Collected Miscellany

In my efforts to bail out Kevin for his lack of posting, I am trying to post more book reviews. In that vein, Stephen Coote’s Napoleon and the Hundred Days is an interesting look at the character of Napoleon and the events of his return to power in 1815.

The book begins with the Conference of Vienna in 1815 and looks back at Napoleon’s rise to power. Along the way, Coote describes the key moments in this rise and the major figures in Napoleon’s life (among them Josephine, Marshal Ney, and Fouche). Coote briefly describes Napoleon’s major campaigns leading up to the major disaster in Russia and his subsequent exile to Elba. Coote then spends the rest of the book on Napoleon’s return to power and defeat at Waterloo.

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Tom Harper’s second book entitled Knights of the Cross which chronicles the adventures of Demetrios Askiates in the First Crusade is much better than his first, The Mosaic of Shadows. This book seems to flow more than the first.

Here is an excerpt from Publisher’s Weekly about the book:

…As the First Crusaders are stuck in an interminable siege of Turk-held Antioch, Demetrios Askiates, a Greek assigned as scribe to the Byzantine emperor’s representative, must once again play detective. The discovery of a Norman knight with his throat slit and bearing unusual markings on his corpse threatens the shaky alliance among the varied European armies of the First Crusade. Amid battles and political intrigues, Demetrios desperately pursues the few clues he has, even as the late Norman knight’s companions, who may have joined him in promoting a new heretical sect, also turn up dead. …

Harper does an excellent job in developing the various characters and giving the plot several twists and turns. He also brings the time period alive for the reader – describing the city of Antioch and the battles that waged around it.

With that said, I still Harper could trim some of the text from the book. There are times when the story drags with subplots that are not relevant to the story. For example, I found myself skimming some of the text when Harper delves into the religion of some of the characters.

Overall, Harper’s second book is an improvement over the first and I think anyone interested in the Crusades from a different perspective (a Byzantine one) would do well to read this book.

Colonel Robert Black’s The Battalion: The Dramatic Story of the 2nd Ranger Battalion in World War II is a fascinating account of the unit that was made famous by the assault on Pointe du Hoc during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Black interweaves the individual experiences of the men with the operations of the battalion.

The book more or less covers the exploits of the battalion from its formation, April 1, 1943, to its deactivation on October 23, 1945. The book’s primary focus is on the battalion’s training and assault of Pointe du Hoc. It covers the battalion’s march to Germany and the end of the war with a special emphasis on a crucial battle in early December 1944 – Castle Hill – where the battalion captured the hill and fought off five German counterattacks.

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Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations is not typically viewed as airport reading these days. The treatise weighs in at 1200 or so pages. So perhaps it is appropriate that I bought and read P.J. O’Rourke’s take on the famous tome instead. A book about a book – and often a humorous one – seem more like airport fare.

On a recent trip I found myself perilously without reading material as I had finished the lone book I brought with me. Browsing through an airport bookstore I stumbled up On The Wealth of Nations by P. J. O’Rourke and read most of it during my travels. The book is part of a series by Atlantic on “Books That Changed the World.” Sort of like Cliff Notes for adults or something. Seemed like an interesting concept for an interesting writer on an interesting subject. I succumbed to the power of marketing.

Was it worth it? Well, as is so often the case, yes and no. Was it an entertaining read? Yes. O’Rourke has a witty way with words and the prose was smooth enough that it was an easy read. It kept me from focusing on all the wasted time spent sitting in an airport or airplane. The real question is: did I learn anything? And this is where things break down. I am not sure O’Rourke really captures anything quintessential or insightful about Adam Smith’s famous work or helps the reader understand it better. It is an interesting journey but you end up with little to hold onto in the end.

James Panero over at Armavirumque captured a telling critique in the Baltimore Sun (that seems to have disappeared behind a subscription archive):

O’Rourke’s book is a peculiar kind of satire. By turns smart-alecky and oracular, it gives readers something to do instead of thinking. O’Rourke professes to share Smith’s skepticism about all-encompassing systems, but he applies the economic theories of The Wealth of Nations indiscriminately, indifferent to the changing realities of a post-industrial age of information. Laughs aside, O’Rourke’s “Cliff’s Notes” to Adam Smith are an abridgment to nowhere.

Allan Sloan had a more positive review in the Wall Street Journal that I wanted to note for two reasons. One, is that Sloan, like almost all reviewers, notes the enjoyable aspect of the book:

The 1937 Modern Library edition of Smith’s work, which O’Rourke cites as his text and I borrowed from my local public library, runs 903 pages, not counting introductions and indexes. Those pages are in small type. Make that very small type.

O’Rourke’s book, by contrast, runs to fewer than 200 pages before appendixes and notes, and has a typeface and layout suitable for modern eyes. And unlike Smith, O’Rourke is a wonderful stylist. Even if you disagree with his conservative political and economic views, as I sometimes do, you’ve got to admire his facility with words.

Two, I wanted to point out that Sloan gets to the heart of the matter and encapsulates the basic libertarian position in one short paragraph:

Smith’s thesis, which still resonates today, is that setting people free to pursue their own self-interest produces a collective result far superior to what you get if you try to impose political or religious diktats. Free people allowed to make free choices in free markets will satisfy their needs (and society’s) far better than any government can. Finally, Smith believed passionately in free trade, both within countries and between them. He felt that allowing people and countries to specialize and to trade freely would produce enormous wealth, because freeing people and nations to do what they do best will produce vastly more wealth than if everyone strives for self-sufficiency.

So to conclude, O’Rourke made for entertaining travel reading, but didn’t leave me with any real insights into Adam Smith or the Wealth of Nations.

BTW, it should be interesting to see where the series goes from here. The Qur’an: A Biography by Bruce Lawrence has recently been released and Darwin’s Origin of Species: A Biography is set to be released in March. I might have to check out the next two volumes to see how the concept plays out with different authors and subjects.

Quite often these days when people ask how things are going I am reminded of that FedEx commercial (watch it here)where the guy pretends to be busy and says things like “Worky work! Busy Bee!” Except, I really do have a lot of things to do and FedEx ground can’t really help.

Anyways . . . in lieu of more substantive posting allow me to note here some interesting books that have been sent my way of late. Yes, that’s right. It’s another installment of In the Mail!

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

From Publishers Weekly

Stoker-winner Hill features a particularly merciless ghost in his powerful first novel. Middle-aged rock star Judas Coyne collects morbid curios for fun, so doesn’t think twice about buying a suit advertised at an online auction site as haunted by its dead owner’s ghost. Only after it arrives does Judas discover that the suit belonged to Craddock McDermott, the stepfather of one of Coyne’s discarded groupies, and that the old man’s ghost is a malignant spirit determined to kill Judas in revenge for his stepdaughter’s suicide. Judas isn’t quite the cad or Craddock the avenging angel this scenario makes them at first, but their true motivations reveal themselves only gradually in a fast-paced plot that crackles with expertly planted surprises and revelations. Hill (20th Century Ghosts) gives his characters believably complex emotional lives that help to anchor the supernatural in psychological reality and prove that (as one character observes) “horror was rooted in sympathy.” His subtle and skillful treatment of horrors that could easily have exploded over the top and out of control helps make this a truly memorable debut.

Black Monday by R. Scott Reiss

From Booklist

Screenwriter Reiss (the name is a pseudonym) plants himself firmly in Michael Crichton territory with this techno-thriller. A microbe that eats oil has somehow appeared in oil fields around the world. Any machine that runs on gasoline is rendered inoperable by the microbe. Greg Gillette, an epidemiologist, tries to beat the clock and find an antidote to the techno-plague before society collapses. Written with urgency and wit, the novel (already snapped up by Hollywood) is imaginative and plausibly plotted. The book doesn’t feature Crichton’s lengthy scientific explanations, but it does have the same sort of plucky characters and high-octane pacing. Sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

POSH by Lucy Jackson

From Publishers Weekly

The pseudonymous Jackson (an “acclaimed short story writer and novelist”) plumbs the lives of those who pace the halls at New York City’s exclusive Griffin School in this accomplished novel. Varied in age and income bracket, the cast is finely drawn if familiar: Julianne Coopersmith, a middle-class teen with an overprotective mother, attends Griffin on scholarship; Morgan Goldfine, Julianne’s best friend whose mother recently died, is awash in grief; Michael Avery, Julianne’s boy wonder boyfriend, is Harvard bound; and Kathryn “Lazy” Hoffman, Griffin’s headmistress, is having a professionally verboten affair with a teacher. Cracks form in Julianne and Michael’s relationship after Michael shows signs of mental instability, though Julianne’s loathe to give up on him, even when his symptoms hint at violent tendencies. Morgan mopes her way through the school year, and Julianne’s mother strikes up an unlikely friendship with Michael’s mother. Kathryn’s affair, predictably, becomes public knowledge, sparking domestic and professional upheaval. If the plot packs few surprises, Jackson’s rendering of relationships—both toxic and positive, filial and friendly—is flawlessly executed as she flits from social strata to social strata. The similarity in cover art between this novel and Prep isn’t for nothing.

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I just finished the fourth book in the Amelia Peabody Mystery Series by Elizabeth Peters – Lion in the Valley. It is kind of a continuation of the third book – The Mummy Case – in that Amelia, Emerson, and Ramses are dealing with the “Master Criminal” in Dahshoor.

Here is a brief summary from the book cover:

The 1895-96 season promises to be an exceptional one for Amelia Peabody, her dashing Egyptologist husband Emerson, and their wild and precocious eight-year-old son Ramses. The much-coveted burial chamber of the Black Pyramid in Dahshoor is theirs for the digging. But there is a great evil in the wind that roils the hot sands sweeping through the bustling streets and marketplace of Cairo. The brazen moonlight abduction of Ramses — and an expedition subsequently cursed by misfortune and death — have alerted Amelia to the likely presence of her arch nemesis the Master Criminal, notorious looter of the living and the dead. But it is far more than ill-gotten riches that motivates the evil genius this time around. For now the most valuable and elusive prized of all is nearly in his grasp: the meddling lady archaeologist who has sworn to deliver him to justice . . . Amelia Peabody!

I like this series, but this book did not particularly grab me. I found it harder to get into the plot and the characters – this might be the book or me. The character development was as strong as Peters’ past books and the story seemed to be pretty solid. I cannot put my finger on it, but a few times I skimmed a few paragraphs because the dialogue was boring and impertinent to the story.

I still look forward to reading the fifth book – The Deeds of the Disturber.