Nonetheless, it is, in every other respect, a mesmerizing read that withstands the test of time. For though its subject is primarily the murder of a young girl, the ways in which it branches out to speak about the law, society and human nature is timeless. A must-read... (4/5 Stars)

The long, complicated life of a remarkable individual in Nelson Mandela

From the Week of June 10, 2013

For all of civilization's advantages, for all that it creates capital, organizes industry, encourages socialization and allows for institutions that aid us all, it is not without risks. Beyond the libraries and the schools, the theatres and the shopping malls, the courts and the law-enforcers, made possible by it, civilization is fundamentally a system for concentrating power from the disparate and disordered masses and into the hands of the few who in turn put it to useful purpose. Most often, this power is applied reasonably, even constructively, but it can also be twisted, shaped into a weapon for controlling the people instead of aiding them. Sadly, we Mont' have to look very far into our history to find horrific examples of just such abuse.

When civilization goes bad, when those we trusted most turn against us and use the powers we have given them against us, what do we do? We can fight, but in a time of increasing, technological advancement, are our overwhelming numbers sufficient against a well-armed, well-drilled force of professional killers? We can disobey, speaking out and winding up in jail for our pains, but will anyone listen to us over the din of the government's demonization of our characters? We can leave, but what message does that send to those we leave behind? Worse, what does it say to those brave souls who chose to stay and fight? What is the right thing to do when faced with such a massive threat? We turn to Anthony Sampson's biography for answers.

Only eight years younger than the state of South Africa, Nelson Mandela is undoubtedly one of the most famous freedom fighters in modern history. The son of a proud, tribal lineage, he was born into a land that had been conquered and colonized by the British Empire which, along with other western European powers, had spent the preceding century laying claim to an entire continent of people and their resources. However heartless this imperialism, having itself only come in the wake of centuries of enslavement and forced relocation, it was, to some degree, a world with standards of education and faith, morals and dignity, all of which a young Mandela soaked up as a citizen of this civilizing system which promised opportunities to those willing to seize them.

Nelson Mandela's customary, colonial existence, however, came to an end in 1948 when, freed from British rule, the newly elected National Party institutionalized racism. The seeds of western superiority sewn into the fabric of South African society flowered with apartheid which not only outlawed interacial marriage, but called for the uprooting of Africans out of white neighborhoods, crowding them into ghettos in which they could safely be ignored. Forbidden from owning businesses by white colonials, the black Africans were confined to narrow lives of unemployment and servitude, a situation the young Mandela found intolerable. Rejecting his life as a lawyer, he spoke out against apartheid's cruel policies, fighting them in court and in public until his vociferousness, and his community organizing against Apartheid, finally earned him a long stint in the infamous robben Island prison where he and his fellow political prisoners would linger for decades, chained by a government that could no more understand them than recognize its own ignorance.

From jail, Nelson Mandela became an agent of change. For 27 years, he read, learned and spoke out against the government that had jailed his friends and taken him away from his family. This constant, dignified agitation bore little fruit until the 1980s when a combination of international political pressure and the rising power of Mandela's political party at home compelled the ruling party to negotiate with Mandela and the ANC, talks that would eventually lead to Mandela's freedom and the freedom of his country from decades of appalling oppression.

The biography of a most remarkable man, Nelson Mandela is an eminently readable chronicle of an extraordinary life. Mr. Sampson, a journalist present at some of the key moments in his subject's life, guides the reader through the many fazes of Mandela's existence, beginning with the young and relatively innocent lawyer and concluding with the powerful symbol of freedom in the face of tyranny. Between, he examines, at length, Mandela's long career as a political agitator, from the incidents that lead to Apartheid's banning of the ANC to the the negotiations that would end his long exile in prison. All of this is accomplished with clarity and without becoming bogged down in any one part of Mandela's long and complicated story which is itself an accomplishment.

Though the work contains numerous revelatory moments for those unversed in Nelson Mandela's story, none are more potent, or moving, than his intellectual and spiritual resistance to the many forces that sought to reduce him from a man of character to an animal of savagery. Provocations from the apartheid regime and pressures from his fellow freedom fighters sought to encourage Mandela into greater acts of violence that would discredit not only his leadership, but the legitimacy of his movement and the message it sought to convey to South Africa and the world. Above all else, it is this that makes Mandela special. For he did not fall back on spiritualism to resist the temptation to fight fire with fire. He used his mind. He read, he thought, and he formed arguments that stripped away the veneer of apartheid and exposed it for what it was, a selfish, foolish disgrace that stained the world for far too long. Mandela's capacity to rise above those who sought to break him will be an inspiration for generations of freedom fighters to come. He is one of humanity's best and most noble children.

For all of its subject's glory, Nelson Mandela is a flawed work. Mr. Sampson succeeds in bringing Mandela to life, but he fails at virtually every other turn to flesh out the world around him. The key events in the struggle against Apartheid are never described in any detail. Moreover, the actors who both aided and opposed Mandela are cruelly underrepresented here. With but one or two exceptions, they are simply names who appear here only as a means of furthering Mandela's story. This is a biography of Nelson Mandela, but he was but the most important spoke in a large wheel. To have the other spokes be so marginalized does them, and the reader, a disservice.

Nonetheless, this is a most thorough document of a legend of humanity. We will all be diminished when he leaves us. For in him, we see the potential for greatness in our species: kindness and fierceness, compassion and determination, cooperativeness and leadership. That he was able to master these virtues in the face of endless provocation and temptation is a lesson to us all. He will never be forgotten. (3/5 Stars)

The extraordinary labors of a revolutionary in Sperber's Karl Marx

From The Week of May 20, 2013

No life is without challenges, moments of crisis and uncertainty that leave us grasping for answers and yearning for stability. The daily intersection of personalities and fortunes essentially ensures that something, at some point, will go wrong. But it's one thing to understand that life has its difficulties; it's entirely something else to deliberately steer one's existence into the winds of such uncertainties, to face them head on with brashness and truculence, and to do so while knowing full well that it may be decades, even centuries, before any of one's labors will make a meaningful difference. The will that must be required to never take the easy road, to forever endure the hardships of deprivation, in the name of a singular goal is remarkable. Mr. Sperber elucidates in his winningly thorough biography.

One of the most pivotal figures of the last 200 years, Karl Marx was a German political philosopher and armchair economist who lived during the twilight of empire. A polemicist who believed strongly in the corruptive power of the elites, his writings provided the intellectual fuel for a series of revolutions that would, after his death, sweep away the monarchies of eastern Europe and replace them with a powerful and equally corruptible proletariat, or people's party, that aimed to create a Marxist heaven on Earth by empowering the collective whole at the expense of the greedy individual. Though he would not live to see any of his predictions, or his beliefs, put into practice on a national scale, he became, in death, a people's hero, an intellectual whose complete and eloquent rejection of the disproportionate allotment of power and money in western society made him the godhead of 20th-century communism.

But though we know the legend well, how well do we know the man? For while Marx's role as the father of the resistance to capitalism is well known, almost forgotten is his poverty, his love for his children and his enduring devotion to his wife who, despite her upper-class upbringing, stood with Marx throughout his tumultuous life which was characterized by a scarcity of, and thus a desperation for, money. His partnership with Freidrich Engels is well-documented, but less so his unwillingness to let go of a decades-old family dispute, nor his struggles to maintain ownership of the movement he was creating, nor his deficiencies as an orator which counterbalanced, in every way, his excellence as an author. Hell, he spent more time as a newspaper columnist than he did as a revolutionary, a fact which, along with the other revelations of the man's existence, make this towering figure a creature of complexity and fascination.

Though it delves, at times, too deeply into the murky waters of economic theory and German philosophy, Karl Marx is a potent and thorough biography of a most dour and engaging man. Mr. Sperber, a professor at the University of Missouri, has gathered up Marx's works and his letters, his deeds and his friendships and fashioned from them a chronicle of the life of a giant of history, a man who has had as many deeds done in his name as some deities. The portrait that emerges from this meticulous assembly is of a man who struggled to find his place, a man who fought his enemies and his slighters at every turn, a man who spent more of his life as a political refugee than he did of a citizen of any country, and a man who knew everything about money and power except for how to make either. For this, he is both a creature of amazement and pity.

The author's characterization of Marx is simultaneously the work's best and worst feature. On the positive side of the ledger, Mr. Sperber removes the mask that history has placed on Marx, revealing him to be an emotional individual whose stubbornness often outstripped his good sense. His willingness to invest his entire life in the erudite refutation of capitalism, as practiced by the western powers, is downright remarkable in light of the Sisyphean nature of the war he was trying to wage against a completely entrenched system. And yet, this brings us to the negative. For Mr. Sperber does very little to actually explain why he was so devoted to an unwinnable war. The author illuminates Marx's influences, his schooling, his family history, his citizenship of the authoritarian Prussia, all of which go some way to sketching out an outline for his motive. But the unimaginable personal deprivations Marx suffered in the name of simple defiance demands a clearer description of what drove him to such atypical lengths. This is a man who endured the better part of a lifetime of financial humiliation, all in the name of exposing a rotten system. Why, when he so clearly possessed the talents to excel within that system?

In every other way, Karl Marx is a satisfying read that breaks the philosopher's life down into manageable sections, each of which succeeds in shedding light on Marx and his world, on 19th-century politics and 19th-century despotism, and on the eternal conflict between socialism and capitalism. But its occasional detours on the road to enlightening its readers prevents it from being truly great. (4/5 Stars)

Charlemagne brings the giant of European history lyrically to life

From The Week of April 1, 2013

For as long as humanity has been capable of passing down its history, it has revered legends, figures of time-shrouded myth whose deeds are as grand as their appetites. All of our hearts swell at the prospect of conquest, whatever shape it takes, but these singular men and women seized that desire and stamped it with such force into the metal of our history that their immortality is virtually assured. Perhaps we would do well to forget them. Perhaps, if we were unaware of how brightly their stars burned, some among us would not be driven by the need to eclipse them, regardless of the destruction such would sew. But we'd have as much luck wishing away the sun as erasing our giants. For even in death, they have but to extend their hands and we find ourselves being welcomed into their destinies. This truth is exquisitely explored in Richard Winston's engaging biography.

The son of kings and the forger of an empire, Charlemagne is one of the foremost figures of our age. An illiterate man with a passion for knowledge, he was a creature of contradictions, of enlightenment and devastation, who rallied the men of his far flung province of the fallen Roman Empire and, over 47 years of rule, created a new imperium upon the ashes of the old. The conquerer of Europe, he caused popes to bow to his will and to craft crowns so that he might place them on his brow, acts motivated by glory, surely, but also from a desire to restore the order of what had been centuries lost in the death of old Rome. That he was successful where others had failed speaks to luck, but also to a once-in-a-generation will to leave behind a world better than the one he had found.

Charlemagne fought the Saxons and the Lombards, the Saracens and the Bavarians, but war was not his legacy. That was rooted in the idea of a united Europe, a continent that could set aside its disagreements and work in concert towards a common goal. Moreover, it was invested into the scriptoria he created, places of learning that could restore at least some of the wisdom of the fallen ancients and bestow upon the subsequent generations the capacity to build towards a world not consumed by war, but progress. These were mighty goals Charlemagne worked towards during his long reign, but fate prevented them from coming to fruition as he'd hoped. For with the passing of his eldest sons, men in whom he'd rested his hopes for a continuation of his dreams, his empire fall to Louis, King of the Franks, a pious but unwise man whose squandering of Charlemagne's efforts plunged the continent into centuries of intellectual darkness.

This is the tale Mr. Winston tells in Charlemagne, a lyrical account of the life and times of the most powerful European figure to emerge from the ruins of Rome. Drawing from Einhard's contemporary account of the emperor's life, as well as what other sources remain from the eighth century, the author paints an irresistible portrait of a singular mind, one as shaped by conquest as it was by metaphysics. Though little remains of Charlemagne's youth, and though it is difficult to corroborate the exact nature of his various deeds, a pattern of behavior emerges across the whole of the man's life, one that speaks to a complex nature that would be as well-suited to the cut and thrust of our century as it was to the tribalism of his own. From the manner in which he treated his wives to the esteem with which he held knowledge, we are made witnesses to the man more than we are the warrior, the spirit more than the deeds, a reality which is sure to frustrate those interested in military history but that pleases those others who find themselves fascinated by the minds of giants.

Charlemagne, for all its delightful prose, is a largely sympathetic account of the founder of the Holy Roman Empire. Mr. Winston is far harsher on the emperor's contemporaries than he is on Charlemagne himself. Perhaps Charles the Great was a man above all others, an unyielding spire of morality lashed by a seething sea of corrupted souls, but this seems far too simplistic given what we know of humanity which is much more liable to produce individuals of gray morality than of purely white and black. The only spot of criticism Mr. Winston levels at Charlemagne is the mercilessness with which he treats the Saxons who, time and time again, rise in rebellion against him, but even this seems muted compared to his paeans to Charlemagne's successes.

Notwithstanding its vagaries and its sympathies, Charlemagne is a vivid and lively document that teaches us as much about the man as it does about fate. For the readers of this chronicle will not be able to walk away unaffected by Mr. Winston's conclusion that, had Charlemagne's eldest sons lived, the subsequent 13 centuries of history would have unfolded quite differently. In peace, the schools Charlemagne founded would have had time to build on their learning, to spur on the intellectual flowering that only occurred centuries later. Instead, Louis' unsuitableness caused many of Charlemagne's reforms to wither on the vine, a tragic fact that caused Europe to devolve back into the post-Roman gloom that had already consumed it for 400 years.

Imagine a world without the Middle Ages, without irreason and theocracy. Imagine a Renaissance that began five centuries earlier in Charlemagne's Europe rather than Italy's city states. Imagine if industrialism came to Europe in the 13th century, not the 18th. We would today be among the stars.

Well worth the read, as much for the dream as for the man... (4/5 Stars)

Ho Chi Min details the enlightened, revolutionary and tyrannical faces of a world leader

From The Week of march 4, 2013
What motivates a man to devote himself to a life of struggle? For the world is full of treasures just waiting to be explored, arcologies of past and present so vast that lifetimes would have to be spent to absorb all their stories. And yet, while some choose to immerse themselves in these worlds of knowledge and discovery, others reject these enriching existences in favor of lives aimed at a single, overarching goal, often thought to be unattainable. Is this hubris, the arrogance of the individual's belief that his is the only will capable of shaping reality? Or is it the mark of greatness, the symbol of a man triumphing over his own needs to give to the world a measure of justice? This fundamental question underpins Mr. Duiker's fascinating if mysterious biography.

Born in 1890 to Confucian parents living in French-controlled Vietnam, Ho Chi Min rose from obscurity to become one of the formative figures of 20th-century Asia. A student and a traveler, a thinker and a toiler, his life's journey took him from the parlors of Boston to the kitchens of Britain, from revolutionary gatherings in Paris to Soviet schools in Russia, until finally depositing him back in Vietnam, at the head of a movement to take back his homeland from the European and Asian colonialists who sought to dominate it. Here, he helped ignite a war that, while it dispatched the French from his native shores, helped make Vietnam the focal point for a Cold-War showdown 20 years in the making. This conflict with the United States devastated his divided country, tipping it into a political despotism from which it would take decades to recover.

Despite the fact that Ho Chi Min was a pivotal figure in both of these wars, and more broadly in the liberation of his country from colonialist rule, his life remains a mystery. Driven to communism by the political perfidy of the west, he was nonetheless a deep admirer of both the United States and France. He immersed himself in their cultures and their values, drawing from their founding documents models of responsible, moral government for his own subjugated nation. Moreover, he was a fighter for freedom, and yet he allowed his administration in Northern Vietnam to be characterized by political executions and one-party totalitarianism, sins that would never be tolerated by the nations he so admired. These appear to be contradictions that will never be resolved. For they might well be present in any man who drives himself to be the father of his nation.

Though at times consumed by an obsessive eye for detail, Ho Chi Min is nonetheless a thorough examination of southeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century. Mr. Duiker, who served during the Vietnam War and who has since become a professor of history at Penn State University, certainly trains all of his formidable powers upon the life of his subject, from his early travels to his Soviet radicalism, from his pleas to the west to his resistance to French, Japanese and Chinese control. However, his work here functions best as a lens through which to examine the broader effects that European colonialism had on Vietnam. For there can be no doubt that France's unwillingness to acknowledge Vietnamese independence, coupled with the deaf ear the liberty-obsessed United States turned to Ho Chi Min's pleas for aid, sapped the west of the moral authority necessary to make anti-communist allies of these ancient nations searching for a 20th-century identity. These tragic missteps not only lead to wars of attrition, they completely re-shaped the political conflicts of the latter half of the century, ensuring that millions more would suffer under the authoritarian yoke of totalitarianism for decades to come.

As a biography of Ho Chi Min, though, Mr. Duiker's work here leaves much to be desired. For though the author manages to capture something of the essence of the man in his youth, this impression fades with time until Ho becomes almost a complete enigma, no more three-dimensional here than he is in the posters and the legal tender that bear his likeness. This is not entirely Mr. Duiker's fault. After all, it is abundantly clear that the details of Ho's later life, particularly the decades in which he actually held political power, have been assiduously guarded by the authorities who have inherited the countries he created. Getting trustworthy and honest information from them must have been virtually impossible. And yet, Mr. Duiker doesn't help his case by abandoning the effort to understand Ho. Indeed, as if snubbed by the man's impenetrable facade, the author succumbs to a lifeless, systematic recitation of historical facts that we would expect from a textbook, not from a biography of a human being. In this, Ho Chi Min leaves much to be desired.

Ho Chi Min is an excellent primer on the political and economic forces at play in southeast Asia leading up to the Cold War. It is thorough and scholarly, virtues that imbue it with gravitas and meaning. But as a biography of the man himself, it suffers at the hands of mythology, the forces of which will make Ho's life all the more opaque in the decades to come. (3/5 Stars)

The extraordinary life of Gertrude Bell in The Desert Queen

From The Week of February 18, 2013
Life, under ordinary circumstances, is challenging enough as it is. Its roadblocks and digressions, pitfalls and pratfalls, at best, require years to be disentangled and, at worst, allow us never to recover from their terrible grip. But what of those among us who are ahead of their time? What of those who devote themselves to ideas and pursuits that seem perfectly sensible to them but to the rest of us seem senseless? If life, to us, is a series of obstacles, then, for them, it must be a mountain up which ones full span on this earth must be spent in the climbing. The summit might someday be reached, but at what cost, to them and to those who love to question, to challenge, to take a different road? In examining the life of one of Victorian England's most adventurous heroines, Ms. Wallach asks this very question. The answer is decidedly bleak.

The eldest daughter of a British steel magnate, Gertrude Bell was born in 1869, at the height of stodgy, Victorian England. Possessing a keen mind and a determined disposition, she rejected the narrow life of a stayed and dignified British lady to excel at Oxford University before ambitiously embarking upon a series of gruelling travels through the Middle East. Supported by her family's wealth, she was free to indulge her passion for adventure, be it climbing the Swiss alps or traipsing through Arabian deserts, without ever having to settle down, much less marry.

Until the First World War, she was a creature of more social than political consequence. A position in the civil service denied to her because of her gender, she explored in obscurity until the Ottoman Empire signed on with imperial Germany and entered the Great War by attempting to conquer Arabia. Starved for intelligence on the area, the British government turned desperately to their citizens in the region, hoping that they might sufficiently understand this tangle of tribesmen and blood feuds in order to fashion from them a workable alliance. One of their primary sources of information, Gertrude Bell was effectively admitted into the British civil service, beginning a career that would not only last a decade, but make her a prime mover in the creation of both Iraq and Jordan, modern nations drawn out of the sands of Arabia. In this, she became a shaper of the policies of the world's most powerful empire, a startling achievement given the patriarchal nature of British society at the time.

Though somewhat bloated at over 500 pages, The Desert Queen is a fascinating glimpse of a most complex life. Gertrude Bell was, at once, both a maverick and a conservative. For even while she was busting the chains of propriety that threatened to enslave her own existence, she was staunchly patriotic. An imperialist and a royalist, she was a traditionalist who believed so deeply in the fundamental myths of the empire that birthed her that she was willing to side with them against her own gender, rejecting the suffragette movement in favor of the benefits and privileges of her class. In this, she is a messy creature, defying easy categorization. Rather than shunning this reality for a simpler narrative, Ms. Wallach embraces the contradictions of Ms. Bell's life and, in doing so, does her the justice this largely forgotten heroine deserves.

Though this tome is, in the main, a biography of the life of Gertrude Bell, it is also, necessarily, a history of the creation of the modern Middle East. Ms. Wallach ably walks the reader through the process by which the British drew up these nations on a map, providing the work its central tragedy. For in this, we watch, with nearly a hundred years of hindsight, the arrogance that lead these imperialists to believe they could re-shape an entire region of the world without grave consequences. They, and the world, would eventually pay dearly for this presumption, as it helped to fuel tribal clashes that would eventually result in not only distrust towards the West, but revolution, war and terrorism across the greater Levant. And this is perhaps why Bell is hardly remembered. For this act of creation was her life's primary political achievement, an act which is now looked upon with, at best, bemusement and, at worst, scorn.

In the end, Gertrude Bell was a mirror for the Iraq she loved. She possessed the best of intentions, but these were overtaken by narrow mindedness and stubbornness, qualities which prevented her, and her British kin, from measuring the cost of their actions. Thanks to Ms. Wallach's fine work, we feel all of this acutely, mourning the opportunity lost as much as the life uncelebrated. (4/5 Stars)