The Next Decade by George Friedman

From The Week of March 27, 2011

It may be that Mr. Friedman is correct in his cynical, American-centric view of the world and where it is headed, politically and economically, over the next decade, but if he is right, then it is a world I want no part of.

The United States is an empire in all but name. It is from this core truth that Mr. Friedman extrapolates his premise for The Next Decade. Empires exert their power for the betterment of their citizens. First, they use political force. If that fails, they fall back on economic pressure. And if even that fails, then they rely on the last resort, military power, to get their way and secure their interests. An imperial government's primary purpose, in Mr. Friedman's world, is to coldly assess the points at which it can take most advantage and to exploit them for the betterment of their constituents. To this end, Mr. Friedman gets out an Atlas of the world and ruthlessly assesses each region's usefulness to the United States. If it is vital, then he offers suggestions on how best to first secure and then to maximize the relationships with that region. If, however, that region doesn't have much to offer the United States, he dismisses its importance and moves on, searching for the next point of exploitation.

The Next Decade is a case study in why loathing for the United States is so widespread throughout the world. For Mr. Friedman's vision of America is no more ethical or moral than the British colonialism that so successfully ruined large swaths of Africa and Asia. If they have something you want, figure out a way to take it. If they don't, well, just make sure they don't have any guns that can threaten you and otherwise leave them be. For a country founded on anti-imperialistic principles, for a country that sought to have "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none," (Jefferson) Mr. Friedman's imperial outlook is a betrayal of the core idea of freedom that fuelled the American Revolution.

But even if we assume, for the sake of debate, that America is an empire in all but name, this does not mean it should exercise this power! Every time power is used, an angle is worked, an advantage capitalized on, enemies are created. Yes, it is the responsibility of governments to represent their citizens as best they can, but this representation cannot come at the expense of others. The endgame of that philosophy will always be acrimony.

This is a fascinating and provocative primer on how an imperial power looks at and assesses the world. We can only hope that no one in a position to act on its suggestions pays it more than academic heed. (3/5 Stars)

A Special Mission by Dan Kurzman

From The Week of March 27, 2011

In A Special Mission, Mr. Kurzman argues that, late in World War II, faced with mounting desolation at home and military failures abroad, Adolf Hitler ordered the supreme commander of the SS in occupied Italy to kidnap and confine Pope Pius XII. Even if this plot did happen -- the author hinges much of his claim's authenticity on the testimony of the aforementioned SS commander --, he failed to convince me of the relevance of his investigation. Is a failed plot from a war fought decades ago worthy of a 320 page book published 62 years after the incident allegedly took place? Seems unlikely. And yet Mr. Kurzman, an author of military non-fiction, provides such glittering portraits of the participants in this drama that he makes the read worthwhile.

Of the various actors in our drama, no two figures play larger roles than Pope Pius XII, and Gen. Karl Wolff. According to Mr. Kurzman, Pius strived, throughout the war, to keep the Catholic Church neutral. So intent on silence was he that he failed to condemn the Holocaust, fearing that it might make him seem, to the German leadership, too sympathetic with the Allies. Furthermore, Mr. Kurzman argues that Pius had his sites set on a peace plan that would bring the war to an end and restore the church to its rightful place of prominence as a powerful, Western institution while, simultaneously, sparing his beloved Rome a thorough sacking by the ruthless Nazis. But regardless of Pius' motivations, his ambitions unraveled when Hitler, heedless of the Pope's neutrality, ordered Wolff's SS into Rome and then to the Vatican, to dethrone a pope. Which brings us to the flamboyant Karl Wolff, a loyal general who, as Himmler's eyes and ears earlier on in the war, surely knew of the Holocaust. But when, fearing that he might be on the wrong side of history, Wolff surrendered an entire German army, in Italy, to the Americans, and in refusing to follow Hitler's order to kidnap the pope, the Allies may have looked the other way on Wolff's earlier crimes, deeming him too useful to execute.

Mr. Kurzman draws in some secondary characters to flesh out life in Rome during the 1940s, but his tale, such as it is, revolves around the ambitions of two men, Wolff and Pius, the former fearing ill treatment at the hands of the ascendant Allies and the history books, the latter fearing his own life and that of his city. Mr. Kurzman succeeds in portraying both men in all their pride and their want of glory. He succeeds in laying out an admirably clear case for why such men can bring themselves to ignore the Holocaust for the sake of their own goals. But that he cannot successfully sell the importance of a failed plot over a non-kidnapping prevents his piece from doing more than educating us on some of history's more interesting and ambitious figures. (2/5 Stars)

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

From The Week of March 27, 2011

Though I was tangentially aware of the dubious circumstances by which the Hawaiian islands were adopted into the Union of the United States, Ms. Vowell's humorous and caustic history of the colonization of Hawaii, by Americans, was powerfully enlightening. Composed with the characteristic Vowell wit, the author interweaves the traditional beliefs of Hawaiians with the story of how waves of missionaries landed on Hawaii's beautiful beaches, Christianized its inhabitants, claimed some of its lands, and set into motion a process of Westernization which eventually lead to the Bayonet Constitution. She describes how the passing of a few decades emboldened the Americans who had settled on Hawaiian lands, and who were in favor of Hawaii's accession into the Union, to give the Hawaiian king an ultimatum, sacrifice his power or lose his position in a coupe. Though the king agreed to sign away his power, his decision was irrelevant. The bayonetters wanted Americanization. And though it would require them to bring down a king and a queen to realize their goals, they were more than up to this bullying task.

Though Ms. Vowell does justice to the unconstitutional spirit of Hawaii's annexation, her sweeping account spends as much time cataloguing the history of Hawaiians since the 19th century: their traditions, their beliefs, their poets. She touches on the key, 19th century figures who shaped Hawaiian culture and Hawaiian thought. While using the arrogant accounts of missionaries to reconstruct Hawaiian life prior to 20th century assimilation into Americanism. So while she leaves us with the sense of the injustice of Hawaiian statehood, she educates us on its inevitability. Being that the history of humanity seems to be oftentimes defined by one group's violent acquisition of what another group can't defend, someone would have claimed those lovely islands and imprinted upon them their own cultural brand. Perhaps it was good that America got their first, but at what cost?

As quirky, edifying, and entertaining as ever. Few contemporary writers bring it home as consistently as Ms. Vowell does. (3/5 Stars)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

From The Week of March 27, 2011

For many, the tempestuous relationship of Catherine and Heathcliff, the dyad around which Wuthering Heights revolves, is darkly, fantastically romantic. It burns with a boundless, dangerous passion that has kept this classic of British literature circulating through English syllabi for decades. But while I agree that Catherine and Heathcliff are magnetic characters worthy of celebration, Wuthering Heights is, in almost every other respect, an inferior, Gothic novel.

Narrated almost entirely through dialogue, Ms. Bronte's most famous work is comprised of the recollections of Ellen Dean, a housekeeper for the wealthy Mr. Lockwood who has traveled to northern England in search of a respite from his troubles. Dean, who works at the home in which Mr. Lockwood is staying, relates to her rich, southern tenant the legendary tale of Catherine and Heathcliff Earnshaw. One night, in an act of charity, Catherine Earnshaw's father collects and brings home an orphaned gypsy boy (Heathcliff) whom he later adopts. But when, some few years later, Catherine's father dies, Heathcliff loses his best advocate, leaving him no armor against the jealous spite of Hindley Earnshaw, brother of Catherine. What began as a sibling rivalry between the boys has flared, now, into enmity as, after years of living as part of the Earnshaw family, Heathcliff is reduced to playing a servant in their household. Perhaps Heathcliff would've endured this humiliation for the love of Catherine with whom he is clearly besotted, but when, after associating with their rich, cultured neighbors, she too turns on Heathcliff, the scarred adolescent hurls himself from the only home he's ever known, bent on transforming himself into a man of power capable of exacting revenge upon the family that has wronged him.

Though Wuthering Heights is beautifully written and powerfully tragic, the core conceits of its plot prevent it from truly taking flight. In order to advance the story, Ms. Bronte finds it necessary to interfere and maneuver her characters into positions where the right piece of dialogue is heard by the right character in exactly the wrong mood. For instance, on the heels of Hindley demoting him to a servant, Heathcliff just happens to overhear Catherine announcing her affection for Edgar, the Linton's son in whom she's made a friend, but he misinterprets her meaning, assumes a betrayal and flees the house, setting into motion the second half of the book. Literary lights as luminous as Shakespeare have deployed such tricks in the execution of a tale, but that doesn't make it any less sloppy. In order for any story of note to have meaning, it must have a gloss of realism. But repeatedly, Ms. Bronte intercedes to position her characters just right, so they might overhear the right piece of dialogue, so they can ask the right questions. This leads to my second criticism.

Wuthering Heights is poorly served by its narrators, Dean and Mr. Lockwood. While having Dean relay the story simplifies the structure for Ms. Bronte by releasing her of the necessity to tell, first-hand, a story that spans more than 30 years, it distances the reader from the piece's emotional events. The reader is aware, from the moment Dean begins her story, that all we are about to experience has come to pass. Mr. Lockwood could, at any time, go out and ask Heathcliff himself for his version of events. Instead, the reader is locked into consuming hundreds of pages of improbable dialogue, most of which provided by Dean who apparently possesses the most remarkable memory in human history. If Mr. Lockwood had a stronger presence in the story, perhaps choosing this structure would have brought something to the table. But as it is, Mr. Lockwood is nothing more than an ornament, a stand-in for the reader.

Wuthering Heights is a wonderfully savage book, shot through with raw and emotional characters. Heathcliff's journey into darkness is fascinating and disturbing, while Catherine's decline as a result of Heathcliff's passion is powerfully potent. But I felt far too manipulated by the author to enjoy a story about a love sundered by spite. Such strong emotion should be truly earned; it shouldn't be a cheap trick to facilitate what comes. (3/5 Stars)

Wikileaks by David Leigh And Luke Harding

From The Week of March 20, 2011

We live in a world that runs on secrets. Every government of note has them, embarrassing officials, shameful incidents and criminal policies which they work hard to hide. And for good reason too. After all, there's no quicker way to humiliate a government, to lower its standing with other governments in the world, than to air its dirty laundry, to force it to answer inconvenient questions about its friends and its practices. On November 28th, 2010, this humiliation was elevated to a new, 21st century level when major newspapers in the U.S., England, France, Germany and Spain published a tiny fraction of a colossal U.S. State Department data dump which revealed, in intimate and unfiltered detail, truths about the world that, without Wikileaks, would have never seen the light of day.

Wikileaks is the account, from the perspective of the Guardian's lead journalists on the Wikileaks case, of how it came to pass that some of the United States' most closely held, diplomatic secrets were splashed across the world's news outlets. Predictably, its primary focus is their major contact, Julian Assange, the charismatic and eccentric point man at Wikileaks, the whistleblowing website that released the government cables to the five newspapers. But while Assange, the Australian-born anarcho-activist, plays a substantial role in the unfolding drama, this piece makes clear that he was little more than a conduit for information. The true source of the State Department cables was Bradley Manning, a disaffected Private in the U.S. Army who, after realizing his government was covering up the truth about an incident in which his own military killed two journalists working in Iraq, decided to make a copy of all the State Department files he could find and, in an effort to expose American duplicity, begin to leak this treasure trove to Wikileaks. This complicated chain of events eventually culminated in the mass publication, at Wikileaks and in the media, of most of these cables, an expose offering the world a look inside international diplomacy unrivaled in human history.

The admirably clear chronicle of events, from Manning's disaffection through to the Swedish rape charges which still currently dog Mr. Assange, paints a vivid picture of one of the most remarkable media spectaculars in recent memory. However, for all the powerful characters and government interests represented here, it's Manning who steals the show. It's understandable that journalists would focus on their negotiations with Mr. Assange to release the cables to the newspapers -- this is, after all, their job and their role in the play --, but that one, 22-year-old, depressed soldier could blow the whistle on the monolithic, U.S. State Department is both astonishing and frightening. As a result of this brave act of conscience, Mr. Manning is currently in solitary confinement and stands to lose his freedom for the rest of his natural life. Manning, Assange, Wikileaks, secret cables... They all combine to give gripping detail to a spellbinding moment in our world's history.

Many have claimed that Manning and Wikileaks have endangered our world as a result of their recklessness. They argue that embarrassing monarchies and governments, as these cables do, will only make such authorities all the more wary and secretive. They argue, in effect, that we live in a world that needs secrets to function. This is self-justifying crap. The only way that we can make the world better and safer, for everyone, is to marry honest words with just actions. How can the West convince the developing world to act honorably if it cant' even get out of its own driveway without abetting some dictator, or looking the other way while failing, Asian states cavort with terrorists? Governments who are allowed to operate in secret succeed in ensuring one thing, that they will act dishonestly because it's easier to get things done that way, to hide corruption. But that's not good enough. If we're to make the world a better place, we must lead by example. And the best example we can set is by being honest with the world.
Utterly compelling work. (4/5 Stars)

Rich Like Them by Ryan D'Agostino

From The Week of March 20, 2011

How do people get rich? Surely no one has worn out more pairs of shoes in the effort to track down the answer to this eternal question than Mr. D'Agostino who, after generating a list of 50, rich, American zipcodes, sets out upon a door-to-door odyssey to learn the truths of acquired wealth. From I.T. Seattle to old-money Connecticut, from gentrified Atlanta to booming Houston, Mr. D'Agostino pounds the pavement of some of the country's most exclusive neighborhoods, working a mixture of charm and flattery to solicit from the successful a few helpful tidbits on the acquisition of wealth. Though his necessarily condensed account of his experiences leaves the reader with no conception of how often he was urned away, his subjects, on balance, seem quite willing to talk to him about their triumphs. But then, as Mr. D'Agostino points out, who wouldn't want to brag a little about conquering the game of life, at least as it's defined by contemporary America?

Though Rich Like Them has enough informational nuggets to satisfy readers looking for tips on getting rich, it is primarily a collection of cleverly told life stories, some hilarious, some fascinating, that do much more to enlighten us on the nature of the successful than the means of their success. Sure, some of the characters here are simply in the right place at the right time, but others exhibit a set of basic skills admirably and doggedly applied. Some get ahead through simply being kind while others advance by unhesitatingly seizing an opportunity. And while there's no universal tactic described here, there does seem to be a core decency to all of Mr. D'Agostino's subjects which, while not excluding ruthlessness, offers a hopeful view of the nature of human success.

Rich Like Them is as charming as its subjects. Mr. D'Agostino strikes a wonderful balance between enthusiasm for his innovative project and introspection concerning the nature of wealth and the people who have claimed it. Though his account benefits from his riveting subjects, the piece would be much the worse without his own dogged determination to give earnest thought to the questions he's posed. Not exactly the kind of piece that wins Pulitzers; nonetheless, a valuable and worthwhile read for both the thoughtful and the ambitious. (4/5 Stars)

Half The Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof And Sheryl Wudunn

From The Week of March 20, 2011

Why does life so often seem to be defined by person A getting over on person B? It seems almost a universal characteristic of human civilization that the people who have something will always endeavor to keep it while the people who lack that something will always endeavor to take it for themselves. Is this a reflection of an inequitable society? Is it a natural outcome of scarce resources? Is it a side-effect of poverty? Or is it just who we are, half-civilized animals who, when our want of something overpowers our better judgement, succumb to a willingness to exploit every advantage we have in order to get what we want, no matter the cost to someone else? Though Half The Sky is, primarily, a heart-rending, first-hand examination of how women in the developing world are entrapped, exploited, used and thrown away, this question of who we are and what we're willing to do when we have power over other people, throbs at its core.

Mr. Kristof and Ms. Wudunn, who have both written extensively for the New York Times, have assembled a harrowing and wrenching account of the plight of women in challenged, Asian countries. From assaulted Pakistanis silenced by rural life and unsympathetic police to Cambodians pressed into sex work by gangsters who have nothing to fear from disinterested authorities, the authors are eyewitnesses to some remarkable displays of depravity and oppression. But though much of the blame should be put at the feet of the pimps and hoodlums who so shamelessly exploit these women, such practices seem far too widespread to be the result of a defect in our human character. Rather, it is the outcome of a toxic blend of societal poverty and legal indifference which has cut a miles-wide hole in the safety net meant to catch the less fortunate and prevent them from tumbling down into Hell.

As much as Half The Sky is an expose of stomach-churning criminality, it is equally a call to arms. For every villain framed, Mr. Kristof and Ms. Wudunn counter with a portrait of a local hero who, often in the face of threats to her life, devotes herself to the cause of justice, for herself and for those like her. In addition to profiling the organizations these women champion, the authors promote a collection of their own charitable endeavors whose goals are to create economic opportunities for women ignored by their own countries. In this, the authors achieve a welcome balance between darkness and light.

For all the awareness this book will hopefully bring to the plight of women in the developing world, I found the economic and legislative solutions offered here far less compelling. Giving financial backing to local entrepreneurs, willing to hire and train the exploited, makes sense, but the scale of their operations are incredibly small. How much good will they actually do before their business, their service, is hoovered up by some textile giant who can keep costs down by paying their workers a pittance? In any event, however much one may want to quibble with the solutions, the problem is terribly stark. The things we are capable of doing when the opportunity exists to take advantage... The depths to which we will sink in order to feed and clothe ourselves... A moving and terrifying read. (3/5 Stars)

The China Price by Alexandra Harney

From The Week of March 20, 2011

I hold with those who struggle to understand why seemingly everything we buy now is made in China. How did we get here? Is it bad that we're here? How much control do we actually have over the quality of the goods we purchase every day? Ms. Harney may not have all the answers, but The China Price goes a long way to illuminating the complex reality of how China has so swiftly become a leading, manufacturing power in our world.

Thirty years ago, China was an impoverished mess. More than half a billion people lived on a dollar a day, uneducated, rural peasants locked into a life of endless, repetitious toil. But with Chinese economic reforms, ignited by the Special Economic Zones in the 1980s, and the weakening of labor unions in the United States, the pendulum of profitability began to swing towards Asia. If American companies could export their labor to China, use impoverished Chinese workers to manufacture their product and ship them to the United States for sale in wealthy, first-world markets, they could rake in huge revenues without raising the prices of their products. Just lower the overhead costs and wham, you're in the black. This relationship between Chinese labor and Western distributions hasn't just strengthened in the decades since, it has drawn hundreds of millions of rural Chinese to the cities where the jobs waiting for them lifted them out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the West, manufacturing jobs were lost and consumer groups grumbled, but the masses were happy because, well, they could buy their clothes, toys, and electronics dirt cheap. And in the end, as Ms. Harney demonstrates, patriotism doesn't stand a chance against the prospect of buying the same foreign good for half price.

The China Price is the result of this relationship. It refers to the new reality that Western nations simply cannot manufacture goods as cheaply as China can. As a result, Western companies looking to maximize profitability, have relocated their manufacturing to sprawling, Chinese cities chalked full of factories that make a startlingly high percentage of Western goods. Ms. Harney does a wonderful job explaining the recent history of China's rise, but it's her examination of these cities of manufacturing that give soul to her piece. She talks to Chinese workers who have gone uncompensated for work-place accidents, who have endured Hellish hours to fulfil productivity requirements, and who have been coached to conceal all of this from Western companies who have been pressured by their consumers to ensure that their products are manufactured humanely. Balancing this exploitation are her conversations with Chinese entrepreneurs who don't understand why the West cares what working conditions in Chinese factories are like. For them, the world is reduced to who can produce the most products for the cheapest price and right now, that's China.

This is a well-rounded account of the rise of Chinese manufacturing and the modernizing influence it has had on the country. It soberly connects all the myriad dots, concluding that the Western desire to buy cheap products has driven a complete re-shaping of manufacturing in the world. Of course, the China Price won't last forever. At some point, the standard of living in China will rise to a point where labor won't be so cheap, elevating manufacturing costs and driving those jobs elsewhere. But until that day comes, the lights will be burning bright in Chinese cities for which the West has no names. (4/5 Stars)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

From The Week of March 20, 2011

Ever since High School English crammed Charles Dickens down my throat, I've had an awkward relationship with classic literature. Seventeen-year-old boys don't, as a rule, groove on stories they can't immediately relate to. The result? The blurry-eyed, when will this nightmare be over slog of skimming through chapters and pounding out semi-coherent assignments for books loaded up with antique language and populated by culturally alien characters. Doesn't exactly scream love affair, does it? Well, more the fool me because, it turns out, ten years on, I love this stuff! Jane Eyre has Gothic gravitas, sympathetic characters, emotional acuity and a delicate sense of horror. But all this is merely icing atop the cake, Jane herself, surely one of the best heroines in English literature.

Living at the sufferance of her aunt, Jane Eyre is an unwanted orphan girl whose existence within the Reed family is only tolerated because of her uncle's dying wish that she be given a roof over her head. Once her only advocate is dead, however, the Reeds prove to be merciless with Jane until, one day, the ten-year-old girl snaps and forces her aunt to confront the extent to which she has allowed, and participated in, Jane's emotional and physical abuse. Such disobedience cannot be tolerated, especially not in 19th century England, and so Jane is packed off to boarding school where our young protagonist is acquainted with the hardships of the outside world: disease, poverty, religiosity and cynicism. It's only when an eighteen-year-old Jane, now a governess by trade, is hired on as a servant in the home of the wealthy and mannerly Edward Rochester that life catches fire and she's plunged into a long and winding love affair with enigmatic Edward and his mannerly set.

Standing in the way of the union of Eyre with Rochester, however, are forces both predictable and supernatural. The former takes the form of Blanch, the elegant daughter of a wealthy family who would make Edward a fine but empty marriage. The latter is far more ominous, a demonic force which has taken root in the Rochester home, threatening to murder both Jane and her impossible love. Will the myriad impediments of class, jealousy and wounded pride prevail over Jane's and Edward's love, or will they find a way to unite in spite of a world dead set against them?

Though most everything about British, and Western, society has changed since the 1848 publication of Jane Eyre, Ms. Bronte's themes here are so universal, so strikingly relevant to the 21st century, that her lovely book wears its age better than most of its contemporaries. Jane is an exceptional protagonist who manages, somehow, to be self-assured, dignified and heroic, all without indulging in piousness or self-righteousness. She does not whine or fuss over the hand that life dealt her; admirably, she puts her head down and pushes onward, trying to succeed in a world that does no favors to women of her class. But it's Her cool disregard for the cruel conventions of British life I love most. Jane Eyre doesn't hesitate to attack the inequities of British society. Blanch may be a caricature, but her sense of entitlement has the echo of authenticity. Set against Jane's pragmatic but penniless goodness and there's little doubt of where virtue lies.

Good things come to those who work hard, expecting nothing but the results of their own labor. This doesn't mean be a pushover; one has to stand up for their beliefs, to be the best while demanding the best from those around them. Jane is the only one here who walks the walk and talks the talk and, as a result, she can't lose. It's so refreshing to read a well-written piece from a more cloistered time that features a heroine superior to those our more advanced society puts forward. Not to mention, Jane Eyre has, in St. John, the perfect villain. No violence, no thunder, no gratuity... Just a man doing wrong as a result of acting out of pure selfishness. The man virtually does nothing untoward, yet, Ms. Bronte succeeds in making him, in all his self-righteousness and moralizing, an infuriating figure.

This is superior fiction: tension, anxiety, horror, and even a little joy. For fans of Gothic fiction of the Sarah Waters ilk, a must consume. (5/5 Stars)

The Watchman's Rattle by Rebecca D. Costa

From The Week of March 13, 2011

We live in exceptional times. Girded by the technological revolution, we're braced for a series of advancements that promise to transform our world. But times of great change are also times of great risk. And so, while there have never been more people focusing their erudite minds on the outstanding problems of science and technology, our societies have surely never been more preoccupied by mind-less distractions. Many seek to profit from these imperfections. We have doctors pedaling proscriptions for happiness, politicians touting back to basics ideologies, and companies promoting products that promise- to cure all our ills. And then there are the alarmist historians who get a kick out of researching fallen civilizations, deriving a list of blunders that may have contributed to their downfalls, and then using these conclusions to, first, scare the crap out of everyone by pointing out the ways in which our civilization is charting a similar decline and, then, offering a miraculous solution to extricate ourselves from this mess of ours. Ms. Costa may be more respectable than most who profit from this particularly repugnant beat-up, but that doesn't make her any more right.

The Watchman's Rattle mixes historical conjectures and largely unsubstantiated science to cook up half-baked theories about why humans struggle to cope with problems bigger than themselves. From a cultural obsession with economics to the rise of oppositional politics, Ms. Costa researches the origins of some of humanity's most important weaknesses. Some of her investigations bear interesting fruit, like her theory that the human mind has not evolved to cope with problems on a societal scale, choosing, as a result, to ignore them. But while such theories are interesting and engaging, Ms. Costa over-inflates the importance of these weaknesses by arguing that they threaten to bring down the whole of human civilization. Why? Because she believes these same weaknesses lead to the fall of prior civilizations, including the Roman and the Mayan. Even if she's right, and it's not at all clear that she is, this rather conveniently ignores the lightyears of knowledge and experience that exists between our civilization and all of the previous civilizations combined.

Ultimately, Ms. Costa has teased out those less enviable aspects of our characters, as people and as societies, blown them up to mammoth proportions and used the fear generated from these to sell the idea that the only thing standing between us and doom is human insight. She devotes the latter half of her book to an investigation of insight, what it is, how it works, and how we can train our brains to utilize it. Along the way, she sites fascinating examples of how leaps of insight have saved lives and changed how we view the world.

Perhaps Ms. Costa is right. Perhaps our civilization is sliding towards extinction and that, because of the magnitude of the problems facing us, our poorly adapted minds refuse to grapple with these existential questions. I know this much. I'd believe her a lot more if she didn't have an interest in magnifying problems in order to pedal her own solutions. No, we and the world we've made aren't perfect, but somehow we manage to live, love and be productive on a daily basis without detonating ourselves and our civilizations in. So maybe, just maybe, we actually know what we're doing. Maybe we're headed towards better things and not grimmer ones. It's always darkest before the dawn...

There are virtues here; some of Ms. Costa's ideas on insight are thought-provoking, but the everything's falling apart setup, followed by the I have your solutions right here for you soft-sell is both disappointing and frustrating. (2/5 Stars)

Sun In A Bottle by Charles Seife

From The Week of March 13, 2011

In the last 250 years, humanity has made incalculable advances in countless fields of knowledge and understanding. We have harnessed electricity, built computers, flown airplanes and even rocketed ourselves into outer space. But while this progress is both wonderful and astonishing, every aspect of our modern world relies upon a single, unavoidable necessity, power. At first, our muscles provided that power: fashioning spears, sharpening knives, capturing food. But then we advanced to horse-power, to run us across vast distances, steam power to propel our ships, coal to warm our homes, oil to fuel our cars, and electricity to light up our cities. But now we've maximized that output. Computers, devices, cars, rockets... All our greatest technologies are leashed by the restraints of the power we can supply them. So what's the answer? What's next? What can free our inventions from the shackles of limited power?

Here, Mr. Seife, a writer of popular science, explores the holy grail of power generation, nuclear fusion. Unlike fission, which is the process of unleashing energy as a result of tearing atoms apart, fusion creates usable energy by smashing atoms together to create fewer, bigger atoms. This process has continuously powered the sun, and every other star we know of, for billions of years, failing only when their internal supply of fuel (hydrogen) runs out. But while we have mastered fission, fusion, the cleaner and more powerful of the two, has proven far more elusive. In order to generate synthetic (read man-made) fusion and confine it to a power plant, it is necessary to heat the fuel to enormous temperatures -- in the neighborhood of 100,000,000 degrees -- to ignite the process. Therefore, chambers capable of containing such temperatures have to be built, and shaped, and made to withstand these temperatures and pressures for years at a time, without fail. It is a feat of engineering unmatched in human endeavor.

Mr. Seife dives into the history of fusion power, laying out the fundamentals of its science before turning his powers of examination upon the various human attempts to harness it. From the hoaxes to the eureka moments, from the un-reproducible successes to ITER and NIF, Mr. Seife, with admirable clarity and brevity, sketches out the close calls and the premature declarations of success in this field of science upon which everything hinges. He leaves little doubt that the over-eagerness of scientists to solve for fusion has set the industry back decades. And yet, there's a hopefulness that endures here in spite of all the disappointments, an awareness of fusion's importance that fuels excitement about how it could change our world. This is thorough and fascinating work. (3/5 Stars)

Good Book by David Plotz

From The Week of March 13, 2011

On several occasions, I've considered reading the Bible. A book, so old, so widely read and adhered to, surely has some meaning for even a non-believer. And yet, every time I consider this thousand-plus-page tome of ancient fables, I lose the will to slog through it. Imagine my delight, then, when Mr. Plotz, the editor of Slate Magazine, published Good Book, an account of his sometimes hilarious, sometimes harrowing, adventures through the Hebrew Bible. Though Mr. Plotz's summary is far too brief to grant a full picture of the Book, it jauntily walks the reader through its major events and themes while gently challenging several of its maxims which have, over time, mutated from their original meanings. As a consequence, he has produced a light-hearted primer on a book that untold millions have read, dissected, and lived by for the last 2,000 years.

From God turning on the lights, to the rape of Dinah, to Abraham and Joseph and Moses and Joshua, the kings and the victims, the prophets and the pillagers, Mr. Plotz subjects the Book to the scrutiny of a 21st century mind. And though it's clear that he finds meaning and comfort in his project, to examine the Book in all its glories, in all its blood, in all its history, he's equally troubled and repelled by fables which do not translate well into a modern, enlightened society. Nonetheless, he forges ahead, trudging to the finish line of a book about as inconsistent as it is ancient.

Though all of humanity's problems emanate from humanity's failings, and not the failings of the Bible, it's also true that the Book has been a source of great comfort and great ugliness. It relies upon its readers to interpret its stories. But who defines what's proper? Who has the wisdom to divine and translate its original meanings? This is a book that has been frozen in time for two millennia, having only been subjected to occasional re-organization, re-interpretation, and re-distribution. There are no true authorities. And so those who need to believe in something, those who need to find legitimacy for their desires, read the Bible, pull from it the pieces of wisdom they require, and blend the resulting concoction of self-justifications into a mixture that suits their purposes and, ta da, righteousness. But if this is the Book's danger, it's light flows from its encapsulation of history. Its allegories have helped many people do good works over countless generations.

Mr. Plotz's has done a wonderful job of illustrating both the good and the bad, never dwelling too long on neither as he journeys through a time none of us will ever fully understand. His wit is sharp, his sarcasm enjoyable and his heartfelt desire to understand the machine code of his belief system is moving and thoughtful. A quiet and well-rounded piece. (3/ Stars)

Ex-KOP by Warren Hammond

From The Week of March 13, 2011

Where KOP offered a rich world and a weak mystery, this sequel is the opposite. The world, now familiar in its crime, its destitution, its depravity, takes a back seat to what must be, even for a corrupt world like Lagarto, an unusually repugnant crime.

Juno, the antihero from the first novel, is rather the worse for wear. Events in KOP have taken their toll on him, professionally and physically, obligating a semi-retirement into the life of a private investigator, chasing after sleazy off-worlders who assume that their privilege and their superhuman bodies will protect them from Lagarto and its slums. But his life is interrupted by the return of Maggie Orzo who, still intent upon her mission to reform, reaches out to Juno to get him to investigate a murder that she believes leads back to the mayor of Lagarto's capital city, Koba. Juno isn't so sure, but he needs the money, so he accepts and begins an investigation that, in true Lagartian style, can only end in misery and vengeance.

In Mr. Hammond's universe, actions have consequences, especially for his protagonists. Ex-KOP is a wonderful demonstration of how neglecting ones marriage in the service of ones self-appointed duty can only lead to heartbreak. Juno's pain here bursts out of his cool facade and transforms him from just an angry man into a crusader, determined to see his last case through. The book's other major theme, the abuse of power, is just as riveting. Rich off-worlders, who have the wealth to create for themselves superhuman bodies capable of the darkest depravities, descend to Lagarto to slum around with the planet's poor, playing with them like they are toys to be used and discarded. It's not a perfect analogy, but this reminds me of Western sex tourism in countries like Thailand and Vietnam, where rich first-worlders can get their darkest fantasies fulfilled by people compelled by poverty to participate. It is vivid and foul, but its repellent energy animates the mystery here and elevates it into the first class.

If Mr. Hammond does not revisit this series again, I hope he considers it a success. It has its warts, but his thoughtfulness, his willingness to use his future world to examine contemporary problems, has made Juno and Lagarto stand out as worthy fiction fueled by a genuine sense of purpose. Just, well, readers may want to have a sickbag handy, just in case. (3/5 Stars)

KOP by Warren Hammond

From The Week of March 13, 2011

It's not enough for dark fiction just to be grim. It must have soul. It must be animated by a core message that gives the grit a purpose. KOP is not a perfect book; some of its characters are predictable, two-dimensional villains who offer the reader little more than a sense of revulsion. But what it lacks in style it more than makes up for in moxie, in intelligence, and in dark vitality.

In the 28th century, humans have gone to the stars, spreading themselves across numerous worlds. Lagarto, a tropical planet, is one of the most impoverished of these colonies. Economic miscalculations have sent its citizens spiraling into soul-crushing destitution. Many of them haven't even the funds to get off-world, to the orbitals, where the most paltry fare would be, for the Lagartians, an inconceivable delicacy. Consequently, Lagartian society has lost its grip on the rule of law and allowed civil society to devolve into a vicious game of every one for themselves, a rat race for the last scraps of food and shelter. Enter our antihero, Juno, an aging police officer who, long ago, made a pact with his best friend, Paul Chang, now the police chief of the capital city, to clean up their streets regardless of the physical and moral costs. All these years on, though, and it seems to Juno that their efforts have been in vane. They may have saved some people from the cruel gangs who devour Koba's streets, but they've only treated the symptoms; they haven't cured the disease. Now, tired of the fight and lonely in his marriage, Juno is sent out by his best friend to solve a case he's not supposed to solve. Further complicating matters is Maggie Orzo, an idealistic cop who is Juno's partner on this case. The daughter of a rich family, her sights set on reforming Lagarto with the light of justice, she has no time for Paul Chang and the corruption of his administration. Will the investigation change her mind and make her see the world through Juno's cynical eyes, or will he be the one who is forced to make changes?

Though KOP is, at root, a mystery, the murder investigation is easily its weakest component. There's nothing particularly wrong with the case; rather, life on brutal Lagarto has three times its intensity. The scenery is grippingly noir, with not a hero or a savior in sight. What's more, Mr. Hammond has committed himself, here, to a heartfelt examination of what life is like when one is the exploited, not the exploiter. Strip away the science fiction, the otherworldliness, and Lagarto could be any of a dozen colonialized countries, trying to wriggle out from under the boot of their imperial masters. However, KOP's best feature, by far, is its earnest depiction of the consequences of poverty and the myriad ways it coerces good people into the darkness where, slowly, their will to be honest and true is sapped from them. Juno's marriage is a powerful example of the cost he pays for trying to do what he considers to be the right thing. And though Mr. Hammond is a bit overwrought here, the price Juno must pay is simply too high for anyone to endure. Flawed but eminently engaging on numerous levels. (3/5 Stars)

The Professor Of Secrets by William Eamon

What we find appalling and abhorrent changes from generation to generation as ever-shifting cultural norms redefine our prejudices and our tolerances. However, it's one thing to acknowledge that we once allowed children to work in coal mines; it's entirely a different horror to read the intimate and disgusting details of how medicine was practiced during the Renaissance. Perhaps, in a hundred years, our descendants will look back at us and, in the same vein, shake their heads at the barbarity of Chemotherapy which is, in effect, a scorched earth policy applied to the human body, but surely that won't be the same as reading about early rhinoplasty, in which 16th century surgeons sliced open the skin of the patient's upper arm, slid a piece of wool underneath the skin, medicated the area until the skin thickened to the proper amount, then transferred this excruciatingly prepared substitute to the patient's ruined nose, cutting the skin as needed to make for a proper fit. The surgeon capped off this anaesthetic-free procedure by forcing a metal form down over the new, well-stitched, nose, leaving it there until it could hold its own shape. I'm sure there will be other procedures I find equally as awful as this one, but I doubt they will exceed it.

Mr. Eamon's fascinating, if disturbing, biography of Leonardo Fioravanti, a 16th century Italian surgeon, contains many of these shiver-inducing anecdotes, but these 360 some pages contain more than just moments of revulsion. This is a sprawling illumination of Renaissance Italy, its powerbrokers, its customs, and most importantly its rigid hierarchies. Fioravanti is depicted here as a dogged doctor with a mind opened to new possibilities. Whatever skill in medicine he could claim, however, paled next to the brilliance of his showmanship which seems to have been first-class. His hunger to be both rich and famous seems about equal to his obsessive need to be right, even when proven wrong. And so, not content with the simple satisfaction of bettering his own understanding of medicine, Fioravanti reached out to a far more powerful world than his, overestimating himself and his authority and incurring some eminent enemies.

Though The Professor Of Secrets lacks the dark humor of History's Worst Jobs, it has something of that book's spirit. Mr. Eamon set out to expose a brilliant man, a brightening world, and its primitive practices, but his descriptions of some of the period's brutalities will be what I carry with me. I'm still wincing! Dry in parts, slow in others, but always enlightening and disturbing. (3/5 Stars)

Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall

From The Week of March 06, 2011

Though only the hardest of hearts would deny that the world's various religious faiths have brought peace and comfort to untold millions, the fact remains that religious institutions demand that their worshippers enter into emotionally and psychologically dependent relationships with them. And if we know anything about humanity, we know that we do not do well with imbalances of power. Those who hold the power are tempted to abuse it while those who have given up their power are easily manipulated into sacrificing their rights, rights every human being should have and exercise. Stolen Innocence is a vivid demonstration of this human weakness made real.

Elissa Wall was born into a world defined, in every respect, by Mormon fundamentalism. Her parents, who were both active members in the FLDS church and practitioners of Plural Marriage, did not expose her, or her siblings, to mainstream America. They, and their community, taught her to fear that world. They taught her that the police would, if they learned of their lifestyle, disperse their family beyond the ability of anyone to piece it back together. As a consequence, Ms. Wall was raised to have full and unwavering faith in her parents and her church. And so, when it came time for her to be married, at fourteen, to her cousin, nineteen, she was expected not to question. She was expected to do her womanly duty and further her husband's ascent to heaven by expanding his Household. When, unhappy in her abusive marriage, she rebelled, the leader of her church, Warren Jeffs, the megalomaniacal son of the church's dying prophet, first called upon her sense of duty to her husband to convince her to stay in the marriage. But when that failed to silence her, he turned to threats, against her and her family, manipulating Ms. Wall through her devout and complicit mother. But Ms. Wall defied all these pressures to break free of her cultish world, relying on the love of a supportive friend to be the star witness in the well-publicized trial of Warren Jeffs.

Though autobiographies draw their vitality directly from the striking, first-hand accounts of their authors, they simply cannot be objective. I doubt anyone has the necessary mental clarity to be objective about their own ordeals. But while it would be wise to take Ms. Wall's extraordinary tale with an appropriate amount of salt -- she does, at times, seem to almost revel in being the helpless, wide-eyed victim --, the extent to which she reveals the FLDS church as an institution driven by coercion, manipulation,heartlessness and duplicity is worthy of Jon Krakauer. Jeffs' herculean efforts to maintain power over others at all costs, even the misery of his own followers who look up to him as a demigod, is both sickening and depressing. It's a good thing then that, to a large degree, Ms. Wall's tale has a happy ending. But what about the hundreds, maybe thousands, of other women who are raised in isolation from the moderating influence of society, trained to be obedient, and then locked into unhappy marriages from which there is no exit but exile? What of them?

Ms. Wall narrates her challenging life with a kind of delicate grace. The clear and uncomplicated delivery of her story will, in all likelihood, leave readers with a poor opinion of Jeffs and his church. And though I agree that these men are revolting, we must remember that these sorts of practices, regardless of which religion sanctions them, are the result of imbalances of power. Men like Jeffs succeed because other people surrender their free will to them, not because of the popularity or otherwise, the righteousness or otherwise, of their faith. Until we find a way to ingrain in everyone a belief in themselves, in their own power, there will always be Elissa Walls and Warren Jeffs. But then, there will always be books like this one to remind us of deeper truths. (3/5 Stars)

Afterlight: Last Light 02 by Alex Scarrow

From The Week of March 06, 2011

Where Last Light focused its energies upon the end of civilization, this epic sequel takes us some ten years into the future, wrapping itself in the question of what comes after the total collapse of the first world. Can the light of civil society simply be switched back on, or must humans make the agonizing, centuries-long climb back up to a technological society step by laborious step? It's a worthwhile premise, but the extent to which Mr. Scarrow lets himself down in its execution left me disappointed.

In the ten years since the world's oil distribution system was destroyed by a series of coordinated attacks, all but a few thousand British people have survived on an island riddled with decaying ghost towns. The rest of the population has died from starvation and disease, leaving behind tiny pockets of life which stubbornly persist in spite of hardship. On one end of the island is Jenny Sutherland who, with her family behind her, has forged a community out on an oil rig just off the British shore. The Sutherlands and a few hundred of their followers pour their hearts and souls into eking out a living on the rig. But in spite of their best efforts, it's clear to virtually everyone but Jenny Sutherland, the matriarch, that they are merely treading water. Meanwhile, in London, thanks to the ruthlessness of its administrator, one of the many emergency zones, set up in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, is holding together remarkably well. It has occupied the O2 Arena, defending it against scavengers and cannibals, while functioning internally on a system of cult-inspired rewards meant to maintain order and allow the zone's leader to stay in power. These two communities know nothing of one another, that is, until Jenny Sutherland's restless son, Jacob, sets off with his best friend to see if there's something else out there. When Jacob discovers the Zone in London, he's sucked down into a savage and ugly world hungry to expand its powerbase. Consequently, the Zone's leadership takes a particular interest in Jacob's home, setting out to capture it at all costs.

I applaud Mr. Scarrow for his ambition here. He has bitten off far more than was necessary in order to tell his tale, but this is, unfortunately, also a contributer to Afterlight's problems. Firstly, the devastation here is far too universal for a disaster brought about by a lack of oil. Mr. Scarrow has essentially described here, and in Last Light, the worst case scenario for Peak Oil, and it seems extraordinarily unlikely that all life, everywhere, would snuff itself out for lack of food. Agricultural communities, fuelled by the knowledge base of educated elites, would persist, especially in the countryside. And and while these communities would cause England to revert to the 16th century, it would be a 16th century augmented by makeshift solar panels andsteam powered vehicles, not to mention handguns and all manner of related tools. Oil is vital to the maintenance of our lifestyle, I agree, but its absence can't reduce the population to a few thousand. Nothing short of an asteroid impact has that power. Secondly, while Mr. Scarrow deserves credit for pushing his characters through some truly trying tests, he wastes it all in a truly ridiculous final 20 pages. I have no wish to spoil the conclusion for anyone who hasn't yet read it, so I will confine myself to this. An author cannot commit 95 percent of his story to insisting the world is one way and then spend the other five percent trying to convince readers it's not. Expectations have been established. And when those expectations are overturned in this way, it's not clever, or revelatory. It's cheesy and sloppy.

There's a lot here: desperation, deception, fatalism, hunger... There's a lot to like, but Afterlight has one of the worst endings to a good novel I've read in some time. (2/5 Stars)

Last Light: Last Light 01 by Alex Scarrow

From The Week of March 06, 2011

A good apocalypse story is, at its core, a rumination on human nature. After all, in lieu of a real apocalypse, we can't really know how we would respond to the disintegration of civilization. We know that humans tend to perform well in smaller-scale disasters like floods and earthquakes, banding together to form strong, sympathetic, supportive networks. But such disasters aren't large enough to threaten the Rule of Law. They aren't devastating enough to wipe out the world that humans know and operate in. So what if the disaster is apocalyptic? What if it kills off the Rule of Law? What if civil services collapse and humans have to rely on other humans to survive? Will our ethics, our civilized standards, hold up in a world without justice? Last Light is far from a perfect novel, but it does ask this question. And though its answer is rather more pessimistic than mine, that it speaks to the issue makes it a worthwhile read.

One morning in contemporary England, everyday British citizens rise and go to work, not realizing that this will be the last normal morning they ever experience. A series of explosive attacks at various global chokepoints for oil distribution have, it soon becomes clear, virtually crippled the dissemination of fossil fuels to every country in the world. Though these attacks are well-disguised as terrorist events, Andy Sutherland, a British-born, oil engineer, knows, when he sees the oil fires burning across the Middle East, that something bigger and infinitely more cruel is behind this well-coordinated strike. Everything, from international trade to putting food on supermarket shelves, is made possible by oil. Take it away and there is no global community; there are no cars; there is no economy; there is no law.

In the days that follow the attacks, Andy battles to get back to his family in Britain while his wife (at a job interview) and teenage daughter (at university) attempt to re-connect with one another in an England infinitely more dangerous and less predictable than the country they knew and loved. Through the eyes of the Sutherland women, we watch England fall apart, devolving into bands of thirsty, starving humans willing to do anything to fill their bellies. We watch both the government and the emergency services collapse. We watch chaos reign as a prelude to the deaths of millions who, in their desperation, aren't thinking of the long term: putting crops in the ground and finding a place to rebuild. They are stripping the supermarkets bare, unable to think beyond the next score. If the Sutherlands are to survive the chaos, and the darkness that hunts them, they'll have to start abiding by the new rules of a new world.

At some 500 pages, Last Light struggles to maintain a good pace, alternating between long passages of dreary plodding and quick smashes of mayhem which rapidly advance the plot. Of the three main protagonists -- the three Sutherlands --, Mr. Scarrow does his best work with the daughter (Leona) who is forced to grow up quick as her comfortable and sheltered world swiftly transitions to one of brutality and selfishness. Where the daughter provides us the longing for home and normalcy, mother Sutherland shows us the true extent to which Britain has decayed in so short a time. Jenny's desperation to reunite with her kids drives her onward, but not so singlemindedly that she doesn't observe how the world has forever changed and what will need to come next if there's to be a next. By far the weakest link here is father Sutherland who, stranded for much of the book in Iraq, gives us nothing more than a succession of thunderous battles as he and his British-American companions attempt to extract themselves back to their homelands. The scenes here are all-too repetitive and are little more than party favors tossed to Mr. Scarrow's action-oriented fans. But for its flaws, the story holds together well. Mr. Scarrow injects a sense of genuine menace into an already scary genre. Treads a bit too close to the silly Rothschild conspiracies for my tastes, but those who like a good conspiracy will devour the malevolent scheme which underpins this piece of quality post-apocalyptic fiction. (3/5 Stars)

Harvard And The Unabomber by Alston Chase

From The Week of February 27, 2011

Though this is primarily a biography of Ted Kaczynski and his fascinating, troubled life, Mr. Chase, who has written extensively on animals and the environment, allows himself the freedom to roam beyond the Unabomber's dramatic actions. He devotes as much time to the man's theories and the times that created him as he does to the man himself and, as a consequence, has assembled here a sweeping and satisfying history of a man who thought he understood the future and, to say the least, liked it not at all.

Ted Kaczynski is remembered, of course, as the Unabomber, the man whose home-made bombs terrorized seemingly random businesses in the 1980s. Though his campaign actually claimed only three lives, its psychological impact was sufficient to coerce the New York Times into publishing his 35,000 word manifesto on the perniciousness of technology. Kaczynski believes that technological dependence will lead to the enslavement of the human race and it was this which motivated him to mail out his bombs to places which proliferated such technology.

Before Kaczynski was the Unabomber, however, he was a brilliant mathematician whose mind, according to one faculty advisor, was sharp enough to solve a problem that maybe ten, contemporary Americans could solve. But as clever as he may have been with numbers, he was equally anti-social, a problem helped not at all by being skipped two grades in high school which only furthered his isolation. As a consequence, the Kaczynski who arrived at Harvard at the age of 16 was ill-equipped to defend himself against the psychological attacks from Henry Murray, a famous and clearly cruel professor of psychology at Harvard who very much belonged to the right wing ethos of American universities that existed prior to the liberalization of the 1960s. Mr. Chase needed only to describe the barbarous tactics used in Dr. Murray's test to explain how this traumatizing incident could have contributed to Kaczynski's radicalization.

This is an excellent biography of a difficult subject. For while Kaczynski is clearly damaged, he's also, at times, a sympathetic figure. At one point, in the 1960s, he flees civilization for the peace of the Montana wilderness, removing himself from a world he disagrees with. But civilization follows him, invading his solitude by mining his hills, paving roads through his wilderness. It's only after these incursions into his world that he gets angry enough to lash out. Our world is an ever-changing place that is incredibly insensitive to those who do not deal well with such change.

The extent to which Mr. Chase is able to explain Kaczynski by keying on the events which turned him into the Unabomber is impressive, revealing a broken man who lacked the tools to articulate himself without the use of violence to acquire the world's attention. Yes, it's all here, from Kaczynski, to his family, to his bombs, to the FBI's effort to catch him. And it's all told with one eye always turned towards the bigger picture of the man in his time.

Kaczynski is wrong, of course. He believes that the use of technology will inevitably lead to a future day in which we invent intelligent machines to do our labor for us. Whether we master these machines and have them facilitate our lives, or whether the machines overthrow us and enslave us, either way we will be slaves to their power, dependent upon them to exist. So far, pessimistic but logical. However, when Kaczynski concludes, from this, that the only solution is to return to a world prior to the Industrial Revolution, just to escape a future that may or may not come about, he loses, well, everyone. Because, of course, we can't go back to a world prior to the Industrial Revolution! Not only would we be consigning billions of people to starvation and death, we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. We know how electricity works, how Relativity works, how the sun works, how energy works, how fossil fuels work, all of which catalyze the ignition of civilization. We know how to make guns, cars, planes, boats, bombs... That knowledge can't be wiped out, not completely. Somewhere, somehow, someone will rebuild what was destroyed. And if, on Kaczynskian grounds, they refuse to do it, someone in the future will once Kaczynski's lesson has been forgotten. Progress is inevitable. And if this means that we are on the road to enslavement, then enslavement it will be. That doesn't mean, until then, that we sacrifice all our agency and give up. Who knows what the future will hold, but we do know this. It's impossible and foolish to go back.

A thought provoking book. (4/5 Stars)

Murder City by Charles Bowden

Where and into what circumstances we are born, together, have the greatest impact on who we become as adults. If you're lucky enough to be born to privileged parents in a prosperous, democratic nation, the odds that you will live a successful life are astronomically better than someone who is born to impoverished parents who struggle to survive in a nation savaged by crime and war. Nowhere is this truth more apparent than on that one, fateful stretch of the US-Mexico border where the twin towns of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua are connected by a bridge that may as well be a bridge of destiny. For on the American side, there persists a healthy state protected by the rule of law and nourished by a strong, civil society. On the Mexican side, however, there endures a place racked by poverty, chaos and death. It was the murder capital of the world in 2009 and, according to Mr. Bowden, a journalist who has spent considerable time in this shattered city, this is just the beginning of the story.

In Murder City, Charles Bowden quickly dispenses with journalistic objectivity; nothing so ivory tower can abide on the soul-numbing, life-shattering streets of Juarez, where drug gangs have acquired so much power that not even the presence of the Mexican army can prevent their footsoldiers from posting cop-killing lists on the walls of police precincts, lists in which they thank the cops they haven't yet killed for waiting patiently for their deadly number to be called. Journalists, soldiers, government officials, judges all have a choice to make, be bought, be silent, or be killed... This is life in a failing state.

Mr. Bowden, in trying to document the catastrophe unfolding in this ruined place, comes across so many bodies, so many crimes, that he details them casually, quietly, as if for him, and for Juarez, stabbed bodies, shot bodies, burned bodies, raped bodies, are no longer remarkable. He learns the intricacies of the drug trade and hands onto his readers the surprising and existential truth that killing, here, has become so normative, so commonplace, so cheap, that often it is done almost whimsically; drug lords exercising power just to prove to their rivals that they have it, that they can do anything. He learns that the Mexican army is complicit in the killing, that many of its generals have no interest in prosecuting a war against the drug lords who are perfectly willing to offer them and their families the same cruel choice they've offered to the journalists and the judges. He learns that no one can live clean in a place where stability is a pipe-dream and life can be bought and sold more cheaply than the weapons used to snatch it away.

This is gonzo journalism at its absolute rawest and scariest. It's clear from Mr. Bowden's lyrical prose, and from the extent to which he has chased a story too few people care about, that he has wrapped himself in the same, nihilistic shroud that encloaks poor Juarez. The genesis of his investigation appears to have been the earnest pursuit of the rapists of a beauty queen who was one of the many women snatched up out of Juarez, used up and discarded like trash. In his desire to bring some closure to her story, Mr. Bowden amplifies her importance in the narrative until it's clear that she is the personification of Juarez, goodness sundered by the teeth and claws of wolves. But this isn't just a tale about the victims; Mr. Bowden saves some of his most incendiary passages for the foolish and insensitive American policies which have contributed to Juarez's fall. His searing condemnation of NAFTA is one of the most powerful and poetic eviscerations of a government policy I've ever read. Just as his interview with a particularly cruel hitman is about one of the scariest.

Mr. Bowden is an extraordinary writer who imbues this piece with an incredible, angry energy. His demons and his outrage take turns lashing out at every conceivable victim. Exceptional and unforgettable work. (5/5 Stars)