Reading the new Hampton Sides

The new Hampton Sides book, Hellhound on His Trail, is not only great, it compares well to his incredible Ghost Soldiers. His earlier book told a little known tale of a joint Army Ranger/Filipino guerrilla operation to liberate US servicemen from a Japanese prison camp. He took a fresh story and told it incredibly well. Hellhound on His Trail, also describes a lesser known aspect of a terrible event. His new book is about James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As the center of the book and the driver of the narrative, it is a little odd that we do not see the name James Earl Ray until page 321 of the book. In his preface, Sides alludes to Shelby Foote's belief that historians should borrow the novelist's way of writing. Sides takes that advice and writes like the very best of the crime novelists. Ray, who Sides depicts as a criminal driven by his angry racism, his shattered family life and a peculiar desire to lead others on chases, was given to creating multiple fake identities. So for the first 3/4 of the book, Sides refers to him as Eric Galt, the name Ray took after breaking out of prison.

Sides' use of novelistic technique of pacing, and building suspense makes the non-reveal of Ray's true name feel like a big reveal. Reading how the FBI manages to piece together his history and his past, I felt a bit of vicarious triumph when they found out who he really was.

The other major character, of course, is Martin Luther King, Jr, who at the start of the book is flagging and flailing, looking for a way for the Civil Rights movement to gain momentum. He is anxious to being a poor person's movement in DC, but becomes involved in a garbage worker's strike in Memphis. Sides provides enough background to show the tensions within the movement without slowing down the brisk pace of the story. We are all aware of the terrible symbolic and social impacts of King's death, so Sides focuses on the things we might forget. With mounting dread, we see him joking with friends as he prepares for a dinner, all while Ray readies his rifle. We also see his young children try to grapple with what has happened to them.

The focus here though is on Ray. I was unaware of his flight across the country and then into many more. He was under the belief that he could find ideological sympathizers who would help him join up with the Rhodesian military.

Don't look for conspiracy theories in the book. The only one of note is related to a St Louis lawyer named Sutherland who is believed to have put a bounty on King's head. Focusing on the Ray's actions leaves space for the conspiracy minded to fill in motive and assistance if desired.

The new Hampton Sides

So I started reading the new Hampton Sides book, Hellhound on His Trail, which concerns the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.* In a later post, I will talk about the book itself, which is great and stands up well to his prior work. At the moment, I want to mention how relevant the book feels today. King's killer appears to have been already damaged and filled with hatred towards King and African Americans in general.

It didn't help though that the Wallace campaign and it allies beat the drum of saving the country for the white man, all the while claiming that King was some sort of stooge of the Soviets bent on destroying the US of A.

The whole feel of the time is frighteningly similar to ours. The drumbeats of panic and fear pulsing from the Tea Partiers, with their outlandish claims about Obama and their over the top rhetoric remind echo what people said about King. You can't say that you are trying to help white America anymore, of course. Instead you say "real Americans."

My fear is that all of this atmosphere will trigger a reaction from some new James Earl Ray. This is not a new sentiment, but the book certainly makes it seem that much more of a threat.

*Full disclosure: The publisher sent it to me. Thanks!

Dense reading of late

Much of my recent reading hasn't been easy to blog. I am trying (and succeeding) to read more international relations books and they are fairly narrow interest. Good books, but not for everyone to be sure. They are part of the broad category of nonfiction where good writing isn't enough for someone to read it. Certain authors, like John McPhee or Ted Conover or anyone who regularly writes for the Atlantic or the New Yorker, write thoughtful pieces and books about subjects that most people would find interesting.

If you are interested in national security policy making, then you will probably find Ivo Daalder and IM Destler's In the Shadow of the Oval Office a good read. The book is a study of evolving role of the National Security Adviser. The first was McGeorge Bundy, a fascinating character in himself and the subject of Kai Bird's fantastic Color of Truth. The initial role was strictly that of adviser, but it came to be associated with the National Security Council, an initially partisan group, but one that became more professionalized in the Bush 41/Clinton years. Thanks to its extra-constitutional status the role has morphed over the years and sometimes caused more trouble than good. The book assumes you are conversant with Cold War and post-Cold War politics and international relations.

I am slowly working my way through the Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen. This one is only for people quite interested in a detailed study of how counter-insurgency campaigns are waged. Kilcullen is a soldier and an academic so he combines rigor with on the ground experience. That experience includes work for Central Command in Iraq and Afghanistan and worked for the Australian military throughout South East Asia. The man packs more information in a paragraph than most writers pack in a page.

Steven Rinella is becoming one of my favorite nonfiction writers

After I gushed about Steven Rinella's American Buffalo, the wonderful Citizen Reader said the book was good and all, but I should really read the Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine. Well that surprised me as I thought it would be tough to top Buffalo.

Having now read the earlier Scavenger, I can see where she is coming from. I won't say I think it is better overall, as I think the books are both so good it is hard to say which is better, but it is built better in certain ways.

Buffalo is about Rinella's fascination with a buffalo, which leads him on a quest to learn more about them and eventually to hunt one. The bit about hunting will probably stop some readers in their tracks, but he convincingly argues that if you are going to eat meat, it is best to get it yourself rather than relying on industrial sources. He does an excellent job weaving in a variety of information but keeping the story focused on his hunt.

Scavenger benefits from Rinella's telling a variety of stories that range from madcap to touching. Having stumbled upon Escoffier's massive cookbook, he decides to create a feast out of the animals and animal parts that American tables rarely see. Not only will he serve them, but he will find them himself. Just as in American Buffalo, Rinella shows himself as a capable, but self deprecating hunter, not afraid to tell you of fears or his shame, as when wonders if he is too old to hunt frogs in a chilly marsh.

The stories are wonderful and I think they are better tales than the ones told in American Buffalo. His quest to capture and keep pigeons so that he can breed them and eat their babies runs into all the trouble you might expect including helpers that come to love the birds and refuse to give them up for butchery. Where American Buffalo rises above the Scavenger's Guide is in its' more thoughtful meditations on how we can stay connected with nature. Read both of these books, I have not seen their like.

Spinning my previous post

OK, I've tempered my enthusiasm for Game Change. I still think it is a great read, after all, I plowed through it in about three days, but I think the arguments of the haters have merit. I'll start with my complaints.

Where is the Republican story? The book is 436 pages long and the discussion about the Republican race starts at 271. In that last section, there is still plenty of coverage about the Obama campaign, so there is very little to say about McCain and his adversaries. Some of the complaints about the book, that is about anonymous score settling and that it is about gossip, are spot on with the Republican story. Giuliani appears and then disappears in a short set of pages. To be fair, the GOP race lacked the drama and tension of the ongoing Obama/Clinton fight, but there is just so little here. We don't learn much about Palin other than the McCain staff didn't like her and that she was maybe less aware of global affairs than we already knew.

Why did Obama win? It would have been nice to get more focus on why the authors thought Obama won. You can infer that Obama had the only campaign that wasn't a disaster. The series of mistakes by the Clinton and McCain teams are well laid out, but was there something positive that Obama's team did?

Can we avoid the cynicism? This is more of a meta comment. The view of the book is often cynical. Obama could get away with things Clinton couldn't because they didn't know how to deal with a black candidate. Team Obama ran into similar problems when they first faced Palin. It is a little dispiriting though to read how little issues and policies seem to matter in elections.

OK, now that I complained, what about the good stuff. Despite all I have said, this is still an entertaining, salacious and often sympathetic look at our prominent politicians. In this way, it reminds me quite a bit of Harrison's Salisbury study of the Mao and Deng era, the New Emperors, an out of print book that someone is offering for $99,999 (it's good, but not that good).

All the nasty details are here, including the terrible acts of Edwards and his attempt to somehow stay ahead of the news long enough to land a role in the new Dem administration. You see how much these people often disliked each other. This makes it all the more fascinating when they become public allies, as the Clintons did with the Obamas.

The central story of the book is the Obama-Clinton relationship. It would be a stronger book if the GOP story was simply left out and told only in relation to Obama and Clinton. Hillary, to my mind, is the most sympathetic person here. Ferociously driven and apparently hard to have as a boss, she appears to be what we want in a politician, a strong believer in her issues and in getting things done.

Her story in the book is tragic. She sees her dreams crushed for reasons she cannot fully comprehend and then does the right thing for the party and the country by supporting and then joining the Obama Team. The book end with Obama's reaching out to Hillary to become Secretary of State, something she did not want to do. I, for one, found their rapprochement touching and thought it helped dispel the slightly dirty feeling from the dirty stories and the sense that politics is just about winning.

A new Bacevich on the horizon

Andrew Bacevich, one of the strongest critics of American foreign policy under Bush and Obama, has a new op-ed in the American Conservative about how America is great at starting wars, but not so great at finishing them. It's a good piece, but my favorite part was getting to the bottom and finding out he has a new book coming out this year. It looks similar to the New American Militarism, which is fine with me, that's one of the best books I have ever read.

So many books to throw on the ground, like this one

James Bradley's The Imperial Cruise is a book that could have been quite good, and perhaps even important, but it isn't. Instead it is a maddening, bitchy book that attempts to reassess Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy. Bradley's thesis is that the American ruling class had an ideology based around an Aryan ideal of the Anglo Saxon. Raising the Anglo Saxon above all others, the US felt free to trample across anyone in its path. The US recognized the Japanese as almost Anglo Saxons and gave them the nod to occupy Korea. This occupation led to the growth of the Japanese Empire, Pearl Harbor, the rise of Communist China and I suppose everything else that happened in Asia in the 20th century.

Where to begin on the book's problems? First is the relatively insignificant one. Bradley really dislikes Roosevelt and his Secretary of War William Taft. He goes out of his way to show that Roosevelt really wasn't much of a Westerner and was basically an upper class sissy. He makes sure we know that Taft was overweight, even calling him Big Bill with regularity. Is this necessary to support his argument? No, but it reveals the contempt for the subject which weakens and cheapens the book.

The bigger problem is with his idea that racism inspired and allowed the cruel Japanese occupation of Korea and created the path for the tragedies of the 20th century. Firstly, what on Earth could the U.S. (or anyone else) do to stop Japan from taking Korea? Russia and China were down for the count, England was retreating to Europe to face the Germans and the United States wasn't strong enough. In 1905, it is hard to imagine the United States managing to fight the Japanese Army and Navy thousands of miles from major bases (Yes, it did to Spain a few years prior, but Spain was on its last legs.)

What's worse though is the idea that it was the United States rather than Japan's own domestic path and the prevailing norms of the great powers that led the country to imperialism. His argument implies that the Japanese were the simple puppets of the United States rather than a state setting its own priorities. If the U.S. had somehow kept the Japanese from taking Korea in 1905, they would have taken it in the next few years and certainly would taken it in the chaos of World War One, just as they used the opportunity to seize all of Germany's possessions in Asia.

This book is a lost opportunity. Clearly racism played a role in American foreign policy throughout the world, but how important was it? Did it cause the United States to neglect certain material interests and focus on others? You won't learn anything like that in this book. If you want analytical revisionism, go read Chalmers Johnson or Andrew Bacevich.

American Buffalo

American Buffalo is such a great read that I am surprised I haven't heard of it sooner (presumptuous of me, I know). The book is part memoir, part meditation on the American relationship with nature, part social commentary and part outdoor adventure tale. It takes quite a writer to weave that many strands together in a short book without derailing the narrative, but Steven Rinella makes it look easy.

Rinella's tone is that of a self deprecating conversationalist. He hops from topic to topic with ease, which lets him bring in a number of interesting asides about the buffalo. When it really won't quite fit, he isn't afraid to break out a half page footnote (which you should read, as they are uniformly excellent.) Many writers of adventure books puff up the exploits of the author. Rinella's excursions into wildest Alaska are amazing and would probably kill me, but rather than brag, he talks about the difficulty and the mental challenge of it. This also helps bring the reader deeper into the story.

Rinella's encounter with the buffalo began when he found a buffalo skull in Montana. His research into the animals leads him to a lab in Oxford, museums in the United States and eventually to a park in Alaska where he hunts buffalo. This part may shock readers to whom hunting is completely alien, but the care he takes in the hunt and his discussion of the history should assuage everyone who lacks a PETA membership.

This is just a fabulous read which I recommend to everyone.

Thanks for the propaganda!

True fans were probably well aware, but I had no idea that we have the British effort to pull America fully into World War 2 to thank for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. After being grounded as an RAF pilot thanks to injuries, he was sent to the embassy in DC where he eventually joined a group that sought to clamp down isolationist and anti-British sentiment in the USA. In her book the Irregulars, Jennet Conat details his adventures.

He came into writing due to boredom and a lucky encounter. CS Forester approached him to jot down some notes so that Forester could write an article about his RAF life. Not thrilled with his party circuit lifestyle, he wrote an entire article instead. Forester loved it and helped it get published. Soon, Dahl was working with Disney on stories about gremlins and his writing career was launched.

It wasn't all writing though. He worked with other spies (they preferred the term agent) like Ian Fleming and the legendary William Stephenson (known as the Man Called Intrepid). He formed a relationship with the Roosevelts and an intimate one with the married Clare Booth Luce, who used her position in Congress and her husbands Life magazine to push for a Pacific rather than a European focus. The dashing Dahl was ordered to sleep with Luce, the better to influence her.

I haven't finished the book, but I like how it both delights with little tales and that it educates with important reminders. For example, Britain and the United States were intensely close at this period, but even still they had crucial policy differences, because they had different interests. There is a sense today that we are not allowed to disagree with an ally like Israel, even when our interests are increasingly divergent.

I also like how the book shows how dis-united American public opinion was on how to conduct the war. If there was any war that you would think people would get behind it was this one, but even then there was intense disagreement.

Nice book for Christmas - nonfiction

If you have people on your list who still like to read about Iraq, consider David Finkel's Good Soldiers. It has made it onto more than one best of list. Finkel follows one small unit in Baghdad through 2007 and 2008. It reminds me a bit of Dispatches, in that it is quite literary, but it lacks the phantasmagoria of that book.

Here is a section where Finkel uses translation as a means to show the difficulty the Army had in working with the locals. The he is a Lt. Colonel who met regularly with leaders of Sadr City. I love the economy of language and the amount of emotion packed into this tiny bit of writing.

He learned to say habibi, which meant "dear friend."

He learned to say shaku maku ("what's up?), shukran la su' alek ("thank you for asking") , and saffya daffya ("sunny and warm")

He learned to say anee wahid kelba ("I am one sexy bitch"), which made people laugh every time he said it.

The months went by. The meetings grew repetitive. The same complaints. The same selfish requests. The same nothing done.

He learned to say marfood ("disapproved") and qadenee lel jenoon ("it drives me crazy")

June came.

He learned to say coolah khara ("it's all bullshit") and shadi ghabee ("stupid monkey")

July came.

Allah ye sheelack, he found himself saying. I hope you die. " May God take your soul."

Making the world go round

I have nearly finished Peter Maass' Crude World. Usually when I like a book, I say it is a "delight" or a "pleasure" to read. In this case, those words aren't really appropriate, what with all the terrible tales, but it is a great read nonetheless. Maass's book is a series of impressionistic essays about oil's impact on the world, particularly on the places where the oil is. It is not a happy story.

He starts off in Equatorial Guinea, a country with lots of oil and few people. It should be a little Singapore off Africa, but instead it is a kleptocracy with the leadership class flying jets while the people starve. They also coopt Western banks companies and politicians. Riggs Bank plays a particularly sordid role as the ATM for the despot. Then it is off to Nigeria where the populous Niger Delta, which should be a vibrant environment and living space, is a nightmare of pollution and random government destruction of villages.

Maass's argument is not with oil companies, although he is highly critical of them. Instead, his argument is that oil companies are in a business which by its nature provides incentives to be corrupt and shady. He says that if Apple had to go get its chips from under the ground of failing states, we would be bemoaning the horrible practices of Steve Jobs. This isn't to excuse the oil companies, but to refocus on the real problem.

This isn't the sort of book to help you understand oil's role in the economy, or the history of oil. I think the book for that is the Prize, a book I own but I have not yet read (this one joined the semi-secret pile of unread books on the play-room bookshelf. Not exactly secret, but covert so as not to showcase the growing number of unread books.) No, this is the book to read to go beyond the dry stories to see what is happening on the ground.

Not Too Dense to Read

I've tried to read a number of books on the financial crisis and, I confess, I had to put a lot of them down. I have found that they assume more knowledge of financial instruments and the financial system than I possess. They are often laden with more jargon than I can handle. Part of it is interest level. I know I could understand it if I put more effort into to it, and given the importance, I know I should. But I should do the same for health care and plenty of other issues. So instead I get a surface level of information and focus on foreign policy, that which really interests me the most.

Anyway, I really liked Too Big To Fail, because it focuses on the people, namely all the bankers and government leaders desperately trying to figure what to do as Lehman and AIG fall apart. It reads like a Bob Woodward book, with lots of detail, profanity and insider info. Andrew Ross Sorkin interviewed nearly everyone involved so he has the detail and he keeps the story rolling. My only complaint is that the book runs a bit long. I am not sure how much more I understand about the financial collapse, but I can see that lots of highly paid, intelligent people can struggle when the system is built to fail.

Fourth star

The Iraq books keep coming, despite the public's waning interest. The Fourth Star, subtitled Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the Army is a book with the Iraq war at its center, but it is quite a bit more. It follows the military careers of Generals Abizaid, Casey, Chiarelli and Petraeus, all of whom recently became four star generals, the highest rank in the Army (five star generals exist, but the rank is an honorific)

The parts I liked best were those that preceded the Iraq war. It shows the often peculiar and roundabout paths that military careers take. There is the constant desire, for those who want promotion, to take positions in charge of military units. In many cases, the Generals in the book despaired of every getting promoted. General Chiarelli found himself teaching at West Point and became known as an egg head. General Abizaid nearly took the career limiting move of becoming a Foreign Area Officer, or one who spends his career in liaison with other militaries. With the exception of the ultra-driven Petraeus, few seemed to be working their way to the top of the Army.

Most of the stories about their careers are fresh and they tell the story of the Army's near destruction in Vietnam, the slow rebuilding in the 70s and 80s, the victory of sorts in 91 and then the challenges of an Army using the wrong tactics in Iraq. The civil-military leadership in the Iraq war is the flip of the Union's situation in the Civil War. In Iraq, incompetent civilian leaders hobbled the general's war effort, just as incompetent generals hobbled the civilian leaderships efforts in the Civil War. Authors Jaffe and Cloud are withering in their treatment of the civilians in the books (as well as towards the self congratulatory Tommy Franks.)

The focus though is on the generals. Casey and Chiarelli eventually took the top two spots, respectively in the Army, but felt that they had been demoted in a sense for their handling of Iraq. Abizaid retired to the Sierra Nevadas and Petraeus continues his quest for glory.

The book is a good quick read, loaded with fascinating stories and analysis. It doesn't quite reach the level of the Thomas Ricks or Dexter Filkins books, but it does give more insight than those books into the Army as an institution.

Dead Hand

Depending on when you call it, the Cold War may have ended 20 years ago (could have been in 86 at Reykjavik or in 91 when the Soviet Union collapsed). Maybe it is for that reason we are seeing a surge in Cold War books. Last year we saw the angry Arsenals of Folly by Richard Rhodes, this year we have a new one from Neil Sheehan called a Firey Peace in a Cold War (just started it, great so far). Take a look at this review essay from Philip Zelikow for a number of books on the era.

In the Dead Hand, David Hoffman of the Washington Post covers both the East and West, but sheds a lot of new light on the Soviet side. He shows both the good, the realization that the nuclear arms race could end the world, and would certainly crush the Soviet economy, as well as the bad.

The bad is pretty grim. He spends quite a bit of time showing the rise of the Soviet biological weapons industry. The US, viewing bio-weapons as a strategic liability, signed and adhered to the Biological Weapons Convention and killed the offensive bio-weapons program. The Soviets feared the US was cheating, so they built a secret program with all sorts of horrors like smallpox bombs and new two punch viruses with an initial bug to weaken the immune system followed by a knockout punch bug.

Hoffman also shows the effects on international relations of the terrible management and maintenance practices, secrecy and the use of poor technology. The decrepit system allowed for the penetration of Soviet airspace by a young German in an airplane, Chernobyl, the anthrax outbreak of 79 and the shoot down of KAL 007. Recent history has tried to pin the blame on the US for this. Hoffman shows that the weight lies heavily, if not completely, on the Soviets.

Hoffman also discusses the post-war period where unemployed Soviet scientists sat in rotting buildings with weapons materials stored in filing cabinets. He reveals more about the US efforts to get weapons materials out of the newly independent republics.

I have a few minor complaints. The title is a bit of a dodge. The Dead Hand of the title refers to a Soviet Doomsday machine that would ensure that the missiles would fly even if the Russian leadership perished. Hoffman uses it as a metaphor to describe how the WMD is still out there even if we have forgotten about it. If you are expecting a book that focuses on doomsday machines, look elsewhere.

There are also times where Hoffman has done so much research that it starts to take over the narrative. The level of detail becomes a bit much and bogs down in a, fortunately very few, places. Overall I found it an engaging, well-written and informative read.

Take a look at this WaPo Q&A with Hoffman where he addresses these issues and more.

Terror strikes the land

A fell wind blows from Detroit. It has been twelve years since the dark tide of Tuesdays with Morrie nearly crushed the spirit of America. We rested too easy while Albom was quiescent, but now the stars have re-aligned and he has returned with Have A Little Faith. This time the topic is interracial, interfaith relations. I suspect the glurge dial will be set to 11. Hug your children while there is still time.

Children of Dust

There are plenty of books out there aimed, at least in part, at helping Westerners get a handle on Islam. Many are designed to whip up fear, uncertainty and doubt. Others, perhaps trying to offset the pernicious effects of the haters, refuse to acknowledge the harsh elements of religious practice. In his memoir Children of Dust, Ali Eteraz portrays Islam as a vast, complex tapestry with beautiful and terrible elements, just like every other religion in the world.

Eteraz, born in Pakistan and now living in the United States, is told early in his life that he is destined for Islamic greatness and spends much of his life pursuing the idea of how to be a Muslim. He studies in a madrassa, moves to the United States, becomes a fundamentalist, then unbecomes one and makes peace with the West. In the US, he trains as a lawyer and becomes a writer.

Eteraz's skills as a writer sets the book apart from similar works. He writing is lyrical, funny and evocative. He handles difficult material, including some occasionally disturbing sexual material quite well. He is best at describing his religous experiences. Far from being a mindless adherent, his relationship with the faith is constantly in flux as his understanding expands.

Although it is not the focus of the book, the early sections on Pakistan are especially valuable today. Despite it's massive importance to the world today, Pakistan remains little known to American readers. His stories of growing up in a small village will give readers a sense of what the life in this vital place is like.

Beautiful books are waiting for me

Yesterday featured my finest visit to the library in weeks, nay, months! I had four excellent holds awaiting. The only question is whether I can burn through them in the next few weeks (in one case I will probably eat the fine.)

Here they are:

The Dead Hand by David Hoffman. This one is about the end of the Cold War, the legacy of WMD and DOOMSDAY MACHINES!!!! Check out this article by Hoffman about the Soviet doomsday machine that may still kill us some day. PD Smith, who covered this topic in his own book, Doomsday Men, has another good piece on the subject.

The Hawk and the Dove by Nicholas Thompson. This book looks at the Cold War through the lens of the great realist George Kennan and the creator of the national security system, Paul Nitze. The reviews are gushing on this one and the subject matter is perfect for me.

Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber. If you want to bum out your lit fic friends at the bookstore, make them come into the scifi section with you. There will be plenty of eye rolling and mockery of book covers. Sci fi fans themselves will do the same to the little section of Star Wars and Star Trek novels tucked away at the back of the sci fi section. I am often one of those eyerollers.

I make an exception for this book because of the author. He is one of the few horror writers, Sarah Langan also comes to mind, that I think are fabulous writers in a debased genre. Anyway the story is about zombies attacking a Star Destroyer and a prison barge. We shall see.

Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy. This is the one I am most excited about. No one writes quite like Ellroy, but he require some concentrated reading time. I need to go hide somewhere with this one. If you don't know him, his hard bitten style has morphed into a speed freak translating jazz numbers in words approach. He is all dark underbelly, all the time. It has been a long, long wait for the novel and maybe you have worried that perhaps he has gone soft, fear not. Part one of the book is titled Cluster fuck. In all caps mind you. So excited to read this one.

Life in the fast lane

When they work, I really like books about jobs and what it is like to experience thsm. As someone who has worked almost entirely in offices, I don't have a good sense of what a day is like for a fire fighter or a park ranger. Two books that managed to explain a job while also telling good stories are the Last Season, a book about backwoods rangers, and Book, a collection of essays about life in the book trade.

Just as entertaining and informative is Richard Polsky's I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon). Polsky is an art dealer who writes about the big business that contemporary art has become. The principal change was the switch from dealers selling most of the art to the auction houses creating market frenzy.

Polsky moved from representing artists to brokering deals between sellers and the auction houses. Over the years he watches as the prices move from the tens of thousands to the tens of millions. While the increase means the commission on one deal can be quite significant, it also means that he is now priced out of the market. He began his career in part to spend time with and too own art. Now owning the ones he loves is just about impossible.

In addition to his art work, Polsky is a journalist, which shows in the quality of his writing. It is breezy, funny and on target. He maintains a good natured air throughout even when he is getting squeezed out of substantial amounts of money. This one will be of particular interest to anyone interested in the business of art.

Where white America is going

Every once and again, a friend will mention some great new place they have discovered. Usually it is on a beautiful beach, near gorgeous mountains or on some amazing fishing river. Out here in Oregon, Bandon is getting as hot as the overheated Bend. Back east, Florida panhandle developments like Seaside in Florida keep getting hotter. After you note the great places to eat, the natural beauty, and the nicely ordered streets, you will note the people. They will be quite open and friendly and, almost to a person, white. Rich Benjamin, who is black, explores these places in his book Searching for Whitopia.

Benjamin argues that wittingly or unwittingly, whitopias are created by fears of immigrants and terrorists and a desire to create comfortable, expensive playground cities. These places are too expensive for most minorities, and even for poor or middle class whites. They allow for like minded people to segregate themselves. Fans of books like the Big Sort will enjoy this aspect of the book.

Race is a touchy subject in America (to be fair, where isn't it a touchy subject?) but I think Benjamin handles it exceedingly well. He is not interested in attacking people, only problems. He genuinely likes the people he meets in these white enclaves. He has few if any personal beefs with them. Instead he wants the government to look at the policies that encourage the development of segregation. A tall order and one that requires resetting the national conversation.

The United States needs a new approach to race, Benjamin argues. For one, people, including whites, need to be able to express all their concerns and needs, without fear of being labeled racist. Equally problematic though is the adoption of identity politics based entitlements thinking by many whites.

The book reminds me of those of Robert D Kaplan, if generally cheerier than his books. The combination of travelogue and policy analysis makes for a engaging way to deal with this topic.

Only Yesterday

I have a bias against older nonfiction books as I don't think they age well. The evidence gets old, the arguments get settled or the style becomes out-dated and the read just isn't the same. Well, Frederick Allen Lewis sure showed me up. He wrote Only Yesterday in 1931 and it read like it was written last year.

Lewis was an editor at the Atlantic and I wonder if his style has influenced later writers there. He is crisp, funny and has a strong point of view throughout. I loved his description of the motivations of Klan members:

"...but it white robe and hood, its flaming cross, its secrecy, and the preposterous vocabulary of it ritual could be made the vehicle for all that infantile love of hocus-pocus and mummery, that lust for secret adventure, which survives in the adult whose lot is cast in drab places. Here was a chance to dress up the village bigot and let him be a Knight of the Invisible Empire."

It doesn't hurt that the subjects feel particularly relevant today. Lewis covers racism, populism, and the infatuation with celebrity, sports, and trifling events, at the expense of vital issues. He describes the madness of the stock bubble and the shouting down of anyone who call into question the riches to be made. He also looks at the cult of business (the business of America is business, and all that) and at the how religion and business began to use each other's language. He describes a very popular book called the Man Nobody Knows which argued that Jesus was the founder of modern business thanks to his executive experience and his skills at advertising.

Reading this book, I was both happy and sad to see that we as a society have many of the same problems. On the downside, there are many problems that we have failed to conquer for so long. On the plus side, our time is not a uniquely debased one.