Tag Archives: Book Review

BOOK REVIEW: Independence: The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution

by Thomas P. Slaughter
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014

Pity the poor high school teacher of American History. They have so much required material to cover, along with an assortment of topics mandated by various outside agencies, that they cannot possibly cover everything, much less make what they do cover interesting.

I know from my own education (way back in the Mists of Time – the 1980s, to be precise), that when it came to American history we were briefed on the colonies in Jamestown and Plymouth – and then suddenly it was a century and a half later, and the Revolutionary War was starting in Boston. Slaughter attempts to rectify this omission.

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Book Reveiw: Operation Nemesis

Operation Nemesis:
The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide
Eric Bogosian
Little, Brown and Company, 2015

This year marks another centennial; one that is going with very little memorial or commemoration, or even much more than a passing nod in the general press. In 1915, using World War I military operations against the Russian Empire as a cover, the Ottoman Empire began a program to systematically wipe out Armenians in their territory.

For various reasons, many countries still haven’t gotten around to calling it what it was: genocide. It’s not like Armenia is really going around demanding reparations or punishment for those responsible. After all, it was a century ago and everyone responsible is dead. In fact, some of those deaths were the direct result of the Armenians themselves.

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On The Reputation Economy

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Cory Doctorow
2003

Thanks to many, many, unspecified technological advances, the world has become a Utopia. In “Bitchun Society”, death has been defeated – you upload your mind every night while you are asleep, and if you happen to die, your last upload is downloaded into a cloned body. You just lose a day. Scarcity and the problems of resource allocation have all been conquered. People join together in voluntary associations as needed to do what needs to be done.

Jules “works” at Disney World, where he and his friends and colleagues have taken it upon themselves to keep the theme park running. But his vision of what the Haunted Mansion should be clashes with his rival Debra, who has completely different ideas.

One day, Jules is “killed”. Restored from his backup, he finds that Debra has used his “downtime” to move in on his “territory”. Now Jules must fight to reclaim control of the Haunted Mansion, while figuring out who killed him – and why.

I suppose we should give authors a bit of a break on their first novels. Very few artists create masterpieces on their first time. So when the plot-motivating murder mystery gets pushed to the background, and a lot of the characters are rather flat, it’s understandable and forgiveable. This is primarily a story of social ideas, anyway.

But I find fatal flaws in one of his ideas….

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Book Review: A Spy Among Friends

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
Ben Macintrye
Crown Publishers (US)
(c) 2014 by the author

It’s kind of easy for most people today to forget that there was a Cold War before the Reagan Era. Or even that it began well before World War II. In the 1930s, young intellectuals dabbled with Communism as a political philosophy, figuring it would be the only way to stop fascism from taking over. Most people in charge didn’t think much of these interests. But the Soviet Union was playing a much longer game than anyone else. Someone like Kim Philby, a well-networked scion on Britain’s upper crust, was an easy target for recruitment. Even before any open hostilities. You’d never know how your investment would pay off.

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Book Review: Mars Girl by Jeff Garrity

The United States’ first attempt at colonizing Mars is in big trouble. The lander has been damaged – somehow – and is drifting off course. Worse, sixteen of the seventeen people aboard are dead, leaving only a teenaged girl alive.

Will she land safely? Will she be able to make it to the prefab, pre-landed restaurant/shelter? Will a rescue mission be able to reach her in time? How will the corporate sponsors of the mission be able to profit from this? How will the news network with exclusive coverage of the landing keep people glued to their screens, and keep the merchandise moving? How will the government spin this disaster to their advantage?

Can our intrepid…er, hero, the ace reporter Ray Barker, while stuck in a small lakeside town in Michigan, find a story that’s big enough to keep his name and face on the news?

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Book Review: Hammer and Tickle

Hammer and Tickle: A History of Communism Told Through Communist Jokes
Ben Lewis
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009

First off, this is the book version of a 2006 documentary about political humor in the Soviet Union. The nominal idea is to show the tightrope dance of those who dared criticize the regime through jokes. Just how much would you be allowed to get away with? Lewis interviews historians, archivists, and even some of those who actually made laughter at Communism’s expense. He even considers the possibility that some of it was allowed in order to defuse tensions amongst the people. If they are chuckling, they aren’t massing in the streets in protest. It’s a nice idea, but Lewis can’t seem to decide whether he’s writing a history or a joke book.

Lewis rather clumsily includes stories about his girlfriend, which detract from his narrative and weaken the overall work.

Oh well. At least there are the jokes:

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Book Review: “World War I: The African Front” by Edward Paice

Wars, for much of history, have been filled with drama. The epic clash of huge armies, with the fates of nations at stake. At the personal level, there are tales of heroism and endurance. Most often, our attention is focused on a main front – that’s where all the big battles are. Yes, battles between many thousands of men can be interesting, but so can the battles on the fringes and flanks where the numbers are only in the hundreds.

Subtitled “An Imperial War on the African Continent”, Paice’s book looks at World War I in East Africa. The fighting there was basically the last mad grab for colonies, as Britain went after German East Africa (modern Tanzania). Belgium (Belgian Congo, now DR Congo) and Portugal (Portuguese East Africa, now Mozambique) were also dragged into the fighting.

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BOOK REVIEW: “Tomorrow-Land” by Joseph Tirella

Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America
Joseph Tirella
Lyons Press, 2014

Ah, the 1964-65 World’s Fair. The last gasp of 50’s optimism, where good ol’ American Know-How and “can do” spirit would solve all the problems of the world and make the future wonderful. A showcase for America’s industrial might and corporate prowess, as well as a sort of “coming out” party for the new nations of the world that had just achieved independence.

Tirella doesn’t look at the Fair itself. This is not a guidebook. Rather, he uses the Fair as a focal point for all the changes taking place in American culture and society. For the Fair seemed to somehow draw them all into its orbit.

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Book Review: Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré s Maps

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré s Maps: Empires of Time
Peter Galison
W.W. Norton, 2003

Albert Einstein has become the poster boy for scientific genius. His image is on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and posters. Anytime someone wants a visual symbol for genius, they go with his face. The Theory of Relativity is used as a standard representation of a complex scientific theory, and his equation for the equivalence of mass and energy is bandied about by people who have no real idea what it means.

This mythologizing of Einstein has even crept in to the origin story for the Theory of Relativity. The legend has Einstein sitting idly at the Bern Patent Office, daydreaming away. Suddenly his daydreams coalesce into a complete Theory (and his hair instantaneously turns into an unkempt white mess), and the world changes.

While a pleasant image, especially to the many who aren’t conversant in the language of physics, it gives short shrift to the many other scientists who were working on the same problems at the same time.

One of those who came really close was the French physicist and mathematician Henri Poincaré. Continue reading →

Book Review – Catastrophe: 1914

Catastrophe: 1914 by Max Hastings

This year is probably a centennial that no one really wants to commemorate: the start of World War 1. The technology for killing had advanced much farther beyond military strategy, leading to horrific casualty figures. But the war (also known as “The Great War”, “The War to Make the World Safe for Democracy”, and “The War to End All Wars”) should be studied, as it is responsible for shaping the 20th century.

British historian Max Hastings has written a fantastically researched and extremely readable account of the first several months of the conflict. He has dug deep into the archives – not just in Germany, France, and England, but in eastern Europe and the Balkans as well to get information from periodicals, journals, diaries, and private letters. While giving plenty of information on the battles and strategy, he also gets down to the level of individuals, both on the front and at home.

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