Tuesday, December 31, 2013

The Best of 2013

As best I can figure, I read 64 books this year, all but a couple of them cover-to-cover. Using the same 15% rule that I used in 2012 and 2011, I should select the 9.6 best books - so the following, in the order I initially read them, are my top 10 reads from 2013. I should note that a few themes jump out as me as I look over my list: disease (typhoid, tuberculosis, yellow fever, and zoonotic) and war (the Civil War, the Lincoln County War, World War I, World War II ) chief among them. So perhaps next year I ought to strive for a more cheerful selection. In any event, happy reading!

Good Book
(reviewed January 4, 2013)
David Plotz's hilarious take on the Old Testament. There is also an element of the serious, as well, when Plotz summarizes Judges 11:  Do you not hold what Chemosh your God gives you to possess? So we will hold on to everything that the Lord our God has given us to possess." As Plotz concludes, "And there, my friends, you have practically the entire history of Israel, of the Middle East, and of planet Earth, in two short sentences."

The Guns of August
(reviewed January 10, 2013)
 Barbara Tuchman's tome on the opening days of World War I is mesmerizing, masterful, and mighty depressing. The crux of the book is the many failures - diplomatic and military - that ultimately led to four years of unrelenting bloodshed across Europe, and eventually the world. I have read more World War I books than I can remember and only The Beauty and the Sorrow comes close to matching The Guns of August.

After Appomattox: How the South Won the War
(reviewed February 7, 2013)
Stetson Kennedy believes you should reconsider what you probably think that you know about the end of the American Civil War: North wins, South loses, and the rest is just details. Andrew Johnson, in one of his finer moments (of which there were to be enough for Congress to impeach him), sent a messenger south to inform the generals stationed there that the president was "for a white man's government, and in favor of free white citizens controlling the country" (p. 45). Using a decade of such incidents as his foundation, Kennedy builds and supports the argument that the end result was as though Grant had surrendered to Lee at Appomattox and not the other way around.

The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
(reviewed February 19, 2013)
David McCullough has clearly done an almost-unfathomable amount of research - on the Suez Canal, the history of Panama, early engineering and railroading technologies and techniques and American imperialism (add Panama to the list of places Teddy Roosevelt took by storm), to name a few of the areas he visits in great, but highly readable detail. Path is 600 pages of everything you ever wanted to know about the Panama Canal and many things you never knew you wanted to know.

A Man in Uniform
(reviewed March 10, 2013)
Kate Taylor's little mystery centered around the Dreyfus Affair was one of the first, and best, fiction books I read this year. The idea is a mysterious woman comes to a relatively small-time lawyer whose family has extensive military connections, pleads that Dreyfus is innocent and charges him with not only gaining an appeal for Dreyfus, but with finding the real spy. It has the makings of a great mystery wrapped in the packaging of 20th century Paris.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
(reviewed July 21, 2013)
Mark Adams visits Machu Picchu the way the Incas did. On foot. No facilities. Serious off-the-beaten path adventuring. And then he weaves his own adventure together with that of the "discovery" of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham III and with the colonization of Peru by the Spanish some 500 years ago. Taken together, this could be a circuitous, hard-to-follow read, but it's remarkably well done, humorous, insightful, and informative. All told, Turn Right at Machu Picchu is some of the best travel writing I've ever read.

The House at Tyneford
(reviewed July 30, 2013)
Natasha Solomons probably could not have created a more tragedy-laced, heartstrings-tugging, tear-inducing story if she had tried to. "Please treat the church and houses with care; we have given up our homes where many of us have lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly." - notice pinned to the door of Tyneford Church by departing villagers. In her author's note, Solomons informs the reader that Tyneford is based on Tyneham, which was requisitioned by the British army in 1943 and to which not a single resident was ever allowed to return.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
(reviewed August 24, 2013)
David Quammen is my favorite author. In Spillover, Quammen has set out to understand the origins of any number of diseases that transfer from animals to people. He provides a detailed examination of some of the better known ones - such as AIDS, ebola, and yellow fever - as well as ones I certainly had never heard of: Nipah, Hendra, and Marburg virus to name a few. In the process, Quammen criss-crosses the planet, from Bangladesh and the Congo to Washington, DC, and the Outback, speaking with molecular biologists, immunologists, epidemiologists and the like, rendering their science-speak into understandable, and highly readable, prose. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is who I want to be when I grow up.

Somerset
(reviewed September 17, 2013)

Leila Meacham's prequel to Roses was probably my favorite fiction read this year. Somerset is the meandering story of the generations of Warwicks, Tolivers, and DuMonts, who form the backbone of both books, as they make their way from the antebellum south to the untamed lands of Texas. The star of the story is Jessica Wyndham, a girl-woman of, some might say, misplaced passions who is at the heart of all that follows. This is storytelling as it was meant to be, it turns gently unfolding and  soaring and always difficult to put down.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
(reviewed November 17, 2013)
Robert K. Massie has created a meticulously researched and engagingly written portrait of Russia's last female ruler. Of all the biographies I read this year - Lady Almina, Countess of Carnarvon; Hetty Green; and Gertrude Bell to name a few - that of Catherine the Great was certainly the most complete, most thorough, and largely because of the subject, the most interesting. After all, the reign of Catherine the Great was notable for its length as well as all she accomplished - partition of Poland and victories in the Crimean, for example. Not bad for someone who entered the world as a minor German princess, may or may not have murdered her husband, and had, ahem, no legitimate claim to the Russian throne.

Monday, December 30, 2013

The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth

The President is a Sick Man by Matthew Algeo has been on my reading list since early summer - I finally had a chance to read it over the Christmas holidays and am happy to report that I much enjoyed it. The extent of my knowledge about Grover Cleveland prior to reading this book was that he is the only man to be elected to the office of president twice, in non-consecutive terms. I was unaware that he was renowned for his honesty to such an extent that he was known for having once said, "tell the truth," which struck the citizenry as completely remarkable. (And says something about how little we have progressed in the last century, as least as regards the trustworthiness of our politicians.)

So, here's the deal: Grover Cleveland discovers a rough spot on the roof of his mouth. Ultimately, it needs to be removed, but at the height of the then-worst depression in the country's history, all parties are concerned that news of the president's health crisis may accelerate the tailspin. Thus, the operation must be top secret, especially as the doctors believe Cleveland to have a cancer of the mouth (this at a time when the word "cancer" is rarely uttered aloud - for more on that, check out The Emperor of All Maladies). Also the public is especially spooked by cancer of the mouth, as that is the form of the disease to which General-cum-President Grant has recently succumbed.

At just over 225 pages, this is a quick read about an almost unknown episode in the presidency of a little remembered president. It is also a book that will cause most readers to consider not only how medicine has changed (which is obvious), but how our thinking about medicine and illness has changed - as well as how the expectation of privacy, particularly for public figures, such as the president - has been reshaped by this thinking and by technology. There are probably few readers out there who will want to add The President is a Sick Man to their "must read" list, but those who do read it should come away with a better sense of President Cleveland, and perhaps even of the Gilded Age.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral - And How It Changed the American West

I didn't know much about Wyatt Earp or the O.K. Corral before I picked up Jeff Guinn's Last Gunfight at the Minneapolis airport a few weeks ago - I certainly didn't know that the gunfight wasn't actually at the O.K. Corall, nor that "cowboy" was a slur used to denote the lowest of the low in frontier society - cattle rustlers, stage robbers, and and murderers among them. I also can't claim to have any great interest in Earp and Company - I had just finished reading about Billy the Kid, though, and learned so much about the West that, especially for $2, I decided Last Gunfight was worth a shot.

Indeed, Guinn paints an equally beguiling portrait of an untamed, unrepentant West where, he tells us, if gunfights where not common, the possibility of them always loomed; men, and not a few women, were armed as a matter of course, whiskey flowed, tempers flared, and Guinn seems to have found a record of the shooting skills - real or perceived - of nearly every man in Cochise County circa 1880. Arizona Territory was just that, a territory rather than a state, the Apaches raided somewhat at will, and the railroad had not yet reached the small towns that cropped up around every silver strike. In such a place it was easy for someone who had run afoul of the law in one place - public brawling, petty theft, breaking jail, running prostitutes, you know, typical frontier transgressions - to be the law in another place. Such was the case for Wyatt Earp who, once he mended his ways, began a lifelong obsession with wearing a badge. (This despite a deep and abiding friendship with the "tubercular dentist," Doc Holliday.")

In many ways, the gunfight itself is the least interesting part of Last Gunfight. Far more interesting are the passages about frontier law and courts, the role in Wells Fargo in mounting posses and paying bounties, and politicking in the territories. Still, this is a book for those seriously interested in the West or in the more obscure corners of American history.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Chain of Thunder: A Novel of the Siege of Vicksburg

I almost gave up on this book. It's the sequel, essentially, to Blaze of Glory, and if you read that review, you know I raved about Jeff Shaara and also, if you've read many other reviews, you know that I love historical fiction and am especially drawn to work (fiction and non-fiction) about the Civil War. Nevertheless, I nearly added Chain of Thunder to my "did not finish" list. Had I done so, it would have been a shame, as I was at least half-way through when I was seriously considering quitting, and this is a book whose second half is much stronger than the first half.

The first half is about soldiers slogging through the mud. The food is terrible, the water is such that said soldiers can rarely see through it, the marches are long (and in Mississippi, hot), and the life of a soldier is a hell unto itself, and that's when the enemy isn't trying to pump him full of lead. Which he usually is. And to be completely honest, I was not interested in 490 pages on the tedium of being a soldier or the politics of generals, for that matter. I was drawn to Chain of Thunder in no small part because Shaara mentioned in the opening pages that, for the first time, he was incorporating the viewpoint of civilians. As such, Miss Lucy Spence, a spunky 19-year-old Vicksburg girl was one of the key voices of the story. Only, for the most part, she's absent from the first 200+ pages of the book. I imagine this is because, until the Federals lay siege to the city, there's not much for her to say or do.

Once they do lay siege she, like virtually all other Vicksburg civilians, moves into a cave that's been hand-dug into the side of a cliff, subsists on rat and mule - when there's food at all - and eventually works as a nurse tending the wounded and dying soldiers who are quickly turning against their commanding general, John Pemberton. (That the Pennsylvanian-turned-Southerner known derisively as "Old Pem" formally surrenders the city on the 4th of July is more than the citizens and soldiers alike can swallow.) Lucy's story, which is simultaneously unbelievably horrifying and inspiring, is really the glue that holds Chain of Thunder together. The rest of the book, to be honest, is old hat. Sherman and Grant smoke cigars and spend a lot of time atop horses. The Confederate generals receive conflicting orders from their command structures. There's a lot of mud and musket balls and misery. I believe this would have been a stronger book had Shaara lessened the emphasis on the conflicts leading up to Vicksburg and begun with the siege itself.

That weakness aside, this is well-written, compelling reading for those inclined to focus on the strengths: not only Lucy Spence's story, but the anecdotes that reveal the face of war in the age of the telegraph - when the wires weren't cut. Grant learns of Stonewall Jackson's Chancellorsville death from a Mississippi train engineer. Pemberton cannot write Johnston for a shortage of writing paper. We're a long, long way from the Marshall Plan. Or drones.

Perhaps the most telling detail, though, comes in the afterward, when Shaara informs the reader matter-of-factually that Independence Day was not celebrated in Vicksburg again until 1945. The baby born in the midst of the siege would have been 82 years old.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater

A few months ago, one of my friends posted a great review of Alice, Let's Eat. I wasn't familiar with Calvin Trillin, but her "bottom line" was that the book was hilarious, as she had come to expect from Trillin.

Alice, Let's Eat is a memoir in which Trillin recounts many of the great meals and delicacies he has enjoyed over the years, mostly (but not always) in the company of his dear wife, Alice. As many of the meals and regional delicacies he recounts are tied closely to one corner of this world or another, Alice, Let's Eat is a bit of a travelogue as well as food log. I like to travel. I like good food. And I especially like to eat good food when I travel (it's quite possible that the best meal I've ever eaten was at the Blue Pig Tavern in Cape May, New Jersey...unless it was at 82 Queen in Charleston, South Carolina...or, well you get the idea). Frankly, I thought I'd be hard-pressed to find more appropriate Thanksgiving reading than Alice, Let's Eat - which I kept thinking of as "Let's Eat, Alice," not to be confused with "Let's Eat Alice," a very Eats, Shoots & Leaves mistake, but I digress.

In any case, I found Alice, Let's Eat to be amusing, if not hilarious. It took until the end of one chapter for me to realize that, yes, country ham was evidently a real dish, that it did come was remnants of mother earth still clinging to the meat, and yes, Alice is obviously a much more adventurous cook - and eater - than I. And if I hadn't already figured that out, it would have been hard to miss when she attended a church picnic where the fixings included healthy helpings of beaver, coon, and bear chops.

This is a quick, fun read for anyone who likes food, travel, memoirs, or some combination thereof. Strict vegetarians may be appalled by the quantity of meat consumed within these pages; everyone else is more likely to mesmerized.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh

Years ago, I read  - and loved - Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels about the Battle of Gettysburg, follow up by Jeff Shaara's Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measures (the bookends to the father-son trilogy as J. Shaara refers to them in the introduction to Blaze of Glory). More recently, I read Gone for Soldiers, about the war with Mexico and the ways that it shaped nearly every Civil War general of consequence, North and South. And, as I said in my review of the latter book, no one writes war like Jeff Shaara (except his father, Michael, now deceased). In any case, I like Jeff Shaara's style, his body of work, and his topic area.

Nevertheless, Blaze of Glory was not quite all I hoped it might be. Part of that, certainly, is no fault of the author: Albert Sidney Johnston (whose death was the defining moment of Shiloh, if not the entire Civil War) and James Seeley are no R.E. Lee or "Stonewall" Jackson - they are not the gripping characters whose history has become part of the national conscience, references to whom any educated person might be expected to recognize without too much trouble. Shaara includes narratives from the perspective of a Wisconsin private, Fritz Bauer, as well, and to good effect. Fritz (whose parents are German immigrants but who has been nicknamed "Dutchie" by the more Euro-challenged members of his regiment) is a likeable soldier, and his angle as a foot soldier rather than a general is a nice addition. He is, however, deeply memorable the way Joshua Chamberlain or Ulysses Grant or even Nathan Bedford Forrest is memorable, though.

More than the characters, the pacing felt uneven. Many chapters were gripping - not least when Sherman (he of the infamous March to the Sea) realizes his camps have been completely taken by surprise after telling his pickets time and again that they are imagining the sights and sounds before them. In other places, the story seems to plod, Shaara taking as long to tell some part of the battle as it might have taken to fight it.

At the end of the day, this is a fine  read, but is best suited to those with a deep interest in the war in the West, as the battles beyond the Appalachians were known, or an absolutely unquenchable thirst for material on the Civil War.