Destiny, Disrupted

Posted on January 12, 2016 by smellincoffee

Destiny, Disruted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
© 2009 Tamim Ansary
416 pages

When Tamim Ansary was a boy, he loved history. Specifically, he loved narrativehistory, the kind of drama that brought the past to life.  The problem was that the only histories he could find written in  this style in Afghanistan were written by Europeans, and as such were expressly about European history.  Being unable to find a narrative history about his own people, he decided to grow up and write one. Destiny, Disrupted is a sweeping survey of the middle east, telling the story of Islamic civilization from its own point of view. It is cavalier history, galloping through the centuries and shooting from the hip. Yet for all its breeziness, Ansary offers more insight than idle jollies. Here is the story of what became of Egypt, Babylon, and Persia, of a civilization that brought them together, shone brilliantly for a few centuries, and then fell away. But the past is never dead, as the present turmoil in Syria and Iraq makes all too plain.

The story begins, of course, in the fertile crescent, with city states that become empires. We in the west know of Egypt, Babylon, and Persia because of their connection to our own story, always included as a necessary prelude in any western civ text.  But as the western narrative moves from Greece to Rome, then Europe as a whole, the world of the middle east continued to grow in its own right.  Persia was the greatest power it ever produced, warring – in different iterations – with both Alexander and Rome. For all of its glory, however, Persia was only an antecedent to the state created by Muhammad and his successors.

The beginnings of Islamic civilization – Muhammad and the succeeding caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman, and Ali – receives outsized attention not only because they were the creators, but because so much of what followed continues to look back on them. Key to Ansary’s account is that Islamic was not merely a religion, but a transformative political community that overcame not only Arab tribal differences, but racial quarrels as the expanding Muslim state captured vast portions of the multiethnic Byzantine and Persian empires. This age was to Muslims what Rome was to the west – and even more so, because it combined the moral and spiritual force of religion with the establishment of law and economic success: imagine if classical Rome and Christian Rome’s golden ages had happened at the same time,  a sudden eruption of law and charity around the Med, and that the only emperors were the Five Good Ones, started off by a figure like King Arthur or the biblical David. This was the weight the founding era held for Muslims, and which has since pressed Muslims on, looking for the restoration and aggrandizement of what once was.  There is no singular school of thoughts on how to restore it;  it has been attempted through feats of arms, like the Turks; through religious martialism, like the Taliban, or through politics, led by both strongmen and populist revolts. As conservative politics look to the golden past, and progressives look to building a golden future, Islam can encompass most visions simultaneously. 

The problem with golden ages and transcendent spells is that they always wear away. After  the assassination of Ali, things went downhill. Islam would fracture into two, then three, then a multitude of polities.  Near the turn of the first millennium,  there were three ‘caliphates’;   successors-by-assassination Abbasid, the lone-survivors of the old  Umayyad’s in Spain, and the Shi’a Fatimids in Tunisia.   Against this disunity came Frankish barbarians from the west and Mongolian barbarians from the east; the capital of golden-age Islam would be utterly ruined, millions killed, and Islam reduced to a sideline player in someone else’s story.  Even later military triumphs at the hands of the Turks, who rebuilt and advanced much of the original empire, even invading Austria, could not bring back the golden age.  The twentieth century is wrought with Islamic nations’ attempts to find their way again after being dominated by the industrialized west, and Ansary’s count covers revolutions in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt, along with the rise of militias and terrorist organizations in Afghanistan and Palestine.

What Ansary has achieved here is a captivating story of an empire rising in glory, stagnating, falling apart, and then struggling to find itself again. The last few chapters are on various Islamic peoples’ attempts to come to grips with modernity — needing it to catch up to the west, but disagreeing on which aspects to incorporate — and display the kind of thoughtfulness that makes this work more valuable than just a historical survey. This is on display earlier, too, especially when writing on the role of Shi’ism, starting first as politics, taking on theological importance, and then molding Persian politics.  One section, a European recap prior to beginning the industrialized portion of the book, does give me pause.  He writes, for instance, that the Vikings took over England and thereafter became known as Normans.  Technically the Normans did descend from Vikings, but they settled in France over a hundred years before their progeny ever  entered England.   In another instance, he attributes the split between Catholicism and Orthodoxy to being solely the result of Diocletian splitting the empire, and later describes Christianity as being essentially about the individual. Perhaps he’s thinking of Objectivism, but I am tolerably sure Christianity involves a deity,

Aside from the chapter on Europe,  Destiny is a wonderful piece of narrative history, informative and funny. Ansary sometimes sounds as if he is writing for cowboys, what with referring to people as “folks” and to disturbances as “ruckuses”.  It has an odd humor about it, like when he refers to the Mongolian treatment of a ruling family: they didn’t want to shed royal blood, he writes, it wasn’t their way.  They wrapped the royals in curtains and them kicked them to death, instead.  Moral crisis solved!  

Although this slightly predates the Arabic spring and the rise of ISIS, both only affirm this book’s relevance. For an insight into the middle east, it seems an unmatched introduction.

Related:

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Picking Up

Posted on January 11, 2016 by smellincoffee

Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City
© 2014 Robin Nagle
304 pages

When young Robin Nagle stumbled upon a communal dumpsite in the middle of an otherwise picturesque meadow, she was astounded by the thoughtlessness of her fellow campers. Who did they think would take care of their rubbish, the  garbage fairy?  People rarely give thought to their garbage service, unless it hiccoughs, but sanitation workers are arguably more indispensable than police or firemen.  Given individuals can get by for decades without calling for fire or police services, but try going decades without the garbage man. Sure, if you have a suitable vehicle you can haul your own bags to the dump, but how do you feel about living in everyone else’s rubbish?  A city like New York, a hive of millions of souls, would choke within days were it not for an efficient army of men and women in white trucks and olive uniforms hauling their refuse away.In Picking Up, Ms. Nagle joins those men, delivering stories and an inside look at a sanitation department working overdrive in New York City with unexpected humor.

Garbagemen are, despite the lack of a caste  system in the United States, our untouchables. We pretend not to notice these men and women whose job it is to take care of that which we have decided is beneath our attention. Certain aspects of their work can’t fail but be noticed: garbage haulers and mechanical sweepers are work trucks, loud and odoriferous, and their working environment places them in the middle of every aspect of urban life.  The men and women themselves, however, are overlooked, unless they’re being held as the subject of derision.  Ms. Nagle’s time spent with the department — first as an anthropology student, then as an actual worker —  looks at san-men square in the face. Through the details of their lives, Nagle teaches readers the ins and outs of keeping city streets clean.

Nagle begins with a brief history of garbage collection in New York, moving forward to present day municipal waste services. There are distinct operations;  the most prized work is picking up actual bags of trash, preferably dumped in one massive pile called a flat.  This is heavy and sometimes dangerous work, depending on what is being disposed, but it pays well.  Crews assigned to travel down a street dumping its public waste baskets into the truck face far more tedious hours, and street sweepers present their own challenge.  This work is constant;  sanitation never sleep, operating two shifts, and on some streets the the job is never done. As soon as a collection truck has finished its route, so many pedestrians have thrown their fast-food rubbish into the bins that they’re already full and the truck makes the round again, like a very smelly bus stop.   In the winter, sanitation workers assume a second job — clearing the streets after every snowfall.   Keeping the New York economy running on ice-free streets is such a demanding task that some DSNY planners regard plowing or preparing for plowing their first duty, with rubbish-hauling merely something to occupy time with during the summer.    What doesn’t change with the seasons is the danger: sanitation work is the fourth-deadliest in the United States, behind airline piloting, logging, and commercial fishing. Spending eight to twelve hours working on city streets alive with traffic exposes sanitation workers to being mowed down by cars, and their crushing equipment is a peril to their limbs if not life.

Picking Up makes for fascinating reading; it’s not so much about trash as the men who take care of it. Nagle’s journey always stops at the transfer station; what happens to it after that, who else is involved in making it go “away”, is not her concern.  This is a study of men (and a few stray women) at work, constantly keeping the commercial machinery of the City from  being clogged by its own refuse. It ventures to muse on waste and consumerism, slightly, but sticks mostly to regaling the reader with the diverse day to day experiences of the sanitation department — navigating traffic in massive trucks, manhandling bag after bag of mysterious waste, dealing with unions, government bureaucracies, a distant city government, and a hostile if not dismissive public — and how the men adapt.

Related:
Gone Tomorrow; Garbage Land.  What happens to trash after the transfer station.
Hack, Melissa Plaut.  Another account of driving/working in New York.
Pedal to the Medal,  a truck-driver turned sociologist’s similar treatment of truck drivers

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Be it Hereby Resolved

Posted on January 6, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Broke and the Bookish’ theme for Top Ten Tuesdays this week concerns New Years resolutions, naturally. I’m not usually one for resolutions, or even paying attention to the New Year, but it’s as good a time as any to set some goals for the new few months.

1. Give honor where it’s due


 

I don’t review every book I read — some don’t ignite my interest enough to merit it,  some are simply too short or don’t distinguish themselves — but a rare few are books I like so much that I shy away from reviewing.  They were so provoking I feel as though I’ll miss something or not do justice.That number is increasing, though, so I think a good project for me this year would be re-read a few of these and post reviews.  Of the above titles, two fall into the “awe” category, three I read in a sequences with too many similar books and was tired of thinking about the subject, and one (Happy City) was an accident.

2.  Have more fun

I read a lot of nonfiction, following a rapacious interest in..err…everything, but a lot of times I read series of books that leave me gloomy and despaired.  I’ve come to realize that this is my version of sitting in front of the television, being caught up in everything that’s going wrong in the world.  Just recently I started creating a list on urban poverty to read later in the year,  with titles like: Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, and stopped myself. This sort of thing has to be considered like salt, a little at a time.  So far, in January, I’ve read only titles about things that make me happy — science, horses, garbage collection, and now, trucks.  (I’m a SimCity 3000 nerd. Yes, books about garbage collection and power lines make me happy.)

3. Take the Classics Club challenge seriously

I joined the Classics Club last year but haven’t pursued any titles on it yet. That will change this year.

4. Wander away from the track

Vast portions of the world are still terra incognita for me: South America has never been touched outside of reading The Motorcycle Diaries, and I haven’t read about subsaharan Africa for six years.

5. Give those Amazon delivery teams a rest
My stack of purchased-and-unread books is starting to climb again. I’m not at the point of having to institute another bar on buying books a la the To Be Read Takedown Challenge, but I definitely need to start reading my own stock faster instead of ogling Amazon’s. (Fun fact: they have three books on garbage I haven’t read.)

What sort of books do I have on hand at the moment? How Greek Mythology Can Save Your Life, Small is Still Beautiful, and The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left to start.  There are a lot more on my Kindle, because they’re cheap and invisible.

I think five will do to start, yes?

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Adieu to you, and you and you and you —

Posted on January 5, 2016 by smellincoffee

As 2015 was ending I finished up a couple of works which merit mentioning. Firstly is Jane Austen’s Emma.  I have read Austen before (Pride and Prejudice), intrigued by mention of Darcy as a model gentleman,  Emma was thus my second foray into the author’s works, though I did not enjoy it nearly as much.  The plot is familiar to most:  Emma Woodhouse is a witty,  self-assured, and quite attractive woman so enormously satisfied with her life that she seeks to manage others. She attempts to pair a few of her single neighbors up, disaster ensues, much chatter follows, and eventually everyone winds up married off – including her. There were quite a few utterly brilliant lines in here – a favorite, following a haughty woman’s “discovery” that Mr. Knightly was a gentleman, noted that he was unlikely to ‘discover’ her to be a Lady, given her manners.  This was only a first reading, I think, given Emma’s reputation as Austen’s “perfect” novel. Perhaps I missed something in the end-year weariness.

Closer to my usual fare was Stagecoach: Wells-Fargo and the American West.  As the title indicates, it is primarily a history of Wells-Fargo’s rise to fame in the 19th century. It was an unusual company, doing its best to fill a vacuum of infrastructure and service in the  still-being-settled west.   Principally, the firm provided banking and express services. Its commercial network provided both communication and transportation, at a dearer rate than the Postal routes but far more efficiently. It became most famous for the mail and treasure that traveled on stagecoach lines, and one chapter sheds a little light on the workings of stages in particular. After nearly dropping the ball on the transition to railroads, Wells-Fargo rebounded and became such a productive company that it drew the attention of trust-busters, who found the collusion of banking and railroads worrisome. The bank that exists today has only a tangential connection to the former behemoth of California, but retains the imagery of a stage coach — which proved a useful brand image even in the late 19th century, reminding prospective customers of how the west was won.

2016 is off to an excellent start so far, with How I Killed Pluto already read and reviewed, and another fantastic book following that.  Right now I’m nibbling at a couple of books, but I’m really looking forward to what January holds. Today I chanced upon a list of books I scribbled down next year, and I must say…I forget about some of the most interesting books.

Oh! I’m presently watching The Last Kingdom, a BBC miniseries based on my favorite bit of Bernard Cornwell, the Saxon Stories series.  So far it doesn’t stack up too well against Vikings, but the latter is…brutal.

Danish tourists inquiring about the time. 
VIKINGS!


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10 Titles that Win

Posted on January 4, 2016 by smellincoffee

I remarked recently that How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming is the best title I’ve encountered in eight years of reading and blogging.   What kind of company does it keep? Drawing from the last five years, these were the titles that popped out most:

  1. How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming, Mike Brown
  2. Death from the Skies!, Phil Plait
  3. Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein
  4. They Eat Puppies, Don’t They? Christopher Buckley
  5. The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head, Gary Small
  6. Hey, Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America?, John Siegal Boettner
  7. Gang Leader for a Day, Sudhir Venkatesh
  8. Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
  9. The Tyrannosaurus Prescription, Isaac Asimov
  10. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan

I decided to create a Goodreads list for people to share the most memorable titles they’ve discovered — do contribute if something sticks out!

Honorable Mentions:
Jennifer Government, Max Barry
Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal
Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, Kurt Vonnegut.
The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance, Russ Roberts
Folks, This Ain’t Normal, Joel Salatin
Give Me Back my Legions! Harry Turtledove

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How I Killed Pluto (And Why It Had it Coming)

Posted on January 1, 2016 by smellincoffee

How I Killed Pluto (and Why It Had it Coming)
© 2010 Mike Brown
288 pages

Is that not the greatest title ever? How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming is the tale of Pluto’s rise and fall as a planet, delivered by an astronomer who discovered a series of objects in the Kuiper Belt in the early 2000s.  The discovery of one object larger than Pluto forced the International Astronomical Union to come to a decision: what, exactly, is a planet?  The resulting definition would famously demote Pluto to ‘dwarf planet’, in the company of Ceres and Eris.   Brown’s confession argues that the 2006 decision wasn’t the first time the concept planet had to be redrawn, and that Pluto’s status as a planet was tenuous to begin with.  Regardless of one’s own astronomical convictions,  How I Killed Pluto  is popular science at its best,

What is a planet?  School children may learn that planet stems from the Greek word for wanderer, given that Earth’s neighbors  were seen to move through the sky independently of the ‘rest’ of the stars.  To the Greek mind, ‘planet’ encompassed not only ‘our’ planets, but the Sun and Moon as well — for they, too,  were celestial roamers.  Astronomical knowledge grew throughout the medieval era, however,  arriving at a worldview in which ‘planet’ meant a body that orbited the sun — and included the Earth.  New discoveries continued to challenge the mental map, like a couple of small bodies between Mars and Jupiter. Initially regarded as planets, they would eventually be given their own distinct category — asteroids — once it realized there were not one or two bodies out there, but scores of them.   The same would had proven true for Pluto, Brown argues, had we realized how much more was out there. Instead, the limits of our technology left us ignorant of most of Pluto’s neighborhood, and without context for its placement. For seventy years, Pluto enjoyed a status that it didn’t quite merit. As much as Brown would have liked to have taken credit for discovering the “tenth planet”, thinking as a scientist he couldn’t quite stomach it. The modern map of the solar system includes distinct groups of objects: the terrestrial planets, an asteroid belt, the great gas giants, and the far-circling Kuiper belt around us.  Viewed objectively, how could a minuscule dot plucked from the Kuiper belt be considered in the same category as Jupiter, but not the others?

How I Killed Pluto succeeds in many levels.  As a pop science piece, it delivers a sense of how science works. Not only does Brown’s account cover the day to day work  of a modern astronomer — poring through computer screens, analyzing the data for what the programs missed — but the kind of organized, critical thinking required to piece together order from chaos. Brown’s passion for collecting and organizing data is, in a word, pervasive; when his daughter is born (in the same year that he discovered several bodies that were pending official names) , she becomes a science project. He charts her feeding and sleeping periods, attempting to figure out if one method of feeding is more effective than another, and creates graphs in attempt to see patterns. (He is allowed to get away with this by virtue of being married to another scientist, one whom he met in the basement of a telescope).  Brown is an excellent communicator,  using analogies that work without feeling forced.  He is an author who a reader like to hear talk, brimming with  both passion and intelligence.

Brown’s memoir was an utter delight to read, and frankly makes me fear for the rest of the year: things can only go down from here.

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The Best of 2015: Year in Review

Posted on January 1, 2016 by smellincoffee

Previous yearly wrap-ups:
2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014

Welcome to the 9th annual year in review, in which I highlight the best of the year’s reading, hopefully without producing a column of text that rivals the Bayeux Tapestry.


Big year for history, obviously. This chart doesn’t include everything, just the major categories. Speculative fiction includes science fiction, alt-history, horror, and (ordinarily) fantasy, but I didn’t include the Narnia books given their size.

First up, a top ten list:

1. The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy
A history of the presidency’s transformation from administrator to Dear Leader, developing with rapidity after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. I read this last January for Presidents’ Day, and thought about finishing the review in time for my Independence Day readings, but was fairly sick of politics by that point.

2.The Iron Web, Larken Rose
A wounded cop, a scared teenager, and a rural community of hippies and anarchists debate politics while being besieged by an out-for-blood ATF.

3. The Rebels: A Brotherhood of Outlaw Bikers, Daniel Wolf
A sociological study of a Canadian biker gang.

4.Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko
A history of police militarization, beginning in the 1970s but gaining steam with the wars on drugs and terror, respectively.  If I could only recommend one book this year, it would be Rise, addressing as it does issues that run deeper than the latest protests over who the police shot.

5.Happy City  Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery
A citizen’s guide on how urban design can create a more fulfilling life — or a more frustrating one.

6. Seven Deadly Sins: A Thomistic Guide to Vanquishing Vice and Sin, Kevin Vost
Sums up Thomas’ Aquinas’ reflections on what  vices do to us, how they quicken in our minds, and how we can overcome them; given Aquinas’ classical background, this is heavy in advice from Stoics like Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius.

7. Pedal to the Medal: The Work Lives of Truckers, Lawrence Ouelett
A sociological study of truck drivers — dated, but right up my ally.

8. Selma 1965, Chuck Fager. A much-lauded and very fair history of the attack by State troopers and a sheriff’s posse on Civil Rights marchers in Selmont, Alabama, written by a student protester on the ground.

9. The Horse in the City,  Clay McShane and Joel Tarr (History)
A history of how horses shaped the urban experience in the equine Golden Age: the 19th century.

10. The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin,  Roger Moorhouse
A history of -….c’mon, it’s right there in the title.

Next year will see a return to more balanced reading, with some books in science and civic interest already lined up.  My history reading should take me into fresh territory, specifically into Asia and the middle east. There will a good string of vintage literature,  I suspect, given my participation in the Classics Club, and the fact that a friend of mine wants to do a buzz-through of the Harvard Classics.  Given (or despite) the fact that near year is an election year, there will probably be a couple of relevant books. Not campaign pulp, mind you, but more interesting things like Ralph Nader’s Unstoppable: The Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.   Two potential series are “The Digital World” and “Good Cop, Bad Cop”. 


..it will alternate books about police doing good work, and police doing police-state work. 

Honorable Mentions:

The Cult of the Presidency, Happy City, and The Once and Future King all deserve reviews, and have nearly-complete drafts. Perhaps I should resolve to give books I’ve missed reviewing their just deserts.


Happy New Year, all! 

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2015 Cumulative Reading List

Posted on December 31, 2015 by smellincoffee

Whew, what a year.

 flags books involved in this year’s Read of England series.
  marks books involved in my annual American Revolution series.

— January —
1. Lives of the Planets: A Natural History of the Solar System,  Richard Corfield (Science)
2. The Empty Throne, Bernard Cornwell (Historical Fiction)
3. Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, Bernd Heinrich (Science)
4.  The Pigman, Paul Zindel (Fiction)
5. The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy (Politics)
6.  A Renegade History of the United States, Thaddeus Russell (History)
7. Nullification, Tom Woods (Politics/Law)
8. Casualties, David Rothstein (Historical Fiction)
9. Map of Betrayal, Ha Jin (Fiction)
10. Green is the New Red: A Social Movement Under Siege, Will Potter (Politics)

–February–
11. Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition of Decentralism, Jeff Taylor (Politics)
12. The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online and the Cops Followed,  Nate Anderson
13. The Human Zoo, Desmond Morris (Science/Sociology)
14. I Am Malala, Malala Yousafzai (Memoir)
15. Kindle Fire HD for Dummies, Nancy Muir
16. The Kindness Diaries, Leon Logothetis (Travel)
17. Whiskey Sour, J.A. Konrath (Detective Thriller)
18. The Iron Web, Larken Rose (Political Thriller)
19. The Rebels: A Brotherhood of Outlaw Bikers, Daniel Wolf (Anthropology/Crime)
20. Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, Susan Freinkel (Political Journalism)
21. The Marriage Game, Alison Weir (Historical Fiction)

–March–
22. Selma 1965, Charles Fager (History)
23. @ War: the Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, Shane Harris (Military/Technology)
24. Here  Comes Everybody, Clay Shirkey (Social Science)
25. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweniger (History)
26. Consuming the Word: The New Testament and the Eucharist, Scott Hahn (Religion)
27. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, Michael Sandel (Economics)
28. Breaking through Concrete: The Urban Farm Revival, David Hanson and Edwin Marty
29. “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Oscar Wilde (Play)
30. Born Fighting: The Scots-Irish in America, Jim Webb (Pop History)
31. The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, Michael Sims (Biography)
32. The Chosen, Chaim Potok (Fiction)
33. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (Classic, Fiction)

— April —
34. Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko (Politics / History)
35. Medieval Essays, Christopher Dawson (History)
36. The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse (Hysterical Fiction) 
37. Come Rack! Come Rope! Robert Hugh Benson (Historical Fiction) 
38. Armada, John Stack (Historical Fiction) 
39. Ruled Britannia, Harry Turtledove (Alt-History) 
40. Joe Steele, Harry Turtledove (alt-history)
41. The Other Queen, Phillipa Gregory (Historical Fiction) 
42. Boudica, Vanessa Collingridge (History) 
43. Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot, Antonia Frasier (History) 
44. Bachelors Anonymous, P.G. Wodehouse (Fiction) 
45. In a Dark Wood, Michael Cadnum (Historical Fiction) 
46. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (Science Fiction)
47. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America, Wyn Craig Wade (History)

— May
48. The Fall of Saxon England, Richard Humble (History) 
49. The Copperhead, Harold Frederic (Historical Fiction)
50. Agincourt: The Battle that Made England, Juliet Barker (History) 
51. Hanging Curve, Troy Soos (Historical Fiction)
52. Very Good, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse (Fiction) 
53. The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton (Religion) 
54. The South Since the War, Sidney Carton (Journalism/History)
55. Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, Eric Bendts
56. The Wars of the Roses, Alison Weir (History) 
57. Harvest of Rage,  Joel Dyer (Politics/Sociology)
58. Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, James Wesley Rawles (Doomer Fiction)
59. The Americans: The Colonial Experience, Daniel Boorstin (History) 
60. Why Waco? James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher (Religion)

— June —
61. The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson, William Murchinson (Biography) 
62. The Ashes of Waco, Dick Reavis (Political Journalism)
63. The English People on the Eve of Colonization, Wallace Notestein (History) 
64. American Colonies, Alan Taylor (History) 
65. The Terrorist Next Door, Daniel Levitas (Politics)
66. America’s British Culture, Russell Kirk 
67. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Klan, Nancy MacLean
68. Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, Ivan Eland
69. The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis
70. American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll,  Bradley Birzer 
71. The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America, F.H. Buckley 
72. A Year of Living Prayerfully, Jarod Brock
73. Last Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition in America,  Daniel Okrent
74. Beyond: Our Future in Space, Chris Impey

— July —
75. The Whiskey Rebels, David Liss 
76. We Could Not Fail: The First African-Americans in the Space Program,  Richard Paul and Steven Moss
77. I Am Forbidden, Anouk Markovits
78. Engines of War, Christian Wolmar (History)
79. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the 1960s, Johnathan Leaf (History/Social Commentary)
80. The Lamb’s Supper, Scott Hahn (Religion)
81. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller
82. Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal, Melanie Warner
83. James Madison and the Making of America, Kevin Gutzman 
84. The Great Cities in History, ed. John Julius Norwich
85. The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar
86. Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis
87. Before the Throne, Naguib Mahfouz
88. Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain,  Chris Lowney

— August —
89. Pedal to the Medal: The Work Lives of Truckers, Lawrence Ouelett
90. Cod, Mark Kurlansky
91. 10 Don’ts On Your Digital Devices, Eric Rzesut, Daniel Bachrach
91. Happy City: Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery
92. The Devil Knows Latin, E. Christian Kopf (Social Criticism)
93. Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, Jules Evans (Philosophy)
94. Tevye’s Daughters, Sholom Aleichem (Fiction)
95. Leofric: Sword of the Angles, S. Arnott (Historical Fiction)
96. The Spice Route, John Keay (History)
97. Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, ed. Hershel Shanks (Religion)
98. The Quartet, Joseph Ellis (History)

— September —
99. Ornament of the World: How Muslims,  Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, Maria Menocal (History)
100. Here be Dragons, Sharon Key Penman (Historical Fiction)
101. The Eagle’s Conquest, Simon Scarrow (Historical Fiction)
102. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis (Fantasy)
103. The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis (Fantasy)
104. Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis (Fantasy)
105. The Horse and his Boy, C.S. Lewis (Fantasy)
106. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis (Fantasy)
107. The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis (Fantasy)
108. The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis (Fantasy)
109. A Family Guide to Narnia, Cristen Ditchfield
110. Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney (Classic)
111. Grendel, John Gardner (Fiction)
112. ST TOS: Foul Deeds will Rise, Greg Cox
113. Zebra Derby, Max Shulman
114. In Search of Ice Age Americans, Kenneth Tankersley
115. The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
116. The Egyptians, Barbara Watterson
117. “Saint Joan“, George Bernard Shaw
118. “A Man For All Seasons“, Robert Holt

— October —
119. The Seven Deadly Sins: A Thomistic Guide to Vanquishing Vice and Sin,  Kevin Vost
120. Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Montgomery
121. The Lady from Zagreb, Philip Kerr
122. The Way: What Every Protestant Should Know about the Orthodox Church, Clark Carlton
123. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
124. Carrie, Stephen King
125. The Great Heresies, Hilaire Belloc
126. ST Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers, James Swallow
126. Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America, Margaret McGuinness
127. ST Terok Nor: Night of the Wolves, S.D. Perry and Britta Dennison
128. ST Terok Nor: Dawn of the Eagles, S.D. Perry and Britta Dennison
129. Joan of Arc, Hilaire Belloc (Biography)
130. Downtown: Its Rise and Fall,  Robert Fogelson (History)
131. The Miracle of Dunkirk, Walter Lord (History)
132. Hitler’s Undercover War: The Nazi Espionage Invasion of the USA,  William Breuer (History)
133. The Lost History of Christianity:  The Thousand Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, Philip Jenkins (History)
134. Battle of Britain, Len Deighton (History)
135. I Saw It Happen in Norway, C.J. Hambro (History)
136. Images of America: Selma, Sharon Jackson (History)

— November —
137. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, Rick Atkinson (History)
138. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd (Graphic Novel)
139. The Battle of the Atlantic,  Barrie Pitt (Time-Life History of WW2)
140. Operation Compass, 1940, Jon Latimer (History)
141. One Year After, William Forstchen (Science Fiction)
142. We Who Dared Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing, ed. Murray Polner and Tom Woods
143. Battles for Scandinavia,  John Elting (Time-Life History of WW2)
144. That Was Then, This is Now, S.E. Hinton
145. Spam Nation, Brian Krebs (Journalism)
146. Foxes of the Desert, Paul Carell (History)
147. “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol”, Tom Mula
148. Convoy, Martin Middlebrook (History)
149. The Horse in the City,  Clay McShane and Joel Tarr (History)
150. Blitzkrieg, Robert Wernick (Time-Life History of WW2)
151. The Rising Sun, Arthur Zich (Time-Life History of WW2)
152. Oil on the Brain, Lisa Margonelli (Journalism)
153. The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang (History)
153. Flying Tiger: Chennault of China, Robert Lee Scott (History)
154. Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin,  Roger Moorhouse (History)
155. Russia Besieged, Nicholas William Bethell (Time-Life History of WW2)
156. December 6th, Martin Cruz Smith (Historical Fiction)

— December —
157. Yamamoto: The Man Who Planned Pearl Harbor, Edwin Hoyt (Biography)
158. The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World, Phillip Schewe (Journalism)
159. Pearl Harbor: The Day of Infamy  — An Illustrated History, Dan van der Vat (History)
160. Horse: How the Horse Shaped Human Civilization, J. Edward Chamberlin (History..ish)
161. Bataan: The March of Death, Stanley L. Falk
162. We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan, Elizabeth Norman
163. Hack:  Driving a Yellow Cab, Melissa Plaut
164. Forgotten Ally: China’s World War 2, Rena Mitter
165. Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America,, Ann Norton Greene
166. Rogue Lawyer, John Grisham
167. Emma, Jane Austen

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Finis!

Posted on December 30, 2015 by smellincoffee

Last year, a friend on facebook challenged me to find and read the following, and now…’tis complete!

  1. A book with more than 500 pages (Politics on a Human Scale, Jeff Taylor)
  2. A classic romance (Emma, Jane Austen)
  3. A book that became a movie (The Copperhead, Harold Frederic)
  4. A book published this year  (The Empty Throne, Bernard Cornwell)
  5. A book with a number in the title (Selma 1965, Chuck Fager)
  6. A book written by someone under 30 (I Am Malala, Malala Yousafzai)
  7. A book with nonhuman characters (The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis)
  8. A funny book (Bachelors Anonymous, P.G. Wodehouse)
  9. A book by a female author (Boudica, Vanessa Collingridge)
  10. A mystery or thriller (The Iron Web, Larken Rose)
  11. A book with a one-word title (Agincourt, Juliet Barker)
  12. A book of short stories (The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse)
  13. A book set in a different country (Map of Betrayal, Ha Jin)
  14. A nonfiction book (Winter World, Bernd Heinrich) 
  15. A popular author’s first book (Carrie, Stephen King)
  16. A book from an author who love that you’ve not yet read (Zebra Derby, Max Shulman)
  17. A book a friend recommended (Recarving Rushmore, Ivan Eland)
  18. A Pulitzer-Prize winning book (An Army at Dawn, Rick Atkinson)
  19. A book based on a true story (The Marriage Game, Alison Weir)
  20. A book on the bottom of your to-read list (The Search for Ice Age Americans, Kenneth Tankersly)  
  21. A book your mom loves (Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Montgomery)
  22. A book that scares you (Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko)
  23. A book more than 100 years old (Beowulf)
  24. A book based entirely on its cover (The Internet Police, Nate Anderson)
  25. A book you were supposed to read in school but didn’t (Grendel, John Gardner) 
  26. A memoir (The South Since the War, Sidney Carton)
  27. A book ye can finish in a day (The Quartet, Joseph Ellis)
  28. A book with antonyms in the title (That Was Then, This is Now, S.E. Hinton)
  29. A book set somewhere you wanted to visit (The Great Cities, ed. John Julius Norwich)
  30. A book that came out the year you were born (Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card)
  31. A book with bad reviews (Patriots, James Rawles)
  32. A trilogy (Star Trek: Terok Nor;  James Swallow, S.D. Perry, and Britta Dennison)
  33. A book from your childhood (The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis)
  34. A book with a love triangle (The Other Queen, Philippa Gregory)
  35. A book set in future (A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller)
  36. A book set in high school (The Chosen, Chaim Potok)
  37. A book with color in title (Green is the New Red, Will Potter)
  38. A book that made you cry (The Pigman, Paul Zindel)
  39. A book with maa-agic (The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien) 
  40. A graphic novel (V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd)
  41. A book by an author you’ve never read (The Americans, Daniel Boorstin)
  42. A book you own but haven’t read (The Eagle’s Conquest, Simon Scarrow)
  43. A book set in your hometown (Casualties, David Rothstein)
  44. A book originally written in different language (Tevye’s Daughters, Sholom Alecheim)
  45. A book set during Christmas (“Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol”, Tom Mula)
  46. A book written by author with your initials (Here Be Dragons, Sharon Penman)
  47. A play (“The Importance of Being Earnest“, Oscar Wilde)
  48. A banned book (The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini)
  49. A book based on, or turned into, a TV show (Star Trek TOS: Foul Deeds will Rise, Greg Cox) 
  50. A book you started but never finished (The Human Zoo, Desmond Morris)
Posted in General | 7 Comments

Rogue Lawyer

Posted on December 26, 2015 by smellincoffee

Rogue Lawyer
© 2015 John Grisham
344 pages

(“Wait for 2016”, I said.  What can I say?)

Rogue Lawyer ranks with The Appeal as one of John Grisham’s most cynical and bitter pieces of fiction. Its lead character, Sebastian Rudd, is vaguely reminiscent of  A Time To Kill and The Last Juror‘s Lucien Wilbanks,  a long-haired warrior for justice who lives for picking fights.  He works for the dregs of the legal system — not the poor, but the despicable,  like a wannabe gangster who had his last lawyer killed. Part of this is idealism, but more pervasive is a contempt for practically every aspect of the legal system.   Rogue Lawyer begins with a series of disjointed sections, some of which finally converge into a more novel-worthy tale, though none of it makes for edifying reading.  Rudd spends the entire novel immersed in degradation. His clients are satanists, crimelords, and human traffickers, and when he is not with them he is attempting to manage a young San Salvadoran cage fighter, striking deals with petty crooks and pettier civil servants, or trading bitter courtroom blows with his ex-wife, as they work on their joint project of raising an emotional trainwreck of a child who will, if he survives being kidnapped by his father’s enemies to settle a score, have serious issues.  The majority of adults in this novel  spend their time plotting to  manipulate,  shake down,  or physically injure one another. The ending is suitably unsatisfying,. While it’s not as bad a novel as The Racketeer,   Grisham did street law much better in The Street Lawyer,  which saw ordinary decency matched against the inhumanity of the legal system. The problem here is there is little decency or humanity to be found. It’s nonstop violence, despair, and brooding, with the one moment of hope in the bleak collection of tragedy coming when the main character ponders packing up and leaving his life behind to go play golf.  Aside from a lead lawyer who is worlds away from Grisham’s usual main characters,  Rogue doesn’t impress.

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