Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

I have to confess that my newfound obsession with Downton Abbey has really eaten into my reading and blogging routine. The truth be told, I actually finished this book early last week, but was on a DA bender and am just now putting thoughts to paper. (I also haven’t started anything new yet…)

Hedy’s Folly is a fairly slim book, and this review, likewise will be fairly slim. Hedy Lamarr was a famous Hollywood actress (and reportedly the most beautiful woman in the world) in the late 1930s and early 1940s who like to invent any manner of things. Likewise, George Antheil was an avant garde composer (his most famous work having caused a near-riot in Paris) and notorious womanizer who was also mechanically inclined and liked to invent. Having discovered this shared interested at a dinner party, this unlikely duo set about to invent a jam-proof anti-torpedo system at the height of World War II. Naturally, the U.S. military failed to capitalize on their invention, but decades later when the patent was declassified, any number of private enterprises capitalized on their frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology. The technology has made possible everything from cell phones to GPS.

That’s the background story.  In this case, the sum of the parts is less than the individual parts. Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil are both interesting people, whose lives hopscotched from Europe to the U.S. (and vice versa) during the Roaring Twenties and Nazi rise. George Antheil lived in the mezzanine apartment above Shakespeare and Company, which is worth something in and of itself. Their stories, though, are often overwhelmed by the technical details of their various inventions. I appreciate Rhodes’s efforts to describe the scientific importance and how-to of their various frequency-hopping innovations, but ultimately, he often provided too much information for the casual reader to fully absorb.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

Destiny of the Republic chronicles the life, times, and assassination of James A. Garfield, 20^th President of the United States. In many ways, Garfield is a man who never wanted to be president, did not seek the nomination, did not actually campaign once nominated, and was ultimately president for only 200 days (nearly half of which he spent languishing in a sick room). This is also the story of the barbarism of nineteenth century medicine, on the eve of the transformation of the operating room from a stinking, vile place to a sterilized one and the story of a political era so ripe with corruption that Rutherford B. Hayes stated that, should the Republicans nominate him for a second term as President, he would refuse the honor outright.

I liked James Garfield. I found him to be a fascinating, smart, highly likable man; I was sorry to see him assassinated, all the more since he never sought the presidency and was a very reluctant candidate, at best. Garfield became the president of what is now Hiram College at age 26, then served as a Union general before spending over a decade in Congress.That it was the decisions of his doctors, rather than his assassin’s bullet, that ultimately killed him made me all the sorrier.

In addition to liking Garfield, I very much liked this book. In many ways it reminded me of The Devil in the White City: there is murder and mayhem, but also the undercurrent of ideas, inventions, and glimpses of the future. The parallels between Guiteau and Prendergast are unmistakable, as are those between the centennial fair in Philadelphia (where Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated the telephone) and the World's Fair in Chicago. Millard does a fine job tracing the interwoven stories of Garfield, Guiteau, and Bell, bringing to life figures about whom I previously knew very little. At times the book is prescient, as on page 184 when Millard describes the transition from an open access White House to one guarded by armed men writing, "the nation had changed not just suddenly, but fundamentally and irretrievable." (The statement harkened me back to my first time in an airport post-9/11.) At other times the book is nearly laugh-out-loud funny, particularly the courtroom scenes during Guiteau's trial. Clearly, if ever a man were insane, Guiteau were that man.

Sheepishly, I have to admit to feeling a jolt of nerdish excitement at the mention of New York City's 1888 blizzard (thank you, Isaac's Storm), and - also nerdishly - took pleasure in adding to my bank of random trivia that Garfield's was the first presidential library created (thanks to his adoring wife and tireless personal secretary) and that Robert Todd Lincoln is the only individual to have been present or in the immediate vicinity of three presidential assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, in 1865, 1881, and 1901).

Elizabeth the Queen

Beginning with her girlhood years as Princess Elizabeth of York and following her and the rest of the royal family up through the Trooping the Colour parade in June 2011, this is an in-depth rendering of the day-to-day and year-to-year life of the Queen. I admit to being a bit surprised by the volume of work the Queen does. Keeping up with all things political and Commonwealth-related, including a daily reading of all cables, memos, briefings, and other such government papers, requires tremendous time, patience, and, honestly, intelligence; doing this while simultaneously being unable to express an opinion or truly give advice to the Prime Minister or other government officials would be more than most mortals could bear. Certainly the Queen has time for her leisurely pursuits and hobbies – reading, riding, and all things “horsey” among them – but on the whole she does appear to work exceptionally hard.

As would be expected of a book covering the span of Elizabeth II’s reign, this one spends a fair amount of time delving into the personal lives and troubles of the royals, from Princess Margaret (once hospitalized for alcoholic hepatitis and eventually smoking and drinking herself into her grave), to the Queen’s children, whose own scandals need no introduction. While the Queen comes off as a cold, dare one say uncaring, mother, she comes off as a much more loving wife, and Prince Philip positively shines. His devotion and steadfastness are bar-none and much of the comic relief is provided by him along the way. Prince Charles, too, comes off as a highly sympathetic character, for whom I truly felt sorry by the end of the book. Diana, though – wow – the descriptions of her various fits, tantrums, refusals of treatment, discontinued treatments, and the lies, lies, lies, had me admittedly questioning William’s total reverence of her. For his sake, if nothing else, I hope Duchess Kate is cut of quite different cloth than his mother.

For me, this book did a remarkable job of taking the shine off being Queen, and the fact that Elizabeth II has carried out this duty unfailing for the past 60 years (February 6, 1952, was Accession Day), gives me respect for her, personally. On the whole, Sally Bedell Smith creates an Elizabeth who is both sympathetic and difficult to admire, and a role as Queen that is both tedious and infinitely compelling. I imagine, then, that she has got it about right.

Gone for Soldiers

No one writes war like Jeff Shaara. Years ago, I devoured the father-son Civil War trilogy Gods and Generals, The Killer Angels, and The Last Full Measure and easily ranked the father, Michael, who wrote The Killer Angels, and the son, Jeff, who wrote the book ends among my favorite authors. Michael, unfortunately, is dead. Jeff continues to write. Recently I stumbled upon his recounting of the Mexican War, Gone for Soldiers: A Novel of the Mexican War. Happily, this book lives up to his other works, with the added benefit of providing a good bit of education about a war which I was previously pretty ignorant of. It’s a good story, with plenty of rich characters, realistic dialogue, and carefully reconstructed battle scenes.

As in his Civil War books, he alternates the voice of each chapter between various protagonists; in this case, the most frequent narrators are Winfield Scott and Robert E. Lee, with guest appearances by Mexican General Santa Anna (who, we learn, was the leader of Mexico on eleven separate occasions), as well as future Confederate generals/heros Jackson, Beauregard, Johnston, and Longstreet. Other famous faces appear as well, from the disheveled Pickett to the distinguished Grant. And while the activities of the “present” (i.e., the Mexican War) are clearly the focus of the book, one can’t help but feel with each turn of the page that Shaara is setting the stage for the Civil War. Did Scott repeatedly tell Lee that he was destined to command a great army? Did Lee feel Jackson “needed” a war? Did Johnston tell Lee that one day he (Johnston) would lead men into battle while Lee gave the orders? Any of this is possible, but the pattern repeats itself so frequently that I couldn’t help but feel it was, perhaps, just a little over done. 

Having read this book, for me, there can be no doubt that the Mexican War shaped not only this country’s borders— it does seem to have been a bit of a land grab, even if we did pay $15 million in the end – but also the course of the Civil War, and arguable Reconstruction years, as well. Shaara notes in his afterward that 11 of the 15 Confederate generals on the field at Bull Run/Manassas in 1861 served under Scott in Mexico. Indeed, the (future) Confederate-to-Union ratio of officers who appear in this book is astounding. More than once I certainly thought that, had it not been for an inexhaustible supply of conscripted new immigrants, the Union surely would have had to cede to these U.S.-cum-Confederate generals and strategists. I truly enjoyed this book, and look forward to exploring Shaara’s other wars, which appear to extend from the Revolution to World War II.

Confessions of a Surgeon: The Good, the Bad, and the Complicated

The Wall Street Journal posted an excerpt from this book by Paul Ruggieri a few weeks ago and I was intrigued enough to pick it up from the library and read on. 

The Good: In addition to some downright funny stories about past patients (hungry Fred was my favorite), this book also provides unique and interesting insight into the ways of doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies. The discourses (sometimes verging on rants) about malpractice insurance were especially noteworthy: I never stopped to think about the numbers, but the fact is that by practicing long enough, virtually every single doctor will be sued. No wonder health care costs are out-of-control. 

The Bad: I got a little tired of what often came across as “poor me,” particularly as it related to “lifestyle” and pay. I have no doubt that the hours are long and the stress is tremendous. As Ruggieri acknowledges, though, that’s part of what drew him to the field. I really couldn’t sympathize with the oft-repeated I-don’t-make-enough sentiment. At one point Ruggieri laments being unable to retire for want of being able to maintain the same lifestyle. My feeling is either suck it up and keep working, or retire and change your lifestyle, but the angst over feeling unable to retire is nothing unique to surgeons. 

The Complicated: Not much. Except for a few bloody pages (skip, skip, skip), Ruggieri does a good job of making medicine accessible – and not gross. He does raise important questions about medical education, insurance, malpractice, and the like, none of which is, or can be, answered here but which provide definite food for thought. This is a fine, quick read, if you’re looking for one surgeon’s take on surgery (and especially the broader issues surrounding healthcare). For something more broadly-based – and more sympathetic – I still prefer Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit.

Alice I Have Been

I felt this book was really two books: the book of Alice as a child, which could be a bit tedious and hard to relate to, and Alice as an adult which was reminiscent of Downton Abbey (I’ve become a bit obsessed, so the parallels were positive for me), and also profoundly moving. Before reading this book, I was vaguely aware that Lewis Carroll was whispered to have had some sort of inappropriate relationship with the young girl for whom he Alice in Wonderland. This book, a well done work of historical fiction, is the story of that girl, their relationship, and her life after Wonderland.

As I said, it felt like two books, and I nearly gave up while reading the first. Upon finishing the book, I determined my disenchantment with the earlier chapters, which focus on Alice Liddell’s childhood, may have largely owed to the higher degree of fiction present in these early chapters than in those that focus on Alice as an adult. As the author notes, while much is known about Alice’s adult life, her life as a child, including the break in relations between her family and Mr. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) is much less so. (Here, even – or especially – the little details nagged at me. Did her mother really refer to all maids as “Mary Ann”?) It was largely the engaging descriptions of Oxford life that kept me interested long enough to reach my reward: the later chapters, particularly those which find Alice amid the tumult of the Great War.

The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us

The LSJ doesn't often publish reviews of books that rely so heavily on research, but a few months ago they did; evidently I wasn't the only one who read the review and thought it sounded interesting. After waiting three months, I finally received the hold notice and could see what all the fuss was about. A little background, first: Jeffrey Kluger writes for Time and this book, as he acknowledges more than once, grew out of feature stories on sibling relationships tha he wrote for the magazine in 2006 and 2007.

Not surprisingly, then, the book reads a bit like a very long feature story. It's chock full of interviews, longitudinal study results, and other standard research fare. Kluger examines everything from sibling rivalry, to the trajectory of shared substance abuse and teenage pregnancy, to abusive sibling relationships. In places, it's a little dark.This would probably be too much, if not for the generous, and usually very funny, helping of personal anecdotes that Kluger regularly doles out. Dysfunctional in any number of ways, the Kluger clan often serves to illustrate any number of research findings in ways that make the reader both thankful and sorry not to be a member of the troop. As for recommending it? If you enjoy magazine-style features, or have an unquenchable thirst for research about siblings, this is a well-written and certainly informative book.