A Theory of Justice by John Rawls

From The Week of May 07, 2012

Though intelligence separated humanity from the animal kingdom, allowing us to invent the tools that would eventually steer us onto a new, evolutionary course of profound self-discovery and world domination, intelligence is but the key to a much greater lock, a necessity for the grander goal of society. For it is society that harnesses that raw intellect and capitalizes upon it, chronicling its many inventions and innovations and putting them to widespread use not only for the general advancement of all, but so that others might improve upon what came before, creating an endless chain of advancement that will one day elevate us to the stars. Without society, the genius of one is never remembered, savored only by those he happens to encounter. His death causes his knowledge to pass into the ether, obligating humanity to sputter along at a level not much higher than the apes from which we branched.

Being that society is critical to our development, it would be advantageous to discover society's ideal form. What rules should it enshrine? What principles should it uphold? Should it favor one class over another, or should everyone be equal? Should innovation be the cornerstone, or should it be the acquisition of knowledge that begets wisdom? Mr. Rawls, a famous 20th century philosopher, grapples with these vital questions in this his classic 1971 treatise on the ideal society.

From the principles of justice to the Veil of Ignorance, from the ethics of civil disobedience to the sins of freeloading, A Theory of Justice is Mr. Rawls' systematic attempt to logic out society's most beneficial form. To do so, he requests that the reader join him in a most detailed thought experiment. The reader is asked to imagine that he is society's ultimate architect, free to work upon a blank and perfectly malleable canvas. He is free to set any rule, to impose any right, to pass any law, to harbor any prejudice. He may shape and contort his society to his heart's content. However, there is one critical stipulation that he must adhere to while he molds his world.

Upon the completion of his experiment, when it comes time for the reader to enter his ideal society, he will do so without any knowledge of where, in that society, he will appear. He does not know what job he will hold, what family he will have, what class he will belong to, or what talents he will possess. He may be the highest of the high, or the lowest of the low. Over this one aspect of his experiment he has no control. With this veil of ignorance in mind, what will his original position be? Will he engineer a society that is fair, fearing that he might enter it as a drudge in need of external support? Or will he engineer an unequal society, trusting himself to rise on the back of his natural abilities? Will he enshrine equal rights to all as insurance against his position at the bottom, or will he opt for unequal rights, confident the powerful will not need such flimsy protections?

Though A Theory of Justice is a challenging read, written more for the benefit of the author's colleagues than it is for the layman, it is nonetheless a powerfully persuasive piece of political philosophy. The Veil of Ignorance, an idea as revolutionary for philosophy as Einsteinian Relativity was for physics, is surely one of the 20th century's most powerful thought experiments. For it forces the reader to recognize that birth is random, that the extent to which we succeed is at least partially based on the luck of the draw, and that opportunity has a huge bearing on our quality of life. Taken altogether, these principles demand that we examine anew our successes, not only to be thankful for the moments in which we were helped by others to achieve our dreams, but in order to recognize that whatever we are is as much to the credit of others as it is to the credit of ourselves. This notion has widespread implications for our future and the societies it will birth.

As much as this work is understandably dominated by the Veil of Ignorance experiment, it is as much a 600-page logistical construct that makes a profound and profoundly simple argument for equality. While we know that society cannot grant us all equal shares of resources or income -- endeavoring to do so is nightmarishly complicated and utterly senseless --, we do all wish to live in a society with equal rights to liberty, to conscience, to life. So how do we justify creating a society that has equal rights but not equal opportunity? By creating a society whose laws, institutions and instruments are designed to consider first the least among us. For to do otherwise is to not only consign the most vulnerable among us to short, pain-filled lives, it is to abandon even the conceit of the notion that society is based on logic and reason.

A Theory of Justice is, at times, interminable and insufferable, a volley of intellectual arrows fired at targets most of us will never meet or know. But within its megalithic logic there are shattering truths that possess the power to reform the reader's conception of society and fairness. In this, it is deeply and enduringly transformative. (4/5 Stars)

The Shaol Sequence Trilogy by Gary Gibson

From The Week of April 30, 2012

Though colonialism has left behind a legacy of racism, classism and economic decay from which half the world is still trying to make a slow, painful recovery, its practice nonetheless imparted one enduring lesson that humanity would do well never to forget. In the name of self-preservation, of ourselves and our society, our interests and our resources, we will do anything. There is no crime too heinous, no betrayal too bitter, no compromise too dark, capable of dissuading us from preserving that which we consider ours.

If we are willing, in the name of ideology, to send our young off to die in the jungles of foreign wars just as readily as we are willing, in the name of self-interest, to make deals with the devils of our world, so long as they benefit us, then we certainly won't hesitate to exploit inferior societies with whatever technological advantages we have over them, not even if those advantages are nuclear, capable of annihilating entire populations when deployed. Though Mr. Gibson's cyberpunk-inspired space opera is packed with action and aliens, alliances and betrayals, this enduring truth is what underpins his epic. He uses it to thoughtful effect.

By the 26th century, life has become complicated for the human race. Having taken to the stars and colonized over a dozen worlds, humanity ought to be prospering thanks to a wide array of technologies which have improved the quality of life of its many members. However, all of this prosperity is contingent on a single technology, faster-than-light travel, a feat of engineering that, though still beyond human understanding, is essentially leased from the Shaol, an imperious aquatic species as long-lived as they are mysterious. Aware that they have humanity over the proverbial barrel, the Shaol can essentially write the treaties they have with humanity and the other races in the local arm of the galaxy, laying down terms they know their client races will tolerate in exchange for interstellar transportation.

One such Shaol stipulation allows them to evict their client races from their own colonies if said colonies are less than 20 years old. This mysterious clause is more of a curiosity to humanity until, for the first time in their history, the Shaol invoke it, forcing a human colony to relocate to Redstone, a human world dominated by a violent strain of political libertarianism that has inculcated its subjects with a dangerous bellicosity that, perversely, may eventually prove the downfall of the Shaol.

In Stealing Light, the sequence's first instalment, we meet the trilogy's three main actors. Dakota Merrick is a Machine Head, a military pilot who has been augmented with surgical implants that allow her to telepathically communicate with her craft. A human, deeply scarred by a genocidal incident in her past, she is manipulated, by some of Redstone's most virulent leaders, into hiring onto a mission to excavate an ancient, derelict spacecraft from the depths of a dead world.

On this mission, she meets Lucas Corso, one of Redstone's beleaguered academics. A scholar of ancient languages, Corso is blackmailed by the Redstone faction leading the expedition which requires his expertise to break the codes that have locked away the Derelict's systems for all these countless centuries. Understandably reluctant to cooperate with his enemies, he eventually finds an ally in the mission's strange machine-head pilot, but will they be able to overcome their distrust to extricate themselves from their bondage?

Though the mission is meant to be a secret from the Shaol, it is closely monitored by one of their oldest and most highly ranked members. Fearful of the consequences to the Shaol should the Redstone faction succeed in harnessing this ancient power, he attempts to steer events to a more satisfactory conclusion, but it may well be that not even his legendary experience can bring fate to heel.

In Nova War, the sequence's second entry, events have overtaken the ability of any faction to control. For a new alien race has appeared on the scene. The Emissaries From God are enormous beings whose destructive powers are on par with their religious zealotry. Here-to-for kept from human space by the machinations of the Shaol, they have surprised their old enemies with their proficiency and their willingness to weaponize faster-than-light technology to devastating effect. Intent upon destroying the derelict, and its kind, that Dakota and Lucas have worked so hard to understand, they will stop at nothing, no depravity, no amount of annihilation, in order to realize their merciless vision of the universe.

In Empire of Light, the trilogy is brought to a shattering conclusion when the Shaol and the Emissaries From God engage in a contest for the local arm of the galaxy, a conflict that promises to leave subordinate races on both sides devastated, their home systems laid waste by weapons of unimaginable power. Within this Long War, as it comes to be called, Merrick and Corso, now powers in their own right, struggle to steer the war away from its apocalyptic conclusion by pursuing a dangerous but critical piece of technology that is more myth than reality. Should they locate it and bring it under their command, then perhaps the long night ahead of all the known races can be avoided and something like sanity restored to all the parties involved.

Though plagued, at times, by poor pacing and repetitive plot elements, The Shaol Sequence loudly hits most of the notes it aims for. Having clearly drawn inspiration from the uneasy nuclear peace that troubles our own world, Mr. Gibson is successful in his attempt to broaden the question of nuclear deterrence, inject it with galactic gravitas and then position it at the philosophical heart of what is otherwise a futuristic techno-thriller. When technological innovation outstrips our wisdom and our morality, what do we do? When we invent weapons that have the capacity to annihilate us all, and then hand those weapons over to an elite over whom we have remarkably little sway, what is the expected outcome? These fascinating and momentous quandries are imagined and then spun out, to devastating effect, across a lively universe.

But as much as these philosophical musings lend the trilogy some intellectual heft, they cannot entirely rescue it from its myriad flaws. Mr. Gibson subjects his characters to amounts of abuse that, by the series' conclusion, have reached the ridiculous. Worse, when his characters understandably seek revenge for the stupendous violence heaped upon them, the author shamelessly manipulates events to block them from fulfilling their desires. Yes, all plot is, in some sense, a manipulation of events in order to reach an imagined conclusion; Mr. Gibson is merely following in the footsteps of a few thousand years of dramatic tradition. However, the extent to which he clumsily fails to hide these deus-ex-machina contortions leave the reader both frustrated and annoyed by the unrealistic circumstances his characters find themselves in. This, along with the author's inability to give depth to his universe, beyond the template necessary to tell his story,, burden the work.

Its challenges aside, The Shaol Sequence is quality science fiction. While a sizeable swath of the galaxy is being loudly and obnoxiously pounded into oblivion, the author's protagonists and his questions of morality and power are, respectively, pleasingly flawed and eminently engaging. A solid diversion... (3/5 Stars)

The Man Without A Face by Masha Gessen

From The Week of April 30, 2012

Of all the many maladies that can afflict society, corruption must be considered among the most destructive. By allowing power to be channeled into the hands of a handful of elites, it hampers economic growth and institutionalizes complacency and inequality, grim realities which not only discourage innovation and progress, but sap the will of those laboring to make positive change in a stagnant system. While some societies can recall better and fairer pasts to help fight darker presents, others lack this encouraging history to draw upon. These nations have struggled with corruption for the entirety of their existences. Their citizens are only aware of a better way through witnessing it in other nations, countries where the history is not so stark and the present not so hopeless.

How does this corruption arise? More over, how is it extracted once it has taken root? Who are the men and women who nurture it and who are those best positioned to attack it? In this biography of Vladimir Putin and the Russia he's made, Ms. Gessen asks these questions and more. Her answers are not always so clear.

Born into modest circumstances, far from the halls of power, no one could have imagined, much less predicted, the rise to prominence of Vladimir Putin, the now three-term president of a new, authoritarian Russia. Diminutive and pugnacious, he was, admittedly, a thug, a self-interested adolescent searching for somewhere to belong in the troubled USSR of the 1970s and 1980s. After a handful of false starts, he would eventually enter into a mutually beneficial marriage with the KGB, the infamous Russian spy service, a relationship that would endure for decades and see him trained and embedded into various governmental posts while the Soviet Union died and gave birth to a new, oligarchical Russia.

Invested with the hopes of desperate Yeltsin loyalists, Putin completed his rise to power in 1999 when he was tapped to succeed the unpopular president. It would take him only a matter of months to betray that faith, engineering convenient crises which he then used to roll back the political reforms of the 1990s. This centralization of power into the hands of the Russian president, completed by 2003, shifted the balance of power in the world's largest country, jeopardizing the interests of powerful oligarchs who were instructed to either get in line or suffer the wrath of Russia's newest Czar. For while this new Russia was definitely not the Soviet Union of distant memory, its tactics were no less deadly, leaving no room for dissidents unwilling to play by the rules of Vladimir Putin.

Penned by a Russian journalist, The Man Without A Face leaves the reader in no doubt of its position on Vladimir Putin and the new Russia. An outspoken critic of Putin's heavy-handed presidency, Ms. Gessen does her best to piece together the admittedly sketchy histories of the rise of Putin and the fall of the Soviet Union, contemporaneous events which fuelled the birth of the new, corrupted Russian state. Though the absence of corroborative accounts hinders her effort to create a definitive biography of the man or the dying regime, she nonetheless lays down a logical narrative deeply informed by the thoroughly documented terrorist incidents that plagued Russia in the early aughts. Putin's abominable responses to these attacks, attacks he likely had a hand in creating in the first place, are rendered, here, in chilling detail, dispelling any questions the reader might have about Putin's willingness to act, at any cost, in the advancement of himself and his strongman agenda.

There's no doubt that The Man Without A Face suffers from the deceptions and the confusion that surround Putin's rise. Ms. Gessen is forced to rely on accepted history and the personal recollections of a handful of compromised witnesses to key events. This is far from ideal for it leaves the author too much room to guess and pontificate, to reaffirm her own biases. However, for all these drawbacks, the author has nonetheless built upon the work of others to make a devastating case against Vladimir Putin, a case there's no doubt he will ignore. For while the faces and the ideologies are different, this is the same Russia in one respect. Corruption is still rampant, corruption which gives the elites a great deal to protect. And when they stand to lose so much, there is very little they are not willing to do in the name of power and self-preservation.

quality work troubled by its suppositions. (3/5 Stars)

Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon

From The Week of April 30, 2012

Despair has many faces. It lives in the crumbling facades of vacant buildings relinquished to economic decay. It beds down with the homeless, encouraging them to surrender to the cruel vicissitudes of fate. It aids criminals, allowing them to take financial nourishment from the hopeless. And it saps at the will of those good souls who try to make a difference. Despair is not only pernicious, it's cancerous, metastasizing through the body of society until it's driven its corrupting tentacles into every aspect of life.

For all of despair's power, it can be attacked. After all, it does not just appear from nowhere; it has a source from which its darkness flows. But what is that source? We may have our own opinions, but they will not sway Mr. Simon. For he is firmly, and understandably, convinced that this despair flows from institutions which all-too-rarely function as they ought. Homicide is a masterful illustration of his contention.

The year is 1987 and Baltimore, Maryland's largest city, is awash in corpses. Stabbed and beaten, shot and crushed, they appear crumpled on her streets, sprawled on the floors of her apartments, and abandoned like trash in her alleys. Young and old, male and female, gangsters and citizens, they are Baltimore's murdered, victims of a thousand crimes. Some were felled by a more violent culture while others were ruined by an ever-more competitive drug trade. Some were cut down out of opportunism while others were discarded by whim. Whatever the cause, whatever the circumstance, they will all, more than 200 of them this calendar year, find their way into the minds and the casefiles of the homicide division of the Baltimore Police Department.

Overworked and underpaid, plagued by problematic bosses and burdened by foolish policies, they are the men and women who labor to solve murders in one of America's most violent cities. Every day, they are called into Baltimore's poverty-riddled streets, to bloody crime scenes with bodies chalked out in the dust. And from this, they must find truth, to pull it from silent witnesses and lying relatives, to lift it from trace evidence and leaps of logic, to rest from the cosmos the knowledge necessary to collar a murderer. After all, a society that allows its killers to roam free, unafraid of the long arm of the law, is no society at all.

In Homicide, Mr. Simon, then a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, chronicles his year attached to the homicide division of the BPD. For twelve long months, he rides in their cars, drinks with them at their bars, watches them in their interrogations and looks on as they collar their suspects. Night after night, case after case, he is a witness to men and women who overcome all of the obstructions placed before them to find some measure of justice for the fallen. This accumulated experience, the joyous and the painful, the exquisite and tragic, he bundles together, forms into a coherent narrative and lays down in this 600-page paean to police work in "the darkest corner of the American experiment."

Had Homicide merely liberated police work from the cliches of television, it would have been a success. Had it merely built on this achievement by painting vivid portraits of the colorful murder police who roamed Baltimore's streets in the final years of the 20th century, it'd be wonderfully instructive. In Homicide Mr. Simon digs deeper, beneath the cases and the headlines, the criminals and their pursuers, to mine deeper truths, that we are all part of a corrupt system; that systems generally, no matter how large, are corruptible; that to sin against those few souls who try to keep the system functioning is itself criminal; and that to fail to recognize this, to fail to act against this corruption, is not only a sin against those who are murdered and victimized by the system and its policies, it's a crime against those few brave and battered souls who risk their lives and their mental health in order to keep the system functional. This is why Mr. Simon's work here rises to the level of masterpiece. It is why The Wire is, even years after concluding its run, still considered by the wise to be one of the most powerful television shows in living memory.

A read made both momentous and memorable by its subjects, its themes, its world, and its author's devastating prose. Outstanding work... (5/5 Stars)

The Darkness That Comes Before: The Prince Of Nothing 01 by R. Scott Bakker

From The week of April 23, 2012

Though the countless generations of humanity that have lived across the centuries have little of custom or culture in common, they do each share one disturbing characteristic. Each generation produces, at one point or another, a few tortured souls who believe that the apocalypse is nigh, that the world they know so well is ending, and that only they are capable of warning the poor, ignorant masses of their collective fate. We may, at some point, discover the source of the strange, existential impulse that empowers this eschatology, but such knowledge is almost secondary to a deeper truth, that, on some profound level, we must simultaneously want and fear the end of the world and whatever that may herald for ourselves and those we love. We must want, in short, to live in interesting times, to play our parts in an epic drama that dwarfs all else that has come before.

In all this desire, though, in all this fervor for the end times, do the doomsdayers truly comprehend what they are anticipating? Can they grasp the bloodshed, the chaos, and the darkness that would arise from an actual apocalypse? And if so, would they rue what they were so eager to declare? This apocalyptic novel from Mr. Bakker leaves little doubt that heralds of end times are but children playing with shadows, that true darkness is far more profound and fearsome than any of us can imagine.

On a world riven by magic and faith, destiny and prophecy, sorcerers, priests and emperors vie for control of Eaerwa, a diverse continent home to both urban cities and rural steps, self-indulgent nobles and war-hardened tribesmen. Of course, Eaerwa wasn't always so ripe for power-plays. Not 2,000 years earlier, it was all-but-depopulated by the First Apocalypse, a continental conflict that turned both the people and their culture to ashes. But the passing of two millennia has not only restored imperial government and mercantile trade to the land, it has allowed the lessons of the past to slip into shadow, forgotten by competing forces whose yearning for power and dominance compel them to violent action.

The result is the Holy War, a conflict that pits two deeply divergent sects of the same faith against one another in hopes of reclaiming a city holy to both sides. But though this conflict is bound to claim the lives of countless souls, selling their families and the continent at large into economic and social chaos, it is almost secondary to deeper forces at play, forces that are awakening after centuries of being thought banished or dead. And for all of the terrors war can summon, they are as nothing to the nightmares this new darkness heralds. A second apocalypse is imminent, ready to return this still wounded world to rubble.

The first instalment of an ambitious trilogy, The Darkness That Comes Before is a fascinating piece of fantasy fiction that arguably has more in common with epic poems and Greek tragedies than it does with its genre's customary fare. Rife with philosophy and violence, it is both sacred and profane, as drenched in the fanaticism of zealots as it is the opportunism of tyrants attempting to capitalize on such faith. In this, it is an deeply political novel that boldly sets out to suck the reader down into a world as intensely drawn as it is utterly foreign, a world of godlike magicians and beleaguered whores, spoiled emperors and holy prophets. These opposing and competing forces occupy the heart of this blood-soaked work, fighting for dominance over a sprawling and, at times, bewildering tale.

But as much as Mr. Bakker succeeds in injecting his fiction with the philosophy of high literature, as much as he manages to bring Eaerwa to light in all its complex depravity, The Darkness That Comes Before is nonetheless a decidedly unlikeable novel. Its characters are all-but-universally hateful. Yes, there are moments when Mr. Bakker's protagonists manage to elevate themselves from the mire, but even these moments are characterized by despair, confusion, and an overriding sense of doom. There is not a spark of joy to be found anywhere within these 700 unpleasant pages.

Mr. Bakker should be commended for his achievements here. It is a rare talent who can conceive of such a rich world and animate it with such violent flair. But his characters are mere two-dimensional puppets, pieces to be moved on the cosmic chessboard. The author never allows his readers to empathize with them, let alone love or admire them. All such emotion is lost in the everpresent sense of gloom and repulsiveness that clings to each of his actors who are, for all their sweat and toil, uncompelling.

For me, the journey ends here. For what Mr. Bakker forgot, in the creation of his nuanced world, was to imprint upon his story something like a reason for the reader to keep turning the page. For all its art, distasteful and disappointing... (2/5 Stars)

Drift by Rachel Maddow

From The week of April 23, 2012

Of all the institutions spawned by human civilization, the military must surely be considered among the most consequential. For other than the nation state, no organization has done more to influence the tide of history. Across the millennia, countless men have been assembled, armed and trained in the art of war which is nothing less than the force that shapes our world. The military gathers up men from different faiths and backgrounds, generations and dispositions, and forges among them unbreakable bonds of brotherhood that transcend all other temporal ties. But for all its power, the military has a dark side as well. For powerful institutions attract those who wish to wield power over them, take them into their hands and steer them as they see fit. The military is a weapon in the arsenal of politicians and visionaries, a tool capable of flattening any opposition in its path. Consequently, how and why it is used is a matter of critical importance. Ms. Maddow illustrates.

Since the advent of World War II, the United States has made it a mission to perfect the art of war. Bringing to bear proficiencies in science, engineering and tactics, this nation has, over the last 60 years, created the most powerful and technologically advanced war machine our world has ever seen. And it hasn't been afraid to use this supreme weapon either, engaging in dozens of conflicts, large and small, over the latter half of the 20th century, both in the name of liberty and its own self-interest. At one time, these wars required the full mobilization of the homefront to prosecute. They required munitions factories to be built and worked, food distribution systems to be re-doubled and re-routed, civil defense forces to be trained and outfitted, all while regular citizens were called away from their families and their jobs to fight and die in distant lands, under different suns. No longer...

Now, in the 21st century, in a world of private contractors and Predator drones, in a world of unlimited credit and overmatched foes, the United States can fight its wars without the bad PR of flag-draped caskets. It can engage in operations all over the world without having to spend the political capital associated with Drafting private citizens. Relying on its reservists to faithfully and uncomplainingly execute dozens of deployments to the world's conflict zones, it can outsource all the burden of fighting a war upon a tiny percentage of its population, leaving the rest to go peacefully about the business of their lives.

How did this happen? How did the United States go from the general mobilization of the Second World War to relying upon less than one percent of its population to prosecute wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? With admirable doggedness, Ms. Maddow reaches back across 60 years of military and political history to, step by painful step, reconstruct the fateful decisions that gradually uncoupled the United States from its military. From the demagoguery of Ronald Reagan to the political expediency of George H. W. Bush,she describes how a succession of powerful presidents overpowered a succession of compliant congresses to get what they felt was their right, the use of military force against their country's enemies without having to bow to the constraints of the Constitution. At the same time, Ms. Maddow describes the many efforts made, from the Abrams Doctrine to the War Powers Act, to halt this dangerous uncoupling. But not even these bulwarks have withstood the desire of powerful men to command the most menacing military the world has ever seen.

Drift is an exceptional read. With a mixture of sardonic humor and cutting sarcasm, Ms. Maddow pillories the self-interest of the numerous presidents whose combined efforts succeeded in resting control of the military out of the public eye and into the private sphere where its influence could be deployed without fear of political fallout. In this, the author is far from partisan, measuring Bill Clinton for as much scorn as she does Bush Senior. If her liberal leanings show at all, it is in the length of time she devotes to savaging Ronald Reagan whose actions here comprise about a third of the narrative. However, the 1980s were a pivotal time in the separation Ms. Maddow is highlighting. And so most of her fire reads as warranted rather than political.

Ms. Maddow has raised, here, a vital concern, one that has been rarely discussed. Given its importance, she should be commended. However, the extent to which she downplays the role technology has played in her tale is problematic. Yes, political expediency has clearly been the primary cause for why much of the United States military has been privatized, but technology has also made it much easier for military power to be exercised in parts of the world where there are few American boots on the ground. Her unwillingness to incorporate technology into her explanatory narrative prevents Drift from fully grasping a complex and worrisome issue.

This is frightening work. The idea that this much power can be concentrated in the hands of so few should sober us all. It certainly will trouble those who consume this worthy read and stay with them for some time to come. As slickly written as it is compellingly argued... (4/5 Stars)

A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts by Christiane Bird

From The week of April 23, 2012

The freedom to live as we choose, unconstrained by the tyrannical whims of the few, is humanity's deepest desire. Food may satiate our hunger and water quench our thirst, but only liberty can satisfy our souls. For notwithstanding the unproven promises of religion, we each have but one life to spend in this world of varied treasures. TO waste that gift in political bondage, forced to labor at the behest of others, is a crime against us all.

Many of us understand this truth intellectually, having had its wisdom handed down to us from the visionaries who fought for and enshrined our freedom, but we do not truly understand it. We cannot taste it for we have not had it ripped from us. No, to truly understand freedom, we must look to those who have lived and toiled beyond the protection of liberty's shadow. Who better to teach us then the Kurds, masters of living at the behest of abusive powers greater than they. Ms. Bird elucidates.

A land of mountains and deserts, tribes and rebellions, Kurdistan is home to the largest population of stateless citizens in the world and is, consequently, one of its most cursed regions. Surrounded by Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, it is beset on all sides by strife, quarrelsome nations who have, at various times, slaughtered its people, coveted its oil, suppressed its language and pilloried its culture, all in the name of self-interest. Not all of these attacks have been malevolent in nature. Some have arisen out of earnest desires to forge new national identities and modernize the region. However, though these assaults may forego the warlike depravities of other attacks, they are nonetheless destructive, tearing at the fabric of Kurdish life unto extinction.

Far from suffering these attacks meekly, the Kurds have violently resisted the efforts of their neighbors to claim their lands and steal their resources. Many of their sons and daughters have built strongholds in these mountains from which reprisals can be launched in the name of Kurdistan which, for decades now, has been nothing more than an idea, a region without a nation, a people without a home. It is into this churning sea of conflicting forces that Ms. Bird plunges her readers headlong. Over many trips and many months, she absorbs Kurdish culture, immerses herself in Kurdish life and is hosted by Kurdish people eager for their stories of love and betrayal to be heard by the broader world. Beginning with Kurdish-controlled cities which preserve the purest form of Kurdish culture, she soon travels to the Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian controlled fragments of Kurdistan, documenting the various ways in which these nations have received and treated their Kurdish minorities. What emerges is a diary of 21st century Kurdish life that is, in every respect, unforgettable.

A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts is a mesmerizing documentation of a people scarred by war and poisoned by tyranny. Ms. Bird, a western journalist, largely foregoes grizzly reconstructions of the various atrocities the Kurds have suffered. Instead, like a photographer of culture, she takes snapshots of the Kurdish people, allowing their tortured faces and their resilient souls to speak for themselves. Through these faces, these lives, we come to comprehend the rhythm of life in fractured Kurdistan: the burdens of the past they bear, the political challenges they face, and the fear of an uncertain future they confront. All this is made painfully and vividly clear while Ms. Bird's narrative introduces us to to the people, the culture, the language, the religion and the society of a civilization at risk of being ground to dust by the powerful, conflicting forces surrounding it.

Though A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts is not precisely a history of the Kurds, it serves the same purpose. For it introduces us to a beautiful and beleaguered people who have been betrayed so many times, by so many different nations, that it's a wonder they have the will to carry on. And yet, these experts in suffering are revealed, here, to have the endurance of saints and the industriousness of builders, proving, once and for all, that, though the strong body can be broken, the strong spirit cannot be made to wither.

Exceptional work that is outshined only by the amazing souls it uncovers... (5/5 Stars)