Eric Pallant's Nonfiction Book Reviews Home Fiction Reviews Nonfiction Reviews Jewish Books Mystery Recommendations Links Nonfiction Reviews Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose ** (of 4) A story of Easy Company during WW II that trained as the most elite paratrooper unit in the Army and fought in the Battle of the Bulge holding off the Germans despite alarming odds and the absence of supplies. The kind of men that make up the greatest generation. Ambrose does let on that these guys were young, uneducated men capable of less than honorable behavior - cowardice, looting, poor judgment - but that is a minor theme. There are too many names to keep track of in the book. The fight scenes are very well described. December 2004 The Best American Travel Writing 2007 Edited by Susan Orlean *** (of 4) On the upside, no kidding, Orlean and the series editor really do skim the cream from thousands of annual travel articles. On the down, there are only so many travel stories you can read in one sitting. It's like reading a magazine that never ends. Among my favorites are Ian Frazier's account of getting sick in Russia, Kevin Fedarko's description of the drug addicted nation of Djibouti, and Matthew Power's experience with the economics of garbage picking communities in the Phillipines. June 2008. The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace *** (of 4) I had no idea there were still bottles of wine worth drinking from the 18th and 19th centuries or that collectors frequently amassed cellars with thirty, fifty, or one hundred thousand bottles. The Billionaire's Vinegar opens with the 1985 Christie's auction of a bottle of Lafite originally purchased by Thomas Jefferson in Paris in 1787. From there Wallace brings us into a world of snobs, sneaks, dilettantes, scientists, clods, and show-offs, a world of invitation-only verticals where a single wine is tasted through decades of vintages and over-the-top horizontals of single year's showpieces of rare wines that cost thousands per bottle. Patrons are invited to drink history. And there's a mystery. Is the Jefferson bottle authentic? October 2008. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall **** (of 4) The author immerses himself in the ultra marathoning community and finds, and compellingly describes, the kind of people that run 100 miles, up and down mountains, in the desert, in the summer, for fun.  Then he finds a hidden tribe of Taruahmara Indians in the remotest mountains of Mexico, a tribe that runs ultras as a way of life.  He recounts a race between the best of the American nutters and the best of the Taruahamara and along the way makes running sound exhilarating and running shoes sound like an enormous, overpriced hoax guaranteed to induce injuries.  August 2009. The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan I finally read it. The first story about Johnny Appleseed is astounding. The second story about tulips is interesting. Marijuana: enough already. I know four people who started the book. Not one of us finished it. Maybe the last chapter is meaningful and none of us will ever find out. Nevertheless, Pollan is a Master wordsmith. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan **** (of 4) This book is a commitment. It contains seven interior books, 150 pages apiece. It is worthwhile, however, for anyone who cares about the hubris of American foreign policy played out on Vietnamese and being repeated today in Iraq (See the Forever War.) The contextualization of how poorly American leaders understood local conditions and believed in their own moral superiority to the utter devastation of hundreds of thousands of lives, many of them innocent Vietnamese civilians. Most convincingly, Sheehan lays to rest the right-wing notion that greater force could have ever won the war. Sheehan's descriptions of strategy and tactics made me realize that among other things we were out-strategized by better generals. February 2009. The Civil War by Bruce Catton (**** of 4) I listened to it on tape. It's a short history of the Civil War. Gettysburg takes about six minutes. The Monitor and Merrimack about two. What makes the book so good, beyond the suspenseful writing (I didn't know who was going to win the Civil War until the very end of the book), is the multiple perspectives Catton brings to view the war by. He examines the different economies of North and South, the Navies, their alliances, and electoral politics. That means the battles, which so many books focus on, are placed in a much wider context and are not given undue weight. May, 2005 Confederates in the Attic: America's Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz *** (of 4) A nice Jewish boy from the D.C. suburbs treks across the south meeting Civil War re-enactors, Daughters of the Confederate States of America, poor-whites with rebel flags flapping from their pick-up trucks and discovers not only hasn't the Civil War ended in the south, but on the contrary, since the days of integration following the Civil Rights legislation of the 60s, positions on race and north vs. south issues have in fact hardened. This is NOT a dry textbook, but rather a largely humorous, respectful travelogue and visit with people I find repulsive. The author does, too, sometimes, in the same way, say, a Jonathan Raban (a Brit) did when he motored down the Mississippi like Huck Finn only to discover the middle of America was filled with overweight Americans sprawled on folding lawn chairs atop pontoon boats. The only reason the book doesn't get four stars is it's about 75 pages too long. Nevertheless, I unreservedly recommend reading the first 275-300 pages. June, 2005. The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. By Marilyn Johnson * (of 4) The book is deadly boring. It might have made a decent one-pager in a fluffy magazine. Johnson is obsessed with obituaries, which, admittedly, can have their appeal, but the book focuses instead on obitiuary writers. As a group they aren't any more interesting than orthodontists or reporters that follow the daily fluctuations of treasury bonds. September 2006. A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger **** (of 4) In the early 60s the Boston Strangler attacked, murdered, and then raped eleven women in and around the city. A black man with a criminal record was arrested, tried, and convicted for the murder and rape of the aged Bessie Goldberg on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Years later a shady handyman who worked in Junger's home while his mother was home alone with him admits to the murders, also without providing concrete evidence. Junger recounts the stories of the two potential murderers and leaves it to the reader to draw conclusions. The story is more terrifying than any fictional murder mystery and simultaneously a strong lesson in the principles of the rule of law: better to have ten guilty men walk free than a single innocent man wrongly convicted. September 2008. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller *** (of 4) This book is the Angela's Ashes of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Fuller is utterly forthcoming about growing up the child of white, racist, ex-pat, British, drunken parents during the final days of the last outpost of white supremacist colonialism. The stories are so personal that when Fuller's siblings die as children it is nearly unbearable to keep reading, but simultaneously so perfectly depicted the book is hard to put down. Fuller is a master of description: smells are palpable, humidity wafts from the pages, African night sounds stay with you after you turn off the light. She never condemns her family, yet you feel subconciously the destructive power of racism on every page. July 2006 Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama *** (of 4) Obama's memoir of his earliest memories through his years as an organizer strike me first as the story of someone I could easily have gone to college with: a liberal, a bit angsty, interested in ideas, anxious to change the world and find his place in it. Which is to say his story is not that unusual for a smart guy who went to a good college. What is stunning about the book, however, is that Obama has lived in other countries, is African, African-American, and white, and above all has the insights to understand what each of those identities represents. That makes him unlike any President, ever. September 2009. Eat, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. By Lynne Truss **** (of 4) What a hoot! The book is one heck of a lot of fun. The Endurance by Caroline Alexander About explorers trapped on the ice of Antarctica. Outstanding photos, OK read. Fifty Miles from Tomorrow by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley ** (of 4) The life story of a native Inupiaq from the early 40s when native Alaskans were virtually untouched by Westerners, except missionaries, through statehood and the battle for native rights to the land. Alas, not many surprises: life was hard, but pure in the early days, but the introduction of alcohol, Christianity, disease, and, well, you know, all the rest of the problems that decimate native populations play out in the narrative. May 2009. Fire by Sebastian Junger *** (of 4) This is a series of reports from the late 90s, magazine articles originally, about dangerous jobs and dangerous people: smokejumpers, jihadists in Afghanistan, blood thirsty rebels in Ivory Coast, massacres in Kosovo. Junger displays two traits that have become his hallmark. One is his fascination with danger that he brings to life because of his fearlessness as a reporter. The second is his extraordinary attributes as a writer. A series of articles that could have become monotonous instead were riveting in every aspect by their understated sense of place and time. There isn't an extra word in his text, nor ever an exclamation mark, yet his impact arrives like a boxer's punch. February 2008. The Forever War by Dexter Filkins **** (of 4) Filkins has chutzpah. He has been reporting on the war in Iraq since the days before Al Qaeda ever goaded the Bush administration into attacking Baghdad. What this book provides is the feeling of being on the ground in a country that is disintegrating. His writing is alive with the smell of a recent bombing by the U.S. Air Force, the sight of a freshly decapitated suicide bomber, and the sound of sniper bullets teeming past his head. It reads best if you recall some of the war's history on your own, but it also stands alone as a gutsy, first-hand account of life among U.S. soldiers and ordinary Iraqis caught up in post-Saddam anarchy. January 2009. 1491 by Charles C. Mann *** (of 4) Mann skewers nearly every myth I learned in K- College about Native Americans. They didn't walk across the Bering Strait to settle the Americas. They've been in the hemisphere more than 10,000 years. Their populations were enormous. Their cultures, even in the densest part of the Amazon, which incidentally is about as natural a forest as the one in Central Park, were sophisticated, political, hierarchical, culturally and scientifically more advanced in most cases than Europeans of the same time period. They didn't invent wheels, because they were useless in the mud and sure-footed llamas were more effective at climbing steep hills than the European's skittish horses could ever be. And their weapons and armor were in many cases at least as effective as European guns. Mann can write. He's riveting when he's telling stories that open chapters. He's great at translating science into English. The book, especially the middle third, is a tad long. January 2006. The Founding Fish by John McPhee Classic late McPhee. Dense, exquisitely written, and plotless; classic late McPhee. Game Time by Roger Angell A collection of Angell's best stories about baseball. Vintage Angell. He's one of the greatest writers in the English language on any topic. Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost *** (of 4) In the style of Bill Bryson, self-effacing and laugh aloud funny, Troost describes his adventures on the Pacific isles of Vanuatu and Fiji. He leaves you with no illusions. These islands may be paradise for the rich and famous that can afford secluded beaches, but for the natives, and those imported by British colonists, these are third world countries rife with poverty, corruption, inept government, and apalling colonial legacies. Still, it's funny. November 2009. Going with the Grain by Susan Seligson ** (of 4) Eight travel stories about bread in Morocco, Jordan, Brooklyn, the Wonder Bread factory in Massachusetts and so forth. Seligson writes well enough. Her stories are cute, you get to know places, but there doesn't seem to be a point to it all. It's like reading a blog. I'm sure her family loved the book. March 2009. Goodbye Darkness, William Manchester One of Manchester's best. A memoir about his role in WWII marines in Pacific theater. Grey Seas Under, by Farley Mowat ** (of 4) The book is a biography of a tough iron-clad tugboat that makes its way from the coast of Newfoundland into the deadly winter storms of the North Atlantic to rescue sinking ships and their crews. It starts slowly as we are introduced to the ship and the company that wants to use it, but after 35 pages gets onto the difficult task of fighting unrelenting elements. Mowat at his best makes you clench your teeth in fear as you listen to the wind and feel icy water drenching your underclothes. But after the tenth or twelfth rescue the stories get repetitive. That's all the boat does: rescue people and there are still 150 pages to go. Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth W. Farnea ** (of 4) In the late 1950's Elizabeth Farnea's new husband traveled to a small rural village in southern Iraq to do graduate research on an irrigation project. Farnea was relegated to life with the women and thankfully recorded her observations of how women completely veiled by clothing, secluded behind walls, and hidden inside houses lived with one another and their multitude of children. It must be one of the first books to think women's stories are worth telling. Moreover, I suspect that for many rural, Muslim women life has not changed dramatically in the intervening fifty years. The strength of the book lies in its cracking open the stereotypes and Farnea's revelations of the individual personalities behind those veils. The fact the book has been reprinted and is still available is testament to its insight. March 2006. To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever by Will Blythe *** (of 4). One of the great first chapters in literature. Blythe's book is a rant about basketball, specifically Duke vs. North Carolina. At the book's opening he draws upon Greek Myth, Shakespeare, the Civil War, class conflict in America, Democrats vs. Republicans, Uma Thurman, Ichabod Crane, Mr. Rogers, Brideshead Revisited, and most of all how much he hates Duke because he is a fan of North Carolina. Remarkably, Blythe keeps up his hatred and his seriously educated investigation of philosophy and religion for the whole book. All the while talking about college B-ball. A rant this long, however, grows shrill. Make the book seventy pages shorter and it could have been a masterpiece. January 2008. Heat by Bill Buford ** (of 4) Buford does his best to make Mario Batali into an eccentric, bigger-than-life, Artiste comparable in status to Michaelangeolo, DaVinci, and Jackie Gleason, but in the end it's just food, and Batali is a drunk who cooks really well. Buford didn't make me care. Maybe if I were a devotee of Batali's TV show or his restaurant, the book would provide that missing piece. I wonder, however, if Buford weren't a writer for the New Yorker but some shmoe off the street whether an editor would have bought this book. Much better to read Kitchen Confidential. (July 2007) A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson *** (of 4) Johnson is an anti-Semitic summofabitch. He blames the victim at times. He seems incredulous that the Jews didn't recognize Christ as part of the Holy Trilogy. But he's a very good writer who excels at putting Jewish history into a larger historical context. And unlike Jewish historians who have a tendency to be triumphalist, tracing a thread of Jewish history, that ignores Jewish failures and Jewish converts to other religions, Johnson supplies a more objective perspective that feels more all-encompassing than some other histories. Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir by D.J. Waldie **** (of 4) A quirky recounting of the birth of one of America's first post-war suburbs: Long Beach. Written by a city councilman who has lived his entire life in the same tiny house. Each section appears as a short, numbered entry, like another nearly identical house on the block, Waldie unveils a grid of humanity that is simultaneously awesome and awful, in some ways the climax of human evolution. It's a quick read that succeeds like all great literature. You will see the world a little differently when you are through. February 2007. The Inextinguishable Symphony by Martin Goldsmith I listened to about half of the book on cassette and have to say I was disappointed. I love listening to Goldsmith on the radio. I could listen to him speak all day. This book about his parents, professional musicians, who fell in love, married, and managed to stay one step ahead of death in Nazi Germany somehow didn't really hold my interest. Sue felt about the same. His parents were interesting, but not that interesting. The Nazis were nearby, but not that close. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer This book about climbing Mount Everest made Krakauer famous with good reason. It's a page turner. Suspenseful. Informative. A terrific read. Jarhead by Anthony Swofford An excellent memoir of life in the marines during the first Gulf War Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Burdain Extremely well written, if a little long, about the inside view of being a New York City chef. The Know it All by A.J. Jacobs **** (of 4) Proof that passionate writing overwhelms mundane subject matter. AJ Jacobs read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and writes a book about it.. Naturally, his book begins with A-ak and ends with Zywiec. The interstices are largely filled with esoterica (both short and long), but my what fascinating trivia there is. His writing is compelling, the selection of topics unfailingly topical, one-liners had me laughing aloud, frequently, and there is enough plot surrounding what happens to AJ's friends and family while he disappears on an apparently fruitless journey that in sum I kept turning the pages to see what was next. I can't ask for anything more of any book. July 2008 Krakatoa by Simon Winchester * (of 4) An OK book. Probably better on tape than to read. That's what Sue says. It was excessively dense, like wading through chest deep water. I don't think I ever finished it. Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction by Martin Gilbert *** (of 4) A fluky book by on the of the world's greatest Holocaust historians. Gilbert gathers dozens of newly uncovered personal histories of November 10, 1938 when more than a thousand German and Austrian synagogues were attacked and burned. The accounts of burned synagogues seem trivial compared to what we know follows. Moreover, the personal histories are all from survivors so their cumulative impact is to make it seem like escaping the Holocaust was not so hard. At first the personal stories seem randomly distributed through the text, but as the stories intermingle with the sound of country doors slamming shut to Jews trying to escape Germany and the war and extermination machines power up to full throttle this highly readable, short book with a British perspective turns terrific. August 2006. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson **** (of 4) Bryson recounts his Iowa childhood of the 1950s writing scenes so effectively that I could see every lincoln log (he peed on), smell the pages of each comic book he read (11 times), knew personally every one of his childhood friends (the fat one, the sneaky one, the moron, the best friend), and recalled the stickiness of a Rambler's vinyl seats. In fact, he so perfectly recaptures childhood that his stories take on a universality that extends to readers who did not grow up in the 1950s. July 2007. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright **** (of 4) You know at the beginning the story will end with planes flying into the World Trade Center, but Wright's recounting makes the book a suspenseful thriller, nonetheless. His explanation of the rise of Al Qaeda from the writings of a disgruntled Egyptian expatriate to Osama provide context hard to find in the media. The psychoanalysis of Osama and his cult-like followers is especially insightful. March 2007. The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece ** (of 4) Harr is a wonderful writer and does his best to create a mystery story around the search for and ultimate discovery of a Caravaggio painting that's been lost for a couple of hundred years. It's a fascinating insiders view of art historians and art conservators. Harr does a good job of locating and expressing the eccentricities of a couple of main characters, building a modicum of suspense as he goes. In the end, however, you know the painting will be found and that dispenses with the mystery, leaving only a story about a brilliant young art history student and an isolated conservator honing in on the same painting. It's not a long read; it's certainly worth a couple of afternoons. December 2005. Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick *** (of 4) I listened to half the book on CD, read another quarter, and didn't have time to finish Philbrick's account of the interaction between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Indians. The backdrop has everything to do with the decimation of 90 percent of the Indian population by disease and though Philbrick does not spend a lot of time on this, it is hard to imagine how Indian society continues with any semblance of normalcy when entire villages die or leave only one of two survivors. Into this Holocaust comes a steady stream of European fishing fleets and finally Pilgrim settlers. What the book does better than any other is humanize the Indians: there are connivers (like Squanto), power-hungry leaders, cowards, and good neighbors, about what you'd expect from any set of neighbors. The book is dense with fact, I think making it easier to listen to than to read. April 2007. Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich **** (of 4) I wasn't expecting to learn much, especially after the book's introduction. A Ph.D., upper-class (relatively speaking), journalist and author agrees to foresake her ordinary life to try to make her income match her expenses as a member of the working poor. She takes jobs as a waitress, Wal-Mart floor worker, and maid and you expect her to be miserable. The book works because the author is downright irreverent. She's sassy, not prissy, cusses like a truck-driver, and introduces you to real people that we ordinarily don't ever get a chance to cross paths with. Rather than being preachy, as I expected she would be, Ehrenreich tells her story, the stories of real working poor, fills in with national statistics, and insightful analysis without ever becoming pedantic. It's good writing. July 2005. The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin **** (of 4) There's a good reason this book made many top ten lists for 2007. It's a very easy read full of insider information about the Supreme Court, but presented so off-handedly and contextually that the book never feels salacious or gossipy. Toobin, the New Yorker legal affairs correspondent, recounts stories we know well -- abortion rights debates, the Lewinsky scandal, Bush v. Gore, the Anita Hill hearings -- but he fits them into a grander story line of the evolution of the court over thelast 40 years and attaches personalities to judges that seem so remote in Nina Totenberg's stories on NPR. December 2007 The Ninemile Wolves by Rick Bass ** (of 4) OK, he really cares about wolves and he can write about nature like nobody's business, but this book is like late McPhee cycling between great story telling and incomprehensible elitist constructions appealing to other nature writers rather than to people who actually have to read the book. September 2008. No Man's River, by Farley Mowat **** (of 4) Fifty years after the events that brought him from the horrors of WW II to a small hut on the edge of Hudson's Bay near the Arctic Circle, Farley Mowat reexamines the people he met and the places he visited. With understatement and power he describes La Foule, the great torrents of caribou that migrate across the barrenlands and the last days of the Ihalimiut Eskimos, suffering through the disease-ridden transition to modernity. His story telling and descriptions of places I'll never get to are incomparable. He travels a lot by canoe through dozens of rapids and in a feat of remarkable writing makes each set of cataracts fresh and daunting. His analysis of the half-breed he lives and travels with and his two adopted Eskimo children is riveting. December 2004. No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. by Doris Kearns Goodwin *** (of 4) The book only covers five years, but it does it so thoroughly that it probably contains more than half a million words. Goodwin brings several strengths to the task. First, she doesn't try to cover their entire lives. Second, and most appealing to me, she describes events chronologically, as if we were following them unfold in the newspapers. Third, she integrates the combustible nuances of Franklin's and Eleanor's divergent personalities, providing psychoanalysis at the same time she is explaining their actions as perceived by the nation and world. Fourth, she writes about World War II as perceived from within America, a view I've never encountered before. Fifth, she's a very compelling writer. But the book's length makes it a real commitment. September 2006. O Jerusalem by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre Very engaging history of Israel war for independence. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan **** (of 4) Probably not much you do not already know about America's industrial food chain and the manufactured food we consume at the end of it. You probably also already know the nutritional and environmental benefits of eating local. But, Pollan is still a great read for the deft way in which he weaves what we eat with philosophy, chemistry, history, economics, and the humanizing narrative of the people who provide our food. In typical Pollan fashion, however, the book contains about 20 percent more words than it really needs. May 2009. Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler **** (of 4) Normally when a magazine writer -- Hessler is a New Yorker correspondent -- assembles a book it feels like a compilation of previously published articles. Not so for Oracle Bones because Hessler manages to hold together the fine details of daily life in China -- the smell of soup, the dust in Tiananmen Square, the rumble of trucks -- with the global signficance of China's headlong rush into industrialization and capitalism. Throughout it all he uses plot generated by three or four characters whose stories intertwine leaving me with only a minor, though forgiveable, sense of contrivance. In sum Hessler has given me an impression of China in the first decade of the 2000s that is built on jiade, false or bootleg versions of everything from DVDs to college diplomas, and a culture just beginning to wonder what the consequences of mass capitalization is having on the spiritual core of its people. A surprisingly easy read for such a long, detailed book. December 2007. Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik Great writing, but plotless, so it was hard to keep reading. They were better when they were New Yorker Letters from Paris. A Peace to end all Peace by David Fromkin. An unbelievably informative book about the transformation of the Ottoman Empire through World War I into the colonial prizes carved up by Western Europe into the countries that now form the modern Middle East. It is full of the origins of today's conflicts and differences between Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Syria, and Iraq and is filled with characters whose names are famous, but whose activities during this time period I knew nothing about, e.g., Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, the House of Saud (to become today's rulers of Saudi Arabia), and King Abdullah, whose descendants still rule Jordan. A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present by Howard Zinn **** (of 4) Zinn flaunts his bias in an attempt to countermand the prevailing mythology of the U.S. and makes a convincing case that the country is not really a beacon of freedom, opportunity, equality, and justice. Rather, he argues, "'Big Government' began, in fact, with the Founding Fathers, who deliberately set up a strong central government to protect the interests of the bondholders, the slave owners, the land speculators, the manufacturers. For the next two hundred years, the American government continued to serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful, offering millions of acres of free land to the railroads, setting high tariffs to protect manufacturers, giving tax breaks to oil corporations, and using its armed forces to suppress strikes and rebellions (page 651)." Having just finished the book at the height of the Hurricane Katrina fiasco in which capital gains tax reform is law, FEMA is eviscerated, and the poor and black of the gulf coast are overlooked, Zinn's historical arguments seem right on the mark. September 2005. Persepolis 1 by Marjane Satrapi. ** (of 4) A memoir in graphic novel form of growing up under Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. It's a good introduction to the history of the era and a fine description of living as a liberal beneath the feet of an autocratic religious regime with their minions of spies and enforcers. The comic book format makes for a very quick read, but the storyline is too superficial. January 2006. Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi *** (of 4) This is Marjane Satrapi's second half of her graphic (comic book) memoir of life as an Iranian exile in Europe as a young teen followed by her return to Iran as an older teen. It is more personal, and therefore, more compelling even then Persepolis 1, especially the second half of the book about life in Iran after the eight-year war with Iraq has ended. August 2006. The Places in Between by Rory Stewart **, maybe *** (of 4) The New York Times book reviewer called this a masterpiece of travel writing -- he was downright gaga over this book, calling it one of the best travelogues ever written. It's about a guy who walks across Afghanistan in the middle of winter. And doesn't die. I found the book a little enigmatic. It's strongest when Stewart is writing about his personal travails: inhospitable village elders, vicious diarrhea, a stubborn dog. But it's weakness is a lack of context, story line, indistinguishable characters, and absence of a full explanation for why he decided to walk for 19 months through Pakistan, Nepal, India, Iran, and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, what emerges from his 40 or so short chapters are snapshots of a part of the world and its men (women are almost entirely invisible on his trek) that I know nothing about: rural, tribal Afghanistan. November 2006. Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein *** (of 4) Just like the authors say, "understanding philosophy through jokes." The book is twenty percent philosophy - ethics, existentialism, epistemology, relativity, meta-philosophy - and the rest is vaudeville. Nearly every page calls for a rimshot. I'm not sure how much philosophy I learned, chapter summaries would have helped a lot, but I loved the jokes. I read the whole book in a sitting and the truth is when I was talking to a friend recently I realized I understood the philosophy of the Stoics well enough to explain it. A Stoic, a Priest, A Rabbi, a Lesbian, a grasshopper, and a lawyer are on a boat...ba Da bum! January 2008. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Aza Nafisi *** (of 4) Nafiisi believes democracy can only succeed in conjunction with a fundamental human right to imagination. She demonstrates its value by documenting the deteriorating lives of eight young women she discusses fiction with under the tyrannical regime of Ayatollah Khomeni's Iran. Western classics are banned and so is the option for young women to imagine a life of joy. "Fiction," Nafisi says, "is not a panacea, but it did offer us a critical way of appraising and grasping the world -- not just our world but that other world that had become the object of our desires." Like the novels Nafisi uses to develop her memoir, this book grows in power and was worth sticking to. It is the most nuanced and complex view of women under fundamentalist Shia rule of the three that I've read. See also Persepolis 1 and Guests of the Sheik. May 2006. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand *** (of 4) The primary reason this story of a race horse, his owner, jockey, and especially, his trainer, became a best seller is Hillenbrand's ability to create drama and especially suspense. She writes well enough that for everyone of Seabiscuit's horse races I felt like gripping the rail and screaming my head off as he came around the backstretch. I was wracked by despair each time Seabiscuit inflamed a tendon. I learned more about thoroughbred racing than I knew there was to learn and can hardly wait for an opportunity to get to a track. Additionally, the book is interesting because the horse was the most famous person in the U.S. in 1939, moreso than Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini, and I'd never heard of him. It reminded me of A Civil Action, by Jonathan Harr in the way the book read like a suspense novel, rather than a dry nonfiction piece about horses. June 2006. 1776 by David McCullough ** (of 4) A recounting of one year of the Revolutionary War, without explaining why the Americans are fighting the British, why fighting for independence was not the original goal, nor why someone living on American soil would volunteer to fight for America vs. remaining loyal to the crown.  Instead the focus is on a few very key battles.  Washington comes across as mythologically large.  McCullough is very good at explaining how chance -- the weather, personalities, disease, getting lost in the woods, missed orders -- play such a large role in warfare.  The book is as ponderous as the movements of Washington's army, however; not much suspense. July 2006. Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron ** (of 4) The Dean of British travel writers takes the Silk Road from China to Turkey and the NY Times says, "Thubron goes to places most other sojourners can’t — because they’re not so much geographic locations as states of mind." It's true: Thubron is so elegaic I could barely follow him. There are periods of great lucidity that bring to focus western China in ways I've never seen them and then there's the majority of the book, which requires heavy slogging through knee-deep prose and ankle twisting constructions that make the book exhausting. I only got as far as Kyrghistan. October 2007. The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski Very thorough review of 50 years of his dispatches from Saharan Africa. He's a Polish journalist who's seen it all in Africa and captures the good and the bad. She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan *** (of 4) James Boylan, a college classmate of mine, and chair of the English Department at Colby, at the age of forty could no longer bear the pressure of living in the wrong body and became Jennifer Boylan. With an ample supply of good humor and equal dose of pathos, she describes what it takes to change genders even after being married and fathering two sons. She's one of the few people to know what women talk about in public restrooms and what men don't say in the men's room, and to compare the ease of purchasing dungarees in the men's department versus the insuperable challenges of buying women's jeans. Which is all to say she supplies a credible voice for what it takes to be a woman in America even for someone not women-born. October 2005 Shia Revival by Vali Nasr *** (of 4) The first two chapters were so densely packed with Islamic history I am almost gave up on the book, but am so glad I didn't. Nasr provides the clearest explanation of events in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia of anyone I've read and does it primarily by describing the 1400 year conflict between Shiites and Sunnis. At the end of the book I felt I knew more about Middle Eastern politics than most of Bush's advisors and half the U.S. media. That shouldn't be taken as faint praise. The only caveat is that the writing is dense, textbookish, but well worth the effort. The book isn't too long, either. December 2006. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson **** (of 4) Shockingly, the book lives up to its pretentious title. Bryson, an accomplished travel writer and memoirist explains, with complete lucidity, the history of science. He starts with the Big Bang and proceeds through the history of the earth, discovery of chemicals and cells, the physics of gravity, and the evolution of all living things. Not once does he veer toward textbook droning; in contrast, his accounts read like mystery stories replete with unsual characters with full personalities (like Einstein, Newton, Crick, and Darwin) and what in any other setting would seem like random trivia, but in Bryson's able hands feel like important anecdotes. All of his skills as a master storyteller are brought to bear to sift through what for most of us would require a lifetime of research. March 2008. Six Days of War by Michael Oren A very thorough, detailed and extremely informative account of the 1967 Six day war in the Middle East Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach ** (of 4) Everything you ever wanted to know about dead people, but were afraid to ask. To her credit, Roach is sassy, often to the point of being humorous. Maybe I know too much biology, or more likely, I've seen too many roadkill animals, but I didn't feel like I was learning very much. July 2006. Taking on the Trust by Steven Weinberg *** (of 4) This is the story of how Ida Tarbell, one of the first women to attend Allegheny College, probably the first woman to be a paid staff writer for a magazine, and surely the first investigative journalist in the world took on John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil of Ohio and the richest man of his time. The history is compelling, but Weinberg in his efforts to emulate Tarbell's impartiality delivers a lot more facts than drama. The conflict between the two, and the story of how a woman from a small town in northwestern PA could bring so low one of the world's most powerful men passes without much tension. June 2009. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin ** (of 4) I know everyone loved this book. It's a best seller and a book club must-do, but I couldn't finish it. Too much hagiography. Too many adjectives. In some ways the book jacket gives it away, and then so does the introduction, and then every page after that. A man with no future beyond rock climbing foresakes all things American to build schools for disenfranchised Pakistani girls and becomes a world hero. Somehow it all seemed too moralistic. September 2008. Tigers in the Snow by Peter Matthiessen ** (of 4) Everything you ever wanted to know about tiger life in the wilds of Asia from Siberia to India. Read the book or visit a zoo, because according to Matthiessen tigers are doomed. The book so plainly praises the dignity of wild tigers in their native habitat and the insurmountable threats to their survival I wanted to kill myself I was so depressed. June 2007. Untouchables : My Family's Triumphant Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India by Narendra Jadhav I have to admit I only read the first 50 pages of this book. Nevertheless, the fictional account of life in India's lower castes, A Fine Balance by Rohatyn Mistry, is ten times more informative and hundred times more interesting. Untouchables confirmed that A Fine Balance may be fictional, but it certainly is not fictitious. Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson **** (of 4) This was my first Bryson. It's his description of walking the Appalachian trail. I can think of no other book that made me laugh out loud. This book made me do it several times. Why we Run by Bernd Heinrich * (of 4) Heinrich does his best to combine science writing, nature writing, the physiology of running, and entymology. The only part I liked was the running. Granted, I know enough science and nature that I didn't learn anything new from his writing, not even new perspectives on old things, but he failed in one critical aspect. He didn't make me care either about him or the places he was writing about. Except the fact that he came from a family of Nazis and refused to admit it. February 2008. Winter by Rick Bass *** (of 4) At the age of 29, Bass forsakes his worldly belongings, save for his broken down truck, and leaves Houston for the very limit of the United States, a remote, sparsely inhabited valley in Montana on the edge of the Canadian border.  His goal is to explore Yaak, learn about himself, become a writer, and above all else, survive winter.  At times he is overcome by self-importance and the self-consciousness of recapitulating Thoreau's Walden, and at others, he is so observant and elegiac that he can make individual snowflakes or the crack of split wood so important we cannot believe we have never before taken notice.  The book's shining message is the imperative to slow down, escape the drive of modern American life, even if all we do is read his book.  January 2007. Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean Norman Maclean is like Roger Angell: an old school Master of wordsmithing. His command of English and of writing is simply superior. Maclean's first great book, A River Runs Through It, about trout fishing took decades to write. Young Men and Fire is the story of smoke jumpers who get caught in a western canyon fire when the fire reverses and flies up a hill at them with the speed of a tornado. Maclean died before he finished the book so you can tell the last 70 pages aren't as polished as the first four-fifths of the book. Still, it's an outstanding read filled with excellent detail presented compellingly. Eric Pallant, Department of Environmental Science, Allegheny College/updated 11 November 2009.