The biggest, quietest revolution of the last century in The Box

From The Week of March 24th, 2014

Our world is defined by revolutions, slivers of time in which long-standing norms are upended by new ideas. Often, these upheavals are loud and violent, eruptions of frustration and rage that smash existing, flawed models, only to replace them with equally flawed ones of their own creation. Unsurprisingly, these revolutions seize the headlines, causing many to fear the new. But sometimes, moments of change are so humble, so subtle, that it takes years before they, and their virtues, are even recognized, let alone heralded. And by then, the world has already re-ordered itself around a new, powerful paradigm. It is this latter form of change that underpins this excellent history from Mr. Levinson.

For centuries, international commerce has been a dangerous and expensive proposition. In order to get one's products profitably to foreign markets, manufacturers had to entrust them to ships sailing across ever-changing seas. Not only did this create long delays, during which time market prices could collapse, it forced manufacturers to have faith in the capacity of the ship's crew to not break, steal, or otherwise tamper with their goods. And then, even if all went well, swift, smooth voyages captained by trustworthy folk, the product would have to be carefully extracted from the hold at the destination by yet more hands that might be tempted to intervene in this long, tenuous chain of commerce. With such nightmarish complications in mind, it's little wonder that merchants favored domestic markets over foreign ones.

In the 20th century, however, this equation began to radically shift, first with the onset of faster, sturdier ships which reduced transit times between ports, then with the most revolutionary change of all, the humble shipping container. A well-welded box forged from commonplace metals, its manufacturing cost was as insignificant as its introduction was revolutionary. Not only would it serve as added protection for the products it contained, it could be lifted from holds by powerful cranes capable of operating far faster than even dozens of humans working in concert. The swifter loading and unloading of ships meant less time in port, which meant more ships could be processed, which meant more goods at radically reduced costs thanks to the steep reduction in human labor. These cost savings would eventually make possible a global economy, one that would lift from poverty untold millions and ensure that our world would never be the same.

As fascinating as it is humble, The Box is a piece of exhilarating non-fiction. Marc Levinson, who specializes in such micro-histories, not only familiarizes us with the fraught and complex world of international shipping, and the colorful characters that have occupied its choppy waters, he details the thorny web of unionized labor, government interests and ruthless economics that have characterized its last 150 years. That all these intractable stakeholders could have the ground taken out from beneath them by something as ordinary as a shipping container seems absurd, and must have to many of them as well. And yet, the author does such a delightful job explaining the commercial dominos that fell in the wake of the container's introduction that the reader is left seized by both the obviousness of the box and by the wonder of how swiftly the world can be changed by new, economic realities.

At The Box's core is the story of Malcolm McLean, a mid-century trucking magnate credited with the wide-spread introduction of the container. Having witnessed its use to move military goods in the Second World War, he attempted, in the 1950s, to improve upon this process with a standardized container that could be all-but-mindlessly lifted onto and out of the holds of vessels transiting the Atlantic. Though it would take years for this practice to eliminate break-bulk shipping - the process of haphazardly filling a ship's hold with all manner of products -, its introduction nonetheless ignited a 20-year revolution in international shipping that transformed every aspect of the process. Not only did costs plummet, taking with them tens of thousands of jobs, vital ports, that had been shipping and receiving goods for hundreds of years, shut down as business shifted to locations that were closer to highway and rail systems that carried the container to its final destination. All this thanks to one man's vision...

In this way, Malcolm McLean feels like the first of the host of tech visionaries we celebrate today. He did not create a computer or write software, but he recognized an inefficiency, had an idea for how to remedy it and, as a consequence, utterly remade our world by making it economical for cheap goods to flow from Asia in exchange for profits that have lifted hundreds of millions out of soul-crushing poverty. To be responsible for all of that, to have had your idea be the launch point for global change, is a heady achievement that deserves to be more widely known regardless of what one thinks of globalization and its costs. Steve Jobs ain't got nothin' on Mr. McLean.

A thrilling ride... Mr. Levinson has a rare talent for finding the critically important in the seemingly mundane. We are the beneficiaries of such a gift. (5/5 Stars)

The exquisite study of life and all its bittersweetness in The Hours

From The Week of March 17, 2014

As much as our memories suggest otherwise, life is filled with mundanity. Yes, we vividly remember the emotional moments that fire through our recollections, but these weddings and divorces, vacations and exhilarations, stand out largely thanks to just how much normality our brains have shrugged into the trash. Add up all the flashbulb days that transform and transfix us and, if we're fortunate, we're left with 40 or 50 standouts compared to tens of thousands of ordinaries. Which leads one to an inevitable conclusion.

To be good with life we must be good with the mundane. There is simply no other way to be happy. For to live principally for the days and nights that excite our blood is to place bets we're far more apt to lose than win. We must live for today, in whatever form it comes. But what if we cannot? What if the prospect of mundanity is a crushing reminder of of all of life's failures large and small? What if excitement is the only way for one to feel alive? What then? It's hard to imagine this pain demonstrated better than in Michael Cunningham's mesmerizing novel.

Decades apart, in three different parts of the world, the lives of Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown and Virginia Wolfe would appear to have little in common with one another. Clarissa is a woman of privilege, surrounded by artistic friends, living out the downside of middle age in 1990s New York; Laura is a still-youthful mother in California just beginning to come to grips with the constrictions of marriage in 1940s Los Angeles; and Virginia is a famous author, as brilliant as she is unstable, persisting in the suburbs of 1920s London. And yet, their lives are connected not just through the story of Mrs. Dalloway, which Virginia is creating, Laura is reading, and Clarissa is living, but through the extent to which they are all attempting to make good with the lives they've created and the talents they've been given.

The sum of these three interwoven narratives, The Hours is a captivating, non-linear rumination on the nature of everyday existence. Mr. Cunningham conceives of a single day in each woman's existence and, as the novel unfolds, allows their thoughts, their reactions and their emotions to fill in a life's worth of detail. By the work's conclusion, we not only understand Clarissa, Laura and Virginia in ways both profound and poignant, we come to understand that life is itself comprised of interactions which may individually appear to be meaningless but are, in the aggregate, quite literally who we are. We may be influenced by how our parents raised us, how our schools trained us and how our obligations wear on us, but how we handle all of life's moments is how we come to know ourselves and what we care about.

For The Hours' three spellbinding protagonists, this gestalt portrays a largely disquieting image of lives stifled by mental illness, by the chains of matrimony and by the weight of regret. In each case, we find disappointment lurking close by, waiting to ambush us at the first opportunity. For it is easy to feel, in retrospect, that we should have tried harder, should have overcome more, should have chosen better. And yet, we did what we could do in the moment. We gave what we could at the time. That this has failed to yield the optimum result is as much the fault of chance and circumstance than in our own stars. Of course, to us, this knowledge is cold comfort. It changes nothing. Our lives are still our own, still for us to lead, to endure.

As depressing as this truth appears, The Hours is in no way emotionally burdensome. Not only is there happiness here, even pleasure, an acknowledgement that mundanity has its own rewards, there is a powerful sense that most wounds can be healed if one recognizes them early enough. Regret and matrimony, for instance, are temporary states. Their condition can be alleviated in any number of ways, provided one has the time and the courage to do so. And in this way, we come to understand that mundanity is exquisitely bittersweet. It is the recognition of the good amidst the difficult. And it is this spirit that vivifies the book, elevating it from the dismal to the mind opening.

This is all quite deep. The fact is, in addition to its many rewarding layers, The Hours possesses glorious prose, a tender heart and a poignant message. It's little wonder that it won one of the most prestigious literary awards we have. Deservedly so... One of the most touching experiences I've had in years... (5/5 Stars)

A riveting conclusion to an epic fight for survival in Dust

From The Week of March 3, 2014

For all of society's many virtues, for all that it is the mechanism by which civilization is thrust onward, it would grind to a halt without our lies to lubricate it. From secret projects to marital harmony, lies arm us with the means to avoid awkward confrontations with the truth that might tear apart our missions and our relationships, diverting what would otherwise be deathly blows into glancing hits that are soon abandoned to the trash heap that is our past. But while lies may normalize what could otherwise sunder us, they carry with them a terrible price. For each time they are used in the name of the good, they chip away at the trust of those we use them on until, eventually, their faith has been rubbled, leaving only anger stoked by being played the fool. Rarely has this rageful backlash been deployed better than in the conclusion to Hugh Howey's creepy and gripping series.

For the men and women of the Silos, the world is steel and stone. Having lived and died for centuries within 50 hermetically sealed arcologies, built 130-stories deep in the earth of a ruined world, they have no concept of Africa and America, of lions and monkeys, of snow and sun. After all, it is death to leave the silo, death to go out to the decayed remnants of what came before. And anyway, they have within their silos everything they could ever want: power, food, life and love. What could anyone else ask for?

But now, after centuries, the lies that have underpinned their lives are slowly being revealed, peeled back like layers of sediment to expose the whys and hows that lead them into these sealed lives, these stale existences proscribed by another's power. But rather than finding truths that will set them free, the people of the silos find only the ugliness of a plan so vile, so pervasive, that they will never be the same, knowledge so pernicious that it will spark a revolution that no one, not even the great men who set this scheme into motion, could have planned for. The result of this war will shape the world for millennia to come.

A worthy conclusion to one of the most successful pieces of terrifying science fiction ever penned, Dust is a work of beautiful dystopia. Eschewing the gory horror of the many previous works that have flirted with SciFi, and its nearly infinite capacity to imagine new and twisted worlds, Mr. Howey has brought to life a creepily, self-contained world, married it with a truly horrific premise and watched as his dark creation spawned stories to freeze the blood. Repeatedly, the reader is forced to look on helplessly as the people of the silos are battered by an enemy unfathomable to them, an omnipotent, controlling entity for which they have no analogue. Their collapse before its superior weapons and its mysterious knowledge is as inevitable as it is tragic, an all-too-familiar outcome when the strong clash with the weak.

And yet, where in past works the silos have lacked the tools to fight back, here, in Wool's endgame, the lies are seen for what they are. Precious knowledge that, hoarded for so long by the silos' overlords, has trickled out until the resourceful have glimpsed some measure of their master plan and used that knowledge to make, for the first time, plans of their own, to seize their autonomy, to realize that the truth actually can set them free. All of which would have been empty without Wool's previous works in which readers watched the silos bend under the weight of ignorance until it seemed as though they might all break and leave the world without hope. But with such a foundation in place, their outrage, their keen hunger for revenge, puts a fire in these pages that no criticism can douse, that no convenient turn of plot can reduce, that no force of the old world can stop. And it is a privilege to watch it all unfold.

Dust is not a revolution. Quite the contrary. It draws upon many established tropes to craft its tale. But where Mr. Howey supersedes those who've come before him is in the sheer terror he can instill in his environments. The doom, the claustrophobia, of the silos leaves the reader yearning for sunlight, for open spaces, for the world he knows. It leaves him wondering who will be the next character to fall in a war he can't possibly relate to. And in this, the author shows us the true power of knowledge. There are no clever villains spitting pithy lines about how knowledge is power. He doesn't need them. This truth scores every page and leaves no doubt that, short of the suns that give us life, knowledge has no peer.

For anyone remotely interested in scares and society, in prisons of the mind and the burdens of the heart, Wool is the bible you've been waiting for. Read it and its wonderful conclusion and thrill to literature done with style and cold steel. (5/5 Stars)

A tragicomic romp through a vivid world in the sublime Sharps

From The Week of February 24, 2014

For all but a powerful few, we are pawns in another's game, our lives subject to forces we'll never comprehend. The potent influences of politicians and CEOs, diplomats and warlords, may not seep to the surface of our daily existences, but they are there, nudging us in directions of another's choosing. Part of this shaping is indirect, the ripple effects created by the wakes of society's prime movers, but a significant component is conscious, the tangible result of men and women who believe they are in the right and who are not afraid of acting on that belief. But what if those beliefs are wrong? What if those plans are too cruel to be tolerated? When do we, as the pawns in their games, decide to take ourselves from the board and make our own choices? K. J. Parker poses these very questions in her fascinating, political adventure. The dark energy generated from their answers is enough to make this one of 2012's finest reads.

In a world of merchant banks and triumphant generals, of powerful priests and corrupted nobles, Permia and the Republic of Scheria endure an uneasy peace. The two countries have little in common. Their skills, their gods, even their politics are completely different, leaving little room for common ground. No surprise, then, that the two bickering nations have recently concluded a decades-long war that destroyed the economies of both countries and was only ended thanks to the brilliance, and the brutality, of Scheria's legendary general, Herec Carnufex, infamously known as the Irrigator. However much they may hate one another, though, they do share a love of fencing, a sport which is of fanatical importance in both lands and can perhaps serve as a bridge by which to heal old wounds.

That appears to be the idea behind a mutually agreed-upon tour in which Scheria's finest fencers will be escorted through passionate Permia and set against its greatest swordsmen, in an ostensibly symbolic display of skill and glory. But when Scheria's prime movers select a band of misfits to represent them, more than a few eyebrows are raised in influential circles. A woman? An accidental murderer? A veteran of the Permian war haunted by his service? The Irrigator's second son who seems far more interested in books than blades? This is hardly a team to be feared. So why have they been sent into an unfamiliar land, with foreign customs and unstable politics? Why do they all get the sense that they are taking part in a game none of them understand? As Permia erupts in revolt, they will have to find answers quickly or else full-on war may resume. And this time, there may not be anything left to salvage when the guns have ceased their firing.

Delightful and dour, Sharps is a sublime work of fantasy fiction from an author whose relative obscurity is entirely undeserved. Ms. Bishop does a masterful job of layering her plots with interconnected schemes that slowly, tragicomically unwind through the narrative, ensnaring her characters in webs of lies and powerplays that rarely end well. This sophistication, in both its understanding of the selfishness of human nature and of the corrosiveness of politics, provides the fertile ground from which her complex characters grow.

This is hardly the first time that misfits have been asked to, in some sense, save the world, but rarely has it been done with such class and verve. It is an easy thing to assemble a cast of clowns and watch them bumble their way towards an inevitable conclusion. It is entirely another matter to animate a company of selfish smart-asses, secretive heroes and foolish businessmen, who not only attract the reader's interest and fondness, but who also succeed in elevating themselves from their darkly humorous circumstances to be rounded, plausible individuals, endowed with the tragic desire to do right, to fulfil their own kind of justice. A misstep of any significance on Ms. Bishop's part and Sharps would have slid into the ditch of farcical absurdity, a world in which the outcome loses all mass. That she has avoided as much here is a credit to her skill.

No review of Sharps specifically, and Ms. Bishop's work generally, would be complete without commenting on the mountains of research and experience from which these tales benefit. The author has a complex understanding of banking and trade that surely flows from an inquisitive mind open to the training and the knowledge of numerous disciplines. But these economic principles are mere icing on the cake that is her familiarity with fencing without which the novel would be a pale shadow. The author speaks fluently of not just the moves but the mentality of the fencer, of the fears and moments of explosive action that characterize it. This expertise deeply enriches the work.

Sharps' only flaw is that it is not the beginning of a series, a greater whole for the eager to devour. We must content ourselves with this unmystical gem that, for all its dirty politics, shines like the sun. (5/5 Stars)

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

From The Week of January 13th, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

The stressful world of the NFL explored in Collision Low Crossers

From The Week of January 6th, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From The Week of October 20th, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A phenomenal look at a forgotten massacre in King Leopold's Ghost

From The Week of August 26th, 2013

Of colonialism's many sins, the degree to which it encourages humans to separate the strong from the weak, the momentarily superior from the disadvantaged inferior, must be its most grievous. After all, by dint of being both the planet's apex predator and foremost intelligent species, humanity is already predisposed to a self-centered view of the world, skewed to favor the viewer at the expense of all else. To then exacerbate this existing trait with all of colonialism's criminal enticements is akin to pouring gasoline upon a fire, an inferno of injustice, exploitation and degradation from which few ever recover.

Worse yet, though, is what this mental sense of otherness does to the victims who, starved, beaten and destroyed, having no culture or resource left to fall back upon, cultivate the victimizer's toxic tactics in hopes of lifting themselves out of the mire into which their fellows have been plunged. Abused becoming abuser creates the most pernicious vicious cycle imaginable, one in which peace and justice are made foreign concepts to entire generations. This Adam Hochschild exquisitely and passionately captures in his valuable investigative work.

Positioned in the heart of Africa, the war-torn and resource-rich country we know today as The Democratic Republic of the Congo has had a long and tragic history. Though claimed by the Portuguese in the 15th century, it was virtually inaccessible to European imperialism until the nineteenth, when Henry Morgan Stanley successfully traversed its dangerous terrain in hopes of locating Dr. David Livingstone, the missionary doctor and explorer who had famously vanished into this strange and foreign place. Until this time, and despite the Portuguese's unenforced claim, the Congo was an organized, self-sufficient kingdom ruled from present-day Kinshasa by a lord known as the Manikongo. But once Stanley's expedition proved that Westerners could withstand the dangers of the Congo, albeit with an excess of luck and endeavor, this kingdom would fall to the voracious hunger of Western appetites.

By the late nineteenth century, most of the world had been claimed in one way or another by the major western European powers of France, Germany and england. When Stanley's expedition proved that the Congo could be a prize to be won, tiny Belgium, lead by the ambition and hunger of its king, Leopold II, leaped at the opportunity to conquer it and, in a stroke, vastly expand its power and prosperity. Though this conquest would take many years to complete and be recognized by the international community, King Leopold II, with a combination of guile and relentlessness, would eventually prove victorious, creating the Congo Free State which began to export large amounts of priceless ivory and rubber to Belgium in exchange for relatively worthless items like glass and beads. But however horrendous this economic exploitation, the human cost was far worse. For in order to create this trade, Leopold's men instituted one of the most ruthless and degrading administrations in history, one in which women and children were systematically starved, beaten and murdered to encourage Congolese men to labor for Belgian gain.

The tale of these abominable crimes and how they came to light, King Leopold's Ghost is a mesmerizing and moving work of non-fiction. Mr. Hochschild, a first-rate historian who rarely disappoints, has set his nimble pen and sharp mind to detailing an all-but-forgotten chapter of western imperialism, one made all the more shocking for its darkness. For make no mistake. The crimes of King Leopold II and his men are at least as grave and despicable as those of the holocaust. The only difference here lies in Leopold's motives which were not forged by ethnic hatred but by greed, made no less potent by its simplicity. Step by cautious step, Leopold convinced the western powers that his intentions with the Congo were humanitarian, even pious, all while implementing, throughout this conquered land, a rule so foul, so cruel, that it inspired the writing of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a work which was, in no way, forced to exaggerate for effect.

Of King Leopold's Ghost's many virtues, the most memorable is the way in which it it reveals the role bias plays in the lives of man. Belgian crimes in the Congo were brought to light by a series of brave men, white and black, European and American, who, thanks to first-hand experience with the systematized beatings, shootings and rapes of the Congolese people, saw through leopold's lies and began declaring them to the public. However, these individuals were only few in number, a tiny fraction of the thousands of Europeans who had been to the Congo under Leopold's reign and watched the hands of the disobedient chopped off, looked on while entire villages were wiped out and the survivors forced into chaingangs, and observed the punishments with the vicious chicotte which often left its victims mortally wounded. This vast majority were silent. They were content to steal from an oppressed and brutalized people. They were content to earn and look the other way.

Even more troubling, though, are the biases amongst the social crusaders, all of whom believed in the rightness of British imperialism. The queen's justice was righteous and true, a light that should be shone upon the whole of the savage world. But Belgian imperialism was another story, the sins of which had to be exposed. This narrowness of thinking, this inability to recognize the universal despotism and criminality that arises out of colonialism, is utterly arresting, but no moreso than the will of the Belgian people to deny that their little country was complicit in the deaths of nearly ten-million people. Not until the 1980s were the records of this time revealed. And even then, no one was encouraged to read them. This is a crime against humanity they would just as soon bury.

But while there are in this tale no clean skins, there is this. When others forget, we can remember. We can read great books and remind ourselves that all crimes have been executed before, in one form or another. And in this way, when they are tried again,we can recognize them. We can be there to say "stop," "no," "this will not be allowed to pass."

A work as riveting as it is valuable... (5/5 Stars)

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is beautiful, exquisite irony

From The Week of August 19th, 2013

What is a hero? The people admire them, our cultures celebrate them and our literature elevates them to immortality. So it is safe to say that we know a hero when we see one. But if pressed to define the criteria for becoming one, we might offer up very different answers. Some of us might value the unsung heroes who toil quietly at thankless jobs that ensure our safety on a daily basis. Others, meanwhile, might emphasize self-sacrifice, believing that a hero is only a hero if we know of, and are inspired by, his or her actions.

But as difficult as it might be to define a hero, it is even harder to unknot the complex relationship between heroes and the societies that harbor them. For while society hails them, upholds them as objects of valor and achievement, it also devours them, reducing them from human beings, with flaws and tempers, to useful paragons that further society's ends. This is no way to treat anyone, let alone those for whom we have the deepest respect. This Ben Fountain captures in his outstanding novel.

For the men of Bravo Squad, they were just doing their jobs, doing what they were trained to do. But for everyone back in America, the ambush at the Al-Ansakar Canal is a defining moment of the Iraq War. Captured on film and replayed for all to see, this four-minute-long engagement, in which Bravo Squad risks their lives to rescue a convoy trapped by insurgents, is a re-affirmation of what they already know, that American soldiers are the bravest and best the world has to offer. And so, it seems only fitting that the survivors of the ambush, while being patched up, and while grieving for the men they've lost, be flown back to America for a thank-you tour, a whirlwind, whistle-stop affair that sees them shaking hands and smiling for photographs in a dozen major US cities before concluding at that most enduring of American rituals, an NFL game at Texas Stadium where they will be honored at Halftime.

For Billy Lynn, the star of the footage which caught him trying to save the life of his dying friend while continuing to kill the enemy, this is a completely disconcerting experience. A 19-year-old boy from a small, Texas oiltown, he is utterly unprepared to be the center of anyone's attention.. And now there are 70,000 people who want to congratulate him, to tell him what they think about the war, and hail him as the bravest of the brave. He must interact with the rich and the poor, the kind and the venomous, all without doing dishonor to the army that has put him here. Over these few hours, he has to be what America needs him to be, but can he be that when he doesn't even know himself? Cheerleaders and millionaires, footballers and fans and at the end of it a war he must go back to, a war that might never end...

As winningly poignant as it is sharply satirical, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is fiction at its best. Juxtaposing the small lives of the men of Bravo squad against the enormity of the spectacle of an NFL game, Mr. Fountain beautifully captures America's tortured relationship with its heroes, with its superficiality and with its founding mythology. For this is a country built on the idea of freedom, constructed to be welcoming to all those who wish to escape tyranny, that is, nonetheless, engaging in two savage and costly wars that have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Rather than deal directly with such a difficult truth, however, the people wrap themselves in the sanctity of their flag, focusing on the deeds of heroic men in order to avoid looking at the price they are all paying in a place that few of them could even find on a map. Never in history have so few been asked to bear the weight of so much for so many and this cultural, economic and experiential divide could not be better represented than it is here.

Beyond its potent cultural critiques, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a wonderful and warm character piece. From its young, virginal protagonist, Lynn, to his friend, Mango, his sergeant, Dime, and the film producer, Albert, who is trying to make their story into a movie, the actors here are complicated, rich and deeply entertaining. Mr. Fountain embraces their flaws, depicting them as young men who both love and hate war, who appreciate and scorn their treatment subsequent to the ambush, and who accept and yet cannot abide the empty platitudes of the rich, entitled men who want to be seen to be doting on them. For all their warrior prowess, these are clearly vulnerable men who would benefit far more from a few days respite than the overstimulated chaos of an NFL spectacular. And this brings us to the author's most trenchant observation.

The culture does not feat heroes for their benefit. They feat them to assuage their own guilt about what the heroes have been forced to do. The culture doesn't care about these boys. If it did, they would ask them what they wanted. They would help them with their care, with their futures. Instead of this substantial and meaningful aid, the heroes get fifteen minutes of unwanted fame while being jerked around by titans of industry with whom they have nothing in common and who seek to only use their momentary celebrity to polish their own egos. It is a display of such profound self-indulgence that would descend to the level of disgusting if it weren't so painfully predictable.

Mr. Fountain has a nimble pen, a sharp eye for cultural critique and a strong sense of injustice and irony, all of which he uses to wonderful effect in one of the best reads in years. (5/5 Stars)

A searing, riveting portrait of the Mexican Drug War in El Narco

From The Week of August 5th, 2013

Nations have narratives, a collection of facts and theories, stories and biases, that coalesce, over decades, into a fundamental mythology that is programmed into most, if not all, of its citizens. For successful nations, this is a largely positive outcome, primarily because it re-enforces those ennobled traits that have purportedly empowered them to the top of the heap. Yes, this comes at the expense of absolute truth, but this is a relatively small price to pay for having such a high bar set for subsequent generations. However, for nations who haven't enjoyed such success, this same mechanism re-enforces a sense of chaos and failure, a toxic stew that embitters all but the most pure of heart.

All of this belief is predicated on the notion that these mythologies are accurate, that they have tangible meaning for those alive today, but what if they don't? What if the fates of nations are determined less by the individual actions of those involved, but by a combination of environmental and circumstantial factors now centuries in the past? For failing states, such a train would be hard to turn around, especially in our modern world in which results are expected to be immediate. And yet, what else is there but to try? Ioan Grillo, here, documents just such an attempt.

For generations, Mexico has been a nation teetering on the brink of catastrophe. For much of its history, these crises were political in nature, as powerful men drew upon the destructiveness of armies to exert their will upon a country troubled by the noxious legacy of Spanish conquest. More recently, though, particularly as Mexico has made the slow, stuttering transition to democracy, these existential challenges have shifted into the much more complicated arenas of economics and social policy which possess contradictions and dilemmas that not even successful nations have ironed out. Unstable currencies, corrupted police forces and concentrated wealth have all taken their toll. And yet, combined, it is difficult to imagine them causing as much damage as Mexico's position on illegal drugs.

Unwisely taking its cue from the United States, Mexico has attempted to prohibit the sale of marijuana and narcotics in its country. But unlike the US, where stable judiciaries and largely honorable police forces keep the trade largely confined to ghettos and dark street corners, Mexico has been overwhelmed on three fronts: by a warmer climate agreeable to plantation of such crops, by widespread poverty that guarantees a steady supply of desperate souls who turn their hands to cultivating them, and by its proximity to South-American nations from which these drugs can profitably flow north and into the United States. Together, this mixed bag of incentives and misfortune has plunged Mexico into a war with a powerful group of highly trained, borderline psychotic, and profoundly motivated insurgents who will stop at nothing, not even butchery, to maintain their hold over an unfathomably profitable trade.

In El Narco, Mr. Grillo investigates these cartels. And by interviewing both its members and its victims, he creates a deeply moving portrait of Mexican life that has been transformed by thirty years of growing strife and deepening social divisions that are ripping the country apart. Seeing before them the most enticing of dangling carrots, the cartels have seized upon a means of acquiring wealth and power that is as old as civilization. And yet, through his narration of the unimaginable cruelty and depravity of their crimes, the author convinces us that the Mexican cartels are newer, more nightmarish beasts that have been nourished not only by Mexico's troubled present, but by its turbulent past in which infighting and discord prevented it from joining the United States in the league of thriving nations.

But while the cartels understandably occupy the core of this work, El Narco's most revelatory and wrenching passages are reserved for those who have had their lives shattered by them. From families forced to participate because of the sheer, dumb randomness of living in the wrong part of Mexico, to innocents who have been caught up and gunned down in the crossfire between the cartels and the Mexican army, and even to the men and women who have been raped and killed as a result of this terrible war, El Narco is a shattering demonstration of the randomness of life, of its preciousness, and of how quickly it can be snatched away. Granted, most of us do not need reminders of the fitfulness of the spark of life, and yet, it is something entirely else to see the blood and the pain spilled out over these 320 pages, to comprehend the twin cancers of grief and nihilism that grow from it. Their stories are impossible to turn away from.

There are no policy positions here. Mr. Grillo certainly seems sympathetic to those who argue for legalization, but how could he not? For while, to us, this may be an academic debate, albeit one steeped in bias and political ideology, prohibition is, for him, a remedy for a bloodbath. Legalization would undoubtedly de-fund the cartels to an extraordinary degree. And that the US has pressured Mexico not to do this out of its own cowardly self-interest, and that Mexico has itself not summoned the courage to do it on its own, is nothing less than a crime against humanity, an unwillingness to acknowledge the terrible cost of preventing people from doing as they choose so long as they do not harm anyone else in the doing. Other than this, though, Mr. Grillo chooses not to editorialize on guns, politics, or culture which, though consequential, seem almost shallow compared to the human stories that fill these pages.

Searing and mesmerizing... An absolute must-read... (5/5 Stars)

The devastating history of eugenics chronicled in War Against the Weak

From The Week of July 8th, 2013

Though the question of what we individually owe to our fellow man is the pressing, sociological issue of this new, global civilization, there's an equally important debate to be had. What do we owe the least fortunate among us? From the mentally ill to the physically deficient, millions of people never receive a fair shot at a successful life. Is this merely a necessary outgrowth of a democratic, capitalist system, that some of us simply will be left behind, or is this inequality a consequence of poor ethics and poor morals? Perhaps, some day, we will have answers to these questions. Perhaps one will help solve the other. But until that day, we have only our past actions to go by. And where misfits are concerned, this is decidedly grim, a truth relentlessly demonstrated in Edwin Black's thorough examination of eugenics.

A scientific movement that grew out of nineteenth-century revelations of the remarkable role evolution plays in the advancement of life on Earth, eugenics is an ethical framework that argues for the purification of the human species through proper breeding and genetic engineering. Popular in the first half of the 20th century, it was originally confined to agricultural and horticultural fields before being seized upon by scientists and philosophers as a means by which to eliminate human malformations. After all, would the world not be better if disabilities from Spina bifida to blindness could be erased from the gene pool? Imagine the benefits to society if it, and its people, could be relieved of the costs of caring for those who, because of some genetic deficiency, cannot care for themselves.

However innocent the origins of this view of humanity's future, eugenics soon took on a sinister air, made all the more obvious with hindsight. For how could the enfeebled and the disabled be trusted to remove themselves from the gene pool? Would it not be prudent for society to sterilize them as a means of assuring that such genetic mistakes would die out with them? Armed with scientific funding from powerful, turn-of-the-century trusts, an American organization set out to lobby state legislatures to pass sweeping laws that would make commonplace the forced exclusion of deficients from the gene pool. Drawing on biased, reprehensible science, the American Breeders Association became a haven for racial purists who disseminated their ugly conclusions not only throughout North America, but to a receptive Europe eager to have its white, Nordic superiority re-affirmed by sham science. Of these new, European adherents, none were as enthusiastic as the group of German scientists who would go onto play key roles in Hitler's attempted extermination of the Jewish population, participating, in the name of eugenics, the worst crime in modern history.

A lacerating account of the history of eugenics, War Against The Weak is a shattering examination of one of organized science's darkest hours. Mr. Black, who possesses a first-class mind for research, has not only assembled an authoritative account of the attempt by a small group of humans to play god over the future of an entire species; he has brought to light, with color and compassion, the many thousands of souls who suffered at their hands. For the eugenics movement was not a victimless crime. It was not simply a foolish idea rooted in a series of unfortunate misapprehensions. It was a systematic attempt to strip groups of innocent people of their basic human rights, passing judgement on them in a manner that is both abhorrent and obscene. From the American Breeders Association's first steps into the arena of public policy, through to the unimaginable Holocaust into which it eventuated, the work reveals the corporations and the actors, the governments and the bodies that sought to destroy the individual freedoms we all hold so dear.

Though the work's most obvious quality is its exceptional thoroughness -- Mr. Black presents the reader with pages and pages of sources that must have taken years to organize and compile --, its most enduring virtue is the manner in which it exposes us to an inescapable truth about the human mind, that it is unavoidably biased. Shaped by its social, cultural and economic environments, and hardened by personal experience, it favors conclusions it likes and ignores those it finds unpleasant. In this, it creates for the individual a narrowed view of the world that, while agreeable to the individual's sensibilities, is colored in the extreme. We now know, thanks to the work of both social and scientific crusaders, that the physical, intellectual and emotional differences between the races are at best negligible. And yet, seeking to find an explanation that justified their distaste for the tide of non-white, non-Nordic ethnicities flooding into their homeland, these eugenicists created pseudo science, convinced receptive governments of its voracity, and then implemented a program of social engineering criminal in its intent and tragic in its scope.

War Against the Weak has its blind spots. For all its rigor, Mr. Black's account is nonetheless a polemic against eugenics. He has no time for seemingly any argument in its favor. Given eugenics' costs, this is understandable, though, regrettable. We should be able to have a debate about what society owes the individual. We should be able to have discussions about the blessings of genetic engineering. But these are areas now profoundly poisoned by the sins of our past, certainly where the author is concerned.

An absolute must-read for anyone even mildly interested in science, justice and human nature... (5/5 Stars)

Technical brilliance and corporate imbecility in Dealers of Lightning

From The Week of May 13, 2013

As much as corporations have helped to create and empower our modern world, supplying it with pools of labor and capital to bring products to our markets, they are no wiser than we are. Despite their fortunes being inextricably linked with being able to predict what's next, they cannot escape the biases, doubts and cynicism that befall us all. How is this possible? Because, while corporations possess far more intellectual might than the individual, they often fail to channel that might in any kind of productive way. Having emerged as a result of innovation, they become machines for printing money, not machines for making bets on the future. Some corporations escape this trap, but most invest in harnessing the next generation of companies, bringing them under their own umbrellas and praying that this infusion of innovative energy keeps them relevant for just a little while longer. But while this strategy works in the shortterm, the piper must eventually be paid. Few demonstrations have made this point more eloquently than Michael Hiltzik's history of Xerox Park.

Birthed in the first wave of technology firms that spawned companies like IBM and Eastman Kodak, the Xerox Corporation was a mid-century American titan. Its copiers ruled offices the world over, reducing to mere moments jobs that had once taken people hours to complete. Their brand became so ubiquitous that its name became synonymous with copying, a reality that will embed Xerox in the cultural consciousness for as long as the culture has documents to copy.

Flush with profits, Xerox could easily afford to make bets on the future which is what it did in 1970 when, in what was then just becoming the Silicon Valley we know today, it created Xerox Park, a research and development lab staffed by the first generation of computer scientists who had actually been exposed to these hulking machines while in university. Helmed by healthy egos and powerful personalities, Park became a theatre of experimentation that not only nursed key inventions like Ethernet which, even today, empowers networked computing, it created laser printers and personal computers, early models of the machines that would soon transform our world. This remarkable tide of innovation would culminate in the Xerox Star, a 1981 office product that married a personal computer with a graphical interface that could be manipulated with a mouse. The Star would also prove to be park's downfall, a grossly expensive commercial failure that heralded the mainstream arrival of IBM, Microsoft, Apple and the rest of the corporations that executed the technological revolution.

Packed with riveting characters and corporate dysfunction, Dealers of Lightning is a tour de force. Mr. Hiltzik, an American journalist, vividly captures not only the dawn of the mainstream computer age, detailing the early versions of the technologies that are so commonplace today, but the egos and the jealousies, the intellects and the foibles, of the men and women who created it. All this while painting a devastating portrait of Xerox's corporate culture, one which completely blinded the company to the reality that it held the intellectual keys to virtually every vital component of modern computing, keys it frittered away out of foolishness and ignorance.

The work is narratively driven by the young minds at Park. Drawing upon interviews and personal recollections of the principals who participated in human civilization's most glorious revolution, Mr. Hiltzik animates a host of fascinating characters who range from the irascible to the humorous, from the artistic to the introverted, capturing at once their brilliance and their frustrations. For in as much as these recent college graduates of the flower-power generation were churning out the technologies of tomorrow, their efforts seem to have been blocked at every turn by a company that understood them as poorly as it understood the future.

This leads us to the work's most effective theme. For while the quirks and the rivalries that characterized Park's geniuses are interesting enough, Dealers of Lightning is fundamentally about the abject failure of Xerox's corporate culture. Mr. Hiltzik convincingly describes Xerox as a company that had long-since parted ways with the notion of being a company about technology and had become a company about making money. He details how its fleet of managers focused on making sure the money faucet was stuck open, that this was their only concern, a reality that understandably doomed the company to a most appropriate irrelevancy. For no corporation that squandered the foundational technologies of our generation deserves to be the steward of information technology, a mantle Xerox thoughtlessly sacrificed for the sake of riding the gravy train until it ran out of track.

One would expect, then, that Dealers of Lightning would be a stinging indictment of Xerox. It's not. The blunders and the blindness so wonderfully depicted here is at least 30 years in the past, far too long for there to be any rawness to these wounds. Instead, this is a work of warning in the form of an epitaph to Xerox's cultural relevance, that it isn't enough to simply hire smart people and set them loose on the problems of tomorrow, that one must embrace change or die. No amount of money can help a corporation avoid this fate.

Outstanding work... (5/5 Stars)

A mesmerizing look inside the secretive perfume industry in The Perfect Scent

From The Week of March 18, 2013

Where there's wealth there's luxury. From the tribal leaders who collected gold and baubles to the corporate executives who accumulate diamonds and beach houses, this has been true for thousands of years. After all, what better way to signal one's importance, one's power, than to possess worthless trinkets and then ascribe value to them, to their scarcity? It is a means by which to express success and nothing more. And yet, thanks to capitalism's power to create wealth, luxuries are today a booming industry, aspirational brands that together are not only worth billions, but that have the power to announce one's arrival upon society's stage. Fine hats and expensive bags, priceless coats and be jewelled watches... These are today's gold goblets and steel-tipped arrows. These are our trinkets. For all of our enlightenment, our education, this trick still works. This lesson underpins Mr. Burr's excellent and entertaining work.

Of the many expressions of luxury, few are as potent as perfume. Considered a key weapon in the arsenal of the numerous secretive luxury houses that dominate the western world, it has been produced in a dizzying array of packages and compositions, from the innocent to the sexy, from the stayed to the eccentric, all in an attempt to obtain the perfect distillation of power and style that will not only cause humans the world over to surrender their wealth to possess it, but signal to those within range of its wearers that they are something special. Its seductions are predicated upon the evocative clout of the human sense of smell which, when activated, has an unparalleled ability to conjure up memories both new and old and, through this momentary connection, transport wearers to other places, other times.

In 2005 and 2007, first in Paris and then in New York, Mr. Burr was allowed a unique perspective of this secretive industry when, as a writer for the New York times, he was invited to write profiles of two very different perfumes. The first was Nil by Jean-Claude Ellena, a second-generation French perfumer, who was attempting to give Herme, the storied luxury house, a successful perfume to add to their other product lines. The second was Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker, an industry hit that grew out of the Sex-And-The-City star's desire to realize a dream, to bring to market a perfume that expressed her own sense of sexuality. Through these two experiences, Mr. Burr ventures into the mysterious world of perfume, a 25-billion-dollar industry whose secretiveness is legendary and whose old-world practices seem decidedly out-of-step with modern reality and economics.

Though at times unflinchingly raw, The Perfect Scent is nonetheless a delightful expose of the world of perfume. Mr. Burr, who balances his fondness for his two subjects (Parker and Ellena) with searing critiques of the industry in which they toil, is an engaging guide into a world most of us know nothing about. Step by meticulous step, he details the industry's practices and biases, revealing not only the creative genius poured into dreaming up these exotic scents, but the stodgy management that decides which of them will go to market and which will be condemned to waste away in some forgotten cupboard, never to be savored by the people who invest so much money in these strange but evocative distillations of our world.

Though Mr. Burr's characterizations of Parker and Ellena leave the reader enchanted with their humility and arrogance, confidence and vision, it is the process by which perfume is created that steals the show. The author describes in fascinating detail the degree to which perfumery has been reduced to an alchemical science, leaving vivid in the minds of his readers the image of a lonely master unpacking the various components of a half-remembered scent and committing its ingredients to paper, measuring their weights, shooting this chemical breakdown off to a lab where these scribblings are given form, molecules precisely combined and returned to the perfumer for the examination of his nose. This singular hunt, to actualize an idea and then to perfect it, makes for a mesmerizing read, one that sports few imperfections. For though Mr. Burr may at times evince a certain infatuation with Parker and Ellena, this never strays into the kind of obsequiousness that would have obscure the truths present in his entwined tales.

Enchanting work made all the more powerful for providing the reader with knowledge of an otherwise unknowable world. One of my best reads this year... (5/5 Stars)

The Internet's creation chronicled in the fantastic Where Wizards Stay Up Late

From The Week of February 04, 2013
Once in a great while, the course of human history is upended by a transformative event, an incident, an invention, an intercession, that leaves an indelible mark upon the world. These events are all-too-often tragic in origin, calamities of war and disaster that just as easily claim the lives of the innocent as the impure. But regardless of their tone, they are rare enough that they attract not only the inquisitive attentions of the passingly interested but the expert lenses of the academically engaged as they attempt to better understand, or better preserve for posterity, something that might not soon come again. Of all such events, none may mean as much to as many as the creation of the Internet. And yet, on this topic, history is oddly quiet, especially when compared to the endless volumes penned about the Second World War whose consequences, for most of us, have long since faded into memory. With charm and rigor, Ms. Hafner and Mr. Lyon correct this notable wrong with their edifying tome.

Born of the dreams of visionaries, not as legend has it from the efforts of the US military to maintain communications during a nuclear attack, the Internet began life in the early 1960s as Arpanet, four relatively simple but extraordinarily expensive computers networked together by genius, high-speed telephone lines from AT&T and a great deal of prayer. A public-private partnership between ARPA, a government agency under the aegis of the US military, and BBN, a pioneering technology firm, Arpanet was constructed to both push back the boundaries of science and to prove that the ideas upon which it was based were not only sound but brilliant.

Until Arpanet, terrestrial communications technologies had been mostly stagnant since the creation of the telephone system in the first half of the 20th century. Satellites had been launched into space, but telephone calls were still being routed through manual switchboards labored over by an army largely comprised of women. By inventing the idea of information as packets, by sending those packets of information in bursts that would maximize the use of the telephone lines over which they were traveling, by creating a universal language by which computers the world over could understand one another, and by cementing the protocols by which networked computers could cooperate and communicate over a network, the scientists working on Arpanet laid down every fundamental component of what would eventually be the Internet. these systems and protocols are still used today, long after most of their inventors have lapsed into obscurity, their stars forever outshined by Facebook and Amazon, Apple and Google, none of which would have existed without the inventiveness and the altruism of men who sought to create something bold and new.

There is no doubt that Where Wizards Stay Up Late is an excellent history of Arpanet. Ms. Hafner and Mr. Lyon not only deliberately and intelligibly illustrate the technologies that underpin the Internet, they patiently walk the reader step-by-step through its shoestring creation, chronicling the frustration and the wry humor of every failure along with the satisfaction and the triumph of every success. But even if their chronicle was a pile of dross, not even worth the paper it was printed upon, it would have done a wonderful service. For without reading this engaging work, who can claim to name the inventors of the Internet? We know Zuckerberg and Page, Jobs and Gates, Joy and Allen; these men are rich, cultural giants who have been the most visible shepherds of our technological revolution. But what of Roberts and Licklider? What of Baran and Davies? What of Metcalf and heart? Without the aid of a Google search, do we know them? Do their names burn across our cyberspace sky? Hardly.

This is shameful. Our culture has become dangerously dependent upon the notion of celebrity. We believe so much in stardom, in the idea of the great-man theory of history, that we assume that those who either shunned the spotlight, or who never felt its beneficent caress, were unimportant, afterthoughts on the stage of human development. But time and time again we're proven wrong. Household names are not so because they are necessarily important. They are so because they are either lucky, charismatic, or good at spreading word of their achievements, little of which has anything to do with merit. This is what makes Where Wizards Stay up Late such a triumph. For it seeks not to mythologize, to canonize, or even to uplift. It adopts the same sober but inquisitive tone used by the dedicated and creative men who empowered one of the largest transformations in human history. May they never be forgotten.

This is first-class work. At times technical, but this is by no means an impediment to its enjoyment. One of the worthiest reads this year... (5/5 Stars)

Gritty The Dagger and The Coin a first rate fantasy epic

From The Week of January 28, 2013
Appearances deceive. For we are not the body we were born to nor the rank we were blessed with. We are not the profession we occupy nor the role we play. Rather, we are the talent we possess, a blend of natural ability and skill honed by knowledge and experience that has nothing to do with gender, race, class or deportment. Of course, no one can see this true self. For it is virtually impossible for anyone to disregard all of the superficial packaging that our culture and our biology value so highly. But if they could see truly, if they could conceive of this essential self, then the world would undergo a revolution as social distinctions we hold so dear collapse in the face of objective truth. Mr. Abraham flirts with precisely this tantalizing reality in the first two instalments of his new fantasy epic.

In a world mastered by dragons who have not been heard from for centuries, the thirteen races of humanity are left to muddle along without their overlords. Dogmen and snakemen, fishmen and human, they clutch at the shards of empire, trying to hold onto their little corner of what the dragons left behind. The result, then, is a fragmented world where the subversive ideas and technologies of the Renaissance clash with an entrenched feudalistic nobility whose claims to the reins of power grow feebler and feebler each day.

Into this often deadly morass of politics and theology is cast Cithrin, a half-breed orphan girl taken in by her city's local branch of a powerful bank. Discovering that she has a head for the business of risks and loans, she learns at the feet of her master until an external threat to the city compels her to adopt the life of a smuggler in hopes of secreting the bank's most valuable treasure out of the city and to the safety of a more secure branch. Along the way, her path crosses with the men and women who, through necessity and avarice, honor and zealousness, shape her world in the years to come. Some of this shaping will be to the good, but most will be ill, a savage struggle for power that will cut down the noble and uplift the unready. And always, in the midst of this storm, Cithrin endures, trying to carve out, for herself, a life worthy of her considerable potential.

The Dagger and The Coin, so far consisting of The Dragon's Path and King's Blood, is fantasy fiction of the first order. Owing more to George R.R. Martin than Joe Abercrombie, it nonetheless alchemizes the political realities of the former and the shocking violence of the latter to create a new, potent brew of gritty, real-world fantasy that has far more in common with renaissance Florence than it does with elves and dwarves. It is fired by a cast of morally gray characters, all of whom are motivated by consistent, understandable agendas born of their life experiences rather than authorial expediency. Laudably, this is as true of Cithrin, the series' ostensible heroine, as much as it is of the various villains who directly and obliquely oppose her.

Mr. Abraham possesses an exceptional talent for world-building. For though both of these volumes come in at under 400 pages, which might as well be a novella by fantasy's grandiose standards, they nonetheless establish a rich, tangled, Renaissance environment that, though inspired by masterworks that have come before them, are not in any sense beholden to them. Dragons and spider goddesses are as old as the genre itself, and yet these tropes are not master of Mr. Abraham. He is the master of them, driving them into a new world of the weird and the mechanical that speaks to K. J. Bishop and K. J. Parker, respectively, far more than it does the men who inspired the form so many decades ago.

But perhaps Mr. Abraham's greatest achievement here is the degree to which he unapologetically taps into the political realities of worlds in transition. The world of The Dagger and The Coin does not exist simply to provide an escapist thrill for its consumers. It is driven by the engine of the change that must come to all declining eras, a change characterized by irreconcilable political conflict, subversive philosophies and explosive violence that are its deaththrows. In this, Mr. Abraham is evoking our late-capitalist world which is likewise speeding towards a swift and devastating conclusion. Technological advancement, a rapid expansion of the population and acute depletion of natural resources will soon converge upon one another, undeterred by the mutually assured destruction that will result from their encounter. We are no better positioned to comprehend what will result from this as Cithrin and her clan are aware of what they will face, but we do share this much. It will be ugly, for us and for them.

The Dagger and The Coin combines yesterday and today in a manner that is as thrilling as it is intelligent. A must read for any admirer of realistic fantasy. (5/5 Stars)

The sins of Scientology revealed in Lawrence Wright's Going Clear

From The Week of January 21, 2013
While the right to freely practice ones chosen faithmust be considered a fundamental right of any free state, there can be no doubt that it is a right that comes at a grievous cost. For while the world is bettered by the good works of the peaceful multitudes who faithfully hold with creeds out of the need to believe in something greater than themselves, it is also darkened by those other practitioners, men and women who twist, pervert and prey upon our need for salvation to sew unimaginable misery. It does not matter what corrosive force motivates these madmen, revenge, ego, spite, or even envy; it matters only that the world has been blighted by their existences, the lives of innocents corrupted by the chains that bind them to these preachers and prophets.

And so we come to the vital questions. How can we guard the innocent without violating their right to practice? How do we distinguish between a cult and a religion as a means of stamping out the former while respecting the latter? How can we promote the values of the good while minimizing the damage of the unhealthy? These are weighty queries which may not be answered any time soon, but perhaps we can come closer to an answer by studying the anatomy of a cult. This Mr. Wright has most thoroughly done in Going Clear.

Though it has been a faith for less than 60 years, Scientology has left its mark on the world. Teachings distilled from the life and times of L. Ron Hubbard, a prolific American author of science fiction with a penchant for bending the truth, it is the systematic attempt to rid oneself of burdensome influences as a means of elevating ones spirit and enabling ones dreams. Through great discipline and concentration, through the rigorous deployment of honest self-examination, the scientologist ascends through the ranks of his faith, each plateau revealing to him more secrets of his religion, secrets carefully measured out in order to encourage him to continue seeking the pinnacle of purity. This seems innocent enough; the world can hardly be made the poorer for having yet another faith capable of providing a ladder up which the struggling can climb to peace and enlightenment. And yet, Scientology has a darker side, one that hides behind the Hollywood glamour that so often shields it from scrutiny.

Scientology is more than a religion; it is a machine for making money. Promising to be the owner's manual with which the troubled can be lead out of darkness, it encourages its adherents to surrender their self-determination to their elders who, by dint of being higher in the church, ostensibly have the best interests of their souls in mind. Money in exchange for knowledge, service in exchange for enlightenment... The faith may be new, but the game is ancient, a truth Mr. Wright documents here in stunning detail. For while Scientology may put handsome faces to the world, Tom Cruise and John Travolta to name but two, it is built atop the labors of thousands of faceless souls sold into its servitude, souls blackmailed into continued obedience through the heavy-handed use of confessions practitioners are all-but forced to make. It is the gestalt of the voiceless and the vulnerable upon whom it rests. Their names, their deeds and their punishments occupy these pages.

Going Clear is mesmerizing work. Building upon a thorough biography of L. Ron Hubbard, a fevered genius whose desperate need to be a hero lead him into the seductive arms of megalomania, Mr. Wright uses the experiences of dozens of men and women to capture a stunning portrait of one of the world's most successful young faiths. From its secrets to its rituals, from sea voyages to Hollywood screenings, Mr. Wright weaves a portrait of a belief system that capitalizes on the credulity of innocents and the desperation of the lost to forge for itself a powerbase from which it cannot be challenged. Endless research and informative prose march us through the faith's history, from its inception as an outgrowth of Hubbard's ego through to its acknowledgement, t least by the government of the United States, as a religion worthy of the First Amendment's protection, a decision that, to this day, bewilders parts of the world who clearly view Scientology as nothing short of a cult.

Those who sympathize with Scientology will find cause to criticize Mr. Wright's work regardless of its rigor, but rational readers will find here an exceptionally researched document that is supported by extensive interviews with key men and women within Scientology. Their harrowing tales provide the work its most devastating punch by acknowledging that Scientology utilizes child labor and perhaps even stoops to child enslavement, as a means of compelling enlightenment. Practices that would land regular citizens in jail for years at a stretch are commonplace in Scientology which hides behind the firewall of the first Amendment to escape responsibility for these crimes. For they are crimes, make no mistake, crimes of coercion, crimes of violence, crimes of bigotry and crimes of self-delusion, all of which leave in their wake the wreckage of lives that will not be easily mended.

Mr. Wright won himself great respect with his examination of the lives and deeds that paved the road to 9/11. He only furthers his status as a first-rate researcher and revealer of truth with Going Clear. Outstanding work marred only by its minor fixation with Scientology's Hollywood overtones. (5/5 Stars)

Seasons In The Sun by Dominic Sandbrook

From The Week of November 19, 2012
In spite of every human effort to avoid it, life appears to be subject to eternal cycles, disruptive ups and downs which excites creation as much as it energizes destruction. From the climate that shapes our planet to the fads that define our culture, these cycles are as ubiquitous as they are influential, leaving humanity no choice but to adapt in the face of constant change. But while, for the most part, we have done well to incorporate these cycles into our daily lives, some have proven to be so profoundly devastating to our way of life that men and women have devoted their careers to ameliorating them, simply in the hope that some measure of suffering can be mitigated.

The most obvious case of this self-made category is the Business Cycle, that here-to-for unsolved byproduct of the modern economy that churns relentlessly onward, aiding the fortunate while drowning the blindsided. And where economics resides so human government dares to tread, hoping in its half-formed wisdom to make for its people a square deal out of the unknowable morass that is the national economy. Mr. Sandbrook captures just such an episode in Seasons in The Sun. Its effects are as consequential as his account is thorough.

Though much of the world has advanced considerably since the 1970s, few countries have undergone a socioeconomical facelift as profound as the United Kingdom. Less than 40 years ago, during the heyday of the Rolling Stones, Britain was a country ravaged by colossal gaps in everything from income inequality to equal opportunity. Lacking even basic necessities like toilets in a significant percentage of its homes, england had emerged from the Second World War a scarred but victorious nation. However, despite its triumph in that most consequential conflict, it enjoyed few economic successes. In fact, it lagged considerably behind its vanquished foes in West Germany and Japan, both of which benefited from finely tuned workforces, economic aid and industrial-based economies.

Meanwhile, england, which was once the world's workshop, a nation that once claimed to be at the throbbing heart of an empire upon which the sun never set, found itself burdened by absurdly high taxes, a highly unionized labor force, and cruelly misguided monetary policy which eventually culminated in the IMF having to extent England a line of credit. The British Empire, with its hand out... This was a humiliation few could bear, least of all the Conservatives who, after more than a decade of Labour-party rule, finally seized power in 1979 and, under their Iron lady, implemented sweeping changes that transformed the country forever.

But before that renaissance, there was Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, punk rock and the IRA, labor disputes and institutional corruption, all of which would be summed up in a single, suggestive phrase, the winter of discontent. This is the history of those tumultuous years, before Thatcherism, when the final dreams of empire were relinquished to others.

Though it comes in at a staggering 990 pages, Season of The Sun is a tome as moving as it is lengthy. While it primarily concerns itself with British politics from 1974 to 1979, and the events that shaped it, it sinks its many, inquisitive tentacles into most aspects of British society, recounting the major theatrical, comical, controversial and even salacious events of the decade. Mr. Sandbrook masterfully collects the full expanse of this material, deploying it in the furtherance of a single, subtle argument, that most aspects of British society, at the time, were influenced by the calamities spilling out of whitehall. This assessment, though difficult to prove, seems all but certain given the degree to which the ruling Labor government bungled the administration of national affairs, preoccupied as it was by internal politics and fear of the country's powerful unions.

Yes, Seasons in The Sun might well have done better to surrender some of its political focus and turn its eye more thoroughly to art and music; after all, the politicians here are rendered in near excruciating detail. However, in every other respect, this is marvelous work. On any number of occasions, it could have slipped into the dryness of self-absorbed academia. And yet, astonishingly, Mr. Sandbrook not only avoids such a fate, he injects his colossus with consequence and pathos, energy and argumentation, making it easily the most accessible scholarly work I've read to date, an absolute credit to its dogged creator. Excluding fiction, I doubt the activities of the IRA, nor the desperation brought on by labor unrest, nor the perfidy of politicians, nor the riotousness of the Sex Pistols, have been more vividly rendered.

For all its ponderousness, a wonderful book. Highly recommended for anyone even mildly interested in cultural histories, economics, politics and fate. (5/5 Stars)