by Andrew
Just because I like to read, a little chat about some books I've read lately. All book links are to my reviews on my own site.
Decision in the West, by Albert Castel. Someone here at ObWings inspired me to read this one, for which I'm quite grateful. It's an account of Sherman's campaign across Georgia to capture Atlanta in 1864. It gets into great detail about the campaign and explains clearly why the campaign was so important to the outcome of the American Civil War. I'm a little leery of wholly endorsing it because the author endorses the 'Lincoln wanted to capture Richmond' thesis that any close look at Lincoln demonstrates wasn't true, so I'm not sure if Castel's analysis is equally flawed in other areas, but it's still a darn good history.
Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose. This is a history of the Lewis and Clark expedition mixed with a mini-biography of Meriweather Lewis. I found Ambrose's writing to be iffy in spots, but the story is so fascinating I'll forgive those foibles easily. The Lewis and Clark expedition is something the likes of which we'll never see again, unless perhaps someday we begin deep-space exploration: a party of men who literally vanished for about two years, with no communication whatsoever with those who launched them.
Take This Job and Ship It, by Senator Byron Dorgan. I was sent this to review, but it had its moments so I'll mention it here. Dorgan wants to take a stand about America's trade deficit, and Take This Job is his attempt to push the fight and offer some solutions to the problem. I don't concur with him that it's a problem, with a few exceptions (environmental, mostly), but I liked the book because Dorgan did a pretty good job of trying to reach out. Yes, he fills the book with plenty of villains, but I was impressed with his attempts to find good guys on all sides in order to attract as much support as possible to his position. I didn't end up a lot closer to his position when I finished the book than when I started it, but I'd be more than willing to continue the discussion with him based on how he laid things out. There's something to be said for that, in my opinion.
American Sphinx, by Joseph Ellis. This is a semi-biography of Thomas Jefferson that focuses on several key periods in his life. I'm still looking for a good full biography of Jefferson, but this was an interesting look at Jefferson the man; I'm a big fan of Ellis. (On a side note I found quite amusing, Brad DeLong actually linked to my review, beginning the link with the comment 'Andrew Olmsted is right to highly recommend the Jefferson biography American Sphinx'. I'm really tempted to put just the first five words of that on my main page, with a link to Brad's full quote. :)
Open thread. Go nuts.
...beginning the link with the comment 'Andrew Olmsted is right to highly recommend the Jefferson biography American Sphinx'. I'm really tempted to put just the first five words of that on my main page, with a link to Brad's full quote. :)
Andrew Olmsted is right to?
Or did you mean four words?
Posted by: double-plus-ungood | September 16, 2006 at 03:08 PM
D'oh. Counting is even more fundamental.
Posted by: Andrew | September 16, 2006 at 03:25 PM
Awhile ago, Kevin Drum had an open thread on authors or books you think ought to have been better known. I personally would be happy to hear of such from ObWi folks. I will offer up one myself, that I read on a recent trip:
_Bridge of Birds_, by Barry Hughart. (1984). Set in a China that never was ("but which ought to have been", my friend always says when mentioning this book to people), it's set in the T'ang Dynasty and features the narrator Number Ten Ox (so called because tenth son of his father and very strong), and a sage who always introduces himself with "my name is Li Kao, and I have a slight flaw in my character". Features villains of stunning evil, mid-air martial arts contests, Chinese versions of the Ganymede myth, hot yet extremely indirectly described lovin', the discovery that the bureaucracy of Heaven is as rigid as that of the Middle Kingdoms, and other such delights. It's like a particularly good Historical Kung Fu movie except that it's a book.
Posted by: JakeB | September 16, 2006 at 03:43 PM
I will add that I continue to listen to massive quantities of Nightwish, and have concluded that their song "Ghost Love Score" is basically a universal Hong Kong New Wave film soundtrack. I think it may have had a synergistic effect on my appreciation while I was reading _Bridge of Birds_.
Posted by: JakeB | September 16, 2006 at 03:47 PM
For a more realistic, science fiction, take on a Chinese-influenced future, I'd recommend the fine Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang.
Western sf has had, at least until lately, an overwhelming western bias, with relatively little emphasis on the fact that most people in the world are either Chinese or Indian, and unless there's a cataclsym, that'll be the case in the near/mid future, as well. (It's one of many annoying things about Star Trek, Babylon 5, and other good-tv, crappy-sf, tv shows, too.)
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 16, 2006 at 04:12 PM
I'm curious, Andrew: in your review of the Castel book, you refer to "one of four major upheavals in our life as a country."
I'm assuming three are the Revolution, the Civil War, and WWII, but I'd have to guess at which might be the fourth you have in mind, out of a few possibilities in my mind.
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 16, 2006 at 04:16 PM
For fun, I'll nominate as possibilities: 1812, Reconstruction, Vietnam era, Western expansion (any of several possible choices of bookends), modern imperialism (roughly 1890-1914), Great Depression and the New Deal. Anyone else?
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 16, 2006 at 04:18 PM
House of War by James Carroll. History of the Pentagon.
Posted by: moe99 | September 16, 2006 at 05:21 PM
For a more realistic, science fiction, take on a Chinese-influenced future, I'd recommend the fine Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang.
Damn, I thought you were going to say Chung Kuo and that we'd have to come to blows. Whew!
Posted by: Anarch | September 16, 2006 at 05:45 PM
Open thread, though hardly a new topic: how wonderfully things are going at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.
"House of War by James Carroll"
Um; gotten really torn apart in some reviews.
"Damn, I thought you were going to say Chung Kuo and that we'd have to come to blows."
Haven't actually gotten to it. (I'm actually pretty poorly read on skiffy of the last decade or two, for various reasons, though I'm reasonably familiar with the field, to a point (not remotely the point I used to be)-- but almost entirely through reviews, gossips, friends, and such.
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 16, 2006 at 06:04 PM
This morning I just finished Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. Pretty interesting; it focuses on how the British and American militaries adapted (or failed to adapt, in our case) as institutions to the needs of counterinsurgency warfare.
Other books I have recently read:
A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
Collapse, by Jared Diamond
The Scar, by China Mieville
How Would a Patriot Act?, by Glenn Greenwald
I tend to wait for books to come out in paperback before I buy them, so I'm always behind.
Posted by: ThirdGorchBro | September 16, 2006 at 06:19 PM
That wonderful wonderful CPA in 2003-4.
"This morning I just finished Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam."
The short Kalev Sepp piece I link to here is probably redundant, then, but I recommend it, anyway, and others might want to read it, if they haven't already.
"Collapse, by Jared Diamond"
Did you know that he may have been wrong in the details on Rapa Nu(Easter Island)?
"A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge"
Which reminds me of the terrible thing: that I was interrupted in reading it a long while ago, and haven't gotten back to it; I've even still got my hardcover here. (I've got to get the very over-due Crusade by Rick Atkinson back to the library, though, before the library police kick in my door.)
I actually rejected one of Vernor's lesser novellas for Dell reprint, as a freelancer, back in 1976 or so.... (And my old friend Jim Frenkel, who was Vernor's editor then, whom I was working for at Dell, is still Vernor's editor, although I've never actually met Vernor, unlike his ex-wife, Joan, also a very old friend, who subsequently married Jim....)
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 16, 2006 at 06:37 PM
The Catholic Church, by Hans Kung. Part of the Modern Library Chronicles series of compact histories, this is a fascinating tour of the Roman Catholic part of Christendom from origin to the turn of the third millennium. Kung is a deeply compassionate man, and interested in the hows and whys of the evolution of practice and doctrine with regard to the status of those outside power.
Inventing Japan, by Ian Buruma. Another in the same series, this about Japan from Perry to the Tokyo Olympics. He brings a fresh-to-me perspective to bear on the ways that rival factions throughout the Meiji Restoration and the run up to World War II could all be conserving different parts of a shared tradition, messily.
Posted by: Bruce Baugh | September 16, 2006 at 07:09 PM
I read "Undaunted Courage" several years ago. Abvsolutely riviting.
Posted by: Chief | September 16, 2006 at 07:17 PM
I have read about the Lewis & Clark expedition, too.
Your summary of it reminds me of a particular myth I heard about it growing up, which was shattered when I finally read more detailed accounts.
The myth was: these guys were passing through uncharted territory, boldly going where no man had gone before.
The reality, which I thought came through quite clearly in the books I read about it, was that these guys pretty much went from one Indian tribe to the next, asking directions and getting supplies.
I mean, this is less like outer-space exploration, and more like a group of tourists walking from Battery Park up to the Met.
Well, we've made it to Washington Square--let's ask that guy how to get the next few blocks. Oh, and maybe they know a good place to get some food, too.
Lewis and Clark were admirable guys, and they had a great trip. But they were hardly out there one their own.
Posted by: kid bitzer | September 16, 2006 at 07:24 PM
kid,
Yes and no. They were not isolated from humanity by any stretch. However, they could not count on the indians to help them (and very nearly got themselves killed more than once), although the Nez Perce almost certainly saved the expedition after it cleared the continental divide. It's a different kind of isolation from deep space, but that doesn't mean it wasn't real.
Posted by: Andrew | September 16, 2006 at 07:55 PM
Did you know that he may have been wrong in the details on Rapa Nu(Easter Island)?
I had, actually (probably via that very link on your blog). I liked Guns, Germs, and Steel better anyway.
Posted by: ThirdGorchBro | September 16, 2006 at 08:12 PM
Ambrose underplays the seminal event of the whole expedition: the men played baseball with the Nee-mee-poo, thus the first game played west of the Divide. Silas Goodrich, the best fisherman on the expedition, was from Massachusetts and thus undoubtedly found a way to choke.
Colter found that the Pikuni liked a different game altogether: Naked Tag to the Death, and We're It.
Posted by: CharleyCarp | September 16, 2006 at 08:41 PM
I'm a big fan of Buruma's, Bruce.
"Lewis and Clark were admirable guys, and they had a great trip. But they were hardly out there one their own."
I never heard that myth; I was taught in elementary school that they visited lots of Indian tribes. (And I'm avoiding quibbling with one of Andrew's sentences in that review! Do I get points, Andrew?!? ;-))
3GB: "I liked Guns, Germs, and Steel better anyway."
It was a bit less of a stretch, though both are quite interesting, I think.
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 17, 2006 at 02:28 AM
Gary,
Are you referring to my use of 'the American people'?
Posted by: Andrew | September 17, 2006 at 09:37 AM
I finished Undaunted Courage shortly after I returned from my Colorado vacation in late June/early July. First: yes, amazingly detailed and pains-taking accounting of the journey, including Lewis' descent into madness and tragic ending at a fairly young age.
Second, was disappointed to read of Ambrose' episodes of plagiarism, and a little surprised that my father, in recommending the book, failed to mention it. Dad's done graduate work in history and is basically ABD, but he's working in a different field now. Maybe he thought that sort of thing would be of less interest to the casual reader.
Third: if so, he was right. Ambrose pulls the reader into the adventure in a way that I haven't previously encountered. Even if his name is besmirched, he's still contributed something of great value to me and to others in my family. I'm going to stock up on his other works when I get a chance.
Fourth, there is something to the point that he wasn't exactly jumping off into uncharted territory. True, in the sense that he knew exactly where he was going and how far it would take him to get there. False, though, because although there were Indian tribes along the way, not all of them were willing and able, as Andrew pointed out above, to help the expedition out. Some of them wanted more gifts than L&C were prepared to give out, while others simply did not know the way. As it was, L&C neatly avoided easier routes to the mouth of the Columbia, and were unable to resupply as intended once there. Hope that wasn't too much of a spoiler. And at times they showed, in full hindsight, appallingly bad judgement in dealing with the native population. Some things don't change, it appears.
So it's not as if they had a Motel 6 and Denny's awaiting them at the end of each day.
As always with such a work, there's lots more to say about it, and less time than needed to say it.
I see Anarch mentioned Chung Kuo; I recall reading some of that several years ago, and that it was an interesting topic but less-than-captivating in execution. I don't think I made it to the end, although I've toyed with acquiring the whole series.
Currently I'm wading my way through On War, although I've scarcely made it into the book itself (the introductions cover the first eighty pages or so).
And of course I'm always rereading Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, which is absolutely the best text on the topic that can be had for cheap. Someone I work with has acquired an antique copy of The American Practical Navigator which I'd love to own; I'm trying to convince him to loan it to me for a while. We have so much lovely technology at our disposal that I think we tend to lose sight of how the technology evolved, and what it evolved from. TAPN remembers, and older copies remember it in the context of then-current use.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | September 17, 2006 at 10:01 AM
Hope that wasn't too much of a spoiler.
No worries. At least you didn't mention whether or not they made it back. ;)
Posted by: Andrew | September 17, 2006 at 10:17 AM
I should also give a special mention to From a Buick 8, a Stephen King novel which has been of great comfort to me during my grieving time lately. It's a story about living with mysteries you cannot solve, and about the worth of working to be a decent human being anyway. It's got Lovecraft's sense of the myserious, unknowable universe, without any of Lovecraft's misanthropy and other complications; King's humanism is at its best here. It is, like all of King's best work, awesomely decent in its appreciation of people and humane values.
Posted by: Bruce Baugh | September 17, 2006 at 11:16 AM
I bogged down recently in a book about poverty, but in Sweden I finally read The Kite Runner, which I very much recommend, and Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red, ditto.
Posted by: hilzoy | September 17, 2006 at 12:50 PM
Open thread. Go nuts. O.K.
John Cole (Tim) and The Cunning Realist have posts up linking and citing a Washington Post article detailing the make-up of our erstwhile patriotic Iraq Reconstruction crew.
I guess we knew all of this, didn't we? But I did not know that Kate O'Bierne's hubby was the guy handling all of the resumes -- the main bullet point of which was loyalty to George W. Bush. My question is why isn't Ms. O'Bierne required to divulge this bit of info on every newstalk show on which her overbite appears.
Well, that's my first question. My others have to do with whether the O'Bierne's and thousands of others should be held in maximum security prisons here or spirited away in the dark of night to foreign facilities after their convictions.
But I decided to restrain myself. I have a drum kit positioned just to the right of my computer desk and I can swivel my chair and go nuts and get my aggressions out toute suite after I read stuff like this.
See ya'll in the coming week.
Posted by: John Thullen | September 17, 2006 at 02:58 PM
Open thread:Oblique comments on reading
I knew a guy, actually I knew his son, this is a true story all my stories are true, who had gone very hungry at some point during WWII. You would walk thru his front door and the couch would be covered with canned food. There were only pathways through the cases and cases of canned and bottled food. Spam and peas and spaghetti sauce. He had seven freezers, he had built additions to his house. There was food in the bathrooms. He was not obese. He was, despite his constant purchasing, still hungry and frightened of not having enough food. He would always be hungry.
...
Watched Truffaut's "Jules & Jim" this morning. I imagined myself one of the characters, with my youth in the Edwardian, being approached in the late 20s by the youth saying:"Look, we have such wonders! Mass production and consumer credit and radio and motorcars and a new physics and anthropology and psychology! We know so much, we understand so much more!" I might have smiled and driven my car off a bridge.
...
I think Nietzsche stopped reading in his late twenties or early 30s. Certainly not completely, but much less than in his youth. Nietzsche is always strangely going on about diet and exercise and digestion. How to chew your food.
...
Thought needs be given to gluttony. Gluttony of quantity, but there is also a gluttony and greed for quality, like the deluded loser in "Sideways" who thought his refined taste proved his worth or gave his life meaning.
...
"His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed."
How many books does a man Need?
Posted by: bob mcmanus | September 17, 2006 at 04:03 PM
Andrew: "Are you referring to my use of 'the American people'?"
Well, since you ask, no.
It was this: "The idea of crossing 2,000 miles and coming back was unprecedented...."
I'm sure you've heard of Marco Polo. (And if you meant "in America," then: a) you didn't say so; and b) there's no way to establish others didn't make such a trip; if you meant "no European in America before that," well, maybe, but that's not at all what you wrote. And, hey, I said I wasn't going to quibble over it!) (Also, I've not checked the route lengths of the Spanish explorers, but some of them really got around.)
So are you ever going to clarify what your four great upheavals in American history are, please?
"John Cole (Tim) and The Cunning Realist have posts up linking and citing a Washington Post article detailing the make-up of our erstwhile patriotic Iraq Reconstruction crew."
Sigh....
9/16/2006 04:20:00 PM.
World Peace Religion, ever look into what the Bible "expressly commands"? Stoned any children or relatives lately? Slaughtered any neighboring tribes? Wear any mixed-thread clothing?
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 17, 2006 at 04:54 PM
Stoned any blasphemers?
Posted by: Slartibartfast | September 17, 2006 at 05:09 PM
Also, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and his companions rode over 3000 miles in 106 days to visit the Great Khan in 1246. :-) (Marco Polo and his companions took 3 years to make their return trip, and were gone for over 22+ years; I'd have to look a little further to establish the length of time of his trip to China, but it took longer than Lewis & Clark.)
Also, I'm not clear if you were limiting yourself to land hikes alone, for any reason, or not; plenty of sea voyages were of greater length than 2 years.
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 17, 2006 at 05:14 PM
The best book I've read in quite some time is Fly by Night, by Frances Hardinge. Don't let the fact that it's shelved in the Children's Section keep you away. It got 8 thumbs up in our household: both adults, the 17-year-old, and the 10-y.o. agreed that this is the Good Stuff.
We had a long family dinner-table conversation, asking: Is it fantasy? Not by the usual standards -- there's no magic -- but it definitely doesn't take place in the Fields We Know, it's a couple fields over, in a para-England of pseudo-1700. A very Terry-Pratchett-like universe, where the Stationers Guild controls all print lest the tyrannical, theocratic Birdcatchers rise again, where the Guilds run things because Parliament and Monarchy fought to an exhausted standstill, and where the protagonist, Mosca Mye, is named for the godling who keeps flies out of jam-jars. Mosca gets into and out of quite a few jams herself, along with her fearless goose, Saracen (he's just a big soppy really), and Eponymous Clent, her -- mentor? Fagin? sidekick/sidekicker? And few of the characters are who Mosca thinks they are, and even fewer are who she thinks they should be, including herself.
Posted by: Doctor Science | September 17, 2006 at 11:19 PM
"We had a long family dinner-table conversation, asking: Is it fantasy? Not by the usual standards"
Argh. That's the standard of an idiot. "Fantasy" is not defined by whether it has magic and swords and is a dreadful derivative of Tolkien.
"Fantasy" is defined by being "fantastic." Period. Full stop.
Jonathan Carroll writes fantasy. So does, at times, Ellen Kushner, Peter S. Beagle, Paul Park, Gene Wolfe, China Miéville, Jonathem Lethem, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Eileen Gunn, Jo Walton, R. A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Tim Powers, Susanna Clarke, Howard Waldrop, and on and on. Magic may be, but need not be, included.
"A very Terry-Pratchett-like universe, where the Stationers Guild controls all print lest the tyrannical, theocratic Birdcatchers rise again, where the Guilds run things because Parliament and Monarchy fought to an exhausted standstill, and where the protagonist, Mosca Mye, is named for the godling who keeps flies out of jam-jars."
I haven't read it, but it's clearly fantasy. What else would it be? Realism?
Sorry, but this statement, which one sees all the time: "Not by the usual standards -- there's no magic" -- makes me want to throw things at walls.
Nothing personal implied.
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 17, 2006 at 11:33 PM
The question was, Gary, would the 10-year-old's friends think it is fantasy? Would the 17-year-old's teachers? You (or I) can *say* "it's fantasy" until we're blue in the face, but the question is -- will the people who like the sort of thing that's usually called fantasy find this the sort of thing they like?
Our conclusion was, "sometimes" -- the youngest is not sure whether most Harry Potter fans her age would like Hardinge, because for them a lot of fantasy *is* magical zapping. "Fly By Night" has been given a very HP-esque cover and presentation, and some of those readers are going to be quite startled by what they get.
I'm an anthropologist of genre, not an essentialist: genre is a way of describing readers, not the Platonic essence of books.
Posted by: Doctor Science | September 18, 2006 at 01:12 AM
"The question was, Gary, would the 10-year-old's friends think it is fantasy? Would the 17-year-old's teachers?"
Ah. I believe you that that's the question you discussed at the dinner table; that's not what you previously said here, though, and I could only go on what you wrote. Thanks for the clarification.
"I'm an anthropologist of genre, not an essentialist: genre is a way of describing readers, not the Platonic essence of books."
Yes. I don't believe in "definitions" of genre particularly, save as a game, and largely a game I grew tired of by the end of my teen years; I prefer my friend Chip Delany's usage of "descriptions", which I blogged about here.
Posted by: Gary Farber | September 18, 2006 at 02:47 PM
my addition to the open thread:
Do you know what's good / fun in preparing one's house for being tented to fumigate for termites?
Alternative answers: (a) Neither do I. (b) Absolutely nothing.
arrgh.
Posted by: Francis | September 18, 2006 at 03:15 PM
Francis,
(c) at least the house is not being cordoned off to remove asbestos. All the inconvenience, plus additional costs to do the job with special added worries about long term disease risks.
Posted by: Dantheman | September 18, 2006 at 03:33 PM
Francis--
I guess pretending you were Grand Moff Tarkin ordering the destruction of Alderaan wouldn't help?
Sorry.
Posted by: JakeB | September 18, 2006 at 03:36 PM
Hey, at least you'll get rid of any pesky cockroaches, sugar ants, flying squirrels, etc that might be freloading off of you.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | September 18, 2006 at 04:16 PM
Death, destruction and a lack of hot water are coming to the Logan household! (Apparently the gas Orkin uses "reacts" with flame, so the gas company is shutting off the meter today.)
Any critters living under the house better decamp today.
ah well, a mid-week stay at a hotel will feel like a business trip with my wife along.
Posted by: Francis | September 18, 2006 at 05:04 PM