Friday Review 8/06/10

I've managed to read 4 books this week.

Yasmin Sabina Khan - Enlightening the World

This was a fascinating look at the construction of the Statue of Liberty (originally called "Liberty Enlightening the World"). Khan does an excellent job of placing the construction into the context of American and French history. However, in doing that excellent job, Khan also displays one of the two traits I found annoying in the book.  The first comes from the fact that Khan has an historian's tendency to follow ideas back to their distant roots. In this discussion of the Statue of Liberty, she traces, extensively, the history of the friendship between France and the United States; the situation in the US following the Civil War; the situation in France preceding and following the Franco-Prussian War; the history of colossal monuments back to the 7 wonders of the ancient world; the use of neo-classical architecture in the US, and what that means, architecturally and ideologically within the US; the situation of architecture in France at the same time; and, finally, the various histories and biographies of the various "fathers" of the statue. The book is organized chronologically, more or less, but these side trips into the deeper past tend to come at unusual intervals throughout. In a longer book, this might not matter - actually, in a longer book, these digressions would contribute to the value of the book - but this is a very slim book, and so the digressions feel very much like distractions. The book has 12 chapters, and until chapter 10, nothing of the actual building of the Statue has been really discussed. That is, perhaps, too many discursive side trips. I frequently found myself saying "c'mon, get ON with it!," and anticipating another venture to discuss this financier, or that manufacturer of copper.

The other thing I found irksome in the book was the use of illustrations.  The book was lavishly illustrated - but often there were no pictures of what I wanted pictures of. Khan offered detailed descriptions of buildings, paintings, sculpture - many of which are still extant - but didn't include pictures of the building, painting or statue in question. I would have liked to have seen pictures of them - especially some of the Franco-Prussian War monuments, which Khan made sound particularly evocative. I could look them up via Google, but that's not the point. I would happily have sacrificed a photo of a sculptor for a photo of one of his sculptures.

Laurie King - The Beekeeper's Apprentice and O, Jerusalem 
Earlier, I reviewed King's second Mary Russell novel - A Monstrous Regiment of Women. The Russell novels describe a series of mysteries solved by Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes.  My wife, a fan of Doyle's detective, was intrigued, and so I acquired the first of the series for her, and several of the later books - she's spent the past week devouring them. I had complained that the romance in Monstrous Regiment didn't work particularly well - it seemed ungrounded - and so my wife suggested that I read the first book and the fourth book (I will explain momentarily) in order to get a better fix on why the romance does work, or is at least grounded in a relationship which makes sense.  O, Jerusalem takes place towards the end of Beekeeper - literally, there is a passage where Russell states "this is not the place to include a book length description of our trip to Palestine" - and so I do recommend that you read them concurrently. Beekeeper is a series of tightly linked vignettes - how Russell and Holmes met; their first case, their first serious case, the big event which cements their partnership. O, Jerusalem and the subsequent novels are more traditional novels. King has done some research on the period (just after World War One), and her descriptions are highly detailed and quite enjoyable. I recommend these to anyone who likes mystery novels, Sherlock Holmes, and/or well researched and written historical romance.

Victor Hanson - Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How we Fight, How we Live, and How we Think


It's hard to be an academic military historian these days.  Military history is very old fashioned in a world of social and cultural historians.  Indeed, there was an article some years ago about how so few schools even teach military history anymore. At the same time, military history outsells most other forms of history books in the general public, especially if the book addresses World War Two, or the US Civil War. The American public is deeply engrossed in those conflicts.
This book is clearly military history, and it is also popular history but Hanson is trying to do a couple of fairly important things on an academic level.  First, this is properly a short collection of three interconnected essays. Hanson examines three battles - the battle for Okinawa in World War Two, the Battle at Shiloh in the American Civil War, and the Battle of Delium during the Peloponnesian War.
This use of essays is, I think, critical to one of the two things Hanson is trying to do - form a bridge between popular and academic history. The book aims for a certain level of academic rigor, but by using the less formal essays rather than the more formal monograph, the book is not held to quite the same standards that an academic monograph might be - Hanson uses several short bibliographic essays instead of standard footnotes, for instance. A lack of footnotes appeals to the general reading public, while the use of essays keeps the book within the purview of academia. Hanson also writes in a style which is accessible to a popular audience, but is making a fairly significant argument about the nature of military history; again, attempting to bridge the divide between academic and popular history. So, that's the first thing that Hanson is doing, and I think he does a fairly decent job of it.  The book is most firmly rooted in popular history, but I think it is rigorous enough to withstand at least casual academic discussion.
The second thing Hanson is trying to accomplish is to provide an academic justification for traditional military history.  This book is crie de coure against the rise of military social history - the study of military history through a lens of social history.  Hanson decries works about women and African Americans in the US Army taking precedence over discussions of battles fought by the Army. His central argument is that the effects of specific battles have "ripples" which affect the war the battle is part of, the soldiers fighting the battle, and the societies from which the soldiers have come. While on the one hand, Hanson has a point, I think he oversells his position. Hanson is trying to prove not just that traditional military history - the study of movements of armies, analysis of battles, and discussion of decisions made by generals - has a place in academia. He is also trying to prove that this sort of history should have pride of place in academia - that it is literally more important to understand the Battle of Shiloh than it is to understand the society which made the battle necessary. Do wars have an effect on society? Absolutely. Does the outcome of a particular battle influence the direction of a specific war, and of future wars? No doubt in my mind. Should we throw out a century of historiography and return to a study of great generals and their detailed battle plans - that, I think, is taking things a little too far.
A final thought. Hanson provides some small maps of the battles in question - considerably more detailed maps would have improved this as a work of military history. Perhaps, instead of looking at three battles, Hanson could have focused on one - Shiloh, I felt, was the strongest part of his argument, but Okinawa was the battle that Hanson was clearly the most interested in - and still made the argument. So, good popular history, an interesting thesis for academic discussion, but not, actually, all that good as military history.

re: site design

Clearly, I am playing with some design options. Apologies for the rapid changes.

Monday Library Post, belated - 8/3/10

First post of August! And it's late! Well, everything slows down in the summer, right?

Anyway, two books from yesterday:

Bruce Cummings - The Korean War
I teach this period of US history, so expanding my personal knowledge base about the conflict is always a good idea.

And, because grabbing the Cummings suggested to me that I hadn't read much military history recently,

John Keegan, The First World War
This is supposed to be the definitive text on the war, and I've never read it, so I thought I'd take a crack at it.

Friday Review 7/30/10

Four books this week.

Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, Red Families v. Blue Families
There is a divide between red (conservative, Republican) and blue (liberal, Democrat) states in the US. This is a widely accepted, if rather simplistic, view. "Traditional" family models are under stress - another broadly accepted idea.  Cahn and Carbone accept both these premises, and back them up with legal precedents and strong statistical analysis. They then propose a solution. If marriage as an institution is to be saved, they argue, the institution must be expanded to as broad a group as possible - same sex marriage is vital to preserving the idea of marriage, and restricting marriage to hetero-normative couples actually weakens the institution by forcing the creation of lesser forms of social unions short of marriage. If families are to remain the locus of child-rearing, comprehensive sex ed is vital. Our education driven, information based economy is not friendly to young couples with a kid straight out of high school, so we need to empower couples to postpone childbirth until they are able to support themselves. (An interesting point made here - Cahn and Carbone suggest that sex ed should not stop in high school - that it should extend into the early 20s, because that is where the current bump in pregnancies is). Finally, the authors advocate some sort of mandated civil service - military or civilian - for teens coming out of high school to serve as a buffer between high school and the "real" world.

The book was interesting. The ideas espoused were not really new ones for me, but I don't think I'd seen them all put together like that before. However, there was a strong sense of preaching to the choir - I don't think the ideas would go over well if you were not already inclined to accept them. Cahn and Carbone acknowledge this - they state that their "fixes" for marriage will satisfy neither the staunch traditionalist nor the radical who argues that marriage as an institution should be abolished. This, however, creates a sense of glibness - "see, we've fixed the problems if only you are willing to accept our point of view" - which is both defensive and off putting. Since the groups arguing for a traditionalist view of marriage and families are one of the larger, or certainly louder, groups in the political arena today, perhaps a greater effort needed to be made to bridge towards them. Ultimately, I think the book is ineffective, despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that I agree with nearly everything within it. I am convinced - but I am not the group which needs to be convinced.

That was a little disappointing, but the only thing I really didn't like about the book was the choice of illustrations. Periodically, the authors - or, possibly, the editor - attempted to break up walls of text with some cartoons which had tangential connections to the text (at best), and they added nothing. In deed, to the extent that the cartoons were ugly and largely irrelevant, they may even have detracted from the text.

David Gordon - The Serialist
Harry Bloch is a pulp writer somewhat down on his luck. He earns his rent and grocery money by writing a variety of semi-popular genre series under pseudonyms, including a series of sci-fi novels (soft porn, clearly a spoof of the Gor novels), a series of "urban" novels (where urban = African-American), and a series of vampire romance novels (for some reason, popular right now). Oh, and he also writes essays for rich kids in prep schools. As the novel opens, Bloch is having his photo taken for the vampire novels. He is dressed as his own mother (who's name and image are the pseudonym he writes those books under), and his 15 year old manager/accomplice hands him a letter from a notorious serial killer. Said killer asks Bloch to ghost write the true story of the killer's killings - an "as-told-by". Bloch takes the commission, and suddenly a new series of killings begins, much like those of the killer for whom Bloch is writing. This launches Bloch, who is already a complicated mess of a man, into a complicated mess of an investigation.

"Complicated mess" actually describes this book quite well. It's fairly densely layered, playing with several different genre's, while taking the air out of a literary contempt for genre fiction. Gordon is playing a dicey game, one that writers like Michael Chabon do quite well - writing literary novels in a genre-esque style, and getting away with it. Gordon stumbles a little on the getting away with it - his voice is snarky (which is good) but sometimes verges on snide (which is bad) - but on the whole the book was enjoyable. One caution - it's somewhat gory in places, so some might not like it for that reason. Additionally, I would totally read the urban crime novels that Bloch excerpts, although the vampire novels and the soft porn sci fi, not so much.

David Liss - The Devil's Company
Oooo, I like Mr. Liss. This is the 3rd of his novels about Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish prize fighter turned thief catcher in 17th century London. Weaver walks a fine line between detective and thug, and Liss walks an equally fine line between detective novel and historical novel (and, in this book, spy story). The detailed descriptions of 17th century London life, especially within the Jewish sections of the city, are as gorgeous as in previous books. The plot, involving the East India Company, and politics, and France, and silk, and fashion, is delightfully twisty and kept me guessing up to the end, which is a good thing in a book of this nature. So, yes, I liked this book a great deal, and would recommend it highly. The only thing lacking is a historical note - Mr. Liss, this is what is lacking from ALL of your historical works, including The Coffee Trader and The Whiskey Rebellion - I want to know what your thoughts on the period are, I want to know what your sources are, I want to know where you diverge from the facts, and where you embroider material which is otherwise lacking. Other than that, a fine book, indeed.

Amal El-Mohtar - The Honey Month
I've had this sitting around for a while, but Amal was just interviewed by CBC Radio in Ottawa (the interview is about half-way down the scroll box, and will probably won't be there for very long, so go, listen, now!) so it seemed fitting to read it. I know Amal - not all that well, but well enough that it feels odd to review her book. Seriously, what if it was awful? How do you say that a book was awful, when you know the author? Luckily, I am spared that problem, because this book was delightful.

The premise - last February, Ms. El-Mohtar set out to taste 28 different types of honey (there are 28 different sorts of honey? I boggle.) and write something inspired by each. The result is a compact work full of lush descriptions of the honey (how each sample looks, how it smells, how it tastes) and then a poem or a piece short short fiction inspired by the honey. Amal is clearly influenced by Catherynne Valente - the short fiction echoes Valente's style and deep (and deeply odd) descriptive voice - but this work is in no way derivative. The whole collection sparkles, but I especially liked the two sonnets (ed - I am informed that they were not actually sonnets, but rather villanelles. Sonnets have 14 lines, villanelles have 19, and if I had counted, I would have noticed that.), and the story about the ring, and the story about the ravens.

My only complaint has entirely to do with my reading style - I devoured this in less than a day, and that was wrong. Just as consuming 28 different samples of honey over the course of a few hours would leave you feeling a little nauseous, so too, consuming the book in a few hours left me not nauseous, but a little overwhelmed. Perhaps I will return to the book in February, and just sip at it over the course of the month. Perhaps some of you will join me. Perhaps there will be honey?

Belated Library Post for 7/26/10

A rare trip to the library without any of my family members along, which means I came out with only a small handful of books rather than a bulging sack. (I only record the books that I borrow for me, incidentally - generally I also borrow a small stack of picture books and easy-reading novels for the kid, and sometimes stuff for my wife that I don't plan to read.)

Anyway, today, three books:

K.E. Mills - The Accidental Sorcerer
Mills is a pen name for Karen Miller, and I nixed the first book from her Kingmaker,Kingbreaker duology earlier - this looks better. It looks like it will be funny, in the vein of Pratchett.

David B. Coe - The Horseman's Gambit
Book 2 of the Blood of the Southlands books. I recall that I found the first book a little dry, we'll see how this one goes. I also recall that I liked the villain in the previous book, which is a god sign.

Deborah Blum - The Poisoner's Handbook
I'm fairly sure I heard a review of this on NPR, and it sounded good. This is a non-fiction book about the birth of forensic medicine in the 1920s.

Friday Review, 7/23/10

I think I've only actually finished two books this week, which is mildly alarming, to say the least.

Laurie King - A Monstrous Regiment of Women


This is the second in a series of books re-imagining Sherlock Holmes as he would be shortly after WWI. The protagonist is a young theological student, a woman named Mary Russell. I enjoyed the book, mostly for the descriptions of post-WWI England in terms of gender mores and social structures. There is a romance between Russell and Holmes - I gather this prompted some criticism of the series as a whole, they end up married - and it might have worked better if I had read the first book. However, in this second book, there seemed to be very little preamble. My wife is currently re-reading the original Holmes stories, and remarked on how interesting it is that a) so few of the stories feature a murder and b) how often the supplicant to Holmes goes away only partially satisfied. This book, by contrast, is a murder mystery (as most mysteries post Holmes have been), and the clients get what they were looking for, more or less. So, an interesting period piece, relatively well researched, and perhaps it would have worked better if it had not included Holmes. I have, however, ordered the first book, to see how it goes.

Thomas Sniegoski - Dancing on the Head of a Pin


This one is also a mystery. The twist here is that the detective is a fallen angel - not fallen unto Hell, but no longer welcome in Heaven either. Sniegoski has done some interesting things with the character - I especially liked the interactions between Remy Chandler and his labrador dog. It is also, interestingly enough, not really a murder mystery. In fact, it fits better as a spy novel, almost - Chandler is a detective, yes, but he is also a critical go-between between Heaven and Earth, and between Earth and Hell - someone who can do things that neither side in the longest cold war can or are willing to do. When you look at it in those terms, it works differently. Anyway, this was an enjoyable and quick read, and I'll certainly pick up a book 3, if there is one.

Both of those books were fairly quick reads. Since then, I've been somewhat bogged down in Red Families, Blue Families, which is somewhat heavy going. I will review it next week, have no fear.

Library Monday, 7/19/10

Just one book from the library today,

David Gordon - The Serialist
The premise looks interesting - an author of serials using a variety of pen-names is contracted to write the memoir of a notorious serial killer, but gets caught up in investigating a series of copy-cat murders. The back material describes it as a "love story to books," and the first couple of chapters are intriguing.

Currently, however, I am reading Thomas E. Sniegoski - Dancing on the Head of a Pin, which I picked up when I was in Virginia back in May. I think it was May. Anyway, I needed something light last night (too tired to read a heavy non-fiction, which was next on my list) and this fit the bill.