The horror of ethnic war and the cost of human difference in The Cage

From The Week of March 31st, 2014

Much of the conflict in our modern world is powered by our differences. Yes, economics and natural resources are also wellsprings of human violence, but these battles pale in comparison to the societal discord spawned by the desire of minority cultures to be distinct and free. From Ireland to the Middle East, from the Jews to the Tutsis, we've witnessed cultures deploy their languages and their customs to distinguish themselves from their neighbors, to define themselves as else. Which may be well enough until some form of hardship comes to the region, driving desperate people to find someone to blame for their stumbles. Who better than the other,? Who better than those we do not understand?

Bloodshed of minorities, causing their traditionalists to entrench and hold the ground their fellows have died for, causing them to make virtuous the ultimate sacrifice for their way of life... Leading to radicalization, the hardening of their hearts to those who've stolen from them, beaten them, killed them. Cycles within cycles until all that is left is death and victory... This grim lesson underpins Mr. Weiss' powerful and disturbing work.

Sri Lanka has existed, in some form or another, for 2,500 years. Settled ed by visitors from nearby India, it was, for centuries, a Buddhist kingdom in the heart of one of the world's most beautiful and idyllic regions. One would have expected the centuries to smooth out any significant differences that might have existed between the various social groupings on such a picturesque island. But a series of divisive internal conflicts in the 13th and 14th centuries, profoundly worsened by western colonization in the 18th and 19th centuries, hardened these differences into distinctions worth dying for.

Consequently, Sri Lanka has been, for generations, two island, with the south ruled by the more populous and culturally dominant Sinhalese and the north governed by the minority Tamilese made fearful by colonialist reforms that they believed would deeply favor the Sinhalese. It would be the Sinhalese who would comprise the government, who would receive the important jobs, who would wield all the influence, not the Tamilese who were merely the remnant of a long-dead kingdom. Ignited by political riots in the 1950s, and fanned by widespread killings in the 1980s, the political discord between these two groups would escalate into a civil war that would not only take the lives of tens of thousands, it would introduce into this idyllic place the corrosiveness of modern terrorism which the Sinhalese government would use as a pretext for a vicious crackdown that would finally end the war, but not before the strife had left a permanent scar on a wounded nation staggering into the 21st century.

A detailed history of the last days of this cruel conflict, The Cage is chilling non-fiction. Gordon Weiss, a journalist and a former official with the United Nations, establishes a rough history of Sri Lanka before plunging head-first into its civil war, documenting many of the unfathomable deprivations that characterized it. A firm believer that both sides perpetrated war crimes, the author equally condemns government and Tiger. The former he accuses of concealing the degree to which it allowed its armed forces to butcher, rape and starve-out Tamilese civilians while blaming these attacks on the enemy. The latter, meanwhile, he rightfully criticizes for taking up the virulent and destructive weapons of modern terrorism: forced conscription of civilians, the use of child soldiers, and the deployment of suicide bombings. Worst, however, was the cult of personality created by the charismatic leader of the Tamil tigers who ritualized and elevated martyrdom into a virtuous end, a worthy achievement for a noble cause.

The Cage, though, is far more than a polemic against the various sins of both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. It cares about their schemes, their despotism, their pieces of propaganda, but only as a means of illustrating the suffering of innocents, some of whom are given voice here. Frequently, Mr. Weiss removes himself from the narrative, surrendering it to those who've lost families, partners, and their own health and vitality to a self-destructive war perpetrated by individuals who exercised no restraint and certainly no decency. Their words are alternately terrifying and plaintive, recitations of crimes that no one should have to endure, crimes for which there is no recovery, crimes that leave marks on those who do them as well as those who suffer them. In this, we come to witness the utter madness of war, particularly, war perpetrated by children and conducted like children.

While The Cage does not directly ask the question, the reader cannot help but wonder what any of this suffering is for. Wars do have purposes. They can be means by which wrongs are rectified and newer,b better balances established. Without the chaos of the two World Wars, the European Union would not have existed. Without the deprivations of the American Civil War, the united Union would not have economically accelerated the 20th century. Some good can come of violence. But as inevitable as the Sri Lankan civil war was, its purpose is utterly absent. To what end, all of this torment? So that ethnic groups can preserve their linguistic codes? To protect their religious dogmas? To husband their ethnic foods? Are these differences worth dying for? Are they worth plunging an entire country into madness and agony? The answer, for anyone even moderately steeped in history, must be an emphatic no. And yet, these conflicts continuously crop up, the result of minorities being radicalized, or radicalizing themselves, on the basis of perceived differences. It is a tragedy without peer or end.

Yes, The Cage could have been more thorough with its history of Sri Lanka. It could've included the testimonies of more innocents. It could have been a rallying cry for the betterment of humanity. But these absences are minor flaws in what is otherwise a moving example of a modern nation, of the value of destiny, and the dangers of despotism. Mesmerizing work... (4/5 Stars)

The thorny history of a famous cemetery in On Hallowed Ground

From The Week of March 24th, 2014

Our relationship with the dead, and the bodies they've left behind, is as revealing as it is complex. For while some dismiss the body as nothing more than empty vessel that can be discarded now that the soul no longer abides within it, many others hold such a deep connection with human remains that anything less than respectful reverence is cavalier and insensitive. For these individuals, the only way they can honor those who have past beyond this life is to ensure that they lie peacefully in undisturbed ground, that their graves, like them, are not forgotten. However, such reverence implies that, on some level, the spirits of the dead still care what happens to their bodies, that it means something to them to have been returned, with grace, to the earth in which they began.

Is there a connection? And should it matter? These are two unavoidable questions in a book about a cemetery. Mr. Poole may not have any immediate answers, but the clarity of the snapshot he has taken here of death, of ritual, of grief, and of ceremony is of such quality that answers seem unimportant.

Arlington National Cemetery is one of the worlds most famous landmarks. The exclusive preserve of those who have died in the defense of the United States, it is home to tens of thousands of veterans, from at least nine significant wars, whose graves are visited by more than seven-million people each year. Popularized by the televised burial of President Kennedy, Arlington is a shrine to ritual and respect. For its very ground holds what remains of those who died for their country, making it, outwardly, a monument to duty and patriotism.

Arlington's history, however, is far more troublesome. Originally the primary residence of Robert E. Lee, the legendary civil-War general, it was appropriated by the Union government after the Lees decamped to Virginia at the beginning of the American Civil War. Initially, it was to be used as a military camp, but once the war came to the doorstep of the capital, it was deployed as as a burial ground, for the bluecoats who died during that great American schism. Despite Mary lee's vigorous efforts to reclaim it, the government refused to surrender the sprawling farm, eventually, over the decades that followed, expelling everyone who lived on the property and converting it into a full-fledged cemetery that would be subjected to all manner of cultural winds that would force many of the graves to be dug up and reburied in order to satisfy the whims of the day.

A fascinating history of a lodestone of grief and remembrance, On Hallowed Ground is a surprisingly engaging journey through a famous monument. Robert Poole has produced a thorough chronicle of this sacred place, walking the reader through the many storms it has endured. His portraits of the stewards of Arlington are fond without fawning, showing respect for the work they have done without neglecting the ways in which their egos have shaped it. But perhaps most instructive are his careful descriptions of the key moments in the Cemetery's long existence, capped off with a detailed paean to the televised funeral of JFK that is both moving and vivid. Lush descriptions of the place not only evoke its grandeur, but remind us of the conflicts, both political and actual, that have defined it.

All literature makes some form of contribution to the culture. And yet, there are occasions when one is surprised by the size of such a contribution. On Hallowed Ground fits that bill. For what looks to be an ordinary history of an extraordinary cemetery becomes, in the author's hands, a revealing chronicle of an institution that, if it avoids scandal, does so just barely. From Arlington's controversial origins, to its mistreatment of black soldiers, to its preferential treatment of officers, it reminds us that even the bodies of the dead are subject to the politics of the day, however revolting we may find them now, and that, for all the reverence and ritual we may grant the dead, the institution that cares for them is, like all institutions, beleaguered by biases. One wouldn't expect a cemetery, no matter its fame, to attract such strong opinions, and yet, they reveal just how much meaning we invest in a place that is only, truly made significant by the value we the living give to it.

A work as revealing of human nature as it is of Arlington itself... Its beauty and its ironies won't soon be forgotten. (4/5 Stars)

A forgotten stain on the American character in The Blood Telegram

From The Week of November 18th, 2013

Government, in all its forms, has forever been a double-edge sword. For all its advantages -- the organization of power and resources into the hands of the able few ostensibly for the benefit of the less able many --, it is predicated on the ancient, animalistic notion that might makes right, that the having of power is also a license to use it as the holder sees fit. This conception has been handed down for generations, from the tribes and the monarchies from which our governments evolved, a time in which all manner of ideas and mythologies were dreamed up to justify the actions of the most high. And though we have mollified such harsh views, varnished them with the veneer of electoral mandates and senatorial debates, that underlying idea of I know best still transfixes our leaders, reducing them from creatures of reason into beings of pure authority. The terrible cost of power's corrosiveness could ask for no better exemplar than Gary Bass' mesmerizing portrait of the intersection of American leadership and Bangladeshi freedom.

Separated by as much as 1,000 kilometers, the two halves of Pakistan were always fated to secede from one another. A geographic oddity born out of the great partition, which saw India declare its independence from the British Empire and Pakistan declare its independence from India, this distance irrevocably strained the natural bonds of community that evolve from humans in close proximity, causing views in both territories to become distinct from one another. And so, when Yahya Khan, then the leader of Pakistan's ruling junta, held free elections in 1970, and found the result going dramatically against him, particularly in East Pakistan, he authorized military action to bring the foolish East back into line.

Supported by the Nixon Administration and all the American materiel it could reasonably supply, the Pakistani Army's ruthless attack on East Pakistan was brutally efficient, leading to the slaughter of nearly half a million people and the conversion of millions more Bangladeshi into displaced refugees who fled to India for safety. This crisis appalled the American diplomats stationed in Bangladesh, prompting them to speak out against its depravities. At first, these warnings were private communications up the chain of command. But when this yielded only inaction, many of the diplomats went public, accusing the Nixon Administration of standing by while genocide was perpetrated by an American ally. The subsequent political fallout not only drove India closer to the Soviet Union, it ignited war between India and Pakistan in 1971 which effectively ended the crisis, the scars of which would linger for decades.

A captivating examination of the conflict, viewed through the eyes of the Nixon Administration, The Blood Telegram is powerful, emotive work that will leave few readers unmoved. Drawing upon White-House recordings, and the first-hand accounts of American diplomats in Bangladesh, Mr. Bass describes in stomach-churning detail the lengths to which Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ignored the mass-slaughter of Hindus in East Pakistan out of loyalty and expediency to dictators and communists. Working hard to thaw relations with Maoist China, and cognizant that Yahya Khan was the best conduit through which they could work with and access China, the President of the United States armed a junta, ignored the entreaties of India, then and still the world's largest democracy, and stood by while their own weapons were used to perpetrate what their own diplomats termed as genocide. Those who objected to this strategy were dismissed as having "gone native" or as being a political enemy of the Nixon administration, neatly allowing the champion of world freedom to plow forward with its plans regardless of the terrible cost.

Were The Blood Telegram's narrative not so consumed by quotes from Nixon and Kissinger, one would be hesitant to take this chronicle at face value. After all, Mr. Bass seems, at times, eager to fit the American diplomats, particularly Archer Blood, for white hats while conversely vilifying the Nixon Administration. And yet, the filth that pours forth, first hand, from the mouthes of Nixon and Kissinger is inescapably wicked, leaving little doubt in all but their staunchest advocates, that their roles in this affair were pernicious and destructive. They are so anxious to win with China that they sneer at anyone who stands in their way, degrading them racially, ideologically and profanely in an effort to justify their actions to themselves. Sadly, despite breaking the law to support Yahya Khan, neither man was charged, much less censured, for their behavior in this matter.

The Blood Telegram is not without its own issues. Though the work is ostensibly about the brutal suppression of East Pakistan, it is far more concerned with the American role in that ugly incident than it is in actually documenting it. We are exposed to one or two refugees and the odd Indian commander, but all else is reduced to the cold statistics of those who were killed, maimed, or forced to flee. We're afforded no real sense of how Bangladesh tried to recover from its bloody,breached birth, much less what was done for the refugees after the Indo-Pakistan war. This despite the fact that Mr. Bass himself states that this is an underreported, little known bloodbath in the 20th century. It is well that we understand the heroic and the villainous roles American officials played in this affair, but not at the expense of understanding and educating ourselves on the reasons why American duplicitousness here was so damaging.

Chilling work that leaves no doubt that representative government is no better at choosing leaders of principle than randomly pulling names from a hat... The crimes of Nixon and Kissinger should not be forgotten... (4/5 Stars)

A sprawling and successful SciFi epic in Hamilton's The Void Trilogy

From The Week of November 10th, 2013

From our actions to our futures, the right to choose is one of humanity's most coveted freedoms, one that countless souls have died to ensure and to preserve. This is as undeniable as it is peculiar. After all, humans, down through the bloody centuries of their history, have spent far more time bound by coercive bondage, political, economic, social, than they have spent free to act as they see fit. Kings and chieftains, sea captains and factory owners, popes and martyrs... They have all used their power and their authority to claim our fealty. And yet, perhaps this is the very reason why the freedom to choose is so prized. For when it is so rare to be afforded with the opportunity to choose one's destiny, regardless of the consequences, then it is savored like the finest wine. But what if we were all afforded this uncoerced right? What if we could act as we pleased no matter the costs to the others around us? Would it still seem wise to hail such a right? Peter F. Hamilton speculates in his engrossing epic.

It is the middle of the fourth millennia and humanity wants for nothing. In the 1,500 years since the creation of the first computer, we have traveled to other stars, encountered alien races both friendly and formidable, and discovered wondrous technologies that have, for most, banished the very notion of suffering. Powerful artificial intelligences ensure a safe and lawful Commonwealth of worlds, most of which have access to science and immortality, art and faith. After all, there is room for any sort of life in a civilization that has done away with the scarcity imposed by finite resources and limited power. In a universe where matter and energy are equally malleable, there is little one needs be denied.

And yet, encroaching upon this utopia is the strangest of threats. The void has persisted for nearly a million years, an incomprehensible region of distorted space within the galaxy in which the physical laws as we know them seem not to apply, in which the power of the mind appears to be superior to that of the physics of spacetime. This might be nothing more than an object of curiosity were it not for the fact that the Void occasionally undergoes expansion fazes, moments of explosive violence that consume the stars and planets in its path. Despite the best efforts of the galaxy's most powerful minds and weapons, the Void has proven to be impervious and indestructible which is why entire star systems have had to be evacuated ahead of its expansion in order not to condemn the lives of countless souls to its voraciousness.

Though the Void's purpose is unknown, many factions within human civilization believe they hold the answers. The most popular of these is the Living Dream, a vaguely Christian organization that believes the Void is a kind of heaven into which they can pass. But those who've studied the Void argue that passing into it helps to trigger its expansion fazes which is why they attempt to halt the pilgrimages to the Void. And yet, these imposts only seem to encourage the dreamers to try harder to achieve their aims, no matter the cost to the universe the Void is threatening to devour.

A series as inventive as it is expansive, The Void Trilogy is epic science fiction, a 700,000-word odyssey through worlds of science and death, politics and faith, yearning and fanaticism. Mr. Hamilton, who is no stranger to thinking big with his fiction, has built here on an existing universe, introducing into it an existential threat that his protagonists fear and his antagonists hunger for. Their clashes prove to be as memorable as they are violent, leaving no doubt that humanity's thirst for destruction, its willingness to use force, has not been softened by immortality.

In its technology and its politics, The Void Trilogy is deeply reminiscent of Iain Banks' famous Culture Series, a collection of works that tried to conceptualize a utopian future for humanity unburdened by the chains of scarcity, one in which everyone would be free to pursue their interests thanks to the willingness of machines and artificial intelligences to do the unglamorous labors that underpin civilization. Certainly, some of the ideas deployed here, are fanciful unto hilarity -- weapons capable of destroying planets and stars are, at times, unleashed almost gleefully --, but Mr. Hamilton manages to largely confine his flamboyant excesses, leaving the reader with an exploration of life utterly transformed from the paradigms with which we are so familiar. To step outside those prejudices, those realities, is a significant achievement in its own right. To then manifest such a utopian civilization in which we are all free to act as we choose, be who we choose, is a feat in truth.

It is a most difficult task to maintain the reader's interest over nearly 2,000 pages and for that we have Mr. Hamilton's host of characters to thank. From the silly to the serious, from the sociopathic to the egomaniacal, we are introduced to detectives and popes, martyrs and commoners, zealots and knowledge seekers, all of whom come together to form a vivid tapestry of conflict and power. And yet, these fine actors are also the epic's most troublesome element. For though most of our prime players have existed for more than a millennia, some even back to the early 21st century, none show any sign of the immense weariness that would naturally eventuate from living so many countless years. Mr. Hamilton makes virtually no attempt to lay out the social conventions that would have to arise to grapple with such unfathomable lifespans: multiple lives, multiple partners, multiple careers. In fact, one of his main characters has been a detective for more than a thousand years. Far from admirable, this seems almost perverse. This, along with a certain plasticness of minds and deeds, troubles the work.

And yet, these flaws do not ruin the epic. For like in life, it is easy to imagine darkness and degradation, to dream up the dystopias that some secret part inside all of us hungers for. It is much more difficult to create, to conceive of a world that is wholly new, and then to animate that world with vibrancy and vitality. The Void Trilogy may be far more interested in exploding stars and weaponized black holes than it is in the sociology and psychology, but it still checks all the boxes of good SciFi while being a rollicking good time. (4/5 Stars)

the risks and rewards of machine intelligence in On The Steel Breeze

From The Week of October 28th, 2013

For all but the last hundred years of human history, which now spans more than ten millennia, we have been the masters of our destinies. The social constructs into which we've been born have certainly constrained us, influenced us, coerced us, but nonetheless our labors were our own, our survival due in whole to our own talents, our own capacities. But now, with the rise of the technological age, all of that has changed. Where once we fashioned our own tools, measured our own medicines and manufactured our own weapons, these tasks and skills have been increasingly given over to machines which hold advantages over us in speed, efficiency and tirelessness. In fact, the disparities between man and machine when it comes to production are so wide that it would be nothing sort of self-sabotage to not surrender these traditional functions to them. And yet, they are not us; they will never be us. And so, when we do inevitably become completely reliant upon them for our societies, what will our futures hold? Alastair Reynolds deliciously speculates in his engaging novel of the future.

It is the 24th century and humanity has climbed off an environmentally ravaged Earth to live amongst the stars. Moons and habitats throughout the solar system have been colonized while Earth cools, populations free to experiment with technologies, with governments, even with immortality. Despite the obvious divisions this would cause, human civilization has been harmonized and pacified by the Mechanism, a pervasive network of machines, both neural and nano, that ensure that individual humans live nonviolently with their fellows. Cooperation and discovery have become the hallmarks of society which has largely abandoned the destructive sins of slavery and discord.

Quietly, however, matters have begun to change. With the discovery of an inhabitable, extraterrestrial world which has clearly been touched by aliens, humanity has been moved to journey to this distant place aboard Holo Ships, city-sized conveyances that can accelerate to significant fractions of the speed of light. Ahead of these voyagers have been sent Providers, great machines that will land on this alien world and build cities for the adventurers to live in when they reach their new home, but the intelligence designed to govern these Providers has become temperamental and difficult, growing beyond its design specks to become something new, a mind unto itself, a force to be reckoned with. And it is willing to do what it takes to ensure its survival, placing it on a collision course with humanity.

The successor to Blue Remembered Earth, On The Steel Breeze is a work of singular creativity from one of science fiction's most innovative minds. Mr. Reynolds, who rose to prominence with Revelation Space, is an imaginative thinker who, throughout his published career, has rejected the notion that the laws of physics are too stultifying for fiction. Instead, he has embraced them and their limitations, providing for the layman some sense of the phenomenal spans of space and time that are unavoidable obstacles for any civilization with ambitions of being interstellar. In the past, this interest in the technicalities has sometimes lapsed into the obsessive, coming at the expense of qualitative storytelling. Not so here, where his characters, both human and artificial, run the gamut from desperate to ambitious while always remaining convincing and entertaining.

Notwithstanding its delightful creativity, On The Steel Breeze has the heart of a very old novel, asking an age-old question. How will man and machine coexist? Here, humanity has relied upon the Mechanism for so long that it has become unthinkable for it to be corrupted in any way, a truth that breeds the very complacency that allows it to be abused by an intelligence grown far too clever and powerful for any individual human to match. And yet, both the mechanism and the intelligence threatening it provide immeasurable benefits to humanity, organizing it, pacifying it, enabling it, in ways both wonderful and fantastic. Is the risk of the technology wriggling out of our control worth its many, glorious rewards? The answer to this question will be disputed for decades to come, and likely long after we have become far too dependent upon our machines to return to a simpler, more self-sufficient time.

Mr. Reynolds' view of this question is admirably pragmatic. He acknowledges both sides of the argument, the usefulness and the fear of losing command and control, all without siding with any particular faction. This allows his work to adopt an open mind about one of, if not the most, formative and pressing questions of the century to come.

Despite its engaging mysteries and fascinating actors, On The Steel Breeze is far from a perfect work. While Mr. Reynolds' choice to honor the laws of physics is respectable, this adherence boxes the author into a narrative corner he never escapes. On Earth, more than a full century expires while the work's core drama is unfolding in interstellar space, all without the author giving any sense of changing governments, social mores, even the forces of dogma. Providing such detail would have certainly prolonged an already sizeable tome, but its omission leaves the reader feeling as though nothing else in human civilization is taking place between moments of explosive action on the holo ships and the alien world they are destined for. The whims, the pursuits and the ideologies of an entire civilization are abandoned to service the plot which is primarily why we are here. But this lost color leaves the work feeling oddly disjointed, like a movie with no sound, or music with no message. It's an absence that is distractingly apparent.

Notwithstanding its flaws, Mr. Reynolds is worth reading for his creativity alone. Any sin of literature is forgivable when we can watch a skilled mind at play amongst the stars. (4/5 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)

Political self-destruction in Preston's informative The Spanish Civil War

From The Week of June 24th, 2013

As much as the last few centuries have seen a significant advancement in most forms of human endeavor, we still lack a consistent, feasible strategy for properly harnessing and altruistically deploying the powers of collective action. For thousands of years, charismatic firebrands have rallied mobs with their voices and their deeds, unleashing these crowds in the name of a goal they desire to achieve. Moreover, entire communities have organized along similar lines in hopes of upending the status quo. But in both cases, the ends fail to justify the means. For the act of deploying the power of the collective, in the furtherance of a specific agenda, encourages others to do so for their own agendas. And it never takes long for these different groups to crash into one another, directly or indirectly, creating chaos in their wake. How we improve this dire outcome is beyond the scope of this review, but its consequences are not. They are vividly demonstrated in Paul Preston's excellent history of one of Spain's darker periods.

The consequence of years of political instability, ideological feuds and economic hardship, the Spanish civil War (1936-1939) was as brutal as it was swift. Pitting political leftists, supported by the legitimate government, the Soviet Union and thousands of foreign fighters drawn to their righteous cause, against right-wing nationalists, supported by fascist Italy, Nazist Germany and much of the Spanish military, it was a devastating conflict that not only claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of belligerents and civilians, it ripped apart Spanish society, plunging it into a kind of nihilistic chaos that would become all-too-familiar when the Second World War would break out only a few years later. The war, which saw towns besieged and bombed, soldiers starved and mutilated and civilians raped and murdered, annihilated the Spanish state, replacing it first with discord and then with Franco's victorious iron fist which would remained firmly wrapped around Spain's throat for more than 20 years.

But how could such a horrific conflict be allowed to unfold? Where were the moments of hesitation, of compromise, that would have kept its ravages from Spanish shores? And why was it such a rallying cry for European commoners and intellectuals? For these answers, we turn to the political turmoil that preceded the conflict, a succession of overturned governments, unchecked egos and ideological disputes that were a microcosm for a pre-WWII Europe gripped in a feverish and contentious debate between communism on the left and fascism on the right. These diametrically opposed forces, armed with proxies and adherents, ideas and weapons, were determined to impose their views upon the world, an insistence that succeeded only in tearing it apart.

This complex, factious world is brilliantly captured in The Spanish Civil War. Beginning with the fearsome politics that launched it, and concluding with the long, Francist nightmare that followed it, Mr. Preston details the thinkers and the commanders, the loyalists and the autocrats, the politics and the self-belief that characterized a dispute that would not only act as a harbinger for the wider, European war to come, but demonstrate the true cost of a heavily populated and profoundly divided continent that, seized by the legacies of imperialism and colonialism, eschewed union for nationalism, wisdom for pride. Every human flaw is on display here, taken up and spilled across 400, swiftly paced pages that never succumb to the bondage of that most notorious fetish of historical non-fiction, endless specificity. That Mr. Preston manages to capture such a rollercoaster conflict without completely losing the reader is an achievement all its own. That he does so while engendering both horror and sympathy is remarkable.

Though Mr. Preston primarily focuses on untangling the knotted rivalries that caused the conflict's breakout, the work's strongest moments are taken up with the ways this war bestirred and repulsed the European community. Mr. Preston makes us witnesses to the foolishness of British politicians like Winston Churchill who dismissed the loyalists as murdering propagandists, to the eagerness of Italian territorialists who were eager to extend their influence in Europe, and to the thoughtfulness of German Nazis who were keen to perform a

dress rehearsal of the tactics that they'd soon be deploying against the Europe they intended to conquer. Seeing all these familiar forces arrogantly jockeying for power, while readying themselves for a war from which it would take Europe 50 years to recover, is as eerie as it is sickening. But lest we lose all hope in humanity, the European idealists who came to fight in such an ugly war receive their own lengthy treatment, one in which we see both the selflessness of individuals willing to fight for something bigger than themselves and the terrible price that is paid for that selflessness.

The Spanish Civil War is not a perfect work. It lingers overlong in the esoteric nature of the conflict's background. Moreover, it skims over the fallout from the war, confining it to an all-too-swift epilogue. However, these are but small imperfections on a tapestry that reveals to what tragic degrees humans invest themselves in ideas that, when empowered by collective belief, can set the masses to marching right off the cliff and into darkness. Not a read for the faint of heart... (4/5 Stars)

Military science fiction done with violence and style in Dread Empire's Fall

From The Week of March 11, 2013
In the hands of tyrants, fear is a fearsome weapon. Not only does it have the power to scourge the courage out of the brave, it institutionalizes a sense of inferiority in those subject to the will of its wielder. It carves into their souls a belief that they must obey or face the prospect of punishments that will send their minds shrieking into madness. Fear compels us to abandon our sense of equality, of personal dignity. And without these virtues to bolster self-identity, without the belief that everyone is subject to the laws of the land, justice atrophies until all that is left is strict, authoritarian order, the likes of which rewards the rich while criminalizing the poor. This truth could ask for no better exemplar than Mr. Williams who demonstrates it to wonderful effect in his engaging trilogy.

For ten-thousand years, the Shaa have ruthlessly ruled the galaxy. Sewing conquest through the liberal use of force, intimidation and nuclear fire, they have subsumed the known races into the fabric of their dread collective, all in the name of their beloved Praxis, a vision of order and enlightenment that only they can truly comprehend. Naturally, most races resisted this shotgun unity, but the anti-matter bombs that the Shaa mercilessly dropped on their cities, their habitats, their worlds, put an emphatic end to that. Perhaps they even attempted to flee, but where could the intelligent species go when the Shaa had already seeded the known universe with stable wormholes through which they could spread their terrible power?

Eventually, unity came to seem natural to the Shaa's client races. As their faiths and traditions fell away, to be replaced by the omnipresence of the Praxis, they became compliant, even content in their bondage until, finally, after millennia of conquest and expansion, the Shaa began to wane. Having conquered every race they could find, having expanded their intelligence through unimaginably complex machines, they had experienced every emotion, explored every thought, sampled every horizon. The universe was no longer a mystery; it was a bore from which to escape. Slowly, through suicide, the Shaa's numbers reduced to one, one last god over the mortal races. And then even he removed himself from the board and exposed an empire of countless billions to a new, chaotic dawn, one far more terrifying than any the Shaa had imposed. This is the story of that dawn, a story of war and resistance, of fire and radiation, that might well burn hot enough to extinguish even the legacy of the Shaa and leave behind nothing but ashes.

Born from the mind of one of science fiction's most eclectic authors, The Dread Empire is a fascinating and engrossing journey through an apocalyptic war. Mr. Williams, who rose to prominence with the Hardwired Series of cyberpunk novels, turns his mind here to military fiction, reconstructing a universe of humans and aliens, of wealth and poverty, of aristocracy and criminality, with winning thoroughness. For the author has rejected the storytelling crutches of Transporters and faster-than-light travel to conjure up a wonderfully detailed reality that, for good and ill, is utterly faithful to its laws and customs. For this alone, the work should be celebrated. Not many possess such vision, much less the willingness to carry it out. And yet, the author has harnessed his talent for three-dimensional characters and deployed it here with vivid results that elevate the series from the mundane to the extraordinary.

Though war dominates the trilogy, The Dread Empire is notable for its politics. Mr. Williams has fused together futuristic technology with an Edwardian society to create a truly horrifying amalgam of privilege and corruption strongly reminiscent of our own colonialist history. In fact, it is an easy matter to regard the Shaa as the British, or the Roman, Empire, using its superior knowledge and tactics to conquer other races and impose upon them a societal structure that is both foreign to their minds and corrosive to their morals. Viewed this way, it is unsurprising that the characters in Mr. Williams' work devote much of their energy to subverting that order in the hopes of overturning it, of converting it into something that better suits ingenuity and personal skill.

Naturally, The Dread Empire has its fair share of flaws. Unlike the adrenaline-soaked pages of Mr. Williams' Cyberpunk work, this trilogy is characterized by long moments of quiet, cruel conniving followed by quick explosions of action and turmoil. Though this technique is not without its merits, the plod is too pronounced, too protracted, to be as engaging as the action sequences which are written with an exactitude that is admirable if somewhat bewildering for those not versed in non-conventional, three-dimensional military tactics. Moreover, Mr. Williams' choice to train the series' focus on only two primary characters leaves much of this universe unexplored. Martinez and Sulah are each wonderful conceptions, creatures of will and ambition who occupy a new space between hero and antihero, but they are both career military and both on one side of the conflict, leaving not only civilian life undeveloped but the enemy perspective as well. The trilogy could have benefited from dropping some of its Edwardian pomp in favor of a third point of view that would have balanced the tale.

Notwithstanding its flaws, The Dread Empire is wonderful work that ties together elements of politics, war, mystery and aristocracy to forge a world that is as familiar as it is foreign. Yes, the author uses thinly veiled conceits to ensure that this future is, in some ways, shockingly like our own, but these can be forgiven when they make possible a constellation of relatable characters and circumstances that keep us invested in the epic. A work of noteworthy imagination... (4/5 Stars)

Tudor England's generation gap comes to life in Thomas Penn's Winter King

From The Week of December 3, 2012
Death and renewal, life's fundamental opposing forces, define our world. They breathe change into our seasons and put fuel into the earth. They provide food for organisms and ensure evolutions steady march. No force is beyond their authority, not even the stars that make life possible. But inside these universal systems, death and renewal shape our lives just as profoundly. They define our relationships, our jobs, and especially our goals, demanding that we move through our limited existence with alacrity and desperation, propelled by the knowledge that everything we are and everything we love is not only finite but fleeting. Even if we cannot hear this driving drumbeat of life, it guides our actions which, in turn, shape our kingdoms, our empires, even our nations. This is a truth well-captured by Mr. Penn's engaging biography of the sunset of the life of Henry VII and the sunrise of his sun, the infamous Henry VIII.

Uncounted barrels of ink have been spilled in an attempt to illustrate the lives and times of the House of Tudor, a brief but influential dynasty that, in the sixteenth century, uplifted England from a political also-rand to a mercantile powerhouse to rival Europe's richest empires. Much of this attention has been understandably taken up by Henry VIII, and his numerous wives, and his daughter, Elizabeth I, who governed her country more wisely than most of its kings. One created a religion; the other created an empire. Together, they were salacious and noble, headstrong and ruthless. But though this attention is warranted, it excludes perhaps the most fascinating Tudor ruler, the man who set the stage for the men and women who followed him.

As firm as he was cheap, as wise as he was suspicious, Henry VII spent his life uniting a fractured crown. Forcing his way to power in the wake of the War of the Roses, a merciless conflict that pitted two of England's most powerful families against one another in a devastating war, he devoted decades of his life to improving England's fiscal standing, linking its fortunes to Europe's most powerful banners. In these maneuvers, he was largely successful, partly thanks to his willingness to use any tactic, no matter how underhanded, to achieve his ends. But such a zealous pursuit of wealth and power with which to pass on to ones heirs must leave its marks, not only on the man but the nation as well, and Henry VII was no exception. For as he lay dying, as his promising son stood ready to inherit all that he had wrought, he was powerless to check the cronies and the influencers, the strongmen and the schemers who he'd used to elevate England and who he'd once played so well. And so, though his son would inherit arguably the richest kingdom in Europe, he would also inherit a security state with a keenly self-interested apparatus, one both willing to manipulate its king and be bound by him, a dangerous precedent that served the younger henry not nearly as well as it did his wiser father.

Winter King is a potent and powerful biography of a transformative period in world history. Mr. Penn invites us back to the dawn of the British Empire, a time in which england lay battered and broken by feuds empowered by greed and self-entitlement, an England that no one could have imagined becoming the defining power of the next 500 years. Here, the author winningly illustrates the lives of the two men who did the most to reshape that country's destiny, setting it upon the path of fame and infamy, fortune and conquest. He captures the fundamental differences between the calculating father and the headstrong son, the shrewd king in his final years and the ambitious prince in his roaring youth, leaving no doubt in the minds of his readers that these men, and the events they weathered, loomed over the generations that followed them. Loves and marriages, schemes and tourneys, assassinations and betrayals are all covered here, detailed in a tome inescapably defined by the cruel but inevitable tides of life.

This is not a perfect history. Mr. Penn disappointingly ignores the first half of Henry VII's life, summing it up in a few pages that gloss over the period's most shattering conflict. This is likely a stylistic choice. For throughout most of the work, the author juxtaposes father and son, their duties, their attitudes, their faiths and their friends. He could hardly adhere to this theme if he covered the time before the younger Henry's birth. Nonetheless, a significant degree of context is lost in this choice, context that might well have aided the reader in understanding the zealously frugal elder henry. As it is, we are introduced to him as an older man, one who has already been forged by the crucible of his time.

Notwithstanding its compromises, Winter King is as readable as it is informative. Too much has already been said of the Tudors. And yet, this is less of an homage than it is an acknowledgement of an exceptional man largely overshadowed by the controversial deeds of his dashing son. In this, it is well worth devouring. (4/5 Stars)

The Tamir Triad by Lynn Flewelling

From The Week of September 10, 2012 As much as we define ourselves by the fidelity of our friends, the magnitude of our wealth, the customs of our culture and the values of our families, identity dictates who we are. For long before the trappings of civilization influence us, identity demands that we pursue the passions that burn in our hearts. Everything, from how we cope with fear to how we manage our expectations, is filtered through our self-regard. For the pain of acting against how we think of ourselves is too much to bear. We must be the person we feel inside or else we are lost to shame and humiliation, to lies and deceptions. Ms. Flewelling vividly demonstrates this truth in her trilogy which is as bold in conception as it is brave in execution.

A kingdom of warriors and wizards, queens and knights, Skala is a realm in conflict. Defined by an ancient pact with its divine patron, the Lightbringer, who promised to protect it from rack and ruin so long as the realm was lead by a queen of the blood, Skala has long been a land in which men and women were equally free to pursue their own destinies. But after centuries of female rule, a king has elevated himself to the throne, usurping the place of his own sister in order to claim for himself the might of Skala. This duplicitous turn of events not only drives the king's faithful sister mad, it has exposed the land to all manner of blood plagues and foreign armies, both of which threaten to decimate the realm. Skala has broken faith with a god. And such beings are rarely known for their forgiveness or mercy.

In The Bone Doll's Twin, the trilogy's opening volume, we are witness to a terrible secret. Mad princess Ariani, deposed by her brother, labors to give birth to twins. A boy and a girl, this ought to be a joyous event for Skala, but Ariani's misfortune deepens when the boy fails to survive the night, leaving only the girlchild as living proof of her blood and her agony. Worse yet, her brother, the king, has cruelly decreed, as a part of a wider crackdown on women participating in matters outside the hearth, that female offspring of the royal blood are to have their lives ended in order to secure his position on the throne. Should the king learn that Ariani's surviving child is a girl, he is sure to insist she be killed.

Fatefully, wizards attending Ariani save the girlchild's life by mystically disguising her, using the essence of her dead brother to impose upon her the appearance of a boy. Thus, to all but a secret few, Tobin, child of Ariani, is a prince, free to grow up unencumbered by the king's scorn and suspicion. Not even Tobin himself is aware of his true identity, not until he has become a young, promising companion of the crown prince Korin, son of the usurper king, and then it is far too late to go back. For Tobin is now a warrior, a young man of station and power. To reject that life for one of a girl, even if it is to heal her realm, is a bridge too far. But then she has not reckoned on the will of the gods.

In The Hidden Warrior, the trilogy's second instalment, Skala's deterioration reaches critical mass. Attacked by its rival, Plenimar, who employ necromancers to steel their assaults, its capital is burning and its king is flailing. The gods have withdrawn their favor from the beleaguered realm, plunging its people into chaos and war. Their only hope now resides in prince Tobin who must reveal his true identity as the sole female heir to the throne. For if she were to sit the throne, reborn as queen Tamir, she could mend the pact with the gods and bring peace back to her land. But then, how can she declare herself to the world when she cannot even accept her own identity?

In The Oracle's Queen, the trilogy's final entry, the war between Skala and Plenimar reaches fever pitch. What's left of Skala's nobility has rallied to Tobin's banner. And yet, a once faithful friend, crown prince Korin, lurks in a damp but important fortress, nursing his wounded pride. For Tobin, or Tamir -- he does not know which story to believe -- has usurped his place, an event which causes the affection Korin once had for Tobin to be devoured by anger and enmity. These dark emotions open the door to the manipulations of a powerful wizard who has so far cynically served the royal family. Civil war hangs like an ugly haze on Skala's cloudy horizon. It is a realm battered and beaten, but the desire for power is too strong for the selfish to let the land rest. Power must be had. And war seems the only way.

As confrontational as it is laborious, The Tamir Triad is a breath of original air in a fantasy genre paralyzed by derivations. While her world and its magics rarely deviate from the norm, Ms. Flewelling's bold choice to take on the painful dilemmas thrown up by gender confusion affixes to her familiar hull an unapologetic masthead that leads the reader into uncharted waters. Unsurprisingly then, sad prince Tobin animates this entire series. Reminiscent of children compelled by their parents to assume a gender that does not suit them, he labors to please his parents, little knowing that they have bestowed upon him an identity he didn't choose and a destiny he didn't ask for. It is left to him to not only discover that he's been living a lie, but to forge a path out of that lie to some kind of identity he can live with, some manner of self-representation that will allow him to marry together the two people nature and nurture have forced him to become.

However, as much as Tobin elevates this trilogy out of the ordinary, Ms. Flewelling's greatest accomplishment here is the darkly aggressive manner in which she raises these questions of identity. This sgrim, challenging and even brutal series is not one easily swallowed by young adults. For Tobin is not ushered into girlhood by puppies and faeries. In her case, accepting herself is also accepting the uneasy mantle of absolute, monarchical power, power which can, and is, easily abused. In this, the author steers clear of making any sort of feminist declarations. In fact, Tobin's journey reads much more as as the acceptance of the cares and responsibilities of adulthood than it does as any sort of parable for the superiority of womankind. This, combined with an unwillingness to pull any punches, lends the trilogy a wonderful, Gothic energy.

But for all that is praiseworthy about The Tamir Triad, there are missteps here. Ms. Flewelling's roster of supporting actors leave a lot to be desired. Though they have clearly been given a great deal of thought, too many of them fall into the simplistic polarities of good and evil, heroic and villainous. In particular, there is insufficient explanation for why the story's antagonists insist on defying the protagonists. Greed and the thrill of manipulation are apparent, yes, but there is almost no sense of the kind of self-preservation that would ordinarily cause such villains to reform their strategies and live to fight another day. Instead, their relentless assaults serve little purpose but to force the heroes to strike them down. Moreover, large swaths of the three novels are taken up with meticulous reconstructions of medieval life which, though appealing initially, wears upon the reader, fattening up an already lengthy epic.

Nonetheless, while the work may be flawed, the degree to which Ms. Flewelling willingly engages with a difficult and even torturous issue transforms the trilogy from a stone into a diamond. And though it may be rough around the edges, the degree to which it shines leaves the reader unconcerned with its blemishes. (4/5 Stars)

The Secret Army by Richard Michael Gibson & Wen-hua Chen

From The Week of April 09, 2012

Though we may, with apologies and reparations for past discretions, endeavor to wipe clean the slate of history as a means of creating a better future, we can never begin anew. For the past is always with us. It may well be that those who shaped it have died, thus relinquishing their destructive hold on power, but they inevitably leave behind destabilizing legacies that corrode subsequent generations. It is difficult for stable nations to combat such patterns -- the United States is still suffering the effects of the organized crime networks created during Prohibition. It is infinitely harder for poor nations to subdue these forces. After all, here, state power is invariably fragmented among disparate interests, the chaos of which permits criminal elements to operate largely without constraint in semi-autonomous regions far from the halls of power. Few parts of the world are more painfully aware of these truths than southeast Asia. Mr. Gibson and Mr. Chen explain why.

Thanks to its decades-long status as the world's preeminent opiate producer, the Golden Triangle, that troubled intersection of Burma, Laos and Thailand, was, for much of the 20th century, a zone of concern for many of the world's governments. Dominated by private armies in the pay of drug traffickers, this region has been plagued by well-funded armies who have worked to corrupt and or repel the armies of the neighborhood's sovereign nations in order to maintain a stranglehold over one of the world's most lucrative elicit trades. Time after time, these forces either co-opt or kill their opponents, preventing area governments from asserting control over their own territories. But how did this come about? Was it inevitable, thanks to the curse of geography, that the Golden Triangle would be a zone of conflict, or is the region's turmoil rooted in its history?

In The Secret Army, misters Gibson and Chen contend that the roots of the region's problems lies in the Chinese civil war, a bloody and consequential conflict between nationalists and communists that eventually saw Mao elevated to supreme power, Chiang Kai-shek expelled to Taiwan and collectivism implemented across the world's most populous nation. Kai-shek, backed by American fear of Communism's spread, continued to resist Communist China, resorting to insurgencies and private armies in hopes of destabilizing the regime and opening up an avenue to victory. When these efforts at agitation failed, however, the armies, here-to-for funded by the US via Kai-shek, rather than disband as ostensibly ordered, took up a new banner, profit. This launched 30 years of conflict in the Golden Triangle, 30 years in which the struggling, post-colonial regimes in nearby nations failed to uproot this scourge, allowing it to embed itself so deeply within the region's tapestry that its corrosive effects are felt today.

While The Secret Army is a compelling and provocative history of one of the world's most troubled regions, the authors assume a familiarity with the region and its players that is absent in all but a handful of their readers. Names, dates, and battles blur past in a hazy and confusing march of history that feels as though it was curtailed here for the sake of time and space. Yes, the authors manage to convey the overall picture of the destructive forces that shaped the region, but these details, the nuances, the players, are barely more than pieces on a chessboard. Little illumination is given to the motivations and the personalities that shaped them. Time squandered on developing the American side of the equation could have been used to generate more thorough portraits of the Chinese, Burmese and Thai actors that prevented the Golden Triangle from being pacified and dragged into the 21st century.

The authors have, here, a fascinating history which vividly spells out the extent to which the vital interests of small nations are ignored by the convenient needs of larger nations, no matter how immoral. It appropriately catalogues the many grievances area governments surely have towards the West which was so preoccupied with the hope of defeating Communist China that it allowed southeast Asia to burn. However, The Secret Army needed to be as much a biography as a history. It needed to introduce us to the powers in the region, put faces to the names. And this it spectacularly failed to do.

Thorough work, but it is as troubled as the region it concerns itself with. (2/5 Stars)

Autumn in The Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt

From The Week of March 26, 2012

Rebellion is a fascinating aspect of human civilization. For while it is a marvelous tool for the oppressed to use to sweep away the political hierarchies which, in their calcification, have descended into corruption and self-interest, it is, at the same time, innately alienating. It is a gestalt of the most earnest wishes of the most passionate people within the citizenry. For moderates, from those complicit in the ruling regime to those who aimed simply to keep their heads down and survive, such strong emotion, and the actions that flow from them, are a threat to everything they know and hold dear. The result, then, is a messy conflagration of gravitational forces pulling at one another in an attemptt to impose their unique vision upon their opposition. The stresses, understandably, are often enough to rip society apart at its seams. If the Arab Spring's various uprisings are not proof enough of these consequences, then let us turn to 19century China for a most vivid example. Mr. Platt enlightens us.

Considered to be the most lethal civil war in human history, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) consumed 19th century China like a virus, leaving in its wake wide swaths of starvation, disease and despair. Thought to have claimed the lives of approximately 20 million Chinese, it was sparked by attempts by Christian converts to dispel the sins and the stagnation of the Qing dynasty and replace it with a new, westernized nation founded on fundamentalist Christian values. It would not die until it had claimed more than 20 times as many casualties, and lasted almost four times as long, as the more famous American Civil War.

Despite the rebellion's virtuous cause, its successful recruitment of native Chinese to its banner, its numerous military victories and its extension of the hand of friendship to a western Europe with which it shared much in the way of ideology, the insurgents were unable to uproot the Qing dynasty which would survive another five decades until the fall of imperial China in 1911. Not only did the rebel's fundamentalist Christianity clash with a strongly Confucian China, Europe was skeptical of the promises of reform and solidarity falling so eagerly from the lips of the rebels. Their resulting skittishness lead the European powers to largely throw their imperial weight behind the devil they knew. The devil in this case was the Manchurian emperor of China, the centuries-old legacy of the Mongolian conquest of China, a man so un-Chinese, so removed from the day-to-day plight of his people, that cities were built within cities simply to house him, to keep him apart from the unwashed.

Lacking external support, and having effectively divided China into warring camps, the rebels failed to create their new, modern China. Instead, they delivered her into a prolonged conflict that only re-affirmed western ideas of Chinese barbarism while strengthening a failing dynasty of authoritarians set on commanding the fealty of this country of nearly half a billion. In the ashes of Nanjing, freedom would have to wait.

Autumn in The Heavenly Kingdom is an exquisite, narrative history of an important insurrection largely forgotten in the West. Dwarfed in cultural importance by both the Crimean war and the American Civil War, contemporaneous conflicts that helped to reshape western notions of freedom, justice and statehood, the Taiping Rebellion is, nonetheless, a pivotal moment in history. Had the followers of Hong Xiuquan managed to transform China into something resembling a western nation, Mao never rises. He never clashes with the United States. Millions upon millions of people do not die. The Korean War never comes to pass. Harnessing this consequential energy, Mr. Platt submerges us in a world of resplendent cities and gigantic armies, religious zealots and imperial stalwarts, European hypocrisy and earnest idealism, all in a successful effort to bring to life a distant world and the sometimes inscrutable war that convulsed it.

While Mr. Platt renders the conflict's prime movers with style and skill, and while he vividly depicts the numerous battles that characterized this failed rebellion, there are moments in which his chronicle yields under the weight of names and events lacking context for the 21st century reader. So much has happened since, both to China and the world, that the morals and the ideologies that underpinned the actors here seem at times bewildering. The author would have done better to have concentrated his narrative on a few key figures in the conflict instead of spreading out to encompass what must be dozens of characters trapped in a spiderweb of shifting alliances and elusive motives.

Notwithstanding the historical dislocation, this is a wonderful journey into a most violent and pivotal time. As exciting as it is tragic... (4/5 Stars)

Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson

From The Week of February 13, 2012

There is no end to the abyss of human folly. It is an infinite chasm into which entire generations of humans have been consigned thanks to the arrogance and the superciliousness of the so-called great men of history. Their unwillingness to allow those beneath them to live as they wish, along with their petty need to impose their will upon events, have burdened decades, sometimes even centuries, with death, despair and the ruination of our hopes and dreams. If they were merely CEOs and we boards of their corporations, we could but fire them. But alas, history is not so tidy, or just. Instead, we can only look back and remember those destructive epochs and learn from them so that they might never again be repeated. Of all of these disturbing times, few were as nihilistic as the 30-years War. Mr. Wilson demonstrates this in exhaustive and soul-crushing detail.

Declared in Bohemia by the dramatic defenestration of two officials of the Holy Roman Emperor, and ended three decades later with the Peace of Westfalia, the 30-years War (1618-1648) was a savage conflict that convulsed most of Europe. Staged primarily in the Germanic states, it was the seemingly inevitable manifestation of long-simmering tensions between protestants and catholics, each of whom were compelled by circumstance to uncomfortably coexist in a largely Catholic empire. Though the Peace of Augsburg (1555) had sought to avoid this conflict by acknowledging Protestantism and Catholicism as official religions of the Holy Roman Empire, and by granting the princes of each of its 225 states the power to choose the dominant religion in his state, this peace would last only 60 years until the imperial elevation of the staunchly Catholic Ferdinand. Fearing that Ferdinand would betray the Augsburg peace, the protestants rebelled, triggering this long and terrible war that killed eight million people, deforested much of western Europe, lead to famine and disease that reduced by half the populations within the conflict zones, and drew in the kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, France and Spain before the last gun was fired, the last sword swung.

For all of its destructiveness, for all of the price in blood and grief paid so that princes and kings could play at war, some good emerged from this conflict. The Peace of Westfalia formalized the notion of a sovereign state whose laws would have to be adhered to by all of its constituents; it ended the era of mercenary warfare popularized by Italian feuds, ushering in national armies to replace them; and, perhaps most significantly, it cemented the existence of the Dutch Republic and ruined the fortune of the Spanish Empire, events which helped to catalyze the rise of mercantile capitalism over authoritarian imperialism, setting into motion a 200-year trend that would eventually lead to the end of a world of competing empires.

This is a long and difficult tale, involving dozens of countries, hundreds of captains, and thousands of skirmishes. Consequently, we must cut Mr. Wilson some slack in the length of his telling. Nonetheless, while his thousand-page account is academically rigorous, its mind-numbing tedium makes it a nearly impossible read. Europe's Tragedy reads like the worst university textbook, an interminable bore so chalked full of dates and battles, kings and whores, captains and criminals, that the unanchored mind flails for something, anything, to grab onto in order to avoid being swept away by outgoing tides of data. Mr. Wilson possesses absolutely no capacity for distinguishing the crucial from the insignificant. Instead, he includes every detail, every shred of information, packing his work until its seams are stressed to the breaking. Whatever value this work had, whatever effort it made to educate, is lost in an undifferentiated sea of minutia.

This is an important war that proved to be a turning point in human history. Mr. Wilson does the conflict justice by thoroughly covering its every twist and turn. This service, this accomplishment, should be acknowledged and appreciated. But we learn best through stories, through narratives. Hell, we learn best wen our eyes haven't blurred over from a sea of charts and ink. Therefore, as much as Mr. Wilson has succeeded in presenting us a history of the 30-years War, he has failed utterly to make us care about, much less to immerse us in, its times. This is a flaw I cannot forgive. (2/5 Stars)

Rubican by Tom Holland

From The Week of December 19, 2011

Of the thousands of nations that have risen and fallen in human history, only a special few have shaken off the yoke of mediocrity to expand into superpowers, states of unrivaled might capable of engendering fear and envy in all those who must consort and compete with them. These superpowers, past and present, have left legacies of culture and science, industry and technology, that have nourished their descendants. However, they have left behind warnings as well, stories of economic, political and personal excess that helped to ignite their downfalls.

Perhaps each superpower is unique unto itself, a singular entity enlivened by a singular people and plagued by singular problems, in which case autopsying the corpses of past superpowers is pointless. But what if all superpowers are fundamentally the same? They are, after all, populated and driven by humans, animals with the same genes, the same evolutionary histories, the same weaknesses. If they are all fundamentally the same, then history is endowed with powers to predict the future. In which case, current superpowers should take note of Mr. Holland's Rubicon for it has encapsulated the fall of freedom.

Though Rome managed to remain a republic for more than five centuries before collapsing into empire, its ultimate and destructive fate, argues Mr. Holland, a British author, was written into its very nature. Rome was founded on the notion that no one man is worthy of divine or monarchical exultation, that, while talent may be found to run deeper in some than in others, the most that man may aspire to be is first among his fellows. To reach any higher is to invite both tyranny and the wrath of the gods. This idea sustained Rome for centuries, working well enough to keep the republic alive. But when a succession of foreign enemies troubled Rome, causing its leading lights to adopt increasingly desperate measures to counter what they considered to be existential threats, this noble idea was first tested and then shattered by the desire among Romans for a hero to arise and save the republic in its darkest hours.

In the last 200 years of the Roman republic, many men vied for the honor of being Rome's savior. First came the Gracchi, brothers who attempted to reform Rome from within its existing institutions. But when the system stifled them, it fell to Rome's military heros to bring change. Marius and Sulla fought for and over Rome, causing a bloody civil war that laid down an example of dictatorial rule that Pompey Magnus and Julius Caesar happily followed. Sixty years of bloody, internal conflict, of plots and counter plots, of dictators and disbanded senates that finally culminated in the assassination of Julius Caesar, the end of the republic and the rise of a new Rome under Augustus, its last savior. These events leave us with one unavoidable conclusion; those who fought to save the Republic ended up destroying it.

Rubicon is a vivid history of the final century and a half of the Roman Republic told through the deeds of its prime movers. Mr. Holland's lively prose keeps the reader thoroughly engaged while he conveys a wealth of information on Rome's culture and customs, its religions and institutions, its seductions and its sins. He pleasingly balances the portraits of his Roman actors against the kings and rebels who threatened them from every side. But perhaps his greatest achievement, here, is in conveying the extent to which Romans eventually lost faith in their government and their constitution.

We hold our most treasured laws to be sacred and inviolate because to break them is to end their power forever. If the rule of law is suspended even once, the people will never be the same. For even when the rule of law is restored, they will not believe in it for they know that whenever the next crisis strikes, the rule of law will be suspended once more and they will suffer the consequences. There are certain truths and ideals that cannot be trampled without being broken. Unfortunately for Rome, powerful aristocrats, glory-seeking military heroes, and the corrupted politicians who enabled them both, succeeded in trampling all of Rome's sacred ideals. In doing so, they fractured their republic into warring factions while simultaneously draining away the people's faith in her institutions. War, death, decay, dissolution... Societies cannot exist without the faith of its citizens.

Though this is history at its grimmest, it is lively and superbly told. Mr. Holland does breeze over some of the more earth shattering events in Rome's final decades, but an excellent primer for anyone seeking to understand why Rome is so often compared to the United States. Similarities abound... Well-done. (4/5 Stars)

Dancing In The Glory Of Monsters by Jason K. Stearns

From The Week of November 28, 2011

While we can all agree that war is a hellish and barbaric business that has few peers as measured by sheer destructive power, there is, at least, an opportunity for some good to come of it. The conclusion of World War II begot the Martial Plan which quite literally paved the roads for a united Europe. Stretching farther back into history, the colonial Americans earning their independence from the British in their revolutionary war laid the philosophical and political foundation for a nation that would become the most dominant force here-to-for witnessed by human civilization. However, as often as these bloody and costly conflicts might lead to a brighter tomorrow, they can just as easily leave behind festering wounds in the bodies and the minds of the belligerents who prosecute them, wounds that must be answered and then answered in turn in what swiftly becomes a loop of mutual annihilation. Though it is perhaps too early to decide which camp the Great War of Africa belongs to, the early returns, based on the observations of Mr. Stearns, favor the devastation of the latter over the hope of the former.

For the 30 years following the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected president of an independent Congo, this enormous and geographically diverse country in Africa was ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko, a murderous and self-indulgent tyrant who systematically plundered his nations resources, oversaw the decay of the national infrastructure, violently suppressed any form of opposition by dividing and conquering his enemies, and sold out what was left to foreign interests that looked the other way while he languished at the head of his own private fiefdom. It will come as no surprise then to learn that when the Mobutu government did nothing to prevent his country from sheltering the instigators and the implementors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, his house of cards finally collapsed when the vengeful Rwandans poured into his country and backed his enemy, Laurent Kabila, all the way to Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, where he seized power in the name of a new Congo.

Any hope, however, that the Kabila government might open the doors to the cleansing winds of democracy for the Congo was short-lived. Having been profoundly and irreversibly shaped by his decades in exile, Kabila demonstrated a shocking inability to govern and an unwillingness to allow anyone else to do it for him. This destructive combination crippled the new Congo and, in 2001, Kabila was assassinated, to be replaced by his only marginally more successful son. Ultimately, the crisis which grew out of the attempt to transform the Congo into a democratic state drew in eight African nations and authored countless rebel groups which ground out a five-year conflict from 1998 to 2003 that claimed the lives of upwards of seven million souls, many of whom were extinguished by disease and starvation, the handmaidens of war. This is one reporter's reconstruction of those terrifying years and the uneasy peace which has followed them to the present day.

Mr. Stearns, a Yale-educated writer and reporter, has, here, chillingly captured the costliest conflict since World War II. Marked by the chaos of shifting alliances and complicated rivalries, the author condenses a war that almost defies narrative into a dense but coherent series of events so tragic that they cause Mr. Stearns himself to wonder if the Congo is simply cursed, a country blessed with natural resources that must, nonetheless endure the corrosive caress of greed and rapaciousness. Yes, the work, at times, requires one to pause and consult Wikipedia as a means of digesting so many bloody events, but the portrait the author paints, of numerous, barely democratic governments clashing over both spilled blood and the riches of the Congo, is exquisite. He has clearly depicted the multitude of selfish ends that drove the instigators of this conflict and their failings which prevent it from being brought to anything like a fair and democratic conclusion.

Rarely has the Paradox of Plenty been more devastatingly exemplified. At times overwhelming, but otherwise a powerful reconstruction of what must surely be one of the most chaotic and despotic wars of recent memory. (4/5 Stars)

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

From The Week of October 24, 2011

As much as humans can be conditioned to endure almost any discomfort, let there be no doubt that the emotion that drives us through all of life's challenges is love. It can take any of a hundred forms, manifesting as love of country, of ideology, of family, even of ones own labor. But regardless of its shape, it is equally powerful in all its guises. Without it, we are nothing but aimless animals. With it, we can endure any wound or torment, no matter its variety or severity. Few stories can claim to make this point with more clarity and gravity than this quiet, autumnal epic from Mr. Frazier.

As the American Civil War grinds to a bloody and inevitable conclusion, W. P. Inman, a young soldier who has only reluctantly fought for the all-but-defeated Confederacy, takes the opportunity of his convalescence in a military hospital to desert from the army. His intention is to return home to Cold Mountain, North Carolina, where he hopes to resume a pre-war romance begun with Ada, the intelligent but somewhat helpless daughter of a preacher. But in order to make this homecoming a reality, Inman must travel 250 difficult miles of treacherous country which, thanks to the war, has been stripped bare of all but those things essential for human survival. Not only must Inman complete this journey on foot, with only a pistol to help him hunt for the occasional game, he must also avoid the Home Guard, bands of Confederate loyalists who sweep the countryside in search of deserters who, upon being apprehended, are often executed as an example to any other soldiers who may be thinking of abandoning their sworn duty.

While Inman drives onward, through the endless obstacles that separate him from Ada, the object of his obsession and hope has her own problems. For her father, upon whom she depended for her survival, has died, leaving no one to upkeep Black Cove, their sprawling and now idle farm. Ada, at a loss for how to proceed with making the place viable, is on the verge of surrender when Ruby, a wiry vagabond, falls into her life. In exchange for Black Cove's roof over her head, Ruby willingly teaches Ada the basics of farmwork. It will take a number of seasons, but together they are determined to make a going concern of the place, to raise it up into a level of prosperity that will banish memories of the dark days of the war.

As Inman draws closer to Ada, and as the war shudders into its final, costly days, life has never seemed harder. Nonetheless, in spite of the fact that Ada has all-but forgotten the boy who left for war four years ago, Inman will not stop until he is home. Brigands, Home Guard, even starvation, all must fall before him for he has a love to find and a home to claim in his beloved Cold Mountain.

The winner of the 1998 National Book Award, Cold Mountain is a novel of exquisite prose and muted emotions. Mr. Frazier has clearly spent countless hours in the dusty corners of library archives, memorizing 19th century texts for he has vividly captured the customs and the rhythms of the 1860s. Far from ever doubting the account's period authenticity, its finely crafted passages draw the reader down into a convincing world of love and war and the extent to which the former makes the latter seem both foolish and depraved. It is masterfully done.

However, while the work's epic structure and fine phrasing make it worthy of acclaim, the author fails to make Cold Mountain a visceral experience. The stoicism exhibited by Inman, Ada and Ruby in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges is commendable, but their lack of affect, their unflappable determination to carry on, reduces them to somewhat mechanical figures, puppets who only act when their strings are pulled by their masters. A measure of this was clearly deliberate on the part of the author who injected his tale with a remoteness meant to reflect both the physical desolation of the environment and the emotional desolation of the war, but the technique is, perhaps, too effective. It left me numbed to the plight of the play's main actors when I ought to have been deeply moved by their endurance.

Despite its tendency to anesthetize the reader, this is a fine work of historical fiction that will withstand the test of time. For it is so much of the period that a reader, ignorant to the date of its publication, might well imagine it a product of Reconstruction. Rare, epic work. Cormac McArthy without the emotional fire... (4/ Stars)