I have no idea where A Man in Uniform came from. I found it in my nightstand recently (has it been there for years?) and it sounded interesting. It's historical fiction, which you may have gathered from my last post that I'm more inclined to like than regular fiction, so I figured it was about time to actually read it.
The plot centers around the Dreyfus Affair (Wikipedia has a nice little synopsis of it), which is known as much today, at least in the U.S., for being the impetus for Emile Zola's famous J'accuse as for anything else. 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. Honestly, the lengths to which the lawyer, Dubon, goes seem rather improbable at times, but this is a fast-moving, well-written mystery that is as much about Parisian society at the turn of the 20th century as anything else. Kate Taylor's writing is a pleasure to read and her plot twists and turns through the final pages. I would classify it as a "beach read" and recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, and especially, a good mystery.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Last Night at Chateau Marmont
If you read my blog more than once a year, you've probably noticed that I primarily read non-fiction. I'm not sure when or how that happened, but I have no problem embracing my inner nerd and proclaiming that I really love non-fiction. Moreover, when I do read works of fiction, I've noticed that more often than not, those books fall into the historical fiction category (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Doc, Alice I Have Been, you get the idea). But a few years ago I read The Devil Wears Prada and thoroughly enjoyed it so when I saw a new Lauren Weisberger title in a bookstore recently, I decided to pick it up.
I didn't like it. In fact, I didn't finish it. This is entirely my fault. If I had bothered to flip it over and read even a smattering of the reviews (i.e., "Pure gossipy pleasure." - Chicago Sun-Times or "Weisberger has a laser focus on the world of the super-cool Manhattan young..." - The Times of London), I would have known this book was not for me. I am not the super-cool. I don't care about the super-cool. And I am especially disinterested in reading about (fictitious) people's (fictitious) Facebook posts. When I think about it, it makes sense that I liked Devil but not so much Last Night - Devil was largely non-fiction. Plus it was funny. Very, very funny.
The long and the short is that I can neither recommend nor not recommend this book. It has characters, it has plot (after years of playing divey bars in New York, a musician finally makes it big, turning his world - and that of his supportive wife - completely on its head), and its well written. If celebrity sightings and Facebook updates are your idea of summer escapism, read away. Me? I'll take those non-fiction tomes any day.
I didn't like it. In fact, I didn't finish it. This is entirely my fault. If I had bothered to flip it over and read even a smattering of the reviews (i.e., "Pure gossipy pleasure." - Chicago Sun-Times or "Weisberger has a laser focus on the world of the super-cool Manhattan young..." - The Times of London), I would have known this book was not for me. I am not the super-cool. I don't care about the super-cool. And I am especially disinterested in reading about (fictitious) people's (fictitious) Facebook posts. When I think about it, it makes sense that I liked Devil but not so much Last Night - Devil was largely non-fiction. Plus it was funny. Very, very funny.
The long and the short is that I can neither recommend nor not recommend this book. It has characters, it has plot (after years of playing divey bars in New York, a musician finally makes it big, turning his world - and that of his supportive wife - completely on its head), and its well written. If celebrity sightings and Facebook updates are your idea of summer escapism, read away. Me? I'll take those non-fiction tomes any day.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Mrs. Kennedy and Me
A friend recently told me she read a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis which left her conflicted: in awe of the life she led and what she managed to accomplish, but also put out with the manipulative, prima donna that she so often seemed to be. My friend couldn't particularly recommend the book she'd read - it was poorly organized and focused a little too heavily on JFK's many affairs for her taste. Our conversation was still on my mind when I had a few hours to kill in an airport recently and so undertook a pretty intensive browsing of the bookstore. Mrs. Kennedy and Me by Secret Service agent Clint Hill jumped out at me and I figured: why not?
It's a relatively short book, with a casual, conversational style, and plenty of photographs throughout. We meet Mrs. Kennedy - and Mr. Hill - in November 1960, just after the election and before the birth of JFK, Jr. In the course of the book, the reader travels with Mrs. Kennedy and the ever-present Mr. Hill from Pakistan to Greece and Italy to Morocco. The travels, the descriptions of these exotic lands circa 1960, are a high point, along with the visits to the various Kennedy homes and the even grander Newport pile where Jackie Kennedy grew up. My only real complaint with the book came at the end, in the chapter about the trip to Texas, where the reader is treated to - or bored with - seemingly every word spoken from the time the presidential party left for San Antonio until the hours after JFK's assassination.
As for the protagonists, I have to say that I concur with my friend's opinion of Jackie Kennedy. In fact, the more I read of the book, the less I liked her. From the beginning of JFK's presidency, she was determined, essentially, that she would not be the first lady. She regularly would agree to host or attend an event in her official capacity and then back-out, to the point that the social secretary did eventually resign. She made no bones about hating the White House and spending as little time there as possible. I couldn't help but think it was no wonder JFK was having all those affairs since he never even saw his wife. (Which isn't to say that perhaps the reason she didn't want to be at the White House is because she knew what was going on.)
In any case, the portrait of Jackie Kennedy that emerges is not an especially pretty one - and JFK doesn't come off all that well, either. The longer I read, the sorrier I felt for the agent, Mr. Hill, who was clearly wrapped around her finger and dedicated to his Mrs. Kennedy to the point of rarely seeing his own family. Did she lead a fascinating life? Absolutely. Would I want to have dinner with her? Probably not.
It's a relatively short book, with a casual, conversational style, and plenty of photographs throughout. We meet Mrs. Kennedy - and Mr. Hill - in November 1960, just after the election and before the birth of JFK, Jr. In the course of the book, the reader travels with Mrs. Kennedy and the ever-present Mr. Hill from Pakistan to Greece and Italy to Morocco. The travels, the descriptions of these exotic lands circa 1960, are a high point, along with the visits to the various Kennedy homes and the even grander Newport pile where Jackie Kennedy grew up. My only real complaint with the book came at the end, in the chapter about the trip to Texas, where the reader is treated to - or bored with - seemingly every word spoken from the time the presidential party left for San Antonio until the hours after JFK's assassination.
As for the protagonists, I have to say that I concur with my friend's opinion of Jackie Kennedy. In fact, the more I read of the book, the less I liked her. From the beginning of JFK's presidency, she was determined, essentially, that she would not be the first lady. She regularly would agree to host or attend an event in her official capacity and then back-out, to the point that the social secretary did eventually resign. She made no bones about hating the White House and spending as little time there as possible. I couldn't help but think it was no wonder JFK was having all those affairs since he never even saw his wife. (Which isn't to say that perhaps the reason she didn't want to be at the White House is because she knew what was going on.)
In any case, the portrait of Jackie Kennedy that emerges is not an especially pretty one - and JFK doesn't come off all that well, either. The longer I read, the sorrier I felt for the agent, Mr. Hill, who was clearly wrapped around her finger and dedicated to his Mrs. Kennedy to the point of rarely seeing his own family. Did she lead a fascinating life? Absolutely. Would I want to have dinner with her? Probably not.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
This thin little book (only 212 pages) packs a depressing punch. Michael Lewis sets out to explore the causes and ramifications of the financial collapse in 2008 and reaches any number of disturbing conclusions. The new third world Lewis visits? Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and the United States, with an emphasis on California.
Germany, Lewis notes, isn't quite so broke as the rest, but their bankers were gobbling up risky (read: stupid) loans with as much voracity as anyone in the world and, given the state of so many other euro-based economies, Germany is hardly unaffected. As a side note, he does a nice job explaining that the EU was created largely to prevent Germany ever again attempting to dominate the rest of Europe, but as just about the only large, solvent economy in the Eurozone, Germans now have the ability to impose their will on others - the Greeks, for example - and require them to become more German (hello, harsh austerity measures) if they hope to retain any semblance of an economy. The problem, of course, is that it's not clear that they do. As Lewis has on good record, every single member of the Greek parliament is lying to evade taxes.
The entire premise of the book is, essentially, that the world is broke, our political and financial systems are broken, and good luck and Godspeed to anyone hoping to fix it. Lew maintains this message steadfastly right up to his concluding sentence, which is oddly, "as idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off." Such optimism seems misplaced to me, but maybe that's just my pessimism shining through.
Four stars.
Germany, Lewis notes, isn't quite so broke as the rest, but their bankers were gobbling up risky (read: stupid) loans with as much voracity as anyone in the world and, given the state of so many other euro-based economies, Germany is hardly unaffected. As a side note, he does a nice job explaining that the EU was created largely to prevent Germany ever again attempting to dominate the rest of Europe, but as just about the only large, solvent economy in the Eurozone, Germans now have the ability to impose their will on others - the Greeks, for example - and require them to become more German (hello, harsh austerity measures) if they hope to retain any semblance of an economy. The problem, of course, is that it's not clear that they do. As Lewis has on good record, every single member of the Greek parliament is lying to evade taxes.
The entire premise of the book is, essentially, that the world is broke, our political and financial systems are broken, and good luck and Godspeed to anyone hoping to fix it. Lew maintains this message steadfastly right up to his concluding sentence, which is oddly, "as idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off." Such optimism seems misplaced to me, but maybe that's just my pessimism shining through.
Four stars.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
Several years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the Panama Canal (pictures below), and was struck then by the remarkable feat that it was. And I didn't even know the half of it. The Path Between the Seas has filled every gap in my knowledge and more. At some 600 pages, it is a veritable tome, and 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. (I enjoyed this book more, and found it more readable than The Greater Journey, which I read last year.)
McCullough does a fine job tracing the canal from its beginnings as a French canal in the 1870s through its completion by the United States in 1914. In the process, some 25,000 men lost their lives and some $639 million - in 1914 dollars - were expended. Yet even the statistics - the cost, the amount of earth moved, the number of men employed (and killed), the gallons of water that pour through the locks - fail to convey the magnitude of the project that Ferdinand de Lesseps and John Stevens and George Goethals undertook and that Goethals saw through to completion.
McCullough does a fine job tracing the canal from its beginnings as a French canal in the 1870s through its completion by the United States in 1914. In the process, some 25,000 men lost their lives and some $639 million - in 1914 dollars - were expended. Yet even the statistics - the cost, the amount of earth moved, the number of men employed (and killed), the gallons of water that pour through the locks - fail to convey the magnitude of the project that Ferdinand de Lesseps and John Stevens and George Goethals undertook and that Goethals saw through to completion.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern
Flapper is the story of the Roaring Twenties, from Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald to the Charleston and the speakeasy, it is that most of famous of decades in all its decadent glory. Joshua Zeitz brings alive the people and the times in a way that also allows the reader to fit the pieces together, understand the magnitude of the social change, and appreciate the nuances of the era. Zeitz examines the suffrage movement, changing fashions, the entrance of women into the world of work, and the growing presence of women in higher education. He tells of those things virtually all of his readers know - Prohibition and Clara Bow, among them - but also of the people and incidents that have been lost to time - Lois Long (aka Lipstick), the groundbreaking columnist for The New Yorker, for example, and Louise Brooks, the daring, dishy, and highly intellectual flapper actress.
Zeitz manages to tell the entire story of Coco Chanel in a single chapter, while allowing the changes she ushered in to permeate the entire book. Ditto for Scott Fitzgerald. The 1920s, Zeitz notes, could be said to have started and ended with Scott Fitzgerald; like the promise of the man, the reader soon realizes that the promise of the decade will also be lost in the midst of this dizzying new life. The fall is ignoble, but Zeitz handles it deftly and his reader, like those who lived through the decade, can't help but be disappointed that the ride must end.
Zeitz manages to tell the entire story of Coco Chanel in a single chapter, while allowing the changes she ushered in to permeate the entire book. Ditto for Scott Fitzgerald. The 1920s, Zeitz notes, could be said to have started and ended with Scott Fitzgerald; like the promise of the man, the reader soon realizes that the promise of the decade will also be lost in the midst of this dizzying new life. The fall is ignoble, but Zeitz handles it deftly and his reader, like those who lived through the decade, can't help but be disappointed that the ride must end.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
After Appomattox: How the South Won the War
I don't remember when or where I first heard of After Appomattox, by Stetson Kennedy, but I most definitely thought that it examined the North-South cultural divide and, pardon me, but what feels to be the growing presence and influence of southern, and especially southern redneck, culture/values. In other words, Honey Boo Boo, anyone?
I was wrong. After Appomattox is the story of the Reconstruction years, 1865-1876, and how ultimately the North lost the enthusiasm for and interest in the promises made to southern blacks during and immediately after the Civil War. Or, as Kennedy puts it so succinctly, "The nation had evidently made up its mind that, so long as the South remained inside the Union and did not go back into the business of buying and selling blacks, it could do what it damned well pleased with them" (p. 237). Certainly there would be no 40 acres and a mule.
Indeed, After Appomattox is the sobering (and sordid) story of complicity and outright racism at the highest levels of government and the inheritance such individuals bequeathed this country for generations to come. 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). Although General Grant - and later President Grant - fought such men doggedly, the tide of racism throughout the country and into the highest reaches of government was simply too strong. In 1876, in a deal that secured Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency by a single electoral vote, the highest and mightiest in the land reached a deal by where the federal government would, essentially, no longer intercede in state matters. The result, Kennedy notes, was as though it was Grant who had surrendered to Lee at Appomattox and not the other way around. To say nothing of the fact that the deal of '76 also set the stage for nearly a century of the repression of and brutality against blacks.
I was wrong. After Appomattox is the story of the Reconstruction years, 1865-1876, and how ultimately the North lost the enthusiasm for and interest in the promises made to southern blacks during and immediately after the Civil War. Or, as Kennedy puts it so succinctly, "The nation had evidently made up its mind that, so long as the South remained inside the Union and did not go back into the business of buying and selling blacks, it could do what it damned well pleased with them" (p. 237). Certainly there would be no 40 acres and a mule.
Indeed, After Appomattox is the sobering (and sordid) story of complicity and outright racism at the highest levels of government and the inheritance such individuals bequeathed this country for generations to come. 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). Although General Grant - and later President Grant - fought such men doggedly, the tide of racism throughout the country and into the highest reaches of government was simply too strong. In 1876, in a deal that secured Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency by a single electoral vote, the highest and mightiest in the land reached a deal by where the federal government would, essentially, no longer intercede in state matters. The result, Kennedy notes, was as though it was Grant who had surrendered to Lee at Appomattox and not the other way around. To say nothing of the fact that the deal of '76 also set the stage for nearly a century of the repression of and brutality against blacks.
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