A Few Good Books

THE SPECTATOR BIRD by Wallace Stegner (Penguin -- 1976)

A fine novel. Stegner has an almost-unmatched ability to write about personal reminiscence, and research into decades past, in a way that yields a delightful story. This short book captures the humanity and disappointments of a 60-something retiree with terrific grace. It made me feel great compassion and sympathy for the narrator, and for Stegner himself. Loved it.

THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS - A Biography of V.S. Naipaul - by Patrick French (Knopf -- 2008)

This biography of V.S. Naipaul is so well-written, so incisive, so knowledgable about Naipaul, so supremely literary while being wonderfully accessible, so unrelenting in its honesty about Naipaul's psychosis and appreciative of the brilliant books it yielded, that it seems almost too much to ask to also be a page-turner. But it is. Even for us Naipaul fans, who looked past his evident brutality, who tolerated his intolerance, and who already knew the outlines of his story, there is much more to be found here. The details of his childhood insecurities, his intense inferiority complex, his chip-on-the-shoulder about being a short dark-skinned man in Britain, compose an excellent lead-in for the drama of his career as it blooms. His marriage to the long-suffering Pat, and his 20-year affair with the Argentine firecracker, make for riveting reading. I have been an admirer of Naipaul ever since a friend stuck 'A House for Mr. Biswas' in my hands 30 years ago. 'A Bend in the River' made a tremendous impression on me. Now, French succeeds at weaving together the story of how Naipaul came to write his great books with his distinct personal history. Truly impressive. Highly recommended.

THE IMPERFECTIONISTS by Tom Rachman (Dial Press -- 2010)

An engaging novel. Set in Rome, at a newspaper that feels and smells like the beloved International Herald Tribune, my trusted companion for so many years in Asia. Irresistible, for newspaper lovers. Funny, psychologically well-attuned. These American newsfolk in Europe are indeed imperfect, on a daily basis. Rachman gets to the core of the competing expatriate mental disabilities. Pretty impressive for a first-time novelist.

THE GREATEST TRADE EVER by Gregory Zuckerman (Broadway -- 2009)

One of the better accounts of the financial meltdown in 2008. It looks closely at John Paulson, the money manager who called the housing dive, and figured out how to make billions off it. Paulson, who looks so dull from a distance, turns out to be an intriguing character, as does his key analyst Paolo Pellegrini. Good context, good story-telling, good explaining of all those financial instruments and their role in the broader calamity.

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE by Steig Larsson (Vintage -- 2009)

Excellent beach reading. It ain't literature. It's an intelligent page-turner. And turn they do. The pacing is excellent. The story is flawed, the descriptions paper thin, and the plausibilty factor hovers low. But we get to follow the alluring Lisbeth Salander, and her refreshing moral certainty. I thought I had enough of her after 'Dragon Tattoo,' but my friend Derek insisted that the second and third installments match and surpass. Tastes pretty much the same to me. Think I'll wait another six months before going for 'Hornet's Nest.'

A CONCISE CHINESE-ENGLISH DICTIONARY FOR LOVERS by Xiaolu Guo (Nan Talese -- 2007)

Inviting novel, about a young Chinese woman who goes to London, meets a guy in a movie theater, moves in with him, makes love for the first time and then many thousand times, and goes through the irrepeatable deliverance that many of us recall as our twenties. Good voice, the narrator. Well-told.

PUDD'NHEAD WILSON by Mark Twain (1894)

What happens when two babies are born the same day in the same house, one 'white' and one 'colored' yet so light-skinned that the two look virtually identical. Race and responsibility, and ever-fallible human nature. Delivered with Twain's characteristic rollicking narrative. Funny. Poignant.

FREEDOM SUMMER by Bruce Watson (Viking -- 2010)

The story of what happened when hundreds of white and black college students went to Mississippi, to try to bring voting rights into the 20th Century. (Not easy.) Focusing on one summer turns out to be an excellent device for capturing the guts of the civil rights movement. Made me remember watching 'Mississippi Burning' while living in China right after Tiananmen, and musing about the dangers and rewards of stepping forward. Much to chew on, here.

THE LAST STAND by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking - 2010)

For many young and impressionable readers in the 1960s, there was an incisive and hilarious book, Thomas Berger's "Little Big Man," that did more than any other to replace the outdated narrative of the Old West as a contest between cowboys (good guys) and Indians (bad guys) with a reversal of roles, portraying European Americans as swashbuckling clods who committed genocide on the good-hearted natives.

George Armstrong Custer, once known as a brave maverick, came across as a deranged maniac in this new story. The battle of Little Bighorn, where Custer and his U.S. Army forces were famously massacred, was transformed from a noble "last stand" into an idiotic boondoggle. Director Arthur Penn's movie version of "Little Big Man," released in 1970 and starring Dustin Hoffman, gave this new perspective an even wider audience.

Nathaniel Philbrick, a Nantucket, Mass.-based historian and author of the maritime delights "Mayflower" and "In the Heart of the Sea" admits to having fallen under the sway of "Little Big Man," as did countless others in our generation, believing it to be more accurate than the pap our parents were fed.

After writing about battles between Massachusetts settlers and natives at the close of "Mayflower," Philbrick grew curious about the subsequent stages of that struggle, and he shifted his gaze two centuries later to the late 1800s, when the saga of Native Americans neared a tragic crescendo. The story of Custer and Little Bighorn, as an iconic myth at the core of the old civilized-against-heathen storyline and also as a supreme instance of white man's folly in the "Little Big Man" version, seemed irresistible.

Philbrick set out to find out what really happened at Little Bighorn. It was not an easy task. Because Custer and every one of his officers and soldiers were killed, none could leave an account for posterity. Sioux warriors who were later interviewed by U.S. Army forces apparently "told their white inquisitors what they wanted to hear," Philbrick notes. The author dug and sifted through previously private letters from soldiers, examined the ship logs on the riverboats that supplied Dakota territory, evaluated Custer's colorful past and also studied the perspective of Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief who won at Little Bighorn.

"The Last Stand" is an engrossing, thoughtfully researched and tautly written account of a critical chapter in American history. With strong narrative skill, offering broad context and narrow detail, Philbrick recounts a story and, in the process, dismantles old myths piece by piece. Custer's military action at Little Bighorn was certainly not the last stand of the white man, who soon succeeded in decimating the Indian population. There was not even a last stand by the hapless soldiers who followed Custer into what was clearly an ill-considered military action against a Sioux village on June 25, 1876, in what is now Montana. Instead, Custer's final battle was messy, conflicted and confused. It did not signify anything heroic or deranged. Militarily, it was a blunder. To a historian, it was a telling incident that reveals much about the time.

Philbrick recounts how President Ulysses S. Grant, weighed down by corruption scandals in the final year of his presidency, did not have the political will to discipline the white miners whoflocked illegally into Dakota territory after gold was discovered there in the mid-1870s. It was Sioux-inhabited land and was, on paper, an independent nation. But for Grant, it was politically easier to chase out or even massacre Indians than to persuade the white miners to leave.

Grant knew Custer, who was widely recognized as one of the greatest cavalry officers who fought for the Union during the Civil War with distinguished service at Gettysburg. Charismatic, impatient, fearless in battle, Custer wore broad hats over the long blond ringlets that flowed down to his shoulders. He made brigadier general at age 23. He was also, Philbrick writes, a master manipulator of the media, aggressively wooing journalists as he plotted to run for president himself. Grant hated him.

While others in the Army wanted to use Custer's military skill and bravado to chase away the Sioux from the gold-laden land, Grant ordered that Custer be tightly supervised by Gen. Alfred Terry, a lawyer whose insistence on careful planning and protocol drove Custer to distraction. Today, Custer might have been diagnosed as bipolar, or afflicted with ADD. He was recklessly impatient, known to bolt off suddenly on scouting missions, abandoning an entire regiment of soldiers who often had to stand on a hillside for hours, or days, until their commander returned.

The campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne was described by U.S. authorities as an effort to defend innocent white pioneers from attack by Indians. But Philbrick shows persuasively that it was an unprovoked military invasion of a legally independent nation on land that only later, after the natives had been cleared out, became part of the United States. Philbrick's version of history, while more serious and clear-eyed than "Little Big Man," essentially embraces a similar perspective.

When Custer and his troops neared the Little Bighorn River, they could not clearly see the nearby encampment of around 8,000 Sioux and Cheyenne natives, roughly 40 times to 50 times larger than Custer had estimated. Two of Custer's fellow commanders so distrusted him that one spent most of the day in a ditch with a bottle of whiskey, while the other waited on a hillside, doing nothing. Custer did not hesitate to attack.

The end was apparently quite swift. Screams and gunshots may have echoed across the plain, but none was heard by nearby U.S. forces, who only the next day discovered more than 200 bodies of fellow soldiers, including Custer's, with a mysterious smile on his face. The battle soon became rich material for mythmakers, portraying a heroic fight between enlightenment and savagery. "Little Big Man" upended that view. "The Last Stand" buries it.

ROUGH JUSTICE: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, by Peter Elkind (Portfolio - 2010)


Eliot Spitzer provided us newspaper readers with a juicy story – upmarket politician gets caught with upmarket hooker – for a couple of weeks in 2008. There were legal papers that clocked the movements and telephone calls of ‘Client #9,’ with engrossing specificity, as he prepared for assignations with the alluring Ashley Dupree. There were funny details, like his reluctance to take off his calf-hugging black socks during intercourse (unlikely, it turns out). There were those memorable pictures of Ashley unclothed, over pages and pages of the New York Post. More than anything, there was the enduring irony of a man who built a political career on sterling ethics, who presented himself as all goody-two-shoes while he bulldozed sleazy Wall Street practices, getting his ultimate come-down from such a tawdry kind of lawbreaking.

The Spitzer story may have seemed like daily news fodder when it broke. But there was a deeper story here. Peter Elkind, a financial reporter who wrote a good book about the Enron debacle, now makes a fine case for taking the time to go back to the beginning and scope out the whole tale. Spitzer was an iconoclastic, caustic politician. He came out of an intense upper-crust New York family with a superhuman need to succeed. Early on, he was an unlikely politician – awkward, impatient, arrogant. He found his calling as the state’s Attorney General, attacking financial practices that everyone thought were untouchable. If he was overzealous and stubborn and unreasonable, voters didn’t care. The public hunger for a political leader who could Get Things Done pushed his popularity ever upward. He coasted to victory as Governor. There was talk, and not a small amount, of a first Jewish President.

We like to watch them climb, and man, do we love to see them fall. Elkind covers the bumpy governorship well. He carefully tracks the origins of the Empress Club V.I.P. He explains the sequences of discovery by the media with knowing skill. The one mystery he cannot crack is who fed the Feds the original, critical tip that started their investigation that intentionally targeted Spitzer. There are obvious candidates – Hank Greenberg, Ken Langone, Dick Grasso – but no resolution here. Elkind judges evidence well, and is straightforward about what he could not decipher, and that makes his account stronger. Spitzer himself cooperated with Elkind, talking at length. But he’s so allergic to introspection that I was left wondering, and still intrigued, what actually made him do it.

BROOKLYN by Colm Toibin (Scribner - 2009)

A lovely novel. Gentle. Subtle. Yet broadly thought-provoking, about the immigrant experience, about the role of chance and timing in the life-changing choices we make, about the mental haze of a 20-something-year-old. And about life in one corner of Brooklyn, and another in Ireland.

WAR AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL by Sarah Ellison (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - 2010)

This is a book for newspaper lovers. The story of Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of the Wall Street Journal, it’s written by Sarah Ellison, the Journal reporter who covered that saga as it occurred in 2007-08. Too bad about the clunky title. It’s a fine explainer, especially for those of us who eagerly followed what happened, but could not quite keep track of the twists and turns in real time, nor make sense of the daft dynamics among the principal owners, the Bancroft family. Ellison lays it out, stenciling in the necessary background, and drawing out the characters who make it come alive. She portrays Peter Kann, a journalistic hero, as an incompetent CEO whose skills as an executive ran to pacifying the owners and promoting his wife. Rich Zannino, the finance guy who took over, comes across as indifferent to the newspaper’s mission and utterly clueless about journalism. And best of all is Murdoch himself, in all his glorious contradiction – brilliant media strategist, gossip obsessive, elite-hating outsider, inconsiderate father, gracious conversationalist, and hard-knuckled publisher of loud, second-rate newspapers all over the world.

I have a slanted view of this history. I once worked for a mediocre newspaper in Hong Kong and watched as Murdoch bought it and sent in his henchmen, who kept it mediocre. More important, I knew Marcus Brauchli, maybe the most poignant figure in this book, as an energetic journalist and supreme man-about-town in Shanghai when we worked there in the last century. I cheered when he became Managing Editor of the Journal, and worried about him when Murdoch’s bid emerged a week later. Brauchli comes across accurately in this book as a savvy workhorse who essentially outsmarts his competitors as he climbs the ladder. Ellison faults him as an editor for not having enough time for his staff, so busy was he trying to save the enterprise. Still, many of us who like and admire Brauchli hoped that he could, better than anyone else, protect the Journal’s high standards while meeting Murdoch half-way on his demands that articles be shorter and blunter. It was wishful thinking. Murdoch has an old-world dependence on devoted lieutenants, and doesn’t have the temperament for compromise needed to win hearts and minds. Brauchli was soon out.

Ellison is ultimately quite critical of Murdoch’s efforts at the Journal, itemizing the ways he has made it worse. She makes quick work of those who defend or applaud his methods of taking it down market. She identifies his bullying tactics. Finally, she explains how this monstrously successful media mogul is happy to lose money hand-over-fist in order for a chance to take up the fight against the disapproving media establishment. So often, the common reader will side with an underdog who challenges The Way Things Are Done. Not this time.

THE MEMORY KEEPER'S DAUGHTER by Kim Edwards (2005)

THE BIG SHORT by Michael Lewis (2010)

THE HEIGHTS by Peter Hedges (2010)

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain (1884)

MANHOOD FOR AMATEURS by Michael Chabon (2009)

I usually avoid essay collections, but I loved this one. Maybe because they don’t read like essays, but like stories. Personal stories that have a point, a rich observation, an explanation of a strong dislike….that then ends up telling a story that makes a point, thoughtfully. I think this book will appeal to anyone. But it will probably have special resonance for men in their 40s, who have ventured into marriage, and fatherhood, and have a perspective on what it was to be a boy, a teenager, a young man, and a full man. In this book, Chabon seemed to muse on territory we all live through, but do not notice the way he does. He is an intoxicating writer. He writes directly, charmingly, thoughtfully, artfully. Without ever showing even a hint of pretention, he is dazzling, even on the meat of the everyday. He recognizes that virtually all fathers are making it up as they go along. He revels in his ability to surpass the remarkably low expectations we set for fathers. He laments the loss of endlessly free afternoons, and freedom of movement, for kids. He confronts the issue of how to talk honestly to his children about past drug use. He muses on the insanity of circumcising his son. He ridicules his own geekiness. Yet his writing reveals a man who has climbed far outside his childhood obsession with sci-fi and comic books, and sees the world in dramatic and subtle colors.

MY TIMES: RACE AND POWER AT THE NEW YORK TIMES by Gerald Boyd (2010)

I was deeply absorbed by this book. It is a revealing portrait of a talented and troubled man, a newspaper journalist who succeeded, whose ambition ate at him, and who retained a touching humanity perhaps half of his time at the top. He ultimately fell victim, both to unlucky timing and to the blindness that can come with ambition.

My views are subjective. I knew Gerald Boyd. I am one of many hundreds of journalists who worked with him and, in my case, had him as a boss when he was the editor of Metro section of the New York Times, where I was a reporter. I thought he was an uneven leader. He could be insightful, intimidating, charming, instructive, rudely dismissive, and also a bestower of tough love. His positive attributes rained on me when I was in favor with more senior editors, and his negatives came when I stumbled. I was not one of his favorite reporters, but I had my moments. I was in the middling crowd, those who needed better guidance from him. And yet the limited guidance he did give, when he spoke honestly and even tenderly to me, was among the most effective I ever got.

His personal story is remarkable. It is one thing to hear vaguely, as we all did on the Metro desk, that he was raised poor in East St. Louis. It is quite another to read about what it was like to go to his mother’s funeral at age 3, to go hungry, to use his smarts and charm, leavened by his innate caution and fear, to see chances and make the most of them.

Race is a steadily undulating theme in this book. Boyd describes his growing consciousness, as a child, of black and white worlds of St. Louis. His militant episodes at college, when he changed his name to “Uganda X” are a comic backdrop for his constructive activism there. His entry to the NYT and the racism he endured there is arresting. Editors look at his clips and ask, “Did you really write this yourself?” Editors ask, when he prepares for a new assignment, “Do you think you can handle this?”

Boyd was not a fine writer. This book is direct, almost workmanlike in places. It doesn’t matter. It’s a strong story. How he made it through school, to a newspaper, through college, to covering Washington, to succeeding in the NYT newsroom – it’s a fine tale. The holes and shortcomings are revealing. He admits having difficulty trusting anyone, but wonders why he has few friends. He torches wife #2 for dragging him to couples therapy, but later acknowledges how essential therapy was for his maturity and judgment.

The real juice, for those of us who care about the Times, come in the section of the book covering his rise to the top during the Howell Raines era. For all Boyd’s talent and smarts, for all his ability to navigate politically choppy waters, for all his relentless determination to succeed, he is at last hobbled by his ambition and defensiveness. When Raines names Boyd to be managing editor, effectively number two in the newsroom, it seems a crowning achievement. But it is virtually an impossible job. Raines emerges as a megalomaniac, and Boyd can only go along as Raines’s psychotic schemes inevitably bleed the paper’s correspondents and desk editors, undercutting their integrity and morale. It’s painful to read Boyd’s descriptions of trying, and failing, to provide any balance to Raines’s autocratic mismanagement. When the Jason Blair incident unfolds, it opens up the cauldron of resentment among the NYT staff, and Boyd reveals a sorry lack of understanding of why the revolution came. Boyd professes to believe in the Raines mission to heighten the paper’s “metabolism”, but it’s clear that Boyd’s own advancement was so identified with it that he had no useful perspective on its glaring failures. Even though he himself chronicles Raines’s shortfalls as an editor and leader, he is surprised that his reporters and editors are all so angry. Boyd becomes collateral damage, and doesn’t get why no one speaks up to defend him.

Like many victims, Boyd cannot see the reality and instead identifies villains responsible for conspiring against him, Joe Lelyveld, Bill Keller, Jon Landman. His accusations against them ring hollow. It is deeply sad, after his telling and sensitive descriptions of the racism he endured throughout his life, when he lapses into a simplistic citing of racism as the cause of his fall. It is even more sad, after his devastating loss of his job and his sense of identity, when he finds partial solace in his wife and their young son, only to be diagnosed with lung cancer and to quickly succumb to it.

His wife, Robin Stone, says that she edited two unfinished manuscripts together, after Boyd died. I feel grateful to her, for not letting them sit unfinished. She did a good editing job, yielding a result that reads as one coherent whole. Stone’s afterward, where she describes some of her grief, are very moving. I put the book down and for a moment tried to imagine what it might be like for Boyd’s young son to read it once he has grown up. And I also wondered about all those others who worked with Boyd and who, like me, enjoyed his tenderness, endured his limitations, and admired his life.

KOKORO by Natsume Soseki (1914)
I’m a fan of Haruki Murakami, so his recommendation of this novel caught my attention. Soseki was an unfamiliar name to me, though he is considered the father of modern Japanese literature, and this is his most popular book. Written 100 years ago, it holds up well. It’s a simple story, of a friendship between a younger and an older man. It's really about a generational shift from traditional to modern society, the kind of transition many of us puzzle over, in different contexts. The effort to express feelings can veer from ultra-repressed to silly, in a way that maybe Japanophiles alone can know. But the themes are universal. Easy and accessible.

GAME CHANGE by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (2010)
Engrossing. Politically savvy. Enjoyable, start to finish. I looked at a copy in my local bookstore, wondering whether to buy it, and then saw this quotation atop the inside jacket cover, from Barack Obama in September, 2008: "This shit would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it." SOLD. And it was a good decision. The book teems with quotations like that, as well as anecdotes and political context that ring true. These are sophisticated political reporters, who covered the campaign every day, and yet were able to boil it down to the essentials, writing in clear if upsparkling prose. The sourcing is weak, so we have to take a leap of faith to trust their details. My take: Leap away. The portraits of the candidates and their spouses are more than plausible. After all, it was a truly remarkable campaign, and even for those of us who followed it closely, this colorful re-enactment is well worth it.

HALF BROKE HORSES by Jeannette Walls (2009)
Lyrical. Feels like a memoir, and is decribed by Walls as a "true-life novel." It's a creative approach to telling Walls's family history, which many of us are curious about, after her previous book. In this one, Grandma sure had some tales, and Walls uses her own imagination to give them a voice. It works.

THE REPUBLIC by Plato (400 b.c.)
The classic. Quite readable. Socrates is worth spending time with.

LESSONS OF THE MASTERS by George Steiner (2003)
Essays on teaching, and learning, from a master himself. Old-school. Thoughtful. Erudite, if somewhat stiff. His focus on Socrates encouraged me to go back to the source.

THE LACUNA by Barbara Kingsolver (2009)
A mature, subtle, demanding novel. Her best yet. Starts gradually, and it actually took me more than 200 pages before I felt pulled in, and understood why Kingsolver was writing about the main character, Harrison Shepherd. The mixed format of diary entries, letters and editor notes did not initially appeal to me. But the writing is so rich and free of gimmick, and it induced curiosity where she was going with it. As I suspected, the payoff is tremendous. Kingsolver's musings on the way lives and personalities can synchronize or clash, on what art means in our lives, on the tragic force of political passions of the day, on writing, on being a well-known writer, on friendship -- they give this novel an enjoyable depth and sophistication.