The Best of 2012

By my count, I read 60 books cover-to-cover in 2012, started but couldn't manage to finish four others, and began reading one book (The Guns of August), which I anticipate finishing in early 2013. In keeping with the same formula from 2011, I've chosen to highlight the top 15% of what I've read this year. I've also included three "honorable mentions" that are nearly as deserving. My best of list, like my reading list, is dominated by non-fiction, but I have included two fiction titles that stood out from the crowd.

Appearing in the order in which I read them originally, the best of my 2012 reading list follows:

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President
(reviewed February 9, 2012)
I knew virtually nothing about James A. Garfield before I read this book, but came away with a deep admiration for him, as well as deepened cynicism about the current state of politics in this country.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
(reviewed March 13, 2012)
A lovely and fun historical fiction read set in the immediate aftermath of World War II in the Channel Islands. Yes, I hope to visit them someday.

Flyboys
(reviewed April 29, 2012)
James Bradley is the only author to appear twice on my list this year; clearly he has the touch. I had no way of knowing when I read this book last April that it would tell the story of Japanese-American relations up to and during World War II so perfectly that I would feel compelled to actually assign and teach the book to my Japanese culture class this coming spring.
 

The Food of a Younger Land
(reviewed May 10, 2012)
It is neigh on impossible for me to imagine an American in which ravioli is an ethnic specialty, eaten only in the homes of bonafide Italians. This book transports the reader to that place and enables one to see what we have gained in the past 80 years - and what we have lost.

The Worst Hard Time
(reviewed July 6, 2012)
Timothy Egan takes an unflinching look at the Dust Bowl and the series of calamities faced by those at its geographic center,as well as the government's role in creating the conditions that led to a decade of impossible-to-imagine drought and disaster. It seems justified to believe the end is coming when it rains mud from the sky.

An African in Greenland
(reviewed August 25, 2012)
From the lush, snake infested coast of West Africa to the snow- and ice-covered villages of Greenland, Tete-Michel Kpomassie's journey is as improbable as it is fascinating. Part memoir, part travelogue, and entirely anthropological, this book was engrossing from beginning to end. And of course now I want to visit the Arctic.


The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War
(reviewed October 3, 2012)
Such a secret history, in fact, that it's seldom (if ever?) taught in school. James Bradley's account of the imperialistic policies of the first Roosevelt administration is as eye-opening as it is damning and proves, rather conclusively, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. From trumped up charges to garner support for the Spanish-American War (when Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy and an aggressive war hawk) to waterboarding in the Philippines, the book covers some of the darker episodes in American history.

Suite Française
(reviewed October 8, 2012)
Written with a poignant urgency that vibrates through the pages, Suite Française is a book about war when the days are early and the outcome is uncertain. How long would this war go on? Sadly, Irène Némirovsky would never find out; she died at Auschwitz in 1942.

April, 1865: The Month That Saved America
(reviewed November 18, 2012)
When I finished this book, I thought, "My God, but that I should be able to write so masterfully myself." More than the story of a single month, it is the story of the choices that defined that month, as well as those that came before it and those that came after it - essentially, a synopsis of the American Civil War and a biography of all the major actors in it.

Honorable Mentions:

Devil in the White City
(reviewed January 13, 2012)
Erik Larson seems to have an especial genius for finding and depicting evil in this world (and in this book, at the Chicago World Fair). I look forward to reading whatever he writes next. 

The Beauty and the Sorrow
(reviewed March 14, 2012)
Calling all Downton Abbey fans. The war as even Julian Fellowes would not dare to present it: raw, wrenching, and completely uncut. Clearly far more sorrow than beauty in this book, but a rich and fantastic read.

America, 1908
(reviewed March 15, 2012)
Evidently March was a very good month for reading. In any case: perhaps I am a bit biased because my own great-grandfather entered the world in early February of 1909, but I found it fascinating to see how this country was a century ago. I was especially enthralled by the New York to Paris automobile race...across thousands of miles of virtually non-existent roads.

Vacation Reading

I've just returned from a lovely vacation which afforded me loads of time to luxuriate in good books (and also sunshine, lots and lots of sunshine). Rather than write a separate review for each of the four books I read, I figured I'd write give a quickie review of each of them here. If you want more details on any of them, just ask.

All Our Worldly Goods - Irène Némirovsky

I actually read two Némirovsky books on vacation, but preferred this one, which is similar in tone and style to Suite Française. The book is set in France between 1910 and 1940 and follows the love and life of a single couple, Pierre and Agnes, across the decades. As the book cover notes, they marry against the wishes of their family, provoking a multi-generational feud with ramifications cascading through time. (And if this weren't enough of a cross to bear, the time period covers two world wars and the depression.) Némirovsky's characters are endearing and believable and what I admire about her writing is how concisely she tells her stories. After all, she covers 30 years in only 264 pages. At times, the lack of detail can be frustrating (wait, did seven years of communal life just pass in a single sentence?), but the whole is better than the sum of the parts and I found myself caring what happened to the protagonists through the very end. That said, this book lacks the poignant urgency of Suite Française, which I ultimately preferred to either of the books I read this past week.

A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway

I have been wanting to read this book ever since I finished A Paris Wife last year, and really the two go hand-in-hand. A Paris Wife takes a more intimate look at the day-to-day life of the Hemingways in Paris, and especially their relationship with one another, but A Moveable Feast paints a beautiful picture of a time and place that exists today only in literature and the imagination. Hemingway opens the book with a preface that some names, places, and faces may have been omitted or changed, but really the expatriate world of 1920s Paris is the star: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach, and entirely too much time imbibing wine in smoky cafes while filling reams of paper with the books that were to become a staple of many a high school's American literature courses. Turning the pages of this book, the reader can not only picture but can truly feel Paris as it was.

America, But Better - Chris Cannon

According to Amazon.com, this book is based on a "hilarious viral campaign" in which a new candidate - Canada - announces its "Canadacy" for president in 2012. I must have heard of this book during that campaign, because I added it to my list sometime last fall. It is certainly a witty and satirical look at, essentially, all the ways in which Canada is alike, and yet superior to, the United States. The book is cleverly done (although honestly the over-reliance on hockey references came to seem lazy). The first half, especially the maps and timeline of U.S. Canadian History, was probably a bit better than the second half, but at only 100 pages or so, it's worth the read for anyone looking for a bit of cynical amusement.

The Wine of Solitude - Irène Némirovsky

This is the second of the Némirovsky books I read on vacation, and although I ultimately preferred All Our Worldly Goods, I enjoyed the change of setting with this one. Unlike her other novels that I've read, The Wine of Solitude is not set (entirely) within France. The book begins in a small Ukrainian town (a fictionalized Kiev, according to the description on the book jacket), then winding through St. Petersburg, rural Finland, Helsinki, Nice, and finally Paris, it is the story of an unhappy White Russian family whose fortunes rise and fall like the world around them. Like Goods, this book covers a vast expanse of time (roughly 15 years) and weaves in the geopolitical situation with which Némirovsky herself was only too familiar. At their core, Némirovsky's works seem to revolve around a few central relationships, and Wine is no different. It is an intricately spun coming-of-age story of a mother and her daughter, a daughter and her father, the daughter and the governess, and how love, anger, jealousy, and hatred make and undermine a family. World war, revolution, and depression are the backdrop against which decisions are made, but Némirovsky gives us protagonists whose characters seemed forged (of iron) almost independently of the events around them.

How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians

How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians was a recent University of Chicago free e-book. Written by Rutgers professor Rudolph M. Bell, it is an academic analysis of how-to guides from the seventeenth century. Then as now, these helpful little manuals covered everything from childhood development to pregnancy concerns to proper deportment of the sexes. The book is interesting, largely as a window into a long-disappeared world (readers were informed by many the sage, for example, that a woman's uterus contained seven distinct compartments: three each reserved for male and female fetuses and the seventh, which was the domain of hermaphrodite babies). That said it is also quite long, and occasionally rather dry. It clocks it at roughly 300 pages; after 200, I determined I'd learned enough about the what and how of living as a Renaissance Italian.

The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944

The Blood of Free Men was one of the recommended reads from the last issue of the University of Michigan alumni magazine. I've never gone wrong with one of their suggestions before, the library had a copy, and the book is a succinct 250 pages, so I figured, why not? This is a book whose title tells you pretty much everything you need to know about what lies beneath the cover: it is an extremely detailed and informative, if sometimes dry, retelling of the days immediate before and after the liberation of the City of Lights. Michael Neiberg does an excellent job reconstructing the movements and motivations of those at the heart of the resistance uprising and ultimate Allied liberation.

This book was especially interesting to me because, despite the many French history classes I've taken over the years - and several hours spent at the Invalides military museum in Paris this past spring - I don't believe I had ever heard the story as Neiberg presents it, replete with iconic Parisian barricades (think Victor Hugo and Les Mis) and street fighting. Even at the Invalides museum, the majority of exhibits were devoted to that most memorable moment when Charles de Gaulle strode triumphantly down the Champs Elysees.

Neiberg also does a great job of presenting the primary actors, de Gaulle and Leclerc not least among them, from multi-faceted perspectives. De Gaulle is alternately maddening and inspiring, which I imagine is pretty true to life. Similarly, Neiberg fleshes out the American position so that the reader can really comprehend why they were not keen to liberate Paris initially. Ultimately, one or two questions do remain unresolved, such as the true motivations of the German commander, Choltitz, who was ordered to destroy Paris, but did not.

All of that said, The Blood of Free Men is probably best recommended for absolute history buffs, either of World War II or French (especially 3rd/4th republic) society and politics. Those looking for less academic reading on occupied Paris might prefer Death in the City of Light or Suite Française.

The Midwife

The Midwife (which I also saw in a bookstore this past weekend with the title Call the Midwife), is the basis for my latest British television obsession, Call the Midwife. It's a seriously good show, and I was impressed how closely a great number of the plot lines hewed to the original book by Jennifer Worth, nee Lee. Although I admit to skimming some of the most, uh, detailed chapters on the art and science of midwifery (and nursing, generally), I found this book absolutely fascinating. Worth does a bang-up job of capturing life in London's East End, not only during the 1950s, when she lived there as a nurse and midwife, but - through her own research and the stories she learns from patients - of life there through the end of the 19th century and entire first half of the 20th.

It is this history that really sets the book apart from the television show. The show cannot capture the scope of the War World II destruction that still litters the landscape: entire city blocks that have been fenced off, the jagged remains of war - and the stench of a decade of filth therein deposited - filling the senses of all who live there. She takes a hard look at workhouses (the description of the workhouse howl is one of the most haunting passages I have read in a very long time), prostitution (often involuntary), and absolute, grinding poverty. As in the television show, most of the individuals who give this book life have dignity and humor that belies their circumstances.

Throughout the book, Worth captures not only the spirit of her patients, but their speech: the Cockney accents seem to leap off the pages and into the reader's ears with ease. Her appendix on the dialect is fascinating, and well worth reading.

The book, like the show, is absolutely fantastic, and I can recommend both without reservations. Four stars.

The Spoiler

The Spoiler is the last of my readings from the NPR summer reading list. Generally, it goes like this: London's tabloids are in a cut-throat competition to scoop one another in the late 1990s, just as the age of the internet is dawning. The book's protagonist, Tamara Sims, is caught in the rush when she is commissioned to write a piece on the life and times of Honor Tait, one of the country's great war correspondents.

Several times I was tempted to give up on The Spoiler altogether, but then I'd turn it over and read the reviews: "A cracking plot, alive with twists and turns and meaning" - The [London] Times and "Extremely funny and sharply observed" - the Guardian and "...a darkly, deliciously witty read" - The Independent. The reviews (and NPR) couldn't all be wrong. Could they? Unfortunately, for me, the answer was yes.

More than once I found myself wondering what I was missing. Was this a farce, in the style of Confederacy of Dunces? (Now there's a book I never should have read.) Every so often I would decide that it was, and then The Spoiler became almost funny, but then I'd change my mind and decide that this book really was intended to be taken seriously. To farce or not to farce? I still don't know. Equally frustrating was that Annalena McAfee alternates between clearheaded, fabulous writing and truly tying her sentences in knots. Several times I skipped entire paragraphs or skimmed multiple pages simply because I couldn't take anymore of the meandering, let's-play-thesaurus prose. (I should add that never once did I need to go back to see what I'd missed - evidently, you can skim heavily and still get the gist.)  Also, there are many, many characters who seemed to exist entirely for McAfee's amusement (or word count). That is, they didn't appear to have any real relevance to the story (such as the Monday night salon gang), and their stories neither started, stopped, or intertwined in any meaningful way. Other characters seemed to have stories with real direction, but then they just disappeared in the last pages, leaving me wondering what the point was. Similarly, both Tamara and Honor Tait seemed to have back stories that were never fully revealed and didn't serve a great deal of (any?) purpose. Even more, I found the most interesting plot line - the coming Internet age - to be the least explored and, therefore, the most disappointing. Finally, I really did not like either Tamara or Honor, but given my litany of other complaints, it seems that hardly matters.

You've probably gathered, but I was tremendously disappointed in this book. There was a lot of promise here, and McAfee clearly has the chops for it, but the book was dragged down by unsympathetic characters and plodding prose. One star.

When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home

Thanksgiving weekend was productive, reading-wise; not only did I start and finish History of a Pleasure Seeker, but I also managed this light and funny travel memoir.

I was given this book by my sister, who remembered my adolescent fondness for the late humorist Erma Bombeck, whose columns appeared weekly in the newspaper. As you might have guessed from the title, When You Look Like Your Passport Photo... describes Erma's adventures traveling to places near (the Grand Canyon) and far (the Great Barrier Reef), exotic (Papua New Guinea) and less exotic (Canada). Beyond a bad case of traveler's envy, this book provided an interesting perspective on international travel 25 or 30 years ago. For example, Bombeck devotes one chapter to airline food, as in the complimentary meals that haven't been served in coach for the past decade. As she vents her frustration about being lost in one country after another my first thought is 'I can relate,' but my second 'yes, Garmin is my friend.'

The most interesting chapters for me were those devoted to her travels in the former Soviet Union, specifically the panel discussions in which she participated with the intent of fostering greater Soviet-American understanding. I believe she cuts to the heart of why so many of us travel when she writes, "Once you have looked into the eyes of people in a foreign country, you realize you all want the same thing: food on your table, love in your marriage, healthy children, laughter, freedom to be. ... [T]he dreams are all the same."

History of a Pleasure Seeker

History of a Pleasure Seeker was another pick from the NPR summer reading list. The novel is set primarily in Amsterdam in the opening years of the 20th century, although key scenes also take place in New York City, aboard the luxurious ocean liners of the day, and in Cape Town. It is, at heart, a book about class and opportunity: Piet longs to escape the dreary life that awaits him if he remains in Leiden and finds his escape as the tutor to the possibly autistic youngest son of the Vermeulen-Sickerts (not that such a diagnosis would have been made in 1907). The Vermuelen-Sickerts are one of Amsterdam's leading families and their son's affliction is at odds with the rest of their gilded, orderly life.

Once he arrives, Piet - and the reader - are thrown into a Downton Abbey-esque atmosphere of life above and belowstairs. There is a gruff butler, a strongwilled housekeeper, a convivial footman, and enough maids and cooks to keep a grand house running in belle epoque style. There is also no shortage of scandals on either side of the class divide.

The book is lively and fast pasted, well written, and with plenty of believable characters to go around. Ultimately, however, it served to drive home to me the extent to which I prefer non-fiction to fiction. I had a hard time caring about almost any of the characters and truly debated finishing the book once I discovered the ominous To be continued on the last page. I did finish it, though I must admit to skimming a passage here and there rather than reading closely. I will not be reading the sequel though.

April 1865: The Month That Saved America

Jay Winik has essentially taken the bulk of the Civil War, its major actors and causes, and analyzed the entire cataclysmic event in the context of a single month - April 1865. Occasionally I find a book so great that as I read I cannot help 1) annotating the text, willing myself to remember pieces of it and 2) wishing that I might have written it myself. April 1865 is just such a book.

In roughly 400 action packed and beautifully written pages, Winik has provided his readers not only the background on the war itself, but mini-biographies of everyone from Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant (whose real name was Hiram; he became U.S. after he failed to correct a clerical error upon his admission to West Point), Jefferson Davis (middle name: Finis, as in his mother really was done after he, her tenth babe, was born), Robert E. Lee, Nathn Bedford Forrest, Andrew Johnson, John Wilkes Booth, William Sherman, Joe Johnston, and basically every other major general or politician of the era.

The events of a single month - the fall of Richmond, Lee's surrender, the assassination of Lincoln - are presented chronologically, yet with the history of all that proceeded and all that came after flawlessly knitted into their telling. The prose is often quite spare, allowing the events to speak for themselves. It is just as often was is not written that truly emerges, as in the description of Lee's final order to the men of the Army of Northern Virginia. After reproducing the order in full, Winik adds a single, simple sentence that elucidates clearly the relationship between North and South for decades to come. "For generations, General Orders Number 9 would be recited in the South with the same pride as the Gettysburg Address was learned in the North."

I can easily recommend April 1865 to anyone with a love of fine writing, an interest in American history, or an appreciation for the art of a good story, even - or especially - if the story is true. Four stars.

Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate

Killer on the Road... by Ginger Gail Strand was another NPR summer reading suggestion. It's a thin little book (roughly 200 pages) with a lot packed into it. This book examines the construction of America's interstates and the ways - directly and indirectly - that the highways have led to an increase in violence, particular of the serial killing variety. Despite the fact that Ben mocked me for reading a book about how the highway system came to be, I actually found the book informative, thought provoking and well-written, and the history of the highways was the most interesting to me. (I was most amused by the fact that the PA Turnpike was considered a "dreamway" when it was built and cars waited for hours for the opportunity to drive it. My experiences on this road usually run closer to nightmare than dream, but I guess it was a different world.)

My complaint with Killer centers on the fact that it often had a bit of split personality, frequently feeling like Strand had written two separate books -  one on the construction of the interstate and one one serial killers - and smushed them together. In places, particularly the first chapter, this was done exceedingly well, while in others the connection between highways and murder appeared tenuous at best. I found her last chapter, where Strand examines the correlations between growth in highways and growth in murder rates in developing countries, to be especially intriguing. This book runs the gamut from urbanization and globalization to truck stop prostitution, 1950s' angst over juvenile delinquency and the military-industrial complex of the Cold War era. As usual, NPR is on the mark in recommending it.

Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman's Journey Through Afghanistan

Opium Nation is a portrait of Afghanistan today - corrupt, impoverished, clannish, and teeming with life. The author, Fariba Nawa, an Afghan by birth whose family fled during the Soviet war in the early 1980s, returns to her beloved homeland post-2001 and finds a war-ravaged land and people. She also finds opium, lots and lots of opium, in nearly every province and in every form. As I read the last pages, I couldn't help but feel a sense of disappointment that what had begun as a promising look at the roots of the drug trade and the implications of the drug trade on foreign policy around the world had devolved into so many incohesive stories. By the end, Opium Nation seemed to be experiencing a real identity crisis: part serious work of research with real potential and real life, part graduate thesis that read more like it was made for an academic journal than a global audience, part autobiography, and part a defense of Afghanistan and its people. For example, Ms. Nawa's quest to find the girl Darya became the story because of her personal importance to the author, when from the perspective of the drug trade and economy she was no more than a blip on the radar screen.

Every few pages Ms. Nawa would drop tantalizing pieces of information about the global drug trade, for example Thailand's decades of work to reduce the quantity of drugs produced in that country, but then the trail went cold. The book - and therefore its readers - might have been better served had Ms. Nawa focused on a single narrative (for example, the underpinnings of the drug trade and opium/heroin market) and then examined that narrative from so many viewpoints - traveling to Thailand and speaking with officials there, traveling to the final consumer countries and examining demand drivers, treatments, even distribution networks, comparing Afghan opium, smuggling, and distribution networks to those of South American countries. I was frustrated because the topic had great potential and yet too often the real story was interrupted by a familial anecdote or some other sentimentally important story that served no larger purpose than for the author to weave her own history into this book.

Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down

This is a lovely book about about Paris, or rather being an American in Paris and trying to figure out: how? why? WHAT? Anyone who has traveled someplace they did not speak the language can relate to many of the feelings expressed by the author, although certainly the volume of red tape he encounters is unique to being an expat. Paris, I Love You... is smart and funny; it is also a beautiful portrait of Paris through the seasons and of the many quirks that make the French, well, French.

Tokyo Vice

When both Paris Match and the NPR book list highlight books on the same topic, I generally think that means I should read up, doubly so when the topic is anything to do with Japan these days. NPR suggested People Who Eat Darkness and Paris Match suggested Tokyo Vice. The former wasn't available at the library, so I went with the latter, by Jake Adelstein. Both books are about the dirty underbelly of Tokyo - prostitution, human trafficking, drugs, yakuza - and the oftentimes cozy relationship between the cops and the criminals. So basically everything I hope my students' parents will NOT associate with Japan!

From the standpoint of being a book about a side of Japan about which I knew nothing, Tokyo Vice was a compelling read. By the end, and by the middle if I'm honest, I was really tired of the author.  It wasn't only that he constantly inserted himself into the story, even when it seemed gratuitous, sometimes the story seemed to veer off on tangents with no clear purpose other than relaying a story about the author. Whether Adelstein was proclaiming his greatness or self-flagellating, I no longer cared. For me, he wasn't the story; the narrative he was writing could have stood on its own without a running commentary on how many cigarettes he smoked on a given day or how long he and his wife and been trying to have a child. By the end, it seemed like the personal information offered nothing new - if he wrote one more time that he was a Jewish American from Missouri, I might have screamed. Also, I know,I know, you're really, really great, but I don't care. I think thou doth protest too much.

The bottom line: if you're really curious about Tokyo's criminal underworld, by all means, this book will initiate you and then some. I'm actually curious about People Who Eat Darkness, just to see how the treatment of the topic varies, but I think I've had enough of the yakuza for awhile. Still, Adelstein irritated me enough in Tokyo Vice that I'd probably recommend PWED even though I haven't read it.

Suite Française

This is a work of fiction, set during the early days of World War II in France as the Maginot Line was falling and the French were coming to terms with the reality of a third war with Germany in as many generations. As the Germans marched toward Paris, those in the city decided whether to remain or head elsewhere in France and those in the Occupied Zone found themselves forced to house the conquerors beneath their own roofs. The characters existed in the notebooks of Irene Nemirovsky alone, but the story is as much non-fiction as fiction, for she wrote it as she and her family grappled with the reality of the war that had descended upon them.

Perhaps because it was written during the war, as events happened, and not from a distance with the benefit of hindsight - or even knowing how things would end - there is no fine line between collaboration and resistance, no acts of great heroism or cowardice. These people are simply trying to make it from one day to the next.

Nemirovsky was a Russian Jew; her family's fortune had been stripped during the Bolshevik Revolution and they'd been forced into exile in France; twenty years later this status left her pesona non grata in her adopted country and she wrote feverishly in an attempt to leave a record of what it meant to be a refugee and what it was to be amidst the confusion and loss of war. When she writes about "the reluctant tears of the very old who have finally accepted that sorrow is futile," the reader knows these words are the experience of a woman grown old before her time; likewise, when she muses on whether one will see the post-war life, it is clear she is speaking not only of her characters. In fact, Nemirovsky was arrested and deported to Auschwitz only weeks after writing in her notebook "...I do not lack the courage to complete the task / But the goal is far and time is short." What she was able to complete is still a remarkable book.

The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War

First things first: I must confess that I opened this book expecting it to detail Commodore Perry's 1853 voyage to Japan and the subsequent opening of that country. I was disabused of this notion quickly, in the second paragraph to be precise; The Imperial Cruise refers to yet another voyage to Japan - as well as elsewhere in the Pacific - this one in 1905 and headlined by then-Secretary Taft and President Teddy Roosevelt's oldest daughter, Alice. It is in the context of this cruise that Bradley revisits American imperialism of a century ago, giving us a blow-by-blow account of the wrongs committed against each of the nation's the cruise visited, and some that it did not.

As James Bradley notes in the opening lines of the book, he researched and wrote this book in an attempt to understand the root of World War II in the Pacific. Like Flyboys, this book is beautifully written, complex, and forces the reader to think deeply about history and the generations-long ramifications of seemingly small words or actions. The protagonist of Imperial Cruise is Teddy Roosevelt, whom history generally teaches was one of this nation's greatest presidents - he saved the cute little "teddy" thus giving all stuffed bears his name, he is the father of our national parks, he charged gallantly up San Juan Hill in his days as a rough rider - why he even has his face carved on Mount Rushmore alongside Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. Bradley's take on Roosevelt is a bit different: Bradley's Roosevelt is imperialistic, power hungry, manipulative, and believes unabashedly in the absolute superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race over all others.

Yet, this book is not merely a portrait of President Roosevelt. It is an examination of an America that believed wholeheartedly in manifest destiny and Monroe Doctrine, marauding in Cuba and Puerto Rico, stealing away the Kingdom of Hawaii, and massacring some hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in a matter of a few short years (as Bradley notes, few remember that more Filipinos died on the first day of battling American forces than Americans died on D-Day). It was the need to "civilize" the Philippines, in fact, that gave rise to such tactics as waterboarding, repeated statements at home that "the war is already over" or "the thing is already over" and "the insurrection ended some months ago." Yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Bradley's criticisms of Roosevelt are harsh as he builds the case that Roosevelt almost singlehandedly laid the groundwork for World War II by green-lighting Japanese expansion elsewhere in Asia (Teddy "should like to see Japan have Korea," but not the Philippines, please) while also managing the neat trick of building resentment against the United States. Bradley is fair, however, is his judgment that Roosevelt, while perhaps more imperialistic than other politicians of his day, was nevertheless a product of his time and class. He certainly was not alone in seeking to exploit Asian nations for his own gain; the British Empire and its young queen so depended on the profits from the illegal sales of opium in China that Bradley notes (rather smugly, I might add) that "Queen Victoria stands as history's largest drug dealer."

Four stars.

The Saddest Month

No, that's not the title of any book; rather, September has been a terribly unproductive reading month for me. I never like to abandon a book, yet this month I've managed to do that not once, not twice, but three times. Undoubtedly these books will haunt me and I will attempt to read them again, although I really shouldn't. In no particularly order, I present my failed readings:

Emma by Jane Austen
One of my least favorite books of all time is Pride and Prejudice. I can't fathom why I thought Emma would be any better, but I did, or at least thought I should confirm that it wasn't. I confirmed this pretty quickly, then continued reading out of stubbornness.Finally I could take no more.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
A not-terribly-creative, yet moralizing story that involves time travel. Obviously I didn't do my homework before embarking on this one. At least I like Mark Twain. Did I mention that the free B&N Nook version included a completed garbled line of text every 4-5 pages? Given that one of my only failed books last year was Mark Twain's autobiography, I think there might be a lesson somewhere. He's either not as funny as I remember or I've read everything of his worth reading.

Losing It: In which an aging professor laments his shrinking brain...by William Ian Miller
The UM alumni magazine does not usually lead me astray. This time it failed me. In fairness, the book is exactly as the title suggests - the (whiny) lament of a professor unimpressed with the aging process. Given the title of the book, its subject matter, and the fact that Miller is a long-serving law professor who has taught Icelandic sagas (yes, really), I expected it to be verbose. Even so, nothing could have prepared me for Miller's ramblings. I paid good money for this book so I was determined to see it through...until I remembered the old "time is money" bit and decided my time was worth more than I had paid for the book. Mom, if you still want to read it after this ringing endorsement, I'll hook you up with my copy.

Fortunately, I'm deep into a James Bradley book I've had on my list for months and I'm soon to fly across the country, so there's hope yet I can salvage something this month!

Royko in Love

For many years, my favorite feature in the mostly-lousy newspaper my parents subscribed to (in fairness it was the paper of record in the mostly lousy town we lived in), was the Mike Royko column. Earlier this year the University of Chicago Press offered Royko in Love as their free e-book of the month and I eagerly downloaded it, then forgot about it, finally reading it several months later.

The book is the compilation of love letters he wrote to his friend/girlfriend/fiancee/wife while he was stationed at the Air Force base in Washington state and she was home in Chicago. The best letter, unfortunately, is the very first one; the humor and observations on life give way, and quickly, to a series of 'I love you, I miss you, only-so-many-days till I see you' ramblings.

1861: The Civil War Awakening

Oh my goodness, what a disappointment. I had been looking forward to reading 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart for several months but it just didn't live up to what I hoped it would be. Mainly this is due to three factors:

1) The biggest factor is that the book ends on the eve of the first Battle of Manassas in July 1861. So really, the book should be called 1861: The First Six Months. I understand, I think, why Goodheart chose to end here - he has chosen to write not a military history, but instead simply to attempt to capture the zeitgeist of a nation on the brink of war. Still, I might not have anticipated the book so much had I known it would end before any of the real "action" began.

2) He devotes a tremendous amount of text to James Garfield. Now, Garfield is an interesting guy, but I'm afraid that compared to the portrait of Garfield Candice Millard paints in Destiny of the Republic, Goodheart's Garfield is longwinded and dull.

3) Not surprisingly, Abraham Lincoln is the book's protagonist. Yet, even Lincoln loses much of his eloquence in these pages. Moreover, his life story, especially his rise from poverty and struggles with depression also seems to receive short shrift. (Granted, this book is not about Lincoln, but about how the times made him and he the times, but I still felt these parts of his life could have been handled better.)

My disappointment comes, too, from the fact that the book started so strongly. The prologue is beautiful; I could picture the bundle of letters folded and faded and see the poof of dust released as the ribbon was untied for the first time in a century. In other places, too, 1861 is shot through with brilliance. The comparison of General Butler to the East German captain left holding the phone, literally, as a crowd of thousands pressed against the gates of Checkpoint Charlie in November 1989 is writing at its finest - from one era to the next we see small decisions, little ripples, that grow into tsunamis. Yet, in the end these examples were too few or too far between. Just as I'd become convinced, again, that this really was a good book, the prose would become flat and leaden. Of course, the last time I'd decided I liked the book, it ended abruptly a few pages later. 

Whatever its strengths or weaknesses, 1861 does allow the reader to consider whether one would behave in the same manner as the gentleman - and one or two ladies - in this book. In most cases, the answer for me was no, but I believe that might have something to do with the benefit of 150 years of hindsight.

Two stars.

......

A week later I'm still thinking about this book, and how the lens of history changes great events of the times into small ones in history (ever heard of the Wide Awakes? or the St. Louis riots of 1861?) and small(ish) events into great ones.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Fortunately, I'm not a big fan of fast food to begin with because Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser would probably have ended that relationship if I was. (After reading it, I'm even feeling a big guilty about last month's trip to Jimmy Johns.) Narrowly, this book, which was published over a decade ago but has been re-released in a new 10th anniversary edition that seems to be displayed prominently in airports across America, is about the history and evolution of fast food in this country and its detrimental impacts on everything from family farms to obesity rates and diabetes to the meatpacking industry. Considering that the latter is still associated with Upton Sinclair, that's a rather impressive feat.

More broadly, however, this book is really a look at the homogenization of America, a trend that begin in the heady days of the 1950s and has rapidly picked up speed since. Schlosser connects the dots between any number of multinational companies, some of which would not seem to be related to the fast food industry, but are, even if only peripherally. In this vein, Schlosser delves into some of Disney's darker history, including the employment of literal Nazis in the immediate post-war years.  He explores how the concept of franchising has changed business in this country - and around the world - as well as the impact of globalization. In Plauen, Germany, the former East German town with the distinction of having been more heavily bombed than even Dresden in World War II, globalization, and specifically the arrival of a McDonald's, seems to have heralded positive change. In Greeley, Colorado, not so much.

When I told Ben I what I was reading, he was surprised I hadn't already read it. I suppose it's possible I'm among the last to have discovered this book. For anyone else who hasn't - and doesn't mind the possibility of having fast food spoiled in their minds forevermore - I can definitely recommend it.

An African in Greenland

One of the more memorable reads from my 2011 list was The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle. The author, Sara Wheeler, visited native communities across the north - Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, Canada, and Scandinavia - to take a pulse on life in the furthest reaches of the planet. She also did a lot of research, thereby introducing her reader to any number of works on life in the north.

One of those books is Tété-Michel Kpomassie's personal account of the time he spent living in Greenland in the 1960s, An African in Greenland. This was not an easy book to come by, but I eventually found a copy on Amazon and, after letting it sit on my bookshelf for a few months, finally cracked it open and really, really enjoyed it.

Tété-Michel is a teen in Togo when he is bitten by a snake, cured by a priestess of the snake cult, and then promised to said cult by his father, as payment and in gratitude for their services. You couldn't make this stuff up. Only days before he is enter the cult once and forever, he finds a book about Greenland in an evangelical bookshop and determines to runoff to the Great White North rather than face the fate of a life among pythons deep in the West African forest.

By turns, and over the course of six years, he works his way from Togo to Greenland by way of Ghana, Senegal, France, Germany, and Denmark, learning the customs and languages of the locals, working whatever jobs he can find, and, evidently, charming the socks off of everyone he meets. Time after time he is housed gratis and he even manages to find a sort of fairy grandfather who finances the trek to, and months in, Greenland.

Once he reaches his promised land the fun continues: dinners of seal, whale blubber and boiled reindeer; sledging across mile after frozen mile of land, building an igloo and sleeping with sled dogs when the way is lost; hunting for seals and fishing with the natives, you name it. All while obviously keeping meticulous notes on his thoughts and experiences and even comparing and contrasting the West African cultures of his childhood to the European and Inuit cultures of his travels. It's a marvelous little book, honestly, and while I don't expect too many others will bother to find and read it, those who do will be richly rewarded.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

In DC earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon at one of the few historical sites I'd not yet visited: Ford's Theater. Browsing through the gift shop, my eyes fell on a "staff pic": Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. It's not my usual fare. There are definite elements of fantasy and reality is often suspended, if not entirely forsaken. The entire premise of the book is that Old Abe Lincoln fought a decades' long battle with vampires, killing scores, before waging the entire Civil War to prevent them taking over America. It's nuts, really. And yet, unlike other fantasy-esque books that I've previously read and disparaged, I actually kind of like this one. Why?

I loved the way Grahame-Smith wove historical events, speeches and writings by Lincoln, and other facts into his tall tale. In many ways, at heart this is Lincoln's story...modified to fit with the vampire theme. It's like he wanted to tell his readers about Lincoln, realized most would never make it past page five of anything resembling a real biography, and had this brilliant, subversive idea to seed his Lincoln story with vampires. Vampires, after all, seem to be the fare of choice these days for those who don't suffer from the suspension-of-reality-blues. From start to finish real and important elements of Lincoln's life and work form the cornerstones of this work, a non unimpressive feat for a vampire story.

This is not a deep, thinking read. I tackled it, start to finish, on a travel day. I started in the airport and finished before the Pacific hove into view. It is a light - and, yes, fun - refresher on the life and times of our 16th president.

4 stars.

French Lessons

French Lessons, by Alice Kaplan, was a University of Chicago Press free e-book of the month that I downloaded several months ago and have ploddingly worked my way through for most of the summer. The briefest description is this: it is the memoir of a Duke French professor. In truth, it is a bit more than that, particularly for anyone who has ever navigated the vagaries of a university department, searched for a dissertation topic, or wondered how life might be different had they never traveled to a far off land or learned another language.

I came to see this book as neatly divided into three parts. Part one is the story of a young girl growing up in suburban Minneapolis in the 1950s and 1960s. That her father was a lawyer at the Nuremburg trials lends interest, and that he dies of a heart attack when she is still in elementary school lends tragedy, but at its heart part one is about being a kid in the midwest in the halycon days after World War II (and then attending a boarding school in Switzerland, but I digress).

Part two is the story of a graduate student searching for a topic, trying to understand theories and the people who create them, and forging an identity as an intellectual and scholar. Honestly, this is the part of the book where I almost gave it. Kaplan spends a bit too long, in my opinion, covering the theories of French literature, for a mainstream audience. (Or even an engaged, knowledgeable one. I was a French major, and I've only just read this book, but I'm drawing a blank trying to name a single theory that was described in detail over dozens of pages.)

Part three is the story of a professor, sometimes young, sometimes not, making her way through the politics of departments and universities, connecting with students, and asking herself questions that I myself have often wondered: how would my life have been different if I'd never spent time in a foreign country when I young? How would my life have been different if I'd never learned French? In what ways has it changed how I think about the world? Can I even separate it from the other parts of my life? (The answer to all four, for Kaplan as well as for me, is pretty strongly, "I don't know.")

I liked this book. If I were to read it again - or recommend it to someone else to read - I'd say to skip the theory. Ultimately, for this book - as for most of life - theory doesn't really matter.

Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure

This turquoise-colored book, with its tropical flowers and map of Hawaii on the cover, was displayed prominently in the Smithsonian's gift shop earlier this summer and since I do love Hawaii, I had to add it to my list.

Lost Kingdom is the story of exactly that - how a kingdom, Hawaii, was lost to the Hawaiian people in an audacious and shameful land grab. Primary blame for the theft falls squarely on the shoulders of the over zealous descendants of the missionaries who arrived bearing God's words and man's diseases. Certainly the US government comes in for its share of blame, as Grover Cleveland essentially acknowledged once he was safely out of office: "Hawai'i is ours...as I contemplate the means used to complete the outrage, I am ashamed of the whole affair." (It is true that when opportunities presented themselves to the Hawaiian Queen, Lili'uokalani, to perhaps allow the islands to retain independence, she mishandled them. However, I think its fair to argue that she never should have been in many of the positions into which she was essentially forced.)

I would imagine most people would have a difficult time remaining calm as they read this book. The manifest destiny and imperialism on display here were certainly not the best moments in our nation's history. Julia Flynn Siler puts it perfectly when she writes, toward the end of the book, that as Queen Lili'uokalani rode a train across the U.S., she "couldn't help but wonder, with such vast expanses of arable land, why Americans seemed intent on taking over Hawai'i." Indeed.

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

This book, with its beautiful cover illustration of belle Paris, caught my attention in National airport last month. I seriously contemplated purchasing it on the spot - having recently returned from Paris, I had a soft spot for it - but it was incredibly heavy so I waited to borrow it from the library.

The premise of the book is that is is the story of American artists, writers, doctors, and others who traveled to Paris between, roughly, 1830 and 1870. The names are nearly all familiar: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elizabeth Blackwell, Charles Sumner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Cassatt, Samuel Morse, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry James, John Sargent Singer, PT Barnum and Tom Thumb, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. And while the book does a fine job of following all of these individuals, where it really excels is in capturing the essence of not only the city, but the era.

David McCullough takes pains to describe Samuel Morse's frustrations in trying to patent the system that would eventually bear his name, the long hours in medical clinics and art studios, and the discourse on slavery, emancipation, and the American Civil War. McCullough is at his finest when writing of war and conflict; the time period he has chosen, beginning with the 1830 revolution and ending with the emergence of Paris as a modern city (as evidenced by the "monstrous" tower Eiffel erected on the old military parage grounds), offers no shortage of war and revolution.

Early on, it is the 1830 revolution, followed by another less than 20 years later, and then the Franco-Prussian war (and the recklessness which wrought it and, subsequently, some 75 years of French-German conflict). Most interesting to me, however, was the treatment of the Communards, a short but turbulent and terrible period in French/Parisian history about which I had previously learned little. Given that this is in the ballpark of the number killed during the Reign of Terror (obviously, precise figures are not available for either of these times), I was surprised I hadn't learned of it previously.

Overall, this was a good read, although it could be quite dense at time and, therefore, a bit of a slow go. French history or American art history buffs would enjoy it greatly, but others might find it just a bit on the dull side.

13, rue Thérèse: A Novel

I only finished this book because it was so short.

The story itself seems straightforward: a visiting professor at a Paris university find a box of mementos in his office from a woman's life between the world wars. He attempts to understand her by delving into the letters and trinkets contained in the box, weaving together a story of her life, while simultaneously falling for his secretary, the woman responsible for placing the box in his office.

So why did I dislike this book so much?

The biggest reason is that it was confusing. Without giving too much away, I would describe 13, rue Thérèse (author: Elena Mauli Shapiro) as The Time Traveler's Wife meets The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society meets The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt. A little time travel, a little correspondence, and high-quality photos of letters, postcards, and photographs. Your standard novel, right? It just didn't mesh for me and, worse, it felt gimmicky. None of the characters - from either the present or the past - seemed well-developed to me (which meant I cared not a whit what happened to any of them) and 1920s Paris made hardly even a cameo appearance. A number of relationships, such as the one between Louise and her piano student, Garance, could have been developed in a way that would at least engage the reader. Instead, we know (barely) that these people existed, then in one way or another that they disappeared.

To whom would I recommend this book? Sorry, but no one. If you want 1920s Paris, The Paris Wife (one of my favorite reads last year) is the way to go. If it's purely fiction you're after, I'd suggest the aforementioned Guernsey. In any case, I just can't recommend this book.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

This book caught my eye at an airport bookstore, but I waited until i was home and could check it out of the library before reading it. Initially, it was a bit of a slow go and I had a hard time getting into it. I put it down for a week or so and when I picked it up again it was with a renewed enthusiasm for what was both a hopeful and depressing read (also fascinating, but I'll focus on that last).

Siddhartha Mukherjee does an admirable job of making the history of cancer, and especially cancer research, accessible to a non-medical audience. Not only is it accessible, but generally this is an engaging read, particularly before the 1970s, at which point the book does focus more on research and becomes more technical by turns. As Mukherjee winds his way through the history of cancer and treatments, I was taken by the progress that has been made in the past few decades. He describes what amount to cures for several, admittedly rare, cancer types, and the progress being made to treat and ultimately cure many other types of cancer. 

So why did I say The Emperor of All Maladies is also a depressing read? Three big reasons: 1) because the more scientists learn, they more they discover that each type of cancer is different and requires different combinations of drugs for treatment, thereby complicating the process of finding effective treatments; 2) as with so many diseases now, there exists the very real risk of drug resistance, rending existing treatments moot; 3) as our environment changes (by which I mean anything as simple as the introduction of the cell phone to the complex phenomenon of global warming), so does our exposure to potential carcinogens, making cancer "prevention" a moving target.

My primary takeway, however, is the fascinating bit. Mukherjee's work is at its finest when he is describing real cancer cases, particularly those from the past. For example, early in the book we are introduced to ancient mummies whose bodies still bear the tumors of the cancer that ravaged their bodies thousands (or, in one case, even millions) of years ago. We also "meet" William Halsted, he of Johns Hopkins fame, who pioneered some of the earliest mastectomies while also nursing and hiding addictions to both morphine and cocaine. The mastectomies, by the way, were truly disfiguring, horrific operations that bear little resemblance to the current-day procedure. Also, for any UM people out there to whom the name CC Little rings a bell (yes, the big bus stop is outside the building named for him), we meet the former-UM president twice in this book. The first time, he is the director of the American Society for the Control of Cancer, the precursor to the American Cancer Society. The second time he is a stooge for the tobacco industry itself, asserting at every turn that there is no relationship between smoking and cancer. Alas.

On the whole, a great read, particularly for those with an interest in science and/or medicine.

A History of the World in 100 Objects

I love the premise of A History of the World in 100 Objects. It grew out of a BBC Radio series in which 100 objects from the British Museum were painstakingly selected, described, and then their history and importance explained to the listeners. As I read each the mini-chapter dedicated to each of the items, it almost felt like I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, and de facto author of the book (the pieces have been reprinted exactly as they were spoken on the air, so much of the text comes from others), did a fine job selected a variety of objects spanning the millennia and continents in order to create a cohesive history of man and civilization. And yet.

By the time I'd read 60 object-chapters, I was pretty much done and by the time I got to 80 I decided, even so (relatively) close to the end, that this book would be the second this year to bear the ignominious distinction "DNF." Man, it seems, hasn't really changed all that much: there were many examples of money - coins, coins, more coins, paper money, and credit cards - the standard sculptures - ranging from the Elgin Marbles of the Parthenon to one of the great, famed, stone statues of Easter Island - and a variety of religious and secular trinkets - glassware, porcelain, mirrors, and miscellaneous knickknacks. After several hundred pages, I was no longer curious about the musings of one or another expert on an obscure aspect of sociology, art history, or any other discipline. The pictures are beautiful, but I prefer my museum objects in all three dimensions.

To fully appreciate this book it is necessary to enjoy sociology, art history, and related fields more than I evidently do.

The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time is the gritty story of the Dust Bowl that gripped the Plains in the 1930s. Like my friend Clio, whose own review convinced me I should add this book to my list, I was largely ignorant of the scope and magnitude of the Dust Bowl. Yes, it was very hot and dry and caused many people, like the famous Okies in The Grapes of Wrath, to head for California. I had never known or imagined, however, that in the areas most badly afflicted (and Steinbeck's migrants did not hail from the worst afflicted parts), when it rained, which it seldom did, the clouds dropped mud from the sky. Cattle and farm animals suffocated on the dust, scores of children and the elderly died of dust pneumonia, and a single storm could bring enough dust to bury an entire Model A Ford. Other storms were capable of traveling thousands of miles, flinging dirt onto the Capitol building in Washington, DC, and even onto ships hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic.

Timothy Egan does a masterful job of bringing these anecdotes to life and of introducing the reader to the individuals who lived in the Dust Bowl and helping us understand why they left or, harder to grasp, why they stayed. Egan also concisely explains the causes behind the Dust Bowl. These causes are a hard lot to follow. There are, of course, the railroads and railroad barrons, but more disturbingly is the federal government. Egan does not sugar coat that it was the federal government, in a fit of manifest destiny, that encouraged more and more settlers to take to the plains, to plow up the grass, to plant more wheat than the country needed, to take on ever greater debt, and so on, until it all collapsed with the onset of the Great Depression.

After years of indifference during the 1930s, the federal government finally took action, buying millions of acres of dusty fields to return to grass. Under the Civilian Conservation Corps, they also planted some 220 million trees in an attempt to anchor the land to itself. Today, Egan notes that "some of the land is still sterile and drifting," and a colleague in Colorado informs me that the devastating fires sweeping through her state are kindled in no small part by the trees that were planted during the Depression.

Overall, this is an incredibly interesting and well-written book, one that I would especially recommend for history buffs or avid readers. It's one of two books I loaded onto my mom's Nook before she left for Europe earlier this week, so I hope she'll enjoy it as well!

Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc

Periodic Tales is an example of what happens when I spend too much time in aiports... Essentially a book of short stories about various of the elements, their histories (from ancient times and alchemists to the Manhattan Project) and the ways humans have interacted with them through time (from the Biblical references to brimstone, aka sulphur, to the intricate titanium creations of jewelers today), it seemed like an interesting read. For dorks. Only.

I did learn a number of interesting, if generally useless facts: the tip of the Washington Monument is capped with aluminum, the kohl that Cleopatra used to darken her eyes was likely comprised of antimony, euro bank notes are printed with an ink of europium and, in theory, you can make your own phosphorous from urine. (Your own, or anyone else's, I suppose. Hugh Aldersey-Williams does win points in this review for performing - and then publicizing - just such an experiment with four liters of his own urine. Admittedly, the urine reeked. Also, the experiment, which involved collecting the urine for days and then allowing it to evaporate before roasting it and grinding it in a pestle, was unsuccessful.)

In the closing pages of Periodic Tales, Aldersey-Williams writes concisely of his aim: to show that the elements are all around us in both a material and a figurative sense. He does this very well, but ultimately my interest in the periodic table and its elements wasn't strong enough to truly enjoy the book. My final verdict is that total science nerds may enjoy it, but others should probably take a pass.

Death in the City of Light

Paris during World War II seems to have made it back on my list again. Death in the City of Lights is no ordinary WWII read, though: it's the true account of a serial killer, Marcel Petiot, preying on a cross-section of Parisians (for example, Jews fleeing Nazis as well as gangsters and prostitutes) at the height of the Occupation. Not only that, but the serial killer is a seemingly well-respected physician with connections to both the Resistance and the Underworld.

David King's telling is meticulously researched and recounted. In all of my previous reading of Paris during the war years, I had never heard this story, which is quite remarkable, not least because even today authorities are unsure of how many individuals Petiot killed - at least 26, but possibly as many as 150. (The uncertainty is due to the ways in which people simply disappeared during the war, a terrifying history in and of itself which bears thinking about.) King begins this book with the gruesome discovery of the bodies, then weaves the tangled web that confronted the authorities (full disclosure: I skipped the paragraphs that appeared to have too high an "ick factor" for me). At times I was as confused as Inspector Massu and Company must have been, but with his prodigious research, King does a fine job of untangling the web in an Epilogue that provides reasonable and satisfactory answers to most questions.

Death in the City of  Light is well-written and provides fascinating insight into the relationship between the various factions in Paris during the War. However, I did have two complaints. The first, which probably could not be entirely helped is that the cast of characters is tremendously long and I had a hard time remembering the relationships between them. (This is further compounded by the fact that many of them have additional code names or aliases and so even keeping straight, for example that Petiot is also Captain Valeri, Dr. Eugene, and Dr. Watterwald!)  In other cases, a character may disappear for hundreds of pages before reappearing, in which case I was grateful to be reading this on my Nook, which enabled me to do a quick search and remind myself who the person in question was. Obviously the latter instances could have been more easily addressed by the author than the former. My second complaint was that, once this book moved into the trial phase, it became a bit lopsided: some of the best passages come from the trial, which was aptly described as a "circus" at the time, but some of the most tedious passages are also contained in those chapters.

I think this is a great read for anyone looking to gain deeper insight into World War II Paris or those who would like to read something that's a bit "off the beaten path," so to speak. A more casual reader, less interested in the workings of the Occupation or mid-twentieth century Paris, may find it less enjoyable.

The Uncommon Reader

It’s the Queen’s Jubilee! Okay, so I missed it by a few weeks, but I actually read this little book—at 119 very small pages, the novella designation is very apt – closer to the Jubilee than I’m finally posting my review of it. (Also, I should add that it has been on my list for quite some time, but all the coverage of the Queen did spur me to actually drive to the library and check it out.)

So, what if Queen Elizabeth II started reading one day and became so addicted that it was all she wanted to do? That is the central question of Alan Bennett’s book, which begins with a rather improbable visit by Her Majesty to a traveling bookmobile/library. Never a tremendous reader, she is suddenly hooked and cannot get enough of the written word. She rides in carriages with a book open on her lap, she dismisses the Prime Minister early from their weekly sessions so that she can resume her stories, and she selects staff based on their appreciation for all things literary. The “peripheral” grandchildren are sent to purchase the titles their grandmother wishes to read next.

It’s all a bit silly, really, although at heart, this is less a book about the Queen’s imagined love of reading and more a book about what it means to love to read. For example, Bennett imagines, “the sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on” and compares literature to a vast country to the borders of which one can travel but never reach. “I will never catch up,” the Queen laments on the same page. And it is true. For how many times have you contemplated the books in the library, or even the titles on an (ever-growing) reading list and thought, “so many books, so little time?” Later Bennett writes of the Queen that she “had not expected the degree to which [reading] drained her of enthusiasm for anything else.” I have often been guilty as charged. 

The Uncommon Reader  is definitely a bit far-fetched (to say nothing of the ending, which was very well done and absolutely made me chuckle), but if you are looking for a fast, light, fun summer read, love books, and can sympathize with wanting to do nothing but turn the page and find out what happens next, you’ll not be disappointed. And if you're more interested in the real life and times of the queen, I'd suggest adding Sally Bedell Smith's Elizabeth the Queen to your reading list.

The Girl in the Blue Beret

The second book I read on vacation was, unfortunately, as disappointing as the first (How I Paid for College...). The story is this: it's 1980(ish) and a former World War II pilot is about to retire from his job as a commercial airline pilot. Forcibly - pilots used to be required to retired at 60. Anyway, to mark his retirement, he decides to visit the Belgian site where he crash landed during the war. Remembering the Belgian and French civilians who helped him and the surviving members of his crew evade the Germans and return to London by way of Spain at great risk to themselves, he moves to France and begins to search for these men and women.

The premise is great and, reading in Paris, which is also the setting for much of the book, the location had much to recommend it as well. Yet, after a strong start, it never really held together. For example, a few characters disappeared completely and others were introduced only to have their stories fizzle or to leave me wondering why they had been introduced. Had two characters truly entered the story only as a way to tell the story of one particular wartime atrocity or was I missing something? Clumsily, in fact, the focus of the story changed, zeroing in on the ruthless and barbaric acts the Germans committed and contemplating the impact these acts had on one particular character - whom we never met.

As quickly as the book changed course, it ends, and in a way that left me completely unsatisfied as a reader. Where had all of these characters gone? Not only was I left with that question (as well as the 'whys' I mentioned earlier, but in many ways I was unclear of even how it was ending. If I thought this were to set-up a sequel, I would be more forgiving, but really it felt like the author (Bobbie Ann Mason) simply grew tired of writing. All in all, I had high hopes when I began reading, and probably through the first half of the book even, but by the end I was confused, frustrated, and disappointed.

How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater

I picked up How I Paid for College at the immensely wonderful Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, earlier this spring. It was a staff pick and, particularly as I had read and enjoyed several other staff picks (Destiny of the Republic chief among them), I skimmed a few pages and decided to purchase a copy. The premise of the story is that Edward Zanni has lived a nice, cushy life until his father remarries to a “stepmonster” and then refuses to pay for him to attend Juilliard. At times, it was funny. Mostly, however, the pranks, frauds, and hijinks felt entirely non-sensical and often gratuitous. The characters largely blended together, which was weird because it was clear that many of them were intended to be the ultimate stereotype of one or another type: the junkie, the exotic foreigner, the eccentric theater student, etc. This was especially strange because I felt like one of the subliminal messages of the book was a sort of “there’s-more-to-any-person-than-meets-the-eye” lesson, where the reader is supposed to look beyond the supposed stereotype to see the whole person. At the end of the day, I just couldn’t buy it, though, and the feeling I had upon finishing the book was one of relief.

Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun

I heard about this book from a good friend who heard about it from NPR. It is the story of how a handgun that was developed in Austria by a curtain rod manufacturer came to dominate the U.S. market and, more salaciously, of the various scandals that have rocked the company in the past three decades. Hit men, alcoholism, domestic violence, tax evasion, and embezzlement have never been more intriguing.

Paul Barrett did a phenomenal amount of research for this book, speaking with any number of characters – upstanding and shady, alike – on both sides of the pond to put together a comprehensive and relatively unbiased look at how Glock has grown and prospered in the 25 years since the guns first entered the American market. (Unbiased except for the tax evasion bit – it’s clear he thinks evading Uncle Sam is bad, and also that he is pretty incredulous about some of the poor management practices at the company. In fact, at times this reads as a case study, but a very, very good one.) Although it seems clear at times that he does not agree with the NRA, he does nevertheless articulate their arguments in accessible language so that even a gun-control advocate such as myself can say, “well, I never thought of it that way,” even if thinking of it that way still doesn’t bring me around to their side.

Overall, Glock, read like a book-length journalism feature story, which is high praise from a WSJ or Washington Post geek like me. I am very glad this book was recommended to me, as it’s unlikely I would have found it on my own and, at the end of the day, it really checked all of the boxes for me: thoroughly researched, well-written, engaging, and on a topic which I didn’t know much about and would otherwise be completely ignorant. Also, the scandals are about as much fun as you can have in high finance and international business…

To Conquer the Air

To be honest, I found this book a bit boring. James Tobin certainly deserves credit for his utter thoroughness in documenting the race to flight. While certainly concentrating the most attention on Wilbur and Orville Wright, he examines the earliest attempts at flight in Europe (which, to a man, ended with the death of the would-be pilot/inventor in his craft), the attempts of lesser known Americans to achieve flight (Samuel Langley, anyone? Octave Chanute?), as well as one of the country's best known and most beloved inventor's efforts: Alexander Graham Bell. And yet, by and large the book simply didn't hold a candle to Jim Rasenberger's America, 1908. (Even Thomas Selfridge's death as Orville's passenger is better told in the latter book, with Rasenberger foreshadowing the man's demise  - and Orville's later feelings of guilt - by quoting from correspondence between the brothers in which they lament how it would be better if Selfridge were out of the way.)

I did come away with a deep admiration and greater understand of what the Wright Brothers accomplished (beyond the end result of flying, that is). Tobin devotes great chunks of text to the many, many iterations of the "aeroplane," as the brothers called it, as well as the rather horrendous conditions at Kitty Hawk, where they frequently battled either sweltering or freezing temperatures and swarms of biting and stinging insects in addition to the obvious hardships of life in rural America 100+ years ago: the need to find, shoot, and skin your dinner before eating it, the necessity of building every structure by hand, and the lack of showers, toilets, and other conveniences. Clearly no one smelled fresh as a daisy or sweet as a rose. I was also struck by the clear-sighted view they had of their invention and it's capabilities. Tobin quotes relatively early correspondence from Wilbur in which he writes, "We stand ready to furnish a practical machine for use in war at once." Similarly, when witnesses of early flights asked what the machine would be good for, they received a single word response: war. Indeed.

Several times I considered abandoning the book as too dry, too slow or, as when Tobin were veer off to explore the efforts of some other unknown would-be inventor, too choppy. Yet, had I done so, I would have missed the descriptions of the flights over New York, the first time the masses saw an airplane fly. The following paragraph especially struck me, capturing the awe of a people and an age:

"On the Jersey shore, people saw the machine bank and sweep into a tight half-circle, then head away, back over the harbor. Now every skipper in the harbor opened his steam whistle. ... Just ahead lay a far greater hulk in the harbor. It was the Cunard liner Lusitania, outbound for Liverpool. ... The flying machine came on and flew just overhead, and the liner let loose with a volcanic blast of steam. A hundred feet up, the roar and the heat enveloped Will."

It seems fitting that it was the Lusitania in the harbor, saluting one new weapon of war and soon to be sunk by another.

The Food of a Younger Land

The Food of a Younger Land provides a fascinating glimpse back in time to the American of the 1930s (and earlier). The book, which is comprised primarily of original, unpublished manuscripts collected as part of a WPA project in the late 1930s and early 1940s (last submissions: December 11, 1941) is essentially a glimpse of what and how Americans ate in the opening decades of the 20th century. The impetus for the government collecting this information - and the project lasted for nearly a decade, beyond the whole Great Depression thing, was the appearance of bottled salad dressings in grocery aisles. As Mark Kurlansky, who really did a wonderful job of stitching piles of 70-year-old papers into a highly readable book, writes in his introduction: “What could better spell the beginning of the end than the manufacture of bottled salad dressing, a product that was so easy to make at home?”

In 1930s America, Italians ate ravioli and Mexicans ate tacos and these foods needed to be described in detail for anyone else. Ravioli, by the way, are “diminutive derbies of pastry, the crowns stuffed with a well-seasoned meat paste,” or at least that is how the WPA writer described them in the late 1930s. Also, tourists in Virginia who do not find the “Virginian foods” along the highway are advised to “knock at some farmhouse door, register [their] complaint against American standardization, and be served after a manner that conforms to the ancient rules of hospitality.” As Kurlansky notes, if that instruction isn’t evidence that this book is about a different country as much as different foods, I don’t know what is.

Given what people in this earlier version of America ate, it’s amazing they didn’t all die of coronary disease at age 35 (of course, I suppose one could make the same argument today)... Primarily, they ate meat and they ate corn. Baked, fried, broiled, and barbecued, they started with hearty helpings of country ham in the morning, plates of fried chicken at noontime, and slabs of beef at night. That, of course, is when they weren’t eating squirrel, possum, rabbit, bison, duck, venison, the intestines of any and all animal, or my personal favorite, beaver tails. Also beans, biscuits, and the omnipresent corn, as a vegetable, a bread, or often a gruel. Whatever Oregon Trail taught me, I wouldn’t have made a good pioneer.

If you’re curious about an earlier era in American history or how cuisine has evolved, I definitely recommend this book. The heartiest might even try a recipe or two (potato salad or breads most likely, unless you fancy trying your hand at pheasant or beaver, though I personally recommend against it). Seeing that I’m not much better in the kitchen than I would have been as a pioneer, I’ll stick to reading the recipes myself.

Flyboys

War is hell. These three words summarize Flyboys, James Bradley’s extraordinary book on the Pacific air war with Japan. In turns gruesome (I skipped entire pages more than once) and mesmerizing, this book is consistently a page turner. Bradley does an excellent job of setting the stage for Pearl Harbor and the United States’ subsequent war with Japan by providing a history of (largely antagonistic) relations between the two nations dating from their first “meeting” in 1853. In doing so, he tackles the issues of expansionism and racism head-on, providing a balanced perspective on the atrocities nations – including the U.S. – had long perpetuated on one another well before World War II. The history of the American experience in the Philippines is especially harrowing and one I’m quite certain I never learned in school. (In short, we “facilitated” the Spanish exist from the archipelago owing to their brutal treatment of the native population, then employed equally brutal methods against these same people, including an official policy to kill every man, woman, and child over the age of ten.)

Bradley uses this history to explain the particular animosity the Japanese felt towards America on the eve of World War II, while also providing a rather fascinating picture of the early air forces. Ultimately, this book is the story of eight American fly boys who were captured and killed by the Japanese after being shot down over Chichi Jima. (A ninth was rescued by a U.S. submarine – that pilot, famously, was George H.W. Bush, who is portrayed warmly in the book by Bradley.) The fate that befell these eight men was so startling that the post-war war crimes prosecutor opened the trial by warning that what befell these men was “so revolting to the human mind that man long ago decided it unnecessary to legislate directly against” such treatment (p. 317). It is shocking.

Yet, in many ways, it is less shocking than Japan’s treatment of its own soldiers (poor provisioning meant cannibalism became de rigeur during the war), and in many ways it is no more shocking that the acts committed by American soldiers against the Japanese (strafing the shipwrecked survivors of a torpedoed transport carrier, for example). Or the napalming of dozens of Japanese cities, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Japanese civilians. In the context of the widespread firebombing campaign that was designed to bring Japan to its knees, but which was still insufficient to convince the country to surrender, the atomic bomb seems the only possible way for the war to end. As Bradley notes, in a perverse way, the atomic bombed actually saved far more lives than it extinguished, a fact that many of the Japanese survivors whose testimony is a strength of the book, acknowledge. War is hell. I think I’m done with war books for awhile.

1812: The War That Forged A Nation

Meticulously researched, 1812 is as much a primer on early American history as a text on the War of 1812. Walter Borneman covers a broad sweep of American history, from the Revolutionary War, where the older generals cut their teeth, to the Civil War where the younger men (or their sons and nephews) would make their own mark. In doing so Borneman's research passes through the Mexican War and the Indian Wars and, of course, focusing on the events of 1812-1814.

This book drove home for me how many years it has been since I have studied American history. (Did I once know that many of the early War of 1812 battles occurred in Canada? That the Americans burned York - now Toronto - in a fit of pique that provoked the British to turn Washington to ash? That "don't give up the ship" was first uttered by a mortally wounded captain in this war? I hope so, of course, but I can't say.) In fact, despite having visited such places as the Constitution in Boston, Mackinac Island, and even Andrew Jackson's plantation the Hermitage, to say nothing of living for two years in Baltimore, my recent knowledge of this war could only be reliably counted on to produce that it resulted in that most mangled of national anthems, The Star Spangled Banner. (On second thought, it may be because of and not in spite of my brief residency in Baltimore that I can reliably recall this last fact.)

Admittedly, the book occasionally became mired in the same details that are a strength. I found myself frequently flipping back a page or two in an attempt to fit a general and regiment together - or even to remember on what side a particular man fought. And his regiment, by the way: was is Kentucky or Tennessee? 44th or 78th? Fusilier or Highlander? You get the idea. The best written chapters to my mind are those that focus on the naval battles, particularly that of the Battle of Lake Erie. ("We have met the enemy and they are ours" can be credited to Oliver Hazard Perry in his victorious dispatch to future president William Henry Harrison following a decisive American victory in this battle.) I also thought the chapter on Andrew Jackson at New Orleans was a real page turner, but, yes, I am a total nerd.

Finally, I will add that I was amazed again by the number of key officers, politicians, and frankly heroes, who hadn't yet reached their 30th birthdays. It's well and fine to remember that in 1812, 30 was already middle-aged, but their heroics still left me feeling old and unaccomplished. Then again, we can't all found a nation.

Bringing Up Bébé

At the risk of incurring the ire of friends who have children, and therefore might be more qualified to comment on a parenting book than I, I’ve decided to share my thoughts on Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bébé. Now the first thing to say about this book, that is the style and the writing – is that I really liked it. Not only is it written in the voice that I prefer and in which I often tend to write (sorry, but try as they might my dissertation committee could not beat the matter-of-fact, conversational quality out of my writing), but it actually made me laugh out loud more than once. This is rare, but then lately I seem to have read a lot about war, and a bit about mental illness, and often both at once. I suppose neither of those topics is particularly funny. So, this book gets points for making me laugh. It also earns high points for providing an excellent, inside look at life in France, from the schools to the hospitals to the bureaucracies. (It also loses points for this, as at various points I was tempted to ditch a life in America for one in Paris, until I remembered that France isn’t entirely the rose garden Druckerman portrays. Child care, healthcare, and college tuition may be heavily subsidized by the state, but the VAT is nearly 20% and most French people I know certainly have as many cost-/quality-of-life concerns as Americans.) I digress.  

As far as the comparisons between French parenting and American parenting, I quickly grew weary. So much of what the author identifies as 'French parenting' I would label as 'common sense.' For example, she bemoans the highly limited diets of American toddlers and children while delighting in the way French children eat a tremendous variety of foods. Now, this may not be a fair comparison for a number of reasons, not least because France is the land of brie and baguettes while America is home to Wonder Bread and Cheez Whiz. But, her case is not helped by showcasing an American toddler who refuses to eat anything except foil wrapped Santa Clauses; his parents buy out the stores at Christmas lest they run out and he go hungry after the holidays. They believe they are being good parents. I believe they should be investigated for child abuse. She attributes the wider palate of  French children to parents refusing to indulge in this behavior and requiring their children to sample all foods at least once and generally eat the same meals as the parents. Brilliant! Who ever would have thought? Other than my own parents, I suppose, and most every other family I knew growing up.

Likewise, we learn that all American children are unruly little wildebeests because their parents have yet to harness the power of the word ‘no.’ She even devotes several pages to how she had to learn to say this word with conviction so that her young son would listen and obey. It never occurred to me that parents would not use this word (and use it often). Clearly the wildebeests belong to the people who cannot say no. I mean, she tells horror story of restaurant meals with her own one-year-old, who cannot be made to sit at the table while the parents eat. Having recently enjoyed a long and lovely brunch with good friends and their adorably well-behaved, one-year-old daughter, I can definitely say that not all American toddlers behave this way.

Toward the end of the book she discusses the differences in baby-proofing philosophies: she wishes to replace the bathroom floors with something entirely rubber in order to reduce (eliminate?) the risk of a child slipping and falling. The French people who learn of this idea think it is madness. So do I. We simply used a bath mat and my mother would say, ‘be careful not to fall.’ I suppose if I had, I would have been more careful the next time.  I’d continue, but I’m sure you get the idea.  

Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life

Coco Chanel, whose real name was Gabrielle, was one fascinating broad. Born to peasants, she would be orphaned by her mother's death and father's abandonment before she was 12, when she was sent to the Aubazine convent. Such beginnings contrast starkly with her later life when she would figure among the wealthiest, most influential women in France, if not beyond - and also bed half of Europe, at least the wealthy half (men and women alike). At various times her lovers included the Duke of Westminster (then himself the richest man in England), Stravinsky, Picasso, Dali, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and a high ranking German official during World War II - in addition to countless others whose names are far less known or impressive (Etienne Balsan? Arthur Capel? Antoinette d'Harcourt?). Also, she had a serious morphine habit. Most impressively is not simply the way Chanel revolutionized fashion, however, but that she continued working at it and being a force within the fashion world until she the day she died at the age of 87, some 60 years after she opened her first little shop.

So, yes, Chanel is fascinating. Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life, however, is a bit dry. In fact, as I read I couldn't help but feel that it could have been written as a dissertation, something to the effect of the "The Life and Times of Coco Chanel: One Woman's Impact on a Century." It's incredibly well researched and painstakingly thorough but, unlike some books which manage to be this without the reader constantly realizing it. In this book, the research can sometimes drag down each dense paragraph, threatening to crush them under its weight. I will say, though, that when it comes to descriptions of Europe - particularly life in France in the 19th century when peasants still spoke patois, or in either of the pre-/post- war periods - the research does pay dividends.

On a separate note, the author (Lisa Chaney), had what was for me the terribly annoying habit of referring to and describing various photos of Chanel or others, sometimes in great detail, which were then not included in any of the photo insert pages. I felt cheated! If the photographs couldn't be reproduced for the book, she should have said so in the text; if they could have been and she chose not to, then shame on her.

The final verdict: Coco Chanel was almost certainly one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century. She gets 4 stars just for surviving and thriving, let alone being a quiet revolutionary in her own way. (Also, I couldn't help but think that she should have just married Etienne Balsan when he asked - twice - but that really is beside the point.) The book, however, gets 2 stars because at the end of the day the reader often has to work to keep Chanel in focus and not be overcome by the words on the page.

A First Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness

On the whole this is a fascinating book to read, or even to contemplate: Nassir Ghaemi posits that mental illness enhances crisis leadership, using many examples from history to make his case, most notably Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and John F. Kennedy. Yet, my enthusiasm for this book waxed and waned as I read. Sometimes it felt a bit clunky: crammed with the familiar jargon of the psychiatrist who wrote it. At these times, I would set it aside and turn my attention to some other book or project. Eventually, though, I was pulled back to it because, at the end of the day, it offers a series of excellent portraits of any number of Great Men from times past. By focusing on their mental health or lack thereof (and this book is primarily concerned with the ones who were a bit deficient in that area), it spotlights history from a new angle.

As examples of the mentally ill leader, General Sherman, Winston Churchill, FDR, MLK, JFK, Teddy Roosevelt, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, and even Ted Turner all go under the knife at some point in this book, so to speak. (The sane leaders, by the way, are George McClellan, Neville Chamberlain, and Richard Nixon; Tony Blair and George W. Bush also make appearances, though Ghaemi cautions against drawing too many conclusions about the still-living. The analysis is sometimes stiff (as I said in the paragraph above, the jargon can be hard to read), but generally fascinating. So many Lincolns suffered debilitating depressions that one relative referred to it as the “Lincoln horrors.” MLK and Gandhi both attempted suicide as teenagers; Lincoln was once suicidal to the extent that his neighbors kept vigil over him to prevent him from attempting the act. The book also brought to light new facts for me, some of which I have probably learned at some point or another (for example, FDR did not contract polio until he was 39) and some of which I don't believe I've ever known (that Hitler was a big time drug addict and that Kennedy's chronically poor health repeatedly sent him to death's door - he was 6'1" and in 1944 weighed only 126 pounds, for example).

Additionally, when he explains it in plain English, the psychiatry itself is interesting. In addition to full blown depression and manic-depression, he spends a great deal of time examining dysthymic (always melancholy though never depressed, dysthymics tend to go through life at a very slow pace, even walking and talking slowly) and hyperthymic temperments (always in a frenzy, hyperthymics walk and talk a mile a minute, have 100 ideas a day, and generally sleep very little).

I also particularly enjoyed the liberal use great quotes, as well as lines the Ghaemi wrote himself. He quotes Sherman saying of Grant, "He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk." Writing of Hitler's extensive drug use he writes, "To call Hitler a time bomb would be to understate matters."  “There is not Kennedy curse. There is a Kennedy gene…that is both a curse and a blessing.” But, my very favorite lines from this book begin with an excerpt from a Thornton Wilder novel:

George Brush is my name

America's my nation

Ludington's my dwelling place

and Heaven's my destination

As Ghaemi then writes, "One couldn't have have invented the irony - only the letter 'r' in George Brush's name separates fiction from recent reality. You'll have to A First-Rate Madness yourself to learn whether he thinks the man behind the recent reality was mad.