1ABVR
How I Got Here
I turned sixty in 2023 and have found the little voice in the back of my head whispering, a bit more insistently than it used to: "So many books, so little time." I've also realized that a decade ago I was routinely reading 80-100 books a year, but in more recent years I've averaged somewhere in the mid-40s (and occasionally dipped into the high 30s, even including books I started and then set aside . . . or, in homage to Dorothy Parker, threw aside with great force).
"Alright," I said to myself, "let's shoot for 50 books read to completion in 2024, and see what happens."
And here I am, wandering into this group for the first time in my--consults profile--18 (!!) years on Library Thing.
2023 in Review
Books Read to Completion: 44
Books Started but Abandoned: 11
Non-Fiction v. Fiction: 28 / 27 (a surprising departure from the usual 2:1)
New-to-Me Authors: 29
Authors I Read More than One Book by This Year: 4 (Loren D. Estleman, Elmore Leonard, Philip McCutchan, Clay Shirky)
Re-Reads: 1 (Len Deighton, Horse Under Water, which I apparently read in 2005 but have no memory of)
Top 5 Books of 2023 (in no particular order)
» Loren D. Estleman, The Witchfinder -- Excellent even by the author's usual high detective-story standards, with an offbeat blackmail plot (and incidental murder), vivid supporting characters and crackling dialogue.
» Nathaniel Benchley, The Off-Islanders -- A solid bit of Cold War comedy, more sardonic and less farcical than its film adaptation (The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!)
» Andrew Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East -- Long and engrossing study by a US Army intelligence officer turned academic; crisp writing, eloquent arguments, abundant supporting evidence . . . with outrage simmering beneath.
» Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody -- Written fifteen years ago, but still surprisingly insightful. A fish, they say, doesn't notice the water, and we've stopped noticing many of the ways in which digital networks have changed the world. This is an eloquent reminder.
» Dudley Pope, Ramage's Prize -- Who'd have thought you could write a naval adventure story about the transatlantic mails? Who'd have thought it would be this engrossing? Not me . . . but Pope did, and it is.
And . . .
Enough of this . . . on to 2024!
I turned sixty in 2023 and have found the little voice in the back of my head whispering, a bit more insistently than it used to: "So many books, so little time." I've also realized that a decade ago I was routinely reading 80-100 books a year, but in more recent years I've averaged somewhere in the mid-40s (and occasionally dipped into the high 30s, even including books I started and then set aside . . . or, in homage to Dorothy Parker, threw aside with great force).
"Alright," I said to myself, "let's shoot for 50 books read to completion in 2024, and see what happens."
And here I am, wandering into this group for the first time in my--consults profile--18 (!!) years on Library Thing.
2023 in Review
Books Read to Completion: 44
Books Started but Abandoned: 11
Non-Fiction v. Fiction: 28 / 27 (a surprising departure from the usual 2:1)
New-to-Me Authors: 29
Authors I Read More than One Book by This Year: 4 (Loren D. Estleman, Elmore Leonard, Philip McCutchan, Clay Shirky)
Re-Reads: 1 (Len Deighton, Horse Under Water, which I apparently read in 2005 but have no memory of)
Top 5 Books of 2023 (in no particular order)
» Loren D. Estleman, The Witchfinder -- Excellent even by the author's usual high detective-story standards, with an offbeat blackmail plot (and incidental murder), vivid supporting characters and crackling dialogue.
» Nathaniel Benchley, The Off-Islanders -- A solid bit of Cold War comedy, more sardonic and less farcical than its film adaptation (The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!)
» Andrew Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East -- Long and engrossing study by a US Army intelligence officer turned academic; crisp writing, eloquent arguments, abundant supporting evidence . . . with outrage simmering beneath.
» Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody -- Written fifteen years ago, but still surprisingly insightful. A fish, they say, doesn't notice the water, and we've stopped noticing many of the ways in which digital networks have changed the world. This is an eloquent reminder.
» Dudley Pope, Ramage's Prize -- Who'd have thought you could write a naval adventure story about the transatlantic mails? Who'd have thought it would be this engrossing? Not me . . . but Pope did, and it is.
And . . .
Enough of this . . . on to 2024!
2ABVR
Books Read to Completion in 2024
This is a bare-bones list of Author, Title, and Date Finished. The titles are clickable links which will take you to the posts with with comments.
1. Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever, 6 Jan 2024
2. George R. Stewart, Storm, 16 Jan 2024
3. Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, 20 Jan 2024
4. Rex Stout, The Doorbell Rang, 21 Jan 2024
5. Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: A History of Whaling in America, 4 February 2024
6. Don Winslow, City on Fire,10 February 2024
7. Joseph Graves, The Race Myth, 16 February 2024
8. David R. Metz, Master of Air Power: General Carl A. Spaatz, 27 February 2024
9. Loren D. Estleman, Every Brilliant Eye, 9 March 2024
10. Chris Dixon, Ghost Wave, 12 March 2024
Currently Reading
James Carroll, House of War
Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From
Andy Weir, The Martian
This is a bare-bones list of Author, Title, and Date Finished. The titles are clickable links which will take you to the posts with with comments.
1. Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever, 6 Jan 2024
2. George R. Stewart, Storm, 16 Jan 2024
3. Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, 20 Jan 2024
4. Rex Stout, The Doorbell Rang, 21 Jan 2024
5. Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: A History of Whaling in America, 4 February 2024
6. Don Winslow, City on Fire,10 February 2024
7. Joseph Graves, The Race Myth, 16 February 2024
8. David R. Metz, Master of Air Power: General Carl A. Spaatz, 27 February 2024
9. Loren D. Estleman, Every Brilliant Eye, 9 March 2024
10. Chris Dixon, Ghost Wave, 12 March 2024
Currently Reading
James Carroll, House of War
Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From
Andy Weir, The Martian
3ABVR
Books Abandoned in 2024
Another bare-bones list: Author, Title, Date Abandoned
† Geoffrey Jenkins, A Cleft of Stars, 24 January 2024.
† James Anderson, The Never-Open Desert Diner, 27 January 2024.
† Kevin J. Anderson, ed., War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, 6 February 2024.
† Steve Berry, The Romanov Prophecy, 20 February 2024
† Robert B. Seidensticker, Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change, 1 March 2024
†
Another bare-bones list: Author, Title, Date Abandoned
† Geoffrey Jenkins, A Cleft of Stars, 24 January 2024.
† James Anderson, The Never-Open Desert Diner, 27 January 2024.
† Kevin J. Anderson, ed., War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, 6 February 2024.
† Steve Berry, The Romanov Prophecy, 20 February 2024
† Robert B. Seidensticker, Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change, 1 March 2024
†
4ABVR
2024 So Far
A "This Year " version of the summary information in Post 1
Books Read to Completion: 10
Books Started but Abandoned: 5
Non-Fiction v. Fiction: 4/6
New-to-Me Authors: 6
Authors I Read More than One Book by This Year: 0
Re-Reads: 1
A "This Year " version of the summary information in Post 1
Books Read to Completion: 10
Books Started but Abandoned: 5
Non-Fiction v. Fiction: 4/6
New-to-Me Authors: 6
Authors I Read More than One Book by This Year: 0
Re-Reads: 1
5ABVR
1. Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever, 6 Jan 2024
Few aspects of American history are as subject to mythologization as its wars, and few American conflicts are as subject to mythologization as World War II. Published 30 years ago, before Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan raised the hagiography of World War II veterans to new heights, this slim (less than 200 pages) overview of the American experience of World War II is an attempt to introduce complexity and nuance into a subject long dominated by simplicity and patriotic platitudes.
Adams is writing for undergraduate audience whose knowledge of the war comes mostly from popular culture, and he does so superbly. His chapter on the origins of the war and America's involvement (from Versailles to Pearl Harbor), is a brisk and lucid overview, and the following chapter (a military overview of the war from the American perspective) is even more impressive. The remaining three chapters cover Americans' experiences in combat and on the home front, and the long-term impact of the war on American society in (roughly) the decade-and-a-half following VJ Day. If I was teaching a university-level American history course that included World War II, I'd assign this book in a heartbeat.
It's not just for undergraduates, though. Adams, merely a serviceable writer, is a superb synthesizer, and the book is a masterful overview of a huge range of complex topics. It is peppered with parenthetical reference to sources, and concludes with a 22-page bibliographic essay -- one section for each chapter -- that tells readers in search of more depth and detail where to go.
You'd have to be very well-versed indeed in the American experience of World War II not to get something new out of it, and if you wanted to read the proverbial "one book" on the subject, you could do a lot worse.
Few aspects of American history are as subject to mythologization as its wars, and few American conflicts are as subject to mythologization as World War II. Published 30 years ago, before Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan raised the hagiography of World War II veterans to new heights, this slim (less than 200 pages) overview of the American experience of World War II is an attempt to introduce complexity and nuance into a subject long dominated by simplicity and patriotic platitudes.
Adams is writing for undergraduate audience whose knowledge of the war comes mostly from popular culture, and he does so superbly. His chapter on the origins of the war and America's involvement (from Versailles to Pearl Harbor), is a brisk and lucid overview, and the following chapter (a military overview of the war from the American perspective) is even more impressive. The remaining three chapters cover Americans' experiences in combat and on the home front, and the long-term impact of the war on American society in (roughly) the decade-and-a-half following VJ Day. If I was teaching a university-level American history course that included World War II, I'd assign this book in a heartbeat.
It's not just for undergraduates, though. Adams, merely a serviceable writer, is a superb synthesizer, and the book is a masterful overview of a huge range of complex topics. It is peppered with parenthetical reference to sources, and concludes with a 22-page bibliographic essay -- one section for each chapter -- that tells readers in search of more depth and detail where to go.
You'd have to be very well-versed indeed in the American experience of World War II not to get something new out of it, and if you wanted to read the proverbial "one book" on the subject, you could do a lot worse.
6rocketjk
>5 ABVR: That looks really interesting, thanks. You've reminded me of a book that's been on my shelf forever and been meaning to get to for about as long: Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War by Paul Fussell.
7ABVR
>6 rocketjk: Fussell's Wartime is a classic, an essential corrective to the waves of gauzy nostalgia that followed in the wake of Brokaw's The Greatest Generation.
The Boy's Crusade, rooted in Fussell's experiences as an infantryman in Europe after D-Day, is also excellent . . . worthy, in my opinion, of being placed alongside Sledge's With the Old Breed, Manchester's Goodbye, Darkness, and Mauldin's Up Front on a list of the greatest American WWII memoirs.
The Boy's Crusade, rooted in Fussell's experiences as an infantryman in Europe after D-Day, is also excellent . . . worthy, in my opinion, of being placed alongside Sledge's With the Old Breed, Manchester's Goodbye, Darkness, and Mauldin's Up Front on a list of the greatest American WWII memoirs.
8ABVR
2. George R. Stewart, Storm, 16 Jan 2024
Published in 1941, Storm follows the life of a winter storm from its birth over the North Pacific until its dissipation twelve days later. The storm, privately named "Maria" by a junior meteorologist at the San Francisco office of the US Weather Bureau, is a significant enough presence in the story to qualify as a character . . . except that Stewart, even as he lovingly chronicles its growth and changing nature, is careful never to humanize it. It sweeps across the Pacific, then across Northern California, utterly indifferent to its effect on the human characters in the story.
Those human characters are, by traditional literary standards, given only slightly more development. They have character traits and motivations, both limited in number and very sparely drawn, but not personalities. Over the course of the story, we see them almost exclusively in the context of doing their jobs, and learn virtually nothing about their larger lives or inner thoughts and emotions.
All of this serves the central theme of Stewart's novel, which is the collision of natural systems (the storm) and the human systems that it touches: the weather bureau, the airlines and railroads, the power and telephone companies, the flood-control works that regulate the flow of the rivers, and the highway department charged with keeping the mountain roads over the Sierra Nevada open and passable. The drama in the story lies in the humans who operate these systems straining their minds, bodies, and spirits to the breaking point to keep them operating in spite of the storm . . . or at least to keep its disruption of them, and thus its effect on people's lives, to an absolute minimum.
My late father was born on the coast of central California (Carmel, south of Monterey) in 1926, and grew up in the world Stewart describes. Storm was one of his all-time favorite books, and I read it (at his urging) in my first or second year of high school . . . the age he likely was when he first read it. I reread it now, at age 60, curious as to whether it held up.
It does, to an extraordinary degree. Stewart's writing about atmospheric phenomena, though it occasionally tips into the self-consciously grandiose, is surprisingly gripping, and his juggling of multiple plot lines and sets of characters is masterful. It's a thoughtful reflection on the way that fragility and resilience coexist in the technological systems that make modern life possible. It's also--something I missed when I read it as a teenager, enthralled by the man vs. nature action--a look into the minds of the workers whose unseen labor (both physical and mental) keeps those systems operating.
Storm is not an easy sell to someone you don't know well, but if anything I wrote above intrigues you, it's well worth tracking down.
Published in 1941, Storm follows the life of a winter storm from its birth over the North Pacific until its dissipation twelve days later. The storm, privately named "Maria" by a junior meteorologist at the San Francisco office of the US Weather Bureau, is a significant enough presence in the story to qualify as a character . . . except that Stewart, even as he lovingly chronicles its growth and changing nature, is careful never to humanize it. It sweeps across the Pacific, then across Northern California, utterly indifferent to its effect on the human characters in the story.
Those human characters are, by traditional literary standards, given only slightly more development. They have character traits and motivations, both limited in number and very sparely drawn, but not personalities. Over the course of the story, we see them almost exclusively in the context of doing their jobs, and learn virtually nothing about their larger lives or inner thoughts and emotions.
All of this serves the central theme of Stewart's novel, which is the collision of natural systems (the storm) and the human systems that it touches: the weather bureau, the airlines and railroads, the power and telephone companies, the flood-control works that regulate the flow of the rivers, and the highway department charged with keeping the mountain roads over the Sierra Nevada open and passable. The drama in the story lies in the humans who operate these systems straining their minds, bodies, and spirits to the breaking point to keep them operating in spite of the storm . . . or at least to keep its disruption of them, and thus its effect on people's lives, to an absolute minimum.
My late father was born on the coast of central California (Carmel, south of Monterey) in 1926, and grew up in the world Stewart describes. Storm was one of his all-time favorite books, and I read it (at his urging) in my first or second year of high school . . . the age he likely was when he first read it. I reread it now, at age 60, curious as to whether it held up.
It does, to an extraordinary degree. Stewart's writing about atmospheric phenomena, though it occasionally tips into the self-consciously grandiose, is surprisingly gripping, and his juggling of multiple plot lines and sets of characters is masterful. It's a thoughtful reflection on the way that fragility and resilience coexist in the technological systems that make modern life possible. It's also--something I missed when I read it as a teenager, enthralled by the man vs. nature action--a look into the minds of the workers whose unseen labor (both physical and mental) keeps those systems operating.
Storm is not an easy sell to someone you don't know well, but if anything I wrote above intrigues you, it's well worth tracking down.
9ABVR
3. Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, 20 Jan 2024
Tracy Kidder is a prize-winning and (justly) acclaimed writer of long-form non-fiction like Soul of a New Machine, Among Schoolchildren, and Mountains Beyond Mountains; Richard Todd is his longtime editor and friend. This book, a collaboration between them where their voices are sometimes made distinct and sometimes merged, is part joint memoir, part reflection on the nature of (some forms of) nonfiction, and part style guide.
There are interesting elements in this book: The glimpse inside the workings of The Atlantic Monthly back in the day were fascinating, the chapter titled "Beyond Accuracy" was thought-provoking, and the discussion of the relationship between "Art and Commerce" contained some gems . . . including A. J. Liebling's quote: "I can write better than everyone who can write faster, and I can write faster than everyone who can write better."
There are also elements that made me roll my eyes: The Atlantic Monthly reminiscences are fascinating as history but belong to an age so far removed from ours that they feel like a dead-end as insight into writing today, and "Rewrite!" is important, but hardly revelatory, advice to give any remotely experienced writer. The sections on style are particularly frustrating, since Kidder and Todd are more interested in deploring things than they are at suggesting alternatives.
The book's biggest problem, though, was that it ultimately felt like less than the sum of its parts. There is no clear through line, and the title and subtitle on the cover (Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction) is, in the end, a far less accurate description of what's inside than the sub-subtitle just below: "Stories and advice from a lifetime of writing and editing." Go in with lower expectations than I did, and you'll probably enjoy it more.
Tracy Kidder is a prize-winning and (justly) acclaimed writer of long-form non-fiction like Soul of a New Machine, Among Schoolchildren, and Mountains Beyond Mountains; Richard Todd is his longtime editor and friend. This book, a collaboration between them where their voices are sometimes made distinct and sometimes merged, is part joint memoir, part reflection on the nature of (some forms of) nonfiction, and part style guide.
There are interesting elements in this book: The glimpse inside the workings of The Atlantic Monthly back in the day were fascinating, the chapter titled "Beyond Accuracy" was thought-provoking, and the discussion of the relationship between "Art and Commerce" contained some gems . . . including A. J. Liebling's quote: "I can write better than everyone who can write faster, and I can write faster than everyone who can write better."
There are also elements that made me roll my eyes: The Atlantic Monthly reminiscences are fascinating as history but belong to an age so far removed from ours that they feel like a dead-end as insight into writing today, and "Rewrite!" is important, but hardly revelatory, advice to give any remotely experienced writer. The sections on style are particularly frustrating, since Kidder and Todd are more interested in deploring things than they are at suggesting alternatives.
The book's biggest problem, though, was that it ultimately felt like less than the sum of its parts. There is no clear through line, and the title and subtitle on the cover (Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction) is, in the end, a far less accurate description of what's inside than the sub-subtitle just below: "Stories and advice from a lifetime of writing and editing." Go in with lower expectations than I did, and you'll probably enjoy it more.
10rocketjk
>8 ABVR: I read Storm about 15 years ago and thought it was fascinating. I noticed recently that's it's been republished.
11ABVR
4. Rex Stout, The Doorbell Rang, 21 Jan 2024
Rex Stout is one of those mystery writers who I don't actively seek out, but will happily read if one of his books falls into my lap. This outing, one of the later installments in the Nero Wolfe series, is what I've come to expect from Stout: A diverting story that I (probably) won't remember the details of six months from now.
The details, in this case, involve Wolfe being hired by a wealthy woman to stop the FBI from harassing her. There's a murder, and although it sidles into the story almost as an afterthought, Stout makes it central to Wolfe's eventual resolution of the main plot. That resolution turns on a scheme, dreamed up by Wolfe and executed by his assistant Archie Goodwin and a cast of supporting characters (some regulars, others one-off), of almost comically elaborate complexity . . . all the more vaguely absurd because of the relatively straightforward result it was designed to produce. Once the scheme is set in motion, however, it leads quickly to a satisfying battle of wits and wills between Wolfe and the feds that wraps up the story.
The yin/yang complementarity of Wolfe and Archie is less in evidence, and has less effect on the story, than usual, but Archie's narration of how he does what he does is as present (and as engaging) as ever. You can start to see other, just-emerging series characters of the era as reflecting his quirks: John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee with his narration of procedural detail, and, less obviously, Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm with his throwaway references to facts not shared with the reader.
Rex Stout is one of those mystery writers who I don't actively seek out, but will happily read if one of his books falls into my lap. This outing, one of the later installments in the Nero Wolfe series, is what I've come to expect from Stout: A diverting story that I (probably) won't remember the details of six months from now.
The details, in this case, involve Wolfe being hired by a wealthy woman to stop the FBI from harassing her. There's a murder, and although it sidles into the story almost as an afterthought, Stout makes it central to Wolfe's eventual resolution of the main plot. That resolution turns on a scheme, dreamed up by Wolfe and executed by his assistant Archie Goodwin and a cast of supporting characters (some regulars, others one-off), of almost comically elaborate complexity . . . all the more vaguely absurd because of the relatively straightforward result it was designed to produce. Once the scheme is set in motion, however, it leads quickly to a satisfying battle of wits and wills between Wolfe and the feds that wraps up the story.
The yin/yang complementarity of Wolfe and Archie is less in evidence, and has less effect on the story, than usual, but Archie's narration of how he does what he does is as present (and as engaging) as ever. You can start to see other, just-emerging series characters of the era as reflecting his quirks: John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee with his narration of procedural detail, and, less obviously, Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm with his throwaway references to facts not shared with the reader.
12ABVR
5. Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, 5 Feb 2024
The market for general-audiences non-fiction on maritime topics is enormous, and the genre is thriving, but but it tends toward the stories of individual ships (David Cordingly's The Billy Ruffian), battles (James D. Hornfischer's Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, campaigns (Ian Toll's voyages (Lawrence Bergreen's Over the Edge of the World), or campaigns (Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible). Eric Jay Dolin has carved out a literary niche for himself by taking the longer view of maritime subjects -- hurricanes, lighthouses, pirates, privateers, the China trade -- in books whose narratives span decades or, often, centuries.
Leviathan, Dolin's take on the American whaling industry, follows this model. After briefly sketching the history of whaling in ancient and medieval Europe, it shifts its focus to whaling as undertaken by the European colonizers of North America, following it from 17C harvesting of "drift whales" (those washed up on the beach by natural causes) and "shore whaling" from small boats through the rise (in the 1720s), golden age, decline, and eventual collapse (in the 1920s) of offshore whaling.
Popular histories of whaling industry have often wrapped it in a gauzy romanticism, and trafficked in a "wooden ships and iron men" brand of mythology. The temptation to present whaling as a great adventure has sucked in its fair share of historians who should have known better. Dolin's great contribution to the history of the whaling is to treat it as an industry: a dirty, dangerous extraction industry little different (except in the setting and the nature of the hazards) coal mining in Appalachia, lumbering in the north woods of Wisconsin and Minnesota, or railroad-buildign in the mountain West. Dolin gives due attention to labor-management tensions, pay, working conditions, and employee morale . . . as well as to the ways that shifting market prices, foreign wars, and other external factors shaped the whaling business.
Leviathan doesn't neglect the signature adventure-at-sea tales that the whaling industry produced in abundance -- the central section of the book, dealing with whaling's Antebellum "golden age," is heavy with them. Readers new to the field will find them engrossing and rewarding, but veterans may find themselves skimming. Any reasonably capable writer can make the wreck of the Essex or the exploits of Confederate commerce raiders like the Alabama engrossing. It takes a rare talent to do that for matters such as whale-oil cartels, marine insurance, and shifting pay scales . . . but Dolin has that talent, and uses it to make Leviathan a fascinating read.
The market for general-audiences non-fiction on maritime topics is enormous, and the genre is thriving, but but it tends toward the stories of individual ships (David Cordingly's The Billy Ruffian), battles (James D. Hornfischer's Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, campaigns (Ian Toll's voyages (Lawrence Bergreen's Over the Edge of the World), or campaigns (Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible). Eric Jay Dolin has carved out a literary niche for himself by taking the longer view of maritime subjects -- hurricanes, lighthouses, pirates, privateers, the China trade -- in books whose narratives span decades or, often, centuries.
Leviathan, Dolin's take on the American whaling industry, follows this model. After briefly sketching the history of whaling in ancient and medieval Europe, it shifts its focus to whaling as undertaken by the European colonizers of North America, following it from 17C harvesting of "drift whales" (those washed up on the beach by natural causes) and "shore whaling" from small boats through the rise (in the 1720s), golden age, decline, and eventual collapse (in the 1920s) of offshore whaling.
Popular histories of whaling industry have often wrapped it in a gauzy romanticism, and trafficked in a "wooden ships and iron men" brand of mythology. The temptation to present whaling as a great adventure has sucked in its fair share of historians who should have known better. Dolin's great contribution to the history of the whaling is to treat it as an industry: a dirty, dangerous extraction industry little different (except in the setting and the nature of the hazards) coal mining in Appalachia, lumbering in the north woods of Wisconsin and Minnesota, or railroad-buildign in the mountain West. Dolin gives due attention to labor-management tensions, pay, working conditions, and employee morale . . . as well as to the ways that shifting market prices, foreign wars, and other external factors shaped the whaling business.
Leviathan doesn't neglect the signature adventure-at-sea tales that the whaling industry produced in abundance -- the central section of the book, dealing with whaling's Antebellum "golden age," is heavy with them. Readers new to the field will find them engrossing and rewarding, but veterans may find themselves skimming. Any reasonably capable writer can make the wreck of the Essex or the exploits of Confederate commerce raiders like the Alabama engrossing. It takes a rare talent to do that for matters such as whale-oil cartels, marine insurance, and shifting pay scales . . . but Dolin has that talent, and uses it to make Leviathan a fascinating read.
13ABVR
6. Don Winslow, City on Fire, 12 Feb 2024
I've been a fan of Don Winslow ever since, intrigued by the title, I picked a paperback of California Fire and Life off a library-sale table a couple of decades ago. City on Fire isn't his best work, but even an average outing with Winslow is an enormously entertaining roller-coaster ride. The plot whizzes along, the characters are more complex and vividly drawn than a lesser writer would bother to make them, and the setting -- Rhode Island in in the mid-80s, a time and a place I experienced first-hand -- is evoked with pitch-perfect accuracy. Winslow is better known for his novels about California and the desert Southwest, but he made me feel the fog rolling in off Narragansett Bay all over again, as if it were yesterday rather than 40 years ago.
The plot -- a riff on the origins of the Trojan War, played out among the rival Irish and Italian mobs in mid-eighties Providence -- is standard crime-fiction stuff. There are ethnic tensions, generational conflicts, and complicated family loyalties. The working-class social milieu is also familiar. You can feel Winslow, on both fronts, working what's usually Dennis Lehane's corner. In City on Fire, though, Winslow takes a different path through the material than either Lehane or (for that matter) Mario Puzo. His hero, Danny Ryan, is anything but a young man with a pedigree, destined for great things. He's a modestly talented, modestly accomplished, modestly ambitious gangster who longs for more respect and responsibility than he gets from those he serves.
When a slight at an end-of-summer clambake spirals into open warfare between rival ethnic mobs, Danny gets a far bigger shot than he ever dreamed of: a chance to establish himself as a great leader or die in the process. Winslow makes it clear, however, that Danny isn't a Rhode Island version of Joe Coughlin, let alone Michael Corleone. He alternates between brilliant improvisations and disastrous miscalculations, sometimes supported by those closest to him and other times undermined by them for their own purposes. The book -- first in a trilogy -- ends with him achieving one of his dearest wishes, but at a terrible cost. Danny is, throughout the story, plausibly and refreshingly imperfect.
City on Fire is a crime story, not an extended contemplation of the human condition, but it has more going on, I think, than many reviewers on LibraryThing have given it credit for. "Loyalty" and "respect" are old, old tropes in crime stories, but Winslow finds interesting things to do with them, using them in more complicated ways than he seems to be doing at first. Danny's complicated family life, particularly his relationships with his estranged mother and quasi-adopted parents, also turn out to be more intriguing than it appears at first glance.
One of the running themes of the story is how the weight of history (personal, family, community) and the push and pull of old obligations (real or imagined) steers our lives in directions other than the ones we might choose for ourselves, given the chance. In this, as in his evocation of the Narragansett Bay fog, Winslow gets the ineffable nature of the thing perfectly right.
I've been a fan of Don Winslow ever since, intrigued by the title, I picked a paperback of California Fire and Life off a library-sale table a couple of decades ago. City on Fire isn't his best work, but even an average outing with Winslow is an enormously entertaining roller-coaster ride. The plot whizzes along, the characters are more complex and vividly drawn than a lesser writer would bother to make them, and the setting -- Rhode Island in in the mid-80s, a time and a place I experienced first-hand -- is evoked with pitch-perfect accuracy. Winslow is better known for his novels about California and the desert Southwest, but he made me feel the fog rolling in off Narragansett Bay all over again, as if it were yesterday rather than 40 years ago.
The plot -- a riff on the origins of the Trojan War, played out among the rival Irish and Italian mobs in mid-eighties Providence -- is standard crime-fiction stuff. There are ethnic tensions, generational conflicts, and complicated family loyalties. The working-class social milieu is also familiar. You can feel Winslow, on both fronts, working what's usually Dennis Lehane's corner. In City on Fire, though, Winslow takes a different path through the material than either Lehane or (for that matter) Mario Puzo. His hero, Danny Ryan, is anything but a young man with a pedigree, destined for great things. He's a modestly talented, modestly accomplished, modestly ambitious gangster who longs for more respect and responsibility than he gets from those he serves.
When a slight at an end-of-summer clambake spirals into open warfare between rival ethnic mobs, Danny gets a far bigger shot than he ever dreamed of: a chance to establish himself as a great leader or die in the process. Winslow makes it clear, however, that Danny isn't a Rhode Island version of Joe Coughlin, let alone Michael Corleone. He alternates between brilliant improvisations and disastrous miscalculations, sometimes supported by those closest to him and other times undermined by them for their own purposes. The book -- first in a trilogy -- ends with him achieving one of his dearest wishes, but at a terrible cost. Danny is, throughout the story, plausibly and refreshingly imperfect.
City on Fire is a crime story, not an extended contemplation of the human condition, but it has more going on, I think, than many reviewers on LibraryThing have given it credit for. "Loyalty" and "respect" are old, old tropes in crime stories, but Winslow finds interesting things to do with them, using them in more complicated ways than he seems to be doing at first. Danny's complicated family life, particularly his relationships with his estranged mother and quasi-adopted parents, also turn out to be more intriguing than it appears at first glance.
One of the running themes of the story is how the weight of history (personal, family, community) and the push and pull of old obligations (real or imagined) steers our lives in directions other than the ones we might choose for ourselves, given the chance. In this, as in his evocation of the Narragansett Bay fog, Winslow gets the ineffable nature of the thing perfectly right.
14ABVR
7. Joseph Graves, The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, 16 Feb 2024
Review coming soon.
Review coming soon.
15ABVR
8. David R. Metz, Master of Air Power: General Carl A. Spaatz, 27 Feb 2024
Review coming soon.
Review coming soon.
17ABVR
10. Chris Dixon, Ghost Wave:This Discovery of Cortes Bank and the Biggest Wave on Earth, 12 Mar 2024
Cortes Bank, a submerged island a hundred miles west of the California coast, interrupts ocean swells that have been sweeping across the open Pacific for thousands of miles. The result, when conditions are right, is towering surf: waves that routinely hit 50-60 feet and can, under the right conditions, reach 100 feet or (hypothetically) even more. Surfers who specialize in the biggest of big waves have been drawn to Cores Bank since the 1990s, seeking the ultimate ride. Ghost Wave is a book about the bank, the waves, and the culture of big-wave surfing, but primarily the latter. Whereas Susan Casey's The Wave divided its focus between surfing and science, Dixon is almost entirely about what happens when boards (and towering ambition) meet towering waves.
Ghost Wave is—despite blurbs and reviews to the contrary—very much a "surfing book." Dixon is a surfing journalist, and he writes as if the reader already understands terms like home break, carve, slingshot, goofy foot, waterman, hold down, and the like. The people he's writing about are people he, himself, knows well, so his introductions of them to the reader (and the characterizations that would make one stand out from another in the reader's mind after those introductions) are given short shrift. By the later chapters, I was having difficulty keeping track of who was who in the large cast of characters. "You can't tell the players without a scorecard," the hawkers at the ballpark used to holler, and Dixon neglects to provide the reader with one.
The physics and technique of big-wave surfing, how they differ from surfing on less momentous waves, and why an open-ocean location like Cortes Bank poses unique hazards to surfers never get the kind of "101"-level explanation that they deserve. The lifestyles and psychology of big-wave surfers, and the conflicts within the community about whether, and how much, to share information get ongoing attention from Dixon, but he's too much a member of the community to step back and lay out the bigger picture dispassionately.
I enjoyed Ghost Wave while I was reading it, but (even as I write this, less than a week after finishing it) I find that very little of it has remained with me. It's not that kind of a book. If surfing has found its equivalent David Halberstam or John Feinstein—someone who can take non-participants deep inside the sport and the minds of whose who devote their lives to it—I haven't found them. Yet.
Cortes Bank, a submerged island a hundred miles west of the California coast, interrupts ocean swells that have been sweeping across the open Pacific for thousands of miles. The result, when conditions are right, is towering surf: waves that routinely hit 50-60 feet and can, under the right conditions, reach 100 feet or (hypothetically) even more. Surfers who specialize in the biggest of big waves have been drawn to Cores Bank since the 1990s, seeking the ultimate ride. Ghost Wave is a book about the bank, the waves, and the culture of big-wave surfing, but primarily the latter. Whereas Susan Casey's The Wave divided its focus between surfing and science, Dixon is almost entirely about what happens when boards (and towering ambition) meet towering waves.
Ghost Wave is—despite blurbs and reviews to the contrary—very much a "surfing book." Dixon is a surfing journalist, and he writes as if the reader already understands terms like home break, carve, slingshot, goofy foot, waterman, hold down, and the like. The people he's writing about are people he, himself, knows well, so his introductions of them to the reader (and the characterizations that would make one stand out from another in the reader's mind after those introductions) are given short shrift. By the later chapters, I was having difficulty keeping track of who was who in the large cast of characters. "You can't tell the players without a scorecard," the hawkers at the ballpark used to holler, and Dixon neglects to provide the reader with one.
The physics and technique of big-wave surfing, how they differ from surfing on less momentous waves, and why an open-ocean location like Cortes Bank poses unique hazards to surfers never get the kind of "101"-level explanation that they deserve. The lifestyles and psychology of big-wave surfers, and the conflicts within the community about whether, and how much, to share information get ongoing attention from Dixon, but he's too much a member of the community to step back and lay out the bigger picture dispassionately.
I enjoyed Ghost Wave while I was reading it, but (even as I write this, less than a week after finishing it) I find that very little of it has remained with me. It's not that kind of a book. If surfing has found its equivalent David Halberstam or John Feinstein—someone who can take non-participants deep inside the sport and the minds of whose who devote their lives to it—I haven't found them. Yet.
