Riding The Desert Trail by Bettina Selby

From The Week of July 31, 2011

The great age of planetary exploration has passed into history. Ericson and Magellan, Shackleton and Hillary, Livingstone and Rondon... They and their brethren have mapped our oceans and summited our mountains; they've journeyed along our rivers and charted our caves. They have claimed all the earthly firsts that we consider worthy. But while ours may not be the age of firsts, the age of great adventures, it might well be the age of admiring those firsts, of looking back with our modern technology and our gift of hindsight and standing in awe of the achievements of those who did so much with so little. In Riding The Desert Trail, Ms. Selby has done more than stand in awe. She has re-traced one of the most epic of African adventures and, in doing so, given her readers a glimpse of both the African culture that hosted her and the singleminded drive to explore that impelled the great adventurers that preceded her.

In 1988, Ms. Selby, a writer and avid cyclist, set upon a long and dangerous journey. Traveling from her native England with only her bicycle, some diplomatic papers and a minimum amount of cash, she landed in Egypt with the intention of bicycling the full 4,500-mile length of the Nile valley. Inspired by Livingstone and Baker who, only a century earlier, had risked their lives to discover the source of the great river, she devoted the following few months of her life to adventuring from the smog of chaotic Cairo all the way to distant and war-torn Uganda in the hopes of completing an epic journey that, even a hundred years on from the age of adventure, remains difficult and dangerous.

The desolation of Sudan and the discord of Uganda would be treacherous challenges for natives to the region. For a lone, foreign woman to journey through this part of the world, a region that has never known, in living memory, the moderating hand of modern technology and organized education... The perils are obvious. And yet, supported by the sturdy bike beneath her and buoyed by the families along the way who generously gave of what little they had to aid her, Ms. Selby steered into the winds of risk and history to achieve, to see for her own eyes the mythical source of a river that has been feeding civilizazions for thousands of years.

Riding The Desert Trail is as much a memoir as it is a travel log. After all, it's difficult to write of such an epic journey without revealing much of ones own character. The middle-aged Selby possesses, here, the irrepressible curiosity of youth as, in this recount of her journey, she engagingly describes both the hostile terrain and the fascinating cultures that ply it with only occasional complaints about the physical and sociological roadblocks thrown up in her way. But as much as this work succeeds in its stated aims, of educating the reader about the heartland of Africa, its most powerful message is, to her, an afterthought. In the planning, the execution and the completion of her journey, Ms. Selby devoted months of time and energy, endured risk and hardship, for a single hour, to stand at the source of the Nile and take in its beauty and its history, months for just an hour to view beauty through ones own eyes... It may be that the age of planetary exploration has come and gone, But let us not for a moment think that the human spirit has lost its thirst to see, to experience and to know, to stand next to the history, of our people and our planet, just on the off chance that we can touch the past and the future.

A well-rounded tale marred only by its 1980s context which, from the second decade of the 21st century, is somewhat dated. (4/5 Stars)

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

From The Week of July 24, 2011

Though many novels have been written about India's emergence into the modern world, few are as potent as The God of Small Things, the 1997 winner of the Man Booker Prize. For Ms. Roy has reached beyond a simple snapshot of Indian life, as seen through the eyes of a middleclass family, and, ambitiously, sought to contextualize modern India by connecting it to its recent past. In this, she exposes the social, political and economic forces that have been at work in India and the extent to which those forces contort and cripple the lives they touch.

Cycling between the late 1960s and the early 1990s, The God of Small Things patiently and devastatingly details the harrowing lives of twins, Estha and Rahel. Born to a witty but world-weary mother, Ammu, who is the regular and stoic victim of her husband's violent, alcohol-fuelled abuse, brother and sister experience life with openness and curiosity, embracing their extended family with innocence and grace. But when, aged seven years, they find themselves at the center of two deaths, one accidental and the other quite purposeful, their lives are forever changed. In the wake of these terrible crimes, the twins are ordered to tell lies for the sake of the family, blamed for its misfortunes, and then finally separated, with Estha banished abroad and Rahel jailed at home. When, 24 years on, they are reunited in India, Estha is a shadow of a man who has sworn himself to silence and Rahel is a haunted failure who has ventured to and returned from the United States with little to show for her years. Together, they attempt to piece together their sundered pasts and heal what was so cruelly broken.

Devoting most of her energy to the 1960s timeline, Ms. Roy couples her lyrical prose with vivid descriptions of mid-century India to produce a near-tangible recreation of a place in time. Through Rahel and Estha, one can feel the chaos of an airport, the terror of a movie theatre, the beauty of their family estate, and the fear of a police station and the extent to which all of these places hold life-altering significance for the fate-battered twins. But as much as one can admire her striking scenery, Ms. Roy's animated characters, and her willingness to throw all of life's cruelties at them, imbue her work with vitality. From the twins who are crushed by fate's bootheel, to their great aunt's selfish cruelty, to their mother's grim endurance, to their uncle's hopeless self-absorption, each member of the family, and the creatures who act for and against them, have distinct personalities that run the gamut from sweetness to cruelty.

The God of Small Things is far from a perfect read. It is, at times, needlessly dense and opaque, indulging in numerous and pointless digressions into a spiritualism that offers little to the story's central plot. However, Ms. Roy's ability to, with artistry and subtlety, demonstrate the extent to which human lives are molded by external influences they cannot control, by bitternesses they cannot suppress, and by desires they cannot ignore, elevates The God of Small Things into rarified air. Tragic and thoughtful work. (4/5 Stars)

Among The Truthers by Jonathan Kay

From The Week of July 24, 2011

Though those of us who are rationalists wish it otherwise, our world is shaped by popular opinion. It does not matter if said opinion is based on logic or reason. What matters is the extent to which said opinion can issue forth from an individual and find traction in a broader world yearning for an easy explanation. When we garnered our news from journalistic sources, popular opinion was, to an extent, safely harbored from extremism because it was in the best interests of journalistic publications to get the story right. But as Mr. Kay argues in Among The Truthers, with the rise of the Internet, control over popular opinion has all-but-entirely slipped out of the hands of the moderating media and fallen into the newly empowered grasp of conspiracy theorists and grudge-mongers who use their expanded platforms to pedal their narrow ideologies. Exit Walter Cronkite; enter The Blaze, or any of a thousand sites of its conspiracist kind.

So just who are these conspiracists? Who are the new shapers of popular opinion? And just how much do we believe them?

From the 9/11 Truthers to the Obama Birthers, from false flaggers to anti-Zionists, Mr. Kay, a decorated journalist for the National Post, throws himself headlong into the modern conspiracy movement. From its leaders to its adherents, he vividly describes their belief systems and their pathologies and, in doing so, quickly generates a fairly consistent portrait of a modern conspiracist. He is invariably male, dogged in the pursuit of truth, distrustful of authority, and perfectly willing to devote his life to his cause. In fact, the cause is what lends meaning to his damaged life. Though the personalities of the men Mr. Kay meets are markedly different, these commonalities connect them across the new conspiracy market which Kay describes as a series of islanded fringe thinkers who have been networked into a community by the interconnectivity of the Internet, a system which has both homogenized and supersized conspiracism.

In Among The Truthers, Mr. Kay mounts a two pronged effort to enlighten the reader about the major conspiracies floating through the Western world and to explain the pathologies of their adherents. Though he is pleasingly successful with the former, it's the later, the fascinating profile he generates of those who worship at conspiracism's altar, that elevates his work from engaging to outstanding. The damaged survivor, the fail historian, the endurer of the midlife crisis... Their backgrounds can be wildly divergent, but in these highly intelligent and endlessly opportunistic few, the outcome seems depressingly similar. The essential aspect of reasonableness that most humans enjoy collapses under the weight of their pain, plunging them into a distorted reality in which they have been victimized, their potential guttered by omnipotent forces beyond their control. It becomes their destiny to spread this revelation to the world and now, with the Internet to fuel them, they've never had a bigger pulpit.

This is easily in my top five reads this year. Engrossing and enlightening in equal measure. This is not a polemic against conspiracism; there is no rancor here. There is only a need to understand and to explain, a desire Mr. Kay ironically shares with his captivating subjects. (5/5 Stars)

The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies

From The Week of July 24, 2011

Are we alone in the universe? On the countless planets which orbit the innumerable stars captured by the billions of galaxies that comprise this grand experiment we call existence, is there no intelligent life but that which accidentally quickened here on Earth? It is a question of inestimable importance to humanity. For a conclusive answer, one way or the other, would surely set off soul-shattering earthquakes in the religious community, the aftershocks of which would reverberate through every corner of society. In The Eerie Silence, Mr. Davies, a British physicist, endeavors to provide a framework by which his readers can answer this question. But while he succeeds in imbuing his tale with some useful history, and while he enlightens his readers on the thought experiments of various scientists trying to tackle questions of interstellar travel, he fails to pepper his chronicle of the human search for alien life with enough spice to keep the observant reader from realizing that his premise is too weak for a book of some 280 pages.

For 50 years now, the SETI program has labored to locate life elsewhere in the universe. Messages have been sent, the sky has been scoped, and radio spectrums repeatedly and obsessively scanned for any sign of a reply, a glimpse, or a transmission from another species. The result of all of these efforts? Silence... A silence so profound that it has spawned many theories to explain it. Perhaps we are a fluke, the result of thousands of variables lining up to provide the exact and only formula for carbon-based intelligent life. Perhaps civilizations like ours are inherently unstable, lasting only a blink of an eye, rising long enough to exploit their planet's fossil fuels only to burn out before they can take, permanently and comfortably, to the stars. Or perhaps there is a grand, galactic club whose members all agree to withhold the knowledge of their existence from civilizations like ours until we have reached sufficient maturity to join them. Without prejudice, Mr. Davies explores these eideas and more as he lays down the essentials, as we understand them, for the propagation of intelligent life.

If there is life out there, what shape might it take? And how might it communicate with us? Mr. Davies devotes half of his book to answering this second, vital question, venturing into the murky waters of completely theoretical science to discuss how an alien species might spread itself across the cosmos. Would it be achieved through huge, lumbering ships that have simply not reached us yet? Or might they come in millions of tiny ships capable of observing us without being noticed? Fodder for worriers all...

The Eerie Silence does a wonderful job educating the reader on not only the basics of the search for alien life, but the fascinating people who've empowered it and the many struggles they've encountered to fund it. This half of Mr. Davies' effort is a complete success. But his decision to venture so deeply into the pseudo science of how completely theoretical alien civilizations might voyage amongst the stars, and what their ethics might be like, and how they might contact us, lifted his tale out of the comfortable genre of science history and dropped it into the genre of the totally speculative. This decidedly awkward marriage is a stain on what is otherwise a lovely homage to courageous and dedicated scientists who, with barely any support, have devoted themselves to a pursuit as fascinating and possibly life-altering as it is thankless. (3/5 Stars)

After The Prophet by Lesley Hazleton

From The Week of July 24, 2011

For much of our world, history is alive, an ever-present force with the capacity to fuel both scholarship and hatred. For as much as its investigation can uncover new truths and right past wrongs, destructive grievances can also be extrapolated from its maelstrom, grievances with the power to sunder once united peoples. is an examination of one such moment in history, a moment that changed Islam forever and sowed the seeds for conflicts still being played out in the 21st century.

In early June, 632 AD, in what is now Saudi Arabia, a man was dying. After a long life in which he had risen from obscurity to found one of the world's most prominent faiths, the Prophet Muhammad was succumbing to a fever brought on by that most common of human killers, illness. Severely weakened, he attempted to communicate, to his family and loyal companions attending him, his last, earthly wishes, including the definitive word on who ought to succeed him as leader of the Islamic people. But thwarted in this endeavor by his ambitious adherents who were too afraid of the great man siding against them to hear his truth, Muhammad died with his desires shrouded in mystery. Though years would pass before the full force of this calamity could hit home, in less than a generation, the uncertainty surrounding the proper succession would tear the Islamic people apart, forever dividing them into two conflicting camps, the Sunni and the Shi'a.

Ms. Hazleton, a veteran journalist, assembles in After The Prophet a chronicle of both Muhammad's death and the events that followed it, beginning with the argument over who should succeed their prophet and ending with th fates of his descendents, with a particular focus on Aisha, his favorite wife, and Ali, his cousin and the first youth to accept Muhammad's teachings. In-between, Ms. Hazleton traces, in painstaking and tragic detail, the many spats, grudges and power struggles which lead to civil war, the martyrdom of Ali and the unbalancing of a people Muhammad worked so hard to unite. For readers, like myself, who are only passingly familiar with Islam, part 1 of Ms. Hazleton's book, covering the events surrounding the death of Muhammad, will be eminently enlightening, imbuing important, historical figures with fascinating personalities and logical motivations. In this, Aisha and Ali are the standouts, long-suffering antagonists with burdens to bear, principles to uphold and wars to reluctantly fight.

But where part 1 succeeds in laying down the foundation of the conflict in gripping detail, part 2, the story of the tangled history of the various princes, warlords and self-interested chiefs who succeeded Muhammad's family, is blurred by a haze of unfamiliar names, inexplicable deeds, and unimaginable times. If part 1 is an introductory course on Islam, part 2 feels like a fourth year class in which notes must be taken and prior principles well-remembered.

As challenging as After The Prophet's second half can be, the whole is well worth the read. If Islam was a dead religion, or a religion that did not concern itself much with its history, the dispute over who should have succeeded Muhammad would be purely an academic argument. But Islam is a living religion, a faith whose followers value its past as much as they do its present. If it is to be understood, its past must be grasped and this is, for the most part, a quality place to start. (3/5 Stars)

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

From The Week of July 17, 2011

It sometimes seems as though the journey of man can be reduced to a single, continuous realization, that man is not as special, as interesting, or as central to the flow of events as he thinks he is. We exist at the center of the universe, until we realize that the Earth revolves around an unremarkable star. We believe that some god, somewhere, decided that this world, and this world alone, would be populated with his life, receive his special attention and oversight. Some of us even believe that a god created us in his image because, of course, we are superior to all other forms of life. Therefore, we must look as god does. Our planet, Our seas, Our lands, Our mountains.... We cannot help but position ourselves at the center of our own story and it is this conceit which Mr. Quinn savages in Ishmael, a story that is nothing short of the reconstruction of human hubris.

Disillusioned by the state of the world and the failure of the 1960s' revolutions to fix its systemic problems, our narrator scoffs when he sees, in the newspaper, an ad from a teacher seeking a pupil with an earnest desire to save the world. The narrator, who is never named, decides, somewhat vengefully, to answer the ad, but instead of the naive idealist he anticipated encountering, he is confronted by, in an otherwise unremarkable office, a gorilla named Ishmael. How does the narrator know the gorilla's name? Because the creature has taught himself how to communicate telepathically, a skill which he puts to lengthy use over the next few days as the astonished narrator agrees to become a student of this singular being.

Any prejudices the narrator may have had for the gorilla are soon dispelled when Ishmael intelligently and incisively disassembles, for his pupil, the mythology man has built up around himself. Through a series of question-and-answer style conversations, Ishmael tries to get the narrator to see that man, unlike any other creature on Earth, considers himself above the laws of nature, that the rules of the world do not apply to him, and that he may do with the world whatever he chooses because he considers the world his property. Stunned by what he is assimilating, the narrator is prodded along by Ishmael until, finally, in a manner he could have never expected, he realizes the revolution that had long eluded him, a coalescence of thought and ethics that will allow him to live a more satisfying life.

Ishmael is a powerful work of philosophical fiction. Through the eponymous Ishmael, the author relentlessly hammers away at human conceits of superiority, arguing that the moment, some ten-thousand years ago, when man put down the hunter's bow and took up the agriculturalist's plow, he became something Earth had never before seen, a being that considered itself subject to only its own laws. In that moment, man left the stability and sustainability of the animal kingdom to become a heartless devourer of planetary resources. Ignoring the consequences, man utilized agriculture's food surpluses to spread himself across the world, reproducing at faster and faster rates, never once slowing down long enough to consider the inevitable outcome of unchecked growth.

While Mr. Quinn presents a convincing case for the damage wrought by human arrogance, and while he argues compellingly for man to relinquish this devastating form of homo-centrism, the author fails to speak to the most obvious omission in his theory. Civilized humanity is infantile. We are at the beginning of our life's journey. We have only taken the first few, tentative steps towards enlightenment, towards becoming a healthy and wise civilization. I hold with those who say that humanity has done unimaginable harm to the planet that gave us life, but this damage may well be the natural and inescapable byproduct of an immature civilization thrashing its way through adolescence. Sadly, humans learn by making mistakes. And so, in order to be reasonable with our resources, to conserve our planet, and to allow the destinies of our fellow, terrestrial species to actualize without our interference, we have to learn a difficult lesson, the extinctionist consequences of being the destroyer. Only when we understand the grief we have caused, the destruction we have wrought, will we find the proper balance between exercising the full potential of our species without doing so at the expense of the life and the world around us. Surely no civilization can be fully realized without serious blunders along the way.

This is valuable and revelatory work, but Mr. Quinn's condemnatory pessimism is, at times, difficult to swallow. powerfully and commendably insightful, but not without its flaws. (3/5 Stars)

Bone Dance by Emma Bull

From The Week of July 17, 2011

Though it is rare for Urban Fantasy fiction to have aspirations beyond escapism, its ability to examine humanity's warts by providing it with a distorted mirror through which to view them bestows the genre with value and power. In its alternative, contemporary worlds where the normal rules do not apply, every conceit, every wish, every imagined nightmare, can be conjured up and, thus, picked apart, digested by readers used to accepting societal norms at face value. Ms. Bull's 1991 work, which was nominated for the Hugo award, manages, despite its flaws, to tap into the genre's escapism without forsaking a grander message, an admirable feat which saves her novel.

In a future Earth environmentally and economically devastated by war, hard-scrabble souls do their best to eke out an existence in the shadow of their authoritarian rulers. These powerful men have capitalized on the disintegration of high-tech civilization to regulate essential systems like electrical power, keeping all but the compliant in the dark. It is a simple and effective method of compelling wide-spread obedience from the subjugated. However, despite how many powerful cards one holds, occasionally, the gods throw up surprises, unanticipated events which have the power to destabilize the status quo.

One such wildcard is our protagonist, Sparrow, a bioengineered human being grown for a nefarious purpose which died with the collapse of the United States' government. Now free, he does his best to stay beneath the scrutiny of the high and mighty, occupying himself by restoring stereo equipment and conserving a collection of albums which he hopes to keep from sliding, along with the rest of civilization, into the rotting neglect of obscurity. But as hard as he has tried to escape the notice of the powerful, Sparrow becomes a wanted pawn in a dangerous game when, after waking from one of his periodic blackouts, he sets out to discover the source of what's plaguing him. In the process, he triggers a series of events which will shake the pillars of his city, threatening to hurl its rulers from their positions of abusive authority.

Ms. Bull has successfully amalgamated the hard technology of science fiction with the spirit world of fantasy to create a strange but compelling piece about the nature of humanity and the role that Fate plays in its existence. Sparrow is an artificial being, a thing into which the gods have breathed life. And it is through him that Ms. Bull explores the essence of human life: loves and friendships, motivations and aspirations. However, Sparrow is not his own man. He lives at the whimsy of the manifestation of voodoo spirits who have chosen to take a hand in Earth's temporal affairs. And so, even while Sparrow is learning what it is to be human, he is realizing that he is little more than a piece to a puzzle being assembled by the gods.

Though Ms. Bull succeeded in investing Sparrow with a rare, delicate and complex humanity, the remainder of Bone Dance's cast of misfits fail to animate. There are flashes here and there, moments in which the secondary characters flicker to life, but these moments are far too few and mostly confined to Frances, the enigmatic woman who complicates and catalyzes Sparrow's life.

There's much here to admire. The prose is witty and active, the world is dark and suitably spiritual, the villains are appropriately creepy and malevolent, but the story suffers from the same syndrome that plagued its protagonist. It is only half alive, deadened by a dizzying array of pop-culture allusions which rapidly became silly distractions from what was, otherwise, a serious examination of life in all its drivers and its fears. I can see why Bone Dance earned its nomination; there is gold here. But its flaws keep it well off a podium finish. (3/5 Stars)

Demon Fish by Juliet Eilperin

From The Week of July 17, 2011

If the 20th century was defined by the rise of technology and the singular role it played in fostering a global community, the 21st century will be defined by the environmental consequences of that technology. For our knowledge and our machines have allowed humanity to spread across the world in unprecedented numbers which, collectively, strain our planet's capacity to meet our demands. Though many species will be pushed to the brink of extinction as a result of our voraciousness, few, or so Ms. Eilperin argues in Demon Fish, are as susceptible as the shark.

In waters from California to Australia, from the shark callers of Papua New Guinea to the cooking pots of China, Ms. Eilperin delves into the history of the shark and our relationship with this most powerful predator. For hundreds of millions of years, since before there were dinosaurs, they have thrived in Earth's oceans, dominating this complex, underwater ecosystem without, as some species have, destroying it. But now that humanity has so successfully propagated, we've endangered the millennia-old preeminence of sharks: our pollutants soiling their food, our weapons reducing their numbers, our anthropogenic CO2 heating their waters. And so, hunted by fetishists and demonized by dramatists, they have been pushed to their limits, opening up the oceans to the kind of species imbalances not seen in millions of years.

Though Ms. Eilperin is careful to include fascinating details about the sharks themselves, their anatomy, their behaviors, their history, and their impact on the planet, Demon Fish spends twice as much time on the shark's bleak future as it does on its interesting past. In fretting over the heartless trophy hunters who catch them and the ritualistic fools who insist that their fins occupy their soup bowls, the author has sacrificed valuable pages that could have been devoted to the furthering of the reader's selachimorphic education. Instead, she has chosen to use her chronicle to shine a light on the extent to which sharks have suffered as a result of human cruelty. Exposing these ugly practices is a worthwhile goal and I come away enlightened to the repugnance of foods like shark fin soup, but Demon Fish is not billed as a polemic. It purports to be an exploration of sharks and their environment. It is, instead, activism contorted to fit into a work of popular science.

This is an enjoyable journey through the world of sharks. Ms. Eilperin has an engaging voice and a finely honed sense of injustice. Both play prominent roles in this worthwhile effort. However, I was looking to Demon Fish to educate me about sharks and the role they play in the animal kingdom beyond our shores, not to be ambushed by the extent to which they are being harmed by factors beyond my control. That this is more activism than it purports to be causes the scientifically minded reader to feel slightly duped. Still, quite the adventure and a worthwhile read. (3/5 Stars)

The Honored Dead by Joseph Braude

From The Week of July 17, 2011

We can never truly understand places culturally foreign to us. We can try, of course, but no book, no university course, no immersion scheme, can substitute for the mosaic of accumulated knowledge, behavioral, societal and cultural, which comprises nationality. But this truth should not dissuade us from the exploration of other cultures. After all, other than physical exposure, the attempt to understand something, or someone, is the most direct way of fostering tolerance and open-mindedness to new people and new ideas. And in a world suffering from a lack of tolerance, a lack of respect for other people and their beliefs, what is more valuable than an open mind? This attempt to understand empowers Mr. Braude's investigation into Morocco and its challenging streets. It's what motivates him to care about a mystery that doesn't concern him, fates that don't involve him. It is what drives him to risk alliances and friendships in a part of the world where it is dangerous to be devoid of such.It is what elevates The Honored Dead from a self-indulgent memoir into a tale of universal self-discovery.

As a consequence of recent, liberalizing reforms in Morocco, Mr. Braude, an American journalist, is allowed to experience something few Westerners have ever seen. Attached to the Casablanca police department as an observer, he is not only taken on ride-alongs, he is furnished with unprecedented access to police files and practices which, in most Arab countries, are firmly walled off from outsiders. Despite such privileges, Mr. Braude threatens both his tenuous partnership with the CPD and the friendships he's made with its officers when a simple investigation into a senseless murder of a man in a Jewish-owned warehouse provokes him to press for a truth the police refuse to acknowledge. Guided in his investigation by a man who considered the murdered man his best friend, Mr. Braude and his companion travel Morocco, delve into family history and journey into the world of Islamic magic all in the hopes of uncovering the inconvenient truth behind the killing of a man widely considered to be an innocent.

Part memoir and part mystery, Mr. Braude ably entwins his own history with his Moroccan investigation to create The Honored Dead, an exploration of Arab culture, its conflict with Judaism, its struggles towards modernization, and its inability to serve its people with a full measure of justice. Though the murder investigation is interesting enough -- many Islamic sensibilities are both revealed and offended by its execution --, Mr. Braude himself is his tale's most interesting enigma. The descendant of a Jewish community that once called Baghdad home, he is staunchly American, more than eager to aid his country's authorities in the rubbing out of terrorist activity. At the same time, he's clearly conflicted over the role he played in the dissolution of a treasured friendship with an Iraqi-American he met while at university. Consequently, he imbues the pursuit of this particular Moroccan truth with a reckless zeal that may well solve the case, but it will not repair the damage that has been done, nor restore the lost closeness he now laments. This broken friendship not only drives Mr. Braude onward in a mad pursuit of truth, it is a quietly potent metaphor for the gulf of ignorance that separates East from West, authoritarianism from democracy. And so, even though Mr. Braude is sometimes too central to his story, he's delivered, in the expose of his desires and mistakes, the portrait of a man and a world both straining for understanding, for truth and for freedom. Quality work and gripping despite its narrow scope. (3/5 Stars)

Render Unto Rome by Jason Berry

From The Week of July 17, 2011

Human nature has many home truths, ugly aspects of character and behavior which are difficult to unlearn. Of these, the most consequential to family, culture and society is our relationship with power, both in the lusting for it and the execution of it. When checked, power in the proper hands can bring about massive, positive change; but when unchecked, when humans are entrusted with autonomous authority, painful experience tells us that, far too often, bloodshed and the loss of innocence are sadly and disastrously inevitable. And even though the Catholic Church cloaks itself in holiness, Mr. Berry illustrates, in Render Unto Rome that righteousness is no obstacle to the human temptation to abuse power.

Mr. Berry, an investigative reporter, has spent 20 years at the tip of the spear which, in its insistent probings into the Catholic Church, has been revealing the extent to which the Vatican has been covering up for its sinful priests. Though Render Unto Rome features its fair share of victims, and the extent to which they were protected by an institution supposedly shrouded in divinity, this effort, Mr. Berry's third book on the recent scandals which have been rocking Catholicism, focuses more on the finances of the Catholic Church, examining both its assets and how those assets are deployed. After explaining some of the accounting tricks which help to make the Church seem worth far less than it actually is, he launches into his primary premise, the consequences for the Church and its adherents of the many, substantial civil settlements which have threatened to bankrupt numerous diocese in the United States.

These eight and nine figure awards, court-ordered settlements meant to comfort and repay the many victims of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of priests, necessitated, in Massachusetts, Ohio and California, a wholesale restructuring of worship. To cut costs and pay the bills, diocese suppressed (closed down) churches, seizing their assets and selling them to fund the settlements. Unsurprisingly, these desperate and heavy-handed edicts angered the many thousands of affected worshippers who, despite doing nothing wrong, had their churches sold out from underneath them by a Vatican caught with its hand in a very naughty cookie jar.

Though the men who ordered the suppressions, and the men and women who fought them, spin through Mr. Berry's riveting chronicle, equally prominent are the abusers, the Orders they founded and the cultures that, for so long, shielded them from exposure. Though there are many names featured in this gallery of pedophiles, none are more prominent, here, than Father Marcial Maciel, the founder of a Christian order which claims tens of thousands of followers. Mr. Berry relentlessly exposes Maciel's unpardonable acts while holding him up as an exemplar of the many abusers which have forever altered the lives of innocents entrusted into their care.

Though Mr. Berry's account suffers from a certain academic dryness, this is, for the most part, an unavoidable consequence of laying out the complicated means by which the Church handles money. This aridness is more than made up for by the flood of information and emotion that comprises the rest of his investigation into the temporal workings of a church which was, for far too long, shamefully, willfully blind to the crimes perpetrated by its most zealous devotees. The reader is not informed about the immense power of archbishops, who are effectively the banks and the auditors of their diocese, he is made aware of the extent to which these bishops have squandered the money of faithful parishioners on the absurd rehabilitation of abusive priests and the cynical schemes of shysters. This is a thoroughly informative and profoundly disturbing piece of journalism which, if it does nothing else, must surely make every reader contemplate a truth far more profound than the cruel crimes of an insensitive church, that man is, by his nature, tempted to test his power, that he will, if unchecked, abuse that power, and that abuse of power is only energized by the expansion of that man's power. No one, and especially no institution, no matter how holy it claims to be, is immune from this truth, the denial of which only hastens ones descend into fantasy. (4/5 Stars)

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy

From The Week of July 10, 2011

We are conformists; this is one of humanity's most fundamental truths. Most of us grow up to reflect the environment we were born into. If that environment is marked by racism, abusiveness, or cruelty, then odds are we will be racist, abusive or cruel. This is not only a self-defense mechanism, the normalization and externalization of the pain we felt, the pain we now want to inflict, it is a natural byproduct of a species designed to be social, a species programmed to participate in communities. And communities cannot exist without conformity. Consequently, nothing is more important to the health of a community than the actualization of fairness, lawfulness, and kindness. Conversely, there is nothing more damaging than the institutionalization of brutality, criminality and exploitation. It is difficult to imagine a piece of crime fiction getting at this truism any more effectively than Mr. Ellroy's dizzying 1990 classic, L.A. Confidential.

Set against the backdrop of 1950s Hollywood, L.A. Confidential is a serpentine chronicle of the corrupt practices of the Los Angeles Police Department as exemplified by three officers. Bud White is the survivor of a broken and abusive home who exercises his demons by punishing wifebeaters. His penchant for ruthless violence is cultivated by Captain Dudley Smith, a sinister Irishman who appears to have his fingers in many, disreputable pies. Jack Vincennes, the high-flying Big V, is the second leg of L.A. Confidential's cop tripod. A participant in the Bloody Christmas beatings, Vincennes is dangerously unstable, capable of episodes of ugliness and violence that would make Bud White blush. Finally, Ed Exley, college graduate and hero of WWII... An opportunist, Exley uses a mixture of competence, cunning and political connections to rise through the LAPD, attempting to remain a clean skin even while he swims through the cesspool of seedy L.A. And its even seedier police department.

The lives of these four men entwine when an apparent robbery gone wrong leaves employees of the Night Owl cafe grotesquely murdered. Initially, suspicion for the foul crimes falls on a trio of African Americans who are brutalized by police eager for a confession. When the three men are exonerated of the murders, it's far too late. They are already dead, crushed under the bootheels of ambitious men who care more about achieving their own ends than they do about justice. Slowly, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the Night Owl murders are far more than they originally seemed, the tip of an iceberg floating in waters soiled by pornography, child prostitution, and sadistic perversion the likes of which not even the hardened men of the LAPD can conceive.

L.A. Confidential is both a rewarding and a challenging work. Told in a stream-of-consciousness staccato, it unleashes upon the reader a bewildering array of sleazy characters and smutty deeds only some of which are explicable. But while the prose offers only blurry snapshots of L.A.'s 1950s underbelly, it succeeds in imbedding the reader in the heads of its dirty protagonists, forcing him to live in the twisted minds of men who each have their own ways of coping with the brutality of the police department and the depravity of the streets it is ostensibly sworn to protect. In this, we watch Mr. Ellroy explore how these men came to be what they are, how they were primed by their upbringings and then infected by the LAPD's ugly culture, a combination which transformed them into nightmares, ignoble men clutching at the tatters of their humanity.

If L.A. Confidential 's strength is its characters and their plights, its weakness is its mystery which is bogged down by labyrinthine twists and turns which leave the reader dizzy and confused. Too many names, too many moving parts, too many pieces of disconnected information, all of which Mr. Ellroy packs into a big, filthy ball and hurls at the reader like a Nolan Ryan fastball. As such, Mr. Ellroy's furious piece is far more crime fiction than it is mystery fiction, far more an indictment of corrupt cultures than an opportunity to catch the bad guy. But then it's impossible for L.A. Confidential can't catch the bad guys. There'd be no one left to walk the streets.

Quality work, but difficult at times to follow. (3/5 Stars)

Earth by Jon Stewart

From The Week of July 10, 2011

Jon Stewart is a wonderful satirist. His blend of humor and outrage seems, at times, to be the perfect cocktail for a world overcome with dishonest politicians, crazy celebrities and media sensationalists obsessed with the spotlight. Given that America, hit all these notes rather well, I expected a similarly potent cocktail from this latest effort, Earth. I was sorely disappointed.

Earth is an open letter to future aliens who visit Earth, only to find the planet deserted. Humanity, it seems, has exterminated itself in one of a myriad of ways, leaving the aliens to pick over the bones of our forgotten civilization. The letter tries to explain to the aliens who we were by first laying down some basic facts about humanity, before layering on details about our politics, our societies, our customs and our religions. In this, Mr. Stewart pokes fun at many of our ridiculous notions while offering a what can I say, this was who we were' apologetic shrug to the curious aliens.

Though Earth does have its humorous moments, these come far too infrequently for good satire. America worked because, even in the midst of its absurdity, it had a point to make, primarily that, for a country claiming to be great, the people of the United States, on balance, know far less than they ought to about both their politicians and their political system. In this, it taught even as it gently scolded. Earth offers no such lesson wrapped in absurdity. It is merely an all-too-familiar recitation of the litany of mistakes we've made as a race. There is no teachable moments here, no central objective. Earth is a weak attempt to laugh at how pathetic we are. Perhaps if the aliens had brought some more biting criticism to the table, there might've been some punch here. As is, Earth commits the cardinal sin of all comedy. It just isn't that funny. If there are no teachable moments and the humor is hit and miss at best, then what's left? Precious little... (2/5 Stars)

Jon Stewart is a wonderful satirist. His blend of humor and outrage seems, at times, to be the perfect cocktail for a world overcome with dishonest politicians, crazy celebrities and media sensationalists obsessed with the spotlight. Given that America, hit all these notes rather well, I expected a similarly potent cocktail from this latest effort, Earth. I was sorely disappointed.

Earth is an open letter to future aliens who visit Earth, only to find the planet deserted. Humanity, it seems, has exterminated itself in one of a myriad of ways, leaving the aliens to pick over the bones of our forgotten civilization. The letter tries to explain to the aliens who we were by first laying down some basic facts about humanity, before layering on details about our politics, our societies, our customs and our religions. In this, Mr. Stewart pokes fun at many of our ridiculous notions while offering a what can I say, this was who we were' apologetic shrug to the curious aliens.

Though Earth does have its humorous moments, these come far too infrequently for good satire. America worked because, even in the midst of its absurdity, it had a point to make, primarily that, for a country claiming to be great, the people of the United States, on balance, know far less than they ought to about both their politicians and their political system. In this, it taught even as it gently scolded. Earth offers no such lesson wrapped in absurdity. It is merely an all-too-familiar recitation of the litany of mistakes we've made as a race. There is no teachable moments here, no central objective. Earth is a weak attempt to laugh at how pathetic we are. Perhaps if the aliens had brought some more biting criticism to the table, there might've been some punch here. As is, Earth commits the cardinal sin of all comedy. It just isn't that funny. If there are no teachable moments and the humor is hit and miss at best, then what's left? Precious little... (2/5 Stars)

The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

From The Week of July 10, 2011

While we lend, as a rule, too much sway to the Great Man version of history, that view of our past which filters historical events through a preoccupation with presidents and generals, popes and revolutionaries, overlooking the overwhelming contributions from the countless common citizens, humanity does, from time to time, churn out an individual so vigorous of spirit, so immense of reputation, so unyielding of will, that we must take notice of him and his deeds. In this, few figures can match Theodore Roosevelt. Racist, imperialist, Christian supremacist perhaps, but also a man of such relentless determination, such indomitable fortitude, that his deeds ought to be remembered, and even respected, in spite of his sins. Ms. Millard has captured here the most daring of Roosevelt's non-military pursuits and, in doing so, brought to light not only an aging president's awakening to the rights of men from other races and creeds, but the story of a Brazilian hero who has, for the most part, been unjustly forgotten by the world beyond South America.

After failing, in 1912, in his bid to re-capture the presidency of the United States, an office he'd relinquished to his hand-picked successor, William Taft, a man widely considered to be a failure in the office, Theodore Roosevelt was at a loss. Afflicted by the familial melancholy, he dwelled in his electoral rejection until a chance meeting with an arrogant priest of his acquaintance alerted him to an exciting expedition being assembled to explore the River of Doubt, a then mysterious and unexplored river running through the Amazon Rainforest. Signing on with enthusiasm, the expedition quickly took shape around his famous name, adding Kermit, his eldest son, George Cherrie, a famous naturalist and explorer of the time, and Candido Rondon, the Brazilian commander of the expedition and a man with immense experience with the region. After months of planning and dozens of diplomatic engagements, the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition finally got underway early in 1914, taking weeks just to reach the river. On February 27th, 1914, after offloading supplies and men they could no longer afford to carry, the expedition started down the River of Doubt, embarking upon a weeks-long mission of starvation, disease and danger which would see men lost to the rapids, men lost to madness, and men lost to the deprivations of a journey no one had ever before undertaken. Countless, laborious portages; innumerable and unavoidable insects; and unknowable and lethal indians with no prior experience of the outside world all characterized the journey which nearly took the life of its most famous participant, the formidable Roosevelt.

Ms. Millard is a first-rate storyteller. Though she, at times, takes liberties with the thoughts of the Indian tribes the Expedition encountered, Her account is otherwise authenticated by the first-hand reflections of the expedition's members who, in writing frequently to their loved ones back home, vividly expressed the seemingly insurmountable dangers facing them. Ms. Millard ties these accounts together with an excellent and informative primer on the Amazon Rainforest: its evolutionary design, its bewildering composition and its innumerable menaces. Her efforts here are unquestionably aided by what is a story out of legend, a script fit for a movie, but the author's keen, biographer's eye allows her to augment a great story with informative sketches of each of the Expedition's participants.

For all that The River of Doubt is primarily about Theodore Roosevelt and his struggle to find meaning after the doors to ultimate power are closed to him, Candido Rondon is, without doubt, the story's true hero. The Brazilian commander is far ahead of his time, a thoughtful and honest humanitarian whose impoverished and difficult adolescence gave him an empathy for the plight of the Native Indians that far surpasses the call of duty. Rondon's attempts to explore, to see, and to understand, all without judgement or enmity, mark him out as an extraordinary soul who clearly has a positive influence on the here-to-for prejudicial and provincial Roosevelt. Easily the star of this wonderful, literary show.

This is, in virtually every way, a successful and enjoyable biography. Top five this year, with a bullet. (5/5 Stars)

Napoleon's Wars by Charles Esdaile

From The Week of July 10, 2011

Histories which concern themselves with events prior to the 20th century invariably collide with a problem endemic to the genre. The farther back in time they attempt to reach, the more opaque events become. Not only do the ravages of time rub out valuable sources of information necessary for the corroboration of events, the context in which the events took place is lost, leaving us to only wonder at the myriad motivations which impelled the past's prime movers. The Napoleonic Wars are a classic example of this problem. For while they transpired at the dawn of the 19th century, in a time of printing presses and parliaments which disseminated information that survives to this day, the shifting alliances, internecine conflicts and political firestorms are 200 years removed from us, mired in a barely post-feudalist world mostly ruled by absolute monarchs and the ambitious men who sought to eclipse them. In other words, this is very much not our world. Though Mr. Esdaile goes a long way to illuminating the wars themselves, he fails to connect us to the thought processes of the men who instigated them, an inadequacy which dooms his history.

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of ruinous campaigns which, for the first time in history, coupled technological advancements birthed by the Industrial Revolution with new military ideas of mass-conscription and standardized training to create huge armies the likes of which the world had never seen. These titanic forces smashed into one another all across Europe, soaking lands, from Russia in the east to Spain in the west, in the lifeblood of millions of dead soldiers. Sparked in 1793 by the First Coalition of European kingdoms which, in the wake of the French Revolution, banded together to use military force to restore the Bourbon monarchy to the vacated French throne, they did not end until the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, casting him from Europe and condemning him to a death in exile. In the intervening 22 years, Napoleon rose from the ranks of a disorganized French army, hurriedly raised to defend the new republic from coalition invasion, to become the most powerful man in Europe. Originally cloaked in republican idealism, he soon became a tyrant, sweeping aside the violence and the confusion that followed in the wake of the French Revolution and replacing it with a military-backed empire with Napoleon at its head. He lead campaigns to conquer territory in Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Russia and Egypt. In doing so, he very nearly succeeded in creating a single block of European kingdoms bent on locking his greatest enemy, England, out in the economic cold. But a guerrilla war in Spain, followed by a notoriously calamitous invasion of Russia sapped his great French army of strength and legitimacy, leading to his overthrow and abdication.

Mr. Esdaile bites off far more than he can chew in this self-styled international history of the period between 1803 and 1815, when Napoleon was emperor of France and very nearly ruler of Europe. Though the author is mostly successful in his attempt to escort us through the ever-shifting sands of the various alliances that sought to oppose Napoleon, he fails to provide anywhere near enough background on the various players involved, leading to confusion and dismay for a reader drowning in a sea of unfamiliar names and labyrinthine political compacts. As a result, Mr. Esdaile hits most of the major notes, the rise of Napoleon, the consolidation of the powers against him, the wars the two sides waged, and the consequences of those wars, while failing to animate the why behind these conflicts: the ambition that drove them, the politics that shaped them, the recriminations and retaliations that perpetuated them.

To be fair, Mr. Esdaile set himself a difficult task. How does one write a history about multiple wars, on multiple fronts, all while providing enough background to tie it all together? His unfortunate answer was to middle it, a single volume history which is too brief to tell the whole story and too long to provide a synopsis. Damningly, I learned more about the Napoleonic Wars from two hours spent with Wikipedia than I learned from blurrily staring at these 650 pages of half-explained alliances and dizzying conflicts. This may be well-researched, but it fails to do what a history must always do best, make explicable events and times now removed from us. (1/5 Stars)

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud

From The Week of July 03, 2011

Of all the cruelties humanity has, spawned during its time on Earth, none can match war for its corrosiveness. It has shattered families, inspired generational hatreds and ended entire civilizations. But while the physical and societal damage it has wrought is obvious and detectable, its deepest cut, its gravest perversion, is the extent to which it corrupts the souls of the pure. For the Greatest Generation, those many veterans who returned from World War II, it lived in their pained silences. For the soldiers who suffered through Vietnam, it was in the shame imposed upon them by a violently antiwar populous. And for those who've prosecuted our most recent conflicts, it is in the PTSD brought on by never knowing friend from foe, innocent from combatant, bomb from IED. These wounds linger. They change lives and alter destinies. They make it impossible to live as one might have wished. And it is this idea which empowers Ms. Skibsrud's tale of quiet, quirky family life in the wake of tragedy.

The Sentimentalists concerns itself with an adult woman's reflections upon her eccentric adolescence. Growing up in the northern midwest of the United States and southern Canada, the daughter of a father who served in Vietnam narrates her childhood's key events, most of which center on her father's amusing peculiarities: his addled good humor, his fantastic projects, his endless stories, and his strange and devoted friendship with a disabled man tied to his past. Gradually, as the story develops, the reader comes to understand that many of the father's (Napoleon's) oddities are externalities of his time in the Vietnam War, and though he's initially reluctant to burden the narrator with his soldiering there, he eventually confesses that he was a witness to a war crime, committed by his company, an outrage which, to his credit, he tried to bring to the attention of his superiors. Armed with this new information, the daughter, who never names herself, realizes how her father's experience in the war changed him and made him into the quirky, dysfunctional and yet lovable man she's known for so long.

Though Ms. Skibsrud does a wonderful job illustrating the cost paid by an unprotected mind forced to witness atrocities, and while this provides the foundation for a story about family, the skill with which she reconstructs the thrills and the strangeness of adolescence is breathtakingly accurate. Her spare, reflective prose succeeds in conveying all of childhood's little details, the quirks, the rituals, and the jealousies, which shape our youth and form the language by which we learn to dialogue with our parents and the world. In this, Ms. Skibsrud has written an intensely authentic work which deploys the trappings of the humble family to say something profound about the human experience and the extent to which it is guided by what has come before. It's no wonder this piece of poetic fiction won the 2010 Giller prize. Beautiful in its sadness, its nostalgia and its ruminations on life as we understand it. (4/5 Stars)

Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard

From The Week of July 03, 2011

Who are we? And why do we do what we do? Surely, these are the most fundamental questions that can be asked of humanity and its nature, yet, odds are many, many years will pass before universal answers are found for them. Who we are as individuals may be the product of our genetics, our parents, our friends, our environments, our whims, or a combination of all or some of these, but we can't know for certain. And until we do know for certain, we cannot know why we succumb to foolishness, why we are ensnared by temptation, or why we repeat the same, stupid actions over and over until we've squandered what may be the only life we have. Out of Sight may be, in the grand tradition of Mr. Leonard, a fun, funny and subversive crime romp, but in its exploration of these fundamental questions, it advances itself from the mediocrity of crime fiction's back benches into the meritorious front row of inquisitive literature.

Blessed with memorable beauty and equipped with her father's moral compass, life for Karen Sisco, a deputy U.S. Marshal stationed in sunny Florida, ought to be fairly effortless. Her love life, however -- her last boyfriend turned out to be a bank robber --, suggests that, deep down, not all is well with the blond-haired honey with the shotgun on her hip. This thirst for danger is deeply indulged when Karen interrupts a prison breakout but, instead, winds up locked in the trunk of a getaway car with a dangerous convict snuggled up behind her. This is Jack Foley, a man who has done three sizeable stretches of time for bank robbery. It's no wonder then that he's eager to escape. But when Karen interferes with his flight, she stirs up emotions in him, feelings that stretch beyond the understandable anger one would feel for someone who ruined his plans. As they part ways and Foley latches on to the prospect of a job in Detroit that might get him the cash he needs to make a real getaway, Karen doggedly pursues him, both of them remembering their interlude together in the trunk and wondering if, in the brief window of time they have left to them, if there might be room for something that transcends the restrictions placed upon them by the roles they've chosen to play.

Out of Sight entertains the reader with an assortment of quirky, Leonardian characters who weave in and out of perils, some of which are of their making, some of which are completely beyond their control. But while the novel is well-served by a solid plot and suitable actors to fill fairly predictable roles, it is the core relationship shared by Foley and Sisco, criminal and woman of the law, which gives this piece its punch. In lesser hands, this would be nothing more than corny trash, the officer of the law tempted over to the dark side by the archetypical, irresistible bad boy, but Mr. Leonard avoids such cliches by ensuring that their attraction is equal and mutual. More over, they are cognizant of the fact that what they have is limited by time and circumstance, that it is a connection that must exist outside of the lives they've chosen for themselves, that it cannot possibly endure. They are two mature adults reaching across their choices, their histories and their self-interests to unite in common attraction, a need that supersedes their life paths.

In this, Mr. Leonard has done something special. He's understood that, being that we are nothing more than the culmination of a million choices across our years on this planet, it is possible to set aside, for a little while, who we are and what we've done. We are not owned by our jobs, our parents, or our chosen destinies. We can just be human beings, creatures capable of momentarily shrugging off their identities.Mr. Leonard grasps this somewhat scary notion and actualizes it in a delightfully subtle and praiseworthy manner.

This is quality and thoughtful work, a rare philosophical gem in the crime fiction arena. (4/5 Stars)

Getting Stoned With Savages by J. Maarten Troost

From The Week of July 03, 2011

When we were last with Mr. Troost in Sex Lives of Cannibals, he and his wife, Sylvia, were struggling to re-adjust to the saturation of Western life after spending two years in tiny and bizarre Kiribati, a country in the South Pacific leagues from civilization. Though they both found gainful employment upon their return to the West, a certain disaffection for the rat race, along with a seemingly insatiable wanderlust, soon motivated them into a search for another adventure. Which is how, not long after recovering from Kiribati, Mr. Troost is once again surfing the cultures of far away lands, this time dividing his penetrating wit between Fiji, which has recently suffered a military coupe, and the island nation of Vanuatu, later to be popularized by the television series Survivor which used it as the setting for one of its many cycles.

Getting Stoned With Savages is aptly named for it does often seem as though Mr. Troost's insights into these island cultures are gleaned through the powerful and revolting intoxicants imbibed there. And yet his willingness to try any substance, to risk every adventure, to confront every monstrous insect, imbues this, his second journey into the wilds of the undeveloped world, with a passion and a humor to rival his Kiribati experience. Despite the Kava haze which lingers over his account, Mr. Troost is able to knit his adventures here into a coherent if fragmented narrative which educates the reader on Vanuatu's French colonial history, on the eccentricities of its people and practices, and on the vast inequities between its rulers and its citizens which seem to characterize most island cultures. All this while Sylvia bravely gives birth to their first child who spends his initial year on Earth in the sun, sea and sweat of the Pacific islands.

Without his telltale wit, Mr. Troost's work would be nothing more than interesting if unspectacular logs of his various travels. But it is his packaging of his distinct brand of humor with a savage dislike for both colonialism and political corruption which allow hiss journeys to leap off the page. Though Sex Lives of Cannibals had a novelty that Getting Stoned With Savages lacks, Mr. Troost is, in every other respect, at the peak of his powers.

Conceptually, the only flaw here is the extent to which he has to cover up for the fact that this tale is devoid of a central event around which the rest of the story pivots. His attempt to talk to a living cannibal offers up some momentary hope in this regard, but this effort soon fails, lapsing the reader back into a series of barely connected adventures which have but one thing in common, that they all occur to Mr. Troost. This ought to be disappointing, but I would rather authenticity than dishonesty designed to sensationalize a flagging tale. And besides, the human experience is, here, a quality substitute for drama as, with admirable courage, the author exhibits himself and the cultures he explores, leaving little hidden away. Entertaining work. (3/5 Stars)

Into Africa by Martin Dugard

From The Week of July 03, 2011

Though we sometimes chafe at its ubiquitousness and angst over its sensationalism, there can be no doubt that our world is better off for having a modern media. Its capacity to inform us about both the state of our world and the power of its prime movers allows us to be infinitely more educated about current affairs than any generation prior to the present. However, for all its good, the modern media does, in all its saturation, put an end to mysteries which, in the past, accrued enormous cultural significance as a direct result of their being impossible for the media to report on. No tale exemplifies this lost ignorance more than that of the lost adventurer who, having dropped off civilization's radar into the mists of the unknown, spends years in the wilderness, exploring, charting, engaging with new cultures while his many admirers back home fret over his absence and their lack of contact with him. Not only have most of our geographical frontiers been explored, satellites make such communication blackouts almost impossible. And thus, there may never again be another meeting like that which took place on October 27th, 1871, when the American newsman and explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, finally met the British missionary and expeditionist, Dr. David Livingstone in the depths of Africa, thousands of miles from the lights of civilization.

This vivid effort from Mr. Dugard is a dual biography which takes up, as its twin subjects, the life stories of Stanley and Livingstone. It reaches across decades in an effort to contextualize the famous meeting near Lake Tanganyika which forever connected newsman and Christian, sensationalist and explorer, rescuer and rescued. Though the two men receive equal treatment, it is Stanley's background that animates Into Africa. For while much is already known of the Scottish Livingstone and his exploratory sojourns through Africa which made him famous and inflamed his advocacy for the abolition of slavery as a Western practice, Henry Morton Stanley has remained something of a mystery. Orphaned young, Mr. Dugard burns off the many lies Stanley told about himself to reveal a complex figure who pursued Livingstone more out of personal gain than for any affinity or fondness for the man. After all, Stanley was a man of masks, a young and abused emigrant to America who, after being fostered for awhile by a successful family in New Orleans, found his way into the Confederate army during the American Civil War, only to be captured by Unionists and freed to fight for them against the South. Drifting through his own life, he caught on at the New York Herald, a popular newspaper of the period and eventually, thanks to a scandal which entangled President Grant, found himself charged with the ambitious task of finding Dr. Livingstone who, by 1870, was four years marooned in the jungles of Africa and long since believed dead by the West.

Though Stanley's background is more arresting, Dr. Livingstone's is not without its moments. Mr. Dugard paints a portrait of a man gripped by a powerful, Christian faith which, over a meritorious career, helped earn him fame and fortune as an adventurer, a chronicler of Africa, and a crusader against slavery. But no amount of success, professionally or privately, could sway him from an obsession to find the source of the Nile. It was this need to know which drove the then famous abolitionist back into Africa for a final and fateful five-year journey which culminated in the meeting with Stanley in 1871. The author describes a man who was so driven to see, to know, and to do, that his passion lead to his wife's demise at the hands of his Africa. What's more, he clearly sacrificed familiarity of his children to conquer both frontiers and iniquities which, as often as not, proved immune to his blows. A powerful and conflicted figure who, as a result of his fearlessness, his courage and his faith, was a national hero to the British Empire.

Interweaving the histories of these two men with the twin journeys which eventuated in their meeting on that fateful day, Mr. Dugard brings to life both his subjects and the times which shaped them. Though his account presumes to know a great deal about Henry Morton Stanley's psychological state, enough of the man's own writings are included here to back up the author's psychoanalysis. And so, though we may have left behind the era of the great adventure, we can relive them in literature and Mr. Dugard does not in the least disappoint with this chronicle of a famous and burdened explorer and the efforts of a troubled American to locate him at the end of the civilized world. (4/5 Stars)

Three Empires On The Nile by Dominic Green

From The Week of July 03, 2011

To the cost of millions who've suffered under its yoke, the world, particularly the West, has learned that colonialism is a euphemism for the systematic exploitation of the weak by the strong. Empowered by a belief in their own superiority, strong groups justified these subjections on the claim of necessity: that they required the resources held by weak groups, that weak groups were too ignorant to understand how best to utilize what they had, that weak groups needed to be properly civilized by the strong in order for them to think and behave properly. But while most forms of colonialism have been rightfully abolished, one of its most insidious tenets persists into the present. This practice concerns the grotesque manner in which the governments of strong groups help to prop up the tyrants of weak groups because it is politically and economically advantageous for them to do so. And it is precisely this manipulative power which pervades Mr. Green's account of the thirty years of political and social upheaval which beset Egypt from the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal to the end of the 19th century.

From the overthrow of the fiscally ruinous Khedive Ismail who ruled, as a playboy, over Egypt until 1879, to the zealous and nihilistic jihad prosecuted by the Mahdi and his followers in the 1880s, and to the final subjugation of rebellious elements by the British in the 1890s, Mr. Green escorts the reader on a sweeping exploration of Egypt and Sudan of the late 19th century. Exhibiting little of its former, pre-Christian glory, the region is rife with poverty and oppression, dominated by poorly educated peasants who have the misfortune of being ruled by the Turkish throne of the Ottoman empire. Perhaps, if the Khedive's rule had been moderately progressive, events would not have slipped his control to evolve into 30 years of bloody chaos. But after hailing Western Europe as the future, Khedive Ismail spent his country into oblivion, a calamity which not only necessitated his removal from power but provided the spiritual fuel by which Sudan went up in religious flames. It not only radicalized Muhammad Ahmad until he believed himself the Mahdi, Islam's prophesized redeemer of the Earth, it gave him an opportunity to recruit an army tens of thousands strong, an army which, in the name of ridding Egypt and Sudan of corruption and foreign influences, devoted the next ten years to turning the region into a war-torn wasteland.

But while the Khedive's failures gave rise to the annihilation of the Mahdi and his crusade, it also empowered men like Ahmed Urabi, the first Egyptian of the modern era to rise from the peasantry to force some kind of reform upon his incredibly corrupted country.

Three Empires On The Nile is full of war and chaos, politics and corruption, religion and devastation. Through men like Charles Gordon, the engineer and reformer, it explores the spirit of adventure and power that infused British life at the peak of its imperial powers. Through the Mahdi and his war, it elucidates the extent to which religious extremism is an outgrowth of poverty and oppression, and that such fundamentalism often ends up destroying the very thing it is suffering to save. Finally, through William Gladstone, the British Prime Minister of the period, it explains how the three Cs of the British empire, Christianity, Commerce and civilization, energized the empire's expansion and lead to its colonial entanglements in parts of the world it could not understand.

Mr. Green's excellent history is full of fascinating and profoundly flawed characters, explorers and drunkards, warriors and self-flagellators, zealots and martyrs, all of whom are set against the ancient world of Egypt and the burning sands of the Sudan. While its conclusion overreaches by attempting to connect these three tempestuous decades to more recent history, it is, in every other way, a wonderful examination of three of history's Cs, colonialism, corruption and change, the omnipresence of which have shaped our nations and our lives. Terrific work. (5/5 Stars)