Beyond Band Of Brothers by Dick Winters

From The Week of January 10, 2010

By any measure one might wish to employ, Mr. Winters is a hero. That is a distinction often designated to members of the Greatest Generation, perhaps too often. But in his humility, his bravery, and his equanimity, Mr. Winters stands out in a sea of souls.

There is, in some people, a fundamental goodness apparent to all those with eyes to see virtue. No, there are no saints -- everyone has moments of ugliness, of brutality --, but there are those blessed with a strength of spirit which causes the rest of us to line up behind them in hopes of having that serenity shield us from harm. And so it should come as no surprise that, in an ugly war, grinding to a painful conclusion, Mr. Winters, minus his gear and his commander, stepped up to gather his men scattered across the French countryside and lead them on a vital mission to help secure the Utah beachhead at the Battle of Normandy. His tactics in this action were so successful, they are still taught at the West Point Military Academy as a textbook example of an assault on a fixed position.

Mr. Winters went onto fame and modest fortune. The exploits of Easy Company, which he would eventually command, were chronicled in Band of Brothers, the 2001 HBO miniseries. But I gathered from these personal reflections of the man that he couldn't have cared less if he was remembered by the greater world. His faith and his upbringing prepared him to live his life fully and successfully, and in a way not defined by the epic events of 1944, where the fate's of continents were decided in blood.

Even if this effort had been poorly written, and it is assuredly not, its spirit would set it apart. Here is an example of a life lived well and with dignity. (4/5 Stars)

Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnases

From The Week of January 10, 2010

With the cheer and good humor one might expect of the absolutely insane, Dean Karnazes introduces us to the world of ultramarathons and their runners. Defined as a race longer than the standard marathon (40 kilometers or 26 miles), ultramarathons attract a special kind of person who, by dint of innate ability or through extensive training, is able to suppress the body's customary responses to immense pain and crushing fatigue in order to complete what are, by any normal measure, superhuman feats of endurance. Though this company of formidable wills must surely experience its fair share of arrogance and self-importance, we find, in Ultramarathon Man, a kind of serenity of spirit that appears to be a hallmark among those able to push their bodies beyond ordinary, physical barriers.

Mr. Karnazes, in particular, seems unaffected by feats. Rather, he is attracted to the opportunity to be alone, to think, to dream, and to reflect upon ones life while running through the night. The challenge is important -- no one would suffer so if it wasn't --, but perhaps finding oneself is the original lure, not the pursuit itself. And so this is a story about a mental journey as much as a physical one, an odyssey of self-discovery, of fitting together the pieces of a life which, thanks to the noise of the everyday, remain scattered and unsorted.

What kind of clarity would we find at the end of a 100 mile run, when our bodies have been pushed beyond our limits, when we've reached inside ourselves for the last ounce of will to go just that little bit farther? When you burn away the detritus of your mundane life, what do you find underneath? Can we endure the pain to find out? Mr. Karnazes is certainly one example of a man who met his measure and pushed through, to find himself capable of undreamed feats. What could we accomplish if, one night, at a loss, we laced up our runners and left the warm comforts of our familiar homes for the unfamiliar road?

A successful book in every respect, as insightful on matters of the human spirit as it is inspirational with regard to what we can achieve if we put ourselves to it. (5/5 Stars)

Savage Kingdom by Benjamin Woolley

From The Week of January 03, 2010

Mr. Woolley's account of the founding of the Jamestown Colony, the first British venture onto what would become American soil, is lively, populated with the decrees of a jealous king, the pursuits of ambitious men/A> willing to do anything to make their mark, and the high-handed attempts of intolerant Europeans to impose their values and their sense of order upon the natives already inhabiting the land so coveted by the white men from the east. Bouncing back and forth between London and the new world, Mr. Woolley chronicles the deprivations of 17th century, cross-Atlantic voyages, the men who braved them, and those poor souls who tried to build some measure of European settlement on a North America untamed by "civilized" hands.

From the European's point of view, this truly was a savage land, riddled with a bewildering array of tribes woven into a confounding network of alliances and feuds. And because it's always easier for man to fall back on prejudice when faced with what is incomprehensible to him, we watch as European values are imposed on the natives, the misunderstandings that erupt as a result, and the dark outcomes that inevitably conclude a clash of civilizations which know nothing of one another.

A fun read that educates without drying us out with burdensome detail. I was particularly captivated by the economics behind the colony's launch, as well as the wooing of Pocahontas by John Smith. It's amazing to what lengths humans will go to claim what they covet and to protect what they claim. (3/5 Stars)

An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina

From The Week of January 03, 2010

Later developed into a 2004 Hollywood film starring Don Cheadle, An Ordinary Man is Paul Rusesabagina's recount of his life in Rwanda, from his chaotic youth to his stint as manager of the Diplomate hotel, a popular, prestigious establishment based in the country's capital of Kigali. It was from this position of moderate influence that Mr. Rusesabagina saw the 1994 Rwandan Massacre unfold, a genocide which he summarizes in effective and painful detail here. Though Mr. Rusesabagina is a Hutu, the ethnic majority which instigated and carried out the massacre, he is at pains to debunk the differences between the Hutu and the Tutsi, arguing convincingly that these are little more than conceits ginned up by radicals set on slaughter as the means of righting historical wrongs. This is a tragic fact which both illuminates the massacre and makes it all the more painful to watch unfold.

Mr. Rusesabagina has to essentially tell two stories here, his own history and that of the genocide, and it's a credit to his abilities and his charisma that he manages this remarkably well. Interweaving fables from his youth with scenes of refugees from the massacre hold up in his hotel -- they resorted to using the hotel's pool for drinking water --, he paints a picture of the siege mentality he was forced to adopt during the massacre in which he took in and protected dozens of at-risk Tutsi. Though one is left with the impression that Mr. Rusesabagina is glossing over some of his less pleasant connections to a regime which authorized the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, there's more than enough painful honesty here to lend his account the weight of authenticity.

Mr. Rusesabagina was an entrepreneur just trying to live his life and raise his family when the world, or fate, intervened and presented him with an opportunity to become an oppressor or a voice for the oppressed. Bravely, Mr. Rusesabagina chose the latter, even though it could have cost him his life. And in that sense, his story is an illustration of the age-old morality problem of speaking out at risk to ones health, or staying quiet in the face of injustice. There's little doubt on which side Mr. Rusesabagina comes down on. (4/5 stars)

The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks

The week of January 03, 2010

Uneven is perhaps the best description of this trilogy from Brent Weeks who certainly has the potential to refine his future work into efforts of brilliance. The Night Angel trilogy follows the maturation of an orphan boy in a fictitious kingdom who begins his life in a guild of thieves. He's eventually apprenticed to a legendary assassin who, as a part of the boy's training, installs him in the nobility so that he might learn the ways of every walk of life. Thus begins the young boy's transformation from street rat into an instrument of vengeance, of dark justice, and one of the only entities capable of defending his home from ruin.

On the dark fantasy meter, The Night Angel falls short of Joe Abercrombie, but remains a solid 8/10 for shocking violence and other mass acts of cruelty. The realism which might have earned it a truly oppressive, Abercrombian 10/10, is intentionally muted by gallows humor which is quite engaging. All the elements are here to craft a memorable series, but too often Mr. Weeks dissolves into the timeless fantasy cliche's of magical swords, and haunted woods, and mystic witch healers, and unbearable "I just can't be with you" sacrifices. It was a promising beginning, holding in it echoes of some of Raymond Feist's work with Jimmy from the Riftwar Saga, but then matters just went down hill from there. Still, Mr. Weeks knows how to do action sequences and these end up saving the series. (2/5 Stars)

Citizens: A Chronicle Of The French Revolution by Simon Schama

From The Week of December 27, 2009, 2010

Though widely held to be the authoritative history of the French Revolution, I found Mr. Schama's recounting of that terrible time painfully long and oppressively weighed down by trivia. Perhaps this is a work more suited for scholars willing to wade through 976 interminable pages of dry but accurate history. Clearly, I will have to return my membership to the society of history buffs because I was skipping whole pages from about page 100 on. Perhaps it is meant to be a reference guide for those teaching a course on a revolution which, in some sense, lasted nearly 20 years as it chewed through multiple constitutions, parliaments, heads of state, currencies and ethics. In that, there is much for Mr. Schama to cover, but doing it with writing as dry as the Gobi? It could not claim my attention.

For anyone looking for a more digestible version of the French Revolution, I suggest Donald S. Sutherland's Liberty and Its Price, a lecture in the Modern Scholar series. However, if you have some suggestions for me, please feel free to write and pass them along. The violence of the French Revolution, especially when contrasted with the comparatively bloodless American Revolution of a scant ten years earlier, has always fascinated me. I found very little enlightenment here. (1/5 Stars)

Lucia by Andrea Di Robilant

From The Week of December 27, 2009, 2010

Lucia is the author's reconstruction of the life and times of one of his ancestors, Lucia Mocenigo, an 18th century, Venetian noblewoman who lived through some of the most dramatic events in the recent history of Europe. She rented her villa to lord Byron, watched Napoleon transform Italy into an imperial property, and served princesses, all while hardly ever leaving the Boot. Though Mr. Di Robilant has found other sources to flesh out this portrait of a beautiful noblewoman living through extraordinary times, Lucia's letters are the centerpiece of this work. Not only do her words flow like water, there seems no subject on which she is silent as she describes, to her sister, in great detail, her triumphs and her failures.

This is a lens through which to view the 50 or so years between 1780 and 1830, in which the French Revolution allowed for the rise of Napoleon and his many wars, his defeat and the conference at Vienna in 1814 which literally redrew the borders of most of Europe. But though the history brightens the tale, Lucia is definitely the gem, the object of interest. She is merely one woman, a woman who died almost 180 years ago, and yet she is proof that, no matter how much time has past, humanity, from all the ages, hungers for essentially the same things, love, acceptance, and success. (3/5 Stars)