Beyond Band of Brothers

Posted on January 27, 2011 by smellincoffee

Beyond Band of Brothers: the War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters
© 2006 Dick Winters and Colonel Cole Kingseed
303 pages

When I landed, the only weapon I had was a trench knife that I had placed in my boot. I stuck the knife in the ground before I went to work on my chute. This was a hell of a way to begin a war.

Dick Winters didn’t join the Army out of abounding love for his country, but because he didn’t want conscription interrupting a profitable business career. Though he joined in peacetime, that peace did not long last, and Winters became a soldier for the duration.  That strategic decision of his turns out to be the last less-than-noble action Winters makes, for he is The All-American soldier.  He’s Sam Damon, come to life, fulfilling every ideal Americans have about soldiers: devoted to God and country, hard-working, clean-cut, conscientious, and morally beyond reproach. He never loses his temper, never shrinks back from a fight, and never seems like anything less than an iconic hero.  For those looking for inspiration, his memoirs will provide it in bounds — but all the stories about his men’s nobility and sacrifice seem a little too much like a 1940s newsreel meant to bolster spirits and inspire faith in the men and the cause than a thought-provoking account of the trials of war.

After joining the Army,  Winters determined to be the best he could be. Determined to excel and to lead, he applied for the paratroop corp and became a lieutenant of a company destined to fight in D-Day, the Bulge, and a few tough spots in between before ending the war as a Major governing a portion of Austria as military governor. While the “on-the-ground” look inside the D-Day operations and beyond is what will attract most readers, I was most interested by his account of basic training and Officer Candidates School.  The intensive training parachutists were put through seemed perverse at times.  After his account of the war — in which  Winter proves himself to be a superb commander, so inspiring that when a superior officer court-martialed him, all of Winters’ non-commissioned officers near-mutinied, resigning their stripes rather than serve  under Winter’s offender — Winter ruminates on lessons learned, particularly in regards to leadership.

The account is readable, and were I less cynical I suppose I would be beside myself with all the inspiration being handed out. I enjoyed it nonetheless, aside from Winter’s account of looting and billeting as they marched through Germany. Winters thought nothing of kicking German civilians out of their home — ordering them, weapons in hand, not requesting — for his own comfort, and justified this by claiming they were supporting Hitler. This seemed disingenuous at best: why the rationalization?  “To the victor go the spoils” may be a cruel mantra, but at least it’s honest. Exacting private judgment on strangers is no more noble when done by a ‘hero’ than by the ‘villains’.  This attempt at justification and the endless moral lessons being taught to the audience soured me on Winters after a while, though I felt a bit guilty about it since he’s a recently deceased Hero and all (d. 2 January 2011). All things considered, I much prefer Sam Stavinsky’s Marine Combat Correspondent. Winters reminded me more of Ernst Junger, who wrote Storm of Steel — both seem more like  ideals than real men, their memoirs fulfilling their respective country’s stereotypes about themselves.

Related:

  • Band of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose’s account of “Easy Company” which brought Winters and his men into the public eye. 
  • Marine Combat Correspondent, Sam Stavinsky, the account of a glass-wearing journalist turned grizzled Marine. I remember it fondly, though I read it back in high school when the romance of nationalism and noble soldiers had in me an ardent follower. 
  • Storm of Steel, Ernst Junger — a German account of the Great War, written by a man with a spooky detachment who embodies the stereotype of the cold, efficient, tough-as-nails Prussian solider. 
  • Once an Eagle, Anton Myrer, from whose protagonist Sam Damon Winters and his co-author quote. 
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This Week at the Library (19 Jan – 26 Jan)

Posted on January 26, 2011 by smellincoffee

Over the weekend I decided to give TWATL a visual refresher and am happy with the way it turned out, aside from some minor niggles. Beyond appearances, I added a few elements — the Cumulative Reading List, which became necessary last year as assorted surveys  made it difficult to glance over  the annual reading; a much neater approach to labels, and a Shelfari widget to show books I’m currently reading. That last seems more like a gimmick than anything else, but I was in mood to play around.

2011 Nonfiction Reading Challenge Update:
Since the challenge began, I have read three applicable books:

  • Six on Six Legs (Science)
  • The Rise and Fall of the Bible, which I could apply toward culture or art..I 
  • and The Age of Absurdity, which — since there’s no philosophy category — I’m not sure as to what to do with. Culture? Money?  

In the future I think I’ll be using this weekly review to share book-related links I find of interest, like Susanne Alleyn’s essay on writing proper historical fiction by staying honest and as close to the facts as possible, Rick Riordian‘s thoughts on writing fiction in general, and a collection of Goosebumps run-throughs from “Blogger Beaware”. If you read the series as a child you may enjoy revisiting them through this complete series of snarky reviews. Blogger Beware has a sufficiently geeky enough audience to merit its own TvTropes page.

This past week at the library was an usually strong series of books. I started the week off with an interesting murder mystery by Michael Connelly, in The Black Echo. I then read another advanced review book, The Rise and Fall of the Bible, which proved to be an entertaining and informative history of the Bible as a cultural icon.  After reading the surprisingly excellent Far Better Rest, I finished the week off with The Age of Absurdity, which I am still collecting my thoughts on.

Selected Quotations:
“Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering.” –  Timothy Beal quoting another author, listed in my notes as ‘Chambers’. in The Rise and Fall.

“”We’re used to picturing the genaology of a text like a family tree: one original at the base ascending like a single trunk, with copies branching off it, and copies of copies branching off them. And so on throughout the generations. We imagine an original from which all the generations of diversity spring as scribes make revisions and introduce copying errors. But the reverse seems to be the case when it comes to the origins of the Bible: the further you go back in its literary history, the less uniformity there is. Scriptural traditions are rooted, quite literally, in diversity. ” – p. 106, The Rise and Fall of the Bible

There were a lot of quotes from Age of Absurdity, but I think I’ll wait until I’m done mulling over things to share them.

Next week’s potentials:

  • Beyond Band of Brothers, Major Richard Winters
  • The Electric Universe, a history of the human discovery and application of electricity. 
  • Stonehenge, Bernard Cornwell. I haven’t started this one yet, aside from the first page.
  • The Confessions, Augustine. This time I’m serious. 
  • The First World War, John Keegan. I checked this out because I wanted some history, but couldn’t find a generic medieval history as I was in the mood for.  I’ve heard good things about Keegan

Also, with the money from birthday checks and the like I recently purchased six Star Trek paperbacks (mostly used copies) and one science book, and will be buying another science book at some point in the next few weeks, so that’s something to look forward to. They’ll probably start arriving this weekend or early next week, seeing as I always buy from the states around Alabama if I can.  Included will be the last Typhon Pact novel (Dayton Ward), another entry in the Titan series (Christopher L Bennett, and my first Vanguard (David Mack) reads.

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A Far Better Rest

Posted on January 25, 2011 by smellincoffee

A Far Better Rest
© 2000 Susanne Alleyn
353 pages


Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is the story of a family beset by revolution. Regarded as a classic of western literature,  the novel warns against the dangers of Revolution and celebrates individual self-sacrifice, unpredictably embodied by the figure of Sydney Carton, who rouses himself from a drunken slumber to save a man’s life, returns to his rest, and rises once more at the novel’s end to save an innocent man from the guillotine’s murderous wrath. A Far Better Rest is Carton’s story, told through his eyes — and an excellent complement to the classic, I might add.

At first the novel did not too much impress me: its cover and opening chapters made me suspect I was in for a period romance instead of a ‘proper’ historical novel. This, I’m happy to report, was a misjudgment on my part. While romance is inevitable — Carton’s enduring love for Lucie Manette drives him throughout the plot, here as in Dickens’ original — this is not a bodice-ripper. Indeed, those bodices which are mentioned remain firmly fastened. Though we see inside Carton’s soul, Alleyn does not make her readers bedroom voyeurs. Instead, Alleyn focuses on what love drives Carton to do. Inspired by Lucie’s faith in him, and her simple goodness, Carton determines to recall himself to life and travels to France, where he finds himself in the middle of a Revolution — a revolution that will, as it continues to mold France’s destiny, force Carton and others to choose their own paths. Carton is continually buffeted by fate, but seeks redemption if only to justify Lucie and others’ faith in him. Lucie is not his only motivation: having grown as a character, Carton only learns of the Mannettes’ presence in Paris in the midst of a personal quest.

Any novel inspired by A Tale of Two Cities cannot very well avoid the Revolution, but Carton’s place in the relative thick of things gives the reader a personal view of the chaos that began to unfold after the First Republic found itself at war with a continent full of adversaries and ruled by a council of ruthless crusaders determined to preserve their gains at all costs. Carton finds in the Republican struggle something to live for, but his hopes are dashed when the Revolution, “like Saturn, eats its own children”.  Alleyn evidently knows the period quite well, and displays an impressive amount of historical detail. (She even attaches a bibliography — not something I see in a lot of historical fiction.) This is reflected in the style of the narrative, for Carton-as-narrator employs some older spelling variations (“connexion”), capitalizes random Nouns within sentences, and O! uses period abbreviations, tho’ they run the gauntlet between being distracting and somewhat immersive.  Alleyn or her editor’s choice of font was also well done — conveying an 18th century feel.  The only truly distracting stylistic choice (for me) was Carton’s self-censorship:  words deemed vulgar are marred by underscores, so damned becomes d___ed and bollocks b_ll_cks.  The reader knows d___ed well what’s being said, but ‘walking through’ the underscores tends to slow down the book’s pace.

Speaking of pace, the book turned into a page-turner after a slow start. The beginning of the book is its weakest — there’s a forced scene in which Carton meets two future revolutionaries while studying in France, one that has no function other than to establish a prior relationship between the boys for when they mature into men destined to lead France from monarchy to Republicanism. The political elements make the book a sort of thriller, and Alleyn’s depiction of Carton’s relationships with Darton, Lucie, and a third character, coupled with his masterful character growth, created in this book book an absolute winner for me — one I’d recommend without reserve. Just as Carton redeemed himself, so will his “self-written” account redeem the story of A Tale of Two Cities for those who think it too florid, dense, or inaccurate — for Alleyn thinks Dickens’ exaggerated account of the revolution a blot on his reputation and attempts to portray it more fairly here. She’s an author who takes her history seriously.
        

Related:

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Teaser Tuesday (25 January)

Posted on January 25, 2011 by smellincoffee

Tuesday Teasin’ time again, from Should Be Reading.

“They’ll hang the fellow at Tyburn, and there will be an end to it.”

“If he is found Guilty.”

“Indeed. Your legal acuity never ceases to amaze me.”

“I do not intend that he shall be found Guilty.”

“A commendable position for the Counsel for the Defense. Bravissimo.”

 p. 32-35, A Far Better Rest. Susanne Alleyn.

There are many variants among the more than fifty-three hundred early New Testament manuscripts and manuscript fragments that survived the Greek language alone (not to mention early Latin, Syriac, and Coptic translations). The oldest of them (from the second, third, and fourth centuries) are the most divergent. Granted, many of the variations among different manuscripts are not terribly significant. But a good number are. Some of these differences were no doubt the result of accidents, but some clearly were not. Early manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, for example, offer four different endings. In the Greco-Roman world of the first and second centuries, long before copyright laws, works of literature quickly lost touch with their authors. They were copied, edited, supplemented, and distributed through decentralized, informal networks in ways that the writers could not anticipate or control.

p. 101, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: the Unexpected History of an Accidental Book, Timothy Beal.

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Top Ten Book (Series) I Wish I’d Read as Kid

Posted on January 25, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Broke and the Bookish are curious: are there any books you wish you’d read as a child?

1. The Redwall Series, Brian Jacques

I did read a few of these books as a kid, but not very many. They’re…fantasy novels which star woodland creatures. In the first book, Redwall, a mean rat named Cluny (Cluny! Cluny! CLUNY THE SCOURGE!) decided to attack a pleasant little abby-sanctuary called Redwall and use its high walls as a fortress. He spurs his horde of vermin onward while, a plucky little mouse named Matthias seeks a magic sword to help save his home.  There are over twenty books in the series in all now.

The books were charming and the dialogue fun (a friend of mine and I used to entertain each other by imitating the rabbits of the Long Patrol), but the older I got the more embarrassed I felt about sneaking into the children’s section to read books about mice with longbows.

2. The Nancy Drew Series and 3. Hardy Boys Mysteries (Various Authors)

While I enjoyed mystery novels as a kid, I mostly read from the Boxchar Children stories. I may have read from one Hardy Boys mystery, but aside from that both series were untouched. (The actual title of Hardy Boys #3 is The Secret of the Old Mill, but the above image came up in a google search and amused me, so there you are.)

4. Matt Christopher’s Works

I was never into competitive sports as a kid: while I liked playing them, I liked PLAYING them. I wasn’t interested in keeping score, which was why I tended to spend recess going on unsanctioned nature walks in the woods with friends,  and Saturday mornings riding bikes and building stunt ramps.  Christopher wrote a series of books about kids and sports, and while I read a couple of them (The Year Mom Won the Pennant, and a book about a kid who gets into biking as a way to get in shape),  I ignored most of the series.

5. Sweet Valley High and 6. The Babysitters’ Club (Francine Pascal, Ann M. Martin)

I realize these are girls’ books, but so were the California Diaries books and I enjoyed them just fine, thank you very much. (I was introduced to that series by a male character, though…Ducky.)  I read one or two in the SVH series from my  older sister’s collection back in the day, though all I remember is that Elizabeth fell asleep with her headphones on once, and there was a third twin who was evil and…may have burned down a house?  I am too old to empathize with the characters now, though. As for the other: California Diaries was a spinoff of Babysitters’ Club, — and one character, Dawn Schaefer, carried over. That’s the main reason that in high school I tried to find the books to read them before realizing they were meant for preteen girls. While Dawn wasn’t my favorite character,  she was the second-nicest person in the series and sort of a hippie, which I liked.

7. More of Ghosts of Fear Street and 8. Goosebumps 2000.  (R.L. Stine)

I was a kid during the Goosebumps heyday, and owned all of the books in the original collection. Ghosts of Fear Street was a kid’s version of his Fear Street books (with less  axe-murder and more psychotic sea monkeys), while Goosebumps 2000 was more or less an attempt to remarket Goosebumps for the new millennium. I disapproved of this for some reason and would not read the books, and by the time I’d gotten over my knee-jerk reaction,they’d  vanished from the shelves. D’oh.  Fear Street Adventures was a different story:  the only place in town that sold books offered them only sporadically.

9. More of Starfleet Academy. (Various authors)

My library had two of these (Starfall and Capture the Flag) and I loved `em both, but Selma doesn’t have a bookstore beyond the supermarkets (which tend to sell romances, westerns, and Christian fiction exclusively), so I couldn’t read more. I would’ve liked to read the adventures of young Worf and young — err,…Cadet — Data.

10. More of Great Illustrated Classics. (Various authors).

As a child I read quite a few “classics” in a shorter, illustrated form — The Call of the Wild, Robinson Caruso,  Black Beauty, War of the Worlds, etc. There are many more, but I only read a fraction of them. Now I read the ‘real’ version of those books, but I still would’ve liked to have read more of the series in this fashion.

Bonus:
11. Harry Potter – — ? Maybe?
While I couldn’t have truly grown up with Harry (being older than him when the first book was released), I wonder how I would have enjoyed the experience of waiting anxiously for every new release and reading through it with great anticipation at what would happen. Instead, I read all of the books in Autumn – October 2007…but I don’t think I was so much disadvantaged.  While Harry was leaving behind a world that disliked him and finding new friends at Hogwarts, I left an unpleasant, past and found my own home and friends in at the University of Montevallo, which I began attending that very fall. So I related rather powerfully to Harry in those first two books. Now, when I watch the movies, I’m reminded of my first week and semester on campus, and I like the connection. (When I investigated my dorm for the first time, I said: “It’s not Gryffindor Tower, but it’ll do.”)  So maybe it was best I only discovered the series in my adult days, eh?

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The Rise and Fall of the Bible

Posted on January 23, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book
© 2011 Timothy Beal
225 pages, not including index.

Disclaimer: I read from an advanced review copy of the book, available through NetGalleys. No compensation for a review, good or negative, was offered or requested, aside from my own potential enjoyment of the book.

For better or worse, the Bible holds a singular place in western history. Within its thousands of pages are history,  poetry, proverbs, legends, and more laws than anyone knows what to do with. For fifteen hundred years, people have looked at it for justification and inspiration —  saints and scoundrels alike.  Timothy Beal writes The Rise and Fall of the Bible in part to address how it arrived at this status. His work is not a comprehensive history of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, but focuses on their collection, promotion, and role in western society.  Essentially, it’s a history of the Bible as a cultural icon — as The Bible, the ultimate and authoritative voice that offers simple, direct, and instant answers to any who seek its counsel — and a critical appraisal of the same.

Beal grew up seeing the Bible in this way, but while he still holds to the Christian faith, he now sees a gulf between this iconic status and the Bible in its most potent context. Rather than seeing it as a “magic eight ball” that delivers answers at convenience, Beal has grown to view the Bible as a work of work which forces individuals to engage with it, to grapple with its diverse meanings.  He believes that the ruthless conversion of the Bible from sacred literature into consumer product is fast eroding its status as an icon, and that the rise of digital literature will encourage individuals to work with the bible for themselves.

Beal’s opening chapters comment on the current status of the Bible (emphasizing its constant repackaging into forms like ‘biblezines ‘and manga stories), after which point he gives a brief history of the Christian canon. I’d expected this section to be the meat of the book, but Beal uses the history to illustrate his point that the relationship between people and the Bible has changed throughout history. In early Christian history, no Authority handed down approved texts to individuals and communities. Instead ,they collected — and created — such texts themselves.  According to Beal, both Jewish and Christian scriptures existed in an infinite variety, as collections and translations were assembled for a given community’s desires, purposes, and preferences. They lifted quotes out of context to apply to their own needs, freely — and this is true not only of the rank-and-file believer, but of church fathers like Paul.* Copyists and translators played fast-and-loose with their work, and the organization of the Christian canon in the early medieval  period seems like a desperate struggle to impose order on chaos. It’s no accident that the canon only came to be once the resources of the state were at would-be censors’ disposal. It’s also rather obvious that the censors’ opinions are arbitrary: from the early church through the Renaissance and Reformation, theologians bickered on what was Authoritative and which was not.

This history of the Christian bible, while not as thorough as I’d expected, was thoroughly fascinating all the same. Such diversity explains all the little inconsistencies, and makes defending claims to the Bible speaking in only one voice impossible to defend. Beal devotes a chapter following his history discuss his problems with seeing the Bible as a one-voice monograph. It is, he says, a library of books that is “constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself.”  Beal adds to his discussion of the Bible’s role by commenting on how the physical expression of scriptures — in scrolls, codices, books, and now digital texts — changes the way people view it.  The unwieldiness and expense of the scroll promoted oral traditions and short anthologies, while the Bound Book conveys to the reader a sense of finality:  a text that is bound is finished and cannot be altered. Its sheer physicality is an imposition, and the relative openness of digital literature is one reason why Beal is optimistic about the future role of the bible. As it becomes more personal affair, the lessons gleaned from it will have real value: rather than meekly accepting The Final Word, individuals will earn truth and meaning by working for it.

I’m glad I read The Rise and Fall of the Bible, though it’s not the book I thought I would be reading. Its history added to my appreciation of early Christian history, and its theme — the Bible’s changing relationship with the people who read it — has given me food for thought.  I never realized how ‘loose’ the Christian canon truly is.

The Rise and Fall of the Bible will be available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 16, 2011.

Related:

  • God’s Problem, Bart Ehrman, which expounds on the lack of a ultimate answer to the question of evil —  something Beal cited as evidence of the Bible’s  multivoiced nature. 
  • Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, Isaac Asimov– a treatment of the Bible as human literature. 

*In studying the creation of Christianity from Judaism back in late ’06 and 2007, I realized that the Gospel authors were rather enthusiastic in repurposing  Jewish scriptures for their own use. One rabbi referred to this as “painting Christianity into the [Torah]”.

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This Library Has a New Look

Posted on January 21, 2011 by smellincoffee

I threatened to move this blog to the new Blogger template last year after Let Me Be Frank made such an impressive transition, and now I’ve gone and done it.  I wanted to make the background either my home library or a large reading room and ultimately went with the latter. At the moment I have two concerns about the blog’s look: first, it seems a bit….dark. If you are not viewing the blog on a widescreen monitor, some of the picture is cut off — including my favorite part, the “NO CELLPHONES” sign. That’s what sold me on the picture to begin with! (I take pleasure in staying disconnected! 😉 ) I think the cut-off eliminates the brighter portions of the background and makes the blog as a whole seem darker. Secondly, the font color may make it harder for some viewers’ eyes. If this is a problem for you, please let me know.  White may stand out more.

Here’s what you are missing if you are not viewing this on a widescreen monitor, by the way:

I bought a new PC back in the fall of 2009, and as a consequence I’ve gotten positively spoiled: the blog’s appearance on more squarish monitors never occurred to me.  Baley of The Reader’s Book Blog showed me what it looked like from her end, and while it’s not as…attractive as the widescreen view, it also hasn’t prompted me to go back to ye old drawing board.  I may see what the page looks like with a background picture of my home library in the future, but ever since adding that Cumulative Reading List ‘page’ last night, I’ve been wanting to complete the transition to modernity.

Special thanks to Jamie of the Broke and the Bookish for telling me how to convert Great Big Lists of Labels into delightfully tidy drop-down lists, and to Baley for her feedback and encouragement.

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The Black Echo

Posted on January 21, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Black Echo
© 1992 Michael Connelly
375 pages

It’s the week before Memorial Day 1991 in Los Angeles, the city of stars, urban street gangs, and smog — and Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch has been called in on a Sunday to check out a possible overdose in a pipe. It’s just a quick job: all he needs to do it is confirm the initial suspicions. If Harry’s partner had been called to the pipe, or any other officer, that might have been the end of it — but Harry takes his job seriously and notices the little details that others would ignore for convenience’s sake. He notices the lack of tracks leading into the tunnel, the unusually pure heroin ingested by the dead man, the indications in the pattern of how his clothing is arranged that indicate he was drugged and dragged in This is no accidental overdose. This is murder.

But who would murder this man, a shiftless Vietnam veteran who has drifted from job to job in the twenty years since the end of the war? Driven by duty — both to the badge and to a former comrade — Harry digs in, annoying his fellow police officers who see only another broken veteran who sought release in a drug that killed him. That’s not unusual for Harry, who is an excellent detective but a miserable police officer. Once he’s committed to a task, he has little patience for rules or people who get in the way. Harry is a perpetual outsider who pains those who work with him,, a grizzled lone wolf, a man on a quest —- and that quest links his case to a bank robbery in which the culprits used Los Angeles’ vast system of underground flood-control tunnnels to dig inside the bank’s vaults.  A year later, the FBI is still looking — but now, they and Harry join forces. They must work quickly, because the thieves may strike again come the weekend.

This is my first time reading Michael Connelly, and I rather enjoyed the experience. I suppose the world-weary police veteran with a hidden heart of gold is a familar character,  but I like Harry.  The book unfolds through the course of a week, as Harry tries to build his case while battling charges by the grudge-holding department of Internal Affairs, who despise a curmudgeon.  There’s a little romance and a lot of plot twists — so many, in fact, that the last one doesn’t emerge until after the actual crime has been taken care of.  There are subtle fragments of evidence woven throughout the book that allow the reader to put the pieces together for him- or herself, without relying on bursts of insight from Bosch.

Perfectly enjoyable book: I liked the gritty detail of it, and the intriacacy of the plot impressed me. I’ll be continuing in this series as I’m able.

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This Week at the Library (12 – 19 January)

Posted on January 20, 2011 by smellincoffee

Most of the books I read are strictly for myself, aside from the odd request from a friend to read a book to see how it is. This week, though, I reviewed two books (Sex on Six Legs, To End All Wars)  for Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt through NetGalleys. Neither of them have been released yet, and both proved good reads. To End All Wars was particularly exceptional.  In fiction, I read Bernard Cornwell’s Redcoat, which surprised me. While historical, its drama is mostly interpersonal, focusing on a young British soldier whose loyalties grow more complicated during the occupation of Philadelphia in 1777-1778.

Selected Quotations:

“You have no quarrel with Germany!” he roared. “German workmen have no quarrel with their French comrades….we are told international treaties compel us [but] who made those? The People had no voice in them!” As he spoke, the sky over London blackened with storm clouds, and before he finished, they burst in a torrential downpour.

That evening, Germany demanded from Belgium passage for its troops.  

(p. 91, To End All Wars. Greg Hochschild.)

“I knew it was my business to protest, however futile protest might be,” wrote Russell decades later, “I felt that for the honour of human nature those who were not swept off their feet should show they stood firm.” 

“I should like the words ‘alien’ and ‘foreigner’ to be banished from the language. We are all members of the same family.”  – Charlotte Despard 

– As quoted in To End All Wars. 

“I think to think of the nuclei of our cells, not as perfectly tuned whirring machines, each gear essential, but as vast echoing warehouses of factories. Entire machines are outdated and useless, left rusted in a corner but never taken away and demolished. Others are jury-rigged out of pieces from older models and newer ones, rattling jerkily through their paces but ultimately manufacturing something usable.” 

p. 55, Sex on Six Legs

Potentials for next week…

  • The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley. I’d intended to read more of it this past week, but wanted to focus on the two advanced reviews.
  • The Rise and Fall of the Bible: the Unexpected History of an Accidental Book, by Timothy Beal. This is another advanced review copy, huzzah. 
  • The Black Echo, Michael Connelly. I saw its main character on TvTropes last night as being characterized by saying “Either everyone matters, or no one does”, which I approve of. The character in question is a grizzled LAPD detective, so I’m expecting an urban mystery.
  • A Far Better Rest, Susanne Alleyn. A Tale of Two Cities from Sidney Carton’s perspective. Again, a TvTropes discovery.
  • Beyond Band of Brothers: the War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters, Richard Winters.  Winters died recently, so I thought it might be appropriate to read his memoirs of parachuting into D-Day.  (Technically before  D-Day, but the two are inexorably bound together.)

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Sex on Six Legs

Posted on January 20, 2011 by smellincoffee

Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life,  Love, and Language from the Insect World
© 2011 Marlene Zuk
246 pages, not including index.

Disclaimer:   I read from an advanced review copy of the book, available through NetGalleys. No compensation for a review, good or negative, was offered or requested, aside from my own potential enjoyment of the book.

Like many of her subjects, Marlene Zuk’s popular treatment of insect life is short, buzzing with excitement, and gruesomely fascinating.  Insects are the most numerous and varied life on Earth. While the functions they play are essential in maintaining a healthy ecology,  a close examination of them reveals a captivating world of behavior that is not only interesting in itself, but can shed light on questions of interest to humanity — like the origins of language and personality.

Zuk kicks off Sex on Six Legs by explaining the scientific advantages of studying insects beyond simple curiosity.  Because insects are so far removed from humans in appearance — and indeed, given their tubular mouths and exoskeletons, repulsive to many — conclusions about insect life are much less likely to be tainted by our tendencies to anthropomorphize the subjects at hand. As relatively simple creatures, the genetic causes of behaviors are far easier to track down than in humans, and their quick lifespans are a boon to scientists studying the effects of genetic manipulation on evolution.  Insects perform the same essential acts of life as humans, and seem to engage in behaviors similar to our own — language, parental care, and community living. Though in most cases insects and humans have taken different routes to the same result,  with insects the behaviors must have an exclusively genetic basis: most insects, like beetles and flies, are solitary creatures whose behavior is not taught or influenced by parents or a society’s needs.  Finding this basis could shed light on the similar genetic foundation of human behaviors.

There’s no denying that Zuk is an entertaining writer, filling the conversational narrative with her dry humor and giving sections whimsical names like “Incest and the Solution to Physics Envy”.  Her subjects are endlessly intriguing, and many a time I was left staring at a page in mute horror after reading descriptions of wasps who zombify roaches and led them into her lair  to be munched on by her little ones — or of spiders who as babies suck blood from their mother’s legs until she is too weak to move, at which point they devour her. Zuk is successful, though, in making the book more than voyeurism:  her chapter on how insects contribute to the study of ‘sociogenomics’  added much to my knowledge of genetics, for instance. Not everything in a given species’ genome consists of usable DNA, and if grasshoppers and other insects are any indication, some species carry far more junk than they do viable information.  Also of note are the chapters on social behavior, addressing questions of insect communication  and organization — no one does court intrigue like ants sizing up potential queens, or consensus democracy like a hovering swarm of honeybees searching for a new home.

Sex on Six Legs will delight anyone with a curiosity about insects, and impress those who think little of them. It’s look into a vast world that most people rarely see, one with lessons to teach about evolution and life as a whole.  The book will be available from Hughton Mifflin Harcourt in the first week of August.

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