The Polysyllabic Spree

This is another book I really struggled with, though I can't figure out precisely why. At only 140 pages, it certainly wasn't too long. Polysyllabic Spree is a collection of Nick Hornby's columns from The Believer in 2003-2004, and the vast majority of them are colorful and humorous, even if I didn't find many books to add to my reading list. (I did find three, which doesn't seem too bad - Random Family, George and Sam: Autism in the Family, and On and Off the Field, the latter of which is improbably a cricketer's biography. As in the British sport, not the insect-obsessed.) At the end of the day, perhaps it's that I'd rather read the books myself than read someone else's impressions of them. Undoubtedly there's a bit of irony in writing that sentence in a blog dedicated to my own, not-as-entertaining-as-Nick-Hornby's impressions of books.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

This quirky book, written entirely in letters, and awash in colorful, spirited characters, is on my shortlist for Best of 2012 thus far. Briefly, it is the story of making a (n often new) life in the ration- and rubble-filled years in immediate post-WWII England. It is so vividly written that not only did I feel I was in Guernsey along with Juliet, I also felt the grind of the Occupation - and what it was to be free of it after so many years. Also, the authors (more on that in a minute) get bonus points for character names: Dawsey, Izzy Bickerstaff, Booker, Simon Simpless. Simply reading the names on the page was half the fun.

These little islands are caught in a bit of the channel between England and France, and are probably the richer in culture for it. The islanders are true to King and country - the Union Jack, lavish teas, the Royal Family, and all that is right and good and British - yet, it's the Normandy coast they can see in the distance. Naturally, my reaction to such a place is to want to visit it, not that I hadn't already planned on trekking to the Channel Islands one day or another.

Now about the authors. I was surprised and saddened to read in the afterword that Mary Ann Shaffer died before Guernsey reached final publication and that it was her writer-niece, Annie Barrows, who completed the rewrites and edits, and saw it through publication and its rise in popularity. Perhaps somewhat selfishly, I think I was most disappointed because, as this was her first book, there is nothing else to read by Mary Ann Shaffer.

Hemingway's Boat

Hemingway's Boat has the dubious distinction of being my first unfinished book of 2012. After fighting my way through 215 pages, I simply decided I didn't have it in me to continue for another 350. Don't get me wrong, the book is well-researched and well-written, but my interest in Hemingway is not deep enough for me to enjoy reading hundreds of pages about, well, Hemingway's boat, Pilar, the people who joined him aboard (and in some cases, their own life stories), the fish he caught, the books he wrote, and the relationships he crumbled. For the ultimate Hemingway enthusiast, this book may be just the thing, but for the casual reader and admirer, I'd recommend Paris Wife (one of the best books I read in 2011).

As a side note, something Nick Hornby wrote in Polysyallabic Spree came to mind more than once. I'm paraphrasing here, but what he wrote is that when an author sets out to write a biography, he should have to apply to a National Biography Office which will have the sole ability to set to maximum number of pages that may be written about said person/aspect of person. By my count, this book exceeded it's allowable pages by many score. It did, however, succeed in making me want to visit Cuba even more than I did previously.

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.