This Week at the Library (20 August)

Posted on August 21, 2012 by smellincoffee

Reviews are pending for A Man on the Moon, by Neil Chaikan as well as The Wild Life of Our Bodies by Rob Dunn. (Pending, as in, “I meant to finish them on Sunday, but some friends invited me to supper and we did a Horatio Hornblower movie marathon. Ahem.”)

Last week  a new novel caught my eye: The Family Corleone, by Ed Falco.  A prequel to The Godfather, the famed novel by Mario Puzo, it proved a worthy tribute. The novel begins in 1933, with the Corleone family active and robust,  but not impressive compared to the  increasingly powerful Mariposa family. While Don Coreleone attempts to preserve his organization’s future against the ambitions of Mariposa — a feat not made easy by the fact that someone keeps raiding Mariposa’s liquor trucks, and he’s sure Corleone knows who it might be —  his oldest son Sonny is increasingly attracted to the darker side of Corleone’s business.  A key character is Luca Brasi, who is in his prime here as a  unaffiliated gang leader who is such a loose cannon that even Mariposa has a healthy fear of him. Homages to the original story abound: it ends as The Godfather begins, with a wedding. Even so, it’s less romantic than Puzo’s world, inhabited by “men of honor”: here, the corruption and stupidity of violence are more obvious.  Although Michael can’t help but be noticeable, given his future role in the family’s affairs, the star here is 17-year old Sonny, whose temper and ambition drive the story. I imagine most fans of The Godfather will enjoy this.

Also, a few weeks ago I read a Diane Carey DS9 novel, Station Rage, in which Chief O’Brian and Constable Odo discover what appears to be a sealed tomb, full of apparently dead Cardassian soldiers in ancient uniforms. Captain Sisko orders the hidden room sealed again while he makes some delicate inquiries as to how they got there, but unbeknownst to him someone decided to bring the dead back to life. Soon, a Alexander the Great-like character from Cardassia’s past is waging a private war on the station with his zombie honor guard, and there’s a Cardassian ship outside the station with an eye on destroying it. The plot is remarkably similar to that of “Empok Nor”, complete with Garak going crazy.  The characterization seems off throughout, with Kira in particular reduced to a vain creature  who is utterly wow-dowed by Sisko’s status as an action hero. The setup is utterly creepy, but the execution doen’t live up to expectations. This isn’t exactly a jewel in the crown of the numbered Trek novels.

Finally, last week I finished reading Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait, which I’ve been reading in bits and pieces throughout this year. The book is a collection of corrections about astronomical misconceptions. I’ll probably just make a few comments on it in next week’s weekly review.

For this next week, I’ll be finishing The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran. After that I have Twilight of the Mammoths to look forward to, at which point  I may continue focusing on science reading for a little bit, or switch gears. I’m itching to read The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt,

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John Adams

Posted on August 18, 2012 by smellincoffee

John Adams
© 2001 David McCullough
751 pages

The memory of some American presidents looms over the national mind like their monuments tower above the landscape. But John Adams has no monument on the National Mall: his face does not stare down from Mount Rushmoreor any piece of currency. He is, or was, until the publication of this book, largely forgotten – a downright shameful fact given the importance of his accomplishments.

Name an aspect of the American Revolution, and John Adams was there.  In the early years, his voice was among the most ardent scolding Britain for its abuse of colonial legal rights: at the Continental Congress, he began and led the charge for independence, championed George Washington as leader of the Continental Army, and defended the Declaration of Independence as its author Thomas Jefferson sat by idly.  During the revolution, he endured a long separation from his wife while working to effect war-winning alliances and afterwards, established the new nation’s  credit. Upon his return to the new United States, he served as vice president and then president, pursuing a solitary course of action that kept America from being embroiled in the Napoleonic wars, earning him the contempt and hostility of both parties, but the praise of historians to come.  John Adams was constantly making American history despite not being born into power, wealth, or influence – he was there because time and again he inserted himself into history’s way and stubbornly stood for what he viewed as the right course of action.

While John Adamsisn’t a hagiography,  McCullough’s appraisal of his subject is mostly complimentary.  Adams’ heroic aura comes not from grand idealism – for Adams was a pragmatist – or dashing military deeds, but in more mundane virtues. He was hardworking, morally upright, faithful to his cause, driven by duty to live up to his potential, and ever-constant.  When compared to his mercurial and petty contemporaries, not to mention the current lot of demagogues masquerading as public officials, Adams seems the embodiment of statesmanship. McCullough’s criticism is limited to acknowledging that Adams could have, at times, a bit of a temper.

Modern readers may find Adams’ comparative conservatism more problematic than any hot-headedness. Although Jefferson might have viewed the Revolution as being a progressive step forward in the history of mankind, Adamssaw colonial rights as being a function of British, and then American, law: they were not so much newly proclaimed as redeemed from the recent abuses of the king. He put little faith in the judgment of excitable masses especially the judgment of men who didn’t own land enough to make them financially independent:  men beholden to bosses were too easily influenced to build a free republic on. He also believed that aristocracies were inevitable, and should be thus planned for – their influenced acknowledged, and limited and removed from actual power – and that a government functioned best with a powerful executive whose decisions could not be easily over ridden. Given his fondness for English law, little wonder that the pro-French party railed against him as a closet monarchist with British sympathies and that members of his own party distanced themselves from him at best (as did George Washington) or openly reviled him, like Alexander Hamilton. With Jefferson conspiring with the French minister and both political parties acting as though civil war was about to break out and planning extralegal martial action, little wonder that Adamssullied his reputation somewhat with the Alien and Sedition acts. To his credit, he lived to regret signing those acts – something Wilson never did, and something it is doubtful Bush or Obama ever will do.

 John Adams was no idealist, but his actions speak louder than the words of those we cherish as champions of human progress, like Jefferson – who repeated the thought that all men were created equal in his Declaration, but persisted in keeping his own slaves.  Adams reviled the practice and refused so much as to hire someone else’s slaves: he and his family did most of the work  on their farm while Jefferson sat idly in Monticello, singing praises of Napoleon and tinkering with his gadgets. And for all his conservatism, Adams looked to the future and prepared the United Statesfor it. While Jefferson dreamt of a pastoral republic filled with gentleman farmers (and their slaves, one assumes), Adamssaw the future of the nation writ in industry, and commerce. One wonders – had the Erie Canal been proposed in a second Adams administration, instead of Jefferson’s first, would it have found presidential support instead of being a project of New York State alone?

 John Adams is an extraordinarily rich biography. McCullough’s reputation as an historian speaks for itself: this is as engrossing as a novel, and filled with details about Adams as a husband, father,  farmer, public official, statesman, and friend. Of the three McCullough works I’ve read, this was the most outstanding, in part because of its subject. I’ve found in him much to admire. 


           
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Q Squared

Posted on August 17, 2012 by smellincoffee

Star Trek the Next Generation: Q Squared
©  1994 Peter David
434 pages

On Stardate 2124.5, Captain Kirk and the Enterprise had a memorable experience with an impish creature named Trelane, a being of extraordinary power but the maturity of a child. Now Trelane is back, this time to play with Captain Picard and a different Enterprise….and right behind him is his godfather Q, beginning him to behave. Trelane, as it turns out, is a member of the Q Continuum, and Q has the task of grooming him to be a responsible adult. Naturally, the universe is doomed. After a tongue-lashing from the good captain, Trelane runs away and returns having discovered how to harness the power of universal chaos to give everyone on the Enterprise a really bad day….by collapsing three parallel universes into one another. Such is how Peter David starts off another fantastic Q novel.

In “Q-in-Law”, the fun came from bouncing lively characters like Q and Lwaxana Troi off of one another. Here, David explores various what-if scenarios: what if  Worf was rising star in the Klingon empire, and not a disgraced orphan? What if William Riker hadn’t been rescued by Nervala IV, but captured by Romulans? What if Jack Crusher hadn’t died? And what if Picard and Beverly Crusher had acted on their attraction…?  When Trelane begins forcing the universes together, chaos ensues, and a thrilling story unfolds as the characters navigate their way though an increasingly insane and ever-changing reality.

Although a novel that touches base with metaphysical notions like multiverses can confusing, especially when temporal shenanigans are thrown in, Q Squared manages to grow busy with action without ever losing the reader, and it’s wonderfully funny  despite how serious things get. The action is frantic, and as Picard and the others lose control, astonished laughter is sometimes the only response to what they’re enduring.

Q Squared is an excellent bit of Trek literature, supremely entertaining on its own merits   and doubly so for knitting together various temporal elements of TOS and TNG together. I understand David did the same with his pre-Destiny TNG Relaunch novel, Q&A. If so, I might have to read it….even if it DOES have the Borg destroying Pluto.

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Coup d’Etat

Posted on August 7, 2012 by smellincoffee

The War that Came Early: Coup d’Etat
© 2012 Harry Turtledove
416 pages

Coup d’Etat is the fourth book in Turtledove’s War that Came Early series, in which World War 2 begins at the 1938 Munich Conference when the Allies call Hitler’s bluff. Soon joined in his invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Polish,  Germany found itself engrossed in a two-front war after Russia rushed to the tiny republic’s defense. But in 1940, Hitler pulled off a diplomatic coup, convincing Britain and France to join him in a war against Stalinism by offering to withdraw the Wehrmacht from the low countries.  Considering that the Soviets were also under attack by the Japanese empire, the Big Switch was making World War 2 out to be a general dogpile against the the Russians — but in Coup de’Etat, the alliance between Hitler and the west breaks down after an “extralegal” change of government in Britain, and what was shaping up to be a vastly different war is now simmering down to an only marginally interesting conflict.

Like Supervolcano: Explosion, Coup d’Etat succeeds initially purely on premise alone. The Big Switch completely recovered this slow-to-start series for me, and the new set course of events it initiated carry the novel: with the Allies and Germany both pouring resources into Russia, it’s as if we’re seeing the Cold War served hot and early.  Will Russia collapse? What will Europe look like with Stalin gone, but with Hitler still reigning? Unfortunately,  that question becomes moot by novel’s end.  Not only are we back to the same basic World War 2 we know — complete with Italy invading British Africa, being turned back, and then aided by the Germans — but the dramatic event that restores the status quo isn’t even dramatic. One minute a character is being interrogated by British intelligence for planning to take over the government, the next minute he’s free because his cohorts have done it. Whoopee.  How did they do it? The reader isn’t shown.  The ramifications of a military coup of Britain aren’t explored, either: the new powers-that-be simply inform us that they have to be very discrete to avoid popular sentiment turning against them.  The war in the Pacific isn’t any more interesting,  perhaps because the American war engine is only starting to rev up. With Hitler at war with Britain, France, and Russia, and about to waste his resources in Africa, and the Japanese already weak after also taking on Russia,  the end-game seems as though it will be inevitably similar to our own. And if that’s the case, what’s the point of a writing an alternate history novel?

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This Week at the Library (6 August)

Posted on August 6, 2012 by smellincoffee

Aside from special occasions like Independence Day, I don’t plan my reading. I tend to follow whatever ensnares my interest, though this tends to result in my gorging  on a particular topic, sometimes to the point that I get sick of it. Thus, my tentative plans to do some science reading have been temporarily sidetracked by a continuing obsession with John Adams, who began to fascinate me in Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, and who has remained in my mind ever since. So for the past week I’ve been reading John Adams by David McCullough, which was most impressive.  Between  First Family and John Adams, though, I started watching a documentary series on DVD called From the Earth to the Moon, and now space exploration  is the thing. It’s not a new interest of mine –  my bed still has the NASA sticker I slapped on it back in middle school —  but I’ve never actually delved into the history of the space program. The series was absolutely astonishing, and since space exploration complements science reading rather nicely, don’t be surprised if it becomes a recurring theme this autumn.  In addition to memoirs like A Man on the Moon and Deke!, there’s Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Space Chronicles to consider, which examines both the history and future of the United States’ space program.
=============T=H=E===W=E=E=K===I=N===Q=U=O=T=E=S===========
All of these are from John Adams, by David McCullough, and from Adams’ own pen.
“The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation, it is impossible they should be enslaved.”
“Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
“We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular government. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. […] I fear that in any assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls. There is one thing, my dear sir, that must be attempted and most sacredly observed or we are all done. There must be decency and respect.”
“Government is nothing more than the combined of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good, and happiness of the people. …There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all others, by size or beauty and variety of colors, in the human hive. No man yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us into the world equal and alike.”
“Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable…”
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Lost Moon

Posted on August 3, 2012 by smellincoffee

Lost Moon: the Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13
© 1994 Jim Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger
368 pages

No one wants to hear ominous noises coming from their car in the middle of a road trip, especially if they’re in the middle of nowhere. But it could be worse — you could break down two hundred thousand miles from Earth, surrounded by the void of space and trapped in a small spacecraft whose every life support system  is failing rapidly.  Such was the case for the Apollo 13 crew: when a loud, ominous bang followed some routine tests, their mission to land in the hills of the Moon became a four-day struggle against the void of space and a dying machine just to stay alive.

Death and disaster had happened before to the astronaut corps: several had died in aircraft crashes, and the Apollo program began in tragedy when flames  consumed the interior of the command module of Apollo I during training, claiming the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee — but those accidents took place too quickly for anyone at Mission Control to intervene. Now, for the first time,  the lives of NASA astronauts were imperiled in the course of a mission, and far from home. If NASA couldn’t find a way to keep those men alive and bring them home safely,  they would face the prospect of having to talk these men through their final hours.  On the ground in Mission Control, and in the void of space, men called upon all their resources — their training, their intelligence, their creativity — to overcome problem after problem, overcoming the odds and achieving a triumphant return four days later. It is the story of those four days that Jim Lovell (commander of Apollo 13) and Jeffrey Kluger tell here.

Although Lovell participated in these events which he’s helping to retell, the book isn’t written from his perspective, nor is it limited to the four days of the mission itself. The authors begin retelling the story of Apollo 13 fairly quickly — and it’s one that keeps the reader tense, even knowing the outcome — but they also weave in reminiscences on NASA’s and the astronauts’ history. These diversions don’t just give the reader a break from the tense situation unfolding around the moon and the technical chatter between the craft and mission control: they add context, demonstrating how the catastrophe of Apollo 1 shaped NASA’s approach to disasters, or how various events in Lovell’s life prepared him for the duties of the space program and the extraordinary challenge of Apollo 13.  Lost Moon almost doubles as a history of NASA from the perspective of an astronaut, and between Lovell and Kluger even explanations of mechanistic failures have an energetic drama about them.

Definitely a book of interest to those interested in humanity’s space endeavors.

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The Artificial River

Posted on July 31, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Artificial River: the Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1867
© 1997 Carol Sheriff
272 pages

At the dawn of a new century, the two-decade old American republic stood hemmed in between storm-tossed Atlantic ocean and the towering Appalachian mountains. Beyond them lay the west, sparsely settled but full of potential, stifled only by the dangers and isolation of the wilderness. But then the state of New York summoned the will and resources to create a river where there had been none before, to turn the woods and rolling hills to an avenue for expansion. The Erie Canal opened the west to development and changed the nation’s history, but how did it effect the lives of the people who used it and lived along its course? Such is the question Carol Sheriff attempts to answer in The Artificial River: the Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress.

The Erie Canal was the first major infrastructure project in the early Republic, and changed the relationship between the state government and the people in a variety of ways. First, Sheriff demonstrates, it led to a stronger governmental hand in economic affairs, but the Canal Board allowed people a more direct voice in government than the House of Representatives. “The people” included farmers who were annoyed that access to their land had been limited or the land itself diminished by flooding and the actions of laborers, but the phrase also covered businessmen who were beginning to link their own prosperity with ‘the nation’s” and eager to enlist government financial support in matters that would – quite coincidentally, of course! – improve their own business prospect while furthering the nation’s interests. It didn’t include so much the laborers who made the canal possible – the men who dug the ‘ditch’ by hand an in era without mechanized tools, and the boys who helped run the boats up and down the canal, seven days a week, finding their pleasures in the taverns and brothels when they could, and constantly under attack by the wealthy as the scourge of society or viewed as a band of sinners who needed to be saved from themselves by the burgeoning Temperance movement.

Aside from the government becoming more involved in the affairs of life, the canal’s presence in people’s lives drove home the idea of what was possible. The 19th century would be one dominated by the ever-forward March of Technology. A century earlier, a given technological triumph might be enjoyed only by a particularly wealthy lord or merchant, but in the 19th century progress became a democratic institution. The Erie Canal’s swiftness was not limited to the the wealthy: the locks opened and the river flowed for all, and it became an active link to “civilization” for the initial settlers even as it served as the agent of the west’s own civilization. Indeed, so quickly did the area along the canal become civilized that it was soon taken for granted and its annual winter closings were greeted not with stoic understanding, but annoyance — like that which cell phone users experience when experiencing choppiness. The fact that they have their personal phone which is operating by sending signals into space is utterly lost on them in comparison to the impression that they have been inconvenienced. So when the railroads followed the canal down the paths it blazed through wilderness and rendered the marvelous waterway obsolete within only a few decades, no one thought it strange When Thomas Jefferson first heard the proposal to build the canal, he snorted that it would make a fine project in a century. He could have never imagined how much change would be wrought before then.

The Artificial River differs from most Erie histories in that its focus is not on the politics and history of the canal’s construction and operation  but on the people whose lives it touched. There it demonstrates what a transitional period the United States was in, shifting from an agrarian republic run by a relative elite to a bustling, noisy commercial democracy where property qualifications were increasingly passe, and the future of the country was in the now very noticeable working class. It’s very fine history as far as its focus goes, but for a fuller appreciation of the canal I would probably read it along with other books.

Related:
Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and American Empire, Gerared Koeppel

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The Ghosts of Evolution

Posted on July 31, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsense Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms
© 2000 Connie Barlow
291 pages

Grocery stores are excellent places to encounter ghosts. They lurk in the fruit section, feasting on anachronisms.

The biological world is a wondrous web of connections between various animals and plants, and such connections are the source of evolution’s “endless forms most beautiful”. Not only does the contest between predators and prey – a biological ‘arms race’ – drive evolution, creating faster feet, sharper brains, and more discrete camouflage, but the mutually-supportive relationships between species shape them toward one another’s uses, , like leather molding itself into a glove over an offered hand. But what happens to the glove when the hand is ripped away – when one part of a cooperative pair vanishes into the mists of history and leaves its partner alone? Said partner becomes a living anachronism, and such anachronisms and their ghostly partners are the subject of this fascinating bit of science journalism that may be most readers’ introduction to the field of paleoecology.

Like an ethereal spectre waiting at a window for her beloved, every spring trees throughout the western hemisphere produce fruit for animals which no longer exist to consume them. The two American continents once looked very much like Africa,  being home to massive beasts. While some are familiar to us, like the mammoth, others are fantastic (sloths that make grizzlies look like pups?) and still others just seem misplaced, like American species of lions and tigers (andbearsohmy).  Barlow and her associates take a forensic approach to uncovering relationships between extinct and extant species. Although some bits of evidence seem obvious — fruits and seeds which are too large for the mouth of any living species, but would have been easily gobbled up by the elephant-like gomphotheres —  her work relies on a wide variety of evidence.  Mouth sizes aren’t everything: a given animal’s intestines must also be taken into consideration. Some fruit require the digestive assistance of bacteria; some seeds need to be softened by stomach acid, or battered by gizzard stones before they can germinate.  So varied are the pieces of the puzzle that Barlow establishes a diagnostic profile for ascertaining if a given species is anachronistic, one that also determines the degree of anachronism.  While some species have found new markets for their produce (so to speak) in the form of horses and cattle brought over from Europe, others see their entire offering of fruit go to waste every year, and have survived the death of the megafauna only because they’re exceptionally long-lived species who sometimes get lucky.In addition fruit, Barlow also illustrates how many plants are attempting to defend themselves against the muzzles and digestive systems of animals who haven’t been around for centuries


Ghosts of Evolution is one of the most fascinating science books I’ve read in a long while. Like Sherlock Holmes taking Watson along to investigate a mystery in Victorian London, so Barlow takes the reader through the Pleistocene jungles with a grand mystery of her own. The text isn’t as formal as most — more a journalistic account of Barlow’s investigation, and replete with dialogue between herself and a colleague as they puzzle matters through – but it’s teeming with interest. Not only does she illustrate the rich biological heritage of the Americas while piecing together the puzzle, but what she does find offers lessons for modern-day conservation efforts. If we can figure out what kind of dynamics kept the landscape healthy in the past, perhaps we can make efforts to restore it. Her epilogue contains information about ecological approaches that have been inspired by work in this field: for instance, the idea that camels should be introduced to the North American desert plains to feast on certain pervasive species of scrub that have been allowed to become overly dominant thanks to a lack of natural predators….a lack created when said predators suddenly disappeared shortly after the arrival of humans in the Americas.

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Teaser Tuesday (31 July)

Posted on July 31, 2012 by smellincoffee

Jim Lovell was having dinner at the White House when his friend Ed White burned to death.  Actually, it was’t dinner Lowell was having, just finger sandwiches, orange juice, and unmemorable wine laid out on covered tables in the Green Room.

p. 1, Lost Moon: the Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13. Jim Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by ShouldBeReading, in which participants share excerpts from their current reads.

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First Family

Posted on July 29, 2012 by smellincoffee

First Family: Abigail and John Adams
© 2010 Joseph Ellis
320 pages

‘Til then, ’til then, I am, as I ever was….yours, yours, yours. 

1776, a musical film which celebrates the Declaration of Independence, is an absolutely delightful movie, as funny as it is inspiring. But increasingly I enjoy it for the tender way it portrays the relationship between John Adams and his distant wife, Abigail.  Committed whole-heartedly to the Revolution, Adams is its most ardent advocate. He struggles throughout the film against the cautious  conservatism of his fellow congressmen, and even his marginal successes seem ruined by the compromises that were necessary to achieve them. In times of crisis, Adams retreats and finds a place to himself….where he finds consolation in the thought of his wife. Throughout the movie, Abigail appears in his thoughts and the two sing and comfort one another, the lyrics and dialogue being taken from their letters. It is those letters that provide the source of this, Joseph Ellis’ lovely biography of the Adams family.

Ellis proved in Founding Brothers that he’s a gifted storyteller, and the same strength is at play here. It helps that he has such extraordinary characters to write about. Abigail is no prim and proper personality stifled by petticoats: she’s strong, vibrant, and independence, giving as good as she gets in terms of political and philosophical conversations as well as sly innuendo  that no one would expect from a couple living in Puritan country.  She is in the truest sense of the word, Adams’s partner; his dearest friend and most constant source of intellectual stimulation. Her interest in politics influences his career directly,  and she takes an active hand in his personal and political relationships with men like Thomas Jefferson.  The affection these two feel for one another — the strength and power of their relationship — is abundantly evident in their letters, especially when they are estranged during Adams’ time as an diplomat in Europe.  Abigail’s role as confidant allows the reader to see inside Adams’ mind, and the man revealed is endearing for his faults and fascinating in his beliefs.  Adams’ progressive realism contrasts with Jefferson’s conservative idealism, and demonstrates the frailty of the false liberal-conservative divide. No man is so easy to box up.  Although politics plays a large role given Adams’ place in history as revolutionary leader and president,  John and Abigail’s family is never far from sight, and the losses they endure can’t help but inspire sympathy.

I thoroughly enjoyed First Family. To be sure, it does have the weakness of maintaining a one-sided view of the Revolution that sees Britain as entirely in the wrong; here, Britain is taxing America to pay for its empire just because it’s fun to be oppressive like that.  It’s also not quite as varied as Founding Brothers, but even so I couldn’t stop reading it. (The story of John and Abigail fairly well enraptures me: even though the Fourth is long past, the taste I had of their relationship in Sacred Honor and Founding Brothers only gave me an appetite for more, and I may wind up having to find and purchase a collection of their letters to find satisfaction!).  It’s a story of romance, family, and politics — one which reveals the mind-boggling insanity of the Adams White House, where the second president is beset by friend and foe alike. Not only does his vice president conspire with the French and instruct them not to pay Adams any attention, but a member of his own party has Bonaparte-esque delusions of grandeur and tries not only to run the presidential cabinet in secret, but put himself at the head of an army he can use to root out spies and traitors….like the vice president. If nothing else, First Family demonstrates the remarkable pillar of contrarianism that was Adams more easily than David McCullough’ denser biography might.

Related:

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