Colder Than Hell: A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin Reservoir: A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin ReservoirReading journals from other years:
Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft
The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees: The Ash in Human Culture and History
Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park
Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome
Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cats Walk Across America
Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class
Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce
Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
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Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
Ben Goldfarb (2018)December 2020
Audio P9
Buffalo. Wolves. Cougars. And now beavers. Enter the world of re-wilding. To do this requires scientific and public support. The later is most important, politically, and that is where books come in for education and advocacy. Eager is a defense of the beaver and you will finish it convinced we need more beavers, lots more. It's not a threatened species, but the natural services it provides are immense and not widely known. Primarily because it is the dams and wetlands that restore rivers, fish, flood control and water aquifers. The beaver is a keystone species. They are so effective, people are selling fake beaver dams. Nevertheless, old biases still exist and many consider beavers a pest to be trapped and controlled. Thus there are beaver advocacy groups and beaver wars at county and state levels. One of the most backwards states is California because water is so limited they don't see a place for beavers at the table, even though beavers have a net positive effect. Other countries like Scotland are seeing beavers reintroduced for the first time in 400 years, while a German man has been replanting beavers in countries all over the world. None of this goes easily, and most places remain hostile to the beaver. One behind my house was trapped and disappeared not long ago. This book has made me into a beaver believer._________________________________________________________________________
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Death in the Everglades: The Murder of Guy Bradley, America's First Martyr to Environmentalism
Stuart B. McIver (2003)December 2020
Audio Audible
Somewhat interesting local Florida history of the "plume trade" aka the great slaughter of most of Florida's bird life, which was part and parcel of similar die-offs at the hands of gun-toting freedom loving Americans in the late 19th century. The book has structural issues: it continually introduces new names that are not fleshed out; the story telling is good in short bits but has trouble hanging together as a narrative; it meanders touching on too many topics while not expanding on others. Nevertheless, I did get some things out of it. This is a local history and you get a sense of frontier life in Florida, including the barefoot mail carrier who walked 20+ miles along a beach to deliver the mail; what people were thinking as they killed off the birds (they knew it was bad but did it anyway), how it was driven by demand and big money traders. The first person to take a stand was of course killed himself, this is his story. I'd never heard of Guy Bradley before but he is pretty famous in the Florida - books, movies, awards, plaques, trails, etc.. so I am glad for this introduction. To be honest I think the Wikipedia article tells the story with more clarity but once you have that as background the book fills in details and adds color._________________________________________________________________________
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A Christmas Carol (Audible Original Drama)
Charles Dickens (2016)December 2020
Audio P9
High-production radio dramatisation by an English company for Audible Studios. The credits at the end must be nearly 50 including a "runner" (!). The main weakness is that the words spoken are not by Dickens. The storyline is there, the characters, but not the language. It is a facsimile of Dickens. This is not inherently a bad thing, thinking of David Lean's two Dickens films, but this comes across as commercialized art. The original has more depth of language and meaning. I suppose this is good if you want the plot and don't want to think much. There are some legitimately scary moments reminding that this is a ghost story._________________________________________________________________________
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Colder Than Hell: A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin Reservoir: A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin Reservoir
Joseph R. Owen (1996)December 2020
Audio Audible
Colder Than Hell is an outstanding combat memoir. The audiobook version (1999) won an award and takes it to a new level. The Battle of Chosin has operatic qualities that can justify reading multiple books even if your not a regular military reader. The book's strength is not explaining what happened generally, there are better books for that (see Hampton Sides), but the day to day POV of a Marine platoon leader and the politics and interactions among his subordinates and commanders. This may sound trivial but I came away with a better/reliable understanding of what it was like to fight in Korea than any book previously._________________________________________________________________________
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Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space
Kevin Hand (2020)December 2020
Audio Audible
I've read a number of books on alien worlds and they have been mostly forgettable, still, it's interesting and important enough to keep looking. This one I will not forget anytime soon. It is about a specific type of alien place, those with a frozen ocean. Our solar system has a few moons such as Europa and some others that are frozen ocean worlds. Kevin Hand is not a journalist but an expert and he goes into depth on how we know this, what we know, and what we can conclude or reasonably guess. It turns out there is a pretty good possibility of life in these oceans, and it would be strange life, if you can imagine an ocean 300,000 feet deep with a similar depth ice cap over top. There's a lot of science here but it makes you feel smarter and at some point you start to enter this new world that he describes unlike anything I have ever experienced. It's not SciFi its better._________________________________________________________________________
He also mentioned a theory that life originated as a way to increase entropy in the universe, through metabolism. As we consume things it moves the universe from order to disorder. Think of the damage humans are causing to the natural world for example, we are literally entropy machines. If this is true, then the universe wants us to expand and continue increasing entropy. Maybe. Wishful thinking perhaps that it's OK to kill off other species and the environment. We probably will not know what's in these oceans for 40-80 years, unless there is a dramatic budget increase or private venture, so for our lifetimes all we can do speculate and imagine through the great insights of scientists like Kevin Hand.
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Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
James C. Scott (2017)December 2020
Audio P9
An interesting Big History approach to the perennial question of civilization versus barbarian. Scott attempts to unwind common misconceptions, showing the civilizing processes as complex and nuanced. There is no steady stream of progress from hunter gatherer to city, rather back and forth exchanges. Sedentary farming and hunting was a mixed thing for a very long time because it worked. The early city states were deadly due to disease, dictators, slavery. On the margin barbarians were a creation of civilized regions. One can not be understood without the other, there was not a clean dividing line. I agree with everything and have come to similar conclusions from my own readings - for many reasons primitive city states could be more deadly than living in the wilds (deserts, mountains), people tended to move in and out of the cities for various reasons such as times of famine or warfare, but it was often safer to be away. Manhattan emptied because of Covid. Some things never change. Now, more than half the world live in cities for the first time._________________________________________________________________________
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The Big Show: The Classic Account of WWII Aerial Combat
Pierre Clostermann (1951)December 2020
Audio Audible
The Big Show was published in 1951 not long after the events it describes. French pilot Pierre Clostermann, who was flying for the RAF, kept a detailed daily diary and claims he made few revisions and thus events are as fresh as the day they happened. William Faulkner called it the finest book of its type from the war, and it sold millions of copies in the 50s. Clostermann comes across as quiet character just doing his job. After the war he earned the accolade "France's First Fighter" from General Charles de Gaulle, he was their number one ace. Nowhere is this said in the book, nowhere is he called an ace or anything special, just a regular guy._________________________________________________________________________
The book is largely made up of combat scenes. They are various: long range bomber escort, dog fights against many German plane types including jets, raids on airports, dodging flak, raids on moving trains, ships, beaches. Hidden facilities, lone-wolf attacks. The descriptions of the violence are intense, but he also keeps an optimistic cheery attitude, life is easy come and go. His seems to have a sixth sense of when to attack and when to stay out of the fracas. He fought four long years on 100s of missions was shot up and down many times. Remarkable story. He lived a long life and took an anti-war stance during the 1991 Gulf War - he made the right move one last time.
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Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther
Craig Pittman (2020)December 2020
Audio NLSB
Cat Tale is awesome. The Florida Panther, closely related to the cougar, was thought extinct in Florida. Then scientists discovered a small and genetically weak population. And thus begins an epic story over decades with a cast of characters battling to save the Panther from extinction. There are many improbable twists and turns, typical Florida weirdness and dirty dealings. All told with a wry sense of humor and wit. I won't retell the tale because that would spoil the fun. But this is also a serious book despite the joy in reading, there is much to learn about how endangered species, government agencies, politicians, scientists, the public and big money developers all interplay. I learned a lot, will remember a lot, and after emerging from a dark tunnel of human corruption it ends with an optimistic vision of the future._________________________________________________________________________
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All My Sons
Arthur Miller (1948)December 2020
Audio P9
This is a review of the LA Theatre Works radio play (Julie Harris 1998), which is a fantastic audio production originally broadcast on NPR. The play itself left me stunned in terms of how quickly things went from surface ideal to tragedy in a single day, at the speed of a plane crash, or factory assembly line, sometimes things go terribly wrong. Only missing is "Dramatic Squirrel" as revelations pile on. By the end you know what will happen before it does, a bit over the top juvenile. This was his first successful play, he was only 26 when he conceived it. The dialogue is awesome and leaves a lot to think about. Acting on your own behalf versus the greater good seems to be the main rift._________________________________________________________________________
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We Germans
Alexander Starritt (2020)December 2020
Audio P9
The genre of war memoir has a sub-genre where the grandson/daughter finds a stack of old letters and photographs long forgotten, or perhaps interviews them 80 years later, and turns it into a book by the soldier but really a product of the younger relative. These memoirs by their nature open questions about the nature of truth, perspective and reliable narrator. As it happens these are the same things modern literature is concerned with. Starritt took it a step further and created a war memoir by a grandson about his German relative that is completely fictional, yet also completely believable. The mind spins a little, but you have to wonder, what is the point, why not just read one of the real memoirs. Starritt though is interested in more than mimicking a war novel, he goes into deeper questions of what it means to have fought on the wrong side of history, and likewise to have a relative who did, and he does so with a light literary sensibility. It's not an experimental work or difficult to read. A few scenes will probably stick with you - for me it will be attacking a tank while riding a donkey and holding a bayonet like a lance - which sounds unrealistic but makes sense in the book with the surreal nature of war. This is a short and kind of fun but also rewarding story._________________________________________________________________________
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Rubicon
Tom Holland (2003)November 2020
Audio P9
Rubicon is focused on the events leading to the end of the Republic, which in this age of authoritarian ascendancy is worth a second look. The full cast of famous characters and events are here and retold with verve and imagination. There is a lot to cover but Holland manages to find a good balance. Roman culture placed a premium on competition and reputation to such an extent public good was neglected by leaders who spent their times and energies literally back stabbing one another. That's the impression anyway. And so it was civilian rule broke apart replaced by a military dictatorship._________________________________________________________________________
I was happy to see Holland did not shy from the slavery question, how widespread it was and how the civilization could not have existed without this cruel and pitiless institution - something to remember when admiring Roman innovation, like finding pleasure in the beauty of American South work camps (so-called plantations) whose beauty was a mask covering it's ugly purpose, the subjugation of peoples they barely considered human for the purpose of material gain. It was in this environment Christianity took root. But that's for another book.
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Paul Revere's Ride
David Hackett Fischer (1994)November 2020
Audio P9
I know little about the American Revolution so was curious about this figure of Yankee reverence. The book is about the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775) the first armed conflict of the war, with Paul Revere as the central character holding the narrative thread. It is an effective approach because Revere played a big role, more than what he is best known for sounding the alarm on an early morning ride. This is a great introduction to the war and it has plenty of flavor of time and place._________________________________________________________________________
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The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
Seb Falk (2020)November 2020
Audio P9
I should have enjoyed this more than I did, having some familiarity with the topics. It is scattered, rapidly jumping across time and people. Part of the problem is I read it on audiobook without the many referenced illustrations. Sections of the book are technical such as the workings of the astrolabe and these passages require a slower and repeated reading then audio allows. I never really got a handle on the book's structure and intent and it became a wash of random stuff without a strong main character or narrative._________________________________________________________________________
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The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World: A Novel of Robert Louis Stevenson
Brian Doyle (2017)November 2020
Audio P9
There is another story, untold in this book of picturesque tales. That of the author, Brian Doyle, who considered Robert Louis Stevenson a lifelong hero and his greatest influence. Who published a book in March 2017 paying the greatest compliment by mimicking the voice and spirit of Stevenson. And who two months later, in May 2017, was dead. It's a sad story indeed, but poignantly symmetrical, Stevenson also died young._________________________________________________________________________
This is a must-read for any fan of Stevenson. It's full of allusions to his life and stories. The writing is top notch, I am amazed at the craft, particularly late 19th century antique vocabulary. It's no small thing to mimic a great writer but Doyle mostly pulls it off. For all it's too-self-consciousness about being a book of stories, I found many of them to be forgettable, or at least not as good as Stevenson - an unfairly high bar. But this was more than made up for by the quality of writing and positive mood.
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Himalaya Bound: One Family's Quest to Save Their Animals?And an Ancient Way of Life
Michael Benanav (2018)November 2020
Audio NLSB
The Van Gurjars ("forest Gurjars") are a nomadic Muslim people found in the Shivalik Hills area of Uttarakhand, India, at the base of the Himalayas. Each summer they migrate with herds of semi-wild water buffalo to alpine pastures high up the mountains. Their sole source of income is selling milk to local communities. They are vegetarian, and treat their animals with an unreasonable amount of love. They have been doing this for over a thousand years. In the 1990s, new national parks were created for tourism, and this conflicted with the Van Gurjars way of life - people came to see the wild lands, not grazing cows. In 2006 India enacted a "Forest Act" that would protect native peoples, but local park officials took a fiefdom approach and put pressure on the Van Gurjars to stop their nomadic trek. Thus conflicts in the forms of bribes, threats, protests, etc.. have been ongoing._________________________________________________________________________
Michael Benanav is an American journalist and nomad at heart who attached himself to a family of Van Gurjars and followed them on a migration season. It's a remarkable way of life with no technology and everything done by hand, he says the 15 year girls have the strength of Olympians. Nevertheless when they settle in towns they become depressed and wish to return to a nomadic existence. The contrast with modernity is stark, as they migrate up mountain roads trucks fly by horns honking. This is interesting look at a not well known nomadic people who seem to be on the cusp of disappearing, Benanav has done them a great service and an entertaining read.
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The Journeys of Trees: A Story about Forests, People, and the Future
Zach T. George (2020)November 2020
Audio NLSB
Some interesting factoids about trees, and what happens in a changing climate. Tree species grow best where they grow best, and not where they don't. This simple fact results in stands of trees of certain species in certain places that remain in stasis. For example the seed that falls from a tree into a place it doesn't do well will not grow there, thus the stand tends to stay in place unmoving and eternal. But if the climate changes this upsets the balance and trees begin to move, sometime rapidly. Birds can carry seeds thousands of miles in a single season. The old stands may die off and are replaced with new, while the original species may move somewhere else more favorable. Some species like Sequoia used to cover much of the north hemisphere and are today relegated to small pocket valleys on the west coast, hanging on to those few remaining places where they do best. A fascinating perspective on how mobile forests are, when you take the long view._________________________________________________________________________
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Peter Shaffer (1979)
October 2020
Audio P9
Full-cast LA Theater Works. This is a fanciful recreation of Mozart's life that has distorted popular perceptions of Mozart as an infant-man genius who composed complete opera masterpieces in his head, and who was hounded by a sinister foe echoing Les Miserables. None of this is true, but it makes a good story. Mozart in this telling is memorable character, it's most powerful aspect. Indeed the last time I saw this was the early 1980s and my perception of Mozart was shaped by it, the story-line faded but not the (incorrect) impression of Mozart. Some day I will read a proper biography._________________________________________________________________________
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Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl
Jonathan C. Slaght (2020)October 2020
Audio Audible
Nominated for a National Book Award (ie. publisher-funded awards). The writing is sourced from daily journal notes spruced up with cliches. It jumps around in time and place too rapidly to sustain the narrative and lacks enough context. Each time something interesting comes up it is quickly left behind without exposition. As one reviewer noted:_________________________________________________________________________
"While sketching in the human background to his mission, Slaght treats his companions too summarily. He lets slip that one assistant had spent 24 years down a Siberian coal mine. What on earth was that like? Alas, we never learn ... Slaght has the astonishing commitment to withstand the rigours of this strange landscape but neither the language nor attentiveness to put his magnificent owl in context." (The Spectator, UK)
He falls into the amateur trap of documenting everything he did interesting and non-interesting - it's a field journal masquerading as creative non-fiction. The word "I" is too frequently used. Nice cover, great title, nice idea, lots of marketing, could have been better.
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J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography
Humphrey Carpenter (1977)October 2020
Audio P9
Nicely done and enjoyable biography from 1977. Tolkien died in 1973, but Carpenter had been working with him on the biography since before then. Carpenter was from Oxford, where Tolkien worked. Curiously, Carpenter and Tolkien are now buried in the same cemetery. Tolkien did not lead a life of action, but intellectually he took many adventures. Romantically he married his childhood sweetheart, but how they met and what brought them together is one of the more touching aspects of his life. He did not have an easy childhood but somehow made a fairy tale of his life. I was surprised to learn he was a conservative and pious Catholic. This opens many questions unexplored. This is not a deep or scholarly look but for an introduction or even curiosity it is well done, comforting even._________________________________________________________________________
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Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
David Hackett Fischer (1989)October 2020
Audio Audible
Albion's Seed posits the existence of at least 11 distinct regional cultures in America and focuses on the first and largest 4, these were the founding cultures. They are New England, Virginia and the coastal south, the Mid Atlantic (PA, NJ, part of MD), and the "backcountry" which is basically Appalachia from PA southward. These regions were settled from different parts of England, respectively: East Anglia, southern and central England (Wessex and Mercia). the English midlands, and the border regions of England-Scotland-northern Ireland. Fischer contends the 17th and early 18th century established the cultural patterns in these regions that still exist today. He provides extensive evidence which is very convincing. I learned as much about English culture as American. Although published in 1989 it is just as relevant today, it's a classic. It will change how I view the US and UK forever, a perspective mind shift. It goes a long way to explaining our current problems and is a reminder that the US has always had internal conflict between cultures. Fischer says each culture has different ideas of what it means to be American, what freedom means. These competing cultures have been its strength over time even when they sometimes appear to be at each other's throats._________________________________________________________________________
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Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
Ian W. Toll (2020)October 2020
Audio Audible
The concluding and longest volume. By this point the US had such a massive superiority in material, troops, leadership and technology the only question was how quick, and boy did they move quick. Airplanes were being over-produced at such a rate older models were bulldozed to make room for new. Shiploads of food and ammo sat rotting in jungles for lack of anyone to take it. American posts behind the lines resembled 5-star resorts. America had over-reacted, over-built. And it kept carpet bombing Japan up to the last day, long after it was obvious there was no reason. Japan for its part stupidly sent its entire fleet on a "Banzai" suicide charge and got its wish. The Kamikaze's were amazingly effective, early precision-guided munitions, but it was too little too late and anyway not sustainable. They engaged in atrocities against civilians that no one understands why, but is a reflection of how they treated themselves, as expendable. Beware the nation of suicidals._________________________________________________________________________
Having read all three volumes I conclude: the best parts are the first volume (Pearl Harbor and Midway), the first half of the second volume (Guadalcanal) and the second half of the final volume. The middle parts of the war are a repetitive grind and better read on a per-battle basis as there are too many to adequately cover at this scale. Regardless, it's an excellent overview of the important elements and offers a springboard to reading more in detail, of which there are no lack of excellent books.
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Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939
Volker Ullrich (2016)September 2020
Audio Audible
Of the political books available this election season a history of Hitler is sadly relevant. It's a door-stopper but easy reading because while Ullrich is not a historian he is a trained journalist. Having never read a Hitler biography before, this seemed to fit the bill for an introduction - it is focused on Hitler personally, no complicated thesis, meant for the average reader, up to date research without bias. There is little analysis, though the facts for the insightful reader feel relevant. Hitler has been analyzed more than any figure in history, Ullrich could have included more insights from other writers._________________________________________________________________________
Like most people, I already knew something about Hitler's life from bits here and there. He seemed to start believing his own BS after about 1937 when he successfully occupied the demilitarized zone bordering France. He had traits often seen in brilliant people - contradictions, charisma, photographic memory, artistic sensibility, risk taking, leadership, fast reader - but was also deeply insecure and, well, a tyrannical genocidal dictator. He was a terrible dinner host, a kill joy, Eva Brown would let loose and party after he left the house. Many people around him were hesitant about going to war, the economy was improving. The lesson we learn from a Hitler biography is to be on the lookout for similar personalities using the same tactics and ideas and stop them while possible. There are a few who echo him today, but none as demonically talented.
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Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Neil Price (2020)September 2020
Audio Audible
Price relies on the latest academic research to determine what the Vikings were actually like "from the inside looking out". If you were born a Viking and raised in that world, this is a roadmap of what you might know: cosmology, mythology, diet, economics, warfare, sexuality, political organizations, art, architecture, etc.. by looking inside out it humanizes and dispels myths. For example, they were actually neat and cleanly groomed, combed hair, wore colorful dress, the opposite of the scary looking icons. In some other ways they were even more violent than supposed._________________________________________________________________________
The society was born in the multicausal catastrophe of the 500s, when over 50% of the population of Scandinavia died, disrupting the old order and giving rise to new hardened local clans who battled one another continually creating a culture that prioritized violence as a means to survive. What triggered the raiding is a matter of debate but it appears to have happened by accident and gradually over time as word spread of success, the Viking nexus originating in south-west Norway. They were traders before becoming raiders with the economy centered on wool and wood, both needed in vast quantities to support the making of ships, sails, ropes and clothing. A walk though a Viking town would smell like a sawmill and wet wool, sheep and sawdust everywhere. It might take 30 people working full-time for 2 years to make a ship, an expensive proposition, however much of the labor was done by slaves who worked under appalling conditions. The Vikings kept a lot of slaves, mostly other Europeans, a practice undermined by Christianity late in the period. The Viking era lasted about 300 years from ca. 750 to 1066, or only about 10 consecutive generations, during which time they changed as rapidly as the change they caused. They were bridge builders similar to the steppe nomads, moving goods and culture between the east, west and north.
Children of Ash and Elm is remarkable. I've been looking for a good history of the Vikings for over a decade and this is the one. It's readable, evocative, detailed and leaves one wanting to learn even more, Price is an enthusiastic teacher. I wish more books about ancient peoples were this well done, it sets a standard.
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Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft
Thor Heyerdahl (1953)August 2020
Audio NLSB
Although I read this over 30 years ago, I wanted to re-read it in light of recent DNA research the appears to confirm Heyeredahl's theory that some Polynesian's immigrated to eastern Pacific islands from South America, not from the west. Given the new evidence the book now has even greater weight and importance, not only as an influential work of exploration and a literary achievement, but the testing of a scientific theory that turned out to be correct. The book explores the Earth while also working out a new theory, comparable to Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle which contained notes about his evolving theory of the fixity of species. When I first read it, I didn't give much credence to his theory because who knew, and anyway if that's what it took to write a great adventure story so be it. But on re-reading it so much more satisfying and interesting knowing it is correct._________________________________________________________________________
Kon-Tiki was published just 3 years after the end of WWII, one of the earliest post-war outdoor adventure books, and as such was influential with many that followed. There have been nine more raft expeditions, the latest in 2015, that recreated Heyeredahl's original. The longest, Las Balsas in 1973, went all the way to Australia and is the longest raft journey in history. The writing is vivid and joyful to read. This is a perfect book, there are not many in this world but I place this on a lightly stacked top shelf of any outdoor literature library.
(read 1981 and 2020)
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Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer
Bill Gifford (2007)August 2020
Audio NLSB
This is a very good biography of a little known early American adventurer, John Ledyard (1751-1789), a contemporary and friend of Thomas Jefferson. Gifford's writing is exceptional, and he went the extra mile, spending a rough week on a replica Napoleonic-era ship as a deck hand, and traveling across Russia. These experiences intersperse the text giving it an extra dimension of interest. Ledyard himself is a difficult subject because he never actually accomplished anything, yet did great things. He is of a type we might recognize, a handsome and personable rouge who never settles down, living his dreams and inspiring those around him. Except for certain Russian traders, who saw him a threat to their territory, which is the same thing that happened to his contemporary, Mungo Park, who was attacked by Arab traders because he was a threat to their trade monopoly in Africa. Both men were the tip of the spear of a colonialism surge that followed in the 19th century, first travelers to terra incognita. Joseph Banks, Lewis and Clark, Captain Cook and so many more. It's useful to think of America as a colonial enterprise, a colonizing people, a spirit that is for better or worse still ingrained in its character with Ledyard an early American archetype._________________________________________________________________________
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Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitlers Best
Neal Boscomb (2020)August 2020
Audio Audible
The last fifth of this book is very good as it builds to the final race, the rest is cursory treatment of too many races and too many people. Still, not bad for understanding the racing scene in the 1920s and 30s, when racing as we know it was invented, this era was probably the pinnacle of the sport._________________________________________________________________________
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Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency
Mark Lynas (2020)August 2020
Audio Audible
Mark Lynas is a British author who is best known for his Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet published in 2007. This is an update 13 years later and it is even more pessimistic given what has happened with no reduction in CO2 emissions. Both books follow a simple, clear and calm format. Chapter 1 is a description of the world at 1 degrees. And so on up to Chapter 6. It is based on the best science available, sourced to academic journals such as Nature and the IPCC. Assuming CO2 levels continue to climb steadily, it's likely we will reach 3 degrees by mid to late century. This is game over because natural tipping points take over and society ceases to function due to widespread drought and killer heat as it reaches 4-6 degrees. It's also possible 2 degrees will cause this, there is no safe level from here out._________________________________________________________________________
Almost every major extinction event in history has been caused by global warming, we live on a perilously balanced planet. There is no historic parallel for the rate and amount of CO2 emissions, it exceeds the worst extinction the Siberian Traps by a factor of 60 in terms of speed of emissions. And while there have been periods when the total ppm exceed our own, things are different now - the sun is brighter causing more warming per molecule then in the past, and again no historic precedent for speed and volume of emissions. Lynas ends this hopeless book with a tone of hope: do not give up. Immediately stop all fossil fuel usage no matter the cost. If enough people take this approach we will see dramatic changes and perhaps in time because there isn't much left.
I'm rating this highly not because of the message, there are already many excellent global warming books. This one stands out by focusing on the big picture without going too far into the weeds and becoming doom scrolling which can leave you exhausted and demoralized. This is a large complex topic and there is a lot to know but this gets all the pieces correct.
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The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees: The Ash in Human Culture and History
Robert Penn (2017)August 2020
Audio Audible
I would not have thought a book about the ash tree would be that interesting. It's sort of a long-term human favorite wood due to its properties. It's all around us as tool handles, baseball bats, kitchen implements, sporting gear, trim, hoops - a generic white wood that is both strong and able to bend without snapping. The writing quality is high with a mix of biography, travel, cultural and natural history. There's a ton of interesting stuff here well told. I became so interested in the section about the medieval practice of eating from ash plates and bowls that I found a maker (in France none in the US) and ordered one. Such are the unexpected costs of reading._________________________________________________________________________
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Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War
Nathaniel Philbrick (2006)August 2020
Audio Audible
Philbrick is at his best with character and sustained narrative events ie. a singular story. His best book is In the Heart of the Sea for that reason it lends itself well to his strengths. In Mayflower we also get this for the first half of the book - the Pilgrims journey and settlement at Plymouth. The first weeks are enthralling as they explore their way around the Cape, I followed them with Google Maps. At some point the narrative speeds up and fragments, then we are into the second half mostly about King Phillip's War a few generations later. The war itself is told through highlights of battles. There is some mythology debunking, like Thanksgiving. And we learn it is estimated 10% of the US can trace a line to the Mayflower. The Indians seem fairly portrayed, though a sad story. The epidemics that preceded settlement are the main tragedy, played out in North and South America at scale and beyond comprehension, as the worst things are. I never realized how important the city of Leiden is to American history. Great introduction to a vital part of early American history._________________________________________________________________________
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Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science Is Rewriting Their Story
Dimitra Papagianni (2015)July 2020
Audio P9
This is a brief overview of Neanderthals written by a Palaeolithic and stone tool specialist at Cambridge who wrote her PhD on the Neanderthal. It retells the whole story. You can see how they came about and evolved. Apparently the hand axe is the oldest human tool dating to 1.6 mya and used by multiple human species without much innovation. Neanderthals used their teeth a lot probably in chewing or stripping hides for clothing since they had no needles and thread. Compared to them, modern humans would look like children, just as dogs are adult-puppy versions of wolves, the end result of self-domestication. Neanderthals had speech and were probably quite intelligent, at least in a practical way, symbolic thinking not fully developed. There was tremendous violence most skeletons show blunt force injuries, possibly in encounters with animals, or one another. And they ate one another, at times, but then so do some humans. These were tough people, given a time machine and walking into the dark old-growth forests of Europe, I would be seriously concerned about the natives, but the population density was so thin you may never encounter them. What killed them off remains a mystery, according to this telling. There is an interesting section on Neanderthals in popular culture and an overview of the fiction my favorite being Quest for Fire._________________________________________________________________________
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The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
Patrik Svensson (2020)July 2020
Audio Audible
The Book of Eels is a Swedish natural history of the eel intertwined with personal memoir, told with literary sensibility. As the strange and mysterious world of the eel is revealed so is Scensson's own history and that of his eel-catching father. There are parallels and connections. It reminds me of the Norwegian Shark Drunk (2015) which is just as good but on a different animal. Scandinavia is producing some interesting natural writing of late about mysterious creatures of the deep - I would read more._________________________________________________________________________
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The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017
Hope Jahren (ed) (2017)July 2020
Audio NLSB
Another great edition. Jahren's tastes in topic areas match my own. Likewise the prose is well written, they are quality long form articles all, not a dud in the bunch. Though nothing really stood out as classic, but that is OK. My favorite is "The DIY scientist, the Olympian, and the mutated gene" by David Epstein. The biographical profiles are fascinating, people I probably wouldn't want to read a full book about, but a magazine length article is perfect._________________________________________________________________________
Contents: The art of saving relics / Sarah Everts -- Altered tastes / Maria Konnikova -- The secrets of the wave pilots / Kim Tingley -- The billion-year wave / Nicola Twilley -- The case for leaving city rats alone / Becca Cudmore -- The battle for Virunga / Robert Draper -- The new harpoon / Tom Kizzia -- A song of ice / Elizabeth Kolbert -- Something uneasy in the Los Angeles air / Adrian Glick Kudler -- Dark science / Omar Mouallem -- The parks of tomorrow / Michelle Nijhuis -- How factory farms play chicken with antibiotics / Tom Philpott -- The invisible catastrophe / Nathaniel Rich -- The devil is in the details / Christopher Solomon -- The physics pioneer who walked away from it all / Sally Davies -- The DIY scientist, the Olympian, and the mutated gene / David Epstein -- Inside the breakthrough starshot mission to Alpha Centauri / Ann Finkbeiner -- He fell in love with his grad student-- then fired her for it / Azeen Ghorayshi -- The woman who might find us another Earth / Chris Jones -- Out here, no one can hear you scream / Katrhryn Joyce -- The amateur cloud society that (sort of) rattled the scientific community / Jon Mooallem -- The man who gave himself away / Michael Regnier -- Unfriendly climate / Sonia Smith -- Its time these ancient women scientists get their due / Emily Temple-Wood
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Live and Let Die
Ian Fleming (1954)July 2020
Audio P9
Live and Let Die is the second Bond novel. I read it based on the recommendation by Matthew Parker in the wonderful Fleming biography Goldeneye (2014), who said it was the first book to establish the "winning formula". From that perspective alone this makes it the most important Bond novel, critically. However, the formula here feels like he is working it out and doesn't quite gel. The ending is predictable and not particularly exciting, Solitaire is not well developed (she was much better in the film). Nevertheless it is a creative leap - the bad guy Mr. Big and his accoutrements are world building genius._________________________________________________________________________
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Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park
Andy Mulvihill (2020)July 2020
Audio Audible
This is a lot of fun. If you grew up in the 80s Northeast and/or ever went a water park with a wave pool, you will be able to relate. It is bloody mayhem at the local "fun park". Despite the puerile cover art, this is a well written book that has depth of character, but also delivers on the promise of craziness. The author Andy Mulvihill is the eldest son of the park's founder, an ex US Marine Captain (b. 1934) whose idea of a good time was designing rides that take risk to its limit, sort of like Killgore in Apocalypse Now surfing under fire. He was a force of nature who simply ignored things like the need for liability insurance. He is legend in New Jersey who catered to a weekend crowed of gold-chain wearing teenagers from the Bronx and Brooklyn mixed with suburbia kids. The park was likewise run by local teenagers. Mulvihill recounts many park stories of love, sex, drugs, violence and spoiled chicken, but also the friendships and innovations, and that Action Park could never exist again, for better or worse, as societies approach to risk has changed, seemingly in the 1990s. This book is something else, it's being made into a TV series and is the perfect let loose and go free in the summer escape from the Covid lock-downs._________________________________________________________________________
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Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
Tim Jeal (2008)July 2020
Audio NLSB
Stanley is most famous for finding Livingstone, but it was a publicity stunt, his real legacy were two crossings of equatorial Africa, the first in recorded history. The popular perception of Stanley as a young upstart who finds Livingstone then turns into a brute killer and imperialist enabler, a model for the Heart of Darkness turns out to be wrong, he is more victim than victimizer, a scapegoat. Jeal does an admirable job establishing Stanley as one of the great African explorers who was unfairly maligned, in no small part due to Stanley's own insecurities from his workhouse upbringing. He wanted to appear tough and strong, and went too far in his memoirs, even when the truth was more sanguine. Of course much of this is speculation, other authors might speculate differently, but Jeal had access to a trove of newly available primary source materials. And Jeal is no hagiographer, as his biography of Livingstone can attest, so his opinion is credible. The third major expedition Stanley took, the rescue of Emin Pasha, is about as Apocalypse Now as it gets for Victorian explorers. They went deep up the Congo, then up another major river into a thousand mile forest full of headhunters, columns got separated and people went insane committing brutish atrocities. Documented in Stanley's In Darkest Africa and later adapted to the 1978 play The Rear Column (dir. Harold Pinter)._________________________________________________________________________
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The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit
Michael Cannell (2011)June 2020
Audio P9
Racing in the 1950s was a blood sport. Driver and spectator were regularly killed. One accident killed 50 and injured 200 more, it was unspeakably horrible. And they raced on, the winner taking the podium. The cars were not yet festooned with corporate sponsorship, rather a solid color reflecting the country - Italy red, Germany silver, Britain green etc.. it was a battle of nations in the aftermath of WWII, the killing now refined to a few super-star gladiators who took their role seriously. A loss was a national disgrace. And the women, always beautiful and available. Booze, parties, and movie stars. Live fast and die young was not just a saying, they created it, James Dean was a racing fan. The technology was primitive, drivers often Jerry-riged cars mid-race to keep them going after some part or another blew or dropped off. Phil Hill, the American driver who won the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit and subject of the book, was a master of this sort of thing who could get into the "zone" and intuitively read and understand his vehicle by sound and feel. Other drivers like the German Wolfgang von Trips operated on sheer balls. Some lasted, many did not. The tolerance for risk was very high then, it says something how much we have gained and lost._________________________________________________________________________
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Alaric the Goth: An Outsider's History of the Fall of Rome
Douglas Boin (2020)June 2020
Audio Audible
Alaric the Goth might be titled "The Life and Times of Alaric". He is the Barbarian leader who sacked Rome in 410, inspiring St. Augustine's The City of God. Alaric died soon after and was buried underneath a river bed with the choicest treasures of Rome never yet found. The primary focus is the period from the Battle of Adrianople in 378 to 410. It describes how the Goths were considered "outsiders", which is to say unwelcome immigrants, who were treated poorly by racist and xenophobic Roman citizens. They were abused while at the same time employed to the do the dirty work no one else wanted. The Goth's got their revenge. Alaric's life is not well documented so Boin takes the innovative approach of describing what we actually know about this period. For example we know Alaric spent time in Athens, and Boin describes Athens from archaeologic and written evidence - the popular plays, the city layout, it being a desirable address for up and coming Romans - and places it into context with Alaric's likely experiences there at that time. In this way we travel through his life and footsteps around the Roman Empire. The small details bring it alive in a way no other book about this period has before, that I have read. It's a fascinating and effective approach to history when documentation is otherwise sparse. This period is endlessly fascinating, Boin has placed the transition from Roman to Barbarian in technicolor showing both peaceful transition and violent change, as told through the microhistory of a single man._________________________________________________________________________
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Born Free: The Complete Story
Joy Adamson (1962)June 2020
Audio P9
This is a review of the "The Complete Story", an omnibus of the 3 Free books published in the early 1960s, about Elsa the Lion and her cubs. I have fond emotional memories of the movie and/or TV series in the 1970s but the details are hazy, so wanted to revisit. It's very interesting on a number of levels. Of course a great love story between humans and intelligent animal. Elsa herself is epic, she straddled the world as both wild lion and tame. If Elsa was truly free or not is debatable, she was groomed by the Adamsons. Whatever the case, both lion and people found the relationship mutually rewarding for different reasons and it worked, until it didn't. That may be the lesson, wild animals can't live in both worlds at once and remain safe. I found Joy's writing to be evocative of the place and time and transportive to an outdoor life in Africa. It was an influential book for its time, turning many people into animal rights activists when such a thing was still fairly new. Jane Goodall a few years later surfed this wave with her monumental first book about the Gombe Stream chimpanzees. One thing almost entirely lacking from Free, which could have propelled it to greatness, is a sense of who Joy and George Adamson are. They are entirely focused and devoted to Elsa and cubs, I wanted to know more but they remain distant, except in their relationship to the lions._________________________________________________________________________
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Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cats Walk Across America
William Stolzenburg (2016)June 2020
Audio Audible
I'm from the East Coast where we don't have big cats, at least not for 100s of years. Heart of a Lion upturned everything I knew about mountain lions (cougars). I thought they were a deadly menace. They are not. More people are killed by porcupines. They have been persecuted nearly to the point of extinction based on primal fears. Like other top predators they have an important place, culling herds of deer and allowing forests and wetlands to reach full potential. The book does not sugar coat the occasional attack, they have happened, but it is rare and with special circumstances. Such is life alongside wild animals, given the alternative I'll take it._________________________________________________________________________
The book is particularly brutal on those western states that have no-tolerance laws seeking to eliminate the cougar entirely. Stunning that what identifies the west, bravery and fortitude, like in South Dakota which is a sort of nursing ground for cougars, elected officials have become ignorant pansies, ignoring experts, ignoring science, appealing to the worst and darkest fears. The cougar is struggling to survive, but the laws around this amazing animal need to change. May it one day find a foothold in the East again, if the South Dakotans and every mid-west state in between would stop shooting for a bit, they will migrate across. But the shooting gallery won't let them through, trapping them in trees with dogs, running them aground with officials unloading 100s of rounds in a spasm of fear and excitement. In California they get by just fine, they are protected with very few problems. Treat them well and amazingly they do the same in return.
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The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians
J. B. Bury (1928)May 2020
Audio P9
The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians (1928) is a brief history of the so-called Migration Period during the last stages of the Roman Empire. The historiography has changed considerably since Bury with the idea of a transition, not a stark break, as seen in the field of Late Antiquity. Nevertheless Bury's writing can be captivating at times, and is based on the same limited number of sources historians still use, the bare facts are not wrong. It is a relatively short book meant for a general audience. Nevertheless it is a complex topic - you'll want to know the difference between Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Alans, Lombards, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Suebi, Alemanni, Gepids, and Vandals - to name a few. Plus all the colorfully named Barbarian warriors and Kings. It's the kind of topic you have to keep reading and refreshing, what exactly happened and why remains one of the great questions of history._________________________________________________________________________
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The Unforgiven
Alan LeMay (1957)May 2020
Audio P9
A story about belonging, in-group and out-group. Small world-building details about frontier life feel authentic and told with a cinematic eye. Indians treated with extreme prejudice, over the top, as is the gore. The inter-family romance is kind of creepy. Follows the "code", people who do bad things get killed later. Even through the eye (Medieval symbolism for a liar). Would like to see the John Ford film which sounds like a classic._________________________________________________________________________
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Flash Crash: A Trading Savant, a Global Manhunt, and the Most Mysterious Market Crash in History
Liam Vaughan (2020)May 2020
Audio Audible
An entertaining look at a stock trading savant (on the spectrum) who worked from his parents house engaging in massive fraud by manipulating loopholes in computer trading systems that contributed to the 2010 market "Flash Crash". It is well told and dramatic. How you see Navinder Sarao - hero or villain - is the question of the book._________________________________________________________________________
One of the more tantalizing figures is "Mr. X" who uncovered Navs scheme and remains to this day anonymous. As Vaughan says, he is the one person whose perspective never faltered and who watched the circus around Sarao with bewilderment. "I think it is odd that you ask if I respect someone who committed massive fraud," he says. "No I don't. I don't respect people who steal money from other people. No matter how clever they are or justified they feel. Sarao did not target high-frequency traders. He was not a victim of the markets. He stole money from all market participants without discrimination. He tried to make the most money he could be using common cheating techniques. His 'genius' was his lack of fear and belief he would never fact the consequences. This allowed him to cheat massively. He did not give his money away like Robin Hood. There is nothing admirable about stealing money for personal gain."
That leaves the perspective of a autistic savant who did not know any better. All evidence points to the contrary, he knew it was criminal but rationalized it because he saw other problems in the market and why shouldn't he do the same? Most savants do not get into trouble with the law. So in the end, this is a story of a common criminal and news of the weird. It doesn't teach us very much. But it makes a good story. I look forward to hearing more about Mr. X, the real hero of the story, who is that masked man?
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The Good Shepherd
C. S. Forester (1955)May 2020
Audio Audible
Well done and feels accurate. It is repetitive reflecting the nature of what it depicts. The fatigue grows on you but in the right way and never flags interest. Most submarine books are about the subs, or the capital ships destroyed, interesting to see it from the perspective of sub-destroyers. It is POV first-person from the captain's eyes only. This is only my second Forester book it's not in the same class as Queen but still worthwhile._________________________________________________________________________
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Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils
David Farrier (2020)May 2020
Audio P9
David Farrier is a Scottish professor of literature and takes a journey around the world considering what trace elements future archaeologists might discover of our civilization millions of years hence. I hesitate to give away too much because that is a plot spoiler, but for example there are the usual suspects like plastics and radiation. He makes a case the longest lived artifacts will be in space such as junk on the moon or in geosynchronous orbit, also oil and gas bore holes in areas of stable geography since they punch down far beneath the surface making them immune from erosion. His writing is informed by literature and there are quite a few allusions to classic novels and poetry. It is oddly comforting to think along these very long time scales as it makes what is happening in the shorter time of global warming, say the next 100k years, seem less momentous._________________________________________________________________________
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The End of October
Lawrence Wright (2020)May 2020
Audio Audible
It is interesting how prescient this is. Wright is smart enough to know which existential dangers are most likely and then plays them out to see what happens. He gets small details right - I expect they added some details post-Covid but pre-publication based on real-time observation of events in China and Italy. What a story that would make, revising a pandemic novel in the middle of a pandemic. This book gave me one nightmare, which I normally never have, my brain had a hard time differentiating reality from the story - things meld in strange ways._________________________________________________________________________
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Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
Carl Safina (2020)April 2020
Audio Audible
Carl Safina is such a gift, I picked this up immediately on release. His premise that animals have culture will be met by some with disbelief even disdain but it's so obvious the evidence is all around for anyone to see. True it's not human culture so we don't readily recognize it as "culture", but every species, including animals, have their own culture so long as a definition of culture is well defined. The book examines three marque intelligent species: whales, parrots and chimps. It is a travelogue as he goes on various expeditions and outings. Really one can read this as an outdoor adventure book as well. There is hardly a page that some surprising bit of information is revealed._________________________________________________________________________
I was particularly impressed by whales who organize into families, tribes and nations - and then signal their name to passing whales eg. I am George of the Wilson family of the California tribe of the Pacific-ocean whale nation. These are human terms and concepts (Safina never gives human analogies), but the idea is the same, there are layers of belonging and identity within whale populations. One significant insight is how to do new species evolve? Normally this is thought to require physical separation like Darwin's finches on separate islands. But Safina makes a good case that as individuals within a species separate into different cultural groups or tribes, over time they evolve into separate species. For example one "tribe" of whales may prefer eating sea lions while another prefers fish. There is no reason for this other than that is how one group of whales always did things, and how they train their young. Over time they evolve into different species that favor one food source over another.
The chapters on chimps was fairly uncomfortable because they are one of the few species to regularly kill members of their immediate group (homicide), chimp on chimp violence is legendary. It is a testosterone culture where competition for status among males drives everything. Compared to Bonobos where male status is not so important. Such insights into our own species is a powerful reason to look more closely at the cultures of other species.
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The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge
David McCullough (1971)April 2020
Audio P9
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge_________________________________________________________________________
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Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class
Luke Barr (2018)April 2020
Audio Audible
This is an enchanting and enlightening story. I knew nothing about Ritz and Escoffier, only the phrase "ritzy". He was a 19th century hotelier from a working class background who rose to fame at the Savoy in London during the 1890s. He tore out the old heavy drapes and dusty velvet, welcomed people of all stations from royalty to nouveau riche to opera stars in a theater of seeing and being seen. Most importantly he brought along French chef Auguste Escoffier who is today considered the father of modern French cuisine. The two created something new, what we would recognize today as the modern luxury hotel and restaurant._________________________________________________________________________
This book rises above a mere biography by the quality of the writing. The storytelling is top notch; the descriptions of the hotel and people, the restaurant and food, it reminds me of Zola's The Belly of Paris with the endless courses of rich food. It is also a social story of 'coming out' - women dining in restaurants was not de rigueur. Likewise royalty were secluded in private rooms, that changed too. The drab, slow, dark heaviness of the Victorian era began to lighten and speed-up as reflected in the decor, clothing, styles and recipes pioneered by Ritz and Escoffier.
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Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire
James Romm (2011)April 2020
Audio Audible
This is the "rest of the story" after Alexander's wholly unsatisfying end to an otherwise amazing life. Romm writes in the tradition of Edward Gibbon assigning motivation to fill in the empty places with a large cast of characters who die in one fantastically gruesome backstabbing way or another. Contingencies rule the day. This is densely packed book that requires a slow and dedicated reading with a detailed character sheet to fully appreciate because so there are so many twists and turns. But even for the casual reader there are remarkable scenes, and the writing style is enjoyable for what it is. I was particularly impressed by the Silver Shields who seemed to be the core the reason for Alexander's successes, many of them still fighting into their 70s. They were unstoppable but also a two-edged sword to whoever wielded them. One senses Alexander kept going because to stop feeding the beast meant death at their fractious hands, which may in fact be what happened._________________________________________________________________________
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The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History
Joseph M. Marshall III (2005)March 2020
Audio Audible
The various Sioux tribes of the Great Plains in the 19th century had a reputation as being some of the toughest and wildest Indians. They were the Indians who in popular imagination swooped onto settlers crossing the plains in covered wagons. They were sometimes seen as animals to be exterminated. Atrocities were committed by both sides. Cultural cliches show the Sioux as tough warriors and not multi-dimensional humans who laughed, loved, had families and responsibilities. Into this gap steps actor/historian Marshall (born 1946) who was raised in a traditional Lakota household. He gives a human biography to one of the fiercest warriors, and does so from a Lakota perspective. Much time is spent on Crazy Horse's early life and upbringing, and of course his role at Little Bighorn. We gain a deeper understanding of how the Lakota saw the conflict, what motivated them, how they organized and saw their place in the world. The book feels accurate and transportive, the vocabulary and cultural information is rich due to Marshall's Lakota background._________________________________________________________________________
Although published in 2004 you wouldn't know because it feels timeless. One aspect that disturbed me is Crazy Horse's one-man crusade to kill gold prospectors in the Black Hills, sneaking up on them and blowing them away, day after day. This is a significant atrocity regardless of justification and I think it shouldn't be forgotten along with his heroic deeds, he was also a cold blooded mass killer. The Nez Perce for example did not commit deeds like this, not systematically, it was more than merely par for the times. He was probably about to be tried and hanged by Federal authorities but events intervened.
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Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs
Michael T. Osterholm (2017)March 2020
Audio P9
Michael T. Osterholm is an expert on infectious diseases. He runs his own institution at the University of Minnesota. He is a public speaker and that is how I heard about him (on Joe Rogan), he is a sharp and focused individual worth paying attention to. The book published in 2017 is a siren alarm that a SARS pandemic is coming. He says it will probably come out of China, then proceeds to describe events that we are familiar with, even predicting the closing of baseball season. He covers other problems such as antibiotic resistance, Ebola, etc.. the usual suspects and some I never heard of before. Osterholm is not the first person to predict it, but maybe the most high profile and recent. This is not journalism but written by an expert for a general audience meant to educate more than titillate (such the Hot Zone) and it does entertain in parts. It is a prescient "Prelude" to the many history books that will be soon be arriving._________________________________________________________________________
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Cache Lake Country: Or, Life in the North Woods
Cache Lake Country (1947)March 2020
Audio Audible
Cache Lake Country (1947) won the National Outdoor Book Award in the classic category. I'd never heard of it before but having had previous success with nature/outdoor books published in or about the 1940s (Northern Nurse, A Sand County Almanac, Shantyboat) this did not disappoint. They are books my grandparents generation wrote. Gentle and wise and unconcerned with existential crisis. It is a happy-place one can retreat to when all appears gloom._________________________________________________________________________
n.b. I listed to the audiobook but am sure this is not the ideal media as the book contains many illustrations (I hear) which would increase it's value not only as a memoir but practical bushcraft guidebook allowing one to recreate a little northern woods wherever you are.
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Bomber
Len Deighton (1970)March 2020
Audio P9
Len Deighton would have been 14 years old at the time of this story. The war left a life-long impression being old enough to remember but a few years too young to enlist. He is of the generation that venerated older siblings - they were the heroes. So it was he wrote a novel about it -- but not a hagiography. Deighton frames a single bombing raid and humanizes nearly everyone who took part - the British aviators, the German night-fighters and ground crew, their wives and girlfriends, even local people from the town that was bombed. In all over 100 characters in a Towering Inferno style. More than half the book goes by before the plane lifts off, we gain an appreciation for the people and circumstances. Then he pitilessly and dispassionately kills most of them off, or scarred for life. We learn the monetary cost of this single bombing run is astronomical. The raid resulted in no military benefit nor had any historical importance. This is a WWII book but also a product of the Vietnam era solidly an anti-war book._________________________________________________________________________
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Lucky 666: The Impossible Mission That Changed the War in the Pacific
Bob Drury (2017)March 2020
Audio P9
Lucky 666 has all the elements of a great book, but ultimately it does not deliver. Drury uses the now standard non-fiction method of telling a core story that keeps the readers attention, there is a mystery driving it forward with strong character and narrative, while hanging from this thread is backstory and tangent. The problem is the book is 90% back story and tangent, while the core story turns out to be only so-so. The tangents are basically a kitchen sink of well known events in the Pacific theater during the first few years. We get treatments of Midway, the assassination of Isoroku Yamamoto, Doolittle Raid etc.. but this is not a history of the Pacific War so there are large gaps, making it feel superficial. There are much better books on these big-picture subjects while this book should be focused on the plane and its crew. But then the amount of biographical back story is numbing and ultimately not rewarding. I loved Drury's Fox Company, it had sustained gripping narrative, it's a wonderful book. This is scattered by comparison. The problem is less Drury's writing ability as the limitations of the topic and how he structured the book. It would have been improved if he spent more time in the air with the crew describing what it is like to be in a plane, the mechanics, the roles each played, etc.. closer to the people with less big picture and backstory._________________________________________________________________________
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No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo
Redmond O'Hanlon (1996)March 2020
Audio NLSB
I've now completed the three O'Hanlon jungle books: Into the Heart of Borneo (1984), In Trouble Again (1988) and Congo Journey (1996) - they are best read in that order as they grow increasingly longer and complex. Congo has been called his magnus opus. I found it the least enjoyable. It's a hot mess, reflecting the place. As another reviewer pointed out, this is not an easy read with a lot going on, many characters who are mostly distasteful, an aura of magical realism, drugs and alcohol, death and sex, fear, disease, painful insects, claustrophobia. It deserves multiple closer readings, I'm not sure I could take it._________________________________________________________________________
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Northern Nurse
Eliott Merrick (1942)February 2020
Audio NLSB
Ever since reading The Lure of the Labrador Wild by Dillon Wallace years ago, I have indeed been hooked on the place. This is the 4th or 5th memoir I've read about the region. They all center on the small town of North West River which was originally settled by French voyagers and Scottish fishermen. It is a fascinating place the more one learns about it, being perched on the doorstep of two great wildernesses - the northern inland forests to the west and the sea to the east. It is also the northern-most town on the Eastern seaboard with access to a road. Keep driving north and the road stops there. This is a memoir by a young Australian nurse who worked at a medical mission in North West River the late 20s and early 30s, before meeting and marrying her husband Elliott Merrick who was also there as a school teacher. Merrick came from blue blood, his father ran the countries largest lead company in New Jersey and Elliott was a Yale grad, but he enjoyed nature and went his own way. He wrote about a dozen books during his lifetime including penning this memoir about his wife, as retold in her voice. The memoir recounts her experiences with patients and the characters she encountered. At some point the mission doctor became sick and left, she took over doing duties and performing treatments she had no formal training it but never lost a patient. Life there in the 1920s was so much different than today, they were closer to 1720 then 2020. Elliott wrote a couple other books about Labrador including True North which looks more my speed with expeditions into the wilderness, but this provides stories about the people and life of a frontier nurse._________________________________________________________________________
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On the Waterfront
Budd Schulberg (2004)February 2020
Audio P9
Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay for the film released in 1954, starring Marlon Brando the contender. On the heels of that success he published a novelization a year later. Then in 1984, he wrote a stage adaptation which premiered on Broadway. It used lasers (!) and surround sound systems which were technological innovations for the time. The chronology is somewhat confusing because usually movies follow the play, and plays follow the novel, but in this case everything was reversed. I listened to the full-cast LATW production of the stage play and found it to be very good. Amazingly I never saw the movie nor knew the story so this radio play was my first exposure. I did read that the ending of the film is "Hollywood" whereas the play (and novel) are more "realistic". Presumably he gets the girl in the film, what happens here I leave to the reader to find out. This story concerns issues that are somewhat arcane today - with the rise of the shipping container the old-fashioned dock worker has morphed into the Minecraft architect, moving around giant cubes with giant machines. Even by 1954 the beginnings of this revolution were starting to take shape. Nevertheless, it has a timeless quality concerning doing what is right versus what is expected. The characters are memorable though probably even more so on the screen with Bernstein's score._________________________________________________________________________
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England
Dan Jones (2012)February 2020
Audio P9
This is the story of eight English kings during the colorful High Middle Ages. It's a good introduction, but limited by the lengh of time covered, necessitating brief coverage of many topics, despite a lengthy book. The Plantagenents could be very capable, the likes of Henry II and Edward III are among England's greatest rules. The worst kings are also interesting, Edward II and Richard II offer a distinct lesson on how to behave badly. Richard II ended the lineage and is credited with starting the War of the Roses, but his father the Black Prince was a capable and powerful leader who unfortunately died too young, one wonders how history would have been different had he ruled - no Tudors. I now have a better sense of the English kings from this period and hope to read some individual biographies. The 12th century in particular was a golden renaissance, the epitome of "middle ages"._________________________________________________________________________
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Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present
Philipp Blom (2017)February 2020
Audio P9
Nature's Mutiny by German historian Philipp Blom is reminiscent of a Jared Diamond book. He asks a question about our modern day and looks back on history for parallels to test a 'natural experiment'. Blom asks, if the climate is rapidly changing, how does society respond? He picks the Little Ice Age as it as the last time the climate changed rapidly, about 2 C colder during a roughly 100 year period. He chooses Europe because of the documentation available and his professional background. What he proposes is society become more mercantile orientated because of increased globalization which was a survival response to the failed harvests and other conditions that made life more difficult, requiring expanded trade to bring in resources needed. Capitalism, rationalism, science were all responses to a more difficult environment. Of course it is not that simple there were contingencies specific to Europe, other places in the world didn't respond this way. So it's hard to say what one can really conclude from Blom's investigation. Nevertheless it is an interesting overview of various aspects of the 17th century, anything by Blom is worth reading._________________________________________________________________________
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The Lion in Winter
James Goldman (1966)February 2020
Audio P9
Review of the LA Theatre Works production ca. 2005. I recall seeing the O'Toole / Hepburn film years ago, it was intensely serious, dark and brooding with stellar acting. This full-cast production lacks the same gravitas with the audience laughing in places, but it is probably closer to how the original play was meant to be performed. I typically like literary romanticized depictions of the Middle Ages but found this to be too unbelievable, the characters brutal with an aww-shucks they are just like us ending. Maybe it could be analyzed in the context of first-wave feminism (1966) but that is beyond my ken. It is probably nothing more, or less, than a black comedy with a Medieval flavor and witty dialogue._________________________________________________________________________
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Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
Andy Greenberg (2019)January 2020
Audio P9
Andy Greenberg has done some serious legwork tracking down knowledgeable people around the world for interviews, even attending a hacker conference in Moscow bravely asking strangers "Do you hack for Putin?" (he didn't get many straight answers). There have been so many hacking attacks and the trail of who did it is so opaque that it is very confusing. Nevertheless, Greenberg and the Western intelligence community has narrowed in on Russia as the world's primary state-sponsored hacking organization, responsible for most of the big hacking incidents in the past 10 years or so including one that did at least 40 billion in damages, the largest hacking incident to date. Specifically the FBI indicted two GRU units known as Unit 26165 and Unit 74455 working from Moscow._________________________________________________________________________
Why does Russia do it? Russia is a relatively small country with a GDP comparable to Canada, yet it feels embattled and surrounded by powerful countries. It uses tactics similar to terrorism in an asymmetrical manner. By destabilizing and keeping its powerful enemies off-balance and guessing it can slow or halt perceived attempts to usurp those currently in power in Russia. Thus the cyber attacks are only one part of a larger strategy to sow chaos in the West. Unfortunately Russia has set the stage for other countries to follow who fear being left behind, there are now at least a dozen countries working along similar lines, beyond the usual suspects like China, North Korea and Iran. This does not include the terrorism of scammers calling our homes and elderly parents, or sending spam emails. We live in an increasingly dangerous world, but that is what terrorism seeks to achieve, to erode trust in governments. Greenberg ends with a story of a high-level security expert who doesn't own a smart-phone, TV or radio - he seeks to reduce his exposure to technology as a means of protection, and resilience.
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A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold (1949)January 2020
Audio P9
A Sand County Almanac (1949) is a landmark book in modern environmental literature. It is personal and cozy, reminiscent of Peter Wohlleben (Hidden Life of Trees), the kind of book that leaves you feeling a bit changed looking at the world in a new and better way. The ideas expressed, that the environment is intertwined, was first observed by Alexander von Humboldt in the early 19th century. His ideas of rewilding are becoming more popular, Monibot's book Feral (2013) can be seen as a direct heir._________________________________________________________________________
It's only amazing that given everything we know so little has changed. Leopold makes a strong case for personal responsibility and ethics ie. not mandated by the government, he was a conservative vision of environmental stewardship ca 1949. However 21st century conservatives have gone so far to the right not only do they disagree with environmentalism on the face of it, they actively encourage and seek outright environmental destruction, while disparaging sane and rationale classic American books like this one.
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The Ancient Celts
Barry Cunliffe (2018)January 2020
Audio P9
We tend to think of the Celts associated with the margins of Western Europe but they were once the dominate people of northern Europe well into Eastern Europe. Barry Cunliffe is a great guide for this thematic survey. A little academic and broad strokes but a lot to be learned. I listened to the audiobook version which is well done, the book is lavishly illustrated so misses a lot of needed context._________________________________________________________________________
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The Seabird's Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet's Great Ocean Voyagers
Adam Nicolson (2017)January 2020
Audio P9
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Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life
George Monbiot (2013)January 2020
Audio P9
Feral is a generous wide-ranging look at how humans manage natural resources. Specially focused on where Monbiot is from, Britain. It is memoir of his outdoor adventures which leads to natural history and talks with locals on both sides of the debate. It examines sea life, plants, ecosystems and animals. It discusses current-day policy and practice. Monbiot is a fantastic writer and deep thinker. It reminds me in style and focus of another famous book on rewilding, A Sand County Almanac. I'm not British but always found its heathlands and moorlands as strange - why not trees? Turns out because laws encourage not growing trees while maintaining a sort of desert mono-culture. The few places that are allowed to return to nature become wildly beautiful and bountiful that cost less to maintain, produce more revenue for the state, restore the land and soil from centuries of abuse, allow visitors to reconnect with nature, clean the air and carbon etc.. and yet. Conservatism prevents it, nothing changes because certain people want nothing to change. Nevertheless the ice dam is start to thaw, groups in Scotland have begun restoring forests that will take generations but the sceptics are slowly being won over, one at a time._________________________________________________________________________
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Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy
Kent Nerburn (2005)January 2020
Audio Audible
This is one of the best stories about 19th century American Indians I have yet read. Nerburn has spent a lifetime studying and living among western tribes and brings a lived perspective most historians lack. It mostly tells the story from the Nez Perce perspective. It gets the facts right and does not apologize for errors on both sides. It's transportive to that time and place while also being hugely interesting and educational. So much about the Nez Perce is myth created at the time by the Eastern press, this book shows what actually happened. As one example, Chief Joseph was not the leader of the tribe for most of the time, nor was he ever a military leader. It is interesting to learn how Indian tribes worked with multiple leaders, or no leaders as the situation changed, something our Western minds have trouble with since we expect a hierarchical formation, anything less being primitive._________________________________________________________________________
Although the famous chase through the Bitterroots to the border of Canada makes up the majority of the pages, it is book-ended by a history of the Nez Perce from first contact with Lewis and Clark, and the subsequent fate of the people up until Joseph's death in the early 20th century. In this way we see the entire history of Joseph's life, what he was born in to, experienced and left behind. I am particularly taken by the quality of Nerburn's writing which has a mystic element, or perhaps spiritual (Nerburn is a theologian among other things), which might not be best in history books but works well here. It is a small masterpiece of creative non-fiction.
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Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs
Budy Levy (2008)January 2020
Audio Audible
An amazing story given its due.This is a somewhat complex story but one of high interest and great adventure. It's almost hard to believe. Calling it an adventure may not be politically correct in light of the death of a significant culture, but that is how people at the time saw it and the end result is the birth of modern Mexico, a violent merger of cultures. As in River of Darkness Levy focuses on combat but also provides bigger picture and politics. One can see patterns that would replay well into the 20th century between Europeans and natives.
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