Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

by Nicholson Baker

I remember the first time I heard about Hitler. My father and I were hiking along a creek in Northern Illinois as he told me the basics. I was baffled by the idea that murder, that most basic of all wrongdoing, would ever be encouraged by a world leader. This shows how naive I was at the time; it wasn't long before I would learn of the myriad exceptions to "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

Later, as I continued to fill in the gaps in my knowledge about World War II, I came to accept the idea that, however I might feel about the morality of war in general, this particular war was both necessary and unavoidable. I could doubt the existence of true evil in the world, yet see it clearly in the actions of Hitler and his Nazis. If there was ever a time to step in and destroy evil to preserve goodness, this was it.

Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke asks that we look again. Baker is known for seeing the details most of us miss; this time he's turned his eye on the ephemera of the years leading up to World War II -- journals, diaries, newspaper articles, contemporary interviews, radio speeches -- and put together a chronological mosaic of people and places as they were at the time. The major players are there, as are the citizens and soldiers, but we also hear quite a bit from those who opposed the war, and those who offered alternate paths. More than anything I've read, this book took the inevitability out of the equation, left me wondering not only what would happen but what could happen. What if Roosevelt had loosened our tight quotas on Jewish immigrants, allowing thousands of refugees to escape from Europe? What if Churchill had not insisted on his blockade, which starved not only the Nazis but all those innocents we told ourselves we were saving? Why did Roosevelt find it necessary in 1934 to parade our battleships through Japanese waters? What if Hitler's ridiculous plan to send the Jews to Madagascar had succeeded, instead of his horrific "Plan B"?

By our actions, did we save as many lives as we destroyed? Is war ever truly inevitable?

Whatever conclusions you come to after reading Human Smoke, it's well worth the time. It was one of the most eye-opening and thought-provoking books I've read in a great while.

White Teeth

by Zadie Smith
Ever since I read my first book by Charles Dickens (actually this was embarrassingly recent) I can't help but identify certain books as "Dickensian." It's a bad habit, and I'm trying to cut down, but just once more, I have to say it: Zadie Smith's White Teeth is, let's face it, Dickensian. I mean it in the best way: the book is multilayered, with a large cast of memorable characters coming from a large variety of classes, colors, creeds, and countries, all colliding in present-day London. Smith's voice is omniscient, her tone both humorous and heartbreaking. She's one of those writers who can introduce character after character without the reader becoming fatigued.

At the core, White Teeth is a tale of two families: the Iqbals, originally from Bangladesh, and the Joneses, of London and Jamaica. The two patriarchs fought (mainly with each other) in World War II, and have been inseparable ever since. Their younger wives hold the families together, and the kids - Irie Jones and Magid and Millat Iqbal - refuse to be contained. Smith is, herself, part Jamaican and part English, and seems to perfectly capture the sense of being a new hybrid in the Old World. The dialects and wildly disparate characters moving perpendicularly to each other reminded me of "The Confederacy of Dunces" at times. Though the narrative spins off in multiple directions, it does manage to come together explosively in the end. This book made me a definite Smith fan, and I can't wait to read her other works.

Three Cups of Tea

by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
During a failed attempt to climb K2, mountain bum Greg Mortenson found himself stumbling into uncharted territory, a small Pakistani village not on any map. The people there treated him with great kindness, though they were very poor even by local standards. That's when Mortenson made a promise that would change his life: he told his new friends he would build them a school for their children.

Back home in California, living out of his car while working as a temporary EMT, Mortenson started to wonder what on earth he had been thinking, making such a promise, when he himself was barely scraping by. He knew nothing about fundraising, construction, or any of the skills he would need to build a school on the other side of the world. "Three Cups of Tea" tells how he eventually fulfills his promise, and goes on to build dozens of schools, most of them for girls, where they're needed most. And, without meaning to, he helps to fight terrorism at its very source. An incredible story, all the better because it's true.

My Top 10 from 2008

Of the books I read in 2008, these are my ten favorites, in no particular order. Please read them, and report back.

Woman's World - Graham Rawle
Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Our Inner Ape - Frans De Waal
Pump Six - Paolo Bacigalupi
Fall of Frost - Brian Hall
Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks
The How of Happiness - Sonja Lyubomirsky
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves - M.T. Anderson
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science - Natalie Angier

Anathem

by Neal Stephenson
I've been of fan of Neal Stephenson's novels since Zodiac, his Boston Harbor eco-terrorism romp, though, like many people, I read Snow Crash first. Stephenson's books eschew the intimidating cool of some science fiction writers, and are more about adventure in the service of Big Ideas. Anathem is no different, yet his scope may be grander than usual; this time he's invented a world so that he can explore an alternate evolution of scientific thought. Unlike Snow Crash, Anathem starts not with a death-defying chase, but with a conversation in a monastery, and some have complained that the story doesn't really get rolling until about 200 pages in. I disagree. The conversations, the personalities, the contrasting of cultures is fascinating. Though the pace may seem slow at first, this is a well-built world worth learning about, one with a lot to say about our own. And our hero, Fraa Erasmas, is a thinker among thinkers. These are interesting people, who, for most of their lives, have had a lot of time on their hands. Of course, this is soon to change.

Like others of Stephenson's books, Anathem has its flaws: underdeveloped female characters and an ending that is both satisfying and frustrating. But, all in all, it was a long and glorious ride, full of fresh ideas but also in the tradition of world-building epics like Dune or Lord of the Rings.

On Chesil Beach

by Ian McEwan
There are moments in one's life that seem to be the fulcrum on which everything before and after is balanced. Of course, these moments aren't often noticeable unless something went badly, something that seems, in retrospect, the beginning of the end. In On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan has created this sort of moment for a young English couple on their wedding night, circa 1962. There is true love between them, and each is certain about the other. But they're on the brink of one of these fulcrums in their lives, and McEwan divides his time between close-ups of this very private night, and zoomed-out looks at the life stories of these two, how they came to be here, how they chose each other. And, after, McEwan follows the long-term results. It's a brief but powerful glimpse of two human lives, how they crash and reverberate backwards and forwards in time. Beautiful.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves

by M.T. Anderson
It's easy, from our vantage point, to see the American Revolution as a good thing. Even as we look cynically at the mythology of high-school history classes, it's hard to argue with the Declaration of Independence. And Anderson didn't write the two Octavian Nothing novels to convince us otherwise. But he does such a good job taking us back into that time, and in the body of a young black man, that we are forced to think again.

As we learned in the first book, Octavian is a slave raised by Boston scientists in the 1760s and 1770s. I won't go into details about the end of the first book, but the second book picks up soon after, with Octavian and Trefusis making their way back to Boston, which is now under siege by the Rebels. When Octavian hears of the Governor of Virginia offering liberty to all escaped slaves, he knows he may never see an offer like this again. Of course, the Governor is no longer held in high esteem by many Virginians, and is forced to live, with his troops (black and white) and wealthy Loyalist colonists, off the shore of Norfolk, in their flotilla of ships, gradually running short of supplies. Would Octavian have been better off fighting on the side of American Liberty? Not likely; the punishment for escaped slaves was often barbaric. Octavian runs into some friends, new and old, and everyone has a story to tell about their journey to freedom. Octavian's story gives us an angle on the Revolutionary War few of us know much about. And Octavian Nothing is a fascinating character, both of his time and alienated from it.

Goodnight Bush

by Gan Golan and Erich Origen
George W. Bush has always been an easy comedy target. But Goodnight Bush takes one of the President's own favorite books and turns it into a gently horrifying commentary on his administration. In the same way "Goodnight Moon" lets surreality creep in while the room gets darker, one could argue that Americans slowly grew accustomed to the bizarre changes in their country during the reign of the sleepy prince in the White House. The artwork is perfect, down to that singular green of the walls (not very well represented in the book cover picture at right), and the text is flawless. As in the original, the details constantly change, though the overall mood is one of resignation and acceptance. By the end of the book, one has to ask, did the last eight years really happen? Or was I sleeping, curled up in a dark and ever-stranger room, as the world outside faded to black?

Free-Range Chickens

by Simon Rich
Free-Range Chickens is a collection of short dialogues and lists, on subjects Simon Rich has spent too much time thinking about, such as childhood or Dracula or God. Some are mildly funny, while others caused bouts of spastic giggles around our household. Rich plays with a lot of common TV and movie tropes, injecting the awkward comedy of real life. Obviously, it's one of those books much more easily enjoyed than described.

The Wordy Shipmates

by Sarah Vowell
The Wordy Shipmates is not what I was expecting; I pictured maybe a colorful trip back in time, where, through Vowell's quirky lens, we would get a close-up portrait of life on the Mayflower and among the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Vowell is more interested in the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and, more importantly, getting us into the heads of those Puritans. Why, exactly, were they Puritans? Why leave England when they did? What did the New World mean to them? And, perhaps most interestingly, how did their values evolve into the America of George W. Bush? I realized I had been expecting a movie, albeit a daring independent film, but Vowell delivered something even better: a book, with the power to not just show us history but to help us get inside the minds of people we never thought we'd relate to.

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

by Natalie Angier
When Natalie Angier offers you a whirligig tour, that's exactly what you get. Angier's writing style is playful and sparkling, and she seems to genuinely enjoy every aspect of science. Unlike Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, Angier's book is less about the wacky geniuses throughout the history of science, and more about what we know now, or rather, what we should know. She asked leading scientists what basic scientific knowlege no one should leave home without, and then uses her whirligig wit to take you along for the ride. Admittedly, there were sections where I started to feel my attention slipping (chemistry, anyone?), but all in all, the tone is light and full of startling and memorable examples. For instance, did you know that, though the cells making up our bodies are too small to see with the naked eye, some cells are so large that you could enjoy a single one for breakfast? Over-easy?

People of the Book

by Geraldine Brooks
Hanna Heath is a rare book conservator in Australia, called to Bosnia to help restore a very rare book indeed: the Sarajevo Haggadah, which had gone missing during the siege in 1992. As Hanna gets to know the book, which is one of the few illuminated manuscripts in the history of Judaism, she comes across a few clues as to its history: a botched binding, a tiny butterfly wing, a white hair, some salt crystals. We travel back in time to witness these crucial moments in the book's 500-year life, and those who lives it touched along the way, including a girl who helps to save it from the Nazis and those who possessed it in Seville, Venice, Vienna. Between each story from the past, we return to Hanna, as she falls in love with the Bosnian librarian who saved the book during its most recent sectarian conflict. It's an intricately interwoven set of stories, full of memorable characters.

How to Be Useful: A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work

by Megan Hustad
There are plenty of books out there that encourage people to shed the corporate chains and find more creative, outside-the-box, "authentic" ways to make a living. Isn't it time you stopped compromising, and stayed true to yourself? Good advice, in an ideal world, perhaps, but a lot of us find ourselves headed in the other direction. What about those of us who have already embraced our creative sides, but now need to buckle down and work, at least for a while, in the corporate world?

Hustad admits right away that most of the "creative and sensitive" souls she knows would never deign to pick up a "success book," such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, or The 7 Habits of Successful People, except maybe in secret. But, truth be told, there are some very good nuggets of wisdom from many of these books, and Hustad worries that her artistic friends may be shunning good advice at their own peril. Hustad does the work for us, pouring over a hundred years of success literature to find the good bits, advice that works today as well as it did in 1901. Some of her findings are counterintuitive; the first section, which draws on Andrew Carnegie, claims that to "just be yourself" is not always helpful. And another chapter concerns the right way, and the wrong way, to be self-deprecating.

Hustad's blend of history and advice, both timeless and topical, is a pleasure to read, and I can already feel myself becoming more useful.

The Botany of Desire

by Michael Pollan
In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan looks at four domesticated plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato, and through them examines how they co-evolved with us to meet our desires: sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. Examples of co-evolution abound in nature; isn't it natural that our species, and our various human cultures, have co-evolved with other species? This wide-angle view allows Pollan to look deep into American (and world) history, as well as the history of science and agriculture, revealing as much about humanity as about the four plants in question. Though Pollan's writing can be a bit over-the-top at times, for the most part, The Botany of Desire is a fascinating, eye-opening journey.

March

by Geraldine Brooks
Letter-writing is a lost art. Even those who write letters regularly can find it a struggle, especially when writing to someone one loves and admires, and especially when one's own circumstances are less than admirable. What is there to say when the truth seems too ugly to recount? This is a problem faced repeatedly by the idealistic Civil War chaplain, Peter March, who is obliged to regularly send charming reassurances home to his wife, Marmee, and his four "little women." March is a good man, but his lofty ideals are getting splattered with mud and blood and reality, and, after a year in the war he may not even be sure he deserves to come home.

Brooks faced quite a challenge in creating a "missing" character from a classic novel, making sure he could be as compelling as the familiar faces of "Little Women," but she's succeeded brilliantly. March, based somewhat on Louisa May Alcott's father, Bronson, is a character all his own, and he adds a lot of humanity and imperfection to Alcott's original tale. Highly recommended.

Woman's World

by Graham Rawle
To create his new novel, Graham Rawle crafted it the usual way, and then spent two years combing through 1960s-era women's magazines to find bits of text - from ads or fiction or other articles - that he could use in place of his text. Then, rather than typing it all up, he clipped out all the magazine bits and meticulously arranged them on pages, occasionally enhanced by bits of magazine art or magnificent drop caps. He photographed the results, and that's what you see.

Like many, I don't always expect that a piece of art will produce a good story, or vice-versa. And I'm sure some people will be turned off by the look of Rawle's book, thinking that it would be too hard to read, even if the novel was well-written. Not at all. Woman's World is a joy to read, and the clipped-out quality is not just a novelty, but essential to the story. I can't tell you much of the plot without spoiling it, but it does become clear very quickly that the narrator is not the most reliable. Norma Fontaine's world of fashion and good housekeeping is not as simple as it seems. The dark humor and unusual narrative style of this book reminded me somewhat of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, although the stories themselves have nothing in common. Woman's World is a delight for the heart and mind as well as the eye.

Our Inner Ape

by Frans De Waal
When humans do something especially generous, kind, or empathetic, we like to describe these actions as being very "human." When we do something cruel or vicious, we often describe those actions as "animal." Frans De Waal would argue that neither of these familiar sides of humankind are unique to humanity. All apes exhibit startling levels of empathy, and not just with their own kind. At the same time, our closest cousins in the animal kingdom, chimpanzees and bonobos, can be as cruel as they are kind. De Waal divides his book into sections named Power, Sex, Violence, Kindness, and then talks about our own species as "The Bipolar Ape." Chimpanzees and bonobos have very different societies (bonobos are female dominant and generally less violent, using sex as a social, er, lubricant) but both are similar to us in many ways. Where do we fit in? Somewhere in the middle. Despite our species' unprecedented levels of complexity when it comes to communication and technology, there's very little motivating us that doesn't align perfectly with our fellow apes. But perhaps, by learning more about our place amongst our nearest animal relations, we can understand our own species better and hopefully bring out the best in ourselves.

How I Conquered Your Planet

by John Swartzwelder
You won't find Swartzwelder's goofy-ass novels at your local Barnes & Nobles. They're self-published, with bland covers and big type, and they're not exactly high literature. They are, however, written by the guy who wrote more Simpsons episodes than anyone else, and his brand of so-stupid-it's-genius comedy is immediately recognizable. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments in How I Conquered Your Planet that I became the crazy guy on the bus, randomly bursting into mad giggles. Sorry, fellow bus riders.

The absurd plot involves a bus driver / private eye named Frank Burly, who is not, shall we say, all that bright. When the Martians arrive, disguised as magicians, and work their mind-control upon him, Frank is recruited, against his flimsy will, into the Martian military. Most of this seems to be an excuse for Swartzwelder to brilliantly play with time-honored cliches in several genres. Not an easy book to recommend, but if you enjoy clever, absurdist, stoopid-funny writing, definitely check this out.

X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking

by Jeff Gordinier
When the media stops talking about something, does it cease to exist? How about something as big as a generation of Americans (albeit a small one)? How can we talk about members of Generation X "saving the world" when they think the whole concept is cliché and overblown? (And please don't call them "Generation X", that's so 90s.) Jeff Gordinier, after plenty of apologies about terminology and generalities, does somehow manage to show that Generation X, though permanently in the shadow of the Boomers and drowned out by the Gen Y/Millenials, is still in existence, and in fact, whether they like to talk about it or not, saving the world.

Any book this jam-packed with generalities and personal anecdotes, of course, has to be taken with a grain of salt. But a lot of the writing was really brilliant, and I found the book encouraging and inspiring. With all the 24/7 hoopla about the wonderful continuing adventures of the Boomers, it's easy to forget that those of us who are, say, 31-48, have had a distinct and valid culture that's worth talking about.

Little Brother

by Cory Doctorow
Part Young Adult technothriller, part polemic and part how-to, Cory Doctorow's latest novel was one of the most gripping page-turners I've read in a while. What happens when Marcus, a kid who loves to wrap his mind around solving puzzles (like, how do I sneak out of school when there are technologies in place surveilling my every move?) finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time after a terrorist attack, and ends up being questioned by the Department of Homeland Security? "Am I under arrest?" he asks, still under the impression that he has a constitutional right to speak to a lawyer. But no, he's definitely over his head. And when he's at last returned, shaken, to the streets, one of his friends remains in custody, possibly never to be seen again. And the DHS lets Marcus know he'll be watched. Marcus makes a vow that he's going to bring his friend back.

Little Brother is one of those stories that feels just around the corner from today. We've all heard plenty of arguments about privacy vs. security, but, for many of us, it's easy to feel that, if we have nothing to hide, we're not going to spend a lot of time worrying about our freedoms being taken away. Doctorow shines a bright light into the problems with this thinking, and vividly illustrates what happens when national security stops serving us and becomes another form of terrorism. Buy it for yourself and any smart young people you know.