This is part of my holy trinity now of nature writing. It is right up there with Baker's The Peregrine and Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard. Brilliant aThis is part of my holy trinity now of nature writing. It is right up there with Baker's The Peregrine and Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard. Brilliant an beautiful. I'm going to jump off because I'll just continue to mumble things like: scripture, masterpiece, and prose poetry, and y'all won't take me serious. ...more
"Eternity wasn't just time, but something like the deeply rooted certainty that she couldn't contain it in her body because of death; the impossibilit"Eternity wasn't just time, but something like the deeply rooted certainty that she couldn't contain it in her body because of death; the impossibility of going beyond eternity was eternity; and a feeling in absolute almost abstract purity was also eternity." - Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
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It is hard to put your finger on, wrap your brain around, this novel. In someways it reminds me of (and stands with) the stream of conscious writers like Joyce and Woolf. But the novel itself FEELS like Djuna Barnes' classic Nightwood. It is mysterious, lyrical, fragmented, dreamy. At heart, it feels like a brilliant, introspective girl/woman (Lispector was 23 when this book was published) working out what it means to be human, but more specifically, a woman; independent of her parents, relatives, teachers, husband, lovers, other women, motherhood, and even God.
Using philosophy, geometry, poetry, nature and intuition she examines herself from a period to a line to a triangle to a circle, and then back again. She explores the shape of herself and what it means to be alive....more
"This is how the present worked: we are features of tales we will never be features of." - 11 :::: march :::: 2011
"What was hardest to accept was next "This is how the present worked: we are features of tales we will never be features of." - 11 :::: march :::: 2011
"What was hardest to accept was next morning the clocks kept collecting the minutes inside them just like usual." - 10 :::: june :::: 2015
"When you are inside a tale like that, it never feels like you are in a tale like that." - 29 :::: october :::: 1969
"Who ever imagined tourniquets could feel like tenderness?" - 20::::april :::: 1999
"Memory is the mother of grief." - 2 :::: may :::: 1945
"...it hitting you what a curious condition thinking was, exactly like waking up one day with a French accent." - 8 :::: december :::: 1980
"The Me of Us can sense The Was has entered the God Swirl." - 8 :::: august :::: 1974
'It is just the no no-light strewn with diamond-dust stars suspended in the middle of his reeling mind like an always." - 28 :::: january :::: 1986
"wading farther and farther into the warm dark sea." - 11 :::: september :::: 2001
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"Living forever is tantamount to being trapped inside one's freedom." - 29 :::: october :::: 2072 :::: 10:30 a.m.
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I read this book twice over two years. Bits and pieces never dissolved. Bits and pieces will never be solved. Goddam I loved this book. I'm not usually a BIG fan of experimental fiction or art. I get the need for it, but often something gets lost; the humanity, emotions. But those writers and artists who can push the envelope without losing the thread of humanity are just amazing. This novel is a thread of 9, well, 10 different narratives. Broken. Fractured. Dislocating. Blending. I can't explain fully, but Olsen (who is an absolute mensch btw) manages to maintain the tension and the stories and land them in unexpected ways. I'm sad. But sad in a way something only beautiful, risky, and human can be sad. I don't want to say more. Saying more might give the game away, but if you've never read Olsen give this book a chance, or two.
Also.
Try another of his more recent novels: My Red Heaven. It is also amazing. Similar and different than this one. Equally built like a Kaleidoscope. Working with small packets, threads, strings wrapped un in various streams of consciousness to produce a picture of a place (My Red Heaven) or a mirror on life, death, and time (Skin Elegies).
I'll come back to finish and review this, but DAMN. Go pick it up and read it.I'll come back to finish and review this, but DAMN. Go pick it up and read it....more
"A thousand details add up to one impression." -- Cary Grant, quoted in John McPhee's 'The Patch'
"...an interloper [at Princeton], a fake professor, a "A thousand details add up to one impression." -- Cary Grant, quoted in John McPhee's 'The Patch'
"...an interloper [at Princeton], a fake professor, a portfolio without minister." -- Robert Fagles & Robert Hollander, both describing John McPhee
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In my Goodreads "About Me" I'm pretty blunt:
"I won't review your self-published book. I promise. Even if your book is published by a traditional publishing house (Penguin, etc), I'm not going to read and review it UNLESS I've read you before (most likely). If your name is Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, John le Carré, Robert Caro, John McPhee, etc., sure... PLEASE send me ALL your books. I'm totally game. Otherwise, you are just wasting both of our time."
That usually scares away most self-published prose pimps, but the other day I landed a REAL fish. Someone at Farrar, Straus and Giroux sent me a quick note complimenting me (I'm a whore for compliments) AND asking if I wanted a soon-to-be-published book by John McPhee to read, enjoy, and yes ... perhaps ... review?
My kids would tell you that in a choice between meeting John McPhee and God, I'd be hard pressed to choose, because to me John McPhee IS GOD. So, of course I took the book. I got it a couple days ago and just finished it today.
[image] Ann Baldwin May's quilt 'Great Blue Heron at Dusk'
Lovely. The book is essentially a memoir, told through prose patches and resurrected scratches. Pieces that have been overlooked or published and never reprinted were culled, edited, and sewn together (at 87, there is a lot of past prose to examine).
Part I of the book contains six sporting essays that range from fishing for pickerel in New Hampshire (The Patch), to chasing errant golf balls (The Orange Trooper), to golf at St. Andrews (Linksland and Bottle), to coach Bill Tierney (Princeton's and later Denver's) championship lacrosse coach (Pioneer).
Part II is essentially a collection of small pieces (some just a paragraph, others several pages) that seem random. They span McPhee's interests and curiosities from people, to places, to science, sports, and errata. It is only as these patches come together that you begin to realize McPhee is essentially taking you on a trip through his memory as a writer, a father, and a person. McPhee's talent as a writer bubbles up, but so too does McPhee's essential humanity. His narrative nonfiction informs, seduces, and entertains.
McPhee, along with Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, etc., helped spread New Journalism through his essays and books. His writing is curiosity distilled with patience + carefully filtered through literary prose + reduced with McPhee's unique talent of observing the crucial character in the perfect place at the exact right time. It is a gift from a literary starets, a psalm from our desert father of nonfiction. In this book McPhee is unfolding a quilt whose patern slowly transforms into McPhee. It is a love note from a father to his family (the book is dedicated to his 10 grandchildren) and most certainly to his readers and fans....more
"Yes, this is the eternal renewal, the incessant rise and fall and fall and rise again." - Virginia Woolf, The Waves
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I've read several of Woolf's"Yes, this is the eternal renewal, the incessant rise and fall and fall and rise again." - Virginia Woolf, The Waves
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I've read several of Woolf's books. I've loved them all: Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Jacob's Room, A Room of One's Own, Orlando. But I think I loved this one the most. I'm not sure. But the book is swelling in me tonight. It makes me travel back to the night when with my wife's grandfather and uncles, as I ritually dressed my wife's father for burial. It makes me think of all those moments in my life that Virginia's words and phrases could make make alive and make poetic. She could catch the fire of life (and death) and could etch its several meanings on a leaf, or on a wave, or in the stars.
The book is experimental, but also rather simple. It is a narrative with six voices (Bernard, Louis, Neville, Jinny, Susan, and Rhoda) with the silent presence of their dead friend Percival. It is a story about narrative, life, growing old, death, friendship. It is a choir of six, singing a song we ALL sing. It is lovely. My wife isn't a fan of Virginia Woolf. She isn't her cup of tea. My wife prefers Toni Morrison. But I, I prefer Virginia Woolf. I don't mind the abstractions. I feel the weight. I float up and down in her prose. I like recognizing T.S Eliot (perhaps in Louis) or E.M Forster (Bernard?) or Lytton Strachey (Neville). I like seeing these men and women as pieces of Virginia Woolf. I love how she folds them into her book. How she folds them into herself....more
Blown away. I'm going to have to let my brain settle down for a day or so to even attempt a review. Blown away. I'm going to have to let my brain settle down for a day or so to even attempt a review. ...more
"Society is sick of history. It is too much with us." - Arseny Roginsky, quoted in David Remnick, Lenin's Tomb
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While Remnick was writing for the "Society is sick of history. It is too much with us." - Arseny Roginsky, quoted in David Remnick, Lenin's Tomb
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While Remnick was writing for the Washington Post in Moscow, my family was living in Izmir, Turkey and then in Bitburg, Germany. We got the opportunity to travel to Moscow shortly after the August, 1991 (the beginning of my Senior year) Coup. It was a strange period. So much changed so fast. I was trading my Levi jeans in St. Petersburg and Moscow for Communist flags, Army medals, busts of Lenin. It was only as I got older that I realized both how crazy the USSR/Russia was during that time and how blessed the Washington Post was to have David Remnick writing "home" about it.
I've read other books by Remnick (The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama and King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero, and parts of Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker). The New Yorker is where I discovered and fell in love with his prose. So, with Remnick, I was reading backwards. It was time I read what is perhaps his greatest work. Lenin's Tomb is a comprehensive look at the last years of the Soviet Union from the election of Gorbachev (with occasional backward glances at Khrushchev, etc. It was nice to get more information about Andrei Sakharov (I knew only broad aspects of his story, and still need to read more) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (I know more about him, but need to read more of his work).
Some of this isn't dated. No. That is the wrong word. It is history, and by definition all history is dated, but the book ends with a lot of potential energy. It is sad to see that a lot of the potential for Russia's democracy has been lost into the authoritarianism of Putin. It is also scary to read quotes from Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and unabaashed neofacists who won 8 million votes in 1991, and hear words that could easily have been spoken by Donald Trump. Nations and regimes are never as solid as we think. Often the corruption that exists for years, like a cavity, eats away at the insitutions until they become empty husks and everything colapses. Perhaps, that is one lesson WE in the United States (and Europe) should learn from the Soviet Union's collapse in the early 90s. Perhaps, it is too late.
Some of my random pieces by Remnick related to Russia:
"There is so much authority that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it can be threatening to existing hierarchical structures." - Roland"There is so much authority that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it can be threatening to existing hierarchical structures." - Roland Griffiths, quoted in Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind
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"To fall in hell or soar Angelic You'll need a pinch of psychedelic" - Humphry Osmond
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I have family that struggle with addiction, depression, PTSD, and anxiety. The idea that one group of compounds (psychedelics) could transform how we view and treat these various challenges to the human condition is VERY excititng. Pollan's book does a great job of juggling the memoirist experience with psychedelics (think of this partially as a 21st century version of Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater) with a narrative nonfiction exploration of the history and current science surrounding primarily LSD, Psilocybin, and 5-MeO-DMT (the Toad). Michael Pollan writes well (he's not quite, for me, upto the level of John McPhee -- but he's close). He both annoys and seduces at the same time. He reminds me of a well-produced TED Talk. He is both interesting and compelling, but also a bit like a worn and comfortable shoe (say a Birkenstock) that represents a group I already feel comfortable both simultaneously walking with and yes kicking.
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Most of Pollan's book focuses on LSD and Psilocybin (which makes sense because that is where most of the history and science are). I was familiar with Leary, Ginsburg, Huxley, and even James' takes on mind-altering drugs and states, but it was nice to see it framed by Pollan. I was also thrilled to be introduced to a bunch of characters I had never heard before. I feel a movie could/should be made about JUSt Al Hubbard.
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There is a huge part of me that finds the idea of psychedelic experience very compelling (I've got friends who are well-respected doctors, writers, and attorneys who feel the same way). However, my issue with most drugs (especially pot), is most people take them to GET close to where I feel I am already. I have a lot of awe, wonder, don’t get depressed, feel no guilt, exist with very low anxiety, etc (although I’m absolute shit at meditation). I think I do a pretty good job of hanging in the present (while being able to look both forward and back when needed). So, I'm not sure I would be seeking LSD or Psilocybin (or smoking the Toad) for any reason except curiosity and [gasp] recreation. That's the draw. The reason I am skeptical still is I'm not sure I trust most of the product (clarification, after reading this I trust the product more than say the manufacturer, deliverer, source). I'm a bit suspect of taking candy OR street tacos from complete strangers so "smoking a Toad" that I didn't catch and milk myself doesn't exactly seem like something I'm going to run off and do anytime soon. But, if the practice comes above ground, standardizes, or I'm dying -- all bets are off. Bring me the TOAD....more
"Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think." - Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar
[im"Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think." - Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar
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In Durrell's second book of the Alexandria Quartet, Durrell has added another voice, another perspective to the events of the first novel. He is giving the story depth. He is destroying of the private Alexandria of Darley, and now expanding the story to include perspectives from Balthazar. Darley has sent Balthazar the manuscript for Book 1, and Book 2 now replays some of the same narrative (some things are missing, some new details are added, some facts are contradicted, new facts are discovered). Balthazar has dropped his loose-leafed Inter-Linear of Book 1 off to Darley, who is now raising Melissa (and Nassim's daughter) on a small Greek island (just West of Smyrna.* Chios?).
Again, I LOVED this second book. The language pulls me page after page. I had to stop myself from licking the page to get another scent or taste of Alexandria. The Carnival scene was intense and reminded me of a comination of Eyes-Wide-Shut and a William Burroughs trip. I also adored the desert/farm section with Nassim and his hair-lipped brother Narouz and their mother Leila).
Finally, I ravished every scene and every line from author Pursewarden (who seems to be modeled on a combination of Henry Miller and Wyndham Lewis)
"You see, the beauty of this world means nothing if you stand alone in it." - Karl Ove Knausgaard, Spring
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The first two books in Knausgaard's Års"You see, the beauty of this world means nothing if you stand alone in it." - Karl Ove Knausgaard, Spring
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The first two books in Knausgaard's Årstidsencyklopedien (Seasonal Encyclopedia) Series were Autumn and Winter. The structure of these books was relatively (and seductively) simple. Knausgård wrote every day for three months on a variety of subjects that relate to the season and month he is writing about. He is addressing these books to his unborn/recently born daughter. I got it. I liked it. It now was familiar.
So, when I picked up this book and figured out rather quickly that the structure had dramatically changed, I was a bit upset. I had to reorder things. I questioned. I protested. I kept reading. It was the shortest of the series so far, so it didn't take too much reading to understand (or begin to understand) why. Once I did, the change was, from a literary perspective, amazing. It perfectly reflected life. We start off thinking we've got things organized. We have a plan and a method. It works. And suddenly, life happens. By abandoning the simple structure Knausgaard, for me, took a series that would be a minor work (think a Mozart Concerto, not Symphony), and turned it into something BIG. He didn't set out to do this, but he allowed (like he always does) the momentum of LIFE, both the banal and the heavenly, both the dark and the light, to dictate his art. And it worked by god....more
"I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, "I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price." - Lawrence Durrell, Justine
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It feels like reading Henry Miller and John Fowels mixed with Anthony Powell and Paul Bowles, salted, smoked, and flavored with the sex and refuse of Alexandria. It was lush, brutal, beautiful, and horrible all at once. It made me want to go (while knowing Durrell captured a place and time that will never exist again). I felt like a peeping tom and a historian before a disaster. The book was infinitely quotable, with prose that sometimes bordered on almost grotesquely lyrical. It danced, seduced, pounced, and fed on me as I nervously flipped from one page to the next.
"Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for "Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs." - Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir
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This book feels like it was written by a sister, a cousin, a niece. Tara Westover grew up a few mountains over from my dad's Heglar ranch. I don't know her. Don't know her family. She grew up about 70-80+ miles South East as the crow flies, but realistically, it was a 1.5 hours drive difference, and a whole planet of Mormonism over.
I didn't grow up in Idaho. I was born there and returned there yearly. But this book is filled with the geography, culture, behaviors, mountains, religion, schools, and extremes I understand. She is writing from a similar, and often shared space. I didn't just read this book, I felt it on every page. Her prose was amazing. The memoir danced at parts, while a couple pages later, I would be sent up for air. I often found myself having to talk through parts of the book with my wife while reading. It flowed. Some books seem to remove friction while you read. My wife abandoned work for a day to read it. It consumed us.
This book reads like a modern-day, Horatio Alger + The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography. However, it isn't just a book about how a girl with little formal education from a small town in Idaho makes it to Cambridge. It is also a tale of escape, and a historiography. Westover is using her own life to do a popular memory study on herself. She is looking at how she viewed her religion, her background, her parents, and her education. She explores how those memories and narratives change and reorient based upon proximity to her family, her father. These narratives especially begin to reorient as she becomes "educated."
I bought a copy and before I even read it, I gave it to my father to read (He grew up in Heglar, ID). Then I bought another couple and yesterday and today my wife and I raced to finish our respective copies. We bored our kids talking about it over two dinners. We both finished it within minutes of each other tonight.
Tara Westover's memoir hit me hard because of the struggle she has owning her own narrative. Through many vectors I related to her (we both graduated from BYU with Honors, were both were from Idaho, educated Mormons, and both have preppers in the family). My family, while sharing similar land, a similar start, and a similar undergraduate education, however, are not Tara's. And that is what made this memoir so compelling. It was like reading a Dickens novel, but one that was set in your neighborhood. It was moving, sad, and tremendous. In the end, I was attracted by how close the story felt, but I was also VERY grateful her story wasn't THAT close....more
"The past could be forgiven, but not forgotten – except with the passage of time." - Ian Fleming, The Man with the Golden Gun
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I can't really call"The past could be forgiven, but not forgotten – except with the passage of time." - Ian Fleming, The Man with the Golden Gun
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I can't really call this an unfinished novel. It was finished, just not by Ian Fleming. He wrote the first draft and died. So, this obviously is the last James Bond novel. I'm not enough of a Ian Fleming fan to recognize how/where/if the lack of Ian Fleming made a huge difference to the drafting. I think the end of the novel, with Jones refusing certain honors, may not have found their way into the final novel if Ian Fleming were in control through the whole process. It seemed too final, too sentimental.
This novel returns Bond to active duty after losing his memory in the last novel. It also sends Bond back to Jamaica. It was good Bond, just not great bond. Seemed like a comfortable Ian Fleming wrting from a confident spot. The shootout was a bit of a disappointment, but Scaramanga’s last few moments were spectacular. ...more
It is wise to enjoy that which is possible without hoping for the continuance of a favorable conjecture and the persistence of good luck." - Joseph de It is wise to enjoy that which is possible without hoping for the continuance of a favorable conjecture and the persistence of good luck." - Joseph de la Vega, Confusión de Confusiones.
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I work in finance and read a lot. Most people assume I read a bunch of business and finance books. Not really. Often, I think you learn more about leadership from history and more about people from poetry and fiction that you can ever find in a business or leadership book. But I've always wanted to read these two pieces. Bernard Baruch was a huge fan of Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" and both books seemed too damn perfect for this Bitcoin, market volatility moment.
Without giving away the game, this book is actually two major pieces and a fantastic introduction:
1. Introduction to both works, with historical background, by Martin S. Fridson (probably one of the best known analysts in the high yield world). Fridson puts both books into historical and financial perspective and introduces both authors.
2. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) by Charles Mackay is divided up into three case-studies: i. The Mississippi Scheme/John Law (1716-1720): Dealing with France during the era between Louis XIV and Louis XV (Duke of Orleans as regent) and Law's involvement in both paper money AND the French enthusiasm for the Mississippi Scheme. It details the rise and fall of both Law and how this financial disaster almost destroyed France (one could argue that it was a big contributor to the French Revolution). ii. The South Sea Bubble/Harley Earl of Oxford (1720): Deals with a similar bubble as the Mississippi Scheme, but was handled a bit differently and ended a bit neater. But again, Mackay details the same factors driving the stock prices up, and what eventually lead to the collapse of prices. iii. Tulipomania : Holland's experience with the Tulip bubble (1636-1637). Primarily in the Netherlands, but also to a lesser degree in England. Mackay details the mania and its spread, as well as the implications (legal and social) after its collapse.
3. Confusión de confusiones(1688) by Joseph de la Vega is a book, written originally in Spanish by a Portuguese Jew, published in Amsterdam. Like Mackay, De la Vega is at heart a poet, so the book contains Biblical allusions, mythology, etc., but focuses on the Amsterdam stock exchange, and looks primarily at the trading of shares of the East and West India Companies. It is amazing (AMAZING) to think that within a decade of the Dutch East India company being created, markets had already developed that would not just buy and sell shares, but options, futures, calls, puts. The market in the 1600s in Holland doesn't feel too different than the NY Stock Exchange or NASDAQ of today.
It is hard to pick a favorite between these two. Both men had financial brains but the hearts of poets. I loved them. De la Vega sees more method in the madness of the markets, while MacKay sees the mass hysteria as the cause of crazy markets. Both men are probably correct to degrees. Both men are hugely influential in the way we think about the market, risk, speculation, and people. Just like I'd recommend poetry to financial analysts, but I'd recommend these financial books to poets. No one will be disappointed.
I should add a part here about Gamestop. The book now seems incomplete....more
"Unmitigated Blackness is coming to the realization that as fucked up and meaningless as it all is, sometimes it's the nihilism that makes life worth "Unmitigated Blackness is coming to the realization that as fucked up and meaningless as it all is, sometimes it's the nihilism that makes life worth living." - Paul Beautty, The Sellout
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THIS novel. THIS one. It snuck up on my white ass and turned everything inside out. It is easily one of my favorite books I've read the last couple years. Funny. Sad. Touching. Radical. Poetic. I will actually frame this all into a real review soon, but for now, just know this novel seems to combine the go-for-broke comedy of Dave Chappelle with the bitch-slap lyricism of James Baldwin, the funky regionalism of Marlon James, and the subversive satire of Ishamel Reed. If you start this book, step into its neighborhood, just know it will OWN you by the end....more
"When did [Grant] ever turn back? He was not that sort; he could no more turn back than time!" - Walt Whitman, quoted in Ron Chernow, Grant
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Ron "When did [Grant] ever turn back? He was not that sort; he could no more turn back than time!" - Walt Whitman, quoted in Ron Chernow, Grant
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Ron Chernow delights in writing about complicated American Icons and money men. It might seem odd that Chernow would chose Grant after writing about Washinton, Hamilton, John D. Rockefeller, the Morgans and the Warburgs, but Chernow also loves rehabilitative writing. Just look at what his biography of Hamilton did (helped out mightily by Lin-Manuel Miranda). Grant is a great subject to write about. He is a complicated man, with an interesting story, surrounded by a slew of fascinating characters. Chernow is also one of my favorite US biographers. He isn't quite as high up the biographer Olympus as Caro (who is really?), but is consistently better IMHO than McCullough, Meacham, and Ellis (among the Costco-selling blockbuster biographers). Perhaps, the proper place for Chernow is next to Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Herbert Donald, and Edmund Morris.
This year has seen two massive Grant biographies. I'm planning on reading Ronald C. White's 864 page biography sometime in the last 1/3 of 2018. This summer, I will also attempt to read Grant's own Memoirs this summer. So, I might have to come back and revise my review after reading White and Grant. For now, let me just say that Grant should probably be viewed as a great American (top 10), and mediocre president (25-30). It is, however, difficult to imagine any president emerging out of the post Civil War/Reconstruction/Johnson years with any huge levels of success. The hostilities of the South to Reconstruction, and black engagement in the economic and political spheres practically divided the nation again, post Civil War. Northern Republicans also seemed exhauted by the horrors of Reconstruction, and largely abandoned blacks. But Grant, despite his failings in many spheres, bravely fought for the legal and voting rights of the newly freed slaves longer than almost any of his peers during that time would have. But Grant was complicated. His blind trust and reliance on old friends, and lack of experience in politics and business, bit him hard and lead to several large scandals during both terms and after his presidency.
Chernow avoids turning this book into a hagiography, but only just. Clearly Chernow thinks Grant's reputation gets hammered too hard for his scandals and drinking and not enough time is spent on his successes (foreign policy, fighting the KKK, etc). My other mild criticism of Chernow, besides a clear resurrectionist bent, is skimming quickly over the financial and economic implications related to the gold standard debate (see Mehrsa Bahadaran's review) and subsequent Long Depression of 1873–79. I find it fascinating that a writer (Chernow) with a background in heavy in financial writing and thinking (he was once the director of financial policy studies with the Twentieth Century Fund), tends to bore easily with the major financial issues of Grant's tenure.
But overall, I loved the book. I loved the sections on Reconstruction and was surprised to learn details about Longstreet, Lee, and Sherman that I didn't know before. I was happy to devote a week to reading it.
***
Finally, Chernow writes primarily about banking families and American biographies:
Upon reviewing my reviews, I'm convinced Chernow does slightly better at writing histories of individuals rather than families; politics rather than finance. However, I should note, I've enjoyed ALL of his books and he's a master at his craft....more
"We seek constancy in heredity--and find its opposite: variation. Mutants are necessary to maintain the essence of our selves." - Siddhartha Mukherjee,"We seek constancy in heredity--and find its opposite: variation. Mutants are necessary to maintain the essence of our selves." - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene
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I've owned Mukherjee's other book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, for years and have consistently found rational reasons to not read it. So, I'm not sure what made me pick up this book first. Perhaps, it was a friend who prompted me. Perhaps, too, was my tendency to come late to authors and read them backwards (rNA?). Perhaps, there is a gene somewhere that always pushes me read an author's first, great novel late. Don't know. What I do know is I was BLOWN away by this book.
It was, first to last page, intensely interesting, it flowed well, and in parts it was damn near poetry. Every day I ended up reading more than I planned for that day. I couldn't put it down. Just like it is sometimes amazing that a fruit fly, a virus, or man can come from an arrangement of just 4 nucleotides in DNA (ATGC), it often amazes me that 26 letters in our alphabet can express the poetry of E.E. Cummings and the prose of a writer like Mukherjee.
As someone who has Type 1 diabetes, RA, Graves disease, and Marfan syndrome, I've always been fascinated by genes the history of genetics (Yes, I'm exist uncomfortably in the shallow end of my family's gene pool). I've actually had my skin punched for genetic tests in the late 80s by Dr. Reed E. Pyeritz at Johns Hopkins. So, discussions in this book about Marfan Syndrome and Johns Hopkins' Moore Clinic hit REALLY close to home. After reading 'The Gene' I'm now a HUGE Mukherjee fan, and have moved 'The Emperor of All Maladies' to my bedside table and will be jumping into that book soon (sometimes, it seems, we can act rationally just by moving cancer closer to us)....more
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