Calico Joe - John Grisham

Calico Joe, John Grisham

What is it about baseball that lends itself to such great literature and movies – much better than most sports (boxing is close)?  But once again I find a baseball novel that has a reach far in excess of the nine innings, bats, and balls.

John Grisham has used his power as a story teller to take us to an insight filled novel that revolves around a major leaguer who barely makes the team, but ekes out a career that is marginal at best, but is painful for the family as his drinking, carousing, and vicious anger terrorize the family and the son, narrator who moves through life being everything his father was not and attempting to avoid his father all together.

He hate his father for the treatment of his mother, the cruelty that he endured and for one intentional beanball that ended the career of the narrators heroes and a young rookie of tremendous potential who was leading the always tragic cubs towards a pennant.  Of course we know the cubs cannot win and we can see the collision coming between the young, handsome, kind rookie and the aging veteran.

It is the sound of collision between ball and ballplayer that must be the echoing call to conscience that starts an unlikely change of events to bring the now dying pitcher together with the disabled ballplayer whose career he destroyed.  It is about making things right, connecting fathers and sons, heroes and villains, finding the possibility of not making things right, but of doing something right that rings through the chapters and the book flies by in fascinating narrative.

Like so many baseball books, the game lends itself to personal issues and cultural examination. 

Water to Wine - Doc Hendley

Water to Wine is a fascinating story.  It is a three part story - each fascinating.  First it is the story of Doc Hendley, son of a preacher, a bar tender, guitar playing musician and general good time guy who becomes  inspired with the idea of doing something positive with his life and, unlike most people, he follows up on that inspiration.  It began in a bar with Tasha, during his days at NC state.   Tasha called him out, challenged him, asked him what he was going to do with himself - "What the hell are you doing here, dude?"

"Do what you want to do, just don't settle."

From that inspiration, his biblical background, and his boozing lifestyle he came up with the line - Wine to Water and he began hosting events under that name to raise money for water projects.

"Unclean water kills a child every twenty seconds - it's more lethal than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.  One in every six people on our planet has no access to clean water..."

So he had money and a cause, but how to spend it.  He sought a NGO and found Samaritan's Purse.  His interview was with the director who gave the appropriate time to listen to this tattooed redneck - and it paid off.  Doc wanted to know his money would actually be used to do what he wanted to have done.  The director challenged him - good idea, why don't you work for us for a year and you can decide how to spend the money.

The challenge was accepted - which is amazing - and Doc asked for the toughest assignment which became Darfur.  The book then follows him in to Darfur, into the villages, observing the devastation of warring groups who have no real purpose other than killing, raping, and robbing, and through this he manages to put in wells and water filters.  Of course the Janjaweed (the bad guys) destroy and foul the wells, kill one of his men, beat up another, shoot at their convoys with AK-47s and make hell worse.

This could have destroyed everything, but Doc persevered after suffering his own depression traumatic stress syndrome.  He realized the basic truth that a bunch of westerners coming in to save the day was dramatic but ineffective in the long run.  What was needed was to train the people in the villages to correct their own problems.  He gave them training, tools and parts and returned to the states after a year in the field.

His story then involves meeting his wife, selling insurance, trying to get Wine to Water built up again - despite the 2008 depression, and having a son who has to have a serious operation.  The details of each part of this story are well told and the three elements - the growth of a person, the growth of an organization and the importance of water all coalesce.

"Maybe it's a Robin Hood thing, or perhaps I've got some of my granddad's John Wayne in me, but I've never once felt guilty about bending the rules to bring someone clean water.  The way I see it, water is the most basic human right.  It is not a privilege.  It sickens me to see how water sources can be wielded as a weapon or, perhaps worse, sabotaged by crooked politicians and greedy officials.

http://winetowater.org/home

Rising Tide, John Barry

Rising Tide, John Barry

"The Valley of the Mississippi River stretches north into Canada and south in to the Gulf of Mexico, east from New York and North Carolina and west to Idaho and New Mexico.  It is a valley 20% larger than that of China's Yellow River, double that of Africa's Nile and India's Ganges, 15 times that of Europe's Rhine.  Within it lies 41% of the continental United States, including 31 states."

"...the Mississippi was the only river in the world that had "mud lumps".  Likely caused by the extreme weight of the new sediment settling on the bottom, they could suddenly rise enough to lift a ship as it passed, and they usually had a volcano like cone spewing gasses and liquid mud.  Humphreys' described them as 'masses of tough clay, varying in size from mere protuberances looking like logs sticking out of the water to islands several acres in extent.  They attain height from three to ten feet about the Gulf.  salt springs are found upon them, which emit inflammable gas."

"There is no sight like the rising Mississippi. One cannot look at it without awe, or watch it rise and press against the levees without fear. It grows darker, angrier, dirtier eddies and whirlpools erupt on its surface; it thickens with trees, rooftops, the occasional body of a mule. Its currents roil more, flow swifter, pummel the banks harder."

At the Peak of the great Mississippi River flood of 1993, the river in Iowa carried 435,000 cubic feet of water a second; at St. Louis after the Missouri River added its waters, it carried 1 million cfs.  It was enough water to devastate the Midwest and make headlines across the world.

    In 1927...the Mississippi River would be carrying in excess of 3 million cfs.

With facts like this, the dates of laws and regulations, the sorting of the geographic data and the organizing of stories, John Barry does a masterful presentation of the Mississippi using the flood of 1927 to present us with a picture of the culture, the conflicts, the issues, and the river.

We see a flood that lasts over six months, one that shows the racial separation that caused the African Americans to suffer indignity and death no matter how strong their efforts and contributions.  It is a look at engineering and conflicts between engineers who were more interested in winning their personal battles than they were finding the right solutions.

We learn about the Percy family in Greenville, MS and they were in the epicenter of the Delta with the senior Percy fighting the clan, trying to find the right way to support the “negro” who he recognized as vital to the success of the region, holding off the Klu Klux Klan which has to rank as one of the most awful and powerful movements in this nation.  Yet he could not hold off the flood and he could not undo the damage that his son does when in charge of the flood situation.

We find out about the power structure of New Orleans with clubs and krewes controlling the power and their use of that power to flood and nearly destroy two areas of rural settlement in order to save the city.  But we also learn that had they waited New Orleans would not have been destroyed.  Then to compound the damage that their egotistical works did – they refused to meet their obligations to the victims of their human caused flooding – even though they had promised to “take care” of the people.

Then there is Hoover who gets to be in charge of the flood for the nation and he sees this as a platform for the presidency.  And it was.  So he uses and throws away the support of the African American leaders and their constituency.  He makes promises that he knows he will not keep after the election and he sweeps in to office and, of course, the great depression.  His rank as a bad president is preceded by behavior that puts a spotlight on his lack of integrity.

It is a story of engineering and politics, of people who are put back in to slavery and some of the most amazing statistics that you will ever read.  To understand this flood is beyond anyone, but this book is a great place to start.   Read it for the good writing and the fascinating insight, but do not read it to feel good about the human character.

http://www.johnmbarry.com/ 

Lost in Shangri-La Mitchell Zuckoff

Lost in Shangri-La Mitchell Zuckoff

The following summary is from Audible.com

On May 13, 1945, 24 American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over "Shangri-La," a beautiful and mysterious valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea .Unlike the peaceful Tibetan monks of James Hilton's best-selling novel Lost Horizon, , this Shangri-La was home to spear-carrying tribesmen, warriors rumored to be cannibals. But the pleasure tour became an unforgettable battle for survival when the plane crashed. Miraculously, three passengers pulled through. Margaret Hastings, barefoot and burned, had no choice but to wear her dead best friend's shoes. John McCollom, grieving the death of his twin brother also aboard the plane, masked his grief with stoicism. Kenneth Decker, too, was severely burned and suffered a gaping head wound. Emotionally devastated, badly injured, and vulnerable to the hidden dangers of the jungle, the trio faced certain death unless they left the crash site. Caught between man-eating headhunters and enemy Japanese, the wounded passengers endured a harrowing hike down the mountainside - a journey into the unknown that would lead them straight into a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white man - or woman. Drawn from interviews, declassified U.S. Army documents, personal photos and mementos, a survivor's diary, a rescuer's journal, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this incredible true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the determined trio - dehydrated, sick, and in pain - traversed the dense jungle to find help; how a brave band of paratroopers risked their own lives to save the survivors; and how a cowboy colonel attempted a previously untested rescue mission to get them out. By trekking into the New Guinea jungle, visiting remote villages, and rediscovering the crash site, Zuckoff also captures the contemporary natives' remembrances

This is a quick read and Zuckoff keeps the pace so that you want to keep reading.  His coverage is good and he makes the people come alive with his insights and background information.

I might say that there were more dramatic rescues in the war, but perhaps none quite as fascinating because of our lack of information about the people and the island of New Guinea.  I find it even more fascinating since my father served there.

In the end this is a story of perseverance after a tragedy that was so dramatic that it is amazing the people who survived did so with such strength.  Besides the rescue this book looks at the convergence of 20^th and prehistoric cultures and the bridge of human kindness and curiosity. 

The final attempt to rescue them was a logistical nightmare using the best technology of WWII and then relying on gliders for the actual rescue.

The author does a nice job following up on the lives of all those who survived and the stories were typical American lives which is quite a success when you think about it.  For me, and this is a very personal opinion, the natives were the ones who lost out because they were the source of curiosity and exposure and then subjects of the cultural parasites called missionaries.   They anticipated that life would never be the same – and they were prophets.

I recommend this video - http://vimeo.com/20097268

It is good “escapist literature”.

Fatal Journey

Fatal Journey by Peter Mancall

I debated posting this review - I tend to only write about the books I really like, but I thought it was intriguing and interesting enough to deserve comment.  

If you ever wondered who the Hudson River and Hudson Bay are named for - wonder no more - Henry Hudson an explore in the first decade of the 1600s.


The trouble is, we do not know much about Henry.  We know he had four northern journeys trying to find that elusive short cut to China that Global Warming is not uncovering.


And we know he did not come back from his last journey when he was forced to anchor in what would become James Bay on the South end of what is now Hudson Bay.  But he never came back to complete his story.

In fact, his crew mutinied and but he and the sickest members of the crew on a raft at the end of the winter and bid them good luck.  Of course, as luck would have it - the leader of the Mutiny and his primary henchmen went ashore during the trip home to procure food from the local Indians and were disemboweled and killed.


So a skeleton crew made it back to England and through a series of somewhat blase hearings were not found guilty of the crime of murder - mutiny had not yet been described as a crime. 

Good story, but how much to we know of Henry?  Very little.  How much do we know about the mutiny and its aftermath - very little  Like so many histories that lack the good first hand documents, this book has to rely on fillers - information about piracy and the laws that it engendered, the subsequent trips to Hudson Bay, and what others faced when over wintering in the Arctic.


Interesting, but my knowledge of Henry Hudson is only slightly greater because of this book. 

Gunman’s Rhapsody, Robert Parker

Gunman’s Rhapsody,  Robert Parker

The following note from audible.com is a good summary of the book which I found really enjoyable.  I just wish Parker had written more western’s than mysteries.  I do not like his mysteries, but love the characters of each book.  In this book he does not have his pair of gunmen – lawmen who filled – Appaloosa and others in a series that has resulted in at least one movie. 

What this book does is create an aura around Wyatt and his brothers, a sense of the west and Tombstone that conforms to the hardnosed detective style.  Here is the true to life mix of hero/villains who cross too many lines to be easily described as good guy and bad guy.

“Robert B. Parker gives his fans the book he always longed to write - a brilliant and evocative novel set against the hard scrabble frontier life of the West, featuring Wyatt Earp. It is the winter of 1879, and Dodge city has lost its snap. Thirty-one-year-old Wyatt Earp, assistant city marshal, loads his wife and all they own into a wagon, and goes with two of his brothers and their women to Tombstone, Arizona, land of the silver mines. There Earp becomes deputy sheriff, meeting up with the likes of Doc Holliday, Clay Allison and Bat Masterson as well as finding the love of his life, showgirl Josie Marcus. While navigating the constantly shifting alliances of a largely lawless territory, Earp finds himself embroiled in a simmering feud with Johnny Behan, which ultimately erupts in deadly gunfire on a dusty street corner.”

Despite the fact that the Gunfight at OK corral has been a part of the American Mythos and portrayed is so many versions on screen and TV, the book is still fresh and the gunfight, as it was, just enjoys a small part of the book  - it was, in truth, a very short episode in real life.  But it is the Earp’s – brothers who have a very strong family bond, their women who see a different version of the men, and their roles as gamblers, gunmen, and lawmen surrounded by equally questionable villains and lawmen that make this such fun reading. 

I found myself wondering how many versions we have had of Earp and the gunfight.  As a child I loved Hugh O’Brien as Wyatt Earp on television and can still hear the opening line – “Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp, brave, courageous and bold…”  And the second line ends with “long may his story be told” which certainly seems to be the case.  One aspect of the story is the long life of the players – Wyatt’s wife lived until the year before I died and most of the Earp’s went well in to the 1900’s.  So the legend lived and rose beyond the dime novels to tell his own story. 

How accurate and how good he was is open to debate for scholars who continue to publish new books about him and all the events.  Maybe it was his long life that raised Wyatt Earp above Wild Bill Hickok who became a showman with Buffalo Bill and other “lawmen” of the west.

I went to the web to find out how many versions of movies we have had from the gunfight that became a Hollywood cash cow:  James Garner, Hour of the Gun (1967) Garner played Earp again (as an amateur detective) in the 1988 TV movie Sunset.

Guy Madison, Gunmen of the Rio Grande (1965)
What's the spaghetti Western take on Earp? Playing fast and loose with the facts. Madison played Wild Bill Hickok in a TV series and made this film when Eastwood, Fond, and others found western gold in Italy.

James Stewart, Cheyenne Autumn (1964) Played for laughs, you can add this to Stewart’s role as Wylie Burp in An American Tale: Fievel Goes West.

Burt Lancaster, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).  This was the gold standard and he was backed up by Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday.

Joel McCrea, Wichita (1955)  Wyatt was the Marshall of Wichita before going to Tombstone – Dodge and Abilene too.  McCrea gives a good performance as the young Earp.

Henry Fonda, My Darling Clementine (1946) As befits Fonda, but not Earp – this was a very easy going, laid back version – not the one in Gunman’s Rhapsody.




Randolph Scott, Frontier Marshall (1939) The first film Wyatt played by one of the greats of the early B Westerns.  Scott faces down the Clanton’s by himself in this version.

Tombstone - Kurt Russell

Wyatt Earp - Kevin Costner

The great disruption - Paul Gilding

The Great Disruption,  Paul Gilding

Joe Deden recommended that I read the Book - The Great Disruption - by Paul Gilding. The Author was born in Australia and has seen the dramatic events that have happened in his own country, but is optimistic about the future if we can accept a few premises:

1. The Earth is Full
2. We have passed the planet's capacity to support us
3. Why are we the first generation to care more about ourselves than our future generations?
4. When confronted with a problem that is too big - the response is denial
5. Acceptance requires change and people resist change
6. The predictable path is that denial will increase with evidence and then suddenly implode
7. China and the Asian countries are leading the way to the new economy that the US was indifferent to.
8. We will learn that life is more than just shopping.

The last point is poignant if you remember President Bush's response to the American people after 9/11 - go shopping. We have had a capitalist idea of more shopping strengthens the economy and the country - sorry, that is wrong.

I am not sure I can come close to the optimism that Gilding shows – I can only hope the horrible right wing rhetoric is about to burn itself out, but anti-science – anti-intellectual is riding high.  However, Gilding quotes excellent sources.  His book is well documented and his strategy makes sense.  Here is an environmental business man who has moved in the circles of both business and environment.  He has a clear voice and he synthesizes both history and existing research (good footnotes) and presents a clear argument for change (while we can).

This book is both a history book and a futurist book which is an interesting combination. I have included some references here – without bringing in the more details studies.  The book is not only one to read, it is one to ponder and to take action with.  Check out his website - http://paulgilding.com/the-great-disruption

For Environmental History you might be interested in a little remembered phenomenon in 1959 - pre Silent Spring - when the U.S. Department of Agriculture banned the sale of cranberries because of excess pesticides. This was just before Thanksgiving. The timing was perfect to get the attention of the American people to the dangers of pesticide.

Noami Oreskes published Merchants of Doubt which reveals how many of the figures who fronted the tobacco industry antiscience campaign are now prominent and vocal climate sceptics.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – 2004  “At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning.  Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”

“most people still don’t think they live in the environment”

“Let there be no doubt, when the environment crashes the economy will to.”

Gaylord Nelson said, “the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.”

“Growth is now an addiction and addicts resist change.”

“I’m not talking about climate deniers or antiscience skeptics.  They can be ignored for two reasons.  First, we can’t help them, because as with an alcoholic in denial, no amount of data will change their minds – they simply don’t want to face reality.  Second, they don’t matter.  The physical science will overwhelm them in the end.”

“33 generals in April 2010 [wrote to the senate majority and minority leaders] climate change is threatening America’s security.”

Nhat Hanh, “The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption.  We consume to forget our worries and our ansieties.  Tranquilizing ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.”

E F Shumacker, Small is beautiful, “ A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption…The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity.  Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to the sole end and purpose of all economic activity.”

Faithful Place - Tana French

Frank Mackey, head of undercover in Dublin was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's inner city in 1985 when he found a way to escape the crammed family flat on Faithful Place. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London, but when he waited for her to come to meet him, the night passed and she did not show up.  He did not go looking for her, he assumed she changed her mind and then he walked away - turning his back on the neighborhood and moving on to become a detective and choosing to avoid family and neighborhood.  


But it is difficult to escape your past and when a suitcase that belonged to Rosie is found stashed in the chimney of a fireplace Frank is drawn back in to do the search he should have done 22 years ago.  The result is the corpse of Rosie and a web that draws in Frank, his daughter from his divorce, a brother who should have been sheltered and befriended and the results of a murder that entwines too much personal anguish.


This is as much a study in the impact that one drunken, wife beating, vicious "da" can have on a family and the resulting generations as it is a murder mystery.  This is a family that holds together despite all odds, except for Frances who has left once and cannot wait to get away again.  

His sisters and most of his brothers want to be connected to Frances, but they also fear him, fear what he will do to upset the delicate balance and swirl around the dramatic events like plankton - unable to move out of the way, helpless to change the flow.


Then Frances' ex and his sister introduce his daughter to the family, something Frances is angry about and his "mammy" - as tough and crusty as you can get after fending off her violent and still living in the house alcoholic husband - takes to Holly and Holly is delighted to meet this lost family.  The tensions mount as father and daughter try to understand each others angst and as Frances moves through the tensions of the family to find the true killer.

The issue is tougher because the murder squad finds an easy solution and sells it so that it can close the case and move on.  Frances takes advantage of a rookie member of the squad to get insights and then burns him (later he makes up for it) and the case is one that is outside the squad since it is a closed case.

So sit back, take a breathe and find out why you are curious about this family.  Enjoy the rich Irish - Dublin language.  Wonder why Frances is the hero of a series of books - what to we like about him - my answer is nothing, but I find him fascinating in his frustrating quirks. 

Vintage Caper - Peter Mayle

Written as a mystery the dedicated fan of either adventure or intellectual sleuths will be disappointed, however, if you want a description of Paris and Marseilles with a little countryside thrown in - this will be a good read.

From a detective standpoint the case of stolen wine in Los Angelos ending up in Marseilles is too straight forward.  Every guess is right on and the case is solved in easy many, but the case has enough good characters to invite you on a food and wine trip that explores not only the 70 Petrus,  53 Lafitte Rothschild, 61 Latour, 82 Figezc. and the 74 Yquem - which for Peter must be the holy grail of wines, but also classic whites and reds that accompany the numerous dinners and lunches that the characters have.

In fact I would say that dinner was a substitute for the violent passages that are so gratuitous in the standard fare (and I liked it).  In fact, despite being in Paris, a swinging ex-thief, now a good guy, working with a classic French woman to solve a theft, traveling across the country and not having one moment of sexual tension might be the hardest aspect to believe.

I would not buy this because it is classic, but I would buy it to relax in front of a fire place with your own favorite glass of wine.