The filth and the power of hydrocarbons explored in Freese's Coal

From The Week of April 8, 2013

Everything runs on energy. From the lightest atom to the heaviest black hole, every organism, every system, cannot exist without some means of excitation, some motive force that allows it to act, that allows it to survive. Without energy, our universe would be a cold, dark, empty space, a lifeless cavern of scattered debris that once was something. And if this truth applies to galaxies, then it certainly applies to human civilizations which are just as voracious, just as greedy, merely on an considerably smaller scale. It follows, then, that few things are as vital to civilization's continuity than energy, the harnessing of which can be complicated both conceptually and morally. This much Barbara Freese captures well in her engaging biography of one of humanity's oldest and most powerful sources of energy.

For centuries now, coal has quite literally lit the world. The condensed remains of organic life millions of years dead and buried, it was once considered nothing more than an ornamentation, indistinguishable from jet by past civilizations that never made insight into coal's enormous potential. For when burned, coal releases its dense storage of hydrocarbons in the form of heat, energy that not only ignited stoves and empowered steamships, but lend its might to the Industrial Revolution. Over the subsequent generations, coal became a ubiquitous, and seemingly endless, source of energy which eventually culminated in a move out of the homes of everyday citizens and into the mighty fire chambers of powerplants which converted this energy into electricity for advancing societies.

Initially, coal was used without compunction by people who saw only its potential, not its price. Gradually, though, with our improving understanding of science and the environment, as our many, historical delusions fell before objective truth, we came to understand that coal was not only limited in supply but terrible in nature. For along with energy, the burning of coal releases immense amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas that, traditionally, has been kept in careful check by a climate accustomed to balancing Oxygen and CO2 levels across geologic timescales. However, with the wholesale use of the planet's store of coal, that climate check is being threatened with an unmanageable amount of CO2 that might well have the power to forever transform our world.

From its earliest moments on the human stage to its most recent threats to destabilize the climate, Coal is a fascinating chronicle of humanity's relationship with this most advantageous and dangerous resource. Ms. Freese engagingly narrates centuries of human history as it pertains to coal, culminating in a fascinating and sobering description of the powerplants which, today, devour it at a frighteningly unsustainable rate. She highlights how coal once darkened every industrialized sky and hardened every industrialized lung, an inescapable scourge that occupied the thoughts and fears of millions. This sets up a potent punchline, that the centralization of coal burning -- its movement from homes to powerplants -- allowed the people to forget its costs while enjoying its benefits, a Faustian bargain that may well be fatal for our civilization.

Coal is inarguably at its best, however, when detailing the social price of coal's extraction. Ms. Freese devotes entire chapters to the conditions under which coal was literally unearthed by countless miners who risked life and limb to excavate it, not to mention the children who were tasked to keep such mines operational at a time before technology saved us from our lack of conscience. None of the facts presented here are entirely unknown to us, but their presentation wonderfully illustrates just how much of our ethics humans are willing to sacrifice in the name of comfort, convenience and power.

Coal is not without its flaws. Ms. Freese devotes entirely too much time to coal's evolution in the west, in particular, Britain and the united States. Other than an all-too-brief chapter on the Chinese relationship with coal, her account makes it seem as though only these two nations have had any influence on coal, its excavation and its use. This seems awfully narrow for a tome that purports to contain the human history of coal. What's more, the geological roots of coal, while explained, are skimmed over, especially relative to the environmentalism which, while welcomed and well-argued, is less interesting than evolution and hydrocarbons.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Coal is a brief and edifying look at a material absolutely essential to the production of electricity that our civilization uses in such abundance. In this, Ms. Freese's work succeeds on its merits. Engaging if somewhat limited... (3/5 Stars)

Humor, tragedy and social injustice in the excellent The Observations

From The Week of April 1, 2013

We are what we make of ourselves, not what others make of us. This is a fundamental truth of human existence that seems, today, inarguable. And yet, for centuries, it was rejected for a more convenient truth, chiefly, that we are born into the fates and the circumstances that suit our personalities. If a man was born into a life of slavery, then that was what he was best suited for. Similarly, if a woman was born to a life of prostitution, then her character was capable of nothing else.

The appeal of this view is obvious, for it re-affirms to the holder that their world is exactly as it should be. To view the slave or the prostitute as we would, that they were forced into those circumstances by ill fortune and socioeconomic pressures beyond their control, would shatter the holder's conception of the world, would reveal to them the fundamental unfairness of their society and would call upon them to change a system that would have seemed to them monolithic. So they wrapped themselves in their biases and condemned untold millions to proscribed lives. This unbearable narrowness of life is beautifully, and humorously, captured in Jane Harris' outstanding novel.

The year is 1863 and life for a poor Irish girl, trying to make her way in Scotland, is far from easy. And yet, this is the lot of Bessy buckley, the Catholic daughter of a woman of ill repute and dark disposition who, alone and sixteen, is attempting to find a place that will allow her to get ahead in the protestant world. Made aware of a job opening in what she imagines to be a castle, young Bessy stumbles, starving, into an estate outside of Glasgow where she encounters the intellectual wife of a lawyer who offers Bessy everything she could want: a wage, a roof and all the food she could desire. Only, as with everything in life, there are certain...strings.

At first, Bessy imagines she can cope with the lady's odd requests. Beginning a daily diary and handing it over to the lady isn't terribly onerous. Nor is acceding to the lady's desire to take every conceivable measurement of her head and body. But when Bessy learns the truth, that she is little more than a pawn in a demeaning game, she's had enough. And her response will set into motion a chain of events that not even she can imagine.

A finalist for the Orange prize, The Observations is first rate historical fiction. Narrated in Bessy's mesmerizing brogue, it exquisitely animates 19th-century Britain in all its narrowminded, classist claptrap, revealing, through Bessy's sharpness of mind and wit, the depths of her society's idiocy. This, naturally, is thanks to the skillful and steady hand of its author, Ms. Harris, who possesses not only a keen eye for the entwined polarities of humor and tragedy, but the the often-times devastating consequences of cause and effect. She deserves, here, every bit of acclaim that has and will come to her.

Of the work's many virtues, though, none shine more brightly than the degree to which it demonstrates the travesty of a society, and a culture, that invests importance in classes and casts. The notion that we somehow deserve, or are tailored for, our lots in life is laughable now that we understand that we are born to a particular life, but that we are shaped by the circumstances into which we are born. Thus, if we are born of tailors, and our society makes it difficult or even impossible to rise above our station, then of course we too will be tailors. We have no other option. But rather than comprehending this obvious truth, Victorian Britain goes the other way, believing that people wind up in the occupations they are made for, awfully convenient for a society trying to justify its unimaginable disparities in income, privilege and opportunity. And yet, though society is inarguably damaged by this reality, the people are moreso. For the women who wish to be scientists are barred from that life. And the poor men with keen minds for finance and politics are cordoned off from the halls of power. The misery of people forced to endure lives unsuited to their natural talents is unimaginable.

The Observations has its shaky moments. Its plot is, at times, too tidy, with every piece fitting neatly into place, holding little of the messiness of real life. Moreover, its resolution strikes this reader has too hopeful for the time and place. And yet, even these flaws seem like small sacrifices in the name of irony and poetic justice, virtues that Ms. Harris puts to good purpose throughout.

A deeply enjoyable romp through a tragically narrow world. It won't soon be forgotten... (4/5 Stars)

Human folly and the power of Malaria clash in Shah's The Fever

From The Week of April 1, 2013

From trees to tigers, from eagles to kelp, evolution has shaped our world for billions of years. Without it, Earth would be little more than a volcanically active water world with a few single-celled organisms listlessly occupying various oceanic vents and superficial pools. There would be no other life, nothing to revel and no one to do the revelling. It is, then, a necessary driver of permanent change. But for all that humanity would not exist without evolution's many gifts, it also presents some problems. For what worked to create us can just as easily work to create things to kill us. Evolution was not a means to our end. It is a means to the development of life. And for all that we may have outpaced our fellow species on the race to intellect, we have not, and never will, corner the market on the right to exist. This is made chillingly clear in Sonia Shah's sweeping biography of a most pernicious and persistent disease.

For nearly half the lifespan of the human species, Malaria has infected our world. Generated from pools of stagnant water in which mosquito larvae happily grow, this crippling illness spreads from these humid nurseries in the saliva of female mosquitos who, with every successful attack upon a living target, inject Malaria's devastating payload into the bloodstreams of their unwitting victims. From there, the disease spreads to the liver, a base from which it can, over the next few weeks, cause havoc to its host, lashing it with debilitating fevers and headaches which, if sufficiently severe, can be fatal. Even if malaria was self-aware, though, it would not care about these consequences of its existence. For its only purpose is to exist. And this it achieves by infecting the blood of the host, blood which is then slurped up by other mosquitos eager for a meal.

So what can be done about this? Ever since humanity has had the tools to battle disease, it has been fighting Malaria. But though there have been soem successes in creating medicines that armor uninfected hosts against Malaria's impact, there is, as yet, no vaccine. Worse yet, some of the agents developed to fight Malaria have strengthened the disease, bestowing it with teeth it once did not require. Failures in the medicinal front have turned inquisitive minds to the prospect of chemically eradicating Malaria's delivery system, the mosquito, efforts that famously culminated in the widespread application of DDT, a wonder insecticide that soon proved to be a poison chalice. Hopes remain for a vaccine, but until then malaria persists, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives a year.

Depicting the pathological, sociological, medical and evolutionary histories of Malaria and its impact on the world, The Fever is a stark account of ingenuity and failure. Ms. Shah weaves a terrifying tapestry of Malaria's causes and effects, a dismaying portrait matched only by her tragic, and at times shocking, account of humanity's calamitous attempts to eliminate this most effective infectious disease. Tales of failed drugs, boastful promises and arrogant assumptions culminate in a truly disturbing portrait of the degree to which humanity leaps before it looks. For so eager are we for cures to the afflictions that trouble our days that we are willing to apply them before we fully understand their consequences, a hastiness that has lead to unimaginable ecological damage.

As much as Ms. Shah's account reserves its most effective blows for these failures, it is equally free with praise for the low-tech methods we've developed to fight Malaria. From mosquito nets to the draining of the stagnant pools that are malaria's breeding ground, the disease has been forced to retreat from many parts of the world. Unfortunately for the impoverished, however, most of these retreats have occurred in the developed world, causing Malaria to be, much like AIDS, a problem experienced by others, elsewhere.

The Fever might well have done with some first-hand accounts of Malaria's impact, the better to exemplify Ms. Shah's arguments. Nonetheless, it is a riveting demonstration of how little we actually control our world and how much we rely upon systems like evolution, that are far older than us, for defenses against the threats that live and grow across Earth's ecology. Wonderfully edifying... (4/5 Stars)

Charlemagne brings the giant of European history lyrically to life

From The Week of April 1, 2013

For as long as humanity has been capable of passing down its history, it has revered legends, figures of time-shrouded myth whose deeds are as grand as their appetites. All of our hearts swell at the prospect of conquest, whatever shape it takes, but these singular men and women seized that desire and stamped it with such force into the metal of our history that their immortality is virtually assured. Perhaps we would do well to forget them. Perhaps, if we were unaware of how brightly their stars burned, some among us would not be driven by the need to eclipse them, regardless of the destruction such would sew. But we'd have as much luck wishing away the sun as erasing our giants. For even in death, they have but to extend their hands and we find ourselves being welcomed into their destinies. This truth is exquisitely explored in Richard Winston's engaging biography.

The son of kings and the forger of an empire, Charlemagne is one of the foremost figures of our age. An illiterate man with a passion for knowledge, he was a creature of contradictions, of enlightenment and devastation, who rallied the men of his far flung province of the fallen Roman Empire and, over 47 years of rule, created a new imperium upon the ashes of the old. The conquerer of Europe, he caused popes to bow to his will and to craft crowns so that he might place them on his brow, acts motivated by glory, surely, but also from a desire to restore the order of what had been centuries lost in the death of old Rome. That he was successful where others had failed speaks to luck, but also to a once-in-a-generation will to leave behind a world better than the one he had found.

Charlemagne fought the Saxons and the Lombards, the Saracens and the Bavarians, but war was not his legacy. That was rooted in the idea of a united Europe, a continent that could set aside its disagreements and work in concert towards a common goal. Moreover, it was invested into the scriptoria he created, places of learning that could restore at least some of the wisdom of the fallen ancients and bestow upon the subsequent generations the capacity to build towards a world not consumed by war, but progress. These were mighty goals Charlemagne worked towards during his long reign, but fate prevented them from coming to fruition as he'd hoped. For with the passing of his eldest sons, men in whom he'd rested his hopes for a continuation of his dreams, his empire fall to Louis, King of the Franks, a pious but unwise man whose squandering of Charlemagne's efforts plunged the continent into centuries of intellectual darkness.

This is the tale Mr. Winston tells in Charlemagne, a lyrical account of the life and times of the most powerful European figure to emerge from the ruins of Rome. Drawing from Einhard's contemporary account of the emperor's life, as well as what other sources remain from the eighth century, the author paints an irresistible portrait of a singular mind, one as shaped by conquest as it was by metaphysics. Though little remains of Charlemagne's youth, and though it is difficult to corroborate the exact nature of his various deeds, a pattern of behavior emerges across the whole of the man's life, one that speaks to a complex nature that would be as well-suited to the cut and thrust of our century as it was to the tribalism of his own. From the manner in which he treated his wives to the esteem with which he held knowledge, we are made witnesses to the man more than we are the warrior, the spirit more than the deeds, a reality which is sure to frustrate those interested in military history but that pleases those others who find themselves fascinated by the minds of giants.

Charlemagne, for all its delightful prose, is a largely sympathetic account of the founder of the Holy Roman Empire. Mr. Winston is far harsher on the emperor's contemporaries than he is on Charlemagne himself. Perhaps Charles the Great was a man above all others, an unyielding spire of morality lashed by a seething sea of corrupted souls, but this seems far too simplistic given what we know of humanity which is much more liable to produce individuals of gray morality than of purely white and black. The only spot of criticism Mr. Winston levels at Charlemagne is the mercilessness with which he treats the Saxons who, time and time again, rise in rebellion against him, but even this seems muted compared to his paeans to Charlemagne's successes.

Notwithstanding its vagaries and its sympathies, Charlemagne is a vivid and lively document that teaches us as much about the man as it does about fate. For the readers of this chronicle will not be able to walk away unaffected by Mr. Winston's conclusion that, had Charlemagne's eldest sons lived, the subsequent 13 centuries of history would have unfolded quite differently. In peace, the schools Charlemagne founded would have had time to build on their learning, to spur on the intellectual flowering that only occurred centuries later. Instead, Louis' unsuitableness caused many of Charlemagne's reforms to wither on the vine, a tragic fact that caused Europe to devolve back into the post-Roman gloom that had already consumed it for 400 years.

Imagine a world without the Middle Ages, without irreason and theocracy. Imagine a Renaissance that began five centuries earlier in Charlemagne's Europe rather than Italy's city states. Imagine if industrialism came to Europe in the 13th century, not the 18th. We would today be among the stars.

Well worth the read, as much for the dream as for the man... (4/5 Stars)

a fascinating if cold glimpse of a possible near-future in The Dervish House

From The Week of March 25, 2013

In the 21st century, technology is the driver of societal change. And though it is tempting to think it has always been thus, this instinct would be in error. For while innovations, from the bow to the printing press, have invited periods of positive disruption, change, historically, has been caused by a complex stew of changing climates, population pressures, natural disasters and geological good fortune, all of which have kept humanity on the path of progress. No longer... Where our species was once subject to fate's whimsy, we now create the tools of our own destiny. With every line of code we write, we program the look, the feel and the morality of our future. Technology has bestowed us with the responsibility for our own success or failure. And while that burden may be heavy, it is one we must shoulder if we are to advance to the next stage of civilization. This is a truth well-explored in Mr. MacDonald's intriguing novel of the near future.

The year is 2027 and Turkey has acceded to the European Union. The dream of a free and secular nation that began with Ataturk has finally, after a century of military coupes and Islamic politicians, been realized in a safe, prosperous country in which men and women, old and young, can succeed. Turkey, once nothing more than the sick man of Europe, once little more than the desiccated heart of a decaying empire, now embodies the American Dream 2.0, the hope for a stable and prosperous Asia.

For all this, Turkey is still subject to profound and disparate forces that threaten to crater its ascendency. A radioactive Iran, demolished by Israeli bombs, is a seething, ecological disaster to its east while Russia, floating on a sea of oil profits, looms to the north, having the power, with a flick of a switch, to end the flow of precious hydrocarbons into Turkey and the West. And these are just the external threats that do not account for the Kurds and the Islamists the disruptive technologies and the thieving capitalists, who trouble it from within.

In this sprawling place, caught between east and west, religion and science, the Deep State and the Islamic state, the interconnected lives of men and women, living in an apartment building in Istanbul, unfold. The economist mourning his past while facing his end of days, the deaf boy who dreams of adventure, the young female professional who yearns for her talents to be recognized, and the young Islamist who is troubled by divine visions all, in their own ways, hold small pieces of a plot to use nanotechnology in an act of terrorism. Their conflicting agendas, and those of the Turks and Greeks, scientists and zealots, they encounter promise to make this hot week in Istanbul, the queen of cities, one to remember.

A thoughtful contemplation of what the world might look like in twenty years, The Dervish House is engaging, if cold, science fiction. Deploying the literary conceit of nesting his host of disparate characters in a single apartment building, Mr. Macdonald is able to craft a varied cast of characters and entangle them in two overlapping mysteries which he then slowly and skillfully unknots during the course of the work. This, along with the liberal use of nanotechnology and terrorism, financial chicanery and geopolitics, allows the novel to be as erudite as it is fictional, a snapshot of a possible, largely optimistic future for a nation that has, for thousands of years, been the cultural hinge of the northern hemisphere. To glimpse it in such detail is pleasing.

For all its imagination, however, The Dervish House is flawed work. For though Mr. MacDonald succeeds in animating his characters with drive and purpose, he fails to invest them with much, if any emotion. Gleefulness and melancholy, ambition and despair, certainly make cameos here, allowing for moments of exultant triumph and crushing defeat, but these explosions are all the more notable for the affectless postures his characters otherwise adopt. We are interested in their machinations, and even occasionally root for their momentary victories, but we rarely love, admire, or even root for them, the notable exception being the young, deaf boy who is easily the novel's strongest character.

Moreover, Mr. MacDonald fails to properly balance the knowledge, about Turkey and the world, he wishes to convey with the plot, about perfidy and nanotechnology, he wishes to execute. Swaths of the novel are consumed by culture, economics, Islam and Turkish history, all of which are interesting in their own rights, but too often we're left to feel as though Mr. MacDonald is showing off his erudition rather than building a better, more engaging story for his readers to consume. His references to the Deep State and financial scams, terrorism and history, ought to add color. Instead, they largely succeed in making the novel seem shallow and flashy.

The Dervish House is high-minded fiction that should be lauded for its attempts to come to grips with the future in all its promise and its politics. It boasts some interesting characters and some complex plots, but the pieces never gestalt into a product that must be devoured. (3/5 Stars)

The cultural and medical histories of Rabies engagingly explored in Rabid

From The Week of March 25, 2013

Viruses reek havoc upon the human mind. For not only do they have the power to starve it of resources, reducing it to an unintelligent sludge, they can attack it through fear, divesting it of all rationality and making of its host an exceedingly soft target. Despite the innate difficulties of battling a scourge one cannot see, however, many of these viruses have been brought to heel, their effectiveness muted by science. And yet, some remain to haunt us, some that refuse to have their claws so easily clipped. Mr. Wasik and Ms. Murphy marvellously documents the most infamous of these vehement holdouts in his excellent chronicle of Rabies.

For all but the last few centuries of its existence, humanity has been blind to the threat of viruses. Its conceptions were limited to what it could taste, touch and feel. So while the species had soem understanding of what was harmful to its health, it could not even imagine the ecologies that lingered beyond the vistas of human vision. And yet, something had to be there. For tribal man could see quite well the consequences of contracting deadly viruses, chiefly, the loss of their companions felled by nothing more than the sudden onset of ill health.

First with the ancient Greeks and then with the Arabs, this understanding began to evolve, but not before superstition had taken hold. Before we knew why, we knew how. And in the case of Rabies, this was particularly apparent. For one had to but wait a few days after being bitten by an enraged subset of mostly friendly animals to feel the deadly consequences: the nightmares, the fear of water, the sleepless nights, the creeping death.

Devils and demons were conjured up to explain such violent and terrifying punishments. And yet, few of these could imagine the truth, that Rabies was a most insidious virus, a chain of genetic information with the singleminded goal to propagate, to spread, to consume. Eschewing the most conventional routes of pathogen's (the blood stream), it attacked the nervous system, inching its way up to the brain which, defenseless against its ravages, succumbed to that most straightforward kind of madness, the bite, a most expeditious method of passing copies of itself on to the next, inviting target.

From the characteristics that made it legend to the scientists who reduced it to mere mortality, Rabid is an entertaining journey through the history of Rabies. Penned by a veterinarian (Murphy) and a journalist (Wasik), it competently mixes humor with fact to create a most edifying illumination of a genetic sequence that, though relatively rare, particularly within civilization, has nonetheless had a profound impact on our conception of horror. The authors contend that the myths that gave birth to vampires, werewolves and zombies were all heavily influenced by our fear of the bite which does not merely emanate from our distaste for pain, but from something far more elemental, an aversion born of memories written into our heritage.

Rabid has its stumbles. It makes almost no attempt to advance our understanding of Rabies' genetic properties. Moreover, it seems, at times, much more concerned with its cultural impact than its medical one. But these are minor gripes in what is otherwise a thoroughly engrossing read that winningly captures the full might of science, particularly its capacity to isolate a problem, reduce it to its component parts and to deduce, through trial and error, a method of rectifying it. Here, this is particularly exemplified in the time the history devotes to Louis Pasteur, the famous French scientist who, in addition to discovering germs, took a largely successful swing at Rabies as well, reducing it from a fearful unknown to a problem that could be vaccinated if not cured. This, along with an intriguing comparison of how the East and West conceive of Rabies' primary carriers, allows Rabid to easily overcome its drawbacks.

This is eminently consumable work. And yet, for all its lightness, Rabid possesses sufficient depth to leave the reader's knowledge of the world of viruses significantly advanced. Most satisfying... *4/5 Stars)

A ringing condemnation of prisons in Abramsky's American Furies

From The Week of March 25, 2013

Of the many pillars of progress that have marked humanity's existence none have had more of an impact than civilization. For it is this gestalt of societal evolution that creates beautiful structure from tribal chaos, that sews together peaceful communities from antagonistic cultures, and that carves out harbors of innovation to elevate us above stagnancy. Our thoughts and our dreams, our extraordinary brothers and our earth-shaking sisters are all remembered by civilization which allows each successive generation of the species to stand on the shoulders of those who came before. And yet, not all of us contribute positively to civilization. In fact, there are a substantial number who, for various reasons, threaten civilization with strains of destructive violence that range from the nihilistic to the greedy. Are we not entitled to seal these criminals away? Is it not right that we remove from them the freedoms the rest of us enjoy? Perhaps, but to think that we do so without consequences would be deeply unwise. This point Mr. Abramsky drives home in his uneven work.

In much of the world, prisons are stressful and dangerous places, institutions that contain the worst humanity has to offer. For years on end, men and women who have broken society's laws endure in these hard places, suffering a kind of purgatory in hopes that, some day, they will be released back into the world and have restored to them the privileges they once enjoyed. This is the hope. But so scarring are these penitenturies, so fraught with animalistic violence and cognitive decay, that this is nothing more than wishful thinking, dreams one holds to when nothing else remains.

It was not meant to be this way. In the breathy reforms of the post-Renaissance West, where it was no longer sufficient simply to execute troublemakers, prisons were conceived of as places of rehabilitation, idealistic schools of reform that would capture destructive non-conformists and shape them into healthy, stable influences. But while some penal systems still notionally cling to this hopeful ethos, the United States does not. Despite drastic reductions in crime over the last 40 years, more and more Americans, every year, are forced into these violent pens, compelled to sleep, eat and endure alongside society's worst. Many of these offenders haven't even committed violent crimes. And yet, here they languish, either worked for pennies or neglected to count down their days, with rapists and murderers, pimps and traffickers, until they can rejoin a society that will only ever half-heartedly welcome them back.

From Jeremy Bentham's optimistic conceptions to the cold, present-day realities, from the harshness of Joe Arpaio's Arizona to the ruthlessness of Miriam Shehane's Alabama, American Furies seeks to chronicle, through statistics and anecdotal accounts, the price, both fiscally and societally, the United States has paid for its punitive approach to crime. Mr. Abramsky, who leaves no doubt that his sympathies lean heavily towards the imprisoned, lays before the reader a series of movements and societal attitudes that go some way to explaining the heartlessness with which Americans approach incarceration. His conclusion, that a toxic combination of the depravity of sensationalist crime and the ongoing privatization of the prison system has lead the US to its current state -- a higher percentage of its people behind bars than Stalinist Russia -- is passionately argued. And yet, there are profound flaws here.

As strong a case as Mr. Abramsky makes, his account tries to be all things and succeeds at none of them. He attempts to make two cases, one based in dry statistics and the other ground in hard reporting. And yet, when he combines his academic research with his face-to-face gum-shoeing, the result does not become a pleasing souffle of passion and erudition. It does not become, as the author so clearly wishes it to be, a declarative statement against the evils of American-style incarceration. It is, instead, a scattered jog through an ever-changing landscape of shifty characters and inferred agendas that imply a great deal but conclusively prove little.

This is not to imply that I disagree with Mr. Abramsky. His argument rests on firm ground. There's been a great deal of sociological research that has attempted to explain the rise of the prison population and why that rise has suspiciously corresponded with the building of new prisons. However, Mr. Abramsky's goal here was to distill that research into a work of narrative non-fiction, capped off with a passionate appeal for understanding and sympathy for prisoners, many of whom are non-violent offenders. And, sadly, that task he failed to accomplish.

Valuable, but ultimately uninspired. The American prisoner will have to rest their hopes for a brighter future on other shoulders. (2/5 Stars)