"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!

"Lawrence in Arabia" by Scott Anderson (2013)

You have always been interested in the story of Lawrence of Arabia, but after you watched the movie a few years ago, you became totally fascinated by him (or maybe it it's really Peter O'Toole... he is just so damn beautiful!). Everyone has heard of Lawrence of Arabia. The name tells a story in itself, like Robin Hood, or King Arthur, or Beowulf. But all of those examples are fiction or legend. TE Lawrence was a real person whose legendary exploits occurred only one hundred years ago. You decided to learn more about this man and looked for a good book about him.

The title of the book suggests that it is about the man who has become a legend, but that is misleading. The real focus of "Lawrence in Arabia" is the Middle East and how the events of the First World War shaped the region into what it is today. Anderson clearly did some exhaustive research when writing this book. It is intimately detailed. He poured over personal diaries from many of the people he writes about and some of the reports he was given access to have only recently been declassified by the British government. All of this allows Anderson a chance to give a fresh take on a subject that has been tackled by countless authors over the last century and contextualize the mythology of the legend of Lawrence of Arabia into the broader story of the Great War. Anderson takes you step by step from the childhoods of the people involved in the story, their experiences through the war, and right up to their deaths. The book is not about one man. It is an ensemble cast working together, often with no knowledge of one another, to shape the course of momentous events: an American oil man, a German spy master, a Jewish agronomist. However, TE Lawrence was such a remarkable force in the Arab peninsula during the war that telling the story of the region absolutely requires that he gets the lion's share of the spotlight.

As a young man, Lawrence was prone to challenging himself to feats of endurance. This quality would later serve him well since riding a camel for hundreds of miles through desert wastelands is about as grueling as it gets. Before any clouds of war were gathering, Lawrence went on a walking tour of the Holy Land. Westerners simply did not do this. Tours were fine, but not intimacy with the people of the region. Lawrence flew in the face of that convention (and so many others as his life unfolded) and fell in love with the people native to those Holy Lands and they, in turn, fell in love with him. The hospitality of the people entranced him and he gathered a crowd of followers everywhere he went. In a prophetic letter to his family, he wrote, "I will have such difficulty becoming English again." He was more right than he knew. Showing that he viewed the region and the people differently than any other Westerner, Lawrence wrote, "The foreigner comes here always to teach, whereas they had much better learn."

And so he did go there to learn. After his formal education, Lawrence learned Arabic, became an archaeologist, and went to study sites in the Sinai peninsula. After The Great War broke out, he was stationed in Cairo as an intelligence officer. Soon he was traveling the length and breadth of the Middle East and befriended several of the tribal leaders of the Bedouins there. After watching his countrymen being thrown back from their assaults on the Turkish-held borders of Palestine and squandered in a futile and stupid amphibious invasion at Galipoli, he decided to encourage the Arab peoples to rise up against the Turks and do more than just assist the British in their war efforts. Rather than seeing the Arab tribes as mere vassals or even obstacles, he saw their promise to defeat an ancient empire in the heart of a region that was soon to become vital to fueling the ambitions of the 20th century. He incited the Arabs to fight for their independence.

Lawrence even committed treason against his king when he informed Prince Faisal ibn Hussein of the classified details of the Sykes-Picot agreement. The secret deal between France and England outlined how the entire Middle East was to be carved up after the war into the imperial holdings each nation preferred. No concern was wasted on thoughts of Arab self rule. This information proved to be enough to inspire the tribes to fight for their freedom.

One of the main reasons TE Lawrence has been so lionized in our culture (other than that amazing movie) is that his experience during the Great War was so vastly different from most soldiers. In a war characterized by entrenched front lines and No Man's Land that stayed static for years, by immobility and mud and futility, by infantry charges that were wiped out yards from their starting points, Lawrence's war had a distinctly contrasting feel. He saw cavalry charges that drove the enemy from their positions, he lead daring raids far behind any front lines, he took part in massive pincer movements, sweeping thousands of men hundreds of miles to envelop enemy strongholds.

The Arab rebels harassed the Turks and forced them out of strategically vital areas.  Every victory they won was one more promise of independence. The Arab Revolt created the conditions that allowed the British army to occupy Jerusalem in late 1917 and become the first Christian power to rule in Jerusalem in the 600 years since the Crusades.

Ironically, considering the last 60 years of the conflicts in the area, the Arab Revolt was heavily aided by the information coming out of Palestine supplied by a Jewish spy ring. This spy network, the one that would prove vital for establishing an independent, Arab controlled Middle East, was comprised almost exclusively by Jews. The leader of this spy ring, Chaim Weizmann, was later to become the first president of Israel. The nations established by the information he snuck out of the region would later swear to drive his own nation back into the sea. "Lawrence in Arabia" was a great lesson in recognizing the extraordinary complexities in a story that has always felt fairly simple and well established.

As you read the book, you wondered, if Lawrence were alive today, would he be discouraged by the state of the Middle East? Would he be ashamed of the people he once championed? Would he be impressed? Would he be surprised that the only Middle Eastern power to have truly thrown off the shackles of Western influence is Iran? Or would an Islamic fundamentalist state terrify him as much as it has so many American presidents?

After the war, on their way to the Peace Conference in Paris, Lawrence, Faisal Hussein, and Chaim Weizmann worked out a plan to bring to the conference. Their plan fell apart when met by the imperial ambitions of the British and French leaders. Weizmann would later become Israel's first president. Lawrence would fade into mythology. Faisal would be publicly skewered for his close relationship with such a Zionist as Weizmann and he would be usurped in Arabia by a fundamentalist Wahhabist Sunni sect lead by the house of Saud. This family would soon name their (sort of) independent Arabian country after themselves; Saudi Arabia. Hussein would be installed as ruler of Iraq. What if an independent Israel had been welcomed by other Arab nations in a spirit of friendship borne from war-time alliances, as these three men had planned? What if ethnic groups had not been separated by empires into arbitrary countries with regional minorities foolishly thrust into positions of power? What if jihad and sectarianism were not common words in the world today? That was the world Lawrence was fighting for, and the Arabs he lead. It was the world many who fought in Iraq over the past decade were also fighting for.

Over the last few years, the world has seen nation after nation throughout the Middle East and North Africa rise up against the governments that were mostly put in place immediately after the First World War. The 2010 Arab Spring probably should have happened a century before, but empires have a hard time suppressing their thirst for power, their lust for control. The Arab Spring is the first time since 1918 that Arab peoples have had a say in how they are governed. It is messy and violent and terrifying to many of us in the West, but there is a good chance that it is ultimately a good thing. We will never know, but it is possible that the world might already be a much much better place today if those with the most influence a century ago had listened to those with the most knowledge.

"Lawrence in Arabia" may have reminded you of the complexities of the world and its history, it may have reminded you that momentous events are the result of processes, that they don't happen spontaneously. But it reminded you of one more thing as well. In a world that is so complex, in stories that are subtly influenced by the choices of millions of people over the course of centuries, sometimes individual people do make a difference.




On to the next book!




P.S. TurnerClassicMovies has a wonderful archive of clips from the amazing movie "Lawrence of Arabia." Anderson references the movie throughout the book. He is obviously a big fan too.
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/296450/Lawrence-Of-Arabia-Movie-Clip-A-Great-Hero.html

P.P.S. In the section of the book about the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Anderson praises the book "Paris 1919" by Margaret MacMillan. He calls it "definitive." You've been trying to read that daunting chronicle of the Byzantine machinations of the "great powers and national supplicants" for a while now. You had almost given up on it, but Anderson's endorsement has inspired you to keep pecking away at it. You love it when books you are reading reference other books you are reading! It's so meta.

"The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet" by David Mitchell (2010)

David Mitchell also wrote "Cloud Atlas," which is one of those books you've been meaning to get around to buying for forever. If it's anything like "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet," it will be well worth whatever you pay for it.

A couple of years ago, you heard a lot of reviews for this book on NPR. They were so glowing that you bought it for Liz one Christmas and she turned out to be just as impressed by it as Maureen Corrigan was. You finally picked it off the shelf recently and were kind of blown away too.

This book was extraordinary. Set mostly in Japan at the dawn of the 19th century, it follows the life of the title character. Jacob De Zoet is a young clerk for the Dutch East India Trading Company. The Company has had exclusive trading rights to the Japanese home islands for over 150 years. No other Europeans are allowed any contact with the Japanese. Built by hand in the 1600's for the Portuguese, the island of Dejima sits mere yards off the coast of Nagasaki and it is the lone trading post for the Dutch in Japan. The Japanese have shunned all contact with the world outside their borders.

For a citizen of Japan to attempt to leave their homeland is a guaranteed death sentence, and for those who do sneak away, returning home means the same thing. Christianity is considered an invasive, destructive religion and all references to its existence are banned. Dutch access to the people of Japan is highly controlled. Simply put, it is the most xenophobic environment possible.

And yet... somehow Jacob De Zoet falls in love with a Japanese woman. This is the main event in the story. The plot unfolds beautifully,  revealing small personal triumphs and conspicuous bravery, conspiracy, adventure, and politics. The villains are epic and the commoners are noble. The story is entrancing and the characters become intimately familiar. But the story is not what was so intoxicating to you about this book.

It was the writing.

It is absolutely beautiful. Being married to an incredibly talented writer has spoiled you so that something has to be pretty phenomenal to really impress you, but this was like few things you've ever read before. The prose was so soaring it bordered on poetry. In the fewest words imaginable, Mitchell was able to illicit powerful emotions in you and conjure in your mind exquisitely detailed scenes. His ability to plunge you into his creation seemed almost effortless.

At one point he describes Jacob listening to his friend play the harpsichord. Mitchell describes the moment's effect on Jacob like this:

"The music provokes a sharp longing the music soothes."

Oh, my God. Right? Who writes like that? In nine words he evokes so much emotion and empathy that you are instantly inside Jacob's mind. In nine words he describes something that you yourself have felt but never known how to express.

You love how books can take you inside the minds of people who never existed in the first place. This book was able to do this with a ease bordering on magic. Mitchell uses language like a master painter uses color. He makes you see things in a different way, he allows you to empathize with people you had never before known existed.

Works of historical fiction (you've read two in the last month) have the unique ability to place you inside a moment or an era in a way that history books don't. As wonderful as history books are, they can't quite take you inside the minds of the people involved. There's always that lingering knowledge that whatever evidence they left behind, no one can record all of their inner thoughts. You are always left outside of the people in history books. You are always an observer. Through fiction, you can become a participant. You can stand on the walls of a far flung isolated outpost and feel the shock wave of artillery shells, surrender to the fear, marvel at the inner working of a mind that is moments from death. You can see events long passed in a more personal and intimate way.

You are connected to everything that every human before you has ever done. This moment, with your fingers on these keys, is the culmination of eons of actions that other people took, decisions they made. Their repercussions have echoed through the lives of everyone else around them. You are a part of a massive tapestry of history. "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet" allowed you to see the individual threads of that tapestry with a beautiful clarity.

Sacrifice is extraordinary, but not exactly rare. Sorrow is universal and intensifies joy for us all. Longing is just a pessimist's word for hope. For all it's ugliness, the world is a beautiful place. Love exists, and in lives that are often overshadowed by seemingly more important things, it is love that we each take with us when we leave this world. Love is what we all remember, not events.

At one point, Orito, the object of Jacob's affection, thinks "The belly craves food. The tongue craves water. The heart craves love. The mind craves stories." Mitchell's extraordinary book satisfied the craving in your mind for stories like few books have. But, like any satisfied craving, as time wears on the craving just comes back even stronger.





On to the next book!





P.S. The city of Nagasaki has restored the island of Dejima (although it's no longer an island) as an historical site. It's the 21st century now, so you can, of course, experience a street level view of the restoration site on google maps. You can virtually walk the streets that Jacob De Zoet walked (even though he never existed).

http://www.at-nagasaki.jp/foreign/english/spot/008.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejima

P.P.S.  As an amateur historian, you found a poignant irony in the fact that this beautiful story was set in, of all places, Nagasaki. Here was where the Japanese people first allowed intimate contact with the rest of the world. Fifty years after the events in this story took place, Commodore Perry would sail into Tokyo Bay with his White Fleet and the United States would force the Japanese people to open their nation to contact and trade with the rest of the world, and it would all be begun at the barrel of a gun. Japan would embrace the concept of modernization and imperialism with a disturbing totality that would soon shock the world.

Another 145 years after Jacob fell in love on that man-made island embraced by the waters of Nagasaki Bay, those same waters would boil under the heat of a man-made sun. 80,000 people would be vaporized in an instant by a bomb called 'Fat Boy.' It would be called an atomic bomb, created by the very folks who claimed that the people of Japan were barbarians. Another 120,000 people in this city that David Mitchell describes with such beauty would die hideously from radiation poisoning within five years of that bombing. Ironically, only 500 meters from Ground Zero would be the largest Christian church in the entire Far East (this is hinted at in the book by the presence of secretive and closeted Christians in the nearby countryside). Many, if not most, of the posterity of the characters in "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet" would die in a massive fireball created by the same civilization that once sought nothing but commerce and wealth through contact with the Japanese people. The same city that witnessed a nation being brought into the 19th century is also the same city that would witness that nation being blasted back from the 20th century.

This awful, unimaginable destruction of the city of Nagasaki would prove to be the event that ended the bloodiest and most costly war in human history. Maybe the world would have ended up a better place if Japan had been allowed the luxury of being left to her own devices back in the 1800's. Or maybe not. The 20th century would most certainly have looked very different if Japan had been allowed to maintain her isolation. The conclusions of the past are replete with both obvious absolutes and countless ambiguities, but reading history books (and now historical fiction) reminds you that one thing is certain... the future is always a great unknown.

"Generation Kill" by Evan Wright (2004)

In March of 2003, Allied forces, lead overwhelmingly by the United States of America, invaded Iraq. There were two main thrusts into the heart of the country. They were coordinated in a classic pincer maneuver with the intent to seize Baghdad and cut off Saddam Husein's hold on power. The US Army led the western thrust, and the eastern thrust was given to the United States Marine Corps. It was the the longest overland assault in Marine Corps history. The vanguard of that Marine assault was the elite special forces First Reconnaissance Battalion. In the backseat of the Humvee that proved to often be the northern most Marine unit in the entire country was a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine. He recorded his experience and wrote a book about it (and yes, HBO made a miniseries out of it and that might be what made you want to buy the book in the first place).

The Marine First Recon Battalion is more than just an elite unit. They are Special Forces on par with the Navy SEALS and Delta Force. There are fewer than 400 Marines in First Recon (and this book made it seem like more than half of them are from Texas), but in the spring of '03 and in the pages of "Generation Kill" the few and the proud lead the invasion of Iraq. Their forte is speed and infiltration. For this they sacrifice the protection of tanks and heavy weaponry. Since it is the invasion's first days and IEDs aren't yet a concern, the Humvees these men drive are not even armored. In fact many of them have no sides or tops at all. First Recon was used as human bait to trip the ambushes that everyone knew were coming along the Marine Corps' main invasion route.

It kept occurring to you as you were reading that First Recon is not designed for this job. They are supposed to be the eyes and ears of the Corps. The specialize in covert actions taking places far behind enemy lines or far below his sea lanes. They are a reconnaissance battalion steeped in a warrior spirit and trained to operate independently while cut off from command and surrounded by overwhelming enemy numbers. They are intended to be used like Robert E Lee's cavalry or Eisenhower's Rangers, but in the invasion of Iraq they are used more like Rommel's panzers. The biggest difference being that panzers had armor and devastating main guns. The men of First Recon were not asked to perform the jobs they had trained for. It could be argued that their talents and skills were squandered. No one asked them to parachute far behind enemy lines and melt into the countryside, or to perform deep sea dives beneath enemy naval emplacements. No one intended to utilize these Special Forces warriors in the way they had been trained to be used. Rather than wielded like a highly honed instrument, the men of First Recon were used as the battering ram of the United States military and they had a reporter riding shotgun with them.

"Generation Kill" alternates between hilarious moments from the Marines and poignant observations from the reporter himself. The driver of Wright's Humvee is a young Marine named Corporal Person. Throughout the story, he is sleep deprived and amped up on ephedrine and caffeine. Person's rambling brainstorms, random rantings, and sardonic commentary provide most of the story's punch lines. But there are moments when the dark realities of war are undeniable.

After the first few days of the invasion, the men are ordered to roll through a town in an obvious attempt to trip an ambush. Wright, unarmed and riding in an unarmored Humvee describes in great detail the extraordinary destruction a convoy of Marines can wreak on a town. You were reminded that it is not a good idea to set Marines loose in any setting unless you are absolutely certain that you want everything to be destroyed. It is what they do, and they do it very well. Presidents would do well to remember that before ordering them into combat.

Most of the Iraqi military had defected and surrendered by the thousands as soon as they could, but civilians from throughout the Middle East had flocked to Iraq and formed a guerrilla force, or Fedayeen, filled with the desire to fight the American invaders. Saddam had ordered them to hit the flanks of the invading American lines, wreak havoc on the American plans, and then fade into the civilian population. This made distinguishing fighters from civilians almost impossible. Of course many, if not most, of the enemy fighters were killed in their hopelessly one-sided battles against the finest fighting force the world has ever known. But it is a long-standing truth of war that when modern weapons are unleashed inside cities innocents are going to die. Tragically, in fighting off Fedayeen ambushes and in enforcing night time roadblocks, Marines of First Recon Battalion killed civilians. In the moment, in the fury of war, the realization that they had killed innocents was not as terrible a burden for the Marines to bear as was the constant fear that they would screw up and let their fellow Marines die. War is an awful thing and priorities are clarified in a way that you will hopefully never have to learn.

Throughout the story there emerges a major disconnect between the higher officers and the enlisted men and their direct commanders. At one point, the higher officers actually order an airstrike on an Iraqi hamlet thinking it will boost the morale of the fighting Marines. Those fighting Marines however, are furious that their bosses had just needlessly killed so many civilians. The efforts to boost morale had the opposite effect but likely succeeded in creating more enemies bent on revenge.

In fact, it impressed you that on more than one occasion, these Marines expressed empathy with the Iraqis. Over and over Wright quotes the men turning to one another and saying things like, "What would we do if an invading army did this kind of thing back home?" or, "What must these people think of us?" It would have been helpful in the atmosphere of international good will generated in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks on American soil, if the leaders of the United States had had anything like the same mind set as these warriors. If the leaders of the Free World had considered some of these simple soldiers' questions, a disastrous war might have been avoided.

The story of the invasion of Iraq is obviously the setting for "Generation Kill" but, as the title suggests, it is more of a story of the men in First Recon and how they handled the stresses and shocks of war. Wright makes it painfully obvious that even the toughest Marine can lose his shit when introduced to combat. When the bullets start flying, and lives are hanging in the balance, what makes all the chaos even remotely manageable is a clear-headed commander who can think logically in order to solve the problem at hand. Calm, professional Marines can handle almost any situation and work to mitigate their losses while still achieving clear objectives. Instead, men like 'Encino Man' and 'Captain America' (Wright withholds their names to protect them from embarrassment) would scream panicked orders into their radios when under fire. They would shoot blindly at perceived threats, mistreat prisoners, call down artillery barrages on targets that should have required one well positioned rifleman. Panic and overreactions are as much a Marine's adversary as any enemy soldier. This is a truism that is not reserved solely for the Marine Corps.

Maybe it's because he is a reporter for Rolling Stone, but Wright pays particular attention to the songs that the men sing throughout the invasion. Sergeant Colbert, arguably the story's main character, confides in Wright that he did not anticipate singing being one of the stress responses to intense combat. In the middle of firefights and ambushes, Wright can hear Colbert calmly singing Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown." It is a curiosity of war that one of the Marine Corps' most elite warriors kicked in Saddam Hussein's front door while singing "Sometimes, I think it's a sin, when I feel like I'm winning, but I'm losing again." Other Marines were heard singing Avril Lavigne or Tupac. When we humans find ourselves in the most intense situations of our lives, for some reason, we seem to be hard-wired to find sanity or solace in songs from our past, however incongruous they may be in the moment.

Few of the men in "Generation Kill" express any real interest in the politics of the war or in politics at all. Those who are overtly political or patriotic are inevitably the worst members of the unit when combat erupts. For most of them the war isn't about who is in the White House or maintaining some long standing Western power structure. Wright says,

"What unites them is an almost reckless drive to prove themselves in the most extreme circumstances. In many respects the life they have chosen is a complete rejection of the hyped, consumerist American dream as it is dished out on reality TV shows and pop song lyrics. They've chose asceticism over consumption. Instead of celebrating their individualism, they've subjugated theirs to the collective will of an institution. Their highest aspiration is self-sacrifice over self-preservation."

Many of these guys were inspired to enlist by one specific commercial that you remember very vividly. A young man scales a series of bone crushing obstacles and grabs a sword only to be faced by a giant lava monster. When he defeats the beast, he is transformed into a Marine wearing the Corps dress blues. The Marines of First Recon saw that commercial and enlisted, you saw it and thought, "Hey! You forgot the part where you have to kill people! No way I'm signing up for that." Whatever that difference is between your reaction and theirs, whatever it is that makes your mind process things so differently form theirs, you are glad there are those who are willing to lay down their lives in defense of your country. Your country might not be here if there weren't.

When asked why he climbed Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Mallory famously replied, "Because it is there." When asked why he walked a tightrope strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, Phillipe Petit pointed to his chest and simply replied, "Because it is in here." For the men of Marine First Recon, whatever the outcome of the war, whatever the legacy of the invasion, the reason they joined the Marines in the first place, the reason why they felt inspired to "Subjugate their will... for self-sacrifice over self-preservation," is the same as Phillipe Peitit's. Many of them could point to their own medal covered chests and repeat his answer, "Because it's in there."

At one point the men of First Recon backtrack into a town they have previously liberated. Greeted by grateful crowds of villagers, the cool and wry humored Sergeant Colbert waves and smiles saying, "You're free now. Good luck. Time for us to go home." If only that had been true. In the days following the fall of Baghdad it becomes clear that the country which was so effective at winning the war had no plans for wining the peace. As Iraqi society is breaking down and the opening acts of a future sectarian tragedy are being played out, a desperate elder in a neighborhood-turned-battlefield knowingly laments to a Marine commander, "The Americans have let Ali Baba into Baghdad." A decade afterwards, it is clear that the Americans have left Baghdad, but Ali Baba and his band of thieves may still be wreaking havoc in the heart of Iraq.






On to the next book!




P.S. Here is an interview with Evan Wright and many of the men in the book about their reactions to the HBO miniseries. They pay particular attention to the humor warriors use to relieve the stress of combat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZvWl67Icn8

P.P.S. This is a scene from the show boiling down the reasons many of the men joined the Marines. Not Safe For Work! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dg3Us9ld2g

"The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara (1974)

There are so many non-fiction books out there about the Civil War, it has been hard for you to justify reading a historical fiction novel about the war. But you have always heard of this one and you finally found it for just the right price (almost free). You are very glad you gave it a shot.

This book was the basis for the movie "Gettysburg." The movie was good but, not surprisingly, the book was much better. In the summer of 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac river and invaded the United States through Maryland and Pennsylvania. General Lee was emboldened by a string of victories over his Northern enemies and was looking to end the war once and for all by taking Washington DC. War on his enemy's home ground would also allow his army to live off Union lands, allowing the farmers of Virginia a respite from supplying the Confederate army. It was the second time in less than ten months that Lee had invaded the Union. The previous invasion had ended in the single bloodiest day in American history at the Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg, as the Confederacy called it). That rare Union victory had lead to the re-election of Abraham Lincoln and his subsequent issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

General Lee felt that this second invasion was a strategic necessity. Time was running short for the Confederate States of America. The Union naval blockade was beginning to have an affect on their economy and inflation was rising. Tennessee was teetering and ready to fall to Union forces lead by General Rosecrans. Farther west, a Union general named Grant was about to take Vicksburg and close off the entire Mississippi River to Southern shipping. The Confederacy needed another miracle. They needed another big win, maybe one that could end the war. Thus was born the greatest battle of the American Civil War, Gettysburg.

But you have read all of that before. It's in history books and you've read stacks of those. This book was different. "The Killer Angels" made it all feel more personal. Instead of the bird's eye view that you are used to experiencing in history books, where vast armies sweep through states with giant colored arrows indicating their movements on maps, this book brought the war down to ground level (although the maps in the book are superb). Shaara was able to put you there, standing on Seminary Ridge, looking out across the mile of No Man's Land between you and the Union positions on Cemetery Ridge. You could see it all clearly, feel the July sun on your shoulders and smell the grass. Writing a novel about the battle, instead of a non-fiction book, allowed Shaara to be very sensual, inviting you into the minds of the men involved.  It made the whole affair feel more visceral and gave it all a personal touch that was surprising to you, and very impressive.

One of the most remarkable things about the Civil War is that so many willingly died for such a terrible purpose. The Rebels fought to maintain the institution of slavery, or at least the 'honor' of their home states. The men from the North, whether they knew it or not, were fighting for a freedom few in human history had ever been privileged to fight for. Shaara explores the minds of men on both sides of the war, even the Southern notion that the war was fought over some lofty ideals. He quotes the southerners lamenting state's rights, and he gives air to their milquetoast argument that government comes from the consent of the governed, and since they refused to consent they should therefore be free from said government. It's all bullshit that has somehow been passed down through the generations as gospel. The Confederate States of America may have seceded from the USA over an issue of state's rights, but it was over those states' right to allow their citizens to own slaves! Any other argument is beside the point, and Shaara makes that clear.

He takes you inside the mind of General Lee and illuminates his inner struggle with the issue.

"When Virginia left the Union she bore his home away as surely as if she were a ship setting out to sea... So it was no cause and no country he fought for, no ideal and no justice. He fought for his people, for the children and the kin, and not even the land, because not even the land was worth the war, but the people were, wrong as they were, insane even as many of them were, they were his own, he belonged with his own. And so he took up arms willfully, knowingly, in perhaps the wrong cause against his sacred oath and stood now upon alien ground he had once swore to defend... without any choice at all; there had never been an alternative except to run away, and he could not do that."

The book is written quite beautifully, almost poetically. It's no wonder it won the '74 Pulitzer Prize. Each chapter is from a different historical character's point of view and hops from one side of the battle to the other. Shaara moves seamlessly from emotionless and detailed exposition to First Person train of thought. That sounds like it would be awkward to read, but it isn't at all. Shaara makes it feel very natural. He helped you to see the war on a personal level. He describes how everything feels. Not just the feel of the ground under their feet or the wind in their hair, but that nebulous feeling you get when you are in the middle of a large encampment of men in the dark and quiet night even when you cannot see them, the sense a soldier gets when an attack is eminent, or the instinct a commander feels when the moment is right to strike his enemy's weakness. Each character has his moment in the book's spotlight.

Colonel Buford, the Union cavalry commander, was as indispensable in the first hours of battle as General Stuart, the Confederate cavalry commander, was absent. Accidentally bumping into Rebel soldiers on the outskirts of town, Buford knew he could not win the battle outright, but he could ensure that the Union didn't lose it before it had begun. Using his cavalrymen's mobility to his advantage, he stood up to the gathering Army of Northern Virginia and secured the high ground for the rest of his own army. His calm and measured awareness of the situation, and his faith in his fellow commanders to come to his aide and occupy the ground for which he had fought, likely saved the capital of the United States from falling into the hands of the Confederacy.

The Battle for Little Round Top is told in extraordinary detail. Colonel Chamberlain, a college professor just one year before the battle, was given command of the extreme left flank of the entire Union army. Arriving on the hill minutes before the Rebels attacked it he was forced to beat back wave after wave of some of the Confederacy's best and most battle-hardened troops. He knew he couldn't retreat. If he did, the enemy would place artillery on the heights and bombard the entire Union line. The Army of the Potomac would have had to retreat, and the road to Washington would have been wide open. His ammunition and his men were dwindling, so he did the only thing he could think of. He ordered what men he had remaining to fix bayonets and charge the oncoming rebel forces. Chamberlain did not graduate from West Point, he had no military experience, he was a bookish intellectual. But on that day, his audacity and aggression in the face of ruin made Virginians and Texans who had never known defeat, turn tail and run for the first time in the whole war.  Colonel Chamberlain earned the Medal of Honor that day, and few men have ever been more deserving.

The day after the battle for Little Round Top, Lee had decided to stop trying the Union flanks and go instead for a massed charge right into the middle of their line. He gave the honor to Major General Pickett. "The Killer Angels" gives Pickett's Charge the reverence it deserves. You could almost hear the orchestral music swelling in your mind as the Confederate soldiers marched through absolute Hell and, for one brief moment, breached the Union lines. It would have been fitting for the war to have ended right there, on the 4th of July, with the greatest artillery bombardment in history followed by the most famous charge in history. But it did not end there. The three divisions Lee had sent to break the Union lines were destroyed. Lee lost more battle flags in that one moment than he had lost in the entire war up to that point combined. Instead of ending on that beautiful summer's day, with a charge so noble it made the enemy swoon with admiration, the Civil War slogged on for another two years and ended in a swamp under the roof of a run down old court house in Virginia.

General Pickett had been itching to get into the fight. His men had been last in the line of march and had come up to the battle after the first two days of fighting were already over. He looked across the field and saw only honor and glory. He couldn't see, as General Longstreet could, the certainty of death waiting there. Pickett couldn't see that times had changed and war was different from the Napoleon era now. None of them could see it, even the infallible General Lee, none but Longstreet. He knew that modern war had changed, even before machine guns entered the picture. Massed artillery could now wipe out thousands of men in the time it took them to march over a mile of open ground. Longstreet looked across the same ground as Pickett and saw, not glory, but fields of enfilading fire coming from high ground. He saw exposed flanks and a death trap. He saw futility. But the others couldn't see it. They saw only Glory.

And so they all died. They died on that day and in the days and months to come. They died by the thousands there at Gettysburg, and they died at Cold Harbor and the Wilderness and countless other battlefields over the next two years. Yet no one learned the lesson. Five decades later, Generals would still see only glory and would still be ordering men into suicide charges against protected enemy lines, through aimed fire and artillery barrages. Even more men would die then. They would die at the Somme and Verdun, at Passchendaele and Belleau Woods, and they would call that war the Great War.

"The Killer Angels" made one thing clear to you that you were honestly not fully aware of. The revered and almost infallible General Lee made a huge mistake in fighting this battle. He allowed himself to be lured into a fight he should have avoided. He was used to an enemy who was incompetent and who ran away when faced with aggressive tactics. Lee had grown complacent and was relying on a general who was dead and gone. Stonewall Jackson would have taken Cemetery Hill on that first day, but Ewell, his replacement, did not. Lee failed to listen to Longstreet and maneuver his army south to cut off the Union forces from DC. He was expecting the same old Army of the Potomac, but he was wrong, and he lost the war because of it.

Through timidity and inaction, the Union's General Meade had won the exact victory that Longstreet was advocating for the South. An expert in the new theory of defensive warfare and realist in the new ways of modern warfare, Longstreet wanted Lee's army to maneuver to ground suitable for defense and force the enemy to expose themselves to destruction by making them come out in the open where massed artillery and aimed rifle fire could tear them apart. Instead, it was the Union's General Meade who had done that very thing, and the Confederacy would never recover.

You may never understand why men sacrifice themselves for unworthy causes, or why we continue to believe that mass violence solves any of our deepest problems,. But books like this one help you to see the world through different eyes. Stories of all kinds, whether they be told in books or movies or oral histories passed from generation to generation, help us all to see the world from different perspectives. You firmly believe that learning to see the world through the eyes of others has a hell of a lot more promise for solving problems than war ever will.





On to the next book!

"The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown (2009)

You make it a general rule to try and avoid novels if the author's name is printed in a larger font than the title of the book itself. But hey, rules are made to be broken right? Everyone has to have a guilty pleasure.

Dan Brown is, of course, the guy who brought the world "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons," and he has an even newer one out called "Inferno." All of these books, including "The Lost Symbol," follow their main character, Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of religious iconology and symbology, on a series of the most improbable adventures set in the world's most famous cities. Brown's thrillers follow a familiar formula and writing style. He uses short chapters (some barely a paragraph long) to keep you turning the pages. You are always thinking, "Well, I have time to read one more chapter, right?" Each of his books is filled with supposedly "Earth Shattering Revelations" that draw you into the story lines. You are perpetually thinking you are just a page or two from learning some huge secret that has been hidden from the world for centuries. The body count in these books can get pretty high. Brown's characters are constantly placed in mortal peril several times throughout his stories and the action is reliably crammed into a few hours, which, again, makes you keep turning those pages. There is an urgency and an energy to his books that make even the most bibliophobic amongst us stay up late at night, desperate to see what is going to happen next.

In short, they are lots and lots of fun.

"The Lost Symbol" is set in Washington DC. Even though you've been to DC twice before, you needed a refresher on some of the more obscure details presented in the book. One of the things you love to do with Dan Brown novels is read them while surfing google maps, especially the street views. Brown's novels are filled with painstaking detail of cities and locations that you will likely never see. And even if you do someday get to wander the streets of Paris or Rome, you won't have the luxury of pouring over every nook and cranny of every piece of art like these books do. That's where good old google comes in awfully handy. Modern technology has allowed you to walk side by side with fictional characters through very much nonfictional ancient plazas and examine actual works of art with the knowledge of experts. Washington DC came alive to you again while reading this book because you could see it both in your mind and on your computer screen. Ain't technology great?

Everyone knows that the Freemasons held great influence over America's founding fathers, and if they don't know that they should spend, like five minutes on the internet. Washington, Franklin, and  possibly Jefferson were all masons and this nation's capitol is filled with masonic references. "The Lost Symbol" capitalizes on this fact and weaves a fairly believable conspiracy intertwining the foundations of the United States with the fundamental tenants of an ancient secret society. Brown also introduces the science of Noetics, the study of human consciousness and the power of thought in the physical world. These two ideas, ancient philosophy and new-age metaphysics, aren't as far apart as they seem. Quantum Physics tells us that the very observation of certain experiments alters their outcomes, meditation has quantifiable healing affects on its practitioners, more and more science is learning that human thoughts have power and actual influence in the real world. Adding Noetics to the storyline made it all seem even more important and powerful.

The pages of "The Lost Symbol" are filled with the kind of brain teasers and puzzles that have made Dan Brown a household name. He drops hints all along the way, and he foreshadows some of his surprises in such a way that the perceptive reader knows they are coming all along, which makes you feel even smarter! Symbols play a huge part in these books, Professor Langdon is an expert in symbology after all. But even some of the characters are symbols. It's no accident that the man who imparts the most wisdom in this book is named Peter Solomon. There is an active component to reading these books. You don't just sit and take them in. You are up and researching, thinking and pondering, even when the book isn't in your hand. It is an addictively fun way to read.

"The Lost Symbol" is a classic thriller but with one extra ingredient sorely lacking in most thrillers. It ends with a healthy dose of hope. The United States was founded by people who believed her citizens could shape their own destiny. They believed that religion was wonderful and essential to a thriving and passionate population, but that it had no place within the structure of a free government. Humans are capable of so much greatness, and we are so full of potential. For a silly mystery book to remind you of the infinite nobility of the human soul... well that was pretty powerful in itself.




On to the next book!