The Science Of Liberty by Timothy Ferris

From The Week of April 24, 2011

How did we come to be free? How did democracy come to replace authoritarianism? And how is it that most democracies do not backslide into tyranny? Mr. Ferris contends that, rather than be fuelled by the ideas that bubbled up out of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, democracy is the direct offspring of the willingness to doubt and the freedom to debate that are the keys to scientific inquiry.

The Science of Liberty charts the progress of modern science from the Renaissance onward, stopping off at various vital points to highlight its key thinkers, inventors and advocates. From important philosophers like spinoza and Descartes, to revolutionary geniuses like Galileo and Newton, Mr. Ferris describes how a growing discontent with the tyrannical rigidity of centralized authorities like the church and the monarchy gave rise to a class of individuals who were willing to question accepted truths, to subject them to the rigor of logic, and to debate their findings with likeminded individualists. Slowly, with the passage of time, communities grew up to house this scientific spirit and it was from these communities that most of the founding figures of modern democracy were birthed.

Mr. Ferris puts forward a compelling case for why liberty should thank science for its existence. Without the spirit of inquiry to cause us to question authorities in our world, we might all be content to follow in the footsteps of those who came before us, at peace in the knowledge that what we were told was truth. But with the dawning of modern science, the impenetrable barriers to freedom were systematically smashed by the sledgehammer of reason, backed by the muscle of the scientific method. Mr. Ferris' argument drags at times as he lingers overlong on some of science's leading lights, but his argument is solid and it goes a long way to explaining how, in the span of some 200 years,saturated by anti-intellectual authoritarianism, the world transformed itself from a flat plane, generated by god, to a round ball, orbiting the sun which was but one of millions of like stars in a vast universe. Illusions falling beneath minds willing to question, willing to be wrong, willing to be free... (3/5 Stars)

Talking To Zeus by Jane Shaw

From The Week of April 24, 2011

For some, life is a smooth and simple transition from adolescence into adulthood. They know what they want to do with their lives, hardly seeming to stumble as they journey down their chosen paths. For the rest of us, this same transition is one of the most arduous and confusing periods of our lives, years marked by indecision and apathy which threaten to ruin our careers before they even get started. For the smooth sailors out there, I have two words for you, lucky buggers. For the rest of us, Jane Shaw offers, in her memoir of finding passion and purpose in an organic, Greek garden, a glimmer of hope.

Having more or less washed out of the British Navy, Ms. Shaw, in her early 20s, was adrift and purposeless when she applied for an internship as a horticulturist at Helicon, a five acre garden in Greece. Against her expectations, she was accepted for the position by the garden's eccentric overseer, Joy, a British bon vivant whose vitality defies her 74 years. Though their early months together are rocky, characterized by a perfectionist's criticism from Joy and intemperate living conditions for Jane, the two ease their way into a comfortable, parental relationship, with Joy handing down her knowledge and her standards to Ms. Shaw who, in turn, offers herself to Joy as a companion in the older woman's various madcap crusades, most of which focus on her neighbor who she believes to be illegally stealing precious water. As Ms. Shaw's time at Helicon stretches from weeks to months, she acquaints herself with the garden's character, as well as its neighbors and those who live and work in the nearby village. But these friendly relations are challenged when the garden must be sold, but to whom? And will the new owners promise to keep the garden in its full, natural glory?

Ms. Shaw does a wonderful job describing Helicon, its plants, its paths, its charms, and its difficult weather. But while the garden and its cast of related characters are delightful, it's her relationship with Joy that steals the show and gives soul to this piece. Joy is the perfect hippy grandmother, a woman who'd think nothing of giving wine to kids at dinner while teaching them the meaning of hard, dedicated work. Yes, distance helps the reader to laugh at Joy's prickliness, not to take it personally as Ms. Shaw occasionally does, but I doubt I am the only one who'd kill for a relative like Joy, someone to admire and fear, laugh with and cringe at, in equal measure. Ms. Shaw's fine, sensible, earthy prose makes Joy leap off the page and, for this, I am grateful.

A lovely read, well-balanced between light-hearted and soberly introspective. (4/5 Stars)

Infinite Reality by Jim Blascovich And Jeremy Bailenson

From The Week of April 24, 2011

If we make it to the year 2100 without blowing ourselves to pieces, we'll look back on the first two decades of the 21st century as the formative period for one of the most life-altering revolutions in human interaction. Virtual reality... It's been the holy grail for scientists, theorists and authors of science fiction. And though we're not there yet, Infinite Reality describes where we've been and imagines where we're going with a clarity and an enthusiasm that makes the mainstreaming of this technology seem right around the corner.

Mr. Blascovich and Mr. Bailenson, researchers of virtual technology and the human mind for UCSB and Stanford respectively, divide their chronicle of all things virtual into three major sections: the history, the science underpinning it, and where it's headed in the near future. Discussion of the field's history is dominated by various experiments designed to test out how to play with the human brain's perception of the external world. The sscientific component preoccupies itself with ruminations on both the technical difficulties in rendering a three-dimensional, virtual world and how it will interface with the proscriptions of the brain. Finally, and most engagingly, the authors point to games like Second Life as examples of the baby steps towards virtual reality before imagining how true VR will change everything from how we meet friends and romantic partners to how we school our kids. It is a world that promises to leave very little of what we know, of what's familiar, untouched.

Infinite Reality is a provocative piece of predictive non-fiction which is strongest when it focuses on what's to come, picturing the ways in which it will transform our world. The historical and scientific components of the work both suffer in comparison. Virtual reality simply isn't an old enough field to have much of a history and the technical challenges of building absorbing worlds and convincing the brain they are real have yet to be ironed out. It's one thing to run controlled experiments in a lab; it's entirely another to scale this technology up for commercialized use. Nonetheless, the authors are convincing when they suggest that this revolution isn't far off which, for traditionalists, must be a scary thought indeed. (3/5 Stars)

When Gravity Fails: Marid Audran 01 by George Alec Effinger

From The Week of April 24, 2011

For many of its authors, Cyberpunk must surely be a challenge. How many genres of fiction are propelled to popularity by an indomitable masterwork? I refer, of course, to Neuromancer, the 1984 classic by William Gibson that established a standard of excellence against which all subsequent Cyberpunk novels must be judged. In light of such comparisons, the best course is the one chosen by Mr. Effinger, to co-opt the genre's dystopian heart -- multinational corporations running amok over failing nation states -- and to imbed it in a completely new and inventive setting, using it to tell a different and compelling story. When Gravity Fails leaves behind the common, Cyberpunk trope of obsessing over the failing West and focuses instead on what the Muslim world might look like 200 years from now. In doing so, it generates a memorable and vibrant world.

Marid Audran ekes out a living as a 22nd century, street-level hustler in the Budayeen, the bawdy and corrupt entertainment district of an unnamed city in the Arab world. The hard-living son of a prostitute, Marid has chosen to make life especially difficult for himself by rejecting the technological augmentations widely available in this glitzy, drug-soaked future. Such augmentations take the form of chips which are wedged into cranial jacks. These chips have the power to either modify ones existing personality (moddies), supplementing it with explosions of courage, bravado, fear, etc., or to completely override ones personality (daddies) with someone else's recorded identity. Marid's obstinance is not religious in origin, though Islam does seem to disapprove of these creepy upgrades; his objection is rooted in his need to both control some aspect of his life and to test himself against the superior skills of his adversaries. As a result, Marid lives a life which bounces from dangerous encounter to dangerous encounter, any one of which could make him a corpse. But though this is self-evident to him, he clings to the notion that wits alone will see him triumphant over his foes.

Marid's precious autonomy is threatened, however, when a serial killer begins to stalk the Budayeen, gruesomely murdering a series of prostitutes with whom Audran is friendly. When the murder strikes too close to home for the Budayeen's notional kingpin, Freidlander Bey, the Arab crime lord summons Audran, ascertains his innocence in the crimes and then forces him to investigate the murders, using any means necessary. And if that includes wiring Marid for warfare, well, no one says no to Freidlander Bey.

Narrated by Marid in the first person, Mr. Effinger animates his protagonist with a mixture of witty humor and droll cynicism. Together, they give Marid a potent voice onto which the reader anchors himself for a ride through a future world where drugs, long-dead personalities and sex change operations are about as widespread as the crime which dogs the Budayeen's streets. The plot is choppy in parts, and it takes some adjusting to the many, Arab names, but the strength of Marid's personality makes up for the piece's rough patches. Additionally, the secondary characters leave something to be desired, but when the protagonist's journey,to stay free in a world plagued by every form of slavery, is this compelling, I forgive the sins and embrace the world as a flawed but worthy entry in a genre all-too-populated by cheesy knockoffs. (3/5 Stars)

Scorecasting by L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias J. Moskowitz

From The Week of April 17, 2011

Any rational fan of professional sport understands that mythology plays a significant role in their love for their favorite pastime. Home-court/field/ice advantage, the hot hand, the hitting streak, momentum... We have welded these and dozens of other axioms onto the basic narrative of sport because, well, the human brain is a powerful machine designed to find patterns in the chaos. In other words, our beloved teams don't just lose because a few, random bounces went against them in a contest between two teams of roughly equivalent skill. No, "the refs were against us," or "that Smith couldn't miss," or "their best players were their best players." Meaning out of chaos... Scorecasting is a systematic attempt by Mr. Wertheim and Mr. Moskowitz to demolish the most widespread of these sporting conceits, subjecting them to the rigor of statistical analysis. And though they largely succeed in this mission, I'm left to wonder if they haven't missed the point of sport.

Scorecasting assembles a collection of statistical oddities in sport and explains them in one of two ways: you're not seeing what you think you're seeing, or you're not properly interpreting what you're seeing. An example of the former is streaky hitting in baseball. The authors conclude that these fabled runs of excellence are essentially meaningless. If a baseball player hits for an average of .300 in a given season, that doesn't mean he will hit successfully three out of every ten times. He may get ten hits in a row before making outs in his next 15 at-bats. This does not make him streaky; a coin flipped ten times may come up heads ten times, but flipped a thousand times, it will come up heads roughly half the time. The sample size is everything... An example of the latter is home-arena advantage. In an era of standardized stadia, it shouldn't make any difference to the players where they are contesting the match, but yet home teams generally win more often than they lose. Why? Because referees tend to favor the home teams over the visiting ones, calling penalties against road teams they don't call against home teams. The authors again conclude that the fans themselves play almost no role. From punting in football to hot-off-the-bench shooting in basketball, most of the popular sports suffer the wrath of precisely this analysis and, in virtually every case, the narrative loses out to cold, hard truths.

Scorecasting will be a handy weapon in the arsenal of stat geeks, a club with which to pummel other fans obsessed by the narrative and mythology of sport. Yet it completely misses the point of why people love sport. It is not to tease out every variable, dispel every illusion, capture every nuance. It is to experience the joy of victory and the despair of defeat. It is to ride the glorious highs of winning streaks and championships and suffer through the doldrums of winless months and trophy-less decades. Passion is what creates the bond between a person and a team. It's a bond built on irrationality, not logic. If we subjected every aspect of sport to logic, no one would pay $100 for a ticket to see grown men act out a child's game. A fan would not buy a jersey for a team whose players don't even know he exists. But people do buy tickets and they do buy jerseys because they want to be part of the narrative. And there's no room for that in statistics.

This is a well-researched and enlightening piece. For some, it will surely strike a cord. But for me, it only succeeded in taking away the last vestiges of magic leftover from childhood. Looking for good, statistical arguments, a must-read. Wanting to believe in the magic of sport? Steer clear. (3/5 Stars)

Triumph of The City by Edward L. Glaeser

From The Week of April 17, 2011

For centuries, it seemed as though the city was a deathtrap, more of a bane than a boon to humanity. This view held sway because of an incomplete understanding of the spread of disease. Most cities were collections of human beings without facilities to deal with their waste, much less systems in place to isolate the sick. But with the advancement of scientific knowledge, diseases became curable. And with that horror on the defensive, cities became hubs of human activity, places for ideas and dreams to be exchanged, breeding grounds for inventors and capitalists to unite in common, creative cause. They became the engines of human civilization, the source of our culture and our industrial and technological progress. But while Mr. Glaeser does a good job of laying down the history, it's his ruminations on how those cities have been shaped, and ought to be shaped in the future, that transform this piece from the academic to the meaningful.

Mr. Glaeser examines San Francisco (environmentalism), New York City (height restrictions), Houston (no zoning) and Paris (dictatorial fiat), describing the forces that modernized them and how the biases of those forces have lead to the spiraling cost of living in three of the four. With an eye to our diminishing resources, he argues most strongly against suburban sprawl, pointing out how various social and political forces have worked to drive up costs in cities, making it unaffordable for families to live in their urban hearts. This has lead to cities like Houston which, with its simplified zoning structure, is essentially a city of sprawl, with housing prices much more affordable than other cities of its size and global heft. But at what cost? When gasoline prices inevitably rise, will suburban life become unaffordable?

Triumph of The City does much to educate readers on the socioeconomic forces that have made life in the city so difficult. At the same time, Mr. Glaeser mounts a passionate defense of the city, pointing out its countless industrial, intellectual and artistic virtues. But while he succeeds in illuminating the forces at play here, he seems short on solutions to the paradox of the city -- capturing young professionals while forcing families into suburban sprawl --, a paradox which will only strengthen in the next few decades. Will the inventors and the investors still connect in a world where the cost of city life drives all but the youngest and the richest into the hinterlands, where the price of gasoline will trap them in suburbia? This is a level-headed discussion about a fascinating subject. Less preachy than Aerotropolis but also weaker on what we can do to fix the problems cities are bound to face in the next century. (3/5 Stars)

Dark Jenny: Eddie Lacrosse 03 by Alex Bledsoe

From The Week of April 17, 2011

While The Sword-edged Blonde, the novel that kicked off the Eddie Lacrosse series, will keep its place in my affections, it's time for me and Eddie to part ways. For while Dark Jenny takes a more heartfelt stab at pleasing its readers with an engaging plot, the novelty of crossing sword-and-sorcery fantasy with a detective mystery has, unfortunately, worn thin, leaving the flaws of this third Lacrosse adventure naked to the world.

For Eddie Lacrosse, a sword-skilled private investigator, life has been fairly rough of late. If his girlfriends aren't in peril, then royal friends are calling upon him for aid, or damsels are getting him in trouble, or dragons are trying to singe him to a crisp. Fortunately, then, the latest drama to darken Eddie's door comes in the form of a coffin, which arrives, care of Eddie Lacrosse, at the tavern out of which the sword jockey runs his business. But rather than the opening salvo in some dark and painful episode, the coffin sparks a memory which turns into a long and winding yarn Lacrosse weaves for his friends over an afternoon of ales. The story concerns a distant civil war that pitted the noble and the corrupt against one another in a clash for the future of a realm. Lacrosse was caught up in these epic events when, after being arrested under the mistaken assumption that he was involved in a plot to kill the beautiful queen Jennifer, he was forced to win his freedom by first convincing his captors of his innocence and then working for them to uncover the identity of the true assassin. None of this is to Eddie's liking, but as events develop, as his life is threatened, as the fates of armies and citizens hang in the balance, he plunges himself into a tangled web of ruthless plots and royal secrets in hopes of finding, at the bottom, a truth that might save a kingdom.

All fiction asks its devourers to suspend some measure of disbelief in order to maximize reader enjoyment. Fair enough. But suspension of such disbelief does not extend to looking the other way while inanities of plot are perpetrated upon them. Lacrosse' attendance at the court function in which the attempted murder takes place, alone, is poorly explained, but it's made worse when he is inexplicably fingered for the crime just to generate, for the novel, enduring antagonists who can hold a non-sensical grudge against him, popping up every now and again to make Lacrosse's life difficult. More over, if you wanted to get to the bottom of a crime, would you hire one of the possible perpetrators of said crime to run its investigation? Doesn't seem likely. From here, matters don't much improve as Mr. Bledsoe pulls out at least two well-worn tropes of SF to provide the framework for a mystery bogged down in hopeless villains and stupendously heroic knights.

Dark Jenny is the literary equivalent of a day old bag of chips. There's still enjoyment in eating them, but their staleness can't be ignored. Mr. Bledsoe is still willing to shock his readers with occasional explosions of the dark intensity that made The Sword-edged Blonde throb with excitement, but these moments are few and far between in a predictable and tired tale. (2/5 Stars)

Bossypants by Tina Fey

From The Week of April 17, 2011

Ms. Fey may not have any novel contributions to make to the memoir genre. Nonetheless, her playful, mocking wit and her self-deprecating mien combine to imbue this account of her life with an affectionate, enduring charm.

A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ms. Fey has devoted her life to comedy. After all, nothing less than love for ones art could cause someone to push through the doubts, the setbacks and the crappy odds of success to realize their dream. From her formative experiences at summer theatre camp and the Second City comedy troop, to her arrival on the public stage with Saturday Night Live and the creation of her own television show, she recounts, here, the milestones of her challenging journey to the top of her profession, all while lighting up her tale with a constellation of boisterous friends, commanding parents and hilarious colleagues. It would have been easy for Ms. Fey to gloss over her life pre-fame, minimizing it in favor of celebrity exploits that sell books and draw in new fans. But, winningly, Bossypants lavishes as much attention on the foibles and the humiliations characteristic of her early life as it does to the triumphant stardom of her current, successful chapter. This, more than anything else, demonstrates the core decency of one of the most widely known people in contemporary comedy.

It's not hard for memoirs to slide into insufferable navel-gazing. After all, they are often several-hundred-page paeans written about the author by the author. Yet I could not find a single self-reverential page in this breezy, funny and telling autobiography. Ms. Fey has a lot to say, about her profession, the state of American life, the difficulties of rising to the top and the exhausting challenge to remain there. She imparts this wisdom with the kind of grace and good humor that make her, I imagine, an irresistible personality. (3/5 Stars)

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

From The Week of April 10, 2011

Though Mr. Spufford has succeeded, here, in shedding light on the causes which lead to the collapse of the Soviet economic system, his decision to tell a true story through fiction's myriad devices has permitted him to have his cake and eat it too, while leaving his readers in literary purgatory.

From the theoretical efficiency of planned economies to the intricacies of setting prices, Mr. Spufford uses a host of characters, some real and some fictional, to put a human face on why the Soviet system failed. To tell this story, he drafts a vast cast of protagonists, scientists, economists, politicians, and regular citizens, each, first, representing an economic theory and, then, demonstrating why the theory failed. It's a structure that enables Mr. Spufford to take us from high-level meetings between American and Soviet officials in Washington to the meagerness of people trying to feed themselves in a country that often times seems cursed. Along the way, he details the inevitable growth of debilitating bureaucracies, necessary for the management of such economies, while pointing out the ways in which top-down economic systems institutionalize corruption. And so, while the lives of his characters fall apart, the reader is left to ponder the truly staggering consequences of operating on inaccurate data which, more than anything else, seems to have been the root cause of the Soviet collapse.

While I give Mr. Spufford credit for venturing into the wilderness of fiction/non-fiction blendings, this unusual alchemy falls well short of its lofty goals. Rather than amalgamating to become more than the sum of its parts, the fiction here cheapens the lessons the non-fiction is attempting to teach, stripping it of the scholarly gravitas of an academic work. Meanwhile, the non-fiction interferes with the reader's need to invest in what are unavoidably two-dimensional characters who are, clearly, only here to humanize the concepts Mr. Spufford wants totransmit. For all that the structure frustrated me, however, the author builds compelling cases for why bureaucracy and corruption played starring roles in the Soviet collapse. These forces provided false information to the planned economy, making its promised efficiency impossible to actualize. But what if we could know every variable, every price point? Every shortfall? Every necessity? What if we could design systems that could generate accurate models predicting human wants and behaviors? Would, with such a computer system, the planned economy reach its fabled efficiency? Mr. Spufford's description of the rudimentary computers that attempted to crunch these numbers in the 1960s and 1970s leave the impression that someday someone will try.

This is a brave experiment. And perhaps the fault is in my stars, for being too inflexible in the face of such an innovative effort. But I needed Mr. Spufford to pick a side, fiction or non-fiction, and stay there. His assimilation of the two took away more from this project than it gave. (2/5 Stars)

Aerotropolis by Greg Lindsay And John D. Kasarda

From The Week of April 10, 2011

In a world with rapidly dwindling resources and a swiftly expanding population, surely there will be no field more vital to the 21st century than urban planning. From the basics of power generation to the intricacies of accessibility, on the ground and in the air, future cities will live and die on their sustainability and their interconnectedness. Though the authors overstate their case, Mr. Kasarda's academic theories on the cities to come and Mr. Lindsay's investigations into the early implementation of said ideas amalgamate into a piece of fascinating, predictive non-fiction.

Mr. Kasarda's core contention is that the cities of both the now and the future must be built around a popular and efficient airport. An incredible amount of goods, from clothes, to electronics, to DVDs, take a ride in an airplane as a part of their journey from manufacturer to retailer. The ready flow of these goods through urban airports will attract related businesses which, in turn, transform these airports into economic hubs capable of fueling the popularity and prestige of their cities. Mr. Lindsay is tasked with logging all the airmiles, flying around the world to discover if this is a viable theory. In the process, he takes us on a tour of the history of commercial air travel, from the birth and decline of LAX and O'Hare to the UPS and Fedex inspired surges in Louisville and Memphis. But while this is instructive, it's the new aerotropoli in China that captivate, billions upon billions of dollars poured into the urbanization of whole swaths of China, establishing cities from scratch, cities that follow the airport-centric model promoted by Kasarda.

Aerotropolis makes a solid case for air travel being the hub around which the city functions. Additionally, their argument, that developing Asia has a leg up over the West because it can build its aerotropoli from scratch, is certainly compelling. But the authors fail to address what seem to me key flaws in the aerotropoli model. First of all, what if the dominance mode of the future transportation of goods is not the airplane? What if we don't come up with an alternative jet fuel and are stuck with the ever-rising costs of existing oil? It is well within the realm of possibility that air travel simply becomes an unaffordable way to distribute goods. Secondly, while Mr. Lindsay does a wonderful and thorough job of explaining how airports like LAX and O'Hare have lost out to other airports in other cities thanks to environmentalism and politics, it is far from clear that just building an aerotropolis will attract the secondary businesses that have grown up in Louisville and Memphis. Businesses flock to those cities because UPS and Fedex have put down roots there. Building an aerotropolis from scratch in, say, Idaho, won't derive the same benefit. This suggests to me that Kasarda may have missed the mark somewhat. Airports are necessary to draw businesses like UPS and Fedex which wouldn't exist without air travel, but it's those businesses that draw the other businesses with them, not the airports. The behemoths move the meter, create the buzz, not the airports.

Interesting, important and compelling, but it feels oversold. (3/5 Stars)

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

From The Week of April 10, 2011

Western nations needed centuries to develop civil states strong enough to beat back the authoritarian ambitions of monarchs and magnates. Wars were fought, royals overthrown, to complete a gradual transformation from tyranny to democratic liberty. By contrast, other parts of the world have captured their freedom swiftly and suddenly, so much so that the civil states Western nations rely upon to provide integrity and honor to society are, in these newly freed countries, embryonic, incapable of withstanding the corruption that is so endemic to nations in flux. Mr. Adiga, an Indian-born author, has beautifully captured the societal and personal fallout when a rapid economic expansion modernizes a nation far too quickly, resulting in an absurdly uneven distribution of the newly created wealth.

The White Tiger is the story of Balram, a once-impoverished Indian man who, after growing up in a countryside devoid of opportunities, has largely escaped his family and relocated to the big city in an attempt to move up in the world. He narrates his adventures through a series of sardonic letters addressed to the Prime Minister of China, writing them while seemingly keeping close eye on a crime in which he may have some personal stake. He narrates in detail how he came to work for a wealthy family, starting out as a lowly driver and gradually working his way up, at least among the servants. The family barely takes heed of Balram until, one night, they are put into their servant's debt. But will Balram be able to capitalize on his opportunity? He has come so far to escape the darkness of rural India. Can he take the fateful, final steps to complete his transformation into a modern man, with modern powers and modern wealth?

Though the enduring theme of the two India's is the foundation that puts Mr. Adiga's delightful and clever book on firm, award-winning ground, Balram gives this piece its soul. The reader watches the playful child become the frustrated man as a boy's simple life gives way to a man's need to make something of himself, a dream that is ruthlessly and obliviously stomped on by both his impoverished relatives and the wealthy family he's hired into. We're aware, throughout, that Balram is intelligent. What isn't clear is how far he's willing to go to earn the freedom that his privileged patrons take entirely for granted. In this way, The White Tiger is Balram's long, slow tumble towards his own kind of ruthlessness, as circumstance burns the sympathy out of him, replacing it with a determined hardness that will not permit him to take less than his due. It is a credit to Mr. Adiga that he can make a man falling from the innocence of grace and into the self-interest of merciless criminality seem compellingly sympathetic.

This is first-class fiction, a thick coating of dark comedy wrapped around a hard core of grim reality in a world moving so fast that many are being left behind. (4/5 Stars)

Burmese Days by George Orwell

From The Week of April 10, 2011

George Orwell is justifiably remembered for his penetrating insights into the insidious authoritarianism of communism and fascism. He is celebrated for his peerless understanding of human nature, particularly those who are willing to ruthlessly re-shape society to fit their view of the proper world. Where did his insights come from? Surely, as a member of the British upper-middleclass, he did not just stumble upon these opinions while at the football. No. In fact, Mr. Orwell had first-hand experience with the cruelty of empire when, in the early 1920s, he was stationed in British-controlled Burma as a member of the British Imperial Police. There, he watched an ancient culture ripped apart by Western arrogance and exploitation. Burmese Days is the powerful result.

In a 1920s Burma colonized by the British, John Flory is a gentleman of modest means living in an expatriate community whose social center is the European Club, a bar/restaurant/meeting place for Englishmen of repute. Having spent considerable time in this ancient, Asian country, he feels a kinship with its people and has an appreciation for their traditions. He is not so innocent as to not avail himself of the female charms of his native servants, but Flory's racial tolerance sets him apart from his friends at the club, most of whom loftily dismiss the Burmese as uncultured savages. Until the modestly attractive Elizabeth comes to their community, Flory contents himself with his friendship with an Indian doctor who, over the objections of Flory's countrymen, appears to be the beneficiary of a new British policy to encourage clubs to admit at least one native as a member. But once the eligible Elizabeth turns up, Flory loses interest in the doctor's campaign, falling head over heels for a girl who, while she reciprocates his interest, has not the slightest affection for the Burmese or their culture. As such, the passionate connection that develops between Flory and Elizabeth quickly sours and she switches her affections to a new, handsome military man in town who is surely a better catch than native-loving Flory.

Having distracted himself with awkwardly courting Elizabeth, Flory has given almost no heed to a plot in town to defame his friend, the doctor. Dr. Veraswami tries to communicate the seriousness of the social attack to Flory, but Flory is too late to see the danger. Soon enough, their town will be swamped in riotous sentiment that has the power to change the lives of Flory and everyone he knows.

Burmese Days is a deliciously caustic indictment of colonialism. The British citizens, in spite of their avowed superiority, are entirely ignorant of the scorn and the schemes directed their way by the native burmese. Flory's friends actually hold the Burmese in contempt, believing them to be uncouth, but it's the Burmese who outnumber the British dozens to one, the Burmese who are willing to plot patiently to victory, the Burmese who provide the necessary services for the British to survive. What's more, despite considering themselves to be civilized, The british depicted here are prejudiced and abusive. Only Flory has any empathy for the natives and he is ridiculed for it. The hypocrisy of a conquerer dehumanizing the conquered, only to dehumanize themselves in the dehumanizing, is rich and cleanly executed.

There can be little doubt that Orwell imagined himself as Flory, a man who meant well but was hapless to mend the situation, to take more than a symbolic stand. In this, there's more than a little self-recrimination here, but this is what makes Flory such a potent character. He allows his flaws and his doubts to rule him until he can't take it anymore. Something must give. He is wonderfully and painfully human.

This is lovely, incisive work. (4/5 Stars)

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

From The Week of April 03, 2011

Intellectuals as insightful and as bold as George Orwell are once-in-a-generation luminaries who possess a unique capacity to expose societal injustices ignored by citizens and dismissed by their governments. His most widely read work, Nineteen Eighty-four, is still popular 60 years after its publication because, more than any other book I can think of, it sees through the veneer of authoritarian Communism, utilizing a profound understanding of human nature to accurately predict the means by which humans forced to labor in such a system are spiritually and intellectually destroyed by it. Though The Road to Wigan Pier lacks the searing satire of Nineteen Eighty-four or Animal Farm, the extent to which it investigates and then reveals the inequities in British society gives it a gravitas worthy of his most famous works.

The Road to Wigan Pier is essentially two books connected by the theme of unfairness and injustice in 1930s British society. Part one is a first-hand account of Orwell's investigations into the lives of the industrial working class. He spends significant time lodging in their homes, participating in their rituals, working in their coal mines, and observing the services provided to them. Though he successfully adopts a fairly detached voice throughout this section, the evidence of widespread neglect and poverty, even after all this time, is enough to churn the stomach. Britain runs on coal. It heats their homes, powers their railways, provides electricity to their factories. And yet the extractors of this vital resource persist in the most appalling, back-breaking conditions imaginable. They are compensated so poorly for what is a dangerous and debilitating job that communities never truly form. There are no lovely homes, no leisurely pursuits, no kids sent off to nice colleges. There are just gray towns that live and die on coal extraction, populated by worried wives, men made unhealthy by the mines and a total lack of affordable, sensible housing for their families.

Part two leaves behind these crippling conditions to engage the reader in a debate.What ought to be done about the problems discussed in the first, investigative section? Orwell cleverly argues that socialism is the only sensible solution to such obvious inequities. However, he's fully aware of socialism's poor reputation in England which is why he sets out to draw in the skeptics by lampooning the period's socialist stereotypes: the soft socialist, the pedantic socialist, the vegetarian socialist, the technologically dependent socialist. And then, once he's thoroughly lured in the doubters by sympathizing with them, he concludes with the obvious, that for all its faults, it is the only fair system.

There is no doubt that the dated argument for socialism, in part two, is completely outmatched by the visceral impact of Orwell's time in the mine in part one. His criticism of soft technophiles is hopelessly out of step with the sensibilities of the 21st century mind, gripped by the technological revolution. What's more, Orwell's advocacy for socialism does seem especially ironic coming from one of the 20th century's most famous anti-authoritarians. And yet there's sense here. Orwell left his comfortable, literary world and, for a time, adopted the life of a miner. In doing so, he encountered an inequity so entrenched that the prospect of having it corrected by simple legislation must have seemed ridiculous. Fairness would need a revolution, not a bill in parliament. I sympathize with Mr. Orwell here because I am a classical liberal who struggles to reconcile my small-government libertarianism with a strong desire for societal fairness. I still don't have a satisfactory answer to this dilemma and neither, it seems, did Orwell. Nonetheless, as usual, this did not sway him from speaking out. Surely, in doing so, he helped contribute to the gradual improvement of the plight of industrial workers.

In spite of a weak second half, The Road to Wigan Pier is first-class non-fiction. Yes, the first half is that good. Oh, to have the talents of this greatest of British authors. (4/5 Stars)

The Daily Coyote by Shreve Stockton

From The Week of April 03, 2011

By necessity, every memoir has woven into its fabric threads of narcissism. While some readers may revel in such self-examination, the rest of us endure these moments of vanity to get to the earnest self-discovery that makes non-fiction of this sort worthwhile. Ms. Stockton certainly has her conceited moments, but her story of finding meaning and love in the wilderness of Wyoming remains a warm and engaging piece.

Plagued by depressive episodes, only vaguely refered to here, Ms. Stockton found herself a drifting twentysomething, locked into an unsatisfying urban existence. As a balm to her flagging spirits, she fixes upon the idea of a cross-country ride from San Francisco to New York, journalling her journey as she goes. She claims to have made it only as far as vast Wyoming before the breathtaking scenery permanently aborted her odyssey. Striking up a friendship with Mike, a pest-controller specializing in shooting troublesome coyotes from an airplane, Ms. Stockton engages a cabin just outside of town and does her best to adjust to life in a place without modern, urban conveniences.

Here, wrestling hay, building good fences and riding horses are skills in far greater demand and supply than shopping at the mall, or navigating the subway. Not long after her arrival, Mike inexplicably besets Ms. Stockton with coyote pup which, much to her own surprise, she not only keeps but raises, domesticating him, to the extent possible. Charlie, the coyote, quickly becomes the focus of her existence: his beauty, his moodswings, his lethal quickness. Fascinated by all, she begins to take pictures of him, pictures which form the core of a popular blog which inspired her to write down her story of finding peace in a slower, simpler life.

The Daily Coyote is an uneven experience. Ms. Stockton has a talent for describing visuals. Her literary depictions of Wyoming's unbounded scenery entice the reader to travel there about as much as her portrayals of the climate's Hellish summers and bone-chilling winters encourage him to stay away. These vivid sketchings are equalled only by those she lavishes on Charlie, the sometimes loving, sometimes- ferocious, coyote who teaches her how to find her own equilibrium. But while her gift for setting the scene is considerable, this is an almost memoir. The story is far too basic. Yes, girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, girl waits for boy to figure himself out has been the basis of numerous stories of self-discovery, but they usually have some drama to them, some core conflict that animates a collection of journal entries into a piece of meaningful literature. Not so here, where all Ms. Stockton can summon is an unconvincing will they or won't they sub plot to support her main journeys with Charlie narrative which is interesting but hardly the stuff of legend. What's more, her eagerness to convince her readers of her metaphysical connection with Charlie stretched my credulity to its limits. Nonetheless, I know much more about coyotes now than I did before cracking the cover.

This is an interesting and sweet memoir, but while its descriptions of Wyoming and life there blow the mind, this feels too much like reading someone's Facebook page. Hardly the author's fault; I'm glad she didn't make up something to put energy into her story, but it is what it is. (3/5 Stars)

Zodiac by Robert Graysmith

From The Week of April 03, 2011

To a civilized, lawful society, there are few creatures who engender more fear than the serial killer. His merciless, unfeeling code is so foreign, so fearsome, that he seems a superhuman predator, a demon who refuses to be bound by the social and moral strictures the rest of us cleave to. While most of these killers are inevitably uncaught, unmasked and demystified, others remain floating through the world, enigmas waiting to be solved. Of these, the Zodiac Killer stands alone.

In 1968, the Zodiac Killer began a cunning and cruel campaign against young lovers in the San Francisco Bay area. Though police have only attributed five kills to his name, Zodiac himself, in a series of letters sent to the San Francisco Chronicle, claims to have taken the lives of 39 people over a multi-year span of death and destruction. Since then, his legend has only grown. After all, he has not only remained at large in spite of a 40 year manhunt to locate him, he claims to have given police his identity in a series of ciphers imbedded in his famous letters. Only one of these ciphers has ever been decoded. Smart, clever, resourceful, murderous, patient and disciplined... In a world before the Internet, DNA analysis, and general forensics, the police needed to be both skillful and lucky to catch Zodiac. And while the former may have been in supply, the latter was nowhere to be seen.

Mr. Graysmith, who worked as a cartoonist at the Chronicle during the Zodiac Killings, has made it his mission to uncover the killer's identity. Pursuing the case for 17 years, prior to the publication of this book in 1985, he has interviewed dozens of cops and victims, suspects and experts in an effort to reveal the identity of one of America's most elusive killers. The result of his investigation is Zodiac, a thorough and disturbing reconstruction of the crimes, the letters, and their fallout. But while it is an excellent primer on the Zodiac case, Zodiac goes beyond typical true crime non-fiction, actually building cases against the likeliest suspects. Mr. Graysmith goes so far in this effort that it becomes necessary for him to use false names to avoid slandering and stigmatizing citizens who haven't been charged with any crimes, but this in no way hinders his effort to paint vivid portraits of the main suspects: their backgrounds, their interests, their alibis. One especially repugnant creature earns the status of chief suspect, with Mr. Graysmith going so far as to follow him in car and on foot, but until an arrest is made we won't know if the author was right about his Zodiac.

This is a thorough and gripping account of a frightening chapter in American history. Mr. Graysmith is an excellent guide into a frightening world, exposing us to the heartbreak, the horror and the vengeance. A well-rounded account with plenty for everyone, except, of course, the faint of heart. Ours may be a more jaded time, but even now these crimes stand out as frighteningly pathological. (4/5 Stars)

Finch by Jeff Vandermeer

From The Week of April 03, 2011

Though Finch is undoubtedly one of the weirder pieces of fantasy fiction I've read, and though its pleasures are far more intellectual than visceral, Mr. Vandermeer's inventive mind and splintered prose make this half-mad piece an engaging, fascinating slog.

In Ambergris, a sprawling, decaying metropolis operating on an early 20th century level of technology, John Finch has bowed to the necessities of the moment and taken up a position with the Ambergris police. A detective, he and his fellows are little liked by the oppressed citizens of Ambergris who are subsisting under the authoritarian rule of the Gray Caps, a race of mushroom-like beings who, after being suppressed by humanity and locked into the earth, have Risen to exact their revenge. As a consequence, the police are viewed as collaborators with the enemy when the reality is, as always, far more complicated. Finch, for one thing, has a past which suggests he has no more love for the Gray Caps than the people do. But love or hate, he must answer the call when a human and a gray cap are found dead in a hotel room, the latter with his lower body missing. Armed with few clues and more enemies than he can count, Finch's sanity is tested as he investigates the crime, only to discover that the universe is infinitely more complex than even he, a man of some education and intellect, can imagine.

At some 350 pages, Finch spends more time plodding than it should, indulging in numerous depressing, introspective episodes in which Finch tries to puzzle out the meaning of existence, how he fits into that scheme and how to reconcile his family's past with the man he's become. But though these broodings are tiresome, the world of Ambergris is enchantingly diverse, populated with enigmatic humans and profoundly alien villains. Mr. Vandermeer establishes a world fatigued to the breaking point by war and then introduces into these foggy, nihilistic streets the personal politics of Vichy France, or any other oppressed metropolis in which the natives under foreign rule must navigate the thorny ethics of cooperation and rebellion. Intellectually, Mr. Vandermeer's willingness to play with existential questions of reality and identity, both species and personal, engaged my mind to the extent that, even through the book's more ponderous sections, my attention was not allowed to wander. Finch does build slowly, but its cacophonous, apocalyptic conclusion brings the story to a well-earned and satisfying conclusion.

It will be too weird for some, but for those who are willing to entertain genre-bending fiction -- Finch does share some thematic genes with the Eddie Lacrosse series by Alex Bledsoe --, and for pursuers of dark, inventive fiction, money spent here is unlikely to be a mistake. Just... Maybe follow it up with a happier tale. (3/5 Stars)