"The Columbian Exchange" by Alfred Crosby (1972)

There is a channel on YouTube called "Crash Course." John and Hank Green host this educational channel and they cover a variety of topics from history to literature, from chemistry to psychology. One of the most intriguing episodes on "Crash Course" was in the world history category and it covered "The Columbian Exchange." It was odd for a history show to cover a book, but John Green assured you that this book was worth it. You decided to pick up a copy and see if he was right.

He was.

"The Columbian Exchange" is Crosby's attempt to put humanity into the context of one of the most influential moments in Earth's history. The premise of the book is that Columbus' discovery of the New World set in motion an exchange between two parts of the planet which had been separated for millions of years. It is an academic attempt to quantify the outcomes of that exchange and their net effects on the entire Earth. The first sentence of the book was memorable for its brevity and its truth. "Nothing can be understood apart from its context, and man is no exception."

It is challenging to conceive of how big of a deal the discovery of the New World was to the people of both the Old and the New World. The two civilizations which met that fateful day on Hispaniola in 1492 are even now referred to as two different worlds. In fact, it is the closest experiment humanity has ever had that could show us how any future extraterrestrial first contact might play out.

You were surprised and entertained to learn that the discovery of the New World was as much a challenge to theologians as it was to naturalists. No one knew how all of these never before seen people, animals, and plants could exist. How had they all gotten there and why were they so different from all of the examples from the Old World? Noah's ark had suddenly become far more crowded. Many theologians began speculating wildly, fearful as the bedrock of their religious beliefs was shaken. Some argued that there must have been multiple Genesis type moments of Creation and that God had only told the Jews about their own, or that perhaps the Great Flood had only truly been a Middle Eastern event leaving the rest of the world untouched.

Most puzzling to scholars of all classes was the New World's lack of the massive herbivores that characterized the Old World. The Americas boasted nothing as magnificent as an elephant, hippopotamus, or rhinoceros. No ox or horse dotted the landscape of either newly discovered continent, only the puny llama of South America and the formidably un-domesticable bison of the North American high plains. Leading theories about Earth's character were scrapped and new ones were hastily formed, most were comically wrong and naive. But regardless of any religious or scientific origin theories, after 1491 Europeans were determined to explore and exploit this New World wherever it had come from.

For all of it's strengths, "The Columbian Exchange" suffers from some of the embarrassing Euro-centrism (and Male-centrism) of its time. Pg. 21 states that Native cultures were barely out of the Stone Age, which is clearly not true and has been thoroughly discredited. But it is important to remember that all of the research that made works like Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," or Charles Mann's "1491," so ground breaking and intriguing had not yet been done in 1972. Crosby's honest look at history motivated these authors, and countless others to ask interesting questions and to look beyond traditionally accepted narratives. And even though the 60's and 70's were the era of the sexual revolution, change is slow to come (perhaps most especially in the academic world) so Crosby's constant use of the word "man" when he means "humanity" is somewhat forgivable, even if it is extremely distracting. It's important to remember (and be thankful) that 1972 was a long time ago.

On page 52, Crosby makes the point that, "We have so long been hypnotized by the daring of the Conquistador that we have overlooked the importance of his biological allies." His allies were, of course, rampant and catastrophic diseases. Thanks to "The Columbian Exchange" we have a generation (or two) of historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists who no longer overlook those diseases when considering the discovery of the New World. Of course military conquest played a part in the fall of the native civilizations of the New World, as did European lust for financial profits, but far more importantly, these civilizations were devastated by disease. Perhaps never before or since has the Earth seen such a rapid and stunning loss of human life. The epidemics spread outward from contact with Europeans far faster than the explorers themselves could travel. What remnants of once great civilizations remained in their wakes were often torn apart by warring factions fighting to fill in power vacuums. European conquest of the Americas was by no means a simple task, but without the destruction wrought by European disease, it is doubtful many of those conquests would have been possible.

The natives' only concession was that their catastrophic contact with Europeans introduced the New World venereal disease, syphilis, to the Old World. The very advancements in sailing and ship building, in warfare and navigation that made the Europeans such a "superior" people, ensured that this devastating disease would spread faster than anyone could have predicted.  Sailors being sailors, this syphilis quickly spread back to mainland Europe. And humans being humans, within a decade it had spread throughout the rest of the globe.

By far the greatest change in the New World in the first century after it's discovery was that the human population plummeted while collections of ever larger imported livestock exploded. The Euorpeans first established breeding grounds for these animals on various (and sometimes uninhabited) Caribbean islands. They used the islands as supply bases to provide food for their conquering expeditions into the mainland. These herds and packs of non-native animals often consumed the native plant life into extinction. Europeans, naturally, transplanted their own feed crops to keep their livestock alive and the transformation of two entire continents had begun. An ecological balance that had taken millions of years to establish was undone in less than a century.

Native Americans had no means by which to transfer their immense grasslands into food energy (other than the buffalo herds of North America). Europeans did: large and domesticated grazing animals. These non-native animals took to the New World with gusto, often escaping their confines and going wild, spreading far in advance of the Europeans who had brought them. The first European settlers of Buenos Aires were greeted by astonishingly vast herds of wild European horses. It has been suggested that horses were breeding on the fertile grasslands of the Rio de Plata (which had never been subjected to horse grazing before) faster than they have at any time in history. When the Spanish moved into southern Texas, they were again met by equally vast herds of non-native species. This time it was wild cattle, the ancestors of the famed Longhorns.

In an interesting twist of irony, the Europeans had brought with them the greatest weapon the natives could have asked for to enable them to resist conquest. The Europeans brought horses. Horses and modern firearms allowed Indians to form formidable cavalry. In some areas (Texas being one of the last) horses even allowed the natives to stave off the Europeans for a few hundred more years.

Paradoxically, the unequaled loss of native lives after the epidemics that spread like wildfire from first contact at the dawn of the 1500's paved the way for an unparalleled subsequent population explosion, not just in the New World itself, but throughout the rest of the world as well. There are all sorts of theories as to why this explosion happened and none of them are provable according to the scientific method. Correlation does not imply causation, and historians don't get a chance to reproduce and test their hypotheses of one-time, global events. One thing is certain however, Until 1492, no food sources from one hemisphere had ever been used to sustain the people of another and the food plants from the Western hemisphere were high in caloric energy.

This is not to imply that it is a simple equation of more calories per plant necessarily equaling planetary population growth. Agriculture is far more complex than that, but the influx of new food plants added variety to the world's menu and, as Crosby points out, the primary reason the vast majority of Europeans even came to the New World was because they wanted to avoid starvation in their home countries. To quote Crosby, "It is just that variety that made American food plants such a valuable addition to the cultigens of the Old World. Indian plants increased the variety of plants which the Old World farmer could try to match the variety of soils and weather in order to coax nourishment out of nature." It was the variety intrinsic in discovering a completely new environment and the life forms it had created that allowed humans to begin to learn how to thrive in a way that was never possible before 1492.

In the early 1600's even the famously xenophobic Japan quickly saw the wisdom in using the American sweet potato, which thrives in conditions unlike any plants native to the Japanese home islands, as a form of famine insurance. To this day the tomb of the Japanese farmer who introduce the sweet potato to his country is referred to as the Temple of the Sweet Potato. If the Japanese were willing to adopt a completely new and totally alien food source, there must be some extraordinary value in this variety catalyzed by Columbus' discovery.

In "The Columbian Exchange," Crosby makes the argument that the discovery of the New World swapped out a more rich and diversified world for one which suffers from a poverty of variety in plant and animal life, in cultures and native populations, in religions and innovations. In short, Crosby does not believe the exchange was worth the cost.

While you mourn the appalling loss of cultures and innovations, and certainly the unimaginable loss of life, you weren't quite convinced by Crosby's conclusion. As devastating as the Columbian Exchange proved to be for cultures and life forms, it resulted in a more sustainable and healthier world. Since the discovery of the New World, the population of the Earth has increased dramatically. The diversity of foods that resulted from the collision of two very different ecologies has eased the devastating toll that crop failures have since wrought on humanity. Famines are less frequent when people have more diversified crops.

Beyond the purely biological reasons you also think there are cultural reasons to see the Columbian Exchange as beneficial to humanity. The colonization of the New World lead to the birth of the United States of America. This was the first time in modern history that any civilization claimed the right of self-determination. For the first time, humans chose their own system of governing themselves. Over the last 230 years, countless people have used America as the inspiration to do the same. We are not a perfect country, not by any means. But our existence lit the fires of liberty and autonomy that have spread around the globe. You believe that the up-front cost of the discovery of the New World was far too great because lives and cultures are undeniably more important than scientific discovery or financial profits. But you also believe that the Earth is now populated with more people than it would have been if that event had never occurred and that those people are more free than they would have been had Columbus never made his fateful voyage.

John Green was right. "The Columbian Exchange" is a fascinating book. Books can often ask you interesting questions, ones that make you consider what you believe. The thing that made this one so fascinating wasn't what Alfred Crosby taught you about the New World, it was what his questions taught you about yourself.






On to the next book!





P.S. In case you needed the reminder, here is the link for the "Crash Course" episode that inspired you to read this book in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQPA5oNpfM4

"Cleopatra" by Stacy Schiff (2010)

There is one woman who might be more famous than any other in the history of the world. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dante, Plutarch, and Elizabeth Taylor all wanted to be a part of telling her story. It seems to you that that story has got to be worth reading.

The cover of this book is kind of brilliant. Cleopatra's face is turned away from the viewer as if to suggest that we are not able or allowed to see who she really is. It is almost reminiscent of that old optical illusion often titled "Young Lady or Old Hag." It makes you want to open the book and start reading because feel like you want to get to be the person who gets to know this enigmatic woman, this legend, this queen of Egypt.

"Cleopatra" is wonderfully written. Schiff promises from the outset to bear in mind the motivations and track records of all of the various historians she will quote in this biography. Every perspective is just that, one perspective, and Schiff bears that in mind as she attempts to achieve some objectivity. Schiff draws mostly from 2 ancient historians, Plutarch and Cassius Dio, neither of whom were Cleopatra's contemporaries. Plutarch was writing about the Egyptian queen one hundred years after her death, Dio two hundred. The former despised overt displays of emotion and the latter was a sucker for stories of schemes and plots. Schiff attempts to glean what truth she can from these (and other) clearly biased accounts.

Before any story can be told it must first be set in context. Alexander the Great had been dead 300 years when Cleopatra was born, but his legend loomed over everything everyone did (as Hercules' did centuries before). Egypt was ruled by the Ptolemy family which claimed to descend straight from Alexander's blood line which means that Cleopatra was Macedonian Greek. No Nefertiti was she, being about as ethnically Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor. As in most stories of the ancient world, the Mediterranean Sea was the perfect stage, It allowed enough distance to allow cultures and peoples to evolve in radically different ways, but not so much distance that they could avoid one another. Conflict was likely and the militaristic Romans had been busy doing everything they could to ensure that conflict was, in fact, inevitable. Cleopatra was born during the decades dominated by bloody Roman Civil Wars.

Cleopatra became Queen of Egypt in March of the year 51 BC at the age of 18. She was crowned co-ruler with her 10 year old brother. By the year 48, she was in exile and seeking to raise an army to reclaim her throne.  Having grown up in Alexandria, a thriving Metropolis and cultural epicenter of the Mediterranean, she was highly educated and was the only Ptolemaic ruler to actually learn the Egyptian language of her 7 million subjects. All of her predecessors spoke only Greek. In fact, Cleopatra was fluent in 9 native languages, which gave her a distinct advantage in her efforts to raise, and then command her armies.

The knowledge collected in Alexandria is shocking, especially when you have a preconception of the ancient world as being a dark and ignorant place. The Library of Alexandria (which was literally in Cleopatra's back yard) was one of the Seven Wonders of the world, the nearby Lighthouse was another. Alexandrian tutors were renowned throughout the Mediterranean. Alexandrian scholars knew the sun was the center of the solar system, they knew how large our globe was (and that the Earth was a globe),  they were fluent in advanced geometry, and they were aware that the moon caused the tides. By the time of her reign, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar could sail the Nile and view architecture that was almost 3,000 years old. The Great Pyramids' construction (another Wonder of the World) was as far removed from her time as she is now from yours. The Egyptians had been recording history in writing for two millennia.

In October of 48, Julius Caesar entered Alexandria furious that Cleopatra's brother had killed Caesar's chief rival. Only Roman generals were allowed to kill Roman generals after all. Cleopatra (in exile) snuck into Caesar's rooms and presented herself to the newly undisputed emperor of Rome. She convinced him to give up his ideas of claiming Egypt as a Roman state and he instead helped his new mistress reclaim her title as Pharaoh from her brother. Nine months later, she gave birth to Caesar's child.

In your arguments with people over the ridiculous Christian obsession with proper gender roles, you are often confronted with the notion that Christianity was actually revolutionary for progressing women's roles. This book helped you put a nail in the coffin of that particularly bullshit notion. Cleopatra died only 30 years before Jesus was born, her story colored the world he and his followers lived in. Jesus actually lived in Egypt as a young boy. Egyptian daughters inherited equally to sons, and they could hold property. Wifely submission was not a thing along the Nile. Women had the right to divorce and hold their property after divorce. They owned businesses and hired employees. If male dominated cultures were the "natural order of things," as Schiff infuriatingly states, then why did one of the oldest civilizations on Earth not adhere to that "natural order?" Doesn't it stand to reason that the arbitrary gender roles that arose in cultures far younger than Egypt, ones that insisted wives submit to husbands and stay quiet, ones that refused to recognize female inheritance and that devalued daughters as objects to be bartered, are actually cultures more representative an "unnatural order?"

Regardless of proper gender roles, either ancient or modern, it is clear that Cleopatra is viewed unfairly in the Roman world during her own lifetime specifically because of her sex. The brutal Civil War sparked by Caesar's ascension to power finally came to an end on Egyptian ground when Cleopatra's brother beheaded Caesar's chief rival, Pompey. Caesar eventually returned to Rome and Cleopatra soon followed. She lived in Caesar's villa until his infamous assassination on the Ides of March in 44 BC. Part of what made her so intriguing to the Romans was that she had entered into this sexual relationship with Caesar of her own accord, as an equal. In a culture more used to treating women like commodities, a queen who would instigate a sexual relationship with an emperor was a unique and bewitching concept. However, precisely because of her sex, she was viewed (and is even today) in a different light. What is seen in Caesar as commendable and enviable ambition is seen in Cleopatra as devious and dangerous manipulation. Her decision to withdraw a wrecked navy in the new Civil War between Caesar loyalists and his assassins would been seen as tactically sound in a male general, but in Cleopatra it is seen as womanly cowardice. Often the only difference between what are seen as schemes rather than strategies is in the count of X chromosomes.

Cleopatra proved to be the perfect social chameleon, infinitely pragmatic. She also had the wealth to accomplish whatever needed to be done to protect her people and extend her own rule. At Tarsus (the future birthplace of the apostle Paul) she meets Mark Antony (who is fighting to claim Caesar's place as the leader of Rome) with one of the greatest banquets in history. After establishing herself as the wealthiest individual in the known world and dazzling her guests with lavish gifts (bejeweled dining sets, golden couches, lush palanquins and the slaves to carry them!), and after convincing her audiences that she might just be the goddess Isis in human form, after inspiring awe and wonder in the crowds of peasants and nobles alike, she was able to effortlessly slip into a jovial and rustic charm in order to put Mark Antony at ease. Moments after her presentation as the paragon of gentility and regal composure, she transformed herself into a thigh-slapping buddy for the old soldier. Anything to maintain her position and help her people. Her son's status, as Caesar's offspring and claimant to the Roman throne, ensured that she was snared in yet another Roman Civil War, but Cleopatra was determined to set the agenda and soon she and Mark Antony were engaged in a passionate relationship.

It's hard to overstate the effect Cleopatra had on the region. Her relationship with Antony directly resulted in the crown being placed on Herod's head (yes, that Herod). His small kingdom was the only independent area in the vast territory ruled by the queen of Egypt. Her domain extended from the Eastern borders of (what we now call) Libya to the Upper Nile, to the shores of the Red Sea, the Sinai peninsula, across almost all of Palestine and Phoenicia, and all the way up into Turkey! Her children were called King of Kings and Queen of Kings before a young carpenter from Galilee claimed that title too (Jesus' childhood would have been rich with stories of Cleopatra). Octavian (Caesar Augusts) effectively suspended the Roman Senate in order to declare war on her, the only time Rome declared war on one single person. He used this war to rid himself of Mark Antony, his chief rival for power. Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt and her death marked the final moment of the 400 year old Roman Republic. From that day forth, Rome was an undisputed monarchy.

After his triumph over Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian declared Egypt a Roman state and began siphoning off all of the riches that land had to offer. In Octavian's custody in Alexandria, Cleopatra committed suicide only eight days after Antony. Or did she? Schiff makes a convincing case that Octavian himself actually killed her. He would have planted the seeds of suicide story (suggesting she let herself be bitten by an asp) in order to wash his hands of the murder, but her death made his future much more simple. In either case, being an expert in the efficacy of most poisons and their uses, it is highly unlikely that Cleopatra died from any snake bite.

She was an extraordinary character. By sheer force of will and audacity, she was able to rise from exile and obscurity to become a legend. She was able to enrich her huge and diverse empire, to protect her people for as long as she could from seemingly unstoppable forces. Her hands were certainly covered in blood from her rise to power and her efforts to keep it, but that has never kept you from thinking of men as great rulers. Cleopatra was, for lack of a better term, a baddass. And she achieved that title in a world dominated by Romans who prided themselves on being the baddest of baddasses. She outlived all but one of them, and he immediately named himself a god once he had disposed of her.

In the closing paragraph of this outstanding biography, Schiff notes that "In her adult life, Cleopatra would have met few people she considered her equal." After learning more about this unforgettable woman, you aren't sure that anyone in any lifetime has have ever met her equal.





On to the next book!

"The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" by E. Lockhart (2008)

After the last David Mitchell novel, you wanted to read a fun Young Adult novel; a palate cleanser. You picked up this one and started in on it with low expectations. By the end of it you were so conflicted and so intrigued that you were insisting that Liz read it too so you could get her advice on how to think about it. Not bad for a light and easy YA palate cleanser. Low expectations, man. They really are the key to being pleasantly surprised.

"The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" (which shall, for purposes of brevity, be hereafter referred to simply as "Frankie Landau-Banks") starts off with a confession letter signed by the titular character. She takes the blame for a slew of pranks and infractions that have been pulled on the campus of her boarding school and exonerates everyone who has been wrongly accused of her misdeeds. The rest of the book is a story revealing the details of those various crimes.

Frankie has just entered her sophomore year at a prestigious prep school in New England, Alabaster Preparatory Academy, one of those schools that is really just a funnel for future students at Harvard or Yale. Her father attended when he was a kid and is living vicariously through his daughter. Frankie physically blossomed over the last summer and has become quite the head-turner, but she is still emotionally immature. Her family members still call her "Bunny Rabbit." They see her as a delicate thing in need of protection.

Soon after the novel starts, Frankie begins dating Matthew Livingston, who is a gorgeous senior and undeniably one of the coolest kids at the school. She falls madly in love with him and revels in her new found ability to banter with funny, quick-witted, self-deprecating people. She likes Matthew's friends and likes her new status in the school as his girlfriend, but all is not perfect in her new relationship. After a while, Frankie realizes that Matthew makes her feel like she is in a box, contained by his expectations of her. Instead of allowing her to feel more free to be herself, he makes her feel less free. He's not a bad guy, he's never abusive or mean to her. He's just part of a larger system that keeps Frankie ( and many others) in her place. He wants to protect her and take care of her, even as she is realizing that she wants to take chances and push boundaries, to be more than anyone expects from her. What's worse for her is that she feels that Matthew is willing to be a part of Frankie's world, but he is never willing to let her be a part of his.

Soon, it becomes clear that Matthew and his best friend, Alpha, are members of a secret, all male society at Alabaster called The Bassets. Frankie's father was a member too, and the fact that she is not allowed to join and that Matthew won't even admit to her that the club exists at all doesn't sit well with Frankie. She is compelled to be a part of this club and goes on a treasure hunt for the Bassets' secret history. She finds a book hidden away, called "The Disreputable History." After reading of the exploits of former members of the society, she begins to understand the roots of the club in a way that Matthew and Alpha never have. For decades, it has been a club that has been dedicated to civil disobedience and committed to shaking up the status quo. Inspired, Frankie secretly takes over the Bassets.

She creates a fake email account, pretends she is Alpha, the leader of the Bassets,  and begins giving out clandestine orders for the rest of the boys to pull off legendary pranks, stunts, and petty crimes. The entire student body, as well as the rest of the Bassets, are so impressed by Frankie's ideas that Alpha can't admit that they were not his. He'd look like a chump. Frankie continues sending the Bassets out on covert missions, each one intended to shake up the rules of the school, of society. Each one pushing the boundaries further and further.

Eventually, Alpha is caught in the act and is about to be expelled for his crimes. Matthew finds out that Alpha is innocent and that Frankie is the real mastermind, and he turns her in. She does the right thing and writes her confession, the one that started the book. And the plot wraps up nicely there.

But you were still left wondering what you had just read. This wasn't a Young Adult "Girl Crushes On Guy. Girl Gets Guy" stereotype (if such a thing even exists), this was a more complicated and nuanced story. The entire adventure is sparked by Frankie's reaction to being underestimated by everyone: her boyfriend, her family, her school, her society. Or rather, it is all her reaction to her realization that she is underestimated while other people (mostly the well connected boys at the Academy) are grossly overestimated. Frankie is the one who solves the novel's big puzzle and who sets the attention grabbing agenda for the secret society, yet she receives no credit for it.

Frankie is realizing that there is a double standard in the world that is perfectly arbitrary. Who you are expected to be, how you are expected to behave, what you are expected to accomplish is already set by the cultural enforcement of gender roles. If Alpha does it, it's genius, if Frankie does it, it's dangerous and psychotic. These roles are more than just arbitrary. They are limiting and they can be destructive. As a girl, Frankie is expected to be a passive participant in her world. A beautiful and smart participant, one who might even add value to the world, but always only ever a passive participant. Never someone who leads. Never someone who changes the world to suit her own vision. That role is left exclusively for the boys.

Frankie realizes that she has no desire to be limited by other people's urge to look after her or to take care of her. She doesn't want to be seen as cute or adorable. She wants to be more than the "Bunny Rabbit" her family thinks of her as being... because she is more than that. She is as capable of being an alpha dog as any of the boys on campus. Actually, she proves herself to be even more capable than they. But her efforts to become the adult she is destined to become are pushed back by her society.

Frankie is a sympatheitc character, but she is not exactly likeable. She possesses many of the qualities regularly praised in male lead characters. She is driven and brilliant, independent and determined. But she is the protagonist. In women, these qualities are usually reserved for the antagonists; your Cruella DeVille, your Wicked Witch of the West, or whatever Meryl Streep's name is in "The Devil Wears Prada." Frankie's ambition, her knack for strategy, her charisma as a leader are all seen as dangerous by the boys at her school, but they are seen (even more disappointingly) as easily forgettable by her school faculty. Whereas Alpha was on the verge of being expelled when it was believed he was the ringleader, Frankie's confession brings nothing but a reprimand. She's not seen as a threat, even though she is guilty of the exact same crimes that would have gotten a boy expelled.

Frankie sees the world as a place that she can change, a place where she can become famous or even infamous. She is energetic and optimistic, but her energy and optimism are stymied when they meet the reality of the society we too often find ourselves in today. The curious thing about this book is that, even after you realized that it was aimed at society, you weren't exactly motivated to go out and keep fighting the good fight to change other people's expectations or challenge the way they limited certain people. It didn't make you want to change society.

It made you want to change yourself.

You have long prided yourself on your feminist ideals (Murphy Brown and Ellen Ripley were early childhood heroes of yours), but "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" forced you to examine your ideas of the women in your life women, and your expectations of what a main character in a novel is supposed to look like. It made you ask yourself, "How are you limiting the women in your everyday life? How are you limiting everyone you interact with in your everyday life? How many of your friends are only that because you like the preconceived notions of your relationship?"

 "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" inspired you to work to change your ideas of how the world is supposed to work. This world needs to be a place where all people are encouraged to reach their full potential regardless of their race or their sexual orientation or their gender. You can be a part of changing the world to make it the kind of place where women are not marginalized, where girls are not taught to be passive participants in their own lives.

God, you want to have a daughter!







On to the next book!

"Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell (2004)

David Mitchell first got your attention last year with "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet." Mitchell wrote "Cloud Atlas" first, and the two books couldn't be more dissimilar. In your review of "The Thousand Autumns," you predicted that if this book was anywhere near as good as that one, it would be worth whatever you paid for it. Well, it turns out that "Cloud Atlas" was worth far more than you paid for it.

This is not really one novel. It's six novellas rolled into one story. But somehow the novellas are all connected, even though they span multiple lives and are told across the arc of centuries. Mitchell breaks up five of the stories, interrupting one with the next. For someone who has always enjoyed reading more than one book at a time, "Cloud Atlas" was perfect.

The sixth story, a post-apocalyptic adventure, is told with no interruption and all of the others have their threads picked up seamlessly in reverse order from when they were interrupted. The final story, a series of diary entries from a 19th Century American notary sailing the Pacific Ocean, picks up more than 400 pages from where it left off earlier in the book. "Cloud Atlas" is like a matryoshka doll of a book and the way Mitchell nestles all of the stories together into one is so cleverly done that it was a pleasure to read. Each story bears its own voice, style, setting, and even tense. Finishing the book left you thinking, "How did he think of doing this?" And, more importantly, "How did he pull it off so well?"

Each story has a reference to the one that came before it, one main character is reading the previous one's diary entries, the next protagonist is listening to a musical piece composed by the last. This could have come off as gimmicky, but instead made the book self-referential in a believable way (David Mitchell was meta before meta was cool). Recurring characters sport identical birthmarks, even though their genders and personalities change. Mitchell flirts with making "Cloud Atlas" a tale of reincarnation, but never commits to that theme deeply enough to claim reincarnation is an explicit theme. It's just a likely explanation for a remarkably complicated but surprisingly clear storyline.

Mitchell plays with language and the evolving nature of human communication. Language is a living thing and humans are constantly changing it, adding to it or grafting new things in when they are needed, rejecting what proves cumbersome. Mitchell's first story is set in the 1840's and the language is as stuffy and proper, but also as soaring as the Victorian Age itself. But by the futuristic "Orison of Sonmi 451" English has changed noticeably. Spelling has become more efficient. Xtraneous "E"s are xpunged from this sleeker lexicon and, reflecting the corporatized nature of human society, everyone refers to products by their most common brand names. All cars have become simply fords, all shoes are nikes.

This story, "Orison of Sonmi 451" (an obvious but endearing reference to Ray Bradbury's famous futuristic novel) was the one that you liked the most as a stand alone story. Sonmi 451 is a "fabricated person" who was cloned for the sole purpose of serving as a slave to her civilization's "purebloods." She proves to be a wonderful reminder of the universal truth that slaves are often greater people than their masters. Like Data, the android from Star Trek the Next Generation, Sonmi reminded you that you can learn a lot about being human by imagining how someone who isn't would try to become human. While describing falling snow, her observation that "Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively" served as another reminder to slow down and relish those common moments of fleeting beauty. Not everyone is privileged enough become immune to the exquisite wonder of the world that constantly surrounds you.

Sonmi 451's story also served as a  catalyst for you to ponder the nature of the soul itself. In her world, the word soul simply refers to an individual's ability to purchase goods or services. It is a subcutaneous device, a piece of technology that serves to perpetuate an inherently soulless system. You found yourself putting the book down and asking yourself difficult and unanswerable question like, "Where does the soul reside? What is it? When does it take up residence?" and, most maddeningly of all, "Would cloned people posses souls?" These are old questions, but the fact that they do not have easy answers implies that they are not unimportant. Truth resists simplicity and there are few easy answers, in your world or in Sonmi's.

Although Mitchell's style is remarkable, the book keeps its head above any accusations of style over substance. The substance is the whole point. The style just makes it all easier to drink in. After five hundred pages and six different intertwined stories, after murders and suicides, after revolutions and apocalypses, after petty thefts and grand betrayals, Mitchell closes his book with a surprisingly concise and unflinchingly hopeful point. Our history and our future are established on our individual beliefs, and those very beliefs tend to become self-fulfilling. Every story in the book is a morality play on this one theme, each matryoshka doll an artist's rendering of a larger, more universal truth.

"If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being... One fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself... In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction. If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth and claw, if we believe diverse races and creeds can share this world peaceably,... if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass."

One hundred years ago, humanity was engaged in an unthinkable slaughter they called the Great War. One hundred years before that, Washington DC was torched in the War of 1812. Today it is looking like the War in Afghanistan, America's longest war, might be coming to a whimpering end. What do we believe, as a people, as one species, about how the world works? One hundred years from now, your grandchildren will be able to tell what we believed by the shape of the world they inherit from you.

"Cloud Atlas" helped you remember that we each have a part to play in shaping that future, in making a world that doesn't perpetuate the belief that pure selfishness and self protection lead to anything other than aggression and subjugation, that might ever makes right. If we believe that the world is a terrible place, one that can only be changed through selfishness, fear, and violence, we will guarantee, once again, that is what it will be. If we believe the world is a good place, one that can be changed through empathy, kindness, compassion, and a shared kinship with all people, we might just be proven right.

It is daunting to realize that every life spent in pursuit of that goal is but one drop in a vast ocean of history.

"Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"






On to the next book!




P.S. Here is a fascinating flowchart for the characters from the book and the actors who played them in the movie across all of the different story lines. This is definitely one movie you need to see!
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoGfVDqYXkC7M-9989rv6fOHUG2oZyPTKypF7lZBUomHb6yV7fV5SY3NEREh0CdETXKJSkiFcHu3TrfR0jbLsPe3PsfB0gvvcf88hMaMLA0GbTUP7Zw9BHNAIH7d-a01FGlodRriQLPyI7/s1600/cloud-atlas.jpg
P.P.S. See if you can add a postscript in your next review that doesn't contain the word 'fascinating.'

"The Liberator" by Alex Kershaw (2012)

It's been since, like last October since you have read a World War II book. Sometimes you just need to get your fix. The 'small unit history of European liberation' genre is what really got you into history books (well, that and "A People's History of the United States") so sometimes it is nice to indulge that original satisfaction and pick up a new one.

So, right off the bat you noticed that "The Liberator" is not the best written book that you've ever read. It isn't awful, but it wasn't particularly well written either. I guess not everyone can be Stephen E. Ambrose. But a book doesn't have to be perfectly written for the story to make an impact on a reader (I mean, they're making "Lone Survivor" into a movie and that book was so poorly written it's embarrassing). The first half of "The Liberator" felt like Kershaw was rushing it, sacrificing the story for the sake of the narrative. Maybe that is more his editor's fault than his, but it made for some awkward reading. Kershaw did, however, hit his stride about halfway through the book and it got considerably more enjoyable to read, but the first half was pretty rough.

The story mostly follows one man, Felix Sparks, from Arizona. Sparks would later become a general and a highly decorated veteran who liberated thousands of oppressed people, but he started his adult life as a train-hopping hobo just trying to survive the Great Depression. He eventually enlisted in the Army even before war broke out. Sparks was stationed in Hawaii, protecting the Navy from a traditional surface attack that would never come. He had been rotated back home when the Japanese attacked from the air instead.

Sparks left for war with his new wife pregnant and heading back to Arizona to have their baby near family. With all of the war books you've read, you'd think you would have gotten used to that kind of story, but you have not. It still fills you with awe and sad admiration that people are still being deployed to combat zones with pregnant wives back at home. How is anyone capable of such extraordinary sacrifice? How are soldiers able to put themselves in harm's way knowing that they have people back home counting on them to return, children who have never met them? But they did, and they do, and they probably will in the future as well.

Sparks was assigned to a National Guard unit formed from four Southwestern states, Arizona Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. For the first 15 years of the 45th Infantry Division's life, their shoulder patch was an insignia reflecting the Native American roots of their home states. The swastika was an ancient Indian symbol for good luck. The Nazi party had besmirched this ancient symbol and the 45th had retired its use for months, preferring to have no shoulder patch instead of sporting the symbol of the Third Reich. Just before they were shipped out to go fight those same Nazis, the 45th adopted another ancient native symbol to identify themselves. The Thunderbird was chosen, and the 45th, previously untested by battle, would soon get the chance to earn that patch in combat.

The 45th infantry soon landed in North Africa, but the fighting was already over on that continent since the Germans and Italians had fled back into the Mediterranean. Allied Command had plans to keep the pressure on the Axis and the 45th was soon landing on the beaches of Sicily. Sparks bristled at his posting as a staff officer (pencil pusher) and begged to be put in charge of a company. He got his wish and saw a mere month of combat before being wounded by falling friendly anti-aircraft artillery. Sparks was shipped to Algiers for recovery, but went AWOL and stowed away on a B-17 in order to get back to his men who were now fighting in Italy.

It's easy to forget how excruciating and costly the campaign in Italy was. Audy Murphy was the most decorated soldier in the history of the United States military. He was fighting in Sicily and Italy, too, his 3rd division was at the 45th's shoulder through most of the war. Murphy he titled his book about his experience "To Hell and Back" for a reason. The attrition suffered by the units fighting in Italy is almost inconceivable. It is not entirely accurate to say that Felix Sparks led E company during that campaign. Saying that implies that he led one group of about 150-200 men. After nine months in combat, however, the men who made up the company that had hit those Sicilian beaches were all gone. The men Sparks led now were brand new replacements, unknown to him.

"The Liberator" follows Sparks and his men on their ill-fated amphibious invasion of Anzio and the killing field that battle became. Sparks lost his entire company in February of '44 when the Germans tried to overrun the beaches. His entire company was lost, killed or captured, but the beach head remained in Allied hands. Somehow, Sparks alone survived and fought his way back to American lines. In 36 hours of combat, the entire 45th division lost 50% of their strength. The German commander in Italy, Albert Kesselring, the undisputed master of defensive warfare in World War II, was amazed at the tenacity of soldiers from a decadent democracy. He called their defense of that beach the Allies' greatest "epic of bravery."

The D-Day invasion of Normandy in June of '44 gets all the glory, but there was another amphibious invasion of France that most people forget about. Sparks and a few hundred thousand other soldiers stormed France's Mediterranean shores in August and pushed up from the south as well. The Germans fled from them like they never had in Italy, right back to the borders of their fatherland. The Americans swept through hundreds of miles of French wine country in a mere matter of weeks.

And then those Germans turned and struck back. Hitler had ordered a massive counteroffensive designed to drive a wedge between the American and British forces in Belgium. Eisenhower saw it as an opportunity and ordered Patton's entire Third Army to swing left and smash into the exposed Nazi flank. But the Americans to Patton's south had to stretch out to fill the gap his maneuver left along the German border.

As the whole world watched the Battle of the Bulge being fought far to his north, Felix Sparks, now a lieutenant colonel, watched a division of crack SS troops drive his men backwards over ground that had been dearly won. Colonel Sparks watched as his entire battalion was surrounded and chewed apart by some of the best troops in the German arsenal. His men, although being cut off, had orders to hold their ground and were refused repeated requests to attempt to fight back to American lines.

A relief force was sent to reinforce Sparks' men but became pinned down under accurate machine gun and mortar fire. Colonel Sparks commandeered two tanks and personally led the rescue mission to save the relief force. The SS watched as Sparks retrieved the wounded men. They had decided there was no honor in killing an officer who was rescuing wounded soldiers. Somehow, Kershaw was able to find and interview one of the SS soldiers who held his fire that day and watched in awe as this American colonel carried wounded men out of the line of fire and loaded them on to a tank heading for safety. In all your years of reading history books, you can only think of one other commander who would have done that. Irwin Rommel was famous for racing to the places his men were in the most danger too. Both Rommel and Sparks were compelled to fight alongside their men, at great personal risk, when almost all other commanders, on both sides, stayed back and gave orders from relative safety. Colonel Sparks lost his entire battalion that day, but he risked his life to do everything he could to save them. Comparing Sparks to Rommel may be a bit of a stretch (Sparks was never allowed the freedom of command that let Rommel's brilliance blossom) but you cannot think of higher praise.

Although the SS were fanatical Nazis, they were outstanding soldiers and earned the respect of the American Thunderbirds. At least, until those Americans found Dachau. Colonel Sparks didn't even know what 'concentration camp' meant until he saw one with his own eyes. As a young man, Sparks had searched for jobs by crisscrossing America in box cars. Outside of Dachau, he saw box cars filled with tortured and emaciated corpses. Trains had once given him a freedom that allowed him to survive the unintended calamities of the modern economic world. Now he saw what evil could be wrought with the purposeful inventions of that modern world. Trains turned to death traps. Factories promising death, not jobs. The machinery of the 20th Century had been twisted to churn out nightmares instead of dreams. And the farther into the camp he went, the more hellish the nightmares became.

His men couldn't handle the realities of what they were seeing, the inhumanity of it all. Some of his men snapped and in a rage summarily executed many of the men they found wearing SS uniforms in the death camp. The word inconceivable doesn't do justice to the horrors of the Holocaust. Faced with those horrors, the boys of the Depression momentarily lost their grip on sanity and exacted justice right there on the spot. Colonel Sparks had to fire his sidearm into the air to stop the killings (there is a picture of this moment in the book's first few pages). These executions were wrong, they were possibly a war crime, and they should not have happened, but you couldn't blame the Americans for their actions.

As the war came to a close, Sparks found himself in Munich, his headquarters in the famous Hofbrauhaus, the very beer hall where Hitler had tried to start a revolution with his "Beer Hall Putsch" back in 1923. When the war finally ended, the 45th Infantry Division had lost 90% of their original men either killed, wounded, or captured. They had replaced the entire number of their soldiers seven times since the invasion of Sicily. The Thunderbirds had fought for 511 days. Sparks had personally been through 8 campaigns, earned 2 Silver Stars, 2 Purple Hearts, and the French Croix de Guerre. He had taken part in the amphibious invasion of Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, and the French Riviera. His unit had liberated more people from Hitler's tyranny than anyone could accurately calculate, and he had a 2 year old son at home whom he had never laid eyes on.

"The Liberator" reminded you that there were more units fighting in World War II than just the fabled 101st Airborne. There were more outstanding commanders than just Patton. The famous battles were not the only battles. The Western Front was not the only front. Soldiers sacrificed their lives for plots of ground that are now inconsequential and forgotten, families left back home suffered in fear and uncertainty. This war was the single greatest event in human history. There are millions and millions of stories from the war that the world will never know about. It is estimated that over 500 US WWII veterans die every day. Many of them have yet to have their stories told. Books like this make you want to keep finding more of those stories.





On to the next book!

"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

You are always fascinated by Malcom Gladwell's Ted Talks. They are insightful, challenging, funny, and thought provoking. You've always wanted to read one of his five books. Might as well start with his first, right?

"The Tipping Point" is an examination of that moment when a social trend or idea becomes an epidemic. The book was written before social networking sites became a thing, otherwise Gladwell would have most likely called the book "Going Viral." Small trends build on themselves until they abruptly become larger patterns, something happens that moves the events to another level. You can rub the head of a match over and over again with no impressive effects, but when you reach the tipping point, it explodes. "Tipping Point" tries to identify why some trends ignite while others don't, and how those trends can be controlled.

The subject is fascinating and keeps your attention even if Gladwell's writing style isn't nearly as impressive as his flare for public speaking. He almost writes with a journalist's dry tone, as if he's reporting on a news story rather than telling a good story. It's not bad, but other writers are more gifted at infecting you with their sense of wonder and enthusiasm. He is quite brilliant, he does great research, and he has a gift for contextualizing difficult concepts in a way that makes them understandable. Hopefully his writing style improves over the course of his next books because you intend to read them all eventually.

According to Gladwell, there are three rules that an idea needs to follow before it becomes a social epidemic: The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. These three rules constitute the structure of the book.

The first rule, the Law of the Few, is pretty easy to understand. It stresses the importance of certain types of people in getting a movement to catch on. Some people are extremely adept at maintaining huge numbers of personal contacts, some are good at learning the most they can about a subject and passionately spreading the word about it in convincing ways. This section reminded you of the early Christian church. Christianity obviously needed a Messiah character in Jesus of Nazareth to spark the movement, but it would probably never have taken root as widely or as deeply as it did in that first century if it had not been for the works of the Apostle Paul. Both types of people were needed for that idea, that religion, to gain popularity, to become an epidemic... to tip. A few people can make all the difference in getting an idea to catch on.

The second rule, The Stickiness Factor, is oddly named, but makes as much sense as the first law. In order for something to become popular. It has to have staying power, it has to be memorable or intrinsically attractive, it has to be able to stick. MySpace and Facebook were essentially the same idea, but MySpace proved to be less sticky, it didn't have that certain something that made Facebook the king of all social networking sites. Even though we are all sick of it, most of us have Facebook accounts today, while we use MySpace as a way to make fun of those who are tragically uncool. Stickiness is a bit mysterious and hard to pin down. Nevertheless, there are people who spend their professional lives tweaking and perfecting the stickiness of certain ideas or products, there is an industry dedicated to it. This rule is, like the first, fairly intuitive.

The third rule, The Power of Context, is more counterintuitive. This is the rule that is the most fascinating to you. The idea is that by changing the little things, small behaviors, environmental details, you can force change on a much larger scale. Cleaning up the subways in New York City in the late 80's and early 90's, literally scrubbing the trains of graffiti and busting people who ignored the fares, had a major effect on the crime rate on the public transit system. Fixing all of broken windows in a sketchy neighborhood can improve the quality of living and lower crime there. Gladwell observes that, "in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first."

But not all of the examples of the power of context were positive ones. One memorable example was an experiment done at Princeton University. Several theology students were asked to prepare an extemporaneous lesson. On the way to give the lesson, each student passed a stranger clearly in need of medical assistance. The stranger was part of the experiment. Researchers were observing to see who would stop to help him. Before heading out, each student was asked why they entered the ministry with answers varying from personal fulfillment, to a desire to examine the meaning of life, to a passion to help other people. The topics of the lesson each student gave were changed up. Some were asked to give a vague doctrinal lesson while others were asked to give a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan. The students were either told that they were already late for the lesson or that there was plenty of time to spare. This third factor was the one that overwhelmingly determined whether or not the theology students would stop and render aide to someone clearly in physical distress. They would stop to help only if they weren't in a hurry, no matter what their motivations for entering the ministry, no matter what topic or parable they had just studied. Their context was more important than their convictions.

This whole section of "The Tipping Point" bothered you. This idea, that we are simply slaves to our surroundings, seems to rob us all of our agency, it denies us our integrity. It seems to insist that who we are at our core changes with every new situation. That doesn't sit well with you. But the more you thought about it, the more you realized that it was not exactly true. Context does matter, but it doesn't change who we are inside. Crimes are not committed entirely because people are or are not good at heart. This is why we have a jury system, to allow people to consider, not just the evidence, but also the context of crimes before rendering judgement (and even the validity of the law itself). This is why the introduction of a gun into a potentially violent situation so often ends up in tragedy. The people involved are still the same, but when the context changes, the outcome does as well. If a young man goes on a killing spree in an American suburb, it is a case for national sorrow. If he does the same thing on the field of battle, he is hailed as a hero and patriot. We pin medals on his chest. Of all of Gladwell's three rules, the Power of Context seems to you to be the most potent, the one that has the most influence on whether or not something goes viral.

"The Tipping Point" made you think about the world in a different way. That is always a good thing. One thing it made clear for you is that human beings are powerfully influenced by one major factor... other human beings. We are wired to be extraordinarily sensitive to the influence of other people. Individually, we have distinct personalities and thoughts, but we, as a race, act as one giant hive or colony. The greater our means of instant communication grow, the stronger the bonds in that colony become. This realization made you wonder what influence you are having on the colony. What change are you a part of and what can you do to help influence the world for the better?




On to the next book!





P.S. These tipping points are called threshold moments by another scientist with a Ted Talk. He has a different name for these tipping points, he calls them threshold moments. But he's not talking about fashion trends or crime rates. On a larger scale, these threshold moments seem to defy the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Order should not be able to arise from a universe that is supposed to be getting more chaotic every moment. Tipping points, threshold moments, are nature's way of creating complexity and order from all the noise. A big ball of hydrogen eventually gets to a point where it ignites into a star. This is one of the coolest Ted Talks you seen yet (even though it's not Malcolm Gladwell).

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history.html

"The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman (2008)

You recently read the book "Coraline" to your oldest son's 2nd grade class. The kids loved the book and you fell in love with Neil Gaiman's writing style. When you saw this one in the store, you thought it might be fun to read to them too. That didn't work out so well.

The only reason you didn't read "The Graveyard Book" to the 2nd graders is because of the opening pages. Gaiman starts the book with a triple homicide. Even though he doesn't describe the murders and the action all takes place just after the gruesome deeds, the knife is still dripping with fresh blood, and that is just not okay to read to other people's kids. You would be fine if Nico read it, but other parents should get to make that call for their own children, not you.

The homicides didn't stop you from reading the book however! Winner of the Carnegie Medal, "The Graveyard Book" is classically British and deliciously dark. The murderer, called only 'the man Jack,' in the book's opening scene misses one member of the family, the baby. The nameless toddler escapes the carnage and finds himself in a nearby ancient cemetery. He falls under the protection of the ghosts who live there and he is adopted by a couple who died a hundred years before he was born. They name the baby Nobody and give him their own last name Owens. Since Nobody Owens is raised by spirits, he is protected and provided for by someone who can actually leave the graveyard, a foreboding character named Silas (who is totally a vampire, but Gaiman never admits it). Nobody (or 'Bod' for short) grows up rarely ever leaving the borders of the graveyard. He is granted certain special powers and knowledge as part of his status as a denizen of the realms of the dead.

"The Graveyard Book" is written for younger readers but it gives them credit for being able to handle darker subject matters. Bod explores the more grim aspects of life, how some lives are ended unfulfilled, the realization that life is anything but fair, the undeniable fact that death comes for all of us, and the freedom in understanding that that fact is not something to be afraid of. He is more comfortable with the dead than with the living. As he grows, Bod befriends a friendless witch, goes on a sortie into the underworld of the ghouls, and consorts with a  werewolf, among other adventures.

Gaiman often writes about worlds beneath our reality, or parallel to it, worlds which are otherwise unseen, but no less real. He writes in the perfect way to allow the reader's mind to effortlessly fill in the gaps. As you read "The Graveyard Book" (and "Coraline") you were fascinated with how he could tease out your imagination, how the writing itself set your mind on a course to create a depth to this imaginary world that exists somewhere other than on the pages. Gaiman leaves certain details tantalizingly un-fleshed out, questions frustratingly unanswered. This style of writing makes it clear that the author has their world fully formed and is only telling you a small story that exists in a tiny corner of that larger world. This entices you to think about the book and the fantasy world far after you are done reading. And it reminds you that this world, the one in which we are all living, is filled with wonder and mystery. It reminds you to keep your mind open and find the story in everyday events, the wonder in the depths of your own mind.




On to the next book!