Boss of Bosses

Posted on June 17, 2009 by smellincoffee

Boss of Bosses — the Fall of the Godfather: the FBI and Paul Castellano

© 1991 Joseph F. O’Brien and Andris Kurins
364 pages
A number of years ago I had a considerable interest in the Mafia, from an adolescent fascination with men of power and prestige and a less adolescent fascination with the darker side of human nature — the corrupting effect of power, and what it can drive people to do. This is not an expired interest, but it is one that is typically latent. Still, it arises every so often, and it did so while I was going through my public library’s discard bin in hopes of rescuing whatever science and history texts I could find. (I found none outside of Carl Sagan’s now probably irrevelant book on nuclear winter.) The bin was full of parenting books with some exceptions — like this, Boss of Bosses. The book is a memoir of sorts written by two FBI Agents who spent five years building a case against a real-world godfather, only to see their work rendered moot when the ambitious John Gotti decided to rid the “Five Families” of who they saw as a limiting liability.
The memoir is written in the third person, with emotional and intellectual context being given for both of the agents by themselves. The opening chapters go back and forth from the agents’ attempts to build a case against Castellano (interviewing people whose lives Castellano’s operations touch) to brief chapters that document Castellano’s rise to power. The authors obviously feel something for their prey: they develop respect and even sympathy for him, and moreso once they are able to plant a bug in his home. They aren’t cynical of their mission as government agents — they do believe Castellano is a criminal whose time has come, but at the same time they recognize he’s no hood. The character of Castellano that emerges from their book is of a gentlemanly rouge. He’s a cut above men like John Gotti; he believes in the old “code of honor” that Mafiosos like Joseph Bonanno claim to have kept. Interestingly, the FBI agents seem to believe in this old code, as well — or at least they believed it once existed in some form and that some men did keep it. Castellano, despite his attempts to legitimize the Mafia by shifting its interests to noncriminal enterprises, is depicted as a relic from days gone by.
The book has a lot to offer to anyone with any degree of interest in the Mafia: it’s a history of one don’s rise to power, a psychology of its members — people so removed from their past that they have to rely on the script of The Godfather to give them answers to police questions — and a story of how the FBI attempted to bring Castellano to justice, only to be thwarted by the “Pope’s” political enemies. The book read well and I’d recommend it.
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Sleep No More

Posted on June 16, 2009 by smellincoffee

Sleep No More

© 2002 Greg Iles
382 pages
Circumstances warranting my reading a third Greg Iles this book , which is a bit unusual. I have in times past read two books in one week by the same author, but I think reading multiple books by the same author in the same genre is a first. Iles makes it easy: his books are thrillers, genuine page turners. I can hammer through one in one day and not feel fatigued in the least. Sleep No More was the Iles book I’d intended to begin the week with, but my sister checked it out before I could and so I read Third Degree instead. As it happens, though, I’m babysitting for her and have her library books available for reading as well as mine.
Sleep No More is set in Natchez, Mississippi, as were The Quiet Game and Third Degree. Unlike the former Natchez books, however, this is not a first-person Penn Cage narrative. The book is written in the third person, and from the perspective of a husband and wife whose lives are thrown into confusion and chaos shortly after their daughter’s victorious soccer game. Was it the underdog team winning that threw the universe into chaos? No. Instead, a woman named Eve Sumner walks by main character John Waters and whispers in his ear a phrase known only to him and his college love — a woman whose passions consumed his life, in ways both good and bad. That was a love ended by her rape and death at the hands of unknown strangers in New Orleans.
Eve — and through her his former love Mallory — begin to haunt John. When he confronts Eve about the mystery phrase, she enrages him by telling him that she is his former love — come back from the dead. Such was the effect of Mallory on John during his college days that Eve has resurrection his obsession with her, and together they begin an affair even as John struggles with the truth of the matter. Is she really the soul of his former — and now present — love, or is this some elaborate scheme? His friend Penn Cage — hello, Penn, fancy seeing you here — seems to think so. Cage is not a believer in the supernatural, and he believes that Waters’ corrupt business partner Cole is trying to disrupt Water’s life in some way for his own selfish benefit. Things only grow more mysterious after Eve dies and Waters’ wife Lily begins acting like a woman posessed.
The book is a thriller: its opening premise is quite interesting, and Iles executes the tension well. I did not expect the plot to go the way it did. Like his previous offering, Sleep No More does not fail to entertain, although after three books of his in the same week, I am (understandably) growing weary of Iles‘ sexy southern gothics. A break may be recquired.
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Further Along the Road Less Travelled

Posted on June 16, 2009 by smellincoffee

Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth

© 1993 M. Scott Peck
255 pages
Peck is always an interesting author for me to read. He and I typically do not see eye to eye on many issues, but like Thomas Cahill, I find his work to be interesting regardless. Perhaps the interest I take in Peck is that he expresses opinions I don’t agree with, but he does so in a manner I can respect — most of the time. As mentioned before, Peck is a psychiatrist who attempts to combine it and spirituality, seeing spirituality as mental health and maturation. A note on the book identifies this as “Edited Lectures”, meaning that unlike The Road Less Traveled, this may not have been written as a book in itself — but that it consists of essays that have edited and fitted to one another. Although the lecture/essays were not written as a deliberate whole, the “space” in between them is not too jarring: the book flows fairly well, and is divided into three parts: “Growing Up”, “Knowing Yourself”, and “In Search of a Personal God”.
One trait of Peck’s writing that I like is that it tends to be widely focused. This book is an example of that, as individual essays see him writing on consciousness, forgiveness, death and meaning, mystery, self love versus self-esteem, mythology, spirituality, addiction, religion, the New Age movement, and sexuality. The strength of the essays varied for me: in general, I thought the first half of the book was strong and that it faded quickly, especially in the sexuality essay. That one was more than strange.
A good bit of the book is about religion, and it was this I enjoyed the most. I consider myself a nonreligious person, but lately I am trying to find the good in it. Admittedly, that’s a tricky direction in which to go, but I am interested in religion as a human endeavor, and I think that a genuine concern for human well-being and growth lies somewhere in them. I am not convinced that it is the heart of every religion, but I think it is least least a part — and I want to see if this is true and if so to what extent. It was the Dalai Lama that first set me on this course, but Gyatso and Peck are quite different: Gyatso’s approach to spirituality is simple, direct, and is aimed at cultivating happiness. Peck is more stern and less humanistic: he focuses on fixing problems, and believes we have to depend on God for growth.
The book is typical for Peck: I found it interesting, and will probably read more of Peck in the future, but I don’t recommend it to everyone. I think the book is valuable in making me consider ideas I’d never thought of before.
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The Third Jesus

Posted on June 16, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Third Jesus: the Christ We Cannot Ignore

© 2008 Deepak Chopra
241 pages
I’ve heard the name “Deepak Chopra” before, but never in a positive light. Still, given my interest in comparative religion and philosophy, and given that I don’t like having uninformed opinions about people, I decided to read The Third Jesus. Chopra’s thesis is this: there are two chief ideas about Jesus, the liberal version and the conservative version. The liberal version believes in the enlightened rabbi, the human teacher. The conservative version is the “WORSHIP ME, MORTALS!” one. Chopra says that the problem with this is that the gospels, when taken in full, invalidate both. His solution to this “problem” is to propose a third Jesus, a Transcendental Jesus who teaches the way to “God-consciousness”, which Chopra never really explains. Essentially, what he does is to quote text from five accounts of Jesus’ life (the traditional gospels and Thomas) and uses them to support his view.
It doesn’t seem to me that he’s doing anything different from what Fred Phelps and Marcus Borg are doing: applying their interpretation to the story. It seems to validate Albert Schweitzer’s idea that people who try to find the “True” Jesus only create narratives that satisfy their own desires. In general, I found the book to be a poor read: Chopra rarely explains his terms, and beyond the in-text verses from the gospels, nothing seems to be cited. This is particularly troublesome given that he writes on historical and scientific topics at times.
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God’s Problem

Posted on June 14, 2009 by smellincoffee

God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer
© 2008 Bart Ehrman
294 pages
While gazing at the library shelves in the “Religion” section attempting to find a book by Marcus Borg, I saw the title of this book and was immediately intrigued. The book description only confirmed my interest and I was soon reading it. Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and former minister, his faith having been broken by the classical problem of religions with “good” deities at their center: if those gods exist, why is there suffering? How can evil flourish so well in a world supposedly built by good and powerful entities? This question has personal relevance to me, as I was never able to really trust God after reading Anne Frank’s diary and realizing how the Holocaust destroyed real people. Ehrman actually uses the Holocaust as an extended example.

This book grew out of a class he once taught about Biblical attitudes toward suffering, and the approach he takes is to identify three general explanations for evil, explain their origin and influence, and then to evaluate them from the perspective of someone who wants to believe but can’t. I say “three general explanations”, but this is my organization — not his. The first two explanations — suffering as a consequence of sin and suffering as being part of God’s Mysterious Plan ™ — need no explanation, either of what they are or of what’s wrong with them. It is the third general explanation — apocalyptic thinking* — that I found most intriguing. Here Ehrman not only explains what that thinking is and how it applies to the suffering question, but in so doing makes the whole of the New Testament make sense. Being familiar with history and with Judaism– having studied it in 2006 and 2007 — much of the New Testament has confused me. If it arose from Jewish/Hellenic culture, where did the New Testament characters get some of their ideas? Why were Pharisees suddenly talking about a Resurrection when OT Hebrews had never heard of such a thing? Why did people make such a big deal of Jesus’ ability to raise the dead? Fitting the New Testament into an apocalyptic context makes it make much more sense.

In addition to these three general explanations, Ehrman also points out that some of the Biblical authors felt that suffering just couldn’t be explained, and he uses Ecclesiastes and Job as its source. (Ehrman believes that Job contains two conflicting explanations for evil: the first is suffering-as-penalty and the second is the inexplicable.)

Given that I am not a religious believer struggling with the problem of suffering, I cannot comment on Ehrman’s ability to convince the audience. He writes well, uses familiar examples, and appears to be quite thorough: for instance, when writing on the explanation of “suffering as a penalty for sin”, he shows that this view influenced the entire historical narrative in the Hebrew scriptures. I think the book bears reading for those interested in what religious people coming from a Judeo-Christian background might say in defense of their God when asked to account for suffering.

He ends the book with an elegant defense of life in the face of continuing suffering, beginning with this: “I have to admit that at the end of the day, I do have a biblical view of suffering. As it turns out, it is the view put forth in the book of Ecclesiastes. There is a lot that we can’t know about this world. A lot of this world doesn’t make sense. Sometimes there is no justice. Things don’t go as planned or as they should. A lot of bad things happen. But life also brings good things. The solution to life is to enjoy it while we can, because it is fleeting. This world, and everything in it, is temporary, transient, and soon to be over. We won’t live forever — in fact, we won’t live long. And so we should enjoy life to the fullest, as much as we can, as long as we can. That’s what the author of Ecclesiastes says, and I agree. “

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Turning Angel

Posted on June 12, 2009 by smellincoffee

Turning Angel

© 2005 Greg Iles
501 pages
I didn’t intend to read two books by Greg Iles this week: frankly, I don’t want to exhaust my library’s Iles collection prematurely. As it happens, I finished Third Degree much more quickly than I anticipated and — as I happened to be at my sister’s house babysitting, and as she is similarly working her way through Iles — I decided to read from one of her checked-out Iles books. Turning Angel, like The Quiet Game, is a first-person thriller written from the eyes of Penn Gage, Houston prosecutor-turned-novelist. Turning Angel is set five years after the conclusion of The Quiet Game, but in the same town of Natchez, Mississippi. Gage’s hometown — to which he returned after the death of his wife — has deteriorated somewhat in those five years, as its major manufacturing employers have left, leaving the town with only tourism as its only viable source of income.
On the May afternoon that this book begins, though, such things are not on the minds of its citizens, particularly not those whose children go to St. Stephen’s Preparatory school, which is approaching its graduation ceremonies. The quiet anticipation is broken, however, when the body of a St. Stephen’s senior washes up on a creekbed in town — murdered. Victim Kate Townsend was a Natchez celebrity, headed for Harvard and the darling of the preparatory school. Her death is shocking enough, but soon rumors spread that Gage’s best friend and respected physician, Drew Elliot, was engaged in a romantic relationship with the not-quite-eighteen year old.
The plot-driving tension begins to build when Elliot asks Gage to once again pick up the lawyer-y banner and defend him against charges of sexual battery and murder — but things are not as simple as they might appear. The book’s title, Turning Angel, comes from a statue in town that seems to turn on its pedestal as pedestrians and cars pass nearby, its eyes following them. Appearances are not reality, and this Gage realizes as he sits in his car following the murder of a local police office with whom he was talking: the then-latest murder in a string of nearly a dozen murders that will result in a matter of days when the book’s plot is nearing its climax. The murders appear to be drug-related — but what does Kate Townsend have to do with drug lords from Biloxi?
While Gage investigates matters to build a defense of his friend, he finds he must contend with race politics — a theme repeated from The Quiet Game, but unfortunately true to real life — and the sexual nature of high school culture. The book, like Iles‘ other novels I’ve read, moves quickly and never loses my interest — although I liked this less than the others, chiefly because the sex seemed to be gratuitous after a while. If I were introducing someone to Iles, I would recommend something else as a first read. What did impress me was how many voices Gage had to assume in writing this book: an agnostic novelist, a fundamentalist preacher, a liberal Shelby-Spong-type preacher, a high school senior trying to talk to the novelist about the role of sex in high school culture, and more. What is most striking — especially when reading a eulogy given by the liberal preacher — was that he does this well. Granted, Iles consults with people in writing, but that he is able to render believable impressions of people who are so different from one another speaks highly to me of his writing ability.
On page 205, Gage consults with a civil rights lawyer from the 1960s about the declining quality of leadership among American blacks, and he says something interesting. Remember that this is written in 2005:
“There’s a crisis of black leadership in this country, Penn. The leaders of my era are relics of another age. A lost age, I’m sorry to say. […] You’ve basically got three types of black leaders today. There’s the managerial type, who pretends race isn’t even an issue. He wants a large white constituency, but he also wants to keep the loyal blacks behind him. […] Then you have your black protest leader. He’s black, loud, and proud. He casts himself in the image Malcolm and Martin, but deep down he’s nothing like them. He uses the ideals of those greater leaders only to get what he wants: personal status and power. Marion Barry, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan — the list is endless. They’re flashy, powerful, and dangerous. […] [The third type is] the prophetic leader. That’s Martin, Malcolm….Ellie Baker. The current generation has produced no leaders of this type, much less of that caliber. I’m watching Bara[c]k Obama, but I’m not sure yet.”
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Third Degree

Posted on June 11, 2009 by smellincoffee

Third Degree

© 2007 Greg Iles
385 pages
After being utterly captivated by The Quiet Game last week, reading more of Iles was a foregone conclusion. Although I had intended to read the fantasy-like Sleep No More, my sister — who introduced me to Iles — currently has the book checked out, and so I went with his Third Degree. Unlike The Quiet Game, Third Degree is written in the third person. What is most remarkable about the book, I think, is that its entire plot takes place within the span of one day — one day in a suburban household that begins on a slightly unusual note but which ends with a body floating in the river and a destroyed helicopter. The story is told primarily through the eyes of Laurel Shields — a special needs teacher whose household will be become a warzone as the plot develops — and Danny McDavitt, a retired combat pilot who now gives flight lessons and who has recently broken off a year-long affair with Laurel. (One other character develops a voice after the plot thickens.)
That Laurel has been engaged in an affair is one secret, but her husband Warren has skeletons in his closet as well, skeletons that will lead to arson and hospitalized federal agents — but today is when both secrets will come to the surface with terrifying and (for some) deadly results. Iles skillfully interweaves a marital drama with a crime-and-punishment police drama to create a story that recquires both to create a “perfect storm” of sorts. The result is also something of a psychological drama, as one of the characters goes through a developing mental hell that forces the reader to constantly reform how they perceive him. The book was as riveting as The Quiet Game, if not as textured: this was shorter and felt more like a Grisham–esque thriller. I enjoyed it tremendously.
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This Week at the Library (10/6)

Posted on June 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • Gump & Co, Winston Groom
  • The Quiet Game, Greg Iles
  • The Faith Club; Ranya Indiliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner
  • Buddha, Karen Armstrong
  • Asimov on Astronomy, Isaac Asimov
I came upon Gump & Co accidentally: it happened to be on display in the fiction area of my library, and I spotted it while headed for The Hobbit a couple of weeks ago. It is a sequel to the 1995 book Forrest Gump, which was somewhat different than the movie it inspired. Although the book is described as “satire”, I read it more as a straight humorous novel that uses Gump’s interaction with elements of the 1980s and 1990s as its fodder. The book begins sometime after the conclusion of the first book and movie, but things have changed. Gump is completely broke and sweeping floors in a strip joint when the book begins, although he will soon be spotted by an old schoolmate and asked to play for the New Orleans Saints. From there, Gump will stumble his way through the 1980s and early 90s, with humorously awkward results — Gump accidentally invents New Coke, covers an entire town in pig poo, and crashes the Exxon-Valdez, for starters.The book is written from Gump’s point of view and in a crude, colloquial way.
I read a recommendation next. Greg Iles’ The Quiet Game was described as being somewhat like John Grisham. The description is somewhat apt in that part of this book is a legal thriller involving political corruption at the highest levels of US government influencing jurisprudence in a small town in Mississippi. This legal story ties in a number of other stories — main character Penn Gage’s struggle to come to terms with his wife’s death, his father being blackmailed, the return of his first love (who will play a greater role in the book than simply “love interest”), and a few others. There’s a lot going on in this book, and it makes for an incredibly riveting story.
Following a growing interest in comparative religion, I decided to read The Faith Club: a memoir written by three women who met on a regular basis over the course of several years to discuss their faith. You might think this an unenjoyable book for a secular person such as myself, and I did as well — but I was surprised by the book. It is less a book about religion and more a book about three women exploring what spirituality means to them within the context of the traditions they were brought up in. I found the book enjoyable and touching in ways.
Next I read a sharply written biography of Buddha, titled aptly Buddha. Karen Armstrong does a good job of introducing the world that Siddhartha Gautama was born into and telling his story within that greater context. She explains his struggle to find freedom from suffering, his realization of the noble truths, and the development and early attitudes of his first disciples. I would recommend it to anyone interested in either Buddha or Buddhism.
Lastly, I enjoyed a little science with Isaac Asimov’s Asimov on Astronomy. The book is a collection of essays on various topics within the general theme of astronomy. Some are straightforward explanations of questions people might ask (how the moon manages to rotate but only presents one face to Earth), but most are his playing with questions he asks himself — like how a planet in a two-star solar system might see those two suns, and how those two suns might influence the development of mythology and science. Set within the text of the essays are brief profiles of astronomical phenomena or astronomers.
Quotation of the Week: “God, I’m trapped in a Southern gothic novel!” – character Caitlin Masters on page 205 of The Quiet Game.
Pick of the Week: The Quiet Game, far and away.
Next Week:
  • The Third Degree, Greg Iles
  • God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer, Bart Ehrman
  • The Third Jesus, Deepak Chopra (No, this isn’t a joke. I know he has a reputation, but I’d like to read him for myself and this looked to be fairly benign.)
  • The Journey of Man, Spencer Wells.
  • Further Along the Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck.
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Asimov on Astronomy

Posted on June 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

Asimov on Astronomy

© 1975 Isaac Asimov
271 pages
Although in the back of my mind I knew the existence of Charon was a relatively recent discovery, I did not realize how recent until I read this book and realized Asimov was oblivious as to its existence. As it turns out, Pluto’s humble satellite — or perhaps co-plutoid would more accurate — was discovered three years after Asimov published this book of essays in 1975. In an essay on the hypothetical tenth planet, Asimov muses that “Charon” might be a good name for a moon. As mentioned, this is a book of essays written on various topics within astronomy and published in various magazines (and other essay collections) before appearing here. As I would expect from Asimov, he combines scientific explanations with humor and talks directly to the reader, sometimes making jokes. Few of the essays are directly explanatory: they tend to be the result of Asimov being curious about a topic and playing with it. Such is the case of my favorite essay in this selection, “The Planet with Two Suns”, in which he writes on how Greek mythology and science might have looked if our Sun had a companion star. In other essays, he does stick with a standard explanation of the topic — such is the case with “Time and Tides”, where he writes on the way the moon and sun cause Earth’s sides. Aside from a few minor things, the essays hold up well against the test of time. Enjoyable as ever.
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Buddha

Posted on June 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

Buddha

© 2001 Karen Armstrong
205 pages
Karen Armstrong’s Buddha is a concise biography of Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as (the) Buddha. The book, divided into five key sections, begins with Armstrong introducing the texts she uses as her sources — vouching for or admitting potential weaknesses in them. Because Gautama is known solely as a religious figure, the book is written about that figure and the chapter titles reflect that. Armstrong begins by writing on the Brahmin religion and the beginnings of the Axial Age in the region that Gautama grew up in, writing on the communities of monks who had “gone forth”, abandoning their homes to live in the forests or to travel through the land looking for spiritual teachers. Although she wrote of this in The Great Transformation, it’s so different from the reality I know that it still strikes me. According to Armstrong, these people were not looking for bliss or contentment — they were looking for freedom from the cycle of life. What I didn’t know was that they believed even the gods yearned to be free from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth — that the gods themselves wanted to achieve Nibanna/Nirvana. Nothing save freedom from the cycle was worthwhile.
The book records Gautama’s call go “go forth” and his journey — exploring the various traditions of the teachers he meets. According to Armstrong, he realizes early on that if he is to find Nibanna, he must find a way that is demonstrably true: accepting things on faith will not do. Eventually he realizes the way of Nibanna and the book switches to the growth of his Sangha as depicted in the Buddhist scriptures, even mentioning an attempt to seize power by one of his disciples. The book ends with his death.
Buddha was a tidy and helpful biography. Armstrong establishes the context, fits Buddha’s story within it, and tells that story well, sometimes examining controversial subjects like misogyny in some of the Buddhist texts. Although most of the information in here I’ve gleaned from other source, I think its presentation here is sharp and reccommend it for someone curious about Buddha.
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