Joan Of Arc, Her Story by Reine-pernoud & Marie-veronique Clin

From The Week of September 26, 2010

I'm often critical of histories for being too dry and lifeless, but here is a scholarly work which, while academic in its rigor, has the potency of narrative fiction. Joan of Arc, or Joan the Maid as she called herself, launched a remarkable uprising in France as, at the age of 19, and claiming to herself the will of god, lead a French army against the British during the Hundred Years War. She helped crown a king and win freedom for France, but the divine guidance she claimed was no match for the political machinations inside the French nobility. A faction opposed to Joan's Dauphin betrayed her, sold her out to the British who handed her over to a religious court for trial and sentencing. The trial was a sham which rammed through a conviction against Joan which was later overturned, but not until long after she was burned at the stake, a traditional punishment for Christian heretics.

Joan of Arc was a remarkable woman living in a time antithetical to the rights of women. Distrusted and despised by her enemies, and little more than a means to an end for her king intent upon his own power and achievement, she was wronged at virtually every step by men who did not appreciate her uniqueness. But then the medieval world was not kind to exceptional souls, over all of whom it cast a suspicious and jealous eye.

This is a thoroughly researched biography of Joan and the politics that surrounded her in life and lead to her death. There's a scarcity of speculation here on what her mental condition may have been, but virtually every other aspect of her life is deconstructed and explained in a most edifying way. Dry but enjoyable. Well-balanced. (3/5 Stars)

The Year That Changed The World by Michael Meyer

From The Week of September 26, 2010

When in 1988, Mr. Meyer was installed as Newsweek's man in Germany and central Europe, no one, least of all the man himself, imagined that he would have a front row seat to the fall of the Iron Curtain. As he points out early on in this compelling recount of 1989 and the death knell of widespread Communism, few predicted that year's political tumult, with even fewer prepared for its ramifications. With admirable dedication, Mr. Meyer makes up for his shock by leaving few political stones unturned as, resulting from a dizzying number of trips to various Communist strongholds, he captures the pivotal moments of Communism's collapse in East Germany, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, all while drawing vivid portraits of each country's prime movers. From the secretive efforts of reformists to put Hungary on a capitalist footing to the last, vicious days of Romania's despotic leader, Mr. Meyer allows us to watch the sad end to a disastrous social experiment which hindsight makes seem so fraught with folly.

There is, I believe, a consensus among reasonable human beings that fairness, in life and society, is a vital virtue worth striving for, that inequities should be minimized where possible as a means of giving everyone an opportunity to succeed. But as noble as this idea may seem, its wisdom is not matched by our arrogance which demands that we act before we fully grasp the consequences of our policies. Fairness is worth fighting for, but not when it means, as it so often has, economic ruin. When we allowed half the world to be swallowed up by Communism, it was in the name of fairness and idealism. The planned economy would bring efficiency and fairness to the population. But what resulted was economic stagnation brought about by a lack of innovation and a total ignorance of the human drive for self-preservation.

An order comes down from the leadership that 10,000 tons of corn must be harvested this year, but as the local boss you know full well that you can only produce half that amount. So, in a world where disappointment leads to being fired, if lucky, and prison, if not, would you tell the truth to power, risking your family's wellbeing, or would you lie to preserve yourself at the expense of disseminating critical, false information through the economy about the abundance of food? You'd not be alone if you chose to lie. Most would. And this is precisely how a planned economy transforms itself from something that ought to be more efficient than the chaos of the free market into something that is disastrously less efficient than the free market. This leads to the real deaths of real people while the political leadership, secure in the knowledge of an efficient system, and their own role in enforcing that system, consolidate their hold on power and, in the name of public morale and national unity, trumpet their own achievements until it becomes impossible for them to tolerate dissent.

This is the spirit of the world Mr. Meyer captures, a world in which millions upon millions of people were consigned to suffer under the weight of the bloated egos of their dictators while the rest of the world moved on. The sadness of their collective realizations of what they've lost is balanced against the joy in the freedoms they've won. Freedom, yes, but such scars they've earned in its attaining. The Year That Changed The World is an apt title for the events of 1989 which changed the fates of countless lives and Mr. Meyer was there to tell us how it all went down. Work well done. (4/5 Stars)

Stasiland by Anna Funder

From The Week of September 26, 2010

There is, and ought to be, a natural suspicion of ground-eye-view histories that make claims to narrative truth on the basis of "I came, I saw, I understood." This danger is especially apparent in journalism where famous reporters are parachuted into conflicts and, on the basis of a few staged interviews, draw sweeping conclusions about both the conflict and the region. They can't claim understanding. They are parrots echoing back to their readers nothing more than that moment's conventional wisdom. But this is the wonderful genius of Ms. Funder's brilliant piece about life in East Germany leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. She makes no claim to understand what life was like under East German Communism. Instead, she allows her subjects, her contacts, to tell their own stories and, in this, she permits her readers to reach their own conclusions about the experiences of her interviewees. She is a facilitator of understanding, not its augur. And this lends her account a wonderful and refreshing authenticity.

The title of this piece is inspired by the name of the secret police which, to a real extent, ran East Germany for most of its 40 years of troubled existence. In addition to its thousands of actual agents, the Stasi could boast of countless informants who were so pervasive, who had so deeply penetrated the social industrial scenes, that public discourse became a carefully guarded sideshow in which citizens did their best to say and reveal as little as possible. At the height of its influence, the Stasi had an agent for every 63 citizens it was tasked to watch. This stands in stark, and insane, contrast to other repressive regimes which can only boast of an informant for every few thousand citizens. This police state masquerading as communism separated families and destroyed lives, all while holding in its hand the power to make or break any business, any venture. It was an agency of truly Orwellian turpitude which, as Ms. Funder's interviewees will attest, cared not a wit for the souls it crushed. From the dissident musician, to the 16-year-old girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, the author relates the real lives of East Germans under one of the world's most oppressive regimes, doing so with an admirable capacity to get out of the way of their appalling narratives which pour off the page.

For anyone interested in the daily lives of those living under authoritarianism, this is a must read. Ms. Funder's dogged determination to gently pull life stories from these battered people is both admirable and slightly ghoulish. But boy does it make for a compelling read. Absolutely one of my best reads this year. (5/5 Stars)

Mary Queen Of Scots by Alison Weir

From The Week of September 26, 2010

I have long admired Ms. Weir's passion for English history and her capacity to animate the subjects she chooses to chronicle. On any day of the week, I'd take the warmth of Weir over the dryness of Fraser, with Biographies of Catherine Swynford and queen Isabella being particular favorites. And yet this investigation into the murder that defined the life of Mary Queen of Scots is a bloated tragedy in desperate need of a heavy edit.

Historians like Weir have taken the reconstruction of 16th century English history to the level of fetishism. Most of the time, this works for the reader so long as the education they are receiving from the text has some small relevance to the present. But here, Ms. Weir's obsession proves her downfall. It may be that the murder of lord Darnley, then the husband of queen Mary of Scotland, was a pivotal moment not only in her life but in the destiny of Elizabeth I. It may even have proven to be an event which summed up Mary's flawed character, exposing her poor judgement. But these hardly necessitate a 700 page reconstruction of a 500 year old murder. Ms. Weir meticulously builds a case for each of the possible suspects, droning monotonously on in her attempt to solve a crime for which time has robbed us of resolution.

If Ms. Weir enjoyed both the writing of this book and the investigation of its subject, then I congratulate her on her diligence. But no single historical event requires this much ink, not unless it has a lot more bearing on today. Ms. Weir is at her best in capturing a subject, fleshing her out, and illustrating both her similarities and her differences in personality and culture brought about by the passage of centuries. This just feels like pointless self-indulgence. Mary's background was edifying, but everything else here disappoints. (2/5 Stars)

The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger

Though the Norman conquest of 1066 and the subsequent passage of a millennia have robbed us of much of Anglo-Saxon culture, Misters Lacey and Danziger reconstruct a surprisingly vivid picture of life in England prior to William the Conquerers overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon way of life. Drawing inferences from the illustrations in a contemporary calendar, illustrations which were meant to guide citizens of the day in activities appropriate to the seasons, the authors assemble a favorable portrait of Anglo-Saxon life which suggests they were advanced beyond the culture of the Normans who conquered them. Women had the power to divorce their husbands, or be recompensed for rape. Many crimes were handled by a system of fines in lieu of physical punishments, an inducement to comply with the law without permanently debilitating the perpetrator. Every Anglo-Saxon had the right to hunt the land and claim what he killed. This democratic policy was in contrast to the Norman method of restricting such rights to the nobility and the owners of the land. Finally, kings were not hereditary. They were chosen from a pool of the worthy who were related by blood to the ruling family, a system that promoted ability over the primogeniture practiced by the Normans.

This is not the first book to argue that a people conquered in the name of enlightenment were actually more enlightened than their conquerers. There is, no doubt, a tendency amongst historians to elevate the virtues of cultures lost to antiquity. They, like great rock stars who die young, are frozen in time, their middle-aged warts unrealized. And yet this is a compelling case put forward with charming good humor that cannot but entertain. (3/5 Stars)

A Little Bit Wicked by Kristen Chenoweth

From The Week of September 19, 2010

It is a credit to Ms. Chenoweth's sweetness that her memoir avoids devolving into a self-congratulatory parade for her own achievements. For make no mistake; this lady of music, theatre and television wasn't sitting at the back of the bus when the supreme being -- insert your preferred deity here -- was handing out talent. As if it wasn't already enough to possess a lovely voice, a keen mind, and an innocent's spirit, she must also be able to claim an actor's aptitude and a charmer's wit? If I was a woman, I'd be green with envy.

And yet the lives of the blessed aren't always as effortless as we might expect. In A Little Bit Wicked, Ms. Chenoweth charts her uneven rise to moderate stardom: her personal struggles, her problematic relationships, and her moments of indecision. In this, she exposes her humanity to those of us who only ever see the finished product, the actor in a role, the creature in the magazine. It's a lesson about celebrity most of us could stand to learn, that those we see in our media come to us polished, packaged. It's what makes them seem larger than life, more than human. But we can't forget that they are still like us, worthy of admiration, not devotion.

This is a charming ride through a world few of us will ever experience. The spiritualism is a bit much and, despite being a total West Wing lover,Ms. Chenoweth's on-again/off-again flirtation with Aaron Sorkin grows tiresome, but this is a charming read that animates a real person behind all the performer's masks. Real enough to sink ones teeth into. (3/5 Stars)

Coyote Frontier: The Coyote Trilogy 03 by Allen Steele

From The Week of September 19, 2010

This final installment in the main sequence of the Coyote novels is a fitting denouement for the trilogy. It lowers the curtains on a quality series from an insightful author without betraying the spirit of the whole.

Having beat back various severe, ideological threats from Earth, the Coyote colonists, now organized into a technologically primitive but intellectually free republic, finally possess enough stability to set about living their industrious lives without fear of external dangers. But no sooner have they settled into their free-market utopian plans when a new technology from Earth makes it possible for virtually instantaneous travel between Coyote, the pure, new hope, and Earth, the environmentally degraded cradle of humanity. For while this new development offers Coyote opportunities to trade for all the high-tech conveniences it lacks, in exchange for providing natural resources it has in such abundance, resources depleted on Earth, it has also opened the door to a tragic crush of refugees fleeing Earth, and its collapsing climate, for Coyote, and its fresh shores.

In Coyote, Mr. Steele's ragtag band of heroes defied fascism and won. In Coyote Rising, they stood up to radical socialism and won. In Coyote Frontier, Mr. Steele sets aside political philosophy for a more balanced discussion centered on both the nature of trade and the thorny morality surrounding the idea of the greater good. Is it right to plunder a planet's natural resources in order to create trade goods that can be sold for profit? Is it right to burden that same planet with an unchecked flood of refugees fleeing a manmade, ecological disaster? Who has the right to claim ownership of land? Who has the right to deny desperate people a new beginning? The first two Coyote novels pleased because their characters were polarized into camps of good and evil, free and tyrannical. Coyote Frontier pleases because it graduates from such simplicities to the grayness of adult ambiguity. In this way, it pays off what captain Lee bravely began when he stole the URSS Alabama, realizing a fully fledged world and its band of freedom-worshipping, capitalist, democratist frontiersmen. Satisfying. (3/5 Stars)

My Stroke Of Insight by Jill Taylor

From The Week of September 05, 2010

While there is a whiff of self-congratulatory praise about this deeply personal memoir, Dr. Taylor, an American neurologist, has assembled a most remarkable account of a terrifying event.

On the morning of December 10th, 1996, Dr. Taylor woke up, intending to go to work at Harvard. But no sooner was she out of bed and into her morning routine then she began to notice abnormal sensations in her head and extremities. Not until much later would she realize that blood was already pooling on the left hemisphere of her brain, the gory discharge of an aneurysm she was in the midst of suffering. Dr. Taylor, realizing that something was deeply wrong, attempted to summon help, but in that brief time, she had already lost the capacity to understand phone numbers, just one of the innumerable brain functions impaired and then destroyed as a consequence of her stroke. Despite her best efforts, it was hours until she could finally summon help, hours before she was in the hospital and receiving treatment from doctors she must have known, seen, talked to, been friends with. What follows from that fateful day is a gripping description of Dr. Taylor's eight-year recovery from a morning's worth of damage, a stroke which crippled her capacity to perform basic mathematics, to place her memories in chronological order, to logic out her surroundings. She was left with her right brain, her creative brain, now irrepressibly dominant. And the experiences she relates from this state of pure emotion is both terrifying and enviable.

Dr. Taylor has not simply reconstructed, here, her life's most pivotal event, she walks the reader through the anatomy of her stroke, from the sensations to the deficits, sparing nothing as she endeavors to make us understand even a fraction of not only her ordeal but her long and difficult rehabilitation. It's remarkable to read a neurologist's thoughts about her own stroke, to have what are otherwise fairly dry details personalized in the profoundist way. Yes, there's some self-aggrandizement here, but when one has achieved as much as Dr. Taylor has, when one has worked this hard to return from such crippling deficits, a little self-indulgence is understandable. To my knowledge, a unique tale. (3/5 Stars)

Coyote Rising: The Coyote Trilogy 02 by Allen Steele

From The Week of September 19, 2010

Where Coyote was a novel about escaping tyranny for the new world, Coyote Rising finds our libertarian revolutionaries fighting for all that they've painstakingly built for themselves on Coyote, the moon to which they fled for a new start. Though the obviousness of the themes and the outcomes hamstrings this second effort from Mr. Steele, it is not without its charms.

Unlike the colonists on Coyote who spent the 230 year journey to the moon in biological stasis, nearly three centuries have past for everyone on Earth, plenty of time for technology to advance and for social systems to rise and fall. The tyrannical America, against which Lee rebelled, has ceased to exist, but the radical socialism that has replaced it isn't much of an improvement. New faces, new lingo, but the same single-party tyranny lies at the heart of their philosophy. The Western Hemisphere Union, or WHU, has arrived at Coyote, in ships much faster than the Alabama, and they too are eager to plant their flag, claim Coyote's land and convince the colonists to come over to their side. Seeing the WHU's representatives for what they are, the same enemy behind a different mask, Lee and his confederates wage and insurgency to reclaim what is rightfully theirs. But how can they succeed against such a technologically superior foe?

Coyote Rising introduces us to some new characters, two of which bring a welcome balance to the story. Alegra is a WHU refugee from Earth who wants only to quietly settle on Coyote and play her music in peace. Through her, we understand that Earth is in ecological collapse, a key motivating factor in the WHU's desire to claim Coyote for its own. For a trilogy far too black and white, Alegra is a welcome shade of gray. James Garcia, an ingenious architect, has also traveled with the WHU delegation. Troubled by his conscience, Garcia's sympathies with the colonists lead him down a dark and dangerous road. Together, James and Alegra do far more credit to the story than the cartoonishly machiavellian Matriarch and her hackneyed, robot henchman who, together, manage to make evil look clownish and silly. There's no genuine menace here. And this combined with an obvious conclusion robs the story of much of its punch.

Coyote Rising wanted to be defiant in the same way that Coyote was rebellious, but while the action pleases, the enemies here are just too flat. I'll stop short of calling this a disappointment because there was much here that satisfied, but the drop in quality from the first novel was unfortunately steep. (3/5 Stars)

Coyote: The Coyote Trilogy 01 by Allen Steele

From The Week of September 19, 2010

Coyote is, for my tastes, as close as it will likely ever get to perfectly satisfying science fiction. Mr. Steele rambles, he meanders, and he pontificates without much by way of subtlety, but the earnest egalitarianism expressed in this novel about liberation from tyranny is exciting, gripping, and gleeful. It has a spirit which makes its flaws unimportant.

The 21st century has not gone well for the United States. A rising tide of religious intolerance has swept into power a one-party state which, by the 2070s, has succeeded in making a mockery out of all the freedoms for which America once stood. Now, fascism reigns in the guise of a kind of faux liberty platform, a fascism which jails dissident intellectuals, neglects the inconvenient poor, and forces upon everyone a rigid order designed to institutionalize the worship of the nation's heroic political leaders. But though everyone may be afraid to speak out, fear cannot be an excuse for inaction. Something must be done to reverse the tide of recent history. A hero is required.

Enter Captain Robert Lee, a descendant of the great Virginian general. Having long since had enough of this tyrannical America, he plots to spit in its face. For he has been chosen to captain the government's vanity project, the URSS Alabama, an interstellar spacecraft designed to carry this new brand of authoritarian Americanism to the stars. Carefully selecting a crew loyal to him, Lee bids his time and then, in a move whose boldness is worthy of his famous ancestor, Lee steals the URSS Alabama, taking with him, to the stars, the seeds of a new beginning.

Coyote has, imbued in its pages, a spark of the freedom that kindled the American Revolution. The tyrannical government is a 2070 version of the nearsighted British who peevishly attempted to claw back power from the 1776ers. In the same vein, captain Lee fits the reluctant hero of George Washington, a man forced to be a statesman, to lead a people even though he is not suited for it. But as much as politics launch Coyote on its journey, the second and third acts of the story are just as good. The former chronicles the Alabama's journey to the moon Coyote. This, humanity's first interstellar jaunt, is wonderfully harrowing. The latter is taken by the frontier life: the settling of a new world, the establishing of a newer, freer government, and the revelling in the opportunity to live, liberated, under a new set of stars.

Yes, Coyote sprawls more than it ought to, and, yes, it uses a baseball bat to make some of its arguments, but the irrepressible verve of its dissidents fighting to be free powers the story relentlessly on towards a satisfying conclusion. This is the kind of fiction only an American could write. And yes, that is a compliment. Well done, Mr. Steele. (4/5 Stars)

The Wolf by Richard Guilliatt And Peter Hohnen

From The Week of September 19, 2010

It is often said that wars, specifically the moneys that wars attract, are an influential engine for technological advancement. And while this is an over-simplification of a much more nuanced truth, the SMS Wolf is a good example of how war drives humanity to explore the limits of industry and technology in the hopes of finding a competitive advantage. The Wolf is a chronicle not only of the SMS Wolf and its journey, but of the human forces that propel us to such extremes.

On November 30th, 1916, the SMS Wolf, a vessel of the German Imperial Navy, left port on a fourteen-month journey that would see it travel half the Earth's surface, sink 37 enemy vessels, capture 467 prisoners of war and return home to Germany without once putting into port. To achieve this, the SMS Wolf disguised itself as a commercial vessel, lulling its prey into a false sense of security before it revealed its true colors and stormed its enemy. Though its primary mission was to mine important harbors in Australia and Asia, it took every opportunity to terrorize commercial shipping in the same region, efforts which, thanks to the self-censorship of the Australian press, were only marginally successful. Captained by a charismatic soldier whose powerful will kept his ship on mission for fully half the war without taking instruction from his superiors, the SMS Wolf became, for many, a floating habitat, as entire enemy crews were imprisoned aboard her decks, crews that were fed, housed and largely allowed to mingle with the Wolf's crew until it returned home in February of 1918.

Mr. Gilliath and Mr. Hohnen effectively tell three stories in The Wolf. They describe the commercial raider's mission, the life aboard ship during that time, and the impact it had on the countries it attacked. And given the tendency for authors of micro history to flesh out the minutest details in order to justify their publication, they manage to balance these three interests with an admirable eye for the compelling. There are no villains here, no sides to root for. There are merely human beings, some with missions to attack, some with obligations to protect, and others who get caught between. Of the three legs of the narrative, the plight of the captives is the most potent, as the authors reconstruct the journals of men and women who, in exchange for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, earn a 14 month stay on a warship fighting a war they aren't involved in. What surprises is the intensity of The snapshot the authors take of Australia in the early 20th century. Compared to what is, governmentally, a fairly liberal democracy today, it is, in 1918, little more than a colonial property with a compliant press, a restrictive government and a oppressive police.

This is excellent work, as gripping to naval aficionados as war enthusiasts and fans of extreme pursuits. (3/5 Stars)

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

From The Week of September 12, 2010

I and many others have rightfully hailed William Gibson for his clairvoyance with regard to what the future holds for humanity technologically and societally. Mr. Stephenson is deserving of precisely the same praise because this 1992 novel has, with remarkable accuracy, hit upon a phenomenon developing even now. Snow Crash may be bizarre and overly self-indulgent, but the way in which it predicts the development of Second Life and its universe of avatars gives it a cultural resonance which will see it relevant for years to come.

In the early 21st century, the United States has economically collapsed, dissolving into various sovereign neighborhoods and communities which, collectively, make up a tattered, societal tapestry. In the real world, this society is dominated by those corporate powers which have come through the collapse with cash in their pockets: fast food chains, church organizations, security firms, defense contractors, and organized crime to detail a few. In the virtual world of the Metaverse, a next-generation Internet which is shockingly similar to Second Life, there is a greater sense of personal power and societal structure. Users present virtually with the use of avatars which they can tailor to suit their interests and their whims. Everyone from the rich to the poor participate in the Metaverse, but status here is controlled less by personal wealth than by the quality of ones connection to the Metaverse. Public terminals, for instance, have low bandwidth, causing users to show up like pale shadows of what they ought to be. But high bandwidth users present strongly and can add all sorts of detail to their avatars lesser users cannot.

In the midst of this jumbled world, a virus has begun to spread, first in the Metaverse and then in the real world. Part computer virus, part human condition, it is infectious and devastating, besetting its victims with an increased susceptibility to mental persuasion and group-think, vulnerabilities which powerful forces within this shattered world are ready to exploit. Hiro, a young computer hacker who recently lost his job as a pizza delivery boy, and YT, a teenaged courier, team up in the wake of the Snow Crash virus to collect and sell information to various interested parties. But as they uncover the importance of the virus and the identities of those disseminating it in order to exploit its effects, their motives will have to evolve from pure self-interest towards something more benevolent if they are to prevent the world falling into servitude.

Mr. Stephenson has put together a clever and dynamic novel. Snow Crash is more than a piece of predictive fiction; it is a re-imagining of the role of linguistics and mythology in a world of moral bankruptcy and economic decay. Mr. Stephenson plays with a lot of themes here, even a few strains of humor, but I could not shake the cartoonish silliness of its protagonists and its overly baroque environment. Mr. Stephenson was no doubt trying to access the mind and culture of a common citizen in his future dominated by pop culture and fast food chains, but to this 21st century reader it comes off as silly and juvenile. If the world is going to end, I need my protagonists to have more gravitas. Snow Crash gives me a sword-wielding pizza boy with mad hacking skills. Maybe that is the hero of this future, but I couldn't buy in. In spite of this, the novel's inventiveness is enough to carry it over the line. (3/5 Stars)

Suck It, Wonder Woman by Olivia Munn

From The Week of September 12, 2010

Though dominated by the fluff expected of any memoir penned by a comedian, Ms. Munn's story of struggle and success in Hollywood has an unanticipated but welcome gravitas. Sure, we read these books for the funnies, for a charming glimpse into the lives of oddballs who rise to the surface of cultural consciousness, but when Ms. Munn opens up about her dislocated youth divided between japan and Oklahoma, and when she details her teenaged struggles with her family, it becomes clear that the reader is being given access to an author who has approached her project with thoughtful and earnest sincerity. This openness creates an emotional connection with Ms. Munn which allows the reader to react with amazement and horror at the cast of freakish characters she encounters upon her move to Hollywood. The host of sycophantic agents and eccentric stars appall as much as they amuse, their foibles paraded before us as though Ms. Munn was a tour guide to an especially bizarre carnival.

I tend not to read the memoirs of movie stars. As if it's not enough to have lived exceptional lives, spreading themselves across popular culture, they must offload their well-coiffed and perfectly charming narcissism onto us in book form as well? It's not enough that we go see their movies, that we venerate them in the media. They also need the affirmation that comes with convincing us they aren't that different from us after all? Like I said, repugnance. Ms. Munn may be successful, she may be beautiful, but what she isn't is blessed. She worked for what she's earned. And even though she now has and can enjoy her success, we see how her success is a byproduct of her damage. This is real. This is authentic. Suck It Wonder Woman is tight, funny and well done, but its relatability, its humanity, is what makes it a success. (3/5 Stars)

The Most Dangerous Place by Imtiaz Gul

From The Week of September 12, 2010

In North America, much has been made of the fact that the charitable response to the floods in Pakistan has fallen markedly short of the aid collected for the Haitian earthquake. Some have tried to dismiss this disparity by arguing for disaster fatigue, that a series of recent natural catastrophes, coupled with the 2008 financial crisis, have combined to empty the pockets of philanthropically minded Westerners. But Imtias Gul's account of the dramatic ways in which Pakistan is failing as a state convinces me that Westerners are wiser with their money than these people give them credit for.

Descent Into chaos is a chronicle not just of the Islamic insurgencies throughout Pakistan and the lengths to which the Pakistani government has had to be strong-armed by the West into fighting these insurgencies, it is the journal of a country slowly falling apart before our eyes. Too many corrupted agents in the ISI willing to work with and protect terrorists, too many crippled governments overcome by religious and militaristic bombardment, too weak an effort to create a civil society that might have knitted together a country born in religious discord. The result is a Pakistan fractured by tribal rivalries, populated by religious zealots, and agitated by strongmen who want to control their own little fiefdoms. We can call it a War on Terror if we wish, but the truth, as always, is simpler. Some people want power over other people. The lengths to which they are allowed to pursue that domination is dictated by the strength of the rule of law. A strong state captures and prosecutes strongmen, allowing citizens to believe in freedom and justice and to act accordingly. A weak state fails to capture or prosecute those men, allowing them to kill and pillage, fracturing society and degrading the people's belief in freedom.

This is where Imtiaz Gul's book excels. In covering the rebel commanders, the compromised agents, the threatened governors, the bloody battles and the forgotten people, he paints for his readers a portrait of failure, a failure which demonstrates the importance of the institutions of law we take so for granted in the West. Revealing and depressing in equal measure.(3/5 Stars)

America: A Citizen's Guide To Democracy by Jon Stewart

From The Week of September 12, 2010
From The Week of September 05, 2010

I've never watched a full episode of The Daily Show, but if that program is as funny as the book penned by its host, then I have a new show to watch. This unfailingly sarcastic, alternate history of America, while wildly and intentionally inaccurate, hits upon a core truth of politics in America, that it is brutish, ugly, and, well, dumb.

With hilarious interjections from political figures like Thomas Jefferson and John Kerry, America is essentially a mock study guide to that nation's government. In acerbic detail, it lays out the basics of the Constitution, the branches of government, the positions of power and the ways that power is abused. No shortcoming of the American system is overlooked; after all, there's plenty of happy scorn to be flung about. All this is contained in some 200 pages of tight, hilarious history that will in no way prepare anyone for an election in America, but it certainly will prepare one for the ceaselessly inane thunderings of politicians and the pundits who judge them

There are times when we lose sight of just how ridiculous life has become in an age of 24/7 media. Mr. Stewart's effort may trivialize important issues, but if it gets just one person to crack open a real history of America, or if it gets just one person to stop caring about the pontifications of pandering politicians, then it has done good. (3/5 Stars)

Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley

From The Week of September 05, 2010

Occupying the heart of all good satire is a pervasive sadness that beats, barely audibly, beneath the happy noise of the surface comedy. The sadness is what lends enough gravitas to the funny to make it meaningful and potent. By this definition, Thank You For Smoking is bloody good satire.

Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for big tobacco, is living a guiltless life. He has no particular qualms with pedaling cigarettes; everyone has the right to buy and consume what they wish. That is, after all, the American Way. But while guilt may not keep Nick up at night, his job security is. His boss is tightening the screws on him, setting for Nick performance targets he can't possibly hit. The boss' hope is that Nick will fail and the boss will have a reason to replace him with a more attractive subordinate. Naylor does not just succeed at the task set before him, he succeeds to such a degree that he draws the admiring and protective attentions of the Captain, Naylor's boss's boss, a chronically ill tobacco titan who approves of Nick's initiative. This is the catalyst for the main thrust of the novel, as Nick, with the Captain's backing, proceeds to ascend in power and esteem within the company by executing a series of stunts and interviews that show the world as much courage as they do heartlessness. But when Nick is kidnapped and nearly killed by having his body covered in Nicotine patches, the good life seems to have come to an end and Nick is forced to reconsider his friends and his livelihood within the company as a battle for control over his division plays out around him.

Mr. Buckley's novel is unfalteringly clever. In connecting Nick's ascendancy to the ever-increasing outrageousness of his lies and evasions to the media about smoking and its harmful effects, he illustrates a fundamental truth of human nature, that the big lie is the best lie. Everyone believes the big lie because it's easier to believe in the big lie than it is to believe in the inconvenient truth. The big lie can make people look strong and confident and in control when the reality is markedly different. The only problem with the big lie is the fall which is inevitable and made, by dint of the accumulation of deceits, all the more harsh. What's more, we celebrate liars. By not examining their actions with the light of truth, by choosing to believe in what they are selling us, we reward their lying which only makes them continue in the fiction. This is the sadness of big tobacco's big lie. It worked for them! They knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. They played the big lie. And when it went wrong for them, when the heyday ended, they capitulated, but not before 30 years of knowingly profiting on the sickening of their consumers. Mr. Buckley shows us a dark and funny glimpse into the culture of death, into the soullessness of selling. It's a credit to his skill that we laugh and do not cry. (3/5 Stars)

Paradise Lost by John Milton

From The Week of September 05, 2010

I may be something of a literary snob, but I am not a heartless literary snob. I understand that, but for poetry lovers and bibliophilic masochists, one does not voluntarily read Paradise Lost, especially if one does not have at least a passing familiarity with 17th century English. And yet, this is one of the great re-shapings of Western literature, not just because it fleshes out the Book of Genesis, but because it commandeers the players of that story, Adam, Eve, God and Satan, and re-casts their roles as heroes and villains. This may or may not have been intentional on Milton's part, his sympathies having run strongly to the protestant. But it's certainly clear that, with the advancement of liberal democracy since the poem's first publication, the way we view the players here, and even the players in the Bible, has changed with the evolution of society's values.

Paradise Lost is a 5,000 line poem that was meant to be performed for an audience. This is not just apparent in its structure, with the action at the beginning and the explanation for the action later on, it is in the prominence of the narrator's role throughout. The narrator reveals to the reader the sight of Lucifer and his host of rebel angels thrown down into Hell. The narrator spies on first their recovery and then their council which decides to send Satan out from Hell on a mission to find the new Earth of God's creation. The narrator flies us through the cosmos with Satan as he works his way passed the gates of Hell and into paradise where, disguising himself as a serpent, he tempts Eve into committing the first sin, the disobedience of God, eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. And it's the narrator who sadly recounts to us the consequences of that sin as Adam grows angry with Eve, then angry with his plight, before ultimately becoming resigned to his fate as first man and first woman are educated about the world and then thrown into it, exiling them forever from Eden.

Reading these words, it is an easy thing to close ones eyes and imagine a long ago town square where a blind Milton summoned the attention of his fellow Englishman with a new kind of drama which put energy and excitement into an old and tired tail his listeners would have heard a million times before. The vivid descriptions of the foulness of Hell juxtaposed by the beauty of Eden fire the imagination, just as its detailed recountings of the arguments between God and Christ, between Satan and his captains, between Adam and Eve, bring life to characters who, being that many of them are objects of worship, deserve nothing less. It makes real, and personal, a story that otherwise seems remote, animating drama from lore. But in doing this, it throws up some interesting surprises.

There can be no question that, viewed through a 21st century lens, Satan is the protagonist and antihero of Paradise Lost. Adam and Eve are slavish adherents to God's will until Satan subverts that blind faith, prodding the pair to put their own actions, their own needs, ahead of god, ahead of others. What would have read as selfish and impious to the 17th century reads now as a clear and concise statement of individual freedom, the right to act as one wishes and be what one wishes to be. The Satan of Paradise Lost is an American individualist. God of Paradise Lost is a tyrant who demands fealty for the sake of fealty. And when his children let him down, as he knows they will, he punishes them with the withdrawal of his affections and the revocation of his largess. True, Satan does these things for his own selfish and petty motives, but the symbolism here is nonetheless difficult to ignore.

This is a powerful and beautiful recreation of a biblical story which has had profound implications for the way that men treat women, for the way we view evil, and for the way that we all view power and those who have it. It's difficult, no question, but it's well worth it. You just might want to have a dictionary handy, one with lots of old English words. (5/5 Stars)

The Girl Who Played With Fire: Millennium Trilogy 02 by Stieg Larsson

From The Week of August 29, 2010

The first novel in Mr. Larsson's Millennium trilogy thundered onto the literary scene with its antihero protagonists and its atypically graceful mystery. And so it would come as no surprise to me if this second installment sold as well as the first, as fans hungry for more Blomkvist and Salander divest bookstores the world over of their many copies. I would be equally willing to wager, however, that fan enjoyment of The Girl Who Played With Fire was far below that of its progenitor because this is, in every way, an inferior book.

Flush with the successful solving of the Vanger cold case, Mikael Blomkvist and his magazine have justifiably earned reputations for their willingness to take on the most controversial of subjects. And so there's no hesitation from Blomkvist when he's approached to run a story about sex trafficking in Sweden. But when the two journalists who researched the explosive piece turn up dead, around the same time the body of Lisbet Salander's abusive guardian is discovered by Swedish authorities, Blomkvist is forced to ask uncomfortable questions about Salander, his one-time partner who has since disappeared without a trace. The police finger Salander for all three killings, a reality which obligates Blomkvist to exonerate Salander while he pursues the real murderer of his two colleagues. All this leads Blomkvist down a dark road, a road straight into Lisbet Salander's torturous past, a past from which few escape.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was not without its salaciousness, but the success of that novel, and indeed the success of Nordic Noir generally, lies in the extent to which the crimes being investigated are, by non-Scandinavian standards, fairly tame. Its strength lies in its innocence, in its absence of splashy gore and irredeemable evil. Here, Mr. Larsson threw all of that away, substituting the cold grace of his first novel with the sadistic sex and the hackneyed "I am your father Luke" tropes which characterize crappy crime fiction. What's more, Mr. Larsson completely fails to sell us on Salander's guilt, a failure compounded by the pain of having to sit through half the book while everyone but Blomkvist blindly gropes towards this obvious conclusion. And then to have these 600 pages culminate in a scene straight out of you can't kill me Hollywood? Not good enough.

The Girl Who Played With Fire needed to be shorter by a good 200 pages, and a lot less cliched, to meet the standard set by The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. That worthy effort will live on in my memory, but this here has made me doubt if the third installment will deserve even a look. A shame. (2/5 Stars)

England's Mistress by Kate Williams

From The Week of August 29, 2010

There may not be much wisdom to be gleaned from the lives of the spectacular, but we can marvel at their experiences, their triumphs and their failures, extracting from the ride a vicarious thrill of what it would be like to shape history. Lady Emma Hamilton was the most famous beauty of her time, a beauty born in poverty, a beauty that died in obscurity. Between her sunrise and sunset, she lived a life the likes to which few can relate.

In 1765, Emma Hamilton was born into the poverty characteristic of a commoner in 18th century England, destitution driven by not enough money and too many mouthes to feed. Consequently, Emma was obligated to follow in the footsteps of most girls from her cohort, finding placement as a maid in a wealthy home. Another girl in her situation might have been content with a roof over her head and food in her belly, but 12-year-old Emma burned for more. In time, she moved on to apprentice herself to various actresses, learning stagecraft while she served them. But with her opportunities for advancement in the legitimate world limited, she turned to the seedy underbelly of British society, a world whose eccentric practices were fuelled by the preoccupations and the vices of the idle rich. In this dark world of noble men behaving badly, she excelled, but not without the price paid by all women who allow themselves to be treated as a lush fruit to be handed round and tasted. Degraded but undeterred, Emma persisted until she captured the attention of a man rich enough to permanently deliver her from her ignoble birth. He would mistreat her, stringing out their engagement, refusing to commit to her in the way she promised to do for him. but no matter, she belonged now to a different strata of society in which other men could be found, could be loved.

Thanks to the devoted efforts of a portraitist, Emma's fame was already spreading, but it wasn't until, years later, when she entered into a controversial affair with the greatest naval hero of the age, that her star reached its zenith. The union of Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson coupled together the era's epic beauty with its epic hero, binding them in such mutual devotion that they ignored all the socioeconomic obstacles in the way of their love. And so, when Nelson died at Trafalgar, Emma was left with the couple's massive debts and no way to alleviate them. Without money, without a husband, without powerful friends to call upon, her fall was sudden and sharp, leaving her to waste away in an obscurity almost worse than the poverty of her youth.

It would be difficult for any author with a fingerful of talent to screw up a story with such a dynamic subject. Ms. Williams doesn't disappoint with a rapturous chronicle of a meteoric life. The parallels with modern celebrity are as striking as the starkness of 18th century poverty and the acts of desperation it provoked from those who lived under its monarchical shadow. I tend to be critical of long biographies; they have a nasty tendency to take 50-page digressions into unnecessary tangents, but the life of this remarkable woman could have filled two volumes. A must read for anyone interested in exceptional lives. And for fans of gritty history, viewed from ground 0, England's Mistress has to be on any shortlist for the five books for the the desert island. (4/5 Stars)

Commander Of The Exodus by Yoram Kaniuk

From The Week of August 29, 2010

Whatever ones views of Israel and its role in the instability of the Middle East, the story of its creation as a modern state is remarkable. Mr. Kaniuk, an Israeli journalist and playwright, has isolated just one of the threads of that creation tapestry and, here, spins it dramatically, revealing in the process a brave mission, commanded by a hero, meant to right a terrible wrong.

In 1947, coming off the unspeakable crime of the Holocaust, and attempting to create a Jewish state in what was then Palestine, a mission was launched by the fledgling state that would come to be known as Israel to gather up Holocaust survivors and to transport them, by boat, from Europe to Israel. The intent was not only to populate a new Jewish state but to protect the persecuted and to attempt to reunite them with what was left of their families. When we think of missions, however, we imagine technical expertise and fast ships and well-armed guerillas making sure the Holocaust survivors were safe. But in 1947, Israel was barely an idea being kicked around by a collection of Jewish settlers squatting on British-controlled Palestine. Even pooling their efforts, they could barely manage to requisition a couple of beaten-down, 20-year-old ships which had to be stripped down to take on as many passengers as possible. They were nothing more than floating refugee columns, drifting across the seas towards Palestine, praying for a miracle.

This new Exodus, this time from Europe, was commanded by Yossi Harel, a brave and dynamic young soldier who, amongst an assortment of dangers, faced down British patrol boats in order to see his refugees safely to their destination. His harrowing exploits are painfully captured by Mr. Kaniuk who describes in vivid detail the acquisition of the boats, the retrieval of the Holocaust survivors, the transportation of the survivors across the seas to Israel and, finally, the heartless conduct of the British soldiers who turned them away at the threshold of freedom. Shameful and heartbreaking. Surely there is no more poignant symbol of Jewish helplessness in the face of the crimes committed against them than this act of dishonorable indifference to their plight. Not that this stopped Harel from trying again, unwilling to give up before his mission was complete.

Mr. Kaniuk has penned a powerful story, one which feels as though it's taken some license with real events in the name of good narrative. But this in no way diminishes Harel's stalwartness or the refugees' desperation, both of which set this tale of woe alight. (3/5 Stars)