Chronic City
Author: Jonathan Lethem 2009 467 pp
My rating: 4*
Started November 3 2009, Finished November 9 2009.
At first, Chronic City came across as something of an update of Bonfire of the Vanities, a study of the lifestyle of Manhattan’s well to do populated by characters with not quite believable names. Then it began to seem vaguely Pynchonesque as characters with utterly absurd names try to go about there business in the midst of a far ranging conspiracy. Finally there were plentiful overtones of Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale and its depiction of a perpetually snowbound city that seems a lot like New York.
While Chronic engrossed and amused -- Lethem’s refractions on our current reality are often quite funny and even insightful -- the book fell a little short of greatness due to its basic plotlessness and characters who are just a little too surreal to engage readers as meaningful reflections of themselves. By comparison, the probable highpoint of Lethem’s oeuvre (so far, as he seems to have even better work ahead of him) 2003’s The Fortress of Solitude, which strongly grounds its characters in a relatable emotional and physical reality, thus instilling novelistic credibility to the magic they partake of.
Names of some of the major characters: Perkus Tooth, Oona Lazlo, Chase Insteadman, Mayor Jules Arnheim, Georgina Hawkmanaji, Richard Abneg
I live in capital’s capital, but I root against the Dow. I feel and instinctive lizard-thrill on those days when it collapses. (65)
I’m truly a vacuum filled by the folks I’m with, and vapidly neutral in their absence. (121)
His self-regard was like a grand pipe organ visible in the air between us, which he played with shameless gusto. (191)
Russ Grinspoon of Grinspoon and Hale. “’The Night Takes Back What You Said’ the act’s early Dylanesque hit and one tolerable song.” (264) [Could be read as Art Garfunkle of Simon and Garfunkle … ‘The Sounds of Silence’ … ]
Who needed computers to simulate worlds? Every person was their own simulator. (267)
Biller knew how to live off the grid, even in a place like Manhattan which was nothing but grid. (343)
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
In The Lake Of The Woods
In The Lake Of The Woods
Author: Tim O’Brien 1994 306 pp
My rating: 4*
Started October 29 2009, Finished October 30 2009.
Love wasn’t enough. Which was the truth. The saddest thing of all. (177)
To know is to be disappointed. To understand is to be betrayed. All the pretty hows and whys, the unseemly motives, the obsesses of character, the sordid little uglinesses of self and history -- these were the gimmicks you kept under wraps to the end. Better to leave your audience wailing in the dark, shaking their fists, some crying How?, others Why? (246)
Swatting flies -- yes. Maybe. But still, it’s odd how the mind erases horror. (301)
My own war does not belong to me. (301)
Because there is no end, happy or otherwise. (304)
Author: Tim O’Brien 1994 306 pp
My rating: 4*
Started October 29 2009, Finished October 30 2009.
Though I have by no means read all of O’Brien’s oeuvre, my sampling of it leads to the conclusion that this author has a single primary objective: coming to terms with his experience as a combat soldier in Vietnam. This suspenseful tale is no exception, addressing the issue from the POV of the veteran trying to live a “normal” life twenty years down the road. In the feeling of foreboding it generates this book reminded me of Robert Stone’s Outerbridge Reach, another novel which instilled in this reader a sense that nothing good was going to come of a man and all that water.
The book moves at a very brisk pace and scores high marks for readability -- for a serious literary undertaking, it is quite the page turner. It probably would have benefited though from a slower pace resulting from more interior development of the two main characters as I felt O’Brien was somewhat pat in conveying how they carried their repsective emotional and psychological burdens. Vietnam was the 800 pound gorilla in their lives and stretched credibility that they had not seriously addressed it in fifteen plus years of marriage.
The first word of the title had me thinking that “Of”, “At” or “By” would have worked just as well, but O’Brien seems to be disambiguating his otherwise post-modernisticly inconclusive tale with the preposition he choose.Love wasn’t enough. Which was the truth. The saddest thing of all. (177)
To know is to be disappointed. To understand is to be betrayed. All the pretty hows and whys, the unseemly motives, the obsesses of character, the sordid little uglinesses of self and history -- these were the gimmicks you kept under wraps to the end. Better to leave your audience wailing in the dark, shaking their fists, some crying How?, others Why? (246)
Swatting flies -- yes. Maybe. But still, it’s odd how the mind erases horror. (301)
My own war does not belong to me. (301)
Because there is no end, happy or otherwise. (304)
Thursday, October 22, 2009
A Fiery Peace In A Cold War
A Fiery Peace In A Cold War
Author: Neil Sheehan 2009 480 pp
My rating: 4*
Started October 4 2009, Finished October 20 2009.
The story of the development of the US ICBM fleet, framed by the career of the air force officer who lead the program in its first decade, Bernard Schriever. While this book would be of particular interest to military hardware geeks, I strongly recommend it for those also interested in post-war politics and the back room workings of our government.
For every American lost in the Second World War, approximately twenty-seven Soviet servicemen and women died: 11.285 million including the 2.7 million who died in German captivity. (77)
[Re Cold War leaders’ understanding of Soviet motives] The men of power were not interested in what the men of knowledge had to say. (106)
Their overall budget for each fiscal year also had be approved by, in turn, the budget committees of the ARDC and the Air Materiel Command, and then by the Air Staff, the Air Force Budget Advisory Committee, the Air Force Council, the secretary of the Air Force, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Bureau of the Budget. (269)
… Bernard Schriever was without a doubt the handomest general in the United States Air Force.(295)
Author: Neil Sheehan 2009 480 pp
My rating: 4*
Started October 4 2009, Finished October 20 2009.
The story of the development of the US ICBM fleet, framed by the career of the air force officer who lead the program in its first decade, Bernard Schriever. While this book would be of particular interest to military hardware geeks, I strongly recommend it for those also interested in post-war politics and the back room workings of our government.
I felt the book’s strongest section was the one in which Sheehan describes the onset of the Cold War, depicting that standoff which was the dominant factor in world relations for 40 years, not as an inevitability, but as a result of constant misperception and miscalculation on both sides, resulting from Stalin’s paranoia on the one side and the intellectual arrogance of US leader’s and opinion shapers on the other. The book’s surprising dramatic highlight describes the months of bureaucratic maneuvering required to place a briefing about the nascent ICBM program on President Eisenhower’s schedule; the resulting presentation to the president and consequent fast track granted the program was likely the zenith of Schriever’s career if not his life.
One of the book's strengths is its character sketches of important players in the saga, particularly those of Air Force general Curtis LeMay and Presdient Eisenhower. LeMay went from been an open-ears innovator in World War II to a power corrupted nutjob as leader of SAC in the '50s, so over the top in his god-like delusions that was the model for the General Jack Ripper character in Dr Strangelove. Eisenhower comes across both as tough, reasonable, open-minded and fiscally conservative; the author depicts him as a remarkably effective president by recent standards.
For every American lost in the Second World War, approximately twenty-seven Soviet servicemen and women died: 11.285 million including the 2.7 million who died in German captivity. (77)
[Re Cold War leaders’ understanding of Soviet motives] The men of power were not interested in what the men of knowledge had to say. (106)
Their overall budget for each fiscal year also had be approved by, in turn, the budget committees of the ARDC and the Air Materiel Command, and then by the Air Staff, the Air Force Budget Advisory Committee, the Air Force Council, the secretary of the Air Force, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Bureau of the Budget. (269)
… Bernard Schriever was without a doubt the handomest general in the United States Air Force.(295)
Sunday, October 4, 2009
The Silver Swan
The Silver Swan
Author: Benjamin Black 2008 290 pp
My rating: 3*
Started September 22 2009, Finished September 24 2009.
Benjamin Black is an alias for John Banville, a Booker Prize winning Irish novelist, who has taken to slumming or at least paying the bills by writing detective novels under the name of Black. As one might expect, The Silver Swan consequently has considerable literary merit. Alas, it does not rise above the pack as a compelling who-done-it, failing to generate much suspense or interest in its central mystery. At the very end, however, it does find itself in a memorably indefinite and bleak place.
Strange, she thought again, this business of people dying. It happened all the time, of course, it was as commonplace as birth. To not be here and then to be here was one thing, but to have been here, and made a life in all its variousness and complexity and then suddenly to be gone, that was what was truly uncanny. (72)
Everything rushes back, everything replaces itself. … When she turned back to the hall the emptiness of the house rushed at her, as if she were a vacuum into which everything was pouring, unstoppably. (272)
Author: Benjamin Black 2008 290 pp
My rating: 3*
Started September 22 2009, Finished September 24 2009.
Benjamin Black is an alias for John Banville, a Booker Prize winning Irish novelist, who has taken to slumming or at least paying the bills by writing detective novels under the name of Black. As one might expect, The Silver Swan consequently has considerable literary merit. Alas, it does not rise above the pack as a compelling who-done-it, failing to generate much suspense or interest in its central mystery. At the very end, however, it does find itself in a memorably indefinite and bleak place.
Strange, she thought again, this business of people dying. It happened all the time, of course, it was as commonplace as birth. To not be here and then to be here was one thing, but to have been here, and made a life in all its variousness and complexity and then suddenly to be gone, that was what was truly uncanny. (72)
Everything rushes back, everything replaces itself. … When she turned back to the hall the emptiness of the house rushed at her, as if she were a vacuum into which everything was pouring, unstoppably. (272)
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Service Included
Service Included
Author: Phoebe Damrosch 228 pp
My rating: 3*
Started September 20 2009, Finished September 22 2009.
This book, subtitled “Four-Star secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter” is touted as the story of the author’s experiences working at Per Se, one of New York’s most highly regarded fine dining establishments, during its first two years of operation. I found the parts of the book in which Damrosch recounts the insider’s view of such a palace of privilege -- the culinary imagination, attention to detail and vast amount of effort required to be the best -- to be quite revealing; without having eaten there, I have a pretty good idea what a meal at Per Se would be like. However, despite the successfully execution of its stated objective, the book was much less than it could have been since so much of it was devoted to the ostensible filler of the author’s life outside of the restaurant . It feels as though the author and her editor realized they did not have a book length of primary material available so rather than do more research they decided to pad the work by letting us get to know the author; the sections in which the author pointlessly describes a café where she spends many of her off hours seem intended solely to build page count while the various chic-litty sections detailing the author’s love live are intrusive enough to be annoying but not probing enough to be interesting -- I started and finished this book much more interested in the restaurant than the author.
The shame of it is that Damrosch is fairly engaging writer from whom this reader at least would have been happy to learn much more about the restaurant itself e.g. I would have been quite interested in more detailed descriptions of the many other jobs performed at Per Se and the inside perspective of those who perform them. As one who routinely bemoans the indifferent food preparation and service of the eating establishments I tend to patronize, I was fascinated by the near fanatical preparation (including weeks of training for the entire staff before the opening), solicitousness and attention to detail of the Per Staff. A fair amount of get-a-life entertainment was provided by the entire organization’s preoccupation with identifying the New York Times’ undercover restaurant reviewer and ensuring that his experiences at Per Se (he visited six times while forming his four star review which by itself seemed to ensure Per Se’s success) were even more perfect than those of all other patrons. Ultimately the book left me quite impressed by the level of professionalism and pride demonstrated by the Per Se staff ; I was encouraged to learn that Americans still excel at something.
“She’s fabulous,” she would tell her guests with a grand gesture toward me, as if recommending a house specialty. The guests looked at me skeptically, waiting for me to be fabulous. (181)
Not liking to discuss my writing with strangers, I had been privately auditioning possible conversation stoppers … “Actually, I’m writing a biography … About a man in Alaska who makes foie gras from penguins.” (207)
Author: Phoebe Damrosch 228 pp
My rating: 3*
Started September 20 2009, Finished September 22 2009.
This book, subtitled “Four-Star secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter” is touted as the story of the author’s experiences working at Per Se, one of New York’s most highly regarded fine dining establishments, during its first two years of operation. I found the parts of the book in which Damrosch recounts the insider’s view of such a palace of privilege -- the culinary imagination, attention to detail and vast amount of effort required to be the best -- to be quite revealing; without having eaten there, I have a pretty good idea what a meal at Per Se would be like. However, despite the successfully execution of its stated objective, the book was much less than it could have been since so much of it was devoted to the ostensible filler of the author’s life outside of the restaurant . It feels as though the author and her editor realized they did not have a book length of primary material available so rather than do more research they decided to pad the work by letting us get to know the author; the sections in which the author pointlessly describes a café where she spends many of her off hours seem intended solely to build page count while the various chic-litty sections detailing the author’s love live are intrusive enough to be annoying but not probing enough to be interesting -- I started and finished this book much more interested in the restaurant than the author.
The shame of it is that Damrosch is fairly engaging writer from whom this reader at least would have been happy to learn much more about the restaurant itself e.g. I would have been quite interested in more detailed descriptions of the many other jobs performed at Per Se and the inside perspective of those who perform them. As one who routinely bemoans the indifferent food preparation and service of the eating establishments I tend to patronize, I was fascinated by the near fanatical preparation (including weeks of training for the entire staff before the opening), solicitousness and attention to detail of the Per Staff. A fair amount of get-a-life entertainment was provided by the entire organization’s preoccupation with identifying the New York Times’ undercover restaurant reviewer and ensuring that his experiences at Per Se (he visited six times while forming his four star review which by itself seemed to ensure Per Se’s success) were even more perfect than those of all other patrons. Ultimately the book left me quite impressed by the level of professionalism and pride demonstrated by the Per Se staff ; I was encouraged to learn that Americans still excel at something.
“She’s fabulous,” she would tell her guests with a grand gesture toward me, as if recommending a house specialty. The guests looked at me skeptically, waiting for me to be fabulous. (181)
Not liking to discuss my writing with strangers, I had been privately auditioning possible conversation stoppers … “Actually, I’m writing a biography … About a man in Alaska who makes foie gras from penguins.” (207)
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Methland
Methland
Author: Nick Redding 246 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started August 18 2009, Finished August 26 2009.
This examination of how illegal methamphetamine drug affects small town society succeeds most when in explores the nuts and bolts of meth usage, addiction, manufacturing and distribution. I found the first section quite compelling, the second, in which the author tries to draw far reaching connections between the rise of big pharma and agribusiness, the spread of meth and the collapse of small town America to be stretching-it-to-book-length filler and the third, where Redding follows up on people introduced in part one and provides an up to date assessment of the effectiveness of anti-meth legislation, well worth reading. The book clearly depicts the devastating addictiveness of this drug and the cataclysmic consequences for those addicted to it, their families and their communities. The book also makes a compelling case that big pharma has contributed mightily to the meth crisis by lobbying strenuously against measures that would have greatly reduced the availability of precursor drugs used to manufacture meth because such restrictions would have modestly inconvenienced the makers of over the counter cold medicines. When more effective legislation is put in place, albeit still watered down as a result of concessions to the drug lobby, and seems to be effective, anti-drug authorities quickly proclaim that the battle against meth has been won and the media declares the crisis over and possibly overblown in the first place; as the mucky-mucks rest on their laurels, the drug cartels figure out how to exploit the loopholes in the law to restore their supply of precursor drugs. As the author writes his final chapter, arrest statistic indicates that whatever progress had been had been lost and that meth is more prevalent than ever.
… high on crank … Jarvis could easily go for sixteen hours without having to eat, drink, use the bathroom or sleep … he could have sex with his girlfriend for hours on end, drink without getting drunk and be awake for work the next day without ever having slept. (49-50)
Twelve hours is roughly the length of meth’s half-life, and a measure of how long it takes one’s body to completely metabolize the drug, as well as an indicator of how powerful the drug is. (The half-life of crack is only twenty minutes …) (51)
… the reasons to do crank are in fact quite often -- initially, at least -- more numerous and compelling than the reasons not to do it. … the ability to make something in your basement that promised work, success, wealth, thinness and happiness was not necessarily too good to be true. (54)
The lengthy description of the décor in the Mexican restaurant on page 170 was completely irrelevant and struck me as pure filler.
Whether meth changed our perception of the American small town or simply brought to light the fact that things in small-town America are much changed is in some ways irrelevant. In my telling, meth has always been less an agent of change and more a symptom of it. (183)
He was working hard -- at staying clean, at raising Buck, at making money. But without meth, Major found it impossible to feel, as he put it, “happy.” … Even when Major did the right thing, he couldn’t quite believe in its rightness, for that thing didn’t satisfy him -- meth did. (230-231)
Meth seizures that year went down, along with purity, signaling the first major DEA triumph over the drug’s spred. Of course, the victory was pyrrhic, once traffickers switched to the pill-form pseudo that drug lobbyists demanded remain unmonitored. (238)
Author: Nick Redding 246 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started August 18 2009, Finished August 26 2009.
This examination of how illegal methamphetamine drug affects small town society succeeds most when in explores the nuts and bolts of meth usage, addiction, manufacturing and distribution. I found the first section quite compelling, the second, in which the author tries to draw far reaching connections between the rise of big pharma and agribusiness, the spread of meth and the collapse of small town America to be stretching-it-to-book-length filler and the third, where Redding follows up on people introduced in part one and provides an up to date assessment of the effectiveness of anti-meth legislation, well worth reading. The book clearly depicts the devastating addictiveness of this drug and the cataclysmic consequences for those addicted to it, their families and their communities. The book also makes a compelling case that big pharma has contributed mightily to the meth crisis by lobbying strenuously against measures that would have greatly reduced the availability of precursor drugs used to manufacture meth because such restrictions would have modestly inconvenienced the makers of over the counter cold medicines. When more effective legislation is put in place, albeit still watered down as a result of concessions to the drug lobby, and seems to be effective, anti-drug authorities quickly proclaim that the battle against meth has been won and the media declares the crisis over and possibly overblown in the first place; as the mucky-mucks rest on their laurels, the drug cartels figure out how to exploit the loopholes in the law to restore their supply of precursor drugs. As the author writes his final chapter, arrest statistic indicates that whatever progress had been had been lost and that meth is more prevalent than ever.
… high on crank … Jarvis could easily go for sixteen hours without having to eat, drink, use the bathroom or sleep … he could have sex with his girlfriend for hours on end, drink without getting drunk and be awake for work the next day without ever having slept. (49-50)
Twelve hours is roughly the length of meth’s half-life, and a measure of how long it takes one’s body to completely metabolize the drug, as well as an indicator of how powerful the drug is. (The half-life of crack is only twenty minutes …) (51)
… the reasons to do crank are in fact quite often -- initially, at least -- more numerous and compelling than the reasons not to do it. … the ability to make something in your basement that promised work, success, wealth, thinness and happiness was not necessarily too good to be true. (54)
The lengthy description of the décor in the Mexican restaurant on page 170 was completely irrelevant and struck me as pure filler.
Whether meth changed our perception of the American small town or simply brought to light the fact that things in small-town America are much changed is in some ways irrelevant. In my telling, meth has always been less an agent of change and more a symptom of it. (183)
He was working hard -- at staying clean, at raising Buck, at making money. But without meth, Major found it impossible to feel, as he put it, “happy.” … Even when Major did the right thing, he couldn’t quite believe in its rightness, for that thing didn’t satisfy him -- meth did. (230-231)
Meth seizures that year went down, along with purity, signaling the first major DEA triumph over the drug’s spred. Of course, the victory was pyrrhic, once traffickers switched to the pill-form pseudo that drug lobbyists demanded remain unmonitored. (238)
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Things They Carried
The Things They Carried
Author: Tim O’Brien 270 pp
My rating: 4*
Started July 19 2009, Finished July 22 2009.
In these finely wrought stories exploring his Vietnam experience, O’Brien mixes memoir and fiction, distilling potent material that whether imagined or remembered, feels very true, describing a world of stoned and terrified infantry grunts whose patrols lack senior officers, tangible enemies and any purpose whatsoever but are all the more deadly for these reasons. The intent is to capture the feel of the experience rather than exactly document it, so little explanation is given as to the wherefore and whys, an approach that worked well for me, except when a character engages in ambush by hand grenade (145), a weapon choice which seemed motivated by dramatic effect rather than combat plausibility.
You’d be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you’d feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn’t water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you’d feel the stuff eating away at important organs. (37)
Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. (41)
… it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead. (44)
Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference -- a powerful, implacable beauty -- and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly. (89)
Author: Tim O’Brien 270 pp
My rating: 4*
Started July 19 2009, Finished July 22 2009.
In these finely wrought stories exploring his Vietnam experience, O’Brien mixes memoir and fiction, distilling potent material that whether imagined or remembered, feels very true, describing a world of stoned and terrified infantry grunts whose patrols lack senior officers, tangible enemies and any purpose whatsoever but are all the more deadly for these reasons. The intent is to capture the feel of the experience rather than exactly document it, so little explanation is given as to the wherefore and whys, an approach that worked well for me, except when a character engages in ambush by hand grenade (145), a weapon choice which seemed motivated by dramatic effect rather than combat plausibility.
You’d be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you’d feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn’t water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you’d feel the stuff eating away at important organs. (37)
Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. (41)
… it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead. (44)
Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference -- a powerful, implacable beauty -- and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly. (89)
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Call It Sleep
Call It Sleep
Author: Henry Roth 441 pp
My rating: 5*
Started July 12 2009, Finished July 19 2009.
This depiction of an early 20th century, underclass, ethnic childhood rivals Angela’s Ashes, particularly in its fly-in-the-head conveyance of a child’s view of the world, thought process and inner voice. Though Sleep is fiction, it was largely based on Roth’s childhood which while materially far better off than Frank McCourt’s -- the protagonist, David Schearl, does not want for food -- was characterized by psychic trauma that makes McCourt’s harrowing upbringing seem a model of well being. Though unlike McCourt’s father, David’s is a steady breadwinner, his constant simmering rage makes him the focal point of David’s chronic state of fear. David’s mother is the counterpoint to his father and the only dependable positive and island of security in David’s life. In the dog eat dog milieu of the Brownsville and lower east side neighborhoods of New York city, most of David’s interactions with other children, whether his fellow Jews or goyim, increase his wariness as there is very little sense of the protected childhood that we have come to expect for children in America: other boys are often feral predators indifferent to exposing each other to physical hazard and even ten year old girls can be precociously sexual, experimenting with David in ways he finds repulsive and terrifying.
The book’s two salient stylistic characteristics (and triumphs) are its child’s eye point of view and its phonetically rendered English speech. The narrative point of view is David’s and the author succeeds completely in rendering David’s impressions and thought process -- his continual attempts to make sense of the world he inhabits where everything except his mother’s company represents peril. Virtually all the characters in the book are recent immigrants whose spoken English is often unrecognizably accented, making most such speech seem that of simpletons. Roth conveys that this impression of ostensible stupidity is highly misleading by transcribing the Yiddish that the Jews speak among themselves in a formal English which projects learning and rationality.
I found the book’s ending a bit of a letdown. David’s terror and his father’s anger both seem headed toward catastrophic crescendos which somehow don’t come to pass; the mechanism for the dispelling of the father’s murderous rage is not even shown or described so that particular plot twist -- at the moment of greatest provocation, he somehow gains control of himself, something that he had never previously shown any capacity for, struck me as a highly implausible conclusion unbefitting a great work of literature. Nonetheless, I found the book’s strengths so compelling and engrossing that despite this lapse, I still give Call It Sleep my highest rating.
David really didn’t care what she thought of him just as long as she sat there. Besides, he did have something to ask her, only he couldn’t make up his mind to venture it. It might be too unpleasant. Still no matter what her answer would be, no matter what he found out, he was always safe near her. (65)
“You were good enough, the gentlest of us all. But you weren’t truly Jewish. You were strange. You didn’t have a Jew’s nature.”
“And what kind of a nature is that?”
“Ach!” Aunt Bertha said impatiently. “You see? You smile! You’re too calm, too generous.” (165)
“Leo, Did he say he wuz Leo?”
“Leo, yea; futt flaw, sebm futty fi.’ He’s a goy.” (317) [Fourth floor, seven forty five]
Author: Henry Roth 441 pp
My rating: 5*
Started July 12 2009, Finished July 19 2009.
This depiction of an early 20th century, underclass, ethnic childhood rivals Angela’s Ashes, particularly in its fly-in-the-head conveyance of a child’s view of the world, thought process and inner voice. Though Sleep is fiction, it was largely based on Roth’s childhood which while materially far better off than Frank McCourt’s -- the protagonist, David Schearl, does not want for food -- was characterized by psychic trauma that makes McCourt’s harrowing upbringing seem a model of well being. Though unlike McCourt’s father, David’s is a steady breadwinner, his constant simmering rage makes him the focal point of David’s chronic state of fear. David’s mother is the counterpoint to his father and the only dependable positive and island of security in David’s life. In the dog eat dog milieu of the Brownsville and lower east side neighborhoods of New York city, most of David’s interactions with other children, whether his fellow Jews or goyim, increase his wariness as there is very little sense of the protected childhood that we have come to expect for children in America: other boys are often feral predators indifferent to exposing each other to physical hazard and even ten year old girls can be precociously sexual, experimenting with David in ways he finds repulsive and terrifying.
The book’s two salient stylistic characteristics (and triumphs) are its child’s eye point of view and its phonetically rendered English speech. The narrative point of view is David’s and the author succeeds completely in rendering David’s impressions and thought process -- his continual attempts to make sense of the world he inhabits where everything except his mother’s company represents peril. Virtually all the characters in the book are recent immigrants whose spoken English is often unrecognizably accented, making most such speech seem that of simpletons. Roth conveys that this impression of ostensible stupidity is highly misleading by transcribing the Yiddish that the Jews speak among themselves in a formal English which projects learning and rationality.
I found the book’s ending a bit of a letdown. David’s terror and his father’s anger both seem headed toward catastrophic crescendos which somehow don’t come to pass; the mechanism for the dispelling of the father’s murderous rage is not even shown or described so that particular plot twist -- at the moment of greatest provocation, he somehow gains control of himself, something that he had never previously shown any capacity for, struck me as a highly implausible conclusion unbefitting a great work of literature. Nonetheless, I found the book’s strengths so compelling and engrossing that despite this lapse, I still give Call It Sleep my highest rating.
David really didn’t care what she thought of him just as long as she sat there. Besides, he did have something to ask her, only he couldn’t make up his mind to venture it. It might be too unpleasant. Still no matter what her answer would be, no matter what he found out, he was always safe near her. (65)
“You were good enough, the gentlest of us all. But you weren’t truly Jewish. You were strange. You didn’t have a Jew’s nature.”
“And what kind of a nature is that?”
“Ach!” Aunt Bertha said impatiently. “You see? You smile! You’re too calm, too generous.” (165)
“Leo, Did he say he wuz Leo?”
“Leo, yea; futt flaw, sebm futty fi.’ He’s a goy.” (317) [Fourth floor, seven forty five]
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Mrs. Dalloway
Author: Virginia Woolf 199 pp
My rating: 3*
Started June 21 2009, Finished July 8 2009.
This is a boulder problem of a novel, a technical challenge that goes nowhere. An exercise in stream of conscious writing, the book follows the titular character and some whose paths she crosses through her day of party planning, reminiscing and social encounters. Though short, it is nonetheless demanding, requiring close reading and careful attention on the part of the reader, particularly as transitions from one character’s thoughts to another tend to occur in mid paragraph and even mid sentence. The books modernism and ambition to reinvent the form bring to mind Eliot’s contemporaneous The Waste Land, as do various moments and for that matter, its setting in London, the “unreal city”. Of all the characters, Mrs. Dalloway herself came across as the least clearly depicted.
“In love!” she said. That he at his age should be sucked under in his little-bow-tie by that monster! (45)
The word “time” split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without making them, hard, white imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; (69)
Later she wasn’t so positive perhaps; she thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist’s religion of doing good for the sake of goodness. (78)
The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent’s Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained -- at last! -- the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round slowly, in the light.
A terrible confession it was … but now, at the age of fifty-three one scarcely needed people any more. Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, int the sun, in Regent‘s Park, was enough. (79)
Author: Virginia Woolf 199 pp
My rating: 3*
Started June 21 2009, Finished July 8 2009.
This is a boulder problem of a novel, a technical challenge that goes nowhere. An exercise in stream of conscious writing, the book follows the titular character and some whose paths she crosses through her day of party planning, reminiscing and social encounters. Though short, it is nonetheless demanding, requiring close reading and careful attention on the part of the reader, particularly as transitions from one character’s thoughts to another tend to occur in mid paragraph and even mid sentence. The books modernism and ambition to reinvent the form bring to mind Eliot’s contemporaneous The Waste Land, as do various moments and for that matter, its setting in London, the “unreal city”. Of all the characters, Mrs. Dalloway herself came across as the least clearly depicted.
“In love!” she said. That he at his age should be sucked under in his little-bow-tie by that monster! (45)
The word “time” split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without making them, hard, white imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; (69)
Later she wasn’t so positive perhaps; she thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist’s religion of doing good for the sake of goodness. (78)
The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought, coming out of Regent’s Park, and holding his hat in hand, was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained -- at last! -- the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round slowly, in the light.
A terrible confession it was … but now, at the age of fifty-three one scarcely needed people any more. Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, int the sun, in Regent‘s Park, was enough. (79)
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tears in the Darkness
Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
Author: Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman 398 pp
My rating: 4*
Started June 27 2009, Finished July 2 2009.
The central story of this book, the extreme privations faced by the US servicemen who fought the Japanese on Bataan in early 1942 and then were captured, imprisoned and enslaved, inspires horror at man’s inhumanity to man and awe at his capacity for survival. While the writing is no more than serviceable, the central framing device -- following a single still alive survivor, Montanan Ben Steele, through the entire ordeal -- did not particularly enhance the story for me and the last 60 pages, dealing with a someone has to pay even if justice is not served war crime trial and Steele’s homecoming felt perfunctory, the central story is so compelling as to overwhelm any weaknesses.
The cumulative suffering endured by the captives -- months of hopeless rearguard battle, followed by three years of captivity by captors completely indifferent to the survival of their prisoners which included the notorious days of marching through the shade less tropical sun with virtually no water, captivity in a feculent, hideously overcrowded holding pen, transport in the cargo bays of broken down merchant ships under frequent bombardment and finally twelve hour shifts with one day off in ten as virtual slaves in a coal mine -- must rank as the most sustained, inhumane, brutalizing ordeal suffered by any large group in American history; the winter in Valley Forge pales by comparison.
Perhaps I missed such an accounting but the war crimes section should have begun with a final tally of number of prisoners taken in 1942 compared to number of survivors liberated in 1945.
A strength of the book is in providing some insight into the mindset of the Japanese, somewhat humanizing their sadistic indifference to their prisoner’s well being. Apparently the ultra hard line reactionary national leadership propagated an anachronistic (and fabricated) concept of a national identity based on bushido and samurai values which turned the nation and particularly the arm into a savage death cult. Physical brutality was a standard part of army training -- men who received such treatment from their own side could hardly be excepted to have much consideration for the well being of prisoners.
It might be time to read another biography of MacArthur, the commander of the US forces which were captured (though he and his family were evacuated to safety). I have a positive memory of him from American Caesar which Tears considerably tarnishes: he comes off as a self-aggrandizing, incompetent blowhard whose high handed inactivity immediately after Pearl Harbor did much to contribute to the debacle that followed, though to be fair, the US forces on the Philippines in 1942 had no hope of beating the Japanese and once they surrendered, they were doomed.
From a prewar Japanese pamphlet entitled “Now, how about the Americans?”:
“The men make money to live luxuriously and over-educate their wives and daughters who are allowed to talk too much. Their lack of real culture is betrayed by their love of jazz music … “ (75)
Japanese doctor tells an ambulatory soldier with a shoulder wound “There is not way to treat such a big and serious wound … The only thing you can do is wash it with seawater.” (103)
Towards the end of the battle of Bataan the commanding general of US forces asks his subordinate commanders what percentage of their troops are effective, meaning they could “walk a hundred yards without stopping to rest, raise his rifle to his shoulder, take aim and shoot at the enemy. By that definition the officers said “only fifteen out of one hundred were fit to fight, and at the moment no one in the command shack could say exactly how many men were still under arms or in their fighting holes.” (145) In a battle shortly thereafter, Ben Steele hears an officer initiate a retreat by shouting “It’s every man for himself!” (145)
Japanese parents often sent their sons off to war with admonitions such as “Don’t come back alive” or “Go and die for your country.” (209)
[For a forced labor road crew bivouacked in the jungle] Instead of a rice pot, the Japanese gave them a rusty old wheelbarrow coated with dried concrete. (253)
[About Japanese transport ships] Life at every level belowdecks was so miserable (in tropical waters the holds reached temperatures of 130) the Japanese troops complained bitterly among themselves, and headquarters, apparently getting wind of the grousing, tried to put the troops’ predicament into perspective. In the 1941 handbook (“Read This Alone and the War Can Be Won”), the hohei were told, “Never forget that in the dark and steaming lowest decks of the ship, with no murmur of complaint at the unfairness of their treatment, the Army horses are suffering in patience .. Remember that however exhausted you yourselves may feel, the horses will have reached a stage of exhaustion even more distressing.”
In the open area in the middle of the holds, men were made to stand so tightly bunched that, looking down from the hatch above, the Japanese guards could see only heads and shoulders, like the tops of pickles jammed into a jar.” (308)
Conditions were so bad on the Japanese transport ship taking prisoners from the Philippines to Japan in late 1944 comes under US bombardment, a US colonel among the trasportees thought “ I hope we get hit. Better to takes our chances [in the water] than continue in this hell-ship”. (311)
On another transport ship, the Enoura Maru, during a 48 day transit at in late ‘44 and early ‘45, only 425 of the 1619 prisoners who started the journey survived. Untreated wounds, dysentery, disease, hunger and thirst killed the rest. (316)
Once Japan had surrendered, the US tried to air drop supplies to POW camps. At one camp, POWs who had survived over three years of extreme ordeals were killed by the falling supply barrels when their parachutes failed to open. (331)
The way a Japanese met death was taken by his countrymen as an emblem of the way he had lived his life. Hope for the best, embrace the worst. Life is precious -- let it go, like it was nothing at all. (351)
Author: Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman 398 pp
My rating: 4*
Started June 27 2009, Finished July 2 2009.
The central story of this book, the extreme privations faced by the US servicemen who fought the Japanese on Bataan in early 1942 and then were captured, imprisoned and enslaved, inspires horror at man’s inhumanity to man and awe at his capacity for survival. While the writing is no more than serviceable, the central framing device -- following a single still alive survivor, Montanan Ben Steele, through the entire ordeal -- did not particularly enhance the story for me and the last 60 pages, dealing with a someone has to pay even if justice is not served war crime trial and Steele’s homecoming felt perfunctory, the central story is so compelling as to overwhelm any weaknesses.
The cumulative suffering endured by the captives -- months of hopeless rearguard battle, followed by three years of captivity by captors completely indifferent to the survival of their prisoners which included the notorious days of marching through the shade less tropical sun with virtually no water, captivity in a feculent, hideously overcrowded holding pen, transport in the cargo bays of broken down merchant ships under frequent bombardment and finally twelve hour shifts with one day off in ten as virtual slaves in a coal mine -- must rank as the most sustained, inhumane, brutalizing ordeal suffered by any large group in American history; the winter in Valley Forge pales by comparison.
Perhaps I missed such an accounting but the war crimes section should have begun with a final tally of number of prisoners taken in 1942 compared to number of survivors liberated in 1945.
A strength of the book is in providing some insight into the mindset of the Japanese, somewhat humanizing their sadistic indifference to their prisoner’s well being. Apparently the ultra hard line reactionary national leadership propagated an anachronistic (and fabricated) concept of a national identity based on bushido and samurai values which turned the nation and particularly the arm into a savage death cult. Physical brutality was a standard part of army training -- men who received such treatment from their own side could hardly be excepted to have much consideration for the well being of prisoners.
It might be time to read another biography of MacArthur, the commander of the US forces which were captured (though he and his family were evacuated to safety). I have a positive memory of him from American Caesar which Tears considerably tarnishes: he comes off as a self-aggrandizing, incompetent blowhard whose high handed inactivity immediately after Pearl Harbor did much to contribute to the debacle that followed, though to be fair, the US forces on the Philippines in 1942 had no hope of beating the Japanese and once they surrendered, they were doomed.
From a prewar Japanese pamphlet entitled “Now, how about the Americans?”:
“The men make money to live luxuriously and over-educate their wives and daughters who are allowed to talk too much. Their lack of real culture is betrayed by their love of jazz music … “ (75)
Japanese doctor tells an ambulatory soldier with a shoulder wound “There is not way to treat such a big and serious wound … The only thing you can do is wash it with seawater.” (103)
Towards the end of the battle of Bataan the commanding general of US forces asks his subordinate commanders what percentage of their troops are effective, meaning they could “walk a hundred yards without stopping to rest, raise his rifle to his shoulder, take aim and shoot at the enemy. By that definition the officers said “only fifteen out of one hundred were fit to fight, and at the moment no one in the command shack could say exactly how many men were still under arms or in their fighting holes.” (145) In a battle shortly thereafter, Ben Steele hears an officer initiate a retreat by shouting “It’s every man for himself!” (145)
Japanese parents often sent their sons off to war with admonitions such as “Don’t come back alive” or “Go and die for your country.” (209)
[For a forced labor road crew bivouacked in the jungle] Instead of a rice pot, the Japanese gave them a rusty old wheelbarrow coated with dried concrete. (253)
[About Japanese transport ships] Life at every level belowdecks was so miserable (in tropical waters the holds reached temperatures of 130) the Japanese troops complained bitterly among themselves, and headquarters, apparently getting wind of the grousing, tried to put the troops’ predicament into perspective. In the 1941 handbook (“Read This Alone and the War Can Be Won”), the hohei were told, “Never forget that in the dark and steaming lowest decks of the ship, with no murmur of complaint at the unfairness of their treatment, the Army horses are suffering in patience .. Remember that however exhausted you yourselves may feel, the horses will have reached a stage of exhaustion even more distressing.”
In the open area in the middle of the holds, men were made to stand so tightly bunched that, looking down from the hatch above, the Japanese guards could see only heads and shoulders, like the tops of pickles jammed into a jar.” (308)
Conditions were so bad on the Japanese transport ship taking prisoners from the Philippines to Japan in late 1944 comes under US bombardment, a US colonel among the trasportees thought “ I hope we get hit. Better to takes our chances [in the water] than continue in this hell-ship”. (311)
On another transport ship, the Enoura Maru, during a 48 day transit at in late ‘44 and early ‘45, only 425 of the 1619 prisoners who started the journey survived. Untreated wounds, dysentery, disease, hunger and thirst killed the rest. (316)
Once Japan had surrendered, the US tried to air drop supplies to POW camps. At one camp, POWs who had survived over three years of extreme ordeals were killed by the falling supply barrels when their parachutes failed to open. (331)
The way a Japanese met death was taken by his countrymen as an emblem of the way he had lived his life. Hope for the best, embrace the worst. Life is precious -- let it go, like it was nothing at all. (351)
Sunday, June 21, 2009
A Bend in the River
A Bend in the River
Author: VS Naipaul 416 pp
My rating: 4*
Started June 10 2009, Finished June 15 2009.
At once an homage to Heart of Darkness, a portrait of recently post-colonial Africa and an exploration of one of Naipaul’s major themes, the lot the descendents of Diaspora Indians, this novel partially compensates for lacking the humor of Naipaul’s other masterpiece, A House For Mr. Biswas, with an unrelentingly ominous tone. The characters are not as fleshed out or human identifiable as those in Biswas, but the prose is more forceful -- at times I felt like I should underline the entire book. The book seems to be set in a fictionalized Congo/Zaire in the period just after that nation and most of sub-Saharan Africa became independent nations; it is notably depressing to think that the nation which in the book is depicted as almost completely non-functional and on the brink anarchy, has gone steadily down hill since Bend was published..
Though Father Huismans knew so much about African religion and went such trouble to collect his pieces, I never felt that he was concerned about Africans in any other way; he seemed indifferent to the state of the country. (90)
Who wanted philosophy or faith for the good times? We could all cope with the good times. It was for the bad that we had to be equipped. And here in Africa, none of us were as well equipped as the Africans. (105)
This was how the place worked on you: you never knew what to think or feel. Fear or shame -- there seemed to be nothing in between. (112)
In a strongly Kurtzian echo, Raymond says of the president, “He is a truly remarkable man.” (198) In HOD, Kurtz is referred to at least five times as a “remarkable man”.
Bringing to mind Marlowe’s “inconclusive experiences” in HOD, Salim remarks “our interview ended inconclusively”. (214)
Indar’s interview in London brings to mind Marlowe’s in Brussels. (218)
It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right. (286-7)
You mustn’t think it’s bad just for you. It’s bad for everybody. That’s the terrible thing. It’s bad for Prosper, bad for the man they gave your shop to, bad for everybody. Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. (408)
Author: VS Naipaul 416 pp
My rating: 4*
Started June 10 2009, Finished June 15 2009.
At once an homage to Heart of Darkness, a portrait of recently post-colonial Africa and an exploration of one of Naipaul’s major themes, the lot the descendents of Diaspora Indians, this novel partially compensates for lacking the humor of Naipaul’s other masterpiece, A House For Mr. Biswas, with an unrelentingly ominous tone. The characters are not as fleshed out or human identifiable as those in Biswas, but the prose is more forceful -- at times I felt like I should underline the entire book. The book seems to be set in a fictionalized Congo/Zaire in the period just after that nation and most of sub-Saharan Africa became independent nations; it is notably depressing to think that the nation which in the book is depicted as almost completely non-functional and on the brink anarchy, has gone steadily down hill since Bend was published..
Though Father Huismans knew so much about African religion and went such trouble to collect his pieces, I never felt that he was concerned about Africans in any other way; he seemed indifferent to the state of the country. (90)
Who wanted philosophy or faith for the good times? We could all cope with the good times. It was for the bad that we had to be equipped. And here in Africa, none of us were as well equipped as the Africans. (105)
This was how the place worked on you: you never knew what to think or feel. Fear or shame -- there seemed to be nothing in between. (112)
In a strongly Kurtzian echo, Raymond says of the president, “He is a truly remarkable man.” (198) In HOD, Kurtz is referred to at least five times as a “remarkable man”.
Bringing to mind Marlowe’s “inconclusive experiences” in HOD, Salim remarks “our interview ended inconclusively”. (214)
Indar’s interview in London brings to mind Marlowe’s in Brussels. (218)
It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right. (286-7)
You mustn’t think it’s bad just for you. It’s bad for everybody. That’s the terrible thing. It’s bad for Prosper, bad for the man they gave your shop to, bad for everybody. Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. (408)
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Eating the Sun
Eating the Sun
Author: Oliver Morton 2008 412 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started April 7 2009, Finished May 12 2009.
This book is primarily a history of human understanding of photosynthesis, though it also is substantially concerned with how photosynthesis has shaped the planet. I thought too much of the book was devoted to the scientific personalities in the arena and not enough to clearly and simply explaining the intricacies of photosynthesis itself; the author tends to explain a breakthrough then cover many pages discussing various tangential issues leading up to the next big discovery which caused me to lose track of the what was important and greatly diluted my understanding of the fundamentals. Despite the fact that reviews state that the scientific explanations are directed to the layman, I still had a hard time keeping everything straight, but then biology was always a weak subject for me. Nonetheless, I understood enough of the details to realize that the unlikelihood of a system as complex as photosynthesis developing randomly is so great as to prompt even an affirmed non-believer to consider the possibility of a greater power pulling the strings. The end of the book addresses human induced climate change which the author indicates is beyond dispute and if left to its current trajectory, will have a severe negative impact on the sustainability of human society; he doesn’t feel the situation is hopeless though, envisioning Manhattan Project type effort to engineer new photo-synthesizing, carbon-sequestering organisms.
Extinctions may remove species and shapes and behaviors, but they do little if anything to biochemical possibilities. (266)
Today’s carbon-dioxide level is 381 parts per million. Bob Berner’s Geocarb model suggests that the carbon-dioxide level was more than three times that for almost all the time the dinosaurs walked the earth. (282)
The average duration of a mammalian species in the fossil record is just a million years. (310)
Nitrogen fertilization is largely responsible for increases in average cereal yield from 750kg per hectare in 1900 to 2.7 tonnes per hectare today. (353)
Author: Oliver Morton 2008 412 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started April 7 2009, Finished May 12 2009.
This book is primarily a history of human understanding of photosynthesis, though it also is substantially concerned with how photosynthesis has shaped the planet. I thought too much of the book was devoted to the scientific personalities in the arena and not enough to clearly and simply explaining the intricacies of photosynthesis itself; the author tends to explain a breakthrough then cover many pages discussing various tangential issues leading up to the next big discovery which caused me to lose track of the what was important and greatly diluted my understanding of the fundamentals. Despite the fact that reviews state that the scientific explanations are directed to the layman, I still had a hard time keeping everything straight, but then biology was always a weak subject for me. Nonetheless, I understood enough of the details to realize that the unlikelihood of a system as complex as photosynthesis developing randomly is so great as to prompt even an affirmed non-believer to consider the possibility of a greater power pulling the strings. The end of the book addresses human induced climate change which the author indicates is beyond dispute and if left to its current trajectory, will have a severe negative impact on the sustainability of human society; he doesn’t feel the situation is hopeless though, envisioning Manhattan Project type effort to engineer new photo-synthesizing, carbon-sequestering organisms.
Extinctions may remove species and shapes and behaviors, but they do little if anything to biochemical possibilities. (266)
Today’s carbon-dioxide level is 381 parts per million. Bob Berner’s Geocarb model suggests that the carbon-dioxide level was more than three times that for almost all the time the dinosaurs walked the earth. (282)
The average duration of a mammalian species in the fossil record is just a million years. (310)
Nitrogen fertilization is largely responsible for increases in average cereal yield from 750kg per hectare in 1900 to 2.7 tonnes per hectare today. (353)
Monday, June 1, 2009
Panic
Author: Michael Lewis 2009 365 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started May 25 2009, Finished May 31 2009.
This book contains selected articles from a variety of authors and sources covering the boom and bust arcs of the last four major financial panics: the October 1987 Wall Street Crash, the 1998 SE Asia financial implosion, the bursting of the internet stock bubble in 2000 and the 2008’s credit crunch (the last of which, unlike its predecessors, is still unresolved with no recovery as yet to be able to look back with relief from). While book suffers somewhat from a lack-of-effort, slapped-together, greatest-hits feel and the disparate nature of the selections prevent each section from building into a coherent unit, I still found it a useful and enjoyable read, particularly the later two sections. Lewis’ pieces consistently stand out as being more deliberative and humorous. The theme of the book seems to be that each crisis starts with a period of near-boundless optimism (“we’ve entered a new paradigm“) following by a shattering return to earth and a resolve that “we’ve learned our lessons and will never let this happen again” which is quickly forgotten or justified away.
On opening the morning after the ‘87 crash GE’s bid/ask spread was 45/65.
It was striking how little control we had of events, particularly in view of how assiduously we cultivated the appearance of being in charge by smoking big cigars and saying fuck all the time. (38)
The chapter from Lewis’ book about a meeting between Healtheon (Jim Clark’s post Netscape internet venture) management and Wall Street investment bankers is hilarious in a Bonfire Of The Vanities sort of way. The bankers spend the entire session in a state of awed befuddlement, no more so than after hearing the CIO’s incomprehensible explanation of the software development details of the Healtheon’s planned website when theWall Streeters are stunned to silence except for one who impresses his peers by using the word “platform” as tech jargon way when asking a simple question .
And that in the way is the point. If you can’t put one over on Lou Dobbs, who can you put one over on? (240)
Prescient passage from a 2002 Lewis article written after the tech bubble crash: … “Eliot Spitzer gets credit for cleaning up Wall Street, which neither he nor anyone else will ever do. (Just wait till the next boom.) “ (244)
A 2008 NYT article by Roger Lowenstein explaining how the ratings agencies contributed substantially to priming the credit bubble by assigning triple A ratings to CMOs and CDOs based on subprime loans is quite a revelation in that almost every aspect of the process seemed tilted towards inflated ratings.
Author: Michael Lewis 2009 365 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started May 25 2009, Finished May 31 2009.
This book contains selected articles from a variety of authors and sources covering the boom and bust arcs of the last four major financial panics: the October 1987 Wall Street Crash, the 1998 SE Asia financial implosion, the bursting of the internet stock bubble in 2000 and the 2008’s credit crunch (the last of which, unlike its predecessors, is still unresolved with no recovery as yet to be able to look back with relief from). While book suffers somewhat from a lack-of-effort, slapped-together, greatest-hits feel and the disparate nature of the selections prevent each section from building into a coherent unit, I still found it a useful and enjoyable read, particularly the later two sections. Lewis’ pieces consistently stand out as being more deliberative and humorous. The theme of the book seems to be that each crisis starts with a period of near-boundless optimism (“we’ve entered a new paradigm“) following by a shattering return to earth and a resolve that “we’ve learned our lessons and will never let this happen again” which is quickly forgotten or justified away.
On opening the morning after the ‘87 crash GE’s bid/ask spread was 45/65.
It was striking how little control we had of events, particularly in view of how assiduously we cultivated the appearance of being in charge by smoking big cigars and saying fuck all the time. (38)
The chapter from Lewis’ book about a meeting between Healtheon (Jim Clark’s post Netscape internet venture) management and Wall Street investment bankers is hilarious in a Bonfire Of The Vanities sort of way. The bankers spend the entire session in a state of awed befuddlement, no more so than after hearing the CIO’s incomprehensible explanation of the software development details of the Healtheon’s planned website when theWall Streeters are stunned to silence except for one who impresses his peers by using the word “platform” as tech jargon way when asking a simple question .
And that in the way is the point. If you can’t put one over on Lou Dobbs, who can you put one over on? (240)
Prescient passage from a 2002 Lewis article written after the tech bubble crash: … “Eliot Spitzer gets credit for cleaning up Wall Street, which neither he nor anyone else will ever do. (Just wait till the next boom.) “ (244)
A 2008 NYT article by Roger Lowenstein explaining how the ratings agencies contributed substantially to priming the credit bubble by assigning triple A ratings to CMOs and CDOs based on subprime loans is quite a revelation in that almost every aspect of the process seemed tilted towards inflated ratings.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Word Freak
Word Freak
Author: Stefan Fatsis 2001 366 pp
My rating: 4*
Started March 23 2009, Finished March 31 2009.
Word Freak succeeds on multiple levels: as an exploration of the world of Scrabble which is accessible to those unfamiliar with the game and yet likely to be of interest to the devotee, as a character study of Scrabble geeks, characters all, who largely comprise its elite players and as a depiction of the weekend warrior which universalizes beyond the game of Scrabble itself to any recently acquired life-consuming, skill-based recreational obsession. The Scrabble aficionado will probably be most entertained by the book’s coverage of the game’s history, politics and strategy, though several rather detailed discussions of preparation approaches and word study might be a bit much for the casual reader. The character studies should have broad appeal and should be of particular interest to those who, to paraphrase Dylan, wonder what we do with our lives. Though I enjoyed those aspects of the book, I was most taken by Fatsis’ portrayal of his burgeoning obsession with the game and his Scrabble ranking; this weekend warrior strongly identified with the author’s emotional roller coaster that Fatsis put himself through overreacting to both successes and failures, one weekend delighted with his progress through the rankings, the next filled with self-castigation after the setback of a poor tournament performance.
I toted my Franklin, OSPD, and word lists to the Continent but didn’t study at all, which surely must be to my credit as a human being, if not as a Scrabble player. (78)
Maven tile ranking: blank s e x z r a h n c d m t I j k l p o y f b g w u v q (290)
Author: Stefan Fatsis 2001 366 pp
My rating: 4*
Started March 23 2009, Finished March 31 2009.
Word Freak succeeds on multiple levels: as an exploration of the world of Scrabble which is accessible to those unfamiliar with the game and yet likely to be of interest to the devotee, as a character study of Scrabble geeks, characters all, who largely comprise its elite players and as a depiction of the weekend warrior which universalizes beyond the game of Scrabble itself to any recently acquired life-consuming, skill-based recreational obsession. The Scrabble aficionado will probably be most entertained by the book’s coverage of the game’s history, politics and strategy, though several rather detailed discussions of preparation approaches and word study might be a bit much for the casual reader. The character studies should have broad appeal and should be of particular interest to those who, to paraphrase Dylan, wonder what we do with our lives. Though I enjoyed those aspects of the book, I was most taken by Fatsis’ portrayal of his burgeoning obsession with the game and his Scrabble ranking; this weekend warrior strongly identified with the author’s emotional roller coaster that Fatsis put himself through overreacting to both successes and failures, one weekend delighted with his progress through the rankings, the next filled with self-castigation after the setback of a poor tournament performance.
I toted my Franklin, OSPD, and word lists to the Continent but didn’t study at all, which surely must be to my credit as a human being, if not as a Scrabble player. (78)
Maven tile ranking: blank s e x z r a h n c d m t I j k l p o y f b g w u v q (290)
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Traffic
Traffic
Author: Tom Vanderbilt 2008 286 pp
My rating: 3*
Started March 8 2009, Finished March 23 2009.
I was disappointed by this book because I was expecting it to be about the design side of road systems when in fact it is much more concerned with the psychology of the driver. Overall the book much too long and he first 100 pages or so with their constant referral to scientific studies to explain every phenomenon were nearly self parodying. On the plus side it did have exceptionally thorough endnotes. One interesting concept introduced was that of “risk homeostasis” which explains why despite a steady stream of significant safety enhancements to automobiles e.g. airbags and anti-lock brakes, overall accident rates are not commensurately lower; the explanation is that since we feel safer in the improved cars, we allow ourselves to take more risks driving e.g. drive faster and talk on a cell phone.
Conventional wisdom of traffic engineers can be completely wrong. Example is that clearing roadsides of potential obstacles and distractions makes them safer; but studies have shown that accident rates can be higher on such stretches than on adjacent uncleared stretches. Theory is that drivers are more engaged in a more challenging environment which makes them drive slower and less complacent. (209-210)
Despite the signs often warning of large penalties for striking a worker (or pleas like SLOW DOWN, MY DADDY WORKS HERE), they are much more dangerous for the drivers passing through them than for the workers--some 85 percent of people killed in work zones are drivers or passengers.
DG: wrong conclusion--probably far more than 85 percent of the people in the construction zone are drivers so statistically construction zones are more dangerous for the drivers than the workers in them.
In 1969, nearly half of American children walk or bike to school; now just 16 percent do. (16)
So much time is spent in cars in the United States, studies show, that drivers (particularly men) have higher rates of skin cancer on their left sides. (17)
The junction of the San Diego and the Santa Monica freeways is the most congested in the United States. (114)
Author: Tom Vanderbilt 2008 286 pp
My rating: 3*
Started March 8 2009, Finished March 23 2009.
I was disappointed by this book because I was expecting it to be about the design side of road systems when in fact it is much more concerned with the psychology of the driver. Overall the book much too long and he first 100 pages or so with their constant referral to scientific studies to explain every phenomenon were nearly self parodying. On the plus side it did have exceptionally thorough endnotes. One interesting concept introduced was that of “risk homeostasis” which explains why despite a steady stream of significant safety enhancements to automobiles e.g. airbags and anti-lock brakes, overall accident rates are not commensurately lower; the explanation is that since we feel safer in the improved cars, we allow ourselves to take more risks driving e.g. drive faster and talk on a cell phone.
Conventional wisdom of traffic engineers can be completely wrong. Example is that clearing roadsides of potential obstacles and distractions makes them safer; but studies have shown that accident rates can be higher on such stretches than on adjacent uncleared stretches. Theory is that drivers are more engaged in a more challenging environment which makes them drive slower and less complacent. (209-210)
Despite the signs often warning of large penalties for striking a worker (or pleas like SLOW DOWN, MY DADDY WORKS HERE), they are much more dangerous for the drivers passing through them than for the workers--some 85 percent of people killed in work zones are drivers or passengers.
DG: wrong conclusion--probably far more than 85 percent of the people in the construction zone are drivers so statistically construction zones are more dangerous for the drivers than the workers in them.
In 1969, nearly half of American children walk or bike to school; now just 16 percent do. (16)
So much time is spent in cars in the United States, studies show, that drivers (particularly men) have higher rates of skin cancer on their left sides. (17)
The junction of the San Diego and the Santa Monica freeways is the most congested in the United States. (114)
Friday, March 13, 2009
Female Chauvinist Pigs
Female Chauvinist Pigs
Author: Ariel Levy 2005 200 pp
My rating: 3*
Started February 22 2009, Finished February 22 2009.
This flawed book probes an interesting subject: how the gains of the feminist movement have degenerated to widespread female complicity in raunch/porn culture. The book’s main shortcoming is that it feels like a loosely connected series of magazine articles (Levy writes for New York and The New Yorker) that don’t build on each other and some of which only tangentially bear on the topic. Nonetheless, the better chapters do provide insight into the phenomenon of the current generation of you-can-be-anything-you-want women routinely choosing to employ that freedom to objectify themselves in order to gain the attention of traditionally unenlightened males. The introductory section on the Girls Gone Wild videos and the chapter about an upscale prep school in the Bay Area are the standouts. Off topic (though non necessarily uninteresting chapters) include a discussion of first generation feminists and an overview of the eye-openingly bizarre lesbian scene in San Francisco its members classifying themselves as butch, femme, trans, boi, Fems etc.
If Levy does arrive at a conclusion about her topic it is that this is still a man’s world.
Nitpicking:
Levy’s critique of Camille Paglia’s anti-feminist essay which infers women make wimpy music cites Madonna as a counter-example, projecting wild energy and cool, implying Madonna is the exemplar of the empowered, have it all woman. (109) But isn’t Madonna the progenitor of the FCP and as responsible for the syndrome as anyone and thus a peculiar choice for a feminist writer to use as to rebut the charges of an anti-feminist?
Levy seems to describe almost every subject’s appearance and assess her attractiveness, implying she has bought into the FCP values she objects to. This sense in reinforced by her use of frat type diction e.g. boobs, tits.
All subjects seem to come from the same part of the socio-economic spectrum: white and reasonably well off. One wonders how FCP values have affected other parts of society.
We decided long ago that the Male Chauvinist Pig was an unenlightened rube, but the Female Chauvinist Pig (PCP) has risen to a kind of exalted status. She is post-feminist. She is funny. She gets it. … Why try to beat them when you can join them? (93)
Raunch provides a special opportunity for a woman who wants to prove her mettle. It’s in fashion and it is something that has traditionally appealed exclusively to men and actively offended women, so producing it or participating in it is a way both to flaunt your coolness and to mark yourself as different, tougher, looser, funnier -- a new sort of loophole woman who is “not like other women,” who instead is “like a man.” (96)
FCP s don’t bother to question the criteria on which women are judged, they are too busy judging other women themselves. (103)
These are not stories about girls getting what they want sexually, they are stories about girls gaining acclaim socially, for which their sexuality is a tool (145-6)
“There’s not really any sluts at my school, but if you walked in there on the your first day, you’d think my whole school was sluts.” (148)
… “girls hook up with other girls because they know the guys will like it,” she said. “They think, Then the guys are going to want to hook up with me and give me a lot of attention “ (150)
The chapter about teenagers, FCPs in Training, is eye opening. All the kids interviewed go to good private schools, but the girls at least all seem to be in the thrall of FCP culture and values. Where are the parents?
Japan and most western European countries have adolescent pregnancy rates of less than 400 per 1000. (Uber-progressive Holland shines with only 12 pregnancies per 1000.) The numbers go up in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, where there are between 40 and 69 teen pregnancies out of every 1000. But in the United States, we have more than 80 teen pregnancies per 1000. (161)
Author: Ariel Levy 2005 200 pp
My rating: 3*
Started February 22 2009, Finished February 22 2009.
This flawed book probes an interesting subject: how the gains of the feminist movement have degenerated to widespread female complicity in raunch/porn culture. The book’s main shortcoming is that it feels like a loosely connected series of magazine articles (Levy writes for New York and The New Yorker) that don’t build on each other and some of which only tangentially bear on the topic. Nonetheless, the better chapters do provide insight into the phenomenon of the current generation of you-can-be-anything-you-want women routinely choosing to employ that freedom to objectify themselves in order to gain the attention of traditionally unenlightened males. The introductory section on the Girls Gone Wild videos and the chapter about an upscale prep school in the Bay Area are the standouts. Off topic (though non necessarily uninteresting chapters) include a discussion of first generation feminists and an overview of the eye-openingly bizarre lesbian scene in San Francisco its members classifying themselves as butch, femme, trans, boi, Fems etc.
If Levy does arrive at a conclusion about her topic it is that this is still a man’s world.
Nitpicking:
Levy’s critique of Camille Paglia’s anti-feminist essay which infers women make wimpy music cites Madonna as a counter-example, projecting wild energy and cool, implying Madonna is the exemplar of the empowered, have it all woman. (109) But isn’t Madonna the progenitor of the FCP and as responsible for the syndrome as anyone and thus a peculiar choice for a feminist writer to use as to rebut the charges of an anti-feminist?
Levy seems to describe almost every subject’s appearance and assess her attractiveness, implying she has bought into the FCP values she objects to. This sense in reinforced by her use of frat type diction e.g. boobs, tits.
All subjects seem to come from the same part of the socio-economic spectrum: white and reasonably well off. One wonders how FCP values have affected other parts of society.
We decided long ago that the Male Chauvinist Pig was an unenlightened rube, but the Female Chauvinist Pig (PCP) has risen to a kind of exalted status. She is post-feminist. She is funny. She gets it. … Why try to beat them when you can join them? (93)
Raunch provides a special opportunity for a woman who wants to prove her mettle. It’s in fashion and it is something that has traditionally appealed exclusively to men and actively offended women, so producing it or participating in it is a way both to flaunt your coolness and to mark yourself as different, tougher, looser, funnier -- a new sort of loophole woman who is “not like other women,” who instead is “like a man.” (96)
FCP s don’t bother to question the criteria on which women are judged, they are too busy judging other women themselves. (103)
These are not stories about girls getting what they want sexually, they are stories about girls gaining acclaim socially, for which their sexuality is a tool (145-6)
“There’s not really any sluts at my school, but if you walked in there on the your first day, you’d think my whole school was sluts.” (148)
… “girls hook up with other girls because they know the guys will like it,” she said. “They think, Then the guys are going to want to hook up with me and give me a lot of attention “ (150)
The chapter about teenagers, FCPs in Training, is eye opening. All the kids interviewed go to good private schools, but the girls at least all seem to be in the thrall of FCP culture and values. Where are the parents?
Japan and most western European countries have adolescent pregnancy rates of less than 400 per 1000. (Uber-progressive Holland shines with only 12 pregnancies per 1000.) The numbers go up in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, where there are between 40 and 69 teen pregnancies out of every 1000. But in the United States, we have more than 80 teen pregnancies per 1000. (161)
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Men Without Women
Men Without Women
Author: Ernest Hemingway 1928 130 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started March 2 2009, Finished March 3 2009.
Almost every one of the stories in this slim volume packs a punch, sometimes literally. The same potency at double the length would have put this book in the four star category. The salient feature of most of these pieces is that they are compelling tales, generating a sense of tension and expectation that makes the reader want to know what is going to happen. They also provide some insight into the macho component of human behavior. The book lives up to its title with only one of fourteen stories containing a significant female character; the male characters for their part tend to be inexpressive to an almost self-parodying degree. The stories that will last the longest with me are “The Undefeated”, a chronicle of an aging bullfighter with echoes of The Old Man and The Sea, “Fifty Grand” an account of a prizefighter giving his all for one last big pay day, and the haunting “Now I Lay Me” about a convalescing soldier whose wound resulted from a shelling while he slept, who now is afraid of sleep and keeps himself awake by visualizing the fishing holes of his youth.
He knew all about bulls. He did not have to think about them. He just did the right thing. His eyes noted things and his body performed the necessary measures without thought If he though about it, he would be gone (26)
It was bright and cold and the air came cold through the open windshield. (55)
Author: Ernest Hemingway 1928 130 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started March 2 2009, Finished March 3 2009.
Almost every one of the stories in this slim volume packs a punch, sometimes literally. The same potency at double the length would have put this book in the four star category. The salient feature of most of these pieces is that they are compelling tales, generating a sense of tension and expectation that makes the reader want to know what is going to happen. They also provide some insight into the macho component of human behavior. The book lives up to its title with only one of fourteen stories containing a significant female character; the male characters for their part tend to be inexpressive to an almost self-parodying degree. The stories that will last the longest with me are “The Undefeated”, a chronicle of an aging bullfighter with echoes of The Old Man and The Sea, “Fifty Grand” an account of a prizefighter giving his all for one last big pay day, and the haunting “Now I Lay Me” about a convalescing soldier whose wound resulted from a shelling while he slept, who now is afraid of sleep and keeps himself awake by visualizing the fishing holes of his youth.
He knew all about bulls. He did not have to think about them. He just did the right thing. His eyes noted things and his body performed the necessary measures without thought If he though about it, he would be gone (26)
It was bright and cold and the air came cold through the open windshield. (55)
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
1632
1632
Author: Eric Flynt 2000 597 pp
My rating: 2*
Started February 23 2009, Finished February 28 2009.
This work of “alternative history” compels as an historical/military work, but repels as a literary undertaking -- it is the first book I’ve read since I started blogging in which I did not find a single passage worth highlighting or commenting upon. The basic story is that for reasons not relevant to the plot, a 6 mile diameter circular section of West Virginia circa 2000 AD is instantly and without warning relocated to central Germany in the midst of the 30 Years War. The worthwhile parts of the book provide some insight into the tactics and depredations of the 30 Years War or depict battle scenes between the West Virginians and the pike wielding infantry of 350 years earlier. The pleasures these aspects of 1632 provide are offset by the total lack of any humanly believable characters (all the main characters find love at first site, usually in the midst of battle with a person centuries removed) and the general implausibility of how events transpire once the West Virginians have accepted their new reality -- basically the Americans never make a wrong move and virtually everyone gets along perfectly and agrees with everyone else on all major issues. The head cheerleader who is also an utterly cold-blooded killer is a particularly eye-rolling creation.
Author: Eric Flynt 2000 597 pp
My rating: 2*
Started February 23 2009, Finished February 28 2009.
This work of “alternative history” compels as an historical/military work, but repels as a literary undertaking -- it is the first book I’ve read since I started blogging in which I did not find a single passage worth highlighting or commenting upon. The basic story is that for reasons not relevant to the plot, a 6 mile diameter circular section of West Virginia circa 2000 AD is instantly and without warning relocated to central Germany in the midst of the 30 Years War. The worthwhile parts of the book provide some insight into the tactics and depredations of the 30 Years War or depict battle scenes between the West Virginians and the pike wielding infantry of 350 years earlier. The pleasures these aspects of 1632 provide are offset by the total lack of any humanly believable characters (all the main characters find love at first site, usually in the midst of battle with a person centuries removed) and the general implausibility of how events transpire once the West Virginians have accepted their new reality -- basically the Americans never make a wrong move and virtually everyone gets along perfectly and agrees with everyone else on all major issues. The head cheerleader who is also an utterly cold-blooded killer is a particularly eye-rolling creation.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Forever War
The Forever War
Author: Dexter Filkins 2008 342 pp
My rating: 4*
Started March 06 2009, Finished February 09 2009.
Filkins accounts of his time in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2007 come in the voice of an eyewitness reporter, almost completely devoid of political and big picture analysis, instead conveying what it’s like to be a soldier or civilian in the midst of the nihilistic maelstrom that the battlegrounds of the GWOT became. While the writing is uniformly powerful, the sections where Filkins is embedded with marines during the crushing of the Falluja insurgency being the standouts for me, I thought the book could have been even better with some changes. I found the early chapters on Afghanistan, a small part of the book, did not really mesh with the Iraq chapters and that the book probably would have been stronger without them. Also the book lacked an overarching narrative or emotional theme and reads as a series of very strong dispatches, a bunch of newspaper features rather than a book written towards a single purpose. The book’s main character is Filkins himself though he remains a cipher; beyond that he is a determined runner, we learn little about him, particularly how the years of extreme carnage and exposure to personal peril affected him. Both of these weaknesses could have been remedied in a single act by recasting the book as a memoir.
This book could serve as a rebuke to anyone who thought the trillion dollars the US has channeled into the GWOT was money well spent. A virtual case study in the cost effectiveness of the US approach to the GWOT is the section that describes how a single insurgent sniper in Falluja pinned down an entire platoon and survived attempts to kill him by air, artillery and tanks. (200-3)
The insurgents were brilliant at that. They could spot a fine mind or a tender soul wherever it might me, chase it down and kill it dead. The heart of a nation. The precision was astounding. (82)
Colonel in the Iraqi army in the early stages of the invasion: “I believe Saddam is an American agent”. (89)
You had to accept your ignorance; it was the beginning of whatever wisdom you could hope to muster. (124)
“They really hate us here.” (127)
The Iraqis lied to the Americans, no question. But the worst lies were the ones the Americans told themselves. They believed them because it was convenient -- an because not believe them was too horrifying to think about. (130)
If you multiplied the raid on Abu Shakur a thousand times, it was not difficult to conclude that the war was being lost: however many Iraqis opposed them before the Americans came into the village, dozens and dozens more did by the time they left. The Americans were making enemies faster than they could kill them. (153)
[Filkins asked an Iraqi woman why she risked voting]
“I voted in order to prevent my country from being destroyed by its enemies,” she said. …
What enemies? I asked …
She began to tremble.
“You -- you destroyed our country,” Saadi said. “The Americans, the British. I am sorry to be impolite. But you destroyed our country, and you called it democracy.” (244)
The marines were still using Vietnam era Sea Stallion helicopters which were much slower and less night capable than the Black Hawks used by the army. The army flew at night in safety, the marines during the day and were shot down. (paraphrase from 278)
[Commenting on the quick destruction of a park the US built in Baghdad] Everything was like that in Iraq: anything anyone ever tried turned to black. (293)
Running at night: it was madness. I was courting death, or at least a kidnapping. The capital was a free-for-all; it was a state of nature. There was no law anymore, no courts, nothing -- there was nothing at all. They kidnapped children now, they killed them and dumped them in the street. The kidnapping gangs bought and sold people; it was like its own terrible ecosystem. One of the kidnapping gangs could have driven up in a car and beat me and gagged me and I could have screamed like a crazy person, but I doubt anyone would have done anything. … The kidnappers had more power than anyone. (294)
Author: Dexter Filkins 2008 342 pp
My rating: 4*
Started March 06 2009, Finished February 09 2009.
Filkins accounts of his time in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2007 come in the voice of an eyewitness reporter, almost completely devoid of political and big picture analysis, instead conveying what it’s like to be a soldier or civilian in the midst of the nihilistic maelstrom that the battlegrounds of the GWOT became. While the writing is uniformly powerful, the sections where Filkins is embedded with marines during the crushing of the Falluja insurgency being the standouts for me, I thought the book could have been even better with some changes. I found the early chapters on Afghanistan, a small part of the book, did not really mesh with the Iraq chapters and that the book probably would have been stronger without them. Also the book lacked an overarching narrative or emotional theme and reads as a series of very strong dispatches, a bunch of newspaper features rather than a book written towards a single purpose. The book’s main character is Filkins himself though he remains a cipher; beyond that he is a determined runner, we learn little about him, particularly how the years of extreme carnage and exposure to personal peril affected him. Both of these weaknesses could have been remedied in a single act by recasting the book as a memoir.
This book could serve as a rebuke to anyone who thought the trillion dollars the US has channeled into the GWOT was money well spent. A virtual case study in the cost effectiveness of the US approach to the GWOT is the section that describes how a single insurgent sniper in Falluja pinned down an entire platoon and survived attempts to kill him by air, artillery and tanks. (200-3)
The insurgents were brilliant at that. They could spot a fine mind or a tender soul wherever it might me, chase it down and kill it dead. The heart of a nation. The precision was astounding. (82)
Colonel in the Iraqi army in the early stages of the invasion: “I believe Saddam is an American agent”. (89)
You had to accept your ignorance; it was the beginning of whatever wisdom you could hope to muster. (124)
“They really hate us here.” (127)
The Iraqis lied to the Americans, no question. But the worst lies were the ones the Americans told themselves. They believed them because it was convenient -- an because not believe them was too horrifying to think about. (130)
If you multiplied the raid on Abu Shakur a thousand times, it was not difficult to conclude that the war was being lost: however many Iraqis opposed them before the Americans came into the village, dozens and dozens more did by the time they left. The Americans were making enemies faster than they could kill them. (153)
[Filkins asked an Iraqi woman why she risked voting]
“I voted in order to prevent my country from being destroyed by its enemies,” she said. …
What enemies? I asked …
She began to tremble.
“You -- you destroyed our country,” Saadi said. “The Americans, the British. I am sorry to be impolite. But you destroyed our country, and you called it democracy.” (244)
The marines were still using Vietnam era Sea Stallion helicopters which were much slower and less night capable than the Black Hawks used by the army. The army flew at night in safety, the marines during the day and were shot down. (paraphrase from 278)
[Commenting on the quick destruction of a park the US built in Baghdad] Everything was like that in Iraq: anything anyone ever tried turned to black. (293)
Running at night: it was madness. I was courting death, or at least a kidnapping. The capital was a free-for-all; it was a state of nature. There was no law anymore, no courts, nothing -- there was nothing at all. They kidnapped children now, they killed them and dumped them in the street. The kidnapping gangs bought and sold people; it was like its own terrible ecosystem. One of the kidnapping gangs could have driven up in a car and beat me and gagged me and I could have screamed like a crazy person, but I doubt anyone would have done anything. … The kidnappers had more power than anyone. (294)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The Glorious Cause
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789
Author: Robert Midlekauff 1982 664 pp
My rating: 3*
Started January 20 2009, Finished February 20 2009.
This book is the fourth volume of The Oxford History of the United States which I’ve read, and by far the least satisfying. While the others (Battle Cry of Freedom, What Hath God Wrought and Freedom From Fear) where characterized by a straightforward, succinct and fact-filled-I-have-to-restraint-myself-not-to-make-a-note-on-every-single-page style, The Glorious Cause was just the opposite: unlike the others, it could have been much shorter and I found its prose style, which seemed to slightly mimic the rhetoric of the period it described, generally long winded and confusing. Why I can unhesitatingly recommend the other three volumes as supremely informative, engrossing and authoritative histories, after I finished this one I felt like I hadn’t learned that much about the era. One thing I did come away from the book with, in a lesson that reverberates today, was the notion that the British, hampered by long supplies lines and lack of local support, even from crown loyalists, lost the war despite winning most of the battles.
What seems like a common complaint of mine: I didn’t like the maps.
Of interest to fans of the series: the book jacket contains the original publishing schedule for the OHOTUS indicating the series which still is missing several volumes should have been completed more than a decade ago and that several of the original authors have been replaced.
Chapter Three’s explanation of the sugar act is confusing.
The Connecticut charter which was issued in 1662 provided that the colony’s western boundary should be the Pacific Ocean. (104)
With army horses and wagons scarce, civilians-- merchants, drayers, and others -- hot to be relied on, and these men, in business for themselves, frequently had better paying uses for their transport. (414)
[During the march to Monmouth Court House] Their soldiers carried packs of at least sixty pounds, weight made especially difficult to bear by sandy roads, woolen uniforms, and cumbersome muskets. The Hessians, who wore even heavier clothing than the English, suffered the most, several dying of sunstroke along the way. (422)
A virtuous people, most Americans agreed, were a people who valued frugality, despised luxury, hated corruption, and preferred moderations and balance to extremes of any sort, especially in the orders of society. (651)
Author: Robert Midlekauff 1982 664 pp
My rating: 3*
Started January 20 2009, Finished February 20 2009.
This book is the fourth volume of The Oxford History of the United States which I’ve read, and by far the least satisfying. While the others (Battle Cry of Freedom, What Hath God Wrought and Freedom From Fear) where characterized by a straightforward, succinct and fact-filled-I-have-to-restraint-myself-not-to-make-a-note-on-every-single-page style, The Glorious Cause was just the opposite: unlike the others, it could have been much shorter and I found its prose style, which seemed to slightly mimic the rhetoric of the period it described, generally long winded and confusing. Why I can unhesitatingly recommend the other three volumes as supremely informative, engrossing and authoritative histories, after I finished this one I felt like I hadn’t learned that much about the era. One thing I did come away from the book with, in a lesson that reverberates today, was the notion that the British, hampered by long supplies lines and lack of local support, even from crown loyalists, lost the war despite winning most of the battles.
What seems like a common complaint of mine: I didn’t like the maps.
Of interest to fans of the series: the book jacket contains the original publishing schedule for the OHOTUS indicating the series which still is missing several volumes should have been completed more than a decade ago and that several of the original authors have been replaced.
Chapter Three’s explanation of the sugar act is confusing.
The Connecticut charter which was issued in 1662 provided that the colony’s western boundary should be the Pacific Ocean. (104)
With army horses and wagons scarce, civilians-- merchants, drayers, and others -- hot to be relied on, and these men, in business for themselves, frequently had better paying uses for their transport. (414)
[During the march to Monmouth Court House] Their soldiers carried packs of at least sixty pounds, weight made especially difficult to bear by sandy roads, woolen uniforms, and cumbersome muskets. The Hessians, who wore even heavier clothing than the English, suffered the most, several dying of sunstroke along the way. (422)
A virtuous people, most Americans agreed, were a people who valued frugality, despised luxury, hated corruption, and preferred moderations and balance to extremes of any sort, especially in the orders of society. (651)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Anathem
Anathem
Author: Neal Stephenson 2008 935 pp
My rating: 4*
Started January 25 2009, Finished February 4 2009.
A challenging novel which could so annoy many readers that they give up well before finishing it, Anathem comes reminded me of good Arthur C. Clarke, Lord of the Rings and, of all things, The Magic Mountain. The book is set far in the future on an earth like planet where those who wish to live a life of the mind are segregated into monastery-like, math-based communities called concents which have almost no contact with the “extramuros” ignorati who comprise the bulk of society. The book is somewhat schizoid as its heart is a rollicking sci-fi adventure (the LOTR/Clarke components) which is rendered somewhat inaccessible by the distracting lexicon of the concent world -- the glossary is twenty pages long -- and frequent, extended, momentum killing discussions about math, logic and philosophy (ala Magic Mountain). The problem for the reader who is more interested in the adventure/plot component of the book is that these often tedious discussions -- one near the climax of the book runs at least twenty stupefying pages -- is that they tend to quickly and obliquely reveal important plot elements, requiring the reader to pay close attention when he/she may be lost, confused or bored.
Ultimately Anathem’s rewards and its ambitious, uncompromising nature won me over, earning it a high rating. In fact, I could see rereading it, mainly to see how much more I would pick up the second time around. That said, here are some caveats for the potential reader:
Why do the fraas and suurs of the highly advanced Maths -- where clothing is made of “new matter” which improves upon physics as we know it by reengineering the atomic nucleus -- use the English system of measurement instead of the metric or something even better?
Glossary is 20 pages and is followed by almost 30 pages of proofs.
About money extramuros: … most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators. (262)
Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs … We have a protractor. (320)
Author: Neal Stephenson 2008 935 pp
My rating: 4*
Started January 25 2009, Finished February 4 2009.
A challenging novel which could so annoy many readers that they give up well before finishing it, Anathem comes reminded me of good Arthur C. Clarke, Lord of the Rings and, of all things, The Magic Mountain. The book is set far in the future on an earth like planet where those who wish to live a life of the mind are segregated into monastery-like, math-based communities called concents which have almost no contact with the “extramuros” ignorati who comprise the bulk of society. The book is somewhat schizoid as its heart is a rollicking sci-fi adventure (the LOTR/Clarke components) which is rendered somewhat inaccessible by the distracting lexicon of the concent world -- the glossary is twenty pages long -- and frequent, extended, momentum killing discussions about math, logic and philosophy (ala Magic Mountain). The problem for the reader who is more interested in the adventure/plot component of the book is that these often tedious discussions -- one near the climax of the book runs at least twenty stupefying pages -- is that they tend to quickly and obliquely reveal important plot elements, requiring the reader to pay close attention when he/she may be lost, confused or bored.
Ultimately Anathem’s rewards and its ambitious, uncompromising nature won me over, earning it a high rating. In fact, I could see rereading it, mainly to see how much more I would pick up the second time around. That said, here are some caveats for the potential reader:
- The first hundred pages are quite slow
- Referals to the glossary are recommended whenever an unfamiliar term is encountered.
- Character development continues to not be Stephenson’s strong suit. The four fraas at the heart of the story never seemed to me to be distinct individuals.
- The reader has to tolerate and even decipher many, many passages such as the following: “But there was nothing about Evendric or datonomy on the wall of your cell for Fraa Jad to see. Just material pertaining to Orithena, and a chart of the Lineage.” (533)
Why do the fraas and suurs of the highly advanced Maths -- where clothing is made of “new matter” which improves upon physics as we know it by reengineering the atomic nucleus -- use the English system of measurement instead of the metric or something even better?
Glossary is 20 pages and is followed by almost 30 pages of proofs.
About money extramuros: … most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators. (262)
Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs … We have a protractor. (320)
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Freedom From Fear
Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
Author: David M Kennedy 1999 858 pp
My rating: 4.5*
Started January 9 2009, Finished January 15 2009.
Another excellent volume in the Oxford History of the United States, this work is essentially a history of the Roosevelt years with a surprisingly sympathetic prelude on Herbert Hoover’s failed administration, which despite its length could well have been much longer -- perhaps even two volumes one covering the depression years and the other World War II -- as it leaves the reader wanting to know more about FDR. While Freedom From Fear clearly depicts the enormous struggles and accomplishments of FDR’s presidency, the man himself remains something of a cipher as when in describing Roosevelt’s death, the author mentions in passing that he was attended by the mistress he had renounced 27 years earlier. The book’s greatest strength is its straightforward clarity but I docked it half a star for some editorial sloppiness such as incorrect diction e.g. immanent used where imminent was meant and the dubious claim that the Hood was larger than the Bismarck.
Recent Social Trends, a scholarly report on social conditions commissioned by Hoover and published in 1933 “feared that the old-stock, white, urban middle class would be demographically swamped by the proliferation of the rural and immigrant poor, as well as blacks.” (28)
Together with expenditures for veteran’s benefits … interest payments composed more than half the federal budget through the postwar decade. Expenses for a modest army of 139,000 men and a navy of about 96,000 sailors accounted for virtually all the rest. (30)
Hoover on 25 Oct 1929: “the fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities , is on a sound and prosperous basis” (39)
As the depression thickened in 1931 and 1932, the main purpose of Garner, Robinson, and Raskob [leaders of the opposition Democrats] was to obstruct the president and prepare to reap the political reward in the upcoming presidential election. (62)
Talk was Roosevelt’s passion and his weapon. None of his associates ever knew him to read a book. It was in conversation that he gained his prodigious, if disorderly store of information about the world. (112)
Gross national product had fallen by 1933 to half its 1929 level. (163)
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930, Long refused to vacate the governorship for nearly two more years, holding both offices simultaneously. (236)
Roosevelt’s dream was the old progressive dream of wringing order out of chaos, seeking mastery rather than accepting drift, imparting to ordinary Americans at least some measure of the kind of predictability to their lives that was the birthright of the Roosevelts … (247)
[In 1938] Louisiana’s Allen J. Ellender declared: “I believe in white supremacy and as long as I am in the Senate I expect to fight for white supremacy.” (343)
[The New Deal’s] cardinal aim was not to destroy capitalism but to devolatilize it, and at the same time to distribute its benefits more evenly. (372)
“Let us turn our eyes inward,” declared Pennsylvania’s liberal Democratic governor George Earle in 1935. “If the world is to become a wilderness of waste, hatred and bitterness, let us all the more earnestly protect and preserve our own oasis of liberty.” (386)
P430 Refers to 1935 Army Chief of Staff Malin Craig as Malin.
Re US strategic bombing of Germany: Accidents claimed nearly as many airmen’s lives (approximately thirty-six thousand) as did combat (approximately forty-nine thousand) (606)
Only 18.1 percent of American families contributed at least one member to the armed forces. (636)
All told, American war plants delivered some 18,000 B-24s … while building 12,692 B-17s and 3,763 B-29s … (654)
Every American combatant in the last year and a half of war in the Pacific islands could draw on four tons of supplies; his Japanese opponent, just two pounds. (668)
(703) Incorrect diction: use of immanent where imminent is the correct word. “… sensing the immanent vindication of the airmen’s cherished strategic doctrine …”
Wartime cartoons and posters routinely depicted the Japanese as murderous savages, immature children, wild beasts or bucktoothed, bespectacled lunatics. (811)
The Japanese army’s Field Service Code [1941]: “Never give up a position but rather die.” (812)
Okinawa: In early June what was left of the Japanese garrison tried to mount a counterattack. Some six thousand men, armed only with sidearms and bamboo spears, Banzaied forwards. They encountered “millions of shells from the enemy’s formidable fleet, planes, and tanks,” Yahara recorded. “All vanished like the morning dew.” (834)
[Upon notification of final Japanese surrender] Among the American troops on Okinawa, unconditional jubilation broke out. The fired every available weapon skywards. The subsequent rain of shell fragments killed seven men. (851)
Author: David M Kennedy 1999 858 pp
My rating: 4.5*
Started January 9 2009, Finished January 15 2009.
Another excellent volume in the Oxford History of the United States, this work is essentially a history of the Roosevelt years with a surprisingly sympathetic prelude on Herbert Hoover’s failed administration, which despite its length could well have been much longer -- perhaps even two volumes one covering the depression years and the other World War II -- as it leaves the reader wanting to know more about FDR. While Freedom From Fear clearly depicts the enormous struggles and accomplishments of FDR’s presidency, the man himself remains something of a cipher as when in describing Roosevelt’s death, the author mentions in passing that he was attended by the mistress he had renounced 27 years earlier. The book’s greatest strength is its straightforward clarity but I docked it half a star for some editorial sloppiness such as incorrect diction e.g. immanent used where imminent was meant and the dubious claim that the Hood was larger than the Bismarck.
Recent Social Trends, a scholarly report on social conditions commissioned by Hoover and published in 1933 “feared that the old-stock, white, urban middle class would be demographically swamped by the proliferation of the rural and immigrant poor, as well as blacks.” (28)
Together with expenditures for veteran’s benefits … interest payments composed more than half the federal budget through the postwar decade. Expenses for a modest army of 139,000 men and a navy of about 96,000 sailors accounted for virtually all the rest. (30)
Hoover on 25 Oct 1929: “the fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities , is on a sound and prosperous basis” (39)
As the depression thickened in 1931 and 1932, the main purpose of Garner, Robinson, and Raskob [leaders of the opposition Democrats] was to obstruct the president and prepare to reap the political reward in the upcoming presidential election. (62)
Talk was Roosevelt’s passion and his weapon. None of his associates ever knew him to read a book. It was in conversation that he gained his prodigious, if disorderly store of information about the world. (112)
Gross national product had fallen by 1933 to half its 1929 level. (163)
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930, Long refused to vacate the governorship for nearly two more years, holding both offices simultaneously. (236)
Roosevelt’s dream was the old progressive dream of wringing order out of chaos, seeking mastery rather than accepting drift, imparting to ordinary Americans at least some measure of the kind of predictability to their lives that was the birthright of the Roosevelts … (247)
[In 1938] Louisiana’s Allen J. Ellender declared: “I believe in white supremacy and as long as I am in the Senate I expect to fight for white supremacy.” (343)
[The New Deal’s] cardinal aim was not to destroy capitalism but to devolatilize it, and at the same time to distribute its benefits more evenly. (372)
“Let us turn our eyes inward,” declared Pennsylvania’s liberal Democratic governor George Earle in 1935. “If the world is to become a wilderness of waste, hatred and bitterness, let us all the more earnestly protect and preserve our own oasis of liberty.” (386)
P430 Refers to 1935 Army Chief of Staff Malin Craig as Malin.
Re US strategic bombing of Germany: Accidents claimed nearly as many airmen’s lives (approximately thirty-six thousand) as did combat (approximately forty-nine thousand) (606)
Only 18.1 percent of American families contributed at least one member to the armed forces. (636)
All told, American war plants delivered some 18,000 B-24s … while building 12,692 B-17s and 3,763 B-29s … (654)
Every American combatant in the last year and a half of war in the Pacific islands could draw on four tons of supplies; his Japanese opponent, just two pounds. (668)
(703) Incorrect diction: use of immanent where imminent is the correct word. “… sensing the immanent vindication of the airmen’s cherished strategic doctrine …”
Wartime cartoons and posters routinely depicted the Japanese as murderous savages, immature children, wild beasts or bucktoothed, bespectacled lunatics. (811)
The Japanese army’s Field Service Code [1941]: “Never give up a position but rather die.” (812)
Okinawa: In early June what was left of the Japanese garrison tried to mount a counterattack. Some six thousand men, armed only with sidearms and bamboo spears, Banzaied forwards. They encountered “millions of shells from the enemy’s formidable fleet, planes, and tanks,” Yahara recorded. “All vanished like the morning dew.” (834)
[Upon notification of final Japanese surrender] Among the American troops on Okinawa, unconditional jubilation broke out. The fired every available weapon skywards. The subsequent rain of shell fragments killed seven men. (851)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Free Lunch
Free Lunch
Author: David Kay Johnston 2007 293 pp
My rating: 3*
Started December 31 2008, Finished January 7 2009.
While this book’s accounts of how the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us is nearly guaranteed to outrage the reader, and while I often reacted that way to tales of, say, how George W Bush made his fortune almost entirely through tax breaks that were only available to him and his fellow owners of the Texas Rangers, much of the indignation I felt while reading this was at the book itself which I found a pretty slapdash affair, anecdotal and weakly sourced. I was expected the book would reveal a systematic assortment of recently enacted policies designed to transfer wealth to the wealthy and which could be reasonably remedied, but instead the examples it provides cover such a broad range from state business incentives, quirks of municipal laws, lack of federal regulation and even court interpretation of existing laws that the conclusion I was left with is that of course the system isn’t perfect.
Chapter One, the introduction, felt unfocused, wandering and extemporaneous.
Chapter Four doesn’t demonstrate that US government policies are responsible for job migration overseas.
Chapter on home security claims that the local police force responds to home security alarms; this is contrary to my experience which is that home security companies have their own agents.
Chapter on title insurance states that Iowa has a unique system which is “better and cheaper” but the rate he lists for title insurance in that state is more than I paid for the title insurance on my house.
Chapter 18, on the west coast electricity crisis of a few years back stirs outrage which is undercut but its simplistic inference that market manipulation by Enron was fully responsible for the crisis.
Chapter 21, a summary of the deficiencies of the US health care system (which the author points out exists as a business, not a service, contrary to most other first world countries) is concise and effective.
Chapter 22 is 20 pages long and filled with factual assertions, yet has only three foot notes.
Cites Alpha magazine as reporting that in 2006, the top 25 hedge fund managers averages $570 million in salary. (246)
Author: David Kay Johnston 2007 293 pp
My rating: 3*
Started December 31 2008, Finished January 7 2009.
While this book’s accounts of how the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us is nearly guaranteed to outrage the reader, and while I often reacted that way to tales of, say, how George W Bush made his fortune almost entirely through tax breaks that were only available to him and his fellow owners of the Texas Rangers, much of the indignation I felt while reading this was at the book itself which I found a pretty slapdash affair, anecdotal and weakly sourced. I was expected the book would reveal a systematic assortment of recently enacted policies designed to transfer wealth to the wealthy and which could be reasonably remedied, but instead the examples it provides cover such a broad range from state business incentives, quirks of municipal laws, lack of federal regulation and even court interpretation of existing laws that the conclusion I was left with is that of course the system isn’t perfect.
Chapter One, the introduction, felt unfocused, wandering and extemporaneous.
Chapter Four doesn’t demonstrate that US government policies are responsible for job migration overseas.
Chapter on home security claims that the local police force responds to home security alarms; this is contrary to my experience which is that home security companies have their own agents.
Chapter on title insurance states that Iowa has a unique system which is “better and cheaper” but the rate he lists for title insurance in that state is more than I paid for the title insurance on my house.
Chapter 18, on the west coast electricity crisis of a few years back stirs outrage which is undercut but its simplistic inference that market manipulation by Enron was fully responsible for the crisis.
Chapter 21, a summary of the deficiencies of the US health care system (which the author points out exists as a business, not a service, contrary to most other first world countries) is concise and effective.
Chapter 22 is 20 pages long and filled with factual assertions, yet has only three foot notes.
Cites Alpha magazine as reporting that in 2006, the top 25 hedge fund managers averages $570 million in salary. (246)
Friday, January 9, 2009
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown
Author: Charles R Morris 2008 169 pp
My rating: 4*
Started December 18 2008, Finished December 22 2008.
A concise and convincing explanation of the credit crisis that precipitated our current economic woes and a good primer on things like CMOs and CDOs. This book which blames the crisis on deregulation and prolonged easy credit gets points for prescience as it was written in November of 2007, well before the shocks of September 2008 when the extent of the financial rot became apparent to most of us. Note on the severity of the crisis: the author has written a new edition scheduled to be published in February of 2009; that edition is going to be entitled The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown.
“ … relative values funds ‘eat like chickens, shit like elephants.” (50)
“The relentless deregulation drive that started during the Reagan administration steadily shifted lending activities to the purview of nonregulated entities, until by 2006, only about a quarter of all lending occurred in regulated sectors, down from about 80 percent twenty years before.” (54)
William McChesney Martin, Chairman of the Federal Reserve for eighteen years from Truman through Nixon, “The function of the Federal Reserve is to take away the punch bowl just as the party is getting good.” (62)
“Refis jumped from $14 billion in 1995 to nearly a quarter-trillion in 2005, the great majority of them resulting in higher loan amounts. (67)
Suprime lending jumped from an annual volume of $145 billion in 2001 to $624 billion in 2005, more than 20 percent of total issuances. More than a third of subprime loans were for 100 percent of the home value -- even more when the fees were added in. (69)
The notional value of credit default swaps -- that is the size of portfolios covered by credit default agreements -- grew from $1 trillion in 2001 to $45 trillion by mid-2007. (75)
Almost all the top one-tenth’s share gains, in other words went to the top 1 percent, or the top ‘centile’ who doubled their share of the national cash income from 9 percent to 19 percent. (140)
It is the transparency and integrity of American financial markets that has made them such a magnet for foreign investment … (161)
Author: Charles R Morris 2008 169 pp
My rating: 4*
Started December 18 2008, Finished December 22 2008.
A concise and convincing explanation of the credit crisis that precipitated our current economic woes and a good primer on things like CMOs and CDOs. This book which blames the crisis on deregulation and prolonged easy credit gets points for prescience as it was written in November of 2007, well before the shocks of September 2008 when the extent of the financial rot became apparent to most of us. Note on the severity of the crisis: the author has written a new edition scheduled to be published in February of 2009; that edition is going to be entitled The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown.
“ … relative values funds ‘eat like chickens, shit like elephants.” (50)
“The relentless deregulation drive that started during the Reagan administration steadily shifted lending activities to the purview of nonregulated entities, until by 2006, only about a quarter of all lending occurred in regulated sectors, down from about 80 percent twenty years before.” (54)
William McChesney Martin, Chairman of the Federal Reserve for eighteen years from Truman through Nixon, “The function of the Federal Reserve is to take away the punch bowl just as the party is getting good.” (62)
“Refis jumped from $14 billion in 1995 to nearly a quarter-trillion in 2005, the great majority of them resulting in higher loan amounts. (67)
Suprime lending jumped from an annual volume of $145 billion in 2001 to $624 billion in 2005, more than 20 percent of total issuances. More than a third of subprime loans were for 100 percent of the home value -- even more when the fees were added in. (69)
The notional value of credit default swaps -- that is the size of portfolios covered by credit default agreements -- grew from $1 trillion in 2001 to $45 trillion by mid-2007. (75)
Almost all the top one-tenth’s share gains, in other words went to the top 1 percent, or the top ‘centile’ who doubled their share of the national cash income from 9 percent to 19 percent. (140)
It is the transparency and integrity of American financial markets that has made them such a magnet for foreign investment … (161)
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