One Crowded Hour by Tim Bowden

From The Week of November 07, 2011

While most of us live unexceptional lives, lives that conform to the expectations of the societies that harbor us, some souls reject the safe existence and choose, instead, the more dangerous and difficult road of venturing out into the chaotic unknown. The virtues of such an unusual life are obvious. Not only is adventure forever around the next corner, but so too is the opportunity to delve into the moral and intellectual jungles that lie at the heart of man's nature. For to see man operate free of the strictures lawful society imposes upon him is to understand him in a way that we conformists will never comprehend. We cannot step outside ourselves to gain the perspective that the unshackled mind enjoys every day. While One Crowded Hour is an outstanding biography of an exceptional man, it is this lesson that underpins its tale.

Born into the economically depressed rural Australia of the early 1930s, Neil Davis shrugged off the life of a farmer, proscribed to him by family and birth, to become one of the 20th century's most notable combat cameramen. An accomplished athlete and sportsmen, Davis could have lived comfortably, firmly ensconced in an orderly nation with abundant resources and a respect for the law. Instead, he traded the commonwealth for the adventure and bustle of southeast Asia where, for two, blood-soaked decades, he covered the Vietnam War. Not only was Davis often positioned in the front-lines of combat, he was, for most of his career, a one-man team, writing, shooting and narrating two to three minute segments for broadcast on the major news organizations in Australia, Britain and the United States. His work captured some of the war's most memorable moments while earning a reputation for luck -- he escaped fatal wounds on several occasions --, for courage -- he appears to have never ducked an assignment --, and for fidelity to his craft -- he refused to stage any of his segments, believing that he had a responsibility to his viewers to capture the historical facts of the war. After countless near misses, after exhibiting a neutrality that earned him the respect of both capitalists and communists, after seeing the world and immersing himself in its many cultures, Neil Davis amazing career was abruptly ended in 1985 when he was gunned down during a forgettable incident in one of Thailand's many, forgettable coupes.

One Crowded Hour is Mr. Bowden's chronicle of the remarkable life of his friend and colleague. Compiled from Davis' diaries and journals, as well as many hours of recordings in which the two men discussed Davis' unique career, Mr. Bowden not only educates us on the life of a man in love with both Asia and its people, but the essence of what it means to be a war correspondent trapped in the inferno of combat. Rarely armed, these journalists were called upon to carry and utilize heavy equipment in some of the world's hottest combat zones, recording the depravities of man while ignoring threats to their own safety. Though some spirits must surely have been shattered by the enormous, psychological pressures of such circumstances, Davis' numerous close calls seemed rather to immure him to the paralytic effects of fear and chaos.

But as much as Mr. Bowden's biography captures the bravery of the man's work, Davis himself is the winner here. The conformity he rejected, the objectivity he aspired to, and the zest for life he never lost rise above the sins of war and the logistics of war journalism to make this a well-rounded biography of the first rate. For Mr. Bowden chose to let Neil Davis be remembered through his own words and actions which were eloquent and remarkable. This is unforgettable work. (4/5 Stars)

Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams

From The Week of November 28, 2010:

Voice of The Whirlwind entertained, but its more philosophical bent made it more intellectual exercise than Cyberpunk thrillride. No such distractions here. Hardwired comes as close as any book ever has to matching the raw intensity and sheer grit of Neuromancer, the king of the genre, a feat all the more remarkable when one considers that this was Mr. Williams' first published work.

In a future America balkanized into various combative factions, descendants of this once great nation scrabble to make a living beneath the bootheel of the Orbitals, an assembly of corporations which, since ascending to their new homes in Earth orbit, have crushed Earth in the Rock War. In the earthbound society left behind, selfishness and self-interest are the codes by which one must live in order to survive long enough to earn sufficient wealth to buy passage into orbit and the future only it can provide.

But in the midst of this grim reality, a glimmer of hope remains. It simmers in the anger of Cowboy, a fighter pilot shot from the skies in the Rock War and hurled down to Earth where he now contents himself with running contraband across heavily guarded borders. He is a Panzerboy, the hardwired human pilot of a hovertank whose every system he can control with his mind through a jack in his skull. It's not until Cowboy re-discovers one of his old flyers from the war and meets Sarah, a lethal mercenary who will do anything to get herself and her junky brother off-world, that the long simmer finally re-ignites into a vengeful burn that won't be snuffed out. He will take the fight to the Orbitals once more and, this time, he won't be quelled.

Hardwired has the whole package, two badass antiheroes who empower a compelling narrative. The nihilistic, gritty world is pure Cyberpunk, shot through with technology that fuses man with machine and creates, in the process, warriors who'll stop at nothing, refuse to feel anything, until they are dead. Cowboy's drive to put up one last fight for justice in the name of vengeance is as moving as Sarah's doomed quest to help and protect a brother unworthy of her sacrifice. Masterfully done. I don't expect to read anything half as cool this year. (5/5 Stars)

The Wire In The Blood: Tony Hill 02 by Val Mcdermid

From The Week of November 21, 2010

Having consumed The Mermaid's Singing, I oughtn't have been surprised by the darkness and the venom in Ms. McDermid's work. And yet the cruelty expressed in this second installment in her series featuring Tony Hill, clinical psychologist and profiler of violent criminals for the British police, took my breath away.

Having established his profiling unit, Dr. Hill ought to be happy. His professional successes are not only making him famous, they are making Britain safe from psychopathic killers. But Dr. Hill is too busy to be pleased with his success because, having won himself his unit, he now has to fill it with quality people, many of whom lack the requisite training to see the world with his clarity. While Tony is schooling his charges, girls are turning up murdered, young girls, troubled girls, girls the police have thus far dismissed as runaways. But Tony and his unit know better and they set about their first case, attempting to catch a vicious predator who boldly hides in plain sight, a killer who possesses only contempt for human life.

If Ms. McDermid is sometimes too graphic, she has an admirable capacity to apply the everyday realities of life to her characters. Consequently, Carol Jordan doesn't remain Tony's partner forever, as would be the case if this was an American TV show; she is promoted and moved onto her own patch, with her own case, with her own troubles. This B plot, the case of an arsonist, does yeoman's work supporting the A plot, Tony's killer whose identity is revealed to the reader early on. This has its intended effect of frustrating and terrifying the reader as the killer systematically picks off victims right under Tony's nose. The Wire In The Blood is easily 200 pages too long, bogging down in unnecessary digressions, but when it's good, it terrifies, the malevolence of its villain flooding from his cruel deeds.

Decent work. Ms. McDermid isn't afraid to let the guillotine fall on important characters, but this is far too loose and a bit too graphic for my tastes. (3/5 Stars)

Blind Descent by James M. Tabor

From The Week of November 21, 2010

There are those who live out their lives in suits, ensconced in familiar, office environments that may, from time-to-time, challenge them intellectually, but certainly never will physically. And then there's Bill Stone, an inventor, a holder of a doctorate in engineering, and one of the world's most accomplished cavers. This is a man who seems to be comfortable only when he's thousands of feet beneath the surface of the earth, where humans were never designed to live, much less survive. In Blind Descent, Mr. Tabor explores the world of extreme caving, chronicling the adventures and the dangers, but it is the men and women who inhabit this blackened world, who drive themselves beyond the limits mere mortals set for themselves, who bring this book to life.

Extreme caving is an extraordinarily risky pursuit which demands both mental and physical strength from its practitioners. A caver is not just descending into a hole in the ground; he is voluntarily immersing himself in a darkness so complete, so profound, that the odds are very good it will drive him temporarily insane with a need to escape, to flee. This phenomenon, known as the rapture, has killed numerous cavers who were perfectly equipped to handle the extraordinary descents, the rocky obstacles, the tight squeezes, the twisting tunnels, and the underground lakes, but physical strength cannot protect the mind from what it has never had to handle. After all, how many among us have been thousands of feet underground, inside a place no human has ever explored, dependent upon our wits and the whims of technology to keep us alive, and utterly powerless to prevent a random shifting of the earth from killing us?

Mr. Tabor uses the competition between American and Ukrainian teams to find and explore the world's deepest caves as the narrative drive for a piece fundamentally about the human desire to explore, no matter what the terrain. The spirit of extreme adventure which animates cavers is powerfully charismatic, even through Mr. Tabor's filtering lens. The personalities are as potent as the swiftness of the minds that have developed all manner of new techniques and technologies to circumvent natural barriers that ought to have stopped us cold by now. But the human desire to know, to see, to be the first, has driven these adventurers to an unthinkable extreme. Mr. Tabor does as good a job of explaining the anatomy of a dive as he does analyzing the cavers who execute them and, in doing so, he furnished me with a complete and compelling portrait of an exceptional pursuit. There's an honor here, an ethic fading from the more trodden walks of life. It is the spirit of human adventure and it burns bright. Excellent work. (4/5 Stars)

Antarctica On A Plate by Alexa Thomson

From The Week of November 21, 2010

Count me among those who have never doubted what they would do with their lives. Since high school, I've only ever wanted to write, to explore ideas, to muse on the world. But for many, such certainty is elusive. Ms. Thomson is in this latter camp, those searching for a calling. And though I imagine that this has caused her some private anguish, it has also motivated her to take a journey of a lifetime, a journey which those of us confident of our destinies would never dare to take.

Antarctica On A Plate is an account of one young woman's time as the cook for a months-long expedition hunkered down near the South Pole. Subjected to soul-shivering temperatures which routinely plunge too low for complex organisms to survive, she acts as both narrator and tour guide of both Antarctica and the expeditions dispatched there by the science ministries of various nations. It's easy to imagine the eccentrics chosen for such missions and Ms. Thomson doesn't disappoint us, describing the woman-deprived russians and the stoic Scandinavians with equal good humor. A city girl from Australia, Ms. Thomson could be excused for pouting through her narrative; after all, it's one thing to want an adventure and entirely another to be stuck for months on end in an inhospitable, unforgiving hellhole from which escape is limited to a single plane that can only fly in and out under specific conditions. But her pragmatism does her credit. Oh, there's bitter humor here, like when she relates the exploits with various grumpy toilets and temperamental stoves, but she embraces her whimsical mission with admirable tenacity.

Antarctica is one of the remotest environments in our world, a sheet of largely lifeless ice visited by a couple hundred brave souls each year. Ms. Thomson lived a life in a city of five million souls, with every modern convenience at her fingertips, but she only found herself when surrounded by the desolation of a tundra. There's more than poetry in this; there's wisdom, that sometimes we can only find ourselves when we test ourselves, when we strip away life's conveniences, when we mute its noise, and listen for what remains. For the reader, there are no life-altering revelations here, but there is amazement for the environment and admiration for the woman who wanted enough from life to meet herself at the bottom of the world. (3/5 Stars)

Last Call by Daniel Okrant

From The Week of November 21, 2010

In Mr. Okrents' heterogeneous career, he has been an author, an editor of the New York Times and an inventor of an early form of fantasy baseball. But though these contributions were, I'm sure, memorable, this biography of Prohibition in America ought to bring him the highest praise. Thorough, imagistic, and humorous, Mr. Okrents journey through the insanity of Prohibition, from its improbable origins to its predictable dismissal, leaves few historical stones unrolled.

We know now, from experience and history, that allies are often made from the strangest of bedfellows who ignore one another's faults for the sake of a common goal. This phenomenon was most memorably realized in the 1919 passage of the constitutional amendment which brought Prohibition to the United States. For it was a coalition of protestant ministries, womens temperance groups and opportunistic distributers of alcohol who came together to fuel the movement to ban the sale of beverages which contained more than three percent alcohol. This event, in addition to staining the U.S. Constitution, proved to have disastrous results. Proponents of the ban completely misread human nature, underestimating in the extreme the desire of people to have their indulgences. No one wants to live under the judgmental moralizing of a government far more corrupted than they. Consequently, a movement purporting to bring a new harmony to America buried police in nuisance arrests, allowed for a sharp spike in crime of all stripes, inspired a whole generation of subversives willing to defy authorities, and lead to the creation of organized crime. After all, people wanted their booze, the booze had to come from somewhere, so territories had to be established, family connections made, underground networks set up, and officials bribed to look the other way.

In Last Call, these arguments are successfully made by Mr. Okrent who uses an amusing cast of characters to provide background and context for a movement that was not only antithetical to the spirit of the American Revolution, it created entire criminal enterprises as a people born on the will to be free refused to be told what to do. It's a remarkable folly told wonderfully well by a first-rate writer who will, I hope, continue to publish work of this quality for years to come. (4/5 Stars)

The Mermaid's Singing: Tony Hill 01 by Val Mcdermid

From The Week of November 14, 2010

Having watched the British television show inspired by this series, I imagined that I had some inkling of the dark and creepy world I'd be inviting into my head. But Ms. McDermid overpowered my defenses. This effort isn't ambitious enough to re-imagine the crime genre, but it does defy enough of its tropes to make it a singularly eerie entry.

Dr. Tony Hill has a secret. To the world, he is a clinical psychologist with a full slate of scary patients who are clearly too ill to be allowed beyond their four padded walls. Inside, though, Dr. Hill is sufficiently troubled by events in his past that he is incapable of forming healthy relationships with women. To the doctor's credit, he is aware of his own deficiencies and goes some way to applying his training to their rectification, but he is, still, a lonely creature who lacks not only a social life but anything resembling a close friend. Professionally, Dr. Hill has been trying for some time to establish a center for national profiling in Britain, a thinktank that would collate crime data and bend the minds of trained psychologists to the cracking of cases that have stumped the police. He's only in the pilot stages of this program, however, when a series of sadistic murders in Bradfield force the police to turn to him to help them find a killer who has easily evaded them.

Tony may have advocates for his program, but not everyone in the police hierarchy is thrilled with his meddling. Consequently, he is partnered with a young, ambitious cop, Carol Jordan, and together, they are set on the scent of a killer who has reached back into medieval times for inspiration, victims left savaged in ways that only Tony seems unaffected by. The future of Tony's profiling program, not to mention the lives of innocent Britains, hang on their capacity to intuit an answer that will lead them to the right butcher.

Though it's not clear if Ms. McDermid drew inspiration for Tony Hill from the real Kim Rossmo, the similarities are compelling. He too attempted to force the Vancouver Police Department to take profiling seriously. Their obstinacy lead to the deaths of dozens of women as Robert 'Willie' Picton was allowed to run amok in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The Mermaid's Singing does not require anyone to know the Kim Rossmo story to be enjoyable, but it certainly adds an additional ghoulishness to an already tight and creepy tale. At times, Ms. McDermid ambles when she ought to be running, and she comes rather close to insulting the intelligence of her readers by implying that her hero may be responsible for the horrors being perpetrated, but there's far more good here than bad, good as long as you have a strong stomach. (3/5 Stars)

The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor

From The Week of November 14, 2010

With respect to Spartacus and Hannibal, no one man haunted the Roman republic more than Mithridates the Great. For while the rebel slave and the son of Carthage both managed to rebel, briefly, against Roman rule, Mithridates practically lived the whole of his life in defiance of the great republic, holding his own against many of its armies, captained by some of its most legendary generals. His voice comes down to us through history, impelling us to rebel against tyranny, to not settle for less than our freedom, a remarkable feat given that the rebel king, by all rights, should not have lived beyond boyhood.

In the time of the Roman republic, royal courts were fractious and dangerous places where treachery against ones own blood was refined to an art. Mithridates' mother was a gleeful practitioner of the poisonous arts, a fact which seems to have instilled in her son two lifelong passions: suspicion of all womenkind and the quest to find the perfect curative. The former poisoned Mithridates' relationships while the latter poisoned his body. But as Ms. Mayor's account of the great king explains so clearly, it was his systematic approach to the pursuit of the perfect potion which allowed him to build up a legendary resistance to all toxins, a fact which did as much as his rebellion to transform him into a legend of history. Sweeping aside his mother and compelling his sister into marriage, Mithridates set about his lifelong quest of defying Rome by learning as much as he could from his land and his people. A descendent of Alexander the Great's generals and an admirer of the great conquerer, he took up many of Alexander's practices, living his life as much in the saddle as he did in his palaces. In doing so, it seems sometimes as if his life is one, continuous adventure, with fortunes now rising and now waning in the war against Italy.

Ms. Mayor, a scholar at Stanford University, captures the whole of Mithridates' vast life, devoting as much time to his experimentation with various poisons and curatives as she does to the uprising against Rome for which he is known. Though she indulges in a great deal of speculation, thanks to the incomplete nature of the historical record, her conjectures seem sensible and logical, illuminating the life of a man for whom we have no contemporary equivalent. For his desire to be free seems to have been married to a kind of ruthless cruelty the modern world finds appalling. Animating such a giant figure, making some sense of the myths and the legends, a challenge Ms. Mayor more than manages.

Who isn't up for a good rebellion? After all, our love affair with the underdog must emanate from somewhere. Mithridates is the ultimate story of devoting oneself to the unwinnable war because it's right to fight for ones principles. Unless one has an active dislike for history, the journey will not fail to entertain or edify. (3/5 Stars)

Strangers In The House by Raja Shehadeh

From The Week of November 14, 2010

It is a fascination of mine to imagine what my life would've been like had I been born elsewhere, bathed by different suns, shaped by different customs, and enchained by different laws. Would there remain, somewhere inside me, some measure of the man I am today, or are we all just products of our environments, our personalities and prejudices assembled out of cultural norms? Perhaps this is a question Mr. Shehadeh has asked himself because it's clear that, while he has the passion and the intellect to have happily succeeded in the West, he was born into a part of the world antithetical to peace, a world which gives only lip service to the law he loves so much.

Strangers In The House is Mr. Shehadeh's chronicle of his life in occupied Palestine. Though he can trace his family lineage back to his grandfather who was a judge for the British when they owned this part of the world, the bulk of the narrative is taken up with the universal conflicts and rivalries that crop up between fathers and sons. Mr. Shehadeh and his father, though both lawyers, chose different paths in the pursuit of justice, the son believing he can work within the Jewish system the father refusing to yield an inch. It is a disagreement made all the more poignant and tragic when Mr. Shehadeh's father is assassinated and the reader watches as Mr. Shehadeh's belief in the Israeli sense of justice is eroded and then destroyed by their inaction on the case.

Though the assassination and the extent to which Mr. Shehadeh is shaped by it dominate this tale, he has also movingly captured his own youth amongst constant conflict. The cities, the attitudes, the family members, the universal themes... They are all here, potently, tragically. For it's clear that Mr. Shehadeh is a stand-in for so many people in the world who want nothing more than to live lives untouched by strife. And yet for some, strife is all they know, so much so that they never have the chance to learn who they are without its everpresent pall occluding the light of freedom. (4/5 StarsFrom The Week of November 14, 2010
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Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh

From The Week of November 14, 2010

It seems, at times, that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is far too big for any one person to encapsulate. Even if all the endless back and forth could be summed up in one volume, it would be inevitably tainted by the biases of its author, a sad fact for a tragic feud which seems as far as ever from resolution. If, then, the whole of the conflict is too vast to grasp, what about a glimpse, from the ground, from the trenches, from where life happens? What can that tell us? A great deal, it turns out.

Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and the founder of one of the first Arab human rights organizations in the region, writes clearly and compellingly about a country he loves very much, a country in his blood. Palestinian Walks does speak movingly to the broader conflict over this ancient, contested ground, but it is as much a travel log as a chronicle of conflict, the accumulation of years of strolls Mr. Shehadeh and his wife have taken through their country. He devotes as much time here to the flowers and the fruits as he does to Israel's poisonous settlement policies which are carving up the land and transforming it from a country Christ might've recognized into a concrete jungle only Donald Trump could appreciate. And it's among Mr. Shehadeh's rolling hills that he writes of the 1967 land grab which has literally divided Palestine ever since, a land grab, he argues, which was unlawful by any measure, a land grab which he has been forced to challenge in Jewish courts which predictably refuse to recognize his logic.

His pain, palpable throughout, culminates in the book's last few pages wherein Mr. Shehadeh, on one of his walks, comes across a Jewish settler with whom he argues. Though this episode feels a bit too perfectly staged to be totally authentic, it sums up succinctly the complete disconnect that exists between these two cultures, cultures which ironically have so very much in common. For they have both been persecuted, the Jews by the Europeans and the Palestinians by the Jews. But rather than acknowledge past wrongs as a means of avoiding the ones to come, they march on, oppressor and oppressed, and the land is the worse off for it.

A wonderful book which, if it does proselytize, does so gently and with a lawyer's reason. An important read. (3/5 Stars)

Simon Wiesenthal by Tom Segev

From The Week of November 07, 2010

History has produced many giants: adventurers like Magellan, philosophers like Spinoza, thinkers like Newton, soldiers like Washington. But most giants have an opportunity to choose their destinies. In fact, most giants seek out greatness, believing that they possess such a spark of brilliance that they deserve to be at the center of events. Not Simon Wiesenthal. He lived a life worthy of the giants, but he did not choose that life. It was imposed upon him by events completely beyond his control, events which will forever scar the 20th century, marking it as the century of social experiments gone horrifically wrong. They are events he endured, events which ought to have broken him but did not, events which stole away his life and replaced it with a purpose that governed the rest of his days. What Nazi could have imagined that one, anonymous Jew, subjected to the unmatched cruelties of their concentration camps, would some day come back to hunt them down and bring them under the force of the law.

Born in Austria, Wiesenthal's early life was shaped by war when World War I claimed the life of his father and forced Wiesenthal and his family to relocate to Vienna where, decades later, he would settle in his new life. But before he would cement himself as one of the greatest Nazi hunters, he spent the 1920s and 1930s between Poland and the Ukraine, helpless as the Nazis rose to power. Arrested in 1941, Wiesenthal was initially forced to work in a rail repair yard before escaping to aid the Polish resistance. But then in 1944, he was re-arrested by the Nazis and relocated to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Severely undernourished and with a wounded foot, Wiesenthal nonetheless survived the three months between his arrival and the American liberation of the camp, an event which marked the completion of his crucible.

Upon returning to Vienna and reuniting with his wife, Wiesenthal chose his destiny. Though his resources were at times pathetically scarce, he deployed the threat of the law to first acquire information concerning the whereabouts of Nazis who had fled Europe and then to badger various governments into acting upon his intelligence. A supporter of Israel, he was clearly appalled at the lack of appetite Western governments had for pursuing and prosecuting escaped Nazis. And so he shamed them by collating enough intelligence that he was able to play a significant role in the arrest of numerous high-profile targets, including, most famously, Adolf Eichmann. For decades, he went to work, every day, hearing the accounts of victims, collecting information, tracking targets, and using the statements of his victims to establish proof of guilt for those targets. In this, he devoted his life to the pursuit of justice, forsaking even the wishes of his wife to perform a remarkable service.

What must it be like to realize that ones life has been shattered, that one cannot go back to the way it was, that one has only a choice between forgetting, as so many governments wished to do, or immersing oneself so completely in the ugliness that one becomes the reposatory of remembrance, an instrument capable of forcing others to remember? Simon Wiesenthal surely had his own aspirations -- he clearly had a talent for architectural design --, but he shelved those dreams to commit himself to a path that would have been unnecessary but for European appeasement of Hitler's madness. It is a supreme act of self-sacrifice, but of course it did not come without its benefits: a sense of purpose, a sense of justice, and the knowledge that his enemies would never forget his name or their crimes. Mr. Segev does a wonderful job of conveying the complex life of Simon Wiesenthal. And though there will always be questions left inconveniently unanswered -- Wisenthal did have a complex and sometimes disappointing relationship with the truth --, the author has drawn as clear a portrait of this exceptional person as can be assembled by the available data. We watch Wiesenthal the boy become Wiesenthal the victim, only to resurrect himself as Wiesenthal the hunter, Wiesenthal the justice-maker, and then Wiesenthal the legend. It is a fascinating journey I will not soon forget. (4/5 Stars)

Life In Year One by Scott Korb

From The Week of November 07, 2010

It is surprisingly difficult to find a history of the time of Jesus Christ which has not been infected by Christian dogma. Regardless of whether or not we believe Christ was divine, we know that he existed, in some form, and that he and his faith changed the world forever. As such, it's important, even to this non-believer, to understand the place and the time that shaped him. Mr. Korb has done a wonderful job of illuminating the Palestine that Christ knew, reconstructing the customs he would have practiced, the towns he would have known, and even a few of the time's great figures he may have met. In doing so, Mr. Korb edifies us on the ways in which Christ's world was not our world, how so much of what he knew was drenched in the misconceptions that dominate a world without science and scientific inquiry.

Rather than diminish the man, Life In Year One fleshes him out by animating the challenges Christ faced in the form of the corrupt sociopolitical forces at work in 1st century Palestine. Riding shotgun are explanations for the origins of numerous biblical dictates, some of which amuse but many of which enlighten us on the necessary context for what now seem like non-sensical biblical notions. This is a quick and playful read, composed by an author with a sense of humor, an author who attacked his subject with a proper balance of humor and curiosity. Definitely one of the five books you must take with you when you decide to embark upon that time-traveling trip back to the dawn of Christianity. (3/5 Stars)

On The Farm by Stevie Cameron

From The Week of November 07, 2010

It is often said that a society should be judged by the way it treats its elderly and its less fortunate. If these are appropriate criteria, and I believe they are, than the case of Robert 'Willie' Picton is a blight on Canadian society. Ms. Cameron does meander, at times, through her 700 page account of this hellish, 15-year odyssey. Nonetheless, the picture that results from her thorough examination is damningly complete.

Robert 'Willie' Picton has the dubious distinction of being one of the most prolific serial killers in the known world. Only one of the dozens of vulnerable women he lured off of Vancouver's poorest streets escaped his suburban pig farm alive. The rest died helpless and alone: dismissed as itinerant prostitutes by the police empowered to protect them; neglected by the politicians who shrugged them off as an unhelpful constituency; and ignored by a society desperate to think of itself as better than that which could produce a killer of Picton's loathsomeness. They died in ways that defy description, in ways that have made painstakingly torturous the effort of authorities to tell his victims apart. Dozens, allowed to disappear and die because they weren't upstanding citizens, because they weren't worthy of a second thought...

On The Farm begins with Picton's antisocial childhood, growing up on a rural, Lower Mainland farm in the 1950s and 60s. It concludes with his lengthy and complicated trial which, late in 2007, returned a guilty verdict sufficient to sentence him to imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Between, it chronicles the life of a man who never integrated into society, a man who was allowed to live on the fringes, to butcher animals, to escape the kind of socialization necessary to understand the difference between a pig and a human. Family friends, such as they are, provide context for the lives of the young Picton, but more revealing are the portraits of the women he slaughtered. They are women who defy categorization but for one important commonality, the bad boyfriends who they allowed to send them spiraling down the drain of society, down to where only the unwanted live, to where sharks like Picton swim. Picton is a powerfully revolting figure throughout, a figure which forces Canadians to see him and to confront the truth that their society produced this monster. But for all the length of Picton's shadow across this chronicle, it's the empathy and the tragedy of his victims, combined with the tireless efforts of the RCMP to catch their killer, that give life to this difficult and gripping read.
The Vancouver Police have, and will continue to, find a way to excuse away their complicity in the murders of these women, but books like this one will help us to remember that the self-serving self-interest of powerful cops in the VPD allowed Picton to operate under their noses while refusing to heed the calls of the families and the experts who knew he was there. Their deafness has brought shame to our country and pain to families who deserved more from men who seem to have long ago forgotten that they are invested with extraordinary powers to protect the public, not to service their own egos. I don't know about others, but I certainly won't forget. (4/5 Stars)

The Witch of Hebron: World Made by Hand 02 by James Howard Kunstler

From The Week of November 07, 2010

Though the quirky and thoughtful A World Made By Hand earned my respect with its post-technological world and its conflicted characters, embarrassingly little of that magic has been handed down to this second installment in what promises to be a lengthy series.

Where the prior book focused on Robert Earl and his fight for some semblance of justice in a world slowly surrendering to the depravities of feudal existence, The Witch of Hebron chooses to devote itself to a collection of incoherent characters, propelled towards one another by a series of mishaps which annoy and frustrate. As readers, we accept a certain amount of deus-ex-machina in our fiction; otherwise, it would take forever for a point to be reached. But the authorial hand must have some subtlety, some aspiration to being invisible, to allow the reader to forget that he is being guided towards a pre-determined conclusion. There is, here, sadly, no such subtlety. But for as aggravating as this clumsiness may be, the choice of protagonists is a most egregious fumble. For rather than capitalize on the complicated and familiar Earl, our focus shifts to the 15-year-old jasper, the son of a local doctor, who, after a misunderstanding with a local horse, flees Union Grove for an adventure in the broader world. But having gone only a short distance, he encounters a cartoonish bandit who forces the naive and innocent Jasper under his wing and into a violent adventure which ridiculously culminates in a series of supernatural incidents.

A World Made By Hand fascinated precisely because it had something to say and a new and thoughtful environment in which to say it. The Witch Of Hebron trades in both of these important charms in exchange for mystical tropes and unsympathetic souls who never provoke a moment's thoughtfulness or understanding. A major disappointment which smacks of an author not knowing how to continue an unexpected success. (2/5 Stars)

Travels In Siberia by Ian Frazier

From The Week of October 31, 2010

There are some parts of the world known to us only through gossip and reputation. This is surely true of no land more than poor, beleaguered Siberia which, when it is spoken of at all, is referenced because of its political gulags and its snowy tundras. Mr. Frazier, an author and humorist, rather thoroughly dispels this unfair characterization by exposing us to a Siberia few of us will ever visit, a Siberia that is real in its kindness and its cruelty.

Initially attracted to this desolate stretch of eastern Russia by friends, Mr. Frazier condenses five subsequent trips there, over a dozen years, into this wonderful travel log which appeals as much as it appalls. A land rife with humor and fatalism, he guides us through its swamps and its ghostly prisons, enjoying along the way the hospitality of kind persons who are, nonetheless, unmistakable in their Russianness. Siberia is, it turns out, quite warm for a substantial portion of the year, but this heat seems rarely to be any more moderate than the oppressive chill for which the country is known. But while the characters he meets along the way entertain, and while the lengthy descriptions of the unreliable, broken-down technology he has the misfortune to rely upon frighten and amuse, it's the extent to which Mr. Frazier conveys the spirit of this inconceivably vast place that captivates. Musch has already been written on the differences between the American and the Russian characters; these differences have, in a significant way, shaped the course of recent history. But it's not until we meet these people, understand their appreciation for old books, their endurance of the harsh weather, their acceptance of Russian fatalism, that we can imagine just how much this remote and crazy land has affected them, made of them the hearty people they are.

Travels In Siberia is charming, but there's a weightiness here which I won't soon forget. The contrast between how we Westerners memorialize our past, our soldiers, our conflicts, with how the siberians are told to consign their past to the scrapheap of history is movingly stark. They seem to understand how damaging this mass-forgetting can be, but they are too fearful of Russian condemnation to defy the company line. This clash of cultures adds a welcome gravitas to Mr. Frazier's chronicle which, though it clocks in at 550 pages, reads quickly and artfully. This is a land of jovial insanity, of chaotic control, of happy depression. This is a unique place about which we'll be hearing more, I suspect, if fresh deposits of oil continue to be discovered, oil deposits which threaten to bring to the region a wealth the likes of which its inhabitants have never seen and can barely fathom. (4/5 Stars)

Our Dumb World by The Onion

From The Week of October 31, 2010

As a loyal reader of The Onion, the hilarious website of political and cultural satire, Our Dumb World was, for me, a must-have. Modelled on an atlas, this collection of scathing primers for our world's most noteworthy nations hacks its way through its readers' delicate sensibilities, leaving no sore spot unprobed in its quest to bring to light the sum total of the world's faults and hypocrisies. There are almost no weak spots here, with highlights including the entries for America and the Democratic Republic of The Congo, the latter of which had me on the floor for a good 30 seconds.

We all, at times, take ourselves far too seriously. I, for one, am grateful to have The Onion around to bring me back to the festering cesspool that is the world we've made. This is a wonderful read for one not easily offended. Consequently, for those of you who find yourselves touchy on the question of national identity, steer clear, or else risk combustion. (3/5 Stars)

Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

From The Week of October 31, 2010

Ms. Bartoletti has assembled here a wonderful and frightening primer on that most powerful of forces, the will and the vigor of young people. In the 1920s, before he had become one of the most destructive forces in human history, Hitler was a mostly powerless thug with a hateful ideology and no way to implement it. But then a program was born, thought up and made reality by Hitler and his cadre, a plan to harness the frustrations of the jobless youth and grant them not just a purpose but an outlet for their anger. In a frighteningly short period of time, Hitler had an army at his fingertips, an army loyal only to his ideals, an army willing to smash and intimidate any opposition. But while the Brownshirts helped sweep Hitler into power, he needed a system capable of extending National Socialism to the next generation of Germans, the youth of the new, Third Reich.

Enter the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary organization modelled on the Brownshirts which inculcated children, some as young as 10, in Hitlerian doctrine. Though the children were given a basic, academic education,the main focus of their training was the transformation of their bodies into machines of war. They needed the skills and the knowledge to fight for Hitler, to fight for Hitler's Germany, not the knowledge of the book, of the weak way. The Hitler Youth were loyal footsoldiers, invaluable to the leadership both as exemplars of Aryan supremacy and as a feeder system of Nazis into the military, baptizing the armed forces in National Socialism. Ms. Bartoletti discusses here the methods used to indoctrinate these young men and women, the highs they experienced, and the betrayals they suffered. For when the army was exhausted and shattered, it was the Hitler Youth left to defend Berlin, at the end, beardless boys against grizzled Soviet troops.. And their leader, their father, having taken the easy way out, putting a bullet in his own brain...

This is a quick, edifying read. There is no power in this world like youth power. But it can be deployed for ill as effectively as for good. That's as true today as it was in the darkness of the Third Reich. This is not the first book to make this argument, or to expose the betrayal of youth in this way, but it is a welcome entry in a lesson that cannot be learned enough. (3/5 Stars)